AN- I'm not going to change the rating on this, but just a forewarning to all those with a sensitivity to the subject, it get's a little racy here.

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Chapter 28

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Ginny watched intently, observing Harry's look of deep concentration. He was a natural at Defense, that much everyone knew, especially considering he had been the one to run the underground Defense group at Hogwarts the previous year, and right now Bill and Fleur were teaching him a few spells that they had learned through their Curse Breaker training, focusing on shielding spells and reflexes. Last night Tonks had worked with him on some of her Auror level Defensive tactics for taking down a perpetrator, it had been rather gentle considering what he was being trained for, but she assured him it was simply laying the groundwork for what was coming.

It had already been a hard day for Harry and Ginny had rather hoped that this training session would have wound up getting pushed to the next evening. But everyone only had so much time that they could promise to him before things changed and everyone was going to need him ready for anything.

Remus and Sirius were going to be spending most of their waking hours over the next few days working on transforming the Stable House at Potter Manor into a usable holding area for any Death Eaters they captured. Going there with the two of them and Harry today had been an experience. The Manor house was lovely though it needed a lot of work to restore it considering it had been sitting abandoned for twenty years, but it was timeless.

The home was right on Bristol Chanel, and you could almost make out Wales in the distance from the beach by the house. Ginny thought that she remembered her aunt's house being rather close to the same area, Shell Cottage. She remembered visiting and playing along a beach exactly like that one, with land off in the distance.

The grounds were overgrown, but the pathway was still able to be made out that led up to the Stable House. It wasn't overly large, but from the discussion she could overhear between the two men it sounded like the 'prisoners' weren't exactly going to be needing standing room.

That was a part that Ginny too was going to have to help out with; Draught of Living Death. That was going to be her Potions project. Remus would be closely watching her prepare it, but she was most certainly not going to be allowed to administer it. Her mother had been firm and unrelenting about the amount of involvement she would let Ginny partake in, her mum had also barely been able to stop herself from trying to wield the same mothering power over Harry as well.

Harry and Ginny had talked about it at length last night when they were alone. This time when Harry came to her room he didn't experience a mind-splitting, nausea inducing pain and the whole experience was much more enjoyable, even if they spent most of the night talking instead of doing... other things. He told her about how hesitant he was to simply start taking Death Eaters and holing them away.

Ginny wasn't quite of the same opinion though. Between Dobby and Narcissa Malfoy they were very confident in who was a loyal Death Eater and who wasn't, and it wasn't like they would be 'sinking to their level', they would simply be incapacitating them and stopping them from doing harm to any others. Like blowing up train platforms and killing a dozen people to send a message or kidnapping fourteen-year old's and forcing them to duel. Or even making a plot of land implode as a warning of what they were capable of.

He reluctantly gave into the idea last night, but she could tell he was still not completely convinced it was the right thing to do, he'd just been growing too tired to carry on about it anymore.

She could see it was weighing on his conscience, and she was going to talk to him about it again tonight. If he was even awake long enough for them to talk. Looking at him now she wasn't sure he would have the energy.

They had wandered all over the Potter property earlier and down along the beach to discover the area. The Potter property was only about two acres, but Ginny was keen on walking around it a few times because she hadn't had many opportunities to get out in nature, nor to get out during the day, the roof of Grimmauld was where she normally had to get her fresh air, and that isn't all that fresh considering it is a London townhouse.

Harry's expression had closed off while they'd been at the property and he hadn't said much when they got back either. They simply had dinner and then he came down to the basement to work on these spells with Bill and Fleur. She had followed and sat back to observe.

The door at the top of the stairs opened and Sirius came down, Ginny moved over on the bench seat she was on so that he could join her in her observation.

"He okay?" Sirius asked her.

"I'm not entirely sure," she admitted. "He's quiet."

Sirius nodded. The two of them may not have gotten much time with Harry over the years, but he was rather easy to read. "There could be a few parts of what's to come that are weighing on him. It could be everything all at once as well."

She leaned back against the wall more. "Ron is coming over tomorrow while you and Remus are out, hopefully he can get Harry talking. He's known him longer than we have."

The both of them frowned at that, the comment bringing up memories of their imprisonment. It was enough that the two of them simply sat there silently as Harry easily mastered two of the spells that Fleur was teaching him.

"That's enough for today," Bill announced, pulling both Ginny and Sirius out of their reverie. "Practice those when you have free time, I'll test your skill the next time we get a chance to meet," he said to Harry.

