Title: Obverse

Author: Neko Kuroban

Fandom: Harry Potter

Chapter: One of…

Chapter Title: Of All The Gin Joints in the World

Summary: All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Warning: Cynicism, I guess. Alcohol abuse, maybe. Also, this will undoubtedly be alternate universe come July twenty-fourth.

Characters: Hermione, Ron, Harry, Other

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The pub was one of those Muggle backrooms, where the booze came as cheap as sin and you could get up on a raised dais to sing once you were far enough gone. The place was on its last legs and the haze of cigarette smoke stung at his eyes, but the shots were strong enough to make even he clench his teeth. It was sparse – save for the barkeep wiping off the countertop and the gaggle of young women who had just arrived, he was the only person within.

He glanced at the cheap timepiece that adorned his wrist. Forty-five minutes. Felt like he’d been sitting there for years. Stagnating.

It had been years, in his mind. Seven years. Seven years since he had slain Voldemort. Seven years since Ginny Weasley had died. He resisted the urge to snort at the irony. The Dark Lord hadn’t ever given a damn whether Harry had snogged Ginny Weasley; he cared that Harry was willing to go through hell to protect her. Seven years since his rage had taken hold of him, spurring him forward on his damned fool’s crusade, eager for vengeance. His friends caught up to him, willing to aid him, and yet… the bond of trust that had existed between them had been shaken, and it still had not quite repaired.

Hermione spoke to him in a different way now. She was eternally loyal and good-natured, but her behaviour had changed. She would hold her child close as she and Harry settled on the second-hand sofa in Mr and Mrs Granger-Weasley’s rented cottage, and she would treat him seriously and frankly, as if he was not the man who had been the same gawky eleven-year-old who had tolerated her bossy attitude (and her crush on Lockhart, and the week in third year where she was convinced that she wasn’t pretty and let one of the Gryffindor girls give her a makeover, and…), as well as her habit of clutching her fingers in her wiry hair when she was annoyed. “I’m not happy,” she had mused aloud – her considering tone of voice suggesting that she had never before contemplated it, and her free hand seeking and finding his beneath a knitted throw. “But I’m content, and I think that’s the most we can hope for. We can’t go back to the way things were.”

Despite Ron’s evident longing to return to the status quo of when they were thirteen (possibly fourteen; the fourteenth year of his life had been a good one, until the end), Harry knew he had changed too much to go back. Changes had come in little ways. He didn’t put much stock in words these days. If truth were golden, words were worth as much as little bronze Knuts. Sometimes you could scrape together enough to buy a drink or to pay for an owl to deliver a poorly written letter filled with insincerities, but mostly they just gathered, taking up space in one’s pocket.

“You’re like a son to me, Harry.” But he had not been Molly Weasley’s child, had he? And it had never been more obvious than the day they had sealed Ginny, the only person Harry had ever loved so much that it hurt, into a box and ripped his heart out as surely as the first handful of scattered dirt fell onto her coffin.

“I love you, Harry.” Ginny had whispered, her voice soft and tentative in the darkness, rising to a sitting position on the floor of an out of the way broom closet, a (cliché, he realized now) clandestine meeting place. She hadn’t loved him enough or else she would be here right now, wouldn’t she?

“Of course I’m happy,” Hermione had insisted on her wedding day, her skirt rucked up to her knees as she smoothed the wrinkles out of her thin stockings. She had averted her eyes, however, earnest for everyone but herself. What had ever happened to I think it’s all right to have secrets, just as long as you don’t have them from yourself?

“I’ll meet you in the pub ‘round six mate.” It was the third night this week that Ron had offered to do something, but never shown.

Truth was like money in another way: whenever he needed gold, Weasleys rarely had anything more to offer than a double-fistful of Knuts.

Flushing scarlet at the impropriety of the thought, he stood to leave, pulling several crumpled Muggle bills from his back pocket. However, as he turned, a startling flash of crimson caught his eye. Ginny? (Drunk. Surely, he was intoxicated or the thought never would have occurred to him.)He looked over his shoulder at the girl singing on the stage. She had chosen some pop song, and she was absolutely terrible, her voice too thin for the melody. Her shirt was too low, even for the muggy weather, and the narrow horizontal stripes and red collar made her look like a tawdry candy shop. Not Ginny. Just another girl. As the song ended, he turned away.

Harry was halfway out the door when thin fingers caught his forearm from behind. The contact shocked him and he staggered, his side slamming into the wall of the narrow corridor that led to the entrance, before whirling to face the redhead, who was pouting up at him, her pale pink lips shining with gloss.

He wrenched back to put some distance between them – being touched unnerved him – and the woman frowned, obviously taken aback. Her eyebrows, fine and blonde, furrowed in confusion. “God, Potter,” she murmured, her gaze piercing through a fringe of hair. “I only went to school with you for years.”

He struggled to place her face, before a vague memory of a girl leaning over a crystal ball surfaced. Faintly, he could recall laughing about the overzealous teacher and the group of girls she inspired. “Lavender Brown.”

The tension drained from her shoulders; her brow smoothed. “The very same!”

Hardly, he thought, glancing down at her. It was no small wonder that he had failed to recognize her. The last time Harry had seen Lavender was several years ago. At the time, she had been a careless, striking strawberry-blonde with a penchant for ‘cutesy’ nicknames – he very nearly grinned as he remembered “Won-Won” – and doodling in the margins of her notebooks. However, looking down at her now, there was something different about her. The impishness had faded from her gaze. He had never noticed that her eyes were green before – they were not the clear, heartbreaking jade that ran in his mother’s blood, but more of a muddy jade that called to mind dying moss in a sun-starved forest. She was not beautiful. Pretty, perhaps, but her features were a little too thin, her collarbone slightly too sharp. Her newly crimson hair was cut short and slightly jaggedly, and the faux colouring – much too bright – contrasted sharply with her pallor. A tired, worn-out quality hung about her lanky frame like a shroud.

“You okay?” She asked quietly, waving her hand – nails manicured; she had to have been doing okay for herself – in front of his face.

“Fine,” he answered distractedly. “Your hair…”

“Is…oh!” She quickly retrieved her wand and drew a darkness charm with a deftness that he admired. She casually brought the tip of her wand to the end of a strand of hair and muttered a quick spell, causing the natural red-gold colour to return to the short-cropped strands. The Shade receded as she replaced the wand in her pocketbook; Lavender smiled self-consciously and shifted the strap of the bag on her shoulder. “How about I buy you a drink?” She offered.

“Lavender,” Harry’s voice strained for patience. “I haven’t talked to you in years. I don’t think we’ve ever even had a conversation before.”

“All the more reason to say yes,” she persisted. “Come on. You were by yourself, and you know what they say about only alcoholics drinking alone.”

Fury, sharp and sudden, welled within him – what does she know – but he forced himself to calm. It was his life that was causing him to fray, he suspected. Not those who meant well. He checked his watch. Eight. Ron wasn’t coming. “Only if we go somewhere else.” If he showed…let him do the waiting.