Chapter 10: Emboldened
In the end, she reckoned that it was the tapping that made her do it.
It was nearly midnight when it started up at the window closest to her head and at first Ginny was too scared to get out of bed to see what was going on. However, five irritating minutes later, when it became clear that her dormitory mates were not disturbed by the sound, she finally gave up and decided to investigate. Pulling aside her bed curtain, she almost instantly saw the owl-like shadow being cast on the floor of her room. As it was too big to be Pig, she knew the only other logical option was Hedwig. Peering through the glass pane of the window, her suspicions were confirmed as the snowy white owl stared back at her expectantly.
She sighed then, wondering why Harry couldn't just let things alone and give her time to think. Shaking her head, she gave Hedwig a stern look. "Shoo," she said softly, fluttering her hands at him. "Not now, Hedwig. Go back to Harry."
The owl hooted softly, his large unblinking eyes following the motion of her hands, but he made no move to leave.
Gritting her teeth, Ginny bitterly fought the urge to open the window. Her fingers went to the latch more than once before she decided for certain that she didn't want to know what he had to say right then. It couldn't be anything more than an apology and Ginny wasn't sure she wanted to hear him apologize for what had happened. She leaned her head against the cold glass and tried to collect her thoughts. Perhaps sensing her momentary indecision, Hedwig hooted again.
Resolute, Ginny lifted her head off of the pane and shot the owl a look. "No, Hedwig. No. Not now. I don't want a message from Harry. Now go." Mind made up, she firmly turned her back on the owl and climbed into bed, yanking her curtain shut.
Tap, tap, tap.
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Maeven, who was perched on her pillow, silently watching her.
Tap, tap, tap.
It had to stop, it just had to. How long could Hedwig sit out there in the freezing cold tapping? At some point he just had to give up and go back and maybe then she could get some sleep.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Twenty minutes later, it had become painfully clear that Hedwig had absolutely no intention of leaving and she was, in fact, just as obstinate as his master. A few times, she had considered releasing Maeven out another window and letting her Familiar handle it bird to bird, as it were. However, Ginny could sense that Maeven was still a bit put out for having been forsaken for Hermione earlier that evening and was in no particular mood to be helpful. The phoenix had just entered the juvenile stage of her life cycle and had taken to acting like it. In fact, she seemed particularly amused by the whole situation.
Her hands clenched tightly in her sheets, Ginny managed to hold out a full ten minutes longer before her anger reached a boiling point. Consumed by fury, she finally tossed off her bedcover, threw back the curtain, grabbed her dressing gown with one hand and her wand with her other and strode out of her dormitory room. It was exceedingly hard to sneak and storm at the same time, so Ginny tried to keep her raging emotions in check for fear of being caught. The hall outside was pitch black so she muttered Lumos and adjusted her wand to emit a very faint light, which she did not extinguish until she had reached her destination.
Throwing her weight against the door of the sixth year boys' dormitory, a voice carrying some semblance of good sense caused her to pause. What on earth was she doing? What if Ron was still awake? How was she going to explain herself then? But Ginny quickly strangled that irritating voice with the logic that, after tonight's little display, if her brother were awake and aware of what was going on, he'd probably help her pummel Harry.
Quietly closing the door behind her, she was nevertheless heartened to hear the telltale sound of Ron's snoring and the fact that three of the four beds were fully enclosed by their curtains. The only one that sat slightly exposed was the one she recognized as Harry's as it was closest to the partially open window and she could see his broom leaning against a table beside it. She shivered at the unexpected chill in the room and pulled her dressing gown firmly around her frame as she strode forward, gripping her wand tightly, guided only by moonlight.
Thrusting the bed curtains fully open, she flung her wand out and whispered "Lumos" again as harshly and as loudly as she dared. Light flared from the tip. "Harry Potter-" she began angrily but she stopped when he jumped several inches in the air and banged his head against the headboard as he lunged backward, pulling his wand out from under his pillow. He wasn't wearing his glasses and the look of pure, unadulterated fear in his green eyes caused a wave of thick, horrible shame to flood her body. They froze then, staring at each other in silence and he blinked several times, squinting at her.
"Ginny?" he said weakly.
She opened her mouth to respond, but felt so acutely awful for scaring him that nothing came out. The expression on his face had been one that she had never seen before but had imagined countless times in her head. It was exactly the way she had pictured him sitting up in that terrible cupboard that his horrible Muggle relatives had made him sleep in for the better part of his life. She had passionately cursed them time and time again for the way they treated him and was now utterly mortified to realize that she had inadvertently been the cause of that expression.
He was fumbling with his glasses now, which also appeared to have been under his pillow. Pulling them on, his eyes widened. "Ginny? Ginny, what are you doing here?"
She was struck then, both by how incredibly stupid she felt for being there in the first place, and by the fact that she was just standing beside him, gaping like a fish. Abruptly closing her mouth, she mustered the last of her Gryffindor courage and climbed up onto his bed, pulling the curtains shut behind her.
It didn't help her nerves when he responded to her sudden movement by inching further away until his back was pressed fully against the headboard. He shifted nervously for a few moments, his gaze riveted on her wand, before she realized what the problem was.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said slowly, as though speaking to a child. It was some small victory when he relaxed and eased off of the headboard a bit.
"Really?" he responded carefully.
It was all she could do not to just throw her arms up in frustration and leave. "Yes, really." The impatience had returned and the next words came out in harsh, rapid spurts. "Although I very well should. Harry Potter, what on earth is wrong with you? Why did you send your stupid owl to my room?"
He was staring at her blankly. "I wanted to send you a message."
She gritted her teeth and willed herself not to hex him outright since it really would be bad form after she had promised she wasn't going to hurt him. Blast hasty promises. "Yes, as that is what owls are generally used for, I gathered that. I meant why did you send her tonight? She's been sitting at my window for the past half hour with her incessant tapping and she won't bloody go away!" Ginny had to pause then, as she had come very close to shouting and really didn't want to wake anyone up. "Didn't Hermione tell you I wasn't angry?" The words were quieter now, but no less sharp.
"Of course she did," Harry responded in a heated whisper. "But it sounded like one of those things she just says for the purpose of making me feel better." He paused then and took a deep breath, as though checking some of his own anger. "I'm sorry, Gin. Really, I am. If I'd known for sure that you'd really said that, then I wouldn't have sent Hedwig."
The apology took some of the sting out of her anger and she paused to consider her options. She had really only come to tell him off, but he'd managed to derail that plan by looking so frightened and then acting so reasonably. Despite the fact that her hand had been forced, she was starting to warm to the idea of working things out with him now instead of waiting for the morning. Unfortunately, she had no idea where to begin.
