Falling For A Professor
By: foralskelse
Chapter 4: Do I Need to Spell it Out?
Ginny woke up the next morning, the smell of the night's rain wafted through her open window. She started mumbling a bit, "Saturday," That night she told Kiki and Dawn what happened, Xander said he would tell Colin.
Ginny rolled out of bed to find her dorm empty, she checked the clock, "Its 10am, you sleepy head!" It yelled to her. Ginny growled and pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a Weird Sisters T-shirt that Tonks gave her.
Ginny slumped down stairs, her stomach growled, she skipped breakfast. When she reached the bottom step, Xander was there and he smiled at her, "Get this," he said, he looked really amused by something, "Colin spent longer in the bathroom today than I did."
"EWW! Xander, I didn't want to hear about that," Ginny got a disgusted look on her face, "Colin is my friend, I really don't appreciate you telling me he is 'Polishing his Broomstick' in the bathrooms!"
Xander laughed, "No! Look," Xander pointed to Colin who just walked up to Dawn. His hair looked wet, "He asked me how to use gel." Xander giggled in Ginny's ear.
"Colin," Dawn smiled sweetly, "did you do something to your hair?"
Colin looked confused for a second and then nodded slowly, "Yes."
"Oh." She said then bent over her book. Colin looked up at Ginny and Xander, both mouthed, "Tell her she looks nice today."
Colin shrugged, "What?" He mouthed.
Ginny rolled her eyes and mouthed again, "She looks pretty!"
Colin nodded and mouthed, "I know."
Xander laughed and mouthed, "Tell her that."
"You look pretty." Colin said quickly.
Dawn looked up and smiled, "Thank you Colin." She looked back down at her book.
Colin smiled for a minute then looked back at Ginny and Xander. Xander mouthed, "Asked her out."
"What?" Colin mouthed, frightened.
Ginny put out two fingers like a little person walking in midair. "Oh!" Colin said, out loud, Dawn looked up and Colin stuttered for a minute then said, "Want to go take a walk?"
Xander hit his forehead with a disgusted look on his face and Ginny tossed her hands up in the air and turned around not wanting to look. 'A walk?' Ginny asked herself, 'Dawn doesn't like that!'
"Sure!" Dawn said, standing up and walking out of the common room with him.
Ginny turned and looked at Xander, both started laughing. "I didn't think she would say yes!" They continued laughing.
Ginny spent the day in the library doing homework with Kiki. Their idea of doing homework together meant sitting in the library doing magazine quizzes and checking out the 7th year Hufflepuff boys taking books off the top shelf.
They didn't skip lunch this time, but noticed who was skipping this meal. "Where is Dawn and Colin?" Ginny asked Xander.
He smiled evilly, "Maybe they are still out on their walk." They began to laugh, Kiki just flipping lazily through her magazine.
However, they did make it for dinner. "Enjoy your walk?" Xander asked Colin who was sitting in between him and Ginny.
Colin didn't answer, he looked to see if Dawn was watching but she was laughing while looking at Kiki's magazine. "Wait," Ginny said looking at his green jumper. "Were you wearing that earlier?"
Colin's eyebrows scrunched together and he put on a frown, "I fell in the mud." He looked utterly unhappy about this and it didn't help that Ginny and Xander began laughing uncontrollably.
Ginny and Xander only shut up when the Headmaster stood up. They glanced over at Dumbledore, who, by-the-way, still looked old. "Students, what with recent events last year," Ginny's smile faded away a little, he was talking about Harry's defeat of Voldemort. She looked over at him, the first time since yesterday. He was looking at her.
Ginny tore her eyes away and put them back on Dumbledore. Why was Harry looking at her? 'Maybe he just wants to apologize,' Ginny told herself, 'he shouldn't, I wanted him to kiss me...maybe he is apologizing because he didn't want to kiss me and he is saying sorry for getting my hopes up, but I was the one who didn't let him--' Ginny thoughts were interrupted by the Headmaster.
