I'll Sock Him One

by charmingly-holly

I’ve come to assume, over the years, just out of plain experience, that it is not a common occurrence to have people frolic about on the roof of my house. Oneshot. HG.

A/N: Wow...two in one day.

That's a first.

Long one-shot. Harry/Ginny ish. Just before he goes off Voldy-hunting.

Before you think it, it actually isn't angsty.

I'm not sure what it is, really. Why don't you tell me?

In other words, review!

-h

Disclaimer: No!

I'll Sock Him One

For Leaf-Blower Boy,
Without whom this story would never have come into existence.
Thank you, dear boy, for falling off my roof.
And no thank you, dear God, for making me be in my bra at the time.

I've come to assume, over the years, just out of plain experience, that it is not a common occurrence to have people frolic about on the roof of my house.

If you think about it, it's rather a general fact, this. Frolicking about people's roofs. I don't think you could find that under any "Common Past-times" lists. Or under any "Uncommon Past-times" list, come to think of it. It doesn't exactly scream "past-time," in all honesty. And unless you're a roofer, I wouldn't call it common either. And even then, roofers don't usually frolic, I don't think. Unless they're gay. Which, I'm sure you'd agree, is extremely rare for a roofer.

So it still wouldn't be common.

Then again, Harry Potter isn't a common sort of guy.

Alright, so maybe "frolicking" isn't exactly the most fitting word. Harry doesn't really frolic most of the time. He rather enjoys…how should I put it?

Stalking?

Yes, stalking fits nicely.

So, I shall begin again: I've come to assume, over the years, just out of plain experience, that Harry's don't usually stalk about the roof of my house.

The floors of my house? Yes. The yard in front of my house? Yes. His room in my house? Yes. The driveway of my house? Yes. The kitchen of my house? Yes. The pond behind my house? Yes. (Though he more stalked into the pond rather than onto it.)

(You couldn't have described him as a happy hippogriff after that experience.)

(Though I found it rather amusing.)

And then he stalked back up to the house and stalked up the stairs (not an easy feat, I assure you. It's really quite difficult to stalk up stairs without stomping up them or storming up them or any other adjective that describes what you do to stairs when you engage in the activity of walking fiercely up them when you are royally peeved.), and stalked into his room, and stalked into his clothes (I'm telling you, he's an expert at stalking. He's made it a bit of an art form. I've told him he should write a book about it. He stalked away from me. Chapter 24- How to handle sarcasm: Just stalk away.)

Have I gotten to my point yet?

Well, if my point is that Harry is a stalker (in the walking sense, not the creepy and psychotic sense), then yes.

However, that is not my point. Or, well, it's one of my points, but it's not the main point. I think.

…This is confusing. Shall I begin again…again?

Yes, I suppose I shall.

Hem-hem…

The morning was quiet, a light mist shrouded the house and whispered into the cracks and crannies to tickle the spiders awake and adorn their webs with shimmering jewels. Sounds were muffled by the heavy air, allowing a blue jay to fly over the house and call out in greeting to the great orb peeking over the horizon without disturbing the slumbering forms inside the house.

Except for one, that is. He was a rather light sleeper.

Plus he was grumpy, and things like the soft-waking calls of birds rather ticked him off in the mornings.

But we'll talk about him later.

A window groaned and a girl poked her flaming head (not literally, mind you. She just had red hair. Otherwise I might have used an adjective a bit more frantic sounding than "poked" to describe the way she was handling her head. Like maybe "catapulted." Or "hurled." Or…moving on.) out to breathe in the crisp and fresh early morning air and close her eyes in rapture of the quiet morning.

In other words, I opened the window and stuck my head out to try and enjoy the cool morning, only to have my face attacked by a wet spider web and a bird dropping to splat onto the windowsill this close to my hand.