As her knees were starting to ache, she took a few moments to collect her thoughts and settle back, crossing her legs in front of her. This took a bit of tactical effort, given the fact that she was facing him and wearing a nightdress while she was doing it.
"Bloody stupid to apologize via owl, anyway," she finally muttered.
He started. "What? How did you know it was an apology? Didn't you just say you never opened your window?"
"Are you saying it wasn't an apology?"
".No." He looked rather confused.
"Well, then?" She raised her eyebrows expectantly.
"I'm just saying you shouldn't assume," he said finally. "For all you knew, it might have been something else entirely."
"Such as.?"
"Well," he appeared to be giving the situation some serious thought. "I don't know. Perhaps a sonnet.or.or something."
"What?!" She choked in hushed horror. Something about the idea alone that Harry might have composed a love poem for her sent her into throes of all- encompassing dread. She reckoned it had something to do with that valentine she'd sent him her first year.
As luck would have it, she noticed his mouth twitching just then, and her lightning-quick reflexes allowed her to fling a pillow at his head just as he started snickering. Apparently too bemused to block the throw, he was smacked soundly in the face and had to pause to readjust his glasses, as they had been knocked askew.
"Great Merlin, Harry, don't DO that." She lowered her head, rubbing her temples and laughing along with him in short, relieved gasps.
"You should have seen the expression on your face." He chuckled, hugging the pillow to his chest, his hair now even more mussed than normal. "A sonnet! Honestly."
A few seconds later, their laughter petered out into silence and the tension that had been temporarily released by the moment started to build again.
Ginny looked down, still unsure of how to proceed, but her discomfort was short-lived as their conversation was interrupted by the feathery sound of Hedwig's return. With an apologetic shrug, Harry climbed out of bed to take the undelivered message from his owl. Sitting there waiting for him to come back, she stared at the spot where the hem of her nightdress lay on his bed sheets and started to regret her spontaneous decision to visit him. She really should have prepared something reasonable to say ahead of time. Now all she could think of were entirely absurd, outlandish things like "Sorry for being such a terrible, blind fool for so long. Oh, and by the way, thanks for the snog. It was lovely" or "I hope you still fancy me after I ran away from you like a complete idiot. Speaking of which, did my brother knock you senseless for making me cry?"
Perhaps she'd just go for a direct approach and ask him if he wanted to see her knickers.
Then she realized that that wouldn't work because she wasn't wearing any.
The gales of laughter that erupted from this particular thought caused her to press her hand over her mouth, and she was mildly embarrassed when Harry chose that moment to crawl back in. Casting her an odd look, he reclaimed his position near the headboard.
"Well, I'm glad at least one of us finds this funny," he said dully.
She struggled to calm herself down and immediately realized that she was suffering from some form of mild hysteria. That had to be it. There was no other explanation for the almost comically stupid things that were entering her mind. In her attempt to avoid the obvious issue, she was needlessly making light of other things and bungling the situation even more. Judging from the look on Harry's face, he thought she was poking fun at his expense.
This sobered her up almost instantly. "No, no, it's not you, Harry, really, it isn't. It's me." He cringed and she nearly moaned in frustration at her stupid choice of words. "That's-oh, Harry, that's not what I meant to say."
"No," he sounded so resigned that she felt as though her heart were breaking. How couldn't she have noticed his behavior before? "No, it's all right. I-I understand," he said.
She was rather surprised when he abruptly pushed away from his seated position against the headboard and stretched out on the bed. Throwing an arm over his face he shook his head from underneath it.
"Perhaps you should go, Ginny."
The emotional defenses were back up in place so quickly that she didn't quite know what to do. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wasn't leaving. As she couldn't see his face from where she was, she gingerly crawled up towards the headboard until she was hovering above him.
"Harry?" she whispered
He didn't respond.
Adjusting her body so she was lying down beside him, she propped herself up on her elbow and tried again. "Harry, please-"
"Just go," he said darkly from under his arm.
The flash of anger caught her unprepared. "Oh, Harry, stop acting like an idiot and look at me. If you'd just let me explain-"
"You know what?" He threw his arm off of his face then with such passion that she nearly fell back at the sudden movement. "It was just like this with my dad. I hate that, you know?"
The fact that he had just voluntarily mentioned his father momentarily struck Ginny dumb. She made a vague sort of questioning noise but he seemed too far-gone in his own angst to notice.
"He was.he was just mad for my mum and she simply couldn't stand him. She called him arrogant too, you know." There was a miserable silence then as Ginny was too horrified to respond and Harry was busy turning an impressive shade of crimson while still not looking at her.
When she finally found her voice, it was filled with the disbelief that had shocked her to her very core. "You think that I can't stand you?"
His eyes flew to her own, sparking defiantly in silent response, and she gasped.
"You complete and utter fool!" He opened his mouth as though to argue, but she smacked down hard on his chest, startling him back into silence. "'His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,'" she all but spat out the long- reviled verse. "Does that sound familiar?"
He stared at her.
"Well?!" She hit his chest again, although not quite so hard this time. "Does it?"
"Yes, but that was." He had an awed look on his face. "That was."
"That was what, Harry?" she growled and his eyebrows shot up in surprise, causing her to flush. She looked away from him then, falling onto her back and repeating the words more softly. "That was what?"
In truth, she knew exactly what he was aiming at, which was something along the lines of "That was years ago." And he was right, it was. However, as much as it humiliated her to admit it, her feelings had never really changed. Intellectually, Ginny knew he needed to hear her say that. Emotionally, she just couldn't right then. For some odd reason, it was asking too much to say the words out loud.
She prayed that he would understand her anyway.
After a prolonged period of silence in which she lay rigidly next to him, staring at the curtains, waiting for a response, an unpleasant sensation of vulnerability set in and she rolled away from him to the edge of the bed.
She had just convinced herself that she had managed to mess the whole thing up beyond repair and should really have left when he'd told her to, when she felt the bed dip behind her and the weight of his arm come up around her waist. Slowly but steadily he gradually dragged her back until she connected with the solid warmth of his body. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his breath hot on her neck, his hand pressing firmly against her stomach. "I'm really and truly sorry. I should never have doubted.You're right, Gin, I'm such a prat."
She suddenly found herself blinking rapidly through an onslaught of relieved tears.
Finally.
It was out.
"No, you're not, Harry," her voice was trembling and it embarrassed her, but she managed to keep her hand steady as she raised it to cover his. "I'm sorry too."
