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“You got it?” Harry asked Ginny breathlessly from the other side of the large, heavy mattress, preparing once again to heave the thing, this time from the front steps through the doorway of their new little home. Ginny had made it clear that she found it ridiculous (“why can’t we just levitate it?”), but Harry didn’t want to chance it – although their new place was in a rather quiet, relatively uninhabited area, there was still the occasional muggle car that drove past on the little dirt road, and Harry knew with his luck, someone would drive by right as they were levitating the mattress to the front door.
“Yes,” came Ginny’s amused voice. “But as soon as we get this thing inside, I’m using Wingardium Leviosa; I didn’t waste seven years at Hogwarts for nothing.”
“A waste, was it?” Harry grinned, trying to catch his breath. “Even all that time you spent out by the lake, snogging me senseless?”
“I didn’t say my time spent outside of class was a waste, did I?” Ginny quipped. “Come on, let’s get going, and maybe we’ll have time to try out this new snogging spot.”
Harry could practically hear the smirk on her face, and he grinned again as he lifted his end of the mattress.
A few painful moments later the mattress was through the door and Ginny was levitating it into their bedroom (navigating through their living room and up the stairs took some skill). They didn’t yet have a bed frame to put it in, but that would be sorted out in time. For now, the floor would do.
Ginny flopped back onto the mattress with a heavy, contented sigh and Harry joined her, rolling over on his side to face her.
“I hope you don’t care which side of the bed you’ll be sleeping on, because I’ve already claimed mine.” Ginny said, eyes closed, smiling.
“Oh yeah?” said Harry daringly. “I thought it might be more fun to just…break it in and see which side we end up on.”
Ginny opened her eyes and raised her eyebrows, but the smile hadn’t left her face. “Goodness, Potter, and they say you don’t know how to flirt.” Harry laughed, and she rolled over to face him, pulling him close. Her soft lips and warm embrace made his insides feel like melted butter, and he knew he would never tire of seeing her face next to him each morning, here, in their room, their bed, their home.
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A while later found Harry lying contentedly in Ginny’s arms, his head nestled into her shoulder as she absentmindedly stroked her slender fingers through his hair. He could just feel himself drifting off when a loud thump sounded through the house. Harry startled awake, groping for his wand, and Ginny slid out of bed, grabbing her wand from the dresser top and pulling on her dressing gown. She moved out into the hall. “Have we got visitors already?”
Harry groaned. “If it’s Ron, tell him he’s got terrible timing. Why can’t he ever interrupt when we’re, I dunno, having dinner or something.”
Ginny chuckled from the hallway. “No one there!” she called up the stairs a few moments later. “It’s just this – fell off the wall,” she said, coming back into the room brandishing a decorative spoon, a wedding gift they hadn’t had any idea what to do with. Taking Hermione’s advice they’d hung it on the kitchen wall, but Harry knew they probably wouldn’t bother rehanging it now.
He gave a sigh of relief and leaned back on the mattress, his back against the wall. Ginny climbed back into bed next to him, grinning wickedly. “What?” Harry said.
“Nothing,” she replied, “I’ll just never get tired of you being scared of Ron telling you off.”
“I’m not scared of Ron telling me off!” Harry protested.
“If you say so,” Ginny smirked, leaning back onto his arm. “You know, Ron would probably be pretty jealous of this.”
“What?” Harry said, bemused. “He’s got Hermione, why would he be jealous?”
Ginny laughed. “Not this!” she gestured to them both, wrapped up together in their cozy nest. “Our new mattress. He’s always wanted something big. If I recall, I think he was even a bit jealous of your bedroom at the Muggles’. Surely your bed wasn’t even close to this size, was it?”
Harry snorted. “Not even close,” he replied. “He shouldn’t have been jealous. The Burrow’s much better than Privet Drive, even if my bed was a tiny bit bigger. Ron’s bed was softer than mine, I can tell you that.”
