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Jean was Quidditch-mad from an early age. He taught himself to juggle rotten apples in the orchard. One of his first memories was Bill taking him up on a broom, the wind in his face and the ground falling away beneath them. Their father had started yelling before they landed, and Bill didn’t take him flying again.
There was an accepted way of doing things in The Burrow. Charlie’s old Quidditch magazines were annexed by Fred and George when they were left around the house, and then handed over to Ron when they were finished. Ron would cut them up and hang the pictures around his room. Jean had taken an embarrassingly long time to realize that he could slip those magazines up to his room to read and then leave them back in the living room when he was done with no one the wiser.
It was harder to admit to himself why he hid his interest. It was to do with the way his mother’s face fell when he wanted to stop in Quality Quidditch Supplies for a look around instead of Maven’s Marvelous Toy Shop and the undefined uncomfortable feeling each time she told Jean how delighted she was to finally have a daughter, so that she could do her hair and teach her to cook and have someone to keep her company while the boys were out in the garden. Jean wouldn’t even realize he wasn’t a girl – wouldn’t know that was a thing – until he was out of Hogwarts. He’d avoided looking too closely at his discomfort without thinking much about it. It felt easier.
Ron was eight when he was allowed to go flying with Fred and George and Charlie. What Jean remembered best about being seven was sitting cross-legged in the orchard with his back against a tree (it was never as comfortable as it should be, leaning against an apple tree) and studying his brothers as they taught Ron to play, filing away their advice so that, when he turned eight, he would be better. Better faster. He caught the apples they were using for quaffles sometimes, on days when he couldn’t stay still that long. He would run back and forth across the grass underneath them, his pigtails waving behind him.
Looking back, Jean’s eighth birthday had passed in a haze of impatience. He’d somehow managed to sit still through the party and the cake, the baby dolls and bows for his hair and all the other gifts people had given him that felt like they were for someone else.
It had been crushing, then, when Jean finally finished cleaning up and looked expectantly at the twins.
“What do you want, squirt?” Fred ruffled Jean’s hair. Jean had finally freed it from the intricate braid that had been hanging on his scalp all day, so he’d magnanimously allowed it.
Jean could remember being impatient at Fred’s feigned incomprehension. “Quidditch?” He’d thought the single word ample explanation, but continued anyway. “For my birthday?”
The horrible sinking feeling had begun before anyone even spoke, as they looked at one another perplexedly.
“Ginny,” his mother had started, “I really think it’s best- You’re still so young.
“Ron got to play Quidditch when he turned eight.” Jean could remember the horrible dragging weight of that next breath and the sinking feeling when all of his six older brothers sat and let him flee out into the garden without a word.
Not quite without a word, because Percy had spoken while Jean was still in earshot. “I don’t understand why she would want to play Quidditch anyway.”
Jean had slowed, hoping, he could see now, though he hadn’t allowed himself to know then, that someone would defend his interest in Quidditch and roughhousing. (It was the proper Weasley way, after all.) His mother had spoken instead, something that had gotten blurred with time into a bitter memory of the way Percy was always her favorite son.
Favorite child, a paranoid voice had whispered for years, the only one not doomed to disappoint her the way Jean was. Jean, who was never enthusiastic enough about being the longed-for daughter Mrs. Weasley had waited so long for. The least Jean could have done was to be a daughter worth waiting for.
When Jean slouched back into the house, the twins were waiting for him. He remembered glaring at them and George’s sympathetic look that had been directly followed by ruffling his hair and, “Ginny, you know we can’t have you on the Quidditch pitch with us. We play rough, and we don’t want to accidentally hurt you, right?”
Fred had been less sympathetic. “We can’t have you hanging around mucking up the works, Gin. I’m sorry.”
The remembered boiling rage was muddled now by the fact that Fred was dead (Fred would still never know Jean the way the rest of his family did, and it always ached at the oddest moments) but Jean could remember the way the rage had focused him.
