Knickers

Chapter 11-New Beginnings Part 1

Harry and Ron sat quietly in the dim hospital wing at Hogwarts, Ron holding his new daughter as Hermione slept peacefully in the bed opposite the two men. Ron was the first to break the silence, the rough timbre of his voice cracking slightly from the tears of joy he had so recently cried. He hadn’t forgotten about what he and Harry had been talking about when they had been interrupted, however, “So, you were saying?”

Harry laughed lightly and, if Ron had paid closer attention to his best friend, bitterly, “I can’t believe you remember what we were talking about, Ron.” He motioned to the baby girl currently sleeping silently in her father’s arms.

Ron shrugged, his mouth quirking into a smile and his gaze falling briefly on Harry’s red-headed goddaughter. “Harry, let’s be serious here. Hermione and I have been trying for how many months to get you to tell us who your mystery girl is and you suddenly look like you’re going to tell us?” He shook his head. “You’re not getting out of spilling the beans just because Hermione happened to go into labour.”

Harry looked down at his lap, questioning the sanity of telling his best friend that he was in love with his sister and not only that, but he had been in love with her since his seventh year of Hogwarts. Furthermore, that the secret had come out and it had helped facilitate the break-up of his sister’s engagement. Of course, she had done the breaking off of said engagement herself but he still felt responsible.

“Harry, you’ve got to tell us,” Ron protested at his best friend’s hesitancy. “Do it for Ella then.”

Harry smirked at this. “Ella is 2 hours old Ron. She doesn’t care if I tell you or Hermione who I’ve secretly been pining away for for the last few years.”

“Years?” Ron looked shocked, looking down at Ella, who was looking up at her father with big, heavy blue eyes. He assumed they were his eyes (as Hermione had brown) but he couldn’t be sure if they were the product of genetics or the fact that his daughter was only a few hours old and hadn’t yet had her eye colour change from the blue that most babies were born with. “Did you hear that? Years!” Ella simply grimaced, yawning widely as her eyes drooped even more heavily than they had been before. He looked up to send his best friend a smirk and a wry look, standing to take his daughter and lay her down into the bassinette lying next to his wife’s bed. “Well? Aren’t you going to tell us then?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry protested, still smiling as he rubbed a hand through his hair and watching as Ron knelt over the bassinette, smiling tenderly at his firstborn.

And thus was the heart of his problem at the moment. It was true that he had spilled the beans to the Weasley’s, and to Oliver, but he wasn’t sure if now was the time to be bringing up such a topic as the ‘Ron, I’ve been madly in love with your sister for years.’ Somehow, he knew that it was going to have to be a more delicate procedure than that as Ron was perhaps Ginny’s closest brother, not only in age, but emotionally. He was about to say something to stall the conversation from its inevitable end when Hermione’s weak voice came suddenly up from the bed she occupied across the room.

“It’s Ginny, isn’t it?” she said softly, grimacing as she sat up and two sets of arms were immediately there to prop her up with pillows. “Thanks boys, you know it’s not necessary….”

“Not necessary?” Harry scoffed, desperately hoping that they would find a topic and stick to it, far away from the subject of Ginny, especially since she was now definitely NOT getting married in a few short weeks. He doubted that anyone in the Weasley family was going to forget that fact, or that he had been the one to ruin the engagement. Granted, Colin wasn’t blameless in the matter; he was a lying and cheating bastard, but he had been Ginny’s fiancée and that kind of relationship was not something a family like the Weasley’s took lightly.

“You just had a baby Hermione.”

“Don’t try to change the subject Harry Potter,” Hermione scolded, reaching for Ella who, despite the fact that she had been falling asleep mere moments ago, had seemed to sense that she was close to her mother again and wanted to take advantage of that fact.

“What are you talking about Hermione?” Ron asked in a confused voice, watching as his wife fed their daughter. “Harry wouldn’t be trying to change the subject unless there was some truth in what you said and there wouldn’t be truth in what you said unless…”

“I’m in love with your sister, Ron.” Harry finished, resigned to the fact that the secret was out and praying that his best friend wouldn’t fly off the handle like he had been known to do in the past.

“What?!” Ron exclaimed, reaching for the side of the bed and sitting down in shock at his wife’s feet. He hadn’t been expecting something like this. “You’re in love with my sister?”

Harry simply nodded.

“Are you crazy?! You know she’s getting married, right?” Ron said loudly, forgetting that they were in the hospital wing and he should keep his voice down.