They lay there then in companionable silence. Countless questions whirled through her head but she was too afraid to voice them for fear she'd spoil the moment. Unfortunately, Harry didn't have that problem
"His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad." he sang softly into her ear, sending shivers up her spine. He chuckled against her neck.
"Shut it, Potter!" She flushed and closed her eyes. "Merlin, that was terrible. Don't remind me."
"Oh, come on, now. It really wasn't that terrible."
"Yes, yes it was. You were there, how can you say it wasn't terrible?"
He paused. "All right, I suppose it was a little terrible at the time."
"A lot terrible," she corrected. "And it still is."
"No," he said firmly, "now it's just funny." He paused. "And sweet."
She could hear the smile in his voice and made a face in response. "Is it, really? Sweet, you say? Well, while we're on the subject of sweet, how did you like my hair tonight? Long enough for you?"
"Oh, now you're just being mean," he said, laughing as he hugged her against him.
Her irritation melted then and she started smiling as well, turning her head slightly as he nuzzled her neck. There was a giddy and unexpected warmth in this position that was strange because it felt both completely new and perfectly natural. Part of her wanted to turn around fully and face him, but it just seemed easier for both of them to communicate this way.
He inhaled deeply all of a sudden and she felt his chest press against her back as his lungs filled with air. Exhaling against her neck, he did it again.
"Harry?" she ventured after several moments of this strange behavior.
"Hm?" he murmured.
"What are you doing?"
"Smelling you," he responded matter-of-factly.
She didn't know what to say.
"You smell nice," he supplied in response to her silence.
She burrowed her head further in the pillow, trying to cover her embarrassment. "Well, thank you," she managed finally.
"Getting better at the compliments, aren't I?"
A frown tugged at the corner of her lips. "Look, Harry, I shouldn't have teased you about that."
"No," he said quickly, "no, you were right. I'm-I'm terrible at them in general."
She couldn't bear it anymore, as the question had been tormenting her the entire evening and he'd just provided her with the perfect opening. "Harry, did you really go to Hermione for advice?"
He paused. "About compliments?"
"About compliments and.and everything."
"Why?" he asked carefully. "What did she say?"
"Nothing! Nothing at all." She closed her eyes, fumbling for some way to explain. "It's just that we had this conversation recently and I said something about you and when she responded I just got the sense that she knew something she wasn't telling me." Her voice trailed off. "You know, I'm probably wrong," she said in a rushed voice. "Never mind."
Harry let out a strangled moan suddenly and dropped his head away from her neck, on to the pillow behind her. "No, you're right."
During the long period of silence that followed, Ginny kept busy by alternately berating herself for having said something to make him pull away and tamping down on her eagerness for him to elaborate.
"I was going to ask you to the DA party, you know," he said suddenly in a soft, thoughtful voice. "But then I heard Neville ask you and I thought.well, I thought I'd missed my chance."
Confusion washed over her and she automatically thought back to what had happened that evening, trying to put the order of events together from Harry's perspective. Before long, she was horrified to realize how easy it must have been for him to misinterpret what had taken place.
"So," he continued obliviously, "I reckoned I'd have to find someone else, but then I heard from a few people that Neville was going to ask Luna." He paused.
When he didn't continue after an appropriate amount of time, she prodded him as gently as she could. "Yes?"
"Well." Harry said slowly.
She bit back the urge to turn around hit him again as she doubted that resorting to violence every time he frustrated her was healthy in the long run.
"So..I decided to. I decided to ask Hermione to find out for me."
Her mind abruptly flashed to the painfully awkward conversation she and Hermione had shared before the DA party about looking appropriate for Ron and it suddenly became blindingly clear what her friend had initially been trying to say. "WHAT?!" she all but crowed and he slapped his hand over her mouth.
They froze simultaneously and Ginny strained to hear any signs that she'd woken someone in the room. Her heart hammered violently against her chest.
After several seconds of listening to Ron's steady snoring, Harry slowly removed his hand. "You're going to get us caught, you know," he said sternly into her ear.
"I know, I'm sorry." She hoped her voice carried an appropriate amount of sincerity. "So you were saying.?"
"Well, there's nothing else to say. I asked Hermione and she said she'd do it, but then she came and told me she couldn't."
At this, Ginny started giggling.
"What?" he asked wearily.
"That's not quite true because.because she tried to, actually."
"Oh no." he groaned.
"Oh yes," she whispered back merrily, "and it was terrible. She really bungled it up something awful. Oh Harry, it was priceless." Ginny wasn't sure why this was suddenly as funny as it was, but she couldn't stop giggling. "Hermione kept stammering on about dates and not being able to reveal things and I've never heard her make such little sense."
There was a significant pause before she dissolved into giggles again.
"So-so wait.you knew?" he finally asked, his voice filled with incredulity. "You knew I'd been trying to find out all along?"
"No!" She shook her head, stifling the last of her laughter. "No, I didn't know. At the time, I thought she was talking about Ron."
Another pause.
"Ron tried to find out too," he blurted out all of a sudden.
"Great Merlin, no he didn't," Ginny shot back in disbelief.
"Yes, he did." Harry sounded miserable. "I didn't want him to, but he started hinting about us going together on his own and when I told him that you were going with Neville, he said he didn't believe it. He wanted to ask you sooner, but I told him to let Hermione give it a try first. She didn't tell us that she couldn't do it until dinner and before I could stop him, he started asking everyone who they were going with."
Ginny furrowed her brow. "But you already knew you were going to the party with Hannah by then." The comment came out before she had given it serious thought and she cringed at how accusatory it sounded.
Harry sighed softly. "Yes.well.I had agreed to be her date that afternoon. She asked me after lunch. They didn't know."
"Oh," she responded in a small voice. She reckoned she should have felt better that he had made such an effort to ask her, but instead all she felt was sadness over the fact that they had missed each other by a matter of a few hours.
"I'm really, really sorry, Gin," he whispered fervently into her ear. "Neville had been avoiding Luna in the DA class for almost a week and Hermione kept telling me she'd ask you and then she didn't. When Hannah came up to me, I'd just made up my mind that you were going with Neville and it was stupid of me to assume that without knowing and I'm sorry. You don't know how sorry I am."
Ginny shook her head absent-mindedly. It was her own fault, really, as far as she was concerned. She should have been as brave as Hannah Abbott. She should have asked him herself.
"Tonight." he started in a strained voice. "Tonight.every time I saw you dancing with.I knew I should have said something. I regretted it so much but we got into that stupid fight right before and I couldn't.I mean, I just didn't know how to."
