The First Day

'I want to show you my parents' house,' he blurted.

Ginny's grew round. 'It's still standing?' she asked incredulously, immediately realizing how stupid she sounded. 'I mean, when I was younger, my first year, I used to pester Hagrid to tell me stories about you,' she added lamely, squirming, hating to reveal just how star-struck she'd been as a first year student. Her face grew warm and Ginny knew it was turning a rather unattractive shade of magenta. 'He told me that it was a shambles and a miracle you'd survived...' she mumbled, mashing a carrot slice beyond recognition.

Harry folded his arms on the top of the table and eyed Ginny in something resembling amusement. 'Hagrid used to tell you stories about me, eh?'

'I haven't asked Hagrid for a Harry James Potter bedtime story since I was eleven,' Ginny muttered into her bowl. 'And you were saying something about showing me your parents' house?' Ginny prodded, desperate to turn the conversation back to its original topic.

'Yes, it's still standing, and I'd like to show it to you.'

Ginny blinked and looked down into her bowl, mashing another carrot with her spoon. 'When?'

'Got plans for after dinner?'

'You mean other than pestering George about when to give me a few shifts at the shop?' Ginny made an elaborate show of pretending to open a homework planner and running her finger down an imaginary day. 'Nope. Nothing else on the schedule for tonight.' She stirred her stew a few times. 'Why now? Why not over the summer?'

Harry drew in a deep breath. 'I've been to it precisely three times since my parents were killed,' he began quietly. 'The first was last Christmas Eve, when I made Hermione go to Godric's Hollow with me. I wanted to visit my parents' graves - I'd never been before. And she only agreed because she thought Gryffindor's sword had been hidden there. After we left the cemetery, we were trying to find Bathilda Bagshot's house. She used to live there, you know,' Harry added.

'Yeah, Auntie Muriel said something like that every bloody day we were at her house in April...'

'At any rate, we ended up finding my parents' house, and Bathilda, or what we thought was Bathilda, met us there. It seemed to be good luck at first, because Hermione thought she might have the sword.'

Ginny's brow furrowed as she remembered something Harry had told her. She touched the crook of his elbow, covered by his jumper. 'Isn't that when Voldemort's snake bit you?'

'Yeah... Nagini was hiding inside Bathilda. She'd been dead for some time, actually.' Harry rubbed the back of his neck. 'I didn't want to go back after that,' he admitted shakily.

'Can't fault you for that one,' Ginny murmured, pushing her bowl to the middle of the table, no longer hungry.

'I didn't even go back to see Mum and Dad until my birthday last summer. Because I didn't understand, you see,' Harry said, as if it explained everything.

'Didn't understand what...?'

'What's carved on their headstone... "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."' Harry quoted. 'I didn't understand that night. All I could think about was that Mum and Dad were dead and gone, and didn't know or care what I was doing. I think it's the first time I've ever been angry at them for dying...' Harry rubbed the side of his hand under his nose and continued. 'They're still here, my parents... I didn't really understand that until I went to meet Riddle. And after everything that happened after that night, I wasn't in state to see anybody's parents, much less my own.'

'You can say that again,' Ginny agreed, clamping her lips shut, aware her sarcastic side flared up in moments of stress. Now was not the time for it.

Harry met her eyes and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a ghost of a grin. 'I was pretty bad, wasn't I?'

'Just a little. I've quite forgotten most of it,' Ginny replied, with an answering grin of her own.

'Anyway, the second time I saw the house was Halloween. I'd been going to the cemetery a few times a month after I started working. Just to talk to them, tell them what I was doing, and since Halloween is their...' Harry swallowed a few times. 'It's when they died, and I had this barmy impulse to go see the house again. There were two wizards there, stealing pieces of the fence. I suppose in hindsight, it shouldn't have shocked me so much. There are lots of wankers like Mundungus Fletcher who'll sell anything they can get their hands on. People have gone inside over the years... Taken fixtures here and there, like pieces of the handrail on the banister. They seemed to have left the upstairs alone, though. I guess even thieves had qualms about taking anything from the nursery... And then I charmed the house to hide it from view.

'So the next day, I talked Ron and Hermione into going with me to pack up Mum and Dad's personal things. And that was the last time I've been there.'

The kitchen door slammed open breaking the tension, making them both jump a little. George waltzed through the door. 'Do you want some dinner?' Ginny asked.

'Going out,' George told her. 'Where're Mum and Dad?' he asked, indicating the table laid for only three.

'Ministry holiday party,' Harry said.

'Oh right... Glad it's not me,' George said with a shudder. 'Right, I'm meeting Lee at the Leaky Cauldron, so don't do anything I wouldn't do with the house to myself, yeah?' With that, George trudged out of the kitchen.

Ginny glanced at Harry thoughtfully. 'Why didn't you tell me any of this before?'