Harry ran a tired hand over his eyes. Indeed, it was 3 in the morning; he had a right to be tired. But what he was really tired was of the situation itself. Truthfully, he had never hated himself more than the moment that he had realized that he was too late for Ginny and that, subconsciously frustrated by this unsatisfactory state, he had consciously ruined any chance she might have had with Colin by blurting out a secret that wasn’t his to tell. “Well, not anymore…besides, I’m too late.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “For Ginny? Harry, it’s not too late until she’s says ‘I do.’” She frowned, “And what do you mean ‘not anymore’?”

Harry sighed, not really sure of how to break the news that Ginny and he were both single again. “Colin wasn’t exactly being honest with Ginny and….something happened outside that brought that fact out to her attention.”

“So it’s true then…..Colin WAS having an affair?” Hermione said quietly, shaking her head, “With Laura. But he’s engaged to Ginny…”

“Was,” Harry said shortly, looking down at his hands and sighing, “I took care of ending the relationship, remember? And since when did you know that it was Laura? I thought…”

Hermione waved a hand dismissively at Harry, “Well who else could it be with? They’re co-workers, and quite frankly everyone knows that Colin doesn’t have much of a life beyond work and home. It was either Laura or some non-existent housekeeper.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry looked down at his hands. Hermione’s powers of deduction never ceased to amaze him, even after all these years. “I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have said anything. She just…she wouldn’t let me explain and,” he sighed harshly, “I told her too much inadvertently. I was just so angry and frustrated and…”

“Shhh,” Hermione shushed the distraught Harry by placing a hand on one of his. “It’s going to be okay.”

“What happened out there mate?” Ron said quietly, wanting the whole story from his best friend before he got Ginny’s version. Indeed, he was almost positive that his tempestuous sister would, instead of giving an objective version, reel him a tale of treachery and betrayal designed to incriminate Harry as the bad guy and paint her as the innocent, which Ron knew for a fact that she wasn’t. After all, he had grown up with her and, while she might at times embrace her softer side, he knew that in this particular circumstance her anger would be ruling her and she would end up saying things that she didn’t really mean. Harry was a different story. Since Voldemort was killed, he had become a different man, a more stable man. Hermione had once told him that she thought it had to do with the re-evaluation of his life that Harry had had to make once his ‘destiny’ was taken care of. His purpose, defeating Voldemort, was completed and from that point onward he had to redefine himself. The new Harry, it turned out, was a quiet and thoughtful man who rarely got really angry and who considered what he was going to say before he was about to say it. He was broken from his musings however by the sound of Harry’s voice.

“Katie managed to convince her doctor to let her out of the hospital for the night to come wait in the waiting room with me and Oliver. We both thought it was a bad idea, but she wouldn’t listen. And Ginny, Ginny wouldn’t leave it alone,” he sighed, looking up and meeting Ron’s gaze as he remembered. “She didn’t know why Katie had insisted on coming and spent quite awhile trying to convince both of us that she needed to get back to her hospital room as soon as possible. Eventually I lost my temper. I ended up mentioning that it was her that knocked Katie off her broom in the first place, although looking back at it, I’m sure it wasn’t intentionally…”

Harry didn’t notice the worried look that passed over Hermione’s face. She knew for a fact that the fall had been intentional on Ginny’s part.

“….And then everything started to come apart. She got angry that I had said that she may have caused Katie’s accident and that I accused her of not being brave enough to stick around to take any blame that might have been due to her and then Colin jumped in, insisting that I apologize to Ginny.”

“And did you?” Ron asked quietly.

Harry shook his head, “No, of course not. I got angry and defensive and I said that I would apologize to Ginny when he did. And then…it just started to come out. He and I fought and I decided that, at that moment in time, it was better to make Colin own up to what he had done instead of protecting Ginny from the truth. Katie tried to stop me but, it was too late. They argued and broke their engagement. Then, Ginny handed back the ring to Colin, he left, and then she turned on me.”

“How so?” Hermione asked.

“She accused me of sabotaging her relationship by telling her what Colin was up to and she asked me why I’d care about whether or not she was with a liar and…”

“That’s when you told her you were in love with her,” Hermione laughed quietly, amused by the story that Harry was telling them.

“That’s when I told her,” he murmured.

“And what was her reaction?” Ron asked.

