Falling Out of Love
When the war was over, Ginny expected to get back together with Harry. She expected a great many other things from Harry as well. She expected him to return to Hogwarts to complete his final year. Harry had always explained how Hogwarts was his only real home.
"I just want to stay at Hogwarts for one more year, Ginny," he had said, looking wistfully past her into the horizon. "I just want to spend time with everyone again and enjoy my last year." He had turned to look at her. "We'll be in the same year. It'll be a blast." Ginny had felt happier than during the whole miserable course of the war, happy to get attention from Harry.
But something had changed about Harry. Perhaps a hex had gotten him after all, because a few days later he seemed a whole different person. He had plans. He wanted to travel, to get away from England, to see the world.
"Alone, Harry?" Ginny asked, heart breaking.
"Don't worry, Gin," he said, completely missing the point. "Ron's coming with me. He figured he'd had enough of Hogwarts by now, and to be honest, I think I have too. We're going to start with Australia!"
That should have been her first clue. If it didn't enter his mind to ask her along, maybe she wasn't quite as important to him as he was to her.
The second clue was less noticeable and Ginny forgave herself for not spotting it. A postcard arrived from Australia by owl three weeks after Harry left. It was a landscape that had little meaning to her, but the written side was what made her heart swell. A few lines about the adventures they were having, signed "Yours, Harry".
"Mine," Ginny thought and pressed the card to her heart. But when another three weeks passed, she felt less happy every time she saw the card taped to the post of her bed. She supposed Harry to be too busy travelling and enjoying the world to have time to write.
Hermione received a postcard and showed it to her to console her, but spotting the "Yours, Harry" on her card just turned her frustration into anger. It was the third and final clue. Harry was not going to get back together with her.
Ginny snapped. She wrote an abysmally angry letter to Harry, only to realize afterwards that she had no address to send it to. After all her painstakingly written accusations, insults and excessive punctuation marks had been rendered fruitless, her anger swelled even more.
She became pissed off all the time.
Butterbeer and gossip nights in the dormitory became awkward events when her roommates' giggles about hot guys were met with murderous glares.
Her friends couldn't concentrate on studying when Ginny abused her quill, pretending it was Harry.
Her roommate Gemma ended up in tears when Ginny's cynical comment to her optimistic plans for the future was: "You should just give up. Dreams don't come true."
After a few days, her friends learned to leave her alone. Ginny didn't mind. She spent her time storming about the castle in a mixture of anger and self-pity, thinking about the future she was supposed to have had.
One night she was out on one of her expeditions far past curfew, when she heard footsteps down the hall. Filch! She nearly panicked for a moment until she remembered that Hogwarts hadn't seen anyone as unpleasant to meet in the dead of the night as Professor Snape, and luckily he was dead. She could deal with anyone else.
Wrong.
"My my, what do we have here," said the whiny voice of Pansy Parkinson. "A stray Weasley."
She wore a malicious smile on her face that didn't bode well.
"Parkinson," Ginny said, trying to sound bored.
"I do believe it's past curfew, Weaselette. As a prefect, I have the right to punish you."
Ginny gave a little snort. "Be my guest. Do you think I care about house points?" She fumbled her pocket for her wand only to find out that she had left it in the dormitory. Shit.
"You don't seem to care about anything these days," Pansy sneered. "Why? Depressed 'cause your precious Potter dumped you?"
"That's none of your business!" Ginny said through gritted teeth. "Get out of my way, Parkinson."
Pansy did the exact opposite, blocking her way completely. "I think I struck a nerve, Weasley. Anyways, I wasn't talking about points. I'm sure I can think of something a lot more creative than that." Her eyes were practically gleaming.
"Like sending a few jinxes my way? Or kicking my face in? Or whatever else it is that petty Death Eater cronies like you like to do," Ginny taunted.
"Aren't you a violent one?" Pansy remarked. "I wasn't thinking of anything so brutal."
