AN- For CelinaGryffindor; I changed around the prompt a bit because it would have been a multi chapter story if I didn't, and I've got too many of those started and not ready for posting.

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Coming Across All Wrong

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"Shit."

"Yep. 'Shit' about sums it up," Ginny Weasley told him as she put her folders down on the table.

Harry wanted to put a hand up to his forehead and block her from view. He hadn't realized that she was the MLE officer that was going to be teaming up with him on this. He worked in the Magical Accidents and Catastrophies Department and there had been a bridge collapse that happened because of two wizards in northern England that had decided to settle things with a Wizards Duel and one of them hadn't had the best aim. It was now Harry's job to go to the Muggle Ministry and come up with an excuse to allow them to be the ones to fix it.

There hadn't been any fatalities on the bridge, thank God, but it had been photographed and printed in too many newspapers and across the internet for them to claim it was a hoax and show that the bridge was still completely intact.

This required someone from the MLE Department to accompany him so that charges could be properly lain for the two Duelers and his Department could fix it up with a Muggle worthy excuse and execution.

"I didn't know that it would be you I was…"

"Stuck with?" she offered. "I'm pretty sure I should be the one complaining.

He deserved that. He certainly hadn't made her life any better when they were at Hogwarts together; constantly sniping at her in the hallways, pointing out when she used a word incorrectly, intentionally sitting nearer to her in the library so he could overhear the gossip between she and her friends and jump in with a few choice words.

The main thing he did was tease her about her crush on Neville Longbottom, The Boy Who Lived. Even after she and Longbottom had started dating he couldn't stop himself from making rude comments to her.

Ginny Weasley absolutely loathed him.

And he couldn't blame her.

He went about things all wrong with her. He'd been a dumb teenager that acted on impulses he couldn't control and it had made him look like a terrible person in her eyes.

Now they had to work together.

He'd managed to avoid her for the first two years they'd been working at the Ministry together. She'd been hired as an apprentice right out of school, hadn't taken any time off whatsoever after finishing up her final NEWT year and he'd done all he could to keep out of her path since then.

He supposed it was inevitable. At some point or another they had been bound to wind up working together. It was a small world, their world.

Harry didn't give any response to her words, he just kept on with the task at hand. "You've, er, been briefed? Read over the file?"

"Yes, and believe it or not, I've been on assignments like this before," she replied snidely.

"Then, shall we just head over there? Get this bit done with."

"Sounds fucking perfect to me."

He didn't wince at her words, outwardly anyhow. On the inside her attitude with him was shredding him up. Now wasn't the time to reflect on it though. They had to get over to the Muggle Ministry of Transport building before they started to come up with plans to fix the bridge themselves.

It was only the Muggle Prime Minister that knew of the Wizarding Ministry, every other department head over there had no idea the number of times Harry and others from his team had jumped in and redirected funds and contractors to clean up the mess that the Wizarding world had made. They had fake plumbers for regurgitating toilets, fake architects for building collapse, fake everything. There was a supply closet full of uniforms and documentation that made them look legitimate.

"Our biggest hurdle this time will likely be our age," Harry told her.

"Excuse me?"

"I didn't mean for that to sound offensive. I'm only a year older than you. What I mean is that in the Muggle world there wouldn't be two people in their early twenties with any kind of authority. They'll likely be expecting someone in their thirties or forties to be showing up, so we'll need to add a few years with glamor charms."

Ginny gave him a skeptical look. "Why?"

He couldn't help the sigh that escaped his lips.

"Don't give me that," she snapped. "Why the hell would it have to be someone in their thirties or forties that would be the ones to have authority?"

Her dad worked in the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad too! She should know at least this much by now if she'd been on assignments like this before. Harry blamed the Muggle Studies class at Hogwarts, there just wasn't a good enough overview.

"Look, in the Muggle world, someone doesn't come straight from Secondary school, er, Seventh-Year, and start working as an apprentice, they have to go to College or Uni for two to four years, then they start doing the apprenticeship, then they spend years and years working their way up the ladder. They don't have simple spells they can cast to reinforce a bridge or something; they need to know weight distribution, what the materials are made of, have built the network of contacts to approve signing authority on safety procedures and done endless amounts of paperwork. So, because of that, you and I," he gestured between she and himself, "would look like two kids fresh from flipping burgers full time who are going to make a million and a half mistakes."

Ginny stared at him, reading his expression and posture for any sign he might be messing with her, then relaxed her stance. "Okay then."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had expected more of an issue trying to convince her.

"So, lets got get the uniforms and paperwork that we need so we can get on with it," Ginny said as she started for the door.

Harry picked up his list of supplies they needed and quickly followed along with her.

