owl post

(a harry potter story)

Harry panted, sticking his hand in his jacket pocket to make sure he still had his wand. Stupid, really, that he didn't think to bring his Firebolt. After all of that rubbish with Cho, however, he wasn't thinking clearly.

He just wanted Ginerva.

He wanted to see her and hold her to his chest, engulfing his face in her scarlet hair, breathing in her smell.

If he'd only gotten to know her better when she was younger, perhaps he'd have had a chance.

Harry pulled a bit of ordinary whiskey out of his parcel. Hedwig hooted at him in a motherly sort of way.

"I need fuel for my fire," Harry explained, half-smiling. He took two shots off of it and, wiping his mouth in relish, continued onward.

He ran for about ten more minutes, but had to slow to a walk, alcohol splashing around in his stomach. By then, a large crowd had gathered and most were peeking out of windows in disgust. "There 'e goes," an older man with a noticeable limp said to his lumpy little wife. "That's 'Arry Pott'r, that is."

"I know, Gerald," the witch said, eyeing Harry with reproach as he grew closer. "Keep the grandkids away from him."

Harry tuned them out. He walked, head held high, and swigged from his whiskey. Some witches made a hacking sound at the back of their throats. He smiled at them, winking as he went, still sipping the whiskey. One witch, a young blonde in bold purple robes, grinned widely.

"Having fun?" she asked, wiggling her fingers. Harry pointed at her and she laughed. "You're crazy and I like it." She walked beside him as the crowd retreated into their homes to spy on him from there. Only about a hundred were left on the streets. It was as though he'd been very popular and then contracted a horrifying disease: people fled from him. All except the blonde.

"I've heard about you in the news," she explained, and Harry adored her sweet American accent. She sounded like she was from the north part of the USA—Harry didn't know all of the states, but there was one with a lot of lakes around it. Maybe there?

She smiled and took the bottle from him, drinking half of it in a manner that could astonish Hagrid. Harry looked at her in disbelief.

"I was taught to drink by the finest. My dad." Her eyes, the color of polished mahogany, were shining. "I like you. We're both insane, drunken maniacs—aren't we?"

Harry nodded.

"Do you even talk? Have you had a Tongue-Tying curse cast on you?" God, Harry liked her smile. She smiled a lot, and it made Harry feel like he had a friend. "My name is Bethany. Bethany Court. I'm from the great-old USA, but I moved here to get an education. Graduated two years ago, I did. I'm training to be someone who handles magical creatures and such." She ran a hand through her blonde hair. "I've got three brothers and a sister and we all look exactly alike—rough blonde hair, straight brown eyes. I don't like my brown eyes. Too boring, you hear? Anyways, my sister and I grew up tomboys. Three older brothers who like to chuck footballs around and pelt french fries at you? Hell, we didn't want any dolls, we wanted knee pads and baseballs and soccer cleats." She stopped talking abruptly. "Sorry to be spewing my life story on you."

"No, it's okay," Harry said quietly. "I don't talk much and you talk a lot. We fit together."

Bethany laughed. "You do talk! God, I thought you had bitten your tongue."

"Can I have some liquor?" Harry asked, and she looked down in surprise at her hands. The brown liquid sloshed around the bottle.

"Oh, Jesus. I'm sorry. Didn't mean to go stealing your fancy-pants alcohol." Her American accent rolled off of her tongue and wrapped around Harry's head.

"I like how you talk," Harry said softly.

"God, thank you. Most people tell me to sit down and shut up." She laughed and squeezed Harry's upper arm. "I've been meaning to ask you this whole time: where the hell are you heading?"

Harry looked at her, head tilted slightly to the side. She stood like she knew she was pretty and she knew she was confident. Her hand rested on the curve between her hip and her breasts; her fingers were painted a low-key light green; her cheeks were rosy from the liquor and from walking; and her robes halted just below her thighs, revealing slender, smooth legs and feet clad with light blue sneakers. Her hair fell down the back of her shoulders, a bright golden color intertwined with sun-kissed amber.

She was gorgeous, but she wasn't for Harry.

"I'm heading to Hogwarts," he said.

"Okay," she said simply, not prying an answer out of him. "What for?"

