an: too much of the music video sonne by rammstein and too many weird hp related chats with my friend sarah. here's my only cure for the epilogue.

-Sonne-

Albus Severus and James have stopped asking why Daddy is always on his hands and knees in the bathroom, not even using magic to clean the grime off of the tile floor. His face grows flushed as he drags an old towel back and forth across the rim around the bathtub, making the white porcelain shine. He bends around the back of the toilet with an old toothbrush, scraping and scrubbing until every possible patch is clean. When he's finished, he wipes the mirrors until they are so glossy that he can see himself amplified: tired, cracked, blank. His knuckles flex, and he is trapped, vaccuming the hallways of the small house, dusting the corners, feeling like a house elf in his oversized gray sweatshirt and fading jeans, his old glasses hanging off his point of a nose. He makes the beds and changes the towels, painstakingly scrubs the kitchen counters and cooks bacon in an iron pan for James' birthday, making sure it's just right.

Ginny stands in the doorway between the hall and the kitchen, nodding her head and smiling as though everything has her special mark of approval. She comments that the front window is not quite clean, suggests that Harry should have used a different solution to make it shine. He has nothing to say—in the air is a dreadful, cold silence. The children know something is wrong, but it isn't anything that is easy to pinpoint. Ginny always talks about how impressed she is by all of the hard work that goes into muggle cleaning, and why should Harry do anything else but what he's good at? She gets home late from quidditch matches and never means to come home, and when she drops in mistakenly, it's because she forgot her red tube of lipstick or her black boots or her sheer black stockings. Most of the time she keeps her good humor, but sometimes she's vicious and cruel, demanding why Harry hasn't brewed any tea yet, asking why he's being quiet, wanting to know why certain books of hers were not in alphabetical order on the bookshelf. Harry finally has the love of his life, and so he is responsive and quick. He always comes to her rescue and massages her feet in the evenings, no matter how bad of a headache he has.

"Harry," she says to him with a smile," your aunt is so right. What a help you are around the house. Curtains and everything." She kicks off her stilettos, and falls onto the couch in a drunken stupor. Harry feels like crying, but he can't. He is all grown now. He just doesn't feel anything. When Hermione and Ron come over (arm in arm, inside jokes, casserole dish in hand), he tries to think of ways to tell them that his wife is like this, a manipulator, but then… this is Ron's sister, and maybe it's all in his head!? So what if she's career driven? So what if she's happy to take a break from cleaning and cooking? Harry tries to tell himself all of this, but he knows, he knows that something is wrong.

Albus Severus and James cower at the spotless dining room table, filling their mouths with fresh bread, warm from the oven and sticky with honey and jam. They go shopping with Ginny and return home with tons of presents, millions of parcels, which Ginny justifies by saying she was never allowed anything of her own. Harry's money supply in the Gringotts vault is dwindling. Harry's back aches with the pains of twenty some years of slave labor, and he watches his sons growing meaner and less vulnerable by the day, on expeditions with their mother to find out what Dean Thomas has been up to all these years, what befell Michael Corner. "You're not who I remember, Harry," she says, by way of apology, whenever an unknown owl leaves a box on their doorstep. She is a ladykiller in female form, a real maneater with her hands on her hips. Harry wonders how he never saw it.

There's nothing else for him to do. He has missed the window of time in which to complain. All that is left is the task of James' breakfast. He is turning eleven today, and there are brightly colored balloons that hang in the drafty corners of the little house. A jinxed banner reads Happy Birthday, Sweetheart! and Harry finds himself all too envious. Later that night, Hermione and Ron and other people will most likely come over and eat the food Harry has so strategically prepared, and they will compliment Ginny. They will leave dust on the perfect wooden floors, and half-eaten plates of cake in the foyer. He will pretend to laugh, and act like he has plans of going out with Hermione and Ron when really, he knows he is not able to leave.

"Harry," says Ginny in a harsh tone, waking him out of his stupor" don't you burn that bacon! I want everything perfect for James' birthday."

The End