Dramatis Personae

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Chapter 2

By Diocletian

* * * * *

August 19, 2005:

The following day, Ginny and Colin found themselves sitting inside the plush, comfortable dining room of "Rafael's", an expensive Italian restaurant in uptown London. They were waiting to have dinner with Colin's younger brother, Dennis, who of course hadn't yet had the courtesy to show up. The two friends were chatting quietly at their table, sipping at their pre-meal spring waters.

"Tell me again how we managed to get reservations here with less than a week's notice without paying a fortune?" Colin asked, glancing over at the long line of famous- and/or rich-looking patrons across the room that were all still waiting to be seated.

Ginny shrugged and continued glancing through her menu. "Because Dennis wanted to do something special tonight when he introduces us to his current flavor of the week. And besides, we know the owner, so we were able to bribe our way in."

Colin gave her a questioning look. "We know the owner of 'Rafael's'?"

Ginny nodded, putting her menu down and taking another sip of water. "Neville's fiancée."

Colin paused for a moment, thinking over what he knew about Neville Longbottom's, the current Hogwarts Herbology teacher, love life. "You mean the current one, right? The one who's not Susan? What was her name, Hannah Abacus or something? The one we knew from the DA?"

"Hannah Abbott, yeah." Ginny glanced out the window impatiently. "Always had her hair up in pigtails So tell me, Creevey: Where is that pathetic excuse you call a brother anyway?"

"Hey guys!" they heard suddenly from across the room. "Sorry we're late, traffic was a nightmare!"

Striding towards them past the unhappy-looking patrons who continued to wait in line, with his arm slung casually across the shoulders of a beautiful, buxom blonde, was 22-year-old Dennis Creevey. Dennis, a curse-breaker working with Gringotts, had wide greenish brown eyes which glowed at the sight of them, and light to medium brown hair with blonde highlights, like Colin. The drab, mousy colour had thankfully faded, not necessarily in a completely natural fashion, back in their school days. But this was where the resemblance ended. While Colin had a well-rounded face, Dennis' face was thinner, along with the rest of him. So, while Colin had a much better build, Dennis was taller. As a matter of fact, Colin and Ginny were almost exactly the same height, and as he often boasted, Dennis was almost half a foot above Colin's "continually-dwarfish build". It was to Colin's (who was already sensitive about his height) eternal annoyance that most people who met the brothers for the first time thought Dennis was the older of the two.

Standing beside Dennis, the young blonde woman smiled confidently at them, flashing a set of perfect, shimmering, white teeth. Her make up perfectly in place, her long, sleek blonde hair hanging attractively around her face in a manner Ginny was certain cost a king's ransom at her salon, she sat down in the seat Dennis had pulled out for her across the table from Ginny. She crossed her long, tan legs demurely, causing the hem of her already short skirt to rise. Blondie casually moved her left arm until it rested underneath her voluptuous chest, drawing even more attention to her barely-concealed breasts, and turned coyly to look at Dennis. It was a move Ginny immediately recognized, as any normal woman would, as one she herself had used on occasion when vying for undivided male attention.

"So, Dennis," Blondie said, speaking in a soft, sultry voice, "I'm finally getting to meet your brother and the ever-infamous Ginevra. Do introduce us."

Dennis grinned at her as her long, professionally made-up eyelashes fluttered prettily at him. The grin he gave her was not exactly the adoring, worshipping look most men would have given their girlfriend if they had been dating such a woman. No, the fellow would have to be grateful about being with her to give her that sort of a look, and Dennis wasn't grateful at all. He seemed to like her well enough, a fellow need only know her bra size to do that, but he was not in adulation of her.

And why should he be, Ginny had to ask herself wryly. He had dated many women in his time, most of them attractive, most of them slutty and each of them about as daft as a doorstop. He had somehow deluded himself into believing that he, for whatever reason, deserved all of this female attention. The only thing Ginny didn't understand was that most British witches had somehow fallen under the same illusion. Since the age of 15, when he finally managed to hit a growth spurt, he had had his pick of girls throwing themselves at him. Sure, Dennis was an attractive bloke, Ginny admitted, but he was so damn cocky, probably due to said attractiveness, that it was a wonder his head hadn't swelled to the size of a blimp ages ago and began circling Quidditch stadiums with advertisements painted on his cheeks.

