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“Happy birthday, Cate.” Ginny smiled at Hecate Lovegood as Harry brought them all tea.
“Thanks, Uncle Harry. Aunt Ginny.” Cate found that she was fidgeting — not something she was usually prone to, but for some reason… Well, no, Cate knew why she was nervous. But if she couldn’t talk to these two, her godparents — Harry, who had been the father she had never had, and Ginny, who had been Cate’s best friend as much as her mother’s — then how was she going to tell her mother...? She looked around the couple’s flat, which she had always loved: neat, compared to the glorious mess of the old flat over Ollivander’s in which she’d grown up, but still warm and homey. “It’s nice to be back.”
“It’s good to have you back,” said Harry, kissing the top of Cate’s head as he deposited Cate’s steaming cup of pu-ehr before her.
Ginny grinned. “Your mum wasn’t sure the Tokoloshi would ever let you go.” Her eyes sparkled in a way that told Cate that Ginny had a pretty good idea of what field research among the teddy-bear-like, omnisexual primates could be like.
“Er, yeah,” Cate aimed for what she hoped was a knowing grin to match her godmother’s, but somehow, even as an Unspeakable, even at the age of twenty-eight, Cate always got the sense that Ginny just… knew things. Secrets. Her mom was that way too; so was Uncle Harry, for that matter. Maybe she was just projecting…. “Actually, um, that’s kind of why I came over.”
“What,” chuckled Uncle Harry, “spending some birthday time with the people who were THERE for your actual birthday isn’t enough?”
Ginny gave Harry a good-natured poke in the shoulder, but kept her eyes on Cate. “I hope you’re not coming to us for advice about the Tokoloshe. Luna’s the expert on those little sex maniacs — and you.”
“And, um, Willhelm —”
Cate wanted to get the whole thing out before trying to explain, but Aunt Ginny always knew. “Willhelm?”
“Um. Yeah.” She looked down at the table. “And. Um. Gabangaye.”
“Ga…” Harry attempted the name, but failed. “Gaban…?”
“Gabangaye. He’s the lead researcher for the team.” And Cate knew that if she could leave it at that, there would be no problem, but no, Cate had to inherit her mother’s fair skin, and so she was blushing like a Bonfire Night blaze, and anyway she needed to tell her godparents about this, because it might send her mother truly off the deep end. Well. The deeper end. And they were the only ones who could help Cate prepare her mum. “And… Willhelm.”
“Gabangaye,” said Ginny, her voice very steady. And she managed his name quite well. “Gabangaye… and Willhelm.”
Cate nodded.
“And,” Harry said, his voice too very even, which was rather terrifying, “we’re not just talking the research team, here, is that it?”
Cate shook her head. Why did she feel fourteen years old? “No.”
“Are you…?” Harry always took forever to find the words he’s looking for.
Cate loved him — loved that he was so careful, especially with her — but right then she couldn’t take it. “I’m involved. With both of them.”
“Ah,” said Harry.
“And… Do they both know about this?” asked Ginny, her hand on Cate’s.
Rather than soothing Cate, which seemed to be the idea, Ginny was just confusing her. “What?”
“Well,” Ginny went on, her strong hands curling around Cate’s, “does each of them understand that you’re involved with the other?”
“Well…” Cate goggled at her godmother. What an odd question! “I mean, they’re married.”
Ginny winced. “Oh, god, Cate. That’s a bit complicated.”
“Um, Ginny,” said Harry. He was frowning, as he did when he was playing chess, which he never won, “I think—”
“Cate, luv,” Ginny said, and she was frowning too, but it was in disappointment, a devastating expression to Cate, but one she didn’t understand in that moment at all, “Merlin knows I’m no one’s expert on matrimony, but are you sure you want to be messing about with not one but two — ?”
“Ginny,” said Harry, placing his hand on his lifelong partner’s shoulder, “I think Hecate means that they’re married… to each other? Is that right?”
Cate, who was feeling bewildered and very much twelve years old, not even fourteen, nodded and stared at the hems of her robes.
