Moonlight and Shadows: Chapter 1.
See Prologue for disclaimer and warnings.
As always, please tell me if you see any errors... :)
Moonlight and Shadows: Chapter 1
In a fit of embarrassment and awkwardness, his first night with Ginny in the hotel room with one bed was spent just holding her, since she didn't stop crying even when she went to sleep. Harry, of course, could neither sleep nor cry, and he felt extraordinarily guilty to see her crying, so he simply held her while both lay fully clothed on top of all their bedcovers.
The second night was even more awkward. Ginny didn't cry, and for a while they did nothing but stare at each other, while Ginny sat on the bed and Harry sat in an armchair on the side of the room. Harry couldn't think of what to say at all. She wasn't crying, so he didn't feel like he had to hold her, but he didn't feel like kissing her when he was so apathetic and couldn't put his heart in it.
"Harry–" Ginny started.
"You should get some rest," Harry interrupted. Ginny sat quietly for another minute, and then turned over and got under the covers. Harry stayed in his armchair, not thinking, and eventually fell asleep.
The third night, she had not cried, but insisted he come and be with her. So he held her on the bed as he had on their first night, silently. When he was sure she was asleep, and he was almost asleep himself, she suddenly turned over and kissed him, hard, on the lips. Her eyes were closed and Harry's eyes flashed wide open. She pulled back, looked at him, and kissed him again, the way they had kissed before Dumbledore's funeral. She opened his mouth and hungrily licked his tongue.
Harry disappointed himself by being able to do nothing. He was surprised by her sudden attack, but more than that, his unfeelingness rendered him motionless. He was ashamed and sorry for this, because he knew he was hurting Ginny. Indeed, she rose a moment later with tears running down her face.
"Harry..." she said wetly, reminding Harry immediately of Cho, and he winced.
"Harry..." she said again. She lay her lips on his chin and whispered, "I want you to feel me." Harry knew she didn't mean that she wanted him to feel her sexually. For the first time since the war, pain– as in, an actual feeling of hurt– shot through him. She couldn't understand that he didn't choose not to feel anything, or that he really wanted to feel her as much as she felt him, emotionally.
"I'm sorry," was all he managed to choke out. "Ginny, I'm sorry, I don't mean to..." Another tear rolled down her face.
"Harry, it's over," she said insistently, clutching the front of his shirt with both hands. "The war is over, you can feel whatever you want to, now! You don't have to be scared for anything, or... or... you don't have to want anything more."
He looked down at her, as she was pleading for him to feel all that she felt. She was happy; she had lost a brother, but she was happy... How did she do that? But she wanted him. She believed the only thing he could want was her, and she was telling him he had her already... and he didn't have to want anything more.
For a moment, Harry though she was right. He looked down at her and she was as gorgeous as ever, even with tears streaming down her face and that desperate, pleading look on her face. She was right... he had won the war, saved the wizarding world, kept thousands of families together– Harry thought briefly of the Malfoys– and after everything, he still had her, and she still loved him, and he couldn't possibly want anything more.
And then, he realized, he did... and that made him the most selfish man in the world. He shouldn't want any more, he didn't even realize what he wanted, but there it was, and she could never understand... and he wondered how to tell her this, and how she would react, and if she would plead with him again and try to make him realized she could give him anything.
But it didn't have anything to do with her.
The thought flashed across his mind, as if it wasn't his own, that whatever he wanted... it had to do with unfinished business, and he had to do something more. But what could possibly be unfinished? There were no more Horcruxes, no more Voldemort, no more Death Eaters... He was fooling himself. Somehow he knew that this had nothing to do with anything he'd ever fought before, and that his unfinished business was on a much more personal level...
"Harry?" came Ginny's voice. He looked down at her again, her tears had subsided a bit, and her grip on his shirt had loosened. But her eyes searched him and he knew she was really no calmer.
