Facing Backwards

Chapter Twelve--Aspiration

Four minutes later, two tangled bodies lay, newly still, on the Longbottoms' four-poster.

"Well."

"So."

"Shall we, uh?... Again?"

"Just to make sure."

* * *

Twenty-seven minutes after that, Ginny and Harry were gasping for breath, side by side, staring up at the canopy above the bed, with its embroidered Pan embracing an almost-flowering Syrinx.

"Well."

"So."

Ginny rested her head on Harry's chest; he could feel the thud of his heart against her cheek. "Ginny?"

"Yes?"

"I think I got your brother sacked today." He found himself tracing the line of her neck through her thick hair.

"Oh." She was silent for a moment. "That's what that was about. Probably the best thing to happen to him in years. He's been desperately unhappy for a long, long time..."

"And I still don't know what was going on between him and Hermione."

She let loose a long, warm sigh that spilled over his arm. He felt her begin to vibrate against him. "Harry, I... Um, I don't want to hurt your feelings, okay?"

The sense of warmth and well-being faded quickly. "What, Gin? What is it?"

"I think..." She began to sob. "I think I need my husband..."

"Oh. Ginny." He kissed the top of her head. "Doesn't hurt my feelings at all, luv. I'll go and fetch him for you, shall I?"

With a teary gasp, she nodded emphatically against him.

Gently detaching himself, Harry slipped off of the bed. Clothes? Still out in the living room. He turned back to see Ginny, a vision of cool white and copper against the rich green bedspread. "Ginevra?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

Through the tears, she smiled dazzlingly. "Love you too, Harry."

Grinning, he turned to leave.

"Oh, and Harry?" He spun back. "Thank you." He stood, momentarily frozen, unable to say anything. Thank you, too. You're welcome. Anything. Ginny curled in upon herself. "Let's do this again, shall we?"

"Twenty-eight days," he said finally with a laugh. "I'll mark it on my calendar."

* * *

Walking up through the halls, Harry passed knots of students. He felt as if they all knew--they were teenagers, after all; their senses could probably identify sex at three hundred paces. What surprised him most was that he didn't mind at all.

The only things marring his deep-felt sense of peace were a niggling anxiety for Luna, and a looming terror of his imminent conversation with his wife.

In the entrance hall, he ran into Sidi and his godson. Her boyfriend. They smiled sheepishly at him and he smiled sheepishly back.

"We're going outside," said the Weasley boy.

"To study," said Sidi.

"Remember, you've got a one-parchment essay due to me on Thursday," Harry said, congratulating himself on refraining from pointing out that it was a better time for a romantic star-lit walk than a study session.

They both blushed, ducked their heads in matching nods, and wandered out the door, holding hands openly now.

Should he tell Sidi and Minnie and Albie that they might have a half-brother or sister on the way? How do you explain something like that--a sibling that isn't a sibling--to a thirteen-year-old, let alone a four-year-old?

Not yet, he thought.

But eventually, yes, they should know. He watched Siria and Harry walking down to the lake, and he shivered.

Have they kissed yet?

Soon.

Please, he asked of no one in particular, let them not hurt too much. Let the joy outweigh the pain, for a little while at least.

* * *

When Harry entered his rooms, Neville froze in the act of hopping from one foot to the other. He stood there, startled, one leg still in the air. "Uh, hullo, Harry." Bright-eyed and red-cheeked, he resembled nothing more than a youngish, rather flustered Father Christmas. The firewhiskey bottle was on the table, open. A blue envelope was propped against it.

"Hullo, Neville. Your wife wants you."

"Ah. Yes, yes." With exaggerated care, he lowered his foot to the balding carpet, and then swallowed. He seemed incapable of moving. "Hermy and I finished the whiskey. Hope you don't mind."

"Well, seeing as it was originally yours and Ginny's, no, not at all."

"No, no... Harry, yes, Albie came through on the Floo and talked to Hermy, something about lions, only they were happy? Something like that. And that Luna and Ron's boy Tom was born. Or is going to be born any minute. Did you hear anything? How could he have gotten an owl? Hermione went into the bedroom to do some work, she said I was driving her crazy, which I thought was awfully funny. Though I'm not sure why. Oh!" he said, reaching into his robes, "speaking of messages, I brought that letter of Gabrielle Delacour's that I told you about..." He searched around inside all of his pockets. "Where did I?..."

"Is that it on the table?" Harry asked.

"Ah, yes, yes..."

