Insane
Author: twinsofthesky
Title: Insane
Challenge: Post-Hogwarts, #33--Eiffel Tower, fic
Summary: He reckons he's a bit afraid of kissing her (seeing how she pushed him into the lake the last time he did), so he takes her to the Eiffel Tower instead.
Rating: PG
Genre: Humor/Romance
Word Count: 2318
Notes/Warnings: Dedicated with a red ribbon to bibliophile20. I hope this contributes to totally making your… day. Or hour. A major thank you to taintedmoonrose for the beta.
Harry really didn’t remember a time when he had been quite so miserable. Admittedly, Voldemort was dead, the Death Eaters were locked up at Azkaban where they belonged, and some semblance of order and peace had been established.
And still, Harry couldn’t help the sigh of utter self-pity from passing his lips. There was just something pathetic about the fact that he was in the City of Romance with Ginny Weasley and hadn’t been able to dig up the courage to kiss her again and admit that he was still madly in love with her.
He’d originally thought that the hard part would be to defeat Voldemort just to be able to get back to her. He’d never really considered the fact that she wouldn’t want him anymore. He had secretly dreamed of the moment for months beforehand. He would apparate to the Burrow immediately after the battle, his black hair smelling like smoke and ashes, and she would fall immediately into his open arms, telling him she had missed him, wanted to marry him and have his children in a house with a white picket fence.
What really happened was a little less romantic. He had been comatose for nearly a week, and had been shipped to somewhere with lots of sun to recuperate with orders not to see anyone.
Although he appreciated the Healers immensely, he couldn’t help but feel a stab of annoyance. If Ginny had been able to come, he had no doubt that she would have visited every day and cheerfully fluffed his pillows for him with promises that once he was out, they could get together once more.
When he had seen her for the first time after that, his brain had broken down completely. Stricken by the sight of her beautiful brown eyes and her bright smile, his brain had gone on a sort of overload with mad, cheesy poetic lines. Unable to think with her lovely flower scent in his nostrils, he had choked out, “Nice shoes.”
It was really only sheer dumb luck that she could stand him at all. He didn’t know anything about charming heroes, but he was sure that the first words spoken to true loves shouldn’t have had anything to do with footwear.
The original plan to travel to Paris included both Ron and Hermione, but at the very last moment, they had ducked out, mysteriously saying that they had a very important meeting that would last about a week in Timbuktu.
Harry highly doubted that they needed to attend a meeting, but had let it go, elated to be alone with Ginny.
There were countless ways that he could have ‘accidentally’ manoeuvred her into a position where she would have no choice but to kiss him back. With so many couples swapping spit shamelessly on the sidewalks, it should have been easy to just steal a kiss from her and then Oblivate her quickly in case she reached for her wand to perform a Bat Bogey.
The truth was, he lacked courage. He had faced Voldemort more times than he changed his socks each week, and still he found himself unable to even think about kissing her without breaking out into a cold sweat.
However, the actual trip had been much better than he could have ever dreamed. They joked about, visited the art museums and ate the fresh bread and the snails together. It was just…Ginny didn’t seem to be interested in him that way anymore.
She treated him exactly like she would treat any of her family members, and he was struggling to do the same.
But he had a niggling sense that he was really failing rather miserably. Older brothers, as a rule, probably shouldn’t have random urges to snog their little sisters.
-.-
“I think we should go visit a river today,” Ginny said cheerily as she came out of her room. Her hair was parted in two pigtails and her brown eyes were sparkling.
Harry tried not to stare, but there was just something arresting about the fact that the freckles on her face seemed to look like cinnamon sprinkled on cream.
If she noticed that he was making an effort to close his gaping mouth, she didn’t say anything. “I mean, we don’t have to visit a river, as long as it’s a body of water.”
“Why?” He was aware that he probably sounded like an idiot, but he was proud of himself for managing even that.
“Because,” she said, one end of her mouth curling up, “we should.”