"I'm going to see the love of my life who I haven't seen in years and just recently started writing to awhile ago and I need to see her."

Bethany pointed out the castle to Harry. She sat cross-legged with Harry on a large flat gray rock, her light-green polished nails fretting here and there as she made rapid movements with her hands.

"So, to get in you're gonna wanna go in through the secret passage," she said, drinking her root-beer-mead that she'd snagged from Madam Rosmerta. Harry had spiked his butterbeer with cherry vodka, and it bit at his tongue, but he loved it. "You can't get caught by Filch—good god, that man is absolute garbage left out in the hot sun. Anyway, getting caught by Filch equals instant turn-in to the authorities. It'll be all over the headlines: 'HARRY POTTER GETS CAUGHT SNEAKING INTO HOGWARTS.' D'you think you'll even have a chance with Miss Ginerva after that? Hell, you'll be thrown into Azkaban." She drew her wand and started drawing a plan on the rock. "So you'll sneak in through the Honeydukes passage with your Invisibility Cloak. Then you'll just crawl through the old witch's hump and go find your Ginerva!" She clapped her hands energetically. "Bingo!"

Harry nodded slowly; he had no other option. Bethany's plan seemed best right now. It seemed like something he would come up with. There was one flaw, however: how would he find Ginerva? He was very likely to step on someone's foot or crash into something.

"How do I find her?" he asked.

"Easy. That there map should help you." She pointed to the Marauder's Map, peeking out of Harry's robes.

He hastily covered it with his hands. "What—how do you know—?"

She giggled. "I was friends with the Weasley twins in my days at Hogwarts. Fred asked me to a few dances back then. He was adorable, but I was too old. Nevermind that, though: I helped them find it. They were looking for mischief one day and I suggested a treasure hunt to find whatever we could. We found Zonko's Joke Shop merchandise, old homework assignments, even some downright disgusting old Fizzing Whizbees. But I checked behind the old Gryffindor tapestry and sure enough, there it was! A worn old piece of yellowing parchment. I knew there was something hidden on it, though. I remember trying every spell I could til it revealed itself. I remember the incantation, too: 'What the hell, why won't this thing show me anything! I wanna cause trouble and it isn't presenting itself to me!" She laughed. "We caused a lot of problems with our trusty…MARAUDER'S MAP!" She shouted the last part to the heavens, watching in delight as a few owls hooted indignantly and took off into the sky. "I'm drunk, but I'm crazy!" she proclaimed, smiling.

Harry smiled too. Bethany was willing to drink with him and to laugh her heart out, not caring if Harry minded or thought her weird. She embraced life like it was free Galleons being handed to her. She loved her life and Harry loved that.

He aspired to be like her.

She ran her fingers through her blonde hair, getting caught on numerous knots. "Damn hair," she said, giggling. "I've been moving around too much."

"Thanks for everything," Harry said to her, and she smiled and wrapped her arms around him. He could taste slightly sour alcohol on her breath. Her hands were warm and her cheek pressed against his.

"Sometimes you just need a hug," she told him, suddenly serious. "Sometimes you just need somebody to love, don't you?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed, drinking from his cherry-vodka-butterbeer. He drained his cup and realized that he was drunk as well, but he felt warm and at peace with Bethany, lying on his back on the cool flat rock and staring at the sky. Nobody was there but them—they were stargazing in a remote field about a half-hour's walk from Hogsmeade. Harry was surprised it hadn't been attacked for commercial use yet.

"I need to stop drinking now," Bethany said, and curled up into a ball. She rested her head in his lap. Her hair fanned out over his legs. "I also kinda wanna play a game."

Harry nodded. "Anything in particular?"

"Truth or Dare." Bethany laughed. "I used to play Insane Truth or Dare 2.0 with my friends from Hogwarts. They were dares like run naked into the opposite sex's dormitory, sneak into Snape's office and substitute his drink for firewhiskey, yaddah yaddah yaddah. So we can play Insane Truth or Dare 2.0—or just Truth or Dare."

"Regular," Harry said gently. He was so happy that Bethany was there to be the outgoing kind of drunk—it meant Harry could be the quiet, alone-with-your-thoughts kind of drunk.

