[Fic]: The Unexpected Benefits of Getting Lost
The Unexpected Benefits of Getting Lost (5400 words)
A Harry Potter fanfiction by Andrew yclept Aelfwine
#
The characters and situations of the Harry Potter series are copyright J.K. Rowling. They may not be used or reproduced commercially without permission. The use of these characters and situations is not to be construed as challenge to said copyright. They are merely borrowed for this work of non-commercial fanfiction, from which the author derives no financial benefit.
#
Warnings: Ron being a git, yours truly, heterosexuality, lack of explicit content, geekery, Irish characters from alternate universes, Diana Wynne Jones references, Harry/Ginny, pre-Hogwarts, AU
#
Well, this is a bit of a departure for me. "Harry and Ginny meet before Hogwarts and bond" has been a popular fanfiction trope for a while now; I've read a few, but somehow I didn't think I'd ever write one. And then this popped out of my head, somehow.
###

"It's my turn, Ron. Come down and let me have the broom." Ginny Weasley said. Her brother had been circling the paddock and pretending to make Wronski feints for the last fifteen minutes, and they'd agreed this morning that they'd take ten minute turns each on the broomstick, as measured by the old kitchen timer Mum had let them have. Ginny had given up the broomstick promptly when it was the end of her turn.

"No, Ginny," Ron said. "This broomstick's too powerful for a little kid, and you're only a girl, besides."

"Ron! You're only a year older than me. If I'm a little kid, so are you. And the Harpies beat the Cannons last week, so don't tell me girls aren't as good at flying as boys."

"They only won cos the referee felt sorry for them. If the Cannons had a fair shot, they'd win the league every year. And I'm going to Hogwarts with our brothers next year, but you'll have to stay here with Mum. Go away, Ginny, and play with your dolls or something, all right?"

"I hate you, Ron," she said, willing herself not to cry. She could go and tell Mum, of course, but some things just weren't done. Besides, Mum would probably say that if they couldn't settle how to share the broomstick amongst themselves they were too young to be trusted with it at all, considering that there were Muggles living on the next farm and it would only take one silly boy or girl flying right in front of their eyes to force her to call out the Obliviators, and wouldn't that be embarrassing for Dad? After all, he wasn't properly appreciated at the Ministry, and the family needed to show his colleagues that, whatever they might think of his department and his fascination with Muggle tools, his children were the best behaved and most responsible in the country.

Instead she climbed over the fence and headed for the wood, with Ron's laughter ringing in her ears. "Stupid brother," she muttered. Bill and Charlie would have taken her side and boxed Ron's ears, if they had to, but they were away working now. The twins were always caught up in their own projects, and Percy would only tell Mum.

She'd go to play in the wood instead. Perhaps she'd find a treasure, and she wouldn't share a single Knut of it with Ron, and wouldn't he be sorry then? Perhaps she'd find a tribe of wild blue-painted Pagan witches and wizards who'd been living in the wood since before the Romans came, and they'd recognise her from a prophecy and make her their queen and give her a sword and a golden torc. Their druids would say Ron should be executed, of course, but she'd spare him and he'd live the rest of his life knowing that his sister could have him stuffed into a wicker man and burnt at any moment and didn't do it only because she was a good queen.

If nothing else, she'd visit her friend Luna. She knew how to get to Luna's house by walking down the lanes, of course, but this time she'd forge her way across the wood, travelling by the game trails and the secret paths that only the Gypsy poachers knew, or would have known if there were any of them about, and even if she didn't find anything marvellous on the way she could always act as if she had done when she saw Ron at supper.

It wouldn't be a very hard walk, after all. Luna only lived a mile or two away, the wood wasn't very big, and once she was through the wood she'd be able to see Luna's house across the fields. Ginny couldn't get too lost, could she?

Apparently she could, she realised an hour later. It was as if she'd somehow got into a wood she'd never seen before, instead of the one that she knew. She should have reached some edge by now, even if she was all turned round and it wasn't the edge she thought she was headed for. Perhaps she'd be stuck here overnight or long... she didn't let herself think about it. She wasn't going to cry. She was ten years old and she was only lost all alone in the wood and she wasn't going to cry. After all, it wasn't as if there were wolves or bears or scary men in the wood by her house. But it also wasn't as if she could actually get lost in the wood by her house. She wasn't going to cry, really.

