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Everyone is there. It’s a perfect late August evening, the dusk only hinting of autumn. The children are chasing gnomes in the garden and shrieking at the top of their lungs. Ginny has set out tables and chairs in the long grass. There’s punch in bowls with ladles and ice cubes shaped like stars and crescent moons – Harry’s little touch. Even the crup and the kneazle are getting along. The breeze is cool and fresh. Everyone is in the present. No one seems to be brooding about the past as is so often the case even now, after all these years. Ice clinks in tall glasses. Steaks sizzle on the grill. The crown of the old oak clings to the setting sun. Its trunk casts a long shadow in the golden light.
She is chatting with Hermione with Lily on her hip, and she’s just about to set her down and fix the pin that’d loosened in her hair when she notices him. He is standing apart from them with a beer in his hand and his back turned. The breeze stirs his dark hair. When he reaches up to casually scratch the back of his neck, another little piece of her heart breaks.
“Harry!” she calls. “It’s almost time to eat!”
He turns, his hand still on his neck. He seems dazed, as though he’d been far away in another world.
“Alright,” he calls back. “Just a minute.”
* * * * *
Her knowledge of the affair had crept into her life, chewing on the edges of her consciousness like a moth. The moment she’d first suspected it took place the previous October. He came home late one evening. His wool coat was wet. She could remember the droplets clinging to it like dew. His face was flushed. He was never late.
“Where were you?” she asked. “I was worried.”
He grinned at her and kissed her cheek. “‘M’ sorry, lost track of the time” he said with the hint of a slur in his voice. The children were eating their dessert. She made him a cup of tea. His damp fringe clung to his forehead, almost concealing the scar. He was soaring high above them, a Snitch just inches from his fingertips.
“I take it you had a good day,” she said.
He sat down at the table, and she put a plate in front of him. He dug into his mashed potatoes as though he’d been starving to death.
“Yeah.”
“Daddy, don’t talk with your mouth full!” Lily admonished him, punctuating her words with a wave of her spoon. Melted ice cream spattered everyone. He laughed and flicked a spoonful of potatoes in her direction. It wasn’t the first time a meal had degenerated into a food fight, but something was different.
He took a long time to come to bed, and when he did, he gave her a peck and slipped under the sheets. She heard the click when he set his glasses on the bedside table.
“You’re happy,” she said to the darkness.
He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I am,” he replied as though he needed to be told that whatever it was he was feeling was happiness.
* * * * *
“Harry!” Ron calls. “Get your arse over here!”
There’s grilled chicken and salads of every kind. Everyone has brought something. Harry looks at the table for longer than is necessary to take it all in.
“The candles,” she says. His expression when he turns to her is uncomprehending. “For the tables,” she elaborates. “The ones you bought this morning.”
He frowns as though it was all coming back to him from a long long time ago. “Right,” he says. “Candles.”
“And plates,” she calls after him.
The kids have their own table, and the adults relax into their chairs with drinks in their hands. George says something funny, and they all laugh. Fleur idly braids her hair. Bill’s arm is draped over the back of her chair. Angela reaches for her glass and laments the fact that it’s empty until Hermione passes her the carafe of Sangria. Charlie tips his chair back too far and would’ve toppled over except for Molly’s quick maternal reflexes. George says something funny, and everyone laughs again. Harry returns from the house and sets lighted candles on the table and along the stone wall.
He’s forgotten the plates. Instead of telling him so, she simply goes to the kitchen to get them herself. She begins to cry in deep gulping sobs when one slips from her hand and breaks on the floor.
* * * * *
Whoever she was, she left no traces. There was no proverbial lipstick on his collar. Just a giddy look on his face when he came home in the evening – a little bit later all the time.
“Who is she?” She’d asked one raw April evening.
She’d waited in the dark living room until he came home and quietly shut the door.
“There is no ‘she,’” he said. He seemed not at all startled by her voice or surprised by her words.
“Is she an Auror?”
“I’ve been at the pub, Ginny. I’m sorry I didn’t fire call.”
“She makes you forget.”
He was silent for a long time. The ticking of the clock on the mantel was deafening.
“No,” he said softly, almost inaudibly. “He makes me remember.”
And that was how she found out. It was all so surreal that she started to giggle. He lit the lights with a whisper.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” he said. “Because I don’t.”
“He?” She couldn’t stop laughing.
He didn’t reply.
“Well, if you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it in style.”
“Ginny,” he said. His voice was pained.
She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Tell me,” she said. “Do you fuck him or does he fuck you?”
He was very quiet. “Please,” he said at last. “Please let’s talk about this later.”
She shot up from her seat. She was much smaller than him. She’d always hated the fact that he had to look down at her.
“I don’t want to talk about it later! I want to talk about it now. Are you fucking this whoever-he-is?”
He took off his jacket and made a big production out of hanging it up.
“You’re a coward,” she told his back.
“No, we’re not fucking,” he said, still without looking at her. “I would never do that.”
His words struck her as even more funny than before. “Really? How thoughtful,” she said. “Tell me, Harry. Do you take off your ring?”
“No!” he snapped. “He already knows I’m married. He’s married too.”
She began pummelling his chest with her fists as hard as she could, but he caught her wrists.
“Ginny,” he said. “Please.”
She slumped against him, and he put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.
“Please what?” she said, her voice dead.
“Please don’t be like this.”
“Like what? Like I’m losing my husband?”
He didn’t answer her.
* * * * *
“Ginny.”
Hermione kneels beside her and helps to sweep up the pieces of the plate. “Do you want to mend it?” she asks, drawing her wand.
She can only shake her head. The force of her grief makes her hot. Sweat trickles down the side of her face.
“Is it Harry?”
She can’t answer. If she does then it’ll be real.
“It is Harry.”
She neither nods nor shakes her head.
“Still?”
She starts to cry again.
Hermione is very quiet as they clean up the last of the shards.
“How do you know? He told me he’d ended things. Harry is not the lying type.”
“Thank you. I think I know my own husband.”
Hermione sighs. “Of course you do,” she says. “I hadn’t meant to imply . . .”
Ginny waves her hand as though swatting at a fly.
“We’re too close, you and I, for these cryptic conversations,” she says suddenly, sounding braver than she feels. “If I can’t be frank with you than who else? He still loves him. This whoever-he-is. He thinks I don’t know. He thinks I don’t see it. I know he’s ended the affair, but he still thinks about him . . . he still dreams about him.”
