Chapter Text
THE STORIES ARE TRUE
Tuesday, September 18, 2029
“I told you I wasn’t crazy about the idea of you starting at Hogwarts so soon after your treatment,” Teddy said. “The place is a germ factory.”
“I have to do something, or I’ll drive Ginny up a wall,” Harry replied. “You don’t want us to get divorced, do you?”
Teddy sighed. “You sound like shit.” He sighed again. “You look like shit, too.”
Harry chuckled. “Thanks, Ted.”
Teddy ordered Harry to open his mouth and stick out his tongue, and then peered inside with the light from his wand. “You have strep,” Teddy pronounced almost immediately. “It’s a mess in there.” He put down his wand and folded his arms in front of his chest as he looked at his godfather. “It’s a good thing Ginny pushed you to come here,” Teddy said. “You really should come to the clinic so I can do a full workup --”
Harry shook his head. “Please. No more of that, I’m weary from being poked and prodded. It’s just a bad cold.”
Teddy tapped his wand impatiently on one of his folded arms. “You’re working at Hogwarts part-time for a reason,” he said. “You had immunotherapy and four joint repairs just a few months ago. You’re still recovering from that.”
“I don’t even think I caught this at work,” Harry insisted from his seat at the kitchen table. “Hermione came to dinner last week. She’d been out traveling, and then she and Ron both ended up with colds, and Ginny was sick as well --”
“My point still stands,” Teddy replied. “A simple cold for Ginny, or for Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione, can put you in St. Mungo’s. The cold causes an infection, and if that infection lingers, it can travel to your heart or your kidneys. You need to stay away from crowded areas, and above all, stick to your schedule and make sure you rest. Can you at least open the windows in your office and classroom?”
Harry nodded. “Some of them, yes.”
“Get fresh air in there, as much as possible. Having the students work outdoors would be even better. Winter’s going to be worse for you. And no meals in the Great Hall! Have the House-elves serve your lunch and tea in your office. Please, Harry.” Teddy reached into a large green cabinet next to the kitchen table and pulled out two potion bottles and something in a paper sack. “This is for the infection,” Teddy said, handing Harry the larger of the potion bottles. “Take a mouthful tonight at dinner, and then twice a day at meals after that until it’s gone. This other one is for the swelling. Take one mouthful while you’re here and then one more once a day after that.” He handed Harry the other potion bottle and the paper sack. “And one of these lozenges every two hours to help with the pain, because the way things look in there, I know it hurts. They’re Fleur’s recipe.”
Harry took a mouthful of the potion as instructed, then nodded. “Thank you, Ted. Please come by on Sunday.”
“If you’re better. If you’re not, there’s always next Sunday.” Teddy then opened the kitchen door, which had been closed to give Harry some privacy; however, Harry was unsurprised to see Vick and Adora standing behind it. The baby was jumping up and down excitedly and cooing.
Harry felt himself grinning. “Adora! How is my darling?”
Vick, who was helping the baby stand and walk, led her inside the kitchen. “And my other darling,” Harry said to her. “How are you?”
“You’ve gotten skinny again, Uncle,” Vick said, a hint of disapproval in her voice.
“You know your aunt,” Harry said. “She’s been on a kick since we got back from America. No sugar in the house, and we’re eating egg whites and salads.”
“I’m going to ask Maman to owl you some pastries,” Vick replied. “She makes them for Dad already. He needs less, you need more.”
“That’s very kind of you, and your mother,” Harry said, watching as Vick guided Adora over to Teddy, who picked her up. “Adora, my love, I can’t kiss you,” Harry said to the baby. “Papa is sick.” He looked at Vick, then Teddy. “She’s okay with me in here?”
“Just don’t cough on her,” Vick said, smiling now. “But we’ll keep an eye on her. She wants to see her Papa.” Vick nodded reassuringly. “Stay here while I make you some soup. You sound horrendous.”
Harry protested. “Really, it’s fine --”
“Uncle,” Vick said. “Please. I want to. Have some tonight, and then have the House-elves keep the rest for you and deliver it with your lunch. It will help knock out that cold.”
“You two are basically the same person now,” Harry said, looking between his niece and his godson, who had taken a seat opposite him at the table. Both of them laughed, and their little daughter Adora, on Teddy’s lap, smiled and pointed at Harry, saying, “Papa! Papa!”
