Title: More than Mrs. Potter

Author: Joy

A/N: Okay folks, we're getting to the end of our series. I would really like it if you guys would drop me a line about my chapters...I like feedback of all kinds. I like to improve my writing and the only way I can do that is if I get a response...Please respond.

PLEASE READ: I have given Harry a non-Cannon piece of jewelry so just go with it.

17. Facing the future

Harry waited patiently for Hermione the basement of the tower where he had met her earlier since she always studied there on Saturdays. Pacing about he ran through all the possible ways Ginny's 'I want you to be my first' comment could be taken and he always came back to the word 'first'. If anything it showed him she didn't have confidence that they would be together in the future. He had his mother's ring in his pocket always... waiting for the 'right' moment, but it didn't come. Now he wasn't sure it was supposed to.

"Trust her Harry," his mother's voice came ethereally from nowhere in particular. Harry settled his head in his hands. "I am serious Harry James...you have to trust her."

"Where are you?" he asked.

"I'm in the locket around your neck like I always am," Lily answered. "Take it off and make the locket life size."

Harry removed the pendent, opened to his mother's image, and made it large. "That's pretty handy," Harry stated.

"Well it will be even more handy after you get engaged and your father has his sex talk with you," Lily contended.

Harry chuckled a bit then became serious, "She doesn't think we're gonna make it."

"That is what you think she means...you haven't talked it through with her so you don't know," his mother stated simply.

"How can what she said be taken any other way?"

"What did she say Harry?"

"She said she wanted me to be her first."

Lily shook her head, "You ever consider the fact that she just meant what she said...no other motives or implications. Ginny just told you she wanted to lose her virginity to you. No comment on the future...Simply the truth."

"If there is a first then it implies there is a second," Harry fumed.

"Or there is a first and an only," she answered. "Listen to me kid. I didn't send you visions of a random girl you were dating to get your hopes up. I sent you a sincere possibility. Don't doubt her...don't doubt me."

Harry looked at his mother one last time, "I love you."

"I love you too," Lils said as Harry shrunk her back to size and refastened the necklace about his throat.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Ginny observed Harry for a time pacing and muttering before sitting down again with his head in his hands. He still expected Hermione to call or come by so he was a bit startled when Ginny walked in. "Hey handsome."

"Ginny." Harry went to get up.

"No…stay. You're fine. I'll talk. You listen…okay?"

"Why?" he questioned.

"Ach...no talking," she muttered.

Harry nodded.

"When I was eleven years old you saved my life. You risked life and limb to save me. And it rightly nearly cost you your life. It was only natural for me to have a bit of hero worship. It was a crush for a long while. Until the day I realized I was just Ron's little sister to you and that was all I was ever going to be."

Harry opened his mouth to say something.

"Ach…I'm not done," Gin commanded.

Harry smiled, "Yes ma'am."

Ginny smirked, "You came to our home in the summer and I learned a ton about you but still I was just a Weasley…not a word from you…" Harry nodded raising his hands in defense. "This is when the story changes so pay attention," she admonished, "I had the realization when I was thirteen that I liked you, not the boy who lived, not the great Harry Potter, not my savior. I liked you…the boy who would sit at my kitchen table and smile at me first thing in the morning like I was supposed to be there next to him."

Ginny took a deep breath, "I realized my fourth year that I had a vague connection with you that seemed to afford me the sense of where you were. I never mentioned it to anyone because it seemed dumb."

Harry looked at her confusedly, which caused her to smirk. "I don't have one of those handy little maps Harry, yet I can always find you. Why is that?"

Harry stared at her, "What do you mean?"

Ginny sat down beside him, "You were right in saying we were bonded down in the Chamber. How I'm not entirely sure. However I know I can feel you. Hell I even knew you were in the room when you had your invisibility cloak on...I can feel you...I can feel where you are and in what direction I need to go to find you. Since we have been together there has never been a day that when you were hurt or hiding I didn't come find you."

He blinked a few times in realization. Harry just naturally assumed that Ginny would find him in those situations. That given enough time she would always come in at just the right moment. "You can feel me?"

Ginny nodded. "I always took it as a sign that we were supposed to be together. It never occurred to me otherwise."

Harry's brow wrinkled, "Then why did you say you wanted me to be your first?"

Ginny shook her head, "Harry this is the wizarding world. Most people fall in love at school and get married. It is very rare otherwise. We are into your seventh year and my sixth. That means that this is the only year I get to have you close before your destiny takes over. I know you come from the muggle world where they do things differently… you are trapped by so many things that you can't control that you have no choice over…I just didn't want you to feel being with me was one of them."

"You were afraid if you told me that you could feel me and where I was...that we were bonded that you would run me off?"

"Not run you off, just take away another choice of yours…another avenue. So much of your future was written on Halloween when you were fifteen months old. I didn't want to add to that sense of limitation."

She paused again, "Saying I wanted you to be my first was more a statement of desire for you to be the person I give my virginity to than anything else. I know you never want to push our physical relationship and I love you for that...so I wanted you to know I was okay. I was ready...I trusted you. I figured we would figure out the future stuff as it became present."

Harry laughed softly, and then laughed some more, louder this time.

"What's so funny?" Ginny asked almost annoyed at his response.

Harry reached over and settled Ginny in his lap intertwining their fingers. "Trust me?"

"Always," she whispered.

"Do that thing to my scar with your tongue that I asked you to stop doing because it was too intense…then kiss the scar."

"Harry I really don't want to have sex in the basement of the tower."

"No…I just want to show you…Oh…I see your point," he murmured softly.

"Yeah," she contended.

"Ginny?"

"Hmm?"

"One little semantic thing?" Harry stated calmly.

"What's that?" Gin answered from his lap.

"Can you stop calling it sex? I don't want to have sex with you. I want to make love to you."

A small smile spread across her face. "Yes sir."

A/N: Yes they are going to have sex...two chapters from now...and the epilogue. Both will have the explicit versions on my website.

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