“Oh.” Ginny’s tone was absolutely flat. “So… Both of them?”
Cate nodded again.
“All of you?”
“They’ve asked me to marry them. Apparently, Gabangaye’s tribe practices both polygyny and polyandry, so…” She looked back up and saw her godparents gently trying to digest that. She bit her lip.
Harry scratched his ear. “Do you want to? Marry them?”
It was funny: all he had to do was ask and the feeling — the knowledge of their love for her, of their love for each other, of their wish to share all of it with her — washed over Cate and through Cate, and she no longer felt twelve or even fourteen. She felt like Hecate Lovegood. “Yes. Oh, yes. Very much.”
Ginny leaned over and kissed Cate on her temple. “That’s wonderful, sweetheart!”
“Congratulations,” Harry said, adding his own kiss of blessing.
Tears came to Cate’s eyes, happy tears — she should have known that these two would accept her as she was. They always had. “Thank you.”
“So,” sighed Ginny, who was tearing up as well, “have you told your mum?”
“Well…” Cate felt all of that joy, that certainty ebb. “That’s… No.”
“Why not?” asked Harry.
Cate gulped. “Mum’s always been very… open-minded, with her dirigible plums and all. And she’s certainly studied all of the variations of human love as much as anyone. But I’m worried…”
“Worried?” Ginny and Harry whispered together.
“Worried that… Mum, she, she’s such a solitary creature, I don’t know if this will make… This might really upset her! I mean, she’s never had a partner as far as I know, except to conceive me, obviously — ”
Whatever reaction Cate expected from Ginny and Harry, raucous laughter wasn’t it. She watched in astonishment as two of the most level-headed people she knew howled like hyenas, leaning into each other, wiping tears of laughter out of their eyes.
After a minute or so, they had calmed down enough that Cate could conjure hankies for them, and ask, “Well? What was so funny?”
The two of them threatened to lose it again, but manage to hold it together. Ginny gestured to Harry as if to say, Your turn!
Cate turned to face her godfather. “Well?”
Attempting to re-establish a somber expression, Harry began, “Well, Cate, I mean…”
“Yes?”
“Your mum… I think she’d understand just fine.”
“I’m not so sure you understand — ”
Ginny cut in. “We understand… perfectly, Cate. Luna has had partners, believe me.”
“Partners?” Cate tried to wrap her mind around that. “But…”
Now Harry spoke. “She loves living by herself, Luna. Always has. But she… has partners.”
“Partners,” echoed Cate, looking from one to the other, at the amusement that was still boiling in their faces, but also their discomfort. Embarrassment? Why would Harry and Ginny… “YOU?”
“Um.” Harry squirmed
“YOU’VE BEEN MY MOTHER’S LOVER?”
Ginny took Harry’s hand. “Her lovers, Cate, sweetie. Both of us.”
Cate blinked at them both. “For how long?”
Harry was squirming again. “Um.”
“HOW LONG?”
Ginny turned to Harry, seeming to be urging him to say something, but Harry was staring at Cate, deeply abashed. “Um.”
Cate stared right back, trying to understand. Her godparents… were her mother’s lovers? Had been for…?
Then, for the very first time in her life, the veil of the everyday fell away from her sight as she looked at this couple and she saw the truth. She saw Harry’s messy, black hair, like her own. His glasses, like her own. His brilliant, frog-colored eyes, which greeted her every morning in the mirror. “YOU?”
Harry’s eyes fly wide, white showing around that familiar green. “Cate, Hecate — ”
“Cate, luv,” said Ginny, her hands finding Cate’s again.
“You!” Cate growled at her godmother.
“Cate?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She turned back to her godfather. Her father. “How could you both keep this from me?” For someone who rarely lost her temper — growing up as Luna Lovegood’s daughter taught one patience if nothing else — Cate felt as if she were doing a pretty impression of a volcano getting ready to explode.
Harry took her free hand, and Cate’s first impulse was to pull it away and shout some more, but when she looked him in the eye again, she found that she was caught, like a fly in amber. Green amber.
