Chapter Nine: The End of the Beginning

A/N: With HBP out this 6th year story has obviously become a little AU… but not too AU, I hope. ;)

High above the Quidditch stadium, Ginny brought her old Cleansweep round in a wide arc around the goal hoops. The thing about practising Quidditch on your own, she reflected wryly, was that you, erm, couldn't. Still, Ron had told her to come out and get some practice in and considering her awful performance this morning, who could blame him?

It was just Harry. Harry! She'd thought her days of agonising over that particular boy were long gone, when it turned out they were only just getting started. The broomstick jerked at Ginny's sudden frustrated movement. One minute he was looking all doe-eyed at her across the common room and telling her he loved her as she leaned over a balcony in her night things, and the next he was ignoring her as she sat three feet straight in front of him. He'd sat opposite her for the whole of dinner tonight and not even looked at her once.

Ginny threw the Quaffle she'd charmed to help her and fumbled the catch as it came flying back. Great! She couldn't even bloody play Quidditch now! She hurled the ball away from her with such force that when it flew back at her she had to make an ungainly roll to prevent it from knocking her off her broom. As it was she almost fell off anyway as a result of the unexpected airborne gymnastics.

She was just struggling to regain her balance and thanking her luck that at least no one was around to see her when she felt something steady her broomstick. Twisting around, Ginny almost lost her balance again when she saw Harry hovering alongside her on the Firebolt, one steady hand on her tail. She could quite easily have thrown herself off right then and there, just so she could avoid the utter embarrassment of the moment. Ginny's face burned like the setting sun.

"Are you alright?" asked Harry, concern filling his face. That only made it worse.

No, I want to die. "Fine, thanks," she managed in a sort of squeak. She cleared her throat. "Stupid Quaffle."

He looked at the Quaffle she had enchanted, which was bobbing alongside her. "Do you- do you need a hand?" he asked.

"No thank you," Ginny replied robotically, praying for her cheeks to stop burning. "No, I'm fine, thank you."

"Come on Ginny, you can't practice on your own. Whatever was putting you off your game today, I want to help." He looked beseechingly at her. Ginny wondered if he knew she couldn't say no to those eyes.

"O- okay. Thanks," she added as an afterthought.

They began to practise passing, with Ginny praying at every throw that she wouldn't mess it up. And weirdly, she didn't. They exchanged pass after increasingly energetic pass, and she caught every one, even when Harry tried to catch her out with a trick throw.

"Hey, no fair!" she protested, deftly catching it anyway.

"Well, if you think I'm going to go easy on you…" he began, but was cut short when Ginny sent a retaliatory throw zipping through his outstretched hands. It had been Harry who had put her off her game with his sudden coldness towards her, but it seemed like now it was Harry who had given it back. She grinned, and he grinned back.

A floating warmth flooded through Harry's body as he drew up alongside her. "That was… really good!" he managed, his head befuddled by the thrill of being near her.

Her smile was warm and genuine and it heated Harry to the tips of his toes. "Thanks!" Ginny brushed her windswept hair off her face. "Ummm… is there anything else you want to run through?" She bit her lip.

Harry's body felt numb, like a rag doll, and he was acutely aware of the blood pulsing through his veins. His Firebolt floated closer to her broomstick as if of its own accord, and a shock went through him as their knees brushed. How about we run through me sweeping you off your broomstick and kissing you until-

"Um! Um, no, nothing!" he said hurriedly, moving abruptly to a safe three feet away from her.

"Oh right," Ginny said softly, hoping her disappointment didn't register on her face. "Well… I'd better let you get on with your practice then."

"Right."

"Have fun."

"Will do."

On her way back to the castle Ginny uttered some choice curse words under her breath. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she berated herself. "Of course he doesn't want to be around you, he's terrified he'll do something he'll regret!" Like kiss me, she thought miserably.