She was sitting at the base of a tree, not crying, when she heard a voice behind her. "Hullo?" It was a boy's voice, she thought. "I don't believe I've seen you here before." The accent was funny, sort of posh like an announcer's on the wireless but sort of foreign at the same time, as if this boy spoke some other language rather often.

"I'm not crying," she said. "I'm only sat here, sat here, um... hunting elephants, that's it."

"I don't think I've seen any elephants," the boy said. "But here's my handkerchief."

"I'm not crying," Ginny said.

"No reflection on your honour," he said, "but I thought you might like the use of a handkerchief. They're very handy for all sorts of things when you're waiting in the wood to shoot an elephant."

She couldn't help but laugh. "Right." She turned round to face him, and got a surprise. Was I wrong? Is he a girl who sounds like a boy?

Ginny knew perfectly well that boys' hair grew just like girls' hair. Plenty of older Wizards wore their hair long: her grandfather, before he died, and Headmaster Dumbledore whom she'd met once in Diagon Alley, and Luna's great-great-great uncle who called her "thou" and the pair of them "fine clever wantons" and was always talking about the days when he rode at Prince Rupert's side. Her brother Bill was letting his grow, now that he was working for the Goblins and living away from Mum's nagging. But she didn't think she'd ever seen a boy of about her own age whose hair fell halfway down his back in a messy black plait. Or, for that matter, a boy who wore knee breeches and a long tunic belted at the waist, with a leather pouch and a little knife hanging from his belt.

But of course he was a boy. A very nice looking boy, as boys went, crouching beside her and holding out a square of off-white cloth. "It's clean," he said. "I thought you might want it in case you'd got your face wet. Don't elephants spray water with their trunks, sometimes?"

"Yes," she said. "I couldn't get a good shot at him, you see."

"That was well done," he said. "A good hunter knows when not to loose."

They grinned at each other, and burst out laughing. It was funny, Ginny thought. A few minutes earlier and she would have thrown a fit if he'd laughed. But now she was laughing, and so was he, and it was perfectly lovely.

"So," he said, "I'm Harry. And you are...?"

"Ginny," she said.

"I'm honoured to meet you, Ginny," he said. "Would you like to keep my company for a while? I can't guarantee that we'll find any elephants, but anything's possible. And if we don't... I've got cheese and bread and sausage and dried apples, so we'll not starve even if we can't eat fresh grilled elephant liver."

She made a face. "Elephant liver?"

"That's what you do when you kill a deer, so I suppose it's what you should do with an elephant. But I've never hunted them, so I wouldn't know for sure."

"Right," she said. "Perhaps we won't kill the elephant, if we find it. After all, I haven't actually got a wand." Oh, shite. You didn't say things like that around Muggles. She'd never met Harry before, so he had to be a Muggle; there weren't enough Wizards in Ottery St. Catchpole for Ginny to have not met a boy of her own age already, or at least to have heard about his family coming to live here. "A... umm, a gonne, I mean, of course."

"Of course," he said. "And I've left my bow at home, and it wouldn't be strong enough for elephant, if they're as big as I'm told they are. Well, we can scout for elephants, at least. And have a bit to eat, and if you'd like I can show you the meadow where Mother Fox brings her cubs to play."

"I'd like that," she said.

"Come along, then," he said, slinging a rawhide satchel over his shoulder. "I've plenty of lunch for both of us, and there's a nice rock we can sit on."

And that was what they did. Harry had rough brown bread and funny strong-tasting cheese, a triple handful of dried apple bits wrapped up in cheesecloth, some salty dry sausage, and a leather bottle of something he called "barley water." It wasn't the kind of food Ginny was used to, but she liked it.

They picked up pebbles and threw them at tufts of grass and knots on trees. Ron always told her girls weren't meant to do things like that, but Harry seemed to think it was fine and even said she had a good eye. They scratched a board in the dirt and played nine-men's-morris with bits of gravel, but got so busy talking about animals and books that they forgot the game halfway through, and by the time they remembered Harry thought it likely time that the fox cubs would be out.

"Umm, Harry, I have to... you know, first." She knew she was blushing horribly.

