Love and Deathsticks
Title: Love and Deathsticks
Pairing: Ginny/Angelina, mentions of various canon pairings
Rating: R for language and drinking away one's problems
Word Count: 3,737
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, I just like writing about these folks
Summary: Ginny's feeling a bit out of sorts now that the war is won.
Notes: Post-DH, pre-epilogue. Emo post-war drama.
After downing the last of her firewhiskey - realizing that the drink didn’t have the same effect it once did certainly wasn’t any help for her mood - she put another few Sickles on the counter before silently backing away and heading out what was often referred to as the “Muggle door.” Then she took a couple of steps down the street and propped herself against a windowless segment of brick wall before taking a cigarette and lighter from her pocket. While she appreciated the right to smoke inside the Leaky Cauldron, unlike some other places in the world she’d heard about, doing it outside on a deserted sidewalk provided her the privacy she truly needed to unwind. Because really, if it wasn’t going to help cure her depression, anxiety, and a dozen other forms of mental anguish, what was the point of lighting up?
Of course, the second she lit the tip of her cigarette, her solitude was broken.
“Ginevra?” called a voice from the shadows across the street.
It wasn’t a name she heard often. It was always either Ginny or Weasley, even though, at least in years since past, she was rarely in a situation where the latter was specific enough. In fact, there were only two people who regularly called her by that name, and she was well past the age where her mother shouting her full name had the desired effect. She was never clear, though, on why Angelina Johnson had always chosen to use her given name - or why it never bothered her the way she thought it should.
Ginny picked her head up slightly and held aside her cigarette, the sort of gesture that said, “Yes, I heard you, and yes, I am in fact Ginevra Weasley, but I’m not really in the mood for pleasantries right now.” The tall woman across the street noticed the gesture, and nevertheless joined the redhead against the wall. Ginny didn’t particularly mind the invasion of her privacy - she didn’t enjoy it, but it couldn’t possibly bring her mood any lower than it already was - as long as she didn’t have to pretend to be happy. Fortunately, when she saw Angelina’s face, it looked nearly as sullen as Ginny felt.
There was a silence as the two women - they were still rather young women, but their experiences had aged them more than time - simply stood there, looking across the street but not processing anything they were seeing. It was not the awkward variety of silence, just the silence between two people who had nothing to say, and didn’t necessarily mind things being that way. Finally, when Ginny was nearly done with her cigarette and reached for the next, it was Angelina who spoke first. “You smoke like a Muggle,” she said in that sort of derisive tone with a tinge of bemused humor behind it.
Ginny couldn’t help it. Her eyebrow arched quizzically towards Angelina and the corners of her mouth turned ever so slightly upward in a smirk. Her brain started calculating against her will - fifteen hours, that was how long it had been since she was last able to smile, shortly after she woke up in the morning. It wasn’t awful, there were days - weeks - when she’d gone much longer, but it wasn’t nearly short enough either. She waited for Angelina to glance sideways at her with a similar tiny smirk before responding. “So what? There’s a Muggle way and a wizarding way to smoke a cigarette now?”
“To light one, yeah. That wasn’t your wand you used, was it?”
“No, you arse, it was not. We don’t have to use magic for everything, do we?” she said. To emphasize her point, she stuck the fresh cigarette in her mouth, lighting it with the butt of the previous one. It doesn’t get more Muggle than that. The silence returned, broken only by Ginny muttering four letters under her breath. “Fuck.”
“Things not going well then?”
“Oh no, it’s just peachy fucking keen.” She took a long drag on her cigarette to emphasize her sarcasm.
“I heard about you and Harry.”
Taking another drag before responding, Ginny was careful not to make eye contact with Angelina, even though she was standing right next to her. “How did you hear about that?”
“Think about it, girl. You were dating the Chosen One. Do you not read the Prophet anymore? They had a field day with you guys.” Ginny’s face started to redden - was it embarrassment, or deep-seated anger at Rita Skeeter spending years discrediting her now ex-boyfriend and the long dead headmaster her family and friends all worshipped? “It’s not exactly the sort of thing you can keep a secret in our world.”
“Well, all the more reason to be shot of him then.”
Angelina was taken aback - that was certainly not a comment she was expecting in response - and for the first time since she crossed the street, she turned towards Ginny in an attempt at eye contact. Ginny, though, resolutely stared straight at the drab Muggle flats facing the Leaky Cauldron, twiddling the cigarette in her fingers between drags. Desperate for something, Angelina prodded her former friend further. “So what happened to you two, anyway?”