But Dennis grinned his arrogant, ungrateful grin, patted Blondie's bare knee under the table and turned to Ginny and Colin. "Well guys, I'm glad I finally have the pleasure of introducing you. This is Chelsie McHarris, my dearest of darlings. Chelse, this is Gin and Col."

Chelsie smiled, flashing her perfect, pearly teeth again, and reached a delicate, carefully manicured hand across the table to shake that of Colin and then Ginny. The redhead noticed what looked like a tiny, black birthmark off to the side of her thumb, and thought cynically that it was probably the only blemish on her entire body. "How lovely to meet the two of you, at long last. Dennis has told me so much about you."

Ginny smiled back and picked up her menu once more, sarcasm flowing to her easily. "Really? He's told us next to nothing about you. It must be getting difficult for him to keep track."

Colin quickly stifled a chuckle, taking a drink from his water glass. Chelsie smiled and laughed politely, but it was obvious to Ginny she hadn't gotten it, which made it all the more entertaining. Dennis had merely raised an eyebrow and was giving her a look that clearly showed he was unimpressed. Ginny just smiled cheekily at him. After a moment of pointed silence, Chelsie cleared her throat and stood up.

"Do excuse me. I think I'll be going to the loo to powder my nose. Dennis, baby, order me a salad with low-fat dressing, would you?" Dennis nodded and Chelsie kissed him, deep and slow, before heading to the bathroom.

As soon as she was out of sight, Colin raised his eyebrows suggestively and Ginny started laughing. "What?" Dennis asked.

"What did you say she did for a living again?" Colin asked, the suggestive tone of his raised eyebrows seeping into his voice.

"She models," Dennis replied simply.

"What does she model? Cowboy boots and handcuffs?"

A hint of amusement crossed Dennis' features. He clearly had no interest in defending his lady-friend's honor, but he answered anyway. "No. She says she would never demean herself like that. She thinks it's vulgar for any woman to strip off all of her clothes and pretend to have sex just to pose for a few pictures in a degrading magazine." He paused and took a sip from his own bottle of spring water before continuing. "She finds lingerie modeling much more appropriate. At least they're trying to sell things that way."

Ginny and Colin burst into laughter as the waiter approached before Ginny spoke up. "So, tell us again, how long has it been since you and Miss Chesty McHarris started dating?"

"Two weeks." Dennis looked up and smiled politely at the waiter as he asked to take their orders. "Fettuccini Alfredo and a Caesar salad with low-fat Catalina dressing, please. With a bottle of port for the lot of us." The waiter nodded and turned to Ginny and Colin, who ordered cheese-stuffed ravioli and tortellini, respectively. The man nodded, assured them their meals would be ready shortly and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the three friends to continue making fun of their new favorite lingerie model.

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Later that night, in a cozy suburban house near Brighton, Ron Weasley was staring, rather contently, out of his bedroom window. Hermione was asleep, spread out on his bare chest with her left arm flung across him. Her breath tickled him slightly, but her warm weight comforted him and made it easy to relax anyway. Her left hand rested on top of his collar bone and, straining slightly, he could see the glitter of the new diamond ring on her finger.

He smiled slightly to himself and closed his eyes. The relief he had felt earlier that day, when Hermione had accepted the ring, had been an almost palpable force. But now... Now she was his.

Earlier that day, not too long after Ginny and Colin had gone into Rafael's across town, Ron and Hermione had been having lunch at a muggle café located conveniently close to the Ministry. They sat outside on the back verandah where several tables had been set up for the customers to eat "alfresco". It was still as hot as a kitchen in hell outside, but the café was packed, so they got stuck out back. The tables did come equipped with umbrellas, but they did very little to help with the heat, which was beginning to feel as heavy and suffocating as a wet blanket, and the lack of a breeze kept people from ever getting comfortable.

