As ever, JKR's characters and world. Hope you enjoy this one – please do leave a review. Alphie has done a wonderful illustration of this event, which you can find at QoHG A Question And An Answer"Love is a circle that doth restless move
In that same sweet eternity of love."
Robert Herrick
Harry sat on the edge of his bed in Ron's room and regarded the delicate piece of jewellery balanced in the outstretched palm of his hand. A tiny circle of gold, smaller than the diameter of a knut shone gently in the early morning sunshine, as it rocked from side to side beneath his clumsy touch. Picking it up, he allowed it to slide onto his forefinger, smiling to see it drop down only as far as his first joint. The stone glittered and sparkled as its many facets reflected the light, and Harry hoped that he had made the right choice.
Two days before he had been standing in bustling Diagon Alley, safely concealed within his invisibility cloak, and accompanied by a very impatient and rather grumpy Ron. Hermione had been given the task of distracting Ginny for the afternoon, and it was with much bullying and cajoling that Harry had tried to persuade Ron to help him in the purchase of that very ring. Ron had finally agreed, pointing out that he was only doing this to stop You Know Who from attacking them, not because he approved of anything to do with Dumbledore's plans in the slightest.
The window of Goblins' Gem Emporium seemed to be quite literally littered with such a vast array of magpie-attracting items, that Harry had scarcely known where to begin. The only thing he knew for certain was that he wanted something as close to a Muggle engagement ring as he could manage, knowing she would be totally entranced by the idea of something so closely linked with the poetry she adored. He mused for some time about the colour of the stone, wondering first of all about a ruby that echoed some of the shades of red running through Ginny's hair. He fleetingly considered an emerald in the display, but with Ron's sniggering imitation of his mother saying, "I thought it would match your eyes, Harry dear," he completely abandoned that idea and finally settled on a single diamond, which reminded him of the star-like necklace, the first thing he had ever bought for her.
As the door of the dimly lit shop chimed to permit them entry, the tiny goblin behind the counter regarded Ron with an air of contempt, eyes scathingly raking over the worn Muggle attire that was the norm in The Burrow during the school holidays. The clink of Galleons in the money bag that Harry had pressed into Ron's hands outside the shop, along with fiercely whispered instructions, caused the goblin's pointed ears to prick up and his face broke away from scepticism into a deeply calculating smile.
"Ah yes," the goblin said in an oily tone, levitating the ring in question in mid air before them and making it revolve slowly. "An excellent choice, if I may say so. This has only recently arrived here from one of our best teams of dwarves, and was hewn from one of their caverns deep beneath an area of the Scottish Highlands. An exceptionally pretty stone, sir; as exquisite as your young lady, perhaps?"
"Perhaps," Ron responded in a rather disinterested manner. Harry prodded him angrily in the back, but Ron ignored him.
"Oh, but Sir, how can one not be enchanted with so perfect a thing?" the goblin began again, beaming more brightly than ever and revealing his very sharp yellowed teeth. "The cut is unsurpassed."
"I'm sure there are others just as good, if not here, then elsewhere," Ron smiled at the tiny creature, causing the ring to pause in mid-air. "A wonderful sales technique, I agree, but it's certainly not worth the quantity of Galleons you're asking for it."
"I see," the goblin said sharply, his grin disappeared and was replaced by a shrewd look in his eyes. "Perhaps if I ask for 20 galleons less, Sir may be interested?"
"Fifty," Ron said, glancing towards the doorway.
"But Sir, I will never make ends meet," the goblin protested at once. "My wife, and family, they will starve; we will be thrown into the gutter…"
"Fifty," Ron interrupted him firmly. There was a pause and Ron moved purposefully towards the door as Harry watched in silent anguish.
"Forty," the goblin offered in slightly more desperate tones.
"Done," Ron said, with a furtive grin sideways at the space where he knew Harry was standing.
The ring was duly paid for and they headed back into Diagon Alley, to the safety of a back room of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes where Harry had finally dispensed with the cloak, and simply stared incredulously at Ron.
"Here you go," Ron threw the small ring box across to him. "Hope she likes it."
"What happened back there?" Harry asked feeling somewhat bewildered.
"Got to watch goblins," Ron explained, examining a bar of Honeyduke's best chocolate on the bench carefully. He prodded it suspiciously with his wand. Nothing happened. "They rip you off every which way they can, you know."
"But why do that for me?" Harry persisted. "You don't want any of this to be going on."
"You're right, I don't," Ron admitted, tentatively breaking the chocolate into segments, and waiting for an explosion that never came. "But I know you're going to do this anyway, no matter what I think. Forty Galleons is money you'll need, Harry. Just because I don't approve doesn't mean I don't care about what happens to you both." He sniffed the chocolate suspiciously and then swallowed a piece.
"Thanks," Harry grinned, and watched his best friend turn into a very embarrassed-looking pumpkin.
