Wallflower

Wallflower

It takes three weeks for Ginny to speak to Harry again after the Battle of Hogwarts, she's that mad at him. Even then, it's only to cast two charms on him: a Shrinking Charm, and a Permanent Sticking Charm.

Harry thinks it is most unfortunate that she chose to stick him to the bathroom door of all places. He is the size of a garden gnome (Hermione was very impressed at this, apparently Shrinking Charms of such magnitude are very difficult to cast, but somehow Harry fails to share her feelings) and easily overlooked; in the state of general chaos that presides in the Burrow with everyone home it takes nearly two hours before anyone notices him there, and another hour before anyone tries to do something about it.

Once Ron and Hermione can breathe again, having laughed so hard for nearly ten minutes that she is clutching at her side and he is wiping away tears, they set to work researching a counter-charm.

It takes them five days to find a charm that might work - clearly, Hermione and Ron are doing very little actual research while closeted in his room - but to Harry it feels like an eternity.

He never realized exactly how important a bathroom was, but he's finding out now.

Aside from the usual activities of washing and showering, and visiting the toilet and such, a lot of other things seem to happen within the confines of the white-tiled room.

Harry thinks it's a little odd that no-one seems to care that he is stuck to the door and can therefore hear everything going on inside. He mentions this to Hermione, who turns a bit pink and mumbles something about Soundproofing Charms and being part of the wall, but gets no real answer. He thinks it might have slipped her mind (unlikely), or Ron is more distracting than anyone ever gave him credit for, because at half-past one the following night two sets of furtive, seemingly ownerless footsteps make their way down the hall; the door that Harry is attached to swings open long enough for the footsteps to disappear inside, then swings shut again.

Harry tries to ignore the sounds of heavy breathing, and whispers, and muffled groans that come from inside the bathroom. He really doesn't need to think about his two best friends doing anything other than arguing right now.

Ginny seems to saunter past an improbable number of times (especially considering that her room is on the floor beneath this one) looking slightly smug, and yet he can see the hollows under her eyes that match those on every one of her brothers' faces (except for one, of course, but he's the reason why.)

At least three times a day Mrs Weasley bustles down the hall, biting her lip, and slips into the bathroom; her muffled sobs seem to reach a cold hand inside Harry and squeeze his heart till there is an actual ache in his chest. He tries to blink away the burning behind his eyes, and tells himself that his glasses are fogged up because Charlie just took a hot shower.

Harry hasn't seen George since they brought him home, pale and shaking, from Hogwarts. The Burrow seems empty despite its capacity crowd without the sound of minor explosions and yells of surprise and outrage, and the laughter is absent from the air.

Percy seems to spend an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom, but Harry can never hear what he's doing in there. He leaves looking the same as always, immaculate robes and neatly combed hair, no hint of redness or darkness around his eyes. Harry is the only one who sees him first thing in the morning though, when he looks furtively up and down the hallway before dashing across from his room to the bathroom. He didn't see Harry there the first morning, such was his rush; his eyes bloodshot with the skin beneath them purplish, like a bruise, and the nails of the hand that reached out to push the door open bitten down to the quick, and bleeding in places. Percy hasn't made the same mistake again.

Fleur is apparently looking after tiny Teddy Lupin until it is decided what can be done with him; his nappy changes and baths are always followed by a lot of cooing in French. Harry wonders if his mother held him the way Fleur holds Teddy, close to her chest, with a sweep of long red hair shielding them from the world around.

His glasses are mysteriously foggy again, but this time Harry doesn't pretend.

Bill nearly slips in a little puddle at the door when he goes in to give Harry his lunch (half a ham sandwich) and fetch Fleur; he glances askance at Harry and then his gaze slides past, and Harry could swear Bill's eyes go a tiny bit unfocussed at seeing Fleur with the baby.

The fifth night, Hermione mutters charms in what sounds like a mixture of French, Latin and Spanish around Harry, waving her new wand around in a lot of complicated little movements. Her head still appears to be the size of one of Hagrid's pumpkins to Harry when it's done, and Hermione looks worried and disappears down the stairs.

The clock at eye level with Harry, hung on the ageing wallpaper across the hall from him, tells him it is three o'clock in the morning when he is rudely poked awake. Ginny's cinnamon-brown eyes flash before him; they are not sleep-muddled like they should be this time of the morning, but instead bright and sharp and so very angry at him.

"Do you know what it was like?" she hisses at him, her words breaking the almost-silence that even the Burrow is in at this witching hour.

"Do you have any idea what it was like, stuck at Hogwarts, humiliated by those two Death Eaters and Snape, while you were off on your noble quest?"

"Ginny, I - "

"I don't need protecting, Harry! I'm not a delicate little toy, but you never saw that. Even Fred and - "

She swipes angrily at her eyes.

"Even the twins asked me - they made fun of me, Harry! Poor little Ginny, underage and still under Mummy's wing, even her own boyfriend won't come and see her! You left me, Harry, everyone knows that, it's all your fault - "

And Harry looks on, bewildered, as Ginny breaks down in front of him, sinking to the floor in front of the bathroom door. Girls still don't make sense to him. He doubts they ever will.

She gets up a few minutes later, having composed herself enough to state categorically (and untruthfully, he can see it in the set of her jaw) that she's never going to talk to him again, not unless he makes it up to her, because it's not fair that she was trapped in the Room of Requirement for months while he gallivanted around the most part of Great Britain, and she's sixteen and attractive and single and she's never going to look at him again.

She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her dressing gown, and pulls out her wand. For a brief, startled moment, Harry imagines her turning him into an actual garden gnome, but she merely mutters a Finite Incantatem under her breath and stalks off down the hallway as he lands with a thump on the floor, and he hears her light footsteps on the stairs.

He finds himself at the door to the room that she and Hermione share, but he can't bring himself to knock.

It takes another four days after that for Harry to get Ginny alone, and a further week to apply himself to the task of making it up to her. She deigns to look at him three days after a new enchanted run for Arnold is delivered by three large owls, and says Good Morning to him at breakfast a week later.

It takes four weeks, two days and fourteen hours after he finally gets down on his knees and begs her to forgive him for her to push him against the inside of the bathroom door and steal his breath away.

Harry considers it his best-spent summer ever.