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Ginny wasn’t accustomed to knocking on doors. As a little girl, she often bounded into her brothers’ rooms unannounced, eager to see what the older boys were up to. It wasn’t until the last year that she learned why so many of them were often in bed and flustered when she thundered in, or less-than-enthusiastic when their baby sister interrupted their activities.
In their first week at Grimmauld Place, just days after coming off the Hogwarts Express from completing her third year, Ginny lost her favorite jumper. Not knowing the layout of the creepy, ancestral home, Ginny stormed into the bedroom she thought belonged to her parents. She was at first confused, and then appalled, when instead of seeing her kind, predictable mum and dad, she saw Sirius Black and Kingsley Shacklebolt, shirtless and snogging atop an old, dusty settee. Ginny rubbed her eyes, sure the dust of the room was blurring her vision. But seeing Kingsley’s large hand tug on Sirius’ long hair, watching his dark, glossy head of hair fall back with a hiss of pleasure, and then seeing the Auror’s free hand reach down into Sirius’ trousers let Ginny know she wasn’t imagining anything.
She left the room, hot, flushed, and confused, having never seen two wizards enjoy each others’ company so intensely. In fact, she’d rarely seen any two people behave so intimately, but she supposed that walking in on her parents a few times in her youth - not knowing what they were doing at the time, of course - wasn’t totally unexpected, given how many siblings she had.
A few days after the ‘incident,’ as she now referred to it in her head, Ginny heard her name shouted from an upstairs bedroom. She thought her mother was calling for her, and not wanting to keep her waiting, Ginny rushed upstairs to see why she was needed.
Ginny immediately regretted her decision. There was no sign of Molly Weasley. Where Ginny expected her mother’s face, instead she saw her previous professor in a compromising position.
Lupin, staid, shabby, and worn, had a pair of legs clad in ripped, fishnet stockings wrapped around his midsection. Ginny’s eyes traveled to see Professor Lupin’s head bent down, his face obscured by a shocking mop of pink hair.
Tonks moaned loudly, urging Lupin on, and when Ginny heard the sound of a zipper, she turned on her heel, bewildered and still skeptical that her former, worn professor was currently shagging the colorful, clumsy Auror. She had never thought of Lupin as anything but her gentle, slightly stuffy professor. The sudden realization he was a werewolf - now combined with him shagging Tonks - continued to baffle her. Ginny decided not to mention the newest incident to anyone, thinking no one would believe her, even if she was telling the truth.
A week passed and by then, Ginny thought she knew the layout of Grimmauld Place well enough to tell the difference between a bedroom door and a cupboard door. She was proved wrong when she swung what she thought was a cupboard door open, and gasped at the sight of Emmeline Vance’s face between Hestia Jones’s legs. Ginny saw nothing but Emmeline’s bare back and Hestia’s long, bronze legs trembling in the air.
Hestia bucked into Emmeline, making noises Ginny had never heard before, and she bolted from the spot when Emmeline began shifting away from the space between Hestia’s legs. Ginny was surprised to feel just as hot and flustered as she’d been when she saw Kingsley and Sirius together. She wasn’t sure why seeing them gave her the same kind of fluttering sensations in her belly as when she’d seen Sirius and Kingsley, but decided dwelling on it - or the sight of their soft curves - wouldn’t do her much good.
After seeing them together, it was perfectly clear to Ginny later why Emmeline and Hestia always arrived and left together from Order meetings. However, the very next day, Ginny did swing open a door, thinking it was only a cupboard. She thought she’d identified all the bedroom doors, and feeling confident that she was only opening a cupboard, she jumped back in surprise when Emmeline and Sirius were snogging within, neither of them looking even mildly embarrassed that they were cheating on their partners.
In her fury, Ginny stomped up to find her mother, who would surely know how to help.
Molly Weasley, as it turned out, wasn’t the right person to ask when it came to extramarital affairs. When Ginny stormed into her parents’ room, she found not only her mother, but Hestia and Sirius in the bed, the three of them curled together and moving in a tangle of limbs. Aghast and brokenhearted at what her mother was doing to her father, Ginny slipped away unnoticed to find her father.
Ginny heard her father’s voice coming from the library, one of his favorite haunts. She listened at the double doors, relieved when she heard Arthur’s steady, calming voice in conversation with Kingsley’s deep baritone voice. Ginny walked into the library, ready to tell her father - and Kingsley, too, knowing that Sirius was also cheating on him - but all the words died on her lips when she saw her father and Kingsley having more than just a conversation in the library.
Ginny saw her father on his knees, with Kingsley’s large hands on the back of his head, moving rhythmically with Arthur’s bobbing. Ginny clapped her hand over her mouth, aghast, and walked backwards out of the library to slip quietly into the first available bedroom.
This, too, was a mistake, as only a glimpse of vivid pink hair and the sound of smacking bodies let Ginny know that Lupin and Tonks were at it again . She rushed out, keeping her head down, and shut herself into her twin brothers’ bedroom, where she was only likely to see them experimenting with their joke products.