Of course, I was a bit too preoccupied with the spider web to pay much mind to the bird dropping that had plopped itself in the "this close" vicinity of my hand. Wet spider webs tend to be a bit difficult to extract from dry hair, and it took much frantic stomping of feet and squealing of voice and thrashing of hands through said dry hair to achieve my task. The result was a bit of a Wild Harpy with Flaming Hair from Hell look. Buy now and get Hysterical Eyes and Heavy Breathing through Nostrils ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Though the eyes and the breathing died down a bit once I realized the spider had not been occupying its web at the time of my attack, and so these two actions were replaced with a disgusted scrunching of the nose and curling of the upper lip when I spotted the bird crud.

I thought probably Madam Trelawney would have a field day with this particular morning and that my Divination for Beginners book lying abandoned in the bottom of my trunk could surely give a meaningful and in-depth analysis of these two events occurring two minutes into sunrise while Jupiter was eloping with Venus and Saturn was having a tea party with Uranus. But I decided to use simple arithmetic to determine my fate.

Following my awakening this particular morning, two bad things could have happened to me. However, only one did. One is half of two, therefore I was going to have a half-bad-day.

This induced a shrug from myself, as I figured a half-bad-day to be half better than a full-bad-day half more than half of the time.

Ish.

I decided that, as I doubted attempting to sleep now would get me anywhere after my adrenaline had been so expertly rushed by a rogue spider web, I would change and take a bit of a fly around the pond. Brush my fingers across the glass top of the still water as the sun finished rising and the birds rustled in the trees and the water bugs danced along the surface of the pond.

Who says I can't be poetic?

I padded over to my armoire and tugged off my sleep shirt (which was actually an old shirt of Bill's that I'd "borrowed" last time he was back from Romania). Big scary dragon on the front that spits flames (fake ones, people. Honestly. Idiots.) every once in a while. It makes me feel protected. Think about it, if you were an intruder, and you'd come to kill me (say your name's…oh, I don't know…Kolderport, how 'bout?) and you rip back the sheets so you can get me and you see a big flame breathing dragon staring back at you, what would you do?

Run the hell away, right?

Right.

So, I tugged on some pants and was just clasping my bra when I heard a noise coming from the vicinity of the bird crud. It was an ominous noise. Rather like it wasn't supposed to be a noise that would happen there.

Kind of like a footstep.

An intruder. Right when I'd taken off my dragon shirt.

Well, damn. Begin the half-bad-day…now.

Now the intelligent thing to do in this situation would be to bolt to the door that was no more than three feet to my right and run as fast as I could to Romania where the real dragons live and breathe fire and growl and claw and squash intruders like ickle bitty bugs with their big huge gargantuan feet.

But, this being me…I didn't.

What I did do was whip around to face the window with my eyes wide and my heart connipting like Professor Snape's left eyelid when Lockhart's accosting him with a quill and signing his favorite potions book right across the instructions for his favorite potion.

Yes, I know. That's a lot of connipting. It's amazing I didn't have a heart attack.

And there stalked Harry (even though he was standing stock still. Amazing, I've really got to ask him how he does it.) with his eyes wide and his heart (I'm guessing here, as I am not literally in possession of his heart. That would be disgusting.) connipting like…something that connipts excessively.

I stared at him.

He stared at me.

We stared at each other, green locking with brown, emotions swirling around us and blurring our surroundings until we were in a cosmic void of romanticism, electricity running between our gazes and piercing our hearts with white hot heat and setting loose flocks of Canadian Geese in our stomachs.

Or, you know, I just shrieked. Piercingly. Like the gnomes do when you hurl them far enough away and they smack against the tree in the middle of the field and slide down it to crumple in a heap at the bottom only to have to get up and shriek away because Crookshanks is barreling after them with a hungry light in his eye and his claws glinting in the sunlight and blood dripping from his razor sharp kneazle-cat teeth…

Well…that was morbid.

Anywho, I shrieked. Which, in turn, caused him to shriek, his eyes going wide. Though his shriek sounded nothing like a gnome. It was more like…a frog. A shrieking frog. You know, those ones that keep you up at night?

