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Since Ginny can remember, it’s always been the three of them.
Her, the youngest and the only girl in her family; her brother Ron, who’s a year older but far less clever, so they might as well be twins; and Ron’s best mate Harry, who’s been over at the Burrow half the time since he could toddle. Harry whose eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad, who’s the only one besides her brother Charlie who can beat her in a Seeker’s match.
It’ll be like this forever, she figures, as they spend yet another lazy summer day by the pond down past the orchard, gorging themselves on peaches Harry plucked from the very tops of the trees. The three of them de-gnoming the garden, hunting for bowtruckles and swimming desultory laps from one bank to the other. Her and Ron, envying Harry his tan skin while they only burn. Her and Harry, telling Ron they think they saw a huge spider just to wind him up.
If one day she and Harry will surely be married, and he’ll sleep in her room instead of Ron’s, well, how much will it really change?
********************
A lot changes just a few months later, because Ron isn’t actually her twin and he and Harry are going to Hogwarts, and Ginny has to wait till next year because Mum is being stupid and won’t ask Professor Dumbledore to make a special exception.
(Ginny suspects that Molly Weasley just wants her only daughter to herself for a while, so she can make a last-ditch effort to interest her in cooking and knitting and other unspeakably boring things.)
“We’ll write you all the time,” Harry promises on Platform 9 ¾, and they do. But along with Quidditch matches and magic lessons and feasts in the Great Hall, an awful lot of their letters mention their new friend Hermione Granger, and how smart she is, and how Ron didn’t like her at first but she’s alright now, he supposes, and how she always helps Harry proofread his essays.
Ginny sits alone by the lake, reading and rereading the letters and hoping there’s enough room in their trio for four.
————————————
There might not be, as it turns out.
Mostly because Ron has taken only ten months to become an absolute git, and now claims that he might as well die if he’s seen hanging around Hogwarts with his baby sister who’s just a firstie. Harry is still wonderful and he says he wants to spend time with her, but he’s friends with Ron first, that’s painfully obvious now. And when he’s not with Ron, he’s with Fred and George out on the Quidditch pitch, because he’s as brilliant a flyer as ever and got made starting Seeker as just a second year.
Hermione, meanwhile, is always willing to study with Ginny, but she already has all the first-year material memorized and usually just winds up lecturing. And the other girls, her yearmates who she’ll share a dorm with for the next six years—all they want to talk about is boys, and clothes, and makeup.
It’s just not fair. Ginny takes to haunting empty classrooms, practicing magic on her own. Maybe she’ll become a stronger witch than all of them, and then they’ll be sorry.
One day she goes to her usual spot with her wand and books and finds Percy doing absolutely disgusting things with Penelope Clearwater, because apparently she can’t have even one brother who’s not horrible. She has to find somewhere else to practice after that, obviously.
It takes a while, but eventually she finds a little stone chamber near the dungeons, perfect for a secret hideout. But apparently she’s not the only one who thinks so, because in November she yet again walks in to find her sanctuary already occupied—this time, by a boy in green robes talking to a snake.
————————————
Tom is amazing.
He’s so, so funny, mostly because he keeps on going long after the point where Harry would frown and say “Ginny, that’s mean.” And he’s smart like Hermione, but actually fun to listen to, because he doesn’t just repeat what’s in the book. And he combs his hair, unlike some boys she could name, and also she’s starting to think there’s nothing common or boring about brown eyes after all.
He very nicely agrees to share the secret hideout, even though he insists he found it first. Hogwarts is in dire need of more wixen who want to become great, he says, and so they can practice together as long as Ginny works hard and doesn’t bother him with too many stupid questions.
By January, she’s starting to feel like she may have finally made a friend all her own—so of course her former friends pick that moment to show up again, and ruin it.
She and Tom are practicing Potions, which he’s very good at and which is not at all like boring old cooking, when Ron and Harry burst into the room like they’re Aurors on a raid or something. “A-ha!” Ron yells dramatically, pointing his finger. “So this is where you’ve been running off to!”
“I walked here, actually,” she retorts, and her heart swells with pride when Tom smirks approvingly.
Ron’s face turns maroon, but Harry is looking at Tom. “What’s your angle here, Riddle?” he demands. “What do you want from Ginny? Because”—he sets his jaw and Ginny suddenly remembers why she wanted to marry him not so long ago—“you’ll have to get through us first. Pick on someone your own size!”
“I suppose that rules you out,” says Tom, rising in one fluid motion to his full height, which indeed puts him about half a head taller than Harry.
Harry draws his wand, Tom’s was in his hand the whole time, and the duel that follows is a flurry of shouted spells and colored light that only ends with two simultaneous curses, a cage of golden light, and the haunting notes of a phoenix’s song.
“What did you do!?” Harry roars, yanking his wand free of the beam of magic connecting it to Tom’s. But Tom doesn’t look smug or victorious—his chocolate eyes hold only awe, and curiosity, and hunger.
“I have no idea,” he says delightedly, “and that almost never happens. How would you like to study with me and Ginny, so you can ensure I’m not up to anything nefarious?”
**********************
And suddenly, Ginny finds herself a member of a new, unlikely threesome.
She’s worried, at first, that Tom and Harry, being both boys and both second years and having that weird thing about their wands that Tom won’t stop going on about, will become friends and leave her behind, but her fears quickly prove unfounded.
For one thing, they fight so much, both with words and wands, that they can barely be considered friends at all. But for another, the two boys both truly value Ginny as a friend as well, each in their own way—and that’s a wonderful feeling.
