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That year, the seventh month dies on a Wednesday and they leave town.
It has them both feeling like kids again, like sneaking out— stuffing his rucksack with shorts and sun cream after work in the dead of night, rolling the top to force it closed around a broken drawstring. By the time he’s shouldering the bag she checks her watch and it’s gone midnight. Twelve minutes into the thirty-first.
She doesn’t acknowledge it, but now he’s looking at her with his brow furrowed and a question forming on his mouth. She kisses it away, sweet and nutty from leftover Thai. Takes his hand from her hip, locks the flat behind them. She’s thinking they just might Apparate somewhere way out west this time— Charlie says California’s beautiful— they could nudge right up to where yesterday’s only half gone, buy him another day before he’s older than his parents ever got to be.
But they won’t.
He leads the way down the steps and around the corner. There’s hardly a breeze, but the night is cool on the back of her neck as the street slumbers under orange lamplight. A block away, back doors of pubs are clanging open for closing staff, bin bags thrown in the skips, keys and change jangling en route to bus stops. The light over the mouth of their usual alleyway is burnt out, so they slip into the dark.
He’s looking at her now, tugging her close till she can smell the soap and linen from his shower, something a little richer in the crook of his neck like the cologne on his top shelf. He’s motionless, concentrating— it’s always like this for a second before Apparating so far. Last week for a laugh she offered to book a Portkey this time instead, something about him getting on in years. Earned herself a spatter of marinara flicked from a spoon.
“I can do it,” she offers now. She’s already picturing cobblestones and stucco and a blue door.
“S’fine,” he murmurs into her hair.
He twists, and for a long moment they’re somewhere between here and there.
—
Three weeks ago she gave her mum notice. Low tones over the washing-up, Victoire and little Molly both fussing in the living room.
“Nothing, Ginny? At least let me make a cake, we can keep it small—”
“Define small.”
“Just family.”
“No, Mum. Please… just trust me this time.”
Curious eyes flitted to her middle.
“Stop that. I’m not pregnant, I’m just saying we’ll be on holiday.”
“For how long?”
“Couple of days, probably longer.”
Her mum tutted with another sidelong look.
And then Teddy knocked a wine glass from the table, shards everywhere, and she left the sink to clean the mess and scoop him up.
—
It’s quieter when they appear from thin air, a thousand miles from London traffic and city lights. They separate and take a second to feel solid ground under their feet, pulling salty air into their lungs as the dizziness subsides. Even the sea is asleep, a distant rumbling like gentle breaths.
On the stoop he swears as he fumbles to turn the key in its crooked lock, rucksack falling to hang from his elbow. She squeezes in to take over. He’s dead on his feet and a little on edge, and she guesses they’re both craving the stiff sheets and quilted pillows upstairs. Inside it’s too dark to see but neither of them so much as lights a wand— they carve a memorized path to a narrow set of steps, fall asleep within minutes to the sound of waves.
—
“You reckon they planned it, having a kid so young?” he asked in late March without looking over, eyes narrowed like the two headstones were throwing off a blinding light. “Or d’you think it was a mistake?”
By now she knew better than to respond with sympathy, that this was curiosity rather than guilt. She shuffled a little closer to his side, boots squelching through snow turned muddy slush. “Mum says everyone was rushing into things back then. She and Dad didn’t exactly wait, either.”
He frowned with a vague nod. “Yeah. Guess it would’ve been the next step anyway.”
They laid the bouquet for James and he took her hand to meander through the rows toward the kissing gate. She felt his thumb slide over her knuckles, over the rings on her fourth as that anxious frown returned.
—
When the sun’s up she nips down to the corner market before he’s awake. Baskets of eggs and ripe fruit, salty-sharp tang of fresh fish on ice— she has the first pick from today’s catch. In the years they’ve been coming here she’s picked up a few Portuguese phrases, remembers the way they feel in her mouth as she exchanges euros for silvery filets wrapped in paper. She carries back more than they can eat in two days, but if she can convince him to skive off Friday they’ll have three more.
From upstairs, he calls her back to bed as she nudges the fridge shut with her hip. Leaned over the pillows, bathed in the sunlight spilling across the bed, reaching for her. He’s different this morning, relaxed. It’s her favorite version of him, all soft edges and easy smiles, the version that quirks a daring brow and throws his head back with laughter from his throat.
She’s thought it before and she thinks it now, that she might get this Harry more often if they moved somewhere like this.
“C’mere, Gin.”
The sheets are a little stale from salt and sun and a dried-up oil diffuser on the dresser that still smells like vanilla. She settles astride his lap, watches the sleep in his eyes yield to something darker, burning.
“Happy birthday.” She whispers it as his hands find her knees, the hem of her sundress, sliding up along her thighs.
“Cheers,” he murmurs back.
It’s the only mention they make of it. When they get up again later he fries eggs and she toasts his health with a fleshy slice of green melon, and with a snort they reminisce about returning home from this place that very first time, picking up half a dozen melons from Tesco to keep the memory of sea and solitude in their mouths. Cutting them open with London bustling down below to find them all pale and bland inside.