Harry smirked bitterly, “She punched me and then she left. I probably shouldn’t have said anything to her at all about Colin.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you did,” Ron piped up, standing and pacing the floor angrily. “No sister of mine would ever marry someone that would cheat on her.”

“Well she was going to,” Harry retorted, “Had I not said anything, she still would be.”

“Again, I’m sure she wouldn’t have if she had known,” Ron continued more insistently this time. “On behalf of my entire family, thank you. Stupid or not, it was the right thing to do. ” He furrowed his brow. Something about Harry’s facial expression made him believe that that wasn’t all that was on the Boy Who Lived mind. “What else is wrong with you Harry?”

Harry should have known better than to think that he could pull the wool of ‘I’m fine’ over his best friends eyes. Ron was far more perceptive than anyone ever gave him credit for. Instead of beating around the bush, he decided to share exactly what had went on in the waiting room of the Hogwarts hospital wing. Right down to the most nasty details. After all, he knew that if he left it lie that Ron would have the information out of him anyways…..

And so Harry told all and when he was finished, he paused, waiting for the point at which his two best friends would either forgive his manipulations-or end their friendship forever

“And she punched you for that?” Hermione broke in incredulously. “After the elaborate plan that you and Katie laid out-a plan I might add was engineered with Oliver in mind, and not Ginny- she punched you for declaring your love for her?”

“No, she punched me for ruining her engagement and I’m sure for humiliating her in front of her entire family, but I can’t be certain.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, sick of hearing the negative talk emerging from Harry’s mouth. She looked down at her daughter, who had, sometime during Harry’s account of his grand confession to Ginny, fallen asleep midway through her dinner. With a sigh, she motioned to Ron to take the baby and watched as he did, setting Ella into her bassinette and absentmindedly doing up her nightgown. Harry, ever the gentleman, discreetly looked away.

“And you’re just going to let her get away from you? What about Katie? What did she have to say about that?” Ron piped up grimly.

“I think I’m going to have to Ron. She was pretty angry and Oliver…I’ve never seen him like that. He was hurt, genuinely hurt. As for Katie, I don’t think she’ll ever get over this and it’s all my fault,” Harry said quietly.

Hermione sighed, “What’s important, Harry, is that you’re no longer withholding the truth from anyone. From us, from Ginny, from Oliver, from ANYBODY. You love Ginny. She knows. Katie loves Oliver. He knows. This should be a liberating experience. The truth sets you free you know.”

Harry rolled his eyes, letting a bitter snort exit his nose and crossing his arms as he did so. “If this is the ‘liberation of truth’ Hermione, then I want to be imprisoned again.”

“You say that now,” she continued, “But a week from now, or even a month, you’re going to be sitting in the Weasley’s kitchen and they, in all likelihood, are going to thank you for sharing Colin’s affair with Ginny before it was too late. And then, with any luck, Ginny’s going to come around and see that this was the best thing for everyone. You might even find that she loves you too.”

Hermione tried really hard to look like she didn’t know that Ginny actually WAS in love with Harry at this point. It wouldn’t do for her to give away the secret now. After all, it was Ginny’s secret to tell and if she wanted to ignore Harry’s love than maybe she didn’t deserve it.

She continued, “As for Katie-I don’t know. Oliver was her best friend and that just doesn’t vanish overnight. Maybe there’s some hope still, for her AND for you.”

“Katie,” Harry murmured, sitting up straighter in his chair and looking panicked. “That reminds me, I told her I’d come back and see how she was doing.” He stood, looking torn as to where he should be going-or staying-at the moment.

“Oh go on Harry,” Ron broke through his inner argument. “We understand. We’ll see you in the morning then?”

“Yeah, that sounds good. I just…need to see if she’s alright. She was pretty broken up when I left her.”

“Go then,” Hermione said softly, gently laying a hand on Harry’s as it lay at his side. “Give Katie my regards.”

And, with a nod of acknowledgement, he was gone. Hermione just hoped that her words of encouragement would help. He was certainly going to need it if he was going to get Ginny to accept him into her life again.

“Ron?” she murmured, reaching over and taking her husband’s hand, making a decision about something that had been bothering her since the day of Katie’s accident.

“Yes Luv?”

“There’s something I need to tell you. Something about Ginny.”

No one had told her she couldn’t be an integral part of the acceptance process that Ginny would have Harry go through (if she knew Ginny at all, and she did…) and somehow, Hermione knew they were going to need it.