"Why are you even back at Hogwarts?" Ginny continued. "Oh yeah, 'cause your parents are in Azkaban and you have no other place to go—"
"Don't you dare talk about my parents!"
Suddenly Ginny found herself slammed against the wall, Pansy's face mere inches from hers. All the amusement was gone from her eyes and they were now gleaming with pure hate.
She gave Ginny another fierce shove against the stone wall and stormed off.
It took Ginny a moment to compose herself. She slouched back to the Common Room, cursing Pansy Parkinson and rubbing the shoulder that had taken the most impact from the wall. In a way, the encounter had left her felt feeling strangely satisfied. At least someone was as angry as she was.
"Ginny," Hermione said the next day at breakfast. "I know you're upset about Harry, but you need to start getting over it. This isn't healthy."
"Ha," Ginny said. She grabbed a piece of toast and proceeded to attack it with a buttered knife. "What isn't healthy is making your girlfriend wait for a year and not bothering to tell her that it's over."
Hermione took the knife from her with an apologetic look. "Well, technically speaking Harry did end it with you at Dumbledore's funeral." When Ginny glared at her she quickly continued. "But everyone did think it was just because of the war and that you two would get back together. Ginny, we all know Harry didn't treat you right, but that's no reason for you to stop treating yourself right. You need to start making yourself happy. Play Quidditch, do things that you enjoy."
"Quidditch reminds me of Harry," Ginny said, not quite as angrily. Even though she wasn't ready to admit it outloud, Ginny almost agreed with Hermione. If that bitch Parkinson had noticed she was upset, then things had definitely gone too far. She just needed to find something that would get her mind off things.
"Maybe you should consider having sex," Hermione said helpfully.
Ginny almost spluttered her pumpkin juice over her eggs and toast. "WHAT?" she said after she had painfully swallowed.
"Don't sound so horrified," Hermione answered, a little annoyed. "I may be an academic, but even librarians have sex. It's natural."
"Hermione has a point," her classmate Olivia said from her other side. "You know what they say. You start being over someone once you're under someone else." She winked.
"And it can help you unwind," Hermione continued. "You really shouldn't be so angry all the time."
Olivia nodded pointedly. "Everyone's fed up with it. Gemma doesn't even want to look at you anymore. She says it makes her feel nervous."
Ginny decided she was annoyed. "I'll start getting over Harry when I feel like it." She snatched her piece of toast, got up and left the Great Hall.
That day Ginny tried particularly hard to focus on things other than Harry. She actually tried to pay attention in her classes, which was a first for her. Unfortunately, all she had that day were boring, theoretical subjects, and after thirty minutes of listening to Binns drone on about goblins or wars, or goblin wars, she was fed up. "Fuck this," she thought, and left for the bathroom. Binns didn't even look her way.
Ginny washed her face and looked at herself in the mirror. There was a tiny line developing between her brows from all the recent sulking, and she tried to smooth it out by smiling at her reflection. The smile turned out more like a grimace, and Ginny sighed. "Maybe I really do need to relax."
"Realizing what a stupid face you have, Weasley?" a familiar voice said.
"Ugh, please not this now," Ginny thought desperately.
"Only checking that it hasn't turned out as ugly as yours, Parkinson," she said and sneered in a manner that would have made Snape envious. "Shouldn't you be in class?"
"Us Slytherins are known for breaking the rules. Wouldn't want to let people down." Pansy leaned closer to the mirror to apply lipstick to her puffy lips. Cherry flavoured, Ginny guessed from the smell. Disgusting.
"What about you? So heartbroken over Potter that you can't even attend class like a normal dutiful Gryffindor?" Pansy continued in a conversational tone.
"Bitch," Ginny replied. Not her best comeback, but it had to do.
"Hmph," Pansy said, smirking. As she left the bathroom, she made sure to push hard against Ginny's shoulder. The same one that had suffered the night before. Double bitch.
Alone with half an hour to kill and a strange, fidgety feeling about her after the encounter with Pansy, Ginny remembered Hermione's suggestion from breakfast. It wasn't like an orgasm could make her situation worse.