Hermione helps her to her feet and smoothes away the tears and sweat from her cheeks with her thumbs.
They both know Hermione knows who he is, and they both know Hermione won’t give away the secret. Ginny wonders if her loyalty runs as deep for Ron as it does for Harry.
“He’s said nothing to me,” Hermione says.
“He doesn’t need to say anything,” she replies. “Like I said, I know my husband.”
Hermione bows her head with what looks like concession. “I won’t argue,” she says. “But, Ginny, please don’t just assume he’s started seeing him again . . . this man. I mean, Harry’s made the sacrifice you asked for. He ended the affair.”
She’s suddenly angry. Very angry, but she bites her lip. It’s the end of summer, and they’re all together. Even if he’s here too. His presence making itself known through Harry’s distractedness. His distance.
* * * * *
In May, he started coming home at half-past-five again, and Ginny knew in her heart that he’d ended the affair. He wasn’t happy. That was clear. But it was over. Things could start going back to normal . . . at least she hoped they would.
Then one night she’d heard voices downstairs despite the fact it was well after two. One belonged to Harry. She knew she shouldn’t go down there. She should just cover her head with her pillow and go back to sleep. For a crazy moment, she felt like the interloper. She got up and pulled on the robe he’d bought her for Christmas two years ago.
“You should leave.”
Harry’s voice was raw as though he’d been shouting. Perhaps he had been.
“And then what?”
The accent was aristocratic. She felt sure she’d heard the voice before but she couldn’t place it. She’d had to cover her mouth to keep from giggling hysterically. Harry had been with a gentleman. It was hilarious really.
“What do you mean ‘and then what’?”
“I mean and then what?, Harry. You’re going to just go back to wedded bliss and domestic cheer? You’re going to pretend as though this never happened – that we never happened?” The voice is sneering, contemptuous.
“I made a vow . . .”
“So did I, you self-righteous prick.”
“Well, maybe I’m not like you.”
There was a long silence.
“Don’t come looking for me,” the voice with the snotty accent said.
“You and your fucking pride!” Harry said. “I don’t want to lose your friendship. Not after how long it took to build, not after everything . . .”
“. . . we haven’t done?”
The voice was close to breaking, but there was no answer. After what felt like forever, she heard retreating footsteps and the soft click of the front door closing. Harry was making muffled sounds she’d never heard him make before, and suddenly, despite everything, she felt her heart break for him. She crept down the stairs until she could see him sitting on the edge of the couch, his head in his hands. She’d only seen him cry twice before despite all that he’d been through during the war – and after.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she’d whispered and he began crying harder. She didn’t wait for an answer and instead went to the kitchen and put on the kettle.
* * * * *
She’d perfected a Glamour that disguised the puffy eyes and blotchy face she always got after she’d been crying. It’d been necessary. Neither of them wanted the kids to know.
Back outside, the sun had set and someone had strung fairy lights in the low-hanging branches of the old oak. Hermione gives her a concerned look, but Ginny refuses to acknowledge it.
Harry comes over to her and puts his arm around her shoulders. “I heard something break,” he says. “Are you okay?”
She smiles as best she can. “Just a plate,” she replies. “It slipped from my hand.”
He pulls her against him and kisses the top of her head. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “There are more plates where that one came from.”
The children had finished their dinners and were chasing George’s sparkle charms as though they were little stars that had fallen to earth.
Just that morning, she’d walked into the bathroom thinking it was empty and found him sitting on the edge of the bath tub masturbating with his head tilted back. His eyes were closed. It was clear he didn’t even realise she was there. She could see his pulse fluttering in his flushed throat. Are you thinking of him? she’d wanted to ask, but she didn’t. She’d just tiptoed out and was halfway down the stairs before she took a breath.
“It’s a lovely party,” he says. She nods. They were quiet for a long time.
“Perhaps we can go to the islands later in the summer.”
She nods again. She isn’t able to speak around the lump in her throat.
“Remember Albus and that jellyfish?”
She pulls his arm tighter around her shoulders and kisses the back of his hand.
“Ginny,” he says softly. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I’m doing the best I can.”
She swallows. “I know,” she says in a tiny voice. “I know.”
* * * * *
For a while things seemed to go smoothly. Harry was home by half past five every evening. He cooked dinner and helped her do the washing up. He read to the kids before they went to bed, and then he’d come back downstairs, sprawl on the couch and click on the telly. She’d sit in the armchair and knit, glancing up every now and then when the crowd cheered a goal.
“Are you happy?” she’d whispered one night as they lay on their backs in bed watching the shadows on the ceiling.
“Of course I’m happy,” he’d answered too quickly.
She was quiet. Outside a dog barked and someone yelled at it.
“Do you miss seeing him?”
It was his turn to be quiet. At last he said, “No, I see him every day.”
She drew in a sharp breath. She hadn’t considered the possibility they might work together although now that she thought about it, it seemed obvious that they would.
“Is he an Auror?”
She heard him sigh. He sounded defeated.
“No, he works for one of the other departments.”
“But you see him a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you talk to each other?”
“No, Ginny. You don’t have to worry. We don’t talk to each other, alright?” He sounded angry.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said gently. “I just wanted to know how hard it is, that’s all. We were friends, Harry, before we were husband and wife.”
He was very quiet. She thought he might’ve fallen asleep.
“Some days it’s hard. Other days less so,” he said quietly. “We weren’t really friends for long before . . . before things got . . . well, before we realised it was a lot more than friendship.”
“Did you ever make love with him?” Her choice of words was deliberate, and he reached out his hand and took hers.
“No,” he replied. “He wanted to, but I said I’d never cheat on you like that.”
“Did you ever kiss?”
He squeezed her hand. “We don’t need to do this,” he said. “It’s all water under the bridge now.”
“I know,” she said. “I just want to know.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . I just want to know, that’s all.”
“Yes, we kissed,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She squeezed his hand back.
“Kissing isn’t that big of a deal,” she said. She meant it to be soothing, but he released her hand and turned over, away from her.
“It was to me,” he said and then said no more.
* * * * *
The days are still warm, but the evenings hint of Fall. Another autumn. It is impossible for her not to remember how things had been this time last year. How happy. She feels sick to think of her naivety.
