Compilation of Hinny Works

by LegendDairy

I've got too many Hinny one-shots, and there are more coming. So they are all going to be posted here instead of individual stories. And Harry/Ginny pairings only, no others. Will be updated sporadically.

114. Criminals and Corsets

Muggle AU- Prompt loosely followed, provided by tsunako-tan07

()()()

Criminals and Corsets

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There was a muffled sound of protest coming from him, the pull of his straps making that sound that leather makes when it rubs up against itself; it was the only other sound in the room. Then there was the clack, clack, clack of her heels on the hard floor around them as she circled. Another crack of the whip against the floor in warning before she gently trailed the whip over his torso.

This one liked to be punished.

She pulled the lever at the side of the stand, holding his restraints, and it drew him higher so that it was only his toes he was trying to support himself with.

He protested and she gave a hard smack against his arse with her paddle and she made a face as she watched how much the fat on his rear kept wiggling.

She really didn't like this guy, but he was a regular and it was a super easy session for her, he would usually pass out after only ten minutes and the remaining fifty that he paid for could be spent cleaning up her gear for the next one or sitting down.

It was perfectly safe, what she was doing. He wasn't going to asphyxiate or anything, just pass out and then she'd pull the lever again and he'd slide slowly to the floor.

This guy though, he was fairly typical clientele that they got through here. Had a apathetic wife that he never properly talked to and a white picket fence that he only really noticed on the weekends, had a boring job that he was probably a supervisor or manager at where he'd been for over a decade. Life had gotten too routine for him, and then he'd stumbled upon this.

Like she had.

She wasn't in it for the kinky shit though, she was in it for the job.

Some of the girls she worked with had come into this after being street walkers or escorts, she'd come into it after a particularly hard night out when some guys had tried to corner her in an alley, then she'd literally stumbled into it, through the closest unlocked door she found. The Mistress of the establishment had been on the other side of the door and scared the men off, then sat her down and gave Ginny a nice cup of tea to help her calm down.

It had been strange for her to be sitting there at a table in a staff kitchen with a dominatrix calming her down, then having a few other girls walking through in their get-ups and giving her consoling looks and words of encouragement while they moved around in five-inch heels and leather, some of them with masks on.

She'd gone out that night because her roommate had brought a man back to the flat and Ginny hadn't had anywhere else to go. She'd been at the university all day and into the evening studying; coming home to hear her roommate shagging had been an annoying end to her day and she felt she deserved a drink. She had set aside a certain amount of funds for situations like this, and it turned out to be the night she caved and dipped into them. Then this guy at the bar bought her a drink, and then another, and then his friends came over to join them… then things got out of hand.

She was currently going to school to become a nurse, or a physical therapist, something in the health field, it would depend on her marks. And she'd been struggling, not academically, although she wasn't top of the class. No, her struggles were financially fixated.

Her parents didn't make enough through legal means to help her or her brothers with school (not like they'd all applied, or would pass a standard background check). She had several brothers and nearly all had gotten mixed up with the family business. On any given night there was likely to be a detective out looking for one of them. They were good guys overall, she knew she could have gone to them for help, but she didn't want to know where their money came from or what they'd had to do to get it.

Even Percy, her smartest brother, he'd been caught skimming funds for the accounting firm he worked at after uni and spent some time in a white-collar prison.

They all knew that she was trying to make something of herself, separate herself from what they all got up to, and they knew that she wasn't the one to call to bail them out of jail. She couldn't afford it. They all had each other's backs, but she would simply be the one baking them brownies to try and cheer them up about their next arraignment.

They all respected her decision to stay clean and did their best not to even talk about what was going on in their 'work' lives around her.

But she still always found out about them.

Ginny would be watching these cop shows sometimes and see the way that people like her family were portrayed; they were the informants, the little guys, middlemen, whatever you want to call it. She remembered watching one such show with her last boyfriend and his mates, and they all made some comment about how there was no way that the Bobby's would treat criminals like that, they'd just throw the book at them and lock them up.

She bit her tongue and kept on watching.

Because she knew that was exactly how they were treated. You can't take down the leader of the Fitzroy Place Gang unless you have someone on the inside, and that certainly wasn't going to be someone undercover.

Seeing Saldana, as she called herself, the Mistress of the BDSM club, and the way she held herself, like she could take on anyone and anything that was thrown at her with only a raised eyebrow and a Cat of Nine Tails, it had been a life changing moment for Ginny.

Ginny had always kept her head down, bound and determined to get herself a better life than what she'd seen happen for her brothers, parents and family friends. She'd scrimped and saved and applied for every scholarship out there, ignored all her teachers calling her 'another Weasley' and immediately setting their expectations for her so low they barely acknowledged her.

She'd gotten on the right path despite all that and now she was taking even more charge of her life.

School was hard. She didn't feel like she could get a normal job to finance her way through it that had alternating shifts and hours where the pay was four quid an hour after tax. Being a dominatrix though, it was legal, it was great pay, and she could do it only once or twice a week and make enough to carry her.

The first time she'd done it had been really awkward. Previous to it she'd barely done more than spank her boyfriend's when they were in bed together, so to be thrust into a pleather cat suit and told to smack a man around that she didn't know… there was a bit of a learning curve.

After one year of doing it now though it didn't bother her anymore. She looked at it as a sort of research project, thinking about what she would do if she needed to perform CPR on one of them, where their pain and pressure points were, if she were to touch the muscle here, would it hurt?

Mr. Lard Arse was passed out now. She lowered him back down to the ground, checked the clock and looked back down at him. He was still bound and blind folded with a gag in his mouth. Ginny removed the gag and made sure he was still breathing, pulse was fine. Then she went to the wardrobe and cleaned off all the props and toys before storing them, grabbing her textbook and sitting down at the table in the room with that and a highlighter.

She had another client scheduled in forty minutes, so that was enough to go over one chapter.

Just another Tuesday.

()()()

Harry could see through the window that there were several people moving around inside the home. It looked like they'd all assembled for a nice Sunday dinner at mum and dad's house. He thought it was nice, strange, but nice, that this family full of law breakers would still come together for a roast and potatoes on Sunday.

It boggled him that there were just so many of them and nearly all of them had served time. Though, it wasn't an uncommon area for people in this part of the city to be one kind of law breaker or another, usually for minor infractions.

He'd read up on several of the Weasley brothers files and knew that there was no kingpin player amongst them, that was good. Because they didn't need a kingpin style player, they needed an underdog that they could turn into a confidential informant. He had his sights pegged on Ron, the youngest brother. He was still eager, had the smallest rap sheet and still thought he could work his way up the food chain with one of the local gangs.

Harry looked along the street and read the license plates, finally locating the one registered to Ron Weasley and went over to it, reaching down to pretend to tie his shoe by the rear tire he stuck a tracker in the wheel well, then he continued on his way to his undercover car around the corner.

He'd worked hard and fast to become a Junior Detective and was determined to get a win under his belt, start adding names to his list for CI's and get assigned nice cases that would exercise his brain. Right now, he was partnered with Detective Dora Tonks, and she was a legend. Only pushing thirty and she had the highest number of felony arrests under be belt per year than the rest of their team. He knew he could learn a lot from her.

She was holding out his coffee when he got into the passenger seat, and she'd turned on the seat warmer.

"Awe, so sweet to me," he teased.

"Yeah, you're lucky you're cute," she told him wryly.

They'd fallen into a good groove as partners right from the off. It helped that he didn't mind doing the dirty work. He'd been used to getting all the grunt work and had expected to have more of it piled on him than he had, so he was still grateful. And very grateful for these little niceties like having the coffee hot and the seat warmer on.

"We might be waiting a while. Looks like they were all just sitting down for dinner."

Dora gave a moan, "And I'm missing my Sunday dinner this week. My mum makes the best roast."

"Stop!" he cut her off. "I'm very happy with the coffee right now, you start talking about food and I'm going to be less satisfied!"

Three months they'd been partnered together, and she'd invited him over to her parent's house for Sunday dinner twice, along with her husband, so the family could get to know him.

Yes, she was married. He'd asked her why she'd kept her maiden name, wondering if it was some kind of power play in her relationship or a feminist thing. But no, it was because there was paperwork that needed to be filed in order to change her surname and she simply hadn't gotten around to it yet. That was the funny thing about her, she was always on her game with work, but personal life things like taxes and such, she would 'get around to it'. For taxes there was a deadline, for her surname she said the deadline was pregnancy; a change of surname would be her way of announcing it.