"Neville," Harry said.

"Uh, yes?"

"Ginny wants you."

"Ah. Yes." Slowly, his face white, he began to walk to the door. He stopped, wobbled and turned back. "You know, Harry... We do give each other, you know, pleasure."

"What?" Harry said, and immediately regretted it--he didn't really want an explanation.

"Pleasure." Neville's face had gone from pasty to a deep red that seemed to have nothing to do with shame. "Just because I can't have, you know, sex... Ginny and I can still enjoy each other...."

It occurred to Harry for the first time that, just as he would never have the same relationship with Ginny as before, so too his level of, well, intimacy with Neville had changed forever. This would take some getting used to. "Neville?"

"Yes?"

"You're a very lucky man."

Neville smiled broadly. "I am, aren't I? And, Harry, so are you. So are you."

Harry smiled and nodded and Neville left, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

The door to the bedroom was closed, but the flat was tiny enough that Harry was sure that Hermione had heard him come in. He went and knocked.

The answer was a single, sustained, high-pitched note, like a kettle that's been boiling a bit too long.

He opened the door and stepped through.

Hermione was seated on the bed in her nightgown--one he had bought her before Sidi was born--with parchment, quills and books scattered around her. This was normal enough.

Her face, however, was buried in a pillow on her knees and she was letting out a keening wail such as Harry had never heard in twenty years of marriage. Where her grief at her father's death had been long and deep and agonizing, this was devastating. Shattering. Her back convulsed, and yet her sorrow spilled out in one long, unbroken, unwavering outpouring of pain.

Harry walked over and set next to her, crushing several rolls of parchment and not caring at all. "Hermione."

She collapsed against him, her head finally coming to rest on his knees. The long keen broke into wracking, jackhammer sobs.

"Hermione, love. It's all right."

She wept against his legs for a long time. Harry stroked her back and her hair.

Eventually, her sobbing subsided to mere weeping. "I can smell her," she spluttered.

"Oh. Damn. I'm so sorry, Hermy. I should have thought... I wanted to see you." Feeling like an idiot, he started to get up, to take a shower, to change his clothes, but Hermione held him tight in her arms, clinging desperately.

"I asked for this," he heard her say. "I truly and literally asked for this."

"It's all right, Hermione."

"How can we go on, Harry, after everything that's happened?" For the first time, she looked up at him.

Still stroking her hair, he said, rather coldly than he mean to, "What exactly has happened, Hermione?"

She squinted up through puffy eyelids. Then, taking a deep, quivering breath, she sat up. "I'm so sorry, Harry."

"Whatever it is, I don't care. I forgive you. I love you."

"NO!" she spat. "Ron and I did something to you I don't know that I could ever have forgiven if it was me. I would have killed you, honestly, Harry."

"Hermione," Harry said, bewildered, "this isn't still about that, is it? Come on, love, you and I agreed, that day, that we'd forget it ever happened. That it wouldn't ever happen again..."

Suddenly, Hermione's face closed off. "Yes, well, Harry, you see..."

Something cold and liquid was churning in Harry's stomach. "What is it, Hermy? What's happened?"

She closed her eyes and spoke quietly. "It was seeing you and Ginny together here that night in the Floo. And I knew, knew, you were having it off together..."

"We weren't, you know. The funny thing is, we'd just been congratulating ourselves on resisting temptation..." He was about to tell her just how close they had come to failing when she broke in.

"I couldn't get the image out of my head. I saw the two of you, sitting there..." She pulled her knees back up to her chin "I know I've been a mess this year, Harry. I know. And we haven't exactly had a lot of time. But you've been so... moody. Withdrawn. Ever since that party last fall." She sniffed, and Harry handed her a box of tissues from the nightstand.

"You know," she continued, "that Percy's been after me for years."

"Really?" It was an effort to keep his voice calm. No wonder she was always so touchy about the teasing.

" Since the days when I was working down in the Department of Mysteries. Cards. Flowers. Pressing up against me when we passed in the hallway. Nothing I couldn't handle. And I always told him to stop. I never encouraged him." Harry nodded, dreading where this was headed. "When I became Minister, he was so angry that he barely talked to me for months. He didn't flirt or write notes on the bottoms of memoranda for the longest time. It was quite a relief. But it was also a bit... disappointing, you know? It's nice to think there's someone out there who's attracted to you, even if you aren't planning on doing anything about it.... Merlin, that sounds absolutely bloody heartless."