“I don’t like that grin,” Harry said uncertainly. “Are you going to push me in, is that it?”
“No,” she protested. “Would I ever do that?”
Harry glanced at her, amazed. “You pushed me in the Hogwarts Lake once!”
Ginny blushed suddenly, and Harry did also, as he remembered exactly when it had happened.
“Well, you had just kissed me in front of the entire Common Room after I’d told them for years that I was over you,” Ginny said airily, lifting her chin.
“You weren’t exactly complaining,” Harry said, lifting his eyebrows at her.
“-And just kissing me like that-You could have given me a warning, at the very least!”
Harry suddenly looked at her, and saw her grinning, and although he wanted nothing more than to just pick her up, toss her onto the nearest furniture able to support them, and have his dirty way with her, he settled for just smiling.
“I’ll be sure to give you a warning next time,” Harry said, and Ginny seemed to find a sudden fascination for her fingernails.
“Anyway, the point is that I won’t hit you and push you into the lake this time,” Ginny said impatiently. “Now can we go?”
“I want to know why first,” Harry said, crossing his arms over his chest. Being pushed into a cold lake wasn’t one of the most pleasant feelings, and if he wouldn’t even get a kiss out of it, he saw no reason to repeat the experience.
Unless she offered to help warm him (as she had done last time). But he seriously doubted she would even lift a finger-she would probably laugh endlessly at him.
“Please?”
“No,” Harry said, stubbornly.
“Fine,” Ginny said. “Don’t hear my funny joke,” she said, and sounded very put-out about it.
Harry sighed. “You can just tell it to me now.”
“Cannot,” she said, and turned around so her back was to him.
“I promise I’ll laugh at it.”
“Very funny, Potter,” Ginny said, turning around to stick her tongue out at him.
“As funny as your joke,” he said, flopping down on a large, cushy sofa to press an arm over his face. “So tell it to me,” he said, and his voice was muffled.
“Okay.” Ginny knelt down on the ground so she was at eyelevel with him, resting her chin on the seat where his head was resting. “I know you aren’t going to jump into that river, Harry.”
Harry lifted his arm, uncertain. “Wait, that’s supposed to be funny?”
Ginny ignored his comment. “You’re supposed to say ‘why’,” she informed him, prodding at his shoulder.
“Oh. Why?”
“Because I know you’re not in Seine!” The words gurgled out of her, and she finished, looking highly pleased with herself.
“In… Seine.” Harry’s brow furrowed, and he muttered the words to himself. “In… oh, very funny, Ginny.”
“I’ve been waiting for a chance to say it to you all along,” she said, looking indignant.
He couldn’t help but laugh at her then. “You should probably stick to looking pretty,” he said mockingly. “You won’t be good for anything else, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t think you were ever quite introduced to my Bat Bogey,” Ginny said lightly, her fingers picking up her wand from the table.
Harry rose from the sofa hastily. “Oh, it’s all right. I’ve heard so much about it-there’s no reason for a close acquaintance.”
“Pity, really,” Ginny said, turning around to reach for an apple. “I think you should make it up to me.”
“I thought we could go up to the Eiffel Tower today,” Harry said, relaxing once more.
Ginny dropped her wand in her excitement. “Really? The Eiffel Tower?”
“I didn’t know if you’d like it,” Harry said, looking up at the ceiling.
“You’re serious?” Ginny asked, moving her head so it was right above his. “We’re going up the Eiffel Tower?”
“Yes,” he said, unable to try to even think of a witty way to answer her question, because he could smell her flowery scent tickling his nose.
Suddenly her head disappeared from his direct line of vision. She had stood up, grabbing her purse from a nearby chair. “Get up, Harry,” she said, reaching for a light jacket.
Harry half rose from his position on the sofa, bewildered. “Why?”
“We’re going now,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“What, now?”
Ginny rolled her eyes. “I didn’t get to go to a river to tell you my joke. This is the least you can do.” She tossed his jacket at him and walked over to the door. “I expect you outside in a minute.”
