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I went looking inside myself for a home
Found only a sapling in search of an oak,
But it’s a start, my love.
He’d remember Fred’s funeral as a bleak series of snapshots, sometime in the thick of that first week.
Cruel sunshine soaked the afternoon, glinting merrily off the rims of mismatched glasses. Harry got the feeling that the Weasleys wanted nothing more than to be left alone, but still they visited with their guests over hollow anecdotes and uneaten finger food.
It was stifling, having nowhere else to put himself. He’d considered trying his luck at Grimmauld Place, checking the wards on his own rather than waiting on the Ministry to get around to it. But the idea of worrying Mrs. Weasley kept him rooted to the chair beneath the old willow in the Burrow’s garden, long after Hagrid had left the seat beside him vacant.
That morning, cold mist had slunk low among the blades to become the dew that had soaked his and Hermione’s shoes while they’d erected tables and chairs.
Devon’s only wizarding cemetery was in Kingsbridge, a bluebell-and-cowslip-crowded pasture by the water, interrupted by the occasional sea-weathered headstone and enclosed by a copse of ancient yews. Opposite Charlie, with the back corner of the casket on his shoulder, he’d processed forward with eyes trained at Ron’s feet.
He’d sat between Hermione and Lee, sticky seagrass brushing the hem of hastily lengthened dress robes, fingers itching for the cloak tucked against his chest. The eulogies had been like static-filled broadcasts, empty adages floating out over the swell of the sea.
Once, he’d swallowed the urge to reach for the narrow set of shoulders in front of him as they crumpled forward. Hermione had sought him, then, hand slipping into his, squeezing hard. It had reminded Harry of the only other funeral he’d been to, nearly a full year prior, and the thought had frozen his insides like a varnish as he’d squeezed back, feeling empty.
The crowd invited to the Burrow had been much smaller: family, remaining Order members, a few friends. Once-familiar faces had sat opposite him, assemblages of features he should have recognized, keen on discussing victory or expressing concern. He’d seen a documentary once on Dudley’s old telly, some daytime program about taming feral cats. Wondered, after finding his third excuse to leave the table, if he wasn’t a bit like something that had been too wild for too long.
Finally, he’d joined Hagrid in the shade, and had a glass thrust into his hand as he’d sat. Hagrid had had a hardened, weathered look about him— a grayness to his cheeks, a brittleness to his grin that Harry couldn’t bring himself to examine too closely. They’d drank slowly and quietly, side by side, saying nothing and everything until he’d departed with a hand on Harry’s shoulder and a soft “take care, take some time.”
And now the sun sank toward the trees, bathing each willow strand in rich gold as Harry settled further against the wicker, fighting the void of silence. His gaze found Hermione, tucked on the porch swing in an overlarge maroon jumper. Across the garden, Arthur was keeping Great-Aunt Muriel sequestered from the table where Fred’s siblings sat, shoulders nearly touching.
Ginny was wedged between Percy and Bill, staring into her lap. Beautiful and terrible, drawing his unwilling eyes. She spoke up every now and again, eliciting a ripple of chuckles from her brothers in response.
The wine was dark and bittersweet on his tongue.
Maybe it could be enough to quiet what lurked at the edges of stillness— thoughts of her, blinding and muddled, heavy in his stomach… of the half-written eulogy, scribbled out for his dead father’s dead friend… of leaf-dampened earth and a white, gleaming platform… Wine had blissfully washed it all away, once, beside a driftwood fire in Tinworth. Godfather, they’d called him.
But the glass felt heavier now, threatening to slip from his fingers. He didn’t even notice her approach.
She’d wrapped Charlie’s dragon-hide jacket over her black dress. Barefoot in the grass, copper hair gilded by evening light.
“Care if I sit?”
He shook his head and met her eyes with effort: deep brown and bright, rimmed with a blotchy pink tinge. She slid into Hagrid’s chair and tucked her legs onto the massive seat.
He’d kept his distance, lately. Time had warped since they’d returned to find the Burrow in shambles— days occupied by lethargic repairs and who’s-sleeping-where and learning how to restock a pantry when no one would cook. But now he allowed himself to study her, dreading the unspoken as the unbearable quiet stretched. Her hair was shorter than last August, curling beneath her collarbone. She had a subdued stoicism about her, a stillness that felt foreign. Perhaps he’d just misremembered it all, forgotten the smallness of her hands and shoulders, the angle of her jaw. Or perhaps, like everything else, she’d changed, too.
Ginny scanned the garden, raising her glass to drink. A tint of crimson stained her lower lip.
“So, Ron says you’re back for good.”
Surprise took hold of Harry’s tongue as his gaze snapped to hers. “Erm… yeah, I guess. Why, did you think…?”
She examined her knee. “I didn’t know what to think.”
He had a sudden longing to touch her, to trace the yellowing bruise on her cheekbone and make it disappear.
“I’m so sorry.” Words uttered so often in recent days they’d grown obsolete. He squeezed everything he could into them, every insufficient explanation that had ever died in his throat.
Ginny was rigid against the chair, watching her family with eyes dappled amber by slanted rays. In the silence that pressed on them both, he realized he was still hurting her.
He chewed over his next words, took a slow drink for something to do. She was the one to eventually clear her throat and offer a mercy he didn’t deserve.
“Can we walk, or something?”
