A/N So as I was writing this and it was getting absurdly long, I realized that this worked better as the first half of a two parter than as the second half of the last chapter… hence the renaming of the last chapter… I really enjoyed writing this chapter so I hope you enjoy reading it…oh and there is some definite sexual tension in this chapter, so fair warning….

The first thing that Harry did when coming into consciousness, before even opening his eyes, was to reach out for the warm body he had fallen asleep next to. His brow furrowed when his searching hand found only a dented pillow and rapidly cooling sheets. One eye popped open, quickly confirming his suspicions. His chronically late sleeping girlfriend had disappeared.

Now, to his sleep fogged mind, there were only three things this could mean. One, she had been kidnapped in the middle of the night by rouge Death Eaters without him waking up. Two, the past five months had been an elaborate dream and he wasn't even dating Ginny. Or three - he thought as he heard the water running in the bathroom - she had a actually gotten before him and was taking a shower.

For a moment, he couldn't think of what would actually make Ginny get out of bed and get ready this early if she wasn't working at the hospital, until he remembered that it was Christmas Eve. Since all the Weasley children had moved out of the Burrow, and were even having children of their own, it had become tradition that the whole Weasley brood, along with their significant others and families if they had them, would spend the day before Christmas in their childhood home.

As Harry lay in bed for a few more minutes he mused on his change of role this year. He had always attended Christmas Eve as the seventh adopted son, as the Weasley's had always treated him, even when he was going through 'his phase' as Ginny called it, but this year he was also attending as one of the significant others. He also expected it would be a much more enjoyable day that it had been before, since it had been awkward the past few years since it was one of the times he couldn't avoid Ginny when they weren't on speaking terms.

In the past he had actually considered not going to the Burrow because of Ginny, and if he hadn't known ahead of time each year from Ron, that she wasn't going to bring Giona, he probably wouldn't have gone. But a part of him felt compelled to go even though it was painful to be so close to her physically, yet so distant emotionally. However, he put himself through the torture each year, because even though he wouldn't admit it to himself at the time, he was so deeply in love with her that the pain of seeing her knowing she was with someone else was better than not seeing her at all.

But this year, he thought as he came to the end of his contemplations, this year was different. This year was going to be how it should have been all along. He smiled to himself as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, ready to start his day.

Rubbing the excess sleep out of his eyes with one hand and hitching up his pajama pants that were sliding down his hips with the other, he shuffled barefoot to the bathroom. Opening the door he was struck by a wall of steam so thick that he couldn't see further than a foot in front of his face. Fairly certain that there had been a bathroom here last time he checked, he ventured into the cloud.

"Morning babe," Ginny called from the shower when she heard the door click shut behind him.

"Morning," Harry replied through a yawn. "Are you trying to boil yourself again?"

"There is nothing wrong with liking a warm shower," she replied, as they slid into a conversation they had had on many occasions since they had begun sharing a bathroom.

"Of course there is nothing wrong with a warm shower," he agreed as he used his wand to create a bubble of steam-less air around him and defogging a portion of the mirror. "I like warm showers, I'll even go so far as to say that I enjoy hot showers. I think that most people will agree that there is nothing wrong with a nice warm shower. But you, my love, do not like warm showers, you like scalding showers."

Ginny's laugh echoed against the tiles of the shower making Harry smile as he started to shave. "Just because it's too hot for you to handle…" Ginny trailed off challengingly.

"Oh its not too hot for me to handle," he contradicted, "I just prefer not getting third degree burns from my showers."

"No one is getting burned," Ginny retorted, turning off the water. "Now would you please hand me my towel?"

Harry, who had moved onto brushing his teeth now that he had finished shaving, continued to clean his teeth with one hand while he grabbed Ginny's towel with the other and draped it over the shower stall door. He watched until the towel disappeared before he crossed back over to the sink.

Spitting into the sink and quickly rinsing his mouth, he looked back into the mirror to see Ginny standing behind him watching his reflection in the glass. She was wrapped in her favorite oversized fluffy white towel, her hair practically burgundy in color from being wet and curling at the bottom where water droplets dripped off the tips making trails down her freshly clean back, arms and chest, until they were either absorbed by her towel or they fell to the floor. His eyes continued to roam up an down her reflection as he took in all of this before he turned around to face the real thing.