Ron fidgeted unhappily in his seat and loosened his tie for what seemed to be the thirtieth time in the past five minutes while he tried to eat his club sandwich. He glanced at Hermione, whose hair was slowly frizzing itself out of the bun she had pulled it ever-so-carefully back into that morning, eating her way through a poutine and sipping occasionally from a sweating plastic cup filled with iced tea. She had a light sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead, but she didn't appear to notice it.

Ron subtly reached into his pocket and fingered the small box within. He'd had it for more than three months now, the jewelry box in his pocket. Inside, nestled on a bed of purple velvet, lay a diamond ring. A very expensive one, at that. Ron had been planning to give it to Hermione sometime in the beginning of May, but the night he'd finally gotten up the courage to ask her, she had told him she was pregnant.

Pregnant. That was a word that had shocked him into a silence that had lasted for more than two days. He had even stayed home and tried to read through papers and file folders instead of going to work. It wasn't that he was upset, just embarrassingly surprised. He loved Hermione and wanted nothing more than to start a family with her, but he had hoped they could have been happily married for a couple of years first. Kids didn't stay ignorant to the facts of biology forever, after all, and they would eventually be able to do math, and Ron didn't much like the prospect of his children growing up to act from his example. It wasn't his choice any more of course, but it didn't change the way Ron felt about Hermione. He still wanted to marry her, more than anything, but he didn't want her to think he was only asking her because she was pregnant.

Taking a deep breath, determination furrowing his brow, the familiar saying, "Now or Never" filling his thoughts, Ron reached back into his pocket and pulled the velvet-lined box out and tightly held it in his fist. Glancing back at Hermione, who had taken no notice of his movement, he knew he could do it.

Pulling a hand anxiously through his hair to push it out of his eyes and clearing his throat, Ron couldn't help the slight flutter of nerves in the pit of his stomach, despite how comfortable he usually felt around Hermione. He was only human, after all.

"Er...Hermione?"

She looked up absently, swallowing a fry. "Yes Ron?"

"Hermione, I've...Er," Ron had to pause and clear his throat again. "I've been meaning to talk to you about some stuff lately. You know that serious stuff we keep saying we have to talk about, but never do? Well, I want to talk about it." Hermione nodded in agreement, biting another fry in half and Ron continued. "It's been three months now since we found out you were pregnant and the baby's going to be born in less than five months. You and I don't have any really strong, solid commitment to each other at the moment and, I mean, we're going to be parents, right? We should be...I mean, we should HAVE, um..." Ron stopped and again ran a hand through his bright crimson hair. "I'm sorry, Mione, I'm REALLY bad at this kind of thing."

Hermione gave him a questioning look and he sighed. He held out his hand, offering her the small jewelry box that sat upon it. She took it, staring at Ron intently. He gave her a small smile. "Go on. Open it. I think you'll get the idea."

Pulling her eyes away from him, Hermione slowly opened the box he had given her, revealing the diamond ring within. Gasping, her hand flew to her mouth and her amazed and bewildered brown eyes traveled back up to meet Ron's hopeful blue ones.

"What...what does this mean?" She asked breathlessly. "Does it mean what I think it means?"

This time, Ron couldn't hold back a grin. "I'm willing to bet it does." And suddenly the look on his face became serious and he stood from his horrendously uncomfortable chair and got down on one knee beside Hermione. This move began to draw stares from surrounding patrons, but Ron ignored them.

"Listen Hermione," he began quietly. "I love you. I've loved you for years. I can't think of anything that could make me happier than if you agreed to marry me. Except maybe knowing that we're going to have a baby in a few months and knowing that we're going to be able to share the love we have for each other with someone else." He took a deep breath as Hermione's eyes began to sparkle with unshed tears. "Hermione Granger, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

Hermione burst into tears right there on the verandah, while the other surrounding patrons smiled to themselves and whispered about how sweet it was. Hermione didn't even notice them as she leapt from her chair, grabbed hold of Ron's shoulders, pulled him up until he was standing once more and crushed her lips against his. Ron's mouth formed a smile beneath hers and he wrapped his arms around her tightly, just as her arms wound themselves around his neck.