She didn’t seem to have a destination. Harry followed silently as she placed her empty glass on the table of untouched onion tartlets and mince pies, and they passed on toward the hedge lining the garden.
The air around the pond was cooler. Ginny draped her jacket around her shoulders, curling her toes into the packed mud and leaving footprints as they meandered by the water’s edge. Several quick splashes to their left created rings that rippled outward from a log. Turtles, she’d shown him one summer.
“Must have been a hell of a year.”
She was squinting into the trees ahead. Worrying her bottom lip.
Harry felt an absurd urge to laugh. “Er… yeah, a bit. Doesn’t sound like Hogwarts was a picnic, either.”
She set her jaw and shook her head.
“Bet you gave them hell, though.” They had rounded the pond’s near border, edging along the copse of trees separating them from the orchard. He pushed the Great Hall from his thoughts.
She paused with one hand against the bark, deliberating, before continuing on wordlessly. They passed through the thicket until the ground cushioned their feet, wild grass and lonely, spindly saplings spreading out beyond a crumbling rock wall. Ginny stepped over it and he followed suit, casting his gaze over the field. The last time he’d been here: a white-capped tent, champagne and pandemonium. A dazzle of gold.
She was angled away from him, her face unreadable.
“Hey.” His fingertips found her arm, the ghost of a touch.
“Hey.” She sounded absent, lingering over the orchard before meeting his eyes. “Mum wanted him buried over there, you know.”
Harry glanced beyond her shoulder with a nod. He wondered if she felt the same way about this place. “I know.”
“I think it’s better, where he is now.” Her voice was firmer.
He could see it: a simple headstone casting shadow over a mound of fresh earth, graying over time among these wildflowers. Lonely, in the orchard, without the sounds of the sea. With only the splashes of turtles.
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s really nice there.”
A flock of geese flew overhead in a broken V, calls echoing over the hills. Ginny’s eyes followed them over the trees before she looked at him again. Cracking him open with her gaze, brave enough for them both.
I never really gave up on you.
“Ginny…” He tried again. “You didn’t deserve–”
She shook her head, scowling. “Stop. Don’t… I just wanted…” She let out a frustrated sigh. “Damn it, I don’t know. I have questions… I had something much cleverer to say about Veelas… but Bill just kept giving me more wine and… now I forgot.”
Months… years maybe…
Harry raised his own very full glass and drained it in a few gulps. Finishing with a wince, warmth spreading through his sternum. “S'alright. Now we’re even.”
Her lip curved slightly. “That’s not how it works.”
“Just give it a minute, then.”
She smirked this time, a devastating half-smile beneath pained, penetrating eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just… good to know you’re still in there, you know?”
Her voice seemed to reach out from across a platform, echoing somewhere beyond the tracks. He nodded numbly.
“Harry–” She stopped, his name a softened, gentle sound. He waited.
“You really walked in there, alone?”
The question was barely audible, a tendril over the pond’s evening chorus.
Harry swallowed, forcing himself to look at her. “Yeah.”
She let out a slow, quavering breath. “Fuck, Potter.”
He dragged a hand across his jaw. Something about hearing his surname— a title once reserved for coy retorts, for broomstick-lofted taunts and murmurs just beneath his ear— stung.
“I came back, though.”
She nodded as her eyes fluttered closed.
This time he did allow his fingers to trace, feather-light, over her bruised cheek, and the furrow between her brows deepened. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, followed by his lips, and as she yielded he felt something sputtering back to life, one hand spreading against her back.
They parted too soon. Ginny met him with eyes wide and overbright, wavering. The shallow breath that caught in her chest hit him like a heavy blow.
His hand tangled in her hair, holding her, grounding them both. “It’s okay, Gin.”
She nodded stiffly as tears spilled over, a released breath parting her lips, and Harry drew her against his chest. She smelled of sea spray and wine and something else, clean and unfamiliar. Beneath it all, so faint he might’ve imagined it: flowers.
Ginny’s fingers curled into the front of his robe, and her breath convulsed in short bursts, damp in the crook of his neck. His arms tightened.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair— a low, muffled noise breaking in his chest, “I’m so, so sorry.”
He wasn’t sure how long he held her there, as the sun skimmed the horizon and hues of purple and gray blossomed low in the east. Harry let his eyes close, forcing himself to keep everything else at bay, to be here , with her. The only real thing in the world.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she finally mumbled.
His eyes opened, facing the place where her brother had almost lay forever. Me too. The words wouldn’t come.
They found the stone wall again, eventually. Knee-high and ancient, mottled with layers of flaky green lichen that softened the place where they sat. Ginny had fallen into an empty, weary sort of silence. She leaned with her back against his chest, swathed in Charlie’s coat and watching with a hollow gaze as the first fireflies blinked among the grass.
The thought that struck him felt reckless, bubbling from a forgotten place: “I promised you no Veelas, by the way.”
He could hear the reluctant amusement in her voice, tucked beneath his chin. “Wouldn’t have mattered.”
The gloaming settled around them, leaching color from the orchard as a choir of crickets swelled. With wine dulling his thoughts of darker, crueler places, Harry focused on her breath against him: cycles of slow expansion followed by gentle release— between each, a moment suspended in stillness, a different kind of quiet.
Her next words were soft, devoid of all celebration or irony.
“You did it.”
He dropped his lips to her hair, squeezing his eyes shut. She’d feel the air filling his chest, the heaving breath he wouldn’t try to control.
“Yeah.”