Ginny hummed in response, and Harry could tell she was planning her response carefully now. They had just stumbled upon territory so often skirted around, and he could feel the sudden shift in mood, as though a dementor had just swooped swiftly past the closed window, unbidden. He knew Ginny wouldn’t judge him, but a tight knot of anxiety was quickly forming in his chest. Ginny always knew what to say, and knowing that she took such care with her words whenever they neared this topic made Harry feel uncomfortable. He didn’t like being treated like he was made of glass, but at the same time couldn’t help feeling a bit close to shattering whenever the Dursleys were concerned. It was much easier to just avoid the topic at all costs, which Harry had become quite adept at doing over the years.
“I never saw your bedroom. I was always a bit annoyed that Ron and the twins didn’t invite me along when they went to…rescue you.” Her hesitation did not go unnoticed by Harry.
“Wasn’t much to see,” he muttered.
“I wish you would tell me more, you know,” Ginny said softly. “I’ve known you for so long, we’re married, and you’ve never said anything about your life growing up.”
Harry felt a prickle of annoyance, even though he knew what she said was true.
“Not much to say, is there?” he said, a bit more harshly than he intended. “I’m glad your brothers came to get me that year, but I never wanted them to see me there. Just humiliating, isn’t it? Locked in my own room and too stupid to find a way out.”
Ginny’s eyes darkened. “You weren’t stupid,” she said. “You were only twelve, and they shouldn’t have locked you in there anyway.”
“Better there than in my old room,” he said rashly, immediately regretting it.
“Your old room?” Ginny asked.
Harry didn’t respond, hating himself and wishing he had never opened his mouth. Maybe if he didn’t say anything else Ginny would simply fall asleep from boredom and they could forget this conversation ever happened.
“Tell me about your old room,” Ginny said, stroking her fingers through his hair again. Harry closed his eyes, allowing himself to get lost for a moment in the soothing sensation and ignore the tight ball of resentment and anxiety swelling inside him like a long dormant creature he never wanted to wake again.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said finally. “It was just small, about the size of our storage cupboard downstairs.”
Ginny’s fingers stopped their stroking, and Harry could feel rather than hear the suppressed indignation in her voice when she spoke. “You slept in a cupboard.”
“I – no – I didn’t say I slept in a cupboard, I said…alright fine I slept in a cupboard, but so what? It was…it was fine,” Harry finished lamely.
He half expected Ginny to protest, to argue with his sudden defensiveness, but instead she just turned to look at him with pain in her eyes, and something else that Harry couldn’t quite comprehend.
“Please, don’t look at me like that,” Harry said, looking away. The last thing he wanted was for Ginny to pity him. He could never let her look at him again, not now that she knew. Not now that she knew the depths of his humiliation that he had tried to hide for so long. Why she wanted to know - why she needed to know - was beyond Harry.
“That’s cruel! How can you say it was fine?” she said in a pained voice.
Harry shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad…it was only until I was ten anyway. It’s not like I needed much space.”
He waited on tenterhooks for her to speak, and then finally –
“I hate them,” Ginny said simply. “I hate them so much.”
Harry said nothing; he didn’t trust himself to speak.
How long they lay there in silence Harry didn’t know, but at some point, Ginny’s fingers started to tickle his scalp again.
“They don’t know what they missed out on,” Ginny said after a long while, her voice thick.
“What?”
“What they could have had, loving you,” Ginny finished, looking back at Harry.
Harry shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, really, I don’t care anymore, and I don’t have to see them again anyway.”
Ginny’s forehead creased. “It matters,” she said, looking away. “But I love you, and that matters more.”
“I love you too,” Harry replied, and the precious words seemed to linger on his lips even after they left his tongue. Each time he had said those words to her was a sacred memory preserved immaculately by the significance of the words, filed away in the most valuable of spaces in his mind. As much as he wished Ginny never had to know, he knew she deserved to, and of all the people who could ever find out his secret, he knew Ginny would treat it most carefully. Ginny cared.
That two-word mantra ran through his mind over and over, valiantly chasing away little creatures scuttling out from dark corners, whispering doubts. But if he ever doubted Ginny, the blazing look in her eyes when she turned back to look at him was enough to let him know that she would never treat him or see him differently now, no matter how ashamed he was of his past. Perhaps in time, Harry thought, as Ginny leaned closer to him under the covers, he could learn to see himself through Ginny’s eyes.