He suddenly buried his face in her neck again and she could barely make out what he was saying but it didn't really matter. The truth was starting to dawn on her in bits and pieces and everything that had, up until this point, been so light and surreal was starting to take root in reality. Harry fancied her. Harry Potter really and truly fancied her and the joy inherent in that was so indescribable that she scarcely knew what to do.
Perhaps the strangest part of it all was that instead of making her excited and energetic, she had never felt so calm in her entire life. The only way to describe the emotion was one of rightness and it suffused her aura with an ease and clarity that made her feel older for some reason.
She gradually became aware of the fact that he was trembling behind her as he was probably mistaking her thoughtful silence for anger.
He whispered her name then and the fear in his voice caused her pain, so she wordlessly lifted her hand off of his own and brought it up to where she felt his head nestled against her own. His hair was as soft as she'd imagined it to be and that was really the only thing she could think about as she stroked her fingers through it and made soothing sounds.
He stilled after a while but she continued her careful ministrations, fully allowing herself to bask in the warmth of his closeness for the first time.
She thought he might have fallen asleep when he suddenly readjusted his grip on her waist, drawing her closer.
"Ginny?" he murmured.
"Yes?" she responded quietly.
"You're so beautiful."
Her breath caught then, as she felt burned both by the words and by the fact that he had kissed her neck right after he'd said them. The incredible power he lorded over her, that she had spent so much time resenting, was now the grateful focus of every nerve in her body. He kissed her again, right below her ear, and she jumped as it caused a sensation like fire flooding through her veins. His hand slid up her stomach a bit higher to steady her against him.
She exhaled slowly before whispering, "How long?" The question slid directly from her heart through her lips before she could truly understand it herself.
When she felt him jerk slightly behind her, she knew she had hurt him by asking and instantly regretted it. "Forget that I brought it up at all, Harry. I'm sorry.it shouldn't matter."
He mumbled something almost incoherent in response before rolling away from her.
Her heart leapt. "What?" she whispered, not quite believing she'd heard him correctly.
"Wizarding Chess," he said again in a clearer voice and, for the first time in a long time, she looked back over her shoulder at him.
He had resumed his initial pose, flat on his back, with his arm covering most of his face but she didn't care.
Rolling over until she was leaning sideways against him, she tried to get a look at his face. "You're joking."
"No," he said in a sullen, miserable voice.
The many hours they had spent playing chess together flew through her mind at a frightening speed as she searched for some signs, some clues, in retrospect, of what he was saying to her now. "You've liked me since.since way back during the summer? But.but we were barely even friends then."
"It wasn't the same sort of like back then as it is now," he responded stiffly.
"What do you mean?" she asked, genuinely confused.
He paused. "Well..I didn't need to be friends with Cho to like her, did I?"
She gasped then and blushed because that's when she finally understood. Lust. He had been physically attracted to her over the summer. The thought had the potential to irritate, had it not been for the way he'd preceded it.
Still, she needed to be certain. "But now it's a different sort of like."
"Yes, although I believe I said that already," he responded in such an aggravated voice that she wanted to laugh.
Before she could formulate a proper response, his other arm quickly joined the first, effectively obscuring his entire face from her view.
"Oh, Harry, come on now." She laid her head on his chest, trying to peer up under his arms. "Don't be silly."
"You're laughing at me."
"No I'm not," she said. But then she was, as she couldn't help it.
"See?" he said darkly.
"Please Harry.please come out." She poked his arm a few times, but he wouldn't budge. "Harry, I need you to look at me."
"Why?"
"I just do."
"No."
A thought occurred to her at that moment, and it was too delicious to pass up.
"Harry?"
"What?"
Dramatic pause.
"Harry, have you ever heard of Oliver Wood?"
She held her breath then, and smiled when she felt his chest hitch under her head.
"Oliver Wood was one of the greatest Quidditch Captains Hogwarts has ever seen," she began in a reverent tone of voice but didn't get much farther as he suddenly withdrew his arms from his face, grabbed the pillow lying next to his head, and pressed it against his mouth. Moments later, she heard the muffled sound of uncontrollable laughter.
As he was shaking too hard for her to stay were she was, she sat up triumphantly and readjusted herself so she was lying next to him again. She'd reckoned that she'd have to wait quite a while for him to calm down, and so was unprepared for when he unceremoniously flung the pillow across the bed and turned to face her.
"You're terrible," he muttered in playful anger before grabbing her shoulders and rolling them over until she was pinned firmly underneath him.
"And you're wonderful," she whispered back, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead.
Their gazes locked momentarily and when his lips pressed down against her own this time, it was to explore in a lazy, gentle pattern that altogether lacked the dark frenzy that had colored their earlier time together.
Not that frenzy was a bad thing, she was forced to remind herself as he trailed feather-light kisses down her jaw and neck, but just inappropriate under those particular circumstances.
And that, it was safe to say, was the last coherent thought she had for quite some time since the kissing was gradually followed by the even more intensely pleasurable touching, thereby diverting her concentration entirely.
In the end, it was Harry who broke contact first, pulling away abruptly, his eyes closed, his breathing irregular.
Disappointed, she sat up as well, but waited patiently for him to speak first.
"Ginny," he said finally. "You should go."
"I know," she whispered softly, but made no move to comply with his directive.
They sat there in silence for a few more seconds and she thought she saw him sway towards her again before he started and sat back.
"Please." He said the word as though it physically hurt. "Just go, Gin."
"All right." She let out a resigned sigh. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."
He nodded.
Grabbing hold of her dressing gown, she had almost crawled completely off of his bed when an impulse caused her to suddenly turn around, lean forward and kiss the top of his head. His hand came up to close around her wrist.
"Sleep well, Harry," she whispered into his hair and waited a few beats until he finally released her.
"You too," he murmured.
Pulling her dressing gown back on as she padded silently out of his dormitory room, she hurried to close the door behind her as she could feel the weight of his eyes on her back and it was making her rethink her decision to leave.
It wasn't until she was starting down the hallway that lead to her own room that she let go of the last of her reserve and broke into an all out run, coming very close to slamming the door behind her before leaping into her bed.
Once safely under the covers, she felt as though she was just now remembering how to breathe and drew air into her lungs in shaky, rapid gulps.
Looking to the foot of the bed, she saw that Maeven was fast asleep but Ginny knew she wouldn't be so lucky that evening as she lay flat on her back, staring up towards the heavens.
As it turned out, she was right.
For the rest of the night she was alternately plagued by a deep longing for him to come to her room as she had to his and an all-encompassing fear of what would happen if he did.
It was the first time she'd ever understood why the Founders had put alarms up in the dormitories.
She was grateful for their foresight.