"Our houses still aren't very united so, we are going to have a Halloween Masquerade Ball. Everyone will get masks that cover the upper part of their face. There will be dancing and food and there is only 2 rules: 1)Don't tell anyone who you are and 2)Be yourself."
Ginny giggled a bit, "So, be yourself, but don't tell anyone?"
Xander smiled, "Exactly!" Ginny giggled.
"So that means no dates?" Kiki asked.
"Yeah, but," Dawn said, leaning in so only her friends could hear here, "Lets know who each other is so we don't end up dating each other." They all nodded, Colin's agreement was a little later than everyone else.
Ginny leaned over and whispered to Colin, "You can always change costumes halfway through the night." Colin smiled at her.
Ginny and her friends were busy over the next couple of weeks working on their masks and costumes when not in classes or Quidditch practice, which wasn't a lot of time for Ginny and Xander, who were both on the Quidditch team.
Ginny was happy with all her classes now, she was doing so good in most that they hardly gave her any homework, although she always ended up with at least a few inches of homework in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Ginny felt so uncomfortable around Harry, even more that she usually did.
During the class, Ginny was always looking down at her hands and when Harry would call on her she would start out her answer with, "Well, Professor Potter..." keeping her face down, even if she already knew the answer by heart she would pretend to refer to her notes or books, not daring to look at him.
Maybe the sense of distance between him and Ginny made Harry ask almost every question to Ginny and give her 10 points for every right answer. Ginny and her friends were positive that she earned about one hundred points a week for just Harry's class. Of course they do lose about one hundred points a week from Snape.
Ginny seemed to inherit the Twins sense of humor for things, much to the dislike of Snape but Fred and George were only too delighted at this discoverment so they send her numerous bewitched candies and sweets for her to "leave behind" in the common room and watch first years pick them up.
Ginny found, that all the commotion from when a second year who eat a tail toffee (a wonder toffee candy that made the consumer sprout a tail for an hour) was too much for her to try and make her costume. Ginny and her friends would spend times before dinner and during the weekends to run up to their room to make their masks. Ginny's was a dark deep red, Kiki's was bright yellow, and Dawn's was black and gold.
It was about a week before Halloween, which was on a Saturday, and Ginny found herself, once again, in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Ginny, like she always did, was keeping her head down.
"Ewww!" Sara and Beth would yell from the first row as Harry asked them to pet one of his magical creatures, Xander would joke about this in Ginny's ear, "I'm sure," he would whisper, "that they wouldn't mind touching HIS magical creature." Ginny giggled.
"Ew, Xander!" Dawn giggled from behind them.
"Of course," Xander smiled at Dawn and turned his face back to Ginny, "I'm sure he wouldn't mind YOU touching HIS magical creature."
Ginny slapped his hand and giggled. Colin poked the back of Xander's head with his sugar quill and told him to looked up, Harry was starring at Ginny. Xander nudged her in the ribs and motioned to Harry who was walking their way.
"Mr. Jeffory, I have wonderful hearing," Harry's eyes twinkled, "and I wouldn't mind if Ginny touched MY magical creature." His eyes were twinkling happily from behind his glasses.
Ginny's head jerked up as if saying, 'How could you talk about something like that about me in front of the whole class.' But her face split into a smile when she noticed that he was holding out his magical creature, the real one, not the 'magic wand' or 'flying broomstick' as her brothers and friends would refer to their...yeah.
Ginny picked her hand up and touched it, it was black and all furry with two scaly ears and it's belly was bald and red. Ginny looked up at Harry who looked thoroughly amused. "Thank you," she whispered.
"Any time, Miss Weasley, any time." He smiled and seemed to be holding back a laugh.
Xander rested his chin on the palm of his hand and stared at Ginny, giggles escaping his lips and Ginny just pushed his arms out from under his face so that it would fall a few inches. But that was the best payback she could do at the moment because Harry was playing with his magical creature which caused more giggles from the 5 friends.