Keeping His Dinner Warm (The Broken Time-Turner Remix)
13.
"Nothing, really." Ginny smiles, head shaking and riddikulus riddikulus riddikulus running through her head. "Hermione?"
"What?"
"Let him cook his own damn dinner."
5.
Her husband in bed with two men, one blonde one dark-haired and-
7.
Ginny likes to watch.
She likes to watch, silent and still, Ginny likes to listen. Hermione is cooking, bottom lip between her teeth, bleeding, and that furrow between her eyes when she concentrates. Ginny watches.
The room smells like a battlefield. Like burnt flesh and browning onions.
Hermione keeps glancing up at the clock on the wall, the one that shows Ron to be at work. At work and at work and at work late, and though Ginny wonders at this, she doesn't say a word.
Ginny's good with secrets.
She is.
There are many things at which Ginny excels: secrecy, silence, stealth. She is the youngest of the Weasleys, and she learned the power of listening young. The strength in watching. She learned young. She learned many things young.
Hermione looks at the clock, again, and turns back to her recipe.
6.
"You would've made quite the spy, Mrs. Potter," said in a deep whisper.
"Thank you, sir."
A sneer, a smile, a smirk.
Her husband's invisibility cloak like quicksilver against her skin.
4.
The second time, Harry was shagging Draco Malfoy and Ginny was an hour early for dinner. It was three weeks until their wedding, and the flash of blonde hair and pink cheeks and "oh, fuck, Potter" made her lock herself in the loo, finger furious against her clit.
Ginny likes to listen. Harsh breath in the other room, "oh oh oh," while she touches herself and fucks herself (and when she comes, she comes hard and sudden and never quite sure what, exactly, she's hissing).
8.
She was not quite twelve, and he was one of the most powerful wizards of all time. Handsome and charming and his words, oh, his words wrapped around her like a summer breeze. She was only eleven, and he wrapped her around him like a shroud. Himself around her.
Words, Ginny knows, are more than just letters strung together. More than sounds.
Most things are more than the sum of-
"Melted butter," Hermione mutters. "Diced onions. Brown and pour over beef."
Hermione cooks like she's preparing a particularly difficult potion, all fierce concentration and a soft humming noise Ginny can just barely make out beneath the clatter of pots and pans and spoons.
She seems happy. Ginny know that happiness, like most things, is mostly a lie.
A benevolent falsehood.
Hermione starts singing, something about dinners and a new row of shells, and Ginny closes her eyes. Counts to ten. Eleven. Twelve. An owl from Ron, something scribbled on a torn bit of parchment, flutters through the window.
"Oh," Hermione says. Oh.
10.
And then she smiles.
3.
The first time, Ginny was fifteen, and Ron and Hermione thought they were alone. Ginny was fifteen, and it was the middle of the night, and Hermione has a mole above her right breast that Ginny longed to touch. To lick. Her brother's fingers were clumsy and awkward, and they never quite reached that spot.
Hermione made these soft little noises, barely vocalized puffs of air. (Oh, oh, oh.)
And Ginny became enthralled with Hermione; with Hermione's skin, Hermione's mouth, Hermione's brain. Lying in bed nights, Hermione Hermione Hermione reverberating through her skull, her skin damp and tingling and alive. That mole taunting her in her dreams.
So she began to listen. To lurk. "Oh, Harry, do you think I could borrow your invisibility cloak? I promise to get it back to you right away."
Ginny began to watch. It turned out that it wasn't just Hermione she fancied, after all.
11.
"Have you read Gilderoy Lockhart's latest?" Hermione asks, and Ginny doesn't cringe.
The answer, of course, is "no, I haven't read that tripe," but Ginny just smiles and promises that she'll pick it up next time she's in Diagon Alley. Hermione simply smiles and smiles and turns back to her cooking.
"I'm trying out a new recipe," Hermione says, "from Witch's Weekly."
Ginny remembers when Hermione was the brightest witch at Hogwarts. When she wanted to grow up to change the world. "It certainly smells good," she says, and holds her peace.
"Ron will be home soon, I'm certain of it."
Ginny wonders when Hermione stopped paying attention. Even Neville could've picked up these clues, and for all his good traits, Neville Longbottom never was the brightest of students.
"Of course he will."
Ginny's good at saying what people want to hear.
1.
Ginny was twelve and she knew things some grown women never get around to learning. When Ginny turned thirteen, she sat on her bed, legs crossed and fingers stiff, and willed herself to forget.
Whispering, "obliviate, obliviate, obliviate."
Some things, however, even the most powerful witch can't spell away. And now matter how many times Ginny tried to forget, she was still a student and there are rules governing the use of magic by underage witches and wizards.
But still she would whisper. Still she would pray.
And then the nightmares-
2.
She took to staying up nights. To observing her dormmates' nighttime faces.
12.
Ron doesn't come home. At least, not before Ginny leaves for the evening, confused and worried and tired of Hermione's chirpy singing (new shells and warm dinners, indeed).
"Let him make his own damn dinner," she says. And disapparates.
9.
Ginny's good at hiding in plain sight, at saying what people want to hear. She would've made a good spy, she knows, and not just because Severus Snape once whispered it to her in the middle of the night. Not just because she can collects secrets like Hermione used to collect knowledge, like she now collects housecleaning tips.
She knows things most people never will; she learned them young, and the lessons stuck, no matter how hard she tried to forget.
So words, Ginny knows, are more than just letters strung together. More than the sounds that they comprise. Most things are more than the sum of-
"Melted butter," Hermione mutters. "Diced onions. Brown and pour over beef."