“Mummy.” Albus clambers up into her lap, causing her to spill punch on her jeans.
“Careful, mate,” Harry says. “You’re getting big for climbing on people like they were trees.”
Albus regards him sleepily but deems his remark too inconsequential to require a response.
“The house is looking good,” says Charlie. “I like the addition. It works well with the original. Where’d you find the same kind of stone?”
Harry doesn’t respond. Ginny nudges his knee. He turns to her.
“Huh? Sorry. Wasn’t listening,” he says.
“Charlie just asked you a question,” she replies.
She suddenly feels uncomfortably restless. She gently frees herself of her clinging son and stands up. There is still a band of pale light along the horizon. Somewhere he was out there. Whoever he was. She tries to imagine him and can’t. She walks to the edge of the lawn where Harry’d been standing earlier.
“Hullo, sweetheart.”
Her mother slips an arm around her waist. She knows nothing about the affair.
“It’s hard sometimes,” her mother says unprompted. “Marriage, I mean.”
Her first instinct is to tell her there is nothing wrong between her and Harry, but then she recalls how astute her mother is. She says nothing, letting the silence speak for her.
“He’ll be back.”
She steps away from her mother’s embrace and wraps her arms around her chest. She doesn’t want to know if her mother’s words came from experience.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says belatedly with little rebuke.
They stand together quietly for a while.
“Come back to the party, Ginny love,” her mother said.
She nods and returns to the light and noise of here and now.
* * * * *
She’d been out shopping with Fleur, which was always a bad idea. She lacked the patience it required. She hated shopping, unless it was for her children. She loved the darlingness of the clothes and toys and fuzzy blankets. She was about to tell her sister-in-law that she’d meet her at the café, but then it occurred to her that the Ministry building was only four blocks away.
When they were first married, she used to visit Harry there all the time, and they’d go out for lunch together. It’d been ages ago, before the kids. She’d surprise him and watch a grin spread across his face like it used to. They’d kiss quickly, and then he’d take her hand. They’d go to the Ministry cafeteria and drink too much coffee and get giggly like they used to.
She certainly wasn’t going there to try to catch a glimpse of him.
Harry did grin when he looked up from his parchments, and he did come out from behind his desk and kiss her, but when she suggested they have lunch downstairs, his smile faded. Her heart hitched in her chest. She’d hit close to the mark, and she insisted, feeling like a masochist and a sadist both.
There were a lot of people, and they’d needed to search around for a while to find an unoccupied table. She’d found one first and called his name, waving him over. He started to weave his way forward when suddenly he stopped dead.
She looked around, her heart pounding. There was a man with curling brown hair laughing with a woman in an unflattering robe, and another man sitting by himself, hovering intently over The Prophet’s daily crossword puzzle. Turning around in her chair, she saw a young apprentice, an elderly paunchy bloke and, ugh, Draco Malfoy. At least she could scratch one person off the list of possibilities.
As luck would have it, Malfoy turned in his chair, and their eyes locked. He looked slightly panicked, trapped like animal in the corner of a cage. It made her smile. He must remember her hexes. His gaze suddenly flicked away from her and onto Harry who sat down across from her. He did not seem happy.
“I didn’t know Malfoy worked at the Ministry,” she said under her breath. “I’m surprised he got the clearance.”
Harry merely nodded and poked at his watery curry with his fork. He looked pale and weary.
“You’re working too hard,” she said gently because it was true. He was working too hard.
“I’ve got a lot of things to do,” he said sharply. He pushed his plate away and rested his forehead against his fingertips as though he had a headache. Malfoy sat down beside her. No wonder Harry had lost his appetite.
“Ginerva,” he said, and she frowned at him. She hadn’t expected such a bland greeting.
“Draco,” she said. He didn’t respond, and she suddenly felt uncomfortable.
“Er, I didn’t know you worked . . . I mean Harry never told me . . . What department do you work for?” she babbled, growing increasingly annoyed with herself with every word.
“Curse-breaking.” He didn’t elaborate. “Potter,” he said as though realising Harry’s presence for the first time.
Harry didn’t lift his head when he muttered “Malfoy.” He must be plagued with Malfoy’s presence every day.
Malfoy turned back to her. “How are the children?”
“Uhm, they’re fine,” she replied. It was weird to have a pleasant conversation with Malfoy.
“Going on holiday before the summer ends?”
“Well, Harry and I have been talking about . . .”
“Nothing.”
Ginny turned, surprised by her husband’s sudden rudeness as he stood up. True it was Malfoy, but Malfoy hadn’t said anything wrong.
“Harry?” she called after his retreating back. She turned again to Malfoy.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” she said. “He’s been working too much lately.”
Malfoy shrugged. “Well, you’d better follow him.”
She stood up just in time to see Harry practically run from the cafeteria as though he was about to be ill and needed to find a toilet immediately. She looked around and saw that the bloke with the curly hair was watching Harry’s retreat. She scowled in his direction. Malfoy followed her gaze quizzically, and then laughed.
It wasn’t a pleasant sound, and Ginny recalled how much she disliked him. She walked away without saying farewell.
* * * * *
The candles have nearly burned down, and she flicks her wand at them to keep them lit. It was the time every party wound down. People’s eyes were closing, and the children had all gone inside to find beds and couches to crash on.
Hermione stands and pulls Ron up with her. “We had a lovely time,” she says.
Ginny nods. “We should do it again in the fall,” she says, but not as enthusiastically as she’d wanted. “We could have a Halloween theme. I’ve always wanted to throw a Halloween party.” She looks at Harry to back her up, but he’s sitting with his head tilted against the back of his chair, his eyes closed.
“Harry, wake up,” she says. “Our guests are leaving.” When he doesn’t respond she reaches out to poke him in the ribs.
“It’s okay,” Hermione says quickly. “I’ll thank him at work tomorrow.”
For about the millionth time, Ginny wants to reach out and grab her shoulders and shake her hard until the answer rattles free. “Who is he?”
Beside her, Harry opens his eyes and turns his head without lifting it.
How much longer can she go on pretending that everything is alright?
“You were thinking about him.” she says later as she undresses for bed. He’s already naked under the sheet.
“Why do you keep asking questions you don’t want to know the answers to?”
From down the hall drifts the nightly sound of their children yelling “good night!” to one another from their rooms. Even Lily’s little voice chimes in.