The broomshed had a lock on it. It was a simple thing, and the key hung in the kitchen by the door. Jean had started by stealing the key that very night.
He remembered walking out into the orchard, dew from the grass soaking his socks and then seeping down into his shoes. The grip of the broomstick in his hand and his heart pounding in his throat. He’d stepped over the broom just like he’d seen his brothers do for years and then he was aloft.
It had been about revenge that night. Showing his brothers that they couldn’t keep him on the ground. He’d half- wanted to get caught, though he’d been relieved when he slipped into bed, the shed locked again and the key hanging back on its hook without incident, all the same.
His mother had tried to console him before bed that night, while he brushed his teeth and stewed and thought about that key for later.
“Ginny, honey,” she had run the brush through his hair, “your brothers are so rough when they play Quidditch. Maybe we could have Luna over tomorrow. We could give each other makeovers! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Jean had jerked away from his mother and thrown himself facedown on the bed until she gave up and left the room.
The following morning, he’d decided that he needed another solution, one that wouldn’t result in losing the rush of illicit flying if he ever got caught.
Ironically, it was Fred and George who inadvertently showed him an answer to the issue. He’d caught them in Percy’s room while Percy was reading downstairs, one of his bobby pins in Fred’s hand with the other end poking into the lock on Percy’s trunk.
“It’s got to be in here. We only need a pinch of it. He’ll never even notice.”
Jean had leaned heavily on the side of the doorframe. “That’s not where Percy keeps his potions ingredients.”
George had reached to ruffle Jean’s hair. “Where does he keep them then, spitfire?”
Jean ducked his head away. “I’ll tell you for a price.”
Fred had pretended to wipe away a tear. “They grow up so fast.”
Jean crossed his arms.
George took the other tack. “Even for your favorite brothers, Ginny?” He’d pouted ridiculously and Jean had rolled his eyes.
“Especially for you two.” He could remember the relief of opening his mouth and allowing poisonous words out. “Wouldn’t want you two sneaking in and mucking up the works, you know?”
George looked ashamed.
Fred just nodded, acknowledging the fairness of that. “What’s your price then?”
Jean had listened back down the stairs before stepping into the room. “Teach me,” he gestured at the bobby pin, “muggle lock picking.”
It had been an educational afternoon and they hadn’t even thought to ask why Jean knew that Percy hid his potions ingredients in his dresser.
Hermione was the only one to know about Jean’s late night practices until Jean made the Quidditch team at school.
Jean couldn’t have been more than five the day he and Charlie got in trouble for playing with the garden gnomes. He couldn’t remember what Charlie had done to be assigned degnoming or why he had ended up out in the garden with Charlie. It was a beautiful day, the sun glistening off the mud in that post-rain way and a cool breeze on what was otherwise a hot day.
Jean wasn’t sure anymore whose idea it had been to turn the degnoming into a game. He just remembered slipping and sliding and racing through the mud after the gnomes in some sideways game of tag. Sideways because, of course, each time they caught a gnome they threw it instead of turning and having it chase them, but also because Jean, at least, slipped and slid until the pale yellow robes his mother had chosen that morning were a muddy brown all over and the barrettes holding back his hair had flown into the weeds and tomato plants and under the hedge, where his brothers and father would find them over the next few weeks.
Always competitive, Jean remembered watching with something like despair the way that Charlie could sling the gnomes nearly to the tree line. Charlie still had to pick him up before he could throw the gnomes at that point (and Jean still felt his face heat remembering the way Fred and George had hooted at him when he tried to throw a gnome from the ground around that age and got it stuck in the hedge). He was still young enough that the field seemed nearly endless, and it was one of the weirder pieces of growing up, Jean thought, that he could remember the insurmountable length of that field and the way that the gnomes Charlie threw had seemed to fly for miles while also knowing that the last time they had degnomed the garden together both Jean and George had thrown their gnomes further than Charlie and Harry had teased Charlie relentlessly about how the dragon preserve was letting him go soft. (Charlie had insisted that it wasn’t about strength, just that he’d lost the technique.)
