Dance With Me
Summary: Bill and Fleur's wedding. Try as he may, Harry just can't take his eyes off of Ginny. ONESHOT.
A/N – just a short drabble. Some thoughts in my head and writing this little thingy helps clear the mind. It's a bit weird but oh well. I just want you all to know that I'm currently working on the fic I told you about. Yes, an HG but nothing like you've ever seen or thought about before. I've really planned this one and it's almost halfway written. Almost. It's not long like my others but its (hopefully) good. So don't worry if you're thinking I've left you guys – I haven't. I've just been on a hiatus. And I'll back back soon-ish.
Harry wandered around the garden, spying the odd garden gnome who had escaped Mrs Weasley's clutches in the mad preparations for the wedding. He felt eyes on his back and he squared his shoulders, turning his eyes towards the orange sky. People, especially the Weasley's, had sensed a quick withdrawal from everything going on. He distanced himself not only from Ginny, but from everybody.
Not on purpose, of course. The only person he had purposely withdrawn from was Ginny but he couldn't help it now, halfway through summer. September loomed before him, a usually happy month that now looked bleak and dark. He kept hoping time would just freeze or something so he wouldn't have to know that all of his friends were boarding the Hogwarts Express while he started a journey whose end was unknown until he reached it.
He had thought… He had hoped so much that he would be able to enjoy the summer. Spend it with Ron and Hermione, all of them trying to cling on to a carefree childhood that was slipping quickly through their fingers like grains of sand. What childhood? He had never had a proper one. And now his teenage years of learning and love and life were replaced with fear and danger. This summer though, had taught him just how set apart he was from even his best friends. He was lonely, he was alone… he was the one nobody knew quite what to say to anymore. Oh yes, they wanted to speak to him, laugh with him, act normally with him but they didn't know how to do it. Not that he blamed them. Harry grinned bitterly. If he were somebody else, he wouldn't want anything to do with himself anyway.
Laughter startled him back to the present. Bill led Fleur into the opening dance, holding her slender waist with loving possessiveness. Her silvery hair floated about as he twirled and dipped her before people's eyes. There was regret in Bill's face that perhaps only Harry could see, for Bill too had a path nobody else would follow. Being a curse breaker had many uses in a war against Dark Arts, and Bill would be needed soon. Fleur knew it too, and perhaps that was why she just wasn't able to take her hand out of his – even for a second. Their time together would be brief until after the war.
After the war. It sounded like a paradise, a utopia land. A dream that lingered and teased but was never certain. Harry had been chasing that dream for what felt like years now. He had given everything for this dream and he wasn't even certain it would come true in the end.
He turned and focused his attention on the dancing now. More people had joined Bill and Fleur and each and every person had a certain look in their eye. It was the same look on Bill's face, on Fleur's face, on Mrs Weasley's face when she watched all of her family home safe, but only for the time being. It was a look of fear, fear of the unknown. This was the last happy day for a lot of people here, Harry included.
He watched Hermione and Ron dance together, slower than everybody else, as if they too were asking time to freeze just for a while. They were talking quietly, oblivious to their surroundings. They could be talking about the war, or him or marriage for all Harry knew. Harry sighed as he watched them. They just wouldn't understand. This was his battle, his fight and search for the Horcruxes. They needed to stay safe or be at Hogwarts or just with each other, not out there risking their lives with him.
"That's what we do, Harry," Hermione had argued back after Harry said this.
"Yeah, mate, we're coming with you whether you like it or not," Ron had said.
Harry wanted to scream at them, hurt them, convince them not them not to come but it was useless. Both of their faces were set like stone as they told him they were a Trio. A tiny part, deep, deep inside of him was relieved however that he wouldn't be alone when the time came. As much as doing this alone was probably better, and in some ways safer and more secret, Ron and Hermione being there would make the road just that one shade lighter.
His eyes travelled over the small crowd and fell on Mr and Mrs Weasley. They sat side by side at the bride and groom's table, holding hands and watching their large family with worry and love. A million times this summer Harry had wanted to thank them for just being there, despite the fact he barely talked to them and remained in the garden and the attic for most of the summer. A million times he had wanted to hug them or just let them know that they were like his family. He suspected they already knew though, his emotions had always tended to show on his face easily.
