In which Ginny Weasley always associates these four things with Dean Thomas.
Tulips. Red ones, yellow ones, pink ones, orange ones, multiple-colored ones.
The round bulbs had always been Dean's flower of choice for her. It was what he gave to her when they met in the Gryffindor common room for their first date to Hogsmeade. It was what he what he gave to her for Valentine's day or when she won a particularly exciting Quidditch game or 'just because I thought you'd like them.'
A few months into their relationship, she asked him why he always got her tulips. Just that morning she had found a bouquet lying on her bed when she returned to her dormitory to grab a few books for her next class. Attached to the flowers was a handwritten note that read, 'Thinking of you.'
She could tell the question came off completely wrong by the look on his face. "Y-you don't like tulips?"
"No, not at all. I think they're beautiful!" she told him as they sat in the library during their free period, she studying for an upcoming Potions exam while he worked tirelessly away at a Transfiguration essay that was due in just a couple hours. She gave his hand an affectionate squeeze. "I was just curious, that's all."
"Oh, right. Okay good. You scared me there for a moment," he said with an audible sigh of relief and a small smile.
"So why do you?" she asked again. "Always get tulips, I mean."
He shrugged as he resumed his writing. "I've never taken you as a rose girl," he said without looking up.
Years later, she receives a dozen red roses for her first wedding anniversary and she wonders Harry even knows her at all.
Spooning. The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed—even to her. Contrary to popular belief, she had maintained her virtue during her seven years at Hogwarts. Though, she'd give the pair of fourth year Ravenclaw boys credit for starting the rumor throughout her fifth year that the only reason The-Boy-Who-Lived was so lucky in his altercations with Voldemort was because of the stolen moments he and a particular redhead had had together in the abandoned classroom on the third floor. Even she had to admit that the rumors were pretty believable. Nevertheless the most intimacy she had experienced with a boy up until the age of seventeen (which is an entirely different story) was with, not the famous Harry Potter, but the lanky, overly-amicable Dean Thomas...in the form of cuddling.
More specifically, spooning.
She'd be lying if she said it was something she had always enjoyed. In fact, the first time he had tried it, it had taken everything inside of her to not spend a Bat-Boogey at him right then and there. When he had explained that he was actually not trying to scare or defile her in any way, she warmed to the idea of letting the tall boy settle behind her on the couch in the common room, her body tucked into his, his arms tangled around her waist.
The silence between them when they assumed this position was the hardest to handle initially. Whereas Ginny wanted to talk about this, that, and another, Dean seemed to value the moments of silence instead. Every once a while she'd feel him bury his face into her mane of red hair or pepper kisses along the base of her neck up to her ear. As the weeks they were together turned into months, she grew to actually savor the sweet moments of silence and just being with each other amidst the craziness of school, Quidditch, and the D.A.
The first time Harry had tried to spoon with her after they married, she had to remind herself that it was not a concept that belonged to Dean Thomas alone.
Still, she did her best to avoid the position with her husband at all costs.
Whiskey pong. He first introduced the game at the Gryffindor party, following the win over Ravenclaw that would secure their house that year's Cup. Harry and Hermione had disappeared earlier—something Ginny tried desperately not to think about; after all, they were best friends, nothing more—and Ron and Lavender had followed suit not longer after, probably finding an empty broom closet out in the corridor away from prying eyes.
Despite the disappearance of the Golden Trio and co., the party was still alive. Anyone younger than fifteen had been ushered off to their dormitories by nine o'clock and the alcohol (cheap beer and couple cases of knock-off firewhiskey) was brought out fifteen minutes following. However, it wasn't until well after eleven that Dean shouted to their group (Seamus, Parvati, Romilda, Jimmy, Ritchie, and Demelza) that it's time for a 'good old-fashioned game of whiskey pong!'
He was met with an enthusiastic cheer from Ritchie, a muggleborn, but looks of complete and utter confusion from the rest of the group.
"Whiskey what?" Romilda asked incredulously.
"Whiskey pong," he repeated, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.
Jimmy Peaks, the sixth year Gryffindor Beater, scoffed loudly. "Seriously, mate? That sounds like a disgusting disease or something..."
He earned a round of laughter from the rest of the group, but Dean simply shook his head. "It's a game, Jimmy. And it's fun. My muggle cousins taught me last summer at one of their parties. Said they learned it from a group of Americans the summer before that when they visited the states for a vacation. Also, it's the only way you'll ever get me to drink!"
Dean's last statement piqued everyone's interest. Especially Ginny's.
It was common knowledge that Dean Thomas did not drink at parties. Not because he was against the idea of drinking, but because he didn't see the point in drinking just to drink. Ginny had tried to get him to take sips of whatever alcohol was in her cups during parties at the beginning of their relationship, but he always refused, claiming that he could have just as much fun as everyone else without alcohol inside of him. And he always did, too.
"Well, any chance to see my best mate lacking in sobriety, count me in!" Seamus said, raising his plastic red cup in the air towards the tall, dark-skinned boy standing with a stack of cups in one hand and a case of a cheap firewhiskey in the other.
The Irish boy was met with a loud round of hollers and hoots as several more cups were raised into the air and tapped against one another as the group shouted, "To Dean!"
Dean simply shook his head at the rowdy bunch before continuing to conjure up a table they could use. It took him only a minute or so to set up the twenty cups, ten on either end, and fill them with the whiskey. More time was spent explaining the object and rules of the game to slightly buzzed adolescents. After twenty minutes, several demonstrations, and a myriad of Quidditch references to get them to understand, Ginny finally said, "So you throw a ball across the table and try to land it in a cup? And if you land it, the other person has to drink the cup down?"
