after we were done with the april chapter of torch, we took a moment and asked ourselves: what if Ginny didn't leave, but walked right back in after she closed the door and left harry staring after her *wink*
Harry's certain he's the only one left, having heard his team's cheery goodbyes as they filed out one by one. So he doesn't think much when he prances around in a towel hanging loose over his hips, plopping on the bench with a satisfied moan as he dries his perpetually messy hair.
"Nice," Ginny smirks and Harry nearly screams in his decidedly not macho voice.
She's at the door, eyeing him smugly, big, cheeky grin on her face.
"What are you doing there?" Harry manages to ask her once he's finished his double over.
"Enjoying myself," Ginny shrugs, completely unabashed. "See you later, Harry."
Harry can bet his broom she winks before she closes the door behind her, leaving him staring awkwardly in her wake, little droplets of water streaming down his face, his chest in rivulets.
Shaking his head vigorously, as if to force himself to wake up from the dream he's absolutely positive he'd just had, Harry stretches and starts for his locker, one hand holding onto the damp towel covering him, drops of water lightly dripping down the arch of his back from the smaller one loosely rolled round his shoulders. Harry reckons if he doesn't hurry a bit there might be no dessert left for him. That's always a possibility with two Weasleys still at Hogwarts, and Harry'd kill for a bite of treacle tart now.
"Actually," a small, wavering voice sounds behind him and Harry spins on his heel, ready to pounce.
But there's Ginny standing still, brown eyes avoiding his, an expression on her face as close to wariness, to self-consciousness as Harry'd ever seen on her, feisty smirk from before slipped into a blooming blush.
"Would you mind if I stayed?" Ginny peeps and Harry blinks at her.
"'S alright," he croaks awkwardly, fingers clutched round the hems of the towel, the tips of his ears simmering under her gaze as he frantically searches for something to say. "I'll - er," Harry loudly clears his throat, "I'll just get dressed and then we can go over the tactics we've discussed today, yeah?"
Ginny looks like she's summoning her might, her confidence and that's entirely more confusing for Harry - she's Ginny, booming laugh and strength, a whirlwind of a human, leaving him breathless and dizzy every single time.
"I'm not really interested in talking Quidditch now, actually."
"You're - eh, you're not?"
Harry wonders briefly if this about Dean, if maybe she knows it was him who had bumped into her, if maybe she came back here to shout at him for causing them to break up…
But Ginny shakes her head and, inhaling sharply, she strides over to him to rise on her tiptoes and grab his face - she kisses him. Shortly, hardly, bluntly. And then her lips are off his and she peels away enough to allow their eyes to meet, to see, to check if it's as alright for him as it is for her.
It's more than alright, Harry's heart beating so loudly, so thunderously he can't hear, can't understand much of what's happening except that Ginny's warm palms are on his face and his own treacherous hands roam down her back, over her jumper and inside it, feeling her skin beneath his fingertips for the very first time.
Ginny's eyes fall shut as she closes the space between them, his face brought to hers in a fiercer kiss, their lips sliding easily now, gliding faster as they adjust to the feel of one another, quickly learn their own personal rhythm.
A voice inside Harry's head screams piercingly when her hands rest on his chest - timidly at first, trembling slightly, then traveling over him, mapping his chest, his shoulders to lay at the back of his head. Her freckled fingers clutch to his wet, sopping hair, twist around his wild curls, scrape over his scalp as Harry kisses her hungrily, passionately, their breaths mixing together hurried and clipped.
He feels the bench behind his knees and allows himself to fall onto it; he wasn't sure how long until his legs betrayed him, buckling under the sheer pressure, the maddening thought of her mouth on his. Privately, he's managed to convince himself that it's just one of his dreams, just another wild creation of his own deranged mind, and that's what fuels his courage. If it's a dream, it can't possibly go wrong. If it's a dream, he doesn't need to stop.
Ginny's knees come to bracket his thighs and he helps her up onto the bench, up onto his lap as their kiss continues, deepens, tongue against tongue. Harry moans when she tugs at his hair and presses into him, gasps loud and hard when he feels her hot against his middle.