“Because I love you,” she replies. “And because I want to help if I can.”
He sighs, but when she climbs into bed, he turns into her embrace and buries his face in her hair. She suddenly feels reckless.
“We could make it work, you know. You could see him and still be my husband and your children’s father. I’ve heard about other people who’ve done that. In fact, it’s very hip these days . . .”
He shushes her with a finger against her lips. “You know I’m not like that. I can’t carve my heart into bits and distribute them like pieces of a roast ham.”
They lie in each other’s arms. Both of them awake.
“Was it strange? Kissing a man, I mean?”
He rolls onto his back, away from her. “At first.”
“Did you French?”
He groans and throws an arm over his eyes.
“Ginny, it’s late. We need to get some sleep.”
“Did you touch his cock? Was it like touching your own or was it different?”
To her surprise, she feels herself growing wet at the thought.
“Did you suck him? Did you swallow his come?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Did you finger his arse? Did he finger yours? If that’s what you want, we can do it too . . .”
Suddenly, he is above her, pinning her wrists to the mattress. He is hard. She moans and pushes her hips up, signalling she’s ready to take him in. He wastes no time doing just that.
They fuck frantically, making the bed creak and the headboard bump against the wall. She feels her orgasm soak the sheet beneath her bottom. She’s never wanted him so much. She clenches his hips between her thighs and rocks up into his thrusts. His eyes are squeezed tight, but when he comes, he says her name.
* * * * *
About three weeks before the party, she’d found a note in the pocket of his Auror robe. She’d been about to launder it. The handwriting was neat, but it was nonetheless obvious that it belonged to a man.
Please. One last time.
She could hear the urgency behind the words – the sacrifice of dignity. How could Harry say “no”? Had he?
She’d asked him when he came home.
“Of course I said no,” he replied, his voice dull and colourless.
“I almost feel kind of sorry for him,” she said. “He obviously still cares for you.”
He pulled off his coat and caught Lily in his arms when the children ran to him, babbling about what they’d done that day. James clung to his waist, and Harry leaned down and kissed him sloppily on the cheek.
“Yuck!” James said, wiping his face. “You’re disgusting, Daddy.” Never wanting to be left out, Lily parroted her brother’s words. “You’re disgusting, Daddy,” she chirped. After a minute, he stood, and the kids wrapped their arms around his waist.
“My little barnacles,” he said fondly. “I missed you all day.”
She felt irrationally ignored. “Well, I hope you weren’t an arsehole about it.”
Harry pried thirty little fingers from his trouser legs.
“Are you ever going to speak to me?”
“Not when you’re talking about Dra . . . him.”
She must’ve misheard and laughed aloud at the sheer absurdity of it.
“I thought you were about to say ‘Draco’,” she said.
He walked to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Ogden’s. She stopped laughing.
“I thought you’d made a promise.”
“Just one,” he said.
“Not in front of the kids.”
“Then I’ll go outside.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.”
“Well, supper’s ready. Your plate will get cold.”
“Then I’ll cast a warming charm.”
“They’ll know. They’ll smell it on your breath.”
His back was turned. She heard the glug-glug of whisky flowing from the bottle.
“I guess you don’t care,” she said cruelly, hating herself for it but unable to stop herself.
He turned, his eyes flashing. “How can you say that?” he asked incredulously.
They stood for a minute with their fists on their hips and their gazes hard. It felt like the beginning of a duel.
“Don’t push me,” he hissed.
“Or what? You’ll run off and give whoever-he-is a ‘one last time’?”
He flinched, and she knew she’d won. It gave her absolutely no satisfaction.
“Mummy! Daddy!” Lily yelled. “We’re hungry!”
“Go on outside and have your drink,” she said gently. She knew he knew her well enough to know she’d just apologised, but when he brushed past her, he didn’t give her the fond smile she’d come to expect.
“Harry . . .”
He stopped but didn’t turn to look at her. His head was bowed in what looked like defeat. She didn’t continue because she didn’t know what she’d meant to say. All she’d really wanted was to hear her voice speak his name.
“Not now,” he said and left the room. “I’ve had enough.”
* * * * *
He holds her as their heartbeats slow and their breathing returns to normal, and she feels a wave of tenderness course through her.
“I think the kids had a good time tonight,” she says. “Even Hugo. He seems to be overcoming his nervousness.”
“He was bound to,” he replies. “Look who his parents are.” He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed.
“Where’re you going?” she asks feeling suddenly alarmed.
“To the kitchen for a glass of water? Why? Where’d you think I was going?”
She doesn’t answer him, and he reaches over and smoothes the hair back from her damp forehead.
“You don’t need to worry,” he says. “I’m not going to Floo to his house or something.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” she replies untruthfully.
She listens to his bare feet on the wood floor of the hall, and summons a tissue from the bathroom to wipe away the semen from between her legs. How could he possibly be gay when he could make love to her like that?
After ten minutes, she goes looking for him, her silk dressing gown wrapped tight against the late summer chill. She finds him sitting at the table with an empty glass. He looks diminished somehow, nothing like the soldier she knows he is. He jumps when she clears her throat to alert him to her presence. Without speaking, she pulls out the chair across from him.
“What are we going to do?” she asks after a long silence.
“About what?”
“About him.” She swallows noisily. Her throat feels suddenly dry.
“I don’t know what you mean.” He turns to look out the patio door. The moon is full. The shiny leaves of the rosebush gleam in its light. She used to be both scared of and in love with the moon. She was awed by it but could never dare to slip out of the Burrow and play in its rays. The feeling of being both drawn and repulsed was uncomfortable.
“You’re still in love with him.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not also in love with him.”
“Ginny, it’s been a wonderful evening and we’ve just made love. Can you stop obsessing over this even for one night?”
“No,” was what she wants to say. But instead she says “Of course” and covers his hand with hers.
* * * * *
She knew Harry dreamed of him. The other night hadn’t been the first time he’d woken her with his cries. She didn’t try to wake him but instead lay as still as possible, hoping beyond hope that she’d hear a name. She’d feel him thrusting against the mattress. Sometimes he even came with a ragged groan.
Of course, he could be dreaming of her, but she knew he wasn’t. The one time she’d shaken his shoulder and woke him up, he’d cringed away from her and retreated quickly to the bathroom. If he had been dreaming about her, he would have finished himself off between her legs. But he wasn’t. She was sure of that.