"Okay, Harry. Truth or Dare?"

"Dare."

"You sure you wanna follow through with that?"

Harry smiled. "Yeah."

"I don't mean to offend you in any way by the dare, then, is that okay?"

"Yeah."

"Alright. Your dare is—kiss me."

Harry froze. He looked at Bethany blankly.

Her hair looked like stardust in the bright shining moonlight. Her eyes were but two stars twinkling in their own sprinkled sky. Her skin was porcelain in the darkness, like marble or alabaster, and looked smooth and pristine. She was smiling in the happiest sad way that Harry had ever seen. Harry could not deny her beauty. He may love Ginerva…

However, Bethany…she was wild and crazy and loved to drink, just like him. She liked him. He liked her. They fit like two different jigsaw puzzle pieces: perfectly.

Harry gently pulled her face up to his and pressed his lips to hers. She kissed him gently and he the same, and they were tentative, unsure of what to do exactly. Bethany eventually pulled away and smiled.

"Awkward," she breathed, and kissed him again. It felt so wonderful, so riveting, to be loved again. Someone actually desired him—of course, if he was right about this. If Bethany wasn't just drunk senseless and, perhaps, was in love with him the way a fan is in love with their favorite celebrity until they realize how regular and great of a person they are and fall head-over-heels for them after laying on their backs under the stars and finding alabaster skin and moondust and sipping from bottles—that's when they fall in love (in every fanfiction ever written).

Maybe Bethany was in love with him, maybe she wasn't. One thing was for sure, Harry did like the taste of her alabaster skin.

They never did get another truth or dare in. It was the great Singular Dare, and Harry couldn't stop kissing Bethany. He lapped her up like she was whiskey and she nearly sucked his face off. When she finally pulled away it was to breath for a moment before diving back in.

"Harry," she murmured against his lips, her gasps like little puffs of smoke. "Harry, Ginerva…"

The sudden zap! of Bethany using Ginerva's name jolted Harry back into reality. "We…we need to stop."

"Yeah." Bethany's cheeks were extremely red. "That was…"

Harry shushed her. "It never happened."

As he laid back down on the rock he thought he heard her whisper something.

"Whatever you say."

Bethany gazed up at the stars, her lips pressured with the ghost of Harry's mouth. His tongue still danced in her mouth, his teeth still snagged on her bottom lip. She could feel his hot breath all over her skin, his hands on her back, in her hair.

She had one chance, and she blew it.

She hadn't meant to remember about Ginerva, but she did. She couldn't let herself continue. That—that was one of the Rules of Females! You can't break the Rules of Females! It also wasn't morally right. She had gotten Harry drunk, toyed with his emotions, and twisted him around and around her finger, slowly reeling him in, slowly…

She knew he'd loved it. He wouldn't have stopped if she hadn't stepped in.

And now he wanted to pretend like it never happened.

Bethany couldn't let him go now. He was slipping through her fingertips, and she had to scrabble to keep him. Soon he'd be off for Hogwarts, his lips kissing Ginerva's lips and not hers. In one afternoon, Bethany had fallen for Harry. He was so quiet and didn't judge her; he liked the way she talked; he said they fit together. They were both insane in their own ways—Bethany with her loud, crazy addictions and talkative manner, though secretly trapped with her own thoughts and self-harming; and Harry with his screaming, fiery-furious exterior that the media showcases and his silent thoughts that only she had heard. She had seen the scars on his wrists, on his stomach. She didn't care.

Each scar meant another battle that had been won.

Harry was asleep next to her. She was very cold but didn't want to wake him, so she tried to ignore the shivers ricocheting throughout her body and just sleep. Unfortunately, it was much too hard and she sat up and drank some water.

"Beth?" Harry called drowsily. She melted. He was so cute, his hair ruffled and his voice low and gravelly from sleep. "Are you still there?"

"Don't worry," she whispered, squeezing his hand. "I wouldn't leave. I just got cold."

"Oh. Come here, then." He patted the space next to him. She snuggled up close against his warm body and rested her head on his chest, very comfortable.

"Thanks," she managed.

She fell into a peaceful, undisturbed slumber.