"How can you say the that the water isn't too hot? Look at your skin," he accused gently, bringing his right hand up to cup the left side of her face. And he was right, her normally porcelain skin was an angry, practically swollen, red.

Never breaking eye contact, he trailed his fingertips from her temple to her cheek and down her slender neck, they brushed lightly against the freckles that dusted her shoulders until they switched directions an made their way along her clavicle and down her chest until he was running his fingers along the edge of the terry cloth. He felt rather than saw Ginny shudder as a chill ran down her spine and goosebumps raised along her skin. Harry knew that this could have been caused by the water cooling on her tender, heat abused skin, but as he watched her half hooded eyes, he smiled knowing that it was his touch that caused her physiological reaction. Dropping his hand to his side he chuckled as Ginny groaned lightly at the loss of physical contact.

"As tempting as you are, standing there in a towel all clean and pink, I need to hop in the shower as well and you need to get ready if we're going to get to the Burrow on time."

Ginny sighed, knowing that Harry was right. "Fine, but only because I don't want to be last ones to arrive like we were at Hermione's birthday," she said, referring to a couple months back when they had lost track of time and arrived at her birthday party an hour and half late looking quite rumpled. None of her brothers let them live it down for the rest of the night and they were still teased about it on a regular basis. "But that doesn't mean I'm not going to make you finish what you started when we get home tonight," Ginny said nonchalantly as she ran a comb through her wet hair.

"I think that could be arranged," Harry replied just as casually.

"In fact, I think I'm going to need another shower tonight, an perhaps I might not object to some company," she mentioned. "I might even be persuaded to turn down the temperature a little bit."

"A lot a bit," Harry countered as he stripped off his pajamas and stepped into the shower.

"A medium bit," she bargained.

"Deal."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"So when are you two going to get married?" Molly asked unceremoniously.

"Mum! We've only been together for five months," Ginny admonished.

Ginny was currently sitting with her mother, Hermione, and Angelina as the whole extended family sat around in small groups visiting after finishing the large brunch Molly had made.

"Well you two would have been together for years if you hadn't been so blind," Hermione added teasingly, to her best friend's irritation.

"Well we were and we haven't so we wont be getting married for a while yet," Ginny replied mainly to her mother. "We are just enjoying being together right now, we haven't even discussed marriage."

"Well you two are already living together so–"

"Mum..." Ginny interrupted warningly.

Even though her mother hadn't thrown a fit like she did when she had moved in with Mauricio, Molly still started to grumble indignantly about the impropriety of them living together out of wedlock and talking about how in her day it wasn't even proper for men and women to even together in that sense until after the wedding. That was until Ginny pointed out that it would be very unlikely that Bill could have been premature and weigh almost ten pounds at birth.

"Are they giving you a hard time?" Harry asked as he slid up behind his girlfriend, resting his hands on her shoulders and leaning forward so he could place a kiss on her cheek.

"My mother is just trying to slap that old ball and chain onto my ankle," Ginny joked.

"Well I hope she's not trying to attach you to that guy you're dating now," he replied worriedly, "Cause I hear he's a total prat and not very good looking either. I think you could do better."

"Aww, well I think he's a pretty nice guy," Ginny replied, "and besides, looks aren't everything. But you're right, I probably could do better."

Harry stumbled back a few paces, clutching his hands to his chest dramatically. "Oh how you wound my heart my darling!"

"No," she retorted, turning around so that she was kneeling on the seat facing him, "just your ego."

"Oh you cruel, cruel, woman. And you know that I suffer from low self-esteem."

Ginny simply scoffed at his theatrics and rolled her eyes, extending a hand to draw him back to her.

"Have I told you lately that you're ridiculous?" Ginny asked, fondly flicking the white puff ball that was hanging from the end of the Father Christmas hat he was wearing.

"And have I told you lately that I adore you?" he countered, slipping an arm around her lower back, pulling her so that she was pressed up against the back of the sofa, so that he could kiss her quickly.

Once he released her, she sat back on her heels and stuck out her tongue obstinately.

"See," Harry said to Molly, pointing at her only daughter, "she is still much too immature to be a wife and mother. But I promise to make an honest woman of her yet Mum."

Before anyone could respond he winked and whisked away to where the twins were calling his name over by the fireplace. But Ginny was happy to notice that her mother seemed so pleased with Harry's use of the maternal endearment, that she seemed willing to let the topic drop for the moment.

