Monster

At the Beginning

Harry's insides were full again, but the thing that was in there this time didn't seem at all alive; it felt as cold, dense and heavy as one of Professor Trelawney's crystal balls. "G-good morning, Mrs. Weasley," he managed before words failed him.

"Good morning, Harry, dear," Molly Weasley replied coolly, surveying the four visitors and the laden table.

Harry gaped, trying to think how to begin. Ron was no help--ash-faced and dumb--and Ginny was clearly on the edge of tears. He turned to Hermione, who, bless her, fell back on protocol. "Mrs. Weasley," she said, "let me introduce--"

"I've known Luna her whole life," Mrs. Weasley interrupted. "And Neville's parents were... are Arthur and my best friends. It's lovely to see the two of you so early. In my kitchen."

"We've made some breakfast," Luna said, her usual airy tone firmly in place. "Would you like some?"

Turning toward the counter to show her the warming bowls, Harry realized that Neville was looking as stiff and as shocked as he had first year when Hermione had put him in a Full Body Bind. "Yeah," Harry said, trying not to make Neville's obvious discomfort worse, "Neville... that is, we made eggs and bacon, Luna and Hermione made the scones and there's chocolate and tea..."

As Harry ran out of air, Mrs. Weasley looked closely at him, then at Neville. Finally, she surveyed the bowls and pots and platters. "Neville, you made most of this?"

When his friend proved to be still speechless, Harry simply said, "Yes."

"Ah," Molly Weasley murmured as she peered at the stove, the sink and the oven. "Well, dear, you can cook in my kitchen any time."

Astonished, Harry glanced over Mrs. Weasley's round shoulder to Ginny and Ron, who both stared at the back of her head, slack-jawed.

"Come along, children," their mother barked in a tone of comfortable command. "We don't want to let anything get cold or rubbery. Bring it to the table. Tea for me, please, Neville dear. And bring the sugar and the milk."

They finished setting the table and arranged themselves around it. If it had been up to Harry, he would have placed himself as close to Ginny and as far from her mother as he could manage. But somehow Mrs. Weasley managed to arrange it so that she was at the head of the table with her children and Luna on one side and Harry, Hermione and Neville on the other.

At least Harry was seated across from her. As they passed the eggs around Ginny resolutely refused to meet his eyes. Perhaps if he reached out his foot...

His toes snapped back almost before he recognized the large, fluffy slipper blocking his path as Molly Weasley's.

The only sound as they ate was the clink of cutlery and the occasional slurp of tea or chocolate. Mrs. Weasley seemed to be enjoying the food enormously, but when she would look up from the plate, her face seemed as warm and expressive as one of Hagrid's scalier pets.

Harry ate, but he didn't taste a thing.

As Mrs. Weasley was spreading some lemon curd on a scone, Harry hazarded a glance across at Ginny. She flashed him a smile so small and quick that he could almost have sworn that he'd imagined it. Even so, that momentary grin lightened the weight in his gut enormously.

I'm not ashamed, he thought as he finished the last of his chocolate, noticing for the first time that Neville had put something like cinnamon in it. Placing his mug on the table with a small, resounding thunk, Harry cleared his throat.

Six pairs of eyes converged on him. Harry locked onto the brown, bright ones directly in front of him. "Mrs. Weasley," he said, and his voice sounded oddly high and distant to his own ear, "I've got something I need to say. What Ginny and I--" A pair of fine ginger eyebrows arched in surprise.

Mrs. Weasley held up a hand. "Stop, Harry. I'm sure whatever you were going to say was very sincere, but I'm not sure I want to hear it."

Harry's mouth sealed itself so effectively, he felt as if he'd eaten a full bag of Fred and George's Everstick Powder. He looked across at Ginny, who was now staring down at her plate, her pale skin half a shade pinker.