He'd done the only thing that came to his mind– he brought her head down on his and kissed her, and he tried to put as much emotion as he could into that kiss. She pulled back after a bit and looked at him, confused.
"Harry... I don't understand." She put her hands on either side of him and pushed up, so she could look at him better.
"Me neither, Gin..."
"No, Harry... what's wrong? Please tell me what's missing!"
"Ginny, I don't know! I don't know what's wrong, I don't know what's missing, I don't know what else I need. I'm sorry." He couldn't look at her, he felt like a coward... She looked at him for a moment longer, couldn't think of what to say, and then sighed and turned over. Harry didn't want to think anymore about what else he wanted. It made him feel so guilty to think that he didn't have everything he wanted.
Tonight, when he had come back to his hotel room, he was utterly astonished to see Ginny already there, sitting on the bed waiting for him. He awkwardly said hi to her, then hung up his cloak and sat down in his armchair while she said nothing. He dully hoped she wasn't breaking up with him; he didn't know specifically that was what he wanted, and she shouldn't just assume that... but she wasn't saying anything...
"Come here," she said finally, not looking at him.
"Wha–?" He started.
"Harry!" she said, more forcefully. "Just come here. Please," she added. He went over and sat next to her on the bed. She didn't look at him until he sat down, but when she turned to him, Harry was surprised to see her eyes full of lust, an emotion he hadn't noticed in her for a year. He detected remnants of sadness, though he couldn't tell if that was about him or about Fred and the rest of her family.
Then, in one movement, she put her hand on his shoulder, pushed him down on his back on the bed, straddled his hips, and leant over to ravish his lips.
Like the night before, he was too shocked and unfeeling to move at first. But when Ginny didn't lift up or come off him at all, he put his hands on her back and tried with everything he had to kiss back. And like the night before, this made Ginny sit up slightly and look at him with confusion.
"Harry... I want to do this. Please just let me be with you," she said, and came back fiercely onto Harry's lips.
What the hell did that mean?! Harry wondered. Am I not supposed to be trying to show her I love her? What about feeling her and stuff, like she said yesterday? What about... wait... 'just let me be with you'? Did that mean... what?! He came to the conclusion that tonight, Ginny "being with" Harry was meant in all ways sexually. Especially since she now had her hands at his pants zipper, his belt and button already undone. He was staring up at the ceiling while she kissed her way all along his abdomen, the whole time taking advantage of his straddled position to grind into his groin.
Finally, as he came to the end of all his questions about what Ginny was doing, he wondered what he was doing... and he realized he wasn't really doing anything. Which was probably the opposite of what Ginny wanted him to do... he tried to make himself gasp in pleasure as Ginny's tongue wove around his bellybutton... tried to make himself get excited while she slowly unzipped his pants...
He couldn't let her see him like this. She probably already knows something's wrong, he thought, because she's felt me hard before and she knows... she knows nothing's happening...
Desperately, he tried to think of something that would make him hard, like she wanted him to be... it wasn't working... The only thing to ever turn him on was Ginny, and she was right in front of him... he'd never once looked at porn, but he tried to think of any girl, naked and writhing below him. An unbidden flash of blonde came to mind and briefly he thought he felt a stirring in his groin... but no, Ginny was a redhead, he didn't like blondes...
Nothing was working, Harry was infuriating himself... he couldn't even get excited for his girlfriend... what was wrong with him? As he got more and more angry it was even more difficult to get excited by anything, and finally anger subsided as he was filled with nothing but sadness... it would never be the same with Ginny again, but he couldn't fake loving her any more.
Suddenly he knew that's what he had been doing for the past week... the war had changed what he wanted, he didn't know why... he loved Ginny, like a cousin or even a sister, and suddenly it felt horribly wrong that she was lying on top of him, about to slide his pants down his hips. For a second before he moved, she barely glanced up at him, and he was sure a tear was about to fall from her eyes. So she knows it's wrong, too...