"No," Harry murmured, "I understand."

"In any case, last summer he started again. After sending me this incredibly nasty critique of some legislation that I'd proposed, he comes in to my office and all but throws himself at me. It was pathetic, but... sort of exciting. And he kept at it, any time we were alone together." She shook her head sadly.

Last summer? thought Harry. Then Albie?...

" I saw you and Ginny, and I just snapped. This little, nasty voice inside me said, right, what's good for the gander's good for the goose. And I invited him over to Grimmauld Place with every intention of seducing him."

She looked at Harry intently, pursed her lips briefly, and went on. "It was so stupid, Harry. Poor Percy... The kids were up in bed, and I'd packed Celestine off for the night. Percy had Floo'd in while I was upstairs, and we were snogging away like a couple of randy schoolkids down in the kitchen when..."

"Albie walked in," Harry said, smiling wanly.

"How did you know?"

"He always does."

"Ah. Yes. Any way, yes, he did. I suppose I should have known he would. Fortunately, I heard him coming down the stairs, so Percy and I weren't, you know, in flagrante. But I was incredibly upset. By the time I'd walked him back up to his room and put him to bed, all I could think was, Hermione, what the hell are you doing? I knew in that moment that, whatever else, I trusted you. I trusted Ginny. And here I was, mucking everything up, all over again, just as I did with Ron."

"Hermione..." What she was saying... It sounded as if it might have been lifted from Harry's own thoughts over the past weeks. What?...

She held up a shaking hand. "Let me finish. I went back down and tried to talk to Percy, but he was extremely upset... I suppose I can see why... And he... He came very close to, well, forcing himself on me. I had my wand close to hand, though, so I put him in a Full Body Bind, and Floo'd him home."

Harry goggled. "Hermione... Are... Were you okay?"

"Fine. I was fine. Well, I was humiliated. And furious, with him. And with myself. And with you, and then I started to think, This is all because I still feel guilty about Ron. After all these years, I still feel as if I'm the bad one because of what I did to you. And I knew Neville couldn't get Ginny pregnant--a rather large appropriation for male fertility treatments came through from Hogwarts this winter, and who else could that be for?--so I thought, There, that'll even the score and do the Longbottoms a good turn." Tears began to flow again. "But I'm too clever by half, Harry. I asked you to trust me, but could I trust myself? Coming up here with Neville nattering away, I realized this was killing me, that I was so bloody jealous I couldn't stand it. It took everything I had in me not to run screaming down the stairs to pull that slut off of you, and then I felt terrible because I love you and I love Ginny, and I want her and Neville to have kids, and I ASKED for this, my god, Harry, what have I DONE?..." And she began to wail again.

Harry wrapped his arms around his wife, a peel of hysterical, relieved laughter building up inside of him, and she buried her head in his chest, her curly hair bobbing as she wept.

"Look, Hermione, fair queen..." It was an old nickname that he hadn't used for years. "It's done. Slate clean. All finished."

"No," she blubbered against his chest. "Maybe she's not pregnant..."

"Given our history, I'd say the odds are good that she is."

"Besides, she'll want more than one. I know Ginny..." And she dissolved into wailing again.

"Hermione..." Then he sighed. "It's these damned Weasleys," he said. "They're such sex magnets. Must have some Veela blood, don't you think?"

Hermione gave a wet snort.

"Hermione, if you don't want it to happen again, it won't. Ginny and Neville will understand."

She worked her arms around his neck and nuzzled up on to his shoulder. "What about you, Harry?" Her wet nose was pressed against his throat.

"Me?" he asked, and the laughter that had been bubbling up inside finally burst out, to Hermione's apparent astonishment.

"Yes, Harry, you... What do you..." Wiping her eyes, she stared at him, eyes wide but brow creased. "Are you feeling all right, Harry."

"Are you joking?" he asked. "I haven't felt this good in days. Months."

Her astonishment turned to something resembling great displeasure. "GOOD? You feel good?" She drew back from him, fuming, magisterial. "Harry Potter, do you know what torture I've been going through for the past week, since that night when Albie woke, having his sex dream, and I Floo'd you and you were sitting there having a chat with Ginny?"

"YES!" Harry cried, trying as best he could to stop laughing. "Yes, I know. I've been putting myself through torture worthy of a squad of Dementors." He grabbed his wife's hand; she was peering at him skeptically, looking as if she might be considering the possibility that her husband had lost his mind. "Hermione, love, the path you've traveled this past week, every bit of it, Ginny and I have traveled right alongside. Well, except for the attempted rape--now I'm sorry I didn't punch Percy while I had the chance..."

