Depression
I didn't see Ginny again for several weeks. I thought about contacting her, to see if she had actually meant what she had said and really wanted--or needed--to talk over a cup of coffee at the Leaky some afternoon. If I admitted it to myself, I wanted to see her. Whether it was to help her or myself, I wasn't sure. Yet something about her quiet sadness had taken hold of me that afternoon under the tree--maybe earlier.
I finally ran into her--almost literally--at the Ministry one afternoon after lunch. I was just returning and apparently she was just leaving, and we bumped into each other in the Atrium.
"Graham!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
I couldn't help but laugh. "I work here, remember?"
She smiled somewhat sheepishly. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"What are you doing here?" I asked, and her face fell a bit.
"Well, Lily started school this week, so Hermione insisted I come by for lunch." She sighed. "It's been a tough week. All the kids are gone now, and the house is so quiet. It's awful."
"Then we should have that coffee," I said before I could stop myself. I had forgotten that it was September, and Hogwarts would have started back; no wonder it had seemed so much quieter in Diagon Alley recently.
"How about lunch tomorrow?" she asked, and I tried not to imagine that she sounded interested or hopeful. I nodded and smiled; it had actually been ages since I had had a meal with anyone but a coworker or the Puceys. Going out for an entire lunch would be even better than coffee. I was already looking forward to it.
"Would you like me to walk you out?" I asked, the words once again falling out before I had really thought them through. She shook her head with a smile; of course she would know her way around--her husband had worked here. I wondered how hard it was for her to come back, and if that was part of the reason Hermione had invited her to lunch.
"No thanks, I remember the way. The Leaky tomorrow?" she asked. I nodded, and she left with a small smile. I watched her go, red hair standing out against a sea of dull grey and black robes, which was ironic, because she had still seemed rather dull and grey herself.
We met at the Leaky Cauldron the next day for lunch. It started out awkwardly, until I realized I needed to make her comfortable. She was dealing with far too much already to be sitting there in clumsy silence with me. I didn't want her to be embarrassed about what had happened so many months before at the house, so I obviously did not bring it up. And though I knew she missed her children now that they had all gone to Hogwarts, I suspected that like most mothers she was also incredibly proud of them and could talk about them for hours.
And I was right. I heard all about James's exploits, Albus's struggles, and Lily's first week at school. They sounded like good kids, and the thought of them growing up without a father really tugged at my heart. I knew they had a lot of aunts and uncles, but that wasn't the same as a father. I had always felt sympathy for Ginny; now I felt a deep pity for her children, anger that their father had been taken from them so young.
It brought back my own regret at not having children, but then, my wife had not been interested, and for most of our marriage, I had been all right with that. We had had time for ourselves and nothing else to worry about: we traveled, went out, enjoyed our childless status even as everyone around us kept procreating like rabbits and stayed home with their kids, tired eyes testament to the difficulties of beginning parenthood. Yet now my wife was gone, and I was alone. At least Ginny had her kids.
Some hint of my thoughts must have passed across my face, because she stopped and glanced down at her food in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I'm talking about nothing but myself. What about you? Do you have any kids?"
I raised an eyebrow. "I thought you checked up on me?" I tossed back. "When you first came to my office?"
She shrugged, but a small smile tugged at her lips. "I did, but I tried not to dig into your personal life too much. Plus some people do manage to keep their privacy these days."
"They do?" I asked, feigning surprise, and she laughed.
"I don't know many, but I've heard it's possible." She sipped at her drink and gave me a curious look. "You're avoiding the question, though. Did you have any children?"
"No," I said, with as casual a shrug as I could manage. "It just wasn't in the tea leaves for us."
"Tea leaves?" she asked, obviously confused, and I didn't bother holding back a bitter laugh.
"My wife was a keen follower of all sorts of divination--her crystal ball, tea leaves and tarot cards, all of it. And children never appeared in any of her castings, so we didn't pursue it."
Ginny was silent for a moment. "That's too bad. You sound sad about it."
I shrugged again, a discomfort settling around my shoulders that I tried to ignore. "I was fine with it while we were married, at least until the end. Then I started to ask about it more. Sometimes I wonder if that's what pushed her away."
