Chapter Text
As with all things, Ginny figures it out before Harry does.
“Where do you go?” she asks one night when she rolls off of him. “Because you’re not here.”
Harry is still hazy from his orgasm. He hasn’t even softened all of the way, and he can barely begin to process what Ginny is even saying to him.
“I’m here,” he says thickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ginny reaches over the side of the bed and grabs her shirt off of the floor. She pulls it on and then reaches down to grab Harry’s. They were both a little drunk when they left Ron and Hermione’s after closing up the shop, but Harry knows that isn’t why he feels so strange right now.
Ginny doesn’t reply for a few moments. She just gets dressed in silence, and glances absently when Harry starts mopping his brow with his shirt. She does this sometimes: sits with her thoughts, takes her time before she decides exactly how to word things. It used to bother Harry, but it’s since grown on him. He likes knowing that she means what she says, even if it takes her a while to get there sometimes.
Unfortunately, this time, she comes up blank. “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s just like you’re always lost inside your own head when we sleep together.”
Harry shuffles up and reaches out for her. She plops down on the bed next to him, fully dressed despite the fact that he’s still stark naked. “I’m always a little in my head,” he says, combing through her hair so it looks less like sex. “You know that.”
“I know,” she says, smiling sadly. “But not like this.”
Harry frowns. “Aren’t you going to stay?”
Ginny shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” she says. “Not tonight.”
“Did I do something?”
“No,” she says. “Well, not on purpose at least.”
“You’re not normally this cryptic.”
Ginny gives him a very Molly look. “Would you like me to be blunt?”
“Please,” Harry says.
She nudges him a bit so he scoots down on the bed, making room for her. She lays next to him, using his chest as a pillow.
“Why do you think we never got married?” she says. “Like Ron and Hermione?”
“Erm,” Harry says. “Because you didn’t want to? You expressly told me if I came within a kilometer of you with an engagement ring you’d hex me.”
Ginny laughs. “Well, that’s true. But if you really wanted to marry me, you’d have badgered me. You know — the way your dad badgered your mum.”
“It’s a bit of a dated mating ritual, Gin.”
“Why do you think we never moved in together?”
This one stumps him more. He’s always known it was a little weird. Ron and Hermione lived together for years before they were married. Everyone he knew lived with their partners. Ginny and he had been together for years, and sometimes they stayed at each others’ for weeks on end as if they did live together. They had toothbrushes in each others’ bathrooms. They had clothes in each others’ hampers. They had just never gotten around to the actual moving in part.
Ginny pushes up onto her elbow to look at him, her fiery hair tickling his shoulder. She puts a curled finger under his chin, lifting his face gently as if inspecting him, reminding herself who he is.
She pulls her hand away. “Did you ever think maybe we’re just not compatible?”
Harry’s eyebrows shoot up. “What are you talking about?” he says. “Of course we’re compatible. We’ve been together for years. You’re my best friend.”
“And you’re mine, Harry,” Ginny says. “But I think there’s more to relationships than that.”
Harry feels himself beginning to panic. He sits up in the bed. “Where is this coming from?”
“Relax, Harry,” Ginny says. “You’re not doing anything wrong.”
Harry reaches for her shoulder, as if maybe he can snap her out of it. “I don’t understand, Ginny.”
Ginny sighs. “Would you like me to be quite blunt?”
Harry nods, swallowing audibly.
“Harry,” Ginny says slowly, as if searching for the best way to formulate the blow. “Has it ever occurred to you that you may be interested in men?”
Harry stammers. “What?”
“Okay, okay,” Ginny says. “Calm down. It was just a question.”
“That’s a hell of a question, Gin.”
“So are you saying it hasn’t occurred to you?”
“I hardly see why it matters,” Harry says, growing more defensive by the second. “I’m with you.”
The truth is, it had occurred to Harry. It had occurred to Harry numerous times.
It had first occurred to him when Seamus and Dean were caught snogging in their dormitories in fourth year. Caught by Harry. Before then, it hadn’t really occurred to him that two men could be together like that. The Dursleys certainly hadn’t exposed him to the possibility growing up, and he hadn’t had much time to think about it amid being hunted for sport by a murderous Dark wizard tyrant. But seeing it spelled out for him like that — and then spelled out again sheepishly by Seamus and Dean as they slowly confirmed the rumors to him and the rest of their friends — had taken a bit of getting used to.