It should have been obvious that this, perhaps above all things, was the one Ginny was least willing to talk about. She attempted to take another long drag to express her displeasure at the conversation topic, only to wince when she realized she was smoking filter. Angrily she flicked the butt into the street, realizing too late that then she couldn’t use it to light her next one the way she had before. She debated for a bit how she was going to light the fresh one she’d stuck in her mouth, but she decided to give in. She held her hand under the cigarette, looked around surreptitiously, and hesitated for a moment before she snapped her fingers, causing a flame to appear. “Happy now?” she asked bitterly after taking the long-awaited drag.
Angelina didn’t respond immediately, since the words out of Ginny’s mouth were clearly not an answer to the question she asked. “Doesn’t make a lick of difference to me how you light your cigarette. I mean, we are technically in Muggle London, you should feel free to do it the Muggle way if it suits you.”
“Well, thank you for your permission,” Ginny replied, finally turning towards Angelina and giving her a mock curtsey. However, she promptly turned back away and propped herself up against the wall again, almost as if her body had carved out a groove where it belonged. Angelina had nearly given up on the girl she once practiced Quidditch with several days (and sometimes nights) out of the week, tired of her rudeness, and was about to head into the Leaky Cauldron when Ginny opened her mouth to speak again. Concentrating on the glowing embers at the end of the cigarette, she said, “Funny, isn’t it? How Muggles call these Deathsticks? Doesn’t really have the same meaning when you’ve seen exactly how much death you can cause with a foot-long piece of wood.” She left out the part about how her ex defeated Voldemort despite having the actual Deathstick pointed at him. Glorifying Harry Potter no longer suited her mood.
Angelina just sort of glared at Ginny. “Deathsticks?”
“Yeah, cuz of all those maladies they cause. Still, it sure feels better than not smoking them if you know what I mean.”
Angelina thought about sarcastically asking if everything was all right, since it clearly wasn’t, but she realized she’d already done that, and as a tactic to get Ginny to share more information, it failed miserably. “Wow,” she said instead. “Morbid much?”
“Yeah,” Ginny replied sardonically in between smoke rings.
“Harry must have really done a number on you.”
Immediately Angelina knew she said the right thing - or the wrong thing, depending on one’s point of view. Ginny’s eyes bulged, and for a moment Angelina was afraid Ginny was going to take her down, whether by fist or by wand. She knew she was capable, too. Few who were around Hogwarts towards the end of the war doubted the magical abilities of those who fought in the final battle. The prevailing theory was that if you were there, and you left the school alive, you must have been pretty quick with your wand. Ginny, though, had an extra advantage, which Angelina was intimately familiar with, having seen her body in the locker rooms at Hogwarts, and how she used her body on the pitch. It was enough to know that Ginny hid more than enough brawn on her petite frame, and Angelina had no desire to be on the wrong end of Ginny’s left fist.
Ginny, to her credit, had no desire to put Angelina at the business end of her fist, only to give her a severe tongue-lashing of a diatribe. “You really think this is all about Harry?! Fuck that! Fuck Harry. You want to know why I’m morbid? I’m morbid because people are dead. My brother is gone, Dumbledore’s gone, Snape - fuck, I still don’t know what to make of him, but it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s dead. Colin Creevey! I mean, what the fuck did he do to deserve to die?”
Angelina was surprised to find herself near tears at the litany of names Ginny ran off. Ginny, for her part, was trying to look away as she regained her composure. “I don’t think any of them did anything to deserve to die,” Angelina said. “That’s why we fought the Death Eaters, isn’t it? So they stopped killing people who didn’t deserve to die?”
Ginny could tell that Angelina was saying this in an attempt to cheer her up, and though she wanted so desperately for it to work, there was something powerful blocking those emotions from reaching the surface. What Angelina’s words did succeed in doing, though, was unlocking Ginny’s inhibition. “Yeah, well, whoo-hoo. Now the Death Eaters are all gone, but everyone’s still dead, aren’t they? They’re still gone, I still come here and drink firewhiskey and chain smoke, and now I don’t even have a boyfriend to go home to.”
“So it is about Harry?”
“No,” Ginny repeated. A few seconds later, though, she changed her mind. “Yes… sort of. I mean, I’d still be out here even if it hadn’t been for that. Certainly doesn’t help though.” She paused, staring cross-eyed at her cigarette as she smoked it. “Might have left after the first one if I didn’t have to deal with all his shit.”
“What shit?”
Ginny took a deep breath - of fresh air (as fresh as air got in the side alleys of Muggle London), not of cigarette smoke - as she prepared her response. “Did Harry ever tell you what Dumbledore taught him, about how sometimes you have to make the choice between what is easy and what is right?”
