Obviously, she'd seen Dean and Harry together before. They were friends, after all. They shared a dormitory, practiced Quidditch together, ate their meals in big groups, lamented homework in the common room. They usually interacted in groups, of course, but they were friends, close friends.
It wasn't seeing them standing together that was giving her pause. It's just, she hadn't seen Dean in almost a year. And she hadn't seen Harry in nearly as long. And she couldn't mistake the literally openmouthed, slightly hungry stare they both directed her way as she stood in the kitchen doorway of Shell Cottage.
Nor did she miss the quick, almost imperceptible glance Dean shot at Harry. Followed, half a second later, by a similar, lightning-fast side-eye from Harry toward Dean.
She gulped.
Then she remembered herself, and rushed toward them. They both stood at once – Dean so hastily his chair fell over, causing Fleur to emit a distressed yelp – but Ginny strode determinedly to Hermione first, upon whom she bestowed a firm hug. She hugged Ron next, then Luna and, following her logical counterclockwise procession around the kitchen table, she reached Harry.
The embrace was immediately intimate and thoroughly familiar. Harry pressed his cheek to hers, his hand cupping her waist at the bottom of her ribcage in a distinctly non-platonic manner. He hadn't touched her so unreservedly since before they'd broken up.
She relished it, and hugged him back fiercely, before stepping back.
He caught her eye and she thought for a moment he was going to kiss her.
She wanted to let him – for a single moment of wild abandon, she thought she would – but before she could even reflect on what to do, she looked past him to Dean, who was waiting for his own hug.
His mannerisms were utterly distinct from Harry's. For one, he was so tall he couldn't easily brush her face with his own cheek or fingertips. He did, however, revert to his own wheelhouse, cupping the back of her head in order to cradle it gently against his chest.
The movement was so familiar to Ginny, so tender, that a wave of nostalgia washed over her, and she relaxed despite herself. Dean was so comfortable.
She came to herself after a moment – hopefully, only a beat longer than any normal embrace – and pulled away.
Dean made no move to kiss her, but his expression, which she'd perceived as comically shocked when he'd first caught a glimpse of her, had turned mournful. To her horror, she thought he might have been about to cry.
She had to admit she hadn't thought of him often in past months, beyond internally wishing him well when he'd failed to return to school. She'd had to hope he'd successfully left the country, perhaps with his Muggle mother; to think otherwise was to add him to her wearingly long list of loved ones she worried about constantly.
Now, though, his eyes welling with tears at the sight of her, she was suddenly frightened to learn more of his experiences. Maybe she didn't want to know how he'd come to be imprisoned at Malfoy Manor.
She leaned back into him and hugged him again, hard, both arms about his waist. She felt him draw a long, shaky breath, squeezed him once more, and retreated.
"I can't believe I'm seeing you all," she said, turning back toward the other three – did she imagine it, or did Dean's hand linger a moment too long on her back before it dropped back to his side? "Ron, good thing Mum's not here to see you – you're so thin!"
As she said it, she realized Hermione and Harry had lost weight as well. She tried to surreptitiously give Hermione a more thorough onceover. Bill had said she was shaken, but hadn't said anything more three nights ago when he'd burst into the Burrow to relocate them to Auntie Muriel's.
She looked more or less normal to Ginny: very pale, a little wan, but so were most people she knew, these days.
"They are all too thin," Fleur agreed. "I 'ave been trying to urge them to eat more. I am just making lunch now." She turned back to the counter, where a loaf of bread was slicing itself. Bill and Harry immediately asked in unison what they could do to help.
Ginny could have sworn Harry deliberately avoided eye contact with her as he brushed past Ron to hasten to the stovetop.
She stared after him for just a moment. Surely, even the errant thought he might feel jealous was a wild misread of the situation, wasn't it? She glanced back at Dean, slightly incredulous, only to see a glimmer of a smirk ghost across his lips for one brief moment.
Suspicious, she strode across the kitchen to stand at Harry's shoulder. "What should we do today?" she asked him. "Bill said you can go outside here. Can we go down to the beach? I'm starved for sunlight." She punctuated this by resting a hand lightly on his forearm, and was pleased to see a genuine smile spread across his face.
"It's wonderful out there," Luna agreed immediately. "I've never lived by the ocean before; I've been spending hours on the beach."
Harry turned to face Ginny, and – yes! – he definitely glanced in Dean's direction before touching her elbow.
"I'm not sure…Ron, Hermione and I are working on something, we need to speak with Griphook this afternoon."
"Come on, mate," Ron put in. "He always sleeps after lunch. We can go down for a little while, at least."
