As the month of July came to a close, the mood at the Burrow remained subdued. The knowledge that George was in St. Mungo’s, under guard to prevent him from hurting himself, cast a pall over everyone in the house.
While Mrs. Weasley visited George every day, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny busied themselves cleaning up Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. “When he’s ready to come home, he’ll appreciate having the shop prepared for business,” Ginny had said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement.
The job was much more difficult than it had seemed at first glance. Ron had thought it would be the work of an afternoon to have the place sorted out. “A few cleaning spells, and we’ll be done by dinnertime,” he’d said. Harry “ and, judging by their doubtful expressions, Ginny and Hermione “ were not so sure.
They were proved right when Ron’s “Scourgify!” aimed at a puddle of melted Fever Fudges rebounded back at him and caused large boils to develop on his face “ and elsewhere, as a stream of anguished cursing made clear.
While Hermione pulled Ron into the storeroom to attend to his boils, Harry and Ginny began cleaning by hand. “There’s too much magic in here; it’s everywhere,” Harry said, shaking his head. “All these spells were never meant to interact.”
A week later, Harry felt much the same as he had during that first summer at Grimmauld Place; they were waging war against the shop. It had drawn blood “ all four of them had got quite good with basic medical spells, out of sheer necessity. But progress had been made. All of the most dangerous items had - they believed and hoped - been removed, and the shop proper was something close to presentable.
Another couple of days, in Harry’s opinion, and the storeroom would be beaten into submission as well. Once all the magical debris was removed, the holes in the walls and the damage to the floors could be repaired, and at that point magic could be used to speed the job along.
“Well, he’ll have a very clean shop,” Hermione said, surveying the work. “Nice and orderly.”
“That isn’t right,” Ron protested. “A joke shop isn’t supposed to be nice and orderly. It ought to be crazy and dangerous.”
“Ha!” Hermione scoffed. “If that’s true, we should have left it as it was!”
Harry laughed. “He said ‘dangerous,’ not ‘lethal.’” Hermione’s got a point, though. George’ll be able to make a clean start when he comes back. There was silence for a moment; he assumed they were all thinking the same thing “ would George want to keep running the shop when he came back? For his part, Harry had no idea. Everyone reacted differently to grief. And it was worse for George than for the rest of the Weasleys “ he had lost not just someone he loved, but a part of himself.
He remembered once seeing a programme on the telly about identical twins. Even in the Muggle world, they seemed to have eerily close relationships. One set of twins on the programme had been separated at birth, raised hundreds of miles from each other, and yet their lives had been unbelievably similar. Despite not knowing each other until they’d been thirty years old, they dressed the same, they had bought the same model “ and even colour! “ of car, married women with the same hair colour, eye colour and first name. At the time, long before he had known of his own magical nature, Harry had thought that there was something supernatural about it all. So if the twins are magical to begin with, it must be even more true, Harry decided.
A hand waved in his face, breaking his train of thought. “You in there, Harry?”
“I was just thinking about “”
“Something about Muggles and twins,” Ginny said. “I know. I need to ask you something; come back to the storeroom?” She took his hand and pulled him with her, leaving Ron and Hermione to stare at their backs.
“I’m still not sure if I like that we can do this,” Harry said as the door closed behind them. “It might be nice to have some secrets, even from you.”
Ginny smiled, and in spite of himself, Harry followed suit. There could be nothing wrong in the world when she looked at him like that. “We can talk about that later,” she said, and then the smile was gone. The room was suddenly much darker. “I don’t think I like what I was feeling from you.”
Harry was at a loss. “I don’t know -”
“I don’t like it because I think you’re probably right, and I wish you weren’t,” she said, her hand shaking a bit. Harry squeezed it, trying to steady her. “If Fred was so close that he was literally a part of George, maybe he won’t be able to recover. Imagine having your…I don’t know, having your personality cut in half.”
It was a harrowing thought. How could you go on after something like that?
“I was thinking,” Ginny continued, “I don’t know what you would say, but maybe if we told George about…well, what you saw in the forest?”
Harry had not intended to share that with anyone else; it was for Ginny alone. But if it could help George… “Yes. I-if you think it’ll really help, if he’d want to know it. But I wouldn’t want him to think -”
“That Fred’s waiting for him, and he gets the idea to join him right away instead of living his life and meeting him fifty years from now?”
Harry sighed. “That’s exactly it. Maybe we should sleep on it, see what we think?”
Ginny nodded. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She pulled herself close. “For being willing to share.”