“I didn’t hear it from Harry, no, but it sounds like something my parents would have said.”
“Yeah, well, he should have taken his own advice.” She finished off the third one and threw it to join its brother across the street. The cigarettes weren’t going to cut it for this, she thought; she wished dearly that they were back inside discussing this over Ogden’s Firewhiskey rather than Muggle-made cigarettes. “There’s an easy way to deal with a girlfriend who can’t handle a dead brother and fighting in a war when she’s fucking seventeen years old, and there’s a right way. He decided to just ignore me and hope that I could get better on my own.”
“Well, maybe he had his own demons to deal with.”
“Jesus, you think I don’t know that? The number of times I had to keep my ears open while he told me everything that was wrong or had ever been wrong with his life! He just never quite felt I was worthy of the same services.”
“So you were there for him and he wasn’t there for you?”
“Yeah,” Ginny replied, thinking if she were inside, she would down an entire pint of whiskey before saying the next sentence. “That, and he slept with some pixie-waif blonde bimbo of an Auror trainee.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. She’s a nice enough girl. Too bad I have to hate her now.”
“You met her?”
“Yeah, the three of us had dinner together a couple of times after he was done training her.”
“You had dinner together?!”
“Well, that’s how they throw you off the scent, see? Hey, honey, there’s this friend from work I’d like you to meet, and then before you know it the friend from work is the dumb bird balancing on his balls when you’re not looking.”
“Well, I guess that settles it then. Boys are evil. Wanna swear off men with me?”
Ginny gave Angelina a wry look. “You’re going to swear off men?”
“No, not really. Although maybe for a while. They just annoy me, you know?”
“Oh God, yes,” Ginny paused as she let a smile develop on her face. “Hey. Do you think Harry and Fred ever found out about that day after Quidditch practice?”
Angelina returned the smile, although on her face it seemed much more of a grin. “Of course not, why would they have? You weren’t dating Harry yet, and I wouldn’t even talk to Fred and George and ‘em all after they got themselves banned from Quidditch.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t their fault. Umbridge was a bitch.”
“I know, but at the time, it didn’t make any difference to me. I learned how to captain from Wood, and if you fucked up my Quidditch team, you were fucking dead to me.”
“Yeah, I used to feel the same way. Fucking Cormac.”
“God, I heard about that. I’m surprised Harry didn’t hex him on the spot.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t hex him within an inch of his life.” She paused, and again cast a sideways glance at Angelina. “So whatever happened with you and Fred? Cuz you weren’t dating when he… you know… right?”
“Yeah. I mean don’t get me wrong, I was pretty torn up when he died. He and George - we were all really close at Hogwarts. But I guess at least I didn’t lose my boyfriend.”
“So what happened? I mean, it’s your business - you don’t have to tell me…”
“Well, if you want to know, telling you is the least I can do after I got you to open up.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I first walked up, I could barely get you to string two sentences together.”
“Yeah, well, you interrupted my cigarette. It kind of defeats the purpose of smoking to unwind if you spend the whole time talking about the very demons you’re trying to escape.”
“I’m sorry,” Angelina replied, and the silence grew more awkward as her guilt suddenly manifested.
“No, it’s all right,” she begrudgingly admitted. “Probably better to talk about it than to smoke it away.”
“You think?”
“Not funny.” Ginny briefly debated taking a fourth cigarette out of her pocket, but instead just smiled at Angelina to let her know the anger was short-lived. “So, you and Fred?” she prodded as a means to changing the subject.
“Nothing.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing happened with me and Fred. We were never really dating I think. Like he was a great bloke to hang around, but when it came to being a boyfriend, he was absolute shite. I mean, we kissed after the Yule Ball, and it was sweet, but I can’t think of a single romantic thing he did for me afterwards. I mean, the whole time we were an item that year, he was always flirting with Katie, or ogling that dumb Veela bitch walking around.”
“I’ll have you know that’s my brother’s ex-wife you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, and you hated her more than I do.”
“Bill’s even more glad to be rid of her than I am. Just like you said, ain’t it? He finally realized what a stuck-up bitch she was, got out while he could, and everyone’s the better for it.”
“Even Fleur?”
“You think I care about Phlegm?”
“Point taken.”
“It’s like there’s this unwritten rule somehow that Weasleys aren’t allowed to be happy in love.”
“What about your brother Ron? He and Hermione are still going strong, aren’t they?”