Harry gave them a firm nod of thanks as they turned to leave, Fleur giving Ginny a kiss to the cheek in farewell on her way out.

"Right then," Sirius clapped his hands. "Been a long day, eh? Anything you want to talk about? Something weighing on your mind maybe?" He sounded hopeful and forced.

Ginny knew that Sirius was rather desperate for Harry to keep feeling like he could come to him with any problems he had, talk to him about anything. No doubt that whatever it was that Harry was keeping to himself was going to nag at Sirius until he knew what it was.

Harry took a long drink of water. "I'm alright," he told him. "Could do with a shower and then bed I reckon."

Ginny exchanged a look with Sirius, trying to tell him that she'd give it a shot prying this out of Harry as well. Poor Sirius looked a little downtrodden about that, but she could tell that he was appreciative of any effort she could put in to get Harry out of his brooding mood.

The three of them trudged upstairs, Sirius giving the order to Dobby to close off the Floo's and make sure that everyone else had left for the evening.

By the time Ginny snuck into Harry's room he was laying motionless in bed, but clearly still awake, and she simply pulled back the blankets and lay down curled up against his side.

The silence between them was palpable, but Ginny just waited. She didn't want to be a nagging girlfriend, she wanted to be someone he felt he could be open and honest with. Even if his thoughts didn't all make sense to him right now, if he shared some of them with her, then maybe she could help make sense of them.

"What if he kills me?" Harry said finally. "And the Dursleys used to lock me up."

Just like that. Those two sentences he whispered out to her, that had been what was putting him in a mood like he had been all day. Two days, really, since having that talk with Dumbledore the night before Malfoy Manor. Ginny simply lay there letting those words wash over her. He had told her the prophesy months ago, after she had shared her own, but the Dursley thing.

Sirius had said they mistreated him, that they didn't like magic. She remembered the state of him when he arrived at the Burrow right before she started her year at Hogwarts and the story of her brothers finding bars on his window.

"What did they lock you into?" she asked in a barely audible whisper. She didn't want to know, but she had to know. From the way he said it, she didn't think he was about to tell her that it was in his bedroom.

Harry was taking his time answering. The longer his answer took the more she feared what he was about to tell her. His arm was around her and he was biding his time, nervously playing with the hem of her shirt, then his thumb was simply tracing circles against the skin above her pajama bottoms on her back. From the furrow on his forehead she could tell he was making those movements absentmindedly.

"There was this, this little cupboard under the stairs," he started. "I slept in there until my first Hogwarts letter came. They didn't give me a real room until they saw the way that my Hogwarts letter was addressed." He gave a small sigh and it was like he was reliving the moment he first saw the piece of mail addressed to him. It did change his life forever to receive it after all. "Mister H. Potter, the cupboard under the stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whining, Surrey."

"They didn't just lock you in the cupboard, they made you live in it?" she asked in thinly veiled horror.

What monsters! What she and Sirius had done to them hadn't been enough. Harry had just been a little boy and they were all the family he had known, how could they treat him like that just because he was a wizard? They truly were the worst kind of people.

She hugged herself tighter to him, trying to somehow make up for all the past love he had missed out on being raised by those vile relatives of his. Also formulating a plan to talk to Sirius and try and find out where those bastards had moved to so they could prank them all over again. Maybe this time they would break a few windows and set off Dungbombs as well.

Ginny couldn't help but wonder why had Harry been thinking about the Dursleys locking him up today though? Was it because they had seen his family home and he couldn't help wondering what it might have been to grow up there in comparison to where he had spent his formative years?

That was the only thing that might have made the connection to them for him today, except for…

"It's nothing like that though," she said aloud.

She felt Harry tensing slightly. Ginny got up on her elbow and looked down at him in the darkness.

"Us tracking down the Death Eaters and putting them away in the holding area's until they can be properly dealt with, it's nothing like what the Dursleys did to you."

Harry silently stared at her for a few moments before giving a small accepting sigh. "I just don't want to be anything like them."

"And you aren't! Harry, they locked up a child! No one here would do that! They couldn't even do that to Malfoy, and he's about to be of age and has made some very poor choices that he actually should be held accountable for. But Sirius, Mrs. Tonk's and Snape did what they could to free him and get him to safety. You were in his room for under a minute and I could tell you were feeling sympathetic for him, and he's made your life miserable for nearly six years. Us locking up the Death Eaters is for everyone's protection. Sure, some of them might get hurt in the capture, but I haven't heard of anyone in the Order with plans to hurt them," she told him.

