Title: Wands, Wishes, & Lavender Cigarettes

Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel

Pairings: Harry/Ginny

Story Summary: Ginny is in love with Harry Potter, but has no hope of getting him to notice her. That is, until her snarky, cigarette smoking, not-quite-swearing Slytherin of a fairy godmother appears. This is a job for the professionals.

Setting: AU. Harry's seventh year, Ginny's sixth. Canon books 1-4.

Author notes:

Wow, a romance. First time I've ever done one of these. But all that soppy stuff is anathema to me, so this is going to be somewhat humorous, and it's going to have the total opposite of soppiness in it in the form of the fairy godmother. Sort of a twist on all those fairytale stories, I guess. Ginny-centric, obviously.

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WANDS, WISHES, & LAVENDER CIGARETTES

CHAPTER ONE

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As far as I'm concerned, I must have done something truly terrible in a past life. It's the only reasonable explanation for why I have such abysmal luck getting the one boy who matters to notice how I feel about him.

-

For my first three years I had a truly, honestly, appalling crush on the Boy Who Lived. It was one of those crushes that makes the crusher cringe everafter once its effects eventually wear off, and the crushee smile awkwardly and spend the rest of their lives avoiding the crusher in the hope of escaping eternal mortification.

You know, sometimes I feel lucky Harry even speaks to me after that.

Anyway, the problem was that even as my crush on the Boy Who Lived began to wane, I fell in love with Harry.

Harry is quieter than Hermione or Ron, with this uncomfortable awkwardness that comes from his awareness of being a celebrity. He hates it. Really. On every level. He'd much rather be someone normal, like Ron, only instead he had fame and on top of that, a destiny. No boy ever deserved normality more than Harry, I think.

He has bright green eyes that show every mood, and a when he smiles his shy grin his eyes light up with such warmth and camaraderie that it tugs on my heartstrings every time I see it. He's stubborn, with a temper like a towering tornado and magic to match, although he'd never believe it if you told him. That's another thing about Harry; he genuinely believes that he's nothing special, and if anyone's ever in danger he always puts theirs lives above his own like he isn't worth as much as they are when he's worth more than the lot of them put together. Sometimes I just want to hit him, he's so maddening. But it's part of what makes him Harry, and deep down it's one of the reasons why I love him so much. How could I not love someone who genuinely cares so much about the lives of other people?

-

Only thing is, Harry steadfastly refuses to notice that I'm a girl. What's really maddening is that we're actually really close, but because we're such good friends it's never occurred to him to think of me in that way. It'd be like fancying Ron and Hermione. It's just not part of Harry's universe. I've tried everything, short of grabbing him and snogging the life out of him, and none of it has ever worked.

My latest attempt failed as much as everything else had. We'd been out flying, playing broom-tag, and afterwards sat in the stands to catch our breath as the sun went down.

"You know, Harry, you're very special to me," I said softly. Harry turned to look at me.

"You're very special to me too, Ginny," Harry said seriously. His eyes were big and luminous in the fading light, and greener than ever. My heart beat began to speed up. Then, of course, Harry said the one thing a girl in love really, really doesn't want to hear.

"I don't know what I'd do without your friendship," he finished, eyes shining with sincerity. I did my best to smile.

That was Harry. So earnest and sincere it was almost painful, and as discerning as a brick.

Afterwards I sat around the Astronomy Tower and moped. I figured that after Harry's latest bittersweet statement I was entitled to it.

"I wish, I wish I could do something to get Harry Potter to notice me," I told the sky forlornly.

"Cry me a river," said a snarky and sarcastic voice. I turned around, and there stood my fairy godmother.

-

She was aged somewhere between sixteen and thirty, but I couldn't tell you exactly where. Her hair was golden blonde, and she wore black-and-dark-green battle robes and black lace-up boots made of dragonhide. Her face wore the kind of expression I've only ever seen on Slytherins.

She crossed her arms and snorted.

"I mean, feck it, you think I haven't heard that line before?" she asked me. "I'm your fairy godmother, by the way. I'm Adelaide."

