Work Text:
It all starts simply enough, when Ginny looks at the calendar.
It’s something she never really makes a habit of doing, seeing as she has the team manager to help keep track of all her schedules and whatnot. She’s always busy, day after day, and it’s generally fruitless to try and wade through the chaos that is her calendar. But she does, one bright Tuesday morning, simply on a whim, and she startles at what she sees.
A perfectly blank space on May 2nd, 2004. No games, no practices, no news briefings. Not a single obligation or event to attend, not even a planned hangout with friends. There’s nothing to speak of on her calendar for the first time in what feels like ages, and even more so, it’s on a Sunday.
I.e., Harry’s day off.
They’re incredibly busy, the two of them, more than they’d probably like. Ginny’s position on the Holyhead Harpies means that once Quidditch season starts, she’s up to her neck in obligations. Even during the off-season, her time’s filled with training new recruits, doing press work, and more.
Meanwhile, Harry’s busy simply because of who he is. Work as an Auror might be a stable Ministry job for most people, a simply 9-5, five days a week sort of deal, but that’s never the case for Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, the Hero of the Free World, can’t be caught doing some menial desk work or basic patrols like any old Auror.
No, instead, they throw him into some of the harshest, most grueling cases, with no other reason besides “He’s Harry Potter, he can handle it!” or something along those lines. Of course, Harry, sweet, kind, courageous Harry, never complains no matter how much it wears on him.
And Ginny knows it does. She knows that internally, he’s sick of all the dark magic and all the fighting and all the politics that have plagued his life since he first discovered who he truly was. She’s yet to bring up quitting to him—she already knows the sort of fights that’ll bring up—but it’s constantly on the tip of her tongue when she comes home to see how beaten down he is every day.
It does make the beaming smiles he gives her seem even brighter, though.
But that’s not what’s important, she thinks as she hovers her hand over the blank day on her calendar. This coming Sunday, she and Harry’ll have an entire day to themselves, free of all obligations, of anything besides each other. The very thought of it has emotion swelling in her chest, even more so when she realizes the significance of the date.
May 2nd. The day the Dark Lord perished. The end of the Second Wizarding War.
It’s not their anniversary, but it’s a pretty damn close second.
Turning away, Ginny lets the gears in her head turn. She has planning to do, after all.
-
Which brings her to now.
She’s not one for elaborate plots, that’s for sure. Planning’s never really been her forte, choosing to leave that to Ron, Percy, or even one of the damn snakes. It’s why her whole plan is painfully simple, but she’s lucky that her boyfriend is oblivious enough to not notice anything.
It’d been easy enough to get Ron to distract him. A couple Floo calls here and there, and the two best friends were off, spending the afternoon perusing Diagon Alley and having some boy’s time. It’d been a little frustrating, having Harry out of the house when they only had this one day to themselves, but Ginny would make sure that it’d be well worth it.
They had the morning together, anyway. A lazy, slow-starting Sunday morning filled with lots of gentle kisses and terrible morning breath and delicious muggle food called pancakes that Harry so loved to make.
He’s always been such an excellent cook, it’s terrible unfair. And while Ginny hated the circumstances that made him such a good one—he had told her in hushed tones, over many nights, the abuse he grew up with, and she’d held him throughout all of it—she had to admit she loved the benefits she reaped from his skill.
Since the day they moved in together, into 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry’s always been so duly diligent about their meals. While he’s absolute rubbish at feeding himself, he’s enthusiastically dedicated to making sure Ginny’s always well-fed, especially after rigorous Quidditch practices. He loves taking care of her, he claims, and it fills her with so much affection that she almost forgets about her own guilt.
Almost.
She always wishes she could do more for Harry, do something nice for him, yet it’s hard to figure out exactly what.
Trips are out of the question, since they have practically no time together as it is. Grand gestures are nice, but Harry’s one to get embarrassed easy, and they’re both in the limelight too much to really go all out, lest they wanna end up on the front page of the Prophet the next morning.
Expensive gifts aren’t an option either, since they’d hardly mean anything to Harry anyway. When you’re the inheritor to the Potter and Black family fortunes, and one of the biggest celebrities alive, money becomes of little circumstance. It’s so different from the money-less environment Ginny was raised in, but she understands.
She understands, but that certainly doesn’t make her predicament any easier.
Harry insists he doesn’t need anything, that her companionship and her love and her family is all more than enough. And frankly, Ginny believes him, knowing the sort of childhood Harry’s had. But that doesn’t make her any less frustrated, because she just wants to do something nice for him for once, for Merlin’s sake!
Which is exactly why she’s doing this.
It’s nothing flashy, just a simple, homemade meal for Harry to return to after his outing with Ron. One night, where Harry doesn’t have to worry about cooking at all because Ginny’s going to take care of it. A simple, three course meal, with a salad to start off with, then a roast as the main course, and finally, Harry’s favorite treacle tart for dessert.
She didn’t go for anything super difficult, mainly because she has little to no experience in the kitchen. It’d never been necessary, seeing as she went from her mum’s homemade meals to the marvelous feasts of Hogwarts to Harry’s five-star cooking. But she’s watched people (i.e., her mum and Harry) cook plenty of times before, and she’s researched loads. She’s sure everything will come out fine.