—
He didn’t mention them again until one night in June. Studying the wand in his hand and the badge on his bedside, wondering aloud if chasing darkness is what they’d’ve wanted him to still be doing. Contemplating mortality all over again.
“Doesn’t even really feel like I picked this,” he mused from the bed. “Maybe I should’ve taken Ron’s lead.”
She watched him in the mirror, squeezing the towel around her hair, pulling his t-shirt over her head. “Something tells me you’d go a little mad working for George.”
He smirked. “Not the shop, I mean. Just… having more fun. Something different.”
She sat across him with her knees drawn to her chest, hair damp against her back. Asked if he was happy, promised it was all they’d’ve wanted. She didn’t miss the way his gaze wandered to her away kit hanging on the door.
“It’s just weird to think about everything we haven’t done yet,” he mumbled sleepily after flicking off the light. “Everyone used to say they were so young, but I never realized…”
Hours later she was still watching him, the rise and fall of his chest, twitches of his mouth, lamplit stripes across his jaw through the blinds. Found herself brimming with a rage that felt old and stymied, wondering if she would ever finish discovering what else Tom had stolen.
—
Later, when they’re wandering a narrow strip of cobblestone through the village, she wants to ask if twenty-two feels any different than twenty-one but swallows the question. They’re both flushed from the sun and the wine she slipped into the beach basket. Cool shade from the houses sends a shiver down her back.
“What d’you fancy for dinner?” she asks instead.
He grins, swings her hand in his. “Are you offering to cook for me?”
“Only if you’re craving pasta. Or a toastie.”
“Wow, both actually. You read my mind.”
She waits for him to drop the act and suggest they eat out but he doesn’t, so they carry cheese toasties and the rest of the bottle up to bed. And afterward he’s reaching for her, pressing her back with vinho verde on his tongue. That glorious laugh of his again when they pause to sweep crumbs from the sheets.
She watches him fall asleep with lights from fishing boats blinking across the walls, salty breeze fluttering over their skin through the open window.
—
It was bold of those three, she had to admit, slipping away after Sunday dinner. Leaving Teddy to silently sweep the room and eventually settle for his second-favorite, offering up a jar of dead ladybirds on a bed of leaves and twigs.
“Ginny, look! This one’s called Oliver…”
She wondered if they were out flying or smoking away from Mum’s eye. Or maybe Charlie had brought back something stronger than ţuică this time.
But then they were back without notice, just in time for dessert, and instead of tobacco or wind in his hair she found a smell that belonged to someone else, like wood and soap and the oily, metallic scent of a Ministry lift.
“Have you been in Dad’s shed?”
He smirked behind the cup raised to his lips, and Hermione plucked sawdust from Ron’s hair, and Mum frowned at the black smudge on Charlie’s chin. The confession came later in their own tiny kitchen, standing at the counter with leftover treacle tart that would never make it to the fridge.
“Your dad’s had it in there all this time,” he divulged, passing her the fork. “That old motorbike. Ron reckons we can fix it up, s’long as your mum doesn’t find out.”
She grinned and chewed the tip of the fork as she wondered if this was what he’d meant, having more fun, or if it was something else entirely.
—
In the morning she presents a belated gift: two broomsticks from the back of the pantry. For a second it’s like watching a kid on Christmas, drowsy and messy-haired and buzzing, until concern furrows his brow and he worries about the two of them being seen. She promises she’s already given it some thought, swears it’ll be worth it.
And so the brooms wait by the door as their day passes much like the first, meandering the narrow streets and watching life unfold here: kids kicking footballs in green-and-white kits that all bear the same number, builders scraping grout along half-finished walls, laundry fluttering from balconies sticking out at mismatched heights.
They talk as they go. Not about the Ministry or preseason, but everything else that comes to mind as time slips by unnoticed. They recap her better World Cup moments and practice their Portuguese (“Gin, I’m pretty sure you just told that bloke you’re randy for the beach”), place bets on whether Fleur would find this place charmant or dull.
But he’s quiet, she notices, in the lapses. Staring off with a look that lingers, tucking his tongue the way he does when a case follows him home. She doesn’t pretend to know what to say, refrains from offering a Knut for his thoughts. Maybe he’s feeling unmoored the way she does sometimes, like twenty-two means taking the last step on a staircase without knowing what’s at the top. She finds herself wondering if they’d’ve liked it here as much as he does, Lily and James, but she can’t picture two ironclad warriors doing things like deveining prawns or wiping crust from a sun cream cap.
He exchanges a euro for a cigarette at the corner, shrugs when she knocks his hip and promises not to kiss him till the smell’s gone. She breaks it anyway when they reach the shore, perched on her toes waist-deep in the shallows, pulling back and diving into an oncoming wave before he can gloat.
As she resurfaces she wonders if he’s thinking of Sirius, too. Twelve years stolen— locked away until youth had given him the slip.
—
The beach near the little house is long and narrow, and across from the docks the sand curls around to nestle against sheer, crumbling cliffs so at night the village looks like a glowing gem embedded in a wild cave wall.
