Something Better Than This

Chapter 2: The Burrow

The Burrow was better. Harry felt he could breathe again once they got out of London, which made him suspect that once their magical target had dispersed the Dementors had lost interest, or been called off, and returned to sucking the joy out of large and readily available population centers in general. It wasn't a pleasant thought. Clean fog was fine. Choking fog was bad enough when it was merely polluted, not predatory.

But at the edge of Ottery St. Catchpole, grass and the summer vegetable garden covered the ground with a hundred exuberant greens, chickens clucked and squawked and scratched as if they'd never heard of Voldemort, which they probably hadn't, and the warmth in Molly Weasley's smile and the easy welcome of Ron's "Come on, let's get the trunks up to our room" made Harry feel more at home than his mother's blood in Aunt Petunia's veins had ever done.

Harry flopped down on one of the two beds wedged into Ron's blindlngly orange room and grinned up at the ceiling. He might have a lot to do, might be planning to dive into dark water, and he'd be restless and edgy until he began, but being at the Burrow made him remember what he wanted to survive up on the surface.

"Ron," he said, sitting up suddenly, "I'm going to go degnome the garden."

Ron turned from his trunk, a mismatched pair of socks in one hand and a woolly hat in the other, and stared. "Now?"

"Yeah. Now."

"Are you daft? We just got home and you want to go do chores?"

"I don't know. It just seems like a good idea." He paused, looking at the shapeless woolen hat. "Is that one of Hermione's elf-hats?"

Ron went rather red and stuffed the hat out of sight, although perhaps it spoiled the cavalier effect somewhat that the hiding place was under his pillow. "Borrowed it last winter, then reckoned with the stupid cold summers I'd ask to keep it. You know, when she finally found out the house-elves didn't want them and all but Dobby quit cleaning Gryffindor Tower over it, she went all thoughtful and started murmuring about strikes and labor organization?"

"No, I didn't know. You don't think she'll start feeling sorry for the gnomes, do you?"

Ron laughed. "You felt sorry for them at first. Then one bit you. We'd just have to get her to pick one up."

"She didn't stop feeling sorry for Kreacher," Harry muttered. He wondered if Kreacher was still in the Hogwarts kitchens. Probably, as Harry hadn't told him to go anywhere else. He still hadn't told Hermione about inheriting Kreacher, and wasn't sure he wanted to. But if he saw the house-elf again, he thought he might order him to take a bath.

"Yeah, well...." Ron left it at that and dropped the socks onto his bed. "I'll come toss a few gnomes with you if you like."

The gnomes probably knew exactly what hit them, or rather what picked them up and sent them hurtling through the air, but it didn't seem to help them much. Neither did numbers, even though schooling and Order business had kept all the Weasleys busy enough that it was a miracle Mrs. Weasley had managed to keep the vegetable section alone mostly degnomed.

The weather was unseasonably cool even here, but there was still some sun breaking through the clouds, and there was certainly plenty of work to do. Harry had worked up a good sweat by the time he and Ron could stump through the garden without any little potato-shaped heads popping out of their holes. Then Ron went off to join his mother, Fleur, and Hermione where they were welcoming four newly-arrived wedding guests -- the Lovegoods and the much less relaxed Longbottoms -- and Harry waved in their general direction but headed to the kitchen for a drink of water.

He found Ginny having one too.

Her hair was loose and windblown, as if she'd been out flying, though he hadn't seen her pass by on a broom. She seemed to have acquired more freckles since he'd last counted them. He found himself staring at her small strong fingers wrapped around the glass until she cleared her throat; he looked up at her face to see that she'd raised her eyebrows and looked amused. "Wake up, Harry. Were you looking for something?"

"Just some water."

"You know, if you're so thirsty you got stuck staring in fascination at mine, you can have this glass...."

He laughed at that and got his own. "No, just... thinking. Or not thinking." He really wanted to hold her. It really wouldn't be a good idea. He had to focus (even if, as his mind supplied unhelpfully, he wasn't really starting the hunt for Voldemort in earnest until after the wedding), and she was enough of a target already.

"I'm thinking it was the not thinking, or you'd make more sense."

"Must be," Harry agreed, gulping cool water. "Were you flying?"

"I was chasing a runaway pig."

Harry choked on his water. "Oh. Not quite so much fun."

"Not quite. I caught it, though. I think Fleur's mother scared it."

Harry's eyes widened a little. "Fleur's mother is here?"

"For the wedding, yes." Ginny frowned. "She's odd. She doesn't quite act like Fleur; she looks down her nose but she doesn't say anything. She doesn't speak much English. But she scares the animals, especially the chickens."

Harry thought of the Veela transforming at the Quidditch World Cup match and thought that he would probably run away from them too, if he were a chicken. That form they changed into, anyway. "Well... Veela turn into birds of prey when they're angry, right? Or something like them, anyway. Maybe they think she's going to eat them."

"She might," Ginny said, her good humor flashing up again. "We're having one for dinner. Mum asked me to fetch it."