Ya, those. That's what he sounded like. A froggy shriek.

We shrieked at each other for a while, both of us standing (well, he was stalking at the same time as standing, but we've already establish that) stock still.

That is, until he fell backwards off the roof, shrieking all the way.

CRASH, snap snap, smash, scuffle scuffle, scramble, groooooaaaan.

Silence.

Until…

"Holy shit! Harry!"

I ran over to the window and leaned over the edge of the roof, peering down at the bushes below my third story window.

"Holy shit!" I said again, mainly because I couldn't quite think of anything else to say. The man had just fallen off my roof. I was slightly speechless.

Harry groaned and rolled off the bush, landing on his face on the grass. He groaned again and didn't move.

"Harry? Are you alright?"

Well, that was a dumb question, wasn't it? Is he alright? Well, I don't know, he did just fall off a roof, so logic would say that no, he probably wasn't alright. But then again, this is Harry we're talking about, he has more lives than all of Miss Figg's cats combined.

Harry groaned into the grass again and turned over slowly, lying on his back with his eyes closed and his face turned up towards the sky, "Ya. Ya…I…ya, I think I'm alright," he said, still with his eyes closed. He exhaled slowly through his nose and rubbed a hand over his eyes.

"How is it that you always manage to survive all these near-death experiences? You just fell out of a third story window!"

His mouth quirked a bit, and he opened his eyes and looked up at me, seemingly ready to speak. Instead, he squeaked and snapped his eyes shut again, clapping his hands over them for good measure.

"I'm not looking! I swear!"

Not looking at what?

"Not looking at wha-" I stopped and looked down at my torso. My unclothed torso. Except for the bra, that is. But it wasn't exactly…conservative. "OH MY MERLIN!"

I ducked back into my room and grabbed my sleep shirt, shoving it over my head before crawling out of my window butt-first.

I wasn't thinking about the stairs, alright? He had just fallen off my roof! I was a wee bit stressed.

I scrambled over to the drainpipe on the side of my house and shimmied down it, braving all the spiders I was sure lived underneath it. I thought it was a rather terrific feat, if I do say so myself.

Harry, however, was unimpressed. He stood up as I got to the bottom and stared at me for a moment.

"Is there any reason why you just crawled down your gutter?"

…Um, well, seemed like a good idea at the time?

I decided to be witty.

"It's a drainpipe. The gutter's the thing around the edges, see?"

Harry quirked an eyebrow at me and was about to retort when the dragon on the front my shirt belched out a plume of flames. His eyes went down to it. He did a Weasley blush.

So did I.

"Umm, I…you..." I decided to be redundant, "…are you okay?"

He looked at me, still blushing, and nodded.

I nodded back.

He nodded again.

So did I.

He no-

"Okay, we should stop nodding."

"Ya…uhh…ya, I'm…I'm really sorry about," he gestured to my window vaguely and looked at his shoes.

I nodded. And then I remembered…

"Right, so why were you stalking about my roof anyways? That's not exactly normal behavior…"

His eyes clouded a bit and he turned away, stalking away towards the pond

"I wasn't stalking," he mumbled.

I jogged up beside him, "Yes, you were. Just like you're doing now," he glared at me and stalked a bit slower, "And you're not allowed to Chapter 25 me."

Half of his furrowed brow lifted as he raised an eyebrow at me, causing half his face to be broodish and the other to be confused. I decided to call it "conbrood."

Now, that takes talent.

"I'm not allowed to what?"

"Chapter 25 me."

Harry stared at me, "…What?"

I sighed exasperatedly, "Chapter 25 me. 'What to do when you don't want to answer a question: Just stalk away,' " he was still staring at me confusedly. I rolled my eyes and continued, "In your book you're writing. About stalking as an artform. Which I think is an excellent title, by the way. You could do it in pretty curly letters," here I held my hands up in front of me, looking off into the distance and speaking in a dramatic tone, " 'Stalking as an Artform,' by the infamous, legendary, conbroodific Harry Potter," I let my hands drop, "Of course, I'll want a percentage of the profits for coming up with the book title and subject material. It's only fair."

