AN- Hinevra requested a childhood sweethearts one.
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Coven of Little Witches and Wizards
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1986
Harry was so excited and nervous about today, it was going to be his first official day of school. He'd picked out what he was going to wear, he made sure to brush his teeth extra good and he didn't even make a fuss when his mum tried to tame his hair.
Today was his first day of school!
Not of real school, where he was going to learn to control his magic, but spelling school where he would learn his letters and maths. He was too young for real school yet.
And he wasn't interested in the school part of it, he was interested in the friends part of it.
As an only child of the parent that was an only child (and his mum was basically an only child because they didn't talk to her family) there weren't a lot of kids around for him to play with. Sometimes he would have playdates with Neville, but Harry was told he wasn't allowed to talk about that because Neville was supposed to be in hiding because of the bad thing that happened to him a long time ago that people still wanted to know about.
Neville was alright, but he didn't like flying and he didn't like noise. He wasn't going to be a good candidate for the Next Marauders of Hogwarts. Neville got nervous even listening to stories about the first generation of them; Harry's dad and uncles.
Harry knew there weren't going to be many kids in his class at the Coven School, but there would be some, and that was more than he had at home.
His mum and dad brought him there through the Floo and the first thing that he noticed was all the noise. There were kids everywhere. There were parents too, but the kids were running around, weaving in between them all and making so many sounds. It looked like they were playing tag.
"Wow, that's quite an impression," Harry heard his mum say.
Harry liked the impression, whatever that meant. He was grinning as he saw three kids run passed him that were of varying ages and heights.
A little girl with big brown eyes ran up to him, she had her hair done up in two braids and her dress didn't quite fit her right, but she had a big smile and looked like she was fun. "Are you playing?" she asked.
"What's the game?"
"I dunno, but it means we need to run and make noise. I think we're playing tag." She reached out and touched him hard on the shoulder. "You're it!" she yelled, then ran away.
Harry heard his mum call something out to him, but it was too late, he was already running after her.
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1987
"Are you saying you want to hold Harry back?" his mum asked the head teacher.
"No, no! Harry is a very bright boy. His school work is coming along just fine; there are a few interruptions in class but generally he isn't the instigator," the woman informed both his parents.
Harry knew he probably should have been listening, but their talk was boring, and he could see Ginny in the hallway through the glass; they were making faces at each other and that was more entertaining.
"The only reason that we want to keep him back is to, erm, separate. Ahem. What I mean to say is… I think he would be a great benefit in helping with the younger students. He would still be doing the work that is for his age level, we just believe that he is picking up on it so easily that he might have the time to spare to assist the new students coming in."
The room was silent for a moment and it caused Harry to stop staring at Ginny and look back over to his parents and the head teacher, all of whom were staring at him.
"What?" he asked.
His dad turned back to the head teacher. "You feel you need to separate them for the sake of your sanity, don't you?"
'Separate?' Harry thought. 'That means when you move two things away from each other.' He knew that because the teachers were constantly saying it whenever he or Ginny took a seat beside each other.
Wait.
"Does that mean you're taking me away from my best friend?!" he asked loudly. "You can't do that! We have to be together! It's not fair!" He stood up out of his chair. "I'll be more quiet! I promise!"
"Harry, dear, you'll still get plenty of time to play with her," his mum assured him. "We can talk to her parents, see about having her over for playdays and such. You two can run all over the house and yard being as loud as you want. You just can't do that here; it's distracting the teachers and other children."
"She can come over?" he asked hopefully. Ginny hadn't come over for a playdate before. "Can I go over to hers too? She's got a really big yard and a funny house."
"Yes," his mum assured him, "we'll work it out with her parents. And if we do that, are you okay with not being in the same class as her?"
His shoulders were still slumped at the idea; Ginny was the best part about school. But, if they would be getting to play at each other's house and have as much fun being really loud, then that makes up for it, a little anyhow. So, he nodded.
"Wonderful," the head teacher said with a smile and a clap of her hands. "Truth be told," she said to his parents, "he really shouldn't be getting bossed around like that until he's married."
The three of them laughed, but he didn't think it was all that funny.
Ginny wasn't bossy!
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1991
"Wake up, Potter!"
