AN- For Mitty on the Ginny Lovers Discord group, and to Phoenixmate for providing the Chapter name.
()()()
Cups and Cute Redheads
()()()
Another quiet 'hem, hem' sounded from the back of the heavily perfumed room. It wasn't at all helping him with his focusing. Not that Trelawny ever told them anything worthy of focusing on but Harry was doing his level best to avoid focusing on the fact that Professor Umbridge was, once again, sitting in the back of the Divination classroom.
He didn't like that Umbridge was always there, it made him feel sorry for Trelawny.
He knew Trelawny's teachings were a farce, because the woman herself didn't know that she was actually a Seer, she didn't recall giving him that warning about Pettigrew over a year and a half ago, but that didn't mean he was okay with seeing her being treated this way. The woman was nearly at the end of her very frayed rope.
The class had only just started and he was already wanting to claw out of his skin and jump out the window just to get away from both of the crazy women.
He should have dropped the class when Hermione did.
His and Ron's copy of The Dream Oracle had been plopped down onto their shared table as usual, now Trelawny was standing over her table in the corner of the room pouring out tea into teacups, several of them.
"You don't think we'll have to start coming up with images in the tea leaves again, do you?" Ron asked him quietly, staring at the professor out of the corner of his eye while he pretended to be skimming the pages of their textbook.
"Great," Harry mumbled back, "I'm really looking forward to her predicting my death again."
"Class," Trelawny called for their attention. "We will be reading chapter seven in The Dream Oracle today about discovering your futures as predicted in your dream states, and to help you center your inner eye, I have brewed a special tea for you all. The tea is known to some as Ayahuasca and will help clear through the fog of your day to day and see into the future. It comes from Peru, made of the magical plants that the Inca's came across centuries ago."
Harry heard Umbridge make a sound behind him again that sounded like a 'harumph' and begin writing on her clipboard.
Trelawny made her way around the room and reached him last, but there was still another cup remaining. Trelawny paused a moment, staring at the two identical looking cups before deciding which one to hand him, then she offered the last to Umbridge.
Harry and Ron shared a look. It was a strangely kind gesture for Trelawny to be offering tea to Umbridge, and Umbridge took it, her pinky finger out, then took a sip and made a face like she'd just drank cat piss.
Harry watched Ron drink some of his, he made the same face.
Trelawny was looking towards their table, so Harry had no choice but to drink some of his as well, and, wanting to get the tea drinking over and done with, he took it all in one large gulp.
It was nasty stuff.
"Right," Ron cringed over the taste still while Harry fought the urge to conjure a napkin to wipe his tongue with. "Chapter seven then."
Harry didn't feel his mind unfogging at all as they read through the chapter. He did feel his stomach getting upset though.
"Urgh, that tea was nasty," Harry complained after climbing down the ladder once the class ended.
"Yeah, I dumped mine in a potted plant when she wasn't looking," Ron agreed. "Looked like most of the class did the same. Even Parvati and Lavender."
"I should have done that."
They got down a few staircases and were walking down the corridor when Harry started to feel lightheaded. He stuck his hand out to rest it on the wall and waited for the dizzy spell to pass. The world seemed to swirl before his eyes a bit and for a moment the corridor looked like it had been devastated by an earthquake; the portraits were all half hanging, windowpanes were cracked or shattered, there was stone dust and rubble on the ground, and he was overcome with the urge to hurry.
Then he blinked a few times, and it was all okay again.
"Harry?" Ron said his name beside him. "You alright?"
"Yeah," he wiped his forehead, a moment ago he was sure he had been covered in dirt and sweat, but his hand was clean, his forehead dry. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's nothing. I think it was just the tea churning in my guts." He pushed off the wall and started walking down the corridor again. Hiding that moment from Ron was an easy call to make; the last thing he needed was for Ron to mention this to Hermione and have her worrying about his mind getting invaded by Voldemort even more.
They went down to the Great Hall and, as he usually did, he took a seat facing towards the Ravenclaw table so he could try and 'accidentally' lock eyes with Cho from across the room.
