It's after lunch on Saturday when there is a knock on the front door, the sound echoing dully through the hallways.
Harry frowns. Grimmauld Place is still pretty guarded, few people outside of the Order and the Weasleys able to get to the front door.
Kreacher is already in the hall when Harry steps out into it. "I've got it," he says, waving him off.
Kreacher mutters something under his breath about the inappropriateness of the master opening his own door, but disappears back upstairs nonetheless.
Checking the location of his wand, Harry cautiously peers out the peephole, only to step back in surprise. He swings the door open.
"Ginny," he says.
She's standing on the stoop bundled in a coat. Over the scarf wrapped around her neck, she gives him a smile that seems just the tiniest bit nervous. "Hi."
"Hi," he says back, rather inanely. His mouth doesn't seem to be working very well for some reason.
She shifts her weight. "I'm sorry to just drop by like this."
"Oh," Harry says. "It's fine."
"If now isn't a good time—"
He shakes his head. "It's a great time," he says, trying not to wince at his own enthusiasm. He pulls the door open wider, and it bangs against the wall. "Want to come in?"
She nods, stepping past him into the entryway.
She stamps her feet on the mat. "It's bloody freezing out there. So much for spring."
Her cheeks are pink from the cold, he notices, her hair grown out long enough to go just past her shoulders now. "Yeah," he says when he realizes he's been quiet for too long. "I figured it was England welcoming me back by trying to freeze my bits off."
God, did he really just say that? What's wrong with him?
Ginny just snickers, shrugging off her coat and winding off her scarf. Underneath she's wearing a pale blue jumper over a rather trim pair of jeans.
"Is there a place I can..." she says, holding up her coat.
Feeling like an idiot, he belatedly reaches for it. "Here, let me."
He can feel her eyes on him as he hangs her things up, and he wonders if it would be possible for him to be more ridiculous and awkward.
"Let's go to the sitting room," he says.
Dutifully following after him, Ginny laughs when she first walks in, and the sound so startles Harry that he's stuck staring at her.
Ginny doesn't seem to notice, walking around the room and taking in the changes. Harry knows it's been transformed almost beyond recognition, sunlight streaming through the sparkling glass, falling across a warm, thick rug and soft, elegantly striped sofas. The walls are papered in a pleasant green, the wainscoting gleaming warmly with a new coat of polish.
"Fleur?" she asks.
"Yeah."
Ginny nods. "She can be like a force of nature, which I imagine is exactly what this place needed."
"I guess so," Harry agrees, not particularly interested in the room at the moment.
She spends a few minutes poking around, her fingers sliding along the top of the piano before she crosses over to look out the windows. Harry stands in the middle of the room, desperately trying to come up with anything to say as she leans on the sill to look at something in the square below, but his brain seems to be stuck on the simple fact that she's here.
The silence is stretching long now, and Harry scrambles for something to say, not knowing why talking in person should be so much harder than writing. Before he can come up with anything, Ginny leans forward, resting her forehead on the window.
"Ginny?" he asks.
"You know," she says, her back still to him. "I'm generally a very cautious person."
Harry blinks at the odd non-sequitur, but is honestly just happy to have her talking about anything at all. "I've seen you play Quidditch," he reminds her.
She turns around, leaning back against the sill. "What's more controlled than Quidditch? There are clearly delineated roles, borders, rules, penalties. And if you study a team beforehand well enough, there are barely any surprises. It's just…execution."
He's never thought of it that way. For him Quidditch has always been about freedom, about not thinking, flying around by the seat of his pants with very little fate-of-the-world consequences. He thinks that's probably a big part of why he never really considered it for a career.
"Sounds a bit boring when you put it that way," he says.
She smiles. "Only because you take such delight in leaping before you look."
He shrugs, not bothering to deny it. "It can be harder to be brave when you know what's waiting at the bottom."
"As if that has ever stopped you."
He gives her an arch look. "So first I'm codependent and now I have an impulse-control problem?"
"A massive one," she agrees. "Me, on the other hand, I want to know everything. I want to know exactly what I'm leaping into. Even if it means I'm more likely not to take the leap at all." She shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest and looking down at her toes. "I suppose that makes me a coward."
"Bollocks," he says. "You're one of the bravest people I know."
Ginny doesn't look up, face still hidden from him as she shakes her head, and it strikes him that she seems strangely…vulnerable, standing there, one hand rubbing up and down her arm.
"You don't know how long I was standing out on your stoop," she says, "trying to work up the nerve to knock."
Harry's brow furrows, barely having time to even process that before Ginny speaks again.