When they had stumbled into the kitchen, garden properly degnomed and the two of them red-cheeked, laughing, and begrimed from head to toe, Jean had been shocked by their mother’s disapproval. He could recall even now the dousing quality of it, how he had gone from open and laughing and triumphant to confused and upset as she bundled him upstairs.
Mrs. Weasley had scowled at Charlie. “Look at the mess you’ve let your sister make of her robes. Those were new this morning. And don’t touch that until you’ve washed your hands, young man. As for you, missy,” she’d turned to Jean. “Let’s get you into the bath and put those robes to soak. Look what you’ve done to your hair.”
Jean remembered reaching his hands up to touch his hair, like he’d expected it to have disappeared or changed in some material way. It was still there, of course. Still red, even, when he’d untucked it from where he’d stuffed it behind his ears as they were running and it was flying into his face.
Mrs. Weasley had huffed out a laugh that only sounded half-amused. “What did you do with the barrettes? They were so pretty, with the butterflies and everything, and now they’re – Oh,” and Jean thought, looking back, that it was the fact that his mother sounded disappointed instead of angry that had made this moment the one he had fixated on, growing up. “Oh, this one’s… The wing is broken. Reparo!” She had untangled the barrette dangling halfway down his back, but the broken wing on the butterfly (advertised, Jean knew from years of wincing at the display as “Magic resistant! Perfect for the child who slips your wand away for ‘experiments’!”) continued to hang sadly.
The stairs creaked as Jean’s mother carried him up the stairs. Over her shoulder, he could see out the window where the chickens were pecking through the grass and a gnome was sneaking back across the sun-drenched field. Mrs. Weasley had sighed. “Oh, well. Ginny, dear, you don’t have to try to keep up with the boys, you know. We could find other things for you to do. When I was your age, I had the loveliest little baby doll. I used to dress her up and cuddle with her. She cried if I didn’t carry her with me and feed her and change her clothes regularly. I called her Abigail. She was the sweetest thing.”
Jean was bundled unceremoniously into the bath as Mrs. Weasley continued. “Maybe we should find you another little girl to play with. I think the Lovegoods have a daughter. You could have her over and hold a tea party in the garden. We could make sandwiches! Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Jean remembered considering that proposal carefully. “Could we play with the gnomes?”
His mother had sighed heavily.
Jean started getting real chores when the twins went off to Hogwarts with the rest of them and left just Jean and Ron at home. He’d been tagging along on his brothers’ chores for years, endless rounds of weeding in the summer (Fred and George had a set of old robes hidden away in their room for explosive experiments, but they worked just as well to stop Jean getting mud and grass stains in the knees of his robes and he’d gotten quite good at sewing), collecting eggs and chasing chickens while his brothers cleaned the coop. He’d thought he was prepared.
“And I thought it would be nice if Ginny helped me out in the kitchen. She can set the table and,” His mother smiled at Jean. “I can teach you my grandmother’s recipes! They’re a family secret.”
Jean had thought even then that Percy or Bill would be a better candidate for passing down fiddly recipes than he was, but it had taken years for his mother to agree. Instead, Jean had been placed on a stool at her side and taught how to crack eggs and to mix dry ingredients before wet, allowed to watch while his mother demonstrated the difference between chopping, dicing, and mincing. (“You’ll need to know this for potions too. It’ll be like you had a head start! Potions is just like cooking!” As an adult, Jean had wondered if he would have disliked potions less if it hadn’t been both the class Snape taught and associated with yet another restraint put on him that marked him different from his brothers.)
Jean had set his teeth and made an effort anyway. To be the daughter his mother had hoped for. To be someone who could carry that weight. When he got really frustrated with it he lay awake in bed and waited until his parents were asleep to sneak out to the broomshed.
It was October of that year when his mother instigated another way for them to bond, just the two of them.