Teddy and Vick had been practically fused at the hip since they were children. Always drawn to each other, they had become the best of friends at Hogwarts, despite being in different Houses and in different years, and then became romantically involved as young teenagers. They had become Healers together -- Teddy had put off his schooling so that he and Vick could study at the same time -- and now they were married with a child of their own. Adora acknowledged Harry and Ginny as her paternal grandparents.
The family lived in Remus’s cottage in Yorkshire. When Remus had been alive, he had scrimped and saved his already meager resources to buy it so that he would have a permanent home of his own; housing had always been as difficult for him to find as everything else, due to his condition. Though the cottage had been a total ramshackle, Tonks had moved into it with Remus once they had made their commitment to each other. During the war, Andromeda had come to stay with them after her and Ted’s home had been attacked by Death Eaters, looking for Harry after Bill and Fleur’s wedding. They had all lived at the cottage together for close to a year, and Teddy had been born there.
After Remus and Tonks had been killed, Andromeda had buried her only daughter, together with her beloved Remus, in the village cemetery just a few miles down the road. After the funeral, Andromeda had left the cottage and returned to the home she had shared with Ted, leaving most of Tonks’s clothes and personal belongings alongside Remus’s, as if both of them would be returning at any moment to pick up their lives where they’d left off.
One weekend, several months after the war had ended, a few of the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore’s Army had come to this cottage. There were rumors that, in light of Remus being awarded the Order of Merlin, some officials in the Ministry of Magic wanted to seize the property and turn it into a war memorial, as had been done to Harry’s parents’ cottage in Godric’s Hollow. When he’d heard, Harry had said, in no uncertain terms, that he would not allow it. He wanted Teddy to have the choice on what to do with his parents’ property; for Teddy to be given the choice that Harry himself had been denied.
So they had all come here: Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione, Bill and Fleur, Arthur and Molly, Neville, George, and Lee Jordan, who had known Remus well from Potterwatch. They had toasted the memory of their friends, cleared out anything that needed to be thrown away, cleaned up a bit, and then cast Preservation Charms all over the cottage and hidden it away under protective enchantments. That way, Teddy inherited all his parents’ worldly possessions: their clothes, jewelry, records, books, pictures, and housewares. Harry had known how important it would be to Teddy, how much it would mean to him, to have so many of his parents’ things. The Ministry of Magic had left the Potters’ things to rot.
And Harry was pleased when Teddy and Vick had chosen to move out here to Yorkshire once they had completed their training at St. Mungo’s. With the Black family money that Harry had bequeathed to Teddy, they had opened their clinic in York and renovated the cottage. It was now a lovely family home on a picturesque property: colorful, warm, and welcoming. It rained often on the moors, but Vick, despite her great beauty, was a hardy woman who was unafraid of work. She was the Weasley cousin who took the most after her grandmother, Molly.
Half an hour later, Vick had placed an aluminum soup canteen and a crusty loaf of French bread in Harry’s hands and was firmly shoving him out the front door. “Go, Uncle,” she ordered. “You need rest.”
“Dinner on Sunday!” Harry shouted hoarsely as she closed the door in his face. “I’ll be cooking!”
“Good!” Vick’s voice rang out from behind the front window. “No rabbit food then!”
“Goodbye, Adora!” Harry yelled again, still hoarse. “Papa loves you!”
“Bye-bye, Papa!” he heard Adora say, then saw her little figure in her father’s arms, waving at Harry from behind the front window of the cottage.
Chuckling, Harry turned away and walked toward the front gate, tapping it where Tonks had carved a love knot with R+D inscribed below. Harry opened the gate and walked out a bit into the dirt and stone path that led down towards the roadway and the village.
The civil seizure of Harry’s parents’ cottage in Godric’s Hollow had been orchestrated by some familiar names in the senior leadership of the Ministry of Magic. When he’d become a Lead Auror, Harry had been granted access to all the records the Ministry held in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and he had decided to look up everything he didn’t know about his past, including exactly how his family home had ended up as a war memorial. The former head of the DMLE, Barty Crouch Senior, had led the committee that seized it. Harry, who was just starting a family of his own, had gone to Kingsley to inquire about getting the property back; Kingsley, in turn, had told him that it was possible, but after nearly thirty years, it would be subjected to a protracted legal battle. After that, Harry and Ginny had talked, and Ginny thought it would be best if they had a fresh start at their own home, in a place where their children could play Quidditch in the back garden.