Harry stopped and stared at me, "What the hell is conbroodific?"

I turned to face him, looking at him like it was obvious, "You."

He just looked at me, "…Right, so what does it mean exactly?"

"It's a juxtaposition of 'confused' and 'broodish.' "

His eyes clouded and he started stalking again, "I'm not brooding."

"Yes, you are. You're stalking too."

He made an exasperated noise and slowed down a bit.

"See, now you're just stalking slowly. Still stalking though. It's kind of amazing."

He ignored me. I decided to change tactics.

"So what were you doing stalking about my roof? Other than to play Peeping Tom, I mean."

Harry choked and turned scarlet, "I wasn't…you….I didn't…no, I…not…I wasn't doing that!"

Very articulate, you are, dear Harrykins.

I raised my eyebrow at him skeptically, "Oh, you weren't? Then what were you doing? Because it sure looked to me like you wanted to see me naked…"

Harry turned, if possible, even redder and made a choking noise, "No, I…no, it was…I was…" he looked at me and sighed, "I was brooding," he finished.

Ah ha! The Horcrux of the problem!

Hahaha. Haha, snigger snigger.

Ha…ha…ya, not funny.

"Mmmhmm, and what were you brooding about exactly?"

Harry shifted uncomfortably and ran a hand through his hair, "Just…stuff…" he avoided my gaze, looking down at his toes and then up at the trees surrounding the pond.

I wasn't letting him off that easy, "Oh yes, stuff is such brood-worthy material. I always brood about stuff, it's hardly unavoidable."

I reached down and pluck a blade of grass from the ground, holding it between the knuckles of my thumbs tightly and bringing my hands up to my mouth so that I could blow into the little space between my thumbs. It made a high-pitched whirring noise, and Harry stared at it for a moment in a conbroodish way.

I stopped blowing and cocked my head to the side, looking at him over the tops of my thumbs. "Bill taught it to me. Amusing way to fill the silence, I always thought."

Harry looked at me with his brow furrowed for a bit longer before suddenly turning on his heel, sighing, and collapsing onto the ground cross-legged. I looked at him a moment before shrugging and doing the same, still occasionally blowing into my thumbs.

He plucked a piece of grass and started lining it up between his thumbs.

"I don't know if I can do it," he said, frowning at the blade of grass between his thumbs and bringing his hands up to blow on it. The green blade merely fluttered out between his thumbs and spiraled to the ground. He frowned at it and picked another one.

I watched as he lined the blade up between his thumbs and thought about what he had just said. I knew that "it" wasn't making a strange noise with a blade of grass. I knew what "it" was, and I knew that he really hated talking about "it."

I also knew that "it" was in the very near future. So did he.

But I decided he didn't need to hear that right then.

"Sure you can," I said easily, plucking him a longer and wider blade of grass and taking hold of one of his hands to line it up against his knuckles, "You just have to set it up right, and then you make your music."

I could tell he was looking at me, perhaps with that ever-present frown and thoughtful, haunted look in his eyes, but I didn't look up and instead carefully aligned his right hand to the blade resting against his left thumb.

We both knew we were talking about the same thing, and we both knew it wasn't the grass.

I raised his hands to his mouth and caught his eyes with mine. His gaze was…intense.

And honestly, since I just can't ever have anything romantic happen in my life, all I could think about were fresh-pickled toads.

I dropped my hands from his and smiled a bit as he blew on the grass, making that high-pitched whirring noise that was a bit like a cricket.

I nudged him in the side with my shoulder. "See?" I said cheerfully, "Make your own music."

He brought his thumbs down from his lips and looked at me, frowning still and not saying anything. Though, and it's really quite extraordinary, he was still stalking. While sitting down.