Her voice was so incredibly loud first thing in the morning, it being followed up with a pillow to the face was disorienting.
"Merlin, what?!"
"Happy Birthday!"
"It would be a happier one if I was able to wake up naturally."
"Then you shouldn't have invited me to stay over. You brought this on yourself." She then steamrolled herself over him; where one holds their arms and legs straight and starts rolling themselves across another person.
"Why are you such a morning person?" he grunted.
"Why are you such a grump? It's morning time! And you are officially eleven. Do you happen to remember what happens when one turns eleven?"
"You talk too much." He pulled his blanket over his head to try and muffle her voice and block out the sunshine.
"That's right! They get their letter from Hogwarts. And you'll be the first of the two of us to get their letter. And don't think that will make you any better at magic than me, just because I'm two weeks younger doesn't mean that I'm not already better at casting than you."
Harry grinned under the blanket. He was getting his acceptance letter today! And there was no doubt that he was getting in; he'd already been doing accidental magic for a while, and knicking his parents and uncle's wands to practice little spells with too, usually when Ginny was around. Ginny had been knicking wands from her brothers for ages too and they always tried simple spells, which usually worked eventually.
He pulled the blanket back down and opened his eyes to see Ginny grinning back at him with her hair all a mess.
"I'm getting accepted today," he said out loud.
"You're getting accepted today!"
He got out of bed and reached for his robe, tossing one of his sweaters in her direction so they could go downstairs to the kitchen, where the mail had hopefully already shown up. His dad was at the stove and his mum was sipping her tea at the table, both of them greeted him with a round of 'Happy Birthday's' and a hug, they gave Ginny a hug too, his mum said it was like she had a daughter with how much Ginny was over. Harry spent a good deal of time at Ginny's place too, with the number of brothers she had there was usually enough people around to play a game of pick up Quidditch, and if it was just the two of them they would play QUAFFLE. Ron always wanted to join them, Ginny's little brother, and they usually let him, he was only a year younger after all, and already as tall as Harry.
Harry had become friends with Ron a few years ago when he got separated from Ginny at school and put in with the younger kids, but Ginny was still his best friend.
"Did the mail come yet?" Ginny asked his parents for him.
"Mail?" his dad said, pondering. "Are we expecting any mail today?" he asked his wife.
"Well, the Daily Prophet came," she replied, then she reached across the table to the newspaper and pulled out from under it a thick envelope with green handwriting on it. "And this. Why, it appears to be addressed to you, Harry," she said with mock surprise.
"Yes!" Ginny rushed over to her and snatched the letter away from his amused mother. "Look at how tiny the writing is! It's just like it was for all my brothers, the same ink as well."
"Hey, it's my letter." He took it from her and carefully opened it, having to move around the kitchen to get away from Ginny who kept trying to take it so she could rip into its contents faster. "You can destroy your own envelope when yours shows up. This one's mine!"
They squabbled and wrestled until they wound up on the tiled floor of the kitchen with the letter at last pulled out and read through it together side by side, laying stomachs down and up on their elbows.
"There's just no separating them, is there?" he faintly heard his mother say.
"Why would you want to?" his dad replied.
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1993
"Why don't you just go to the nurse?" Harry asked after Ginny had groaned for the umpteenth time.
"Because I know what's wrong and I need to just wait it out." She put her head down on the table beside her half-completed assignment.
"Maybe we should brew a potion. I read about one that is supposed to help," Hermione said knowingly.
Hermione said everything knowingly. It used to bug Harry that she 'knew' everything there was to know about the wizarding world when she grew up in the Muggle one, but she usually did know more than either of them about the history of things, and she read ahead through all of the textbooks they'd been assigned, and several that they hadn't, so she was a great resource when it came time to write essays.
"Do you know what they're talking about?" Neville asked him quietly. Three years into school and Neville was still so shy. He'd been raised alone by this grandmother, and, try as Harry did, he couldn't get Neville to be more confident. It was a wonder that he got sorted into Gryffindor with the rest of them.
Ginny heard Neville. "I'm talking about 'woman's troubles'," she waxed dramatic. "It's happened! I'm officially not one of the boys. I'm going through… the change," she shivered.
"It's completely natural," Hermione started.