She can tease Harry when they’re with Tom, in a way she never could when Ron would always take his side. He doesn’t seem quite so perfect and untouchable when they’re all in stitches trying to explain the difference between chopping and dicing for the third time, after he melts yet another cauldron. And now that she’s spending time with Harry again, she can admit that Tom isn’t brilliant about absolutely everything. He can be downright stupid sometimes—such as when he insists that Quidditch is pointless.
“It’s not even good as a game!” he rants, as if he might finally change the two Gryffindors’ minds this time. “The Snitch is vastly overvalued, so six of the players are useless and it’s nothing but a one-on-one competition to ‘find the shiny thing—‘“
“But that’s where you're wrong!” Harry says earnestly, pulling a notebook from his bag. “You’re not taking into account tactics, and formation, and about about a million other things—Oliver was just talking about this the other day. See here—you’ll want to take a look too, Ginny…”
Ginny leans in over the pages covered in moving X’s, arrows, and letters representing the various players and maneuvers. She’s determined to make the team herself next year, even if only as a reserve.
“Oh, well, if Oliver said it…” Tom sneers, his default reaction when the Gryffindor captain comes up in conversation.
“So what would you consider a good game then, O Cunning One?” Harry challenges. “It’d have to be something slow, complicated, and definitely not on brooms…Chess, maybe?”
“Yes, exactly!” Tom says, looking pleased to have finally gotten through to them, only to storm off in frustration when Harry and Ginny burst out laughing.
***************************
The days go on like this, and her first year ends on a high note. But it’s the next September when she feels she’s really starting to hit her stride at Hogwarts.
It’s the people around her who really make the difference. Harry and Tom, who stick with her even though they have extra classes now, and in fact compete to convince her which electives to choose (Tom makes a convincing case for Arithmancy, but Harry’s stories from Care of Magical Creatures sound like so much fun). Her fellow flyers on the Gryffindor team, where she now plays reserve Seeker and Chaser as needed (and not just Harry, no matter how much Ron teases her. Alicia, Katie and Angelina are three of the coolest girls she’s ever met, and Oliver is…intense, but there’s nothing like earning his respect). And others as well, kids she didn’t notice or consider before: Luna, who’s even more refreshing and fun than when they were little. Colin, who’s finally grown up and calmed down a bit. Demelza, a new firstie who reminds Ginny a lot of herself.
The thing about having a lot of friends, she finds, is that they can arrange themselves into nearly infinite different configurations, like in the word problems from her childhood maths workbooks. She’ll always learn something new with Harry and Tom, whether from dueling them or just exploring the castle. But when Harry goes off with Ron and Hermione to do what Tom snidely calls “Gryffindor Golden Trio things”, or Tom is with his fellow Slytherins at the Slug Club (or, in Harry’s words, the “Suck-Up Club”), the boys are different to hang out with one on one. Even Hermione is nice to talk to when Ginny needs advice about girl things, not all of which, it turns out, are completely boring. If Ron joins the two witches, watch out; Ginny can get hours of fun out of winding them up and watching them bicker. Same with Hermione and Luna, though their debates are amusing in an entirely different way.
Even Ron, who swore up and down last year that he’d never associate with a “slimy snake” and that Harry and Ginny should start planning their funerals, turned right around when he heard Tom mention “chess” during yet another argument with Harry over worthwhile pastimes. Now the two of them practically always have a game in progress, and watching them teaches Ginny more than she ever thought possible about the King’s Gambit and the Sicilian Defense—as well as about creative insults.
“The more the merrier,” her mother always told her, when she would complain about having simply too many brothers. She always suspected it was a load of bollocks, but this year she decides that maybe, sometimes, it can be true.
—————————————
When winter comes, Harry somehow manages to figure out the real reason Tom stays at school for the holidays, and it’s not “to get ahead on studying”. That leads to the question of where he goes in summer when he has to leave Hogwarts, and what it was like there for the eleven years before he boarded the Express for the first time.
Ginny herself does not learn the specifics of any of this. It seems that Harry and Tom, when alone together, form yet another configuration, one in which Tom reveals more about himself than in mixed company. But when they arrive at King’s Cross at the end of June, Harry gives Tom a stern look, and the Slytherin drags his trunk over and leaves for Godric’s Hollow to stay with the Potters.
When Harry visits the Burrow that summer, Tom comes too, and the pair of them have new stories and experiences and inside jokes, the kind that arise naturally when two friends spend extended time in close quarters.
Some days Hermione stays over as well, and browbeats Ron into staying inside with her and finishing his summer homework (he doesn’t put up as much fight as Ginny would have expected), and it’ll be three of them out by the pond again: Ginny, Harry and Tom this time. She and Harry teach Tom to swim, teasing that he’ll need to know how when the Black Lake inevitably bursts into the Slytherin common room and floods the dungeons. Because Tom insisted she memorize the Herbology book before helping him brew potions, they both manage to stop Harry just in time before he wades into a patch of water weeds that would’ve given him hives for a week. Ginny serves as the impartial referee when the boys compete to stay underwater longest (they’re both too stubborn for their own good, and pass out more than once).
(If there’s also something thrilling about the moment when they both surface, gasping for breath, water dripping from dark hair and newly-defined muscles, Harry loudly accusing Tom of cheating with a wandless Bubble Charm; well, Ginny keeps that to herself.)
They meet up again in Diagon at the end of August. Their ice cream orders at Fortescue’s are always the same, so Molly just orders them an extra-large Neapolitan sundae and they split it three ways: Chocolate for Tom, strawberry for Ginny, and vanilla for Harry.
*************************
There’s a Yule Ball in Ginny’s third year, and it’s all anyone can talk about. Which drives her absolute spare, because once again she’s supposedly too young to go.