"Why did you come back?" she asks.
"What?" Harry asks, thrown by the speed of this conversation as it takes yet another unexpected turn.
She finally looks up at him, and there's something determined about the set of her chin. "I mean, was it really just to get away from Ron and Hermione? Or to see Teddy? Or because you're sick of traveling?"
He opens his mouth. "I…"
She pushes off the window, pacing towards him. "Why come back two days before a Hogsmeade weekend? I mean, it's probably just a coincidence or something, but I keep thinking about it. I've been thinking about it since you first wrote that you were coming back. And then you came to Hogsmeade and we've been writing, almost every night..." She pauses, her hands tightening into fists before relaxing again. "If I'm reading too much into that, please tell me. I just need to know, one way or the other."
This is a giant avalanche of words and information that Harry has no hope of parsing really, so all he's left with is the unavoidable truth.
"You're not," he says, because he may be confused about a lot of things, but not about this.
Her expression doesn't shift. "I'm not?" she asks.
He takes a cautious step towards her, his heart thudding away in his chest as he considers his options. He'd really rather not make an arse of himself again, but she has to have come here today for a reason. Ginny never does anything without a reason.
"I came back to see you," he says, and it's a bit of a relief to finally admit it out loud. When she doesn't move to interrupt him or tell him off, he takes another step. "I wanted to see if there was any chance…"
Her entire body seems to soften with what he hopes is relief. "Really?" she asks, like she really wants to believe that but isn't sure she should.
"Of course," he says, only more certain in the face of her hesitance. How could she even doubt it?
"I told you not to wait for me," she says. "I practically made you promise."
"Yeah," he says, because it's not like he could forget. "But at the risk of making you angry, I have to admit that I didn't really listen. I mean, I wasn't expecting anything. I never assumed… I just kinda…hoped, I guess."
He barely gets the smallest glimpse of her expression before she looks down, folding her arms across her chest.
Harry forces himself to just stand there and wait, trying to ignore the urge to shove his hands in his pockets. He'd really rather she were looking at him because he has no idea what is going through her mind. Is she going to tell him off?
She lets out an unsteady release of air. "I did too."
"What?" he asks, trying to concentrate over the pounding in his ears.
She looks up at him, and there is nothing like anger in her expression. "Hope."
A large part of Harry wants to stride across the room, but he's trying really hard not to get ahead of himself for once. "So you're saying…"
"That I'd really like to kiss you," she says in a rush. "If that's okay."
This is definitely something he did not expect to hear, his stomach lurching pleasantly. "Right. Great. Brilliant. I'm definitely okay with that," he says, and is his mouth even attached to his brain anymore?
Somehow, she's kind enough not to laugh at him for that, but neither does she move, and it's going to be hard to follow through when they still aren't close enough to touch.
"I just…" she says, hands twisting in front of her.
"What?"
She looks up at him helplessly. "I really don't want to mess this up again."
Finally giving into the urge, he crosses the last distance until he's standing in front of her. "You never messed it up."
She isn't looking at him, staring somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. Reaching out, her fingers hesitantly touch his shirt, palm pressing down flat as if to prove that he's really here. Warmth radiates across his body from the touch.
"Ginny," he says, hand covering hers.
Her eyes finally track up to his face, her head tipping back. "Merlin," she breathes, her fingers curling in against his. "Have you always been so bloody tall?"
He lets out a breath, feeling off-balance having her so near. "For a while now, yeah."
Pulling herself up to her full height, she puts a hand on top of her head, drawing it forward until it hits just at his chin.
"Maybe you've shrunk," he says, tilting his head down to look at her with a smile.
She gives him an indignant glare. "I'll have you know I'm quite tall."
"You're perfect," he says without thinking, his face immediately warming.
"If you believe that," she says, ducking her face. "You've clearly been away too long."
"I was scared I had," he says, tentatively touching her arm, wanting to pull her closer.
She shakes her head, reaching for his face, fingers warm on his jaw. "I really hope that's not true." And then she's lifting her face up to his and he's leaning in.
There's an awkward moment of getting their noses aligned, of Ginny working her way around his glasses, but then her lips are there, soft and warm against his.
Until that very moment, he thinks part of him is still convinced this won't actually happen. That she'll pull back, that someone will barge in, that something will happen to get in the way. But she's kissing him, it's actually happening, and he has to bite back every instinct to just drag her closer and deepen the kiss. Instead he keeps it gentle, doesn't push, and maybe he's still holding his breath a bit because he remembers far too well a time when being around him only made her think of bad things. Of inescapable memories.
