()()()

College

()()()

In a sea full of people moving around in exercise trousers and hoodies, his permanent bed head fit right in. It was only his third day of classes and everyone had given up the pretense of making an effort after the first day of classes when it came to getting dressed in the morning.

His roommate had already given up on going to his morning classes. Granted, he didn't have many morning classes and they were only intro ones.

It was the first time Harry had ever shared a room with someone and he'd been so worried that whoever he would get roomed with they wouldn't be able to coexist in such a tight space. But so far so good when it came to Ron Weasley and Harry Potter sharing a dorm room. Ron was a bit of a slob, but he kept it all to his side of the room and respected Harry's snacks enough not to help himself.

Thus far anyhow.

Harry was taking a lot of intro classes because he wanted to get a good overall feel for what the college had to offer.

Ron was there because of football; which was why his schedule was mostly consisting of whatever he could take in the afternoons to fulfill his minimum classes requirement.

Harry was a morning person though. He liked getting up early and being one of the first up to get to the cafeteria in the morning and find the cereal bar fully stocked, get a spot at whatever table he fancied, sit by the window and let wakefulness come to him before going to his first lecture of the day on Art History.

He also just loved being there.

He'd taken a gap year after secondary school so that he could work and afford to be here, and he wasn't going to waste it by skipping all his classes.

Ron had taken a gap year too, but he'd done it so that he could work and play football and get good enough to be recruited to the college team with a scholarship.

Having a roommate that was the same age as him was nice too. Sure, having to room with someone a whole year younger than him shouldn't have made that much of a difference, but it actually would have. Someone that was eighteen and moving away from mom and dads for the first time, someone who was there because it was 'what you did' after secondary and didn't appreciate the opportunity, it would have made a big difference.

Yes, Ron was lazy with his studies, but he had flat out told Harry on their first night in the dorm, the 'get to know you' night, that he was so grateful to be there.

They had moved into the dorm room on Friday and by Saturday morning they were already great friends.

Ron being on the football team too would mean that Harry would have the room to himself to get his essays and such done without disturbance. Ron had a copy of the practice schedule up on the back of the door in the room and it was intense. His workout routine was intense too, and he liked to work out in the evenings, thus the sleeping in.

The other reason that he was glad to have Ron as a roommate was walking into the cafeteria just now as well. Ginny looked like she was fresh in from a run and a shower, she was a morning person too, also at the school on a partial football scholarship, but she took her classes seriously as well.

Ginny was Ron's younger sister and she'd stopped in at his room on Saturday to say 'hi' and introduce some of her new friends before they went out to one of the college pubs for a poetry slam, or art installation, or maybe it was some other kind of social event hosted by the college student union or something, he hadn't been listening properly because he was too surprised to see three attractive girls in his room, Ginny being the one he had noticed the most.

She'd been a bit dressed up when he'd met her on Saturday and had put in a bit of effort in her appearance when he'd run into her at the cafeteria coffee station on Monday morning, but then she, like everyone else, had put in minimal effort today and was wearing yoga pants that cut off at mid-calf and a tight exercise shirt with a light blue zip-up sweater and a high pony-tail.

She was still attractive though.

She gave him a wave before she went to grab her breakfast and he tried not to stare at her as she moved down the line.

He was pretty sure she liked him too, but it was a tad awkward considering their living situation. Were it any other girl but her that he'd taken a shine to this quickly then he would have done something about it. With Ron in the mix, he wasn't sure what to do, only that he wanted to keep spending his breakfast time with her and didn't feel the need to mention that to Ron.

Harry looked out the window at the cloudy sky, then down to the manicured stretches of lawn with intersecting pathways slowly filling up with sleepy students moving about.

"Really loving this meal card," Ginny said as she sat down across from him. "Doesn't matter what I put on my tray, it's always the same number of points deducted with each pass."

Indeed, she had nearly enough for three meals on her tray and was folding up a croissant and a bagel in a napkin and tucking that and an apple into her bag.

