Glancing at his watch, Harry realized with a start that it was much later than he had thought. Picking up the pace, he jogged down the cobbled road toward the quieter end of Diagon Alley. After a quick exchange with a sweet old shopkeeper, he gripped the full and colorful bouquet of flowers and turned on the spot, vanishing. Apparating was easy now, but he still didn't like it much. Still, when it was that or be late…
"Gin?" he called out, opening the front door to his own house. He knew she would be there, but Grimmauld Place was so big he didn't know if she would hear him right away. "Ginny? Where are you?"
"Here!" the shout came from up the stairs, but was not actually very helpful in locating his girlfriend.
"Master," a croak near his elbow made Harry jump. Kreacher looked up, meeting his gaze and gesturing to Harry to hand him his cloak. "Mistress Ginny is upstairs, Master Harry. She has been in the second bedroom for much of the afternoon, but she has forbidden Kreacher from entering for now. Kreacher wonders if Mistress Ginny is quite alright?"
"Oh, she's fine Kreacher." Harry smiled down at the old elf, undoing the fasten on his cloak and handing it down to him. He watched the elf hitch the cloak up onto a hook and continued, "Do you know when she ate last?"
Kreacher smiled back. "Mistress Ginny ate the breakfast that Kreacher made this morning. Mistress Ginny liked the pancakes, Kreacher believes, and she seemed to have enjoyed his company and chatted with Kreacher while she ate." Lining Harry's shoes up next to several other pairs he said, "Mistress Ginny went out today as well, Master Harry. Miss Hermione came by the house briefly in the late hours of the morning and Mistress Ginny left with her, but came back alone. Kreacher does not know if she ate lunch outside of the house or not, but he imagines it to be so."
Nodding back down at him, Harry was grateful for his elf's help and that Ginny was happy and had company while he was away. "Do you think you could have dinner ready in an hour or so?
Ears bobbing slightly, he nodded. "Would Master like Kreacher to arrange a vase?" he pointed at the flowers in Harry's hand.
"Sure, Kreacher, that would be great. I'm going to give these to Gin first, but then I'll probably send them down to the living room. Could you get one ready there?"
Kreacher bowed low and backed out of the entryway. Before he was even out of sight, Harry started up the stairs toward the second bedroom. It was one of the bigger bedrooms, on the third floor. Seeing that the door was already ajar, he peeked through the gap between the door and the frame. Ginny was laying on the bed, sprawled out with a book propped up against a pillow.
When she heard the door creak, she sat up and looked at him. "Hey you." She smiled.
"Hey you." Harry echoed. "I brought you something." He held the flowers out for her and smiled back.
"Oh!" she gasped, reaching out for the flowers. "Oh Harry, they're beautiful!" she pushed her face into the flowers and breathed deeply. "What's the occasion?"
"Well." Harry shifted a little uncomfortably. "Well, that, uh, that Quidditch match was a year ago today."
Ginny smiled up at him, her face still in the flowerpetals. "The Quidditch Cup, you mean?"
"Yeah!" he was relieved she knew what he was talking about. "So, I mean. It would have been a year since we, uh—"
"Since we started going out?" she supplied.
"Yeah. A year since we started going out." He shrugged in what he hoped was an offhand looking way. "Or it would have been, if I hadn't had to go away, I suppose." There was a long pause. "Is that stupid?"
"Nah, it's not stupid." The hands holding her flowers drooped into her lap. "I was thinking about it too. It really makes the most sense to start actually counting from a few weeks ago, when we made it official again," she grinned more to herself than to her boyfriend, "but this day is important too."
Relieved that she didn't think he was a complete moron for remembering the Anniversary-that-Wasn't, he sat down on the bed next to her. "So what have you been doing all day?"
"Oh, I actually went out shopping today." She grinned at him again, her expression harder to read now. "With Hermione and one of her muggle friends."
"Hmm." The thought of Hermione having muggle friends was a little odd to Harry, but he knew that he, Ron and Ginny couldn't be her only friends, especially during the summers. She did write an awful lot of letters during the school year. "Where did you go?"
Her grin broadened. There was something mischievous about it that he was not sure if he should be frightened of or not. "We couldn't really go to any wizard shops, obviously, with a muggle with us. But Hermione and her friend had a good time bringing me to the muggle ones, teaching me things." She paused, wondering how to proceed. A faint pink flush had begun to creep up her cheeks. "I wanted to get something to commemorate today, too."
"Er, oh." Harry said uncertainly. Why was Ginny blushing?
"I was wondering, Harry, if you wanted to see something . . . New."
"New?" he asked.
"Yes, new." She confirmed. "I picked up a few things while shopping today."
"While shopping?" he gulped, feeling his own face reddening and wishing vaguely that he could supply his own words rather than echoing hers.
She giggled and pecked him on the cheek. "Yes, silly. Now you wait here."
She stood and walked behind a large paper screen through which Harry could see her silhouette. He vaguely remembered sending the flowers downstairs with a wave of his wand before sitting up quite straight on the edge of the bed. The shadow-Ginny pulled her sweatshirt up over her head and drop it on the floor, then scooted her shorts down into a rumpled pile next to it. "Ready?" she called to him.
"R-ready." Harry was painfully aware of how dumbstruck he sounded. He cleared his throat and tried again, "Ready."
A red curtain of hair peaked around the edge of the screen, with one apparently bare shoulder exposed. "Now don't laugh."
He couldn't think of anything he was less likely to do, but he also didn't trust his voice not to break again, so he merely nodded.