Harry laughed quietly at the memory, and carefully replaced the ring in the dark blue velvet of the box, closing the lid with a snap. He had thought carefully about how he was actually going to ask Ginny to marry him, and remembering the complete idiot he'd made of himself when he'd tried to ask her to the Yule ball that first time, he had come up with a slightly different tactic to avoid the worst of his nerves. Every pair of socks in the entirety of the Burrow had been summoned earlier that morning, and were currently invisible under Ron's bed, with a single exception. Ginny would inevitably be on a sock stealing mission once she realised her haul had vanished. Harry grinned wickedly in anticipation, and disappeared under his invisibility cloak once more.
A scamper of feet up the twisting stairs slowed to a scuffle on the landing outside. A lengthy pause followed, and Harry could just hear her catching her breath before the door slowly creaked open. A pair of dark brown eyes peeked mischievously around the wooden door, her long red hair tumbling irresistibly over her shoulder. Seeing that the room appeared to be empty, Ginny grinned happily to herself, and slipped inside, closing the door silently behind her. Casting her eyes around the room, they alighted on Harry's trunk, and she made a beeline for it, lifting the lid with the ease and familiarity of an expert. Her hands hovered over the contents of the trunk, passing over copies of Which Broomstick and his robes, coming to a halt above his cauldron, which normally stored his socks. Today it was empty. She frowned in bemusement, and leaned further forwards, her torrent of hair falling so that it obscured her vision. She gave an exclamation of annoyance, and swept the offending part back off her face, where it lay quietly for a second before tumbling around her again with impish glee.
"Come on, Harry," she muttered beneath her breath. "You've got to have some socks in here somewhere."
Harry bit his lip hard to prevent himself from laughing out loud. He'd caught her on a sock stealing mission once before, and had forgotten just how funny it was. She scoured the contents of the trunk, digging beneath the surface, and finally gave a cry of delight, emerging victorious with his new pair of Chudley Cannons ones in her hand.
Harry felt his chest tightening as his heart began to beat quickly with fear. This was it. What would she say? What if…? The thought was too horrible. Surely she wouldn't turn him down. Would she? His palms suddenly seemed clammy. She began to unravel the socks from their neat ball so that she could put them on, when she stopped suddenly and frowned. He clutched at the windowsill to steady himself.
"What on earth…?" she said aloud, as her fingers encountered an unexpected solid object within the soft woollen exterior. Her hand wriggled inside the sock and emerged clutching the small navy blue box. Harry gulped. This was either the best or the worst idea he'd ever had in his entire life, and at that precise moment, he wasn't sure which. He moved silently behind her and twitched the invisibility cloak off his shoulders, letting it fall from his fingers in a silvery shimmer of flimsiest fabric.
Ginny opened the box.
Confusion flooded her features as she caught sight of the ring that nestled within. A quivering hand reached out and touched it, her slightest movement making it sparkle and glint in the sunlight as if it were winking at her. Tilting her head sideways to examine it carefully, she shivered, appearing to be uncertain about what to believe, and rubbed her hand absent-mindedly across her forehead, still clutching Harry's sock. She raised a slow eyebrow, her perplexed emotions finally giving way to a tiny smile that flickered in the corners of her mouth.
"So do you like it then?" Harry could resist it no longer, and his hand gently touched her back. She gave a sharp squeak of surprise and whirled around to face him.
"Harry!" she exclaimed, panting in panic, and her eyes far wider than normal. "W-What?"
"Sorry," he smiled apologetically. "I just wanted to know what you thought of it."
"It's beautiful," she said, still breathing very unsteadily. Her deep brown eyes lifted to his, somehow melting away the worst of his fears.
"Gin," he said, softly, caressing a hand down her cheek. "You know I love you, and I want to be with you always. I didn't mean to scare you but this is the best way I could find to offer you every single sock I'll ever possess for the rest of my life. I wondered if you would think about marrying me, because I can't think of anything I would like more."
There was a strangled gasp from Ginny, who swayed slightly beneath his touch and stared incredulously at him as if he'd just transfigured himself into a towering stack of Muggle poetry books. Her eyebrows spoke volumes as they knitted together trying to comprehend, and her eyes never once left his face in the stunned silence that followed.
"You… you?" she stammered at last, clutching the tiny box still in her left hand. "Harry? Serious? Me?" She caught her breath, looking to all intents and purposes as if she'd completely lost the ability to string a sentence together. Harry chuckled quietly. It was incredibly unusual to see anything taking the wind out of Ginny's sails, and for once he seemed to have done that most effectively.
"Yes you," he smiled down at her. "Do you honestly think I'd let anyone else share my socks?" She giggled slightly and gazed up at him with an awed expression.
"You mean it?" she whispered, her voice cracking towards the end of the question.
"Of course I mean it," he said fervently, pulling her hands and their contents into his own. "Ginny, I want to marry you. I want to do everything properly, and I know it's going to be difficult, what with the baby and everything, but we'll be fine as long as we work through this together."
There was an awkward pause, during which Harry was alarmed to see an expression of hurt filling her eyes. She pulled away from him, and examined a poster of the Chudley Cannons Chasers scoring a spectacular goal with apparently studious interest before turning to face him again.
"So you're asking me just because of the baby, then?" she asked in a terrifyingly quiet monotone, biting her lip so that the redness stood out against the pallor of her face. He could see her trembling.