After all, how hard can cooking be?
-
Very hard.
Cooking can be very, very, very hard.
Ginny sniffles, nose still itching from the spice dust in the air. She is not going to cry. She’s stronger than that, she won’t let this get her down, she’ll—
Something else beeps wildly, and Ginny allows herself a single, choked out sob.
It had all started with the salad, like all terrible things do.
She’d been fairly confident at that point. Perhaps that was her mistake. She went through it fairly quickly, picking out all the ingredients listed in the recipe, a lovely mix of vegetables, legumes, and pre-cooked shredded meats.
Or, at least, it should have been that, but when Ginny went in for a taste, she found herself repulsed at the sheer bitterness of it. It’d taken several bites and even more identification charms she’d learned in Herbology to realize she’d gotten the wrong sort of leafy greens.
But that was hardly fault! Really, what sort of supermarket sold such foul tasting greens anyway?
No need for panic, she’d told herself. She couldn’t take the greens out now, not when she’d mixed the whole thing so thoroughly, but she could still fix it with dressing! With renewed fervor, she’d gotten to work on the dressing, following the ratios by heart until she’d made a salad dressing that looked like it could be served at a restaurant.
Proud and smug, she’d immediately tossed it over the salad and mixed everything together before daring to take another bite.
…and then spitting it out right away.
Salt. The dressing had called for sugar, to balance out the sourness of the vinegar, the saltiness from the soy sauce, and all the other complexities of the dressing. And yet, she mucked it up again and used salt, like a damn moron, and now her entire mouth felt like the deserts of Egypt she’d visited with her family years ago.
And then, there’d been the oven.
God, that damn oven. Why had she let Harry go for muggle appliances again? How on earth was she supposed to know how gas works? It’d taken her a lifetime just to figure out how to make it work, the damn thing refusing to heat up until Ginny had kickstarted it with a small Incendio charm.
Oh, how proud she’d been of herself, only to gawk when she pulled out the roast and saw it entirely charred. Not toasted or even slightly burnt, but completely and utterly black all around. An overcooked, overdone nightmare, Ginny had thought.
That is, until she’d cut it open to see completely squishy, pink, raw meat.
Okay, maybe she’d gone a little too strong on the Incendio there.
She kept her hopes up, though, for the tart. She tried again, this time biting the bullet to play around with the strange numbers display on the oven instead. It seemed to work well enough, heating up more steadily than it had the time before. It’d been with a misplaced sense of trust, then, that Ginny had stuck the tart base into the oven for something called a “blind bake.”
Perhaps it was just her luck that 15 minutes later, she was pulling out a tart crust with pie weights melted in the center.
Melted, bloody melted! The damn things served a single purpose, and yet they couldn’t even do that! And god, she’d already spent so much time trying to make that crust in the first place, how on earth was she supposed to make a whole new one before Harry came home—
The sound of rustling from the Floo fills the air, and Ginny freezes.
“Ginny?”
No, no, no, this can’t be happening. It’s not ready, she’s not ready, and it’s a good two hours before Ron said Harry’ll be home. God, she hasn’t even worked out where the damn beeping sound is coming from, and she has to go find new pie weights, and she still needs to figure out what the hell treacle filling actually is, and—
The beeping stops, and Ginny allows herself just one more, tiny sob.
“Gin—? Oh, love, darling, what happened?”
Harry’s rushing to her without second thought, not even waiting a second to take in the room around him. Ginny accepts his hug without protest, letting him press a soft kiss to the top of her head as she clutches onto him.
“You’re early,” she says, her voice muffled by his shoulder. He pulls back just enough so she can speak clearly, and she steels her voice, refusing to sound as shaken as she feels. “You weren’t supposed to be back ‘til 7.”
“Change of plans,” Harry quips with a little smirk, reaching down to wipe some of the flour dusted on Ginny’s cheek. “Gonna tell me what happened?”
“…’t was supposed to be a surprise,” she grumbles, looking away. “Wanted to make dinner for you, ‘cos, y’know, you always do, and…”
When she risks a glance up at Harry, she allows herself a little surprise when she’s not met with annoyance or even just exasperation, but rather just love. Full, unabashed love in the form of a beaming grin that only Harry Potter can give.
And, okay, maybe a little bit of amusement too.
“How’d that oven work out for you?” he says, with that big dumb grin still plastered on his face. Ginny wants to kiss it off of him.
“Completely useless,” she replies without missing a beat, and Merlin, his smile’s infectious because she can feel her own lips curling up. “How do muggles get anything done, I swear!”
“Ask your dad,” he quips, and Ginny lets him lean in to press chaste kiss to her lips. “C’mon. How’s about we vanish all this and go down to Mumbling Murtlap’s?”
“But—”
“I know you like their crab pasta.”
It’s true, she does… but, but—
“We can get shakes at Sweetrose after?”
God, Ginny loves this man.
She leans up to press her lips against Harry’s once more, and when they part, she doesn’t even try to stifle the huge grin on her face.
“Lead the way.”