His eyes drifted further over the dancers, watching the sun's last orange tinges disappear. This day was ending and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The decorations caught the last rays of light and sparkled for seconds before the hundreds or candles lit themselves all throughout the garden.
And then Harry's eyes caught on an orange flame that wasn't from the sun. Ginny was watching the dancing with a wistful expression on her face, the candlelight was reflecting in her eyes and Harry felt his gaze stop wandering and glue itself to her familiar form. Probably the hardest part of this summer was having Ginny so close to him and him not being able to reach out to her. She respected this of course and hadn't tried in the slightest to catch his attention or speak to him directly. She was too respectful of his decision for that, even if she didn't agree. Perhaps it was this approach that caused a very undesired effect on Harry. The more she treated him like a stranger – in a polite, nice way – the more he wanted to touch and talk to her.
Just like that her eyes snapped towards him. Little did he know she knew exactly when he watched her and was tempted to touch her, but she held back and waited for him to come to her. Merlin knew Harry was being too noble for his own good in this decision, but he had to break it first.
She stared at him from across the dance floor. Her expression was hopeful but resolute; she wouldn't go to him if he didn't go to her. She stared at him for a second longer and then turned her eyes back to the dancing but Harry just kept drinking the sight of her in.
He bit back a protest as somebody asked her to dance, reminding himself they were not together. She moved flawlessly, smiling vacantly at her partner when he commented on something but now her brown eyes remained locked on Harry's every time she turned in the dance. Those eyes haunted him some nights, accusing him but never angry and never saying anything. Harry couldn't tear his gaze away and it wasn't long before he found himself before her and whoever she was dancing with.
Ginny's arms fell limply to their sides as he stopped beside her. Her partner melted away and it seemed that he was standing there with her with a million miles between them but nothing at all.
"Dance with me." A command, but a gentle one.
"Hey, Harry."
She sounded tired.
A new song started up and even without thinking and by some sort of magnetism, their hands met and Harry led her across the dance floor. They danced in silence for a couple of songs, unaware of gleeful sideways glances from family members and friends, just content to be able to touch each other for only a little while. It scared Harry and Ginny too just how much he had missed her touch. Even after everything their lives had thrown at them, they were so young and so inexperienced to feel this way.
Harry knew, in the moment by the candlelight that there would be no one else except for Ginny. It wasn't a feeling, or a wish, it was a cold, hard fact and he could tell Ginny knew the fact too. They would grow old, or become separated or whatever happens that causes a love to die but theirs wouldn't. Even a mere half a summer apart had taught them both that. He just knew that whatever twist of fate had made him the Boy-Who-Lived, had also made Ginny the one for him.
So he spoke. He told her he loved her, told her that she could do whatever she wanted and that just wasn't going to change. He said he was going to come back and marry her, live with her and love her. It didn't occur to him in this safe moment around friends that there was a chance he wouldn't come back, a big chance. He loved someone, and that was reason enough to live. He told her he was sorry for avoiding her for half the summer, it was a waste.
"Yeah, I knew it was a waste but I figured you would come to your senses," Ginny said seriously. "Well, I hoped you would. Because I knew since the instant I saw you that somehow, I would end up with you."
To both of them, that schoolgirl crush seemed to prove what they were both thinking. They both spoke earnestly, making plans quickly for the future. Ginny would wait for him, and she would fight, too.
"And you can't stop me following you to the end of the earth, either," she said. "If I want to, I will."
"I know," said Harry.
At that moment Ron and Hermione came up behind him. The moon was hight in the sky now and the day was almost over. It signified the beginning of the end, the last stretch of fighting that would determine a winner. With Ron and Hermione behind him and Ginny next to him, holding his hand, Harry felt his spirits lift.
The war loomed still before him, but just this evening has changed things. He was ready.
He leant over and kissed Ginny, letting it say everything he hadn't let himself say all summer. He could feel her smiling as he held her and he smiled back.