With a deep intake of breath, Ginny stepped out into full view. She was tall and freckled and perfect, standing there in front of him. "What do you think?"
Forcing himself to focus, Harry realized that the little clothes she was wearing actually matched and looked brand new. "Is this what you bought today?"
"It's some of it,"
Some of it, repeated Harry in his head. He was either in for the best day of his life or a lot of trouble. Or, he supposed, both. After a moment, he realized he was supposed to be answering her and actually looked more closely at the individual parts rather than the heavenly whole. The bra and panties were both black, and looked to be made of silk or something like it. Lace-lined edges met with her irregular freckles on her hips while carefully shaped cups held her in a way that made her easy confidence even more clear. He gulped before answering her, "You make them look fantastic."
She crossed the room in three strides, throwing herself onto his lap. Her mouth pressed hard against his, tongues moving against each other smoothly, her fingers tangled in his messy black hair. A moan escaped, neither sure who it came from, and then another. Ginny could feel Harry's body through his clothes and tore his shirt up over his head and threw it somewhere behind her. He grunted shortly, pulling her hips toward his own and holding tight to her bum.
Sliding his hands up her smooth back, Harry tried to undo the clasp on the back of her bra. After struggling for several seconds, he snatched his wand from the bedside table and flicked it, causing the clasp to spring apart.
Ginny laughed, a bright and bubbling sound in the dark room, and Harry met her eyes.
"Well," he reasoned, "I needed to get through."
She laughed again, but it was interrupted by a soft moan as his hands slid up under the bra and replaced the cups with his own hands. She grabbed the fabric and discarded that as well. Their lips met again, the kisses growing more frantic as Harry rubbed his fingers on her skin and as she scratched at his already scarred shoulders and back. Ginny moved her long, nimble fingers to the front of Harry's jeans, undoing the button and the zipper. She smiled against his lips as she felt him, hard, through his boxer shorts. As she ran her fingers along him, as much as she could reach, she felt him gasp and shudder, dropping one of his hands to the small of her back and pulling her forward.
They fell backwards against the soft, downy blankets on the bed. Readjusting themselves slightly so they were both completely off the floor, Ginny shucked her boyfriends jeans off in one smooth movement before she crawled back up over him, running her fingertips along his thigh, his hips, his chest, his lips.
The moan that came from him, his eyes shut tight and mouth gaping, was what she had been waiting for. "Ginny," it was soft and urgent and came with a reaching hand that gripped her arm.
"Yes Harry?" she teased.
He opened his eyes and his green found her brown ones. The eye contact was like a shock that ran through them both. Harry reached up and pulled off the underwear that Ginny wore, at the same moment that she reached down and pulled off his. Laying back on the bed, he pulled her willing body up so she was kneeling over him.
Not breaking the eye contact, she reached down carefully. As soon as she touched him, he gasped loudly, his whole body shuddered once in anticipation. Slowly, almost too slowly for Harry, she lowered herself down on top of him, sitting straight upright on his hips, until he was entirely inside of her. The moan began early on, growing in volume as she slid over him, until he was clenching his teeth with the effort of keeping himself under control.
Leaning forward slightly, Ginny began to move her hips in a way that Harry vaguely thought should probably be illegal. He knew somewhere that he would never be able to tell her no again, not as long as he knew she could do this to him; could cause this much pleasure in him.
He shut his eyes tight, not wanting it to be over yet, but just then she began to moan. Softly at first, and not quite rhythmically, she moaned and gasped every time he went deep into her. Knowing that he didn't stand a chance like this, Harry reached up and grabbed her hips, slowing her until he could flip her over, throwing her on her back and climbing up on top.
"Oh, Harry…" she whispered to him, weaving her fingers into his hair again.
Slowly, he picked up the movements, thrusting into her over and over again. He bit his lip when he felt himself getting close again. He felt her shift her hips slightly, hitching her leg up so her knee was near his shoulder. Following her lead, he gently pushed her leg up until it was resting on his shoulder before pulling the other one up to match it. The next thrust produced such a sound from her that Harry was sure he had hurt her or had done the wrong thing, but before he could open his mouth to ask, she shouted out:
"Holy hell, Harry! Do that again!"
Confidence renewed, he built up the rhythm again, pushing himself into her again and again, as deep as he could go. She yanked on his hair fairly hard, which he didn't mind really, before dropping her fists to the bedspread, gripping it tightly and her chest rose and fell rapidly with shallow breaths.
"Kee—keep going," she moaned loudly.
"Don't… don't have to tell me twice." He could barely get the sentence out, he was focusing so hard on not letting himself finish too early.
Finally, after several well timed movements, Ginny let out a scream of pleasure, clutching at his hands on her hips as she writhed against him. He could no longer have held back even if he had wanted to, and felt the release into her sweaty body, holding her close to him, filling her with everything he had.
Feeling the energy drain out of him all at once, he dropped forward, catching himself so as not to crush her before lowering himself onto her. Still tangled together, still breathing raggedly, he fell to the side with a whump and a slight squelching sound that made them both giggle weakly.
For some time, they laid next to each other until their breathing slowed down to normal and their arms seemed to wrap themselves around each other again. They had almost drifted off before Harry muttered sleepily, "Gin?"
"Hnn?" she didn't open her eyes, but her eyebrows twitched as though she had thought about it.
"'Love you."
She smiled, her eyes still closed. "I love you too. Happy anniversary."
"Happy 'versary."