Title: Love Like Laughter (4/4)
Summary: A Ginny and Harry Get-Together (Again) Fic. Post Voldemort and Post Hogwarts.
Length: (this chapter) 1700 words
Character/Pairings(s): Harry/Ginny
Genre: Romance

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Before she finishes her sentence, Harry's tucked his mirror back inside his robes and Disillusioned himself. He rushes, cursing the heavy Auror robes Kingsley insists they wear despite Harry's constant petitions for robes that allow more fluidity of movement.

Still, by the time he reaches the front of the house, Goyle is Disarmed and Stunned, levitating limply in front of Ginny.

"You're slow." She smiles, her eyes accusing though they don't leave Goyle's hovering form. She bites her lip, perhaps contemplating the best place to take her stunned captive.

"Perhaps," Harry suggests, preparing to Apparate, "you're simply very fast."

"You would know, wouldn't you?"

Surprised, Harry watches her carefully for several seconds. Her expression does change. "What?"

"I'll dispose of him." And she disappears with a very soft Pop!, taking the prisoner with her.

He runs his fingers through his hair, watching the spot of air she'd recently displaced. Suddenly, he feels the night all around him, dark and silent, and misses Ginny.

Sighing, he Apparates to his office with a loud Pop! that frightens a nearby dog into loud yipping barks, but Harry doesn't hear because he's already gazing mournfully at the pile of paperwork he has to fill out detailing the assignment and wishing Ginny would hurry back from Azkaban to help.

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Harry's fingers are in his hair, combing it down as his eyes gaze steadily over the form in front of him. Picking up the quill from his desk, he jots answers hastily on the lines. When he reaches the bottom of the parchment, he rubs the bridge of his nose displacing his glasses slightly before signing his name with a flourish.

He rises, paper in hand and sees Ginny in doorway, watching him. With a smile, he says, "Just who I was looking for."

"You're just who I was looking for." She waves the Azkaban documents at her side.

"Excuse me, Ginny, but I'm pretty sure I'm just who you were looking at." He grabs at the folder, but she pulls it out of his reach.

"Let me see the report first."

"Alright." He hands it to her.

Eyes flicking over the parchment, she bites her lip and, not looking up the parchment, says, "Quill?"

She hears Harry shuffling through paper on his desk. "I don't know where..." Something falls to the ground and shatters. Harry bends over to pick it up and Ginny takes the opportunity to watch the back pockets of his jeans stretch slightly over his arse. He says a quick Reparo, stands, and replaces the photo on his desk. (She knows from past snooping that it's a wizarding picture from Ron and Herimone's wedding of the entire Weasley clan. She wishes he'd picked the other shot because her picture self is laughing hysterically in this one, partly because she'd had too much champagne and partly because Fred was about to set off dung bomb on Hermione's train.)

"Here." Harry offers her a quill, already inked, and she snatches it.

She flicks her eyes over the document one last time. "Wait. I can't sign this." She twirls the quill, sending Harry an accusing smile.

He blushes and reaches to take the paper back. "What? Did I make a mistake?"

Stepping away and pulling the paper out of his reach she says, "Yes, you did. You seem to have remembered to put in your brilliance concerning your ability to guess Goyle's location, but have left our your stupidity and slothishness in terms of actually capturing him."

"What!" He cries, indignant. "What was I supposed to say. I mean, I gave you credit for hexing him!"

Pursing her lips and schooling her features into sour disapproval, she replies, "But I feel that some note should be made about your complete failure to anticipate when and where the former Death Eater would run." She punctuates the statement by jabbing her finger into his chest.

"I'm an Auror, not a Seer, for Christ's sake!"

She can't help it and lets free a small hiccup of a giggle.

"ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME!"

The hiccup turns into a roar, and, as Harry's eyes bulge, she backs away carefully until she her back is against the glass door of his office. She bites her lip to hold back more laughter, and Harry's eyes darken, focusing on her mouth. The situation no longer seems funny, but still her breathing is unsteady and her pulse, racing.

"Ginny," Harry warns, his hands moving toward her face, but she's not sure what he's her warning against. Then his lips are hers and she doesn't think it matters anymore.

He's tentative at first, gently rubbing his mouth along hers, but when she tilts her head, he takes advantage of the new angle to deepen the kiss, tongue pressing between her lips. His hands slid up her neck and into her hair, pulling it free from it's ponytail, and the smooth, tugging pressure drags a moan from her. Carefully, she places a hand on Harry's chest.