Harry brought up the app that would give them the alert when the car started moving and they both sat there in companionable silence for an hour, then started discussing top films of all time, then arguing over them, finally, two hours later, the app let them know that Ron Weasley was on the move.

The youngest Weasley male had lived a few places over the last few years and they didn't have a current address for him.

Making sure to stay a block or two behind him, they followed the car for ten minutes before it stopped outside a row of flats, not in a terrible area but not a posh one either. Ron didn't get out of the car though, it was a girl. As they drove past they watched her lean over to him from the passenger seat and then the door opened and she got out.

Dora pulled in and parked the car ahead of them a few spaces and saw the girl go into the building. Ron took off again, but they were still tracing him, so instead of following him immediately they waited to see which unit she might live in. From the building she was walking up to it looked like the layout might be six flats stretched front of building to back, the units stacked on top of each other. Sure enough, a few minutes later the lights turned on in the fourth floor flat.

Harry looked over at her and Dora gave him the nod. He got out of the car and went to take a look at the buzzers. The fourth-floor unit was registered to Lisa Turner. He made a note of the address and then got back in the car, and she started following after Ron again.

Ron was several blocks away now and Harry picked up Dora's phone so he could do a search on Lisa Turner while also checking the direction Ron was going in.

"Found her. Lisa Turner; grew up in Surrey, several pictures of food on Instagram, one photo where she failed to notice the massive dildo in the background. Oh, look, someone even pointed it out in the comments section and she didn't take it down."

"Let's stick to the important facts please?" Dora cut him off.

"Well, the facts are; she looks like a tart. Could be Ron's girlfriend. If he'd bringing her home for dinner then she must be someone special."

"Any indication of what she does for money?"

"Nothing for her on Linkdin, I'm not seeing her on Facebook either, though she might be under a different name. Turn left here. We could scroll through Ron's list of Friends and see if her picture comes up."

"He's Friended half the country, that would take ages."

"Right, our system then." He turned on the laptop as Dora swerved this way and that down the streets. "Here she is. What do you know, mug shot isn't nearly as flattering as the dildo picture."

"Potter," she warned.

"Yeah, yeah," he grinned as he scrolled down the screen. "Not much here; possession charges from her youth that were thrown out, drunk and disorderly, drunk and disorderly, oh, she was arrested with the Weasley twins at a concert once three years ago. She looks like the right girl."

"Making her way through all the brothers then?"

"Could be. She's originally from their neighborhood though, so maybe family friends. Doesn't have to be salacious."

"You don't think so, eh?" she teased.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm fully aware that it's likely to be, we just don't have confirmation of it." He held up his phone. "They aren't Facebook official."

"Oh, so if it's not on Facebook then it isn't so? They don't have to advertise to the world that their bone buddies."

"I also know that Ron didn't go into her flat with her."

Dora relented at that and offered him a pensive frown and a 'yeah' as she kept on driving.

Ron's car had stopped moving a mile ahead of where they were. It wasn't an area with business' around, only a Taj Mahal food store and several three-story residences that looked to have also been converted into flats.

They were too late to figure out which one was his though. They found the car, but there weren't many options for parking around so it could have been any one of the buildings on this street or any of the next ones that belonged to him.

"We'll keep tracking his movements," Dora sighed. "At least we've got the Lisa Turpin connection we learned about tonight."

It wasn't what Harry had hoped for from their evening. He had imagined they'd go back to the station with a hell of a lot more than what the Weasley clan had for dinner and the single contact name. He'd hoped more along the lines of following Ron into a shady club with a back room where some new drug was being parceled out for distribution, then they could bring him in and get him to flip right away.

"Patience grasshopper," Dora told him.

"You need to start watching some new movies," he grumbled.

Three weeks later and the Lisa Turpin connection was the only definitive information they had about Ronald Weasley, and they were at the point now of needing to use it. There had been three more Sunday dinners and several other times that showed Ron had swung by her flat. The tracker battery had now died as well.

Coming up on the building, they arrived just as another tenant was leaving. Dora flashed the badge and they held the door open for her.

"Fourth floor," Harry reminded her unnecessarily.

They trudged up the stairs and came to stand in front of the door. Dora knocked and there was no answer. He and she leaned in to get a listen and they could hear plenty of movement on the other side of the door, no one was coming to answer it though.

Harry raised his eyebrow at her in question.

She tried knocking again, this time harder.

The sound on the other side of the door stopped and there was a new sound of shuffling, then the door was pulled open, on the other side stood a very exasperated looking Lisa Turpin, her face and hair not nearly as put together as it looked on Instagram.

"Lisa Turpin," Dora greeted her. "We're with Scotland Yard and we've got a few questions for you."

Lisa's eyes went wide and her jaw slack. Someone in one of the bedrooms behind her swore loudly. It sounded to Harry like a man that was hastening to pull his trousers on.

"What do you want?" Lisa asked.

"Mind if we come in?" Harry could see from the light in Dora's eyes that she was thrilled they'd caught Lisa with someone other than Ron, it was more ammunition.

Sure enough, a man came out of the bedroom that bore no resemblance to Ronald Weasley. "I'll just let you get this settled up. I'll, uh, see you later, yeah?"

"Yeah, bye," Lisa dismissed him, and he wove his way awkwardly through the three people crowding the door.

"Satisfied customer?" Dora asked.

"What do you want?" Lisa asked indignantly.

"We'd like to talk to you about the prostitution charges that are being filed against you. I'm sure you are aware that it is illegal."

"Drug trafficking too," Harry stated.

"I don't traffic drugs!"

"But the prostitution bit? That part you haven't got an issue with?" Dora smiled. "Want to keep talking about this in the hall?"

Lisa rolled her eyes and led them through the small flat into a large sitting area, where there was another woman sitting at the table with her back to them and several textbooks open before her, working away on a laptop with headphones on. She didn't acknowledge them until Lisa went to stand in front of her.

"What?" the girl asked loudly.

"Visitors," Lisa stated loudly, gesturing towards he and Dora.

"I don't want anything to do with your 'visitors'," the girl said back, not bothering to check over her shoulder. "I'm almost done with this essay and then I'll be gone."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "My flatmate. As you can see, we aren't the best of friends. She's going to uni and tries to pretend she wasn't raised in the same shithole I was." She crossed the room and sat on the couch, staring at them as though they were meant to join her. "What was this about prostitution charges?"

Dora gave a cursory look at the couch and seemed to have decided it was clean enough and took a seat. Harry chose to remain standing though and looked back over at the flatmate; she hadn't even glanced at them, and if she was going to uni and moved here from some shithole then he commended her for trying to make something of herself.

"We've got four men thus far that say they paid you for sex."

"If you're coming after me for supposedly fucking some guy and him throwing a twenty at me, then you clearly don't have enough to do."

"You're saying you aren't a prostitute then?" Harry asked.

"I'm saying I happen to enjoy sex, if some guy gets the wrong idea and leaves something on the nightstand that I didn't ask for, then that was his mistake."

"Ah, finally," the girl across the room sighed and pulled her headphones off, her hood from her sweater coming with it, before she closed her laptop. She flipped all her books closed and turned in her chair to pick up her backpack, then paused in surprise when she saw he and Dora there, noting how they were dressed. "Oh, those kinds of 'visitors'," was all she said, as though this was a common occurrence.

Harry was momentarily struck by how lovely she looked. Her hair was back in a plait that came around her shoulder and she had these big brown eyes. There was a sort of look of innocence in her too.

"Yeah, these kinds of 'visitors'. This is Ginny, by the way," Lisa told them. "Ginny, they think I'm a prostitute, can you clear this up for them?"

Ginny shrugged and started stuffing her textbooks in her bag. "What you do is your business."

"Fuck sakes, get off your high horse and just help me out, would you?" Lisa growled at her.

Ginny turned to look at her in exasperation before turning to him. "If she were a whore then she'd be living somewhere much nicer than here. She doesn't drink much, doesn't do drugs and we don't have the nicest things around here. I'm sure you've checked her bank account already, so where would the money be going? Because she's constantly fucking someone, thus my need for the headphones."

He conceded that she had a fair point.

"Can you tell us where you were last Sunday night?" Dora asked Lisa.

"At a bar. Picked up a guy and we went back to his."

"Thankfully," Ginny muttered under her breath. She pulled her backpack on and went to the kitchen cupboard, grabbing a few snacks. "If you need someone to bail you out, call someone else," Ginny told her as she zipped her bag closed and made to leave.