“I won’t get to go either,” Demelza offers, and Luna nods along. But it doesn’t make her feel any better because Demelza is a second year and not even a teenager, and Luna is…well, Luna. And then Hermione comes up to her one day in the library and tells her, in strictest confidence, that she’s been asked by Viktor Krum. Viktor Krum!
In mid-December, Ginny is on her way to meet Harry and Tom in an abandoned classroom to practice Summoning Charms when she overhears a thump and a scuffling sound through the cracked door. She pauses before entering—the two of them might be dueling and the last thing she needs is to get hit with Harry’s signature Expelliarmus—and then distinctly hears Tom say something that ends with “Yule Ball”.
She shouldn’t, she knows she shouldn’t, but she’s desperate to know what goes through boys’ heads when they’re deciding who (and who not) to ask—especially these particular boys. So she stops and presses her back to the wall, her ear up against the aperture.
Harry mutters something inaudible in response, and there’s another shuffling noise as Tom chuckles.
“Why not? I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave.”
“I…stop messing around!” Harry huffs. Then, after a pause: “Besides, I’m taking Ginny.”
Outside the door, Ginny herself just manages to avoid gasping loudly, but only because it feels like she’s choking instead.
“Oho, are you now,” Tom replies smoothly. “Not if I ask her first, darling.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Watch me.”
“Excuse me!?” Ginny bursts in, unable to hold herself back any longer. “Is this what I think it is?”
Harry turns so red she’s surprised his glasses don’t steam up. “G-Ginny! How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know that you’re talking about me like some prize to be won, that’s how much!” In the space of a minute, she’s gone from desperate for any invitation to the Ball to utterly outraged at their patronizing, sexist attitudes.
Tom dips his head in apology. “It appears we’ve been caught in the act, Potter.”
“Shut up, Riddle,” Harry grits out.
“Is this some kind of prank?” Ginny demands, suddenly suspicious, even though Tom doesn’t really do pranks and Harry can never keep a straight face during them. “Are you making fun of me?” Neither of them have shown much interest in the dance so far, after all, even though they’re both on the “Most Desirable List” someone posted in the girls’ toilet, right beneath Cedric Diggory and Roger Davies. But could that be because they maybe, just maybe, both had someone specific in mind?
“No! Of course not!” Harry insists, at the same time Tom says, “Not at all, Ginny, and we’re sorry to have made you wait this long. We were simply hoping to come to a gentleman’s agreement, is all.”
“Well, neither of you strike me as particularly gentlemanly right now,” she snaps, tossing her hair angrily, even as a part of her thrills at the idea of them competing over her. “What if I don’t want to go with either of you?”
“That would be a quandary,” Tom says seriously, cocoa eyes flicking between her and Harry. “We’d both be left dateless then, and we might have to—“
“Stuff it, Tom!” Harry shouts over him, then rubs the back of his neck and steps closer to Ginny. “Er, Ginny, d’you want to come to the ball with me? I’m really sorry I didn’t ask you sooner.”
She falters for a moment, because things may be different now but he’s still Harry, and his eyes are green and he’s saying the very words she fantasized about when she was six. But he’s also her friend and her teammate and practically her honorary seventh brother, and—
“A valiant effort,” says Tom, stepping up beside Harry, and suddenly she’s reminded of first year, when he was dark and brilliant and different from Harry in all the best ways. “But now it’s my turn. Ginny Weasley,” he extends his hand, “would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the Yule Ball? I’m sure we’d be the envy of all in attendance.”
“Oh, come on,” Harry scoffs. “Are you really going to fall for all that waffle? This arrogant git will probably just ditch you to talk to Crouch or something.”
“Don’t listen to him, Ginny,” Tom stage-whispers behind his hand. “He’s just trying to hide that he can’t dance.”
“I can too! I’ve been practicing with Hermione!”
“Want to show me your moves, lion boy?”
“You insufferable—“
“Enough!” Ginny shoots two near-simultaneous Stinging Hexes at both of them. “And it’ll be the Bat-Bogey next if you don’t come off it,” she threatens, even though she’s fighting a fond smile. Because Tom is arrogant and insufferable (and tall and charming and so, so handsome) and she’s heard it from Hermione herself that Harry really can’t dance (but he’s elegance in human form on a broom, and as radiant as the sun). But they’re also two of her best friends, and she’s still not sure whether they’re competing over her or just to have yet another thing to fight about.
So…
“Now listen, both of you,” she says, in her voice that sometimes makes even Fred and George back off. “I don’t really care who I go with, I just don’t want to miss the Ball because I’m only a third year. So I’m happy to go with either of you,” she forces herself to look away from gazes of emerald green and chocolate brown, from Harry’s freckles and Tom’s dimples, “as friends. As long as you both give me at least one dance. Deal?”
Harry looks…surprisingly relieved. Maybe he didn’t want to upset their friendship either. “Deal,” he says, sticking out his hand to shake like after they’ve had a Quidditch friendly.
Tom smirks. “I think that could be highly advantageous to all of us.”
In the end, they mutually decide to let Harry be the one to “officially” take her; Ron may have gotten over his sister being friends with a Slytherin, but he’s still liable to throw a fit over her going to the Ball with a “dirty cheater who always sweet-talks the bishops,” as he said after he and Tom’s last chess match. Tom, surprisingly, offers to bring Luna; according to him, going with any of the Slytherin girls would “upset the delicate balance of the pureblood marriage-contract game, and make enemies of too many prominent people” (Harry snorts dubiously).
“Maybe what your little ‘gentleman’s agreement’ needed was a gentlewoman,” Ginny sniffs as they head to dinner later, after an hour of Summoning cushions out from under each other’s noses, and neither of them has an argument for that.