Jean had wasted no time in complaining to Luna the next time they had a playdate. “And now she wants me to learn to knit so I can make Christmas gifts for my brothers like, like… like I’m a little old housewife.”
Luna always knew the right thing to say, somehow, even back then. “Did you know that knitting used to be a thing fishermen did? It only became for housewives later, when it was useful for keeping women at home.”
Armed with that knowledge, Jean found that he didn’t mind the knitting as much. It was something about the soothing rhythm of it as he looped the yarn back and forth across the scarf (he’d categorically refused to make socks when Mrs. Weasley had proposed it) and the slide of the yarn across the side of his fingers. He still only finished one scarf by Christmas time. (It was slow work!) He didn’t understand how his mother had expected enough for the whole family.
It galled him anyway when, the night his brothers returned from school, Ron was sent to help the older boys clean the chicken coop while he was kept inside to sit with his mother and learn to bind off the end of his scarf. Before he’d been given his own chores (He still didn’t understand why a Christmas gift for his father had been given the same weight as chores) he’d been able to sneak out and partake in the work as long as he borrowed someone else’s robes. There was something so satisfying about those sore shoulder muscles and a clean chicken coop at the end of everything that was entirely different from trying to turn the same few twists and turns and moves with a needle into muscle memory. (It couldn’t have been long after that that he began patching together a set of robes for himself out of his older brothers’ robes from the rag bag.)
Jean remembered it as a relief when Ron went away to school as well. Mr. Weasley needed someone to help him prune the apple trees every winter and to pick apples every fall. If there were no other options then Mrs. Weasley had no choice but to allow it. The added freedom had made the knitting and cooking more bearable even as Jean was encouraged to learn to change yarns and colors so he could add dragons to the ends of Charlie’s scarf in celebration of his brother’s new job. He still hated being left alone at home. (His chore robes got more colorful and interesting. That was the winter he’d stopped trying to match shades of fabric to his thread, then begun to make interesting designs with the thread.)
When the Yule Ball came around, Jean didn’t have dress robes. He was a third year. He hadn’t been supposed to go, but he liked Neville and dancing sounded energetic – not altogether unlike Quidditch, really – and it was a bit of a thrill to have boys interested in him after all these years growing up like something ill-fitting. (There was a glow, too, at the thought of Ron’s girl’s dress robes.) He’d thought about going to the twins first. He knew they had money coming from somewhere. (Hopefully somewhere legal.) Then he’d thought about asking his parents for money. In the end, though, he’d gone to Dean Thomas, who he knew was good with charms and colors. He’d done his own sewing.
Mrs. Weasley still looked wistfully at the pictures of Jean and Neville at the Yule Ball. When Jean first sent the pictures home he’d half expected a howler back. Instead, the letter had been understanding. The robes had come out very well, and she knew Jean was a teenager, but it was hard to see “her little girl” growing up (and she would have loved to have been involved in Jean’s first set of dress robes).
Jean hadn’t known how to respond or what to make of the triumph he had felt at the fact that his dress robes were less girly than Ron’s. He remembered the weeks spent on internal debate about how to answer but not the letter he finally sent. He assumed it was along the lines of ducking his head and changing the subject, and his mother must have gone along with it.
Harvesting apples was everyone’s favorite chore. The old-growth apple trees needed climbing and flying to collect the apples safely. Being the smallest and the youngest wasn’t as bad when it meant that he could climb higher and slip through smaller gaps. When his father told Bill, home for a weekend, that Jean was his most valuable helper, it took away some of the sting of the twins calling him a shrimp or the fact that even Ron was so much taller than Jean. (When the family first ran into Harry Potter in a train station, when Jean didn’t know who he was, he’d appreciated Harry first for being a boy shorter than he was.)
If harvesting apples turned into rounds and rounds of apple butter and apple pie and apple turnovers with his mother, at least it also became pressing apple juice and brewing apple cider with his father. Even the twins were sometimes pressed into helping slice the neverending bushels of apples for their mother’s pies. Apple season was Jean’s favorite for chores.