I broke the silence with this observation.

He snorted and rolled his eyes.

It was enough to lift the heavy mood a bit, at least, and I went back to plucking through the grass trying to find a suitable music-making blade, waiting for him to say what he wanted to say. I plucked one up and began aligning it to my thumbs when he spoke.

"But…but what if I'm…what if I'm really…bad…really bad at making music?"

It was a pathetic attempt to continue with the analogy, really, but this was Harry, after all, and he never claimed to be the most eloquent of people. In fact, no one ever claimed him to be the most eloquent of people. Not even Romilda Vane, and she was more obsessed with him than I had been in first year.

I finished aligning the blade before I spoke again, "You won't be. You've already done it once, haven't you?" I raised my eyebrows at him briefly and then turned to blow into my thumbs.

He watched me make my music for a little while longer with a contemplative look on his face before shaking his head and turning back to look at the pond. He pulled his knees up and rested his elbows on them, his too-big-for-his-body hands hanging between his legs. He fiddled with a blade of grass in his fingers.

"Well, it doesn't matter if I can make music if I can't even have what I really want," he said, not taking his eyes off the blade of grass in his hands and a slight flush creeping up his neck slowly.

I supposed he thought he had said something embarrassing, considering he was blushing. Probably he thought he was being right coherent talking like that. But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.

I stared at him blankly for a moment before repeating the last of his sentence, "What you really want?"

He nodded and blushed a bit more.

I frowned and tried to figure out what in Merlin's name he was on about.

"Okay…" I frowned at him, "So, what do you really want that you can't have by making music?"

Yes, I realized it made no sense. But, then again, the whole conversation made very little sense, so I thought it fit.

Harry looked at me like I'd just declared my undying love to the splatter of bird crud on the window sill of my room.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, completely confused.

I threw my hands up and sat up a little straighter, tossing my hair back and fixing it into a ponytail for lack of anything else to do, "Well, I don't know. I was trying to figure out what you were talking about!" I finished tying my hair back and glared at him slightly.

He frowned a bit at me and went back to fiddling with the grass in his hands.

And didn't say anything.

I sighed and leaned back onto the grassy embankment, keeping my knees bent and resting my hands on my stomach. I'd already gotten him to talk more than he had all summer. It wasn't likely he would keep at it now.

"Well, I was talking about you," he said suddenly, not moving from his position beside me.

Well, maybe I was wrong, then. Surprising, I'm hardly ever wrong…

Right.

I glanced up at him curiously, "Me?"

He nodded and didn't say anything more.

"When were you talking about me?"

He let out a short breath and turned around to look at me in annoyance, "Just now!"

I raised an eyebrow at him, "Well don't act all irritated, Harry. I was just asking a question."

He glared at me a bit and then turned back around. I looked at the back of his messy head of hair and frowned.

So, when was he talking about me, again?

I was just about to ask him when he started talking again, still not moving a muscle besides the ones in the hand fiddling with the blade of grass.

"Sometimes I think it will all be gone when I come back."

I tensed. He was talking about leaving. He hadn't talked about leaving to me since Dumbledore's funeral.

In fact, he hadn't talked to me at all since Dumbledore's funeral.

"Well, some of it will be," I told him, rather bluntly. He looked up in surprise at that; I'm sure he was expecting unconditional reassurance and motherly cooing from me. I couldn't decide if he was glad that's not what I had done or not, "But not all of it. Not the important stuff. I'll still-," I stopped myself. Well now, I couldn't exactly finish that sentence like that, now could I. What a terribly bad idea, that. Declaring my undying love for him just when I'd somewhat managed to get over it.

Stupid, really. Right stupid.

But, of course, considering my half-bad-day couldn't just stop at half, Harry noticed my sudden silence and looked at me sharply.

"You'll still what?" His eyes were boring into mine and I suddenly felt like I was in a very tight space despite the fact I was outside, by a pond, on a very much open grassy embankment, with endless sky above my head.