Harry's lips peel from her mouth to kiss her down her jaw, her neck, his hands inside her jumper, pulling her to him and she lets out a low moan, a whisper of his name, turning his mind completely blank.
So he heaves them up, strong arms supporting her, eager fingers gripping at her thighs through her jeans. He doesn't even stop to think, to say anything: in his head, this is all a dream.
Ginny wriggles closer to him, her legs swinging enthusiastically to clasp around his middle, palms bringing his face back to hers so she can taste his lips again and again, savouring the feeling of them, the taste of him, his warm breath on her face.
But then the heel of her boot presses too hard, too fast onto his right hip as she struggles to find her balance. The towel, damp and loose around his middle, suddenly unfastens, sliding slowly down his hips, to his legs, to the ground.
"Oh," Ginny gasps, her eyes wide while Harry seems to have lost the ability to move let alone have a coherent thought. Sadly, his friend...little Harry seems to remain fully on board with their previous activities.
Getting out of this tangled position is really not a doable thing, at least not without wanting to die. "Er - sorry."
Ginny's blush is high on her cheeks, rosy and glimmering like a sunset, but she seems to be closer to recovering her wits than Harry. Probably because she doesn't have the most glorious body pressed against her naked skin while her nether region is on full display for anyone and everyone who'd like to see. Harry silently prays 'anyone and everyone' doesn't include any of her brothers.
"S'alright, Harry," she says after a moment, clearing her throat, hands holding tightly to the rolled towel round his neck for better balance, careful not to press too hard into him, "I think we were having a pretty mutually good time - definitely seems you were. In one way or another."
Harry buries his face in her neck while she gently slips her legs from around his hips, hissing sharply when she brushes along his front. In the process, her hands drag over his back, warm against his damp skin, and end up skirting his bum. Which really isn't a necessary movement. And he's hardly going to let that go unnoticed. "Alright there, Gin?"
Oh hell, that should have been way less of a squeaky-voiced question.
She blinks up at him, lets her hand trail over his chest and up to his shoulder to play with the towel there. "How about we - uh. Dial this back a little?"
Harry nods and Ginny's really close now, their noses brushing when she grasps the towel around his neck and presses it into his open palm. "This'll cover you up a bit, yeah?"
He dips his head again, unable to speak. It feels like his throat is somewhat closed up. "Yeah. I, er - have some fresh pants," he explains unnecessarily, all of a sudden ridiculously worried of her opinion on his hygiene habits. "In my locker that is."
While Harry drags the towel round his hips and tucks the end tightly, holding the edges together with a deathgrip for good measure. Ginny's gaze darts down. "That one's fairly smaller than the first. Flashing some leg, eh, Potter? I like."
"I'm more than just a gorgeous body, Weasley," Harry shoots back over his shoulder as he makes his way towards the lockers. Ginny leaves a respectable distance between them but doesn't leave, and definitely doesn't turn.
She's already been up close and personal with most of it and Harry is a little proud of his arse, so he lets the towel drop before he steps into his pants and draws them up around his hips with a small wiggle.
When he turns around, her gaze is dropped so he knows the little show was worth it. And so were those squats.
"Alright?"
Ginny blinks a few times and finally drags her eyes back up to Harry's face. He watches her from behind water stained glasses and smirks. "Speechless?"
"Positively. We'll see what happens when my glorious arse is put on display for you, Harry," Ginny drawls with a roll of her eyes and he can feel his face catch fire again.
"Are you, uh - are we - "
"Well, I'll assume it'll be a little bit before either of us is naked again, but it's a nice goal, eh?" Ginny smiles coyly, brown eyes searching for the emerald in his.
Harry pulls on his trousers and carefully zips his fly before asking, "Do we get a timeline on that or play it by ear?"
"How bout we hammer out the details over a snack in the kitchens?"
"Dobby'll love that," Harry grins widely.
Ginny walks back toward Harry and brushes his hands away, doing up his last few buttons and settling his tie around his neck in a loose knot. "Would you say it'll count as a first or second date?"
Their fingers knit together and Harry leads them from the locker room, heart beating wildly in his chest and blood rushing so quickly through his body he feels like he might just begin to float.
"Probably an encore to our first."