Harry grinned in understanding and appreciation. Neither of them came from well off families, and they needed to get creative about making their money go as far as it could considering there was no weekly allowance or monthly supplies of food being shipped to them.

He patted his own bag, "I've worked out how to make a trail mix to snack on."

"Oh, very clever," she said, leaning forward to get the details on his newfound discovery. "Let me guess; you've got three types of cereal, a few nuts and raisins from the oatmeal station, and… a crushed-up pack of crisps?"

He laughed and pulled out the plastic container. "Very close! No crisps, but pretzels are close enough, and I took a chocolate chip cookie and crushed it up to add a little something extra."

"Brilliant! Now I think we just need to remember to get a thermos the next time we're out at Poundland or somewhere so that we can keep hot water for tea from the station."

"No," he dismissed. "Water from the tap is fine, you just need an electric kettle for your room."

"Oh! Yes!" She sounded like his mention of it made him a genius and pulled out her phone to put that into her Notepad app. "I need that for my Pot Noodles too. And more Pot Noodles." Her thumb was quickly moving across the screen of her phone and then she tucked it away.

"How are you so energetic in the morning? You've only just sat down," he asked. And he was most certainly not complaining. Having breakfast with her the last three days in a row had set him up in a fantastic mood for his classes.

"I've been up for an hour though. Hit the gym for a quick run and some stretches before I came here."

And she smelled like she'd just come fresh out of the shower, her hair was completely dry though, so she must not have washed it. "It's crazy how different you are from Ron."

"Yes, well, one of us had to be the pretty one."

"Yep, that's definitely you, but that isn't what I meant."

"Hmm, good to know you think I'm pretty. Though, I believe what you were referring to was the fact that I can string a sentence together this early in the day?" He nodded. "It's because this is the only time of day that it was quiet at home. All my brothers were up all night hanging out with their friends or playing video games or whatever. I was the super lame one that spent all afternoon dreaming of when I could crawl back under my covers and read or fall asleep."

"Sounds like you had an epic social life," he teased.

"I did!" she exclaimed and tossed a grape at him from her plate. "I just didn't go out every night. That sounds exhausting. All the parties were on the weekends, and all my practices were before school during the weeks. This is the schedule I've had for four years," she shrugged.

"No, I'm glad I've got some company for breakfast. It starts the day off right when you are in a good mood from the start."

"Oh, now I know you think I'm pretty and I put you in a good mood. Mr. Potter, you do know how to flatter a lady."

There had been a few friends and work colleagues he'd had over the years that were female and he'd shared this sort of banter with before, and it had just been that, banter. He didn't want it to only be that now though. It was a bit girly of him, but he'd hoped that part of his experience going off to college was that he would have a college girlfriend too, and a semi-serious one as well.

It just seemed a bit too convenient a situation that his roommates sister was the one he wanted to have that with though.

And he wondered if Ron would mind if they did start up something.

"Well, my lady, I was thinking of doing a run into town to hit up a Poundland later. We're nearly at the week mark and I've realized what small items I'm missing from my life that would make everything so much easier."

"Perfect. I am in! Are we going to take the bus?"

"I'd guess we'll need to. They may not weigh much but I don't fancy helping you cart four flats of Pot Noodles back to your dorm, that's about three miles."

"Awe, you'd offer to carry them for me?" she pretended to gush.

He would have too, if she'd asked. He probably would have done anything that would have shown her that he was interested in being more than friends and yet the act would still be subtle enough that he was unable to backpedal if she didn't return his affection.

It wasn't that he had low self-esteem, he'd been able to make friends just fine, girlfriends on the other hand; he'd always been too busy for. At least, that was what he told himself. His family that he grew up with weren't very motivational guardians. His aunt and uncle reigned praise down on their own son, his cousin, but Harry didn't get that from them, and there was no way that he could get close enough to a girl to risk letting her know how he was spoken to at home.