Harry had thought he’d put the issue to rest. But Teddy and Vick’s act of moving into Remus and Tonks’s cottage, of making it a home…whenever he thought about it, Harry found that he wanted to reclaim his parents’ home even more, not less.
Had you been Minister for Magic, you could have just taken it, a little nagging voice said in the back of his mind. It was a dark voice that spoke sometimes, the side of Harry that was cunning. The voice was indeed correct -- but would the reclamation of his family’s original home be worth the other heartaches being Minister would cause him?
Harry walked about half a mile down the path, tamping down his feelings and trying to enjoy the evening weather, before he stopped, turned on the spot, and Disapparated home.
Monday, September 3, 2029 -- Two Weeks Earlier
Harry had started his first day as a Hogwarts professor by stating the obvious. “Right,” he’d said to a standing-room-only classroom packed with what must have been most of the fifth- and seventh-year students, a good number of the sixth-years, plus many students who’d looked significantly younger. “Let’s get some things out of the way. Yes, I’m teaching at Hogwarts now. Yes, it was by my choice. No, I didn’t get sacked from the Ministry of Magic.”
There had been an echo of nervous laughter. Good. Snark always worked.
Harry continued. “I’ve decided that the approach I will take to questions about my past, the war, the Battle of Hogwarts, the D.A., and any associated entities or events is just to say that everything is true.” More nervous chuckling. “Even the most outlandish stories. Those are definitely true.”
The laughter was louder this time, which was another good sign. Over the years, Harry had needed to become skilled in putting people at ease. “Now that all of that is out of the way,” he went on, “my actual role as a professor here is to work specifically with the fifth- and seventh-year students in preparation for their O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. exams. I have wide latitude to tutor in a variety of subjects as long as it fulfills those goals.” There were some suppressed groans of disappointment from the sixth-years and the younger students. “However, that does not mean I can’t do other things. I have been chatting with some of your other professors, and we do have some plans in the works for other duties I will have that will, hopefully, be helpful for all Hogwarts students.
“Now,” Harry continued. “So that we may all start off on the right foot, I’ll lay out my rules. Firstly, if you come to my classroom, you are expected to work. It is not a place for you to gawk, either at me or at anyone else. If you are not working or doing anything that I, in my expert opinion, consider constructive, you will be turned out and not allowed back in.”
Harry watched the students closely, maintaining eye contact with them so that they knew he was serious. “Secondly, my classroom will be open, for now, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon. There is no set schedule as of yet, so you may come and go as you please, but that will change as exams get closer.” He paused for a moment, then went on. “If I’m not in the classroom, don’t mess around. I will know. You are to act as the mature, disciplined students you should be, now that most of you are either fifth-year or above.
“Lastly, I will not tolerate whinging, arguing, unauthorized dueling, fistfighting, bullying, or other annoying behaviors whose names end in -ing. Because my study room and sessions are optional, I have the choice to permit or prohibit students from entering my classroom at will. Don’t go moaning to Professor Longbottom or Professor Sinistra, either; they will both tell you the same.”
The vast majority of the students seemed to have straightened up and were, clearly, keen on being on their best behavior so that they would not be denied access to Professor Potter. Harry continued to look at them as he spoke. “Now, with that being said and the rules established, I will be opening the floor to you. Please tell me what you wish to accomplish in your study sessions and what you want to work on. I can’t promise I can do everything, but I am here to try my best.”
There was a stunned silence, which Harry expected; he waited patiently for hands to be raised. “Sir?” a Ravenclaw said; he was quite mature, so he must have been at least a sixth-year. “You want to know what we want to do?”
“Yes,” Harry said simply. “You have tough exams coming at the end of the year. What do you want to work on in preparation for them?”
A Gryffindor raised her hand and began to speak when Harry nodded toward her. “I think we need to practice our spellwork. A lot of us are worried about practicals.” Around her, some students started nodding.
“Excellent,” Harry said, and with a wave of his wand, his own writing began to appear on the chalkboard. “Tell me more.”
As more students began to speak, the lot of them seemed to feel much more at ease. Hestia’s advice had been sound. The theoretical part of the exams did not seem to worry them as much as the practicals; if they were anything like how the students had been when Harry had been at Hogwarts, that did not surprise him. Most of his classmates had struggled with their spellwork well into their fifth year. Neville had not even continued Transfiguration into N.E.W.T.-level.