"So," Hermione asked helping the change of topic along, "does Harry have any idea what you made him?"

"Nope," Ginny replied with a smile. "He was a very good boy and didn't peak once."

"How do you know?" Angelina asked.

"Well for one, Harry isn't Fred," Ginny started in a tone that could almost be considered sympathetic. "I can ask Harry not to do something and trust that he actually wont do it." Ginny paused as a mischievous smile grew on her face. "Also his hair never turned red and green like it would have if he had opened the door to the study."

The circle of women all had a good laugh at this until they were started by a loud bang on the other side of the room causing them all to search for the source of the commotion. Ironically, but not surprisingly, it had come from the corner where the twins were standing with Harry. It seemed that trust levels had been misjudged, in that Harry trusted the miss-trustworthy twins. As a result Harry looked like he had been in a red glitter explosion. Ginny was the first person to break the stunned silence with her laughter, but the rest of her family and even Harry himself quickly followed.

"Ow," Harry said suddenly, his laughter coming to a halt. "Ow!" he exclaimed again ending everyone else laughter as well.

"What did you do to him?!" Molly asked smacking the twins on the back of their heads.

"We didn't do anything to him," Fred replied incredulously.

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow…" Harry continued as he clutched his right eye.

"Well you did something to him," Molly continued to scold.

"Seriously Mum, it was just regular glitter The only thing we did to it was make it so you cant magic it off," George insisted, looking uncharacteristically concerned at Harry's reaction.

Meanwhile Ginny walked over to her boyfriend and was gently prying his hands his hands away from his face. With his wild blinking and watering eye, it didn't take long to figure out what was wrong with him.

"Relax, you've just got glitter in your eye. You're acting like you eye is about to fall out of you're head," Ginny teased.

"But it hurts," he whined as he continued to blink.

"Stop blinking for a second," she ordered. "Oh come here," she commanded with a sigh as his eyelids continued to flutter. As he leaned over she grabbed his head and used her thumb to hold his glitter encrusted eyelid open. "Look down…look left…look right….look up…Hah! Don't move," she warned as she reached out to remove the offending object from his eye. "Better?"

Harry blinked a few more times before speaking, "Much, thank you Peanut."

At this the twins both stood and began applauding wildly.

"All hail Ginny! Eliminator of optical obstructions," George cheered.

"The savior of sight!" Fred added.

"The remover if renegade glitter!" George continued.

"The destroyer of - ouch!"

This time it was Ginny's turn to smack her brothers.

"Come on Harry, lets get you cleaned up before it happens again," she said, grabbing her boyfriends hand and leading him up to the bathroom leaving a sparkly trail in their wake.

They could hear the chatter that had died down after the glitter explosion start back up as they made their way upstairs.

"Okay," Ginny said once they had reached the bathroom and closed the door behind them, "take off your clothes."

Harry gave her look that she might have called lecherous had he not been looked like one of those shoes from that movie she watched with Hermione. "I like it when you're all authoritarian like that, and here I thought we were going to wait until tonight to finish what we started."

Ginny simply raised an eyebrow while she attempted to suppress a grin. "Shut up and start stripping."

"Yes ma'am!" Harry replied enthusiastically as he peeled off his sweater and jeans, leaving them inside out to better contain the glitter.

Ginny snatched a washcloth from underneath the sink and hopped lightly onto the counter motioning for Harry to come towards her. As he settled between her legs she began to carefully clear away the glitter. Harry watched her as she worked with the efficiency and concentration of the healer she was becoming, her touch was gentle but firm as she worked to remove the flitter making sure to keep is away from his eyes.

Her hand stilled and their eyes met when she felt the intensity of his gaze.

"What?" she asked feeling suddenly self conscious.

"You're amazing," he told her. "You know that?"

"All I'm doing is getting rid of some glitter," she said teasingly, "surely that's not all that amazing."

"No," he insisted, "you're amazing."

He leaned forward closing the little space that remained between them and kissed her gently. He made to deepen the kiss and was surprised when instead of responding, she pulled away.

"Harry!" she exclaimed unhappily as she twisted around to look at her reflection in the mirror. "You got glitter all over me!"

Harry was far from apologetic and responded by dropping his head and running his hands vigorously through his hair making a shower of red glitter rain down onto Ginny's lap. She squealed and tried to either push him away or at least hop of the counter, but his much larger frame prevented her from doing either. He eventually stopped, laughing even harder when he saw her pouting.