His friends had been close to him, but they'd been school friends or work friends, not 'bring around to your house' friends.

His relatives were also the reason that he wasn't able to go to college directly from finishing his secondary school, he didn't think he had any money, they hadn't told him anything about a trust that his parents had set up before they'd died.

It was there though, not a lot, but enough that he could have gone to school the year before. It had been a lot more, but he'd found out his uncle kept borrowing from the trust and claiming it had been for his upbringing by forging Harry's name on Dudley's private school acceptance and several other miscellaneous 'upkeep' expenses not relating to Harry.

He could have taken his uncle to the solicitors over it, probably should have, but instead he simply packed up his things and left their house. It had been too late to apply for college then, so he'd worked and saved and built up more of a nest egg for himself.

He didn't need to tell Ginny that right now though. He wanted her to like him, not pity him.

So, he quirked a playful eyebrow at her pretend gushing. "I would be the one carrying the Pot Noodles, and that will leave you with the towels, pillowcases, two electric kettles, thermos, and I'm going to go ahead and make the wildly misogynistic assumption that you are in need of a yoga mat as well?"

"Damn!" Ginny grinned at him. "I do need one too! I don't think they carry them, but it doesn't hurt to try.

"Why do you 'need' a yoga mat? Do they not have them at they gym?"

"For my dorm room," she shrugged. "It's multipurpose. I'm actually going to put it between my bed and the wall so it doesn't make as much noise when it's moving."

He opened his mouth to ask a few more questions about that, but closed it right way. He didn't want to know what she was getting up to on her bed that was causing it to rock against the wall so much.

"So, it's a date then?" Ginny asked him brightly. "Meet you here for dinner around six-ish and we'll head down from here?"

"Can you make it a quick bite at 5-5:30? It closes at 7."

"Done."

()()()

Their excursion to Poundland didn't give him any hints as to whether she was interested in him the same way he was in her. In fact, she'd mentioned it to Ron and though he hadn't been able to join them he'd given Ginny a list of items he wanted her to pick up for him and a twenty-pound note.

Their breakfast meetings continued, their anecdotes were shared, and he fell more in like with her every day.

Now it was two weeks later and he was studying late on a Friday night when he heard Ron's phone buzzing on his desk, he'd forgotten it when he went out with some of the guys on his team. It was Ginny's name and picture that popped up on the screen. So, Harry answered it.

"Hey, Ginny," he started.

"Can you come and get me?" Ginny asked right away. She didn't sound okay, she didn't sound scared necessarily, or like she was crying, she just sounded… off.

"Where are you? What's wrong?"

"J-just. Find my phone," she slurred.

Harry pulled the phone away from his face and looked at the screen. He wasn't sure he knew Ron's pass code, but there was a very obvious swipe pattern still visible.

"Stay on the line, okay?" Harry asked her while he tried to get in. "Keep talking. Tell me what's happened."

"Hi."

His second guess at the code was correct and he found the 'Find My Phone' App and clicked into it.

"Hi," he said back. "What's going on, Ginny? Talk to me."

She was listed on the App in the phone so he was able to click on her and it showed she was only a ten minute's walk away.

"Not 'hi' hi, I mean I'm high. It was an accident."

Now he wasn't sure whether he should laugh of not. She'd accidentally gotten high and called her brother to come and rescue her?

"Don't tell Harry though! I want him to like me. I don't think he would like that I got high. Or the football team. Urgh, what if they do testing? I mean… they did testing already… they wouldn't do it again so quick, would they?" She was talking slowly and mumbling a bit into the phone, but he certainly heard the first part of that correctly.

And she didn't realize it wasn't her brother she was talking to.

Harry grabbed his keys and pulled on a coat, grabbing a hoodie for her just in case she needed it. "I'm coming to get you, just stay where you are and keep talking to me."

Ginny started prattling on to him. He couldn't catch what she was saying all of the time, but he asked questions about what she'd said, referencing the gist of what he'd heard, and she kept talking.