"So, you weren't with Ron Weasley then?" Dora asked, ignoring Ginny's comment as she headed for the door.

"Excuse me?" Ginny stopped in her tracks, staring at Dora.

"Ron Weasley," Harry picked up, talking to Lisa. "Were you not with him at his parent's house on Sunday. We saw him drop you off here."

Lisa and Ginny exchanged a look.

Ginny narrowed her eyes at both of them. "Did you come in here with trumped up prostitution charges against her because you want some dirt on one of the Weasley boys?"

"Is there something you know about them that you want to share?" Dora asked her in a falsely sweet voice.

Ginny put her hands on her hips and glared at them. "Yeah, Ron's afraid of spiders; screams like a little girl, stands up on a chair and everything. He's also my brother. That wasn't Lisa that Ron dropped off, it was me. Congratulations on doing your research correctly. Good luck finding something you can blackmail me with. I'm going to the university library now, just in case you want to take a coffee break before you continue to follow me."

Oh fuck, was all that went through Harry's mind as she stomped out of the room.

He should have realized as soon as he saw there was a flatmate that it could have been her being dropped off.

But she'd been studying.

Studying something complicated that involved a really thick textbook. There was nothing about the Weasley brothers making calls to their sister when they were locked up or getting bailed out. They didn't even know there was a Weasley girl.

()()()

Ginny was fuming as she went down the stairs in the corridor.

How dare they? It was blatantly obvious to her what they'd been trying to do with Lisa, thinking she was Ron's girlfriend or something. She'd heard so many stories before about people being coaxed and blackmailed into being confidential informants.

Well screw them!

They had nothing on her. They weren't going to trick her by saying something about how it could keep her brothers out of lock up; they were all going to spend some time there inevitably anyhow. It would be like throwing a dart at a spinning wheel to pick and choose which stint for which brother she was going to use her 'get out of jail free' card for, the one those detectives, or whoever they were, would inevitably offer.

Her brothers would be pissed at her too if she did become a C.I. to try and sort out their messes after all she'd done to insure she wasn't involved with what they got up to.

She got out onto the street and pulled out her phone to send a text to Ron.

Think uv got a tracker on ur car. Not telling u how I know. Just check.

Before she sent it though, she reread to try and decide if it was the best way to tell him, or if she even should.

If there were people from Scotland Yard trying to get information on him, did that mean that he was getting in more trouble than he should? Maybe if he got pinched now then it could keep him out of bigger trouble later.

"Ginny."

She jumped at the sound of her name being spoken so close to her. It was the male cop; he'd followed her out.

"What?" she narrowed her eyes at him before looking determinedly back to the direction she'd been heading in, and not slowing her pace at all.

"You don't go by 'Miss Weasley' very much, do you?" he asked.

"What?"

"I called your name a few times, you didn't respond."

"Excuse me for being a bit preoccupied with the internal struggle over whether I should tell my brother he's being followed or that I've got detectives looking to pin charges on my flatmate. You know," she stopped and stared at him, "if I wind up having to look for another flat because of that stunt you and your partner just pulled with Lisa, I'm going to be pissed. You're a Junior Detective, aren't you?"

He'd stopped beside her and blinked in surprise and confusion.

"Bet it would look really bad to your chief inspector to find out that not only were you just using your badge for intimidation, but that it was with the wrong person. How much time did you waste finding out if Lisa was selling herself or actually just a huge slag? Because she might not be an ideal person to live with, but living with her is just far enough away from my family, still affordable, and legal."

He nodded as he sucked in a deep breath. "You're right, it would look bad. We fucked up there. But we are trying to keep your brother out of trouble."

Ginny let out a loud 'ha' at that and continued on her way.

"You laugh about this? Do you know what your brother is into?"

"No, I don't, and I don't want to know. All six of my brothers, plus the rest of my family, know that I want nothing to do with what they get up to. So why don't you just run along back to your partner and let her know that too. I've nothing to do with what they get mixed up in, and I never will. I'm just going to uni and minding my own business. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have hot date lined up at the school library followed by an exciting grocery trip at Poundland."

"Would you just-"

"Bye, Green-eyes," she dismissed and cut through traffic at the corner to cross the road.

"Jay walking is illegal," he yelled at her.

"Only if it's more than two feet outside a designated cross walk, it doesn't matter what color the light is," she yelled back holding up a two-finger solute and feeling proud of herself for having the final say.

This time last year she might not have been able to talk to him like that, much less be grinning as she continued down the street about how good talking back and taking charge had felt. She would have simply bit her tongue and been all meek and silent if she was her last year's self. It was a side effect of spending two to three times a week in a dungeon barking orders at her clients and 'putting them in their place'.

She'd discovered her assertive side through being a dominatrix, and it was liberating.

Ginny pulled out her phone again and looked at the message that sat there waiting to be sent, biting her lip and wondering whether she should tell him.

That would be getting involved, the voice inside her head told her. If the detectives came back and asked her if she'd warned Ron about them visiting by sending this message she would be officially be becoming part of whatever they were up to.

She opted to save the message for now and think it over. Her phone went back to the home screen, and she saw it was still early, 10 a.m. That meant she had an hour to get to the library and print off her paper, then get to her class, three hours of back-to-back classes, more library time to get her new assignments started, then she had to be heading back to her flat by no later than seven so she could drop off her backpack and get changed for work.

She checked behind her to make sure she wasn't being followed and didn't see anyone.

If the detectives did decide to follow her, then they would be in for a very boring day. And there was no way that they would be still tailing her by the time she headed off for the dungeon. Bobby shifts were 12 hours at the most.

No, she felt safe that they wouldn't look far enough into her to follow her or keep harassing her. They didn't even know who she was until ten minutes ago.

()()()

Harry felt like he could break something when they got back to the office. He'd just managed to stop himself short of leaning on the car and kicking the tyres several times before and after they'd done the ride back to the station.

"Well, that sucks," Dora stated as she leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. "There is nothing on a Ginny or Virginia Weasley in our system. There are no phone calls out of jail to her, no visits from her in the logs for them. Fucking nothing. It's no wonder we completely missed her."

"It's not a wonder how Turpin is managing to cover her rent though. She might not be making much off the 'assumptions' made by her johns, but she doesn't appear to have any other way to cover her half of that flat," he grumbled.

It was too minor a charge to put on her though, they didn't have a way of proving it. It was something that should be passed off to an auditor, nothing else.

Dora leaned across her desk and towards him, lowering her voice. "It didn't seem like Ginny wanted to get involved in any way, shape or form though, right?"

"No," he shook his head. "I'm not even convinced she sent a message to Ron about the tracker on his car. Not that it matters since it's dead now."

"He could still find it though," she shrugged. "But, if Miss Uppity there is dead set against getting involved, then maybe you can still find a way of getting into Ron's circle without her outing you."

He wouldn't have called Ginny 'uppity', if anything, she was just being smart, trying to make her own way in the world and keep her nose clean. Dora did have a point though, it was unlikely that even if she did send a message to her brother about them, that Ron would be able to link that to some new friend he made at a pub.

"So, I should still try and get in with his crowd of friends?"

"As I understand it, Ron is a talker. He's your best choice for a Fredo."

Harry decided she was right. Even if he did become friends with Ron, that didn't mean that he was going to be invited to the Weasley family dinners and see Ginny again.

For the next seven days Harry started hanging out at the pub close to Ron's place after work. On three of those seven days, he ran into Ron. Day two they played a game of darts against each other, to which Harry lost spectacularly, and not on purpose. Day three they just sat beside each other at the bar and started chatting over a pint.

Harry had 'chav'd' himself up a bit for this; worn a jacket that was a bit too big, trainers, had a cap on that he kept adjusting, and started using a bit more slang than he normally did. Ron was wearing the exact same style and both of them simply sat there bitching about their jobs. Ron claimed he was currently working for a phone company at a mall kiosk and Harry told him he worked in the back at a Millie's Cookies doing the baking, something that Ron couldn't check in on by simply walking past the storefront.

He didn't want to come on too strong though, so he laid off the pub for a few days after that and when he went in again he was glad to see that Ron had got there before him.

"Hey, mate," Harry greeted.

"Hey! Where've you been?"

"Er…" he made a show of adjusting his cap and straightening it again. "I might have got pinched for, erm, something. But, it's all cool. Need to find a new job though."

Ron had been about to throw another dart and stopped, looking very interested in this story.