He felt someone take a seat beside him, but didn't look over to see who it was, because Cho was looking at him. He started to give her a grin when the image of her face, eyes swimming with tears, flashed before him, it was quickly followed by the sight of her scoffing at him and storming away, surrounded by very girly décor and pink and white confetti.
He quickly blinked again and rubbed his eyes.
"Mate, that tea still bugging you?" Ron asked.
"What tea is this?" Hermione asked, it was her that had taken a seat beside him.
"Trelawny had us drinking some nasty tea in Divination. Most of us just took one sip and tossed it."
"And me being the idiot that I am, drank the whole thing down in one gulp to get it over with," Harry finished for him.
"It was gross," Ron continued. "Umbridge was there again. I think Trelawny was just trying to get her to drink the stuff, stared her down while she did it."
"Well, it can't have been anything harmful then." Hermione gestured to the head table where Umbridge was sitting with her bulging eyes staring maliciously across the room for anyone doing anything slightly against the decorum of the school. "She's still there being as awful as ever."
Harry felt a bit better after he'd eaten something, which was good because there was a mountain of essays that he and Ron needed to get done.
They sat in the corner of the Common Room, as far away from the other students as possible.
Looking down and focusing only on his textbooks and his parchment paper, he was able to concentrate. Any time he looked up though, images would swim before his eyes. He'd been seeing things on the way back got Gryffindor Tower, opting not to say anything to the other two and simply followed their path. When he looked up from his work he would see the common room with furniture knocked over, yet there were still students sitting at them. One time he looked up at the twins who were causing a commotion and it looked like George was missing an ear.
"Ron," Ginny's voice said suddenly from across the table. It startled Harry and he looked up. "This letter just made it through screening," she tossed a folded piece of parchment at her brother.
Harry could see her making this movement, but he could also see her illuminated only by a light coming through the bottom of a closed door as she grinned up at him, her hands at his waist under his jumper and moving upwards as he pulled her closer and ducked his head to snog her.
He didn't blink as he stared at her, shocked by this other image he was seeing. She was still little Ginny Weasley, only a fourth year and his best mate's little sister, standing there across the table from him, but at the same time, she was also a slightly older version of herself that was snogging the daylights out of him. He could feel her snogging him! And him snogging her. He could feel their hands at each other's waists, feel her lips on his own, her teeth taking a light nip at his bottom lip.
"Harry," a voice called.
"Huh," was his only response as he continued to stare at Ginny, mouth agape. This other version of her that he was clearly hallucinating was currently taking his hand with her own and placing it on top of her breast. He could feel the weight of it in his hand, how soft it was. His excitement grew as he began kneading it and they continued snogging.
"Harry," Hermione gave him a nudge.
"What?" he asked angrily, finally blinking and looking at Hermione instead of Ginny.
"What do you mean 'what'? You looked completely lost in a daze there."
"Oh." He blinked a few more times and then realized that his body had been reacting to that scene of another version of him and Ginny getting up to trouble in what was likely a broom closet. "Er, nothing." He cleared his throat. "Sorry, probably just focusing too hard on my homework. Took me a minute to come out of it."
Ginny just cocked her eyebrow at him and then walked away. Ron hadn't paid any attention to him. Hermione, luckily, took that as a sign that he was taking his homework seriously and didn't ask him any more questions.
'What the fuck was that?' he asked himself, glancing down under the table and willing his body to relax, then pretending to be once more immersed in his assignments.
When he woke the next morning his stomach still felt a bit off, but his dreams hadn't been any different than they usually were, still a long corridor with that same door at the end, and no way for him to will it to open.
He still had the memory though, the one of Ginny and him snogging.
What the hell had that been?
He liked Cho!
And Ginny had a boyfriend!
And what was that image he had of Cho at dinner yesterday? Why had he seen her crying in one spot, then storming off away from him in another. He didn't recognize where the second spot had been, the first one though, he was sure that was the Room of Requirement.