After taking another sip of tea--she was on her third cup--her mother continued. "Arthur has already had a rather thorough conversation with our two youngest children here, and has ascertained that--whatever you may have gotten up to last night--none of you acted... irresponsibly." Now it was Molly Weasley's turn to blush, and she did a good job of it. "I happen to know for a fact that my own children, Luna and Hermione are all well acquainted with the spells and potions involved in... family planning. I know it because Arthur and I thought it important to train them ourselves. I think perhaps we have been remiss in not doing so for you, Harry, and for..." Her plump hands fluttered about her face. "Well, Neville dear, I'm not at all sure what I could tell you. Perhaps you should talk to Charlie..."

"Charlie?" asked Ron. A quiet smack let Harry know that Ginny had hit him beneath the table.

"The point, Harry dear--and Hermione and Luna and... Yes, well, Neville dear, it is still important that you hear this..." Neville now looked as if he wanted to go out and join the Gnomes in their holes in the garden. "The point is that reputation is a very funny thing. Boys' and girls' reputations are judged very differently. It shouldn't be like that, but it is."

Again she swallowed some tea; the color in her face seemed to be evening out. "I married Arthur just after we left Hogwarts," she said, and the room was suddenly very still. "Bill was born eight months later."

Harry didn't know much about human reproduction, but he knew enough to know what that meant.

"Before you jump to the same conclusion that everyone else did, children, I want you to know that all of my other babies were born quite early. Not one got past thirty-six weeks. We had made a promise to each other not to... do anything until we were married, and we stuck to that promise. But the damage was done, you see. All of our friends assumed we had been, you know, long before we left school. We'd told them we hadn't, but this gave that the lie in their eyes. Arthur was constantly being ragged by his friends in the Ministry, being told what a lucky man he was. And my friends... Like you, Ginny, I'd grown up with brothers. I had no idea how cruel girls could be."

She turned to Harry, and her eyes flashed--Harry had never noticed how much they resembled his girlfriend's. "I've watched this with my sons as well. A boy who has a way with girls, who messes about a bit? He's a sport, a lad. The other boys look up to him, even if they would never say it to his face, and the girls think it very dashing that he's a bit naughty. But a girl? There are all sorts of names for girls who mess about, many of them beginning with 'S', and none of them very nice."

The weight in Harry's middle was settling heavily again and his own gaze dropped into his mug. Slut. Slag. Scarlet...

"Hermione, I know that Arthur spoke very seriously to our Ronald this morning," Ronald's mother continued. Ronald himself was once again turning a remarkable shade of tomato red. "I am sure he will have some things to add to you, Harry."

Harry felt his own face swell with anticipated shame.

"But I want to make sure you understand just what I mean. Girls' reputations are ridiculously delicate things. Perhaps it is different in the Muggle world--Arthur is always going on about some thing called women's rib or something like that."

Hermione shook her head almost imperceptibly, but Harry could not be sure whether it was because Mrs. Weasley had butchered the name of a movement in which she believed passionately, or because she was asserting that things were not in fact terribly different in the Muggle world.

Molly Weasley--the closest thing to a mother Harry had had since he was a baby--stared at Harry until cold sweat began to bead on his brow. "Harry Potter. Arthur and I trust you, as we trust our own children, to do the right thing. I do not ask you what you and Ginny were doing last night, because it is not my business and because... Well, as I said, I trust you. But I want you to swear to me that you would not and have not done anything to deceive my daughter. Because if I found that you have trifled with her, young man, I will track you down, wherever you may be. And you will wish I had sent a Howler. You'll wish it had been You-Know-Who that found you. And then, once I am done, I will let Arthur and her brothers loose on what's left. Do you understand me, Harry?"

He nodded. He could not meet her gaze.

"Oh, I'm sure they were very careful last night," said Luna, her voice wafting up from the other end of the table. "Ginny has been practicing the Contraceptive Charms for weeks. I've been helping her. She really is quite good at them. None of us would ever say anything to hurt Ginny, because Hermione's really very careful about such things, and Ronald and Neville are both frightened of her, and she's my friend and who would I talk to about who she's having sex with other than her, and no one believes anything I say in any case, and she's marked Harry as hers, so he won't say anything either."

A silence fluttered over the table as everyone--Luna included, probably--tried to work out just what she'd said.

