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Ginny's tenth birthday will always be memorable because of three things that happened.
I. Dad got her a present from work. It was a very pretty porcelain doll, and although she was too old for one, it was so beautiful she placed it on her shelf next to the hovering figurine of Aidan Lynch on his broom. (Aidan winked hopefully at the doll, who didn't respond.) It was the first time Arthur had brought that "Muggle junk" home: all the way into the house, instead of hiding it in their broom shed.
II. A Prefect badge arrived in the post, and at dinner, Percy sat down on mashed potato in his chair. Mum had gone crimson, glaring furiously around the table. The twins had met her gaze as innocently as they could, and Bill who was home on a rare occasion, surreptitiously kicked them under the table. Molly had lovingly ladled two extra helpings of dessert to Percy later, because with Bill gone or acting neutral, Percy was the only one who disapproved of Fred and George running amok. Someone left crushed newt droppings in the envelope later, but Ron swore quickly he'd just misplaced some of his new Potions ingredients.
III. Years afterwards, when Ginny was nineteen, she used a golden clock to turn back time and prevent the twins from putting the mashed potato on that chair in the first place. No one had told her that was the last thing she should have done.
*
Summer, 2010.
Ginny wakes up on a lumpy couch, and curses. The last thing she remembers is smearing the Time Turner with mashed potato-covered hands, and the conviction that Hermione is going to kill her. After all, the meaning of "that's a prototype with some very unstable magic, don't touch that," is a mite unmistakable. Then again, it is Hermione's fault. She shouldn't be bringing things back from work and leaving them lying around Ron's flat, for Ginny to steal— er, borrow, in the first place.
Funny, how it doesn't feel like anything's changed.
She goes to breakfast, shuffling in her carpet slippers, expecting to walk into the same old argument about the cholesterol hazards of too much bacon. ("I'm a curse-breaking part-werewolf wizard, Fleur, I'm sure I have worse fears than cholesterol.") It always ends in the same way, Bill pulling Fleur down into his lap, and feeding her a bit of his breakfast. They Apparate to Gringotts together, and Ginny is always embarrassed on their behalf about how married they are.
The kitchen is empty. There's no trace of Fleur's frilly apron hanging on a wall, or the mud streaks of Bill's boots. Have they left already? They usually leave a note if they're gone before she's up: they've been extremely accommodating about letting her live in their guest bedroom, ever since George threw her out last week. He's not sure about wanting family around, not without Fred.
Homeless and squatting as she is, Ginny makes it to work fifteen minutes late, greeted by the sneer on Draco Malfoy's face.
"Good morning to you too," she sighs, hunting through her pockets. "Where's the jar? I'll put in five Knuts now."
Malfoy looks at her askew, the sneer firmly implanted. "What're you going on about?" he asks, but he sounds distracted. Following her line of vision, she notices that he's not sneering at her, but at two bent heads in a corner of the offices of The Practical Potioneer.
"I'm talking about the jar," she says impatiently, looking around for it; usually, it's enthroned on his desk in plain sight, next to the brass nameplate that reads Junior Copy Editor. "You know the bet we had? About my unpunctuality? I put in five Knuts every time I'm late, and you give me back five Knuts from it every time you're late, and that way the jar never empties?"
Malfoy looks at her in confusion out of the corner of his eye. "Gin, there are many ways to make easy money off you, but five Knuts is too low a rate for my style. Bloody moron with his begonias— Weasley, are you okay?"
Ginny, who tripped over a chair leg and landed on the floor with a crash, glares balefully up at him. "No," she growls, batting away the hand he's extended to her. "What the hell did you just call me?"
"Weasley," repeats Malfoy uncertainly. "I called you Weasley, didn't I?"
"Before that," corrects Ginny, staring at him.
Malfoy's mouth quirks upwards in a familiar smirk. "Oh, Gin. Never fails to get your back up."
"Since when do you call me that?" This is, she thinks, too early for her day to fall apart. She has much more to worry about than the obligatory smug office bastard's idea of mind-games and torture.
"Since always," Malfoy is saying slowly, cocking his head, and regarding her curiously. "You know, since fourth year, when you made me spill punch on my dress robes, and we acted like loons to the Weird Sisters' music afterwards. Weasley, are you all right?"
No, she is not. But her heart has stopped beating, and it's harder to breathe, and articulating those words is harder than dying.
"That's not how the Yule Ball happened," rasps Ginny, whispering. "It can't be."