Had he made her cry?
Normally he would talk this through with Ron, and he might have had it not been for the scene with him and Ginny.
Scene… was that the right word for it?
Hallucination.
It was more a hallucination.
It must have been from that tea. He was the only one that drank it all. Where did Trelawny say it came from again? Peru?
He gave a stretch and quickly changed into his uniform and went downstairs. It was still early so there weren't many others in the common room milling about.
He didn't go all the way into the common room, he viewed it from a distance, wanting to see if he would still be seeing it in two states; one normal, one in disarray.
It looked normal.
Although there was one person there that he wasn't sure if he wanted to see or not; Ginny was sitting on an armchair by the fire. She wasn't doing anything, her legs were crossed, feet propped up on the coffee table, and she was twirling her hair around her finger looking bored, like she was waiting for her friends to come down before she went to breakfast.
Harry froze on the landing when he saw her.
Once again he was looking at her in the chair, but another hallucination was playing out before him as well; this time she was a few years older, so was he, and they were naked. She was laying back on a blanket with her perky breasts bared for him, nipples erect and pointing up to the sky. He could see every freckle on her chest and torso. There was this look in her eye as well, like there was a hunger there. His whole body gave a lurch as he felt himself slide into her, saw this naked version of her bask in the pleasure of him sticking his cock inside her. He felt the pleasure of it too; it was incredible.
Harry grasped the railing and held his breath as he saw the image of her wrapping her arms around him and they started moving together. It was slow at first, they had their eyes locked on each other and he could feel her hand on his back, it made him want to close his eyes so he could appreciate the feel of it even more.
Then someone bumped him from behind when they were coming down the stairs and he nearly fell over, losing eye contact with the fully clothed and fourteen-year-old Ginny down the flight of stairs.
"Sorry," the guy called.
Harry didn't bother checking who it was, he just turned back to head up the stairs and seek out privacy to take care of this overwhelming desire that had consumed him.
Five minutes later and his breathing had returned to normal, he was already toweling off after his emergency shower and wank session.
He didn't get it. Where were these thoughts coming from? What if he started having hallucinations about other people like he was having about Ginny?
What the hell was he going to do if he had one about Hermione?! Or one of the female professors?
He decided he'd just have to keep his eyes down and not look at anyone properly today, that's all. Maybe tomorrow this weirdness would pass and he wouldn't have anymore episodes like this ever again.
So, he did keep his head ducked as much as possible that day. He accidentally bumped into a lot of people, but there were no more kinky hallucinations about random people anymore. Not that Ginny was random, but… she wasn't a constant presence in his life, she was just kind of… there.
This approach was working for him. He had accidentally made eye contact with Hermione a few times as they went over a few notes for an essay while Ron was at Quidditch practice and nothing strange had happened, so that was good.
By the time Ron got back from practice that night most everyone else had gone to bed. Unfortunately, when he finally showed up, Ron looked so miserable that he just gave them a morose nod of acknowledgment and carried on up the stairs, likely to take a shower and go straight to bed.
"He's not doing any better, is he?" Hermione asked.
Harry had already looked back down at his essay and opened his mouth to respond, but someone else got to it first.
"Worse actually," Ginny responded. He gripped his quill harder at the sound of her voice and reminded himself not to look at her. She had come in with Ron and Harry felt his face starting to heat up just knowing she was in his presence. "It's lucky for me he's doing so poorly, it pulls Angelina's focus towards his performance instead of mine."
Harry was staring at the letters on his essay and his eyes widened and the muscles in his pelvis clenched as he heard that word repeating itself; mine, mine, mine. It wasn't Ginny saying it though, it was him, he was just saying it about her. The letters on the page swam before his eyes and he was assaulted with the image of Ginny, her back turned to him, her long hair cascading down over her bare shoulders. She was pressed up against a wall, her hands and arms against the wall for leverage and support as she kept rocking back against him in time with his repetition of that single word.
