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SIYE Time:8:00 on 29th March 2024
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all your fumble words
By lazyweekendmornings

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Category: Post-DH/AB
Characters:Harry/Ginny
Genres: Action/Adventure, Angst, Romance
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 90
Summary: The war is over, and grief hangs heavy over victory.



Slowly, Ginny and Harry must learn to pick themselves up and live again.
Hitcount: Story Total: 30530; Chapter Total: 2204
Awards: View Trophy Room




Author's Notes:
i don't have any excuse for why this is so lat, but life has been incredibly busy and overwhelming and exhausting the past few months and i'm doing the best i can, promise! anyway, one more chapter + an epilogue after this, so we're nearing the end! as always, hope you enjoy, and let me know what you think!




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The next day dawned fresh and grey-skied, the kind of weather that always threatened rain but didn’t quite follow through.

“Good Quidditch conditions,” Ginny mumbled sleepily. She had just woken up and gotten to her feet, heading straight for the window to peer out of it. Harry peered at her, a red-headed blur silhouetted against the morning sunlight.

Harry gave her a small smile, suddenly thinking back to Oliver’s attitude on the morning of Quidditch matches. “You know, you’ll be Quidditch Captain next year,” he told her. He reached out, still half asleep, and took his wand. With a mumbled Accio, his glasses came zooming towards him, and he caught them with his left hand before putting them on. The world came into focus, and he could see Ginny’s beaming face.

“You seem very sure of yourself, Potter,” she said.

“Course. They’d be insane if they don’t do it,” Harry said. Much as he loved the sport, he was absolutely convinced that Ginny was a far better player than he’d ever been.

Ginny didn’t say anything, but she gave him a little smile. If Harry didn’t know better, he’d say she was shy. She stepped back towards him, perching on the edge of the bed and pressing a soft kiss to his stubbled cheek. Harry thought back to the earlier year, to waking up to a silent tent, or going to sleep to the sound of Hermione’s sobs. He still couldn’t believe, sometimes, just how lucky he was.

It seemed almost unfair, that he got to be here, and so many other people weren’t. He thought briefly of Remus and Tonks and felt a now-familiar pang in his chest when he thought of Teddy, and everything that had been left behind, that didn’t remain anymore.

He looked down at Ginny, into her bright eyes, and his own eyes felt oddly hot. “What is it?” Ginny asked. Her smile faded as she looked at him, and Harry recognized the look of concern on her face.

He shook his head. He didn’t know what to say. He could feel a lump in his throat, and he felt scared to speak. He just knew, somehow, that he wouldn’t be able to talk without crying.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. He could feel Ginny’s hand in his messy hair, slowly stroking it, but it seemed to register from somewhere far away.

When he finally opened his mouth, he wanted to say that he was fine, or that he didn’t want to talk about it, or that he didn’t think he’d ever feel as strongly about anyone or anything as he did about Ginny.

What came out, though, was something completely different. And when he spoke, his voice sounded thick and foreign to his own ears.

“I was a Horcrux,” he said.

Ginny’s hand stilled in his hair. He felt a buzzing in his ears, as if someone had cast a Muffliato on him. “What the fuck?” she said.

He didn’t know what he had expected. Shock, definitely. Anger. Betrayal, maybe.

He closed his eyes. It took every single bit of courage he had to open them and look up at her. She mostly looked confused.

“When… when Voldemort killed my parents. He accidentally made me a Horcrux,” he said. It sounded so insignificant, when he said it like that. Two sentences, to describe so very many years of confusion and grief.

“How do you accidentally make a Horcrux?” Ginny said, sounding, if anything, even more confused.

Harry shrugged. He had no fucking idea.

“When you said… when you said he set out to make six Horcruxes, earlier. You meant that…”

Harry nodded. “I was the seventh.”

“And… and are you, still?” Ginny asked.

“Am I still what?”

Ginny gave him a look. “Are you still a Horcrux.”

Harry shook his head. “Remember when I said I kind of died?” he said.

“Course I remember. Not the kind of thing you forget your boyfriend telling you.”

Something in Harry’s heart felt unbelievably light at the sound of Ginny calling him her boyfriend. Even after what he had just admitted.