They wait until sunset to set out with broomsticks in hand, casually as they can through streets brimming with music and voices from open windows. At the top of the hill, a few Muggles snap photos from a grassy outcropping. As they pass she wonders why they’re all trying to capture the same angle— that iconic sunset from the postcards— tilting cameras up to keep each other out of the shot when there’s an entire cliffside at their disposal. But then the sun is sinking below the line, and its watery trail retreats to nothing, and the crowd clears out. Three-legged camera stands all packed up, heading back down toward the village.
And that’s when she walks straight to the cliff’s edge, peering for a second at the sea churning below, and leaps over the side.
He follows.
He gives over to the dive for longer than she does; for half a second her heart plummets to her stomach before he’s pulling sharply upward below her, skimming the surf with one hand and an echoing laugh. They steer away from town and out toward open ocean, chasing the sun.
Eventually he tires of looping high over the water and matches her pace. As the purple strip of nightfall swells like a bruise she’s first to set eyes on a suitable destination: a cluster of rocky shadows on the horizon. And suddenly in the fading light he’s darting ahead, and for the millionth time she decides it’s the best thing in the whole world, flying with him, following that laugh he probably doesn’t notice still tumbling from his lips.
She touches down first, but it costs her two scraped knees against barnacle-covered rock. Breathless and dripping from sea spray, she stares over the dark water with a terrified thrill at the idea of submerging her feet. She can tell it’s much deeper out here, the surface moves differently— calmer, even though it could swallow her up in an instant.
“Fancy a swim?”
He chuckles in response but it’s a little frayed, gaze sliding past her as she wonders if he’s imagining it too: steeping his torso in the cold, letting his fingers slip from this weathered little sea stack till there’s nothing holding him at all.
Instead of swimming they make a jar of Hermione’s bluebell flames, balanced on the stone to burn bright, and it’s home base as they take off again. Stars prick the sky one by one at first until the dark really deepens and the rest explode overhead, painting cloudy ribbons so vast she needs to lie on her back to take it all in. She searches for his silhouette as he swoops through the sky and rematerializes at the edge of the flame’s glow. Then he’s lying next to her and facing the universe too, wondering things like whether there are more stars out there than grains of sand way below (better ask Nev), and how far north they could fly before absolutely needing to stop (Iceland, probably). Every so often she glimpses a blinking plane or the shadow of a bird passing just overhead, black against black.
“This was a good one,” he sighs after a while. It’s like the sea is settling in for the night around them: the waves are bigger but even, like breaths again.
“The gift? I’m glad. We can leave them here too, they’re meant to be spares…”
He turns away from the stars, faces her with one arm behind his head. “Good birthday, I meant.”
“Oh. Good.”
It’s quiet again while the wind raises gooseflesh on her skin, pulse quickening as she chances another look at him. And then he says to her what George did on his twenty-first, then Ron on his as he poured one out.
“Had to happen eventually, yeah?”
She thinks again about dipping her toes, letting go of the rock. Drifting.
—
Next summer they’ll celebrate properly at the Burrow, and Teddy will vow never to forgive Dominique for putting a pudgy fist through the cake’s huge number twenty-three. They won’t make it back to the house on the beach; between her postseason with England and the Minister’s task force, there won’t be enough time. So they’ll wait— better to visit in the fall anyway, avoid the crowds— and in November they’ll escape for a weekend with a wool blanket and a few of his jumpers.
“Maybe we move here permanently,” he’ll breathe against the shell of her ear with the wind at their backs, and she’ll think it’s something like a postcard: two of them standing on the empty sand with his arms around her, cradling the budding swell of her belly in his hands. “Get a fishing boat or something. Teach the kid.”
“Maybe,” she’ll hum back, amused. She’ll entertain all his ideas that year, he’ll paint the future a thousand different ways to see how being a father fits each one, and come April when she’s feeling huge she’ll pretend she didn’t expect him to come full circle and stick it out as an Auror.
—
Saturday he replaces the lock that’s been driving him mad for three days. Borrows a screwdriver from the next-door neighbor, returns a few minutes later to ask for a hammer, too. She watches from the stoop with an ice lolly from the docks, bare legs soaking up sun in the little white shorts he loves.
“Reckon I’ll get better at this stuff when we get a real house someday,” he promises.
She shrugs. “There’s a spell for screws, you know.”
“No fun in that, though.”
“Right.” And she grins, hopping off the brick wall. “Fun.”
They walk to the beach to cool off as she finishes her lolly, and they spot a cat that reminds them of Crookshanks slinking around a huge glazed flowerpot. As she licks her sticky fingers she wonders about getting a real house someday, wonders how many bedrooms he’ll suggest and if she’ll ever enjoy gardening and whether she’ll need to invite the neighbors for dinner even if they’re boring.
The sun burns her raw that afternoon. Back in the house it’s like she’s on fire, and he grills fish with tomatoes and olives and then presses cold hands to her shoulders, murmurs cooling charms against her skin. She can hear the laughter, the told-you-so caught in his throat.
That night she drifts off to the sounds of cats in the alley and boats bumping the docks. She’s first to fall asleep and so she doesn’t notice him watching, mesmerized in that stuck, overfull way he feels sometimes when he looks at her. Listening to her breath through the dark, like water meeting the shore.