He never went to the pub anymore no matter how many times Dean and Seamus fire called with taunts and pleas. She wondered if it was because he would be there. He also no longer played Quidditch on the weekends. It made her sad. She’d thought she’d be pleased that his life had shrunk to include only his family, but she wasn’t. She missed the colour in his cheeks and even the beer-scented kisses.
* * * * *
Sometime behind 3 and 4:30, she makes her decision, and once she has, she’s eager to shake Harry awake and tell him. But she doesn’t. The sun would be up soon enough, and she could do it then. Feeling relieved, she falls fast asleep at last.
“Remember that Auror instructorship in Australia?” she asks casually, as she pours milk into the children's cereal bowls.
Harry lowers the newspaper so he can see her properly. “Yes,” he says with what sounds like trepidation in his voice. He knows the sly, scheming look that she almost certainly has on her face.
“Well, James will be starting school next fall, and this will be our last year to spend abroad. You said you always wanted to try living in a foreign country.”
“By which I meant Wales,” Harry says and raises the paper again – his way of saying “this conversation is crazy and I want no part of it.”
“Come on,” she says. “At least consider it. The kids would have a brilliant time and you’d have a cushy job for a year.”
He folds The Prophet and sets it down on the table.
“You’re actually being serious.”
“Oh very much so,” she says. “Everyone says it’s beautiful down there, and if we left in September, spring would just be starting. You can’t convince me that you’d rather slog through a dreary English winter.”
“I’m not sure the position is still open,” he says.
“Well, check and find out.”
“I’ve never taught before. I don’t have the right background.”
“You taught the D.A.”
“That was years and years ago.”
“You have an innate talent for teaching.”
He pushes back his fringe and resettles his glasses on his nose. “Australia is a long way away,” he says. “You’ll miss your family.”
“They’ll still be here when we get back.”
“Who will take care of Hobbes and Plum?”
“Ron and Hermione will take care of them – you know how much Rose has been needling them for a pet.”
“The Department needs me.”
“The Department will survive.”
“You know how much I hate Portkeys.”
“Then we’ll fly in an airplane like the Muggles do. The kids would love it.”
“Who will look after the garden?”
“I’m sure we can find someone.”
“There are a lot of poisonous and dangerous animals in Australia.”
She rolls her eyes. “The last thing I would’ve imagined is that you of all people would be afraid of a frog.”
“It’s not about me,” he says indignantly. “It’s about the kids.”
“No it’s not,” she says. “It’s about him. You don’t want to leave him.”
He seems to have no response to that.
“That’s not true,” he says with a forced calm.
“You know it is. At least think about it, Harry. We need to get away from here. We need to work on our marriage. You can’t go on seeing him every day. It’s killing you.”
His eyes plead with hers. Their message is clear – it’ll kill me even quicker if I can’t see him.
“Please,” she pleads back. “Just consider it.”
He nods weakly. “I have to get to the office,” he says.
“Kids! Daddy’s going to work!” she calls and smiles at the sound of running feet. They grab Harry around the waist, trying to keep him from walking to the door. He pretends for a moment that they’ve succeeded. She watches them all. Her family. Her beautiful imperfectly perfect family. His glance before he leaves tells her all she needs to know. He will consider it.
It’s as good as saying yes.
* * * * *
Shortly after he’d ended the affair, Harry had taken up running. He’d be gone for hours no matter how cold or wet the weather was. If she hadn’t known in her heart that he’d broken up with whoever-he-is, she would’ve thought they were seeing each other again.
In July, he ran a marathon. She and the kids set up folding chairs near the finish line. The others were there, too. Ron and Hermione and Hugo and Rose. Charlie. Bill and Fleur and their kids. James had made little flags for everyone. Some of Harry’s fellow Ministry colleagues were also there to cheer him on. Ginny watched Hermione closely for a sign that one of them might be the one, but Hermione betrayed nothing . . . at least not until Draco Malfoy showed up.
“Why’s Malfoy here?” Ron whispered, drawing his wand. “If he tries anything, I’ll hex his balls off.”
“Ron!” Hermione snapped. “The children!”
Ron scowled and put away his wand, but Hermione’s face remained flushed, her expression unhappy. If Ginny didn’t know better, she’d think Malfoy of all people was Harry’s former lover.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
Hermione just shook her head.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” she asked.
Hermione turned her head to look at her, pleading with her eyes not to go there.
Ginny couldn’t help herself.
“He is, isn’t he?”
When Hermione still didn’t respond, Ginny started scanning the crowd for a handsome man because of course Harry, being good-looking himself, would’ve been with a handsome man. Which scratched Malfoy off the list. Ginny had always found him too pale and thin to be beautiful. Slightly above average, perhaps, but not gorgeous by any stretch of the imagination.
“It’s him,” she said, nodding at a tall bloke with dark hair.
Hermione closed her eyes wearily. She seemed just about to say something when suddenly Harry appeared around the bend. He held his t-shirt in one hand, and even though his chest was slick with sweat, he clearly had energy left.
“Go, daddy, go!” Albus cried, waving his flag.
Harry grinned as he passed them. She watched him raise his arms in victory when he crossed the line. Her heart felt full to the point of bursting. Anyone who loved him must feel just as proud. Her eyes sought out the tall bloke with curly hair. He was clapping happily.
“Ah ha!” she said out loud, but then – to her amazement – Malfoy went over to Harry and pulled him into a hug. Harry, no doubt still flooded with adrenaline, pulled Malfoy close and held him tight for a moment, saying something in Malfoy’s ear that made Malfoy smile.
“Christ,” Ron mumbled. “Malfoy is such a star-fucker.”
He turned to Hermione with a fake cringe as though expecting a smack, but Hermione hadn’t even noticed him. Her eyes were full of sadness. Knowing and sadness.
“He is here,” Ginny snapped at her. “Who is he, Hermione?” But then Harry joined them flushed and beaming. He picked up Lily and set her on his shoulder.
When Ginny finally had the opportunity to look for the curly-haired man, he was gone. And so was Malfoy.
Good riddance.
* * * * *
The last thing she’d expected to find was bruises. Nobody raised a hand to Harry. They didn’t dare. So when she’d noticed the fading purple on his wrists and forearms, she’d been instantly suspicious.
