Notes: harry is a slytherin, voldemort actually died on that halloween and the diary was his last fragment. hope you enjoy my first story :)

It would be a lie to say she did not know when they started. She remembered the precise moment: the very first time they talked.

It was at the middle of her first year.

That painful tug of loneliness she had been feeling ever since stepping inside the school had cost her much more than a few sleepless nights and swollen eyes. She had almost closed down an ancient school and dragged the wizarding world's hero to death because she was feeling sad. Ginny felt herself laugh through the tears staining her face. It sounded so small when put that way. So simple.

She had been thinking about how tired she was of all the crying. Wishing so desperately for someone to make her laugh — people were scared of her still. Spreading rumours around about her dark nature. Her siblings, the noble idiots, had taken it upon themselves to dismantle one by one. By scaring people.

She almost laughed again.

She had been thinking about how tired she was and how she wanted someone when he sat by her side on the empty hallway. Just like that.

After a few seconds of silence, he spoke, ever so serious. "Are you hurt, Ginevra?"

"I'm not," she said.

"Good," he said.

There was no haste to the way he rumaged to his materials until he found the book he was looking for. With a flick of his finger, the boy found his current page and proceeded to read in silence by her side.

She may not have known him for long, but she knew of him. From the time he was still a fairytale no one was quite sure existed in reality — she certainly knew that embarassing doll of the boy-who-lived stowed away in her room —, yes, but also from her siblings stories of the first school year of the great Harry Potter.

The twins had decided it would be a great idea to pull a prank on Harry on his first day — Can you imagine getting one over the defeater of you-know-who? — and made Ron help. The entire day, they had told her, minor annoyances had been pestering him. Harry had figured out who to blame for it, but instead of ratting them out, he retalieted. A year long prank war had started between them, to Fred and George's most pure delight. According to Ron, Harry Potter was "not as bad as he expected", which was more than anyone ever thought to hear him to say about a slytherin.

That was what she thought about when he sat beside her, silent, for the fourth of fifth time. Ginny was the one who broke the silence. "What are you reading? You've been on that same book for quite a while."

He startled at her voice, bumping his arm on the wall as he turned to her. Harry rolled his eyes at himself, but lifted the cover high enough for her to read.

"A potion's book," he said.

"Yes, I've read it before. Do you realize it's meant for children?"

Harry reached for his glasses in lieu of giving a proper response, adjusting it with a harsher than necessary movement. She could swear there was the faintest color painting his cheeks. "And yet," he muttered, "It's well above my level."

"There is no way that is true."

"You can say that to all my potions that exploded."

"I could help you," she said. Noticing the hesitance in his gaze, she felt the need to add more. "I've been helping my mother ever since I was old enough to stir a cauldron. I'm truly good, promise."

"Alright."

"Alright?"

"Alright."

A few scares and very close calls were inevitable when you put Harry Potter and a cauldron in the same room, as Ginny had come to realize. They were lucky to have found an out of use classroom for their experiment — she doubted the mess they made would be tolerated anywhere else on Hogwarts. But by their third week of studying together, there was no denying that the mishaps along the way were as close to zero as they would ever get.

Harry studied the vial of translucent white liquid they had produced and flashed her one of his rare, wide smiles. "You're a good teacher, Ginevra."

"There was not that much to teach," she returned. The warmth on her cheeks and her downcast eyes at the compliment were a bigger sign of her gratitude than any words could ever be. "You knew more than you realized."

The boy leaned back against the table where they had set their ingridients. He did not call her out on her blatant lie, but the dark green eyes peering at her from hooded lids made it clear Harry was well aware of the limits of his knowledge. "Thank you," he said, and left it at that.

She was perched up on a chair as he moved around, cleaning out their workspace. She would have offered to help, but it would be a worthless effort. Harry would wait for her to finish and clean it himself all over again. The first time it happened, she had been intrigued, far from mad — it was more information about her friend that she chould file away inside her brain: Harry Potter has nice eyes, dimples, a grumpy disposition and he is a control freak.

She scrunched her nose just as a thought hit her. "You will not spend christmas with them, will you?"

The sheer disgust she invested in each syllable was more than enough indication of who they were. His awful family.

"No," he said and she was about to start to breath again when he saw fit to add, "I'll stay here."

"You should come with me."

He froze and gave no answer, pretending to be too involved with his task. She was not above repeating herself, but a knock at the classroom door deterred her.

The face of a blushing girl with voluminous hair appeared as the door opened. "I heard you saying in the common room that you came here to study," the girl she now recognized as Hermione said. "I wondered if I could join?"

Ginny smiled, turning to Harry. The boy wordlessly stopped his cleaning and nodded.

That year had marked the first christmas at her house and this was one more of those. Far from the first time they went there, with all the awkward introductions and the mass curiosity of her family, the seventh time consisted of a much more private affair.

His lips trailed his favorite spot on her neck, his teeth teasing her skin with the possibility of more. He kissed it with reverence, pulling her closer to himself right before biting it.

His licked it right after, his tongue soothing the place as she squirmed around on his lap. There was a stream of incoherent noises filling the room and she knew they must be coming from her, but at that moment, she was not sure of anything.

"Gin," he muttered once, twice, one hundred times before letting himself wonder down her body. Her nipples were his next victim and — stars, she did not remember how to breath. He sucked each one with a passion, taking turns between them. Each brush of his soft lips meant a frantic hump of her hips against the hardness she could feel between her legs.

Wet would be an euphemism to describe her current state. She was a mess, drenched on herself and it only got worse by the second.

His attention wavered from her breasts for a mere moment to focus on her face. Whatever he saw there must have pleased him, because he smiled, eyes glossed over in the same drunken stupor she was on. While his mouth found her nipples once more, his fingers were buried inside her underwear; his touch was a light, barely there. It drove her closer and closer to the edge.

When she could not take it anymore, she kissed him, searching for his lips as if they were salvation. The knot on her stomach uncoiled and his fingers slipped inside her, fucking her through her orgasm as she gushed wetness all over his hands.

She buried her head on his shoulder, trying to relearn how to breath just as someone yelled her name downstairs. Groans followed by laughter filled the room and Ginny smiled despite herself.

She knew precisely how they had started, just as she knew that they would never end.