The First Day

Harry lay in bed, his eyes glued to the ceiling. Ron snored gently in the other bed, sleeping with an ease Harry envied. The morning after his birthday, Molly and Arthur had affixed his clock hand to the family's clock, and Harry's hand had immediately swung to "Home". He'd carried a warm glow the rest of the day, smiling a little when his glance fell on the clock, pushing the memories of Privet Drive back a little further each time.

He had dreamed about his parents that night. They were walking together ahead of him, hand-in-hand, and the faster he ran, the further ahead they were. He called after them, repeatedly, even resorting to using their given names, hoping that would rouse them to something, even anger that he'd called them Lily and James, rather than Mum and Dad. He had managed to wake up before he fell out of bed, but the bedding was so twisted from his flailing about, he had to work his way out of the mess to remake the bed.

It didn't seem as if he could win. One nightmare was replaced by another.

He stealthily reached back to the windowsill for the framed photograph of his parents. Would they have been so upset by the Weasleys doing more than just taking him in? Everything he knew about them pointed to no, but it niggled a little in the back of his head that they might have felt he didn't need them, now that it was all over.

He gave up trying to sleep and reached for the copy of Transfiguration Today Shacklebolt had sent over with a stack of other journals, magazines, and books, instructing him to study and practice as much as he could. Rather than risk waking Ron, and lighting the lamp, Harry pulled his wand out from under his pillow, and thought, Lumos. He trained the narrow beam of light on the fine print of the page and began to read about advances in transfiguring animate objects into inanimate objects without killing them. Harry could see how it might be useful to become a desk or rubbish bin when investigating someone, but the legal issues it raised were perplexing. Harry didn't have much faith in the Wizarding legal system as it was, and he didn't think they would be able to handle testimony gathered in a situation that had no legal precedent.

He worked his way through the article, pausing every so often, to check what the author said against what was in his textbook. A few times, he found something he didn't know the answer to, and wondered why Shacklebolt was even doing something as daft as making him a full Auror. He thought he might write McGonagall and get a list of the seventh year textbooks. He put the magazine down on the floor, and picked up one of the books on potions. It was a small, succinct book that grouped potions ingredients by their use, accompanied by an illustration of the ingredient. It also cross-referenced them with another ingredient that could be substituted for it, and its antidote. Harry wondered why this wasn't on the book list for Potions. It would have helped him immeasurably in school. He finally fell asleep, the book open to a page about ingredients that were primarily used in potions to change the size of people and animals. When Ron woke up to go help Molly with breakfast, he saw Harry sprawled across the camp bed, his wand alit, the light illuminating Harry's feet, his glasses askew, and the book under his cheek.

Sighing, Ron reached down and gently removed Harry's glasses, setting them on the windowsill. He pried the book from under Harry's head and marked the page with a scrap of parchment, then slowly twisted the wand from Harry's grasp, whispering, 'Nox.' He tucked the wand back into Harry's hand, the fingers wrapping instinctively around the handle.

Ron pulled his dressing gown on over his pajamas and stumbled down to the bathroom to wash and dress.

*****

The days fell into a pattern for Harry, Ginny, Ron, and George. In the mornings, after breakfast, they headed to the shop, racing to have it ready to open the next Monday. The cosmetic damages had been easy enough to repair. After all, walls could be repainted, shelves and cabinets could be repaired, and merchandise could be restocked. It was going to take more than a few coats of paint to restore the energy George had had with Fred. Fred had always been the more restless of the two, and he often bounced off the walls in comparison to George. George quietly went about the business of teaching Ron and Harry to make some of the more popular products. According to the ledgers George had kept from their last year at school and the first year they had premises, the Skiving Snackboxes were one of the most popular items, so that was the first thing they made.

It didn't go well.