Harry opened his mouth, but the words in his head remained stubbornly in his head. He wanted to tell Ginny he knew she'd felt like something of an outsider when he was with Ron and Hermione. He'd been making a conscious effort to include Ginny when he was with them, and as he stared at Ginny he knew it wasn't what he ought to say. 'I just didn't want you to worry about me,' he said lamely, cringing inwardly at how false it sounded to his own ears. 'With everything else going on with Snape and the Malfoys, I knew you'd worry about how seeing the house would be. And you shouldn't be worrying about me like that, especially when you've got N.E.W.T.s coming up.'

Ginny's eyes narrowed. She knew Harry wasn't being quite truthful with her, but she decided not to pursue it. Instead, she pushed her chair back, waving her wand over the table. The remains of her and Harry's uneaten dinners vanished and the bowls drifted into the sink. She walked into the scullery and retrieved her coat from its hook and returned to the kitchen, pulling the sleeves over her arms. 'Let's go...'

*****

Ginny walked down a darkened lane, Harry gripping her mittened hand tightly. 'It looks pretty bad,' he told her, his breath appearing in puffs in front of them in the frosty night. 'Part of the roof's gone from the rebounding Killing curse, but the structure is stable. And then there are all the things that people could pry from the downstairs that're missing.'

'Is just from this past summer, do you think?'

'I don't know,' Harry sighed. 'I didn't notice much of anything about it last December, and it was too dark to really tell.' He stopped in front of a fence. I didn't get much past the gate,' he added sheepishly. 'But I can't imagine it just started last summer.' When he put his hand on the gatepost, the sign marking the house as the place where Harry defeated Voldemort seventeen years ago rose out of the tangle of nettles. 'That I didn't mind,' he said, indicating the various scribbled messages. 'Pulling my house apart for souvenirs...'

Ginny squeezed his hand. It didn't take a genius to know that Harry was an intensely private person and hated intrusions on his personal life from the normal sources like the newspaper and magazines. But for someone to break into his parents' house and spirit away the household goods as prized baubles must have been agony. Harry pushed the gate open, and motioned for Ginny to enter the rubble-strewn garden. He followed her and let the gate close with a clang that echoed in the stillness. Ginny stared at the gaping hole in the roof with something like awe. 'Merlin...' she breathed.

'Looks pretty awful, doesn't it?' Harry crossed to the heavy front door, and pushed it open. 'You can go inside, if you want,' he added.

Ginny hesitated briefly, but nodded once and sidled past Harry into the entryway. She headed straight for the staircase, ignoring the rest of the house. As she put her foot on the first riser, she turned to him. 'Aren't you coming?'

Harry shook his head. 'No. But you go ahead. I'll be right here.' Ginny's hesitation stretched into several moments until Harry urged her to continue. 'Go on, Gin. It's okay.'

Ginny slowly tiptoed up the dusty stairs, feeling as if she were walking on someone's grave. There were two bedrooms at the top of the stairs. She was drawn to the side of the corridor flooded with the clear starlit night. Ginny stood in the doorway, her breath catching in her throat. She steadily walked to the shattered cot, her hand resting lightly on a splintered rail. Ginny could easily imagine Lily standing next to this cot, bravely refusing to stand aside and sacrifice her son. It was what her own mother would have done.

Her hand tightened around the rail and Ginny felt tears slip down her cheeks. Throughout her entire childhood, she'd heard stories about how little Harry Potter had somehow defeated the Darkest Dark wizard of all time, but in her mind, they had always had the sparkling quality of the book of fairy tales her parents had read to her. Never had she entertained, even for a second, that the reality was anything like this broken and smashed nursery. At least not until she had sat at Hagrid's knee, drinking in the tale of how Hagrid had found the baby Harry in the wreckage and transported him safely to his Muggle aunt and uncle. Even then, Ginny hadn't been able to picture the destruction that now surrounded her.

She let her hand trail off the dusty rail, breathing deeply in an attempt to rein in her emotions. She quickly slipped down the stairs, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. When she met Harry, standing just outside the door, she was a semblance of tranquility once more. 'Are you all right?' Harry asked doubtfully.

'Yeah....'

Harry tipped her face up toward the dim starlight and peered at her face. The remaining tearstains gleamed dully. 'It's something of a shock, isn't it?' he asked easily, dabbing at the dampness on Ginny's cheek. 'Makes you wonder how anything survived that.'

'You have every right to be a bitter, angry, cold-hearted arse,' Ginny murmured. 'But you're not.'

Harry smiled a little and pressed a light kiss to Ginny's forehead. 'Yes, I am. Ask Ron sometime. He'll disabuse you of that daft idea in less than ten seconds. Anything to take the piss out of me at least once or twice a day with you around.'

'I mean, it wouldn't have been a surprise if you'd turned out like Malfoy,' Ginny argued. 'How did you not?'

