Potterfic: Lost Time
Apologies to all requestors; this was spontaneous inspiration and not meant to snub any of you!
Author: bennmorland
Title: Lost Time
Rating: G
Genre: "fluff & sparklies!" and some angst, because let’s face it, it’s a bittersweet premise
Word Count: 803
Beta: Unbeta'd.
Notes: Inspired by a "drawbble"[/incredulity] by reallycorking, found here. The "drawbble"[/again with the incredulity] was the fulfillment of a request by penny_sieve: "Harry and Ginny at Bill and Fleur's wedding and they finally give in to temptation and dance with each other." So, in other words, I'm sitting here at the third degree of originality...
WARNING: Half-Blood Prince SPOILERS
Impossible to silence it. It kept nagging at him, biting at the heels of his perceptions like a rabid hyena going through its time of month.
Harry Potter wondered why it was that he’d agreed to come to Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour’s wedding. He didn’t really know Bill all that well and Fleur was in a bit of a dream, it looked like. He could have, in retrospect, gotten away with passing off the invitation as a courtesy rather than an earnest request to “bee zehr for zee most special day uff our lyve-zuh.”
“When I get married, remind me not to send out talking invitations.”
Harry jumped in his wooden seat and looked back over his shoulder. Ginny Weasley was standing behind his chair under the French summer sun. She wore a simple yellow dress with a white flower in her hair. The light from the sky sang through her fair eyebrows like angels in the clouds.
Harry smiled sheepishly, and spoke. “I’m sure we can see to that.”
Ginny’s ironic smirk left her face with a swiftness that brought Harry’s mind to what had escaped his lips.
“Oh, crap. I didn’t mean… Although I didn’t not mean, either… Bugger. Lost cause, isn’t it?” he added when he saw a smile wink to life in Ginny’s brown eyes.
She sighed visibly then, and rested a hand on the back of Harry’s chair, tantalizingly, painfully close to his suited shoulder. His eyes alit for a moment on Ginny’s freckled fingers, their nails painted a pale pink, and the bracelet whose pearls fell with dull pings against the wood. Repressing the sudden and overwhelming urge to take that hand and kiss its every surface, Harry turned his gaze to the dance floor.
Bill and Fleur were doing something closely resembling a jive or perhaps a primitive war dance. Arthur and Molly Weasley were a little more proficient at spasming in tandem. The only two that made a likeness of actual dance partners were Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, who were waltzing - Tonks could waltz? - circles around the revelers.
The band, a gaggle of Wizards wielding mandolins and whistles, were doing their utmost to play a popular tune that Fleur had decided would be her and Bill’s “song.” Harry hadn’t heard it before, but doubted very much it was supposed to sound quite like that.
He felt, then, a soft touch at his ear. He shut his eyes and returned to the school year before, when he and Ginny were free of all care in their love. Harry had often thought of those days, each time becoming more certain that what had appeared to be a crush and accompanying whirlwind romance had really been something that some go through their whole lives searching for and never find. Love, Harry knew from bitter experience, was not something that is a given. You have to fight for it once it is found, hang on tooth and nail. You have to fight not to lose yourself in it; you have to fight harder to give yourself to it.
He stood. Ginny’s hand fell from his shoulder, and he felt behind him a disappointed energy. Turning, he saw Ginny’s eyes were shining brightly in the sun. Harry’s hand had found Ginny’s and was leading her onto the patio that served as the dance floor.
The band had gone into a slow song, and there were more couples venturing onto the weathered wood. Two in particular, however, looked on. Ginny’s parents appeared to be anxious, as though they should already begin to prepare for the fallout that was sure to follow this action; Ron and Hermione, bickering at the edge of the patio over whether this slow song was the one Ron had promised her or whether it was the next, suddenly went silent as they both caught sight of Harry and Ginny.
Neither of them, not the fire-headed girl or the red-cheeked boy, noticed this of course. They were too wrapped up in the moment of abandon, of reckless emotional endangerment. Everyone around them was so happy, so idealistic. There is, after all, nothing quite like a wedding to make people throw all romantic inhibition to the wind.
In moments, Ginny and Harry were one body, molded back into comfortable embrace. For three minutes Heaven opened up and enveloped the two in a shimmering purple fog of glorious wealth and contentment. Harry would not have traded all the Galleons in the world for those precious seconds.