"I know that," he said sadly. "And I've been having that same argument in my head all day." He gave a small stretch and then pulled her back to lay down with him. "Now talk me out of the whole 'person trying to kill me' bit." His words were serious, but his tone had a slightly playful edge to it.

Ginny cuddled back into him and gave a small chuckle. "Alright. Well, let's start with how he isn't really a person anymore."

"Nope," Harry shut down that argument. "He is a walking, talking, breathing, eating, torturing-"

"Yeah, yeah," she rolled her eyes. "Technically he is a person. Though technically 'he' isn't a 'he' from what I understand." Then she lost her sense of preservation for a moment and rocked her hip forward against Harry in just the right spot to indicate what she was talking about.

It wasn't like there was much she could feel against her hip to make out anything specific about what she had just brushed it up against unintentionally, but the shock of what she had just so brazenly done made the both of them freeze up slightly.

Ginny bit her lip, her eyes going wide. Her face was heating up with a blush and she was sure from the expression she could make out on Harry's face that he was going just as red.

He cleared his throat once and sounded to be forcing himself to press on with their conversation. "Whatever you want to classify him as, he's out there somewhere and we don't know where. As soon as he gets a chance he will try to kill me."

"He put stock in that prophesy," Ginny pointed out, "it doesn't mean that you have to as well. We've got all his Horcruxes now, he could get shot by a Muggle farmer tomorrow and then the Dark side will have lost their leader."

Harry was about to say something, but instead gave pause and furrowed his brow at her. "The way that you say that."

"What?"

"The Dark side will have lost their leader," he repeated.

"I hardly think this war will all be over because Riddle dies," she pointed out. "It is likely that Bellatrix Lestrange or someone else will want to continue on trying to get rid of Muggleborns. Riddle is hardly the first of Wizardkind to start a war based on this. He's just the current problem."

Harry sank further against the pillows at that information.

Ginny was kicking herself for making their conversation go the way that it had. She was trying to put his mind at ease and take some of the burden away from him, now she had just bummed him out even more.

"Look, do you really think it is going to be down to a 'him or you' situation when you have all of us surrounding you and supporting you?" she asked him point blank.

He sucked in and let out a deep breath. "I feel like with the number of times I've encountered him and gotten away I should be so lucky to escape the next time the situation arises," he told her morosely.

"Maybe that's the power he knows not," she suggested. "Luck."

"I'm not feeling very lucky," he mumbled.

That hurt her.

She knew that he meant his having to be the one to kill or be killed by Riddle, but she was in his bed, he had just found out a few days ago that he wouldn't have to go back to the Dursleys, instead he would be staying here with she and Sirius indefinitely and now he was saying he didn't feel lucky.

It was causing a stinging behind her eyes and her nose to grow slightly congested.

It was making her feel rejected, and like she should probably spend the night in her own bed.

Going to her own bed felt like a weak move though. She liked sleeping beside him, she knew he wasn't actually rejecting her, he probably didn't realize the way what he had just said could be interpreted.

Ginny's jaw clenched and she bit her tongue. She wasn't one to walk away from a situation, but she wasn't really one to simply lay there and let people bitch and moan either.

The silence between them stretched on and she didn't know how he couldn't hear her thoughts as they were loudly yelling at him to make his own damned luck then while she mentally stomped around in a huff.

"I'm mad at you," she finally said, not being able to keep it in anymore. She couldn't fault him for not being able to read her mind, but boy did she want to.

"What?!" he asked her, startled by her admission. "You're mad at me? Why?"

"You go from living in a place where you get trapped in a closet, to living in a castle with your friends in a magical world you thought was only in fairy tales. Now you find out that you never have to go back to those bastard relatives of yours and you have a Godfather that would do literally anything for you, including breaking out of a place that no one was supposed to be able to break out of so that he could protect you, and you don't feel lucky," she told him. "And you have the nerve to say that to your girlfriend that you have seen in person for only three weeks over the course of your four-month relationship while she's in bed with you. So, yeah, I'm mad at you."

She could see his mouth was opening and closing as his brain struggled to find the words to say.

"That. I. It had nothing to do with you! Or Sirius!" he protested. "I'm… am I not allowed to feel unlucky about some madman hell bent on killing me? About everyone is thinking that I'm going to be the one to end this nightmare when it could really just wind up being me dead before I have the chance to properly live?"