-.-
“What’s he saying?” Ginny asked, looking a bit alarmed as a plump Frenchman bellowed something from the elevator.
“He’s speaking in English,” Harry informed her, as he flipped through a manual on the Eiffel Tower.
“He is?” Ginny inched closer to the guard and made an attempt to understand what he was shouting. She stood like that for a moment, then turned to Harry. “No, he isn’t!”
“Yes, he is. He just said something about not being able to go up to the third level because of security reasons.”
Ginny’s face fell, and she sighed. “I knew something like this would happen. Just when it’s our turn to go, they shut down the elevators.”
Harry merely grinned at her and lifted his eyebrows. He motioned to his pocket with one hand, and with the other, he pulled out his Invisibility Cloak.
Ginny’s mouth fell open. “Harry, you’re not serious,” she said, but he could distinctly the mischievous spark in her brown eyes.
“Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve,” he said, and, looking around furtively, he flung the Invisibility Cloak around them.
He had neglected to remember that although the Invisibility Cloak could house one person comfortably; concealing two grown adults would be a bit of a hassle.
Ginny giggled as he tried to orient himself around her (without making his embarrassment known). “Our shoes are probably showing,” she whispered.
“Let’s just make a run for the elevator,” he suggested.
The door was opening, and in the shuffle of everyone exiting, it was easy for the two pairs of shoes to be unseen. They pushed past the crowd and entered the elevator. Harry pulled out his wand, muttered a spell, and the doors began closing. The elevator jolted as they started to move up, and Harry grabbed the Cloak to pull it off.
“Blimey, the elevator!” someone shouted, and there was a gasp.
“How much of a fine d’you think the Ministry will charge?” Harry asked at Ginny, who was laughing so hard that she had tears in her eyes.
It took a few minutes for her to compose herself. “Nothing. You’re the Boy-Who-Lived. You could say you saw a potential Death Eater coming up here, so you followed them.”
“And I happened to be hiding you under the Invisibility Cloak as well?” he asked, grinning.
“Something like that.”
The elevator smoothed to a stop and the doors opened with a ‘ding.’
Ginny let out an audible gasp as she stepped towards the glass pane. “It’s so beautiful!” she said delightedly.
Harry was too busy watching her reaction to even notice the scenic view below.
She turned around to look at him, and in that moment, he completely forgot that he was supposed to be her ‘older brother,’ and that he was supposed to be thinking entirely platonic thoughts about her.
All he knew was that she had that blazing look in her eyes, so he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her.
Her mouth immediately opened underneath his, and he felt an elated sensation overcome him. It was unthinkable that he had been able to go on everyday knowing what he was missing-her fingers eagerly clasping behind his head, the flowery scent in her soft red hair, and her body pressing against his.
They finally broke off, panting for breath, but stayed with their arms wrapped around each other, with their foreheads leaning against each other’s.
“I should slap you on principle,” Ginny said dreamily. “And then throw you off the Eiffel Tower because we don’t have a lake handy.”
“You can throw me off anytime if I get to kiss you again,” he said, ducking his head to kiss the corner of her mouth.
“I’ve been waiting for you to do that, you know,” she said, and in his quest for trying to place exactly how she tasted, he felt a tear trickling down her cheek.
“What, kiss you?” he asked, lifting a hand to wipe away the tear.
“Yeah. I thought you needed space and time for yourself. So you could figure out exactly what you wanted. I thought it would be selfish to snog you until you couldn’t breathe, just so you could agree to be with me.”
“I thought-I thought-” Harry stepped back a little and gaped at her, unable to believe it. “I thought you weren’t interested in me anymore.”
Ginny scoffed as she looked up at him. “You’re unbelieveable,” she said. She lifted her face so her lips were mere inches from his. “So I think you should make it up to me.”
He was going say something incredibly suave like, ‘I think I can handle that,’ but she had already pressed her lips to his.