“Who did that to you?” she’d asked, but she hadn’t received an answer, and Harry stopped rolling up his sleeves even in fine weather.
Once she’d found out “she” was a “he,” it’d all made sense.
Sometimes the bruises were on his throat and sometimes they were on his shoulders. She’d never have guessed that her Harry liked it rough. He was always so gentle with her.
She couldn’t stop imagining how they must've looked together. Was it more like fighting than kissing? Was it like two Alpha males rutting during a spring thaw? Or was it tender and slow? She hoped it was the former.
Angry sex she could deal with.
* * * * *
The day after the party, she comes home to find Malfoy sitting on the front steps of her house. She’d just been to the Burrow to drop off the kids. She figured she and Harry needed a night out together, and if there were any lingering doubts in Harry’s mind about Australia, she’d ply him with wine and put his fears to rest.
Malfoy’s head is bowed, and when he lifts it, she suddenly understands. It feels like a lightning strike.
“You.”
He merely stares at her mutely. She stares back.
“Aren’t you going to order me to leave your perfect little family alone?” he says nastily.
She thinks about it for a minute. Of course, she wants him to leave her family alone, but in some incalculable way, Malfoy is already a part of her family – or at least her marriage. Like a vine, he’d become an inextricable part of her life.
But why, God, did it have to be Malfoy?
At first she simply couldn’t imagine Harry in bed with any man. It seemed so impossible. He’d never given her even the tiniest clue that he might be bisexual. But then as time went on, she found herself able to picture him with a melting blur of a male body – long legs, muscled arms, a hard flat chest. She could even imagine Harry kissing a man’s mouth and rubbing like a cat against his whiskered cheeks.
But now that blurred body has a face. She suddenly feels like she might be ill. Not so much because it’s Malfoy, but because by being Malfoy, her whole understanding of her husband has crumbled. Harry suddenly seems strange to her. Utterly foreign.
It is what hurts the most. She raises the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. She may have won the battle, but Malfoy had won the war. She’d never be able to think of Harry the same way she used to ever again.
“Do you want to come inside?”
The words surprise her as much as they surprise Malfoy. She thinks he’s going to decline the invitation, but then he stands and follows her through the door.
As they walk to the kitchen, she feels acutely aware of all the dozens of details her eyes barely registered anymore. Harry’s Quidditch gear, her trainers, the kids’ rubber boots, Hobbes, their Crup, lying in a sun patch, wedding photos on the mantel – Harry turns toward the camera, laughing, the wind in his hair. He is breathtakingly beautiful and so obviously happy. She hopes that Malfoy notices them.
“Water, juice, beer or wine?” she asks without turning around.
“Whisky.”
Merlin, he is truly unbelievable!
She closes the refrigerator and walks to the liquor cabinet in the living room. She wants to tell him that Harry doesn’t drink whisky anymore, but she stays silent. The only sound is the ice clinking in the glass she hands Malfoy. And then she pours one for herself. She hates whisky. She bites back a crazed giggle when she imagines the look on Harry’s face when he sees her.
She wants to turn his heart as inside out as he’s turned hers.
“Sit,” she says, pointing at a chair, and to her surprise, Malfoy sits.
The silence is torture. Conversation starters tumble through her mind, and all of them seem ridiculous under the circumstances. Malfoy throws back his whisky and rises to fill his glass again. It goads her that he refuses to cede to her the role of hostess in her own home.
“You don’t need to take him to Australia,” he says suddenly, angrily. “It’s over between us. It has been for months now.”
“Who says I’m ‘taking’ him to Australia to get him away from you? Maybe I think it would be an exciting adventure for my family.” She’s determined to say “my” as much as possible – my house, my family, my husband.
She’s clearly hit a nerve because Malfoy averts his eyes.
“It won’t be good for his career. I wonder if you have any idea how close to becoming Head Auror he is.”
Ouch. That hurt. A lot. She’d known Harry had the position of Head Auror in his long term plans – but only after all the children had started Hogwarts.
“Yet another reason to end your affair. The public might not take so kindly to their new Head Auror sleeping with a former Death Eater.”
Neither of them has raised their voice, and they’d both remained in their chairs, their postures casual. An onlooker would have no idea that they were fighting for their lives – or more precisely, their lives with Harry.
“I know about the details of Harry’s career, thank you very much,” she says, realising that such an assertion was now a lie. How many other “facts” of her life would Malfoy unravel before this evening was over?
“Mmmmm,” he says vaguely, and her hand itches for her wand.
“How would you even know anymore? He hasn’t spoken to you since he ended things between you. Everything that you think you might have to tell me about Harry is old news.”
From the look of pain that washes over Malfoy’s face, she knows she doesn’t need a wand to wound him. Perhaps even fatally. Her heart swells with love for her husband. He’d walked away from . . . whatever it was that Malfoy offered him out of love for her and devotion to his family.
Malfoy opens his mouth to reply, but whatever he’d meant to say is cut off by the sound of someone stepping from the Floo in the Floo room. Malfoy freezes, his glass halfway to his mouth. She realises she’s stopped breathing and takes a painful breath into frozen lungs.
“Ginny!” Harry calls. “I’m home! Where are you?”
“In here,” she calls back. Her voice is eerily calm.
She feels sorry for him when he walks into the room and sees them sitting there with glasses of whisky in their hands. His expression changes from his “I’m home” look to confusion and then to panic.
“What are you doing here?” he asks Malfoy.
“Hello to you too, Potter,” Malfoy replies, but she can suddenly see his snotty nonchalance for what it really is: a thin mask to cover his true feelings. She inhales sharply when she realises that he must’ve removed that mask for Harry – and maybe only for Harry – because she knows Harry could never fall in love with someone as jaded and indifferent as Malfoy was trying so hard to seem.
Harry must’ve seen Malfoy naked in many more ways than one.
Even though she’s shaking, she rises from her chair, pours Harry a glass of whisky and gives it to him with a kiss on his cheek. It was meant to do no more than soothe Harry, but she hears Malfoy swallow and sees him turn his head. She wonders why she doesn’t feel smug. Harry sits but only on the edge of his chair. He looks like a bird ready to fly from its perch at the first sign of danger.
“Malfoy says I don’t need ‘to take you’ to Australia. He seems to know a lot about the subject given that you and I only discussed it for the first time this morning.”
Harry drinks all his whisky in one swallow.