"To... oh, right. Well, if you'll go that way, I'll go this way, and we'll meet back here when we're done. We'll whistle or sing or something when we're coming back, to let the other know, right?"

"Sure." Part of her couldn't believe she was trusting a boy. After all, she knew perfectly well that if it were any girl other than her Ron would try to sneak up and watch, so he could make fun of her afterwards or brag to other boys or something. But Harry seemed very trustworthy, somehow.

A few minutes later, feeling much more comfortable, she walked back. She couldn't think of anything else, so she sang random bits of the Celestina Warbeck songs her mother listened to.

She heard Harry before she saw him, singing something that sounded very foreign, with lots of little trills and funny notes in it. I wonder where he's from? she thought. He hadn't told her much about his family, other than that his parents had died when he was very small and he lived with someone he called "Teacher" now. Perhaps his grandfather was a general in the Indian Army, and he's being raised by an old Sikh sergeant? Ginny wasn't sure she had a very good idea of what the exotic foreign people in her Muggle books were supposed to look like, but she imagined that some of them might dress something like how Harry did. Or perhaps he's Harry Potter? No, of course he wasn't Harry Potter. Harry Potter would be living somewhere with Wizards, training up to be a great hero, not running about in the wood like somebody out of a Robin Hood story.

"Shall we proceed?" he said, offering her his arm. She giggled and took it.

The fox cubs were very cute. They tumbled together, playing at fighting. She and Harry lay on their bellies at the edge of the wood, watching them. He stayed very still, and she felt a bit embarrassed to have pretended to be a hunter, even as a joke; Harry, she suspected, actually did go hunting, even if he didn't hunt elephant. It was hard to stop herself laughing out loud at the tiny creatures' antics. She concentrated on her breathing--one of her books had said something about that, and it seemed to help a bit.

The cubs were having so much fun. Part of her wanted to grab Harry and play the same sort of game with him. But that would scare the foxes.

At last the little animals and their mother headed away. And Harry sat back on his heels and said "Good evening, Teacher. Five minutes and fifteen seconds."

"Twenty seconds," said a woman's voice.

"Fifteen."

"All right. Fifteen. So, you've made a friend?"

"Yes. Ginny, meet Siobhán Nic Gearailt, my Teacher. Teacher, this is Ginny."

Harry's Teacher was nothing like she'd imagined. Not only had she been envisioning a man, crusty and vaguely military, perhaps a bearded Sikh in a turban, she'd been imagining someone old enough to be Harry's parent, if not grandparent. But this was a woman, her hair half black and half red with a single white streak and tied in a plait like Harry's, but for being much neater. And she couldn't be much older than Ginny's big brother Bill. She wore clothes much like Harry's, but instead of a knife she had a full-fledged sword and a little round shield at her belt.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Miss Ginny," she said, holding out her hand. "And how in the names of Saint Michael and the Blessed Mother did you get here?"

"Umm... I was in the wood by our house. And I was only trying to visit my friend Luna, but... I got a little lost, and then I met Harry. I'm sorry if I wasn't supposed to be here--I didn't realise it wasn't all right, and I didn't see any signs or fences..."

Harry gripped her hand. "And I have made her my Guest-Friend, Teacher. We have shared food and drink. You threaten her at your peril."

"Calm, be calm," the woman said, laughing. "You know full well I'd never harm a child, Harry. Especially not a little sweetheart of yours. But I am wondering how she managed to get through five layers of wards. And I didn't think there was anyone magical within ten miles, so I'm a bit curious about that as well."

"But... there's a dozen Wizarding families in Ottery St. Catchpole," Ginny said. A second later, the thought caught up with her. "You mean you're Wizarding people? And here I spent all day with Harry trying not to talk about magic?"

"Harry," Teacher said, "is, amongst other things, a Wizard. My magic isn't quite the same as yours, but rest assured that I have it. But the fact that you're a Witch, and have travelled, somehow, more than fifty miles from where you should be, makes things distinctly more... awkward."

"I'll not tell anyone anything, if it would hurt Harry," Ginny said. "I'll make an Unbreakable Vow, if you like."

"I know you'd not, but you're young. And a powerful Wizard or Witch, with certain skills, could pluck everything from your mind. I'm afraid we'll have to memory charm you."

"No! I'll stay here before that, and never see my family again or go to Hogwarts, even. I don't want to forget Harry."