"I know I spent Boxing Day pretending it never happened, but that didn't work out too well for me, really." Malfoy gives her a wry smile, shrugging. "There was a moment when your three brothers tried to shove my head down Moaning Myrtle's toilet, and I remember thinking that reality is twisted and cruel, because your brother Percy was supposed to have graduated already, and I thought I could avoid his wrath."
Three brothers. Percy. "Percy Weasley tried to shove your head into a toilet?" repeats Ginny stupidly.
"It was his idea. Fred and George kept watch for teachers, and I spent five incoherent minutes explaining I hadn't tried anything inappropriate with you, and the night before was very pleasant despite that."
"You're lying." The accusation is automatic. If she knows her brothers, then she knows the roles would have been reversed; Fred and George would never be worried about teachers, and Percy would only have to be persuaded very hard to defend family honour. There's no other way he'd collaborate with the twins... is there?
"Malfoy," she says suddenly, suddenly aware of their position, chatting almost amicably in the middle of the office floor, and no one's looking at them askance. "Malfoy, does Percy get along well with the twins?"
She expects him to snort, and tell her he has no real interest in her family dealings, but he turns that same curious frown on her again. "Of course he does," he says matter-of-factly. "Better than you do, at any rate," he adds with a laugh. "Thank god I'm not really a welcome face at your family Sundays, or else the dinner table tension would kill me."
"Why would I invite you to Sunday at the Burrow?"
Yes, agrees the only sane part of her brain that isn't screaming in a wild panic, that's the most important thing to fixate on here.
"Why would I want to spend Sundays at the Burrow?" says Malfoy, still laughing. "But I suppose as my mate, you're too considerate of my feelings to invite me. Do you want a hand at replying to Letters to the Editor today?"
Ginny can't hear. The thunder of bloodrush in her ears is making the world hazy and topsy-turvy all around. Why would Malfoy call her his friend? Why isn't she getting along with the twins? Why does Malfoy talk like Fred's still around? How did she become his friend? A wave of nausea lurches through her body, as she tries to picture her brothers threatening Malfoy as though he was her... did she— were they—?
"No, Weasley, thanks for asking so coherently, but we are not, indeed, some sort of shag buddies." Malfoy's voice is a degree cooler, less amused, and her eyes snap to him. He holds her gaze for a second, smiling tight-lipped, and turns away to go to his desk.
For the first time, she sees what he'd initially been bothered by. Percy Weasley is by the water cooler at the back of the office, stiff and formal, but making a short-haired Penelope Clearwater laugh. A few feet away, trying to conceal his obvious boredom is someone she wished could feel bored again. There is Fred.
*
Dear Bill.
The corner of the parchment bears the address of The Practical Potioneer, flagging it as office stationery. Ginny's hands are shaking so badly that the ink runs in errant directions on the lines she tries to write.
Woke up this morning in your house. What used to be your house, I'm beginning to think. Did you and Fleur get married, decide you're going to have a daughter, and name her Victoire after one of Fleur's novels?
She doesn't dare ask anything else. She sends the letter before she can tear it up, and locks herself in the women's loo for ten minutes before she dares come out again. Part of her is hoping that an earthquake would rip through the ground in the meantime, and she'd come out to see everything is the way it's supposed to be. The way she remembers it.
Dear Hermione, she begins in her mind anyway. I fucked up in ways unimaginable. I think I broke something somewhere.
*
There's a note at the bottom of her handbag with the day's date scribbled on top, reminding her that she's agreed to have a coffee with Harry in the Ministry cafeteria. The smiley-face drawn below it seems to be rather sardonic, and someone else has snidely written, Thinks he's a regular Ludo Bagman, he does.
Harry (the Harry she knows) plays Quidditch professionally (retirement age for flying sportsmen is something like thirty-five) but the Department of Games and Sports is always courting him. Harry, in turn, is courting Luna Lovegood, who works in the Department of Magical Creatures, so he's often seen at the Ministry. Ginny (the Ginny she remembers being) finds this cute, and would have never compared him to Bagman of all the slimy gits in the world.
(She has a sneaking suspicion that Malfoy's the one who wrote that anyway.)
He looks no different than what she remembers, tanned from the sun until his scar shines whitely under his messy fringe. Harry usually grins to see her, but now his smile is polite, and he calls her "Ginny" with some reserve. She clutches the visitor's badge tightly under the table, trying to convince herself that she can't fool the telephone box, she is Ginevra Weasley.