"I'd like to go," said Dean. "I could use the sunlight too, Gin."
Yes, Harry's hand had definitely twitched compulsively, darting back toward her elbow for a second before he pulled it back. It's because Dean called me Gin, Ginny surmised with amusement.
The whole situation was increasingly humorous to her. To think, she'd spent hours after she and Harry had begun dating agonizing over how to interact with Dean, how to remain friends with him, how to preserve Harry and Dean's friendship, how to keep it from interfering with Quidditch.
How much time had she spent worrying about it, managing their feelings, trying to not to speak about one in front of the other, minimizing affection with Harry when Dean was in the room?
She had seen Dean just once after she and Harry had broken up, on the day of Dumbledore's funeral, and grief for both events clouded her memory of the afternoon. She had been even more of a mess, stuttering incoherently, giving Dean a stilted, awkward hug. He probably hadn't even known what had prompted her bizarre behavior.
Overall, she realized now, she had spent far too long treading so delicately. She had dated both of them, and she had loved both of them, and she'd come to spend the day with her friends, damn it. She planned to enjoy herself, and she wouldn't get caught up in any stupid love triangle.
Of course, she still daydreamed of Harry more often than she would ever admit, while she would never consider getting back together with Dean. That complicated matters, but still: she would act completely normally, and Dean and Harry would feel how they felt, and that was neither her business nor her concern.
"It's settled, then," she said, smiling at Dean. "After lunch."
"You brought a suit?" Ron asked her skeptically.
"Well, no," she admitted. "But I'm not shy." Before she could stop herself, she winked at Harry. Then she looked back at Ron, daring him to comment.
"Me either," Harry said hastily, and she had to bite back a laugh. She knew for a fact Harry was extremely modest; when they'd first used the Room of Requirement as a place to shag, she'd had to cajole him into removing his clothes. He'd even admitted he'd changed on his bed, protected by his curtains, until third year. The thought of him swimming in his underwear was more amusing than salacious.
"The water's too cold to do much swimming," Dean said, perhaps a touch sullenly. He appeared to have caught Ginny's impulsive wink.
Lunch conversation was subdued. After picturing a reunion with Ron, Harry, and Hermione for months, Ginny was suddenly hesitant to bring up anything related to their quest, afraid of being shut down. She certainly wasn't about to bring up conditions at Hogwarts without explicit questions to that effect. For one, anything she said would probably be related back to her mother via Bill, who would keep a secret if requested but was otherwise a garrulous information sharer.
That didn't leave many topics of conversation. Ginny felt it rude to ask after Dean and Luna's apparent imprisonment in Malfoy Manor, and apart from the genuine "How are you?" she'd asked them when she'd arrived, she didn't want to pry any further.
"I'm surprised Mum agreed to let you come visit," Ron said between bites of his sandwich.
Ginny rolled her eyes. "You have no idea," she said. "I think she only agreed because Auntie Muriel is so tired of Fred and George already. One less body in the house."
It had taken an entire evening of coaxing, pleading, and arguing, but finally her parents had agreed to let Bill escort her to and from Shell Cottage. The ordeal was further reason to embrace this afternoon as fully as she could. Clearly, she wouldn't be getting out of Muriel's place again short of an epic battle with You-Know-Who, which now seemed as unlikely as Ginny going back to school anytime soon.
After Ginny helped to clear away the lunch dishes, she said brightly, "Time for the beach!"
To her surprise, Hermione said tentatively, "Actually, I think I'd prefer to stay inside. I've been reading some of Bill's books on Egyptian wizardry and they're fascinating."
Ginny frowned. Hermione's words sounded innocent enough, but Hermione had always been one for taking her homework out into sunlight and fresh air. Indeed, while her tone was placid, Ginny thought Hermione looked distinctly uncomfortable, shoulders slightly hunched as she sat at the table, making fists to pull her sleeves tightly over her hands.
Without a moment's hesitation, Ron said, "I'll stay in with you. I'd just burn anyway." He inched closer to Hermione's chair, and she smiled at him.
Ginny wanted to appreciate the intimate moment between her brother and close friend, but could only revel in the tender warmth they exuded for one moment before Luna said, "Actually, I'll stay in with you two, I think the kelp I collected a few days ago must be nearly dry, and I'm going to try knitting with it," and Ginny realized that meant she'd be heading outside alone with Harry and Dean.
She glanced between the two of them, alarmed despite her promise to herself, and saw they'd already reached this conclusion. Harry looked distinctly unfriendly; Dean was stonefaced.
She laughed.