*******************
Ginny wears her best dress robes to the ball, and gets to dance far more than once with both her best friends. She does formal foxtrots and waltzes with Tom, and freestyles to the Weird Sisters with Harry. Luna spends a significant portion of the night dancing alone to a rhythm nobody else can hear (although Ginny joins her for a few songs and finds it's actually rather fun), so Tom makes the rounds with all the Slytherin girls, while Harry loads up at the food table and Ginny gives each of her brothers a dance (it’s even nice to see Percy again, sort of). They all come together again for a fast-paced group dance, and then, much to Ginny’s surprise, Neville Longbottom approaches and shyly asks her to partner with him for a song. She goes straight from him to Dean Thomas, and then Michael Corner, and before she knows it it’s been a half hour and she’s lost track of Harry and Tom. She finally spots them again by the doors to the gardens; apparently, the first thing they did when she left them alone was get tipsy on too many Butterbeers and rum balls, because they’re twirling around together with silly grins on their faces, evidently unable to even stand without holding on to each other.
Ironically, Ginny thinks with a fond roll of her eyes, Harry is a far better dancer when he’s not trying to lead. Or maybe it’s just the alcohol.
**************************
The Yule Ball was a smashing success overall. Ginny and Luna got to go with the upper years; neither Harry nor Tom got a drink thrown in their face, as happened to Ron and Seamus on their disastrous night with the Patil twins. The delicate balances of both the Slytherin marriage-contract game and their three-way friendship are well preserved.
But something does change between the three of them after that, regardless. As Ginny finishes out her third year and goes into fourth, there’s a tension there when she’s with both Harry and Tom, a frisson as the Beauxbatons girls say. Maybe it was inevitable as they all got older; but it’s certainly spurred along by her knowledge of what Tom’s hands feel like on her waist, her memory of spinning with Harry until she’s dizzy in more ways than one. Sometimes, when the boys think she’s not looking, she catches them staring at each other, eyes burning with an intensity previously reserved only for the Quidditch pitch and the dueling ring. When she’s alone with one of them, they have bizarre questions and remarks about the other, as if gathering information on a bitter rival.
(…A romantic rival?)
“Looks like it’s just the two of us again, Ginny,” Tom says on a breezy November afternoon. “I suppose Harry thinks going flying with Chang is the better option.” He gives her a significant look, running a hand through his chestnut curls.
A week later, when Tom is on prefect rounds, Harry leans in close to her, green eyes bright and unblinking. “I want you to know that Cho is just a friend, and a practice partner,” he says earnestly. “I don’t even know her that well, beyond Quidditch. And, er,” he finally breaks eye contact for a moment, “you can tell anybody else that, too.”
“Okay,” Ginny replies, biting her lip and trying to contain her blush at having him so near.
“Good,” Harry says, “good. By the way, any intel on what Tom’s buying for Christmas? Sweets for both of us again, or, uh, is he getting us each special gifts this year?”
She honestly has no clue—Tom is the most secretive person she knows—but the idea that he might get her a special holiday gift makes her heart flutter. She’s thinking about this, the next time she’s alone in the library with the handsome Slytherin, when he glances up from his book and meets her eye.
“Oh, by the way,” he says casually. “If you’re cold or sore after practice, do feel free to use the prefects’ bathroom—the password is ‘nereid’. It’s exquisite, like a sauna or a Roman bath.”
Her brain has not yet come unstuck when he adds, already back to his reading, “And tell Harry, too. It’ll be more satisfying when we crush Gryffindor if their Seeker is in top form.”
She does take advantage of the exclusive bathroom—who wouldn’t?—and it truly is gorgeous, more like a good-sized swimming pool with bubbles and scented oils. The thought of running into either Tom or Harry there in a state of undress, of what might be glimpsed through a veil of steam, is enough to keep her up nights. But neither of their regular bathing times seems to coincide with hers.
The Weasleys are invited to Potter Manor that Christmas, and Tom is staying there as well. He does, indeed, give Ginny a unique gift (a beautiful new potions kit, which contains dozens of specialized compartments but folds up small enough to fit into a pocket); so does Harry (a full set of Chaser gear, with a note that reads Angelina and Alicia graduate this year—better start training!). She’s beyond pleased—and relieved to have spent so much time doing extra work in Runes, where she enchanted special protective cuffs for each of them.
(When Tom and Harry get out their gifts for each other, they’re the exact same size and shape, distinguishable only by the pattern on the gift wrap. Harry tears apart Tom’s meticulous wrapping job, utterly seamless thanks to a custom spell, and Tom carefully removes every bit of Harry’s liberally-applied Spellotape, and they unveil two matching high-grade dragonhide wand holsters. They both even tried to be clever by buying each other opposite House colors—Harry got Tom Gryffindor red and gold, and received green and silver in return. The assembled guests break into laughter.
“We could just trade them back, if you want,” Harry offers sheepishly, but Tom categorically refuses: “Now you’ll be stuck with a bit of Slytherin on you forever.”)
***************************
She doesn’t want her two closest friends to fall out over her. She doesn’t! What the three of them have together, plus Ron and Hermione and Luna and all the rest, is far more valuable than any schoolgirl crushes that probably won’t last long past seventh year anyhow.
But sometimes she reads the Muggle novels Hermione smuggles from home. The ones where there’s a girl and two boys, and our heroine is faced with a choice. Between a childhood friend—an alpha werewolf who’s more of a big puppy when he’s around her—and a mysterious newcomer, willing to tame his darkness to earn her love. Or a kindly baker who’d go hungry to share with his sweetheart, and a dark-eyed hunter who’s more than a bit of a predator himself. And Ginny wonders what it might be like to be that girl, the lead in the story. The apex of the triangle, the focus of so much concentrated desire.
