AN- Prompt from Pix25 about Harry stepping in and pretending to be Ginny's boyfriend when he comes across her in a sticky situation in an alley. Muggle AU.

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Chewing Gum

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He wished his friends would stop insisting that they hang out at this particular bar. Yes, the drinks were cheap and the music and televisions weren't too loud, there was also tables that were on an upper level so there was a certain amount of privacy; all together, it was a perfect place for he and his uni buddies to hang out.

But there was a problem, and it was the waitress.

All of his mates were completely smitten with her and insisted that they all needed to sit in whatever section she was covering when they came in.

Harry could admit, she was hot, thought she didn't play up the 'I'm hot so I'm going to flirt with you in the hopes of a big tip' game that he'd seen several attractive waitresses use, because tipping was not a custom for waitresses in this country, so generally they laid it on thick. And she didn't do that. She was smart too, once she'd spotted his textbook that was poking out of his bag and asked how he liked the professor for the class and they'd had a bit of back and forth. She was incredibly easy to talk to, and yes, he'd fantasized about her from time to time.

But his mates also fantasized about her and were constantly trying to get her attention and see who could get her number first.

Harry wasn't going to play that game though, because he knew that despite how attracted to her he was, it would never work out.

And why would it never work out, you ask?

Because she chewed gum.

All. The. Time.

She didn't smell like cigarettes, so that wasn't the reason. In fact, she smelled fucking incredible.

But the constant chewing.

Yuck.

It was Thursday night and he and his mates were at the pub again, in Ginny's section, again, and the four of them, not including Harry, were once again discussing ways that they could convince her to come home with them after her shift.

Tonight Harry was with them all in spirit, but his head was down and he was working on banging out an outline for how he was going to write out an end of the year thesis that needed to contain the singular paragraphs or sentences the he'd deemed brilliant enough that they needed to be included, which were currently written on several pages of his notebook.

"Mate, pull your head up, you are missing everything," Seamus nudged him.

"Missing what?" Harry asked, not looking up still.

"She's leaning over the bar, I can see right down her top."

"Yay, boobs," Harry deadpanned and continued working on his outline. He'd seen Ginny leaning over the bar before, he knew she had a nice chest; particularly when she was wearing a vest with a low cut like she was tonight. He didn't need to look up from his work to stare down her shirt and lose his concentration.

"How are you so immune to her?" Dean asked him. "She's so fit, and just the right amount of flirty. I'd give my left nut to get to know her better outside of this place, if you know what I mean."

"Everyone knows what you mean, Dean," Harry told him. "We always know what you mean."

"I say tonight is the night," Ernie announced. "We just ask her straight out if she might fancy one of us and see what she says."

"Oh, don't ruin the bar, mate," Mikey complained. "You tell her that we'd all fancy a shag and which one of us would she prefer and she's going to start switching her section every time we come in. She's half the reason we come in here!"

"Yeah," Dean picked up. "Thirsty Thursday's will be a thing of the past without her in the picture."

"Heaven forbid she winds up working somewhere else," Harry sighed. It was always the same conversation. They discussed other things too when they went out; school, family, dating lives, anecdotes and current events. Every meet up was simply not complete if they didn't include the way the four of them fawned over the waitress though.

"Bite your tongue!" Seamus threw a chip at him.

"Oi! Don't get your greasy nibbles all over my notebook!"

"You guys in need of another round?" Ginny asked as she came to collect a few empty pint glasses.

Harry looked up from his notebook at the sound of her voice and was immediately distracted by her pouty lips and the few stray hairs that hung down from her pulled up hair that framed her face. She really was very pretty.

"I think we'll all take another," Mikey told her.

"And we've got a question for you when you get back with them," Ernie added as she put the empty pint glasses on her tray.

There was some shuffling under the table as several of them tried to give Ernie a swift kick in the shin for saying that.

"No need," Ginny said airily. "The sound travels from up here. And, sorry gents, you'll have to treat this place like a museum; you can look, but you can't touch." She followed that up with a saucy wink, aimed at him, and carried off her tray full of empties with a smile on her face.

