Chapter Text
“Ouch! What was that for?”
She knew he wasn’t actually in pain, she hadn’t punched him that hard. The hurt cry had likely been born out of surprise and a bit of playful exaggeration. But Harry met her gaze with an indignant look, eyes wide and brow furrowed as though he had been viciously affronted.
“What’re you going to do, Chosen One? Cry about it?”
Harry rubbed his shoulder where her knuckles had connected and shrugged, the edge of his lip twitching.
“Maybe I will.”
It was Ginny’s fifth year at Hogwarts, and she had finally begun to feel comfortable around the Boy-Who-Saved-Her-Life. She had realized as she finally got to know Harry her previous year that he really wasn’t all that she had made him out to be. He was no hero to squeal at and run from, he was a kid just like her. A good kid, but a regular one. Sure, he happened to mysteriously be placed in situations where he needed to act heroic far more often than his peers, but she would probably have done the same things had she been in his place. Ginny found that the two of them were actually more similar than she had thought, and they now frequently exchanged glances when strange or amusing things happened. It was as though they shared some kind of understanding.
She had idealized this boy so much in her youth that she found herself constantly surprised when she first started to get to know him. Seeing him brush his teeth at The Burrow while she waited for the sink, silently sharing amused looks with Hermione in the common room while he groaned about his homework, and good naturedly cringing at dinners when she heard him make bad jokes all made her realize his humanity.
Unfortunately, Ginny had only grown to like the mundane side of him even more than the great protagonist of a children’s story that she used to imagine. But for the first time in her life, she had been able to put her feelings for him aside and appreciate his friendship as it began to blossom between them.
She knew she would get over him eventually, but even when she was dating Dean, Harry always seemed to be in the back of her mind, itching at her skull. She had not broken up with Dean because of Harry, though he may have had a factor in the fighting and the jealousy that extinguished whatever had once sparked between them. But ultimately, though she had liked Dean and felt all the right things, she knew it wasn’t meant to be from the beginning of their relationship. But clearly she and Harry weren’t meant to be either. She just had to wait, she would repeat to herself. She would get over this boy eventually. Eventually.
Ginny squinted at Harry with what she hoped was a challenging stare. Most people had gone to bed now, and it must have been a little after midnight. A low murmur was coming from a couple of other groups of students, while the waxing moon outside shone bright on Gryffindor tower. The bright fire of the common room was crackling quietly behind Harry, casting shadows on his face and masking his green eyes. They were unreadable, but something was pulling at the corner of his mouth. The dark skin at the edges of his face was touched by the flames, glowing with golden light, and when he licked his lips they shone, but Ginny tried very hard not to notice that.
“Don’t go flicking your ink at me like that again, or my next target will be your nose.” She warned. The first two times it had happened, she let it slide, but evidently it had been Harry’s intention to bother her. She supposed he wanted a break from the monotony of the History of Magic textbook he had been reading. Her voice came out rougher than she intended, and Harry’s thick eyebrows raised, so she proceeded to give him a toothy grin. Hopefully, the flash of teeth still came off just a bit intimidating.
Harry’s first instinct was to put on a very innocent look, reminiscent of a puppy caught chewing on shoes and pretending not to see the bite marks.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just write really… vigorously.” His voice was falsely sweet as he tried unsuccessfully to keep a straight face, his eyes shining and betraying the laughter he was holding back.
“All over my essay on Selkies, you git!” Ginny laughed.
Harry grinned and said a bit dryly, “Well, my nose has already been broken once this year. What have I got to lose? I can just ask Luna to fix it.” One eyebrow was quirked in challenge and he clasped his hands calmly on the round table without breaking eye contact.
Ginny dropped her quill, scooted her chair a little closer, and leaned in for the full effect of her threat. She was now only about a foot from Harry’s face, but she tried not to pay attention to the faint heat blooming in her cheeks.
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean with my fist. I’ll Bat-Bogey Hex you into next week, Potter.” She said steadily.
Harry instantly leaned back and lifted his hands in defeat, a caricature of fear on his face. “Alright! Fine, Ginny, you win.”
Ginny gave him a sweet smile with an edge of smugness. She pulled her scroll and quill over to her, Harry returned his gaze to the thin, yellowed pages of his book, and they continued to work side by side in a comfortable silence.
About half an hour later, when she was midway through the essay, Ginny set down her quill and cracked her knuckles, shaking out the tightness that was beginning to cramp her hand. She yawned and stretched, and was just starting to think about her bed, with its big warm comforter and assortment of fluffy pillows… When suddenly a certain messy-haired boy leaned over her paper, shot her a devilish look, and very purposefully dropped one large ink blot onto the side margin.
Ginny’s eyes got very large and her mouth dropped open in mock anger.
“Oh, you did not just do that!” She cried, reaching to pull her wand out of her back pocket. She stuck it in Harry’s face, who made no attempt to get away or fight back. One pale, freckled hand had settled right between his eyes and just close enough so that Harry went a little cross-eyed looking at the smoothly carved wand. A shadow of a smile still played upon his lips, though his eyebrows were raised in interest as he looked up at Ginny and watched for what she would do next.
“I will do it!” Ginny insisted, grinning and pushing the wand an inch closer.
Suddenly, something shifted. As Harry tilted his head to gaze at her and the firelight finally hit his skin, lighting up the shades of brown, sparkling in his green irises, a change went through his eyes. It rippled the playfulness there like wind through tall grass. When it had passed, he had a curious look on his face that Ginny couldn’t quite identify. His eyes were… soft, somehow. There was joy and trust and humor, but also a sort of sadness. He looked vulnerable and tender, and for a moment Ginny swore no one had ever looked at her like that.