What would she do if I kissed her? Harry mused to himself an hour later as he went in to get changed. She'd used to have a crush on him, hadn't she? But that was gone now. Now all he could see was that whenever he was around, she was hurting inside and no one but him seemed to see it. And whenever he saw her, that was the only thing that made him fight the urge to go over and kiss her… an urge that was growing stronger and more persistent as time went on.

Am I that repulsive to her? he thought, kicking an empty bin moodily. There was a sudden movement in the high window of the changing room, but when Harry looked up there was nothing there but a square of twilit sky.

As he showered and dressed, Harry's feverish brain was occupied by only one question – how to make Ginny happy again. She had been happy right up to the point when this potion came over him, right up to the point where he fell in love with her. Which must mean that she did not return his feelings. So, Harry thought with the twisted logic of the insane or deeply in love, all I have to do is make her fall in love with me and she'll be happy again. He smiled to himself, hope firing his senses.

The next day, Harry was in a better mood than he'd been in all week. "Afternoon," he said brightly to Ron and Hermione as he plopped into an armchair between them in the common room.

"Harry!" exclaimed Hermione. "Why weren't you at lunch?"

"Lunch?" Harry was fazed for a moment. "Oh yeah…lunch. Forgot about that. Oh well, I'm not really hungry anyway." He missed the look Hermione and Ron exchanged.

"Did you get your Charms essay back?"

He had, but had forgotten to look at it. Harry took it out of his bag. There was a large green 'D' at the bottom, followed by the comment 'Were you paying full attention to this work?' in Flitwick's loopy scrawl. He glanced through the essay, and stopped at a sentence halfway through, which the professor had helpfully ringed. 'While the Defendeus shares many key attributes with the Protegus charm, Ginny is so beautiful there are also important differences in application arising from the two charms' differing I hate Dean results.' Harry winced.

"What did you get?" asked Hermione anxiously. "Because with exams coming up so soon, you should really be aiming for straight Os…"

Harry rolled up the parchment and put it in his bag. "I got an O," he reassured her with a smile.

Ron said something just then, but Harry didn't hear it because he had just heard Ginny's voice behind him. He couldn't hear the words, but she sounded tired.

"Harry? Harry!"

He glanced up. "Hmm?"

Ron glowered at him. "I said you haven't forgotten about tonight, have you?"

Harry racked his brains. He recalled the pair of them telling him something before he went to Charms, but Ginny had been walking past at that particular moment and he hadn't really taken it in.

"Erm… tonight…" he searched for clues in their faces.

Hermione sighed. "The Indicating Ink will be ready, but I can't make it because of extra Ancient Runes and Ron just got himself a detention from Snape." She turned on Ron, who rolled his eyes as if to say 'not again!' "Honestly, what did you think you were doing? He doesn't even teach you any more, AND you're a Prefect, and yet you still managed to get a detention!"

"What did you do?" asked Harry.

"Absolutely nothing!" Ron protested. "Until that great lump Bulstrode came cannoning into me out of nowhere, knocked me right over. It was right after you'd gone, Harry, you should have seen it, she was practically crushing me!" His face darkened. "Sabotage, that's what it was, trying to knock out our captain before Saturday's match!"

"How did that get you detention?"

"It was when I was trying to push her off me, Snape came along and accused me of brawling." Ron descended into unintelligible mutters. Harry caught the occasional words like 'greasy old git' and 'bloody Slytherins'.

Hermione turned to look at Harry earnestly. "This means you need to go and collect a vial of Indicating Ink yourself. But you must only collect it once it has turned deep purple, Harry, that's very important, deep purple. Harry? Are you listening?"

Harry blinked. "Right, yes. Vial. Deep purple." He attempted to look like someone who was in complete control. In reality his heart had been in his mouth since Ginny walked in.

Later that afternoon Harry was on his way to the library when he caught sight of Ginny and Mena Selari in the corridor ahead of him.

"Ginny!" he called, running to catch up. The girls turned round as he reached them. "Could I have a word?" he asked. Ginny glanced at Mena.