“Depends what you mean by ‘going strong’ though, doesn’t it? They’re still at each other’s throats half the time, and they’ve been together God knows how long. Same thing with Percy and that Clearwater bitch. I’m pretty sure the only thing she sees in him is that she can walk all over him.”
“What does he see in her then?”
“Strictly business I think. She has all the same Ministry ambition crap that he does. To be honest, I think she’s the only reason he pulled all that shit with our family before the war. At least he came out of it at the end though.”
“It sucks, doesn’t it? How it’s always the ones who try to do the most good that get hurt the most?”
“It’s almost like no one thought it out. Like killing Voldemort would automatically solve everyone’s problems and everyone would be happy? Like you can suddenly fast-forward nineteen years, and magically you’re happily married with three kids? It doesn’t work like that.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Angelina paused briefly, recognizing the familiar feeling of reality setting in. “I hate how half the time, it almost seems like things are worse now than they were during the war.”
“We’re not living in fear anymore. So now we can just focus on how much life sucks without being able to look forward to some Dark Lord’s defeat to make everything better,” Ginny replied, and then she simply sighed.
“You wanna go back inside and get a drink?”
“Not really, no. I’ve already been in there tonight. There’s nothing left for me in there.”
“What’s left for you out here?”
“Fuck if I know. Probably nothing here, too.”
There was silence for a moment, and Angelina was clearly pondering something, Ginny could see it in her eyes. Swearing off men for a while did sound like a good idea to Angelina, and now here was her former Quidditich teammate standing next to her, a girl whose body she always admired - even if it wasn’t in game shape anymore, pack-a-day smoking and staying off the pitch saw to that. Angelina turned and stood so she was looking Ginny in the face, the redhead too focused on her own thoughts to realize what was going to happen until it was nearly too late. As Angelina leaned in with her lips slightly puckered, Ginny asked simply, “What are you doing?”
“What do you think? I’m trying to cheer you up.”
“Ange, I just finished chain-smoking three cigarettes. You don’t want to kiss me.”
“Ginevra, honey, eventually you’re going to have to accept that other people’s lives suck, too. You really think I’ve never had one of your Deathsticks before? Trust me, my lips have touched far fouler things.” Angelina smiled and Ginny returned the tiniest of smirks. “Now, are you going to let me kiss you, or do I have to take you by force?”
Ginny was about to lean in for the kiss until the memories of that night after Quidditch practice came rushing back. She was the last one out of the showers, and when she stepped back into the changing area with her towel wrapped snuggly around herm it appeared to be entirely empty. Halfway through her ritual of brushing her hair, she was momentarily surprised when Angelina rounded the corner still dressed in her Quidditch robes. “Hey,” Ginny said, almost in a whisper, far more timid than she usually sounded.
“Hey,” Angelina replied. “Just finished locking up all the equipment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be captain and all, but sometimes it’s a real pain in the arse.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“You know, I’ve been meaning to tell you…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, you’re amazing out there. Our team is shite without those three, but with you out there, we can at least pretend to be respectable. I mean, we only lost the last match by ten points because of you. Play like that keeps us in the running for the Cup.”
Ginny blushed, and no sooner had she removed her towel and hung it over the door of her locker than she was pinned against the bank of lockers, cool metal pressing against her bare skin, their lips and tongues entangled in a most unexpected dance. The two girls flirted with each other often the rest of that year, but it was Angelina’s last year at Hogwarts, and they never found the opportunity to repeat their lambada. Shortly afterwards, Ginny started locking lips with Dean Thomas instead, then Harry, but now, even years later, that night after Quidditch practice was the only time Ginny found herself taking such a submissive role in a romantic encounter.
She found she rather liked being pinned against the lockers.
Letting the memories continue playing in her mind, Ginny put her lips near Angelina’s earlobe. Finding it surprisingly difficult to restrain herself from taking a nibble, she lightly whispered, “Take me.” The words, along with her gentle breath, aroused Angelina far more than the nibble could have.
There was no hesitation.
Within seconds - so quickly that Ginny couldn’t be sure if it was done by magic or by physical force - Ginny was backed up against the wall, her arms held over her head, pinned at the wrist by Angelina’s forceful grip, and Angelina’s tongue invading deep into her mouth.
“You know,” Angelina said minutes - hours? It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. - later, quite short of breath. “Come to think of it, I’d rather not go inside either. You wanna come back to my place instead?”
“Depends, you’re not going to make me wait another ten years before we do that again, are you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Then let’s go.” They walked off hand in hand, Angelina still smiling, Ginny still only smirking, and Ginny continued, “You were right.”
“About what?”