It made her breath catch in her throat. She dropped her wand to her side and her smile faded to a pale ghost of itself. Something stirred at her center, a heat, a twisting. It was as though a fiery serpent had begun to slither through her intestines and up to her chest.
“I know you will.” Harry murmured.
As quickly as the moment had come, it passed. Ginny shook her head, forcing a little chuckle. She quickly looked back down at her ink-dotted essay and swallowed to push back the serpent, which had gone still again. She glanced back at Harry out of the corner of her eye and saw that he suddenly seemed terribly interested in magic history, for he was now hunched over, his gaze glued to the dusty old book. His face was tight and still like a stone mask as his eyes flickered just a little too quickly over the page.
“Well, I think I’d better be off to bed now,” Ginny chirped, putting her wand back into her pocket and beginning to gather her things. Even to her own ears, though, her voice had an unevenness, a tremble. She swallowed again.
“See you, Harry.” Ginny said over her shoulder as she walked away, trying to walk casually and contain the energy that was buzzing through her legs. She glanced over her shoulder as she went and was met by an uncertain smile and a hand raised in farewell.
Ginny trotted up the steps to her dormitory and plopped down on her bed. The other girls were all asleep. She sat there, staring at the frayed edge of the red and gold rug beneath her where it met the cold stone floor. Her stocking feet shifted, toes tapping slowly, thoughtfully.
Was that really… anything? She asked herself, mind flitting here and there like a cornish pixie. The look in his eyes, the way he had gazed at her as if seeing her for the first time, she felt it. It was as though something had travelled between them, some rope thrown and hooked, in those few simple seconds. It pulled on her now, just below her sternum.
Ginny’s toes twitched with the urge to run back down the flight of stairs, throw her arms around the boy, and hold him. Just that. Just to feel the warmth of him through his shirt, to breathe in that scent she had grown so accustomed to, like a sea breeze and something warm mixed together. She wanted him to be able to open up to her, to let out all the pain he held in. She knew she could never fix him, but she wanted to make it better.
Shit.
She was really in for it now, wasn’t she?
Ginny scrunched up her face and shook her head, ginger hair tumbling around her face. She stood up with some amount of determination and undid the button on her jeans, before sitting back down on the edge of her bed and tugging hard when the tight pants refused to come off her ankles. When she got to her feet again and pulled off her long sleeved shirt, her hair immediately became frizzy and clung to her cheeks. She pushed it away impatiently and unclasped her bra, placing it in her open trunk and picking out a soft oversized t-shirt to wear to sleep. Just before pulling it over her head, Ginny glanced down at herself. Not for the first time, she couldn’t help but wonder what Harry would think of her body. Trying to better embody the independent young woman she knew was inside her, she pushed those thoughts out of her mind.
Boys aside, what did she think of her body? For several years she felt wrong in it, something she could thank Tom Riddle’s possession for. Such a lack of control over her own self took its toll, and no doubt contributed to her insecurity. About a year ago, however, she had decided to start saying three nice things about her body whenever she looked at it with a critical eye. It felt dumb at first. But it helped.
She had always been rather skinny, and though she was fifteen now, she remained rather flat chested. There was still no sign of curves in her hips, and when she was on her period her stomach bloated and extended beyond her breasts. But she liked her legs, they were long and lightly freckled. There, another thing; she did like her freckles. She was really quite pale, and her skin turned weirdly pinkish sometimes when she was cold… but hey, she had been getting a faint outline of abs ever since she started doing sit-ups and such to warm up before quidditch practices. Ginny savored this feeling of strength and power; the constant longing to prove herself worthy was temporarily satiated by the development of hard earned muscles. She pulled her shirt over her head and looked up at the ceiling as the image of Harry’s face, illuminated by the flames, floated to the surface once more.
Ginny gave a frustrated sigh, falling back onto her bed with some force. It dipped under her weight before bouncing her back up a little, reminding her of the times when she used to jump on her bed as a little girl, despite her mother’s loudly expressed disapproval. Once, during a particularly boring summer, she spent hours a day for a whole week leaping around on the mattress. She liked to imagine that she was whipping up and down on a broomstick, soaring high above the ground. Then one day she flopped onto the covers only to discover, rather painfully, that her bed had been transfigured to a large stone slab. Her mother had acted vehemently confused when confronted about this issue, but had somehow been too busy to fix it until a week later. Ginny was still a tad bitter about this, but she was glad she had inherited her mum’s spirit.
Before she could get lost in childhood nostalgia, Ginny felt something knocking once more at the door of her consciousness, waiting impatiently to be addressed. She sighed and sat back up. She scooted backwards on the bed to lean against the pillows and pulled her knees to her chest. She rested her chin in between them and blinked slowly.
Alright. Fine. She would think about this.
The logical side of her, the side that was sick of unrequited feelings and didn’t want her to be hurt again, said that this was just a last ditch effort to convince herself that there was hope. It was a moment crafted entirely in her head and nothing to waste another minute thinking on.
Perhaps that voice was right. Perhaps this was just the final step in her silly crush and then she could truly get over him. Surely that look on his face could have just been exhaustion, right? They had been messing around, but she had challenged him and he merely tried to convey with his expression that he wasn’t in the mood. Right. That should be it, then.
But Ginny’s gut shouted that something more had happened when he looked at her, that she had not made up that moment, that he had felt it too.
Her gut whispered that after all these years, Harry Potter finally saw her.
And Ginny Weasley always trusted her gut.