So he concentrates on how she's reacting, on making sure that everything is okay. The moment she pulls back, his eyes are intent on her face.
"How was that?" he asks.
She smiles. "Fine," she says, her hands sliding down from his face to rest on his shoulders. "Nice."
It was nice. Which should be good, but honestly, nice isn't a word he ever thought he would use to describe kissing Ginny. He looks at her face, and she doesn't seem panicked or worried, just slightly disappointed if anything—and that sparks a horrible feeling, like maybe it has been too long or she's going to change her mind, but her hands are still on his shoulders, and he realizes with a jolt that what they are really doing is being stupidly cautious.
He's never been a fan of cautious and he damn well isn't going to start now because she's here and he's here and he's not wasting that chance. He's not ruining this.
If she needs someone to jump off a cliff, he's more than happy to do it.
He reaches for her face with both hands and then he's leaning back in and kissing her the way he's always wanted to. Not like he's going to break this by stepping wrong, but letting out everything he felt first seeing her at The Three Broomsticks, that moment she smiled at him and he knew he'd never really be content just being her friend. Letting her know in no uncertain terms that his feelings for her haven't gone anywhere for all they've tried to pretend they don't exist.
She makes a small sound of what might be surprise, and he really hopes this wasn't a stupid idea to push her like this, but that worry evaporates as her fingers tighten on his shoulders and she's pulling him even closer, kissing him back with matching enthusiasm.
And this… This isn't nice or anything remotely close to that. He half-heartedly tries to come up with a word to describe it, but he pretty much stops having brainpower to think because it just feels…so much better than anything ever really.
When they eventually break apart, neither back away from each other. Harry's breathing thunders loud in his ears, or maybe that's his heart or his thoughts. He has no idea.
He lowers his face to her hair, breathing in the floral scent.
Her fingers curl into his shirt. "Is this really happening?" she asks, voice soft.
"Want me to pinch you?" he offers, because he's an idiot and he's feeling so stupidly giddy he barely knows what to do with himself.
She lets out a shaky laugh. "Now I know it's really happening, because you are an utter prat."
"Insulting me already?" he asks.
She leans back to look at him, eyes traveling over his face. Her smile shifts into something much more uncertain. "You really aren't going anywhere?"
He is hyperaware then that he has kissed her twice before only to disappear right after—once to die. He touches her face, taking in the wild tumble that is her hair, her flushed cheeks and pink lips, and thinks she has probably never looked more beautiful.
"No," he promises. "I'm staying right here."
"Good," she says, giving him a smile that warms him to his toes. It quickly falters though as something seems to occur to her.
"What?" he asks, fingers tightening of their own accord.
"I'm still going back to Hogwarts," she says, sounding a little miserable at the idea.
His shoulders relax. "It's not that long." In the scheme of things, he can handle a few more months if he knows exactly what is waiting for them on the other side.
She nods, not looking at all convinced.
"If you'd rather wait—" he forces himself to offer, despite feeling sick at even the idea of putting this off again.
"No," she says, looking horrified by the idea as well. "I think we've have just about enough of waiting, don't you think?"
He nods enthusiastically. "More than enough."
Before he can come up with anything to say, she's kissing him again.
He doesn't need any more encouragement than that, this time really settling in to the feel of it—of holding her, kissing her. It's no awkward first kiss or a desperate last kiss. But something warm and exciting and so, so amazing.
So this is what it's really supposed to feel like, he realizes.
Ginny's arms wind up around his neck, fingers weaving up into his hair, at first gently exploring and then tugging him down like she can't get him close enough, and he knows the feeling, his arm dropping to wrap around her waist, pulling her up against him. The angle changes again, somehow even better.
And oh, god, this. This is what he imagined. Heat and friction and the taste of her mouth, only it's even more than that, a fiery warmth lodging deep in his body, radiating from every point of contact between them, and he can't imagine how he lived without doing this every damn day for the last two years.
It feels like barely any time at all passes before the mantle clock lets out a soft chime. Ginny pulls back, staring blankly at it as if gathering her wits.
"Merlin, is that the time?" she eventually says.
"Hmm?" Harry says, honestly not at all interested in things like clocks and schedules.
"I was only supposed to be gone an hour."
He frowns. "It can't possibly have been an hour already."
"It's been an hour and a half."
He cranes his neck around to look at the clock, sure that can't be right. "Really?"
She touches his face, something soft and warm in the curve of her smile. "You are rather distracting."
He leans into her, his hands sliding up her back. "Am I?"