Slowly, all six faces turned back to Harry. Once again, his eyes were locked on Ginny's. "Harry," she said, her voice just above a whisper, "what did she mean, I marked you?"

"Ginny dear, I'm not sure--" Mrs. Weasley broke in, looking suddenly squeamish; Ron nodded desperately in agreement.

"It's all right," Harry said, not to them but to his girlfriend, and, fingers trembling, he opened his shirt.

The whites of Ginny's eyes showed wide and round. "I... did that?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah. Just like the ones on your back."

"But..." Ginny's face seemed just as at war with itself as Harry remembered his own being in the bathroom. "But I didn't save your life...."

"Well, I don't know about that," Harry began, and it was an attempt at a joke, but even as he said it, he realized that she had in fact saved his life in any number of ways over the previous two years. Ginny's eyes--and her mother and brother's--were locked on the white, bird-shaped markings on his chest. "I... I don't think that's what this is about--or yours either. I think it's something different. I don't think the marks on your shoulders are about you owing me something. I think... They must be something I did to you. Something..."

"What handprints?" Ron blurted out, and Harry felt Hermione's leg kick out at him. Poor Ron.

Ginny looked at her mother, Neville, Hermione, and then Harry. Finally she sighed and turned back to Ron. "When Harry saved me at the end of first year, he left two handprints on my shoulder blades--white ones, just like those. Mum and Dad and I think they're signs of a life debt."

Harry was about to speak when he felt Hermione squeeze his knee. "They're not," she said authoritatively. "Life debts leave no outward mark. This must be something different."

"Then what?" Mrs. Weasley and Ginny hissed together, both staring at the middle of his chest.

It took a great act of discipline not to yank his shirt closed again. "Um... I've been thinking about when I held you that way. It was when I helped you up. You were crying--you were terrified you were going to be expelled, and I..." He held his hands out, trying to remember the moment. "I lifted you up. And I... I don't remember thinking it in so many words, but I felt just what I was feeling, um, last night. That I would do anything to keep you from getting hurt. That I would do anything to make sure you... you weren't... sent away. From me."

Ginny and Ron's mouths dropped open--they'd never looked so much like brother and sister. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw that even Luna looked astonished.

"Wow," said Neville.

"Five years ago." Ginny spoke slowly, testing each word. "You felt that five years ago and it took you until this May to actually do something about it?"

"I..." I was twelve years old. I'd never felt anything like that in my life. I'd never been allowed to feel anything at all. I'd never even had friends. No one had ever said they loved me and I'd never said it to anyone else. I... "I was a git."

Ginny looked as if she were trying to be angry, but was too shocked to manage it.

"Too right you were!" Ron said with a smirk. "Makes me look like less of a twit, that's for sure!"

"Well," Hermione said, patting Harry's thigh, "at least Harry had the good manners to choose a practice girlfriend from outside Gryffindor, so that Ginny only had to see them together from time to time, instead of spending his time imitating a lamprey in the common room every night."

"I...!" Ron looked utterly abashed.

"A lamprey?" Mrs. Weasley said, an edge in her voice. "Isn't that one of those disgusting sucking fish?"

Hermione nodded primly.

"Ronald Bilius Weasley! What poor girl were you making a spectacle of in the Gryffindor common room?"

The other five teens answered in unison, "Lavender Brown."

Luna continued, "Padma Patil said that her sister told her it was quite revolting. I was very sorry to hear that, Ronald, because I always thought that you would be a very good kisser."

Ron goggled at her, then around at the rest of them. "Well, it's not like she..." But his mother's glacial expression reminded him just how the conversation had started and he closed his mouth more forcibly than Harry had ever seen him do when there wasn't food involved.

"It's all right, Ron," said Hermione with a very small smile--which struck Harry as more than a little unfair, since she had been the one to land her boyfriend in trouble in the first place. "Lavender told me just before..." She frowned. "Just before the end of the year. She told me that your Venus and her Mars formed an improper trine, or something like that. She'd decided to console Dean instead. Their charts were perfectly balanced."

