I've Never Asked

Author's Notes: Many thanks to excitedrainbow for showing that there are some people in the world who can do things quickly. Like beta. <3

I've Never Asked

Mum's dancing again: she's hitched her huge skirt up around her knees and is strutting around with Neville, throwing back her head and laughing. My mum's got quite a bit of style, she can move all right - Neville, on the other hand: two left feet.

It's nice to see her laughing, I suppose - she hasn't really smiled in a while, it's been really stressful at work. Not that that lessens the unpleasantness of the experience of seeing her drunk.

I'm bored, so I look around for Frank - or Francis, depending on whether it's his father or his mère addressing him - when I hear Mum shriek, "Hermione!" I look around just in time to catch her almost tripping in her effort to cross the room and hug my dear, probably already-drunk, aunt. I can just make out Ron over the music from behind their embrace: "Nice to see you too, Sis."

"How long do you give it before Hermione's face-down on the floor?" a voice asks, and I twist round in my seat to see that Frank's sat down at the table next to me.

I glance back at Hermione, note her animated grin, and surmise that my suspicions were correct. "In my professional opinion, I'd give it half an hour."

Hermione doesn't party often, but when she does ... put it this way. I haven't seen Hermione do something half-heartedly in my entire life.

Stupid academics who can't hold their drink.

Stupid adults.

Frank sees my expression. "Come on, the party's not that bad ... yet."

He has a point. This party's pretty good, if you like adults who all know each other far too well dancing and singing loudly together. I don't recognise the song; I think it might be Muggle. Grandpa's rigged up some Muggle contraption to the music player - well, Grandpa came up with the idea, but Fred did all the work. But everyone's dancing: this is a good stage for a Weasley party, before everyone gets really drunk and starts sitting around the table and making toasts.

That's when the stories come out, though.

"Good evening, Miss Potter," says a voice, and I turn to see Neville sitting with us at our grandparents' huge dining table. "Mr Weasley," he nods to Frank, who raises his bottle of what I assume to be Butterbeer in return.

"Hi, Neville," I mutter.

"So, how are things?" he asks. "Excited about your results?"

"Mmm," I manage. I try again. "Can't wait."

Frank rolls his eyes. "You know you've done fine -"

"Now, seriously," Neville interrupts. "Did - Herbology went all right, yes?" His gentle face appears to be joking, but I think I can detect a hint of anxiety.

"Yeah ... yeah, it was OK," I say, trying to assuage his fears. "I think I managed an 'E'."

Frank grins charmingly. "I'll be lucky if I get a 'P'."

"Nothing wrong with a good healthy 'P'," says a voice I know, and out of nowhere, Fred's hands appear on Frank's shoulders. "How are my favourite niece and nephew? You're not boring them to death with exam talk, are you, Professor Neville?"

"Your favourite niece's OWL results come out next Saturday," says Neville.

"What?" Fred looks alarmed. "Oh. Well, good luck and all that. Remember, if it all goes wrong you can open a joke shop."

"Thanks," I mutter, and inwardly wish they would both just go way.

"Now! On to more important things," the uncle I once considered my favourite says, eyes glittering as he sits down next to Neville. "How's your love life?"

"Oh." Go away. "Er, fine."

"She just broke up with her boyfriend," puts in Frank helpfully.

Fred clasps a hand to his heart. "The course of true love never did run smooth! And why did you ditch the unlucky fellow?"

Because when I realised that I was more interested in my Muggle-born boyfriend's television than I was in him I knew there was a problem. "Oh, it just stopped working." I attempt a smile. It probably comes out as more of a grimace.

"Ah well. Better luck next time," Fred says, and turns to Neville. "Cho Chang's just had a baby - did you hear?"

"With who?" Neville frowns. "Did she get married?"

"To a Muggle, from what I've heard. It's a boy," - he turns back to me and winks - "give it fifteen years, and he can be your toyboy."

