Reversing Course is coming along, but more slowly right now, as I try to work out some of the more detailed plot points. In the meantime, Deadwoodpecker asked if I'd ever write a companion piece to What Comes Up/Pump Up the Volume, but from Ginny's point of view. It was a good distraction, so here's part I of my purely fluffy frolic and detour. Special thanks to the Ginny Lovers discord for indulging my discussion of Ginny liking Harry headcanons, and an extra special thank you to LegendDairy for gifting me with the changing room scene.

Growing up as she had with six boisterous, uninhibited, and often oversharing older brothers, by the time she started at Hogwarts, Ginny Weasley was no stranger to what most girls her age considered the mystery of the opposite sex. While the distractions of her first year at school prevented her from sharing her knowledge, before her second year was a month old, Ginny had become the unofficial expert when it came to educating her age-mates about what made 12 year old wizards tick. And if some of her details might not have been completely accurate – she taught her friends that "blue balls" were what boys got from sitting too long on a broom during Quidditch – it was certainly more information than any of them were getting elsewhere at the time. And when Ginny returned after the Christmas holidays having overheard a rather explicit conversation between Bill and Charlie about a witch at the bank Bill was shagging, well, it was a wonder that any of them got any real homework finished at all.

"I swear, he told Charlie he put his mouth down there," she confided one night in her dormitory, to the combined fascination and horror of the other second years. Ginny's information had been deemed important enough that the Gryffindors had been joined by all of the Ravenclaws and a couple of Hufflepuffs. No one had thought it necessary to ask any of the Slytherin though.

"Like any of them will have any luck catching a bloke anyway," laughed Demelza. She leaned in towards Ginny. "What exactly did he do with his mouth? Kiss it?" she asked skeptically.

"I'm not sure," Ginny admitted. "I think he said something about . . . licking?" She made a face. "Why would he want to do that?"

"It's an effective arousal ritual," said Luna Lovegood in a dreamy voice. She was twirling a corner of Ginny's quilt and until that moment hadn't given any indication she was listening. "And prevents nargles from invading the cavity."

Most of the girls exploded in laughter but Luna seemed unpeturbed. "You'll understand someday," she said serenely. "We just need to reach our sexual awakening first."

HPHPHPHP

Ginny was pretty sure that Michael Corner wasn't going to sexually awaken her. He was her first kiss, a fact she rather regretted as soon as she realized that he used his tongue as if going into battle with the giant squid. Still, she'd briefly harbored the notion that she could help him improve, and spent some amount of time instructing him "to close his mouth a bit more" until she finally gave it up as a bad job. After Michael got angry over the fact that Gryffindor had beaten Ravenclaw in Quidditch, Ginny had no trouble at all walking away.

Dean Thomas was rather nicer. He was calm and artistic, and it showed in the carefully deliberate way he used his mouth and eventually, his hands. Ginny sometimes felt little flutters in her belly when she kissed Dean and sometimes didn't mind when he brushed his hands down the front of her robes, and even when they ventured inside her shirt. She occasionally wondered what it might be like if Dean's hands roamed further, but every time they approached that boundary, Ginny held back, and Dean didn't push her. For a little while, Ginny wondered if there was something wrong with her, if she should be feeling more. Dean was her boyfriend, after all, and he was cute and kind and liked Quidditch. But no matter what she thought she should be feeling, Ginny couldn't work up any more excitement for him than those occasional flutters in her belly. By the time she began thinking that it was time to break up with Dean, Ginny had stopped pretending she didn't know the reason why.

HPHPHPHP

Ginny hadn't lied to Hermione. She really had moved on past her crush on Harry, sometime around the start of her fourth year. That summer at Grimmauld Place had gone far towards making Ginny realize that Harry was nothing like the silly fantasies she'd been concocting in her head for years, and that understanding gave Ginny the clarity to talk to Harry as a real person and then as a friend. What she'd been less honest about was exactly what her feelings were for Harry now. When Harry kissed Cho in the Room of Requirement and Ginny felt an unreasonable and surprising stab of jealousy she convinced herself that it was just a remnant of her earlier crush, that little bit of her childhood that had wondered what it would be like to kiss Harry Potter and have him kiss her back. Instead, she kissed Michael and then Dean, taking Hermione's advice to go out with other people so that she could relax around Harry. It worked, and then it worked too well.