George unthinkingly tossed a slew of ingredients into a cauldron, and lit a fire underneath it. He perfunctorily stirred the mixture a few times and turned to the ledger once more, Summoning the things to make the Whiz-Bangs. The cauldron burbled uneasily, and George peered uncertainly into the bubbling mess. 'Damn it. I think I might have gotten the recipe wrong...' He absently began to walk up the stairs to the flat. 'I should have gotten that notebook before we got started.' Halfway up the stairs, George froze, his hand clutching the handrail. 'Maybe I ought to keep an eye on that cauldron,' he muttered, backing slowly down the stairs. 'Ron... Could you go upstairs and find it for me. It's got a blue cover.'

Ron set the cauldron he levitating to the table down and slipped up the stairs to the flat. He pulled his wand from his pocket and murmured, 'Accio notebook.' He wondered why George wouldn't even Summon the notebook from the back room. Taking a few moments, Ron began to wander about the flat. He hadn't really been up here before. It wasn't a particularly large flat - just a small kitchen, with an area for a table, a sitting room, bathroom, and a bedroom. Ron laid his hand on the door to the bedroom, and slowly pushed the door wider. Two beds sat against the wall, across the room from each other, each still neatly made with quilts Molly had made for them when they moved into the flat. Ron ran a fingertip over the surface of the windowsill, coming away with a dark smudge from the dust. It felt uncomfortably like a shrine to Ron.

'Ron?' George called up the stairs. 'Did you find it?'

'Yeah!' Ron shouted.

'Could you bring the ledger book, too?' George asked. 'It's on the desk in the sitting room.'

'Sure.' Ron felt a shiver ripple down his spine. He had wondered if George deliberately refused to move back to the flat, so he could keep it as a sort of mausoleum. He hefted the large ledger book off the desk, and wondered when Hermione was coming home. As much as he wanted to talk to Harry about George, something held him back. Harry was doing better in that he wasn't walling himself away from the rest of the family anymore, but Ron knew he still struggled with nightmares. And now it appeared he was trying to avoid sleeping. Ron had woken up again to find Harry asleep with his glasses on, and some book or magazine open on his chest, or tucked under his face, his tip of his wand lit up and clasped tightly in his hand.

He needed Hermione to provide the voice of reason he so sorely missed right now. She could help him figure out what to say to Harry to help with the nightmares. And she could tell him why George was able to reopen the shop, but unable to even go into the flat he'd shared with Fred, much less their old bedroom at the Burrow. It was starting to wear on Ron a little, keeping an eye on George during the day and one on Harry at night.

'Ron! We need that notebook now!' George yelled, seconds before an explosion rocked the back room.

Ron flew down the stairs, the notebook and ledger clutched to his chest, and found Harry, George, and Ginny covered in sticky purple sludge. George pulled the notebook from Ron's grasp and paged through it, leaving purple smudges on the pages. 'Damn...' he muttered. 'I knew we were forgetting something.'

Harry sighed and pulled his wand out, and began to cast Scouring charms to clean the mess. 'What took so long?' he asked.

'Nothing,' Ron mumbled, setting the ledger book on the table, once the hardening layer of sludge had been cleaned off the surface, painfully aware that three months ago, he would have given Harry a look, and then two of them would have found something to do so they could talk.

'Don't worry about it, bro,' George said from the supply shelves, looking at Ron over his shoulder. 'It was my fault. I should have double-checked the recipes before we got started.' He set an armload of ingredients on the table. 'Really, it's not a big deal. I should have had the book down here. Memorizing the recipes isn't my specialty.'

'Are you still sure I should be doing this?' Ron asked, feeling slightly deflated.

George set the notebook to levitate at eye level, and began to measure ingredients into the now-clean cauldron. 'The first time I tried to make the Fever Fudge from memory, I put the ingredients in the cauldron in the wrong order, and it exploded in my face. Made me smell like rotten eggs for three days. Fred made me sleep on the sofa in the sitting room.' George Summoned another cauldron to the table, and lit a fire underneath it. 'Here, you make the orange end. All those cooking lessons with Mum should make it easy enough for you. Recipe's right there,' George said, indicating the page with the recipe written in his angular hand.

Ron bit his lip for a moment, studying the recipe for a moment before he turned to the supply shelf and picked out the ingredients. 'Here goes everything,' he muttered to himself.