He was shagging her this time, last time, the image he'd seen that morning, it had been gentle and sweet, this time it was more primal than that; animalistic. They were both naked and about in their early twenties, he had one hand on her hip, pulling her back against him so he could thrust inside her as deep as possible, the other was snaked around her front and touching her just above where he was fucking into her.
"Yes!" Ginny panted, "yes, I'm yours!"
He took his hand off her hip and clutched at her hair, pulling her head back and to the side so that he could suck at her neck. Merlin, she looked gorgeous like that; lost in ecstasy with a sheen of sweat on her brow.
"I love it when you take me like this," she growled in his ear and kept rocking back against him. "Make me cum right now and I'll drop to my knees and suck you off."
Harry tried to stifle his strangled cry and gasp in his seat, blinking rapidly and wishing he could somehow bottle up that hallucination and save it for later when he was alone.
"Harry, are you okay?" Hermione asked.
No, he wasn't; the hallucination was gone and he'd just cum in his pants.
"Just… tried to suppress a yawn for too long. Came out weird," he lied lamely, then gave a fake yawn and tried to be discreet about wiping the sweat off his forehead. "I should probably call it a night and head up to bed." He kept his head ducked as he put everything into his bag, letting out a breath of relief when he saw Ginny's feet head towards the stairs from his vantage point under the table.
"That wasn't about… you didn't have another vision, did you?" Hermione asked him.
He shot up straight in his seat, then realized she meant about Voldemort, not about his sex fantasies where Ginny was the focus.
"No," he assured her. "I'm just tired, that's all. I don't know what that sound was about. Frustration probably." Frustration was right, he thought to himself. He wondered if he'd have gotten the opportunity to see this older Ginny drop to her knees if his teenage body would have allowed him to last a bit longer.
He lay in bed that night staring up at the ceiling, wondering if there was any way to get his hands on more of that tea, wondering if that would be a good idea even. Forget the fact that this was his best mate's little sister, in his hallucinations Ginny didn't feel like Ron's little sister to him, emotionally. In the hallucinations she was just Ginny, and she felt like the most important person in the world to him.
He made a mental pro/con list about whether he needed to get more of the tea.
Pro- he might have more of those fucking hot hallucinations.
Con- he might only be able to see them about Ginny, someone who only just got over her little crush on him and had moved on to someone else.
Con- he'd still be seeing the weird layered images of what was real and what wasn't when he went from place to place in the castle.
Pro- when he had the hallucinations about Ginny, it was the most incredible feeling, aside from just how hot it was. It felt like everything was right in the world and he had no more worries.
… was that it? No more pros, no more cons?
He lay there for a bit longer and tried to think up more to add to the list but couldn't think of any.
Well, he was fifteen, full of hormones and armed with an Invisibility Cloak and a map that told him where everyone in the castle was, what do you think he did?
Finding the tea in Trelawny's classroom wasn't too difficult, convincing himself to drink it down again, that took a bit more will power.
Just one more time, he told himself. Maybe he'd start hallucinating about sex fantasies with Cho this time. Although… he now didn't know whether he wanted them to be about Cho or if he wanted them to continue to be about Ginny.
Things were so awkward between he and Cho, the fantasies/hallucinations about Ginny had seemed so… natural. Comfortable even.
Destined, one might wonder? The tea was supposed to help you see your future.
Destined was a bit of a stretch, he shook his head. Divination was of no use to anyone that wasn't a Seer, and he certainly wasn't a Seer.
He thought about this while sitting cross legged on the floor in his Divination classroom at two in the morning. He'd drunk the tea and was now waiting to see if he was going to throw up, have another vision, or be okay and able to make it back to his bed without anyone noticing he'd gone.
His walk back to Gryffindor tower took twice as long as usual; his stomach was churning a bit, but it wasn't that, he kept being overcome with images of the castle in different states of change. When he walked down the corridor with the Room of Requirement it looked like the room was on fire, yet there was no door on the stone wall showing the entrance to the room. He saw phantom presences of people he didn't know walking through the corridors in the daylight, but it was nighttime.