"No. It's a horror show and I feel like I've been punched in the abdomen."
"You feel like you've been punched?" Harry asked in surprise. "Did you get hit? Maybe by a spell or something."
Ginny and Hermione chuckled at that.
"What? You're in pain and you say you feel like you've been hit."
"Maybe she just really needs the loo," Neville said in even more of a whisper to him.
Harry had been in that kind of situation before; a few too many figgy puddings around the holiday and he felt like he might spend the rest of his life on the toilet.
"I don't think that's what it is," Harry told him, still unsure what was going on.
Ginny had a high tolerance for pain; she'd suffered through boils brought on by plants in the greenhouses, potions splatters, misaimed spells that had her doubling over, friendly rounds of Quidditch that took a turn, and worst of all, last year she'd suffered through an entire school year with the worst DADA professor and his never ending diatribe about his books that he'd supposedly been through first hand; not one of those times had she been as dramatic as she was being right now.
She was nearly in tears this morning over him offering her the last muffin within reach at breakfast. There were other muffins! They were just a little farther down the table.
Something was definitely up with her that Hermione knew about.
Ginny was keeping something from him, and teasing him about it essentially, he didn't like that; they told each other everything.
At one point in their study session Hermione said she needed to get another book from the library and Neville asked if he could join her to stretch his legs. Harry used this opportunity to ask Ginny what was really going on.
"It's nothing, Harry. Just leave it alone, it'll pass."
"I don't want to 'leave it alone', you're saying something's wrong with you and you won't tell me what."
She chuckled then, as though it was all a big joke, then, of all things, she blushed. Ginny wasn't someone who blushed. She did a bit when they found out that Lockhart was their professor at the start of last year, but that didn't last long. She might have blushed a little when one of the older boys took notice of her, then she'd quickly turn her head to him and glare, daring him to comment.
Right now though, this was an embarrassed sort of blush.
"I'm just… you know, a 'woman now'," she muttered.
"What?" That made no sense. What could have changed between yesterday and today that would make her claim she'd gone from girl to woman?
"I'm, you know, starting to ride the crimson wave," she said, digging the nib of her quill into the table.
"Ginny, I have no idea what you're talking about."
He saw her jaw lock up and her lips purse how they did when she was annoyed.
"Hey, don't be like that, you're being all cryptic, you can't get annoyed with me because I'm not catching on."
"Fine," she sighed. "When a girl reaches a certain age her body starts going through changes, one of these changes is that every month or so she starts… needing extra hygiene supplies." He frowned at her, he'd gotten the 'growing body' talk from his dad about how he'd eventually need to shave and shower more. Did she need to shower more? "For fuck's sake, Harry," Ginny exasperated when she saw he was still confused, then she pulled him toward her even closer. "I'm on my period. I feel like I've been punched in the gut because my ovaries are evacuating themselves since what they were storing up has not been used to help make a baby."
Now it was his turn to blush, and look horrified. "No! We're too young for that! We're only thirteen."
His reaction made her chuckle and she let him go. "You make it sound like it's happening to the both of us. And no, I'm not too young for that. All of the girls in my dorm have gone through this already."
"Gross, I didn't need to know that."
"Be happy, it means their boobs are going to be coming in now, you can stop only ogling the older girls."
"I don't do that!"
"Right, sorry, my mistake." She didn't sound at all sincere.
"Hey, this means you're supposed to be wanting chocolate, right?"
"When do I not?"
He gave her his signature crooked smile then and moved back to sit in front of the assignment he'd been working on, feeling better now he knew that there had been a legitimate reason for her not to outright share what was going on with her.
Ginny returned to her work and he looked her over to see if he could tell that she was turning from the Tomboy Ginny to Woman Ginny. She still looked the same to him.
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1995
Ginny didn't look the same to him anymore.
She didn't look the same to a lot of the guys in his dorm, most particularly Dean, whom Ginny had, for some unknown reason, said 'yes' to when he asked her to go to Hogsmeade with him.
At first Harry thought he was disappointed because they had a standing date to go together to Hogsmeade, now, watching Ginny and Dean sitting in a corner booth at the Three Broomsticks, he wasn't so sure that was the only reason anymore.