A few seconds later she was in a bathroom stall, knickers down to her feet and hand under her skirt.
Unsure at first, she started touching her clit, gently applying pressure the way she liked it. It had been a long time since she had touched herself. Probably before she and Harry had gotten together.
But it didn't take long until she was aroused, wet and alive. She slipped two fingers into her cunt and moved them rhythmically, mind devoid of Harry or misery or anything except pleasure. Her mind provided a dark-haired stranger, and she imagined hot, intense kisses and strange, skilful fingers moving inside her until she was about to climax—
The bathroom door opened.
"Did you hear what Jones said to me after that?" a girlish voice said, and her companion asked: "What?"
Ginny came. She bit her lip to stop herself from sighing aloud from contentment. And then she suppressed the giggle that almost escaped when she realized what she had done.
Two things helped Ginny start to get over Harry. One was sex.
After the first orgasm in the bathroom, Ginny took to masturbating whenever she felt like it. When the dorm didn't provide her with enough excitement, she would do it in the bathroom, while listening to people come in and out. When that didn't excite her enough, she'd choose someplace even more risky, like a secluded corridor or a far corner in the library.
A sex-manic, a professional would probably have said. But as long as it was satisfying, exciting and made her feel in control of her life, Ginny was content with her new hobby. It was something that separated her from the fairytale fantasy she had built about herself and Harry. And it was hot.
The other, which Ginny wouldn't have admitted under threat of Crucio, was Parkinson.
"Ugh, you," Pansy said, as Ginny entered the bathroom. Pansy was at the mirror, applying makeup onto her pug face. Strange how often they had happened to use the same bathroom at the same time recently.
"Staring at your face all the time won't make it any less ugly," Ginny commented and walked past Pansy into a bathroom stall.
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you," Pansy replied.
"I don't spend half the day in front of a mirror. I'm not a vain git like you," Ginny shouted from the stall.
"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that. You seem pretty vain to me. All that desperate showing off to get Potter and other guys to notice you. Not to mention your Quidditch stunts. And your outrageously red hair. I think you like attention."
Ginny felt herself go wet. What the hell.
"Hey! I can't help the colour of my hair. And I like it as it is," she said, trying to keep her voice level.
"Of course you like it, it's noticeable," Pansy said. Ginny could hear the smirk in her voice. She put her hand down her knickers.
"And I like Quidditch." She didn't know why she was still talking to Pansy. But she did know that something about the situation made her feel more aroused than before.
There was something deeply satisfying about talking to your enemy while having one hand down your cunt.
"Haven't seen you flying at all this year. I think you're bored because there's no Potter around to try and impress." Ginny was about to answer, but Pansy was gone. She heard the sound of her footsteps in the corridor outside.
"You know nothing," Ginny said, breathless.
Ginny was getting dressed one morning when an interesting thought occurred to her.
"Hmm," she hummed out loud, an edge of mischief to her voice. Then she rolled her knickers off and threw them into the heap of clothes beside her bed. She felt a little exposed, even though her school uniform came low enough for her not to have to worry. But more than that, she felt excited.
She blushed a little when she passed some Gryffindors in the Common Room. She found herself squirming in her seat at Charms, worried that the wetness between her legs would leak and leave a noticeable spot on her skirt.
They had gotten into a pattern of trying to get a rise out of each other. At the Great Hall they would take turns glaring at each other. When Ginny passed her in the hallway, Pansy would make a point of saying something obnoxious about her to a fellow Slytherin. If Pansy was alone, they would fall into a pleasant insulting competition.
"Did you just get punched in the face or does your face always look like that?" Ginny would say.
"You just never had the fortune of associating with a real aristocrat to recognize one," Pansy would reply.
After they ran out of things to say, they would revert back to childishly calling each other "Bitch" and "slut". Almost like old pals.