"And memory charms are too dangerous," Harry said. "I don't want Ginny hurt. I'll take my chances, and die if I must."

"Well..." Teacher said. And Ginny knew that it was hopeless. She'd charm Ginny's memories away, and drop her outside the Burrow. Harry was only a boy, and what could he do to stop a grown woman with strong magic and a sword at her belt? He couldn't, anymore than Fred and George could stop Mum putting the frog they'd made a pet of back into the pond. And Ginny would only have a sneaking suspicion that she'd lost something wonderful, and she'd go away to Hogwarts with that in the back of her mind, and drift through life like poor Luna had done since her mother died, only without knowing there was any reason behind her drifting, and perhaps some day she'd see a black-haired man who walked through Diagon Alley like an ancient Wizard-Lord come back to life, and she'd wonder who it was that he reminded her of, but it would be too late because Harry would have long since forgotten her...

"I'll do anything," Ginny said. "I'll be your maid or clean your stables, and eat your table scraps, and I'll sleep in your barn."

"You'll do nothing that I don't do as well, and you'll share the food from my dish and the drink from my cup," Harry said. "And you'll sleep in my bed, and I'll sleep in the barn. Unless I have to sleep across the door to protect you, and don't think I won't, Teacher."

"I'd not expected such... intensity," Teacher said. She opened the throat of her tunic and slipped out a ring on a chain. She closed her right eye, and looked through the ring with her left. And promptly said something that sounded like a swear in a foreign language. "You shouldn't have been able to establish that much of a bond in only an afternoon. And here I'd thought Fate would leave us alone for a few more years.

"But it doesn't change the fact that if I send you back to your family without some manner of memory charm we'll be found out. Your mother will know something's different about you, or your father will see it, and they'll end up taking you to a healer or a priest, and if one of them has a look at you they'll end up calling in someone with powers and connections. And then..."

"I'll stay," Ginny said. "I'd miss Mum and Dad, and Luna, and my brothers, but if that's what it takes to keep Harry safe, I'll do it."

"But... I don't want you to lose your family, Ginny. I never knew my parents. I don't want you to never see yours."

"There are certain... solutions," Teacher said. "You're a bit young for them, but there's definitely a bond there. That said, I don't want to force two children into something so permanent."

Ginny figured it out before Harry did. "You mean... I have to marry Harry? I'll do it."

"And if that's what it takes to stop you memory-charming Ginny, I'll do it," Harry said. "I've never met a girl I'd rather marry more than her."

"Marriage," Teacher said, "is awkward. You're the Heir of an Old House, Harry. The rules here aren't quite what I grew up with, but they're similar enough. We'd need witnesses of the appropriate ranks, and the permission of your Head of House or formal magical guardian, which I'm not despite my best efforts, and ideally a priest to bless you once the wedding oaths were made. Besides, there may be a contract already in place--I've not been able to see all the appropriate papers yet. But there are other forms of union. Do you mind being a concubine, Ginny?"

She cudgelled her memory for a moment. "Um... there was something in one of my books about them--the Arabian Nights, maybe? Like a... a slave girl or something? If that's what it takes."

Harry blushed. "If that's what it takes. But I don't want you to call me Master, and I'll never make you do anything you don't want to do..."

"Not a slave at all, Ginny," Teacher said, grinning. "Being a concubine, or perhaps 'consort' is the better English word for it, is a perfectly respectable thing where I'm from. As Harry's consort, your honour-price would be twice that of a... baronet, I think that's the closest equivalent. You'd have as much veto over his marriage as he would, which I have to admit isn't all that much in the higher aristocracy, but it would be very unlikely that he'd be forced to marry anyone who wouldn't at least be polite to the both of you. And Harry, haven't I taught you the laws? Slavery has been forbidden in my country since the reign of the Emperor Níall Nine-fingered, of blessed memory."

"I know," he said, "but when Ginny said that I was afraid it might be allowed in the Wizarding World, and I thought telling her I'd protect her and be good to her was more important than trying to think through the law book you made me read last week."

"Obviously we need to read Wizarding law a little more, Harry, but I approve your sentiments heartily. Protecting your consort, not only her physical body but her feelings, is one of the most important parts of being in a relationship."