"Harry!"

"Hermione, I'm trying to say... That night when you called, the reason Albie woke up, Ginny and I were skirting about as close as is humanly possible to making exactly the mistake you suspected us of."

Hermione's eyebrows shot up.

"We didn't," he said. "But it was a near miss. And it was more than a bit unpleasant. And I was feeling nineteen kinds of guilt for treating you that way, for treating her that way--shush, Hermione. When I saw Percy at home that night..."

"You saw him?"

"Yes, yes, you see the beauty of it, but it gets so much worse, love... The next morning I called in on the Floo to get a message to Minnie..."

"About an animagus exercise, she told me."

"Yes, but I saw Albus first , you see, waving that bloody ruler Percy reads his newspaper with and this awful, awful idea just sort of mushroomed inside me--this thought that, if you and Percy had been at it, you see, as Ginny and I had come so close to being at it, and if you'd been together for long enough..."

"Oh, Harry," Hermione gasped, "you didn't! You couldn't!"

"I did." Hermione's abashed expression only made Harry want to giggle again, so he pressed on. "I almost convinced myself Albie was Percy's child. And worse..."

"Worse?"

"Yes, worse, I was well on the way to convincing myself that Minnie was his too--I know, I know, but she looks like you..." He shook his head and sniggered.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione said, but the disapproval in her voice was as familiar and as comfortable as an old blanket, and he warmed himself in it. She brought a hand up to his face. "Why didn't you talk to me?..."

"For the same reason you didn't talk to me, I suppose. Feeling too guilty. Too frightened of what I'd find. You sent that letter to Ginny..."

"And you thought I was playing tit for tat."

"If you'll pardon the expression." The hand that had been caressing him gave a playful slap. "Hermione... The thing is, by today, I just couldn't worry about it any more. I decided I was being stupid no matter what I chose to believe or not believe and so... in the end I trusted you'd let me know what was going on."

Her face was soft and sad. "You're a good husband."

"I only want to make you happy." He pinched the spot at the base of the ribs that was her one ticklish spot.

"Stop it," she yelped.

"Okay," he said. And felt her settle back in to his embrace. "I love you, Hermione Granger."

"Hm. I love you, Harry Potter." Then very quietly, she asked, "Did you tell her you loved her, too?"

He sighed, then nodded. "You love her too, love. Loving Ginny, or Neville, or the kids, or Ron... It doesn't take away from what I feel for you. And it doesn't change the agreements we've made."

"Oh, Harry," she said again, no disapproval at all, and he leaned down and kissed her, he kissed his wife gently and slowly and she kissed him, lips unhurried and fully, and he knew in that moment what he had always thought he had known, but had never truly understood: that he was hers and she was his. He felt her weight leaning heavy against him, smelled a faint hint of the brimstone bouquet of firewhiskey. "I'm tired, Harry."

"Come on," he said, "let's tuck you in."

Sweeping all of the parchment off of the bed, he maneuvered her under the covers. Her breath was coming more and more deeply. As he was putting out the candles, he heard her murmur, "Maybe... might feel better... maybe Neville and I should stay, next time..." Then before Harry could so much as smirk, she said, "Stop that, you randy bugger... dirty mind..." And within two minutes she was snoring.

Harry sat on the edge of the bed, suffused by a delicious, bittersweet sense of wholeness. None of it mattered: Ron, Ginny, Percy. Sidi and Harry Weasley. Minnie's moody outbursts or Albie's preternatural flights of fancy. They loved each other, and none of it mattered.

It wouldn't be until months later that he would see the humor in the fact that it had been on the night when he'd first made love to Ginny that he had finally remembered how much he loved his wife. Then it would strike him as riotous. Now, he was content simply to feel good.

Once Hermione had fallen truly asleep, Harry leaned over and kissed her slack cheek. Then he quietly shuffled out towards the door, and closed it behind him.

His thought had been to grab a sip or two of whiskey for himself, to slow his tumbling thoughts. But Neville and Hermione had well and properly killed the bottle.

He opened the note from Gabrielle, feeling the need to do something.

Mon cher Neville, it began, and then went on for some pages discussing the finer points of Gillyweed cultivation.

