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SIYE Time:2:07 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: 30526; Chapter Total: 3354
Awards: View Trophy Room




Author's Notes:
Some information comes to light, a confession is made, and a meeting is arranged.

Hope you enjoy this chapter! As always, let me know what you think. Also, how do we feel about past tense (as in this chapter) v/s present tense (as the earlier two chapters have been)?




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Ginny felt a little numb at the moment, only warmed up by the feeling of Ron’s arm around her. She would normally be annoyed at this display — Ron was clearly feeling overprotective ever since the argument with Harry — but it was reassuring right now, and the physical contact reminded her to stay grounded in where she was right now. She was sitting on the sofa in the living room of the Burrow in between Ron and George. Harry and Hermione were in the corners next to them, half on the sofa and half on the arm of it; in front of them, scattered in various chairs dragged in from the kitchen, were Kingsley and the rest of her family, except for Charlie.

“You’re sure about this?” said Hermione. She was the only one who seemed calm, but Ginny suspected, from how tightly crossed her arms were, that it was a façade.

“Yes. I do have some experience in Magical Law Enforcement,” said Kingsley, not unkindly. “Fred’s will is a completely binding document, legally speaking.”

“I told you it would be,” muttered George. “We made them together.”

“When?” asked Ginny’s mum. This was the first time she had spoken up since Kingsley and the others had arrived.

“In seventh year. After we left school,” George said. “Tonks and Bill were our witnesses. We hired a lawyer, got all the formalities out of the way after an Order meeting. We thought it was a right laugh back then, hiding the actual wills from each other, since we… we assumed we wouldn’t need them for ages.” He let out a strangled laugh. Ginny’s throat felt tight, and she clenched her hands into fists, focusing on the feeling of her fingernails digging in to her palms so she wouldn’t give in to the flood of tears threatening to burst forth.

“Oh, Georgie…” Mum whispered. Ginny looked up for a brief second. Her mother wasn’t even attempting to hide the tears running down her cheeks. As Ginny watched, her dad wrapped an arm around her. He looked dangerously close to tears himself.

Ginny cleared her throat. “So. This is… legitimate?”

“It is,” Kingsley confirmed. He met her eyes, and suddenly Ginny felt reassured, like she was speaking to the man who had eaten dinner with them so many times and laughed at terrible jokes with her dad, and not the Interim Minister for Magic. “I’ve checked it myself. It’s very legitimate. Fred owned half of the shop, and he’s divided up his shares equally between George, Ron, Harry, Hermione, and you.”

“But why us?” Harry said. Ginny turned to look at him, and suddenly wished she was sitting next to him, and could hold his hand to ground herself, but Ron had seated himself firmly in between them and didn’t show any signs of moving anytime soon.

“What do you mean?” Kingsley said.

Harry looked impatient. “I get why he’d leave it to George, and Ron and Ginny.” He looked at her as he said her name. “But I don’t really get why he would leave it to me and Hermione instead of, I dunno, Bill or Charlie or Percy or something…”

George rolled his eyes. “Bill and Charlie are older than us, Fred wouldn’t have thought they needed anything, they both have good jobs. Percy was going through his prat phase when we wrote it, obviously. You were in school when we wrote these wills, and that Umbridge bi–that Umbridge woman,” he corrected himself quickly, “was giving all of you hell.” He shrugged. It seemed obvious to him, but Ginny didn’t quite understand it fully.

“Oh,” Ron said, a look of dawning comprehension on his face. “You’re saying he didn’t know if we’d get jobs?”

“With the way the Ministry was behaving,” Bill said slowly, flashing Kingsley a half-apologetic look, “it really didn’t seem likely at the time that any of you would fare well after Hogwarts.”

“Yeah, and you’re all family, innit. My will’s the same. We never bothered writing a new one later,” George said, and stood up.

Hermione sniffled, no doubt in response to George putting Harry and her in the category of family.

“Anyway,” George said. “If that’s all, I should be going…”

“Actually, there was one other thing,” Kingsley said. He looked uncomfortable, and Ginny recognised the shift in his tone, from family friend to Ministry official.