“Well, me kind of dying… when Voldemort killed me, it kind of… killed the Horcrux. Not me,” Harry said.

Ginny didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she got up, walked to the bedroom door, and turned the key in the lock. She returned to Harry’s bed and sat down, running a hand through her messy hair and taking a few deep breaths.

“You have a lot to explain, Harry. And you’re going to do it now,” she said.

*

Later that afternoon, after lunch, Mrs. Weasley decided to go out to Diagon Alley to pick up a few things she needed for teatime, leaving Ginny and Harry alone at home. They sat down outdoors, by the orchard.

“So you were never possessed by him?” Ginny asked, picking up their conversation from where they’d left it this morning.

“No. I wasn’t. I mean, he tried once, during fifth year, but… no. Not possessed. But it’s how I could see his thoughts. It’s how I knew your dad was… you know.”

Ginny went a bit pale. “Oh,” she said.

“It wasn’t like… it wasn’t like your first year,” Harry said hastily. “I mean, I don’t think he ever, you know–”

“Took control of you,” she said. Her voice seemed oddly empty and, while she was looking at him, Harry knew she was thinking of a time five or six years ago, a diary, and hours of her life she wouldn’t ever remember properly or get back. Without thinking, he leaned over and took her hand.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

Before either of them said anything else, there was a loud pop!

Instinctively, Harry grabbed his wand and got to his feet, and he noted (with an absentminded sense of pride) that Ginny had done the same as him.

Heart racing, Harry took a moment to look at the figure who just Apparated into the orchard, the red-headed figure wearing magenta robes and a smirk.

“Oh,” Ginny mumbled behind him, and then she rushed to hug George.

“You can put your wand down,” George told Harry over Ginny’s head. “I’m not going to try and murder you. Pretty sure only someone with a death wish would do that by this point, mate. Although maybe I should try to murder you, seeing as I caught you in a compromising position with my little sister…”

Harry put down his wand with a sheepish smile.

“We’re just sitting down and talking, you nutter,” Ginny said.

“Yes,” agreed George. “Sitting and talking. About your feelings, probably. What could be more compromising than the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived himself, going mad with emotions?”

“Fuck off,” Ginny said, but she was laughing as she pulled back.

“Where’ve you been, anyway?” Harry asked, but he thought he recognised the robes.

“The shop,” George said, with a shrug that was clearly intended to be casual, but Harry could make out the lines in his forehead and by his eyes that hadn’t been there a few months ago. Another overwhelming wave of sadness washed over him, but he forced it down and away, somewhere hidden out of sight. Out of mind.

“How’s the shop doing?” asked Ginny.

“It’s alright. About as well as we could’ve hoped, I think,” George said, with a little shrug.

“Hey,” Harry said suddenly, before either of them could say anything else, “I thought you couldn’t Apparate directly here?” He remembered Dumbledore, and Tonks, having to walk past the boundaries of the Burrow to Apparate.

“Oh, Bill and Dad removed the charms last weekend,” George said, sitting down on the grass. Taking their cues from him, Harry and Ginny sat down as well.

“The war’s over and all that,” Ginny said, moving to rest her head against Harry’s shoulder. She still seemed a bit quieter than usual, but Harry couldn’t blame her, given everything he’d told her.

“The war’s over. Our dear brother’s gone to Australia, doing Merlin knows what,” George said. “And then he and you are about to change the Auror department for good, apparently.”

Harry shrugged. “I’ll consider it a victory if we manage to get rid of some of the tossers in the department, at any rate.” He thought of Proudfoot’s smug face and resisted the urge to shudder.

“A worthwhile victory that would be,” George said. “What’re you both going to do, then?”

Harry frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Hermione and Gin will be off to Hogwarts,” George said, leaning over to ruffle Ginny’s hair and ignoring her affronted protests, “And you both will have proper grown-up jobs, innit?”

Harry nodded. “We were talking about getting a flat,” he said, remembering the conversation they’d have about it.

George didn’t say anything for a moment. And then, casually, “You wouldn’t need a flat.”

“What do you mean?” Harry said again.