At the back, however, came some paragraphs of an entirely different sort:

I have been thinking much since a while about how I met you and your friends. I have been thinking much, especially, about your friend Harry Potter. Meeting him had a great influence on my life--not least my weakness for men with glasses.

But of course, it is much more than that. We French--and especially we French with Veela blood flowing in our veins--are very fond of passion and of honor. But we do not like to think of these two things as connectable, as being connected. Harry Potter was the first person I have ever met who not only did everything with passion completely, but always managed also to do always the right thing. He was a young man most admirable, and, the few times we have met since, he seems just as admirable today. Hermione Granger is most fortunate.

I look forward to hearing how the salination charms work. And if you have the opportunity, please pass my grateful thoughts on to Harry.

Ton Amie,

Gabrielle

Harry folded the letter away and put it back in the envelope.

Passion? Honor? He felt little connected with either just now.

Well, he thought, perhaps more now than a few weeks ago.

* * *

Unable to sit still in Remus's rooms--unwilling to stare at the orange stain on the carpet or watch Sirius's face scowling down at him from the picture--Harry decided to go for a walk.

He found Ron, sitting on the front steps of the castle, watching the light of the still-gibbous moon slowly flood the valley, slack-jawed and stunned.

"So," Harry said.

"It's a boy. It's a bloody boy."

Harry grinned and threw his arms around his friend. "Congratulations, mate. Welcome to the club."

"I'm a bloody dad." He stared at Harry. "Shouldn't I have to know what I'm doing?"

"No one ever does, Ron. It's a headlong leap into the abyss."

Shaking his head, Ron looked up again. "Luna looks brilliant, as relaxed as ever again.... And Tommy looks..." Ron's face twisted as he searched for the proper word, and then went back to a look of blank astonishment as he gave up. "Sent the owls out. Fawkes wanted to go, so I let him take the one for you lot at Grimmauld Place... But... you're both... here."

"That's okay. Minnie'll be thrilled."

"I'm a bloody dad."

"How does it feel?"

"Terrifying. And like I rule the bloody world." Ron shivered. In his hair, Harry could just detect the miraculous scent of birth. What a fragrant pair we are, he thought.

"I've got an idea," Harry said. "What say we head down to the Broomsticks and drink a toast or three to Tom Weasley."

Still looking as if he'd been thumped rather hard on the head, Ron nodded and stood. They walked silently for a while, Ron's arm over Harry's shoulder. "You ever work that stuff out with Ginny?" he asked.

Harry nodded. "I'll tell you about it later. But yeah, I think it's worked itself out." Then they fell back into silence

"So," Harry said as they passed through the school gates, figuring he'd wait for Ron to start telling war stories of the birthing until he was ready for it, "you spending the night up in the hospital wing?"

"Nah," said Ron, with a lop-sided grin, "Lois Skepples kicked me out. Said I was too much of a Nervous Nelly, that Luna and Tom needed their sleep and my hovering'd keep 'em up."

"Well," Harry said, "we'll get you home before it gets too late. This is the last quiet night's sleep you'll have for a while."

Harry felt Ron's arm lift from his shoulder and ducked, expecting a friendly cuff to the head. None came. Harry turned to look at his friend and was astonished by what he saw.

Ron was standing, looking up into the sky, his arms straight out. With the moonlight falling on his upper surfaces, he looked as if he were aglow with stardust.

"Ron..."

Ron's mouth opened slowly, and a voice--not his own--boomed out. "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well....

"Today is born a grandchild of the Dark Lord's last victims... And he shall bear the Dark Lord's name in joy and in honor, and bring those whom he loves joy and honor...

"And this day too was begotten the first child of he who defeated the Dark Lord, begotten by two who were possessed by the Dark Lord, possessed but never owned... And her name shall be called Alicia, known as Ali, and she shall serve long as the head of the wizarding state...

"These same two shall beget a second child, who shall be called Francesca, known as Frannie, who shall become the greatest headmistress that the School founded by the Four shall ever have known...

"And last shall these two beget Lilia, known as Lily, who shall be the greatest of all, for she shall heal the rift betwixt the wizarding world and the world of non-witch-kind...

"And they and their families, and their half-siblings and cousins and all about them shall prosper and live in joy....

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well...."

Harry realized that he had ceased breathing.

Ron softened, his arms drooped, so that the light he bore dimmed slightly, and suddenly he shook his head, as if to clear it. "You say something, mate?"

Harry looked at his friend, swallowed, and then smiled. "Nah. Not a thing. Come on, Ron, let's get ourselves a drink."