~*~
End Part 10
In the end, she reckoned that it was the tapping that made her do it.
It was nearly midnight when it started up at the window closest to her head and at first Ginny was too scared to get out of bed to see what was going on. However, five irritating minutes later, when it became clear that her dormitory mates were not disturbed by the sound, she finally gave up and decided to investigate. Pulling aside her bed curtain, she almost instantly saw the owl-like shadow being cast on the floor of her room. As it was too big to be Pig, she knew the only other logical option was Hedwig. Peering through the glass pane of the window, her suspicions were confirmed as the snowy white owl stared back at her expectantly.
She sighed then, wondering why Harry couldn't just let things alone and give her time to think. Shaking her head, she gave Hedwig a stern look. "Shoo," she said softly, fluttering her hands at him. "Not now, Hedwig. Go back to Harry."
The owl hooted softly, his large unblinking eyes following the motion of her hands, but he made no move to leave.
Gritting her teeth, Ginny bitterly fought the urge to open the window. Her fingers went to the latch more than once before she decided for certain that she didn't want to know what he had to say right then. It couldn't be anything more than an apology and Ginny wasn't sure she wanted to hear him apologize for what had happened. She leaned her head against the cold glass and tried to collect her thoughts. Perhaps sensing her momentary indecision, Hedwig hooted again.
Resolute, Ginny lifted her head off of the pane and shot the owl a look. "No, Hedwig. No. Not now. I don't want a message from Harry. Now go." Mind made up, she firmly turned her back on the owl and climbed into bed, yanking her curtain shut.
Tap, tap, tap.
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Maeven, who was perched on her pillow, silently watching her.
Tap, tap, tap.
It had to stop, it just had to. How long could Hedwig sit out there in the freezing cold tapping? At some point he just had to give up and go back and maybe then she could get some sleep.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Twenty minutes later, it had become painfully clear that Hedwig had absolutely no intention of leaving and she was, in fact, just as obstinate as his master. A few times, she had considered releasing Maeven out another window and letting her Familiar handle it bird to bird, as it were. However, Ginny could sense that Maeven was still a bit put out for having been forsaken for Hermione earlier that evening and was in no particular mood to be helpful. The phoenix had just entered the juvenile stage of her life cycle and had taken to acting like it. In fact, she seemed particularly amused by the whole situation.
Her hands clenched tightly in her sheets, Ginny managed to hold out a full ten minutes longer before her anger reached a boiling point. Consumed by fury, she finally tossed off her bedcover, threw back the curtain, grabbed her dressing gown with one hand and her wand with her other and strode out of her dormitory room. It was exceedingly hard to sneak and storm at the same time, so Ginny tried to keep her raging emotions in check for fear of being caught. The hall outside was pitch black so she muttered Lumos and adjusted her wand to emit a very faint light, which she did not extinguish until she had reached her destination.
Throwing her weight against the door of the sixth year boys' dormitory, a voice carrying some semblance of good sense caused her to pause. What on earth was she doing? What if Ron was still awake? How was she going to explain herself then? But Ginny quickly strangled that irritating voice with the logic that, after tonight's little display, if her brother were awake and aware of what was going on, he'd probably help her pummel Harry.
Quietly closing the door behind her, she was nevertheless heartened to hear the telltale sound of Ron's snoring and the fact that three of the four beds were fully enclosed by their curtains. The only one that sat slightly exposed was the one she recognized as Harry's as it was closest to the partially open window and she could see his broom leaning against a table beside it. She shivered at the unexpected chill in the room and pulled her dressing gown firmly around her frame as she strode forward, gripping her wand tightly, guided only by moonlight.
Thrusting the bed curtains fully open, she flung her wand out and whispered "Lumos" again as harshly and as loudly as she dared. Light flared from the tip. "Harry Potter-" she began angrily but she stopped when he jumped several inches in the air and banged his head against the headboard as he lunged backward, pulling his wand out from under his pillow. He wasn't wearing his glasses and the look of pure, unadulterated fear in his green eyes caused a wave of thick, horrible shame to flood her body. They froze then, staring at each other in silence and he blinked several times, squinting at her.
"Ginny?" he said weakly.
She opened her mouth to respond, but felt so acutely awful for scaring him that nothing came out. The expression on his face had been one that she had never seen before but had imagined countless times in her head. It was exactly the way she had pictured him sitting up in that terrible cupboard that his horrible Muggle relatives had made him sleep in for the better part of his life. She had passionately cursed them time and time again for the way they treated him and was now utterly mortified to realize that she had inadvertently been the cause of that expression.
He was fumbling with his glasses now, which also appeared to have been under his pillow. Pulling them on, his eyes widened. "Ginny? Ginny, what are you doing here?"
She was struck then, both by how incredibly stupid she felt for being there in the first place, and by the fact that she was just standing beside him, gaping like a fish. Abruptly closing her mouth, she mustered the last of her Gryffindor courage and climbed up onto his bed, pulling the curtains shut behind her.
It didn't help her nerves when he responded to her sudden movement by inching further away until his back was pressed fully against the headboard. He shifted nervously for a few moments, his gaze riveted on her wand, before she realized what the problem was.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said slowly, as though speaking to a child. It was some small victory when he relaxed and eased off of the headboard a bit.
"Really?" he responded carefully.
It was all she could do not to just throw her arms up in frustration and leave. "Yes, really." The impatience had returned and the next words came out in harsh, rapid spurts. "Although I very well should. Harry Potter, what on earth is wrong with you? Why did you send your stupid owl to my room?"
He was staring at her blankly. "I wanted to send you a message."
She gritted her teeth and willed herself not to hex him outright since it really would be bad form after she had promised she wasn't going to hurt him. Blast hasty promises. "Yes, as that is what owls are generally used for, I gathered that. I meant why did you send her tonight? She's been sitting at my window for the past half hour with her incessant tapping and she won't bloody go away!" Ginny had to pause then, as she had come very close to shouting and really didn't want to wake anyone up. "Didn't Hermione tell you I wasn't angry?" The words were quieter now, but no less sharp.
"Of course she did," Harry responded in a heated whisper. "But it sounded like one of those things she just says for the purpose of making me feel better." He paused then and took a deep breath, as though checking some of his own anger. "I'm sorry, Gin. Really, I am. If I'd known for sure that you'd really said that, then I wouldn't have sent Hedwig."
The apology took some of the sting out of her anger and she paused to consider her options. She had really only come to tell him off, but he'd managed to derail that plan by looking so frightened and then acting so reasonably. Despite the fact that her hand had been forced, she was starting to warm to the idea of working things out with him now instead of waiting for the morning. Unfortunately, she had no idea where to begin.