It had occurred to him later that very year at the Yule Ball as he felt the icy glare of Parvarti Patil on his face through the duration of their excruciating dance. She thought he’d been sneaking glances at Cho all evening, and he had been, at first. But eventually, his eyes fell on Cedric — that strong jaw, that thick mop of hair, the way he always laughed and grinned and made Harry feel safe when they were together. He knew then that this was nothing like that, like what Seamus and Dean had, pressed up against one another in the corner of the ball — because he wasn’t them. He was Harry. And he was there with Parvarti, who was very much a woman.
It had occurred to him when he and Ginny first began dating — not the first time, but the real time, after the War. They were still so awkward then, because they had been one another’s firsts — not just for sex, but for everything. Everything felt strange and new and slightly uncomfortable, but Harry reckoned that was just how relationships tended to be. And when, eventually, they grew to be comfortable in each other’s arms and lives and mouths, it stopped occurring to him.
...Well, sometimes it still occurred to him. Occasionally when a particularly fit bloke came by the shop, or when he went with his mates to Quidditch matches and watched some of the players zip around the pitch, or when Kestrel’s seeker Magnus Chambers hovered by the stands long enough that Harry could see his muscles rippling beneath his robes, the way his trousers fit his waist and legs so snugly.
But it didn’t matter, because he was with Ginny. He was happy with Ginny. He never doubted that she loved him, and he never doubted that he loved her. So when it occurred to him, he simply pushed it away as one of the many errant thoughts that flitted through his mind on any given day.
“It honestly hasn’t,” Harry lies now. But as the words come out of his mouth, he knows that it’s a waste of breath. Ginny must have noticed somewhere over the years, or she wouldn’t be asking.
“Well, it’s occurred to me,” Ginny says.
Harry frowns. “I don’t know why you’re so worried about my interests.”
She laughs. “Well, it is sort of relevant, seeing as I’m your girlfriend, Harry.” She squeezes his forearm. “But I actually wasn’t talking about you.”
“Wait,” Harry says, grabbing his glasses off of the bed stand to put them on, like maybe this will all make more sense if he can see the world around him in focus. “Are you telling me you’re interested in women?”
Ginny has gone quiet.
“Maybe,” she says. “I think so.”
“Okay,” Harry says slowly. He finally pulls his shirt on, because he feels weird having this conversation half-naked. “Well, I don’t see why it should matter. Plenty of people like both.”
“I know that, Harry,” Ginny says. “But what if we don’t?”
Harry shakes his head. “I don’t know why you’re bringing all of this up out of nowhere. If you don’t want to be with me, you can just say.”
“Fuck,” Ginny says. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up like this. I’m freaking you out.”
“Yeah, Ginny,” Harry says. She’s right: he’s tense all over, his heart drumming up the pace. His hands are combing wildly through his hair. There are too many thoughts in his head. “You’ve just shagged me and then told me you want to leave me for a woman. I’m a little freaked out.”
Ginny laughs. “I didn’t say that,” she says. “And, I don’t know, Harry. That’s why I brought it up. You’re barely there sometimes. I don’t know where you go in your head.”
“Well, I’m not thinking about men,” Harry says, crossing his arms.
“Maybe you should?”
“It’s not funny, Ginny.”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Ginny says, the smile falling away from her face. “I just wanted you to think about it, because I don’t want you to wake up one day and regret not exploring it.”
“Are you telling me I should shag a man?”
Ginny laughs again. “That’s not what I was saying at all,” she says. “You’re the one who brought that up.”
She stands up. “Forget about it,” she says with a confusing smile. “Or don’t. I don’t know. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Harry gawps at her while she reaches down to tie her shoes. “You can’t just say all that and then leave,” he says incredulously.
“I have to go feed the primmyseed pups,” she says. “Because someone forgot to do it before they closed the shop up.”
“Ginny —”
“Don’t go batty, Harry,” Ginny says, pulling her jacket on. “Just think about it.”
***
Ginny is not a very gracious winner, but she’s also very rarely wrong.
They don’t talk about it for a few weeks, because the shop is always busiest around Midsummer when the entire wizarding world seems to need herbs and bulbs and blooms for their wreaths and altars and festivals. But they also seem to interact less, with Harry spending more time in the greenhouse tending to their growing plants and Ginny minding the front of the shop, charming their new and repeat customers with displays of their brightly sparking Litha bouquets and their potted Gator Greens that kept house mice in check by feasting on them ravenously.