Harry understood Dean's interest; Ginny was great, she was a great friend, she was a great Quidditch player, she was a great prankster and, though he wouldn't admit this to anyone, she had gotten really pretty.
He wasn't sure when exactly that happened that she went from being 'Ginny' to being 'pretty'; her name and that word were now linked in his mind though.
"Urgh, I don't need to see that!" Ron complained and gestured back over to Ginny and Dean, something Harry had managed to pull his eyes away from for all of a minute, now he looked back over and saw that they were kissing.
"Calm down, Ron, it's not like they're full on snogging like Cedric and Cho over there," Hermione pointed out.
That was also something Harry didn't want to see, he'd had a crush on Cho pretty bad at the start of their last school year, even wound up asking her to the Yule Ball, but Cedric, the Tri-Wizard Champion and former Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain, had got to her first. Seeing them together now didn't wound his pride nearly as much as when he'd seen them together at the Yule Ball last year.
"Doesn't it seem weird to see them together now?" he asked the table, preferring to discuss people that weren't his best friend and his dorm mate. "He's done with school and she's still got another year and a half. Isn't there some kind of ick factor there?"
"It does make the age difference stand out more than it did last year," Neville agreed. He then shot another look back at Ginny. "Wish I had a girlfriend," he sighed.
"You aren't talking about Ginny, are you?" Ron asked with disgust on his face.
"No! She went with me to the Yule Ball as a favor last year, that's it. I'm surprised you didn't go with her, actually," Neville said to Harry.
"He was too busy pining over Cho then to remember that Ginny was a female as well," Hermione pointed out.
"Hey! I've always known she's female, I just… was distracted." His eyes shot over to Ginny and Dean again, thankfully they were done kissing now. When he looked back to bring up something about how he'd remembered she, Hermione, was a girl he was cut off by the expression on Hermione's face that told him she realized his feelings on Ginny had changed. And that caused him to lose all track of what he'd been about to say.
"I wish I could have gone last year," Ron pouted. He nudged Hermione, "you should have gone with me instead of Krum."
"You know," she glowered, "it is traditionally the male that asks the female."
"Yeah, but you're a year ahead of me so that changes things."
"So, I should have gone with you and bickered all night, just so you could say you'd gone, instead of with someone who was genuinely interested in going with me?"
Ron started to say something, then stopped.
Harry and Neville exchanged a look, they knew that Ron fancied Hermione, yet Hermione hadn't caught onto that. She had figured out that Harry was starting to get more than friendly feelings for Ginny, but she was blind when it came to guys fancying her.
"I invited you to join us here at this table," she continued, "maybe next time I'll wait until you man up and ask if you can join."
"They're fighting again?" Ginny asked he and Neville as she slipped into the seat beside him.
She smelled particularly nice today. It looked like she might have brushed her hair for longer than usual too because it was so shiny and smooth looking.
She'd put effort into getting ready for her date, he sulked internally.
"Ginny!" Hermione turned her focus on her. "Where did Dean go?"
"Off with Seamus. Zonko's was calling and apparently that was enough to make him forget all about me."
"What?!" Harry growled. How dare Dean bugger off in the middle of his date with her! Ginny loved Zonko's! Even if she couldn't buy anything there, she loved to browse. Dean had just been given the honor of kissing her, how could he have moved on to hanging out with his friend that he hung around with all the time? If Ginny would have let him be the one to kiss her he wouldn't ever stop!
That realization felt like a punch to the chest.
"That was rude of him," Hermione protested.
"He was just snogging you and then wandered off with a guy?" Ron asked. "You must be a terrible kisser then. Or, do you have bad breath? Maybe that's it."
Harry was eternally grateful that Ron had joined their table now, that was exactly what Harry needed to hear in order to get him in a better mood.
"Excuse you! We kissed a little, I would hardly call it snogging. And no, I don't have bad breath," Ginny defended. "Do I?" she turned to Harry and got close enough to blow her breath in the direction of his nose.
"Mmm, hot chocolate," he grinned, now stopping himself from leaning forward and kissing her to see if she tasted like it too.
"Whatever," Ron shook his head. "I hope you're done with him."
"It was pretty rude that he left in the middle of your date," Neville agreed.