"Great," I say. "I'll remember that."

"Well, people to go, places to see, etcetera," says Fred, standing up. "Come on, Longbottom, I think we're cramping the young people's style - see you later," he adds, grabbing Neville, saluting and wandering off into the crowd.

"I've got a whole year to whip you into shape," calls Neville over his shoulder at Frank, "I'll get you an 'A' if it's the last thing you do!"

"Thanks," I say once they're gone. "Just what I wanted to talk about with Fred and Professor Longbottom." I reach for his Butterbeer and take a swig; then gag. "What's in this?"

"Firewhiskey," he says matter-of-fact-ly. "And honesty is the best policy. Who's Cho Chang?"

"No idea. Why the covert drinking?"

"To stop my mother from having a heart attack." He grabs the bottle back and takes another swig. "McGonagall spoke to her about my 'poor concentration in lessons' and Maman blamed the sex, drugs and alcohol, and I blamed her for being French, and then she banned me from drinking anything all summer. And you shouldn't be such a twit about talking to them. Neville's cool, and Fred's just - Fred."

I sigh, and look out at the throng of adults. Granny's appeared, and looks agitated - probably about food of some kind. Hermione's hugging Neville, Fred's dragged Ron off to look at his music player - "CDs? Get with the times, Ron" - Mum's gone back to dancing, with another glass of wine in her hand. I hope no one unpleasant turns up from school because their parents have been invited. Thank God my ex's parents are Muggles.

It's kind of weird that my mother - that woman dancing over there - was Harry Potter's girlfriend. When people ask me if that's true, I have to reply with "Yeah ... he's also my father."

"No ... no way. Really?" is the response I get from people my own age; from adults who never followed the story properly at the time, it's a "But you don't even look like him!"

As if I'm going to have a dirty great big scar on my forehead.

Oh, all right, I do look a lot more like my mum than like my dad. This is probably a good thing.

There are some little things, though, which leave me acutely aware of the ways in which I resemble my father.

You try being the only freckle-free Weasley.

But yeah, it is weird to think that Harry Potter once strutted down the hallowed halls of Hogwarts with my mother on his arm.

Not that he would have strutted, or anything - oh, I don't know. I don't know what he was like.

I'm jolted out of my reverie by a small bundle of bushy brown hair and blue party frock launching itself up onto my knees. "Eliza!" I cry, rearranging her onto my lap properly. "How are you, sweetheart?"

"Very well, thank you," the five-year-old daughter of Ron and Hermione informs me. "Good evening."

I give her a hug - more of a squeeze, really - and catch Frank regarding us with an air of moroseness.

"What?" I ask, stroking Eliza's hair as she snuggles into my lap.

"Anyone would think she was your favourite cousin," he sighs.

"I saw you two days ago. I haven't seen her in a week."

"I don't think it counts if they pay you to spend time with her."

Damn. Ron still owes me three galleons.

"You're just bitter I get all the babysitting jobs," I retort. "Liza, where's your hairtie? You can't have come out with your hair like this."

She fixes me in her blue gaze. "I lost it." The curls around her head look like a small afro. "Me and Mummy and Daddy went to the pub first."

Aah. That would explain the increasing volume of Hermione's laughter.

"Well, considering that they should, technically," Frank continues, relentless, "be my babysitting jobs -"

"How so?"

"My dad's the oldest. I should have been born first."

"Well sorry, oh Logical One, but I beat you by about a year; plus, I'm a girl - ergo -"

"Your freakish time of birth is not my fault. I hold it as a deeply unfair -"

"Freakish?"

"Your mum's only thirty-three. You should be Eliza's age."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll just get hold of a time turner and go back in time and inform my parents how the contraception charm works, and then we can rectify this heinous -"

"My Mummy had a time turner," puts in Eliza.

"That's nice," I say, patting her on the head. Eliza reads way too many books for a five-year-old.