But, as the students filed out of the classroom, chattering excitedly and waving goodbye, some a bit shyly, it became apparent to Harry that there would also be great challenges ahead. He did not want to merely lecture -- the students already had professors for that. Transfiguration seemed to be a major source of anxiety for them, which also did not surprise Harry, given Professor Runcorn’s advanced age. Harry suspected she was deeply traditional in her teaching and attitudes. He’d have to figure out ways to make the subject more engaging for them.
While most of the students filed out, a few decided to stay behind to talk to Harry. Some of them he did not know at all, some of them he knew of, and some of them he knew. Dean Thomas’s two children, Nathaniel and Susannah, were now tall sixth- and seventh-years. Luna’s twins, Lorcan and Lysander, were sandy-haired fifth-years with fanged earrings. And Ernie Macmillan and Susie Bones’s son Edward was a seventh-year Hufflepuff; his elder sister Abigail, Harry recalled, was already a trainee in the Auror Office. Harry also met all three of Seamus’s sons, known collectively as the Finnegan Boys; all three were Gryffindors and were consistently in detention, much to Neville’s chagrin. He also met Cho’s two sons, who had the last name of Duncan, and two Ravenclaw girls who were the daughters of Padma Patil and the nieces of her twin sister Parvati, the Divination professor. More students had familiar last names of students who had been in the D.A. over the years, either under Harry’s leadership or that of Neville, Ginny, and Luna. If Harry knew of them, he had only ever seen them in photos or when they had all been quite young; now, they were all teenagers, grown into nice mixes of their parents -- identifiable eyes and features, or smiles, or general mannerisms.
It made Harry feel good to meet them all, finally. His own crop of kids, plus Teddy, plus the Weasley nieces and nephews, had been born soon after the war, so all of them had now completed their Hogwarts education and were moving on to their careers and grown-up lives. But this group was still young, and their enthusiasm was infectious. He kept having to reassure them that no, it was his pleasure to be teaching them at Hogwarts, his honor to be their teacher, and he was here because he wanted them to do well, nothing more and nothing less.
After more than an hour, the last of his new students exited his classroom, with many reassurances that they would be returning, along with Harry’s reassurances that he would be there to see them. The silence in the classroom did not lie heavily. On the contrary, it seemed electric with anticipation, with possibility.
Wednesday, September 19, 2029
Harry was exhausted. His cold and the subsequent infection he’d developed from it had wiped him out. Before his health had taken a marked decline, he’d rarely been ill. And he’d always been dedicated to his work: sick days were rare, holidays even rarer, and personal leave, almost never since Lily was born. The Ministry had to give him an enormous back benefits payment when he’d resigned.
It was now three in the afternoon, and Harry checked in on the few students who remained in his study hall, letting them know it was time for him to close up the room and for them to begin to head to their dormitories and dinner. Mornings tended to be much busier for him; after lunch, the students tended to be a bit languid, and during this time of the year, they wanted to enjoy the last remnants of the warm weather, not study indoors. Harry was planning on setting up an outdoor Charms practical session…as soon as he could shake this damned infection.
A few minutes after three, Harry closed up his classroom and headed to his office next door. Though it was the end of his instructional day, he wasn’t planning on leaving just yet. Ginny would still be at work for a few hours, and she’d always preferred a later dinner, so there was no rush to get home.
Harry and Ginny had spent the spring in the United States -- mostly in western North Carolina, close to Appalachia, where there was a small specialty hospital dedicated to magical medical research. It was called the Lamplighter Hospital, a name which Harry found both fated and a little ironic. Teddy and Vick had known about it through their work as Healers. Though Harry would be expected to pay a great deal of money for his treatment there, being a foreign citizen, he would be guaranteed not only good care but also discretion. The hospital was in an isolated area, difficult to travel to, and it would be off-season for tourists.
Teddy had wanted to accompany his godparents to the hospital. Harry understood why: Teddy wanted to know more for his own practice, and he was optimistic that his and Vick’s little clinic in York could someday be a similar type of institution in Britain. But Teddy also had an infant at home, and Harry, with much difficulty, told him that his priority should be his own family, his home, and his patients and medical practice. Harry had said that he’d told Teddy’s father, Remus, the same during the war.