Harry called for a pint and got it in hand before he told Ron that he had been selling a little more than cookies at his last job, he'd let a few too many people know that he could hook them up with LSD and a few other things if they requested a box of cookies with a certain phrase. Turned out that he'd sold a box to the wrong person and wound up getting thrown in holding for a few days.

"Now my parents are pissed that they had to bail me out again," he continued. "Said that it was the last time. But what am I going to do for money?" he asked. "I've got a record. If it isn't this, then what? I didn't give them the name of my supplier, so he's still cool with me, even said I didn't owe him anything for getting nabbed. But he is done with me too, seeing as how I don't have a distribution option anymore."

Ron stared at him as he thought it over and Harry knew that he had him. "I think I could help you out with that."

()()()

"Stop behaving like a fumbling fool!" she snapped at the man that was bent on all fours in front of her. "I told you I needed my boots cleaned and you've barely gotten one of them fully licked! We're nearly out of time." She smacked him with her riding crop then made a show of uncrossing and crossing her legs in front of him so he could see up her skirt for a brief moment, making a real 'Sharon Stone' of it. "Move on to the next boot." The tip of her crop went under his chin now and she made eye contact with him. "Don't disappoint me."

This guy was a regular, and he was the best looking of all her regulars. He liked being bossed around rather than being choked or tied up. He was young too, only about thirty-five. He also took care of himself, he didn't have sculpted abs or anything, but he was healthy. Apparently, he just wasn't getting the kind of treatment at home that he needed to be completely satisfied.

Perhaps he was just too shy to ask his wife, which was kind of sweet when you think about it; he didn't want to jeopardize their relationship by requesting something he found shameful.

"Yes, mistress," he panted and started licking the tip of her knee-high boots.

"There you go, that's a good boy," she purred.

There was only ten minutes left of demeaning him and she was done for the night. Then she heard a distant sound from the corner cabinet, barely audible over the music in the room, and damned whomever it was that was sending her messages so late.

It was likely someone else that had opted to take a few classes over the summer break and wanted her feedback on something, those were the only kinds of messages she received this late at night.

She smacked him with her riding crop again, his tongue was getting a little too adventurous. "Did I say that you could touch my skin?" Ginny put the bottom of her shoe against his shoulder and pushed him away. "You've been bad now. I don't think you're worthy of cleaning my shoes anymore. Get up," she ordered. "Go over to the wall and bend over. You're getting punished for that."

He did as she commanded and then she heard her phone vibrating because whoever was trying to get in touch with her was calling her now instead of texting her. She grabbed a small vibrator from a drawer close by and turned it on, then stuck it in Mr. Thursday's tight pants, just beneath his balls, then grabbed a paddle.

"Who's a bad boy?" she growled at him and gave him a smack on his arse cheek.

It was hard to hear it over the sound of the vibrator and the music, but to her ears the sound of her phone buzzing away seemed incredibly loud, so she kept right on smacking Mr. Thursday's arse. It shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did that he wound up cumming in his pants. "Now, you really are a dirty boy, aren't you?" she asked after pulling him up straight by his hair and whispering it in his ear. She gave him a shove and he relaxed back against the wall again. "Time's up. Go clean yourself off, you disgusting animal."

He pulled the vibrator from his pants and set it on the cabinet, then gently limped out of the room.

Ginny let out a deep breath of relief and rushed over to her phone to figure out who was so fucking desperate for her attention.

Ron!

He'd called her three times in a row and left two voicemails. She clicked for her voicemail to start sounding off in her ear as she grabbed the sanitizing spray and started spraying down all of the surfaces that had been used, and tossed the vibrator into the bucket, then had a system for doing deeper cleans on any toys that had made skin contact.

The first voicemail was him just speaking gibberish, which she deleted.

If he was drunk dialing her then he was going to be in a world of hurt. The next time she saw him she'd tell him he was interrupting her precious hours of sleep and punch him in the shoulder.

The next voicemail clicked on as she was wiping down the wall and cabinet, this time she could make out exactly what he was saying. One of his friends had been shot and he needed her help. They were at his new place, but he couldn't take his friend to a hospital because it would be reported.

She vibrated with rage upon hearing that and nearly broke her screen as she deleted the message.

She then checked what his text said, it was just his new address with an exclamation point.

Gun shot wound.

Fantastic.

She took a few breaths as she finished cleaning up the room, then, when she felt she was calm enough, she texted him the number 20, because that was how long it would take her to get there.

Twenty minutes later, when she was standing outside his new flat, she thought about how sad it was that he lived in a nicer place than her, and all by himself too. She had to share her flat with the 'borough bicycle' and smack around grown men with retirement plans in order to afford it.

Ginny wished she was wearing something else. Knee high boots with fishnet stockings and a mini-skirt would hardly keep up with a story of her brother having woken her from sleep. She'd borrowed the clothes from other girls at the dungeon so she at least wouldn't show up at her brother's flat in a leather zip up corset and a trench coat.

He'd better have a first aid kit at least.

She pressed the buzzer button to his flat and was let in immediately.

"Gin, thank God you're here. It's not bleeding anymore, but we're worried about infection," Ron said as he showed her through to his bathroom where his mate was sitting on the floor with his back against the tub.

There were smears of blood all over the place, the injured guy was holding a rag up against his forehead and it looked like his hair had been completely drenched.

"Fuck, Ron, were you trying to wash the wound or drown him?" she asked. "Never mind, just get me your first aid kit, I might need a needle and thread too."

()()()

He knew it was going to turn out to be her that Ron called. He knew, and he didn't stop him.

Harry figured that even if Ron's sister ratted him out, she wouldn't let Ron kill him, and he had enough on Ron now to flip him to be a C.I., which is exactly what he wanted.

Problem was, even though Ron was a bit of a fuck up, they had gotten along really well. The number of time's he'd needed to stop Ron from putting his foot in his mouth around the wrong people over the last four months had been ridiculous, but Ron had introduced him to so many people that were wanted by Scotland Yard that Harry didn't mind helping his friend out.

And Ron was his friend now, so this next part was going to suck so much.

Although, it was Ron's fault that he nearly got his head shot off, so there was that little bit of maliciousness brewing inside Harry right then.

He glanced up at Ginny when she was looking around at the mess they'd made of Ron's loo when they were trying to stop the bleeding. It was a grazing bullet, but head wounds bled like motherfuckers, so his blood was everywhere.

And had his blood not been all over the bathroom instead of all residing in his body like it should have been, he most certainly would have had it pooling between his legs at the sight of Ginny Weasley! He didn't know what she'd been out doing in that get up, but it was fucking hot!

Black boots, fishnet stockings, mini skirt, cropped top with a suit jacket over it and some make-up around her eyes that made her hair color really stand out nicely.

This was day and night to what she'd looked like the last time he saw her.

Actually, it was exactly day and night; maybe she wore sweaters and jeans during the day and dressed like this at night to go out on the town.

She crouched down beside him and looked at the rag he was holding to his head. "I'm going to pull this away gently, alright?"

He said nothing and let her do what she pleased, wincing slightly as the skin on his forehead was tugged at by the cloth.

"Yeah, you're going to need stitches." She locked eyes with him then and her eyes stayed locked on him as he saw the recognition dawn. Her jaw clenched and she got a real indignant expression on her face. "You-"

"Here you go," Ron said, placing his first aid kit on the top of the toilet seat lid. "I'd tell you how this happened, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to know."

"No, I don't," she snapped at him. "Cotton balls or q-tips?"

Ron went into the cabinet under his sink and pulled out cotton balls and contact solution, a saline solution that she seemed appreciative he had thought to put in her reach. "I'll just leave you to it then? Oh, and this is Harry." Ron ducked out of the room then.

Harry watched her close her eyes and shake her head. "If I sent him that fucking text then you probably wouldn't be here having nearly earned a hole in your head."

"I'm trying to make the world a better place," he offered, hoping for some sympathy from her.

"You're trying to see if I can make it so you won't have a scar on your forehead forever," she countered and started with the cotton balls and saline. "Now, don't read into this, it's just the best position to take care of it." She then shrugged off her jacket and straddled his lap. His hands immediately came to rest on her hips and she swatted them away. "I said don't read into this, which you can translate into 'don't touch me'."

"Sorry, instinct." He winced as she pressed the cotton to his wound, it really stung.

"This really isn't so bad. Ron could have cleaned you up himself if he wasn't so squeamish."

"Spiders and blood, yeah, he told me."