When he got back to his room he stood at the foot of his bed and stared at it; because he was already in it. He was laying in the bed looking a few years older and thinner than ever, looking like he'd been through hell and back. And there was Ginny, stretched out beside him, taking his glasses off and setting them on the side table before gently wiping away some of the grime from his face, saying she hadn't given up on him.
This time he had to blink because he felt emotions bubbling up inside of him and tears welling to his eyes. It looked like Ginny had been through hell as well, but she had been the one there taking care of him.
By the time he was done blinking he could see his bed was empty, the hallucination had gone.
Harry pulled off his cloak and barely found the energy to stash it and the map back in his trunk before falling into bed and passing out immediately.
The next two days he kept having the hallucinations, and he kept having them about Ginny. Suddenly she was there, everywhere he went; he would see her in the corridor in passing and an image of them in bed together would flutter across his eyes; her with her head thrown back as she rode him, their fingers interlocked; he swore he could smell sex in the air. He would catch her out of the corner of his eye at dinner and see the image of her standing on what he knew was their mattress and doing a strip tease for him. She said 'hello' to him in the common room on the second day and he swore he could feel her lips locked around his cock while she played with his balls.
It was too much.
It was so fucking hot, but it was too much.
He felt so many unfamiliar and wonderful emotions when he was having these episodes. He felt like he was falling love with Ginny, but they hardly ever talked. It was too confusing. There was also the issue that Hermione was starting to notice that he was behaving oddly, Ron would too soon, after Hermione pointed it out to him probably. With both of them surrounding him all the time it wouldn't be safe to keep sneaking up to the Divination room to get more tea.
That all meant that his fantasies, and he was calling the ones about Ginny fantasies now, had to stop.
He was upset at the thought of that, but grateful also when they began to peter away. It was four more days before he noticed that he'd seen Ginny several times and not once did he immediately delve into a fantasy of them going at each other like rabbits. It was hard to control his expression, his blushing, and his erections, when they happened.
And it was five days later that he found himself in the Room of Requirement with Cho Chang coming towards him with tears in her eyes, exactly like she had done in one of his very first hallucinations.
He'd walked back to Gryffindor tower after Cho had kissed him in a complete daze.
He'd just had his first kiss, with the girl that he'd liked, and he was so confused. His hallucination had come true.
Did that mean that they would wind up in that second location with the confetti and her storming away from him? How would they get there? Why would he be somewhere like that? It had been so… pink.
Ron and Hermione asked him about the kiss when he got back to the common room, but he still didn't share the bit about him having the premonition that it was going to happen. And the next day none of that mattered anyway because they were at Grimmauld Place and awaiting news about Mr Weasley relating to a vision Harry had that wasn't nearly as enjoyable as the one's he'd had from the special tea.
This vision had been entirely different.
He had been the snake; he knew he had. He couldn't explain it but somehow he'd become a snake, got to London and attacked Mr Weasley, then got back to Hogwarts.
He was so glad he'd stopped himself from going back and getting more of that tea now, but how was he supposed to admit to the Weasley's, all of them, that not only was he having sex fantasies about Ginny, he'd also tried to kill Mr Weasley?
"Alright?" Sirius whispered. He was sitting beside him at the table in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. Everyone was just sitting there, peeling labels off of Butterbeer bottles or resting their head in their hands as they awaited news from St. Mungos.
Harry gave him a non-committal response.
"You're staring at her pretty hard."
Harry turned his head sharply to regard his Godfather. What he'd said was barely audible, there was no way that anyone else at the table had overheard it, but it was crystal clear to Harry what the underlaying question was behind Sirius' statement; why are you so concerned about Ginny over the others, is what he was asking.
He hadn't noticed he was staring at Ginny. He'd been staring at her absently because he'd been wondering if she would still care about him after he was asked to fully explain what he'd done. She wouldn't want to be around him anymore after that. And for some reason that thought, of her not wanting him there, that thought hurt more than of Ron potentially not wanting to be around him anymore.