She doesn't have a ready comeback to that, blinking back at him like she really does find him particularly distracting. It's only fair, he supposes, because he can't stop himself from kissing her again.
"Harry," she mumbles against his lips.
"Hmm?"
"I really have to go," she says, which would be more convincing if she weren't still clutching his arms and already kissing him again.
"Why?" he asks.
She sighs, settling back on her heels, an unacceptable amount of distance widening between them. "I may have…snuck out."
He looks at her in surprise. "Did you?" Now that she's of age, he doesn't think she would have to do that anymore.
She grimaces. "I didn't relish having to explain… Well, any of this, to be honest. If this went…badly, well, it would be hard enough to deal with without pitying looks from Mum."
He draws her closer. "That didn't happen," he reminds her, really grasping for the first time how hard it must have been for her to come here today, how much it had taken to even try.
"No," she says, smiling. "Which only means Mum is going to be insufferable when she finds out." She grimaces as if in anticipation of her future mortification.
It's a bit of a sobering reminder, the idea of dealing with Ginny's family. And Ron. Oh, god. Ron.
What is he going to say when he finds out? Is he going to hate him? Harry's stomach twists at the thought.
Something of it must show on his face, because Ginny peers closely at him and says, "You know, we could just…keep this to ourselves for a little bit. If you want."
"You mean us?" he asks. Just saying that makes him happier than he wants to admit.
She gives him a smile like she likes the sound of that as well. It fades as her fingers play with the collar of his shirt. "You've been gone a long time. A lot's happened. Things are...different now." She shrugs. "Figuring all of this out while everyone is watching…" Her eyes widen as if the idea horrifies her.
Honestly, as much as part of Harry wouldn't mind shouting it from the rooftops, he isn't particularly thrilled with the idea of trying to figure out how to do this with her family watching either. It sounds slightly terrifying actually. He tries to imagine dinner tomorrow with Molly and Arthur and George and Percy watching their every move.
"Sure," Harry finds himself agreeing. "We could do that."
She looks so relieved, giving him a brilliant smile, that Harry lets any other concerns fall away. They're in this together now. Everything else is unimportant.
"Stop it," Ginny says, voice stern.
"What?" he asks, not aware that he was doing anything, let alone how he might have messed up already.
Only she doesn't look angry. "If you keep looking at me like that, I'm never going to get out of here."
"Oh," he says, not exactly repentant of this particular sin. "Is that supposed to be a bad thing?"
"Yes?" she says.
"You don't sound particularly certain."
She clears her throat. "I'm certain. Definitely."
But the only thing that is definite right now is that she's staring at his mouth.
"Yeah?" he says, leaning down to kiss her because it's not like he ever backs down from a challenge, and her lips are just right there.
"Okay," she says when he finishes thoroughly proving his point. "I don't really remember what we were arguing about but you win."
He laughs, and if part of that is relief, he's going to ignore that for now. "I'll have to remember that tactic."
She puts her hands on his chest, firmly pushing him back away from her. "You're going to be dangerous."
"Come on," he says. "Let's get you home before your mum notices."
She reluctantly agrees, slipping her hand in his as they walk out of the room. He tries not to let on that the simple gesture catches him off-guard, because once he gets past the unfamiliarity of it, he likes it. Really likes it.
Out in the hall, he watches her pull her coat on. Her scarf slips out of the pocket while she's doing up the buttons. Harry leans down and scoops it up, fingering the soft lopsided knots that tells him she probably made it herself.
She holds her hand out to take it, but he's strangely reluctant to give it up, so instead he steps closer, looping it over her head. He very carefully wraps it around her neck, tucking the ends into her coat.
He feels silly by the time he's done, but Ginny is watching him with an expression that makes his skin warm.
She bites her lip. "See you tomorrow?"
"I like how that sounds," he says, barely resisting the urge to figure out a way to hold her again.
She smiles. "Me too."
He pulls the door open for her despite how reluctant he is to see her go.
Out on the stoop she pauses, turning back to look at him. "Harry?"
For some reason, his heart is pounding hard. "Yeah?" he manages.
She shoves her hands down deep into her pockets, tilting her head slightly to one side. "I'm really glad you came back early."
Something warm seems to expand in his chest, a bit like a Patronus. "I'm really glad you knocked," he says.
She gives him a wide grin, her chin tucking down into her scarf, and Harry can't help himself. Despite knowing she needs to leave, he steps out onto the stoop, taking her arm. He leans in and kisses her again.
She laughs against his lips, but doesn't pull away.