"You two are really close now then?" she mocked. "Best of buddies for life?"

"I don't want to put him away, if that's what you're asking."

"What are you going to do with him then?" She looked angry, but she was being so gentle with him.

"I might not have to do anything. For whatever reason, his contacts seem to keep getting nabbed." He said this with the tone of surprise and regret, hoping she catch on that he was being facetious.

She pursed her lips, her nice and supple lips. Lips that were incredibly close to his own.

"He had nothing to say about your outfit, did he?" he couldn't resist asking her.

"I'm dressed the same as every other tart we grew up around."

"Except you're not a tart, are you," he stated.

"You don't know me, maybe I am." She raised herself up on her knees slightly, essentially inviting him to bury his face in her chest.

He resisted.

Just barely.

"Please don't tempt me," he whispered. "It's bad enough that I'm betraying him, I don't want him to come in here and see I'm making unwanted advances on his sister who is doing something she probably swore she never would."

She did as he asked and lowered her bum down so it was resting gently in his lap. Then the vixen licked her lips and bit the inside of her bottom lip as she pretended to focus on the wound.

"Why are you still trying to tempt me?" he asked.

She locked eyes with him again and her brow furrowed. "I'm not. What are you talking about?"

Oh.

Oh, she hadn't been pretending to focus on the wound at all.

"Er, never mind. I'm just going to close my eyes," he backpedaled.

He felt a huff of her breath on his chin and had to remind himself several times that he was not allowed to touch her. Each time he'd needed that reminder his hands had been halfway to her hips, and he'd felt her pause in her efforts to stitch him up, then his hands lowered and he wished desperately for something on the floor that he could hold onto.

"There," she said several minutes after she'd started. "All done with the stitches."

He opened his eyes again and they went straight to her cleavage as she was leaning over towards the first aid kit, searching for a bandage.

"You'll want to get some anti-biotics. You can probably go to a chemist to get those prescribed, otherwise, try a walk-in clinic. Absolutely do not clean this wound with anything other than warm water and soap, if you use something stronger then it might make the wound reopen."

"When can I get rid of the stitches?"

"I'd say ten days. And obviously I didn't use the dissolving thread, so they will need to be physically removed, otherwise you'll go around looking like Frankenstein's monster forever."

He was feeling a bit lightheaded, which was probably what led him to ask, "can I take you out for a drink to say thank you?"

She affixed the bandage to his forehead and stood up. "You should stay away from anything that might thin your blood for about two days. No Aspirin, no alcohol. So, no, you can't take me out for a drink."

"All good?" Ron asked from the other side of the door.

"All good," Ginny called back to him and pulled her jacket back on after washing her hands in the sink.

"Did I just hear you asking my sister out?" Ron asked him, sounding more surprised than angry. "Because she doesn't get involved with guys like us. She's too good for you." He leaned over to her then and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you, and never again… hopefully."

"You're welcome. And next time, just drop him at the A & E. There was no reason they couldn't take care of it."

"Noted."

Ginny dried her hands on the only clean towel left in the room and gave her brother a smile before giving Harry hard stare, then walked out.

"Love you," Ron called after her. "You're brilliant."

"Love you," she called back. "You're a moron."

"Isn't she great?" Ron grinned at him and helped him up to his feet. "Let's get you on the couch, yeah?"

Ron got a change of clothes for him and kept replaying the events of the night over and over again out loud, always sounding amazed that Harry had pushed him out of the way just in time to get himself hit.

They'd both been incredibly lucky tonight.

Ron still didn't realize how lucky they'd been.

Harry may have run away from the scene with Ron, but he knew that his team had heard what was going on when the gun was pulled and that they were a minute away from charging into the building to arrest the suppliers. He'd whispered into his microphone that it was time for them to do so, right before he pulled it out of his collar and tossed it in the corner of the room as they bolted.

Poor Ron was so eager for adventure and an exciting life, he wanted to prove to his brothers that he could be somebody all on his own. But he was too trusting.

Thing was, Ron wasn't in so deep that he couldn't still turn his life around.

"Your sister," Harry started after Ron had been reliving the night for over an hour.

"She's too good for you," Ron said immediately. This time it sounded more like a warning that he drop it.

"No, not that," he placated. "Well, I mean, yeah, she's attractive, but that wasn't what I was getting at. She's in uni now?"

"She wants to be a nurse. Doesn't like what we get involved with, and me and my brothers certainly don't want her to end up mixed up in all of it like we are."

"Good on her," Harry nodded. "But, if you weren't caught up in all of it, what do you think you would be doing?"

Ron shrugged and thought on it a moment. "I might like being on the other side of it. You know, law enforcement. But it's too late for me. I've been in lock up a few times, only for a few days each time, but still. Plus, what would the rest of my family think if I became the person that was responsible for putting them away? Nah, can't happen."

"I like that your family means so much to you."

"Yeah, we're close." He looked proud then. "And it wasn't like they told me to go into this kind of life, it was just what I know. Dad was the one with all the contacts when my brothers and I started asking about jobs. Dad knows everyone. They all like him and look up to him too. That'll be my oldest brother Bill one day."

"And Virginia never asked about jobs?"

"Virginia? Oh, you mean Ginny. Nah, her name is short for Ginevra, not Virginia. And no, she never asked about jobs."

Ginevra? He'd never heard of that name before. It was pretty.

And it was likely another reason why they hadn't found her name in their system.

"Truthfully, she was always so quiet and sweet. Started getting more confidence after she moved out of the house and went off to school. Probably has something to do with living with that slag Lisa she's stuck with. I dated Lisa for a bit. Hell, everyone 'dated' Lisa for a bit. I'd help Ginny out with paying to live in a different place if she'd let me, but she won't. She's out to prove she can take care of herself, and I don't blame her."

The Weasley crime family wasn't exactly burning down in flames, but for a moment of delirium Harry had a mental image of Ginny rising from those ashes, wearing a sexy nurses outfit and asking him to turn his head and cough as her hand moved down between his legs.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"What do you think you'd do?" Ron asked him.

He chose to be honest. "Same as you, I'd reckon. Law enforcement. Except difference is, I wouldn't have to worry about turning in my family, they're all on the straight and narrow so I wouldn't need to turn them in for anything. And getting shot," he gestured to his forehead, "is making me consider it even more."

Ron looked at the bandage again and shook his head. "Can't believe you took a bullet for me."

When Harry entered the office the next day it was to a round of applause, a tradition for any officer wounded on the job and returning to work.

"Very spiffy bandage there," Dora greeted him and went to touch his forehead.

He ducked her and went to his desk, beside hers. "Get everyone last night?"

"Everyone we heard on your mic, and then some. Just Ron that got away, but he was with you, tending to your wounds," she waxed dramatic.

He opened his mouth to let her know that it was actually Ginny that had fixed him up properly, but stopped short because he, like Ron, didn't want to get her more involved than she already was. His mouth was already open though, so he had to say something. "I should get to a center or something to have this looked at and get some antibiotics for it too."

"Probably. Why don't you look over the report about last night before you go, I'll tell the captain where you've gone."

It took him half an hour to read through the report and try to recall if there was anything missing, there wasn't. So, twenty minutes later, he found himself sitting in a clinic waiting for his name to be called. It was a slow day at the clinic patient wise and he wound up getting a bed to sit in quickly as the nurses and doctors checked in on the others around him. There were a lot of people in scrubs.

One such person in scrubs came to stand directly in front of him and he thought for a moment that he was seeing things.

"You can't be here," he shook his head at her slightly.

"Oh, but I really can," Ginny responded dryly. "You, however, really can't tell anyone who it was that stitched you up or else I'll be in a world of trouble."

She was speaking quietly as he took in the changes in her appearance from last night to now; the makeup was gone, her hair was pulled back and plaited, the unicorn scrubs she had on were adorable and her name tag showed that she was a nurse trainee. She also looked tired, there was a soft hint of blue under her eyes showing that she hadn't gotten much sleep last night.

And that was likely his fault.

"I won't say anything," he promised.

"Okay," she picked up a chart and started writing some things down on it. "I know what it was that caused the injury, but it could have just as easily been from a broken bottle. D'you have any issues with my changing the story on the paperwork?"

"I… do," he told her honestly. "Sorry, but it needs to go in my file, and it might need to be presented in court."

Little furrow lines formed between her eyebrows and she bit her bottom lip, but her eyes showed that she understood. She looked upset but understanding.