"Oh, good," Ginny said, some of the old fire returning to her face, "I always felt sort of sorry that I dumped Dean so violently."

I didn't, Harry thought--but he kept the thought to himself. "I think what I was trying to say, Mrs. Weasley," he said, "is that I'd rather kill myself than hurt Ginny. I promise."

The older woman peered at him for a moment as he re-buttoned his shirt and then nodded. "I'll hold you to that. But that's not what I wanted to talk with you about."

The warm, joyous feeling that had been stretching its wings in Harry's abdomen again suddenly abandoned ship, leaving a cold vacuum behind. "It... It's not?"

"No, Harry, it is not." She rearranged herself in the chair, and Harry was reminded of a hen settling herself in her nest. "I did want to clear some of these issues up, but--as I said--Arthur and I trust you. And we trust Ginny. No, knowing that you and my underage daughter are attached, knowing my youngest son and his... friend are close to you--not to mention, apparently, my goddaughter and the son of my oldest friends--and knowing that you have some task that you began with Professor Dumbledore but were unwilling to discuss with Professor McGonagall, what I wish to know is just where you plan to take my children--and these other children towards whom I feel all but a mother's care--after the wedding on Saturday."

"I..." This was worse than the other talk. "She told you I wouldn't talk?"

"Well of course she told me, Harry dear. Since Albus's death, after all, I am the head of the Order of the Phoenix."

Really, this was too much. Harry knew it was rude to let his mouth flop open, but he couldn't help himself--nor could any of his friends, with the possible exception of Luna, who looked as if she were thinking about Blibbering Humdingers.

"Mum?" Ginny started, but even she didn't seem up to the task of forming the question.

"Well, children, it's not a job I would have chosen for myself, truly. But there was no one else for it. None of the younger members could be spared from their work, poor Emmeline--who was supposed to take the job--was killed and even if he weren't on assignment, Remus isn't able to help one week out of the month, a challenge I'm free of, thank Merlin. Hestia and Sturgis both have young children at home, and can't be counted upon to be available at a moment's notice, and he hasn't been the same since he was released from Azkaban, the poor man. Dedalus is just silly, always has been, the dear, Elphias is too old, Kingsley and Arthur and Tonks need to be able to keep up at least the appearance of working for the minister, and Minerva was never going to be able to take the job, poor dear, not if she was in deep mourning as we had assumed would be the case should Albus... disappear. Mundungus Fletcher... Well. I've been the Order's quartermaster, so I already knew most of the day-to-day details of keeping the Order operational, and after all, Ron, where do you think you got your head for chess?"

"Oh," Ron said.

"Certainly not from Dad," muttered Ginny, and she and Harry shared another quick smile before her mother cleared her throat dismissively.

"I won't have you speaking disrespectfully of your father, Ginny."

"Yes, Mum," she said, but her eyes remained bright.

"So, Harry, I ask my question again. Where are you taking these children?"

"I... Mrs. Weasley..." Harry flashed on the memory of Molly Weasley lying weeping on the floor of Grimmauld Place, watching as the Boggart showed her one after the other of her loved ones dead and bleeding on the floor. "Please, Mrs. Weasley... If it were up to me, I would be doing this alone. I would never put Ginny or Ron or any of my friends in danger at all. This really is my responsibility, and I'm the one who has to see it through. But if I've learned anything in the last few years, it's that I'm nothing without my friends. I need their help."

"And you don't need ours." Molly Weasley's eyes had a very Ginny-like cast to them again--but it was the look that frightened Harry the most, the one that let him know that he was at most two sentences from a full explosion.

"It's not that!" he blurted. "Please, Mrs. Weasley, I'm not leading them against Death Eaters. We're not going to be heading off into battle or anything like that."

"Then why can't you tell me?"

"I..." He looked at Ginny, at Ron. They both shrugged. Beside him, Hermione sat very still, looking as uncomfortable as Harry felt. "I promised Professor Dumbledore that I wouldn't."