She was still talking into her phone when he found her. She was sitting back against the wall of a business that was closed for the night with her head slouched down and her eyes closed.

"Ginny," he said as he came to crouch down beside her.

She looked up at him and he saw that she'd gotten her face done up for a night out. She looked really pretty, but her eyes were vacant and glassy like she was drunk.

"Harry!" she grinned. "Hold on," she told him and returned to talking into the phone. "It's okay, Ron. Harry's here, I'm sure he'll help me out. Did you want to talk to him?"

He wanted to laugh but he managed to control himself. She didn't need to feel anymore embarrassment right now.

"Let's just put your phone away, shall we?" Harry asked and helped her to her feet, putting her phone and Ron's in his pocket and offering Ginny his hoodie. "I brought this for you, just in case. Are you cold?"

"Oh!" she mooned and took the hoodie, hugging it close to her. "You are so sweet! I just want to… to…" She didn't say anything more, she just pulled on the hoodie and then stood there swaying in front of him just enough that he reached out to steady her. "You know?" she asked, as though she'd just had a full conversation with him in her head and that was the only two words she said out loud to finish the story.

"You just want to…" he encouraged. He'd really like to know what the missing bits were that she'd dialogued in her mind.

"Yeah!" she exclaimed sleepily and gave him a hug.

He wrapped his arms around her, trying not to pay much attention to the weed stink coming off of her and instead enjoy the fact that she had initiated this contact.

"Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm super tired."

It took a lot longer to get back to his dorm room than it had to go out and find her, but with him having to half support her all the way back, he was taking his time. He probably should have brought her back to her own dorm room, he knew where it was, but considering how she was responding to the pot he figured his dorm with Ron was probably a better bet.

Ron was there when they got back as well. By that point Ginny was nearly asleep and barely able to put one foot in front of the other.

"What happened?!" Ron worried and came to assist him by getting Ginny's other arm.

"You left your phone," Harry started as they directed Ginny to lay down in Ron's bed.

"Yeah, I came back to get it a minute ago and I couldn't find it, or you, anywhere."

"Well, Ginny called it and I answered. She says she 'accidentally' got high and needed help getting back. I used your phone tracker app and found her."

"Aw, thanks," Ron said sincerely as he took off her boots now that she was laying down. "She's never been one to drink or do recreational drugs. She'd kind of a hypochondriac, anytime she feels the slightest bit off she thinks something is seriously wrong with her."

"So, the 'accidentally' high bit is true?"

Ron grinned at him. "Yeah, there's no way she'd opt for it. Probably got hot boxed and didn't notice until she'd inhaled too much. Where'd you find her?"

"Not too far away. She was sitting down outside a closed sandwich shop."

"Alright, well, she'll be fine in the morning, just let her sleep it off." He then pulled out his little spritzer of Febreze and gave her two sprays of it to cover up the skunk stench that had adhered to her clothes. "I'm going to stay here instead of heading back out."

Harry gathered he was done studying for the night then and helped Ron do up a makeshift bed on the floor, offering him one of his extra pillows and grabbing them each a beer from the mini-fridge.

They got talking about all the worlds problems as the night wore on and a few more drinks were consumed, they had been talking about all the different societies at the college as well and when Ron mentioned the LGBTQ+ society, Ginny, who Harry had thought was completely knocked out and had been for hours, piped up with, "They should invite the prospectors."

Ron and Harry exchanged a look. Clearly Ron had thought she'd been completely asleep as well.

"The prospectors?" Ron asked, encouraging her to explain.

"Yeah. Prospectors are non-binary." She was talking slow, her voice was heavy with sleep, but they were both sure they heard her correctly.

"What do you mean?" Harry chuckled.

"Prospectors!" she exclaimed as though both of them should know exactly what she was talking about. "You know, how they're always finding gold in them/their hills." She had said it so seriously.

Then she launched into a fit of giggles and nearly rolled off the bed and onto Ron.