"I doubt it had anything to do with you and everything to do with her," Ginny said, reaching across the table and taking my hand. It was small and warm, and it felt wonderful to hold hands with a woman again, even for a brief moment. She sat back and grinned. "Besides, children aren't for everyone. They are hard work."
"You seem to be doing well by them," I observed, hoping to steer the conversation away from my own problems. She frowned, though, and I immediately sensed I had said something wrong.
"I'm trying." She sighed. "They're all at Hogwarts now, so at least I know their teachers are watching over them."
"Is anyone watching over you?" I asked after a few moments silence. I sensed that sending her children to Hogwarts had left Ginny more alone than before, and I was worried about her. I hardly knew her, but I did not want to see her spiral into a lonely, locked-up depression. It was hard to break out of, having had to do so myself.
"Hermione does," she replied. "And Angelina, George's wife, comes by a lot. My parents still have the entire family over every Sunday, so that’s been good, too--for all of us."
It struck me then how different our situations really were. Last time we had met, I was certain we shared a connection, having both lost our spouses. Yet Ginny had a large, extended family checking in on her, helping her through her loss. I barely had my parents, a few friends, and a brother whom I'd talked to once since the divorce. Strangely enough, talking with Ginny made me feel more alone, and not less.
Regardless, I enjoyed our lunch and we agreed to meet the following week, though I wasn't sure why she wanted to meet with me when it seemed she had so many others supporting her. Yet that lunch slowly turned into a weekly meeting, sometimes a quick bite to eat if Ginny was working on an important story, sometimes a longer meal if neither of us had to rush back to work. We talked about all sorts of things, including our spouses, and I learned things about Harry Potter I had never thought to learn. He had been a great man, even with the little quirks and faults his wife shared; I regretted not knowing him better.
I also started regretting our meetings. Ginny seemed to grow stronger each week, yet I felt worse. The weather had turned cold and it just seemed easier to stay inside rather than venture out in the November chill. Yet I couldn't just abandon her, and I began to dread seeing her for lunch as much as I looked forward to it. She seemed genuinely interested in continuing our meetings; I daresay we were friends now. The real problem was that I had started thinking about more.
It had started with a simple peck on the cheek one afternoon after lunch: quick and light, it had sent shivers down my back. She had smiled at me and dashed off, but I had been dazed the entire walk back to the Ministry. She had kissed me, and in that moment I knew I had started to develop feelings for her that were more than sympathy, more than pity. I was falling in love with Ginny Potter.
Yet I knew I couldn't let myself: she was a widow, the widow of the most famous wizard of our time. She was a single mother with three children, at times still struggling to keep it together and move on with her life. I knew that because we shared these things with one another, the small but difficult challenges of losing a spouse and trying to put the pieces of one's life back together. I could not understand all of what she was going through, but I understood enough, and she understood me. Every week I found myself thinking about our lunch date more and more, until it was over and I felt empty until the following week.
I threw myself back into my work; it didn't help. I tried to distance myself when we met, but she always pulled me back. I even let Adrian set me up with a girl he knew, but she was much too young and inexperienced, and all I could think was that she didn't have flaming red hair and beautiful brown eyes.
I needed to end it. It wasn't right and never would be. I may have been a Slytherin, but I had changed a great deal over the years, and most importantly, I had my honor when it came to women. The last person I wanted to hurt was the one person I cared about the most.
It was December when we met for the last time. Ginny had been too busy for lunch and had sent me an owl to see if I was available for dinner instead. My heart dropped into my stomach: dinner felt much more like a date than lunch, and my feelings for her had not changed. I wanted to tell her no, dinner would not work, but I couldn't do it in a letter, so I said yes. I was determined, however, to end it in person that night: lunch, dinner, everything.
We met at an Italian restaurant just on the other side of Diagon Alley. Ginny wore a beautiful gold blouse with a skirt and high boots. Her hair had grown out since the first time I'd met her and was pulled back in matching gold combs. Her brown eyes sparkled in the dim candlelight of the restaurant, and I found myself avoiding looking at her, because each time I did, I wanted to lean over and kiss her.