There is a crackly noise from this gramophone/M-P-three thing behind us, and suddenly the volume increases dramatically. The adults cheer, and even more of them move onto the dance floor, where Mum is now gyrating almost obscenely with Dean Thomas. Fred is dragging a protesting Hermione off to whirl around with him, her cheeks flushed red with the heat and the alcohol.

I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.

The song playing screeches something about being "sick and tired/ Of working just to BE RETIRED!" Mum sings along, and shouts, "Hear, hear!" Despite this brazen display of drunken-older-people, I smile to myself, a little bit; I know how desperate she's been to quit her job lately.

I sometimes feel a little bit guilty for ruining her life and her NEWTs and all that. Only a little bit, though.

The thing is, they - all of them - are happy. As far as I know, anyway, unless Ron secretly beats Hermione or something. Although, in reality it would be the other way round - never mind.

The point is, they are happy and healthy, even if Ron does walk with a slight limp, and there's a deep scar on Neville's cheek, and Frank can't bring any girlfriends home at full moon in case his dad growls at them and tries to steal the steak off their plates. But they live their lives and enjoy them. The ghost of Harry doesn't hover around, dampening everything they do.

Well, this is what I usually think.

Until they get drunk and start toasting the dead.

This doesn't happen until the early hours, when most of the acquaintances have gone home, and they're all sitting around the table with bleary eyes.

Usually, it starts with the conversation sliding onto "the good old days" at Something Place. (Weasley family legend: a haunted house that was full of recluses and dead House Elves and was my inheritance, apparently; but it got blown up in the war. Pity.) They wax lyrical about the Order and Dumbledore's 'Army': "when we were fighting for something!" they cry. They talk about their old Professor, Umbridge - God, do they go on about Umbridge!

Then, they get onto the toasting of the dead. They talk about a blonde fairy-creature called Luna and her "crumpled-thing thingie." (I've never asked.) Sometimes, it's "Seamus. Now he knew how to party," and Dean always replies, morosely staring into the bottom of his glass, "I'll drink to that."

The night - or the morning, by now - will wear on, and the deaths will go further and further back. "Padfoot!" they cry, and a plethora of images race past me: too much black hair, a laugh "like a dog", a love for my father that was so strong that it killed him, a curly font on a magical map, locked in the bottom of my trunk.

"Cedric" - a blond boy; there's a picture of him in the Trophy Room which girls still ogle - and Fred will sometimes mutter: "couldn't string two words together." Ron will nod, and slur, "what is right and what is easy," and then he'll glare at the younger generation to impress us with the profundity of his speech.

Some names receive mixed reactions: when someone yells, "To the Creeveys!" some people start to weep; some laugh uproariously, banging the table with their fists. Other names, however, will always elicit the same response: any mention of 'Hagrid', and the whole room will fill with sniffles.

Some people's lives are more interesting than their deaths. If Hermione's very drunk (and, interestingly, if Ron isn't around) she'll start to ramble about some sort of liaison she had with Viktor Krum - if it wasn't for the way Fleur always fills up her wineglass and Mum starts to pat her on the back, I wouldn't believe it.

If the name 'Draco Malfoy' comes up, you know you're in trouble. They only toast him on special occasions. "For not killing Dumbledore!" they cry, sloshing wine all over the table.

My father is never mentioned.

Oh, he's mentioned, of course. It's not like it's taboo, with his room kept locked - not that he had one - or anything ghastly and novel-like like that. He comes up quite a lot, in fact - Ron wouldn't be able to tell any of his schoolday stories if he couldn't talk about him, and what a loss that would be to the world - joke, Ron! (Not that he can read minds, or anything. I've checked.)

No, Harry's mentioned quite freely - Mum always refers to him as "your father" - and I know most of his life story. And I know all sorts of stupid trivia about him, as well - stuff that people like this lot bestow upon me because they think I need to know it. There's a basilisk, a stag Patronus, a prophecy; there's also treacle tart, an owl called Hedwig, one of the first Firebolts, an episode where he thought his Godfather was the Grim.

