Liberating the Tin Man

Chapter 4. Vacation for One

Four days into Harry's week off from Quidditch practice, he sat, miserable and alone, at the table that usually held host to animated conversations and other such comforts. It wasn't as if Ginny hadn't missed out on their morning coffee ritual in the past, he thought, as he stared blankly at the front page of the Prophet. Back in September, in fact, Harry recalled several occasions when the witch had failed to show up for days at a time -- but she hadn't done so recently. And this time, Harry had to admit, he hadn't really been surprised at all when each hour would go by and the door hadn't been flung open to admit the amusing windstorm that was Ginny in the mornings.

He'd seen her face on their last meeting there, briefly, before she covered it with a quick flip of her thick hair and dashed out of the caffé. Harry had been doing his best to act the part of the world's biggest prat, and he was now painfully aware that he'd succeeded in hurting Ginny's feelings. He hadn't meant to take it that far, ignoring her like that, but he'd done it anyway. Moodiness had taken him over and he had allowed himself to become so annoyed with the witch for still wanting him to be someone that he wasn't capable of being anymore that he had resorted to mistreating her, and he regretted it terribly. He was frustrated with her defiance in the face of his own sacrifice: that Ginny still, nearly three years after their break-up, refused to date any other wizards. She may appear on the surface to be fine with the "just friends" status that the two had established in recent months, but Harry had begun to doubt her sincerity.

Putting the newspapers in order and pushing his chair back to stand up, Harry tried to imagine what he would do with himself for yet another day without flying, looking about the coffee shop for an inspiration.

Through the door, Harry could see that a dainty snowfall had begun, and he was glad of it. He was quite fond of the feeling of the icy flakes melting against his skin. It helped to make him feel a bit renewed, and he liked to use instances like that -- cold drops of melting snow on his forehead, or a brisk breeze slapping at the base of his neck - to aid in preparing his mind for Quidditch. Harry had become quite adept, actually, over the year and a half that he had so far spent immersed in the game, at numbing his mind from outside influences. And it seemed to be serving him well. These were the very same techniques, in fact, that he had used so successfully to keep Voldemort out of his head during the heart-wrenching and perilous year that he, Ron and Hermione had spent hunting down decrepit pieces of the foul wizard's soul.

The little white dots of snow didn't seem to be collecting on the pavement, Harry noted, and he watched for a few moments as they fell to their apparent doom, disappearing upon contact. He shut his eyes and took a moment to fight off distant memories as they tried to force their way into the present. For years, he'd wrestled with his hauntings: memories of a maniac's taunts, which had plagued his sleep; memories of precious friends and cherished father-figures, frozen in time as they faced their own deaths; and he'd wrestled with feelings of overwhelming sadness and loss -- as had everyone.

Realizing that he probably looked a bit foolish, standing in place and staring out of the window as he was, Harry donned his cloak and left the caffé. He still had no idea what he would do with himself for the rest of the day, but he sought to put a better light on things by remembering that his team would be reporting back for practices soon, and recalling the huge role that Quidditch had played in freeing him from his many daemons.

Harry smiled involuntarily as he remembered how hopeful he'd felt, all those months ago, when a pair of pamphlets arrived by owl addressed to himself and Ron. It was in the days after they had buried Hagrid, the first person that Harry had ever remembered caring about, when he and Ron sat in the kitchen of the Burrow and laid out their plans for joining up with the Quidditch preparatory program -- signing up within a week of receiving the brochures. Ron was in eight kinds of pain with the recent losses of Hagrid and his brother, Percy, and needed something to do with himself when Hermione would be off at school, in order to maintain a bit of sanity. Harry had said that he just needed something to throw himself into. And he had.

Now, walking down the pavement on his way back to his flat, Harry had to wrestle with the realization that he just may have alienated his only steady acquaintance outside of the ruthless, cutthroat world of professional sports in which he had engrossed himself so completely.

"How am I going to fix this?" he wondered, somberly. "Can I fix this?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

"Just you, today?" shouted Lou from the back stock room as he moved to approach Harry at the caffé's cluttered service counter.

Harry grimaced. "Yeah," he replied, pointing to a little greaseboard which had been set up on the counter to advertise the new Christmas blends being offered at the shop. "I'll try the Reindeer Romp, please."

Lou smiled. "One Romp, coming right up." He gave a little wink to the caffé's other morning employee, Laurie, as she scurried in through the door and hustled out of her coat.

"Care for a Romp as well?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow in gest.

"Tempting, but no thanks. Sorry I'm late," Laurie replied and Harry saw her cast a stealthy glance at the Harry-Ginny table and then onto himself.

"No ginger-haired friend yet today, love?" she asked Harry, sneaking a tiny hint of a grin into the question.