"Oh well," she shrugged, "at least I tried. And I've got you lot here that I'd rather hang out with anyhow."
At this she moved closer to Harry and rested her head on his shoulder, a familiar move as they were generally seated this close on the couches in Gryffindor, and each time she did it now he had a more powerful reaction than the previous time.
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1996
The water was dripping down from his hair onto both of them as their mouths moved together. They were up to their waists in the pond and the air felt chilly now that they'd gone for a swim, but he held her close and relished the feeling of her warm body pressed right up against his own, her wet underclothes that were acting as a swim suit, her knickers that were essentially suctioned to his own boxers from the waters effect on the fabric, and them being pressed right up against each other.
He'd dreamed of this moment for nearly a year, it was what he'd been thinking about when he suggested they cool off in the pond, then seeing her coming out of the water, seeing her hardened nipples showing through the dark bra she had on, he couldn't resist anymore; he'd waded right back into the water and started snogging her like his life depended on it.
She'd given a single squeak of surprise, then she was kissing him right back.
Merlin, she felt so good. This felt so right.
He knew it would wind up feeling as incredible as it did, that her athletic little body would fit right against him as perfectly as it did.
Desperately he wanted to let his hands wander down to her bum, it was right there. That would be too much too soon though. He wanted them to keep on doing this forever, there was no way he was going to risk pushing her too far too fast when they would have the rest of their lives to continue snogging as they were, and more.
Her fingers were tangled in his hair when he picked her up by the underside of her thighs and wrapped them around his waist, wading further into the water so it would assist with keeping her comfortably wrapped around him, then his mouth started wandering down her neck.
His lips found the dip in her collar and he instinctively let his tongue swirl against it. The reaction from her was well worth the experiment. She cried out loudly, a moaning, gasping sound that shot straight through him and down to his groin.
"Fuck," he gasped and quickly went about untangling them so he and his erection were a safe distance away from her. What it essentially boiled down to was him tossing her up and into the water a few feet away from him.
"What did you do that for?" Ginny asked as she broke the surface of the water, she'd dipped below and was now wiping the water out of her face and her hair back.
"Sorry!"
"Sorry you kissed me like your life depended on it, or sorry you dunked me after doing it?"
"Dunked you! I'm not sorry I kissed you! I've wanted to for ages. I thought you liked it?" he asked desperately.
She had enjoyed that, right? That wasn't all in his head.
"Why'd you stop then?"
"Y-you are okay with it?"
She scoffed and splashed water at him. "Yes I was okay with it! You think I would have let us carry on like that if I wasn't?"
"Well, I don't know, I just kind of came at you. I didn't give you any time to protest."
"Did it feel like I was protesting? Merlin, Harry. I thought you might have fancied me too but I didn't imagine that when you finally did something about it you'd immediately toss me in the pond after."
"To be fair, we were already in the pond."
"Yeah, your suggestion, and likely due in part to me needing to be half naked for the activity. Was that what finally got you to do something about it?"
He grinned at her then. She said she thought he might have fancied her 'too', meaning she liked him that way also. "I don't know what you mean, we always go swimming at yours when it's this hot out."
"Yeah, but I don't know if you've noticed, my breasts have gotten a bit bigger since last year, and-"
"Oh, I've noticed. That bra barely fits on you anymore."
She splashed him again, this time with a smile on her face. "So what was with shoving me away like that, or is that just how you end all your snogging sessions?"
"Er, we were just getting a little carried away, weren't we?"
She stared at him then, a calculating look in her eye. She knew him too well for him to be able to lie to her. Then she stood up properly again and began walking towards him, her chest once more on display, and he waded back away from her, keeping his waist below the waters surface. She stopped moving forwards when he moved and stared more.
He wished she would come down into the water, just for a few minutes so his body could relax, but she just stood there with her, nearly painted on, wet bra and endless sun-kissed skin.
"Harry," she said his name like a question.
The jig was up. "Can you just, give me a minute? And, you know, crouch back down?"
She was grinning at him now. "Why?" she asked teasingly. "Something about me standing here like this giving you a bit of trouble?" She waded closer to him.
"Ginny," he pleaded. He didn't need her making him feel any more uncomfortable about this. She was too confident for her own damned good. He waded backwards again, he was going to need to change directions if she kept trying to come closer to him, the shore wasn't that far away.
