Disclaimer: I own nada!
A/N: Much love for the review…. And the marriage proposal blush! to Kielo. Enjoy chapter 2 everybody!
Chapter 2: Harry the (Very Pretty) Ballerina
Harry Potter, with his floppy brown hair, doleful blue eyes and oversized glasses was moping about at the bar. He was staring intently into his drink. "Gin!" he called out, in a slightly slurred voice. "Gin!" he repeated.
The barmaid wandered over to him, with her hands on her hips and an evil glare in her oh so sparky eyes. "What do you want, Harry?" Ginny Weasley asked her highly intoxicated customer.
"There
seems," Harry garbled, "to be something unu…unus…unushual,
unushuel, unusual in my drink." Harry smiled at his ability to
finally pronounce the relatively simple word correctly. For him, and
his inebriated state, it was a large accomplishment.
"Harry,"
Ginny said, with a sigh. "That is ice. You are drinking a gin 'n
tonic. Those come with ice."
Harry
smiled brightly, showing his pearly white teeth. "Whad'ha you
talking about Gin? I'm not drinking you…silly. Silly Ginny," he
said while giggling profusely and tossing his hand haphazardly in
Ginny's general vicinity. Thankfully, Harry's arm stayed firmly
attatched to his body, otherwise there would be no controlling where
that arm could have been flung to.
Ginny sighed, once more. Then
she grimaced because she realized she couldn't find anything more
interesting to do than sigh and contemplate how peaceful life would
be if Harry didn't come into the bar every night whinging about how
he hasn't managed to kill Lord Voldemort yet, and how Lord
Voldemort has started a successful West End musical, and how the only
thing that Harry had left going for himself was coming to Ginny's
bar and whining about life in general. Apparently it was a very
fullfilling exercise for Harry. Ginny couldn't completely see the
merit in it, but she didn't mind the income boost his many visits
to her bar provided her. However, even she had her limits.
"I'm cutting you off, Harry," she said as she turned her
back on the Boy-Who-Lived and returned to her space behind the bar.
Ginny ran the Hell's Retreat. A cozy little bar with an evil little
name. Suddenly, a cold gust of wind blew through the bar conveniently
interrupting any description of the bar that was going to occur.
Accompanying the gust of wind was a tall stranger in a dark trench
coat with a fedora placed intriguingly over one eye. Tufts of
platinum blonde hair could be seen peeking out of from beneath the
new customer's hat. He strolled up to the bar and took a seat on a
barstool, a small distance away from Harry.
While this new
customer was slowly taking off his leather gloves, Ginny's hired
help started shouting out to her, "Ginny! Ginny!"
One paticularly
rambunctions new hiree shouted out, her name was Mindy, or Maxie or
something equally peppie. Either way, she probably wasn't going to
be working at Gin's bar for very long.
. "What?" Ginny
said, pointedly looking at the soon to be fired for an indeterminable
reason girl.
"It's
nine-o-clock," she whispered.
Ginny brightened up
considerably. "Hey, Ron!" she shouted out, and immediately
Ron appeared at the bar with Luna and Hermione in tow.
"What fun!" exclaimed Luna.
"For Merlin's sake," muttered Hermione.
Ron looked around anxiously. "Why doesn't Harry have to do it?" he asked, quite upset about the entire predicament he found himself in.
"Because
Harry is currently struggling with a very persuasive drink," said
Ginny with a smile. Service with a smile was always her best skill.
Ginny muttered something and waved her wand in a very lyrical manner.
"Perfect," she said. Her crew had been transformed. Loony Luna's
blonde hair was braided into two long tails and she was wearing large
bell-bottom jeans with a black top. She was suddenly seated on a
piano stool in front of a keyboard and she seemed quite pleased
towards the entire predicament.
Hermione squeezed her eyes
shut. She had a tambourine in one hand and a cowbell in the other and
she was dressed in an atrocious yellow and red print dress with a
yellow headband in her unruly hair. "Is it over yet?" she asked
to woever was listening. When no one answered, she opened her eyes
very slowly. "Damn," she said as she surveyed her new apparel.
The two instruments in her possession earned two separate and equally
foul swear words from Hermione's usually placid tongue.
Ron's hair was spiked, in a way that no one can quite visualize unless they consider a photograph of a red Barney. Basically, it wasn't good. But Ron felt mighty cocky about it, and that is all that matters in show buisness. He had a guitar in his hands and an akward smile on his face.
Ginny was sitting on the edge of her bar with a microphone in hand and her apron was transformed into a slinky green dress. She suddenly was looking extremely glamarous and much more attractive than any of the members of her back-up band.
"Go…"
Ginny whispered sultrily into her mike. The music started, Hermione
began shaking the tambourine out of beat, earning her multiple evil
glares from both Ginny and Luna.
And in a second Ginny began to
sing:
"Oh it's nine
o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an
young man sitting next me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin.
He
says, "Son can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how
it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When
I wore a younger man's clothes."
