AN: Okay. You are all kinds of amazing. I am overwhelmed with the reviews and hit count on this, really. I was never expecting this to be popular. Sorry for the delay, too. There were so much writing, papers, SATs, procrastination, and another Bat Mitzvah… Yes, getting a tumblr might have been a small reason, too (conjure-at-your-own-risk).
Some notes about this chapter: I've been debating on changing the rating depending how things go. For now if they're any particular readers, some heavier swearing and scenes will be done in this one. There's also some internal ableism with Harry's injuries.
(I also have more shout-outs hiding in here. Have fun looking for them!)
This is more of a filler chapter focusing on Harry, but the next one you'll be seeing more characters and a slight move toward a plot. I also have no clue how many chapters there'll be, so I'll try to make the updating less sporadic for everyone's sake.
Yes, Ginny is going to kick his moping ass. That is her specialty.
Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though JK Rowling and Bloosmbury and Warner Bros allows us to play in the sandbox, it doesn't mean that I owe a damn thing.
Title: Gusts Come Around: This is a Place
Word Count: 2K
Summary: For the first time since his tour in Iraq ended, Harry felt somewhat optimistic with his group therapy partner. Muggle AU. HPFF Challenge
There is a house built out of stone
Wooden floors, walls and window sills...
Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust...
This is a place where I don't feel alone
This is a place where I feel at home...
—Cinematic Orchestra, To Build a Home
Collin Creevey also enjoyed taking bloody photos of us.
Thankfully, he understood the importance of not using certain types of flash photography, but he was hell-bent on capturing every 'happy' moment that we had. "Photos are important," he had said after blinding me. "They help us connect and remember the happier movements in our lives." And then he would go on, citing a research study and some fortune cookie crap about the powers of positive thinking.
I had complained this to Hermione, and she had told me to suck it up.
She actually had said it in a more eloquent manner, and she'd cited some research studies about the power of being positive and how it worked healing the body.
Even Ron had taken her side when I has later complained to him.
"Seriously, mate," he had said in his small kitchen. He was pouring some surgery glaze over fairy cakes. "A class I took at Uni went on about how positivity can help someone get better. They used my baking class to make treats for an experiment."
Traitors. All of them.
I hunched myself behind Ginny's chair when I saw Creevey again. Ginny snorted at my immature attempts of hiding. She raised her head, hiding the rest of me; her long hair fell down to my face. It was distracting hiding from Creevey when next I could only think about was 'Wow, Ginny's hair smells really good."
"Brave Harry Potter," Ginny said in a sing-song voice. "Came out of Iraq with most of his limbs intact, but it's the camera that scares him the most."
"I'm not photogenic," I told her. I raised my head to speak to her better, but all I got was a mouthful of sweet-smelling hair. I spat the red strands out. "Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope."
She wrinkled her nose. "I'm more of a Trekie." She held her hand up in the Vulcan sign. "Live long and prosper." I snorted and made a comment under my breath about how the Force wasn't strong with her. Ginny glared at me and said, "you would be more photogenic if you actually start smiling more often."
"Of course I smile!"
"You don't," a gruffer voice said. I looked up and saw Remus Lupin standing over me with a cup of tea in his hands. "Don't worry, my girlfriend says the same about me."
"Isn't that sweet?" Ginny looked down the back of her chair, her voice cloyingly sweeter than her words. "I'm sure that Mr Lupin has a wonderful smile. Why don't you show Harry, please?"
The older man gave us a weary grin, and it did made the scars on his face look softer. Right on cue, Creevey appeared with his camera and snapped the Kodak moment of Mr Lupin and Ginny smiling, but I appeared bug-eyed with crooked glasses.
"We should all do toothpaste commercials," I said, blinking away the annoying lights flickering over my vision. I used the (thankfully it was parked) wheelchair to help myself up. "How much time do we have left?"
Mr Lupin looked down at his wrist. I tried not to stare when I saw that his thumb appeared to had been hacked off. "Only a few minutes left. Are you looking forward to the weekend?"
"He and I are helping my brother with a catering event," Ginny said. "Harry's only in it for the free food afterwards."