*****

In the evenings after dinner, Harry and Ginny would steal off to the hammock for a couple of hours of solitude. 'Hogwarts letter came today,' Ginny said, drowsily.

'What are you taking this year?'

Ginny settled into the hammock a little more. 'Oh, the usual. Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, Potions, Arithmancy, Astronomy, and Defense - although I'm not sure who's going to teach that.' She glanced at Harry shyly. 'I'm the Gryffindor Quidditch team Captain this year.'

'Gin, that's great!' Harry said sincerely.

'Mum said I could go to Diagon Alley tomorrow afternoon to get my things.' Ginny paused and looked up at Harry. 'Maybe you could come with us?'

Harry took a deep breath. 'I don't know, Gin...' he said nervously. 'Maybe if I used...' His hand drifted down to his pocket where his Invisibility Cloak was hidden.

'No.' Ginny sat up, and folded her arms across her chest crossly. 'You can't keep hiding,' she told him.

'I'm not hiding,' Harry protested.

'Oh?' Ginny said archly. 'Then what do you call what you've been doing?'

'Keeping a low profile,' Harry retorted.

'Hiding,' Ginny corrected. She climbed out of the hammock and looked down at Harry. 'Either you come with me without the Invisibility Cloak, or don't bother coming at all.' She strode back to the house. 'Git,' she muttered angrily.

*****

Harry sat huddled on his bed, the heavy book about offensive charms and hexes open on his crossed legs. Ginny was right, he was hiding. He had barely left the house or the immediate environs of the Burrow in over three months. He glanced up as Ron walked into the room, his journal tucked under his arm. 'Ron? Am I hiding?'

'Truthfully?' Ron slid the journal into a drawer of his night table.

'No, I want you to lie to me,' Harry retorted sarcastically.

'Yes. You're hiding.' Ron found a pair of pajamas and changed into them. 'At some point you're going to have to face the rest of the world again. Before you go to work.' Ron dropped to his bed, and pulled his knees up into his chest. 'Look, mate, I understand it hasn't been easy for you, and that you just want to be left alone, but that's not going to happen, and staying holed up in here isn't going to make the attention go away.' Ron paused, the image of George standing frozen on the stairs flashed through his head. 'Like George. Have you ever noticed that if he needs something from the flat upstairs, he sends one of us?' Ron began to play with a loose thread of his dark blue pajamas.

'Yeah...' George had sent Harry up to the flat to find the stash of Venomous Tentacula seeds he and Fred had hidden before the war broke out.

'He's doing the same thing you are. Hiding from the fact Fred's gone. No matter how much he wants it to go away, not going into that flat or his bedroom here isn't going to change it.' Ron snapped the loose thread. 'The same thing with you. You can hide in here all you want, but it's not going to change anything.'

'That's not fair,' Harry objected, slamming the heavy book closed. 'Do you think it's easy for George to be at the shop?'

'Of course not,' Ron snapped. 'That's not the point...'

'It is the point,' insisted Harry. 'You can't expect him to just pick up where he left off and pretend like everything's okay, because it's not!'

'And hiding from everybody is supposed to make it better?' Ron snarled, his ears growing red. 'I'm not bright like Hermione, or have that instinct that you do, but even I can see that all the two of you are doing is punishing yourselves for surviving!' Ron swiped a hand across his face; unaware angry tears had tracked their way down his face. 'Do you think we'd all be better off if you were gone? Either of you?'

'No... I...' Harry stammered.

'You survived,' Ron said flatly. 'And Fred is dead. Closing yourself off from the outside world is not going to bring him back, no matter how much you want it to be true.'

'It's not just Fred,' Harry mumbled to his feet. 'It's everybody.'

'You're not responsible,' Ron said. 'You're not God. You couldn't have predicted any of it. Or stopped it, even if you wanted to.' Ron yanked his bedding back and crawled under the sheet. He curled up on his side, facing the wall, away from Harry. 'I miss Fred, too,' he said softly. 'I hate that Teddy won't know how bloody brilliant his father was and how great his mother was.'