The more Ginny got to be Harry's friend, the more she understood how both his determination and frustration urged him on. And the more she watched him trying to always do the right thing and keep so much closed off and to himself, the more she knew that he'd never give up believing that the entirety of their futures rested almost solely on his shoulders. Somewhere in the midst of this growing awareness, Ginny's feeling of friendship began to blur into something else.

She suppressed it, of course. She could do that, as long as her latent feelings for Harry Potter were mostly emotional and nothing more. And for a while, all was fine. Ginny was sure she imagined that Harry seemed to be looking at her more often, and if she was becoming less and less enamored of Dean, well, that had nothing to do with anything other than the fact that he'd just gotten a little . . . boring. Right?

And then Harry called Quidditch practice.

He worked them hard, first running up and down the stadium's steps and then in the air, but Ginny didn't mind. Harry worked right along with the rest of the team, jogging past them on the steps and then flying circles around their formations, trying to distract them as they took turns with Quaffle and Bludger. Everyone should be familiar with every position, he said, so at the end of practice Ginny found herself racing Harry after the Snitch, leaning forward until she was nearly flat on her broom before she snatched the fluttering ball right out from Harry's grasp at the last minute. They rolled together onto the ground in a mass of limbs and brooms, laughing good-naturedly at each other as the rest of the team descended. Harry reached out a hand to help Ginny to her feet but she grinned cheekily at him and handed him the Snitch instead.

Everyone was ribbing Harry, Ron asking pointedly if Harry was sure Ginny wouldn't make the better Seeker, when they got to the changing room. Before she followed Demelza to the girls' side, Ginny reminded her brother that she'd beaten him as Keeper too. Ron made an obnoxious hand gesture before disappearing behind the curtain that separated the entryway from the two sides of the changing area. Ginny turned to go shower.

"You beat everyone, you know."

She turned back. "What?"

Harry gave her a grin. "Beating, Seeking, Keeping, you won every time. And Chasing, of course." He grabbed a towel from the shelf and rubbed it across his face.

Ginny's throat was suddenly dry. "I didn't hit the Bludgers very hard," she said, swallowing. "I just got a couple of lucky shots in." She was very aware of the way Harry 's practice uniform hugged the lines of his body.

Harry shrugged, then pulled his jersey over his head. "It was enough to nearly knock Peakes off his broom," he said. He tossed the jersey into a nearby hamper. "Don't sell yourself short."

Ginny didn't think Harry was showing off, half stripping in front of her so that she couldn't help but see the way his abdominal muscles marched up his torso. More likely he was thinking of the Burrow, where everyone except Ginny ran around in various states of undress half the time. She was just another Weasley; Harry'd probably forgotten she was a girl. She resisted the urge to bite her lip.

"I'll . . . I'll stick to Chasing, I think," she said thickly. There was a swoop in her belly that was more than anything she'd ever felt with Dean. She took a deep breath and then matched Harry's grin. "Wouldn't want Ron to get a complex or anything. Another complex, I mean."

Harry snorted. "Good thing Lavender didn't come to practice today, huh?"

"Or Hermione," agreed Ginny.

Harry grinned again. "I wondered about that," he said. He fiddled with the button on his uniform bottoms and for a wild second Ginny wondered if he was about to take them off. The swoop in her belly moved closer to the space between her legs. She forced a small shrug.

"I'm staying out of it," she said. "They have to figure things out on their own."

Harry nodded. "Ron's so thick though; probably take a Bludger to the head before he realizes he fancies her."

"I'll try harder next practice then," said Ginny with a smirk. It was getting easier to talk; after all, it wasn't like this was the first time she'd seen Harry without a shirt. Sweaty, and without a shirt, that was, and with his hair tousled even more than usual. She swallowed again and gestured weakly behind her. "I guess I better . . ." she said.

Harry nodded quickly, his hand flying away from his button. "Right, me too," he said. "I uhh, I wouldn't want you to miss dinner." He picked up another towel, suddenly sounding awkward. "I'll uhh, maybe I'll see you there?" He wasn't looking at her anymore and Ginny wondered if he'd realized he'd started undressing in front of her.

"Sure," she said. She forced a casual tone. "Sounds good." Blushing but not sure why, Ginny grabbed a towel of her own before pushing aside the curtain that led to the girls' showers.

"Bye Ginny."

Ginny didn't know if she imagined Harry's final comment; she was too busy setting shower to be colder than normal, relieved that Demelza had already finished and left. Her body tingled, and definitely not from exercise; she hoped Dean wasn't waiting for her to have dinner with him. She really didn't want to think about her boyfriend right now.

Ginny didn't think about her boyfriend that night in bed either.