"Oh, don't mind me!" the dark-haired girl said hurriedly. "I'll see you in Divination, okay?" With that she hared off down the corridor.

Looking somewhat abandoned, Ginny looked awkwardly at Harry. "What… um, what do you want? I'll be late for Divination…"

"I'll walk you!" he said eagerly, and they set off down the corridor. Ginny walked in silence, not looking up at him. "Oh, there's a shortcut here!" said Harry suddenly after a while, and with some trepidation Ginny ducked after him behind a tapestry of Godefred the Giddy being killed by a dragon.

"How did you know about this?" asked Ginny as they started up a tiny spiral staircase. "Lumos!"

"My dad's map," said Harry simply. "Someone disappeared at this point so I had a look and here it was. It takes you almost to Trelawney's tower. Oops, careful!"

Harry reached out to catch Ginny as she almost slipped on a loose step. Half in his arms, Ginny gave a nervous laugh and steadied herself. She could not extricate his large warm hand from hers, though, and opted instead to carry on up the stairs as if nothing were happening, using him for support.

They reached the top of the stairs, and a large wooden door. "Um, thanks Harry," she mumbled, trying in vain to reclaim her hand.

"No problem. Um, Ginny, I was wondering…"

"What?"

He looked very serious by the dull light of her wand. "Why do I upset you so much?" he blurted.

Ginny was momentarily startled. "Upset me? You don't upset me…"

"Yes I do, ever since… well, you know. I can tell by the way you bite your bottom lip like that-" Ginny immediately stopped biting her lip "-and you always swallow hard before you speak, and you twiddle your fingers in a certain way and there's this… look on your eyes. I can always tell."

Ginny was taken aback at this detailed analysis of her body language. Was she really so obvious?

"I don't think everyone sees it," he said, squeezing her hand. "Remember this Christmas at the Burrow when they wouldn't let you play Quidditch with us, and you acted like you thought it was funny? You were upset then, and no one else seemed to notice."

Ginny snatched her hand back. "You didn't even like me then."

"Didn't I? Then why did I notice?" Ginny swallowed hard. Why was he doing this to her? "Please don't be upset!" Harry wanted to hug her, to hold her and make it better, but he only seemed to be making it worse. "Ginny - why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying!" she snapped, and wiped a trickle of a tear from her eye.

Harry felt a twisting pain in his gut. "Please, Ginny, what's so wrong with me that you can't look me in the eye? Don't you feel anything for me?" A hard lump was beginning to form in his throat.

Ginny raised her chin and looked him square in the eye. "Can't you see what's wrong with you?" Harry felt like he was falling from a great height. "This isn't real, Harry! This isn't what you'd be doing if you were in your right senses! This isn't you!"

And before he could reply she had wrenched open the door and disappeared.

It was just after teatime and the Gryffindor common room was full of people chatting and playing games like Gobstones and Exploding Snap. There was a small group of third years giggling in a corner, one of two of them glancing over every so often to check that Hermione and Ron, the only prefects in attendance, weren't paying them too much attention.

Hermione and Ron, however, had other things on their minds. Neither Harry nor Ginny had been seen all evening.

"I'm sure they're not together," said Hermione for the hundredth time, but looking worried all the same. "And even if they were…"

"They'd better not be!" interjected Ron. "It's all very well in theory, Harry noticing her and that, but he'd better not be out there… noticing her now!"

"I'm sure he's not," said Hermione absently. Ron turned to see what she was looking at.

"Why do you keep staring at those fifth years?" he asked.

Hermione blushed. "Staring? I'm not staring at anything…" but just at that moment the group got up and she was up in a flash and hurrying over to where they had been sitting.

Looking puzzled, Ron followed her. "What are you – what's that?"

Hermione was poring over a length of parchment. "Nothing, nothing… oh, this is very poor… barely merits an Acceptable…"

Ron snatched it off her and looked at it. "Mena Selari's Potions essay? What are you reading this for?"

"Shhhh!" snapped Hermione, putting the parchment back where it had been left. "I was checking on a hunch."