"Is everything all right?" she finally asked as the waiter cleared our food. I sighed, dreading the answer I knew I had to give.
"Yes and no," I finally replied. "Ginny, you seem to be doing really well."
She seemed confused by my statement. "Yes, I suppose I'm doing better than I was six months ago. But what does that have to do with anything?"
The words were so hard. "I think maybe it's time we…we stopped having lunch. Stopped meeting." The shocked look on her face ripped me apart inside, but I kept talking as if I could somehow make it better with words. "It's just that we decided to get together and talk about our losses, but it's been several months now and you seem so much better that I--"
"Don't want to be friends anymore?" she asked, her voice rather cold. Merlin, I hated doing this, but it had to be done. I could not be with the widow of Harry Potter, which meant I simply could not see her anymore.
"It's not that--" I started, but she stopped me.
"Then what is it? Was I some sort of charity case? A patient who's been cured and dismissed from treatment?"
"No!" I exclaimed. I had known from the moment I'd set foot in her house that she had had a temper, and I was seeing it once again, directed at me full force. "Ginny, it's not like that at all."
"Then what's it like, Graham?" she asked, sitting back and crossing her arms over her chest. "Because I don't see any reason why we can't keep having lunch together--or dinner."
"Because it feels like a date," I hissed under my breath, refusing to meet her eyes. When I did glance up, she was staring at me as if I had gone mad for even suggesting it.
"It's not a date," she said. "It's two friends helping each other through a tough time in their life."
"And I think we're both through that rough patch now, enough that we should stop seeing each other." If I expected another shocked, hurt response, I was wrong. She narrowed her eyes at me and leaned forward.
"You just don't want to bother anymore. You don't want to see me." She was flinging a challenge in my face, and I actually groaned as I fell back against my chair.
"No, Ginny, that's not it at all." I took a deep breath. I wanted to be honest, because in the end it would probably hurt her less if she knew the truth. Yet I couldn't say it, because I was too afraid of being the one to get hurt. "It's just that…that…I like you, Ginny. Too much to hurt you."
"I thought we were helping each other," she replied.
"And we did. But…bloody hell…I think we've done all we can for each other. I really do."
"Fine." Her flat tone felt like a slap across the face. "But tell me the real reason why you don't want to see me anymore."
"You're making it sound like we're a couple or something!" I said under my breath, and to further rub it in, she laughed.
"A couple? Graham, you've been a great friend to me all these months, but not like that…oh." She stopped and stared at me, and I knew from the look in her eyes she had figured it out. It was probably written plain across my face at that moment anyway, and there was nothing I could do as I watched her set down her napkin and gather her purse.
"I see." She blinked back tears. "You've found someone."
"What?" I asked, blindsided. "Found someone?"
"To be with," she said. "And you don't want to hurt me--or her. I get it now." She stood to leave, a sad smile on her face as she looked down at me. "I'm sorry it took me so long to understand."
"No--Ginny, it's not like that," I said, standing and reaching out for her hand. She moved away just enough that I could not reach it, and it felt like she had stepped away forever with that one small rejection. I had to tell her. "There is no one else."
"Then why are you doing this?" she asked. "I don’t want to lose you, too." Her hand came up and touched my cheek. "You've been such a support, such a good friend. Please don't leave."
My entire body responded to her touch, but my mind reeled at her words: a good friend. Nothing more. This time I stepped away.
"I have to," I said. "Because I want something I can't have."
"What?" she asked. She honestly had no idea, and it broke my heart.
"You," I whispered. If we had been the subject of a tasteless witches' romance novel, I would have crushed her too me and kissed her passionately. Instead, we just stared at one another, until Ginny shook her head, a dazed look on her face.
"I have to go," she said, gathering her cloak and scarf around her.
"Ginny, I'm sorry--" I started, but she waved me off.
"No, it's all right. I get it now. It's for the best." She took a deep breath, looked me in the eyes, and held out her hand. "Good-bye, Graham," she said softly. "Good luck."
I held her hand for as long as I could before she turned and walked away--out of the restaurant and out of my life.
I finished dinner alone, but then, I had grown used to it months ago. I had just dared to hope that maybe I wouldn't be alone anymore.
I had been wrong.
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