-.-
Title: Insane
Challenge: Post-Hogwarts, #33--Eiffel Tower, fic
Summary: He reckons he's a bit afraid of kissing her (seeing how she pushed him into the lake the last time he did), so he takes her to the Eiffel Tower instead.
Rating: PG
Genre: Humor/Romance
Word Count: 2318
Notes/Warnings: Dedicated with a red ribbon to bibliophile20. I hope this contributes to totally making your… day. Or hour. A major thank you to taintedmoonrose for the beta.
Harry really didn’t remember a time when he had been quite so miserable. Admittedly, Voldemort was dead, the Death Eaters were locked up at Azkaban where they belonged, and some semblance of order and peace had been established.
And still, Harry couldn’t help the sigh of utter self-pity from passing his lips. There was just something pathetic about the fact that he was in the City of Romance with Ginny Weasley and hadn’t been able to dig up the courage to kiss her again and admit that he was still madly in love with her.
He’d originally thought that the hard part would be to defeat Voldemort just to be able to get back to her. He’d never really considered the fact that she wouldn’t want him anymore. He had secretly dreamed of the moment for months beforehand. He would apparate to the Burrow immediately after the battle, his black hair smelling like smoke and ashes, and she would fall immediately into his open arms, telling him she had missed him, wanted to marry him and have his children in a house with a white picket fence.
What really happened was a little less romantic. He had been comatose for nearly a week, and had been shipped to somewhere with lots of sun to recuperate with orders not to see anyone.
Although he appreciated the Healers immensely, he couldn’t help but feel a stab of annoyance. If Ginny had been able to come, he had no doubt that she would have visited every day and cheerfully fluffed his pillows for him with promises that once he was out, they could get together once more.
When he had seen her for the first time after that, his brain had broken down completely. Stricken by the sight of her beautiful brown eyes and her bright smile, his brain had gone on a sort of overload with mad, cheesy poetic lines. Unable to think with her lovely flower scent in his nostrils, he had choked out, “Nice shoes.”
It was really only sheer dumb luck that she could stand him at all. He didn’t know anything about charming heroes, but he was sure that the first words spoken to true loves shouldn’t have had anything to do with footwear.
The original plan to travel to Paris included both Ron and Hermione, but at the very last moment, they had ducked out, mysteriously saying that they had a very important meeting that would last about a week in Timbuktu.
Harry highly doubted that they needed to attend a meeting, but had let it go, elated to be alone with Ginny.
There were countless ways that he could have ‘accidentally’ manoeuvred her into a position where she would have no choice but to kiss him back. With so many couples swapping spit shamelessly on the sidewalks, it should have been easy to just steal a kiss from her and then Oblivate her quickly in case she reached for her wand to perform a Bat Bogey.
The truth was, he lacked courage. He had faced Voldemort more times than he changed his socks each week, and still he found himself unable to even think about kissing her without breaking out into a cold sweat.
However, the actual trip had been much better than he could have ever dreamed. They joked about, visited the art museums and ate the fresh bread and the snails together. It was just…Ginny didn’t seem to be interested in him that way anymore.
She treated him exactly like she would treat any of her family members, and he was struggling to do the same.
But he had a niggling sense that he was really failing rather miserably. Older brothers, as a rule, probably shouldn’t have random urges to snog their little sisters.
-.-
“I think we should go visit a river today,” Ginny said cheerily as she came out of her room. Her hair was parted in two pigtails and her brown eyes were sparkling.
Harry tried not to stare, but there was just something arresting about the fact that the freckles on her face seemed to look like cinnamon sprinkled on cream.
If she noticed that he was making an effort to close his gaping mouth, she didn’t say anything. “I mean, we don’t have to visit a river, as long as it’s a body of water.”
“Why?” He was aware that he probably sounded like an idiot, but he was proud of himself for managing even that.
“Because,” she said, one end of her mouth curling up, “we should.”