“How long have you been here?” he asks Malfoy. His voice is wary but not unkind.
“Since noon.”
“I only knew he was here when I came home at five,” she adds quickly. The last thing she wants Harry to think is that they’ve been sitting here talking and drinking for five hours.
“You’ve been here since noon?” Harry’s voice sounds lost as though the universe has contrived to confuse him.
“Yeah.” Malfoy’s voice sounds weary. Again she sees just the tiniest gap between the mask and the face beneath.
“I asked you never to come here,” Harry says gently. “And you promised you wouldn’t.”
“Nothing bad has happened, Harry,” she says, wondering why she feels the need to come to Malfoy’s defence.
“Anywhere but there, anywhere except Australia,” Malfoy says, and she suddenly feels as though she’s no longer in the room with them.
“Draco . . .” Harry says.
Malfoy turns to her abruptly, and the mask falls back in place.
“Would you change your mind about your ‘family’s exciting adventure’ if you knew that Harry himself created that position so that we could go there together? Would you like to know how far we proceeded in our plans?” He pulls a letter from his pocket and throws it into her lap. With shaking hands, she opens the already broken seal and pulls out a photograph and a lease. The photograph was of a small seaside villa with a sunny courtyard full of exotic looking trees and flowers. Feeling numb, she unfolds the letter.
Dear Misters Malfoy and Potter,
This is a copy of my standard one-year lease starting September 1, 2016 and ending August 31, 2017. Please note that I am giving you the first month free because of the work on the road between Shoalwater Bay and Perth. It should end by October, but in the meantime it’s causing too much dust and noise. A deposit is due . . . .
She looks up. Harry has his head in his hands, his fringe spilling through his fingers. Malfoy has the customary sneer in place, but it slips when he sees her eyes fill with tears.
“Harry,” she chokes. “Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me you weren’t planning on leaving us . . .”
She doesn’t see or hear his tears, but she watches his shoulders shake.
“Fuck!” Malfoy says suddenly and stands up. He dashes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Thanks for the drink,” he tells her. “I’ll show myself out . . .”
“Don’t you even fucking think about leaving!”
She’s heard that voice before. It’s the same voice that challenged the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. It's the same voice that challenged Voldemort in the Great Hall. It is pure unadulterated Harry.
Malfoy sits down.
“Why are you doing this?” Harry asks him. “Why now?”
Malfoy’s mouth twists and he glares at Harry, but his eyes well with tears.
“Because you’re actually considering this!” he replies, shaking the letter and photograph in his hand. “I know why you ended things, but I don’t know why you have to go to Australia? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think I wouldn’t care? That it wouldn’t kill me? Fuck you, Harry!”
She feels invisible as their eyes lock.
“I thought it would be easier on everyone if I went away. Things can’t stay the way they are, Draco. This isn’t working.”
“What is it precisely that ‘isn’t working’? The fact that I work in the same building as you do? That I live in the same city? The same country? The same fucking hemisphere?”
“Why do you want me to stay? You told me in no uncertain terms that seeing me every day would kill you. I don’t want to hurt you. I tried to do the absolute minimum when we ended things, but you refused to remain friends with me. Whose fault is this mess we’re in?”
She didn’t know, but she is certain it wasn’t hers despite the fact that Malfoy had turned to fix her with his eyes.
“Don’t even think about blaming this on Ginny. If you want to blame someone, then blame me.”
“Oh, but I do blame you, Potter,” he says without releasing her from his gaze. “Ginny,” he continues, his voice almost gentle and soothing. “Did you know that it was your husband who kissed me first? I’d been determined our friendship wouldn’t turn into anything closer, even though I wanted it to, but then he kissed me and changed everything . . .”
“Please, Draco. Can we not discuss this in front of her?”
Malfoy is about to turn away when she suddenly says, “No! No more going behind my back!”
Harry looks at her. “I don’t want to go through a blow-by-blow, day-by-day accounting of . . . of this . . . of our . . .” He gestures between him and Malfoy. “Affair. All you need to know is that it’s over, Gin . . .”
“Is it?” she asks quietly.
“What?" he asks, his voice incredulous.
“Is your and Malfoy’s affair really over?”
She can tell he’s getting angry at her. He’s caught in a trap and growing desperate. It was no more than he deserved really.
Her heart starts pounding painfully when neither of them responds.
“Well?”
“Yes”
“No”
Their responses almost cancel each other out, but she’d heard them: Harry’s voice saying “yes” and Malfoy’s voice saying “no.”
Malfoy turns to her. “Do you want to see what it was like?” he asks. There’s a wild glint in his eyes. She remembers her father’s words: “The only man you should truly fear is a man with nothing left to lose.” Her eyes flick to his left hand. His finger is bare, but there’s a slight, pale indentation where a wedding band must have been.
She shocks herself when she nods and says “Yeah, I want to see what it was like.”
Harry’s eyes grow saucer-wide when Malfoy crosses the small space between them, lifts his chin, and kisses him on the mouth. Harry shoves him away with an angry “no!” but the shove is gentle. She knows he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t want to hurt Malfoy.
“Harry,” she says calmly. “I want to see it. I want to see you kiss. Now that I know it’s Malfoy, I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to fathom your attraction, trying to picture you two together, so why don’t you just get it over with now. Show me. Show me what you two were like together.”
Malfoy clearly needs no more encouragement. He tilts Harry’s head back with both hands, cupping his face, and kisses him deeply.
Harry pulls back, and he looks at her as if she’s just betrayed him in some way. Which seems ludicrous under the circumstances.
“Come on, Harry,” she says. “If not for you, then for me.”
She has no idea where her courage is coming from, but then again, she is a Weasley and she’d vowed never to let Harry shut her out as he’d done during the year he and Hermione and Ron were hunting Horcruxes. She feels certain now that whatever she sees between them will not break her. She tosses her hair as though getting ready to kick off the ground on her broom.
“Your worst, most hurtful secret has already been revealed,” she says with a nod to the letter and the photograph on the coffee table. “You owe it to me not to hide anything more.”
“Are you leaving me?” Harry asks, sounding like the little boy with the big owl she’d met so many years ago. “The children . . . Please, Gin . . .”
Malfoy looks at her but she doesn’t waste an ounce of her attention on him. She knows he wants more than anything for her to say “Yes.”