He drained his water. "Need a hand?"

"No, but you can come if you like."

Harry followed her; Ginny headed outside, detouring briefly to pick up a handful of chicken feed and a knife before she strolled off toward the largest group of them, arms swinging. She let a little of the feed trickle between her fingers on the way, then scattered the rest of the handful in a few short arcs and stood waiting.

"Won't the other chickens notice something," Harry asked, "if they come to get a snack and one of them dies?"

"Chickens aren't that bright," Ginny said absently. "I won't do it in front of them, though. Harry... why don't Ron and Hermione get 'How do you think I'd feel if this was your funeral'?"

"I didn't know they were going to say they'd come." It wasn't a very good explanation, and Harry knew it, so he thought for a little while and then said slowly, "They've been along for... for everything. Almost everything. I don't want them hurt either, but it's less... it's less like they'd be in danger because we were having fun."

Ginny snorted. "So if I were helping you hunt down Voldemort instead of kissing you, you'd be more comfortable?"

"No. Yes. No." No! He wanted her to come back to, and with that, Harry realized with a start that he was thinking of coming back as a real possibility. And yet... he might not. And if he didn't.... On impulse, he asked, "Will you be my second?"

She blinked at him. "What?"

"I suppose Ron and Hermione are more like them right now. For now. But Ron told me once that in a wizard's duel, your second is there to take over if you die." He swallowed. "I hate to think of you in danger. I know, I know you already are, and maybe it won't do you any good for me to be apart from you. But I hope it will. I'm going to be annoying Voldemort a lot before long, though I hope he won't notice too much right away." He took a deep breath. "You fought him by yourself for a long time, didn't you. I'm not going to forget that again. If I die," and if Ron and Hermione don't get there first, "will you kill him?"

Ginny looked at him for a long time. Then she looked down at the chickens gathered and pecking around her feet and very calmly, with no sudden motions, reached down and picked one up. "If Voldemort kills you," she said in a low voice, tucking the chicken securely under her arm and holding its feet, "and Ron and Hermione are with you, then by the time I'd get to him I suppose I would have lost all of you." She started walking slowly away from the patch of feed-scattered ground. The chicken complained. "Damn right I'll kill him, if I can."

Harry scuffed his feet through the grass and walked with her. "It bothers me. The idea of being a killer. Murderer." It was strange telling her this. He'd known he could talk to her about Voldemort; they'd talked about the news time and again... but when they had been together, outside and away from people, they had usually had things they'd rather talk about and things they'd rather do. Someone else's life.... Now they were together, but not together, and he told her how he felt about hunting Voldemort because he shouldn't kiss her. Anyway, the chicken would probably peck him. "But it doesn't bother me as much as the idea of him out there, still running around and killing... a lot more people. Torturing them. What did Mr. Fortescue ever do to anybody?"

"I think," Ginny said, "it would count as self-defense."

"I'm going to hunt him down."

"Even then. After everything he's done, with what we know he means to do.... You know he still wants to kill you." Ginny's eyes were hard. When she reached a low rock, she sat down on it and set the knife beside her, braced the chicken's body and grasped its head, and twisted with as much fervor as if she had hold of Voldemort instead. Its neck broke swiftly, but the rest of the chicken spasmed and kicked. Ginny stuck it headfirst into an odd object that looked something like a large metal funnel on a stand. The chicken's head dangled out the bottom; Ginny picked up the knife and cut it off, moving back quickly as blood spilled out onto the dirt below and splattered the nearby grass.

Harry thought of the thrashing basilisk, then of young Voldemort, talking of rooster feathers in a mocking voice. "...Does it bother you to kill chickens after he made you do that?"

Ginny went very still. The dead chicken's kicking died away in her silence. Harry was about to apologize when she said slowly, "Do you think it should? I thought you liked Mum's roast chicken."

"I do like it. And I don't know if it should bother you," said Harry. "I just wondered if it did."

She sighed. "It bothers me more to think I might have taught him how. I don't remember it, myself. But I already knew how... and I do remember he told me the orphanage was in a city."

Harry chewed his lip. "I don't think he ever needed to learn how to kill anything," he said. "...Er, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I do like your mum's roast chicken." He shot her an awkward smile; she returned it a little reluctantly, and he offered hesitantly, "Really, I didn't mean it like that. He... when he was at the orphanage, he already liked scaring the other kids and hurting them. He hanged somebody's pet rabbit. I think the only difference was that back then he was afraid of being caught." He thought for a moment. "I think... if he learned how to catch and kill a chicken from you, then the chickens probably had a lot easier time of it if he'd come up with a way by himself."

"Hmm." Ginny considered that. "...Thanks. Want to help pluck when it's drained?"

They carried the defeathered chicken into the house some time later and turned it over to Molly, who promptly sent them back out after onions. They found Neville hunting for Trevor under the chard and detoured to try to help him, but had no luck, although Luna joined them in enthusiastic search and told them all about the underground mushroom farms being run by unregistered toad Animagus farmers.

The night's chicken dinner was very tasty.

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