“I don’t like that grin,” Harry said uncertainly. “Are you going to push me in, is that it?”
“No,” she protested. “Would I ever do that?”
Harry glanced at her, amazed. “You pushed me in the Hogwarts Lake once!”
Ginny blushed suddenly, and Harry did also, as he remembered exactly when it had happened.
“Well, you had just kissed me in front of the entire Common Room after I’d told them for years that I was over you,” Ginny said airily, lifting her chin.
“You weren’t exactly complaining,” Harry said, lifting his eyebrows at her.
“-And just kissing me like that-You could have given me a warning, at the very least!”
Harry suddenly looked at her, and saw her grinning, and although he wanted nothing more than to just pick her up, toss her onto the nearest furniture able to support them, and have his dirty way with her, he settled for just smiling.
“I’ll be sure to give you a warning next time,” Harry said, and Ginny seemed to find a sudden fascination for her fingernails.
“Anyway, the point is that I won’t hit you and push you into the lake this time,” Ginny said impatiently. “Now can we go?”
“I want to know why first,” Harry said, crossing his arms over his chest. Being pushed into a cold lake wasn’t one of the most pleasant feelings, and if he wouldn’t even get a kiss out of it, he saw no reason to repeat the experience.
Unless she offered to help warm him (as she had done last time). But he seriously doubted she would even lift a finger-she would probably laugh endlessly at him.
“Please?”
“No,” Harry said, stubbornly.
“Fine,” Ginny said. “Don’t hear my funny joke,” she said, and sounded very put-out about it.
Harry sighed. “You can just tell it to me now.”
“Cannot,” she said, and turned around so her back was to him.
“I promise I’ll laugh at it.”
“Very funny, Potter,” Ginny said, turning around to stick her tongue out at him.
“As funny as your joke,” he said, flopping down on a large, cushy sofa to press an arm over his face. “So tell it to me,” he said, and his voice was muffled.
“Okay.” Ginny knelt down on the ground so she was at eyelevel with him, resting her chin on the seat where his head was resting. “I know you aren’t going to jump into that river, Harry.”
Harry lifted his arm, uncertain. “Wait, that’s supposed to be funny?”
Ginny ignored his comment. “You’re supposed to say ‘why’,” she informed him, prodding at his shoulder.
“Oh. Why?”
“Because I know you’re not in Seine!” The words gurgled out of her, and she finished, looking highly pleased with herself.
“In… Seine.” Harry’s brow furrowed, and he muttered the words to himself. “In… oh, very funny, Ginny.”
“I’ve been waiting for a chance to say it to you all along,” she said, looking indignant.
He couldn’t help but laugh at her then. “You should probably stick to looking pretty,” he said mockingly. “You won’t be good for anything else, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t think you were ever quite introduced to my Bat Bogey,” Ginny said lightly, her fingers picking up her wand from the table.
Harry rose from the sofa hastily. “Oh, it’s all right. I’ve heard so much about it-there’s no reason for a close acquaintance.”
“Pity, really,” Ginny said, turning around to reach for an apple. “I think you should make it up to me.”
“I thought we could go up to the Eiffel Tower today,” Harry said, relaxing once more.
Ginny dropped her wand in her excitement. “Really? The Eiffel Tower?”
“I didn’t know if you’d like it,” Harry said, looking up at the ceiling.
“You’re serious?” Ginny asked, moving her head so it was right above his. “We’re going up the Eiffel Tower?”
“Yes,” he said, unable to try to even think of a witty way to answer her question, because he could smell her flowery scent tickling his nose.
Suddenly her head disappeared from his direct line of vision. She had stood up, grabbing her purse from a nearby chair. “Get up, Harry,” she said, reaching for a light jacket.
Harry half rose from his position on the sofa, bewildered. “Why?”
“We’re going now,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“What, now?”
Ginny rolled her eyes. “I didn’t get to go to a river to tell you my joke. This is the least you can do.” She tossed his jacket at him and walked over to the door. “I expect you outside in a minute.”