I really hate cramped spaces. Even hypothetical ones. Something to do with my first year and that stupid Chamber…

I cleared my throat and ducked my head a bit to hide the flush creeping up my neck and face.

"I'll still…um…I'll…still…I'll still…be here," I whispered the last part and prayed he wouldn't take it how I meant it. I'd managed to hold back from telling him, "Well, Harry, you are the daft one, aren't you. I'll still love you, you prat. Geez. Boys. Thickheaded, the lot of you."

But I thought that probably would add just a little bit more turmoil to those swirling green eyes of his. He's noble like that. He'd feel all guilty for dumping me and blame my misery all on himself.

Which, if I wanted to be bitter about it, it was partially his fault. Him being all nice and noble and goofy and handsome and Harry-like and all.

I felt Harry shift beside me and lifted my head to look up at him. Way up at him, as a matter of fact. He had stood up and was now pacing in front of me, grabbing at his hair and flailing his arms around. I sat up to observe him.

It would have been funny in a different situation.

"See, that's the thing Ginny! That's the thing! What if you aren't? What if you aren't here?" I opened my mouth to protest at this, but he continued on unhindered, "What if…what if they get you? Then what? How am I supposed to handle that, huh? What if you're not here when I get back because they've come and…and what if they-"

I cut him off here. "They won't," I said, watching as he his hand stopped halfway through running through his hair and his feet stop moving so that he stood in front of me with his head down, staring at the ends of his shoes.

And, for the first time all summer, he wasn't stalking.

"But what if they do?" he asked, his hand falling from his hair and his head lifting slightly to look at me. I stared up at him blankly.

What if they did?

I ran my own hand through my hair. This conversation was getting too heavy. I didn't want to think about this. I just wanted to make fun of him for stalking everywhere some more.

But, of course, he'd stopped stalking.

Bloody prat.

I sighed as my hand reached the end of my messy and tangled red hair, coming out with a little bit of left over spider web clinging between my fingers. I looked at the web, "Well…then they do."

I couldn't think of any way else to put it.

Harry's hands went to his hair again and he looked up at the sky, breathing deeply before looking back down at me.

"I don't think I could handle that," he said, "How can I handle that when all I want…when all I want is…how can I? How can I, Ginny? How can I," he seemed to be struggling for the right words, "Look, it's like the music we were talking about. How can I make my own music when all I want is…all I want is the one who makes the music?"

I looked up at him blankly.

"Pardon?" I asked.

He sat down suddenly again and rested his elbows against his knees and his forehead against his hands, "Giiinnnyyyy," he groaned, rubbing his head.

Well, what in the world was he whining about?

I looked at him, "Um…yes?"

He looked up at me, "Don't make me say it again. Please don't make me say it again."

I looked at him blankly.

"Say what again?"

He groaned into his hands and blew up on his fringe irritably.

I thought it was rather childish.

He looked up at me again, "The music, Ginny. The music. I can't make my own music when all I want is the one who taught me how to make the music in the first place!"

I looked at him blankly some more, until….

"Wait…me?" I asked, pointing at myself with my thumb.

He glared at me, "No, Ginny. Music. We're talking about music."

I stared at him. The boy was so confusing. Why couldn't we just say what we were supposed to say?

I nodded my head slowly, "Right, okay. Music. So, you want the one that taught you how to make the music?" I asked, continuing with the analogy he was so adamant about.

He nodded, "Right."

"But you can't have the one who taught you how to make the music because you dumped her?"

Harry glared again, "I didn't dump her, I just…" he stopped and shook his head fiercely, "Wait, there is no her! There's just the music! Not a her, an it."

I looked at him, highly affronted.

"I am not an it!" I yelled incredulously. He groaned and pulled at his hair in frustration.

"It's not you, Ginny! Gods, would you just go with the analogy here?"