It wasn’t just Jean’s mother who liked doing his hair. His father and Bill and the twins and even Percy liked to play with it. They liked brushing it out and running their fingers through it. They loved to ruffle it so that they could smooth it into place again. They enjoyed braiding it, or trying fancy hairdos that required Jean sit still half the afternoon. It wasn’t that Jean hated his hair.
There were moments Jean enjoyed. Fred was oddly gentle and needed frequent breaks himself in which he would race Jean around the garden. (It was Fred who did Jean’s hair for the Yule Ball.) There were moments when Jean was happy to lean back and make his hair someone else’s problem.
Mostly, though, it felt frustratingly like Jean’s hair gave people the right to treat him like a doll. Or like people thought it did. His mother would make him stay put there and have him hold his head just so while she pulled a braid tighter and tighter against his scalp or redid the same barrette by drawing the same scraping line against his skull, only to decide that it still wasn’t in the right place. When Jean complained, she was forever nearly done. They’d brought one another to tears on multiple occasions before Jean learned to find Bill or Fred to do his hair whenever one of them was available or to do it himself.
Even once Jean had taken over doing his hair every day, Mrs. Weasley still asked to do his hair. “Oh, but Jean, would you just let me fix…” or “Come here for a minute, Jean?” and then once he was there, “Now, I just want to try…” Some days Jean had better luck getting out of it than others.
Jean had a particular recollection of the night after Luna’s mother’s funeral. His mother had seen a hairstyle at the funeral and pointed it out to him. “I bet that would look even better on you! We’ll try it sometime.”
It had taken all of three hours of quiet and grief before his mother needed something to do with her hands.
“Come here, Ginny. You can sit right here, and I’ll just see if I can replicate the hair on that woman. You won’t have to do anything, just sit. I think she just…” Mrs. Weasley had trailed off and gripped a chunk of Jean’s hair. Jean bit his lip and tried not to argue, still hurting at the thought that Luna’s mother was gone for good.
Jean remembered it like it was consecutive, the attempt to allow his mother to fiddle with his hair and yanking his hair out of her hands and then storming across the room in a huff. The shouting back and forth about how he wasn’t a doll and she just wanted to make him look nice for once and on and on. It had ended with Jean running up the stairs and crying on his bed and Mrs. Weasley following him up and the subsequent emotional conversation and guilty trip back down to the living room. The sitting forever while his mother pulled his hair uncomfortably in five different directions at once. Jean remembered sneaking out to the broomshed that night, still shaken by his first brush with the mortality of other people and wondering how guilty he would feel if his mother died during the night.
When Bill started dating Fleur, Jean’s first thought was that his mother was finally going to have the daughter she wanted. His next fear was that he would never measure up.
When Fleur sailed into the yard and called the chicken coop ‘quaint’ it was easy to hate her. When she sat in the kitchen and told Mrs. Weasley how to prepare the meal she was making, it was even easier. When Jean surreptitiously tried her cooking advice and it worked, it was just as simple as flying.
The summer was hot and long and Jean found it was effortless to dislike Bill’s choice of girlfriend when she showed up looking breezy and like the ghost of the daughter Mrs. Weasley had wanted while Jean walked in from practicing Quidditch with his hair falling out of its braid and a grass stain down his side and the heat pressing down on his temper until it was ready to explode. Even the rudeness that kept Fleur out of Mrs. Weasley’s good graces couldn’t save her from the backlash of Jean’s anger, though he hoped she never knew about it.
When his mother wasn’t enchanted with Fleur, Jean thought he should have felt more relief. Instead, by the time that Hermione arrived to shore up his dislike of Fleur with her own, he felt like he was climbing the walls trying to figure out what his mother was looking for in the daughter he couldn’t manage to be. (Why did it matter that Fleur was rude? Surely, that wasn’t so uncommon. Plenty of people were rude. Ron was rude.)