"I am sorry about all this and you getting caught up in it." For whatever reason, he really wanted to make sure that she saw he was being honest.

"It was bound to happen eventually," she dismissed.

"I tried to talk to him about finding a different career path last night."

That got her attention.

"What use would he be to you as a C.I. if he got a real job?"

"I wasn't thinking about him being a C.I. then, I was just thinking about him choosing a different path, like you did."

She stood still for a minute, then came toward him and put her hand on his thigh. She made the gesture because she was about to tell him something, but for a moment he was frozen and focusing on how the warmth of her hand there radiated out and sent a thrill of something up his spine.

"I appreciate you saying that, and I get how you can think that it isn't too late for him, but you shouldn't get your hopes up that you can change someone's life so profoundly like that."

That confused him. "It wasn't meant to be some kind of life altering conversation," he clarified. "I would never imagine that I could have that kind of effect on someone where I step into their lives and make everything all better. But, Ginny, Ron is a fuck-up," he said, placing his hand over her own, "if there's something that I could possibly say to him to stop him from making a mistake he can't recover from, then I'm going to try it. Because he may think that I'm someone that's gone down the same path as him, but other than that, we have become friends."

She leaned toward him a bit more and the hints of a smile started on her face. "Then, I'm glad. I shouldn't play favorites with my brothers, but Ron is it."

And then it happened, she gave him her first real smile.

And it was beautiful.

He reached up and cupped her cheek on impulse, and she quickly grabbed his hand. She didn't pull it away from her, she simply stopped him from making any other moves on instinct.

The noise level in the room registered with him again, it had fallen into muffled background noise until then, now it sounded near deafening.

"I guess neither of us got enough sleep last night," he tried to recover, lowering both his hands so they were now grabbing at the side of the flimsy mattress he was sitting on.

Ginny took a step back from him and looked down at the chart in her hand once more. "You saying I look terrible?"

"No!" he insisted. "You look wonderful, just," he traced a line under his own eye, "looks like you could have used another hour or so that you lost because of me."

"Well now, isn't that seeped in innuendo," she teased. "I have to get another form for you because you were injured on the job."

Ginny walked away and in his moment alone he tried to think about what he could possibly say to convince her to meet up somewhere and talk to him; not him in his work capacity, or him pretending to be a chavved up gangster wanna-be, but just him.

It wasn't Ginny that returned with his chart though, it was another nurse.

"What happened to Ginny?" he asked before she could get a word out.

"The ginger girl? She's from the local uni doing a placement, needed to move along with the rest of the trainees here today. Did she do alright? Make you feel comfortable enough?" the lady asked kindly.

"Yeah, yeah, quite… comfortable." He didn't think he hid his disappointment very well.

Three months later and Harry was pretty sure that his chances of ever seeing Ginny again were slim to none; he'd wound up needing to arrest Ron and his brother Charlie for exotic animal smuggling. It had killed him to do it. The night of the arrest Dora had needed to take him to a pub after they finished up the paperwork and get him good and drunk.

Two months after that and there had been so much new work coming his way that he barely had a second to reflect on it.

He was back on a stake out with Dora again, this time it was a white-collar criminal that they were following; the investment banker that washed money for one of the bigger drug dealers in the area. The guy was being followed so they could find out where he and his client met up so they could get pictures and it had been a week now of different partners being on his tail and nothing had come up.

Until now.

When Geoff Sutton went into a nameless building by himself, a building that showed no lights on in any of the windows, Harry started getting excited.

"Calm down, would you?" Dora commented. "We don't have anything on him yet. The door he went through wasn't locked and there are no reports of Santos in this area."

Santos Espanoza was the Dealer they were really after, but either way, Harry's palms were still feeling sweaty with anticipation and he kept wiping them on his trousers.

"Can't we just-"

"No."

"But if we only-"

"No."

"It's just that-"

"Look, Harry, I don't have a spray bottle in here to discipline you with, so if you speak up again I'll just have to whack you on the nose," Dora said. "If we see Sutton leave, then we'll go in and investigate, but if we don't see Espanoza at all, then we've no reason to get any closer right now."

"He could have already been-" then Harry was hit in the face with a newspaper and felt the sting of it make his eyes start to water. "Fuck, alright!"

An hour and a half they sat there. Other men had been going in and out of the building, not many of them, and none of them were who they were hoping for.

After Sutton left they got out of the car, Dora led the way towards the building and pulled open the door.

Harry had no idea what he was looking at when they walked into the room behind the door. It was dark and there was soft, kinky sounding music playing. Every few moments he thought he heard the sound of something being hit and a groan. There was a desk in the room and two doors leading off, the desk was the only part of the room that had any lighting and it was the kind that neon signs were made out of. The lady standing behind the desk was wearing a tight fitting leather blouse of sorts and a masquerade mask.

"Do you have an appointment?" she asked them.

They both showed her their badge and nothing about her composure showed she was bothered in the least that they were law enforcement.

"Is there someone in particular that you came here to see then? Or were you just looking for a discount?"

"What the fuck is this place?" he whispered to Dora.

"A dungeon," she told him.

His mind immediately went to those little corners of the internet where he'd watched a few videos now and again. He'd never known where places like this existed though. It was like walking into Kinky Narnia, where they didn't hide that it was all about torture and play.

"Is it a Mistress that runs this place?" Dora asked the lady, not sounding at all bothered about them finding themselves here.

"I've already pressed the button to call her here," the receptionist said pleasantly.

One of the doors on either side of the desk opened and a corseted woman came out, perched on her very high stiletto heels. "I'll ask you to follow me and keep your mouths closed until I say you can open them," she commanded.

Very well, Harry thought, and followed along behind this Mistress and Dora through a dark hallway with two different colored lights lining up the doorways that they passed; he imagined the color of the light told you whether a room was occupied.

The Mistress opened the door at the end of the hallway and that led to a breezeway that had proper lighting at the end of it. It took his eyes a minute to adjust.

"Ladies and gentleman, we have visitors," the Mistress announced to the scantily clad people lounging around in what must have been their breakroom. There were only four employees there, three women and one man.

Dora spoke out to them, "we're looking to talk to the person that offered their services to Geoff Sutton."

"We don't really deal with names here," one woman in a gimpy cat suit told her. "What's he look like?"

The Mistress let out a loud 'tisk', and the woman quieted right down. "We have confidentiality agreements with our clients," she said to Dora. "I'm sure you understand."

"And I'm sure you understand what will happen if it get's out what and where this place is," Dora told her in kind.

"Go back to your cleaning," the Mistress told her staff, they were quick to disperse. "Sutton, you said?" she asked kindly.

Dora pulled out a picture of him and showed it to her.

"Right. He is a regular. I'd say he comes around every other week. Uses the same girl for his… treatment. He's the classic submissive type, apologetic even. You've just missed him."

"And what about this man?" Harry showed her a photo of Espanoza.

"Hmm, attractive. But, no, I don't recognize him."

"And I don't imagine this is the kind of place where he can stop to take a phone call that might have been overheard," Dora said, looking around in distaste.

"When it comes to that option, his hands are tied," the Mistress mused.

"Mhmm, and, can I get your name?" Dora asked, pen poised to take notes.

"Mistress Aphrodite."

"Your real name."

"No."

"How about the name of his… therapist?"

"Vixen."

While Mistress and Dora were locked in a staring contest, the door opened again and one of the girls slipped in, clearly not realizing who was occupying the room. She went to the kitchen area and grabbed something from the cupboard, then turned back to head out, giving a glance in their direction and making eye contact with him and pausing.

Holy fuck, Harry thought.

His heart rate was suddenly going so fast it was like a drum solo sounding out in his ears.

Her eyes only locked onto his for a moment before she continued on her way, carrying herself as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on, but he saw the flush across her exposed chest before she'd turned.

He'd seen her wearing less the night that she'd stitched him up. He'd recalled that outfit of hers several times before and had the occasional fantasies while his hand was keeping him occupied; about the look in her eyes and the shape of her lips, always flipping back and forth between how she'd looked when she'd stitched him up and how she'd been at the clinic.

Now he knew why she'd really been wearing that get-up that night, she'd been coming from work.

Ginny Weasley was a dominatrix.

"Thank you so much for your time." Dora's words cut through the thumping sound in his ears and he acknowledged them just in time to follow her out, back down the hallway.

It was an empty hallway, and it was impossible to tell which of the several doors had just been closed to conceal a petite ginger behind it.