"Yes!" Dean yelled with exasperation, planting a kiss on his girlfriend's forehead. "Whoever drinks all their cups or passes out first loses! You guys got it?"
They nodded their heads, though Ginny knew it was more because they were eager to have an excuse to drink alcohol than because of understanding. An hour and several chugged cups later, it came down to Dean and Demelza Robins in the final match. Ginny had made it to the second round of the bracket after defeating Ritchie in the first, where she met Dean in an embarrassing loss (she hadn't sunk a single ball the entire game). Parvati showed incredible accuracy against Jimmy, though came to a close defeat by a more talented Demelza, allowing the blonde to advance to the final against the hardly buzzed Dean (Ginny surely didn't contribute to this, but Romilda had given him a run for his money in the opening round).
The final lasted for nearly a half an hour, though the excitement of it never died. Every ball Demelza sunk was met with a chorus of happy cheers as Dean was forced to consume more and more alcohol. Still, Dean landed almost fifty percent of his shots and Demelza was losing coherency by the minute. In the end, Dean defeated the blonde Chaser by two cups, the crowd put-off by his lack of slurred words and reckless, alcohol-induced behavior. Still, for the the next month straight and occasionally afterward, Dean Thomas was referred to as the 'Pong King' by his his friends and girlfriend.
Nearly a decade later, she's overcome with guilt for laughing—hysterically, that is—when a particular lanky man approaches her at her engagement party with a glass of firewhiskey in his hand. When she raises an eyebrow at him, he just shrugs and leans in, whispering into her ear, "I'm still the King, y'know." She can't even muster up enough self control to explain what happened when Harry appears at her side with a look of pure confusion etched onto every single inch of his face.
"Inside joke," she offers as an explanation later that night as they in bed together.
Snow in March. They kissed for the first time in the snow in December behind Madam Puddifoot's. He asked her to be his official girlfriend from the Astronomy Tower watching the snow fall in January. They had a date dedicated solely to making snow angels and snowmen by the frozen-over Black Lake in February. But it was the third month of the year—the exact date she eventually forgot, but March nonetheless—that would stay in her mind perpetually.
They had been fighting that day. They didn't have arguments very often, but when they did, it was a full-blown war. And just like the others, it was about Harry. Dean had overheard her talking to Michael Corner the day before at a D.A. meeting in a 'more-than-friendly manner.' That probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal if she hadn't forgotten of a study date she had promised Dean the day before, in favor of spending the night with Ron, Hermione, and Harry in the Gryffindor common room. The look on Dean's face when he arrived back in the common room after being stood up told her that she had screwed up. The fact that he had stomped upstairs to his dormitory without another word only confirmed the assertion.
When she sat next to him the following morning at breakfast, she knew that he still wasn't over it.
"I'm really sorry," she said in a hushed voice, her hand reaching for his beneath the table.
He pulled away and responded with a huff.
"Dean, come on," she tried again. "It's not like I ditched you intentionally. It just completely slipped my mind."
He scoffed bitterly. "Good to know I'm so forgettable. Thanks, Ginny. Real nice."
"I didn't mean it like that!"
Her raised voice drew the attention of those sitting close. He gave her a stern look and shook his head. "I'm not doing this right now, okay? We can talk at free period." With that, he stood and stalked out of the Great Hall, leaving Ginny alone to deal with the concerned looks from their friends across the table.
Later that day, away from the prying eyes of their friends and peers, was when the real fight began. She had managed to get him alone after a sixth year Herbology lesson and cornered him behind the greenhouses. Snow was falling lightly from the grey sky above and both of their shoes were soaked from being immersed in the six inches of snow below.
"Are you ready to do this now or are you going to keep on ignoring me?" she asked accusingly, never one to back down from confrontation.
"Y'know what, Gin, I'm not going to apologize for being mad when I have every right to be!"
"I told you that I didn't mean to, Dean! Merlin, are you going to hold stupid shit like this over me forever? Because if you are, I'm not going to stick around to take it!"
"You've hardly stuck around anyway! I saw you talking with Corner after the meeting! And then I come back to the dormitory that night to see you all snuggled up to Harry! What the hell, Ginny?"
"I was not 'snuggled up' to him!"
"Might've well have been. We both know you wanted to be," he said, his voice losing its temper and this time coming out cold.
The redhead threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "Dean, for the Christ's sake, why can't you just accept the fact that I'm with you? Not Harry! Yes, okay, I know that at one point I had feelings for him! And yes, we are still friends! But we are bound to be! He is my brother's bloody best friend! I'm bound to interact with him here and there. That doesn't mean I'm bloody in love with him though! Please just get it through your thick skull that you are the one I'm dating—and want to be dating—and that you're the one that I love and that—"
She was cut off when a pair of lips crashed against hers. Before she had a chance to respond to the hasty action, her back was pressed against the cool glass of the greenhouse and his long, slender fingers were tangled into her mess of a hair. The kiss was more passionate than any other they've ever shared, filled with desire and passion and lust.
It was over as soon as it begins and she was left in a breathless stupor, her body still pressed up against his.
"What the hell was that?" she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
"You said you love me."
"And?"
"And I love you too."
She paused. Then asked, "Really?"
He broke into a grin and then leaned in to kiss her once more, giving her all the answer she could've needed.
When she goes into labor with her second child—a son—in the middle of March when the snow is falling, in what feels like a lifetime later, she wonders what her life would've been like had she chosen the lanky boy who loved her, before they both ever knew what love was, over the hero of the wizarding world.
Different, she decides.
Very different.