She attempts weakly to start a conversation, but she can't remember why they're meeting in the first place. She has a nasty feeling she knows why Harry isn't her sort-of friend, or why Fred and Percy hadn't acknowledged her earlier. If she's Draco Malfoy's new best friend, her life has panned out differently than she remembers living it.
"How're things with Luna?" she asks, thinking this is the safest topic.
"They're good, she talks about you sometimes." Harry runs a finger on the rim of his coffee mug, carelessly averting his eyes to the tabletop instead of her. "How's your work?"
"It's good. Um, good."
"Potions always was your best subject, Hermione tells me."
"After Charms, yeah," she agrees, wondering now if she looks like Snape's pet or an honorary Slytherin after the fact. All she remembers is sweating in the dungeons with her housemates and the fifth-year Ravenclaws, trying to avoid Snape's barbed criticism.
"Snape and Flitwick. You know how to pick 'em." There's a brief moment when the clouds part, and she sees a sliver of the old Harry's grin. And then it's gone. The new Harry frowns abstractedly, and looks like he wants to leave.
"I saw Fred today," she blurts desperately, anything to keep him in his seat. "At work. Fred and Percy."
Harry looks at her blankly. "Er, that's great."
Why is he not surprised?
"He and Percy seem very close."
For the first time, Harry notices the surprise in her tone. "Yeah," he says slowly. "They are, aren't they? Ron was convinced, back in third year, that Percy would blow a gasket when Fred and George got a Prefect letter."
"The twins made Prefect?" gasps Ginny. They've always been cleverer than their grades indicate, but by the time fifth year came around for them, they'd scraped three OWLs each. No one had been more disappointed than Mum or more disapproving than Percy.
"No surprise was it?" says Harry, rolling his eyes. "They've always been top of their year. And the letter came, and neither would say which of them it was addressed to, but only that they refused. Percy was upset for a while, but he came around. Ron says he was just happy with the marks they kept getting, after that something about fraternal loyalty being magnificent and enough."
Ginny's nearly gagging at this recital of pure Percy pompousness, but Harry's surveying the coffee mug thoughtfully. "Bit thick of him, yeah?" she manages to say.
"Yeah," agrees Harry half-heartedly. "Though that's pretty generous coming from your brother. Percy, I mean. He's stuck by them ever since then."
"But—" The twins can't stand Percy.
No, realises Ginny, Percy couldn't stand the twins, ever since they were little. Impressed as he had been by their ability to maintain a good academic record, he'd disapproved of their pranking. By the time Percy had reached fourth year, an obvious candidate for the next Gryffindor Prefect, the twins had quickly realised that if they weren't careful, they'd be following his example. It would be worth it to make Mum happy, having another badge in the family, but only one brother between two identical ones could wear it.
"Hmm?" prompts Harry, glancing up at her. She shakes her head, swallowing hard.
"Nothing. Sorry."
"Right." Harry drains his coffee in one swallow. Ginny wants to ask about Bill, about Charlie, about George, whether he remembers the primal pain of having lost a part of himself. Something twists inside her chest. A sickening thought. Had Fred replaced George in this time-altered reality? Was it supposed to be only one Weasley brother at a time? Why else hadn't she seen him at the office too?
But Harry is already making some excuse about schedules and time and necessary appointments and trying to take his leave. Ginny stares helplessly up at him, frozen and limp in her chair at the same time. She wants to ask, the question is burning her tongue in her silent mouth, but she's more afraid than she's ever been of the inconvertible truth of knowing.
"Harry!" someone calls out, a girl's voice. Ginny looks up dazedly, half-expecting Luna. She sees Harry grin in pleased surprise, and hastily murmur goodbye. Luna isn't calling. It's Alicia Spinnet, from the erstwhile Gryffindor Quidditch team, and she's standing very, very close to George. Ginny feels her stomach plummet, this time not because she can see George, but because she's very sure George's seen her, but he looks like he can see right through her.
*
Draco Malfoy isn't very used to girls. The only girls he's had much to do with are the ones Ginny pushed him towards in Hogwarts. ("Yes, you thick-headed idiot, all that giggling doesn't mean she finds your face funny, it means she wants you to ask her out.") He's never been any good with girls when Ginny isn't around, telling him what to do, but he pretends anyway for their benefit that he knows the ropes of being seductive and charming.
He knows the ropes of being manipulative and getting what he wants, but that seduction and charm stuff mostly works on girls in the Slytherin Common Room, where the only half-decent lookers are either older or younger than him. He's mostly left to practice his skills on girls his age, and they're so good at it themselves, that it's like playing chess. He's too busy trying not to get beaten that he doesn't have much time to be turned on.