“I could probably use a good lay.”
Pairing: Ginny/Angelina, mentions of various canon pairings
Rating: R for language and drinking away one's problems
Word Count: 3,737
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, I just like writing about these folks
Summary: Ginny's feeling a bit out of sorts now that the war is won.
Notes: Post-DH, pre-epilogue. Emo post-war drama.
After downing the last of her firewhiskey - realizing that the drink didn’t have the same effect it once did certainly wasn’t any help for her mood - she put another few Sickles on the counter before silently backing away and heading out what was often referred to as the “Muggle door.” Then she took a couple of steps down the street and propped herself against a windowless segment of brick wall before taking a cigarette and lighter from her pocket. While she appreciated the right to smoke inside the Leaky Cauldron, unlike some other places in the world she’d heard about, doing it outside on a deserted sidewalk provided her the privacy she truly needed to unwind. Because really, if it wasn’t going to help cure her depression, anxiety, and a dozen other forms of mental anguish, what was the point of lighting up?
Of course, the second she lit the tip of her cigarette, her solitude was broken.
“Ginevra?” called a voice from the shadows across the street.
It wasn’t a name she heard often. It was always either Ginny or Weasley, even though, at least in years since past, she was rarely in a situation where the latter was specific enough. In fact, there were only two people who regularly called her by that name, and she was well past the age where her mother shouting her full name had the desired effect. She was never clear, though, on why Angelina Johnson had always chosen to use her given name - or why it never bothered her the way she thought it should.
Ginny picked her head up slightly and held aside her cigarette, the sort of gesture that said, “Yes, I heard you, and yes, I am in fact Ginevra Weasley, but I’m not really in the mood for pleasantries right now.” The tall woman across the street noticed the gesture, and nevertheless joined the redhead against the wall. Ginny didn’t particularly mind the invasion of her privacy - she didn’t enjoy it, but it couldn’t possibly bring her mood any lower than it already was - as long as she didn’t have to pretend to be happy. Fortunately, when she saw Angelina’s face, it looked nearly as sullen as Ginny felt.
There was a silence as the two women - they were still rather young women, but their experiences had aged them more than time - simply stood there, looking across the street but not processing anything they were seeing. It was not the awkward variety of silence, just the silence between two people who had nothing to say, and didn’t necessarily mind things being that way. Finally, when Ginny was nearly done with her cigarette and reached for the next, it was Angelina who spoke first. “You smoke like a Muggle,” she said in that sort of derisive tone with a tinge of bemused humor behind it.
Ginny couldn’t help it. Her eyebrow arched quizzically towards Angelina and the corners of her mouth turned ever so slightly upward in a smirk. Her brain started calculating against her will - fifteen hours, that was how long it had been since she was last able to smile, shortly after she woke up in the morning. It wasn’t awful, there were days - weeks - when she’d gone much longer, but it wasn’t nearly short enough either. She waited for Angelina to glance sideways at her with a similar tiny smirk before responding. “So what? There’s a Muggle way and a wizarding way to smoke a cigarette now?”
“To light one, yeah. That wasn’t your wand you used, was it?”
“No, you arse, it was not. We don’t have to use magic for everything, do we?” she said. To emphasize her point, she stuck the fresh cigarette in her mouth, lighting it with the butt of the previous one. It doesn’t get more Muggle than that. The silence returned, broken only by Ginny muttering four letters under her breath. “Fuck.”
“Things not going well then?”
“Oh no, it’s just peachy fucking keen.” She took a long drag on her cigarette to emphasize her sarcasm.
“I heard about you and Harry.”
Taking another drag before responding, Ginny was careful not to make eye contact with Angelina, even though she was standing right next to her. “How did you hear about that?”
“Think about it, girl. You were dating the Chosen One. Do you not read the Prophet anymore? They had a field day with you guys.” Ginny’s face started to redden - was it embarrassment, or deep-seated anger at Rita Skeeter spending years discrediting her now ex-boyfriend and the long dead headmaster her family and friends all worshipped? “It’s not exactly the sort of thing you can keep a secret in our world.”
“Well, all the more reason to be shot of him then.”
Angelina was taken aback - that was certainly not a comment she was expecting in response - and for the first time since she crossed the street, she turned towards Ginny in an attempt at eye contact. Ginny, though, resolutely stared straight at the drab Muggle flats facing the Leaky Cauldron, twiddling the cigarette in her fingers between drags. Desperate for something, Angelina prodded her former friend further. “So what happened to you two, anyway?”