"No, that you do have license to feel bad about, but don't you think you'll feel a little worse about wasting the time up until that point being completely morose about what could potentially happen and not spending your time doing what it was you were keen on doing before you arrived here from Hogwarts? I believe it was something along the lines of spending happy quality time with me and Sirius? He's worried about you. I'm worried about you. But we wanted this holiday to be a break for you. I know you've got these extra lessons now, loads of things that you're going to be learning, and challenges that lay ahead. But you're here with me now and I just want to see you happy dammit!"

Ginny wasn't sure at which point she had sat up during her tirade to tell him off, but she finished her rant with a well-placed punch to the mattress in emphasis.

"If I can't cheer you up while I'm literally in bed with you then what's the point in trying," she finished. Her voice cracked halfway through her last statement and she closed her eyes, trying to push away the feeling of depression and inadequacy she was experiencing. She wasn't going to start humming over this. She wasn't. She had built this situation herself, she could leave and go back down to her room. She wasn't physically hurt, no one was.

She was stronger than this.

The gentle touch of Harry's fingers against her jaw made her jump slightly and open her eyes. He too had sat up and moved closer to her. She couldn't help leaning her head against his hand as he traced his fingers up so his palm was cupping the side of her face.

"You do make me happy," he told her seriously. "I don't want you to think for a second that you don't. You and Sirius, the things you two get up to, pranking the Dursleys, coming to my Quidditch match, everything you two have done for me has made me so happy. I'm sorry I'm a grumpy git sometimes, but that has nothing to do with you. I want you here with me. And you're right, I should be appreciating that we're actually here together right now. I have been waiting for this since I left after Christmas."

They were the words she wanted to hear, but they also made her feel instantly like she had been completely irrational. He leaned in and gave her a sweet kiss, then only pulled back for a moment before leaning in once more to give her a more thorough one.

"Are we okay?" he asked in quiet worry.

"We're okay," she told him. "I'm just… being female," she finished, trying to fight the bubble of relieved laughter that was threatening to come out.

Harry did give a light laugh. "I happen to like that about you."

Ginny settled back down into his arms and lay beside him.

"This is what I had hoped the holiday would be like," he told her. "You sneaking into my room every night. I had just hoped that it would be less full up of reminders about what's expected of me down the line."

Ginny chewed her lip a moment, feeling slightly nervous. "I could just be a nice distraction for you, if you want to take your mind off it," she offered. Her image of what his stay there for the week had involved her sneaking into his room every night as well, but they hadn't been spending the time talking in her fantasies.

"Distraction? Usually I just want to talk everything through with you so I can get it sorted in my mind. Quidditch is generally my distraction."

Ginny closed her eyes and gave a tight-lipped smile to herself at his naivete. He was just as innocent as she, but apparently Ron and his other friends weren't as full of innuendo as Sirius and Tonks. She resisted giving a sigh and decided to just take matters into her own hands.

Sitting back up she pulled her shirt over her head and swung a leg over his torso. "We've done the talking bit, now can we move on to my version of a distraction?" she asked in a low voice.

AN- Ginny just took her shirt off. Racy part starting now. If you're sensitive to that kind of thing, just stop reading now and skip to the next chapter, just know that they aren't going all the way.

"You, w- oh!" He had caught on now. "Distraction, right," he smiled and his hands came to her sides.

That's better, Ginny thought. He was rather adorably clueless sometimes. She knew it had been irrational for her to react like she did a few moments ago, but he had barely kissed her for the past few days. Now seemed like an ideal time for catch up.

She started by leaning forward and placing a kiss just above the neck of his shirt, trailing her mouth up to his jaw and finally making it to his lips. He responded eagerly, his hands snaking behind her and up her back to hold her closer, rolling her over so he could take control.

She liked it when he was in control like this, it made her feel desired. Her legs instinctively wrapped around him and clenched to pull him tighter, making Harry groan.

"Gin," he whispered, his hand traveling upwards along her side and giving her delightful shivers. "Can I?" he asked, his finger brushing along the bottom strip of fabric on her sports bra.

He pulled back from her enough to get a read on her expression and she bit her lip. If he hadn't asked and simply let his hand do all the wandering and exploring that he wanted then she would have probably just given in to all the wonderful sensations that would come from his touch, but because he was asking and wanting verbal confirmation that he could go ahead she was having trouble saying 'yes'.