They got to the room and he went for the filing cabinet while she went to the uniform racks.

"What kind of uniform would I need then? The orange vest thing?" she called out to him.

"No, we're going in as Executive Administrators, so we'll need business suits." He went from file cabinet to file cabinet pulling out work orders and duplicating them, getting ID badges and doing the same. The last file cabinet was the most updated, it had 'email approval correspondence' as proof that there had been approval from the Muggle higher ups to push through final approval for their 'contractors' to start the work. He wasn't familiar with email. The most he'd done with computers was figure out how to play some of his cousin's video games, and the internet had taken off since then so it was now a primary method of interaction.

"How's this?" Ginny held up two nearly identical suits, one with a slighter cut on it made for women.

"Sure, we'll pull them on and tailor them with a charm. We'll need briefcases too."

They went to opposite sides of the storage room to change their clothes and perform the tailoring charm. He hadn't needed to change his dress shirt, but Ginny had been wearing a t-shirt and hadn't thought to change that.

"Do you mind?" he pointed at her shirt.

"What?" She looked down at the jacket.

"Erm," was all he replied before he just changed it into a pale red blouse with a scooped neck that didn't come too low.

"Oh," she blushed.

"Okay. Now for the final touches." He conjured a mirror and started adding hints of grey to his temples, stubble around his chin that appeared intentional, not scruffy, and a bit of bags under his eyes.

Ginny had let her hair down and done something that made her skin a bit tauter, like she'd spent years attempting to maintain her youth. She'd also added a bit of extra make-up and it did make her look nearly ten years older.

"This isn't the first time you've had to do this, is it?"

"It is, actually. I'm just trying to recreate what Sheila, Kingsley's assistant, looks like."

Sheila was the right age they were trying to go for. Ginny did an impressive job.

She was certainly going to age well.

"Alright then. Now I'll just add our headshots to the ID badges and we're ready to go."

With everything ready they headed out of the Ministry building through the Visitors entrance, which was only one block from the Muggle Department of Transportation. Ginny's heels were clacking along the sidewalk as they went along and it kept pulling his attention to her.

"So, er, how have you been?"

"This isn't a social excursion, Potter," she said, effectively cutting down the conversation.

Harry kept his mouth shut then.

They got to the correct Muggle building, past security no problem and up to the tenth floor. It was over quickly; they found the right people, provided the right documentation, all of Harry's job was smooth. Ginny though, she needed to get the full incident report and wound up having to go from one side of the office to the next in order to find all the paperwork that recorded who saw what and any injuries.

Harry found her after he'd gotten everything stamped and approved, she was at the copy machine and looked about ready to kick it.

"How do they do this," she asked him out of the corner of her mouth.

She had the lid of the copier open so that she could get everything scanned one at a time, but the paper was in the middle of the glass and there were thirty or forty sheafs of paper left to go for her to copy.

"Give it here," he held out his hand for her to pass it all to him. He made sure everything was facing the right way and closed the lid to set it all face up in the tray on top and hit 'start'. Everything started sliding through easily after that.

He took all the originals and brought them back to the admin assistant that Ginny had pointed out while she waited for the final pages to print.

They got back in the lift and had it all to themselves as it started its descent.

Floor nine dinged passed, then eight, then seven. He felt like he should say something more to her, this would be the perfect opportunity to apologize for how he'd been with her in school. Floor six dinged passed. He'd been a real bastard to her. Hufflepuffs were known for their hard work, dedication, patience and loyalty, and while he knew he held all those qualities, another trait that the Sorting Hat failed to mention was that they were all single minded survivalists too; they wanted what they wanted and could be petulant about not getting it. Floor five dinged passed.

"Ginny, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be such an asshole to you in school."

As soon as he'd blurted that out the lift came to an abrupt stop between floors four and five and the lights flickered and went out, then the emergency lights came on.

"What… what just happened?" She had gone to the corner of the lift and braced herself against the rail there.

"Er, looks like the power went out." He automatically went for the red 'call' button on the panel.

"Can't we just Apparate out?" Ginny asked, but the question came too late.

There was a voice that came out of the speaker on the panel. "This is Jason at security. Looks like the lift is acting up. Can you tell me how many people are in there? Just hold the yellow button down to respond."

Shit, Harry thought. If he hadn't pressed the button then they would have been able to Apparate out of the lift.

"There are two of us here. Can you tell me if the outage is building wide, or is it just the lift that's stuck?"

"Just the lift," Jason told him. "I've put a call out to building maintenance. Just sit tight, we'll have you out of there soon and I'll let you know just when that is when I have something to report, otherwise, I'll check back in on you in twenty minutes. Are either of you in distress?"

Harry held down the button. "We're fine, we'll be here for any updates." He let go of the button and turned back to Ginny. "Guess we may as well take a seat."