It should have been obvious that this, perhaps above all things, was the one Ginny was least willing to talk about. She attempted to take another long drag to express her displeasure at the conversation topic, only to wince when she realized she was smoking filter. Angrily she flicked the butt into the street, realizing too late that then she couldn’t use it to light her next one the way she had before. She debated for a bit how she was going to light the fresh one she’d stuck in her mouth, but she decided to give in. She held her hand under the cigarette, looked around surreptitiously, and hesitated for a moment before she snapped her fingers, causing a flame to appear. “Happy now?” she asked bitterly after taking the long-awaited drag.
Angelina didn’t respond immediately, since the words out of Ginny’s mouth were clearly not an answer to the question she asked. “Doesn’t make a lick of difference to me how you light your cigarette. I mean, we are technically in Muggle London, you should feel free to do it the Muggle way if it suits you.”
“Well, thank you for your permission,” Ginny replied, finally turning towards Angelina and giving her a mock curtsey. However, she promptly turned back away and propped herself up against the wall again, almost as if her body had carved out a groove where it belonged. Angelina had nearly given up on the girl she once practiced Quidditch with several days (and sometimes nights) out of the week, tired of her rudeness, and was about to head into the Leaky Cauldron when Ginny opened her mouth to speak again. Concentrating on the glowing embers at the end of the cigarette, she said, “Funny, isn’t it? How Muggles call these Deathsticks? Doesn’t really have the same meaning when you’ve seen exactly how much death you can cause with a foot-long piece of wood.” She left out the part about how her ex defeated Voldemort despite having the actual Deathstick pointed at him. Glorifying Harry Potter no longer suited her mood.
Angelina just sort of glared at Ginny. “Deathsticks?”
“Yeah, cuz of all those maladies they cause. Still, it sure feels better than not smoking them if you know what I mean.”
Angelina thought about sarcastically asking if everything was all right, since it clearly wasn’t, but she realized she’d already done that, and as a tactic to get Ginny to share more information, it failed miserably. “Wow,” she said instead. “Morbid much?”
“Yeah,” Ginny replied sardonically in between smoke rings.
“Harry must have really done a number on you.”
Immediately Angelina knew she said the right thing - or the wrong thing, depending on one’s point of view. Ginny’s eyes bulged, and for a moment Angelina was afraid Ginny was going to take her down, whether by fist or by wand. She knew she was capable, too. Few who were around Hogwarts towards the end of the war doubted the magical abilities of those who fought in the final battle. The prevailing theory was that if you were there, and you left the school alive, you must have been pretty quick with your wand. Ginny, though, had an extra advantage, which Angelina was intimately familiar with, having seen her body in the locker rooms at Hogwarts, and how she used her body on the pitch. It was enough to know that Ginny hid more than enough brawn on her petite frame, and Angelina had no desire to be on the wrong end of Ginny’s left fist.
Ginny, to her credit, had no desire to put Angelina at the business end of her fist, only to give her a severe tongue-lashing of a diatribe. “You really think this is all about Harry?! Fuck that! Fuck Harry. You want to know why I’m morbid? I’m morbid because people are dead. My brother is gone, Dumbledore’s gone, Snape - fuck, I still don’t know what to make of him, but it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s dead. Colin Creevey! I mean, what the fuck did he do to deserve to die?”
Angelina was surprised to find herself near tears at the litany of names Ginny ran off. Ginny, for her part, was trying to look away as she regained her composure. “I don’t think any of them did anything to deserve to die,” Angelina said. “That’s why we fought the Death Eaters, isn’t it? So they stopped killing people who didn’t deserve to die?”
Ginny could tell that Angelina was saying this in an attempt to cheer her up, and though she wanted so desperately for it to work, there was something powerful blocking those emotions from reaching the surface. What Angelina’s words did succeed in doing, though, was unlocking Ginny’s inhibition. “Yeah, well, whoo-hoo. Now the Death Eaters are all gone, but everyone’s still dead, aren’t they? They’re still gone, I still come here and drink firewhiskey and chain smoke, and now I don’t even have a boyfriend to go home to.”
“So it is about Harry?”
“No,” Ginny repeated. A few seconds later, though, she changed her mind. “Yes… sort of. I mean, I’d still be out here even if it hadn’t been for that. Certainly doesn’t help though.” She paused, staring cross-eyed at her cigarette as she smoked it. “Might have left after the first one if I didn’t have to deal with all his shit.”
“What shit?”
Ginny took a deep breath - of fresh air (as fresh as air got in the side alleys of Muggle London), not of cigarette smoke - as she prepared her response. “Did Harry ever tell you what Dumbledore taught him, about how sometimes you have to make the choice between what is easy and what is right?”