“Ginny, what’s wrong?” asked Fred, seeing Ginny slam the door behind her. “You didn’t eat one of our Constipation Clusters, did you?”
“No, and I don’t want to talk about it.” Ginny hugged herself and sank down to the floor, basking in the normalcy of her brothers’ products, which were somehow the most predictable phenomena at Grimmauld Place.
“Bad day?” George stood from his spot next to Fred and joined Ginny on the floor.
“Something like that.”
“Ears, you think?” Fred called to George, holding up two fleshy, ear-like objects in his hand. George nodded and Fred threw the contraption across the room, where it landed in George’s hands.
“This,” George began, showing Ginny the ears, “is what we’re calling Extendable Ears. We tried Extendable Eyes first, but–”
“We saw things that no human being in their right mind wants to see,” Fred finished darkly. “Ears are loads better.”
Ginny’s eyebrows knit together. “What do you mean? What did you see?”
Fred and George exchanged furtive glances. They were having another silent conversation with their facial expressions; Ginny knew the faces well enough to know they were disagreeing with each other.
“Whatever it is, I can take it,” she added hotly. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen…in bloody cupboards, for Merlin’s sake–”
“What if it was our parents?” George blurted, turning crimson. “Together?”
“With each other?” Ginny asked slowly. “Or with the others?”
George blanched. Fred crossed the room and sat down on the floor next to Ginny, staring at her intensely for a moment.
“What do you know?” asked Fred, eyeing Ginny suspiciously.
“Err…I think…mum and dad are…they’re not…they’re with–” Ginny choked on her words. She didn’t want the images to come up in her mind, but trying to vanish the scenes of her father and Kingsley or her mother and Sirius and Hestia were too much to bear.
“They’re swingers?” George suggested lightly.
“You know what they’re doing?” Ginny demanded, darting her eyes between her brothers. “They’re okay with it?!”
“Of course they are,” Fred said matter-of-factly. “We saw them with Mrs. Diggory–”
“Stop!” Ginny clapped her hands over her ears and shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want to know. You’re saying this is normal?!”
“For them,” George said, shrugging. “We didn’t know everyone in the Order was like that.”
“You’ve seen the others?” Ginny said, thunderstruck. “Kingsley and Sirius? Hestia and Emmeline? Lupin and–”
“ Lupin’s in on this too?” George interrupted. He met Fred’s eyes, who were shining with glee. “ Professor Lupin?”
“Yeah, he’s with Tonks,” replied Ginny, trying to keep the image of blurred pink, sandy brown, and gray hair from her mind.
“I thought she was with Bill,” Fred muttered. “Blimey, mum was so excited–”
“No, remember we saw her with Emmeline?” George countered. “But Lupin - we thought he was the only one who didn’t–”
“Please stop,” Ginny said, scrunching her eyes together. “Are you two telling me that everyone in the Order is shagging each other and our–” Ginny swallowed hard, unwilling to voice her parents’ involvement in whatever activities the Order had outside of their usual missions.
“When they’re not on missions, yeah,” George said, averting his gaze from Ginny’s. “We’ve, uh–”
“Seen a lot?” Fred interjected. He took an Extendable Ear from George and lifted it up. “Heard a lot, too.”
“So you knew and didn’t tell anyone? I thought mum and dad were cheating–”
Fred rolled his eyes. “Nah, they’ve been at this for years. Thought you knew–”
“I obviously didn’t,” Ginny replied, through gritted teeth. “Does Ron know? Charlie?”
“Ickle Ronniekins doesn’t know anything,” George answered airily. “Charlie might already be a part of–”
“Never mind,” Ginny snapped. She stood abruptly and returned to the door, wondering if Kreacher would obliviate her if she asked nicely, as she no longer trusted any adult in the Order.
“It’s why we think they only allow members out of school,” Fred said, cracking a conspiratorial grin. “I’d like to get with T–”
Ginny didn’t want to listen anymore. She went out to the corridor to find the bedroom she was now sharing with Hermione. Though it was her room, she’d learned her lesson, and decided to knock on the door loudly before entering it.
“Come in!” Hermione called, and Ginny breathed a sigh of relief when she saw only Hermione sitting on the ancient bed, tomes spilled out in front of her.
“You didn’t have to knock. This is your room, too,” Hermione greeted, quirking an eyebrow at Ginny.
“You never know what you’ll find if you don’t knock,” Ginny said curtly. She curled herself up in her bed and hugged a pillow to her chest.
Until that day, Ginny had always believed her parents loved only each other. She never imagined her mum and dad with anyone but the other. Molly and Arthur Weasley belonged together. Ginny felt her stomach twisting as she wondered if she or her brothers had a different father - she hoped that since they all had similar red hair and freckles, that wouldn’t be the case.
Nevertheless, the bombshell of learning her parents weren’t monogamous or seeing so many of the Order members getting frisky with each other had taught her a valuable lesson.
She would never open a door without knocking, and she wouldn’t breathe a word of what she’d learned to anyone, still holding out hope that she could have her memory altered before she looked any of the Order members in the eye again.