"Would I have to stay here all the time?" Ginny said. "Not that I mind, but... I'd like to visit home once in a while."

"Yes," Teacher said. "It would be difficult to explain, but there is precedent. And if you were Harry's consort, nobody would be able to extract details, such as our location, from you. The power of the bond would protect your mind, up to the point of making a vegetable of any Legilimens who attempted to breach your shields."

"Well... I always thought I'd marry Harry Potter, someday, but now I've met you, Harry, I'd rather marry you."

Teacher burst out laughing. "Did you forget to tell her your surname, Harry?"

"It didn't seem important," he said.

"What did I say?" Then the thought made its way through her mind. "Oh, good grief. You mean I've spent the entire afternoon with Harry Potter, and I didn't even know?"

"I'm afraid you have done, Ginny," Harry said. "I understand if you don't want to..."

"No, you prat," she said. "There's nothing I'd like better. And it's probably just as well--if you'd said you were Harry Potter straightaway I'd probably have been too frightened to talk with you."

"Then I'm grateful to whatever good spirit stopped me telling you."

"So," she said, "I'm Ginny Weasley. Pleased to meet you, Harry Potter."

"I'm Harry Potter," he said. "Pleased to meet you, Ginny Weasley."

"Could I be your consort, Harry?"

"I'd be delighted, Ginny."

"Very well," Teacher said. "Now, let's see if I have what we need." She opened her own belt pouch, and promptly began taking things out of it. Obviously it was the sort of bag that had more space on the inside than it did on the outside. "A little bread, a little salt, a bit of wine... well, brandy will do... and this wire will serve to form the torcs on. So." She drew her sword, and gestured.

Ginny couldn't help but shrink against Harry. He put his arm round her shoulders. "It's all right," he whispered. "In Teacher's world they use swords to do their magic with, sort of like wands."

"Okay." She could almost see a circle of light form round the three of them.

"If you, Ginny, would kneel here, and you, Harry, would kneel there, facing her, we'll begin." They knelt down. There was a bronze cup between them, a piece of bread with a bit of salt sprinkled over it resting on a leaf, and two bits of wire bent into hoops.

"Now, Harry. Do you take this woman to be your consort? Say it with your full name."

"I, Harry James Potter, do take this woman, Ginny, to be my consort."

"And do you, Ginny, take this man to be your mate?"

"I, Ginevra Molly Weasley, do take this man, Harry, to be my mate."

"Do you promise, Harry, to love, honour, protect, and cherish her?"

"I do."

"Do you promise, Ginny, to love, honour, support, and cherish him?"

"I do."

She laid her sword between them. "Do you swear on this steel and the Cross it represents, by your ancestors and your honour, by the Blessed Mother and your patron saints?"

Harry laid his hand on the hilt. "I so swear."

Ginny laid her hand next his, their fingers barely touching. "I so swear."

"Break the bread, Ginny, and feed Harry a piece. And you, Harry, take the other piece, and feed Ginny." They did. It was awkward, but sort of a nice feeling at the same time.

"Take the cup, Harry, and give Ginny a sip of it. Only a sip, now, it's strong." He did. The liquid burnt like fire on her tongue, but she didn't care. "Now, Ginny, do you likewise." She did. Their eyes met over the cup, and they shared a smile.

Teacher took the cup from their hands, picked up one of the wire hoops, and put it round Ginny's neck. She put the other round Harry's, and took the sword from between them. "Now," she said, "you may kiss each other."

That was awkward. Ginny had never even really thought about kissing a boy, not even Harry Potter. Not as a reality, anyhow, rather than a vague dream full of drifting rose petals. She'd only ever kissed her family, and Luna once or twice when they were playing some game that seemed to require it. They met knee to knee, and hugged each other. She looked in Harry's eyes, and saw the same nervousness in them. Somehow they got their lips together, puckered, and... kissed.

It was far nicer than she'd expected it to be. Not wildly exciting, like in the novels that Mum read and which Ginny sometimes borrowed when she wasn't looking, but very nice. Then the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she felt a sudden flare of heat round her neck. What was that?

She looked at Harry, and knew. Instead of a wire hoop, he had a torc round his neck, dully gleaming. And the sudden slight extra weight on her neck must mean that she herself now wore a torc as well.

"Very good," Teacher said. "Congratulations. Now, to complete the bond, you must share pleasure."