Six years later, he still doesn't understand why women get upset when they listen to him go on about Ginny. (Loads of straight blokes have female friends, and their girlfriends don't really care too much.) All he knows that it's good ammunition to use against her brothers, all smoothed down into respectable and proper Ministry jobs between Ron and Percy, disapproving of their youngest sister who was the prank-pulling firecracker in school.
There have been times in those six years, when he's had too much Firewhiskey, and Pansy teases him while he's hungover, about being so clueless. He dreads to hear what he must ramble on about, when drunk, but Pansy assures him he becomes very single-minded in his mental pursuit of an anonymous someone.
He knows he should, as Junior Copy Editor, lord it about in the office a bit, but his baser instincts always overpower him. He's given up trying to resist. When Ginny Weasley writes him a hysterical, smudged (with tears, he thinks uneasily) note asking him to meet her, only braver men than Draco would pause to drop everything and go to her side. He is, he realises, lovesick. It's pathetic.
*
"If your brother finds me here, I'm going to be made spit roast, you know," he tells her casually, just in case this really had slipped her mind. His fingers comb soothingly through her hair, mechanically, but he's very conscious of the sound his breath makes as his chest rises and falls, her nose buried in his shoulder.
"Should you be worrying about that?" asks her muffled, shaky voice.
He honestly doesn't know, but it's a better thought than the others chasing around in his head. For instance, her confession that as of yesterday, she was convinced she despised him. He doesn't know what he did to earn her loathing (her brother's, maybe) ("I don't loathe you, I can't stand you; there's a difference,") but it's a dead weight settling over his labouring heart.
Then there's the other stuff she's been saying, and really, it's easier to think of her as mad. But Father wouldn't have thought so: Father would have understood. The wanton urge that must have led Ginny to change the past is something Father understands very well, behind the bars of Azkaban.
"Yesterday, you wouldn't have been the first person I'd come to for support."
But here they are, sprawled spread-eagled on the floor of Shell Cottage. The sunlight falling through the slats of the window illuminates the dust swirling in the air above them. He doesn't like this Ginny, he doesn't want her to regret being here with him.
"Yesterday, I'd lost Fred," she goes on, stirring in his arms, and turning free of him to roll away on the wooden floor. "Today I've got him. And I've lost everyone else."
"No, you have me," he points out. He turns on his side to be able to look at her better, narrowing his eyes against the dim sun. "You have me," he repeats, more stubborn than a child.
"You were someone else yesterday," she points out, with a choked sort of laugh. At least she appreciates the irony, he thinks. Merlin, someone has to.
"But it's not yesterday anymore. It's today."
The tears pool in the corner of her eyes, the concentrated realisation of that truth. Her eyes are bright and dark and crying, and it runs an icicle through his chest, that cold feeling of not being able to fix things for her. He crawls closer towards her, and she stares up at him, not moving, hardly breathing. She's sucking in her breath, he can tell from the tight plane of her half-exposed stomach and the tautness of her limbs when he touches her arm. He brushes his thumb across her lower lip, tilting up her chin as he lowers his head to tentatively press his lips to hers. He hears her breathe, expel her first breath, and with it, fear and mourning. She's scared, she's still thinking about tomorrows and grotesquely faraway yesterday, but his tongue is tracing the line of her lower lip. His body suspended above hers, his hand runs against the curve of her side. Her lips part suddenly, and she isn't crying when she kisses him. There's fervour, determination, and steel in her grasp when he feels her hand at the nape of his neck. She kisses him, and he can taste his Ginny, buried layers beneath, trying to reconcile with the new reality.
He's seen a Fiendfyre only once. It licks the crab-apple tree in the yard of a Yorkish Muggle twice, and the tree crumbles and curls into ashes. The fire lights the oppressive dark for what feels like a century, aping terrible shapes against the sky. He thinks this Ginny in his arms is like the shapes that a Fiendfyre takes after it's burned to ashes what either of them knew about yesterday. Unlike the Fiendfyre, this Ginny really is in his arms, she's not an illusion he can extinguish by magic.
*
Ginny. Are you feeling alright? And yes, yes, and I think yes (to answer all your questions) (though I'm not quite sure about the last one, but thanks for giving me a good counter to the everyday bacon argument.)
See you at dinner; I'm cooking, and see if you can get a table and some chairs out on the beach?
Bill.