She turns down Michael Corner’s invitation to spend a Hogsmeade weekend with him. She knows that it would be a good idea to date someone different, to try a casual relationship with no strings and no stakes. Even Hermione said as much, and she would know something about the dangers of falling for a friend (It hasn’t escaped Ginny’s notice that the bookish Muggleborn supports the Chudley Cannons this year). But Michael’s hair is dishwater blonde, his eyes a watery bluish-gray. And Ginny is a planet orbiting two suns.
*********************
When the holidays end and they all return to Hogwarts for the spring term, Harry and Tom are immediately swept into full-blown round-the-clock preparation for their OWLs; and no matter what Hermione says about it “never being too early”, there’s no way Ginny is going to subject herself to that kind of stress in only fourth year. So as the weather warms and the two older boys drive themself spare trying to revise everything they’ve read since the age of eleven, she finds herself spending more time alone or with her own yearmates, and she’s honestly a bit thankful for the reprieve.
It gives her time to get in touch with her own maturing magical core, away from two of the most intense auras she’s ever been in the presence of. Time for solo flying sessions, because Harry was right: there will be two open Chaser slots next year, and she’s long come to suspect Seeker isn’t actually her best position. Time to think about what she wants, even if her Career Advice session isn’t for another year yet.
“I told McGonagall I was thinking about playing Quidditch professionally for a few years, or maybe the Auror Academy,” Harry says over a quick lunch in April, one of the rare occasions when he, Ginny and Tom are all together again. “How about you, Tom?”
“The Ministry is still my top choice,” the Slytherin says immediately from where he sits on Ginny’s other side, “and Slughorn pushed the political route hard, naturally. But I’ve also considered becoming an Unspeakable.”
“I think I like Harry’s options better,” Ginny remarks; constantly pandering to the public or keeping secrets sounds like torture to her. “I’d want a job that keeps me active.” Privately, she thinks about how nice it would be to share a career with your partner or—she flushes—spouse. Getting to be together on the job, discussing unsolved cases or game tactics over dinner.
Then again, her father has many horror stories about couples who worked in the same department and drove each other mad in close quarters every day, eventually having spectacular blowout fights in front of their mortified coworkers.
“Many of the most senior politicians have spouses in the DMLE,” Tom says casually, but he’s looking in her direction. “And Unspeakables have flexible schedules, so they’d never miss a Quidditch player’s away games.”
Ginny has absolutely no idea how to respond to Tom Riddle of all people making what sounds suspiciously like an argument for his suitability as a husband, but luckily Harry steps in to contradict him, because that’s just what he does.
“Oh, please,” he rolls his eyes. “Like you could deal with being married to someone with a dangerous job. You’re always going on about protecting what’s yours.”
“No, anyone I’d choose would be as skilled as me, and as magically powerful. They’d be perfectly capable of protecting themself.”
“Don’t forget ‘anyone you’d choose’ also has to choose you back, you egomaniac,” Harry jibes. “Plus, who would want to marry a smarmy politician anyway? Right, Ginny?”
Merlin, now Harry is doing it too. Ginny is very suddenly reminded of what it’s like to be in the eye of these two’s hurricane, quite literally sat between them.
(And yes, being a politician’s wife might be tiring sometimes—but might it also be exciting, glamorous even? Ginny does like attention, she’ll admit it. She loves the cheering crowds on game days, even enjoyed dressing up for the Yule Ball to a certain extent.)
Tom, meanwhile, is sanguine in the face of Harry’s barbs. “As I said,” he replies with the hint of a smirk, “The Department of Mysteries also tempts me greatly.”
“You haven’t even gotten any OWLs yet,” Harry points out. “Talk about counting birds before they hatch.”
“You make an excellent point, Harry.” Tom dabs his lips with a napkin, but Ginny is pretty sure he’s hiding a laugh. “Which reminds me, didn’t we agree to do a double block of Transfiguration revision this afternoon?”
Harry grumbles something unintelligible, but roughly shoves the last, too-large bite of his sandwich into his mouth and rises from the table with Tom. Then, after polite goodbyes to Ginny that couldn’t be more different in tone from the way they were speaking to each other, they disappear together, off to wherever it is they go for their marathon two-wizard study sessions.
*****************************
And then it’s Midsummer and exams are over, and there’s one short, blissful week of golden days spent at what is, at its heart, a beautiful castle in Scotland before the Express comes to take them home. Ginny’s fifth-year friends are free of the gauntlet of their OWL year (including Ron, who moans endlessly about stuffing up his Potions practical, until Ginny gets fed up and says “I sat a few exams as well, you know. I think I did alright, thank you so much for asking”), and Fred and George celebrate their graduation with a fireworks display and a full-size Portable Swamp in the Charms corridor.
It’s midway through the summer when the results arrive, along with everyone’s Hogwarts letters. Tom and Harry are staying at the Burrow for the weekend, sharing the twins’ recently vacated room; Hermione is visiting too, just back from France and “practically glowing”, as Ron says enthusiastically before turning bright red and staring at his hands for the next hour and a half. Ginny is telling them about her summer job at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes (which mostly consists of sneaking treats to her favorite Pygmy Puff) when a very overloaded barn owl taps at the window.
Everyone opens their envelopes together. Tom and Hermione both receive straight O’s, she with honest amazement and relief, he with the smug assurance that yes, everything is going exactly to his plan. Ron is pleasantly surprised to get mostly E’s across the board, “except for the classes everyone knows are bollocks” (“History of Magic is important, Ronald!” Hermione scolds, while precisely no one defends Divination). Harry rivals Tom’s marks in the classes that interest him, and skates by with a mix of E’s and A’s in the others even though he barely prepared.