It was indeed chilly for swimming. The sun shone weakly, struggling to break through light cloud cover, but the choppy, persistent wind combined with the icy water made the thought of prolonged submersion unpleasant. The wind also kept Ginny's hair in her face, and made conversation difficult.
The trio trekked the short walk down to the beach, and Ginny staked out a spot in the sand, collapsing on the coarse sand, lying back, borrowed towel under her head, feeling the sun on her face.
"This is so nice," she announced. "I've only been at Auntie Muriel's two days and it felt like I'd never feel the sun again."
Neither boy said anything, and she cracked her eyes, squinting against the sun. Harry was looking at Dean, but not with jealousy or suspicion. Dean stared at the sand.
Ginny knew she'd said something wrong.
"Hey, I'm sorry," she said, sitting up and putting her hand on Dean's knee. He was cross-legged and silent. "I don't know what happened with the snatchers, and I'm not asking – unless you want to talk about it. But I'm sorry."
Dean smiled at her – not quite the genuine, heart-melting full-force smile he could usually deliver, but a real smile nevertheless. "Hey, it's nothing," he said. "You didn't do anything wrong." He put his hand over Ginny's and squeezed her fingers. The silence was awkward for a moment.
"Anyway, you've been at school, right?" Dean continued. "That's what Bill said. How is everyone? Seamus and Neville?"
Ginny removed her hand, the better to gesticulate. "Good! They're both good. Luna probably told you, we actually, uh, revived Dumbledore's Army, so…" She struggled to think of a way to encapsulate the past seven months in a way that was truthful but wouldn't alarm either of her exes.
"You restarted Dumbledore's Army with Death Eaters running the castle? God, Ginny, you're such a badass."
Dean's easy compliments, always so nonchalantly delivered, were probably her favorite element of his personality.
"I mean, you two have been on the run," she said. "I don't think Hogwarts, even Death Eater Hogwarts, is really comparable to that."
Ginny wasn't one to downplay her own accomplishments out of a conditioned sense of modesty; truly, Harry's adventures at least seemed far greater than her own.
She lay back down on the sand, closing her eyes again, relaxing in the weak warmth.
"Let's just lie here a moment," she said. "The wind feels so nice."
Lying between Harry and Dean, she wanted to reach for one of their hands. The only question was whose to reach for.
Harry, of course, was her instinctual first choice. He was the one she'd pined over for the better part of the year, the one she'd always been hyperaware of, the one she still loved. She'd been the one to break up with Dean, after all. And yet, in this moment, knowing Harry was going back into the unknown, knowing Dean was staying, remembering how confident she'd felt while dating Dean, how comfortable he was to be with and to be intimate with…his security was utterly tantalizing.
She opened her eyes, squinting against the sun, and turned her head slightly to her left and right. Harry and Dean had both followed her suggestion; they lay outstretched, eyes closed, hands loosely at their sides.
She hesitated for just a moment, but then plunged ahead.
She reached toward each boy, found two different hands, and threaded her fingers tightly through them.
Both responded in kind. Harry squeezed lightly in assent, while Dean rolled their entwined hands once.
Later, they talked. Harry thanked Ginny for attempting to steal the Sword of Gryffindor, which led him to admit to Dean they'd apparently been camped remarkably close to each other – Dean looked rather shocked at this news – and Ginny filled them in on the Carrows' horrors.
After that, conversation was easier, more lighthearted. The tide came in and tickled their toes. It was, indeed, icy, but Ginny, determined to enjoy the day, gamely stripped off her jeans and waded in past her knees, embracing the feeling of her numb shins. Dean and Harry both hesitated, but eventually followed her.
Dean splashed her, and she splashed him back but hit Harry, and that began a quick, brutal war that ended in all three of them sopping and salty and beaming.
Moments afterward, of course, she was sopping and salty and freezing.
"Here, Gin, I can dry you off," Dean said as they approached their towels and clothes, and made half a movement toward his jeans before jerking to a halt. He froze, looking mortified.
"It's fine, I can dry both of you off," Harry said, digging into his jeans pocket for his wand – which, Ginny thought, peering at it, didn't actually look like Harry's own – and pointing it first at Ginny and then at Dean. Ginny didn't quite catch his muttered incantation, but suddenly she was dry, if not warm.
"Where's your wand, Dean?" Ginny said. She was afraid the question might be insensitive, might harken back to his captivity, but his wand was such an integral part of him and part of his magic…
"Useful spell when you're camping in the rain," Harry carried on hastily, and Ginny realized he was trying to give Dean an out. She felt a surge of affection for Harry: he could be so thoughtful and quick on the uptake when someone's pride was at stake.