I was going to argue about that, but Ron's cooking, according to Ginny, was barely seconds to their mother's. Since Ron was very good at his work, I quickly found that I had no room to back myself out when it came to his concoctions. His crêpes were even able to drag Hermione away from cram-studying for her next exam. There was some big social event happening tomorrow that involved some of the higher-ups in society; one had thought that it would be nice to tap into a virtually unknown caterer and she had eventually found Ron.
"I would say that there's more in life than free food…" I sighed heavily and thought back to the treacle tarts that he had made last week. Ron had promised that he would be making them again for the event tomorrow. "You know," I said. "Your poor brother may need some help tonight, maybe we should leave early…" I looked at Ginny and met her amused gaze. "I'll even smile for a group photo."
She patted my cheek. "That's sweet of you." She ignored me huffing some more bargaining tools and she spoke to Mr Lupin. "What are your exciting plans?"
"Somehow kicking Sirius out of my flat and getting him his own." He pointed his injured thumb at his friend who was posing for Creevey. He dropped his voice to a conspiring whisper. "Dora and I love him very much, but we just want to have a place for ourselves."
"Does he know that you're ready to move on?" I asked. I tried not to imagine some horrible unforeseen future if Hermione wanted to room with some prat, and they would want to kick me out. That's not going to happen, I told myself. Hermione would sooner kick his arse than terminate our friendship. Right?
As if sensing my thoughts, I felt Ginny's fingers curled with mines. "We wish you luck," she said. "Maybe you can make it up for him by helping him pick out some lovely curtains?"
My breath hitched when Ginny twined her arms around my neck. Her hair moved down her shoulders, strands tickling my nose with its sweet fragrance. She stared boldly and fiercely into my eyes. "Well?" she murmured, and shifted her weight so that her knees were pressed on either side of my hipbones. The closeness created an abiding warmth that's been building up for a while.
My hands moved up her sides, cupping her upper arms. I tugged her closer and brought my back down on the couch headboard. Her hands moved so that one was tangled in my hair; and that the other was lazily working its way to remove my shirt. "Yes, Ginevra?" My voice sounded throaty and far away from my ears.
"Don't call me Ginevra," she intoned me. She drew circles with her index finger at the back of my head. "Call me that again, Potter, you rotter, and there'll be hell to pay."
"Like what?" I bent my head and kissed the junction of her neck. Her flowery shampoo filled my senses. The freckled curve of her neck was fascinating. Each new showing of bare skin was like a discovery; something that she clearly appreciated when my mouth grazed down her collarbone…
What the… I opened my eyes and expected to be crashing on Ginny's couch. I cradled my head in my hands and slowly counted down from ten. It's just a dream, I reminded myself. Go back to sleep, you idjit.
I gasped when her mouth brushed over the scar. Her hair fell down and spilled over my chest. It looked like firelight in the low lights. She kissed the scar again. "How?" she murmured, using her fingers to trace over the injury.
"Shrapnel," I muttered, more distracted that she was laying on top of me—naked. I tugged at her fingers and brought them up to my forehead. "Here, too."
"You're too pretty to die," she said. Her fingers moved alongside the edge of my face, tracing out the contours. I tried to make out her expression, but my glasses were abandoned somewhere around the room.
"You need to get your eyes checked," I scoffed. I couldn't see what was so attractive about my body. I was a lanky, skinny mess of scars and childhood injuries.
"Let me show you…" Ginny palmed down my contracting abdomen. "You really have no idea how beautiful you really are, inside and out…"
I almost fell out of bed.
I laid there, half dangling off the bed. The sudden shift in momentum threw my thoughts into a loop.
Okay. I was dreaming about Ginny. I had an able-working body, and I was dreaming about blissful and intimate contact with her. Sex was not going to happen because she's my friend. She's Ron little sister. I'm also his friend and Hermione's, but I'm clearly not having dreams about them…
Bad brain, I scolded. I curled myself into a small ball, ignoring how empty my bed felt. She's off-limits.
She smelled like crushed grass and flowers. She yanked on my shirt, bringing me down to the earth with her. "Can't get rid of me that easily, can you?" Ginny gave me a smacking, messy kiss.