"Damn," Seamus frowned. "Well, that answers that then, doesn't it?"

"Er, not really," Harry said, earning all of their attention. "Well, she didn't actually tell us who she would go for out of the five of us."

Dean grinned at him then, "does that mean that you're in the game now that you know there won't be a clear winner?"

"The game of what?" Harry scoffed. "Seduce the waitress? No, I'm not in that game, you lot can just keep carrying on about which of you is winning in that fantasy."

"Oh, we know you're just too proper a bloke to admit you want her too," Dean dismissed.

Harry rolled his eyes and returned to his work. Ginny brought them another round of drinks, then another after that so Harry got to the point of being socially lubricated enough that he put his notebook away and they all had a very serious discussion about how long it would take a giraffe to throw up (a very serious discussion that involved attempting to calculate the amount of pressure the esophagus would be putting towards the resistance of such a thing and where the placement of the giraffes head had to be in order to make the vomit appear).

Then before they knew it the clock had struck eleven and they were settling up their bar tab.

Harry went to use the loo before leaving and was the last of them to leave the pub. He opted to go out the alley entrance though because it was closer to the opposite street where he needed to wind up.

"Let me pass or you're going to regret it." It was the first thing he heard when he opened the door, and it was Ginny's voice that he recognized saying it. She was at the bottom of the steps and there were three men blocking her from leaving.

"Come on, don't be like that darling. We just want to have a nice chat, don't we boys?" The middle guy said and took another step toward her.

With as casual a hurried step as he could manage, Harry started down the stairs to her. "Ginny. Babe, sorry to keep you waiting." He got to the bottom of the steps and put an arm around her shoulder. "What's this then?"

Ginny put her arm around his waist immediately. "These pricks were just about to see which of them would get a swift kick in the family jewels first."

He drew himself up to be as tall as he could possibly look. "Were they now?" He gave each of them a glare in turn. "Haven't you got anything better to do? Wiser choices that could be made?"

"Think you're a big man, do you?" one on the end said. "Probably going to the uni down the road, got yourself a hot girlfriend, so you think you're better than us?"

"No," he said calmly. "The fact that I go to the university up the road and don't resort to trying to force myself, along with two of my mates, on whatever unsuspecting female we come across is empirical evidence that I am better than you."

"Oh, big words," the last one said.

"Very," Ginny agreed with venom dripping off her tongue. "Now fuck off before we beat the three of you with his big bookbag."

"Still two on one," said the middle guy, and he moved closer.

"Yeah," said Ginny and she stepped forward as well so Harry's arm was no longer around her shoulder. "But one of them is me; a waitress at a pub with six older brothers. If you don't walk away now, not only will I injure you, but I'll make sure that that security footage," at that she pointed up to the camera pointing down directly at them, "makes its way into the hands of every last one of my brothers hands, and every last one of them is over six feet tall and will reign down hell fire on you to the likes of which you could never imagine."

The three of them balked at the CCTV and began backing away immediately.

Harry watched them retreat back out onto the street and out of sight before he looked up at the camera as well. "You should probably tell your boss to review that footage and get their faces out there."

"The camera's broken." She turned around to face him, looking much more upset about what happened now. "It was stupid of me to come out this way. I forgot we'd been asked to go out the front until further notice." She gave a shiver, though the night was warm. "Thank you for showing up when you did."

"You managed to hold your own just fine, even if you were bluffing. But, I'm glad I decided to come out this way as well."

She looked shaken up.

"Do you want me to walk with you?" he offered.

Ginny shook her head. "I'm not far, you don't need to go out of your way for me."

"I'd kind of feel better if you let me walk you home then. If it's not far then it isn't an inconvenience."

"Alright," she breathed out, saying it in a way that had him believing she was hoping he would insist. "I'm this way then."

She pointed in the direction he was heading anyhow.