Harry spent the rest of the night trying to wrap his mind around it, when their shift finally ended and they passed off the watch to the next pair, he went home, still thinking about it.

Ron had said she'd been quiet and sweet, then she moved away from home and started gaining confidence. What this the reason that she'd had that personality change?

He was on the night shifts, so sleeping through the day he needed blackout curtains, a sleep mask, and having his television on the news station for white noise to drown out the sound of everyone else carrying on around his flat.

It was unclear how many hours later a thumping noise awoke him, until he blinked several times and the contacts he'd left in were able to focus on the clock that told him it was 4:30pm, and the thumping noise was someone banging on his door.

Harry pulled his sleep mask the rest of the way off and trudged through his flat to open his front door, finding Ginny Weasley standing there, looking like she hadn't gotten any sleep since he'd last seen her. The makeup had been washed off and she had a sweater on, so he guessed she'd been in classes today.

"I need to talk to you."

"H-how do you know where I live?" he asked in shock.

"It's in your medical records."

"I…" He had no more words just then, so he stepped back to let her into the flat. "Hold up," he said as he closed and locked the door. "Going through my medical records to find my address-"

"I didn't need to. I was the one to start filling out your paperwork that day in the clinic, it was right there. I just remembered it, is all."

"You remember my address from seeing it once six months ago?"

"I made sure to take a mental note," she told him dryly.

That was fair enough, he resolved. "I need some coffee if we're going to have a chat."

She followed him to the kitchen and crossed her arms as she leaned back against a counter. "I gather you didn't tell your partner that you recognized me last night?"

"No, I didn't tell her."

"And are you going to?"

"Not unless it seems relevant to what we're working on, and thus far it doesn't seem to."

"So, there aren't currently plans to blackmail me into planting a bug on Sutton while I'm smacking him around then?"

He had been pouring water into the back of the coffee maker when she said that and he nearly lost his grip on the pot he was pouring the water from when she said that.

He didn't want to think about her doing that!

Harry took a breath and collected himself while he finished up with his part in getting the coffee going and let the machine take over.

"How did you wind up doing… I mean… why?" he asked, turning to her. "I thought you were trying to get away from, you know, the nefarious side of life."

"I… stumbled upon it. Into it, actually." She let out a sigh and her head leaned back against the cabinet, "I was out at the pub near there one night and a few guys chased me into the alley, the one that led to the break room you were in last night. The Mistress then chased them off. At first, I didn't know what to think, but the people there were so nice to me." She chuckled, "you can't imagine how strange it is to be given a cup of tea to calm me down by someone in a gimp mask wearing chains and leather."

He started to grin and said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

"I was in nursing school then and we had to take a psychology class, so it wasn't too hard to wrap my mind around how people could indulge in that world, or be the person working in it. Then… you know, bills needed to be paid, food needed to be purchased, and I refuse to take money from my family. So…" she trailed off. "It's twice a week I'm there, and it pays enough that I'm comfortable now. Plus, it is legal."

"I know," he told her immediately. "It was just a surprise for me, that's all."

She chuckled. "It was a surprise for me to see you there last night too."

"Isn't it, kind of… gross?"

"At first, sure, but then it wasn't so bad. Now, it's kind of routine."

"Routine?" he asked dryly.

She rolled her eyes and stared him dead in the eye. "I'm not shagging them or giving them golden showers, or whatever other self-deprecating thing you're thinking. I boss them around and get creative with handcuffs. I can guarantee you it's never something that would be a turn on for me. It's a job and a much better paying one than Millie's Cookies."

He couldn't help his shy smile at that. "Talked to Ron then?"

"Before you locked him up, yeah."

His hand went to the back of his head, "not too mad at me for that, are you?"

"No," she sighed. "Nor for Charlie. It was all just a matter of time."

He wished his coffee maker would work faster so he would have something in his hands. A cup of coffee between them would be like a kind of shield just then. Particularly as his next question slipped out; "And what does your boyfriend think of all this?"

"I haven't got one. I can't imagine that any guy that found out would be interested in dating me either."

"I don't know about that." Careful, he warned himself, the two of you should not be getting involved.

She appeared to be holding back a scoff. "Okay, let's try and say it this way, 'I've no interest in bringing my work home with me.' If I was dating someone and they found out, and they weren't repulsed, that can only lead me to believe that they were into it, and I have never once fantasized about being handcuffed to a bed, nor the other way around."

He couldn't tell if she realized he was interested in her now. Maybe he wasn't being as obvious as he thought.

Finally, the blessed sound of coffee in its last stages of passing through a filter.

Harry jumped on the opportunity to grab a mug and busy himself with readying a cup. "Do you want one?"

"I probably shouldn't. I've been awake for over a day and need to get some sleep."

"What are the odds that your flatmate isn't entertaining?" he teased.

"Too fucking low for me to want to think about," she groaned as she rubbed her eyes.

He looked over towards his sitting room and wondered if he was pushing the boundaries of whatever was going on here but went ahead with it anyway. "You can kip out here for a few hours if you'd like. I don't have to leave for three hours."

A small glimmer of hope and relief shone through her tired brown eyes at the offer. "You're okay with that?"

It was only ten minutes later and she was on his couch, completely off in dreamland. When it came time for him to leave for work, she was still completely dead to the world and he didn't want to wake her just so she could stumble the several blocks home, potentially passing out in a pile of rubbish on her way. So, he left her sleeping on his couch with a note on the coffee table for her if she woke up while he was gone.

When he returned home in the morning his couch was empty and that left him bothered.

He'd put his number on his note to her and she hadn't texted him so much as a 'thanks' before she'd left.

He grabbed a piece of cold pizza from his fridge and went to take a shower before heading to bed. On autopilot he went into his room and flicked on the tv, looking around his floor to find the pyjama pants he'd been wearing before he changed for work.

That was when he noticed that Ginny was asleep in his bed.

At least, she had been asleep, she was now rousing due to the sound of the morning news report.

"You're here," he said in surprise.

"Hi. Er, yeah. Sorry, I just, I woke up on the couch and read your note. Your bed was just laying empty and… I may have overstepped a bit, it's just, I don't get the opportunity to sleep somewhere so quiet all the time."

"It's fine," he assured her. "I just thought you'd left, that's all."

"What time is it?"

"Nearing eight now. In the morning."

"I've got class in two hours." She pulled back the sheets and stood up, and he noticed that she was wearing the pants he'd been looking for.

And he was incredibly turned on by the sight of her in them.

It was a terrible idea but the situation was too perfect; Harry stepped towards her, picked her up by her thighs and kissed her as her legs instinctively wrapped around him.

()()()

What had she been thinking?! How could she have let that happen?

The 'how' of it happening had been playing on repeat in her head since the moment she left his flat. The entire series of choices she'd made that landed her in his bed with him had been playing on repeat.

First there had been the decision to go over to his place; that choice had come from sleep deprivation followed by a full day of annoying concerns over what he must think of her, as if that had mattered.

Secondly, she shouldn't have taken up his offer of letting her kip on the couch.

Thirdly, after kipping on the couch, she should have gotten up and left when he did. She'd heard him moving around and getting ready to head out for his night shift, she had just been so comfortable and tired.

Then fourth, oh, the fourth.

Her fourth mistake was to let herself into his bedroom around midnight when she'd woken up in a haze and realized her clothes were not a comfortable sleeping choice. His pyjama bottoms were right there on the floor, and they looked so damned comfy. Shucking her jeans and knickers, the pulling on those babies and losing her bra, it had felt wonderful. So had his mattress and pillow.

Which, of course, leads directly to her fifth choice; kissing him back when he came at her.

Just like with the seducing song that his pyjamas and mattress had called out to her in the middle of the night, she wanted nothing more than to lose herself in him when he'd kissed her.

And she had.

Twice.

Because once simply hadn't been enough.

And, well, the first round had been quick for both of them.

They hadn't said anything, they'd just shagged and snogged, then shagged some more. They'd both been all hands and mouths and the delicious sensations of skin on skin. Having him want her and take her like he had, it had felt so fucking good.

It hadn't taken long for him to nod off after the second time and she'd slipped out as soon as his breathing was even.

He'd left a note for her on the coffee table, and it had his number on it.

Now she was wondering if not taking the note was her sixth mistake.

Did she want to open a dialogue with him?

If she started texting him then he would start texting her back, possibly.

Then what? They would just start booty calling each other?

She didn't sleep around.

She made a point of not sleeping around.

In fact, he was only the second person she'd ever done that with.