Fleur was beautiful. She had surely played with dolls. Her hair was always intricate. (She continually wanted to try something to fix Jean’s hair. It couldn’t just be about the disagreements. When Jean nodded to everything his mother said, he was accused of not listening and not caring. Suggesting either of those accusations were accurate only got him further into trouble.) Fleur could keep up with the boys, but she didn’t. She pulled a face walking past the chicken coop like she didn’t like the smell and she squealed when Bill pretended to hand a gnome to her during degnoming. She might be rude, but she certainly had that something Jean felt he lacked.
Jean had immediately been sure that Fleur would be happy to join Jean and his mother on their knitting evenings, something that Hermione only did with a book in her hand instead of yarn. When Mrs. Weasley eventually (begrudgingly) extended an invitation, Fleur bore out Jean’s worst suspicions by bringing half an intricate lace doily and what she told Jean was a tatting needle.
Jean could remember the day Mrs. Weasley had finally accepted Fleur. Remembered watching Fleur’s reaction to Bill’s mangled face and waiting for her to prove that being Mrs. Weasley’s ideal daughter was nothing to strive for. The way that Fleur had frozen, and Jean had been so certain it was coming, only for Fleur to toss her hair and instead declare Bill’s bravery. How wrong-footed he’d felt, and the way he’d checked Hermione’s reaction in an attempt to react appropriately, and the way that his mother had turned to Fleur for a shoulder to cry on after. (The rank betrayal he’d felt in that moment, as well as everything else. The moment of petty horror that had nothing to do with the Death Eaters in the school or the way that Greyback had mangled Bill’s face or Dumbledore’s death, and everything to do with the long list of wedding chores that his brothers wouldn’t be asked to help with that Jean couldn’t escape now.) The part of Jean that admired Fleur for declaring herself beautiful enough for both of them (the self-confidence. The conviction) had to work hard to make itself heard.
In the end, as he had guessed, Jean’s carefully cultivated reputation as a tomboy had done nothing to get him out of wedding planning. The fact that Tonks was planning her own wedding to Remus had felt like a betrayal. It wasn’t until long after he’d worked out his own gender – after he’d announced it even – that he had noticed the way he’d coveted Tonks’ ability to change her appearance and the way he’d projected on her.
Tonks didn’t have to know how to cook. She’d volunteered and Mrs. Weasley had turned her help down. (She’d volunteered. Jean should have known, maybe, but it was easy to rewrite facts into wishes to feel less alone.) Jean thought, looking back, that he’d spent a nearly equal amount of time wishing to be Fleur and Tonks for opposite reasons.
In the end, his careful planning and internal debates about how to come out to his family were swept away in indignation and an instinct not to let any of his brothers (but especially not this one) win an argument. It was fine. He had never considered lying about this with any serious intent. He was a Gryffindor. He wasn’t going to be Bill or Charlie or Percy and move away. Not now.
(There had been no one gender revelation or moment that he could point to when he suddenly knew. Just all of his assumptions crumbling beneath a gradual piling-on of evidence.)
The coming out had happened on the Quidditch pitch.
It started in the kitchen. Mrs. Weasley sent Jean back in for silverware and Percy was just picking up the casserole dish to bring out to the table and it had come out accidentally.
“Better get this out there before Mum starts looking for it. Do you need any help Ginny?” and then when Jean had shaken his head, “As long as you’re sure. If I were you I’d take advantage of it while I’m still feeling apologetic. I’ll forget I’m sorry the first time the twi-”
Jean had started it himself, trying to distract Percy from the awful blank look on his face from his misstep. “Well, at least you’ll always be mum’s favorite.”
Percy had, predictably, taken it upon himself to correct Jean. “Mum might feel sorry for me, but I’ve never been a real Weasley. Not like the rest of you. I don’t understand why people like Quidditch, I don’t like crowds and clutter and no personal space. I’m not a proper rough-and-tumble – the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin first. I’ve never fit. Not really.”