"We could be in here for twenty minutes?"

"No, that's just when he said he'd give us an update. We could be in here for longer than that," he told her honestly and made himself comfortable on the floor.

She frowned at him and sat down as well, looking up at the blank screen over the door that usually told you what floor you were at, then to the button panel. "They don't have some kind of emergency function that brings it down to the main floor and opens the doors?"

"Some do, some don't. I think it depends on how tall the building is or if they decide to spend the extra 10-20 thousand pounds on that option."

She just hummed in response and sat there. He didn't know if his apology even registered with her considering what happened a second later.

"Erm, so… I am sorry," he repeated.

"I heard you the first time." Her tone wasn't clipped or wry.

"Oh… okay."

There were a few more moments of silence.

Ginny finally broke the silence again. "Do you still live in the Muggle world?"

"Still?" he repeated.

"You lived with your Muggle relatives during the summers, didn't you?"

"How… er, yeah, I did. They didn't exactly want me there though. I left them a month before my Seventh Year started."

"They didn't want you there? But you were their family." She sounded offended on his behalf.

"Erm, they weren't fans of magic. Scared of it actually. Took me in out of obligation. And… they weren't the nicest people."

Ginny gave a small scoff. "So, that's where you learned it from then?"

"Hey, their treatment of me came from a place of hate, I didn't do anything to them!"

"Are you saying I did something to you? Because I certainly don't remember doing anything to garner your attention in school."

"No, because you were too busy fawning after Longbottom, weren't you," he automatically countered, it coming from those few years of similar interactions with her at school.

"What the hell do you have against Neville? I don't remember him having much to do with you either. Is it some kind of jealousy you have? Because I know he's written about in the history books, but his life hasn't exactly been a cakewalk. And it wasn't fawning, I got over the whole 'Boy-Who-Lived' bit before we even started dating, I'll have you know. And if I hadn't gotten over it before then, I certainly would have now."

He frowned at her, brow furrowed, at how she phrased that. "I would hope so, you've been with him for years."

"What? No. We only dated for a year."

"But…"

"Urgh, don't tell me you believe the tabloids. We might get photographed together, but he's a friend of the family. All that crap about him 'cheating' on me, he was out dating other women."

He felt a blush rising to his cheeks and was glad the emergency lights didn't make it bright enough in there for her to be able to tell.

"Well, why didn't you come out and correct them?" he asked.

"As if. They'd just find a way to spin it, make one of us seem like we were jilted and try to run an expose on 'where it all went wrong'. There's no story; we were friends, we dated, it didn't work out, now we're friends again."

"Oh." It was all he could think to offer by way of verbal acknowledgment.

"What do you care, anyway?"

"Er." His hand went to the back of his neck. "Just… curious, I guess," he lied.

"Okay, then why did you care? Back in school? You must have had a reason that you started singling me out. Or were you like that with anyone that showed an interest in Neville?"

It felt like it was getting pretty warm in the lift now. He took off the suit jacket, trying to extend the allowable time he could have before being forced to answer.

"I, ahem, I admit I went about that all wrong."

"There's a right way to harass someone?"

"Er, no. But I could have started with at least, erm," he cleared his throat again. "Asking you to Hogsmeade."

"What," she deadpanned.

He held his breath. He wasn't sure why he was holding his breath, but it was what his brain was telling him to do.

"Potter," she said his name in a threatening way.

He let all the air expel from his lungs. "Look, you were the first girl I realized I fancied and I didn't know how to go about telling you, or getting you attention and every time I tried it all came out the wrong way. Then you started paying attention to me, even if it was only to bark back at me or hit me with that Bat-Bogey hex of yours, and… well, by that point I was just glad to be getting some of your attention. Then I just, I just didn't know how to switch gears. Then you started dating the guy you fancied and it just made me turn into an even bigger asshole."

"Yeah, no kidding. And thanks a lot, by the way, you're the reason I served so many detentions in my Sixth Year. If you had just minded your own business-"

"Then you would have been doing more than just snogging in those alcoves after curfew. You think I liked catching you doing that?" Their volumes were getting higher.

"What I did then and what I do now are none of your business!"

"I know! That's why I've been trying to avoid you!" he nearly shouted at her.

She paused, staring at him with wide eyes. "You can't possibly still fancy me."

He didn't really have an answer to that. "I… don't know."

"You don't know?" Ginny asked skeptically.

He shifted uncomfortably. The hard bottom of the lift cage may have had carpet over it, but it was still a very hard floor. It was made even more uncomfortable by all this coming out in the open.