I huffed and crossed my arms across my chest. "Fine, I'll go with the analogy. Merlin…" I glanced up at him before uncrossing my arms and continuing, "So, you can't have the music-maker because she," here he glared at me. I rolled my eyes, "Because it got dumped by you and-"

"Ginny! The analogy!"

I glared at him and then sighed, "Fine. The analogy. Whatever. You can't have the music-maker because…why?"

Harry sighed in a long-suffering sort of way, "Because I want her to be safe."

"It," I corrected.

He glared, "It," he said.

I acted like I was thinking this through. "How do you keep music safe?" I asked.

Harry threw himself back against the embankment and groaned once again. I lay down beside him.

"Okay, Harry. I'll stop," I said, looking up at the morning sky. "But you should know that she'll wait for you."

I felt him tense beside me, "Really?"

I nodded, picking out another blade of grass and starting to line it up between my thumbs. "Yep."

"Even…even after I dumped her?" he asked.

I glanced over at him, "It, remember?"

He waved a hand dismissively, "It, right. Even though I dumped…it?"

I blew into the grass and nodded. Harry grinned widely.

"I'll come back, Ginny."

I nodded again before removing my hands from my mouth and looking at him. "Good. Because otherwise that music would have to sock you one."

He chuckled at that and pulled up his own blade of grass. "I think the music will probably sock me one anyways. Probably she'll do a bit more than just sock me one."

I contemplated this a bit as he brought his hands to his lips, "You're right. She'll probably snog you senseless first to reduce the pain. She isn't completely heartless, you know."

Harry chuckled and blew into his thumbs. "Ya," he said, "I know."

And that was that.

We didn't snog, though I can tell you something, I had a hard time restraining myself. I did though, if only because I thought it would make it harder for him to leave when he finally had to. I'm an exceptionally good snogger, you know, people don't pass up a snog from me easily…Like I said, I'm not completely heartless.

He stopped stalking the rest of the summer, and I liked to figure it was because of all we'd talked about at the pond, even though I think part of it was my mother's cooking and part Ron and Hermione cornering him in his room one day…

But those are different stories.

Bill and Fleur's wedding was a week after the Pond Incident, and it was all I could do not to act any differently when I knew they'd be leaving soon. Harry and I, amazingly, hadn't acted any different towards one another after he fell off my roof and I climbed down after him. He, I think, did it because he knew if he acted any different with me, he wouldn't be able to leave so easily. It helped him to have something to think about in the future that didn't involve evil warlords and magically preserved foods.

I did it because I didn't want to think about him leaving.

And so now I write this, at the brink of war, in an ungodly hour of the morning with no spider webs in sight since I cleaned them all a week ago after The Incident. I'm getting ready to go downstairs and weather the storm that is sure to come when Mum figures it out, and I can tell you something; I'm not looking forward to it.

Though, then again, who ever looks forward to war?

My hand is cramping now, and I wish they would hurry it up. I've been waiting here the past three hours, since before the sun was up.

Well…actually, the sun still isn't up. I got up extraordinarily early.

I suppose I want to be here for the beginning of this thing. Not many people get to see the beginning, it's usually passed before they realize it's gone, lost on the wind and tangible only through memories.

I just want to know that it's started. I don't want to be caught off guard.

…And there it was. A high-pitched whirring, just loud enough to creep through my window and tickle my ears. It came from the top of the hill, and I suppose if I had looked fast enough I would have seen him disappear over the edge of it.

But I didn't. I didn't really want to see him disappear.

But that's beginnings, isn't it? You never see them even if you think you want to.

So now it's started. I'll shut this book and put it in my dresser, not to be opened until the end of all of this. I'll comb my hair out, slip on some jeans, and pad downstairs to help Mum with breakfast. I'll let her ask me if they left today because I know she's not as ignorant to their plan as she pretends to be. And when she does, I'll tell her the truth.

They'll come back though, Mum. He'll come back.

And when he does, I'll sock him one.