Harry’s letter also contains a gleaming new Quidditch Captain badge, the red and gold stylized C flanked by a pair of wings. Ginny teases him for his astonishment (honestly, who did he think they would give it to? Katie has her NEWTs this year and has always been too easygoing for the role), but is forced to eat her words when a Prefect’s badge falls from her own envelope and she lets out an actual squeak of shock.
Tom congratulates them both, in his own unique way. Namely, he tells Ginny it’ll be nice to have a competent patrol partner for a change, then turns to Harry and says innocently—
“Given the nature of the sport, isn’t the Captaincy really an award for being the best at sitting?”
Harry smacks him over the head with a sheet of parchment, but he smiles more at Tom’s jibe than at Ron and Ginny’s enthusiasm combined. “It’ll be your funeral if all your little joint patrols keep her from making Chaser!” he shoots back.
The commotion has Molly rushing over to the table, asking everyone about their scores and physically grabbing Ron’s letter to confirm it for herself, much to his annoyance. Then she actually cries when she sees the Prefect badge, and Ginny has her brother beat for embarrassment.
“Oh, I’m so, so pleased for all of you,” Molly beams, wringing her hands for a moment before falling back on her usual standby for when a major milestone demands acknowledgement: “I think I’ll bake a cake!”
This is Molly-speak for “spend the entire afternoon cooking up a proper feast”, so all five of them troop outside, both to work up a good appetite and avoid getting roped into helping in the kitchen. This involves everything from broomstick racing (Harry, Ron and Ginny) to debating the latest controversies in the Wizengamot (Tom and Hermione) to offering color commentary on both these activities (Luna, who wanders over from the Rook with her usual uncanny sense of timing).
It’s impossible not to notice how Tom and Harry have both, somehow, become even more handsome in the time since school let out, the stress of exams visibly lifted from their shoulders. Harry is once more toned and sun kissed, after a spring spent cramming in the library; Tom laughs more and is obviously no longer skipping meals to endlessly revise his notes. They’ve also each managed to grow about six inches in as many weeks. Molly has asked them three times already if either of them have a girlfriend yet; they always give noncommittal responses while avoiding eye contact, vague answers about “having their eye on someone”.
And Ginny is both elated and terrified, to think that someone might be her.
You should just choose, she tells herself sternly. She’s never been a person to waffle or string people along, and girls like Romilda and Lavender would cast Unforgivables to be in her position; to have the interest and attention of the two wizards now at the very top of the Most Desirable List, which has continued to update and circulate through the girls’ loos.
Tom sits with Ron in the grass, playing best-two-of-three on a chess set he conjured out of thin air with a wave of his hand, his features more finely carved than any of the pieces. He’s trading teasing remarks with Ginny in between moves, and the decision would seem to be obvious. But then Harry touches down next to them with his hair ruffled just so by the wind, and asks her if she’d like a go on his Firebolt as if it isn’t his most treasured possession in the world, and she’s back to square one again.
********************
Ginny is thinking about all this and more on the back porch that evening, the sun setting and the crickets chirping in the back garden, when it occurs to her she hasn’t seen Tom and Harry in an hour or so. Hermione and Luna have gone home, and Ron is snoring on the sofa from the sheer amount of food he’s consumed, but she’s not seen her two best friends since Tom lost a round of Exploding Snap in spectacular fashion and Harry went with him to the bathroom to fix his hair and clothes, laughing and saying he was saving this for the Pensieve.
She has a feeling she knows where they’ll be, though. And even if she can’t choose just yet, there are few things better than the three of them down by the water on a summer evening.
Her instincts are proven correct when she nears the pond, and hears the gentle splashing of bare feet in the water on the other side of the trees. She smiles—Harry’s shoes never stayed on long when they came out here—and is about to call out a greeting when she hears Tom speaking, his voice low and intimate.
“…and I still haven’t heard a ‘thank you’, darling…”
“For what?” Harry this time.
“All your OWLs. I daresay you’d never have scored so many O’s if not for all our private study sessions.”
There’s a single, much louder splash, and Tom cackles before Harry lays into him:
“Study sessions! I probably could’ve gotten a lot more studying done without you there, you git!” There’s no heat to his voice, though; he sounds playful, teasing. “And I still haven’t heard a congratulations for making Quidditch captain. A proper one,” he adds when Tom makes a noise of protest.
“Oh, but I do think you’re the very best at sitting. And not just on a broom.” His words become slightly muffled. “I rather like the way you’re sitting now, for instance.”
Baffled by this conversation, Ginny slides a half inch to the left, silent as only a younger sister of four prefects can be, and peers around a tree to get a look at them.
The boys are sitting on a large, flat rock by the shore, where some combination of Weasley children and friends have dried off in the sun after countless summer swims over the years. Harry, as she suspected, has his feet in the water, his jeans rolled up practically to his knees and his trainers tossed carelessly nearby. But beside them on the grass are Tom’s Oxfords, lined up neat as a pin.
And the Slytherin has his ankles submerged too. Bracketing Harry’s, because—Ginny takes the scene in slowly, piece by piece—Harry is sitting between his legs. In his lap, really. Though the smaller boy is currently wriggling around, shoving at Tom’s hands where they’re wrapped around his waist.
“I won’t be sitting like this much longer if you don’t shape up!”
“Fine, fine.” Tom’s speaking into the nape of Harry’s neck, the words punctuated by kisses. “Congratulations, Captain Potter.”