George sat back down next to Ginny. “Okay, what is it?”

“Now that I’ve managed to get Law Enforcement in relative order,” Kingsley said, “I think we can begin the Death Eater and Death Eater sympathiser trials soon. And everyone in this family will almost definitely be called as witnesses in most cases. Especially you four,” he said, indicating Ginny, Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

Ginny’s stomach sank.

“Why her?” Ron asked. “I thought it’d mainly be us.”

“Yes, but the trials of Amycus and Alecto Carrow are scheduled soon. And as Ginny suffered the most under their regime, along with perhaps Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom, her testimony is crucial,” Kingsley said.

Ginny stifled a groan. If only Kingsley hadn’t said that.

“What?” Bill said, looking sharply at Ginny. “You never said it was that bad.”

“Death Eaters were running the school and I’m a blood traitor. How did you think it would be?” Ginny said dully.

“Yes, but when you say suffered–” Ron started to say.

“I can’t believe you didn’t say–” Mum said at the same time.

“It’s fine,” Ginny said. “Really, it’s fine. I’ll testify, Kingsley. Anything to get those sick people behind bars.”

Kingsley nodded gratefully. “Because of the trials, none of you can leave the country for the next few weeks, until it’s over,” he said. “Consider it a favour. I need all of your help.” For some reason, he gave Hermione a pointed look.

“Of course, Kingsley,” Harry said, and his voice seemed even more quiet compared to Bill, Ron, and Mum’s tones.

Kingsley stood up, brushing the crumbs from the biscuits he’d eaten with his tea off his deep purple robes. “Alright. Well, I need to be getting back to the Ministry. I’ll be in touch with all of you soon, as soon as I know more about the trials. Molly, Arthur, can I have a quick word before I leave?”

Ginny’s dad nodded, and the three of them walked to the kitchen. Hermione sniffled again, and it seemed like Ron couldn’t stand it anymore. He stood up and moved to sit down next to her, wrapping his arm around her. George went to talk to Bill and Fleur, leaving the four of them on the sofa.

Ginny moved a little closer to Harry’s side, reaching out and taking his hand.

“Was it really that bad at Hogwarts?” Harry asked her quietly. If the question had come from anyone else, especially one of her older brothers, Ginny would’ve lost her temper, but the way Harry asked her was different.

She looked up at him. He squeezed her hand, but waited for her to talk. “We probably have a lot to catch each other up on,” she finally said. “A lot happened this year.” She didn’t want to talk about at all, if she was being honest, but she especially didn’t want to talk about it here and now.

Harry nodded. “Yeah. I suppose it did.”

*

Harry cornered her an hour or so later. Kingsley had left to go back to the Ministry, and Mum had convinced George and Bill and Fleur to stay for dinner. They were helping her cook, and Ron and Hermione had snuck away upstairs to Ron’s bedroom. Ginny didn’t really want to dwell much on what they were doing, but she found it awfully hypocritical that Ron, despite his overreaction to Harry and her relationship, had no ethical qualms to maintaining one of his own.

She had been making her way up to her own bedroom, lost in thought, when Harry appeared in front of her, seemingly out of nowhere. “Oh, hi,” she said. Her tense shoulders relaxed a little, and she took his hand, pulling him into her bedroom with her.

“Hi,” he echoed, and looked around her room. Ginny thought suddenly of the afternoon of his seventeenth birthday, and was very grateful Harry didn’t attempt to talk about the view from her window.

She felt suddenly self-conscious about the pile of clothes on her desk she was yet to put away in her wardrobe, and the general clutter around the room. Harry didn’t seem to mind, though, didn’t even look at anything in her room apart from her. “Andromeda wrote back,” he told her.

“Oh, she did? That’s great,” Ginny said. She’d been worried he would have wanted to discuss the last year, the events at Hogwarts, what he’d been up to over the year, and — if she was being honest — she didn’t feel like she had the capacity to handle any of that today, especially after hearing Kingsley read aloud Fred’s will. The idea of Teddy — a small baby, who was too young to know any of the things he’d lost — managed to cheer her up a little.

