"Why are you looking at me like you think this is a mistake?"
Ginny's eyes rise to lock with his, roving all over his sleep-drenched features: the mussed up hair, the softness of his cheeks covered by the roughness of the dark, black stubble. The sloppily placed glasses and those deep, vividly green eyes. Her stomach twists against her will.
"Reckon that ship's already sailed, don't you?" Harry's eyebrow raises coyly and he shoots her a little grin, bare thighs tensing under her palms.
Dipping low on her elbows, Ginny takes him fully in her mouth so she doesn't have to think about it, her name immediately rolling down his tongue in a low, heavy moan.
Because when she does stop to think about it, she fears that she might never be able to live without hearing those five letters in her name string and chime the way he does it; with that faint lull in the 'i' when he calls her, that heavy linger on the final letter when he moans her name - something she knew to be true before she found the courage to propose they lose their minds for just one night.
The sunrise catches in his rumpled hair when his body presses into hers, her spine against the headboard as he kisses her neck. Her head rolls back, his hand moving between her thighs again.
"Harry."
She doesn't know what she means by it - stop, don't stop, go deeper, harder, she feels like she'll go mad. His scent, that biting sweetness of his lips, everything she'd been dreaming of for so many years, wondering what it would be like, making it up in her head. Their first kiss, the first time they made love - they all wither when she lives the real thing.
His image had never really faded away, the boy with dark hair and green eyes had never really left her side through all those years.
He tugs her and she slides lower, her knees flexed and her legs apart, guided by his hands.
"Harry, fuck," she groans louder when he thrusts in, the muscles of her stomach taut. She feels exhausted, but she's afraid to stop.
Ginny's arms lock around his neck and her mind falls into oblivion, her grip on reality slipping further every time Harry increases the rhythm, his forehead against hers, his scar against her skin. In her dreams, she'd tell him to go faster, harder, deeper.
"Faster," Ginny closes her eyes and moans, allowing him to take her to the edge again.
His room smells of sweat and sex as daylight spreads, the sounds of thrusting and skin pounding skin clashing against the walls, and it's better than her dreams.
Ginny walks away from what she vaguely remembers to have been Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour with a warm coffee in her hand, unsure what to do with herself. She hasn't exactly been cleared to leave Britain and she hasn't been told where to stay either.
Well, Harry had told her to go to The Burrow. But he'd also said 'Ginny, please' and 'oh, fuck' and 'don't stop'. It's been some weird 24 hours.
She drags her robe closer to her and shuffles further, coffee held close to her sternum, warmth spreading throughout her body as the old, dark clouds settle over her mind.
She would not go home - for there is no home, and had not been for the past nine years. She'd been sent away and away she intended to stay until this - this thing came crashing into her life, threatening to uproot it again. After she'd worked so bloody hard to rebuild herself and everything had been going right for once…
Then she had seen the girl die and she had screamed. Why had she not ran away, why had she not turned on her heel and fucking Disapparated out of there? No one would have seen her, no one would have known she was still there. She could have simply told them she got bored of waiting and decided to leave, just like everyone else.
Ginny doesn't bother to conceal her swearing, the streets are empty anyway. Later, Diagon Alley would be clamouring with people, witches and wizards late for work, struggling to make it just in time, the violent roil of busy streets at the start of day. Now, though, not one hour after sunrise, it's only her.
And Harry, tucked away somewhere in the belly of the Ministry, obsessing, as always, over a new case. This time, however, this new case happens to involve her too.
Just like last time, Ginny suddenly thinks with a shudder.
"But," she sticks out her chin, squares up her shoulders, "I'm in control this time."
Ginny's next step rings louder, gait heavier as she walks away with purpose. She turns left out of the main street, and disappears.
When Mrs Belby is forced to unlock the front door of Number Seven Charing Cross Road by herself, the thick, harrowing frown especially reserved for her daughter-in-law deepening on her face, her heart nearly stops.
There she is, the very same daughter-in-law, her body butchered on the old family rug - her legs dabbling in a stream of blood close to the stairs as the upper half stands still by the entrance, white and silent and sad as a profaned statue.
Mrs Belby's eyes bulge as they follow the girl's long, ginger hair wounding terribly along the hallway, and the crimson droplets of blood spilling out of it, streaming underneath her new pair of shoes.
Her knees finally buckle and she falls, screaming shrilly for her son.
"Marcus!"