“I didn’t hear it from Harry, no, but it sounds like something my parents would have said.”
“Yeah, well, he should have taken his own advice.” She finished off the third one and threw it to join its brother across the street. The cigarettes weren’t going to cut it for this, she thought; she wished dearly that they were back inside discussing this over Ogden’s Firewhiskey rather than Muggle-made cigarettes. “There’s an easy way to deal with a girlfriend who can’t handle a dead brother and fighting in a war when she’s fucking seventeen years old, and there’s a right way. He decided to just ignore me and hope that I could get better on my own.”
“Well, maybe he had his own demons to deal with.”
“Jesus, you think I don’t know that? The number of times I had to keep my ears open while he told me everything that was wrong or had ever been wrong with his life! He just never quite felt I was worthy of the same services.”
“So you were there for him and he wasn’t there for you?”
“Yeah,” Ginny replied, thinking if she were inside, she would down an entire pint of whiskey before saying the next sentence. “That, and he slept with some pixie-waif blonde bimbo of an Auror trainee.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. She’s a nice enough girl. Too bad I have to hate her now.”
“You met her?”
“Yeah, the three of us had dinner together a couple of times after he was done training her.”
“You had dinner together?!”
“Well, that’s how they throw you off the scent, see? Hey, honey, there’s this friend from work I’d like you to meet, and then before you know it the friend from work is the dumb bird balancing on his balls when you’re not looking.”
“Well, I guess that settles it then. Boys are evil. Wanna swear off men with me?”
Ginny gave Angelina a wry look. “You’re going to swear off men?”
“No, not really. Although maybe for a while. They just annoy me, you know?”
“Oh God, yes,” Ginny paused as she let a smile develop on her face. “Hey. Do you think Harry and Fred ever found out about that day after Quidditch practice?”
Angelina returned the smile, although on her face it seemed much more of a grin. “Of course not, why would they have? You weren’t dating Harry yet, and I wouldn’t even talk to Fred and George and ‘em all after they got themselves banned from Quidditch.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t their fault. Umbridge was a bitch.”
“I know, but at the time, it didn’t make any difference to me. I learned how to captain from Wood, and if you fucked up my Quidditch team, you were fucking dead to me.”
“Yeah, I used to feel the same way. Fucking Cormac.”
“God, I heard about that. I’m surprised Harry didn’t hex him on the spot.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t hex him within an inch of his life.” She paused, and again cast a sideways glance at Angelina. “So whatever happened with you and Fred? Cuz you weren’t dating when he… you know… right?”
“Yeah. I mean don’t get me wrong, I was pretty torn up when he died. He and George - we were all really close at Hogwarts. But I guess at least I didn’t lose my boyfriend.”
“So what happened? I mean, it’s your business - you don’t have to tell me…”
“Well, if you want to know, telling you is the least I can do after I got you to open up.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I first walked up, I could barely get you to string two sentences together.”
“Yeah, well, you interrupted my cigarette. It kind of defeats the purpose of smoking to unwind if you spend the whole time talking about the very demons you’re trying to escape.”
“I’m sorry,” Angelina replied, and the silence grew more awkward as her guilt suddenly manifested.
“No, it’s all right,” she begrudgingly admitted. “Probably better to talk about it than to smoke it away.”
“You think?”
“Not funny.” Ginny briefly debated taking a fourth cigarette out of her pocket, but instead just smiled at Angelina to let her know the anger was short-lived. “So, you and Fred?” she prodded as a means to changing the subject.
“Nothing.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing happened with me and Fred. We were never really dating I think. Like he was a great bloke to hang around, but when it came to being a boyfriend, he was absolute shite. I mean, we kissed after the Yule Ball, and it was sweet, but I can’t think of a single romantic thing he did for me afterwards. I mean, the whole time we were an item that year, he was always flirting with Katie, or ogling that dumb Veela bitch walking around.”
“I’ll have you know that’s my brother’s ex-wife you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, and you hated her more than I do.”
“Bill’s even more glad to be rid of her than I am. Just like you said, ain’t it? He finally realized what a stuck-up bitch she was, got out while he could, and everyone’s the better for it.”
“Even Fleur?”
“You think I care about Phlegm?”
“Point taken.”
“It’s like there’s this unwritten rule somehow that Weasleys aren’t allowed to be happy in love.”
“What about your brother Ron? He and Hermione are still going strong, aren’t they?”