Harry shrugged. 'I don't know. Maybe part of me remembered what it felt like to be loved all those years I wasn't.' He let out a long, shaky breath. 'But that's why I'm just a dumb Auror and not an Unspeakable...' He put an arm around Ginny's shoulders and guided her to the gate. 'Are you dying to get back, or can I take you one more place...?'

'What else did you have in mind?' Ginny asked.

Harry pointed down the lane. 'There. I'd... I'd like to introduce you to my mum and dad...'

'I'd like that.'

Harry kept his arm around Ginny's shoulders, as they meandered toward the cemetery. 'Most of the time, I come after dark,' he said. 'But every so often, I come on Sunday afternoon and sort of walk through the village a bit. It's nice,' he said wistfully. 'Makes me think about what it might have been like if Mum and Dad hadn't died... Could be a nice place to live later... Doesn't look at all like where I grew up,' he mused. Ginny began to think he wasn't actually talking to her any longer. Rather, he was talking at her - aware she was there, but not requiring Ginny to reply to anything he said. It made her wonder, briefly, if he ever spoke like this to Ron and Hermione. 'Here...' Harry steered Ginny to a kissing gate, and held it open for her.

'Where are they?' Ginny asked, peering through the darkness.

'Just over there,' Harry told her, pointing toward the rear of the cemetery. 'Fifth row down.' Ginny followed him, through a light covering of snow. Snow lay in drifts on the gravestones, softening their hard edges. He came to a stop in front of three headstones. Two were so close; they nearly touched, containing the names of James and Lily Potter and next to it, a smaller stone with Sirius Black carved into the white marble. Harry bent to brush the snow off the surface of his parents' headstones, his hand lingering in soft caress. 'Hiya...' he murmured. He no longer felt as he did last winter, that there was nothing there, no essence of his parents' lives left in the world. 'This is Ginny,' he continued in that same quiet murmur. 'She's home from school for the holiday. I just wanted to introduce you to her...' Harry straightened, brushing the snow from his mittened hand onto the side of his jeans. His arm slipped around her waist. 'Gin, this is my mum and dad...'

Ginny reached down and laid her hand against Lily's. 'Thank you...' she said, too softly for Harry to hear.

*****

George stood outside the private room at the Leaky Cauldron. The sounds of people talking and laughing drifted on eddies of music into the corridor. George could feel his hands clench inside his trouser pockets. Most days, he was able to get out of bed, dress himself, function, run the shop and pretend as if things were normal, even though they weren't. He didn't particularly want to be here, but it was better than banging around the empty house, remembering Fred wasn't going to be with them Christmas morning, teasing Ron about his inevitably maroon jumper. He nudged the door open, visibly bracing himself as he walked into the room. 'George!' someone shrieked, launching herself across the room. Angelina threw her arms around him, clutching him tightly. 'It's so good to see you!' she exclaimed.

'Hi, Ang,' George said, patting Angelina awkwardly on the back. 'Back for Christmas?'

'Yeah, just until Boxing Day, then I have to go back to Toronto the day after.'

'How's the shop?' Angelina asked, towing George across the room to a small table occupied by Katie and Summerby.

'It's great,' George said evenly. 'Ron's been doing a fan-smegging-tastic job,' he added, making no attempt to keep the sour note from his voice.

'George!' Katie admonished softly, a shocked expression on her face.

George accepted a lager from a passing waiter and gulped a third of it before he lowered the glass to the table. Turning to Angelina, he said, 'Ron's doing... He's fine. Contributes ideas. Some of them are even good.' He picked up the glass again, and quickly drank the rest of the lager, signaling for another when the glass was empty. He caught a glimpse of Angelina glancing at Katie, then tilting her head toward him in question. Katie shrugged in response. 'I can see you,' George growled. 'No, I don't do this normally,' he told Angelina. 'The last time I got too pissed to even Floo home was in September. I'm just not in a very jolly mood. So, if you'll excuse me, I'll not be playing Father Christmas this year.'

'George, that was rude,' Katie admonished.

George's eyes closed and he set his second glass on the table. 'Yeah... you're right. I'm sorry, Ang.' He abruptly stood up and pushed the chair back under the table. 'I should go. I don't even know why I'm here...' With that, he swiftly left the room, without even saying hello to Lee.

Summerby glanced at his watch. 'Right, I've got an early Portkey tomorrow. I'll just go home, then.' He perfunctorily kissed Katie on the cheek and left the room, leaving Angelina alone with Katie.

Angelina propped her chin in an upturned hand and gazed at Katie. 'What?' Katie huffed, picked up George's abandoned drink.

'Nothing,' Angelina said. 'I just thought that George...'

'That he wouldn't be bitter and angry still?'