In Ginny's moment of hesitancy, Harry sprang up, throwing Ginny sideways onto the bed. He had his pants zipped and buttoned before she'd even said anything, and was doing his belt when she burst into a sob, saying his name.
He felt almost as much guilt with that sob as he had when Sirius had died.
"Ha– Ha– rry..." Ginny said. Harry sat back down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. Like a brother, he mused. Not that she needs any more of them...
She stopped sobbing shortly and simply stayed silent while a couple more tears rolled down her chin. But when she looked back up at him, it was with all the love she'd ever shown him.
"You don't trust me?" she asked, although it sounded more like a statement. Harry's heart sank.
"Ginny, I trust you immensely. I know you wouldn't hurt me, and you haven't ever hurt me. I'm hurting myself... for hurting you. I hate what I'm doing to you, and... I just can't... do... anything..." he finished lamely.
She looked at him a moment, still with so much love in her eyes, before she said, "I know, Harry... You don't have to feel guilty about it... because actually, you aren't hurting me." She paused, and Harry didn't know what to say. "You aren't like the rest of us, Harry... we all believe that love is an earthly feeling, and I don't think you do. You realize like no one else can that love cannot possibly be earthly and mortal.
"There isn't really supposed to be an 'us,' is there, Harry? Because I can already tell that you know this about love, and I would never understand it. You are only going to find one person in the world that knows this like you do..."
"But you just told me all that... how can you not understand it if you just told me..."
"I can put it into words, Harry... and you wouldn't be able to tell anyone what you know about love. To you, it just is."
"Ginny," he swallowed. "I'm so sorry..."
"Me too, Harry. I've always wished I could be the one for you... but I can't fly away with love. My family doesn't let themselves go easily, we're really protective... I mean, you know all this, but the point is that I can't let love take me away, because I've always been a little fearful of that... and you have to find someone who will. But I know it's not all right with us, I know we aren't really compatible... with our different types of love... but I just hope we both end up really happy–" at this point she started to cry again, and she finished wetly, "because we were really great together."
Harry's arm tightened around her shoulders as she sniffed a few times.
"Ginny?" he said after a bit.
"Yeah?" she answered, not looking at him.
"I... I think I want to go take a walk. But could I come back, you know, here... later?"
She nodded and whispered, "please." He gave her one last squeeze and got up to get his invisibility cloak.
On the main road of Hogsmeade, no one was really out and about. If they were, they were making their way to their hotel or perhaps to one of the pubs. Harry walked briskly, but he found that wasn't good enough. He was leaving Ginny, never going back to her as a boyfriend again... and he felt like he should be running away. Not that he was eager to leave her behind, but because it had been so long since he had actually run away from something, and he missed the adrenaline.
And so, he ran. He ran all the way up Hogsmeade's main street, up to the Shrieking Shack, briefly debated whether or not to go further, and decided it couldn't hurt. He was almost to the point below a rocky cliff where he, Ron, and Hermione had followed Sirius up to his secret cave hideout, and he decided to stop there.
He panted, waiting for his breathing to slow down, not bothering to be quiet anymore. He thought about taking the cloak off, but no one had to tell him anymore to be safe before all else, so he kept it on. He was about to turn back and make his way to Hogsmeade again, when he saw a light precisely where he thought Sirius' cave had been.
The light was surely made by a wand, but it was gone before Harry could be sure. He listened for anything– a scuffling, rocks moving, breathing– but he was too far away and too unsure that there was really anyone there at all to distinctly hear any noise.
Was it time for another adventure? Was he really aching that much for some excitement, that he needed to investigate something like a light in a cave only on suspicion? He might invade someone's privacy severely... people really needed it right now...
It was with great disappointment that he wouldn't be able to solve another mystery that Harry turned back to Hogsmeade.
He had only taken a few steps, however, when he tripped over something and went sprawling across the path. The cloak managed to cover everything except his shoes and ankles, he thought, and since it was dark it didn't really matter. He was getting up, trying to look for what he'd tripped on, when a voice come from behind him.
