The Wine With The Stars In It

Ginny jumped off the motorbike and ran to meet the waves. They rushed toward her, pink, deep copper, and grey in the setting sun, and retreating, cast foam, fragments of seashells, and seaglass at her feet. She unzipped her windbreaker and let the breeze slide against her sides and belly.

"It's beautiful here," she said.

When Harry did not answer right away, Ginny turned and saw him leaning against the bike, in the shadow of multi-colored cliffs. Sunlight glanced off the lenses of his glasses; otherwise, he seemed utterly drained of color.

"Come here," she called, and after a moment, he let go of the bike, and walked slowly across the sand to her.

"It's beautiful," she said again when he drew close to her, and put his hands on her hips. She leaned in and brushed his wind-chapped lips with her own. "Beautiful." His skin was cold. She wanted to gather the rosy pink and the copper from the ocean, the russet, ochre, and blue-grey from the cliffs and rub them into his skin.

He said, "We won't know if we're in the right place until moonrise."

Ginny nodded. "I think this is it, though. I mean," she said, pulling away slightly, and pointing, "there's that knobby sort of rock that Lupin described. And we passed that petrol station three-quarters of a mile back, just like he said. And - look. There are butterflies."

They were bobbing just above the cliff's grassy lip, three or four of them, white as dandelion fluff. They seemed engaged in some sort of dance, though Ginny supposed they were probably just catching the last warmth of the day before retreating to wherever it was butterflies went at night.

"I've never seen butterflies in winter," she said. "I think it's a sign."

"You sound like Luna," Harry grumbled. "This is Queensland. It doesn't get that cold."

"Excuse me," said Ginny, catching his face between her hands and making him face her, "I didn't come here to be grunted at. If I want to be stupid about butterflies, let me."

"Fine," Harry said with a trace of amusement. "Just don't compare my eyes to...pickled toads."

Ginny made a face. "I never did," she informed him somewhat heatedly. "That was the twins. I told you."

"Sure." His cheeks pushed against her palms as he grinned for the first time all day.

"Fine, don't believe me."

"I don't."

She let go of his face and swatted at his chest. He caught her wrists and pulled her against him. She struggled, and they ended up tussling in the sand while the sun smoldered into the sea.

Night came in shades of violet and indigo, with stars in unfamiliar patterns. Ginny found that disorienting, more so than the fact that it was winter here, while they'd left England in the middle of a sweltering summer. Her eyes strained for Orion, Ursa Major, and the Pleiades. She felt some relief when the moon sprang up over the horizon, splotched, swollen, and familiar. Beside her, Harry tensed and clutched her hands.

As the moon climbed higher and cast a white path across the darkened water, Ginny and Harry turned together. The waves of color were invisible. Flecking the cliffs were crudely etched moons and stars, shimmering in the moonlight.

"Harry," Ginny gasped.

"He was here," Harry said, his voice rough. "Sirius camped right here when he was on the run. He came here with Remus years ago."

I know, Ginny almost said, but it seemed a pointless remark, and a cruel one perhaps. He knew that she knew the story; he wanted to say it anyway, and the names that went with it, just to hear it. "I'll be right back," she said instead and, untangling her limbs from his, she rose unsteadily and walked across the sand to the motorbike, her lit wand held out in front of her.

As she retrieved her rucksack, her hand brushed the bike's smooth, cool surface and she felt a tingle that went from her palm to her belly. "He loves you," she heard herself whisper to the bike's absent first owner. "We came all this way because he wanted to say it in a place he knew you were free. And happy. But in case he can't - because I know he has trouble saying it, he loves you. Just so you know."

She hurried back to Harry, gripping her rucksack, and dropped back down beside him. She was trembling, she realized, and felt incredibly stupid for it. He was the one who should be a wreck. But when she looked up at him, his profile in the moonlight seemed perfectly calm.

She almost told him to uncork the wine, but stopped herself. If he were under a spell, it was one she had not wish and no right to break. So she took the bottle out of the rucksack herself, touched her wand to the cork, and murmured, "Alohomora." The cork dropped into her hand; she shoved it in her pocket.

Ginny held the wine bottle and waited for what seemed a very long time, during which Harry's lashes barely twitched. In fact, he hardly seemed to be breathing. Ginny waited, and her gaze slid eventually from Harry to the moons and stars on the cliffs.

You were here, she thought. Now he can see it's written in stone. You were here. And I guess the fact that you're not here anymore is proof that you loved him. She wondered if Harry understood that. She would tell him if he did not. That was one thing she knew she could tell him.

At length, Harry sighed and turned to her. She passed him the bottle wordlessly. It was Bourgogne, which Hermione and Ron had sent to them from Provence. Hermione would tut at them if she ever found out they'd had it on the beach, without goblets or glasses, after a supper of vegemite sandwiches, Ginny supposed. But watching Harry's fingers as he lifted the bottle and said gruffly, "To Padfoot," she could not bring herself to care.

He drank quickly, then passed the bottle back to her. "To Padfoot," Ginny said, and sipped. The wine was very rich, and it made her cough. She liked the aftertaste, she found. It was fruity, though not terribly sweet. She took another, deeper sip.

It went to her head fairly quickly. She began to feel the waves rustling up the beach as she breathed in, and slipping away as she exhaled. The salt in the air mingled with the wine on her lips. She tilted her head back and let the breeze toy with her hair while she gazed at the real stars. Again she squinted and tried to will them into the shapes she knew.

When still they would not move according to her will, she leaned back farther, and before she knew it, was falling backward. She landed with a rough thump, the wind knocked out of her, the wine - not all of it, mercifully - splashed across the front of her t-shirt. Oh-no, she thought, bringing her hands up to cover her eyes and burning cheeks. No, ignore me, Harry. Please ignore me.

When she no longer felt the breeze, she knew it was because he was leaning over her. She felt a puff of warm air on her neck, and knew it was his breath. "Sorry," she moaned.

He said nothing, just crouched over her until, timidly, she lowered her hands and peered up at him. "Sorry," she breathed again. Something sloshed in her stomach. The wine, she thought stupidly. And supreme mortification.

"It's all right," Harry said. There was moonlight on his glasses, hiding his eyes. Around his head, the stars seemed to bob like the butterflies.

"Sorry," Ginny whispered a third time, and at last he appeared to realize that she was incapable of saying anything else.

He took the wine bottle from her, and set it aside. "It's all right," he told her earnestly, and kissed a corner of her mouth. Then he flopped beside her on the sand, put his hand on her hip, and turned her toward him.

Can you say it now? she wondered. Can you tell him, after all this time and all this distance, even after I've mucked it up?

"I love you," Harry said. His voice trembled slightly, though that might have been from the breeze tossing his words in the air.

Or, she thought, moving her hand to cover his, maybe he meant both of them - her and his godfather. The thought warmed her, and helped her smile. She threaded her fingers with his and squeezed them tightly.

By now she knew him well enough to know not to say I love you back just yet. It was a selfishness she understood and to which she had grown accustomed; when he said the words, he preferred to be the only one saying them, at least for a little while.

He knew how she felt. But she wriggled closer anyway, and rested her head on his shoulder. They lay together in the shelter of the star-flecked cliffs, while the real stars danced slowly overhead.

03/ 10/05