“No,” she says firmly. “But I want to watch the two of you together. I want to understand why you almost abandoned your marriage and your family and your friends. I don’t want to be left wondering, trying to imagine and being unable to.”
Harry’s face seems as changeable as water in a basin as emotions flick across it. Beside him, Malfoy is shaking visibly. She knows he’s willing to do anything to be with Harry again, even if by doing so he’ll hand her the last tiny bit of power he still held.
Harry stands suddenly. In perfect Harry-fashion, he’d clearly made up his mind. He grabs Malfoy’s arm and drags him close, meeting Malfoy halfway in another kiss. He slides his fingers into Malfoy’s short, pale hair, so different from hers, closing his fingers in a fist, tightening hard enough to hurt. He never kissed her like that. He was always gentle. Once she’d thought it was out of consideration; now she wondered whether it was half-heartedness.
Malfoy’s works Harry’s shirt free of his trousers, searching for skin and making a soft, covetous sound when he finds it. Harry gasps and then turns to look at her.
“Is this what you want, Gin?” he says angrily. “Because we don’t have to stop here. We never did.”
But instead of answering him, she addresses Malfoy instead.
“What did you do?” she asks. “Did you go down on him?”
“Of course,” Malfoy replies. “Don’t you? Opps, silly question. I already know you don’t.”
She flinches and looks away. It’s true after all. She didn’t like the choking sensation, the metallic taste of come.
“Don’t,” Harry says as Malfoy unbuckles his belt. He grabs Malfoy’s hands to still them. But he can’t stop entirely. His mouth seeks Malfoy’s again. She catches a glimpse of tongues.
“She said she wants to see us together,” Malfoy says into their kiss. “She’s the one who asked for it.”
Harry turns his head to look at her, and she nods.
“Why stop now?” she says archly. “I doubt you ever did before.”
“Bloody right,” Malfoy says. He yanks open Harry’s belt and unbuttons his fly.
“How does this help any of us?” Harry says as Malfoy drops to his knees. “How does this make things right again?”
She can’t tell who he’s talking to. Probably both of them. She wants to ask tell him everything’s already changed, already ruined, so why not stomp out the embers of both flames?
But then Harry would be alone. She doesn’t want him to be alone. At the end of the day, she loves him too much.
Harry tips back his head with a groan when Malfoy frees his erection. She can’t tell if it’s a groan of resignation or a groan of desire. Her question is answered when Malfoy takes his penis in his mouth and Harry’s hips thrust forward.
She feels an unexpected surge of arousal and realises in the same instant that she can’t watch anymore. Things had gone too far, even for her curiosity. Even for her revenge.
“Go upstairs,” she says. “Just use the guest room, okay?”
Harry looks at her.
“It’s alright,” she says. “I’m going for a walk. Fuck him if you want, but make sure he’s gone by the time I come back.”
Malfoy stands when she does, and Harry quickly buttons his jeans. She ignores them both and goes into the front hall to get the crup’s leash. She takes her time putting her shoes on and then leads the crup to the door. Outside, the late afternoon sun is hot and bright. She goes back inside to get her sunhat – her neck is already sunburned from gardening – and finds they’ve gone upstairs. She can hear the creak of the floorboards under their feet.
Part of her wants to stay. Part of her wants to hear their words and the sounds they make together. But a larger part knows that she’d never be able to forget – that every time she and Harry made love, she’d think of them.
She hears the door to the guest room open and close. The crup nudges her with his nose, eager to go back outside. Were they really going to have sex? Or were they going to spend their time together talking? She actually hopes it’s the former. She’s afraid of the words they might say to each other.
She walks until the sun starts to set and then turns back. She’s given them nearly three hours – the longest three hours of her life.
Malfoy must’ve Apparated from the balcony because Harry comes down the stairs alone. She goes into the kitchen to put on the kettle as he sinks into one of the armchairs in the living room. They drink their tea in silence and watch the garden fill with darkness. The fairy lights are still in the tree from last night’s party. She stares at them incredulously. Was it only last night? It seemed a million years ago.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says.
“What do you want?”
“Anything. Except your mother’s beef stew.”
She smiles and goes to the kitchen. The light glows softly as she reaches for the plates. After a few minutes, he wanders in and fills a glass of water at the tap.
“I thought maybe we’d go to the islands next week,” he says, and he might as well have said “Don’t worry, we’re alright.”
She walks over to him. It takes a moment before he opens his arms and pulls her against his chest, but eventually he does. He smells like soap and aftershave. He must’ve taken a shower.
Somehow she knew that Malfoy wouldn’t. She can’t help but feel a faint twang of sadness. She hoped he hadn’t returned to any empty house.
They sit down at the table. It’s nothing fancy, just spaghetti Bolognaise, but it seems like a feast.
“We’ll have to reserve a cottage,” she says, pouring him a glass of red wine. “Lily will be disappointed if we don’t get the one with the roses.”
He smiles. “I’ll do my best.”
She looks closely at his face. There is no sign of awkwardness in her presence, but his eyes are slightly puffy. He must’ve been crying. She reaches out and covers his hand with hers. Her diamond engagement ring sparkles in the wavering light. He turns his hand over and twines their fingers together.
“Let’s not go to Australia,” she says and is not at all surprised by the soft sigh of relief she hears.
She isn't naïve. There were going to be rough patches and potentially violent storms to weather. And she’d have to come to terms with the fact that she shared his heart with another and probably would for the rest of her life.
“He’ll be alright,” she says gently. “Malfoys always seem to land on their feet.”
He doesn’t pull back his hand, but he does shake his head. “Not now,” he says. “Too soon.”
“Are you going to be able to see him every day at the Ministry and be okay?”
“Well, I’ll have to be.”
“It won’t always hurt so much,” she says as much for herself as for him.
He nods, but his breath catches around tears. She doesn’t want him to cry again, so she stands and takes his hand.
“Remember how, when we first bought this house, we used to sleep out in the garden?” she asks.
“How could I forget,” he says with a soft smile, knowing her well enough to know exactly what she is implying.
They Transfigure a sofa cushion into a mattress and Levitate it through the French doors. There’s a hint of fall in the air, so she summons several blankets from the storage closet in the guest bedroom. They lie still without touching, but serenely, familiarly. Like husband and wife. She watches the stars between the limbs of the tree.
“Welcome back,” she says softly. “Welcome back to where you belong.”