During that time, Harry does as he’s told and thinks about it.
It’s not so much realizing that he’s attracted to his own gender that’s so hard. What’s hard is realizing that not everyone is. He’d always thought it was just something everyone experienced to some degree, and ignored completely.
What’s harder is thinking about how different it would be to be with a man — to really be with one. The Wizarding world has always been more accepting of that sort of relationship than what he knew of the Muggle world, but he isn’t sure if he can see it for himself.
Occasionally two men come into the shop, looking for cherry bonsai trees or bouquets of thornless roses. Most of the time, it’s subtle enough that Harry could miss it: the way they stand a bit closer to each other than friends would, or the way they bump shoulders when discussing the wares they peruse. Sometimes, the couples that come in are more obvious. They hold hands, or kiss, or grab each other’s arses when they think no one is looking.
Harry tries to imagine it for himself: holding hands with another man, buying potted ivy for his in-laws or herbs for their kitchen or a bouquet for a dinner party. He has a harder time picturing this because he’s never been with a man before, and doesn’t know who to picture in the position.
One evening when the shop dies down, Harry finds Ginny out in the greenhouse cleaning up. She’s wearing thick gloves, stained blue with the sap produced from the bacchanal succulents, enough of which could put a grown man to sleep in seconds.
She laughs when he wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her neck. “Harry, we’re in a greenhouse,” she says, pulling off her gloves.
So he Disillusions the windows. He kisses her madly, pushes her into the glass walls of the small building. He pulls down her knickers and pushes her skirt up around her waist and takes her from behind.
They drop down onto the ground after. Ginny pants slightly as she does up her fly, hiding her bright orange coils back behind the denim. “Did that help clear anything up for you?” she asks, grinning at him ironically.
Harry wants to pretend like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but it’s always a waste of time to try to lie to her. “No,” he says miserably.
***
And then, what of the life they’ve built together? They’ve been running the shop for years. It feels like it’s a bigger part of their relationship than either of them, what they’ve made together, the way they discovered together that the way that growing and tending to herbs and plants and flowers had a way of healing them from the inside out. Or at least distracting them from their memories enough that they didn’t have time to wonder whether they’d ever truly heal.
What of Ron and Hermione and Molly and the Weasleys? Harry couldn’t imagine going to the Burrow for Christmases without Ginny on his arm. He couldn’t imagine going and seeing Ginny on anyone else’s arm. What of their friends? What of their clients?
Ginny laughs when she finally teases these concerns out of him. “I think if those are the things that worry you the most, it’s proof enough that we shouldn’t stay together.”
They stay together anyway. They kiss good morning and goodnight and they still shag occasionally, particularly when they’re a little tipsy.
The sex isn’t bad. The sex is as good as it’s always been. But now that Ginny’s pointed it out, Harry does begin to notice himself fading away during it, rescinding back into his own mind, his own body, like she was never there at all.
“I think you should try it,” Ginny says after one particularly desperate session on his couch. “With a man. Just to see.”
“I don’t want to,” Harry says. He lifts off of her. “Do you want to?”
“I have tried it with a man, just now,” Ginny says.
“You know what I mean. Or have you already?”
Ginny shakes her head. She hammocks her head in her hands and looks up at him patiently, her breasts drooping a bit to either side of her chest. “I wouldn’t cheat on you, Harry.”
“Okay,” Harry says. “What if I wanted you to?”
“Well, what if I wanted you to?”
“Then it wouldn’t really be cheating.”
Ginny grins at him. “So you’ll try it?”
Harry sits upright on the couch and she follows his lead. “I don’t know who I’d try it with.”
Ginny thinks about this. “Someone who doesn’t mean anything to you,” she says sagely. “That way if it’s rubbish, the stakes are low.”
“What if it is rubbish, and I just don’t like sex that way?”
“That’s fine, too,” Ginny says, pulling her knees into her chest. “Plenty of people are like that. It’s fine.”
“You already have someone in mind, haven’t you?” Harry asks, a teasing grin spreading across his face.
She blushes a bit. “No,” she says. “Maybe.”
“Do I know her?”
“I don’t know,” Ginny says. “Do you know Harpies chaser Poppy Villegas? Because she’s right fit.”
Harry rolls his eyes at her halfhearted joke. “You don’t have to tell me who it really is if you don’t want to.”