He walked along beside her silently until they were out on the well lit street. "So, you were bluffing about the camera, but what about the brothers?"

"They're real, and I really do have six of them that are a good foot taller than me. I don't know that I'd tell them about an interaction like that though. I mean, not if nothing happened. They're already telling me I shouldn't be living in this city alone when I could have opted to go to uni in one of the cities they're in."

"You go to uni?" he asked in surprise, she'd never mentioned that before.

"Yes. I've got the job at the pub to cover some of my living expenses so I don't have to rack up a bunch of debt to go; my parents couldn't have afforded to send all of us kids to school like yours and your mates have."

"Excuse me?" he asked in offense.

"Oh, I mean nothing by it," she said sincerely. "I'm glad you've taken them up on their generosity. I know of enough kids that couldn't be bothered because they've got free food and rent at home so they aren't even thinking about finding a career for themselves. Plus, guys like you and your mates there are what's keeping me comfortable while I go to school."

"I guess that's true enough." There were a few people he knew from before uni that had their gap year funded by their parents and grandparents and they still hadn't sorted out what they were doing three years later.

"Hey," he suddenly realized, because she had shot a lovely smile at him, "you're not chewing gum."

"Oh!" she blushed and bit her lip as she chuckled under her breath. "I don't actually like chewing gum. I just do it at work."

"What? Why?"

"It was something I read about in my Intro to Psychology class in my first year, one of the suggested reading materials was something to do with insight into woman's lib, or the male psyche, and part of it really stuck with me; about how to tell if a man was only interested in you superficially by doing something annoying all the time and seeing if they were still interested. It was a strange read, but I implemented my 'chewing gum at work' bit to try and be just annoying enough that no table would try and keep me hanging around for too long."

Harry laughed. "It worked! Drives me mental seeing someone chewing all the time, even when it is an actual meal, I just want to drown it out."

She grinned up at him again as they kept pace down the street. "I've noticed you cringing a few times. Sorry for intentionally bothering you with it. Your mates though," she shrugged.

Harry knew what she was getting at. "They're all harmless," he assured her. "I wouldn't be friends with them if I thought any of them would try something like what those three blokes in the alley just did."

"Yeah, I got that impression. I get a kick out of you lot as well, some of the conversations I've overheard," she chuckled. "The topics can get dark but the humor is always there."

"Just how well can you hear us when you aren't right at the table?"

"Well, the Irish one can get pretty loud. Him I can hear from wherever I am in the pub."

"Seamus. Yeah, I don't think he'll ever understand the difference between an inside voice and an outside voice. We shared a wall in residence our first year and he was not at all considerate when he had 'visitors' over."

"I've never understood the need some people feel to be that loud during sex," she said. "It's one thing for the people in a porno to do it, it's quite another for someone in real life to be screaming and moaning about. I would find it distracting, and probably a turn off, if my partner started saying things like 'you like that' and 'take it all', or whatever."

This conversation had taken an interesting turn.

"So, you're the quiet type in bed then?" he asked with intrigue.

"I'm not the kind that a person outside the room could hear properly over the sound of the bed anyhow," she winked. "I'm considerate of my neighbors like that."

He wanted to hear a bit more about what she was like in bed, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "This is me," she pointed up to a door between two shops that led to a few flats on the second to third floors.

It was a busy street she lived on.

"Depending on the time of day, I'd say you could be pretty loud in bed and no one would overhear you."

"Yeah," she laughed. "Probably." Then they stood there for a moment, neither of them sure how they were supposed to say goodbye. "Thanks for walking me home then," Ginny told him finally.

"Anytime."

With that she turned and headed up the steps to the door and was out of sight in under a minute.

He needed to backtrack down the street a few blocks before turning down a different one to head to his own place. The whole time he was walking alone he was wondering about Ginny. He'd already been in agreement with his mates that she was quite attractive, now he knew that the very annoying habit of hers was a rouse to keep guys like him honest.