'What's going on up here?' Arthur stood in the doorway.

Harry looked up open-mouthed. 'N-n-n-n-nothing,' he stuttered. He quickly opened his book, and turned a few pages until he came to the section on destroying barricades.

'It didn't sound like nothing,' Arthur said calmly.

'It's nothing, Dad,' Ron said, pulling the sheet over his shoulder.

'Right.' Arthur sighed and started to close the door, but stopped. 'He's right, Harry. Hiding isn't going to bring Fred back, nor is it going to make it easier to deal with. Living isn't something to feel guilty for.' With that, he closed the door softly, leaving Ron and Harry alone once more.

It was quiet for a long while. Ron stared at the wall until his eyes burned. After an hour, Harry turned out the lamp, and began to use his wand to read. It was after midnight when Ron's soft snores drifted across the room.

Harry kept his head bent to his book, reading until his head ached and he drooped from exhaustion. When he finally shut the book and pulled his glasses off, he watched the shadows playing on the ceiling until he fell asleep as well, his dreams hazy and distorted.

*****

Harry sat on the edge of his bed and tied the laces of his trainers. He found his moleskin pouch, and after folding his Invisibility Cloak into an impossibly small square, tucked it inside. He felt strangely naked without it in his pocket. He blew out a deep breath, as he put the pouch back inside a drawer in the bureau where he kept his scant belongings. It wasn't solely to make Ginny happy. After he'd put his book away last night, he lay awake for hours, thinking about what Ron had said. He kept the cloak on him mostly as a connection to his father, but increasingly over the past couple of years, he had come to rely on it as a means to isolate himself, when he wasn't actually using it to hide for his own safety. Harry gently pushed the drawer closed and walked down the stairs.

He joined Ginny at the table and reached for the pot of tea to pour himself a cup. 'I need to get a few things this afternoon,' he said tightly. 'Some books for work.' Ginny's eyes flicked to the side, and she hooked a finger in Harry's jeans pocket, pulling it open slightly. It was empty. She glanced at him questioningly and he hitched a shoulder. 'I thought I could go with you.'

*****

Ginny pulled her book list from her pocket, as they approached Flourish and Blotts. 'The only things I really need are the Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense books,' she said, consulting the list. 'What did you want to get?'

'The N.E.W.T. level Potions book, and the seventh year Charms, Defense, and Transfiguration books.'

'Whatever for?'

Harry yawned a little. It was after three before he went to sleep, and he was awake before eight. 'You know all those books and things Kingsley sent over? They talk about things I missed last year, so I need them for reference.'

Ginny turned to look at him, taking his chin in her hand, tilting his face down. 'You don't look very good,' she commented.

'Didn't sleep much,' Harry admitted. 'Been studying at night.'

'We can go back home after we're done here,' Ginny suggested. 'Have a kip.'

'That would be nice,' Harry said. 'What else do you need?'

'Ummm. My Potions kit is in horrible shape. I need to just start all over again. I need some new robes, too.'

'Okay.' Harry was aware of the whispers that erupted in their wake, but he tried to ignore them. Most people left them alone, but while they waited in the queue at Flourish and Blott's to pay for their books, a few people came up to Harry and patted him on the back and shook his hand, thanking him profusely. Harry flushed with embarrassment, and murmured something to each person that spoke to him. Ginny could tell it was making Harry uncomfortable, but he managed to smile fleetingly at each person that approached them. He paid for his books and waited for Ginny to purchase her things, before they trudged down to the apothecary to refill Ginny's potions kit, then stopped in Madame Malkin's for Ginny's robes.

Laden with packages, Harry Apparated them back to the Burrow, and they dropped their things off inside the house before they met at the hammock. Harry pulled his glasses off and put them in his shirt pocket, then sank into the webbing, allowing himself to relax, knowing they were safely ensconced away from the unwanted, but necessary, attention. He didn't think he would ever grow accustomed to the accolades he felt he hadn't truly earned. Ginny eased into it, and rested her head on Harry's shoulder. 'Thank you for going with me,' she said softly, knowing how much it had cost him to accept the praise for an event he'd sooner forget ever happened, and how difficult it had been to take the time to talk to the line of people that had formed the second they had walked into the book shop.