In what must be a record for how quickly he’s forgiven Tom, Harry grins and turns around in his embrace, throwing his arms over Tom’s shoulders. “That’s better. And thank you, Prefect Riddle, for the study sessions.” He tilts his head up, Tom leans in, and they kiss full on the mouth.
Without even consciously thinking about it, Ginny pivots on her heel, turning away from this private moment not meant for her. She slips back through the orchard, steps light and careful but thoughts racing, memories from the past few months—few years really—playing before her eyes, recontextualizing in this new light. Reconfiguring.
Oh, she thinks again and again, remembering heated glances and probing questions, long disappearances on weekend afternoons. Oh, that makes a lot more sense now.
**************************
She feels a number of things over the next two weeks, after she goes to bed early and cheerfully sees off Tom and Harry the next morning, keeping her face neutral through Herculean effort as they say goodbye and Floo back to Potter Manor.
There’s an initial scalding rush of embarrassment—how could there not be? That old insecurity that they think of her as just a silly little girl, too young and naive to know what’s really going on. Followed by an overwhelming sense of relief that, Merlin, at least she didn’t ambush either of them with a heartfelt love confession.
As the surprise of what she saw settles a bit, she finds herself recalling more and more moments between the two boys over the years, seemingly ordinary interactions now entirely different—and, oftentimes, hilarious—in hindsight.
Fetching some dittany after a tumble from her broom, she remembers Tom sitting in the stands at every Gryffindor match, not even a book to distract him even though he was clearly bored stiff—and how he’d spent nights, in strict secrecy for reasons she hadn’t then understood, practicing his Arresto Momentum until he could probably cast the spell better than Merlin himself. Snacking on Pepper Imps at the twins’ shop, she thinks of how Harry always loudly claimed to hate them when they came in Lily’s care packages—but only because they were Tom’s favorite and the proud Slytherin would only eat sweets if he was “preventing waste”.
She smiles and bites her lip, and it’s not just because the Pygmy Puff she’s come to think of as Arnold is rolling on his back, begging for tummy rubs. Tom and Harry are…cute together.
And then, a few days before the start of term, it occurs to her that all their secrecy was not, necessarily, to exclude her. She remembers her worries about their little trio being ruined if she were to date one of them; her fears that whoever she rejected would become a third wheel and drift away, their friendship never the same again. She hadn’t wanted to be responsible for making someone feel like that.
It’s entirely possible, she realizes with a flicker of warmth in her chest, that they might have had similar consideration for her feelings. That she was wrong about the nature, yes, but not the degree of their affection for her; that they do care for her deeply, as a friend. That while she dithered about being the apex of the triangle (Circe, was that really a thought she had? She’s going to Incendio all those terrible novels Hermione lent her), they were worried about leaving her outside their closed circle.
(Just as Ron and Hermione are worrying now about Harry, only without actually discussing it and in spite of the fact that he’s clearly desperate for them to finally get together, because they are both hopeless about love in different ways and clearly perfect for each other.)
Merlin. Are Tom and Harry actually perfect for each other, too?
************************
When she arrives on the Hogwarts Express in September, prefect badge pinned to her robes and Arnold in tow in his new carrier, Ginny has given a lot of thought to what she’ll say to Tom and Harry, has several lines prepared in her head about friendship and understanding and being happy for them.
She never utters a single one of them. Instead, when she enters the compartment the boys are already neck-deep in a row over the precise definition of Dark magic, Harry waving his wand and Tom quoting research papers from memory, and for a moment she almost thinks that night at the pond was a strange dream.
But for all she knows, this is just what these two being in a relationship looks like. And Tom keeps touching Harry’s hand, supposedly for emphasis, whenever he makes an important point.
As the first week of term passes, as she easily aces Quidditch tryouts with Harry and learns from Tom how to wrangle the first years (and then promptly discards everything he says and lets them basically get away with anything not dangerous), it never feels like the right time to bring it up. She was never meant to know in the first place, after all, and for whatever reason, they don’t seem ready to tell her themselves. Maybe they’re apprehensive about what everyone else will say, worrying (incorrectly) that she’d gossip to others. She also strongly suspects that they’re getting quite a bit of enjoyment out of carrying on a “secret” romance, always surreptitiously touching under the table or showing up together for mealtimes with rumpled robes. Who is she to spoil their fun?
Ginny is more than happy to give them time alone, having plenty to get on with in her own OWL year. And when they do spend time as a trio, the new lack of any pressure or sexual tension (on her part, anyway) is…freeing.
So freeing, in fact, that she can’t resist the opportunity to tease them a little:
“Bad luck, I was here first,” she says matter-of-factly, propping her feet on the third chair at their regular table in the library. “Maybe you can sit on Tom’s lap, Harry.”
She manages to keep a straight face for ten full seconds, long enough for them to believe she’s serious and turn the color of Luna’s radish earrings, before she cracks and moves aside.
Or when Harry has his arms full of supplies, so Tom gets down on one knee to tie his shoe for him “before you trip and concuss yourself”:
“Congratulations, when can I expect the wedding invite?”
Tom startles and jerks upward without releasing the shoelace, and Harry goes down in a hail of books and dried potion ingredients. No concussion, though, because Tom breaks his fall.
**********************
Finally, in late November, Harry informs her seriously that he and Tom have something they need to tell her.
When she meets up with them in the old Charms classroom on the third floor that’s been converted into a kind of improvised student lounge, they’re sitting together on the sofa and have very obviously just stopped holding hands the moment she walked in.
“Oh, good, Gin, you’re here,” says Harry, always more talkative when he’s nervous. “We—uh, Tom and me, I mean, although the three of us are also a kind of ‘we’—just wanted to clear something up with you. You see, Slughorn’s invited us to his Christmas party—“
“I know,” Ginny offers, unable to keep her amusement from creeping into her voice.