Ginny put the microphone down and strolled among her customers, brushing their hair with her fingertips, or flipping their collars gently. While she did, Ron and Luna picked up the intermittent humming:
"Da da da de de
da
Da da da de de da
Da da"
Ginny picked the mike back up and glared at Luna and Ron who instantly dropped vocals and allowed Ginny to continue on with the showcase of her talents. While she was singing she caught eye contact with the mysterious stranger and seemed to be singing to him for the rest of the song:
"Sing us a
song you're the new guy
Sing us a song tonight
You're different
and mysterious, anyway
And, to me, that's always alright.
Now
Harry at the bar is a friend of mine
He's plastered straight on
his ass
Tomorrow he'll wake up with a headache
Feeling like the
dog's breakfast
He'll say "Ginny, darling, another
round"
He's got nowhere to else to be.
Because Voldemort's
not quite dead yet.
He's sure that he'll kill Tommy one day
But
tomorrow is definitely not it.
Sing us a song
you're the new guy
Sing us a song tonight
You're different and
mysterious, anyway
And, to me, that's always alright.
Now, Ron
over there is my brother dear,
He's never had time for Hermy.
He's
flirting with Luna and Dean and Seamus
He's got something he's not
telling me.
The waitress is workin' on her resume
She soon
won't be working 'round here
Those guys who all hang out at in
this place
Hell's Retreat, the bar full of bums,
Are all
drinking a drink they call loneliness
But it's better then
drinking alone
They're all comin' here to relax for a spell
And
forget about life for awhile.
And the bar smells like an alley
And
the cups haven't been washed in a year
And the customers are all
fat slobs-
God, I wish I wasn't here.
Da da da de de da
Da
da da de de da
Da da
Sing us a song you're the new guy
Sing
us a song tonight
You're different and mysterious anyway
And,
hell, that's always alright."
With a smile and a wink
Ginny ended her set, never taking her eyes off of the handsome
stranger. Ron was grimacing. "Gin! Gin, why'd you have to go and
say that about me? Now Hermy is going to be pissed at me again.
Thanks a lot, Gin. Why do feel the need
to ruin a perfectly good
marriage?" Ginny just waved off his complaints without a care,
still focusing very intently on the man who was now standing right in
front of her. The mysterious stranger took her hand in his and gently
kissed it. She could only barely hear Ron in the background, crying
out, "Hermione! I love you! It was just a song!"
"Enchanted, Mademoiselle." The mysterious, blonde haired,
grey eyed, gaunt, son of a well-known yet now deceased Death Eater
said. Ginny giggled and began twirling a stray piece of her fiery red
hair around her finger.
"Ginny?" one of her employees
shouted out to her.
"I'm busy!" Ginny shouted back
through a tight mouthed grin.
The unnamed, yet very well
described man coughed slightly to cover his laughter.
"But
Ginny!" The employee's voice came shouting back.
"Not
now, I'm with a customer!" yelled Ginny, who never broke eye
contact with the once Slytherin prefect turned mysterious stranger.
"But, Ginny, we can't find Harry!" yelled the employee
desperately.
"Damn!" she said. "You," she
said, pointing to the stranger whose eyes she had been staring into
for at least five minutes. "Stay right here. I will be right back."
She headed off towards where Harry had been sitting all the while
muttering "God damn Harry. Boy-Who-Lived. Pshaw. He's going to
be the boy-who-wished-he-hadn't-lived when I'm through with him."
She headed out the front door and proceeded to call for Harry like
one calls for a lost dog that no one in the family really liked:
half-heartedly and bitterly.
Inside an entirely different scene
was taking place. Harry was not as lost as the employees had assumed.
Indeed he had, with Ginny gone, now assumed center stage in the bar
and was about to proceed with his own special magical musical number.
"Hello
audiece...audiene…audi…people!" he said with
a bright wave and a tipsy bow. "I am going to dance for you. I
am a ballirine…ballriny….ballaria, dancer. A pretty pretty
dancer," he ammended when he found ballerina too difficult to
pronounce.
He waved his wand and said a tiny spell, in slurred
speech. And, as we all know, it is never safe to drink and spell, yet
Harry had forgotten this golden rule and so thus, he ended up in the
middle of the bar in a bright pink tutu with a bright pink hair band
in his black scruffy hair. A track of classical music from Swan Lake
was playing in the
background and Harry was dancing, quite
extraordinarily unsuccessfully. Yet, despite his idiotic nature he
was grinning brightly and waving at the burly men and flighty woman
who were all drinking their beers at the bar.
"Damn Harry,"
Ginny was still muttering as she made her way back into her
establishment. She screeched as she saw Harry dancing in his own
peculiar topsy-turvy manner, and Colin Creevey standing near by
documenting each second of the embarrassing escapade. Colin managed
to stuff a five pound note down the waist band of Harry's tutu
before Ginny managed to grab Harry's arm and pull him off the
stage. As she rushed past the mysterious, strange, unusual, hot man
she gave him a wink before pushing Harry into the back room of the
bar and forcefully detaining him against his will.
Well, that's all for now, folks! Please please please review (it's a spark of joy in my day!) Chapter 3 will be up soon.