Pulling away after what seemed like an eternity, Hermione hugged him and laughed even as the tears streamed down her cheeks. "Oh, Ron. Of course I'll marry you!"

A grin so wide it hurt his cheeks broke across Ron's face. He took Hermione up in his arms once more and spun her around, ignoring her screeches of protest. When he finally put her down, she hit him playfully on the shoulder and kissed him again. The grin didn't leave his face and he reached around her to pluck the ring out of its box and placed it on her ring finger. She wrapped her right arm around Ron's waist and held her left hand out in front of her to gaze at the beautiful diamond. She wiggled her fingers to watch it sparkle and another soft smile fell onto her lips.

"Mrs. Hermione Weasley," she murmured to herself dreamily. Ron made a face, his nose wrinkling in mild disgust, and kissed the top of her head.

"Maybe you should keep your own last name," he suggested helpfully.

* * * * *

August 20, 2005:

Ginny sat impatiently behind the wheel of she and Colin's convertible, a lovely new BMW which was currently outside Heathrow International Airport, waiting for Harry Potter to move his ass and come outside. The top of the car was down because even in the sweltering heat, the breeze when the car was moving beat the A/C any day of the week. But at the moment the car was parked, near the entrance Harry had indicated, and Ginny was sweating profusely in the afternoon sun.

Her red hair was something that had never been very handy in the summer months. She couldn't stay out in the sun for any length of time at all without a wide-brimmed hat and a thick layer of +50 sunblock covering every visible inch of her body or she would burn horribly. Currently she had neither.

'Next time,' she thought to herself irritably as she fanned herself with an old magazine she'd found in the backseat, 'next time, Hermione or Ron can pick him up. This has got to be the hottest day of the bloody year. Let Ron miss his meetings and lose his fucking job, I'm not sitting out here again next time.'

After another five minutes of impatient waiting, Ginny was about to drive away and let Harry catch a damn taxicab home when she heard her name being called out from across the parking lot. She pulled off her sunglasses and glanced up to see 25-year-old Harry Potter emerge from the sliding electronic sensor exit, his suitcase rolling along behind him and a duffel bag slung over his left shoulder. He waved enthusiastically and headed towards the cherry-red convertible while Ginny reached over into the glove compartment and hit the button to pop open the trunk. Harry pulled it open the rest of the way and tossed his bags in before slamming it shut and jumping up to the front left seat to sit beside Ginny.

They gave each other a friendly grin and a quick peck on the cheek. "How's your summer been, Gin?" Harry asked as he pulled on his seatbelt.

"Hot," she replied, pulling the car into gear. "And hectic. It's a hell of a heat wave we're going through. How was your flight?"

Harry shrugged as she drove out of the parking lot, slipping on his own pair of sunglasses, considerably more expensive than Ginny's. "Just the same as my last trip. And the one before that. And all the ones before that. It's always the same. They run, I catch them. But I suppose that must be the reason they keep sending me off to all the different, faraway corners of the earth, huh?" Ginny grinned and nodded in agreement as she turned onto the main road.

Harry leaned over and turned up the volume on the radio, which was playing an old Billy Joel song and started singing along, flashing a grin at his redheaded companion.

"...Come on Virginia, show me a sign

Send up a signal, I'll throw you the line

The stained-glass curtain you're hiding behind

Never lets in the sun...

Only the good die young!"

Ginny grinned back at him, humming along. She had always loved that song. But, glancing over at Harry occasionally, she took the opportunity to study him. He had changed since she'd seen him last in late June, but not tremendously so. He had grown his black hair out long again, like he had the summer before, and had it pulled back out of his face with a small, thin elastic. He didn't appear to have shaved for a couple of days at least and he had been tanned a deep golden bronze that almost made Ginny want to cry in envy. If she ever stayed outside for as long as it took to get a tan like that, she would be as red as a cooked lobster. Harry was also wearing his contact lenses, as he usually did since graduating from Hogwarts, his golden earring glittering in the sun from his right earlobe, and his emerald eyes shone with the energy his most recent mission had filled him with.