"What?" he almost yelled in disbelief. "Ginny? How can you think that?"
"What else am I supposed to think, Harry?" she responded passionately, the emotional turbulence of the past few days beginning to storm once more "You can't expect me to do this just because of the baby."
"I'm not!" Harry protested vehemently. "Ginny, I love you, I really do."
"I know you do," she admitted, sounding as if she were being ripped in two. "But I don't want to just get married because you want to do everything right for the baby. I understand that you'd want to, but I –I can't do that."
"Gin!" Harry exclaimed. "It's you I want to marry. You. I'd never ask for any other reason."
"Harry, there's no way you'd be asking me now if it wasn't for Dumbledore's suggestion, is there?" she said softly.
"I was planning on asking you anyway after I'd finished my N.E.W.T.s," Harry confessed in all honesty, looking steadily at her. "Ten months from now. I can wait those ten months if you want me to Ginny and propose again then, but nothing is going to change in the way I feel about you."
"You were going to do that?" she asked, regarding him in sheer amazement.
"Yes, but I'd hardly have told you about it, would I?" he smiled wryly. "Spoil a perfectly good surprise. The look on your face was definitely one worth seeing."
"Gaping like a goldfish?" she laughed.
"That's a pretty fair description," he teased, and lifted a lock of her hair. "And about the same colour too."
"Hey!" she protested, laughing along with him. Her right fist rested lightly on his chest, sock still clenched in her grasp and there was total silence. Harry didn't dare move. She looked at him, clearly searching for a way forward; the words were unspoken, but Harry understood.
"Ginny, please marry me."
Dark brown eyes fused with emerald green ones.
"I'd love to," she whispered.
Harry felt a rush of warm pleasure flooding through his chest and up towards his throat as he grabbed her round her waist and swung her off her feet.
"You mean it?" his whole being felt suddenly lighter and happier than he'd been in a long time. "You really will?"
"Yes," she giggled, eyes sparkling up at him from the massive smile that illuminated her entire face. "I love you, Harry Potter."
Pulling her even closer to him, he enveloped her in his arms, hugging her tightly and never wanting to let her go. The feeling of joy bubbled up inside him, exploding in an irrepressible grin of his own, as the realisation slowly sank in that she actually wanted to be with him forever. Their lips met, gently at first, sparking the familiar tingle of desire and love, swiftly dissolving into a firmer embrace in a world of darkness where only the two of them existed and time seemed to stand still.
Finally they broke apart, and Harry smiled down at her in his arms. Her hair caught in the sunlight, glittering with life, and her face was glowing with delight, warming every inch of him with happiness.
"I suppose you'd better try that ring on, then," he chuckled, kissing her forehead. "You do like it, don't you?"
"It's gorgeous, Harry," she exclaimed, watching him open the box and take it out. "Where did it come from?"
"A little shop in Diagon Alley," he explained. "Ron helped and did the actual buying for me. I couldn't be seen there in case it got back to Voldemort, and I don't want you in any more danger."
"Ron knows?"
"You don't mind, do you?" Harry asked, feeling a little anxious. "I'd rather trust him than anyone."
"I don't mind at all," Ginny said, sounding quite relieved. "To be honest, it's good that he's starting to accept things. It's funny because I know I argue with him a lot, but I really hate it when he's mad at me."
"He's not angry," Harry reassured her. "He just doesn't like what's going to happen to you, and I'd probably feel just the same in his shoes. Anyway," he changed the subject, grinned at her, blushing slightly and gestured to the ring. "May I?"
She looked up at him rather shyly and placed her left hand in his, allowing him to slide the ring a little clumsily onto her third finger. They both stared at the unfamiliar addition to her hand, the diamond flashing in the sunlight, encapsulating a multitude of colours.
"Wow!" Ginny found her voice. She flexed her fingers to examine the strange newness, sliding the ring slightly by rubbing her thumb against it. "We really are going to get married, aren't we? It's actually going to happen."
"You're not backing out of it now," Harry chuckled, lifting her hand and kissing it. "That looks far too right on your finger."
"I can't wear it, you know," she said rather sadly. "It's a dead giveaway that something's going on, and you're right, we can't let Voldemort find out about any of this."
"You can wear it here," Harry said thoughtfully. "No one comes here very often, apart from your family, and they all know about Dumbledore's plan. Once the baby's arrived, it'll be fine as well. Voldemort won't be after you then."
"Thank you," she tore her eyes away from her hand and hugged him with all her might. "I absolutely love it." She grinned, her eyes twinkling in anticipation. "So are you ready to tell my family about this?"
"Just about," he smiled. "Ginny, after the gauntlet your dad made me run when I asked his permission to marry you, even Fred and George will be a pushover. I mean, what's the worst they can do?"
"You really want me to answer that?" she laughed.
"Er… not really," Harry chuckled, knowing full well that he'd have blue hair or something by teatime. "Come on, then. Let's go downstairs. I think Ron'll want his room back."
She smiled angelically up at him, indicating beyond doubt that she was up to something, but for a moment he couldn't see what. They were clattering down the stairs when her right hand swung into view, clutching a successfully stolen pair of Chudley Cannons' socks.