warning: femslash

...and this is where I lose myself when I keep running away from you...

The change never comes, never happens. Or if it does, she doesn't notice it.

Ginny is now nineteen, and absolutely exquisite in her beauty. She turns heads wherever she goes, though she doesn't really notice this. It's been almost four years since she's looked Harry Potter in the face, but he is a fading memory now. She tries to feel sorrow, regret, for the words she so harshly spoke to him, but she's too tired and too busy and hates harping on the past.

She is a different person, now, and she thinks that if she returned her mother's owls and invitations for dinners and various family functions at the Burrow her family wouldn't recognize her. She's still physically the same, long ruby hair and endless freckles, an athletically apt build, but she knows she is not ginveraweasley anymore. She's ceased to be the little girl with braids and innocence splayed across her face for what feels like a lifetime.

She lives in a cottage, by herself, in a small village far away from anybody she's ever known. It's a complete surprise, then, when Gabrielle shows up at her door, looking windswept and like she's just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. It's been so long since she's seen her, the beautiful Veela descendant, and Ginny wishes for a second that she hadn't spoken the words

that banned Gabrielle from her life.

"Ginny," Gabrielle says, relief dancing on her lips. "Eet is so good to see you." Gabrielle kisses Ginny's cheeks, but Ginny is too stunned to respond. She hasn't seen Gabrielle since Christmas the year before she graduated Hogwarts. She was blossoming then, and Ginny couldn't help but enviously follow the strands of gold in her hair, or the tip of Gabrielle's tongue as it seductively moved across her lips when she ate.

"Whare 'ave 'oo been?" Gabrielle asks, when Ginny has resumed the function of her legs and steps aside, allowing the graceful French woman into her home.

"Here," Ginny says, gesturing around her. The cottage isn't grand or expensive, but it is clean and tastefully furnished. Ginny offers Gabrielle some coffee and disappears into the kitchen for a few moments, and when she comes back she sees Gabrielle has shed her scarf and coat, and is wearing something Ginny thought she'd never see her in--a pair of jeans and a plain gray sweater. She looks fantastic, though, and Ginny feels a wave of heat wash over her.

"Why are you here?" Ginny manages to say, handing Gabrielle the steaming mug.

"I 'ave not seen you for a long time." Gabrielle says this as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"And that's for good reason, I would have thought I made myself clear at that Christmas-" Ginny stops because there's nothing else to say. She said it all that night, when she let her lips, impudent and wanton, run up and down and across Gabrielle's so-perfect-it's-painful body.

"Ginny," Gabrielle stands, and she is almost too close for comfort but Ginny knows that she doesn't really mind. Gabrielle is beautiful and smells amazing, like softness and purity. Ginny takes a step back; she doesn't want to tarnish the creature in front of her again, with her black words and her anger and her utter exhaustion and regret. But Gabrielle slips her hand into Ginny's, and shakes her head. "Silly girl." She whispers, and her lips are coming closer and Ginny's pulse skyrockets.

It comes and goes, the feeling of missing the people she's left behind, but she isn't one of them anymore, and even though Gabrielle sighs into her mouth and tells her again how much she missed her and what her smiles mean to her, and how she forgives her for that night, for the words that negated the sweet touches and the explosions of pleasure, Ginny can't help but wish Gabrielle would leave. Gabrielle has come to save her, but Ginny doesn't want to be saved.

The next morning Gabrielle has made her breakfast in bed, and the girl's blue eyes are full of something Ginny would rather not think about.

But she quietly wishes she could be the girl Gabrielle thinks she is.