This morning had been different. Pansy had managed to do something so completely unexpected that it truly pissed Ginny off. Pansy had started the morning by smiling at her. Smiling! In a completely fake and angelic manner too, and it had gotten Ginny off her guard.
Ginny had been left gaping at her stupidly until she had the sense to close her mouth. She had seen Pansy smirk into her magazine. One point for Parkinson, that sneaky bitch.
Potions was the only class Ginny had the misfortune of sharing with Pansy. She was going to pay Pansy back for the shock from morning, somehow. So that bitch was using unfair methods that didn't involve insulting her or sneering at her? Well, Ginny had means of her own of surprising the Slytherin back.
"Today we will be brewing a Warming Ption. A mighty useful potion as winter draws near! Keeps the drinker warm for three to four hours, and there are variants that last as long as ten hours! But those are slightly more ambitious than what I have planned for today's class. Be sure to ask me at the end of class is you would like to know more.
"All of you should have read the instructions as was assigned last time, but in any case, they are on the board," Slughorn drawled, pointing at the mentioned blackboard. "Pick a partner, preferably someone from another house."
Since McGonagall had taken over as headmistress, she had done her best to enforce what she called "house unity" and what everyone else called "a load of bollocks". Most of the tie, the professors didn't care whether the students actually tried to get along, but they did do the bare minimum required by their job to enforce the policy.
Ginny crept closer to Pansy as Slughorn gave his speech, and lightly touched the girl's arm. Pansy flinched and looked at her in shock.
"What? Don't expect me to partner with you," she said, looking horrified. "I've seen what a mess you are at Potions. Not to mention what a completely annoying, ginger twat you are."
Ginny smiled sweetly. "I've seen what a mess you are at Potions. You're no better than me."
"And that's why I'd like to pare up with someone who actually knows what they're doing!" She glanced in panic to her side only to notice that Daphne, her loyal Potions partner of seven years had walked over to Nott. That treacherous bitch.
"You don't realize what you just did, Weasley!" she growled, glowering back and forth between Daphne and Ginny. "You may have cost me my Potions N.E.W.T.!"
"A fair sacrifice in the name of house unity," Ginny replied, feeling smug. Her plan was a success. Pansy was practically seething. Now she just had to stay sane for the next two hours and not let Pansy piss her off. "Why don't you go get the ingredients while I set up the cauldron?"
"Fuck off," Pansy said, but left for the ingredients cupboard anyway.
"Won't you start cutting up the goosegrass, Pansy? I'll heat up the cauldron," Ginny said when Pansy returned.
Pansy's eyes narrowed for a moment. And then her face burst into a horrible, knowing smile.
"Why yes, Ginny. Would you pass the knife?" she said. "No, wait. I've got it." She reached in front of Ginny and made sure to brush her arm against Ginny's front side.
What ensued was a War of Invading Personal Space and Making the Other Person Feel Uncomfortable by Being Overly Nice.
"Ginny darling, won't you grind the wiggentree bark for us?"
"Of course," Ginny said, getting as close to Pansy as possible with the mortar and pestle. "Pansy, be a friend and stir the cauldron, okay? Five times clockwise."
Strange looks were sent their way, but neither of them noticed.
"We still need to add the valerian root," Ginny said.
Pansy had the root in her hand, but accidentally dropped it besides Ginny's foot. She got down to grab it before Ginny had a chance to step further.
"Oh no, please don't look up," Ginny thought desperately, and hoped in vain that her skirt would prevent Pansy from seeing anything.
Pansy looked up. And blushed bright red. She got up quickly and dropped the root into the cauldron.
Their eyes met. Ginny was afraid for a moment that Pansy would shout out her revelation to the entire class. But what she saw in Pansy's eyes was something else. A challenge. Desire.
"You may leave your potions for evaluation," Slughorn said. "Class dismissed."
They quickly gathered their things and both rushed out. Ginny had no idea what was happening, but instinctively, almost feverishly she followed Pansy into the dungeons.