Did she find the fact that he couldn't stand her gum chewing so much to the point that it was his turn off, her turn on? Some women would play games like that, wouldn't they? It was like playing hard to get in order to make him want you more.

Whatever it was she had been working with him, it had him on her hook. Her dropping that information about how loud she is in bed had simply been the final nail in his coffin of intrigue.

()()()

When his mates messaged him about meeting up at the pub for Thirsty Thursday again the following week, Harry had jumped at the chance. He'd been incredibly busy all week with paperwork and assignments and needed several drinks and ridiculous conversation to get his head on straight again.

It also meant seeing Ginny again, and he had something for her.

She hadn't been on his mind most of the week, but when he'd realized he was completely out of the necessities grocery wise he'd done a run to the store and saw the candy racks by the teller, he noticed the gum in particular, and picked up a few packages of 'Ice Breaker' gum on a whim.

He was sure it would get her chuckling, and it had. He'd been seated on the end of the booth he and his mates had been occupying and slipped it onto her tray when she came to swap out the empties. Harry watched as she nearly dropped the tray from her surprise and laughter.

"Ice Breaker," she said when she ran into him as he was exciting the loo. He wasn't sure if she'd made out to run into him there, but he wasn't going to question it. "That's really cute."

"Coolmint," he grinned. "I thought you'd like that over Cinnamon."

"This one certainly makes my mouth feel alive. Thanks."

With that, she walked past him and left him wondering what he was supposed to take from that. Her mouth 'felt alive'. He was sure there were other ways to make her mouth feel alive, and he couldn't help but think of another few ways he could help that occur.

()()()

The end of the term was on them and the tension in the library was high. The amount of hair twirling and tapping of pens was driving him absolutely mental, but he had to keep on working. This place had proven to get his creative juices flowing before, but today it wasn't doing it.

All the reference material he could have needed was right before him, but the girl with a green stripe in her hair at the next table over was trying to sneak a nutrition bar and the crinkling of the wrapping sounded like shrapnel. The guy with long, stringy hair down the table from him was doused in some kind of deodorant or after shave that was assaulting his nose, and the woman seated nearest to him with busy hair kept stopping her lip reading every few minutes with a slight jump, only to sit up straight, close her eyes and mouth what she'd just read as though trying to lock it into her memory.

The tapping that he was hearing came from two tables away. It simply echoed all the way across the room and had his ear drums vibrating with the sound.

It was all just a vast tapestry of nuisance and he was about to lose it when someone swept past him to crouch down beside the girl doing her memorization and began talking in a whisper, but one he could hear like a dull, humming roar.

When something slid down the table and hit him gently on the back of his hand he was about ready to murder whoever had done it, thankfully, what he did first was look at the object that he was hit with and saw that it was Ice Breaker gum. Next, he saw it was Ginny that was crouched beside the girl, and she winked at him with a cheeky grin.

Harry could only stare at her. He'd only ever seen her done up for work, right now though, she was wearing a tight long-sleeved shirt with a formal vest over it that showed off her lovely chest, and her hair was plaited and hanging down over her shoulder. She looked so natural, and very freaking sexy. He continued to stare as she said something more to the girl, then came around to sit beside him.

"You look like you could use a break." Her hand reached up and touched one side of his forehead. "There's a vein right here that looks about ready to burst. It's in the shape of a lightning bolt. If it doesn't kill you to have that happen then you'll be left with a neat scar, but a very uncool story of how you got it."

She was touching him. God, how he wanted her to just keep touching his forehead, maybe give it a little massage so that he could get his creative juices flowing again after just a minute of her relaxing touch.

"There are a lot more distractions in here than I'm used to and, I'll admit, I'm getting stressed about it."

"Am I now one of the distractions?" she grinned again and shot yet another wink at him.

It pained him to say it but, "yes." Thankfully, she didn't look offended. "It's nice to see you outside of the pub, but if I don't get this done soon then I'm going to go completely mental."

"Why don't you take this work somewhere quieter then to get it done?"