“Of course I do,” Ginny says. “We both have to tell each other. A week from today.”
Harry gawps at her. “A week?” he says. He laughs incredulously, still a little loopy from the sex, like he tends to get. “You want me to get a man into my bed within the week.”
Ginny shrugs. “You’re Harry Potter. I think men would be lining up for it. They probably already are.”
“I don’t know, Gin.”
“Okay,” Ginny says. “Maybe that’s too fast. What about a kiss?”
Harry ponders this. He has kissed precisely three people in his life: Cho Chang, Ginny Weasley, and Alicia Spinnet, which he did once during a very brief game of spin the bottle during his eighth year at Ginny’s pushy encouragement. Maybe she was trying to figure things out then as well. She had kissed Pansy Parkinson that night, and it had lasted a little longer than Harry had expected.
“Maybe,” he decides.
“Okay,” Ginny says. “I might get a head start on you. Is that okay?”
“So you definitely have someone in mind.”
Ginny just shrugs, giving him a devilish smile.
***
As in all things, Ginny beats him. Harry can tell the second she gets to the shop a few days later. She doesn’t act differently, not really. But it’s like something has changed in her, loosened or lightened, like she’s finally taken off a cursed necklace she’s been wearing all of her life.
It’s all been very confusing for Harry, and very exhausting. But when he sees her like that, he feels devastated.
He’s not jealous, which surprises him. But it makes him think, for the first time, that maybe she’s really right. Maybe there’s something missing from his life that he didn’t even realize existed.
Ginny kisses him on the cheek after she sets up the counter for opening. Harry has been channeling his anxiety into tending to the pots of Angel’s Trumpet they have displayed in the window. They’re one of his favorite spring blooms, a beautiful white flower that is poisonous enough to kill a giant. But in his scattered state, he’s been overwatering them, and their leaves are growing yellow and droopy.
“How’s your mission going?” Ginny asks, rubbing his back.
“Not as good as yours.”
She freezes. “You said it was okay.”
“It’s okay,” Harry says glumly, picking one of the limp blooms free so a new one can grow in its place. “That’s not it.”
She squeezes his forearm. “It’s not a race, Harry, really. You can take your time. You don’t need to rush into anything you’re not ready for.”
“I am ready,” Harry says as their early morning customers begin to trickle in — elderly wizards looking for new hobby plants, home chefs stocking up on herbs, the occasional lovesick teenager looking to make a grand gesture. “I just haven’t worked out the — specifics.”
Ginny sets a watering can on the counter beside him and casts an aguamenti. “Okay. You have options. You could always pick someone up at a bar.”
Harry shakes his head. “I think that’s a little too anonymous to start with.”
“Owl Seamus and Dean. I’m sure they’d be thrilled to help out.”
“No,” Harry laughs. “Too far in the other direction.”
Ginny begins carefully watering some of the bright pink Tradescantias displayed on the counter. “Okay. So you’re looking for someone you know, but aren’t too close with. A colleague. Maybe a regular.”
“Maybe,” Harry says, dipping beneath the counter to find a quill for his ledger. When he stands up, Ginny is frozen, gripping the watering can in her hands and staring out into the ambling crowd in the shop.
Harry tries to follow her gaze, but she grabs his hand before he can as if trying to steady him for a blow. “What about Draco?”
Harry scoffs immediately. He looks up to spy Draco standing in the far corner of the shop, one hand on a small pot of Silverweed as he scans a list in his hand. “That is not happening,” he says, pulling his eyes away immediately. “He would never — I would never —”
“Well, I thought we agreed it should be someone who doesn’t mean anything to you,” Ginny says gently, pulling her hand away. “Besides, I’m sure he would go for it.”
Harry locks his eyes onto Ginny, whose own eyes are shamelessly following Draco as he meanders about the shop. “Why do you say that?” he asks.
Ginny shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says, dropping her voice. “I think he’d see it as a fun challenge.”
“You’re saying you think he’d like to deflower me.”
Ginny turns to him. “Well, I’ve already seen to that,” she says. “But yes.”
Harry thinks about it for less than ten seconds. Then he laughs. “No, no,” he says. “Back to the drawing board.”
“Well, seeing as I’ve just inspired you to think about him naked, I’d say at least half the battle is done,” Ginny says. “He’ll be back for a pickup on Friday when our Knotgrass comes in. You have time to think about it.”