Pansy stopped abruptly and Ginny almost ran into her.
"Why are you following me?" she demanded, looking challengingly into Ginny's eyes.
"I don't know," Ginny said, mouth dry.
She didn't know whether it was her or Pansy who closed the distance between them, but before she knew if, they were snogging the air out of each other. Ginny pushed Pansy towards the closest wall, only for Pansy to struggle and pin Ginny against the wall. Ginny found that she didn't mind being trapped, not with Pansy's hands running all over her body.
Pansy attacked her neck with kisses, and a whimper escaped Ginny that only seemed to encourage Pansy more. Ginny slipped her hands under Pansy's vest and shirt and fought to open the hook of her bra. She cupped Pansy's breast, excited to find the nipples hard. Pansy's hands found their way under her skirt and began to touch her. Ginny thought her legs would betray her. And then she didn't think at all. All she did was feel.
It didn't take long until Ginny came. She moaned loudly.
Her arms had been around Pansy's neck, but they were pulled apart and Ginny was left to embrace air.
Pansy ran. Ginny dropped to the floor, shattered, confused and in a state of bliss, and just sat there.
After the events of that day, Ginny hid herself behind the curtains of her four-poster bed for the rest of the evening.
"My life is a bit fucked up," she thought, absentmindedly stroking Arnold.
Her friends didn't talk to her much these days. School was going dreadfully. She had stopped playing Quidditch because of a boy. She had just been brought to orgasm by another woman.
It hadn't really been about Harry for a while anymore. Even though it was painful to admit, Ginny could now see that she hadn't just felt up to taking responsibility of her own life.
She couldn't expect other people to make her happy anymore. She needed to do it herself.
"But what the hell am I supposed to do the next time I see her?" she thought, anxiety clawing at her. Her stomach lurched uncomfortably every time she thought of Pansy. A mixture of fear, insecurity and… desire?
She knew what she had to do. It was crazy. It was the worst plan ever.
"I can't," Ginny thought. "What if she says 'no'?"
Her inner Gryffindor roared happily at the idea of challenge and reckless plans. Ginny, on the other hand, felt miserable.
Anything could happen tomorrow. In the worst case, she would be facing a pack of tormenting Slytherins at breakfast. The whole school would know by lunch. She would probably die of embarrassment before dinner. Ginny was suddenly glad that none of her brothers were at Hogwarts anymore.
In the best case… Ginny didn't know.
Pansy was nowhere to be seen at breakfast. The Slytherins looked no more unpleasant than they always did, so Ginny deduced that the secret wasn't out. At least something was not entirely horrible about her life.
Ginny grew more and more desperate as the day proceeded.
She finally saw Pansy on a corridor on the fourth floor. Pansy was alone. Ginny felt her courage fail her when the brunette rushed past her without the familiar multitude of insults.
"Pansy," she said quickly, before she could run away herself.
Pansy stopped and turned around to look at her, eyes narrowed. "What?"
"Do you… Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me next weekend?"
"What?" Pansy cried, looking horrified for a moment. Then she went a pretty shade of red. She still managed to return to her usual annoyed expression, however.
"Hogsmeade," Ginny repeated, feeling like a complete idiot. "I'm asking you on a date."
Pansy gave a little laugh. Ginny braced herself for the scorn that was sure to follow until she realized that Pansy actually looked nervous.
"A date. With you. With Ginny Weasley," Pansy said, as if tasting the words to see if they felt right. After what felt like way too many seconds of uncomfortable silence, she finally said: "Fine. I'll go on a date with you."
Ginny's stomach flipped.
"You don't need to sound so reluctant about it," Ginny said, trying to ignore how hard her heart was beating.
"You're the one asking, I can sound however I want," Pansy retorted.
"Bitch."
"Slut," Pansy said, but with an edge of humour. "See you on Saturday, Weasley."
"See you," Ginny said and turned to leave. From the corner of her eye she could see a little flustered smile play on Pansy's lips. Ginny smiled and walked off.