“Hey, he’s family. I’d do anything for him,” Harry replied, putting his arms around her.
“I know,” Ginny breathed, and then she kissed him.
When they returned to the Burrow that evening, there was a letter waiting for Harry. It was addressed in Hagrid’s messy script, but the splotchy reddish stain on the envelope gave away the identity of the writer just as surely.
It was a mark of how twisted Hagrid’s views were on the subject of what sort of creatures made acceptable pets or objects of study that Harry actually hoped the stain was Hagrid’s blood. It was the least awful thing it could be; if it wasn’t, Harry didn’t want to guess what animal it came from “ or, worse, what it was if it wasn’t blood.
Dear Harry,
I just heard the good news from Professor McGongo “ McGanag “ Prof M. It was great of her to invite you back to finish school (and Ron and our Hermione as well).
The repairs are going faster than we thought. Hogwarts will be ready on Sept. 1. You’re invited for tea when you get here. You can meet Happy, he just arrived last week. He’s a Giant African Fanged Razorbeast. He’s beautiful. And so friendly! Amazing creature, you’ve never seen anything like him before, I’ll bet!
I’m sorry I can’t come to your birthday party. There’s too much to do here. It’s been a difficult time settling down the unicorns. I’ve never seen them so riled up before. But Prof M. may be there. She says she has something to discuss with you before school starts. She won’t say what it is, but I have my guesses, and if I’m right you’ll be very surprised.
Good luck, and happy birthday!
Your friend,
Hagrid
Harry gave the letter to Ron once he’d finished it, shaking his head. He watched as his friend read it, laughing as Ron’s eyes bugged out. He knew what Ron was thinking, as he had precisely the same reaction.
“A Giant African Fanged Razorbeast. Giant. Fanged. Razorbeast. We always knew he was barking, but this…it’s beyond mad. I don’t know if there even is a word for how mad this is.”
If I had to think of Hagrid’s description of an ideal pet, Harry thought, I don’t think I could do better than Giant Fanged Razorbeast. That puts Blast-Ended Skrewts to shame!
“Let me see that,” Hermione said, taking the letter out of Ron’s hands. She read quickly, and then reread it; Harry thought she couldn’t believe it said what it did and needed a second read to convince herself. “You weren’t joking,” she went on, her face pale. “I suppose that explains the blood on the envelope?”
“It must,” Harry said, looking distastefully at the red stain. “‘Happy’ must have bit him, or slashed him, or…Merlin only knows what. But he’s thrilled as can be.”
Ron was shaking his head slowly back and forth, repeating the words “Giant Fanged Razorbeast” and “He named it ‘Happy’” to himself over and over. He only stopped when Hermione took him by the arm and led him off, leaving Harry and Ginny alone in the kitchen.
Harry helped himself to a piece of pie while Ginny read the letter herself. “What about the unicorns?” she asked thoughtfully. “Do you think it’s just Hagrid’s new pet that’s got them upset?”
Seven years ago, the unicorns of the Forbidden Forest had been prey for Voldemort; Harry wondered if something evil could be lurking there now, hunting them again. “I hope that’s all it is,” he said, not really believing his own words.
“I hope so, too,” Ginny repeated back to him, her tone as unconvincing as his. “And what was that about McGonagall coming here with a surprise for you?”
Harry gave Ginny a blank look in reply. He had no idea what Hagrid meant; he strained to think of anything that might make sense of it, but nothing came to mind. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Maybe she’s coming to tell you that you get an automatic pass on all your NEWTs as a reward for saving the world,” Ginny snickered.
I don’t think so! But it would be nice… “Hey!” Harry’s thoughts were distracted by Ginny grabbing a fork and starting to eat the pie right off his plate. “Get your own!”
“But it’s so much better sharing with you,” Ginny answered, in a syrupy voice. “Don’t you want to share with me?” she added teasingly. “You tell me you love me, but you won’t even give me a bite of pie. Some hero you are!”
They both dissolved into giggles, and thoughts of Razorbeasts and unicorns and visits from Headmistresses were forgotten.
The thirty first of July dawned with a bright, cloudless sky. It was a perfect morning, warm but not hot, just right in Ginny’s opinion. The mood inside the Weasley home was brighter as well; her mother “ and, by extension, everyone else in the house “ had seized on Harry’s birthday as a distraction from George’s troubles.
All the Weasleys, except for George (and Charlie, who had already been back in Romania for two weeks), as well as Hermione, were waiting in the kitchen. When a head covered with unruly black hair poked itself through the door, they all burst into an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
Mrs. Weasley was the first to reach Harry, wrapping him in a suffocating hug. “Eighteen years old! I wish James and Lily could see you. They would be so proud.”