“Do you want to see it?” Harry asked, taking out a tightly furled scroll of parchment. Maybe he knew that it would cheer her up, or maybe he needed this as much as she did.

She took the parchment, opening it up to read the letter.

Dear Harry,

Thank you for your letter. Of course I remember Nymphadora and Remus choosing you as the godfather to Teddy. It was Remus’s belief that Teddy would be safe with you, should anything occur to them. Given recent events, I am inclined to agree with him.

It is very kind of you to offer to come and spend some time with him. Why don’t you come over this Friday? I’m enclosing my address to this, feel free to come any time after lunch.

Sincerely,< /p>

Andromeda Tonks.

PS: Now that we’re family, you must stop with the ‘Mrs Tonks’ nonsense. Call me Andy, if Andromeda isn’t to your taste.

Ginny smiled when she got to the postscript. “She never struck me as much of an Andy. Do you think the rest of us could get away with calling her that?”

“I think you probably could,” Harry said.

When Ginny looked at him to hand him the letter back, she was surprised to see how teary he looked. “What is it?” she said, attempting to be as gentle as she could. Gentleness did not come very easily to her, but she would do her best with Harry; she had seen how upset he got with raised voices and people fighting around him–a product, she supposed, of the Muggle tossers who raised him.

“It’s just…” Harry seemed to hesitate for a few moments before everything came bursting forth all at once, “she called me family. George did earlier, too. I’ve never had a family before. And now Teddy’s going to grow up and not know who his family is, what his parents did for them, everything they sacrificed, and all he has is Mrs Tonks — Andy, I mean — and me–”

“Shut up,” Ginny interrupted. She stepped closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and looking up at him. “You’ve been family to us for ages now, probably since you first sat with Ron in the Hogwarts Express. And Teddy has more than Andy and you. He has us, too.”

Harry slowly nodded. Ginny reached up a hand and wiped under his eyes. She noticed he still looked upset, and she couldn’t stifle the sigh that left her. “Look. Just talk to Ron. It’s going to be fine, you both will make things alright soon enough, once he gets his head out his–”

“It’s not that,” Harry said. It was his turn to interrupt her now, it seemed. “Earlier, with Ron, you said… you said you–” he trailed off.

“Oh.” Ginny said slowly. It was sinking in now, what she had admitted to him earlier. She didn’t want to betray how embarrassed she felt by the confession, by the way she’d blurted it out in front of everyone, only some hours after they reconciled at all. Instead, she squared her shoulders and met Harry’s gaze dead-on. “Yeah. I said I love you. And I meant it. I didn’t mean to say it, not so soon, but… it’s the truth. I think I’ve felt like this since fifth year.”

Harry looked completely floored. Not for the first time, Ginny wondered if anyone had ever told him they loved him before. She doubted it. “I–” he stammered. “I, er–I feel the same way. Reckon I have for a while, too.”

Some part of Ginny, some insecure small part of her that had taken over completely in her first year and then been shoved down to a corner that she tried to ignore, felt reassured that he felt the same way. “Good. Would’ve been very embarrassing for me if you hadn’t,” she said.

Harry let out a watery chuckle. “Will you come with me?” he asked her, very softly. He lifted a hand, tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. Ginny felt inexplicably like crying at the tenderness of the gesture.

“Come with you where?” she asked, just as soft as him.

“To meet Teddy. I want you there,” he admitted.

Despite her best efforts, a tear slipped forth and slid down Ginny’s cheek. She wiped it hastily. She knew the significance of this, of Harry asking her to come with him to meet his godson, his family. “Of course,” she said. She didn’t even have to think about it.

“Thank you,” he said. She pulled him in to kiss him, too teary to even attempt any more conversation. “I love you,” he whispered, against her lips, barely louder than a breath. His arms wrapped around her waist, holding her close, keeping her secure.

She closed her eyes. “I love you, too,” she whispered.

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