"But you've told your friends," Mrs. Weasley said, that edge in her voice imperceptibly sharper.

"I... He told me that I could tell Ron and Hermione..."

"And Ginny? And Neville and Luna?"

"They... They sort of made it impossible for me not to," Harry said miserably, knowing that his position was growing weaker and weaker.

Mrs. Weasley leaned forward, until Harry could see the veins in the whites of her eyes. "I can do that too, young man."

Harry gulped.

"What if Professor Dumbledore told you that it was alright, Harry?" mused Luna, her voice sounding less misty than usual.

"Luna," Neville whispered, "Professor Dumbledore is--"

"Dead, of course," Luna said, a bemused smile rippling her features. "But Harry could speak to his portrait."

"But school is closed," Hermione said, her brows furrowed tightly.

"That goes without saying," Luna said. "Really Hermione, you usually don't say such silly things. No, I have his portrait at home."

"You do?" Harry said, gawking. "Why?"

Now it was his turn to be favored with his pixilated friend's most dismissive stare. "Well, Harry, he was my grandfather."

It would have been funny if the whole situation hadn't been so serious; all five of the other teens performed a set of perfectly synchronized double takes, turning from Luna to Molly Weasley and back again.

Luna sat beneath their collective gaze smiling beatifically. Mrs. Weasley said, a note of anxiety obscuring the anger that had been there just moments before, "They didn't make it widely known, but Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were... very close."

Ron looked as though he'd just smelled one of Slughorn's fouler potions, while Ginny looked as though she'd just seen a unicorn.

"They... came together during the fight against Grindelwald. Albus felt that acknowledging their relationship would endanger Minerva, and she... Well, you will all have noticed that she is a rather private person."

Beside Harry, Hermione nodded.

"Argentia McGonagall--their daughter--was two years ahead of me at Hogwarts. Aggie met Ben Lovegood ten or fifteen years after school and we were both pregnant with daughters at the same time. I'm Luna's godmother. She was Ron and Ginny's."

So many questions piled in to Harry's head that he wasn't sure he could even begin to sort them out.

"He used to come when I was little and give me sherbet lemons," Luna said wistfully. "And other times, Professor McGonagall would bring me Ginger Newts." Her voice thickened and Harry sensed that she was thinking about her mother. "They both came to Mummy's funeral, of course. It was the first time they ever visited together. It was quite nice. And they apologized for not being able to acknowledge me, but I understood, it was all to do with Voldemort, since Daddy had told me that he wasn't really dead and they needed to protect me and Mum from him." Suddenly she smiled. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but since we're sharing secrets this morning, I get to have tea with them every Friday in Professor Dumbledore's rooms. Or I did." Though her tone darkened, the smile remained.

"Luna," said Harry, reaching across to her, only to find Hermione's, Ginny's and Neville's hands stretching out to her as well. Ron looked utterly stricken, but even he was moved to pat her awkwardly on the shoulder.

"Well," Luna said brightly, "Come along Neville and help me fetch the portrait. It's quite large."

"But..." Harry tried to force his mind to work. "Luna, the portrait won't know--"

"All wizarding paintings share the knowledge of the subject at the time of the most recent portrait." The words spewed from Hermione's mouth almost automatically. She blinked. "Do we know when the headmaster last sat for a portrait?"

Shaking herself, Mrs. Weasley answered, "He had one made every year on his birthday--as a precaution, he said. So I presume the most recent one would have been finished in February."

"That would have been after he started your... lessons, Harry," Hermione said. "And after you made your promise, yes?"

Harry nodded.

Luna leapt up and began pulling Neville towards the fireplace. Tossing in a large handful of Floo powder, she called out, "Hesperides House" and disappeared in a flash of green, soon to be followed by their friend.

Harry sat, trying desperately to digest the events of the last hour--of the last day. A gentle tug on his hand pulled his awareness back into the room.

"You okay?" Ginny asked, her warm, fine hand closing over his.

Harry nodded again--but this time he meant it.

"So Mum," Ron said, "does Neville get to cook in here because he's gay, or what?"