After letting down Teddy as gently as he could, Harry and Ginny had planned to spend their time in North Carolina alone. Ginny had found a room in town, and she was planning on working on writing her romance novels during the time she wasn’t spending with Harry, who would be expected to stay in the hospital most of the time. They had both been looking forward to it, truthfully: Harry, for the first time ever in their marriage, would not be beholden to anything occurring at the Ministry of Magic, and Ginny, also, had taken time off from her work at the Prophet.
But within a week of their arrival in North Carolina, Bit had sent them a letter through the international post. She couldn’t bear to be apart from her parents; she was desperately worried about her father, and she was arranging to take a leave of absence from school to visit them.
She had not taken the news of Harry’s illness well at all. Bit had always been extremely close to both her parents, and had been devastated when she’d heard that her father was ill and was going to go to America for treatment. Harry, too, had been loath for her to see him in such a vulnerable condition. It was bad enough that Teddy and Vick knew, that Ron and Hermione knew, that Ginny knew, let alone his other children.
But Bit had come, making the longest journey she’d ever taken without her parents in her young life, and James had accompanied her to help her manage and make sure she arrived safely. Harry’s emotions, upon seeing both Bit and James come into his room after such a long and complicated trip, surprised even himself. He had been happy and grateful to see them, but also moved and proud.
The benefit of the time Harry had spent at the Eyrie with Al was that he and his middle son, whose relationship in the past had been the most difficult, were closer than ever. James, though, had drifted apart a bit from his parents in the past few years. He had taken a flat in Dorset during the Quidditch season, even though the family home in Hereford was relatively close by. Because of his sexuality, James was and had always been the young Potter most burdened by the price of his parents’ fame. Deeply private and discreet when it came to his relationships, he did not wish to live at the family townhouse in Grimmauld Place, but instead kept a flat of his own in London for use during the off-season, despite the great expense. James, above all, did not want his personal life to be the subject of gossip: his extreme good looks, charm, and superior athletic abilities also generated publicity and revenue for Puddlemere United. He’d been given a staggering amount of gold in his contract, enough to set him up for the majority of his life, and, like his mother had been when she’d played professional Quidditch, he was driven to perform at his very best.
Harry had fully expected James to remain in North Carolina for a short while and then return to England; he’d always been restless that way. But James had stayed and, even better, had spent a lot of time at his father’s side. He’d learned a lot from the Healers who specialized in physio, to be sure, but he and Harry had also spent a lot of time talking. Like Al, James had opened up to Harry in a way he hadn’t before, and he had been so wonderful with his mother and sister as well.
Harry would never have wanted to become ill, but the way all his children had handled it, including Teddy -- with their love and care and genuine concern -- made him immensely proud of them.
Shortly after Harry entered his office, the House-elf Mabel appeared. She already knew his habits. Mabel had brought Harry a hot cup of tea with milk and sugar and a beautiful fruit tart topped with blueberries and strawberries. The tart had to be Fleur’s work; she was a talented cook and baker in her own right, and she had always been a kind and generous sister-in-law to him. Harry thanked Mabel and then, after the House-elf disappeared, he finished his tea and pastry. It was a lovely end to the day.
Then Harry tapped the locked drawer in his desk with his wand: it opened, and, above his kit, sat the carefully folded Invisibility Cloak. Al had generously let him borrow it back on a temporary basis after Harry had told him he needed it for sensitive research on school grounds. Harry unfurled it and, with the familiarity of long practice, pulled it over his head. It felt like putting on a comfortable pair of pajamas. He then pulled out the Marauder’s Map from a pocket of his robes, along with one of his trusted black notebooks and a biro.
The Map had informed him that it had taken Prongs, under the same Invisibility Cloak, nearly a year to map the entire castle. Fortunately, Harry had his work to build on, rather than needing to start from scratch. Harry had decided to start his own mapping in the dungeons because they had been the least damaged in the Battle of Hogwarts and were likely to be largely unchanged since the Marauders’ days. But the dungeons were vast, and Harry’s cold had sapped his energy; he wasn’t nearly as far along as he’d have liked to be. So he’d decided to stay late today, even though he was still feeling achy and tired, in order to try to catch up.
Harry could not be entirely sure, but he believed that he, himself, was the one living person who knew the most about the topography of Hogwarts Castle and the grounds. Neville came very close through his time as leader of the D.A.; so did Ginny, for the same reason. There were also, of course, George, Ron, and Hermione, who had used the Map extensively at various points. Harry had all of them beat, though, with the ultimate prize: the Chamber of Secrets, which could only be opened by a Parselmouth. Or someone who slept next to one, in the case of Ron.