When things like that last one come up, I always turn to Mum for, y'know, a tiny bit of elaboration but sometimes - a lot of the time, actually - she tells me I'll have to ask someone else, because they weren't really friends at that point.

Funny, how you assume your parents know everything about each other.

Anyway, when something like the Grim thing comes up (or the chasing the spiders thing, or the Mirror of Erised thing, or the voices talking to him from the plumbing thing) Mum will throw back her head and laugh (she likes doing that), saying, "Oh, I was too busy pining for him then, and he was too busy ignoring me." And then they all laugh, genuinely, without a tinge of sadness.

I suppose, after sixteen years, you stop being sad about it.

But there's still ... still something there, something preventing me from knowing him completely, or asking all the questions I'd like to. In a way, it's almost as if he's untouchable. Yeah, there's definitely an aura of the untouchable about him. It's almost elitist: if you weren't there at the time, then you'll never know what it was really like. What he was really like.

"Hello? Anyone at home?"

I blink, and realise that Frank has been trying to get my attention. "I think someone's trying to get down," he says, nodding at Eliza, wriggling in my lap. I let go of her, she jumps down, and Frank calls, "Pierre's in the garden!" after her as she vanishes out through the back door.

"So," he says, peering through a gap in the strawberry-blond hair no other boy in the world can pull off. "What are you doing at the weekend?"

"Nursing my mother's hangover?"

"You should come out with us," he says, dragging a half-eaten bowl of raspberry trifle across the table towards him.

"No offence, but I don't really want to hang around with a bunch of fourth years."

"Fifth years in September." He plucks a raspberry off the top and pops it into his mouth. "And my mate Terry likes you."

"He's still in the year below."

"Come on, it'll be fun. What are you doing the night before your results?"

"Trying to sleep?"

"Come out with us. I've got birthday money to spend, and they've decided we're going to some posh bar."

"Where?" I ask, despite myself. Spending the seemingly endless supply of Delacour money is always an appealing prospect.

"Chitterton Alley. It's a bar-club-pub place."

"You'll never get in," I say with the well-practiced smug superiority of the one who is just that little bit closer to seventeen.

"I will with my fake I.D."

I gawp. "From who?"

"A friend of a friend. I'll get you one, if you pay me back. So, are you coming? I'll tell Terry to keep his hands to himself."

I don't know what to say, and furthermore, I'm annoyed with myself for not being able to remember what Terry looks like; disgruntled, I pluck a raspberry from the trifle myself.

Suddenly, a hand appears out of nowhere and slaps mine. "Don't do that," snaps Mum. "Get a bowl and a spoon."

"But -!" I cry, turning to Frank, but he's smiling sweetly, all traces of raspberry wiped from his face. "Bastard," I mutter. He grins.

I look up to find out what's happened to Mum: behind us, she's leaning on Fred's shoulder, and he's trying to make her dance. "Oh, God, I'm getting too old for this," she whispers, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed.

Or too drunk, I add in my head, because, to be honest, Frank's right. Thirty-three isn't old.

I wonder what my dad would have looked like if he'd lived past seventeen. It's difficult to tell when the clearest photos you have are yellowing newspaper clippings of an awkward fourteen-year-old, lovingly cut out and kept by your grandmother. Immortal forever: no greying hair and crow's feet for him.

I wonder why they don't toast him. They'll mourn acquaintances, friends and enemies dead for more than fifteen years, but by some assumedly unspoken agreement no one ever raises a glass and says "to Harry Potter."

I have, in the past, wondered if it's a resentment thing - the papers often, still, refer to him as a self-sacrificing martyr, and I can tell it's always annoyed Mum.

So I asked Hermione, once, if perhaps, just maybe, there was a general feeling that he had no choice - that he didn't choose to make any sacrifices - that he was more of a victim who was forced into doing what he did.