"Look, I started fancying you in my fifth year, alright? That was several years at school together where I had hoped that I might get up the nerve to ask you out, so you've always been this sort of… unattainable idea, or whatever, to me. I don't know if I fancy you or I'm just remembering all those teenage hormones and jealousy."

"Wow. Okay."

"Okay?"

"Well… I kind of know what that's like. I mean, you know I had a thing for Neville for ages and that turned out to be a disappointing relationship. It was like, once we were official, I realized that it wasn't a fancy I held for him, it was just… love. The friendship kind of love," she clarified quickly.

"Wow." It was his turn to return the sentiment. He hadn't thought about it like that. Then again, he hadn't known she and Neville weren't an item anymore until a few minutes ago, but it was an easy enough comparison.

"You've figured out how to ask women out by now though, right?"

She was teasing him; he could hear it plain as day in her tone. Not to mention the smile she was giving him.

"Yes, thanks," he rolled his eyes. "I've had a few unsuccessful relationships since and got that figured out."

"Good, because that would just be sad." They shared a chuckle then.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Well, I'm not going to break the Statute of Secrecy by suddenly being somewhere else right now, so I think we have time for another question."

She had always been a witty and sharp one.

"Why didn't you follow through with Quidditch? It seemed like you were determined to follow that career path."

It was like the air had deflated out of her as she slumped down. "Couldn't afford it," she pouted. "It would have been ages before I started making real money and I wouldn't have been able to support myself. So, I applied on a few Ministry jobs, and here I am."

"Are you saving up so you can try out for a team later?"

"Erm… I think that dream is stashed away for me now. Besides, I like my job. I'm… comfortable."

It sounded like that was something that she said to herself several times over, probably every time she saw a notice in the Daily Prophet that there were going to be try-outs.

"I think you should just save up and give it a go. You were a natural out there. I always knew that at our games it was either going to be a through and through Gryffindor victory, or we'd catch the Snitch but it wouldn't have mattered because you would have slaughtered us with points on the goal."

"That was just school games."

"No, that was just you being really excellent at playing Chaser." He could see the pride in her cheeks from that comment. "I think you should try saving up so you can give it a go, or at least go to the try-outs and see if you've got what it takes."

"Thanks. I… I never got much encouragement at home about it. My mum was always pressuring us to get safe jobs at the Ministry. It was like she thought me being a professional Quidditch player would be to hazardous; and yet I've got one brother that is a Curse Breaker, another that is a Dragon Handler, and, well, you know the Twins."

"Did she give them all a hard time as well?"

"… yes."

"And it didn't stop them, did it," he pointed out.

Ginny chewed her lip then. "They all had encouragement from the rest of us though. Me, I'm the youngest and the only girl, my brothers were practically shoving Ministry applications at me through out my entire seventh year."

"I never thought you would be the kind of person that would let others opinions alter your own."

"Yeah, well, just goes to show that you never actually knew me."

He wasn't sure why that comment made him grin, but it did. "I guess not."

The lift gave a jolt then and the emergency lights switched off as the overhead fluorescents came on. The carriage then started continuing issuing the beeps for each floor as they made their way down to the lobby.

"That didn't feel like twenty minutes," Ginny stated happily as she got to her feet.

"No. Guess the maintenance guy was able to fix it without needing to call someone else in."

The final 'ding' announcing the main floor went off and the doors opened to reveal a man in security uniform.

"You're Jason, I presume," Harry asked him as they stepped off the lift.

"I am. Looks like you two aren't worse for the wear. Sorry about that."

"Not a problem. Just gave us an excuse to sit down on a busy day," Ginny dismissed the apology and shook his hand.

Harry felt much better on the walk back to their Ministry than he had on the way to the Muggle Ministry office. He'd finally admitted to Ginny about his fancy for her in school and she was receptive to it. They'd held a proper conversation, maybe now they could put it all behind them and things wouldn't be so awkward the next time they had to work together.

They squeezed back into the phone booth that was the Visitors entrance and went back down to the Atrium, then back up to the storage closet to return the uniforms they'd borrowed and change back into their own clothes.

"Hey, Potter?" Ginny stopped him before he opened up the door again for them to leave. "Thanks for finally telling me."

He managed to give her a half smile. "Thanks for not hitting me with that hex of yours again when I did."

She looked like herself again, with the glamor's removed, and she still had that same beautiful smile that had first caught his attention.

"Hey, Ginny?" With where their conversation had been going today, he figured it was now or never. "Will you go to Hogsmeade with me?"

She stopped smiling and gave him a looking over once more. "No." His stomach gave a drop. "But I'll let you take me to lunch in the cafeteria right now."

His elation was back. "Cafeteria food is how you're going to start letting me make it up to you?" he grinned.

"What? They've got really good chips," she shrugged and pulled open the door.

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