“How?” Tom asks bluntly, as if this were privileged information only available to masters of secrets such as himself.
“I saw a Slughorn’s personal house-elf Finny deliver the invitations to you on Tuesday,” she replies. “They were very gaudy.”
“Oh good,” Harry says again, and it sets off another stream of babbling. “Well, that makes things easier. Maybe. Anyway, we, me and Tom, are invited and so we decided we needed to tell you as soon as possible that, er—“
This time it’s Tom who steps in to rescue his…boyfriend? Ginny supposes they’re about to tell her just what they are to each other—with an interruption. “What Harry and I want to say, Ginny, is that as delightful as our arrangement for the Yule Ball was, we won’t be able to repeat it for Slughorn’s party. Because—“
“Because you’re going with each other,” Ginny supplies, tired of Harry’s prevaricating and Tom’s grandiloquence. “Obviously.”
“Because the two of us, you see, have recently become—“ Tom has put a proud, possessive hand on Harry’s shoulder, and misses Ginny’s interjection until Harry touches his other arm and says gently, “Uh, Tom,” at which point the Slytherin cuts off and says “Wait, I—excuse me?”
Ginny knows she shouldn’t be enjoying this quite so much, but she can’t help but be relieved to be on this end of the awkward prepared speech. “You’ll attend Slughorn’s party together, of course,” she repeats, smiling fondly at where they’re still touching each other. “Because you’re, well, together. Dating. In some capacity, anyway. Since at least last summer.”
Tom visibly stops himself from asking “How?” again, which is alright because Harry asks it instead.
“You’re not that stealthy, you know,” she says with a flick of her hair to make herself sound impressive—even if, in all honesty, she’d probably still be obliviously pining after both of them if not for that accidental encounter in August.
“Oh,” Harry says dully, mouth open in the shape of that same letter, even as Tom looks mildly offended at the slight to his subterfuge abilities. “And you…you’re okay with that?”
“I’m very happy for you,” she says simply, the words she’s been wanting to say since September at last getting some use.
Harry flashes her his familiar grin, and Tom’s smirk stretches across his face like his long limbs stretch on the couch, slow and languid. Merlin, they’re still both so gorgeous—maybe even more so as a matched set. “In that case,” Tom says, arm going fully around Harry’s shoulder this time, “allow me to re-introduce you, Ginny Weasley, to Harry Potter—my boyfriend and date to the Slug Club Christmas party.”
“I’ve known her since she was in diapers, you prick,” Harry huffs, but he leans in closer to Tom’s touch. And then Ginny asks him if his Amortentia smells like shoe polish and hair pomade, and Tom threatens to withhold his Potions notes from them both if they don’t stop laughing, and it’s as it’s always been between the three of them.
********************
“You’re really not even disappointed?” Harry asks as they’re preparing to head back to their separate common rooms, because at heart he’s still the same little boy who gave her his hand and said “C’mon, Ginny, you can be Moony!” when she was four and Ron said a girl couldn’t play Marauders with them. “That you won’t be able to come to the party, I mean. We talked about going as friends with you and Luna again, but…” he smiles up at Tom. It’s only been an hour since they “revealed” their relationship to Ginny, but they’re already very comfortable showing affection in her presence.
“But you still owe me for turning down my Yule Ball invite, darling,” Tom murmurs, pressing a kiss to his temple.
Oh, thinks Ginny, remembering that other time she eavesdropped on them, that conversation she only overheard the end of, and another puzzle piece turns, reconfigures, and clicks into place. Then she rolls her eyes, because Harry could really stand to acknowledge that she’s grown up some, too.
“Oh, I’m coming to the party,” she says, arching an eyebrow at him—a trick she learned from Tom. “How do you think I knew what the invitations looked like? Finny dropped mine off an hour after yours.”
Harry looks deeply chagrined and opens his mouth to apologize, but Tom only dips his head in respect and acknowledgement. “That Bat-Bogey Hex Slughorn saw you cast on the Express?” he asks knowingly.
She gives him a curt nod. “And don’t worry about Luna either—I’m asking her to be my plus-one.”
“Then I’ll save you both a dance,” Tom says without missing a beat, because he’s still the same boy who shared his secret hiding spot with her when she was eleven and felt all alone. “After all, I’m still the only one who knows how…”
He silences Harry with a kiss before he can argue the point, then turns and saunters into the Great Hall.
“Git,” Harry mutters, gazing after him adoringly. “He’s wrong anyway, I asked Mum to give me lessons this time.”
*********************
“So I thought it might be fun to go together,” Ginny finishes, after recounting all this to Luna the next day. “Since Tom and Harry are ready to let their little secret out now.”
“Oh.” Luna contemplates this for a moment, her earrings swaying imperceptibly in the invisible breeze that always seems to surround her. “It was supposed to be a secret?”
“Supposedly,” says Ginny, wondering just how long her intuitive friend has known.
Luna hums. “I thought they just kept quiet about it so the wrackspurts wouldn’t steal their joy.” Then she turns sharply, and looks at Ginny with uncharacteristic focus and intensity. “Oh, and I’d love to come to the party with you, Ginny. But are we going as friends, or something else?”
Ginny pauses, a little stunned because she didn’t even think of that question—but now she realizes that the answer can be anything she wants it to be.
“Well, I had assumed as friends,” she says lightly, sorting through the bag of Every Flavor Beans they’re sharing. It can be difficult to tell cherry from sriracha in low lighting. “But there’s nothing wrong with leaving room for change.”