Ron caught her and pulled the blanket tighter around her so she would be cocooned in. She rolled over to face the wall and he sat back down, picking up a back scratcher he had tucked beside his dresser and held it over his shoulder, starting to rub her back with it.

Ron rolled his eyes at Harry, "now she'll be out in a second."

Harry sat there watching this sibling interaction with interest. It was a foreign concept to him that anyone might know another persons quirks like these two did each other. Ron was right though, her soft snores were carrying across the room to him only a moment later.

"That's incredible," he exclaimed.

Ron shrugged. "She's always been like this. For Ginny, it's a back rub, for Percy it was his nose, that is weird. George needs noise, Fred needs a breeze, Charlie and me will fall asleep anywhere at the drop of a hat, as can Bill, but he'll also wake up at the drop of a hat too."

"I can't imagine having that many siblings and knowing them that well."

"You get used to it, especially when we were all crammed in together in a council house as well."

Ron had mentioned when they first met that though he was labelled a chav where he grew up, Harry didn't need to worry because he kept all his violence for the football field. When Harry gave him a confused look Ron explained that chav was now known to stand for Council Housed and Violent.

Harry hadn't known that 'chav' was an acronym before that, he thought it was like pikey, just slang.

Once Ginny had been properly sleeping for a few minutes Ron put his back scratcher down and lay down in his blanket bed.

"It's alright with me if you ask her out, you know," Ron said quietly.

Harry turned his head in his friends direction. It was too dark in the room for him to see if Ron was giving him any sort of pointed look. He had no idea how Ron would have picked up on it, unless Ginny had mentioned something to him about their breakfast meet-ups.

"I'm pretty sure she likes you too."

A warm feeling started in his cheeks and spread downwards to hear those words from Ron.

He now had Ron's approval and an almost confirmation that Ginny reciprocated his affection.

()()()

Ginny sucked in a deep breath as she woke up, then opened her eyes as wide as they would go and blinked a few times.

She had slept really well, but she couldn't remember when she'd fallen asleep. She did know that this was not what her room smelled like, and that was not her Westham poster on the wall, it was Ron's.

"Oh fuck," she mumbled and rubbed her palms against her eyes.

"Hey sleepy," said a quiet voice on the other side of the room.

She turned towards it and saw that Harry was standing by his desk, putting a binder in his backpack and looking ready to head out for the day. He held a finger to his lips before pointing it down at the floor between the beds.

Ginny leaned over the side of the bed and saw that Ron was there, still completely asleep.

"I could probably start playing the violin in here and he still wouldn't wake up," she told Harry. "And I don't play the violin." Her mouth felt like it was coated in cotton and tasted like bad fish.

"Yeah, well I don't have that sort of relationship with him yet, so I'll just ask you to be courteous. He did let you stay in his bed all night after all."

"Yeah, that's true. My thanks to both of you. I get a little paranoid when I'm high. That's why I don't do it."

"Why did you do it last night then?"

"It wasn't intentional. I was unknowingly hot boxed. By the time I'd caught on just how much I was inhaling it was too late and I needed a place to sleep. Then came along a hero," she teased. She wasn't sure what Harry had been doing out at that time, but she was very grateful that he did. She was pretty sure she had been on the phone with Ron then, so maybe he asked Harry to get her?

Harry gave her that fucking adorable, crooked smile of his. She loved that smile. If he wasn't Ron's roommate, she would have already snogged that smile.

"I had my evening study plans interrupted last night and am about to head off for the library and let Ron sleep in."

She sat up, double checking that her clothes were still on her the right way around. She was wearing Harry's hoodie. It felt so soft and nice. It made her want to give him a big smile, then realized her tongue felt two sizes too big. "I need to do that as well. Urgh, and brush my teeth."

"How about I grab you a coffee and a muffin and meet you there?" he offered.