"Like where? If I go home I'll see all the chores that need to get done, it's too loud at the pub, and I can't think of anywhere else designed for just this purpose like the library."

"You do know there is more than one library on this campus."

"There isn't another one that has the books that I need."

Ginny nudged the books in front of him. "Don't you already have the books that you need?"

Damn, she's right, he realized.

Ten minutes later he was on the other side of campus in the library that held the great novels from the past generations, and it was dead quiet.

"See," Ginny said proudly. "No one comes in here to get their thesis papers done up. This library is for reading for pleasure and people can do that anywhere."

"This is perfect!" He found a table by the window and immediately went over to it and started pulling his books and papers out of it. "Three hours of focusing here and I should be completely done my first draft!"

"Well, I've got a lecture right now, but I'll be back after to get started on a few of my own essays, so I'll see you later."

He gave her a hasty, and hushed, farewell then settled down into his new nest of organized chaos that he now had the proper quiet and atmosphere to deal with.

Two hours later he was flipping through one of his books to find the exact wording for something he sourced and his eyes flicked up for a moment and caught on Ginny, who he hadn't realized had come back; she was standing a few shelves down and was talking to someone, a guy, that was standing quite close to her. They were smiling at each other and the guy reached up and tugged gently at the end of her braid, the one which was still hanging over her shoulder and happened to be in the perfect location for the guy to have done the 'accidental boob graze'.

It soured Harry to see that, but he was so close to being finished his work that he needed to get back to it and finish it off.

Time was keeping a mind of its own while he finished up but it couldn't have been more than twenty minutes later that he'd written out his first version of the conclusion and dropped his pen, leaning back in his chair with a massive sigh.

"All done then?" came her voice from the table behind him.

Harry whipped around. "How long have you been sitting there?"

Ginny shrugged. "Half an hour maybe? Long enough to finish the rough draft of my own essay."

He looked around at the other tables. "Where did your, er, friend go?"

"What friend?"

"I looked up a while ago and saw you chatting with someone over there," he pointed his thumb in the opposite direction.

"He had a class to get to."

Harry nodded and started packing up his things. "Yet another chivalrous man trying to walk you from here to there to gain your attention?" he attempted asking lightly.

"Oh? Were you trying to gain my attention? I thought you were making sure I didn't have another set of douche bags trying anything funny between the alley and my place."

He paused. "I may have phrased that wrong."

"Well, I'd take that better than you thinking I'm some dainty moron that can't get down a corridor without some man to protect her."

"You are not a dainty moron."

"So, you were trying to get my attention?" she smirked.

He started gathering up his things. "I… was concerned about your safety that night, I'll admit that." His bag was packed up now and there was nothing left for him to do to keep his hands occupied. He should have packed up slower, now he was just sat there trying to figure out where he was supposed to be looking. His eyes landed on hers though and now he was caught staring into them. In this light there were almost golden. She was looking quite pleased with herself.

"I'm starving. Do you want to get some food?" she asked.

"I'd love to."

They left the library and were wandering through the campus in the direction of an all-day-breakfast place he loved and talking about what classes she was taking when he spotted his mates, his Thirsty Thursday mates, across the yard, and they spotted him.

"Oh bugger," his exclamation halted her anecdote about a poorly planned performance piece her classmate had chosen to do for an oral presentation.

She followed his gaze. "Oh, think they'll have something to say about this?"

"Yeah, I'm definitely in for some questions and ribbing."

She took his hand then and clasped her fingers through his. "May as well give them something to talk about then."

He looked down at their intertwined fingers, then up at those gorgeous eyes and back down to her lips. It might have been a trick of the light, but when he looked back up at her eyes, essentially in question, it seemed those golden browns had turned a shade darker.

She knew what he was asking, and the squeeze of his hand told him her answer.

Harry grinned widely before stepping toward her as he pulled her closer and kissed her. The sound of protests his mates were making carried across the yard, but they were drowned out quickly by the sound of blood that was racing through him at the way Ginny was eagerly responding to his advances.

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