"Trip jinx, Potter," Malfoy said, sounding exactly like he had when he'd caught Harry leaving the Room of Requirement in 5th year.
"Malfoy," said Harry, getting up and taking off the cloak while brushing himself off. "I should have known," he muttered.
"Should have known what? That I'd see you in the fall?" he laughed.
"Nice to have your wand back, then, is it? Glad to see it actually succumbed to calling you its owner again."
"Straight to the point, Potter? Yeah, it's nice to have my wand back. Actually," he paused, and Harry thought he was going to jinx him again, "I came down here to...er... well, most would call it showing gratitude."
"You're thanking me by tripping me?"
"No, Potter. That was to make sure it was you. I wouldn't want to confuse your dense ruffled head by giving you such mixed signals, would I?"
"Wait a minute... you came down here? Does that mean..."
"Then again, it's so easy to confuse you that it probably wouldn't have made any difference... Yes, Potter. There's a cave up there–"
"I know about the cave. Aren't you staying with your parents?"
"I was the one on the inquisitorial squad, Potter. I'll ask any questions," he snarled. Harry stayed silent, but Malfoy said nothing more.
"Well... er... you're welcome, I guess, since that's what this is all about..." Malfoy brushed this aside.
"Where's your girlfriend, Potter? Did she finally realize you're not a saint? Or did she actually tell you you're too good for her?"
Harry looked at the ground. This hesitancy cost him dearly, he knew it, any moment Malfoy would laugh and make a joke about how Harry was too good for everyone and he might as well go to hell for that... But Harry couldn't help it. Ginny's words had struck something in him– he hadn't realized himself that he and Ginny were wrong together until she had used her own words to tell him. And what she told him about love... it was exactly right. His mother was mortal... but her love would never, ever die. With the end of the war, with Voldemort's defeat, and with Snape's memories... they all taught Harry that humans would never, ever understand love, and that love was really the most unique gift that could be given.
With Ginny, it was only brotherly love that he could give her.
Harry had expected Malfoy to laugh, or to make any other indication like he always did that love was too stupid to bother with, only for the weak. He looked back up to see Malfoy staring vacantly at some tree, as if lost in thought. Harry's first idea was that he was under the Imperius Curse, but then he knew instinctively that no one was around to perform the curse.
None of Malfoy's icy cold demeanor had left his eyes, but he obviously wasn't thinking of taunting Harry. Harry looked for any recognition in his eyes, but all he saw was the moonlight and some shadows. In fact, Malfoy's whole body seemed to reflect moonlight and shadows (Harry thought vaguely of Lupin, before pushing the thought out of his mind). His white-blonde hair and pale skin almost glowed opalescent and pearly in the moonlight, but every bit of him was shadowed.
Harry had never looked at anyone like this, from a surface level. He knew he tended to look for a person's soul before anything else. Maybe it was because he knew Malfoy didn't really have a soul that Harry was able to look at his shell and wonder slightly why he was so tightly wrapped up in it...
"Yeah, well... bye, Potter." Before Harry had even registered these words, Malfoy had turned away and was walking back along the path to his cave. He stood for a moment, realizing it would be foolish and pointless to call Malfoy back, but all the same wondering about what had happened.
He remembered Ginny's wish for him to come back to her, and walked back while putting his cloak on again. It was only when he was almost back to his room that Harry registered that he had another mystery on his hands... one he wouldn't let go.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Yay for chapter one! mmmmm can't you see Draco glowing? ah.
Hmm what was that I saw? A little cliffie? Oh, surely not... :)
Another A/N: I'm sooooo sorry to do this to y'all right in the beginning of the story, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to update for a couple days. If I do, it's Christmas early, right:) But take heart, I WILL be able to keep writing. Just no updates. So look forward to maybe two more chappies in a few days! Thanks :)