He pulls back.

"Harry!" She gasps, frustrated, tugging on a fistful of his robes.

Extricating himself from her grasp, he mutters, "Shit, Ginny. I'm sorry. You didn't ask..." And then he Disapparates with a Pop!

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Pacing around his flat, clenching and unclenching his fists, Harry curses himself for being such a bastard.

He wants to throw something. Or punch someone. Or spend hours flying round England until he's lost. Mostly he wants to finish what he started with Ginny. He's still hard. And from a kiss. Granted, he'd been thinking about kissing her all evening. Well, perhaps since the park. Or maybe since he saw her being so friendly with Dean. If he was honest, he'd been thinking about kissing Ginny since sixth year.

And he's still thinking about it. He's thinking about the way her eyes squinted and her cheeks pinkened when she laughed. The way her lips parted beneath his gaze. The way she allowed him to press up against her, chest to chest. The sound she'd made when his tongue touched hers. The way she'd moved her hand up his chest, presumably to push him away.

"Damnit!" He kicks the coffee table in front of him.

"Normally people shout out in pain after they hurt themselves, not before."

He whirls around to see Ginny, walking toward him, grinning.

"How did you get here?" Being the savior of the wizarding world, he has many enemies and his flat is heavily warded.

"I used the floo from your office."

He nods. Of course she would be able find the only fireplace on the network that would take her directly to his flat. He can't understand why she's still smiling. She should be slapping him.

"Harry." She's within grabbing distance now and he wants to tell her that if she starts laughing again, he won't be responsible for his actions. But she doesn't laugh. Instead, she places a hand on either side of his face, pulling him down and into a kiss.

This time it's her tongue, eager and wet, that seeks out his, pushing, rubbing, twisting. One of her hands has drifted into his hair and the other rests against his nape. He moans in protest when her lips move away from his, but suddenly they are on his neck, and then at the hollow of his throat.

Her fingers are unbuttoning his robes, and pushing them off his shoulders so that they pool with a soft woosh on the floor.

Backing away from her, he says, voice low and rough, "I thought that you were interested in being friends."

Smiling, eyes narrowed predatorily, she murmurs, "Yes, that too. But not now." She wraps her arms around his neck. "Now, you should kiss me."

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"You're too distracting," Ginny whispers while drawing circles on Harry's naked chest.

He stills her hand. "You're too distracting." She laughs and tries to kick him, but only succeeds in tangling her leg in the sheet. "But tell me, why am I distracting?"

"Believe it or not," she says, knowing he won't believe her when she does not believe herself, "I did not come here for a quick fuck."

"Well," he says reasonably, "you got one quick fuck, a good night's sleep, and then a very, very slow fuck."

"I came here to make sure you received the signed documents and sent them in right away." Her eyes narrow and she pokes him in the chest. "But you distracted me."

He snickers and running finger up her arm, says, "They're already ten hours late. What's another hour?"

"I'm sore," she mutters indignantly, rolling away from him.

"Too sore for lunch?"

Immediately, she sits up and begins scanning the room for her clothes. "Lunch sounds brilliant."

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"So," Ginny says when they've both finished their sandwiches.

Harry shakes his head, feeling very full, content to sit silently.

"You've a spot of mustard on your cheek." She reaches across the table and wipes at it. Harry can see down her shirt. He swallows, suddenly not so content.

"Ginny. I don't think..."

"Harry. I do think and because I think I know that we've both been waiting for this for a long time. I've caught you watching me. And don't tell me I didn't proposition you and not Dean when I was drunk at The Three Broomsticks. Actually, I was a bit disappointed we didn't shag that night. We're good together. I like you."

Uncomfortable and not wanting to be a girl, he replies, "I like you too." As she catches his hand in hers, he remembers what he was going to say before she cut him off. "Ginny, I can't work with you anymore, not if we're..."

"That's not a problem. Kingsley said he was going to give me my own team if I carried off one more of your missions well."

"He didn't tell me." Her thumb traces the veins on the back of his hand. "We'd better turn the paperwork in from last night."

Looking right into his eye and running her foot along his calf, she murmurs, "Harry, I'm glad we're doing this. I really have missed you."

"You still smell the same."

Ginny smiles and pulls him out of the chair and into her arms. Rubbing her nose against his, their lips almost touching, she closes her eyes and laughs. And he thinks it sounds a lot like love.