"Oh, I would love you forever." She carefully climbed out of the bed and stepped over Ron, then pulled off the hoodie to hand it back to Harry. Harry handed her her purse and she kept her head down, wanting to get away from him as quickly as possible so he didn't have the opportunity to tell just how much of the stink that the room held was coming from her. "Thanks, I'll see you in twenty."

Her dorm was in a building a half mile away, the fresh morning air on her skin felt refreshing. She couldn't help but notice all the other girls that were similarly attired, some of them holding their shoes, and doing the walk of shame. Which she guessed she was doing too, it just wasn't for a fun reason.

Ginny got into her room, grabbed her shower caddy and made a bee line for the showers. She wound up lathering herself up with soap with one hand and brushing her teeth with the other. She had no idea what she said when she was back in Ron and Harry's room, but she did remember talking. What if she said something really stupid, or told them how much she fancied Harry after only having just met him?

Last night was a bit of a blank spot, only snippets of what happened were coming to her mind. She'd been at a coffee shop with some new friends and there was this local band playing. They weren't very good, but it was an outing and she was trying to socialize. Then there was this rooftop garden and people lighting up around her while she was chatting with a photography major in his second year and the fumes had just been getting stronger around her.

After that, she knew she called Ron, she knew Harry had walked her back to his and Ron's room, but it was like everything had been on fast-forward and she'd been so sleepy.

After washing herself thoroughly and wrapping a towel around herself she padded back to her room and stuffed her clothes from last night into a clear plastic garbage back and wedged it into her laundry hamper so it wouldn't mistakenly get tossed out, or stink up her room.

"Where did you get to last night?" Hestia, her dormmate asked as she rolled over in her bed, her eyes still shut.

Ginny gave her the abridged version as she got dressed, not wanting to keep Harry waiting any longer than she had to.

"He's hot," Hestia muttered. "They both are."

"Gross, that's my brother."

"Harry isn't though, is he?" She'd met Harry and Ron at the same time their first weekend here.

Ginny didn't think Hestia was too interested though, she had said that about a lot of guys she'd come across since Ginny had met her.

"Yeah, Harry is," she admitted.

"If you don't tap that soon, someone else will."

Hestia's warning ruminated in her brain as she made her way to the library. She had been hanging out with him a lot and was pretty sure he liked her too. And even if he didn't, surely they could still be friends after admitting she liked him.

He was in the far corner of the library, at a table that was getting a good amount of natural sunlight. There were two coffees and one and a half bagels sitting on a napkin before him.

He was so thoughtful, and funny, and smart.

If she didn't make a move on him, Hestia was right, someone else would. And soon too.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she took up in the seat beside him.

"Hey," he smiled at her. "Feeling better?"

"I like you," she blurted out. "Like, a lot."

He and those beautiful eyes of his simply stared at her unblinkingly for a full ten seconds before a grin came to his face. "Really?"

All the air she didn't know she'd been holding rushed out of her lungs then. That had been a pleased 'really', not a how-do-I-deal-with-this-situation 'really'.

"Really," she confirmed and shifted a bit closer to him. "Do you… think…"

He moved a bit closer to her as well. "I hoped, but you are hard to get a read on."

"I thought I was being completely obvious."

"How?" he laughed.

"All our meals together! The trip to Poundland two weeks ago." As soon as it slipped out of her mouth she remembered all the pun's about 'taking a trip to Pound-Land' that the kids would make when she was growing up. Quickly moving on from that, she added, "and I wasn't entirely sure all that I might have said to you last night." She was blushing now, she could feel it.

"That was mostly a bunch of muttering," he chuckled. "Although I did catch that you didn't want 'Ron' to tell me that you'd gotten high last night. It was me you were on the phone with by the way, not Ron."

"Oh." Now she knew she was full out blushing. "Well, I guess it doesn't really matter what I might have admitted to you last night then."

"I might still like to hear it though," he told her in a deep and quiet voice as he drew even closer to her.

"Maybe I'll tell you later," she whispered and closed the distance between them.

()()()