"The snatchers took it from me," Dean said ruefully. "Thanks, Harry," he added, plucking at his dry T-shirt.
Inside, Ron, Hermione, and Luna were cozy, if cramped, in the sitting room, a small fire keeping them warm against the chilly wind outside.
Ginny sat by Luna, hoping to find out more about where she'd been after never returning from Christmas. She didn't want to make Luna relive any trauma, but at the same time, she'd felt like she was walking on eggshells around Dean, and she was desperately curious to know what had happened to her friend.
Luna, however, was unexpectedly taciturn, telling Ginny calmly that she'd been in the Malfoys' basement since Christmas with Mr. Ollivander, but refusing, quite calmly and politely, to say more. Her kelp knitting was across her lap; it appeared she'd softened and cleaned the kelp by magic before cutting them into thin strips, which she was rather successfully knitting into a long rectangle.
"I think it'll be a table runner," Luna said, anticipating Ginny's question. "This is nonmagical kelp, but I think Daddy will love another element of ocean décor; we're working on redecorating one of our workrooms. In fact," she added, glancing pointedly at Hermione, "I expect Daddy doesn't even mind that the Snorckack horn blew up; we were thinking of knocking out one of our walls to expand the size of our main workroom."
"Luna," said Hermione at once, taking the bait, her tone both exasperated and pitying, "we told you, the Erumpent horn, er, did a bit more than knock out a wall, I'm afraid-"
Ginny rolled her eyes as Luna opened her mouth to respond. Truly, there was nothing she found so irritating as one of Hermione and Luna's spats. She maintained they both goaded the other quite purposely, but neither could see how performative the other's protestations were.
"Can I get a tour of the house?" she asked the room at random, standing up. "It's so pretty!"
Bill and Fleur were working in the garden, glad, Ginny assumed, to find a short reprieve from their houseful of guests. Ron looked up, but made no move to rise from the couch he shared with Hermione, blanket over their knees, his arm around her shoulder.
Harry, however, stood up at once. "I'll show you," he said. "It's small, there's not much to see."
"Can't they give it a rest?" Ginny asked, half-teasing, half-serious as soon as they were on the staircase.
"They're both bored," Harry said, "This is what it's been like for days. Anyway, this is Griphook's room," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as they reached the landing, passing the closed door. "And Ollivander's…they both sleep most of the day, they don't really come down."
"Bathroom," he said, gesturing to the door on the left. "There are really only two bedrooms on this floor; Bill put up a wall separating Griphook and Ollivander once we arrived. Hermione and Luna share this room," he said, gesturing to the fourth doorway. "And Bill and Fleur sleep upstairs, in the loft."
They'd reached the end of the hall, marking the end of what was, indeed, a very short tour.
"It's a really pretty house," Ginny said rather lamely, hearing Hermione's and Luna's voices floating up from downstairs.
"Bill and Fleur have been so nice to us," Harry said, "I know we're really putting them out…" His sentence drifted to a close, and Ginny said nothing.
He was standing very close to her, even given the confines of the narrow hallway. Up close, Ginny could see a scab on his chin and another healing abrasion on his cheekbone, which she assumed were courtesy of the snatchers.
"Can I kiss you?" he asked, softly and urgently. "I know, we shouldn't – but, can I?"
In response, Ginny put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled his face down to hers. She didn't even consider turning him down, even though she knew, as his lips moved against hers, that this would not help her remember why she was trying not to pine for Harry. Later, she thought she might regret this.
And yet, how could something that made her feel so good right now – touching Harry, feeling his body, reveling in the knowledge he still cared about her – be a bad decision?
Her hedonism won out, and she maneuvered Harry so his back was to the wall, slipping her hand under his shirt to stroke his far-too-thin torso. Harry's hands were similarly exploratory.
As suddenly as it began, Harry pulled away.
"Ginny, I'm sorry," he said, guilt etched across his face. "I shouldn't have asked you…I don't want you to get the wrong idea…We can't go any further."
"I'm not stupid," Ginny whispered back. "I know you're leaving again."
"I just missed you. A lot, okay?" Harry said in a rush, as though he wanted to say everything on his mind before he thought better of it. "I can't stop thinking of you, in the tent, on the run. I watch you on the Marauder's Map."
Ginny snorted. "That's fucking creepy, mate."
Harry laughed too. "Yeah," he said sheepishly. "Anyway…"
"Anyway, I'm glad we did that," Ginny said firmly, "but let's go back downstairs, or I will force you into the bathroom and shag you on the floor."