I threaded my hands through her hair, and I laughed against her lips. "Why would I?" I met her eyes. "I'll always need you around…"
Fuck. I clutched tightly at my sheets, breathing hard.I looked around my dark room, confused by the absence of Ginny. I fought myself from getting back from the throes of the dream, and forced myself to think straight.
Those dreams were never going to happen in real life.
It was something that I had slowly accepted after coming back from Iraq. Sure, I had some mates joking about how some girls found war scars and heroes to be sexy, but that all stopped with the medication with side-effects and my arm.
My stupid fucking useless arm.
The truth that Ginny was going to get better. She was going to walk in the near future. She was going to have an able-working body and move on from her time in the war. I was going to always have a lame arm and haunted by my personal demons. A line came to mind about heroes and their tragedies, and I was only more inclined to disagree that some heroes do get their happy ending.
They're just not me.
I get too lost in past. I get stuck in some pathetic self-made labyrinth and I don't get out. Ginny's not like that, she's more social, more positively—more alive and grounded in the world than I am. Sometimes the hardest thing to do in this world is to live it. She can.
But I don't know how to live it when my choices were always changing.
I arrived early the next morning with Hermione. We were dressed for the occasion and wore the borrowed outfits from the small company. I was wearing the nice slacks that still felt too big even with the belt, and a starched white dress shirt that felt very itchy. Hermione was wearing some sort of taffeta yellow dress. It was the more amazing fact besides her straightening her hair was the makeup. The effect was strong on Ron when he opened the door and blurted out what the hell happened to her.
("Honestly, Ronald. Just because I don't bend to what society expects me to look like—"
"Blimey! I'm just tryin' to say that you look nice! Are you wearing heels because you look taller?"
I was never going to ask Ron for any sort of romantic advice.)
While those two were arguing over arranging the appetisers to his car, he told me that Ginny was in her room down the corner. He also warned me to knock first if I didn't wanted to get struck in the face by a pillow or a paperback book.
She was indeed there and told me to come in and help her. She was half-dressed and her wheelchair waiting by her bed. Any details about her room vanished from my mind immediately.
"If you like what you see, then you better say something." Ginny twisted her hair up with one hand and showed her bare back to me. She was sitting on her bed and wearing a golden dress that stopped halfway at her thighs. The gauzy material complimented to richness of her hair and the paleness of her skin. My eyes wandered down her back, unable to say anything expect for some bumbling words.
"I…" I was at a lost for words. My stupid dreams were playing in my mind's eye. I closed my eyes and looked away at the empty hallway. "You look…look nice."
"Always good with the compliments." Her shoulder blades moved when she huffed. "Do you think you can help me with the zipper? It'll be too embarrassing to ask Ron for his help."
I nodded dumbly, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. I awkwardly sat down on her small bed and fumbled with the zipper (it was hard doing it with one hand, but I was getting better at it). Freckles dotted her pale skin and were disappearing when the dress covered them up. I tried not to let my hand linger when I was done. "Slept well?" I asked in her ear. My head had unconsciously levelled down to hers and was closer, too.
"Not bad," Ginny said. "And you?" She let go of her hair and turned around to face me. Eyeliner and mascara sharpened her eyes. A small eyelash was on her cheek. I made a move to brush it away; her face tilted up and her lips parted in a silent word.
But I stopped myself.
Truthfully, I could had done the entire romantic scene, but I was confused. I wasn't even back home for a full year and I was still healing. My feelings for her were new, exciting, and I wasn't ready to jump in yet; and latch myself onto the first person that showed the barest hint of something more than friendship. I could also be reading her all the wrong way and ruin a friendship that I desperately needed. After all, wasn't falling for someone supposed to be slow like falling asleep? This felt so sudden and alert instead.
But, god, the thick part of me wanted to kiss her.
Maybe in some alternate universe I made a cheesy joke about making an eyelash wish, and we would be kissing. I would know what it would feel like to her have lips pressed against mines, and her voice breathily saying my name. Maybe those dreams would even come true in a time when we were both ready.
Maybe I wasn't some nutter who needed to happy but already was.
The happy thoughts slipped away and I was back in my self-made labyrinth of pessimism and negativity.
I leaned away. "We should go help them."
Ginny didn't say anything.