-.-
“What’s he saying?” Ginny asked, looking a bit alarmed as a plump Frenchman bellowed something from the elevator.
“He’s speaking in English,” Harry informed her, as he flipped through a manual on the Eiffel Tower.
“He is?” Ginny inched closer to the guard and made an attempt to understand what he was shouting. She stood like that for a moment, then turned to Harry. “No, he isn’t!”
“Yes, he is. He just said something about not being able to go up to the third level because of security reasons.”
Ginny’s face fell, and she sighed. “I knew something like this would happen. Just when it’s our turn to go, they shut down the elevators.”
Harry merely grinned at her and lifted his eyebrows. He motioned to his pocket with one hand, and with the other, he pulled out his Invisibility Cloak.
Ginny’s mouth fell open. “Harry, you’re not serious,” she said, but he could distinctly the mischievous spark in her brown eyes.
“Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve,” he said, and, looking around furtively, he flung the Invisibility Cloak around them.
He had neglected to remember that although the Invisibility Cloak could house one person comfortably; concealing two grown adults would be a bit of a hassle.
Ginny giggled as he tried to orient himself around her (without making his embarrassment known). “Our shoes are probably showing,” she whispered.
“Let’s just make a run for the elevator,” he suggested.
The door was opening, and in the shuffle of everyone exiting, it was easy for the two pairs of shoes to be unseen. They pushed past the crowd and entered the elevator. Harry pulled out his wand, muttered a spell, and the doors began closing. The elevator jolted as they started to move up, and Harry grabbed the Cloak to pull it off.
“Blimey, the elevator!” someone shouted, and there was a gasp.
“How much of a fine d’you think the Ministry will charge?” Harry asked at Ginny, who was laughing so hard that she had tears in her eyes.
It took a few minutes for her to compose herself. “Nothing. You’re the Boy-Who-Lived. You could say you saw a potential Death Eater coming up here, so you followed them.”
“And I happened to be hiding you under the Invisibility Cloak as well?” he asked, grinning.
“Something like that.”
The elevator smoothed to a stop and the doors opened with a ‘ding.’
Ginny let out an audible gasp as she stepped towards the glass pane. “It’s so beautiful!” she said delightedly.
Harry was too busy watching her reaction to even notice the scenic view below.
She turned around to look at him, and in that moment, he completely forgot that he was supposed to be her ‘older brother,’ and that he was supposed to be thinking entirely platonic thoughts about her.
All he knew was that she had that blazing look in her eyes, so he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her.
Her mouth immediately opened underneath his, and he felt an elated sensation overcome him. It was unthinkable that he had been able to go on everyday knowing what he was missing-her fingers eagerly clasping behind his head, the flowery scent in her soft red hair, and her body pressing against his.
They finally broke off, panting for breath, but stayed with their arms wrapped around each other, with their foreheads leaning against each other’s.
“I should slap you on principle,” Ginny said dreamily. “And then throw you off the Eiffel Tower because we don’t have a lake handy.”
“You can throw me off anytime if I get to kiss you again,” he said, ducking his head to kiss the corner of her mouth.
“I’ve been waiting for you to do that, you know,” she said, and in his quest for trying to place exactly how she tasted, he felt a tear trickling down her cheek.
“What, kiss you?” he asked, lifting a hand to wipe away the tear.
“Yeah. I thought you needed space and time for yourself. So you could figure out exactly what you wanted. I thought it would be selfish to snog you until you couldn’t breathe, just so you could agree to be with me.”
“I thought-I thought-” Harry stepped back a little and gaped at her, unable to believe it. “I thought you weren’t interested in me anymore.”
Ginny scoffed as she looked up at him. “You’re unbelieveable,” she said. She lifted her face so her lips were mere inches from his. “So I think you should make it up to me.”
He was going say something incredibly suave like, ‘I think I can handle that,’ but she had already pressed her lips to his.
-.-