Ginny found herself so preoccupied with all these thought that she couldn't concentrate on her studying.

No, there had been no sixth mistake, she told herself. Taking his number and using it would have been a distraction.

She didn't need any distractions.

She needed to get her Bachelors in Nursing and land a job that paid enough to get her out of Lisa's flat; preferably living somewhere in her own.

And she was so close to this happening.

She didn't need to text him. She didn't need to be in that headspace that women like her get into when they're in a new 'something' with a guy and can't focus until they know what that 'something' is.

What she needed to do was focus and keep heading on the path she'd been on.

If he really wanted to reach out to her, then he knew where she lived and he knew where she worked… part time anyhow.

Her head kept leading her in all different directions that day, and part of the next. Eventually, she was able to push the reoccurring thoughts about Harry Potter and his lovely eyes and crooked smile out of her head and focus.

Two months later and she was officially a nurse! One with a job offer! A few job offers, actually. None of them were for the most glamorous of places but she understood that she had to pay her dues before she could get her resume to the nicer hospitals or clinics.

Ron had gotten out of jail early on good behavior and helped her move her things out of Lisa's place and into a her new place. She'd met a med student that had a room available and offered it to her. Hermione Granger was essentially a candy striper at the clinic Ginny worked for and they'd hit it off in the break room.

It was so nice to be getting on with someone that wasn't struggling to rise up from their situation; Hermione's parents were dentists, one's with their own practice. Her parents had helped her out with Med School and with getting her flat, it was one owned by one of their friends. Ginny did her best not to give an incredulous look at her new flatmate when she'd told her that she didn't want to 'live off of her parents money anymore'. Yet, Ginny couldn't bring herself to admit what her own family was like.

It felt wrong, but the whole ride from Lisa's flat to Hermione's, Ginny had begged and pleaded with Ron not to let on how they grew up, or that he'd just gotten out of doing time.

Thankfully, Hermione wasn't there when Ron helped move the boxes and bed into the flat.

Living with Hermione had been like stepping into a whole new world, one that Ginny knew had existed but she'd never experienced it for herself. They did laundry ever other day, they took turns cleaning the already clean bathroom, they left each other food in the fridge after purposefully making too much. They helped each other study!

It was clean, and pleasant, and, best of all, quiet.

Coming home to that after a full shift of bedpans and junkies looking for a fix and calling you names after being denied, it was incredible.

Ginny had quit working as a dominatrix, there would have been a way to work her schedule around it, but she didn't need the extra money anymore, and she didn't need somewhere to escape to either.

It had been six months of total and complete normalcy when she ran into Harry again.

She was babysitting her niece for a few hours while her eldest brother and his wife were 'napping', it was something she did occasionally. Victoire was only a few months old and Ginny felt obligated to be there for her little niece and show her that there were different paths that one could take in their life.

Ginny had Victoire in the stroller and took her to the park since it was a nice day out and a weekend so there were going to be loads of other kids around. Victoire had been content every time they'd gone out, she seemed to like moving around rather than sitting still.

Once they found a spot of grass, Ginny spread out a blanket and lay her niece down, laying right beside her and reading out of a children's nursery book until she grew fussy and it was time for a feeding.

It was while she was bottle feeding her niece that a shadow passed over the blanket and Ginny looked up to see him standing there, looking back and forth between she and her niece.

"Harry," she greeted coolly.

The expression on his face told her he was amazed to find her there, but he'd been the one to come over, and they had bumped into each other before. It may be a largely populated area they lived in, but coincidences did happen, so she didn't understand what was leaving him speechless.

He crouched down to his knees and stared at Victoire, still saying nothing.

It took her longer than it should have to realize what was causing this reaction from him.

"You aren't too good at math, are you?"

His eyes shot up to meet hers.

"Babies take nine months, nearly ten, to gestate. This child, my niece, is almost five months old. She isn't yours."

He sucked in a deep breath and lay down on the grass, his head resting on their blanket. "I thought I was about to have a heart attack."

Ginny shook her head. "You're an idiot," she laughed. "We don't know each other very well, but I assure you, if I had found myself pregnant after that morning, I would have reached out."

"I'll remember that for next time."

Her eyebrows shot up in question; he thought there was going to be a 'next time'?

He couldn't see her expression though, he was still laying with his eyes closed. "I talked to Ron recently."

Her mouth dropped open and she tried to form her jumble of thoughts into words; and failed.

"He said he's joining up with the army and needed a letter of recommendation, asked if I'd write it."

She looked down at her niece and shifted her slightly to get more comfortable. "He told me he was thinking about it the last time we talked. I hope he follows through."

"Me too." He had gathered himself together then and rolled over, coming to sit beside the blanket and looking at her. "I'm still sorry about… all that."

She damned her cheeks for flushing. "Don't be, I was a willing participant."

"I meant about my needing to lock him up, and your other brother. I'm not sorry about us hooking up. I am a bit ticked with you for not using my number though. I know you saw the note."

"Oh." Once more, she shifted uncomfortably. "I had a lot going on then; I didn't think I could deal with the… distraction."

"This might sound conceited, but I thought I would have been a good distraction."

She scoffed derisively. "I was finishing up with school and cramming as much information in my brain as would fit! I didn't have the headspace to fit anything like relationship turmoil, and that's all we would have had. You knew what I did for extra cash and you were had using my brother for months then were the one to arrest him. I knew that, you knew that. I'd been working my arse off to get through school, I wasn't about to throw that away because I was too busy worrying over a guy I fancied to put in the effort I needed to to get through the last hurdle before landing a real job."

"You've finished with school now," he pointed out. "And Ron has already been incarcerated and released. Did you lose my number since then?"

"I never took it in the first place," she admitted. "But I didn't forget where you live. I, however, have since moved, now I'm living with someone going through Med school, in a clean and quiet flat and figuring out my new normal. It's been really peaceful."

"It's just the one job you've got now then?" he asked casually.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Yes." Her teeth were clenched so hard when she answered that her jaw hurt.

"Then it sounds like you do have some spare time now."

"What?" Victoire started fussing now that her bottle was done and Ginny lifted her up to burp her, happy for the distraction. It sounded like Harry was about to ask her out; but that couldn't be right.

"You've got free time now on your days off. Time enough for a date?"

She blinked at him several times. "You want to go on a date with me?"

"Oh, I never thought you'd ask," he grinned, a cheeky twinkle in his eye. He thought he was clever. Then he lost the cheek. "Really, I would like to get to know you better. Can I have your number?"

She wanted to ask him why. Did he think that she was easy, just because they'd shagged that one time, technically twice?

"Don't do that," he cut through her thoughts. "I can see that look in your eyes like you're trying to figure out what my game is. I don't have one, I've just been thinking about you and remembering. I want to spend more time with you. I know you don't get involved with what the rest of your family does, so it isn't like I can work an angle here like I did with Ron. And, I'd like to point out that Ron and I turned into friends despite what I did."

It appeared like he was being honest. And his argument didn't leave her with any unanswered questions. She supposed the worst that would happen is that he'd use her for sex a few times and then they'd be done.

Considering she was still too busy navigating the ropes at work and helping Hermione study at home, there wasn't much time for looking for a boyfriend or just someone to spend a night with. She was craving someone to lay with at night, and here he was offering that to her.

She then noticed the faint scar on his forehead, it was only a fraction off from the coloring of the rest of his skin. He'd taken that bullet for her thug of a brother, one that he likely had talked into joining up with the army to get him on the straight and narrow.

"Okay," she answered finally.

"Okay? I was hoping for a 'yes, I'd love to'," he smiled.

Victoire was done being burped, so she settled her down in her arms again and started rocking her.

"Maybe if you ask me out for a second date," Ginny shrugged. She was feeling the tingles of excitement now over being asked.

"Text me then," he grinned and wrote down his number of a bit of a receipt he had in his pocket.

"What, right now?"

"Yes. I want to make sure that I've got your number so I can nag you until you actually show up at whatever restaurant our date will take place at."

She blushed, but searched for her phone anyway and sent him off a text with just her name typed out.

His phone let off a ding, followed by another one. "And that was your message followed by another one from my mother letting me know I'm now officially late meeting her." He looked back up at her, his green eyes looking very vibrant now. "Until I see you again?"

She chuckled at his version of a farewell. "Laters," she offered lamely.

Her phone pinged as she was getting her niece back into the stroller a half hour later, it was Harry asking if she was free on Thursday.

()()()