Map in hand, Harry headed down two floors to the dungeons. Though the dungeons were indeed vast, they had been easy to map. All Harry had to do, really, was verify that all the rooms were in the same place that they had been nearly sixty years earlier and add in any missing information.
Prongs had been very crafty. When Harry’s father was first mapping the castle, he’d managed to sneak into the Slytherin dungeon and dormitories under the Cloak -- so much for that House’s pride that no outsider had infiltrated their dorms in seven hundred years. Prongs had done it decades before Harry and Ron. However, as unappealing as a trip into the Slytherin dungeons was to Harry personally, he did want to verify that everything was still the same, so he decided to work on that today.
Measuring his breathing, Harry waited by the blank space of the wall patiently for a Slytherin to enter their common room, curious about their password -- today, it was Wolfsbane -- and then walked slowly and stealthily downstairs behind the student, surreptitiously casting a Silencing Charm on his footsteps. The student did not notice. Harry was a professional.
Above the fireplace mantles in the Common Room were two new portraits: one of Horace Slughorn, Harry’s former Potions professor, and the other of Severus Snape. Neville had informed Harry that Sinistra had moved Snape’s portrait down here when she had become Headmistress. The portrait did belong in her office, since Snape had been a Headmaster, but Sinistra was still entirely unable to forgive him for allowing the Carrows to beat and torture students, and for abandoning the school when Voldemort attacked it. Though Harry, intellectually, understood the predicament Snape had been placed in, part of him couldn’t help but agree with her reasoning, just a little. Snape had indeed been a brave man who had protected Harry and had ultimately been loyal to Dumbledore, but he had made plenty of mistakes and had harbored a cruel, vindictive streak of his own. McGonagall had been able to look past that when she was Headmistress, but Sinistra had not.
The Slytherin dungeons were the same now as they had been in the 1970s, when Prongs had mapped them: staircases, dormitory entrances, common areas. Slughorn and Snape’s portraits could not see Harry under the Cloak, and he was glad to have it -- though Harry was a professor now, he did not want to have to make an excuse about why his presence was necessary in the dungeons. Harry waited patiently again, for longer this time, for another student to leave the dormitory to head off to an afternoon activity like Quidditch practice or a club meeting. There had not been many Slytherin students in his study halls yet, past the first day, where most of the fifth- and seventh-years had come to gawk at him. Finally, two younger students were leaving together, dressed in what Harry recognized as workout clothes, likely headed off to one of the popular student exercise groups. Harry followed the students out, undetected again.
He really was tired and was feeling worse as the afternoon progressed. The excursion into the dormitory had taken around half an hour, and the thought of mapping through the endless twisting staircases down in the dungeons was making him dizzy. He really should do more…but the Slytherin dungeons were a big enough prize for today. Harry supposed putting off his homework was one of the advantages of being a teacher, rather than a student.
On his way out of the dungeons, Harry stopped by the Potions classroom, where Terry Boot was still running his afternoon session. He was charming and energetic and entirely unlike Snape, whose batlike presence Harry still half-expected to see down here. Terry laughed with the students and gave them praise, but also gave useful feedback on improvements they could make. He was also quite talented at explaining chemical reactions and harbored a genuine love of the subject. Harry was learning a great deal from him, as Snape had been a passive teacher who expected his students to learn from the textbook and only ever criticized them.
Once the class was dismissed, Harry decided to head home. He’d told Ginny about his project, primarily so that she wouldn’t expect him to come home right away after work. But, to both his pleasure and surprise, she had been very interested and had wanted to come with him to work on the Map, especially on the weekends. However, two adults wouldn’t fit under the Cloak, and, if they were indeed caught, there would be no good explanation as to why Ginny was there, as she was not employed at Hogwarts. Ultimately, for now, Harry had to decline her help with mapping, but her offer to work on it with him was enough. Harry brought the Map and his notes home with him in the evenings so they could exchange ideas. And while they were working together, Ginny seemed… mischievous, and impish, and fierce, and clever. In all the years they had been married, they had never pursued a project like this together, and Harry felt it brought out the best sides of her.