I gaped, trying to process what she'd said. My settled on the most irrelevant and therefore safest part.

"Er… did you just say…?"

"Feck it." Adelaide gave me a smirk. "I'm not allowed to say naughty things, you know. They put a fecking spell on me." Disgusted snort. "But hey, it's not my fault everyone just happens to know what I want to say." Another smirk.

"Erm, right then." I decided to just go with it. My life had been more weird. "I'm Ginny Weasley."

She gave me an amused look.

"You think I don't know that? I'm your bledding fairy godmother."

Right. Mentally slap self.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

Adelaide rolled her eyes.

"Another feckin' stupid remark. Don't you ever think afore you open your mouth? You say, 'I wish I could do something to get Harry Potter to notice me', and poof, here I am, an' then you ask me a fecking stupid question like that?"

I could feel the Weasley Flush creeping up my neck as I realised that up until now I had indeed been displaying the kind of mental acuity I'd expect from my brother Ron.

"Oh?" I said coolly. "And you think you can do it?"

Far too many teeth showed themselves in a very white smile.

"Honey, it's what I feckin' do."

oo o0o oo

That wasn't the end of the conversation, of course. Adelaide had me tell her all about Harry's past and the history we shared. At the end of it Adelaide pulled out a cigarette.

"Well," she said around it as she lit up, "this boy sounds like a keeper, unfortunately he also sounds like he's dense as plutonium. The good ones mostly are. And don't look at me like that, these things are made of lavender."

Sure enough, the smoke she exhaled was tinted faintly purple and smelt herbal.

"I didn't think fairy godmothers were allowed to smoke cigarettes," I said.

"They're not," she shrugged, "but technically a cigarette has tobacco in it, right…?"

"Ah." I caught on. "And since these contain no tobacco whatsoever you are technically speaking, not smoking cigarettes."

"Zactly." She puffed away contentedly. "They're feckin' awful, mind you, but going through the motions helps me think." She took a long, slow drag of her cigarette and stared at me, then took it out of her mouth and lifting one foot, stubbed it out on the bottom of her boot. There was an accumulation of ashy material on the sole; clearly this was her habitual way of dealing with the problem.

"Right," she said grimly, "before we can get anywhere serious we have a lot more to find out. I'm not one of those flighty chits that just gets you both together and then flits away; if I get a job I get the job done, which means no unhappy marriages, no divorce. I'm a professional. So, tell me about your married life, Ginner-Pinner. D'you want kids? Does Harry? How many? What kind of jobs you going to have? Who's going to stay at home with the kids if you have any? D'you both like pets? Dogs? Cats? Guinea pigs? How about a dragon? And of course, where're you both going to live? Do your tastes even come near't' matching each other?"

"I – I – "

"FECK IT, GIRL!" Adelaide yelled, stabbing her stubbed-out cigarette in my direction, an exasperated expression on her face. "You want Harry Potter, you have to be able to answer some of these questions! You can't just know who he is now, you have to know who he's going to BE!"

Adelaide flicked the cigarette stub away, pulled out a fresh one and lit up.

"Right," she said calmly, breathing out purple smoke again, "you need support everywhere you can. So. Your brother and wonderboy's other friend. Tell them how you feel and ask them, honestly, for advice. Ask them the questions I just asked you. Come back to me when you've got a bit more to go on."

With that my fairy godmother stubbed out her cigarette against the tower wall and vanished, leaving only two lavender-cigarettes and one shell-shocked Ginevra Weasley as evidence she was ever there.

oo 0 oo

The next evening, when Harry was on one of his periodic visits to the headmaster, which everyone but my friend Luna Lovegood believed were fighting-against-Voldemort training sessions (she proposed lovers trysts: need I say, ew) I found Ron and Hermione at a table by themselves in the common room, Ron doodling little snitches on his parchment while Hermione swatted him with hers and told him to work on his Transfig.