Share pleasure? What did that mean? Suddenly she realised, and by Harry's blush he must have worked it out in the very same instant.

"Enjoy," Teacher said, dispelling the circle round them. She was gone as silently as she'd come.

"Good heavens," Harry said. "I... aren't we a bit young?"

"We are," Ginny said. "I suppose if we have to, but... Don't get me wrong, I'd like nothing better, someday, but..."

"Wait," Harry said. "Teacher likes to make me work things out for myself. That's what she's doing to us, I think. Now... pleasure means fun, doesn't it?"

"I suppose it does," Ginny said.

"And..."

"What we've been doing today has been fun, hasn't it?" She grinned at him. "That's it, isn't it? Let's have fun, my Harry."

"Let's do, my Ginny." He took his knife and pouch from his belt, hooked them onto his satchel, and hung it from a tree branch. "There, now they're out of the way. I think you can beat me to the other side of the meadow, to that rock right there, Ginny-my-consort."

"Shouldn't that be 'I think I can beat you,' Harry-my-mate?"

"I prefer it my way."

"Fine," she said. "Let's do it." And they took off at a run. Ginny wasn't sure if she actually beat Harry, or if he let her win and she was only letting him think she hadn't noticed. She put the thought aside, tapped him on the nose, and said "You're it!"

Tag somehow led into wrestling, and they rolled over and over together on the grass like the fox cubs. Too young or not, it felt good to be so close to Harry, and the odd bit of nuzzling each others' faces was, if anything, even nicer than their kiss. At last they were too tired to wrestle anymore, and Harry lay on his back with Ginny snuggled up against him and her head on his chest. "It's wonderful," she whispered. "I like being your consort."

"And I like having you for my consort," he said, putting an arm round her and stroking her hair. "Hmm... perhaps we could stay like this all night? I think I could sleep."

"So could I," she said, "but wouldn't the foxes come and have a pee on us or something?"

He laughed. "I suppose you're right. Would you like to go home, Ginny?"

"I'd love to, Harry. Speaking of which... where is home?" The got to their feet, and Ginny took Harry's arm.

"Let me collect my things," he said, "and we'll go there."

Walking arm-in-arm didn't feel like a game anymore, the way it had felt this afternoon. It felt natural and right, the way it looked when Mum and Dad did. A thought came into her head. "Harry?" she said.

"Yes, love?"

"What about your scar? I mean, all the books and stories say that when... when the Dark Lord tried to curse you, and couldn't, that he left you a scar on your forehead. But I can't see it. What happened?" There was a long pause. "I'm sorry if that's too personal a question."

"Ginny," Harry said, "Ginevra my consort, there is no question that's too personal, not in private between us. But my scar... I'm trying to think how best to explain it you. There was something there. Something very bad; a piece of the Dark Lord, you could say. Teacher took it out, after she found me. She used magic from her home; I don't know all the details, but we had to go to Glastonbury, and it needed a priest and a relic of one of the soldier-saints, and I pretty much slept for three days after and she slept for another two after that. And when it was done I only had a little bit of a bump there. You can feel it easier than you can see it."

"Oh," she said. "But it's gone, so why would it matter?"

"Some people are uncomfortable about dark magic, and the idea of my having had something like that on my head, even if it's gone now, would bother them."

"But I'm not some people," she said.

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry, Ginny. I'm not used to this yet."

"I'm not, either. But we'll get there together."

"We will." They stopped for a moment, and hugged each other, hard.

"So," she said, "where is Teacher from, anyhow? She doesn't sound Irish, exactly--my friend Luna's mum was Irish, so I think I know what they sound like--but she doesn't really sound quite like anyone else I've ever heard, either."

"Well," he said, "it's complicated. Did you ever hear of parallel worlds?"

"Like the Related Worlds in the Chrestomanci books?"

"I knew I liked you," Harry said, "and I suppose now I know why. Yes, like that. She's from one of those."

"Which Series is it in?" She giggled. "Has she ever met Chrestomanci? Or Cat Chant?"

"Not that much like," he said, laughing. "But history went differently there, and they have different magics and different languages. The closest thing to English is a language called Sacsna that some people in Wessex speak, but most people in what we call England speak something that's kind of like Welsh or Cornish. Teacher's milk tongue is Éireannach, cos she's from Teamhair, which is the place they call Tara here."