“Cate, sweetheart,” he said, his voice low and thick, “we none of us ever meant to keep anything from you. Please believe me. It was just…” Eyes wide, mouth open, he looked to Ginny, who gave an annoyed grunt, but continued for him. “It’s just that whatever we were to you, Harry and I — or Pansy and Daphne or Dean and Tien or… — there was never any question among any of us that you were your mum’s daughter.”
“What…?” Cate looked back and forth her godparents — between… between Harry and Ginny, and felt the enormity of the whole thing crashing down on her. How often had she dreamed of finding out that her father was someone famous, or rich, or exciting. And he was. He was Harry. Whom she had loved all of her life, and who, with Ginny, had given her what few things her mother could not, and more of what her mother offered in abundance. Yet how could they not have told her? “Harry, you, you grew up without parents. How…?”
Harry’s eyes grew nearly as wide as Cate’s mum’s, and he looked as if she had kicked him quite effectively in the fork.
Sitting pale beside him, Ginny stammered, “Cate, luv, Harry and I never meant to keep anything from you. We have loved you like the daughter you are. Remember, our tribe doesn’t practice anything more exciting than same-sex marriage, and even that wasn’t legal when you were born, so trying to explain to anyone how my partner ended up impregnating your mother, and how I didn’t actually mind because, you know, I was there — ”
Now it was Cate’s turn to blanch. The image of Harry, Ginny and her mother in bed… Merlin.
Harry was crying. Eyes still wide, but tears were dribbling down along the lower rims of his glasses and down the line of his chin. He clutched Cate’s hand. “I love you, Cate. You’ve been a joy from the first moment. Brilliant. Wonderful…”
Cate stared at the familiar, beloved face and realized he was torturing himself, as she’d watched him do so many times over the years — as she and Ginny and her mother had teased him about so many times over the years. Now her Lovegood heritage took over; Cate felt herself find her equilibrium again. Felt calm descend. She loved Harry. She loved Ginny. She had loved them her whole life, and she would go on loving them, as they loved her.
She leaned forward and kissed her father on the cheek. “I’m not angry with you, Harry. There’s no need to beat yourself up. It was a shock, that's all, but I’ve got over it now. Or at least I will do. I couldn’t be more pleased than to find out that you are not just my godparents. It’s… the best birthday present I have ever got, and you’ve given me some wonderful ones over the years.”
“You’re not angry?” Harry searched her eyes.
Cate shook her head, and he embraced her, with Ginny wrapping herself around them both.
“Merlin, Cate,” Ginny sighed. “You are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you.”
“Hmm,” sniffled Cate, since there didn’t seem to be much more that needed to be said. Except… “Ginny? Harry?” Merlin. What was she going to call them now?
“Yeah, Catie, luv?” said Ginny, since Harry seemed to be absolutely speechless.
“Will you help explain to Mum? About, you know Wilhelm —?”
“And Gabangaye,” Harry murmured. Getting the name right.
Ginny added, “Of course we will.”
“And also?”
“Cate?” they both sighed.
“Will you… give me away? With Mum? Would that be —? ”
“Of course,” said Harry.
“We’d love to,” said Ginny.
A shiver of something passed through Cate. “Oh. Good.”
They all stayed there, sniffling, hugging, vibrating. Until at last Harry chuckled. “Come on, ladies. Let’s go tell Luna she’s not losing a daughter, she’s gaining a pair of sons. I have no idea how she’ll react, but I do know this: it will be interesting!”
Ginny and Cate laughed as they stood, Cate with an arm still holding each of them tightly. “True. Life with Mum is nothing if not interesting.” She peered at each of them. “Which, come to think of it, is how we got here, I suppose.”
They all laughed — Harry turning bright red as he did so — and made their way to the Floo.
I’m not losing a mother, thought Cate as Harry prepared the hearth, I’ve gained a father and another mother. And a pair of husbands. This truly is the best, most interesting birthday ever.