"Ron, Hermione, I need to talk to you guys," I stated. Already I was slightly pink. The thought of what I was going to say horrified me, but if my chain-smoking fairy godmother said I needed to do it, then I needed to do it. (Either that, or natural sadistic tendencies were making themselves known.)

Hermione's eyes narrowed at me. She might not be the most socially-adept witch around, but she's sharp, and usually fits the pieces together before anyone else does.

"It's about Harry," she stated matter-of-factly. "You've come to tell us you're in love with him."

Ron gaped slightly at the sudden turn in conversation. I slid into a chair.

"The problem is, I can't seem to get him to realise," I said honestly. "I'm at my wits end. Harry's the One, I'm sure of that, but I need him to know it too."

As Ron sat clearly wondering how he had suddenly become part of the fabric of a soap opera, Hermioned 'hmm'ed thoughtfully.

"Harry's tricky about that sort of thing," she said at last. "Sometimes he can be awfully perceptive, and other times he can be thick as a brick."

I nodded. This was all familiar to me.

"So really, you never know whether he's genuinely oblivious to something, or just ignoring it in the hope it'll go away."

Not comforting, Hermione.

"In your case," she continued, "I'm inclined to think he hasn't consciously noticed it at least, seeing how comfortable he is with you. I think you're going to have to actually come out and tell him how you feel."

I nodded and turned to my brother.

"You have any ideas how to attract Harry's attention, Ron?"

Ron was slowly turning red, clearly conflicted between what would get his attention and what he thought becoming of his younger sister. Hermione, I noticed, watched in some amusement.

"Stop frying your brain and talk to me, Ron," I demanded.

Ron took a breath and shook his head.

"I am not helping you throw yourself at Harry," he said firmly.

There would have been a row then but Hermione slipped in as I gathered breath to shout.

"Alright, Ron, but couldn't you mention to Harry that Ginny fancies him? Prepare him for when Ginny tells him herself?" she suggested.

Ron thought this over. He let out a relieved breath.

"I guess," he nodded. He scowled darkly. "But don't you go – telling him in broom cupboards, Ginny – or –"

I rolled my eyes.

"Please, Ron," I said with asperity, "I know as well as you do that'd send Harry fleeing in terror. I've seen how he reacts to Romilda Vane, you know."

Hermione giggled.

-

Romilda was a brazen fourth-year girl who had spent the past year trying to get Harry to fall in love with her. For a year now we had watched Harry sneak around in his invisibility cloak, burn love letters, and calmly dispose of love potion-spiked chocolates. What made it so amusing was that Harry did it all matter-of-factly, avoiding each approaching snare with the grace and ease of a Slytherin. What's more, he did it all without a trace of bad temper. I asked him about it once.

"Well," he said mildly, "it's not as if it's doing me any harm, and she's only a kid. I might as well let her, if it makes her feel better about things."

"Harry," I said, exasperated, "she's done everything but tell the Prophet you're planning to get married!"

"I know," he agreed seriously, "that's why I bought the controlling stake in the Prophet. I'd been thinking about it for a while, but Romilda was the last straw. Anything they print about me, they have to run it past me first, now."

That's another thing about Harry; sometimes he does something so outrageous he leaves you speechless. Until then none of us knew he had a clue about business. Turned out his Gringotts account manager had been casually tutoring Harry whenever he stopped by.

-

Anyway, now that Ron had given his protective older brother speech, I decided to move on to the next set of instructions Adelaide had given me.

"What do you two know about what Harry wants to do with his future?" I asked.

"Play Quidditch for the Cannons," Ron said promptly. Hermione elbowed him.

"That's what you want to do Ron, don't go transferring it to Harry," she scolded, before turning to me.

"I know he was planning on being an Auror, but lately he's been mentioning how much he likes teaching everyone in the D.A., so I wouldn't be surprised if he went for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position when this is all over." 'This' including school, clashes with the Ministry, the war ,and of course, Voldemort. "Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Sort of," I agreed. "But what about the other stuff? Where does he want to live? Does he want kids one day? That kind of thing."

"Oh," said Hermione. "I see."

She looked at me very seriously.