Sighing quietly, Harry tried to keep himself in check. He was fighting a strong urge to look over at the table himself, just to make sure Lou and Laurie weren't having him on somehow, but he knew he'd find it desolate. And, he wasn't happy about being reminded about his sorry lot. Was there a soul left in the world who just wanted to let him have his coffee without intrusions of sexual innuendo or fantasized romantic links?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~

Christmas dinner at the Burrow had come and went and Harry was left - for the first time ever after sharing a holiday meal with his favorite family - with a huge well of dissatisfaction in his belly. He had been holding on to some measure of hope that he could reconcile somehow with the Weasleys' only daughter, but found the smallish home to be so overrun with activity and, well, people that he barely managed to exchange ten or twenty sentences with the girl. Neither he nor Ginny had a need to stay over at the Burrow anymore, and so the visit had been a rather short one: complete with beef roast, glazed carrots, treacle tarts and a wild exchange of presents for those not staying at the house, but devoid of any space for private conversations. And Ginny hadn't seemed to be making any particular effort to free herself of her family's company.

Harry wondered, as he sipped on his drink and looked up at the door yet again, whether Ginny had even lifted her eyes in an effort to meet his as they exchanged gifts in the living room. "Most likely not," he decided, upon further reflection. There they were: Harry, Fleur, Hermione and a flurry of ginger-haired Weasleys, sitting in a huge kind of a circle in front of the fireplace, and Harry hadn't even witnessed the opening of his present to Ginny. Nor did she watch him open the soft, gray London University of Magic jumper she had gotten for him. All presents seemed to have been opened in a firestorm of wrappings and ribbons and Harry had sat among the others, smiling politely while he despaired over his misfortune.

He hoped Ginny liked the teapot that he'd given her, even if she wasn't inclined to show much appreciation in front of her family. Laurie had helped him to pick it out from a flowery assortment of gift items that had been set up near the order counter of the Caffé dei Dolci in order to entice customers into doing a bit of Christmas shopping while waiting for their drinks. She had suggested that a Wedgewood pot would make a perfect gift as it was a rather classic choice.

Classic, Harry mused, was how he thought of Ginny -- when he reflected upon her. She was not a frilly witch, nor was she plain by a long shot. He supposed that this would put her in the category of "classic" and so he had purchased the teapot in high hopes that it would please his friend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

On Saturday, the seventh and last day of his "vacation", Harry half-heartedly walked up to the coffee shop counter and plopped a galleon down on the stainless steel top. Dejectedly, he ordered a cup of Columbian coffee -- the strong stuff -- and did his best to be polite as Laurie worked the ancient cash register and fetched a mug of dark coffee.

"You drink it black, yeah?" Laurie asked, setting the mug down in front of Harry.

"Right...black," Harry muttered softly, remembering that Ginny had teased him about drinking his coffee this way only because that was how she drank it. He missed being teased, he thought. He missed a lot of things.

"I'm glad to see you two back together," Laurie said, drawing the sulky wizard out of his reverie.

Harry scrunched his eyebrows and stared at Laurie over the counter. "What?" he asked.

Nodding her head in the direction of the table that Harry and Ginny had usually occupied, Laurie smiled. "There," she said. "She's been in here for a while now, and asked about you." The girl smiled at Harry again. "I told her that you've been in every day this week. Lou and I have been keeping tabs, you know." She winked and then turned her attention to another customer who'd begun to tap his fingers on the counter, waiting to be served.

Harry's head spun around. A huge smile plastered itself on his face and his heart soared for a second. "She's back," he thought. "Now, don't say anything stupid to get her mad again." Walking over to their table, his spirits lifted, Harry greeted Ginny with an enthusiastic nod.

"Hello," he said. "Nice to see you here again."

Ginny smiled up at Harry. She ran her index finger over the rim of her coffee mug for a moment and studied her companion. "Buck up, little Ginny," she told herself, channeling Bill, her favorite brother, "you can do this."

"Hi," she said, setting her coffee cup down and watching Harry take a seat. His smile was still there, but his eyes no longer had that carefree twinkle that they'd possessed seconds ago. Ginny gave Harry another little smile and brought her hand down into her lap, rubbing the pads of her thumbs together in a nervous gesture. She was still basically staring at the sorry-looking wizard across from her, and the look on his face was wreaking havoc on her nerves. His eyes were dancing about, uncomfortably, and his cheeks were beginning to lose their dimples. He looked like a wizard who was struggling to hide his emotions.

"Imagine that," Ginny thought, snidely. "Harry not showing his feelings..."