'No,' Angelina sighed. 'I'd worry if he wasn't bitter and angry still... Especially now. But no, that's not what I was thinking about.' She pinned Katie with a severe look and said, 'I was talking about you and George. I thought the two of you would have been an item now. You talk about him all the time in your letters, and you hardly mention... Oh, what's-his-name... Martin, yeah... Martin. The two of you seemed pretty cozy when I left.'

Katie ran a fingertip around the rim of the glass. 'I can't... I mean, I like George. A lot, actually. But I can't... With George it's got to be all or nothing, and just having him in here, the way he was... It's exhausting.'

Angelina's eyes widened. 'You're such a bloke,' she spluttered. 'Dating that empty set of robes, even though he's got nothing to hold your attention long-term, just because he's got the emotional depth of a puddle.'

Katie shook her head. 'It's too much to try and cope with. I don't want to try and compete with Fred all the time. There's only room for two people in a relationship. George by himself is one thing, but George carrying around Fred's ghost... That's one ghost too many for me.'

*****

Harry slid into the camp bed in the attic. Ron was still at Hermione's parents' house, so the attic was quiet, save for the ghoul clanging and moaning above them, but Harry hardly noticed it anymore. He picked up the newly repaired photograph of his first birthday and watched as he flew headlong into his mother's arms, Lily laughing while she set him to rights and sent him off toward James.

Ginny's words about him not ending up like Draco swirled through his thoughts. Even when things had been horrible at the Dursleys, he had still had lovely dreams about feeling safe and protected, or what he'd assumed at the time had been dreams. After his tête-à-tête with Dumbledore after Riddle sent that Killing curse at him, Harry wasn't so sure dreams were really illusions in the end. Certainly, Draco hadn't wanted for anything materially or physically as a child, unlike Harry. And given the lavish amount of attention Draco's mother had seemed to shower on him at school via packages from home didn't give Harry any more insights about Draco's childhood at all. Even after everything he'd learned about Draco through the testimony of both Narcissa and Lucius, Harry had to admit he knew less about Draco than he could fit on the point of a quill.

Harry replaced the photograph next to the ones that Ron had given him on his birthday and waved his wand at the lamp, lowering the wick so a dim glow permeated the room so Ron wouldn't trip over anything when he came home. He dropped his glasses onto the small table between the beds and stacked his hands behind his head, peering nearsightedly at the shadows on the ceiling. It wouldn't be the first time his perceptions about someone had changed so drastically.

If it could happen with Snape, it could happen with Draco Malfoy, too.

*****

Harry slowly woke up to bright sunlight streaming through the window above his bed. He sat up so quickly, the bedclothes slithered to the floor, tangling around his feet. Impatiently, he kicked them off and ran downstairs. Today was his eleventh birthday. And it hadn't come yet. Every day, he'd been expecting the letter with the purple wax seal and the green ink, addressed to him, and only him.

He raced down the stairs, irritably shoving his hair out of his eyes. No matter how short his mum cut it, it always grew back overnight. Harry couldn't figure out why for the life of him, considering he hated his hair so much. He pushed the kitchen door open and Lily stood at the stove, making his favorite breakfast for his birthday. 'Is it here?' Harry shouted, ignoring the pile of presents at his place at the table, eagerly scanning it for his letter.

'Is what here?' Lily asked, in mock-bemusement.

'My letter! My letter that says I'm going to go to Hogwarts like you and Dad!'

'Oh...' Lily said, turning bacon over in the pan with dawning comprehension. 'You mean this letter?' she asked, taking a large envelope from her apron pocket. Harry could only stare at it dumbfounded. It had been the longest summer of his short life, waiting for his letter. 'Go on and take it, gumby,' Lily teased gently. 'It won't bite you.'

Harry reached out with a trembling hand, and gingerly took the envelope as if it might explode in his face like when he played Exploding Snap with his father. He turned it over and pried it open and pulled the thick parchment from inside. A slow smile blossomed over his features, and Harry dashed out of the kitchen, back upstairs, where he knew his father was, dressing his baby sister for the day. 'Dad! Dad!' he called. 'It's here!' He burst through his sister's bedroom door brandishing the letter, nearly tackling his father as he knelt on the floor, tying Eileen's shoes.

Severus looked up and grinned broadly. 'That's wonderful, son...'

*****

Harry bolted upright, panting heavily. Ron turned over in his sleep and grunted, but didn't wake up. He grabbed his glasses and ran down into the bathroom, bracing his hands on the sink and staring into the mirror. He ran his hands through his hair, sighing in relief as it sprang back into its customary untidy mess and didn't flop into his eyes. His fingers traced over the lines of his face, seeking assurance his eyes didn't believe that it was the lines and hollows of James Potter that stared back at him, and not of Severus Snape.

Because the one "what if" he hadn't mentioned to Ginny earlier that week in Snape's office had been - what if Snape hadn't joined the Death Eaters in school and he'd married Lily instead...?