Ron was his best friend. Sure, they fought, but all friends, really good friends, they could get over their fights and be the best of friends once more.
Ginny wasn't his best friend, he was barely on her radar anymore.
Harry looked back at Ginny, who was staring at her bottle in front of her, then she looked up at him and her gorgeous brown eyes met his and she gave him this sad smile, one that made it feel like his heart was swelling, because he knew that smile meant that no matter how things turned out, she would still care about him.
Then she looked back down at her bottle again.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry muttered back to Sirius.
Mr Weasley was okay though, Sirius had been put in the most festive of moods, then Hermione showed up and together she and Ron, and Ginny, convinced him that he hadn't been possessed, and Harry felt like he could breathe again.
Along with being able to breath again, he also found himself growing distracted around Ginny. Every time they were put to work cleaning or sitting at the table together for meals he couldn't help looking for any sign that the fantasies that he'd had of her, of them, might have been premonitions. He had been caught by Hermione when he was looking at Ginny's chest one day, not at her developing breasts, but at her actual chest, trying to see if he could spot the constellation of freckles he remembered from the fantasy of them making love outdoors. Ginny had given him a curious look another day when he couldn't help but reach out and touch her hair when she was standing close to him, checking to see if it felt the same as it did in the fantasy of him shagging her against a wall.
Being in such close proximity to her at Grimmauld Place, it was causing all the fantasies to start popping up in his dreams, which led to him thinking about them every time he saw her throughout the day, which caused him to blush and start bumbling around with things and making a fool out of himself. It also led to him taking more than his fair share of showers and blaming it on the poor cleaning job Kreacher does.
He was just leaving the bathroom after one of those necessary showers when he found Ginny waiting on the other side of the door.
"Oh!" she blinked at him in surprise. "I didn't know anyone was in there."
She was smiling at him, her hand held out low in front of her as though she was about to turn the doorknob.
That smile and her hand being where it was, he was forcefully reminded of his fantasy he'd had of her in this exact location, except she was about twenty and that smile was less adorable and more seductive; she'd pushed him back into the bathroom in that fantasy and closed the door behind her before tugging his towel away from him and leaving him naked. They'd nearly broken the sink in that fantasy. He'd stripped her down naked and hoisted her up onto the porcelain before he dropped to his knees and did a thorough job of getting her off using only his mouth.
He really liked that fantasy.
"Harry?" Ginny cocked her head at him, her smile was gone. "Look, you've been acting really strange around me." She blushed then and looked down, like she was searching for the courage to continue speaking. "I know I'm just someone you get stuck hanging around with sometimes, or," now her expression took another dive, "someone you get stuck saving. But… normally you just ignore me. So… what's going on? Why do you keep… paying attention to me?"
Harry stared at her for another moment. Ron's sister. Fourteen. Has a boyfriend. You just kissed someone else a few days ago. All these reasons passed through his mind in that moment, all the reasons why it would be a very bad idea to simply pull her into the bathroom, shut the door and snog her soundly.
"Sorry I've been acting weird," he told her finally. "I feel like I'm going through a lot right now and I should have talked to you sooner… you know, about my paranoia about whether I was being possessed. Guess I was just working up to another apology. So, I'm really sorry," he told her earnestly. "And you aren't just someone I get stuck hanging around. You're my friend. We're," and this part pained him in a way he couldn't describe to dial his feelings for her down to this one word, "friends."
The smile she gave him then made him feel better. The hug and kiss on his cheek after made him feel even more so.
()()()
One and a half months later Harry was watching Cho storming out of Madame Puddifoots Tea Shop in Hogsmeade; the place was pink and frilly and there were pink and white confetti on everything.
It had been the worst first date anyone could have asked for, yet he couldn't help smiling as he walked down the street to the three broomsticks because he knew now that his hallucinations and fantasies from before Christmas meant that someday, a few years to go yet, and he would be recreating those scenarios with Ginny Weasley, and she was going to mean the world to him.
()()()