"You are too cute, Harry." She said this and then launched herself at him then had her arms around his neck, holding him close so he had no escape. Next she managed to get her legs wrapped around his waist once more and most certainly was able to feel what she'd done to him now. "Hmm, is that why you're being shy?" she asked, wiggling her bum slightly and returning his erection to full mast.
It was a lost cause trying to hide it from her now, so his arms came around her waist and he pulled her in tight against his chest so he could feel those lovely breasts of hers pressed right up against him. "I just didn't think you'd appreciate it, that's all."
"You didn't think I'd appreciate knowing that you fancy me for more than my personality?" Her hips moved against him again, very subtly.
"Which apparently you do like," he managed, then let his hands move down to her bum, thinking he could justify groping her there if he pretended in his mind that it was to stop her teasing him like that. "Ginny," he said her name softly and stared into her big brown eyes.
"I'm going to hate admitting to everyone that they were right all along," she said.
Harry wasn't quite as bothered about that; since they were six everyone had been saying the two of them would wind up together. Now here they were; he certainly loved her as more than just his best friend.
"Are you sure you're ready for this?" she asked. "Because you haven't dated much, you don't know what else is out there that you might prefer."
He cut her off with a kiss. He didn't need to take a run at dating other girls to know that what he had with Ginny, what they could have together, would be incredible and all he'd ever need. "I am 100% in this. I'm not even bothered about telling everyone they were right, I'm just glad they were."
She kissed him back, then rested her forehead against his. "We've still got two years of school left, it's a bit too soon to be telling them all they're completely right."
He chuckled. "You're right. I can just imagine our mum's starting wedding planning if we tell them we're together. Much too soon for that."
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2000
Neville took his seat once more beside him after a long speech about how much their friendship mattered to him, and stating that he knew all along that the two of them would wind up together. There were a few scars on Neville now and a slightly haunted look to his eyes, the change in him told Harry and Ginny that the shy boy they had known through Hogwarts had been forever changed in the past few years since he'd come of age; Dumbledore had been taking him under his wing and using his assistance to get rid of a few 'fail safe's' that Voldemort had hidden around before he'd been imprisoned after killing Neville's parents. It hadn't been an easy task for either of them, but today's bride and groom had been Neville's emotional support through the whole thing.
Hermione was Ginny's Maid of Honor and she stood up next and gave a lovely speech about the kindness and friendship that she'd cherished with them since their first Hogwarts Express ride together, and also added that it was obvious to everyone that they would wind up together.
The speeches continued after that and every time, whoever was speaking would mention that they'd seen this day coming from a mile away. It grew tedious to listen to, so he and Ginny exchanged a look that decided they would turn it into a drinking game; that made it more interesting.
By the time the microphone had made it back around to Harry and it was his turn to talk they were on their third bottle of champagne between the two of them and he was sure he was swaying slightly.
"Er, thank you all for coming here today. As every single one of you have mentioned, it's been a long time coming, so Ginny and I figured, hey, let's do it now." He was certainly too drunk to make this speech. He'd practiced it in his head and it was not coming out right.
His wife stood up and took the microphone from him, he wrapped an arm around her waist for balance. "Sorry about that. The speeches went on for a bit. Not saying we didn't like them, we just enjoyed a few drinks while listening."
Class act they were; a pair of drunken newly weds. They're parents must be so proud, Harry thought.
"Let's just sum this right up so we can move on to the music portion," Ginny continued. "We appreciate that most of you left the 'rubbing it in' bit for today, but a special shout out to Jenn Woods, the Head Teacher at Coven of Little Witches and Wizards, the first of whom to foresee this day coming."
Harry took the microphone back then. "She tried to separate us when we were seven because she thought I shouldn't be bossed around 'like that' until I was married." Everyone laughed. "I still say Ginny isn't bossy."
Ginny took the microphone back. "Sit down, Harry."
"Yes, dear."
The room laughed again at that, but Harry didn't care, in a few hours he would get to enjoy a full, uninterrupted, week of Ginny bossing him around their hotel room at a resort.
The lot of them could preen all they wanted about how they 'saw it coming from a mile away', he was still the one that was winning.
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