As her knees were starting to ache, she took a few moments to collect her thoughts and settle back, crossing her legs in front of her. This took a bit of tactical effort, given the fact that she was facing him and wearing a nightdress while she was doing it.
"Bloody stupid to apologize via owl, anyway," she finally muttered.
He started. "What? How did you know it was an apology? Didn't you just say you never opened your window?"
"Are you saying it wasn't an apology?"
".No." He looked rather confused.
"Well, then?" She raised her eyebrows expectantly.
"I'm just saying you shouldn't assume," he said finally. "For all you knew, it might have been something else entirely."
"Such as.?"
"Well," he appeared to be giving the situation some serious thought. "I don't know. Perhaps a sonnet.or.or something."
"What?!" She choked in hushed horror. Something about the idea alone that Harry might have composed a love poem for her sent her into throes of all- encompassing dread. She reckoned it had something to do with that valentine she'd sent him her first year.
As luck would have it, she noticed his mouth twitching just then, and her lightning-quick reflexes allowed her to fling a pillow at his head just as he started snickering. Apparently too bemused to block the throw, he was smacked soundly in the face and had to pause to readjust his glasses, as they had been knocked askew.
"Great Merlin, Harry, don't DO that." She lowered her head, rubbing her temples and laughing along with him in short, relieved gasps.
"You should have seen the expression on your face." He chuckled, hugging the pillow to his chest, his hair now even more mussed than normal. "A sonnet! Honestly."
A few seconds later, their laughter petered out into silence and the tension that had been temporarily released by the moment started to build again.
Ginny looked down, still unsure of how to proceed, but her discomfort was short-lived as their conversation was interrupted by the feathery sound of Hedwig's return. With an apologetic shrug, Harry climbed out of bed to take the undelivered message from his owl. Sitting there waiting for him to come back, she stared at the spot where the hem of her nightdress lay on his bed sheets and started to regret her spontaneous decision to visit him. She really should have prepared something reasonable to say ahead of time. Now all she could think of were entirely absurd, outlandish things like "Sorry for being such a terrible, blind fool for so long. Oh, and by the way, thanks for the snog. It was lovely" or "I hope you still fancy me after I ran away from you like a complete idiot. Speaking of which, did my brother knock you senseless for making me cry?"
Perhaps she'd just go for a direct approach and ask him if he wanted to see her knickers.
Then she realized that that wouldn't work because she wasn't wearing any.
The gales of laughter that erupted from this particular thought caused her to press her hand over her mouth, and she was mildly embarrassed when Harry chose that moment to crawl back in. Casting her an odd look, he reclaimed his position near the headboard.
"Well, I'm glad at least one of us finds this funny," he said dully.
She struggled to calm herself down and immediately realized that she was suffering from some form of mild hysteria. That had to be it. There was no other explanation for the almost comically stupid things that were entering her mind. In her attempt to avoid the obvious issue, she was needlessly making light of other things and bungling the situation even more. Judging from the look on Harry's face, he thought she was poking fun at his expense.
This sobered her up almost instantly. "No, no, it's not you, Harry, really, it isn't. It's me." He cringed and she nearly moaned in frustration at her stupid choice of words. "That's-oh, Harry, that's not what I meant to say."
"No," he sounded so resigned that she felt as though her heart were breaking. How couldn't she have noticed his behavior before? "No, it's all right. I-I understand," he said.
She was rather surprised when he abruptly pushed away from his seated position against the headboard and stretched out on the bed. Throwing an arm over his face he shook his head from underneath it.
"Perhaps you should go, Ginny."
The emotional defenses were back up in place so quickly that she didn't quite know what to do. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wasn't leaving. As she couldn't see his face from where she was, she gingerly crawled up towards the headboard until she was hovering above him.
"Harry?" she whispered
He didn't respond.
Adjusting her body so she was lying down beside him, she propped herself up on her elbow and tried again. "Harry, please-"
"Just go," he said darkly from under his arm.
The flash of anger caught her unprepared. "Oh, Harry, stop acting like an idiot and look at me. If you'd just let me explain-"
"You know what?" He threw his arm off of his face then with such passion that she nearly fell back at the sudden movement. "It was just like this with my dad. I hate that, you know?"
The fact that he had just voluntarily mentioned his father momentarily struck Ginny dumb. She made a vague sort of questioning noise but he seemed too far-gone in his own angst to notice.
"He was.he was just mad for my mum and she simply couldn't stand him. She called him arrogant too, you know." There was a miserable silence then as Ginny was too horrified to respond and Harry was busy turning an impressive shade of crimson while still not looking at her.
When she finally found her voice, it was filled with the disbelief that had shocked her to her very core. "You think that I can't stand you?"
His eyes flew to her own, sparking defiantly in silent response, and she gasped.
"You complete and utter fool!" He opened his mouth as though to argue, but she smacked down hard on his chest, startling him back into silence. "'His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,'" she all but spat out the long- reviled verse. "Does that sound familiar?"
He stared at her.
"Well?!" She hit his chest again, although not quite so hard this time. "Does it?"
"Yes, but that was." He had an awed look on his face. "That was."
"That was what, Harry?" she growled and his eyebrows shot up in surprise, causing her to flush. She looked away from him then, falling onto her back and repeating the words more softly. "That was what?"
In truth, she knew exactly what he was aiming at, which was something along the lines of "That was years ago." And he was right, it was. However, as much as it humiliated her to admit it, her feelings had never really changed. Intellectually, Ginny knew he needed to hear her say that. Emotionally, she just couldn't right then. For some odd reason, it was asking too much to say the words out loud.
She prayed that he would understand her anyway.
After a prolonged period of silence in which she lay rigidly next to him, staring at the curtains, waiting for a response, an unpleasant sensation of vulnerability set in and she rolled away from him to the edge of the bed.
She had just convinced herself that she had managed to mess the whole thing up beyond repair and should really have left when he'd told her to, when she felt the bed dip behind her and the weight of his arm come up around her waist. Slowly but steadily he gradually dragged her back until she connected with the solid warmth of his body. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his breath hot on her neck, his hand pressing firmly against her stomach. "I'm really and truly sorry. I should never have doubted.You're right, Gin, I'm such a prat."
She suddenly found herself blinking rapidly through an onslaught of relieved tears.
Finally.
It was out.
"No, you're not, Harry," her voice was trembling and it embarrassed her, but she managed to keep her hand steady as she raised it to cover his. "I'm sorry too."
