Unlike a Sister (Harmione)

Chapter 26: The Painting

For the first time in recent memory, Harry waited for the Sunday Prophet with a sense of buoyant expectation. When it finally arrived and he untied the broadsheet, his face broke into a wide grin.

EX-AUROR USED BLOOD SLUR FOLLOWING EVALUATION: CALLAHAN TRIAL TAKES ANOTHER DRAMATIC TURN

At the counter with his tea, he read through the main article. Much as Harry had interpreted it, the Prophet viewed Hermione's decision to reveal the inadmissible evidence surrounding the magical evaluation as a stunning gamble that paid off. While Judge Fawley may have been displeased, four of the Wizengamot magistrates were elected and would be under considerable pressure now to ensure an apparent blood supremacist did not go free.

Further down, there was an account of Harry's own testimony. And this, he had not expected. The Prophet actually ripped into Bruton for dredging up Harry's childhood and attempting to paint all Muggle families as violent and gun-crazed.

He glanced at the byline. Zafira Clarke. Hermione had mentioned her before, he thought. She was one of the few prominent Muggle-born writers on staff.

Harry looked at the picture with the article. It was quite good. The photographer had managed to get Harry, Hermione, and Callahan in the same shot. He could tell it was from the beginning of his testimony for he and Hermione were smiling at each other. It was almost flirtatious. Callahan was in the far background, staring off towards the doors of the chamber.

"Good morning."

Harry looked over his shoulder as Ginny shuffled inside, eyes bleary with sleep.

"Morning."

She glanced at the paper in his hands.

"How's the coverage, then?" she asked tightly.

"Fine," he said noncommittally.

A tense sort of silence followed as she fixed herself tea. Since their argument over Harry's ejection of several Prophet staffers from the ball, they had not had a real conversation. They were both waiting to see who would break first. And he could tell it was getting to her. He always broke first. Yet, Harry was strangely grateful for her coolness towards him. It created an invisible ward around his mounting guilt.

"Are you going to watch again tomorrow?" she asked, her back to him.

"No. I'll go for closing statements, though."

She nodded, then turned. "I'd-I'd like to go too, if that's all right? Show support."

Harry looked at her properly for the first time. He knew it was an overture and it opened a small fissure in the invisible ward. But...he wasn't quite ready. He could see Howard Banbury-the Prophet columnist who'd essentially called Hermione a traitor to her own world-kissing his wife's cheek at the ball.

"Sure," he grunted.

She nodded, likely knowing this was the best she'd get from him for now. She came towards him, extracted the sport section, and moved to the table.

The silence stretched on.

The room by the garden was a talisman. Harry carried it in his thoughts and turned it over in his hands, worrying the edges of it.

He wasn't prepared for how hard it was not to see her. To know they would not be alone for another week. In the quiet moments that Sunday, as he prepared dinner, as he skimmed over files in his study, he played it all over in his mind, again and again.

The way she had moved beneath him. The surge of heat he'd felt when she pushed herself against his mouth. The sight of her as she came around him, his name on her lips. The way she burrowed into his chest, like it was a safe place.