They can, Mum. They’re watching him right now, Ginny thought. But I doubt they could be any prouder of him than we are! She waited until her Mum stepped back, and allowed Harry a moment to catch his breath, before kissing him herself. “Harry birthday, Harry,” she whispered in his ear.
“It is already,” he replied just as quietly. Then, louder, he said, “This is brilliant. I can’t believe all of you got up so early just for me!”
Everyone assured Harry that he deserved it, although in Ginny’s opinion Ron seemed a bit less enthusiastic about the early hour than the rest of the family. That didn’t stop him, however, from standing up and presenting Harry with a gift. “This is from all of us,” he said, adding, “but it was my idea.”
He handed over a long, thin, inexpertly wrapped package. Ginny wondered what model Ron had gotten; he had said he would “take care of everything” a week ago, but there hadn’t been a word about it since then.
Harry tore into the wrapping, to reveal a Nimbus 2002. “T-this is…amazing. How…it’s…wow,” Harry sputtered. We all chipped in, but we didn’t give him nearly enough money for that!
“I know it’s not a Firebolt,” Ron said hesitatingly. “But it’s pretty good. When I went into Quality Quidditch Supplies and mentioned that I was looking for a broom for Harry Potter, they couldn’t move fast enough. The owner, Mr. Swiftsure, just about gave it to me for free.”
Harry gave Ron a bone-crushing hug. “You’re the best mate anybody could ask for, you know that?”
“You just remember that come next March,” Ron answered. “And you have to let me have a go on it whenever I ask.”
“No worries,” Harry agreed. “I-I don’t know…this is so great, you’ve been so good to me,” Harry said, addressing all the Weasleys.
“Nonsense, Harry,” Mr. Weasley said firmly. “You’re family. This is how families act towards each other…well, how they ought to, at any rate. It’s time you got used to it.”
Everyone agreed, and Harry’s protestations that he didn’t deserve such extravagant gifts finally ceased. As they all sat down to breakfast, Ginny whispered to Harry, “After we eat, I’ve got another gift for you, upstairs.”
It struck him as a very strange thing to think, but Harry hoped that Ginny’s gift was something she’d bought, and not the gift she had intended to give him last year. She was waiting for him upstairs right now, and he had already spent close to an hour talking himself into just going up there and finding out.
It wasn’t the right time. Last year, when it seemed likely that they might never see each other again, he had been ready to accept her gift of herself. And over that year “ especially in the past few weeks “ he had been thinking about how significant a gift it was. She was offering him all of herself, giving him the most intimate and private thing anyone had to give.
There would be a moment when it was right, but it wasn’t today, with her whole family one floor below.
There was something else. He was, he admitted to himself, nervous. He knew how it all worked “ well, the theory, at any rate. He’d known since he was ten years old.
Dudley had been invited to a sleepover party at the home of one of his horrible classmates, and the boy’s parents had “ over the lad’s objections, no doubt “ invited Harry as well. Seeing no way to prevent Harry from going without raising awkward questions, Vernon and Petunia had allowed him to attend as well. One of the other boys at the party had snuck in a book he’d found at the library: a book all about sex. The boys had been alternately fascinated and disgusted by it, and the next day “ for the first and only time that Harry could remember “ Dudley had gone voluntarily to the library, to see what else he could find out about this strange new topic.
What worried Harry now “ although he had no real basis for it “ was this: he suspected that there might be more to the whole thing with witches and wizards than there was for Muggles. He thought that magic must factor into it somehow. He imagined that wizard fathers took their wizard sons aside when they were old enough and explained the magical birds and bees to them. Without a father, or an older brother, or any other adult to have that talk with him, Harry thought it likely that he was missing knowledge he would need when the right moment presented itself.
Maybe there’s a book, he thought, and then an image came to him, and he hated himself for it even as he burst out laughing:
Hermione and Ron alone, on their wedding night, a textbook on the nightstand, and Hermione lecturing her new husband: “You’re doing it all wrong! The diagram on page 593 is very clear, Ronald!”
Harry didn’t think there was a strong enough Memory Charm in the world to erase that vision from his mind.
Ginny heard footsteps approaching her bedroom door; Harry was on his way up. She had a good idea what he had been thinking about for the past hour. I hope I’m right, anyway. I don’t want him to be disappointed.
She thought and hoped that he was as nervous as she was, as unready to finish what had been interrupted on his last birthday. Now that - again, hopefully “ their time together could be measured in years instead of days, there was no urgency, no need to rush things.