They lay there then in companionable silence. Countless questions whirled through her head but she was too afraid to voice them for fear she'd spoil the moment. Unfortunately, Harry didn't have that problem
"His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad." he sang softly into her ear, sending shivers up her spine. He chuckled against her neck.
"Shut it, Potter!" She flushed and closed her eyes. "Merlin, that was terrible. Don't remind me."
"Oh, come on, now. It really wasn't that terrible."
"Yes, yes it was. You were there, how can you say it wasn't terrible?"
He paused. "All right, I suppose it was a little terrible at the time."
"A lot terrible," she corrected. "And it still is."
"No," he said firmly, "now it's just funny." He paused. "And sweet."
She could hear the smile in his voice and made a face in response. "Is it, really? Sweet, you say? Well, while we're on the subject of sweet, how did you like my hair tonight? Long enough for you?"
"Oh, now you're just being mean," he said, laughing as he hugged her against him.
Her irritation melted then and she started smiling as well, turning her head slightly as he nuzzled her neck. There was a giddy and unexpected warmth in this position that was strange because it felt both completely new and perfectly natural. Part of her wanted to turn around fully and face him, but it just seemed easier for both of them to communicate this way.
He inhaled deeply all of a sudden and she felt his chest press against her back as his lungs filled with air. Exhaling against her neck, he did it again.
"Harry?" she ventured after several moments of this strange behavior.
"Hm?" he murmured.
"What are you doing?"
"Smelling you," he responded matter-of-factly.
She didn't know what to say.
"You smell nice," he supplied in response to her silence.
She burrowed her head further in the pillow, trying to cover her embarrassment. "Well, thank you," she managed finally.
"Getting better at the compliments, aren't I?"
A frown tugged at the corner of her lips. "Look, Harry, I shouldn't have teased you about that."
"No," he said quickly, "no, you were right. I'm-I'm terrible at them in general."
She couldn't bear it anymore, as the question had been tormenting her the entire evening and he'd just provided her with the perfect opening. "Harry, did you really go to Hermione for advice?"
He paused. "About compliments?"
"About compliments and.and everything."
"Why?" he asked carefully. "What did she say?"
"Nothing! Nothing at all." She closed her eyes, fumbling for some way to explain. "It's just that we had this conversation recently and I said something about you and when she responded I just got the sense that she knew something she wasn't telling me." Her voice trailed off. "You know, I'm probably wrong," she said in a rushed voice. "Never mind."
Harry let out a strangled moan suddenly and dropped his head away from her neck, on to the pillow behind her. "No, you're right."
During the long period of silence that followed, Ginny kept busy by alternately berating herself for having said something to make him pull away and tamping down on her eagerness for him to elaborate.
"I was going to ask you to the DA party, you know," he said suddenly in a soft, thoughtful voice. "But then I heard Neville ask you and I thought.well, I thought I'd missed my chance."
Confusion washed over her and she automatically thought back to what had happened that evening, trying to put the order of events together from Harry's perspective. Before long, she was horrified to realize how easy it must have been for him to misinterpret what had taken place.
"So," he continued obliviously, "I reckoned I'd have to find someone else, but then I heard from a few people that Neville was going to ask Luna." He paused.
When he didn't continue after an appropriate amount of time, she prodded him as gently as she could. "Yes?"
"Well." Harry said slowly.
She bit back the urge to turn around hit him again as she doubted that resorting to violence every time he frustrated her was healthy in the long run.
"So..I decided to. I decided to ask Hermione to find out for me."
Her mind abruptly flashed to the painfully awkward conversation she and Hermione had shared before the DA party about looking appropriate for Ron and it suddenly became blindingly clear what her friend had initially been trying to say. "WHAT?!" she all but crowed and he slapped his hand over her mouth.
They froze simultaneously and Ginny strained to hear any signs that she'd woken someone in the room. Her heart hammered violently against her chest.
After several seconds of listening to Ron's steady snoring, Harry slowly removed his hand. "You're going to get us caught, you know," he said sternly into her ear.
"I know, I'm sorry." She hoped her voice carried an appropriate amount of sincerity. "So you were saying.?"
"Well, there's nothing else to say. I asked Hermione and she said she'd do it, but then she came and told me she couldn't."
At this, Ginny started giggling.
"What?" he asked wearily.
"That's not quite true because.because she tried to, actually."
"Oh no." he groaned.
"Oh yes," she whispered back merrily, "and it was terrible. She really bungled it up something awful. Oh Harry, it was priceless." Ginny wasn't sure why this was suddenly as funny as it was, but she couldn't stop giggling. "Hermione kept stammering on about dates and not being able to reveal things and I've never heard her make such little sense."
There was a significant pause before she dissolved into giggles again.
"So-so wait.you knew?" he finally asked, his voice filled with incredulity. "You knew I'd been trying to find out all along?"
"No!" She shook her head, stifling the last of her laughter. "No, I didn't know. At the time, I thought she was talking about Ron."
Another pause.
"Ron tried to find out too," he blurted out all of a sudden.
"Great Merlin, no he didn't," Ginny shot back in disbelief.
"Yes, he did." Harry sounded miserable. "I didn't want him to, but he started hinting about us going together on his own and when I told him that you were going with Neville, he said he didn't believe it. He wanted to ask you sooner, but I told him to let Hermione give it a try first. She didn't tell us that she couldn't do it until dinner and before I could stop him, he started asking everyone who they were going with."
Ginny furrowed her brow. "But you already knew you were going to the party with Hannah by then." The comment came out before she had given it serious thought and she cringed at how accusatory it sounded.
Harry sighed softly. "Yes.well.I had agreed to be her date that afternoon. She asked me after lunch. They didn't know."
"Oh," she responded in a small voice. She reckoned she should have felt better that he had made such an effort to ask her, but instead all she felt was sadness over the fact that they had missed each other by a matter of a few hours.
"I'm really, really sorry, Gin," he whispered fervently into her ear. "Neville had been avoiding Luna in the DA class for almost a week and Hermione kept telling me she'd ask you and then she didn't. When Hannah came up to me, I'd just made up my mind that you were going with Neville and it was stupid of me to assume that without knowing and I'm sorry. You don't know how sorry I am."
Ginny shook her head absent-mindedly. It was her own fault, really, as far as she was concerned. She should have been as brave as Hannah Abbott. She should have asked him herself.
"Tonight." he started in a strained voice. "Tonight.every time I saw you dancing with.I knew I should have said something. I regretted it so much but we got into that stupid fight right before and I couldn't.I mean, I just didn't know how to."