The matter thus settled, they returned to the sitting room to rejoin the others. Hermione and Luna were shooting glares at each other in turns, but the room was otherwise silent, its occupants apparently lost in thought.
"Exploding Snap tournament?" said Ron, the moment they came in. "Now that you're here we have an even number," he said to Ginny. "We've been playing it most nights."
Ginny acquiesced, and the tournament began in earnest. They used a complicated, double-elimination bracket; Exploding Snap was not a complex game, and, in Ginny's opinion, it took quite a bit of effort and extreme good cheer from the participants to make an afternoon of the game engaging.
Nevertheless, darkness had fallen by the time Ron was declared victor. Bill and Fleur had reentered the house at dusk. Fleur had entered the room, raised her eyebrows, and said nothing before exiting, but it was enough to cause Ron and Harry to immediately vanish the ash smeared into Fleur's cream-colored sofa before continuing the game.
"I need a few of you to help me with dinner," Bill said now, poking his head into the sitting room. "And a couple more of you can go get some firewood. And can someone please go upstairs and see if Mr. Ollivander and Griphook are awake?"
Thus directed, the group dispersed. Ginny headed into the kitchen, where Bill was presiding over two mounds of rhubarb and radishes, which Fleur and Bill had evidently just harvested, a bin full of potatoes, and a platter of raw meat.
"Gin, can you peel the potatoes?" Bill asked, handing her the hefty tub. "You can do it outside, we compost the peels."
"I'll help," Dean said immediately, trying to intercept the potato handoff.
"I've got it," Ginny said calmly, balancing the bin on her hip. A younger, immature Ginny would have bristled at Dean's revival of his old chivalrous nonsense, but Ginny was determined to let nothing irk her on this beautiful evening of freedom.
She and Dean trooped outside, both carrying peelers which Bill had thoughtfully duplicated. Ginny wasn't sure why Bill and Fleur, as adult wizards in clear command of culinary spells, even had one peeler, but Bill had apparently inherited from their mother the ability to create chores as a method of diversion for underage – or in this case, underage and wandless – wizards.
They peeled in amiable silence for a moment, before Dean inquired after Quidditch at Hogwarts. Ginny's recounting of the halfhearted Quidditch teams three of the Houses had put together seemed to cheer Dean immensely; he'd apparently been wallowing over missing this component of his seventh year, where he'd hoped to be a standout Chaser.
Finally, after peeling the last potato, just before Ginny was about to climb to her feet, Dean sighed heavily, put his hand over hers, and said, "I've really missed you."
"Uh…I've missed you too," Ginny said wildly, trying to buy time to suss out Dean's intentions.
"No," Dean said seriously, inching closer to her, putting one arm around her. "Really, Ginny. I can't stop thinking about you. Going into hiding, getting captured, living with your brother…it crystallized a lot for me. I still love you. I know we can't be together right now, but…"
He trailed off, gazing at her with heartbreaking tenderness, and Ginny was frozen.
Then Dean kissed her.
Her immediate instinct was to pull back, to stop him. Harry's kiss from a few hours ago was still seared at the forefront of her memory, still causing her stomach to twist every time she thought of it.
And yet…Dean's lips were, as they always had, forcing her to relax, making her weak. His hand, covering the back of her head, was incredibly comforting.
And she had an epiphany.
She and Harry were broken up. They were not together. She and Dean were broken up. They were also not together. She was not obligated to kiss anybody, or to refrain from kissing anybody. She was in a war, and she was going to kiss who made her happy.
She would have shagged who made her happy, if she weren't leaving after dinner.
She kissed Dean back, cupping his face, turning toward him. Her peeler tumbled into the dirt.
The kiss was passionate, but brief. Ginny pulled away first. "Anyone could come out," she said.
Dean muttered something that sounded like "so what", but with good grace he turned so they were once again facing forward, looking out over the garden. He kept his hand on hers.
"Please, just remember what I said." She couldn't read his face, especially in the dim light.
She said, quite truthfully, "I will."
After a raucous dinner and a delicious rhubarb dessert, Bill deposited Ginny back at Auntie Muriel's, where the usual fight broke out with Fred and George over who would sleep on the couch in Muriel's living room, and who was relegated to the floor. As usual, she was not victorious.
As she lay on the ground, trying to fall asleep to the soundtrack of her brothers' snores, she was, for the first time in months, not worrying about Ron and Harry and Hermione, or Dumbledore's Army, or for the Order of the Phoenix. She was remembering Harry's lips, and Dean's arms, and she was happy.
Thanks for reading and leaving your thoughts! I'm so intrigued by Ginny's sexual confidence, and I love Dean, so this was a fun oneshot.