And then there had been the conversation with her mother a week ago:
“Ginny, I’d like to talk to you,” her mother said as they stood together cleaning up after dinner.
“We’re talking right now, Mum,” Ginny answered as she stacked dishes in the sink.
“I’m serious, Ginny. There’s something you need to know. You’ll be seventeen in less than a month, and, well, a young lady needs to be prepared. You’ll be wanting to get married someday, and you need to know about your wedding night,” her mother said, blushing furiously.
“I know all about that, Mum!” Ginny was generally one to tackle any subject head-on, but this was a conversation she wanted no part of.
Her mother gave her a weak smile. “I knew all about it, too, Ginerva Weasley, and do you know what happened to me?”
Ginny bit her lip; she wanted to say “Six brothers and me is what happened, I think.” But she, somehow, managed to hold her tongue and merely waited for her mother to go on.
“I…I shouldn’t be telling you this, but someone ought to, and there isn’t anyone else. What happened is this: I received the first and only detention I got in seven years at Hogwarts, and I was very lucky not to be expelled.”
Again, Ginny resisted the urge to comment; it was not lost on her that there was a discrepancy between “wedding day” and “Hogwarts,” but she just listened.
“You’re not making this easy, you know,” her mother frowned. “I suppose I wouldn’t have at your age, either. The thing is…you know that sometimes, when you’re very emotional or excited, you lose control of your magic. It happens to everyone. Well, there are times…moments…when you might lose control in a pretty spectacular way. And your magic might go off all around you.”
Ginny was curious now in spite of herself; she had never heard of it. She knew about accidental magic, of course, but not like this. “Mum? What did you do?”
“Ginny, you are never to repeat this to anyone. Not Harry, not any of your brothers, not anybody. If you speak a word of it, I will disown you.”
“Mum!”
“I’m serious, Ginny.”
“Okay,” Ginny sighed. “I promise. So what did you do?”
“Your father and I were in the Prefect’s bathroom, and it was the spring of my last year, and he was so handsome…so dashing, and…well, one thing led to another. We both lost control, and our magic went off. It got out. It…uh…wrecked Professor McGonagall’s classroom.”
Ginny consulted her mental map of Hogwarts. “That’s three levels up from the bathroom!”
“Yes. And she was in it at the time. Teaching a class. Three students got concussions, and her glasses were broken. I have never seen her as angry as she was when she found us.” Her mother shuddered involuntarily at the memory.
“She found you?”
“We had no idea it had happened. We were…”
“Occupied. I get it.”
“Yes,” her mother sighed. “The point of all that is that there’s a spell you need to know. When you…on your wedding night,” she said, “if you cast it, it’ll keep your magic from getting out like that.”
Her mother had told her how to perform the spell, but she wasn’t going to be needing it today. There was a knock at the door. “Come in, Harry,” she said. “I was just thinking about you.”
She watched his eyes sweep around her bedroom as he entered, saw the relief in them as he saw the small, neatly wrapped package resting next to her on the bed. She could feel it emanating from him; she had been exactly right.
Ginny patted the bed, beckoning Harry to sit next to her. “This is for you. It’s…I hope you like it.”
He carefully examined the parcel, turning it over in his hands. Slowly, he unwrapped it. Not at all like my brothers “ they all have to tear presents open like animals. He pulled out a small, framed photograph: three men, one exactly like Harry, except for the colour of his eyes, the second tall and handsome with a look of mischief on his face, and the third looking tired and a little bit scruffy, but smiling proudly just the same. All three wore school robes; in the background was the Black Lake, a tentacle waving in and out of the picture.
“W-where did you find it?” Harry breathed.
“Do you like it?”
His kiss was all the answer she needed.
Much later, he asked, “Was Worm “ did you cut anybody out ?”
Ginny shook her head. “It’s all in one piece. I think Wormtail must have been the one who took it. My Dad brought home a box, I guess it was in the basement of Grimmauld Place, and I went through it and found this. I thought you’d want it. Happy birthday, Harry Potter.”
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Ron and Ginny took turns on Harry’s new broom for most of the afternoon, leaving Harry to watch from the ground while Hermione sat nearby reading for the upcoming school year.
Hermione could not be convinced to join in a game of two-a-side Quidditch; she was “so far behind” on her reading, she claimed, that it was giving her nightmares. Harry just shook his head at that. Some things never change, I guess.
