Chapter Text
Harry comes home, and Ginny is gone.
The fridge is empty, as are the cupboards. His coffee mug from the morning remains on the counter, unrinsed. In the sitting room, the decorative floral pillows are gone, and so is the plush rug. He really liked the rug. It felt nice against his bare feet.
Upstairs, Ginny’s absence is further marked. She’s taken the decorative paintings and the family photographs, the ones of the Weasleys, of Ron and Hermione, of the two of them.
He finds one, placed carefully on his now-bare pillow. Taken when they were fresh out of school. Ginny’s hair is the longest it’s ever been, tumbling down her shoulders to her waist. Her smile is radiant, her cheeks pink beneath her freckles. She looks very young, and so does he. His hair untamed, his glasses still the unflattering round frames he wore until Ginny convinced him to swap for a smarter, more angular pair.
She did that to him often. Buy this set of robes, wear that shirt to dinner. She taught him to flatten his hair and tailor his clothes and drape his arms around her in the exact right way for pictures. Harry hadn’t minded. He didn’t give enough thought to his appearance to care about it, and all of that seemed easier than the things Ron did for Hermione. Stopping to get flowers on the way home from work, massaging feet in the evenings, trading off cooking dinner and washing dishes. It looked exhausting. Ginny never asked for flowers, or chocolates, or jewellery, and she cooked every night while maintaining a spotless kitchen.
Harry stands in his stripped bedroom thinking of these things, staring hard at animated proof that they’d been happy, once. He tries very hard to dredge up the emotions that he knows he should be feeling: heartbreak, misery, anger. He mostly feels inconvenienced.
After a few unproductive minutes, he tucks the photo into his nightstand. He flops down onto the bare mattress in his work robes, and doesn’t bother toeing off his shoes. Something that would’ve had Ginny hissing at him, if she was around.
He knew she wouldn’t be here. He received a letter, after all. It arrived on his desk promptly at the beginning of his lunch. Cream parchment, crisp lines of ink, an incomplete circle dotting the i in the signature. He read the letter twice before folding it up and sticking it into his pocket as he stood up from his desk. Then he met Ron and Seamus for lunch. They discussed their morning cases, and their particularly obnoxious coworkers, and their weekend plans. After, Harry went back to work and finished out his afternoon.
Lying on his bed, he takes the letter out. The creases, made first by Ginny, form neat, perfect thirds. He’s taken to scrunching his letters up into a ball, because it’s quicker than folding and the owls will carry it either way. He thinks about crushing this one, too, an attempt at expressing the emotions he should feel but doesn’t.
In the end, he reads it again.
It’s short. Flat. Ginny’s been unhappy, and she’s not coming back.
He touches her name, loopy through the G and sharp through the following letters, and then drops the parchment to his chest. At least he won’t have to break the news himself. Ginny will tell her mother, and Mrs. Weasley will helpfully inform anyone who could possibly want to know.
He’s right. An hour later, he’s downstairs rummaging through the dry goods left in the kitchen and debating ordering takeaway. It was Ginny’s idea to renovate Number Twelve and bring the kitchen to the ground floor, knock down some walls. Properly modernise the house. It is admittedly convenient that he’s not in the basement when Hermione tumbles out of his fireplace.
She draws herself up, and then flings herself at him in a hug.
“Oh, Harry,” she says, a common refrain in school but one he hasn’t heard in many years.
The hug is nice. Her hair is soft against his chin, her arms clutch tightly at his back, and one hand rubs a soothing circle across a shoulder blade. She smells like warmth and cinnamon, as if she pulled a tray of snickerdoodles out of the oven right before hopping into the flames. It’s a nice smell. Relaxing. He misses it when she pulls away.
“We’ve just heard,” she says, mouth pressed flat with sympathy. “Ron wasn’t sure if you’d want him to come.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Hermione is quiet for a moment, looking at him. Her hand’s on his forearm, a comforting weight.
“You are, aren’t you? I thought…well, I did think that you two haven’t—I don’t want to overstep.”
“You’re not overstepping. You’re right. Ginny and I…”
Harry shrugs. It feels like there’s not much else that needs to be said. Hermione seems to understand by the way she gives his arm a gentle squeeze and pulls her hand away.
“Do you want to order food?” she asks. “Come round to ours for drinks? What are you in the mood for?”
“I’m fine,” he repeats. “I was about to order something if you want to stay. Call Ron over, too.”
She does. Ron unfolds into the room with tangible awkwardness, shifting his limbs around him like he can’t decide what to do with his hands. Eventually, he lands a soft punch on Harry’s shoulder, and asks, “How about that match? I thought Wimbourne had Montrose, but then that Thimblerig Shuffle…”
They actually don’t talk about Quidditch much these days, which means Ron must really be hurting for things to say. Harry indulges him, feigns interest in a play-by-play, tries not to smirk when he catches Hermione rolling her eyes.
The arrival of food is the opening she needs to plunge them into a different topic. Over pad Thai, Hermione drops an update on the latest anti-werewolf legislation, a bill that will never pass, but will certainly drum up articles-worth of negative press for werewolves as it dies.
It’s nice. Not the bill, of course, but the company. It could be any other evening they’ve spent together in the past few years. Harry does not feel heartbroken, or devastated, or even numb. He feels normal.
When they’ve finished eating, Hermione and Ron offer to sleep over, something they haven’t done since the first few years after Voldemort’s death. Harry waves them away, tells them to have a good night, and goes upstairs.
Lying on his bare mattress, he begins to write a list in his head. Things Ginny took, things he needs to replace. Things they never had but that he should probably get now that he’s single.
It’s an odd word. Single. The idea that his entire identity has shifted now that Ginny no longer sleeps next to him at night.
It’s more than that, he knows. The entire future they were meant to have, planned out since they were children. Marriage—he’d yet to go shopping for a ring, something Ginny never failed to bring up when her mother was around. Two-and-a-half children. An Auror and a professional Quidditch player, war heroes turned power couple and, eventually, domesticated parents.
Harry doesn’t feel heartbroken. He doesn’t. He feels…
This wasn’t supposed to happen, is what he thinks, when he’s tossed and turned long enough to discover how uncomfortable a bed without sheets and a duvet can be. He’s not sad but he’s missing something. His life was meant to include Ginny and now it won’t. Maybe he’ll see her around the Burrow, eventually. But he won’t come home to her serving up a meal in the kitchen. He won’t go to her matches and wait for her outside the locker room after. He won’t see her walking towards him in a white dress, smiling beneath Aunt Muriel’s tiara.
He’s not heartbroken, but he’s suddenly restless. He takes a shower. He goes downstairs. He curls up on the sofa. When he does fall asleep, in the grey hours of dawn, it’s to the refrain, This wasn’t supposed to happen…