"Absolutely not," she said fiercely, and I suddenly realised why McGonagall tries to offer her the post of Professor every few years. "Harry chose his path. There's no two ways about it."

So sometimes, now, I wonder if it's not resentment in behalf of him, but rather resentment towards him. Perhaps, they ... in a way, they resent him for ... how much they loved him. Perhaps it's the case that they have forgiven him, but they cannot forget what his death cost them.

In all honesty, I don't think I'm ever really going to know the reason behind it. I doubt it's logical, whatever it is - I should try and forget about it.

God, Hermione working at Hogwarts. I live in fear of the day it happens. I can only just about deal with having to call Neville Professor in term-time. I've called him 'Neville' in front of a class a few times before, and let me just say that it is deeply, deeply embarrassing.

She'd have to be Professor Granger. I couldn't call her Professor Weasley - even though it's not actually my surname. I'm a Potter. I asked Mum why, when I was about seven - they weren't married at sixteen and seventeen, they weren't that stupid - and she said, "Because there are more than enough Weasleys to be getting on with."

Don't ask questions is the impression I got.

I wonder if she loved him. Actually, no I don't.

I wonder if he loved her.

I usually don't bother with those kinds of thoughts, but sometimes they creep up on me. Did they really fancy each other? Were they just friends, really? Were they really madly truly in love? Was it just a brief thing? Did they dance with each other at Slughorn's parties? Get drunk and grope each other on the common room sofa? Go to Hogsmeade together? Did they - you know what I mean - slowly build up to me, or did it happen all of a sudden?

I wonder how long they thought it would last for. I mean, obviously, they were living in a war, but ... no one ever really thinks they're going to die, do they?

Frank's gone outside to smoke - where all the children are. Well done, cousin-of-mine, excellent plan. I return to watching the adults attempt to dance. I'm making it sound as if they are a depressed bunch of people, and they're really not. (Although, quite a few of them could be alcoholics. My mother included. I'm sorry, it's just not dignified to drink that much.)

The Boy-Who-Lived still affects them, it's true - it's not always in stalwart cheerfulness that they recount the misdemeanours of their youth. Sometimes, their eyes grow sad, misty and far away. I've seen Hermione sniffle over him in public, a little bit, but I've also seen Ron do the oh-so-manly rapid blinking thing. My mum's different, she lets it out: sometimes he's mentioned, and tears, clear as water, will start to trickle down her face, while she continues to laugh at the joke, or whatever. And then she'll brush them away, with a laugh and a dismissal - "Don't mind me, sometimes I cry when I talk about him" - and go back to what she was talking about. It really freaks out strangers. She cries properly, occasionally. She has a few triggers: last year a song they once danced to together was played at Bill and Fleur's wedding anniversary, and she had to go and lie down in a quiet room.

And she's still single. I mean, she's had boyfriends - I think - but she's always been careful to keep it ... not hidden, but separate from me. None of them have been serious enough for me to meet, anyway. But it's fine - she's a perfectly healthy human being.

They're happy. They're singing and dancing and drinking and talking about their jobs and the new Minister and their children - their lives. Not because they need something to distract them from the pain, but because they want to - they want to talk about these things because they care about them. Sad as it may seem, it's what they care about most in the world. They have their ups and their downs and all that but overall they are happy and living in the present and healthy.

Yet under all this there is the untouchable Harry Potter, who they can never forget and I will never remember. His presence still touches them in some way, and I cannot work out how.

I don't know what it is. Harry Potter left his mark on all of us, and me least of all. The thing about this scar is that it healed, eventually - almost completely. They always do.

It never really vanished, though. Never. I don't think I'll ever know how to feel about that.

- THE END -

Author's Notes: A sequel, dealing a little bit more with what happened with Harry and Ginny, is in the works. Also, I must credit the "Retired" song lyrics to The Enemy. *cringes*