Dinner that evening was a quiet affair, until it was interrupted by a knock at the door. A tall witch with an aristocratic bearing stood in the doorway, holding a small, squirming bundle in a red blanket.
“Andromeda!” Mrs. Weasley called out. “Come in!”
She entered, and Harry stared at her, marvelling as he had done a year ago at the resemblance to her late and unlamented sister. “I thought it would be a good time for Teddy to meet his godfather properly,” she said, as Harry stood up from the dinner table and peered down at his godson, feeling a new and unfamiliar thrill as the baby peered back up at him.
As Harry watched, Teddy’s hair was changing; it had been bright red, the same colour as his blanket, but now it was turning black and growing unkempt. His eyes, too, were morphing; they had been a deep blue but were now emerald green.
“He likes you,” Andromeda said. “I think he wants you to hold him.”
Harry didn’t say anything; he just let her hand Teddy into his arms. “Hello, Teddy,” he said softly. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Teddy gurgled, his pudgy little arms waving. “He really likes you. Don’t you, Teddy?”
The Weasleys crowded around Harry and Teddy; Harry felt Ginny’s arm around him. Someday, it’ll be our baby I’m holding, he thought, picking up the same thought from her. But in a sense, Teddy was his, too. Andromeda might raise him, but Harry knew it was his responsibility to be a father to Teddy “ to be the father James Potter hadn’t had the chance to be to him.
“You will, Harry,” Ginny whispered to him. “And I’ll be right there with you.”
There was much fussing over Teddy, interrupted only by the arrival of Professor McGonagall.
“Happy birthday, Mr. Potter,” she’d said once she’d settled in and been nearly force-fed a piece of birthday cake by Mrs. Weasley. “I’ve got something to discuss with you. In private, if you please.”
So Harry had gone outside with her, leaving behind quizzical expressions of the Weasleys. “Professor, is something wrong?” he said, once they had wandered out into the yard.
“Why ever would you think that?”
“Well, I just -”
McGonagall scoffed. “You are going to have to learn to stop jumping to conclusions, Mr. Potter. I’ll not have anyone teaching for me who can’t think things through properly.”
Teach…? Teaching for…? What does she mean? Who’ll be teaching…? She doesn’t mean…?
“On the other hand, I do not want teachers who will stand there, mouths open and eyes unfocused, when they are spoken to,” McGonagall went on.
“How…I haven’t even graduated! You want me to t-teach? I don’t understand.” Hagrid had been right; this was a complete surprise.
“I have given the matter a great deal of thought, Mr. Potter. I daresay you are aware that your informal defence classes two years ago were received well. I have spoken at length to your fellow students, and it is clear that they found you to be a very skilled teacher.”
That was true; Harry had taken tremendous pride in the way the DA responded to his instruction. I was really good. “But…I’m…I can’t be a Professor.”
“No,” McGonagall shook her head. “Not at present, no. But you can be a student teacher, and you can teach “ with supervision “ the incoming first years in Defence Against the Dark Arts.”
That’s the subject I’d want to teach. She’s got that right. “So you have a new Defense teacher?”
“Yes. But he is temporary. He’s agreed to teach for one year, and possibly a second, but absolutely not more than that. I would like to train you up to take over after that. You will have to graduate and pass your NEWTs, of course. I will not have an unqualified teacher on my staff. At that point, Mr. Potter, you will be able to call yourself Professor.”
It was enticing, if also terrifying. But if he agreed to this, what would happen to his goal of becoming an Auror? Surely he couldn’t do both? “I already…you remember, I want to be an Auror.”
“Yes, I do remember, Mr. Potter. I have discussed this with the Minister. We both feel that you would make an excellent Auror. But,” she said, pausing for a deep breath, “we both also feel that you would make a much larger contribution to the Wizarding world by educating Hogwarts students. You have experience, not merely in fighting Dark wizards, but in facing the choices that can lead a wizard to become Dark. That is a perspective that my students would benefit from.”
It made sense. And, as he considered it, while the thought of catching Dark wizards and stopping them from causing harm was appealing, the idea of stopping them from turning Dark in the first place appealed as well. Not to mention, there’d be much less chance of ending up with chunks taken out of me like…well, like Mad-Eye.
“You’ll want to think about it, Mr. Potter. I’ll expect an answer in, let’s say, one week? Will that be enough time?”
Harry nodded. It was, indeed, a lot to think about.
Harry Potter and the Castle of Dreams by starkllr
Chapter Notes: Thanks one more to LoonyPhoenix for his invaluable Beta-ing!
Only one more chapter before we're off to Hogwarts, and the title will actually make some sense...