Ginny knew, though, that he would probably be spending that night "celebrating" his return home in some seedy London pub or another. He'd fill himself up with booze to the point that would force him to spend that early morning with his head bent over a toilet and then, despite the hangover he'd suffer, he'd do it again the next time he came back from a mission. It was a habit he'd first developed in the middle of his sixth year of Hogwarts. Ginny didn't approve of it, but there wasn't a lot she could do to prevent it. It was just Harry's way.

And it wasn't so bad. He wasn't an alcoholic, by any means. He just went out and got drunk once in a while because it was something to do and he would be feeling reckless and indifferent. He had felt that way a lot after Sirius died. It had probably been brought about by the combination of Harry's intense and manic depression and the sudden realization that, despite the number of people who cared about him to some degree or another, there wasn't a single person left in the word whose authority Harry respected.

Sirius had been the closest thing to a father Harry could ever remember having and then he had been taken away from him. The only living person whose approval he sought was dead and he no longer held the extent of respect he had had for Dumbledore. So what had been left to care about? What was the worst the teachers could do to him: send nasty letters about him to the Dursleys? He was no longer their responsibility, having been thrown out of Privet Drive the minute he had turned seventeen. So then what? Take points away from Griffyndor? Give him detention? He didn't care. Within a matter of years, he was either going to have killed or been killed and he didn't see how learning to properly harvest Toe Leaves in Herbology was going to help him live.

The turning point had probably been the morning in early November in his seventh year when he'd come to Transfiguration completely pissed. It was a common occurrence by then for Harry to go to class with hangovers so awful that he often wished Voldemort would just get it over with and come to finish him off already, but to see him arrive in class still drunk wasn't good. He hadn't been completely out of it, dancing and singing on his desk or something else quite so stupid, but it had been obvious enough and McGonagall had hauled him out of class.

She hadn't yelled or lectured. She had merely taken him to her office and placed a box full of old newspapers in his lap and said to stay there until she came back for him after classes were adjourned, because she wasn't going to subject any more of Harry's teachers to his drunken behavior. After a while of sitting there bored, Harry had gotten curious and began looking through the box.

The newspapers were mostly from back in the seventies and some from the early eighties, issues of the Daily Prophet from back when Voldemort had originally been in power. There were reports of attacks on muggles, mysterious kidnappings, Death Eaters being caught, but disappearing before they could be taken to Azkaban. And obituaries. There were a lot of those.

A house-elf arrived with a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee around lunchtime and Harry had hardly noticed, so engrossed in the old articles as he was.

McGonagall had returned at four o'clock that afternoon. She sat down in the desk in front of him quietly and, after a moment, had spoken eight words that had changed Harry's life. "Do you really want that to happen again?"

Harry had never again swallowed a mouthful of alcohol on a school night. On the occasional weekend and over the Christmas break, maybe, but that was only to be expected. The boy had, after all, essentially lost everything. But he never did it when it mattered and after Easter that year he swore he never would again until after Voldemort had been defeated.

He had been true to his word. Even now, years later, after the deaths of a lot of people, some he'd known and some he hadn't, he was still much more conservative than he'd ever been back then. Ginny just thought it was too bad he had to visit a therapist to stay that way.

Still, it's always nice to have him back, Ginny thought to herself as the raven-haired man beside her beat on the dashboard in tune with the song's drums, continuing to sing along.

"You got a nice white dress and a party on your confirmation

You got a brand new soul

And a cross of gold

But Virginia they didn't give you quite enough information."

Harry winked at her suggestively, causing Ginny to roll her eyes and laugh at him as she sang along with him.

"You didn't count on me

When you were counting on your rosary."

Ginny and Harry grinned at each other again and Harry slung an arm playfully across Ginny's shoulders. She glanced down at his arm and looked back up at him, waggling her eyebrows at him suggestively. This caused him to laugh and kiss her lightly on the forehead before allowing her to focus her attention back on the road while he enthusiastically mouthed the last few lines of the song to himself.

Ginny glanced over at him one last time and smiled gently. "Missed you, Harry."

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