'No worries,' Harry mumbled.

Ginny reached up and stroked his hair, smoothing it away from his face. 'You're not just studying at night,' she stated, her fingertips tracing the shadows under his eyes.

'No, really, I am. I have a year of school to catch up on, and three years of training to try and stuff into my head before next month.'

'Even Hermione couldn't do that,' Ginny scoffed.

'It's not quite required that I do this, but I just don't want to embarrass myself.' He sighed and rubbed his eyes. 'I don't think even I can live up to my own reputation.'

'You could have come back to school,' Ginny pointed out, logically.

'No.' Harry shook his head, and snuggled into Ginny. 'It's not a good idea.'

'Why not? You could get the year of school you missed and not throw yourself into the Ministry meat grinder so soon.'

'No,' Harry repeated. 'I need to move on.' Ginny suddenly went cold. 'Move on?' She sat up. 'What do you mean move on?'

'Harry's eyes opened and he squinted at Ginny's blurry outline. 'Not from you, Gin. From all the "Boy-Who-Lived" and "Chosen One" nonsense.'

'And not going back to school will make every one forget that?'

'Probably not, but there's too many memories at school for me. And at the Ministry, I'll just be another Auror.'

'Yeah, you keep thinking that,' Ginny snorted.

'Okay, that's not going to happen, but...' Harry shrugged. 'It's worth a shot, at least. I can try to go about my day in relative anonymity.' He closed his eyes again. 'I just can't go back.'

'You're not the only one with bad memories there,' Ginny said sharply. 'I have the same memories of losing Fred that you have.'

'It's not just Fred,' Harry sighed. 'It's tainted...' he mumbled, trying to explain, but feeling as if he were failing miserably.

'Tainted?'

'Hogwarts was my first home. My first real home. Right up until the end, even with everything that happened there, it was still my home. But if I go back, then what I'll remember is the battle, and the next few days, but what I want to remember is the first time I was on a broom, and finding out for a brief moment I could possibly leave the Dursleys, kissing you for the first time...' Harry shivered. 'I can't go back...'

'But I'd be there,' Ginny ventured.

'That's the problem,' Harry said. 'You'd be there and I can't keep depending on you like that.'

'But that's what I'm here for,' Ginny huffed. 'You're supposed to be able to depend on me.'

'It's like the cloak,' Harry tried to explain. 'I can't use you like I've used the cloak.'

'I don't understand...'

Harry shifted. 'I don't want to become dependant on you. I don't want to run crying to you if I get a splinter in my hand. Or the emotional equivalent of that.'

'Then why am I here now?' Ginny asked, in a tone that made Harry sit up.

'I'm totally making a cock-up of this, aren't I?' Harry said, massaging the back of his neck.

'Yes, you are.' Ginny slid out of the hammock.

'Ginny, wait...' Harry grabbed Ginny's wrist. 'I need you. But I need to learn to live, too, and I'll never learn if you're chasing after me with a butterfly net.'

'I wouldn't do that,' Ginny said mulishly.

Harry regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. 'I don't just study at night to make up for lost time,' he told her. 'I stay awake, studying, as late as I can, to keep from falling asleep.' He smiled deprecatingly. 'See, if I don't sleep, I don't have nightmares. Or if I stay awake later, I have fewer nightmares,' he said.

Ginny stared at him. 'You're not taking care of yourself -'

'Ginny.' Harry pulled her back to the hammock. 'If I went back to school like this, would you be able to focus on your studies?'

'Probably not,' she admitted reluctantly. 'I'd worry about you.'

'You shouldn't have to.' Harry settled her back against him. 'You're not my mum. You're my...'

'What?'

'Girlfriend...?' Harry glanced at Ginny. 'If you want to be...'

Ginny reached back and patted Harry's thigh. 'I'll think about it...'