He suddenly buried his face in her neck again and she could barely make out what he was saying but it didn't really matter. The truth was starting to dawn on her in bits and pieces and everything that had, up until this point, been so light and surreal was starting to take root in reality. Harry fancied her. Harry Potter really and truly fancied her and the joy inherent in that was so indescribable that she scarcely knew what to do.
Perhaps the strangest part of it all was that instead of making her excited and energetic, she had never felt so calm in her entire life. The only way to describe the emotion was one of rightness and it suffused her aura with an ease and clarity that made her feel older for some reason.
She gradually became aware of the fact that he was trembling behind her as he was probably mistaking her thoughtful silence for anger.
He whispered her name then and the fear in his voice caused her pain, so she wordlessly lifted her hand off of his own and brought it up to where she felt his head nestled against her own. His hair was as soft as she'd imagined it to be and that was really the only thing she could think about as she stroked her fingers through it and made soothing sounds.
He stilled after a while but she continued her careful ministrations, fully allowing herself to bask in the warmth of his closeness for the first time.
She thought he might have fallen asleep when he suddenly readjusted his grip on her waist, drawing her closer.
"Ginny?" he murmured.
"Yes?" she responded quietly.
"You're so beautiful."
Her breath caught then, as she felt burned both by the words and by the fact that he had kissed her neck right after he'd said them. The incredible power he lorded over her, that she had spent so much time resenting, was now the grateful focus of every nerve in her body. He kissed her again, right below her ear, and she jumped as it caused a sensation like fire flooding through her veins. His hand slid up her stomach a bit higher to steady her against him.
She exhaled slowly before whispering, "How long?" The question slid directly from her heart through her lips before she could truly understand it herself.
When she felt him jerk slightly behind her, she knew she had hurt him by asking and instantly regretted it. "Forget that I brought it up at all, Harry. I'm sorry.it shouldn't matter."
He mumbled something almost incoherent in response before rolling away from her.
Her heart leapt. "What?" she whispered, not quite believing she'd heard him correctly.
"Wizarding Chess," he said again in a clearer voice and, for the first time in a long time, she looked back over her shoulder at him.
He had resumed his initial pose, flat on his back, with his arm covering most of his face but she didn't care.
Rolling over until she was leaning sideways against him, she tried to get a look at his face. "You're joking."
"No," he said in a sullen, miserable voice.
The many hours they had spent playing chess together flew through her mind at a frightening speed as she searched for some signs, some clues, in retrospect, of what he was saying to her now. "You've liked me since.since way back during the summer? But.but we were barely even friends then."
"It wasn't the same sort of like back then as it is now," he responded stiffly.
"What do you mean?" she asked, genuinely confused.
He paused. "Well..I didn't need to be friends with Cho to like her, did I?"
She gasped then and blushed because that's when she finally understood. Lust. He had been physically attracted to her over the summer. The thought had the potential to irritate, had it not been for the way he'd preceded it.
Still, she needed to be certain. "But now it's a different sort of like."
"Yes, although I believe I said that already," he responded in such an aggravated voice that she wanted to laugh.
Before she could formulate a proper response, his other arm quickly joined the first, effectively obscuring his entire face from her view.
"Oh, Harry, come on now." She laid her head on his chest, trying to peer up under his arms. "Don't be silly."
"You're laughing at me."
"No I'm not," she said. But then she was, as she couldn't help it.
"See?" he said darkly.
"Please Harry.please come out." She poked his arm a few times, but he wouldn't budge. "Harry, I need you to look at me."
"Why?"
"I just do."
"No."
A thought occurred to her at that moment, and it was too delicious to pass up.
"Harry?"
"What?"
Dramatic pause.
"Harry, have you ever heard of Oliver Wood?"
She held her breath then, and smiled when she felt his chest hitch under her head.
"Oliver Wood was one of the greatest Quidditch Captains Hogwarts has ever seen," she began in a reverent tone of voice but didn't get much farther as he suddenly withdrew his arms from his face, grabbed the pillow lying next to his head, and pressed it against his mouth. Moments later, she heard the muffled sound of uncontrollable laughter.
As he was shaking too hard for her to stay were she was, she sat up triumphantly and readjusted herself so she was lying next to him again. She'd reckoned that she'd have to wait quite a while for him to calm down, and so was unprepared for when he unceremoniously flung the pillow across the bed and turned to face her.
"You're terrible," he muttered in playful anger before grabbing her shoulders and rolling them over until she was pinned firmly underneath him.
"And you're wonderful," she whispered back, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead.
Their gazes locked momentarily and when his lips pressed down against her own this time, it was to explore in a lazy, gentle pattern that altogether lacked the dark frenzy that had colored their earlier time together.
Not that frenzy was a bad thing, she was forced to remind herself as he trailed feather-light kisses down her jaw and neck, but just inappropriate under those particular circumstances.
And that, it was safe to say, was the last coherent thought she had for quite some time since the kissing was gradually followed by the even more intensely pleasurable touching, thereby diverting her concentration entirely.
In the end, it was Harry who broke contact first, pulling away abruptly, his eyes closed, his breathing irregular.
Disappointed, she sat up as well, but waited patiently for him to speak first.
"Ginny," he said finally. "You should go."
"I know," she whispered softly, but made no move to comply with his directive.
They sat there in silence for a few more seconds and she thought she saw him sway towards her again before he started and sat back.
"Please." He said the word as though it physically hurt. "Just go, Gin."
"All right." She let out a resigned sigh. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."
He nodded.
Grabbing hold of her dressing gown, she had almost crawled completely off of his bed when an impulse caused her to suddenly turn around, lean forward and kiss the top of his head. His hand came up to close around her wrist.
"Sleep well, Harry," she whispered into his hair and waited a few beats until he finally released her.
"You too," he murmured.
Pulling her dressing gown back on as she padded silently out of his dormitory room, she hurried to close the door behind her as she could feel the weight of his eyes on her back and it was making her rethink her decision to leave.
It wasn't until she was starting down the hallway that lead to her own room that she let go of the last of her reserve and broke into an all out run, coming very close to slamming the door behind her before leaping into her bed.
Once safely under the covers, she felt as though she was just now remembering how to breathe and drew air into her lungs in shaky, rapid gulps.
Looking to the foot of the bed, she saw that Maeven was fast asleep but Ginny knew she wouldn't be so lucky that evening as she lay flat on her back, staring up towards the heavens.
As it turned out, she was right.
For the rest of the night she was alternately plagued by a deep longing for him to come to her room as she had to his and an all-encompassing fear of what would happen if he did.
It was the first time she'd ever understood why the Founders had put alarms up in the dormitories.
She was grateful for their foresight.
~*~
End Part 10