Ginny had not been at all upset when Harry had decided to leave the Ministry of Magic. Though he had taken a serious and severe pay cut to work at Hogwarts, especially part-time, they were quite comfortable financially, with a paid-off home and property and relatively few expenses. Bit’s tuition at the Conservatory was the main drain on their resources. Ginny had been terribly worried for Harry’s health, but as he improved in hospital and as she was able to spend quality time with her husband, her mood had improved as well. For her, the trade-off of losing a sizable portion of Harry’s income was that he would be home more often, he would be feeling better, and he would be much less stressed.
To cover himself and his movements, Harry returned to his office on the first floor, folded the Cloak and left it in his secured desk drawer. Afterwards, he grabbed his leather bag -- more so that it looked like he had work to take home than the actual reality -- and then went back downstairs to the Entrance Hall, where students would see him depart for the evening and say goodbye. He passed through the heavy oak doors, which were open, letting the evening light inside, and then walked up to the marble fountain in front of them. Harry wasn’t entirely sure, but he believed the fountain was in a similar spot to where Hagrid had laid him as he pretended to be dead, and as Voldemort had stepped around and over his body, attempting to humiliate him and all the rest of the surviving students and teachers.
This generation of students knew nothing of that: they only knew the stories, and Harry had told them they were all true. They didn’t know the ugliness that went unsaid, underneath the stories.
After pausing to pay his respects, he walked out of the castle gates and then, after reaching the end of the protective enchantments around the castle grounds, Disapparated home to Hereford.
As Harry entered the back door to the kitchen, he smelled the delicious odor of roasted meat and felt genuinely hungry for the first time in weeks. “Gin?” he called out. “Where are you? It smells good in here.” Ezekiel, Ginny’s Kneazle, trotted over to Harry and rubbed up against his legs, purring loudly. Harry bent down a little and gave him a stroke along his back and tail. “Oh, hello, Easy,” Harry said, greeting him.
Ginny entered the sunny kitchen after her Kneazle. She was in her house clothes. “I’ve made a roast chicken,” she said. “Lily is coming for dinner tonight. I told her you were still sick, but she said she’ll risk it. I took the afternoon off.”
“You never sent a Patronus,” Harry replied. “I was working on the Map. I would have come home earlier if I’d known.”
She smiled, a little sadly. “Teddy sent me an owl. He and Vick reckon you’ve lost weight again.”
Harry sighed exasperatedly. “I’ve been sick with this damned cold for almost two weeks. It’s killed my appetite.”
“And now you have an infection, and you’re still dragging yourself about.” She leaned on the counter. “It’s not just the cold. Teddy and Vick are right, of course. We’re going to have a nice dinner tonight with Lily, and then tomorrow, you’re going to stay home and rest. Get some work on the Map done, if you insist, but you’re not going in on your day off.”
Harry nodded. The thought of rest did actually sound appealing, alien as it still seemed as a concept.
“And you and I both need to eat,” Ginny continued. “You know me…my jeans get tight and I hear Gwenog’s voice, all these years later, calling me a fat layabout.”
“I never liked her,” Harry said fiercely. “I wish you’d never gone to play with the Harpies, the way she treated you.”
“I would have been treated the same anywhere else,” Ginny said reasonably. She smiled fondly. “You spoiled me, you know, at Hogwarts. When you were captain, you never got on any of the girls about their weight…nor the boys, for that matter. You were in the minority there, unfortunately.”
“I just pretended to slip an illegal potion to Ron,” Harry replied, chuckling.
“Eh, it worked,” Ginny said. “Once.” She laughed a little. “But anyway, Mum sent a dozen eggs as well, in beautiful colors, and a basket of cheese. And I picked up some sugar and juice for you, and those ice cream bars you like for your sore throat.”
Harry walked closer to Ginny, hugged her to himself, and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll put in a fresh loaf of bread while we eat,” he said, laying his chin on the top of her head. “You can come home for lunch tomorrow and have a nice sandwich with those eggs and the tomatoes.”
“Sounds delicious,” Ginny said. “You’ll have one with me, of course?”
“Of course,” Harry said, stroking her silky, fragrant hair. Its fiery red was fading, replaced by a softer gold, but none of that mattered to Harry: not the spectacles she wore more often now in front of her warm chocolate eyes, or the lines around her face, or the way her body looked different now than it had been thirty years ago. What mattered to him was that she was still Ginny, his dearest companion and friend, his beloved wife, and she had her own ways of trying to make things right, even when she didn’t have to.