“They couldn’t exactly stick around in the Burrow, could they? Don’t think they’re too keen on staying here while their girlfriends are off at school,” Ginny put in, giving Harry a teasing little smile.

“Well, yeah, course not,” George agreed, “I just meant, you could always stay in the flat above the joke shop. It’s in London, so it’s near the Ministry, and there’s a spare bedroom there, now that, you know.”

None of them said anything for a second. Harry, who hadn’t even considered this as a possibility, was gobsmacked.

“Besides,” George added, in a tone that seemed far too casual, much like his shrug earlier, “it’d be good to have some help with the shop now and then. And some company. You’d have to share a room, mind.”

Harry, who’d spent much of the last seven or eight years sleeping in the same room as Ron in the Gryffindor common room and had gotten long accustomed to his snoring, didn’t see this as a problem. “That’d be great,” he said.

“Good. You can move in once Ron’s back from Australia,” George said. A brief look of relief crossed his face, before it was replacing with a smirk he directed towards Harry. “Besides, then you won’t have to worry about my parents catching you when they try to protect the virtue of our baby Ginevra.”

Ginny lunged at George, tackling him to the grass, and Harry couldn’t stop himself from laughing at the both of them. He tilted his head up, enjoyed the rays of sun on his face. The clouds had cleared up; and it looked like the rest of the day would be sunny and bright.

*

Andromeda and Teddy arrived at around four. At the sound of a knock on the door, Harry got to his feet to answer it. He grinned when he opened the door and saw them. Teddy was awake, waving his arms around happily from his position in Andromeda’s arms. “Hi,” he said happily.

“Hello, Harry,” Andromeda said, giving him a smile that, by Andromeda’s polite standards, was exceedingly friendly.

Harry stepped aside so they could come in, giving Teddy a bright little smile. Today, the little tufts of hair he had were an indigo-blue. He led them into the kitchen, and happily accepted little Teddy when Andromeda set him in his arms before she sat down at the table and let Mrs. Weasley pour her a cup of tea.

“How’s your work at the Ministry going, Harry?” she asked him, once she had greeted Ginny and George as well.

“Good, thanks,” Harry said, carefully sitting down. “I’m going back tomorrow.” The truth was, he wasn’t looking forward to going back to meet Robards without Ron.

Andromeda nodded politely. “I see,” she said. “And you’ll be joining the program in September, yes?”

“Yeah. The first of September,” Harry nodded.

“Of course, you’ll be all moved out by then,” George said casually.

There was a silence, the sort of silence that seemed deathly. Harry looked up at Mrs. Weasley. “You’re moving out?” she said slowly. “Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”

“Er — well,” Harry said. He didn’t know what to say, had had no idea that Mrs Weasley would take it like this. He was almost reminded of her reaction last year to the news that he, Ron, and Hermione would be leaving after Bill and Fleur’s wedding.

As if sensing the tension, Teddy let out a tiny little sound, not a cry but more a whimper. Harry set his finger down in Teddy’s little hand carefully, smiling at now-familiar feeling of his tight fist forming around his finger.

“Nothing’s decided yet,” he finally said, rather lamely.

“They might stay with me, Mum,” George said, his tone casual. He looked at Mrs Weasley, right in her eyes. “They’ll want to be nearer to London, to make travelling to the Ministry easier. And we’ll probably be here for dinner every weekend, anyway.”

A few more seconds passed. “Well. I suppose that would make your jobs easier,” Mrs Weasley finally said, turning to give Harry a little smile. “And you will come back often, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Harry said.

“Good,” Mrs Weasley said, and then, with a little sniffle. “Merlin, I’m being silly, but… two more sons are leaving. It just feels so…” she trailed off, dabbing at her eyes. Harry, too taken aback at Mrs Weasley calling him her son, a feeling he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to, didn’t say anything.

“I know, Molly. I felt the same when Nymphadora married Remus. It’s always difficult when they grow up,” Andromeda said, reaching her hand out and resting it on top of Mrs Weasley’s. “But we’re all family. That won’t change.”

Harry felt a sudden warmth in his chest and looked down at Teddy. He resolved to always make him feel as welcome wherever he lived as he had always felt at the Weasley’s. After all, that was, he mused, what family did.

*

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