“I am not shagging Draco Malfoy,” Harry says, finally glancing over at him. “And I don’t think picturing him naked is half the battle.”
“I only said to think about it,” Ginny says, a smile playing at her lips. “Besides, it’s only a kiss.”
***
Draco comes by the shop once a week to pick up plants for his potion making. He brews only highly advanced potions with Pansy Parkinson and supplies them to a number of shops on Diagon Alley. He is frequently in need of asphodel root and boom berries and mallowsweet, which Harry and Ginny started growing specifically for him. He’s one of their best customers, really, but Harry has definitely never thought of him that way.
Never.
Some weeks he comes by with Pansy, but this Friday, he comes alone. Harry has his order ready on the counter for him, two open boxes teeming with sprawling vines and blooms and carefully curated herbs. They don’t often chat when he comes by, though Draco will occasionally ask after how the plants in the greenhouse are doing, and Harry will sometimes ask how his potions are doing, and neither of them entirely understand what the other is talking about.
Harry watches him as he takes out his coin purse to pay, his long, slender fingers, the way his hair falls into his angular face when he counts out his galleons and sickles. He was always a sort of pretty man, even back at Hogwarts, though Harry had never noticed it then. Or maybe he had.
Draco hesitates. “Merlin, I’ve forgotten,” he says, irritation in his eyes. “Pansy left the stock of Sleeping Draught out overnight, the lot of it is ruined. Do you have any valerian in stock right now?”
Harry hesitates. They have some growing right in the window. But he thinks of Ginny, the way she seemed to float around the shop lately, the way she seemed even more self assured than usual, like she’d just been freed from something.
“Why don’t we check the stockroom?”
The stockroom is enchanted with artificial sunlight and the shelves are laced with stasis charms so that their greenhouse plants can remain healthy until they’re ready to be sold. It’s one of Harry’s favorite places to be: entirely surrounded by the fruits of his labor, the lush, bright foliage and blooms that he and Ginny have tended to from seed.
Draco comes to the back with him occasionally when he wants to hand select some of their more expensive wares in that fussy, particular way he has. Harry climbs up their rolling ladder and grabs a small pot or valerian off of the shelf. His hand shakes slightly around the pot, partially hidden by its small white buds. He stays frozen like that for a bit too long.
“Are you quite alright, Potter?” Draco says, rolling the leaves of the stargrass flourishing on a lower shelf between his thumb and index finger. “You seem a touch squirrely today. Moreso than usual, that is.”
Harry climbs down the ladder and hands Draco the pot. He twists it in its hands, inspecting it slowly. It’s nothing special. It’s just some valerian. He doesn’t need to look at it that long, or stay in the back that long, but he does, and it feels like a sign.
“Can I ask you something?” Harry says. He blurts the words out quickly before letting himself think about it.
Draco raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, erm,” Harry says. “Just wanted to know what you thought of the wormwood supply. I know you had notes on the last crop.”
Draco studies him, still twisting a stem of the valerian between his fingers. “Is that really what you wanted to ask?”
Harry falters. He should have known better than to bring it up, because Draco is annoyingly perceptive, and now it’s too late.
“No,” Harry says. “I wanted to ask how you knew you were interested in men.”
Draco’s eyebrows shoot up, a confused smile spreading across his lips. “Is this some new customer survey you’ve begun conducting?”
“Nevermind,” Harry says, hopping off of the ladder. “Forget it.”
“No, no,” Draco says. He puts the valerian on the shelf behind him and leans back onto it, pocketing his hands. “Tell me more.”
“I think you’re supposed to be telling me more,” Harry points out.
“I just want to know why you’re asking.”
Lately, Harry has gotten a little lost in his head when he looks at men, and it happens now without his permission. Draco’s slender body is reclined onto his shelf, spindly pink herbaria vines sprawling down onto the floor behind him like a cape. His hair is pushed back out of his face neatly, dropping down to his shoulders which are broad and sturdy and draped in a royal purple cloak. Harry’s eyes dance from angle to angle: the slope of his jaw, the jut of his elbows, the twist of his ankle crossed casually in front of the other.
“Potter,” Draco says.
Harry snaps out of it. “I don’t know. It’s stupid. Forget about it.”
Draco shakes his head. “It’s not as if I woke up one day and knew that I was gay,” he says, more generously than Harry expected. “It’s not always obvious when you’re young.”