"You're here," Harry stated. He did the strangest thing as he said the obvious, in Ginny's estimation. He lifted his head and looked directly into her eyes. Harry wasn't one to do this kind of thing, and it felt very intimate, making Ginny struggle a bit to set her resolve and say the things that she'd prepared to say.

"I'm here," she began. "Harry," Ginny said. She was still playing with her thumbs and doing her best to maintain eye contact through two feet of thick, coffee-scented air, Harry's glasses, and six days of crying into her pillow while she attempted to sort out her life. "We need to talk."

Harry dropped his gaze. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Laurie at the counter. She was leaning forward, balancing her chin on the palm of her hand and pretty much spying on himself and Ginny. For some insane reason, this tickled Harry's funny bone and he gave his head a very subtle nod toward the counter, beckoning to Ginny with his eyes to have a look.

"I think that Lou and Laurie think we're more interesting than we really are," he said.

Ginny's heart dropped. "So did I, Harry," she thought. "So did everybody." Sadness and anger percolated back up through Ginny and she straightened up, ready now to do the thing she'd come to do.

"Harry," she said again. "We really do need to talk."

"I know," Harry offered.

He rearranged his face into a very acceptable look of interest. It was, no doubt, the look he had perfected in class when trying to convince the Hogwarts staff that he really did intend to take his education seriously, Ginny mused.

"Harry, I'm sorry that I haven't come here for the past few days. I really am."

Harry smiled. "Oh, it's ok," he said. He lifted his mug and took a big sip of coffee, apparently thinking that perhaps the talk was over.

"But..." Ginny said, smirking slightly.

The smile slid off of Harry's mouth. He set his mug back down and reconstructed his academic look, blinking a few times and muttering, "but..."

Ginny laughed. "But..." she continued, "I have to be honest with you. I'm having a hard time just sitting here, morning after morning, drinking coffee and chatting when what I'd really like to do is to follow you back to your flat and snog the living daylights out of you."

Harry's eyebrows shot up and he coughed a few times and cleared his throat. He shot a look over to Laurie, wondering whether she could hear well from her vantage point, and whether she could somehow indicate to him what he should say, or how he should look...anything. Ginny had made it clear that they needed to talk, but he wasn't expecting anything quite so...blunt. Anxiety and fear traveled up his spine and seized Harry's mind, rendering him mute for the moment, except for the ability to expel a few more coughing noises.

"I talked to my mum about you...about us," Ginny was saying. "And she said the funniest thing." Ginny brought her hands back up to the table top and used them to massage the rim of her mug again. "She said, 'Ginny, you shouldn't meet him every morning like that. Why would he buy the cow when he's getting the milk for free?'" Ginny snorted and smiled at Harry.

"I don't think Mum knows what people are referring to when they say 'milk' in this story," she said, laughing again and taking a sip from her coffee.

"Um..." Harry muttered uneasily. "You and your mum talk...about...me? About us?"

Ginny laughed again. "Yes, Harry. We've always talked about you. About us."

Harry gave another helpless look and Ginny shook her head. "Sorry," she said.

"She knows that we dated back in Hogwarts, then?" he asked.

"Yep."

"And she knows things about us? When we were dating?" Harry continued. His palms were sweaty now. Surely, he thought, Mrs. Weasley would not be inclined to invite him over for dinners anymore. Not if she knew all of the particular circumstances of his and Ginny's friendship.

Ginny nodded her head. "She even knows about our little afternoons by the lake, Harry," she said matter-of-factly. "I am her only daughter, after all. We're quite close when we're not at each other's throats."

Harry closed his eyes. "Right," he said. When he opened them back up, he noticed that Ginny was preparing to stand and she had an arm reaching under the table to grab her bookbag. He began to panic. Ginny was leaving. He hadn't responded to her brash statement, except to ask stupid questions about what Molly Weasley may or may not know, and now Ginny was leaving.

"Say something," he begged his mouth. "Anything."

"Well, I'll see you tomorrow," Ginny said as she got up from her seat and strode over to the door. "It's okay," she called when she'd reached the threshold. She had one hand on the door handle and leaned on it for a second, smiling sweetly. "I'm working it out. We can be friends, Harry. I just wanted you to know, that's all."

A movie, a Muggle movie that used to be on television every year around Halloween time, came drifting up to the top of Harry's thoughts. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the images that it brought, wondering why he was thinking of an old movie when he should be running down the street after a gorgeous witch who'd just laid her heart out in the middle of a coffee shop for him. There in a thick forest, a girl in a blue checkered dress was squirting oil on a figure who was dressed in metal. He was rusted, she was saying, and couldn't move or speak.

"Right," Harry lamented. "I'm the bloody Tin Man."

He rubbed his temples gloomily and cast another look toward Laurie at the counter. She smiled back at him, kindly.