“Depends what you mean by ‘going strong’ though, doesn’t it? They’re still at each other’s throats half the time, and they’ve been together God knows how long. Same thing with Percy and that Clearwater bitch. I’m pretty sure the only thing she sees in him is that she can walk all over him.”
“What does he see in her then?”
“Strictly business I think. She has all the same Ministry ambition crap that he does. To be honest, I think she’s the only reason he pulled all that shit with our family before the war. At least he came out of it at the end though.”
“It sucks, doesn’t it? How it’s always the ones who try to do the most good that get hurt the most?”
“It’s almost like no one thought it out. Like killing Voldemort would automatically solve everyone’s problems and everyone would be happy? Like you can suddenly fast-forward nineteen years, and magically you’re happily married with three kids? It doesn’t work like that.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Angelina paused briefly, recognizing the familiar feeling of reality setting in. “I hate how half the time, it almost seems like things are worse now than they were during the war.”
“We’re not living in fear anymore. So now we can just focus on how much life sucks without being able to look forward to some Dark Lord’s defeat to make everything better,” Ginny replied, and then she simply sighed.
“You wanna go back inside and get a drink?”
“Not really, no. I’ve already been in there tonight. There’s nothing left for me in there.”
“What’s left for you out here?”
“Fuck if I know. Probably nothing here, too.”
There was silence for a moment, and Angelina was clearly pondering something, Ginny could see it in her eyes. Swearing off men for a while did sound like a good idea to Angelina, and now here was her former Quidditich teammate standing next to her, a girl whose body she always admired - even if it wasn’t in game shape anymore, pack-a-day smoking and staying off the pitch saw to that. Angelina turned and stood so she was looking Ginny in the face, the redhead too focused on her own thoughts to realize what was going to happen until it was nearly too late. As Angelina leaned in with her lips slightly puckered, Ginny asked simply, “What are you doing?”
“What do you think? I’m trying to cheer you up.”
“Ange, I just finished chain-smoking three cigarettes. You don’t want to kiss me.”
“Ginevra, honey, eventually you’re going to have to accept that other people’s lives suck, too. You really think I’ve never had one of your Deathsticks before? Trust me, my lips have touched far fouler things.” Angelina smiled and Ginny returned the tiniest of smirks. “Now, are you going to let me kiss you, or do I have to take you by force?”
Ginny was about to lean in for the kiss until the memories of that night after Quidditch practice came rushing back. She was the last one out of the showers, and when she stepped back into the changing area with her towel wrapped snuggly around herm it appeared to be entirely empty. Halfway through her ritual of brushing her hair, she was momentarily surprised when Angelina rounded the corner still dressed in her Quidditch robes. “Hey,” Ginny said, almost in a whisper, far more timid than she usually sounded.
“Hey,” Angelina replied. “Just finished locking up all the equipment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be captain and all, but sometimes it’s a real pain in the arse.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“You know, I’ve been meaning to tell you…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, you’re amazing out there. Our team is shite without those three, but with you out there, we can at least pretend to be respectable. I mean, we only lost the last match by ten points because of you. Play like that keeps us in the running for the Cup.”
Ginny blushed, and no sooner had she removed her towel and hung it over the door of her locker than she was pinned against the bank of lockers, cool metal pressing against her bare skin, their lips and tongues entangled in a most unexpected dance. The two girls flirted with each other often the rest of that year, but it was Angelina’s last year at Hogwarts, and they never found the opportunity to repeat their lambada. Shortly afterwards, Ginny started locking lips with Dean Thomas instead, then Harry, but now, even years later, that night after Quidditch practice was the only time Ginny found herself taking such a submissive role in a romantic encounter.
She found she rather liked being pinned against the lockers.
Letting the memories continue playing in her mind, Ginny put her lips near Angelina’s earlobe. Finding it surprisingly difficult to restrain herself from taking a nibble, she lightly whispered, “Take me.” The words, along with her gentle breath, aroused Angelina far more than the nibble could have.
There was no hesitation.
Within seconds - so quickly that Ginny couldn’t be sure if it was done by magic or by physical force - Ginny was backed up against the wall, her arms held over her head, pinned at the wrist by Angelina’s forceful grip, and Angelina’s tongue invading deep into her mouth.
“You know,” Angelina said minutes - hours? It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. - later, quite short of breath. “Come to think of it, I’d rather not go inside either. You wanna come back to my place instead?”
“Depends, you’re not going to make me wait another ten years before we do that again, are you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Then let’s go.” They walked off hand in hand, Angelina still smiling, Ginny still only smirking, and Ginny continued, “You were right.”
“About what?”
“I could probably use a good lay.”