"You. Could go. Under it?" she told him shyly, her cheeks warming even more than they had been in the anticipation.

Her eyes grew wide when she felt a responding twitch against her center from him. He had grown aroused and her permission seemed to have an interesting effect on his body.

"Really?" he asked excitedly.

Ginny's whole face warmed with pleasure now. It was lovely how cautious and courteous he had been being with her, his excitement was making her feel more assured that their progress they were making together wasn't at all going too fast.

He came back to begin kissing her again, his lips serving as a delightful distraction while his fingers slowly dipped underneath the elastic at her ribs. The tips of his fingers traced along the underside of her breast, causing a pleasurable shiver to run down her spine. She was rather happy with the size of her breasts as they were, caught up somewhere between a B and a C cup currently, and hoped that he thought they were nice. He had commented as much last summer by accident, they were bigger now.

He was taking his sweet time moving his fingers along them, slowly stroking around the edge of them, not properly going in for a grope, like he was memorizing their perimeter. Then he began moving his hand over it properly.

Ginny's eyes were starting to roll back in her head. Her eyes had been closed as they snogged during his tentative exploration of her chest, the both of them half focused on what his hand had been doing. But Harry didn't seem to realize what his lower half was doing now that he was cupping her breast properly. His hips were twitching, his erection was pressed against her and the twitching movements were causing his hardness to almost vibrate against her there.

That movement felt better than his fondling, coupled with it though she was growing quite wanton.

This wasn't an unfamiliar feeling for her. She had explored her body herself several times before and knew what these continued movements would lead to. Ginny just didn't know if that would be too much too fast for them.

It did feel wonderful though.

Harry seemed to be getting rather worked up as well. His kiss was growing frantic as he pulled his hand out from under her bra, quickly moving his other hand to get underneath her bra to explore the other one.

Ginny had been resisting the urge to thrust back against him, focusing all of her energy towards giving him the snog of his life, but all three pleasure points being stimulated were making it hard to keep any sort of resolve.

Her legs locked around him harder and she gave up her fight, thrusting her pelvis against him and the delicious movement making her lose contact with his lips as she rolled her head back from the satisfied feeling that shot up from her center when she met his thrusts.

"Ginny!" Harry panted in surprise.

"Feels so good," she groaned out, giving another slow thrust against him. His accompanying groan of pleasure and responding movement was telling her that he didn't have a problem with what this had turned into.

Their lips found each other again and all sense of decorum left her head as their rocking and grinding made her feel a pressure in her belly begin to lower and build between her legs. That pleasurable feeling just kept building as they lost themselves in each other. It wasn't long before that pressure was causing a tidal wave of delicious sensations to explode throughout her entire body and she cried out her release.

Harry continued rocking against her, his lips fastened themselves to her neck, neither of his hands were on her chest now. One of them was holding tight to her hip, holding her in the position he desired, the other was keeping him from crushing her entirely at her side.

She was just coming down from her high when he let out a groan of his own and she felt a sudden shock of moisture against her belly.

The two of them lay there, frozen in their same position as the surprise of what they had just done replaced the pleasure they had felt from it.

"We. I," Harry started stammering out of breath.

"I…" Ginny started in a whisper, "liked it." She was barely able to believe she had just said that aloud.

Why shouldn't she tell him she liked it though? Clearly he enjoyed it as well, and it was certainly obvious how much she liked it when she had been writhing in pleasure just a moment ago. She was hardly going to tell him that it was a mistake, it wasn't like they got too carried away and had stripped their clothes down. They had simply… dry humped.

"You did?" he breathed out in relief.

"Wasn't it obvious?" she asked. That little activity had made her rather sleepy and satiated. Her whole body was relaxed save for her mind, which was lazily trying to tell her they should probably talk about what just happened, make sure both of them were okay with it. But Harry didn't sound regretful.

He gave her a gentle kiss, it sort of felt like he was saying 'thank you', and she smiled against his lips.

"I, uh, I know a spell to clean that up," he said sheepishly, rubbing a hand down her side, his thumb tracing a little closer to where there was a little reminder of their activity.

Ginny couldn't help a giggle at that. "I do too, don't worry." She reached over to the nightstand and grabbed her wand, cleaning them both off as Harry lay back down beside her contently, not allowing his hand to leave her at any point while she returned her wand, encouraging her to lay back beside him.

She snuggled back into him with a smile on her face as she drifted off to sleep, happy and listening to the sound of his even heart beats.

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