Harry hesitates. “What about when you’re not young?”
Draco’s brow knits as he gives Harry an incredulous smile, like he’s not sure he’s heard correctly. “Potter, are you having a quarter-life crisis?”
Harry takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Nevermind,” he says again. When he puts his glasses back on, Draco is still staring at him with that stupid smile. Harry realizes this is not getting any less embarrassing, and Draco is going to tell all of his friends about it anyway, so he might as well be honest.
“It’s Ginny,” he says. “She wants to know.”
“She wants to know if she’s attracted to men?”
Harry laughs. He knows Draco is being purposefully obtuse, but he’s also being more accurate than he realizes. “No,” he says. “I think she thinks I might be gay.”
The word feels clumsy on Harry’s tongue, much clumsier than it seemed to be for Draco. He wishes he could take it back immediately. Ginny had seemed to think that a completely emotionless encounter would be a good starting point, and this is beginning to feel like the opposite of that.
Draco sizes him up suspiciously. “But you’ve been with her for years.”
“I have.”
“Right,” Draco says. “And you love her.”
“Well, yeah,” Harry says.
“But you don’t want to sleep with her.”
Harry feels himself flush. It took years for he and Draco to adjust to the polite, amicable, but generally impersonal relationship they struck up after the war. To even say they were chummy felt like a bit of a stretch. This felt like stepping out of a puddle and diving into the Great Lake.
“No,” he says. “I mean yes. I mean, no. I do. We do. It’s not like that. She just wants me to make sure.”
“She wants you to try shagging a bloke.”
Harry goes even redder. Draco is very annoyingly perceptive, or maybe Harry is just very obvious.
“Not shagging,” Harry says hastily. “Just. Snogging?”
“And she told you to ask me.”
“No!” Harry lies. He pushes a hand through his hair. “Merlin, Malfoy. That’s not why I asked. I just wasn’t sure if I even wanted to.”
Draco shrugs. “Well, I’m happy to help however I can, if you’d like to try it.” He’s still leaning against the shelf, as cool as ever, like they’re talking about the Tornadoes’ last upset to the Kestrels. “Anything to support a fellow small business owner.” He pauses. “I mean Ginevra, of course.”
“Of course,” Harry says, his mouth suddenly growing dry.
Draco makes a show of checking his watch. “Well, I don’t have all day.”
“Oh,” Harry says. “Now?”
“Did you want to schedule something in my calendar? I’m a very busy man, Potter.”
“Oh,” Harry says. “Okay.”
Draco rolls his eyes, but that stupid smile remains on his face. He pushes off of the shelf and strolls over to Harry, whose heart is pounding so hard he’s sure Draco could hear it from across the room.
“Christ, Potter. Relax,” he says. He steps close, and Harry shivers when he places an open palm on his collarbone. Draco looks at him curiously as though Harry has suddenly sprouted antlers. Harry tries his best not to meet his intense gaze, but finds that his eyes fall down to his lips instead.
“Alright then,” Draco says. “This is the part where I unfurl my secret homosexual tentacles and use them to suck your life force out through your ears. Have you brought yours along as well?”
“Shove off, Malfoy.”
Draco kisses him. His lips are surprisingly soft, as soft as Ginny’s, really. He tastes sweet, and a little bitter, like he had just taken tea. He parts Harry’s lips slowly with his own, and Harry takes his bottom lip between his instinctively, giving it a gentle nibble. Draco’s fingers curl against his collarbone.
Draco pulls away. Harry realizes he’s pressed against the shelf.
“By the way,” Draco says, patting Harry amicably on the shoulder and then turning away to pick up his valerian. “Is there some sort of discount available for supplying this service? Friends and family, perhaps?”
Ginny appears in the door, a bag of blue-tinted Mandrake soil in her hands. “Harry,” she says. “There are customers up front. What are you —”
She glances over at Draco, who gives her a smile and a small wave. “Oh,” she says. “Hi, Draco.”
“Nice to see you, Ginny,” Draco says.
The two idiots just smile at each other like they’re in on some joke. Harry’s heart is still pounding. “Sorry,” he says. “We were —” he stammers. “Would you ring him up, Gin?”
He walks out of the stuffy room before she can reply. He passes through the front of the shop and out into the greenhouse, where he sinks down against the glass walls and sits with his head on his knees until he can be sure that Draco Malfoy is very, very far away.