“Yeah,” Jean had agreed thoughtlessly, tapping the handles of his fistful of cutlery on the counter, “it’s awful trying to fit into expectations when you feel like they don’t fit. I get it.” He’d turned to face Percy. “You know we love you anyway, right? As yourself, whether or not you fit?”
Percy had laughed in Jean’s face. “You’re like the ultimate Weasley, Ginny. When have you ever met an expectation that didn’t fit?”
Jean was stung. He’d registered the choice that was there, then shrugged and shoved through it. There was only one choice next to a brother scoffing, no matter how kindly it had been meant.
“Don’t run, Ginny, you’ll get mud on your robes. You can’t fly with us, Ginny, you’re too small. We don’t want to hurt you. No, don’t clean the chicken coop with the other boys, come help me make dinner. Ginny, what happened to your hair?” Jean scowled.
“The other boys.” Percy’s words fell into the silence thoughtfully. It was some comfort that he hadn’t chosen the other response Jean had worried about, the “if I’d known you wanted to be cleaning the coop so badly…” version.
Jean dropped his gaze to his hands and rubbed absently at a patch of dust on the side of his thumb. (From climbing a tree after the first early apples and then dropping. He’d ripped his robes. There would be another session with a needle and thread late that night to sew the tear before his mother saw.) His thumb was clean before Percy spoke again.
“So I’m assuming you don’t want to be called Ginevra.” And then, softer, “Are you planning to tell everyone?”
Jean nodded. “I thought Jean, maybe.” His mouth was dry. “I am, I just…” He blew out a breath to avoid crying. “Mum wanted a daughter so badly.”
Percy put the casserole dish down to slip an arm over Jean’s shoulder. “She’d be more upset to think you were making yourself unhappy on her account. And she’s got daughters-in-law now. Fleur, and I think Ron and Hermione…”
Jean swallowed. Nodded again. Cleared his throat and gestured with the fistful of silverware. “Thanks, Perce. I’d better. Better get these out there before someone comes looking for them.”
“Jean.” Percy spoke behind him as Jean reached for the door. “If you don’t want to be here, if they say anything… My flat is always open for you. They love you though. They’ll love you either way.”
Jean had taken a breath and nodded without turning around before pushing the door open. Held it while Percy picked up the casserole dish and came after.
It had been a matter of pride at that point.
Jean wasn’t willing to feel like a coward where other people could see. He squared his shoulders as he dropped the silverware onto the table. (Hermione and Harry immediately began setting it.) Percy laid the last casserole dish on the table.
“Mum, dad.” Jean could feel the anxiety catching in his throat. “I want to tell you something.”
Something in his voice must have sounded off. Everyone was looking at him. Harry laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I- Mum, I’m a man, not a- I’m not your daughter.”
Mrs. Weasley’s face wobbled. “You’ll always be my child, Gi- you’ll always be my child, daughter or son.”
Harry’s hand was still on Jean’s shoulder, grounding him. Jean felt his face crack open in relief.
Percy pulled a face and mouthed, “See?”
Fleur sighed. Jean could just hear her saying to Bill, “do you think we should do something about – he’s with the bridesmaids, in our wedding photos.”
Mrs. Weasley dropped the dishtowel she’d been holding and then she was hugging Jean. “Oh,” a sigh that could have held the beginnings of Jean’s old name. “Oh, my love. Of course, of course you’re our son. I’m sorry that we allowed you to doubt that.”
Jean blew out a slow breath. To his surprise, his robes under his mother’s face were growing damp. “I thought, maybe… Maybe Jean, instead of Ginny?”
A hand slapped him on the back, and a cracking voice next to his ear declared, “Fred would think this was the best joke, finding out we’ve got another brother and…” George trailed off. “It’s not really funny, but…”
Jean’s father’s arms wrapped around him and his mother both. Jean allowed himself to relax into that double embrace.