"I hate you," she declared, crossing her arms in front of her chest indignantly.

"I know," he replied with a smile as he flicked a piece of red glitter off the tip of her nose.

It didn't take them too much longer to get cleaned up the best they could.

"Come on," Ginny said, hopping of the counter, "let's run home really quick so we can get changed since you cant spend the rest of the day in your boxers and undershirt and you got red glitter all over my new sweater and…"

Ginny trailed off as she struggled with the doorknob and found it didn't want to turn.

"Is it locked?" Harry asked looking over her shoulder.

"Of course its not locked," Ginny snapped as she continued to struggle with the door. "I'm not an idiot."

"I never said you were," Harry placated. "Here let me try," he said as he switched spots with his girlfriend and attempted to open the bathroom door. "It's stuck," he announced after pulling on the know a couple times.

"I could have told you that," she said irritably as she closed the lid of the toilet and sat down heavily putting her head in her hands.

Harry pounded on the door a couple times and called out for help.

"They're not going to be able to hear you," Ginny muttered. "My old room is next door and everybody showering in the morning used to wake me up, so Dad put a permanent silencing charm on the room. Sound can get in but it cant get out."

"Well then I'll just take the spell down," he said confidently as he reached for his wand. He paused when he realized when he wasn't wearing his pants and reached for his pile of clothes. "Peanut?" he asked when he didn't find it, "Do you have your wand? I must have dropped mine down stairs when I got hit with the glitter."

"Mine's in my purse," she groaned. "These pants don't have pockets."

"Well that's ironic," Harry murmured to himself since it was rare that either of them were without their wand, let alone both of them at once. "Well maybe I can just kick the door down and then just fix it later."

"Good luck with that," she said sarcastically. "With all the explosions that the twins have set off over the years, there are so many spells and enchantments on these walls that I think the Burrow is practically indestructible."

Harry sighed as he tugged on the handle a couple more times, putting all his weight behind it. It just wasn't budging. Without magic, they were just going to have to wait for someone to come rescue them. He turned around to tell Ginny this and was surprised to find her hyperventilating.

"Whoa Ginny, what's wrong?" he asked knelling down in front of her.

"We're never going to get out of here!" she cried as her breathing continued to speed.

"Calm down babe, I think you're freaking out a little prematurely. We are in a house full of people, someone is going to need to use the loo eventually."

"And they'll use the one downstairs," she replied fatalistically.

"Why are you panicking?" he asked. "We have been in here for half an hour and you've been fine."

"That was when I knew I could leave if I wanted to," she exclaimed.

Harry became even more concerned when he saw her eyes start to go glassy. "Ginny, you really need to calm down," he ordered authoritatively, knowing she was about to pass out if she didn't stop hyperventilating.

"Look at me," he commanded, his tone leaving no room for disagreement as she did what he said. "Now breathe with me," he told her taking a deep breath in through his nose and holding it for a moment before letting it out through his mouth.

She followed his lead and after a few minutes of this she had calmed down enough to speak rationally.

"Are you alright?" he asked gently tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Now I am," she replied. "I don't know what happened to me. I've never been claustrophobic before," she continued sheepishly.

"It happens to everyone once in a while," he said consolingly. "Trust me I know. I spent the first eleven years of my life living in a cupboard. Most of the time I was fine, it was actually my safe haven, but sometimes when I would hear the lock latch shut and I knew I was locked in the dark for I didn't know how long, it would all be to much and I would panic like you just did."

Harry didn't speak about his pre-Hogwarts years very often, not wanting anyone's pity and not really wanting to think about it himself. Ron and Hermione knew the gist of it, but Ginny knew more than anyone else. And while she loved the fact that he trusted her enough to reveal his not so pleasant memories oh his childhood, it always broke her heart to think of a young Harry being abused the way that he was.

"So," Ginny said wanting to move to a more cheery topic of conversation. "I was at work the other day and Dr. Sean was telling me a story about a patient where…" she began settling in for some one on one time.

A/N So what did you think? Will poor Harry and Ginny ever get out of the bathroom? Will they get to exchange Christmas presents? Will we find out what Ron eventually got Hermione for Christmas? Will the author ever admit that she once got locked in a bathroom with a broken handle when she was home alone for 2 hours before her brother came home to get her out? Leave a review and you might find out! Lol….