"What? What hunch?"

Hermione led him back to where they had been seated. "It's nothing, Ron," she started, but on seeing his look she gave in. "Oh, alright. We know that someone tried to give you a love potion, so I was just checking a likely candidate."

"You… you think Mena Selari is the one who tried to give me the potion?" spluttered Ron.

"Well I did," Hermione said calmly. "But I don't any more. That girl couldn't brew a love potion if she tried. No feel for the subject whatsoever."

Ron had gone red by this point. "But... but what made you think…?"

"Well how many girls do you know with a massive crush on you?" sniffed Hermione. "It does narrow the field a little bit. Besides which, had you thought that whoever it was might not give up so easily?"

"What do you mean?" Ron chose to ignore her previous comment.

"Well," she said patiently, "have you considered the possibility that they might see it hasn't worked and try it again?"

Ron looked a little panicked. "Er… no. I hadn't really thought of that." He glanced around the common room suspiciously.

"Just be careful, Ron. The last thing we need is for you to be mooning around someone the way Harry is with Ginny. Imagine if it was someone like Millicent Bulstrode or Eloise Midgen!"

"If that ever happens," said Ron, looking a little jumpy, "tie me to a chair and get Dumbledore immediately."

"Have you seen an essay lying around anywhere?" said Mena, appearing behind Ron, causing him to jump about a foot in the air.

"Oh, hi," he said. "I think there's one just over there!" Mena smiled and thanked him and Ron grinned, as if he were remembering what Hermione had said about her having a crush on him.

"No problem," he said, with what could have been an attempt at a wink.

Hermione's sigh was audible. "We don't know it's not her," she said shortly.

"Yeah we do," Ron said. "Besides, you're just jealous."

She went pink. "Jealous? What do you mean, jealous?" she hissed.

"You're jealous that somebody likes me enough to put a love spell on me!" Ron burst out.

Hermione had just opened her mouth to retort when Harry appeared. At the same moment the third years in the corner burst into uncontrollable giggling as one of them began to grow hair all over his face at an alarming rate. Without a word Ron stood up and marched over.

Hermione turned to Harry. "Are you alright? Ron and I were worried about you."

"Yeah, I'm fine." Harry was aware that he was convincing nobody. They could hear Ron's voice amongst the background hubbub: "Boys, magical hair growth potion is not a toy!"

"It's just Ginny!" Harry blurted. "I don't get her!" Just saying her name out loud gave him a bittersweet throb somewhere in his chest.

"What don't you get?" asked Hermione, keeping her expression blank.

"Why do I upset her so much?" he asked, feeling that same hard lump rising in his throat. "I try to tell her I like her, and I end up hurting her! I just don't get it!" He realised his hands were balled into tight fists.

Hermione was silent for a moment. "Harry…" she started, "do you have any idea why Ginny's upset with you?"

Harry considered. "She said I wasn't me, that it wasn't real…"

"Exactly. Your feelings might seem real to you but to Ginny they're a cruel joke, because she knows they're the result of the potion." Harry opened his mouth to protest but she silenced him. "Whatever you might think, Harry, you can't know your true feelings until we find an antidote. Then if you still feel the same, tell her."

"But she doesn't like me that way," groaned Harry. "She gets all upset every time-"

Hermione couldn't believe how dense boys could be. "Ginny gets upset, Harry," she interrupted, "because she has liked you that way since before she even came to Hogwarts."

Harry felt a light bubbly feeling start in his stomach. "I thought she – she got over that…"

"She settled for being friends, Harry," said Hermione. "But she never got over it!"

The bubbly feeling spread all over, and there was a buzzing in his ears. She never got over it… she liked him… Ginny liked him! He was aware that he must look a little manic, but he couldn't keep the ear-to-ear grin off his face. The most beautiful, funny, gorgeous girl at Hogwarts… liked him!

He faintly heard Hermione mutter, "Oh dear. I shouldn't have told him that..."

To Be Continued…