"Irish Gaelic?" Ginny said.

"Kind of. Éireannach's got a more complicated kind of grammar, more like Latin or Greek; Teacher says that's because in her world they mostly conquered people, instead of getting conquered. We speak it a lot at home, Teacher and I."

"I suppose I'll have to learn it, then." Ginny couldn't help but be a bit worried. They taught them a bit of Latin at dame school, to help with their spells when they went to Hogwarts, and she wasn't very good at it.

"Teacher has spells that help a lot, and then you'll just need to practice. That's how I learnt it," he said. "You'll do fine. I can feel it."

"And then when we go to visit my family, we'll have something we can talk in so Ron doesn't understand what we're saying. And he'll think we're saying he's thick and ugly, and maybe he'll be right but maybe he'll not be, and it'll drive him bats. Um... that is if you ever go with me. You don't have to. I understand if you don't want to. I mean..."

"Ginny," he said, "I would love to meet your family. But I hope they don't mind me. I mean, if they'd rather not meet me, or if you'd rather I didn't meet them..."

"They'll love you, Harry, once they're used to you. I'm sure of it."
###

Notes:
I know that Harry's far too young to have had his grandfather be a general in the Indian Army under the Raj, at least if we're assuming Muggle lifespans, and all of that. Ginny, however, doesn't--she's read books like Rudyard Kipling's Kim and Talbot Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles, but she doesn't have a very good idea of how far in the past they're set, much less of the colonialist issues surrounding them. She also doesn't really know that Muggle lifespans are shorter--I'm using the assumptions of older fanon (if not older canon ;-) for this fic, and the Wizarding lifespan is typically a couple of hundred years, and sometimes as long as three or four centuries. Mostly because I couldn't resist Luna having a cavalier great-great-great uncle. ;-)

Using "wantons" as a pet name for children comes from Thomas Dekker's original (i.e. pre-Beatles) version of "Golden Slumbers." I couldn't think of a better 17th century term for him to use--if anyone's got one, I'd be grateful.

Teacher comes from a culture that... well, it isn't a very likely probability track,* but for various complicated reasons what happened with the Greeks in the Eastern Roman Empire happened with the Irish in the Western Roman Empire. There isn't a Hiberno-Roman Empire anymore, but Ireland is still a fairly powerful state and retains a lot of institutions inherited from the Empire. Their language is called Éireannach rather than some variant on Gaeilge because they used to call it Rómánach and themselves Rómánaigh, seeing themselves as heirs to the Roman Empire even if Rome herself was occupied by Germanic tribes and jumped-up descendants of Roman plebeians. But the national consciousness thing was flying about Europe in their 19th century something like how it was in ours, people went hunting for a "native" name, and that's what they came up with--it's sort of like the Greeks coming to call themselves Hellenes rather than Romans.

Well, that's the Watsonian answer--the Doylist answer is that I wanted to be able to distinguish it readily from our world's Modern Irish in the text. I'm aware that early mediaeval Irish naming practices were different, but I decided to use the Modern Irish forms for personal, family, and place names just to make it easier on myself.

The difference in wording between Harry's vows and Ginny's is a matter of rank, rather than gender. I'm not sure if married women can have male consorts in Teacher's world, or whether they have any sort of same-sex marriage, but neither is particularly an issue in this story. I do think that a consort and a wife could and generally would share their husband's bed, but I'm not sure that bed is particularly sexualised in their culture**; the ideal relationship between the two might possibly be seen as that of foster-sisters*** and dearest friends, rather than lovers. If I end up continuing the story and the issue of Éireannach custom about these things should become important, I'll work it out.

I'm also not sure how Teacher knows that Harry is of a higher rank than Ginny, but I'm arbitrarily assuming that the Potters are very high on the totem pole, that Teacher has memorised the records for the Wizarding families of the same status, and that she knows none of them have a daughter of Ginny's age and appearance.

*Then again, they might well say the same thing about our world.
**Nudity, at least in the context of bathing, isn't sexualised at all. Which might mean Ginny has a little shock in store tonight. :-)
***In mediaeval and early modern Irish culture, the relationship between foster-siblings was almost closer than that between genetic siblings.