After a lifetime of facing the worst scenarios the wizarding world was capable of producing, there were not many things that Harry Potter would say he was truly afraid of. Giant snakes and dark wizards with fractured souls? Nothing. Rogue Death eaters and the trappings of magic politics? Just another day at the office. Somehow though, he doubted he would ever overcome his debilitating fear of Ginny Weasly's wand arm. Which went some way to explaining why he found himself in the kitchen of the Burrow, immobilised: staring wide-eyed down the barrel of the proverbial gun, and up towards the annoyingly beautiful face of his ex-girlfriend.

He gulped visibly.

"Gin… the others will be here soon…no need to get them involved yeah?" Harry's calm voice felt strange to his own ears considering that, to him, it was drowned out by the erratic thumping of his heart. He knew, of course, that Ginny would never do anything to actually hurt him, he just didn't particularly fancy whopping great bats clawing their way out from his nose on such a pleasant Saturday afternoon. In response to his attempt at pacifying her, Ginny simply tightened her jaw. Her face was a mask of cold indifference but her sharp brown eyes betrayed her mounting anger. Against his better judgement, Harry spoke again. "Mind telling me what I've done wrong this time?" he said, not being entirely truthful in his ignorance.

"Harry... you know exactly what this is about," she said, through gritted teeth. She was still dressed head to toe in forest green, the colours of the Holyhead Harpies, both of them having just come from her first professional match. At 18 she had made history being the youngest debutant the Harpies had ever seen, managing 15 goals and 6 assists in a tremendous victory over the Falmouth Falcons. Despite their history, Harry had been ecstatic for her. That is, he had been, until she had unceremoniously grabbed him by the collar and whisked him away when he had tried to congratulate her.

"Whatever it is I can assure you it was Ron's fault," Harry chuckled nervously. He knew he was pushing his luck with the humour but he thought it best to stall until the other Weasly's made it through the fireplace. By the look Ginny had given her family before dragging Harry away however, there was little hope in that regard.

The murderous redhead in front of Harry tapped her wand on the frame of his glasses. "Spoke to Gwenog after the game today, she wanted to say congratulations," she spoke softly but her tone was like ice.

Try as he might, he just couldn't stop her from distracting him. Ex-girlfriend or no, she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever met and it was sort of scary that an angry Ginny was 10 times more attractive to him. Something about the redness of her high cheekbones that matched her hair to perfection, and the way that her fury angled her features. She breathed heavily, the tight breath doing interesting things to the slope of her collarbones, and it took some serious willpower not to stare. He had to shake his head a couple times to remind himself that he was most likely about to be hexed into next week and that now was not the time to notice things like that.

Harry gulped again. "That was nice of her," he managed to keep his voice steady and tried his best not to meet her eye. Calm down, Potter. This might be for something else entirely he thought to himself.

"Yeah it was. She said something interesting though. Something about speaking to you at the Gala for the Department of Magical Games and Sports last week."

Bugger.

Harry decided it was time for full damage control. "Look, Gin... I was only trying to-" but he wasn't given a chance to finish his sentence before she cut him off.

"DON'T call me that!" If her tone was wicked before, now it was downright venomous. "You asked Gwenog to give me a chance with the first team didn't you? Asked her to play me today."

It was a rhetorical question, Harry knew, but he felt he had to answer anyway. "I just told her how good you were, that's it," he said. He could feel his own impressive temper rearing its ugly head in spite of his initial fright. He blamed her, really. She always managed to bring out his more passionate side. Even when she was showing him the sharp end of her tongue.

"Who the bloody hell do you think you are Harry!? Who gave you the right to interfere like that!?" She dropped her wand to her side, abandoning it in favour of a shouting match.

Harry stared at her in disbelief. "Interf- Merlin's sake Ginny, I was just trying to help out a friend!" Without the immediate threat of a hex, he felt bold enough to raise his own voice. "Or is that another thing I'm not allowed to do now? Want me to stop speaking to you next? Pretend like I don't know you?" He shouted back. In the back of his mind, he knew he was being unreasonable but, after almost two years of Ginny biting his head off for any perceived slight, he was frankly tired.