"You know how the Dursleys treat Harry." I gritted my teeth and nodded. I did indeed. The way Harry's always so thin at the beginning at term, and the way he used to stiffen at casual contact, and how grateful and perplexed he always is when people want to help him… it gives away how he gets treated at home. Back in my first year Ron and the twins had gone on about locks and bars and Harry being starved, which was bad enough, but sometimes when Harry was talking about life at Privet Drive it was the things he didn't say that told us the most… It's abuse, plain and simple, and has been going on so long that Harry doesn't quite see how horrible it is.

Hermione interrupted my dark thoughts.

"Well, because of that Harry has always desperately wanted to be loved and to have a family of his own. Have you ever noticed how much he beams when your mum fusses over him?"

I nodded. I seem to be doing a lot of nodding.

"The sad thing is that even though it's what he wants most in the world, Harry doesn't really believe he's going to get it. He's even accepted that."

Hermione blinked rapidly. Her eyes had gone suspiciously shiny. I couldn't blame her; mine had too.

To my surprise, Ron entered the conversation suddenly.

"He needs someone who loves him Gin," he said seriously, "who'll always support him and never turn their back on him or assume the worst. Someone who doesn't laugh at his fears and who can tell him every day they love him until he believes it."

I've never heard Ron speak about anything this passionately except Quidditch. This wisely, about nothing at all.

"Don't go after him unless you're willing to do all that for him, Ginny, because while I'd kill him if he hurt you, I'd never forgive you if you hurt him."

To hear all this from Ron the Thick, Ron 'emotional range of a teaspoon' Weasley, was a shock. So I just nodded.

I had a lot to think about.

oo 0 oo

Eventually I returned to the Astronomy Tower.

"Adelaide?" I called. "Fairy godmother?"

There was no reply. I was still all alone up here.

"Adelaide, where the hell are you!" I yelled.

"For crissakes, you think you're the only one I gotta look out for?" snapped my fairy godmother, flinging a cigarette stub at me. "I've got thirty others allocated to me and all of them are going through fecking lovelife crisises. It's a wonder I get any bleddy sleep."

She stomped on the cigarette stub where it had fallen and grounded it in until all the little embers were gone. I brushed ash out of my hair with my fingers.

"I did as you said," I told her." Hermione in particular had a lot of advice."

"Figures," Adelaide said, lighting a cigarette. "What'd Miss Mensa have to say?"

I blinked.

"Miss what?"

"Criss." She was disgusted. "It's a muggle thing, okay? Don't strain your brain."

"You're muggleborn?" I was surprised.

"Yah. And Slytherin." A drag on her cigarette. "It's why I'm so snarky and cynical. They eat you alive down there. Next time you see a mudblodd sorted into Slytherin, tell the headmaster it's be kinder to take them out and shoot them."

Hang on.

"If you're a witch, how come you're a fairy godmother?"

Adelaide looked irritated.

"Do we have to go through this fecking story?" she asked.

"Yes," I said firmly. She sighed and stubbed out her cigarette against the stonework.

"Fine, you feckin' parker. M'mum was from a fae line and so I dended up with fairy blood in me. I always had trouble at school coz the magic they taught us was designed for witches, not fae. So at graduation I'm left with poor marks, a reputation as a weak witch, and no job prospects. I'm ready to sell fingers in Knockturn Alley when up pops a woman telling me they'd teach me how to use my fairy magic if I take a job as a feckin' fairy godmother."

Savage snarl.

"They didn't tell me the feckin' details until after I'd signed up. No swearing, no cigarettes, no booze, no fecking private life coz you're on call all day every day to a bunch of fecking hopeless brats with no more brains and spirit than a wet flannel."

A deep breath.

"Mind, you're not so bad, actually pretty smart when you bother to use your brains for something, but most of the ones I get are worse than sheep."

A sigh.

"Right, so tell me what your friendly neighbourhood intellectual had to say."

I recounted the conversation. She sighed again.

"Right, least we have something to work with. Let's get started."

-

END CHAPTER