"What do you think people are gonna say when this gets out hmm?!" Ginny soldiered on. "I can picture the front page in the paper now, 'Weasly sleeps her way to the top'," she mimed a headline in mock amazement.

"So what? Everybody knows the Prophets a rag! Besides, no one in their right mind can say you don't deserve it. Not after that game," Harry said, partly to butter her up but mostly because it was true. Nobody could doubt Ginny's ability.

Flattery, apparently, would get him nowhere, as it only served to redouble Ginny's annoyance. She turned away from him and began to pace the length of the kitchen in irritation, stopping every so often to glare.

Harry sighed deeply, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "Everytime we speak for more than 30 seconds nowadays we have a bloody row," he muttered to himself in exasperation, only half expecting Ginny to hear him. In truth 'nowadays' was a touch generous. After the battle of Hogwarts, the pair of them had tried desperately to rekindle some semblance of their relationship but the raw emotions exposed by their grief saw even the simplest of conversations devolve into shouting matches. School, Quidditch, and Auror training had given them the distance they had needed to cool off but old passions always seemed to flare up when the two were in close proximity for too long. Arguments were common in the Burrow for many weeks after the survivors of the war had managed to pick themselves back up again, and the two were at each other's throats often enough that Arthur Weasley himself had to pull the two aside and tell them to pack it in.

The disappointed and stern look the eldest Weasley had given Harry that day had been more crushing than anything the Dursleys had ever thrown at him.

Ginny rounded on him again, her small fists balled up at her sides like she was about to punch him, which wasn't too far out of the realm of possibility. "You just can't help yourself can you? Always need to ride to the rescue and save the day," evidently, she hadn't heard his self pitying mutter (either that or she had chosen to ignore it),

Harry scoffed. "Oh come off it, not this again, I can't do the washing up without you accusing me of trying to 'save the day'," he said, punctuating the statement with exasperated air quotes.

Ginny folded her arms. "Alright then. How about the fact that you tried to give mum money to pay for my school things last year? Or when you tried to buy me a flat in Holyhead?" Harry flushed. Okay so she wasn't entirely wrong. He may have overstepped in the past, but he really was just trying to help them out. The Weasley's meant everything to him and in his mind, he was just paying them back for nearly a decade's worth of love he'd never had before. The fact that he'd had a falling out with the youngest Weasley meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, he still owed them everything, even if they refused to take even a knut.

"That's not fair, I was only trying to help," his argument sounded weak, even to himself.

Both Harry and Ginny were too distracted to notice the rest of the Weasley clan (plus Hermione and Fleur) filing through the living room fireplace, just in time to catch Ginny shouting once again. "When are you going to realise the war is over Harry! You're not the hero anymore and we don't want your help! So kindly, PISS OFF!" she pointed to the door leading to the gardens, only to curse once she noticed their audience.

Nobody moved for what felt like an eternity. The Weasleys, all similarly adorned in Harpy green, shuffled nervously from foot to foot, clearly at a loss. Even the usually rambunctious Charlie couldn't seem to look at Ginny or Harry for more than a few seconds. Only the faint creaks and groans of the Burrow permeated the deafening silence.

Eventually, the Weasley patriarch cleared his throat and attempted to break the tension with his cheerful attitude. "Well, the two of you certainly seem in high spirits. Why don't we get dinner started and we can talk about it together," if not for Arthur's genuine smile, one would assume he was trying his hand at sarcasm.

Ginny attempted to reply but couldn't before the cold, entirely too formal to be normal, voice of Harry got there first. "Thank you Mr. Weasley, but I really should be going. I've got some field reports Robards wants for tomorrow," stiffly he made his way to the exit, stopping briefly to give a curt nod to Ron. Hermione made to stop him, but seemed to think better of it once Ron laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Harry turned once he reached the door, vivid green eyes set solely on Ginny. "Well done on the game today Gin, you really were brilliant," with that, he stepped out the door and took with him any joy that Ginny had felt for her debut. The distinct crack of apparition could be heard a few seconds later, finalising Harry's abrupt departure.