Oblivion came when Ginny’s lips found his.
All he remembered once he had returned to his hotel after leaving the reception early was the feeling of Ginny’s fingers pressing into the back of his head, running through his hair and caressing the back of his neck. The memory of the scent of her drove him to near madness. He did not sleep in that small provincial inn, but stared out at the moon and wondered what might have been.
Author: bennmorland
Title: Lost Time
Rating: G
Genre: "fluff & sparklies!" and some angst, because let’s face it, it’s a bittersweet premise
Word Count: 803
Beta: Unbeta'd.
Notes: Inspired by a "drawbble"[/incredulity] by reallycorking, found here. The "drawbble"[/again with the incredulity] was the fulfillment of a request by penny_sieve: "Harry and Ginny at Bill and Fleur's wedding and they finally give in to temptation and dance with each other." So, in other words, I'm sitting here at the third degree of originality...
WARNING: Half-Blood Prince SPOILERS
Impossible to silence it. It kept nagging at him, biting at the heels of his perceptions like a rabid hyena going through its time of month.
Harry Potter wondered why it was that he’d agreed to come to Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour’s wedding. He didn’t really know Bill all that well and Fleur was in a bit of a dream, it looked like. He could have, in retrospect, gotten away with passing off the invitation as a courtesy rather than an earnest request to “bee zehr for zee most special day uff our lyve-zuh.”
“When I get married, remind me not to send out talking invitations.”
Harry jumped in his wooden seat and looked back over his shoulder. Ginny Weasley was standing behind his chair under the French summer sun. She wore a simple yellow dress with a white flower in her hair. The light from the sky sang through her fair eyebrows like angels in the clouds.
Harry smiled sheepishly, and spoke. “I’m sure we can see to that.”
Ginny’s ironic smirk left her face with a swiftness that brought Harry’s mind to what had escaped his lips.
“Oh, crap. I didn’t mean… Although I didn’t not mean, either… Bugger. Lost cause, isn’t it?” he added when he saw a smile wink to life in Ginny’s brown eyes.
She sighed visibly then, and rested a hand on the back of Harry’s chair, tantalizingly, painfully close to his suited shoulder. His eyes alit for a moment on Ginny’s freckled fingers, their nails painted a pale pink, and the bracelet whose pearls fell with dull pings against the wood. Repressing the sudden and overwhelming urge to take that hand and kiss its every surface, Harry turned his gaze to the dance floor.
Bill and Fleur were doing something closely resembling a jive or perhaps a primitive war dance. Arthur and Molly Weasley were a little more proficient at spasming in tandem. The only two that made a likeness of actual dance partners were Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, who were waltzing - Tonks could waltz? - circles around the revelers.
The band, a gaggle of Wizards wielding mandolins and whistles, were doing their utmost to play a popular tune that Fleur had decided would be her and Bill’s “song.” Harry hadn’t heard it before, but doubted very much it was supposed to sound quite like that.
He felt, then, a soft touch at his ear. He shut his eyes and returned to the school year before, when he and Ginny were free of all care in their love. Harry had often thought of those days, each time becoming more certain that what had appeared to be a crush and accompanying whirlwind romance had really been something that some go through their whole lives searching for and never find. Love, Harry knew from bitter experience, was not something that is a given. You have to fight for it once it is found, hang on tooth and nail. You have to fight not to lose yourself in it; you have to fight harder to give yourself to it.
He stood. Ginny’s hand fell from his shoulder, and he felt behind him a disappointed energy. Turning, he saw Ginny’s eyes were shining brightly in the sun. Harry’s hand had found Ginny’s and was leading her onto the patio that served as the dance floor.
The band had gone into a slow song, and there were more couples venturing onto the weathered wood. Two in particular, however, looked on. Ginny’s parents appeared to be anxious, as though they should already begin to prepare for the fallout that was sure to follow this action; Ron and Hermione, bickering at the edge of the patio over whether this slow song was the one Ron had promised her or whether it was the next, suddenly went silent as they both caught sight of Harry and Ginny.
Neither of them, not the fire-headed girl or the red-cheeked boy, noticed this of course. They were too wrapped up in the moment of abandon, of reckless emotional endangerment. Everyone around them was so happy, so idealistic. There is, after all, nothing quite like a wedding to make people throw all romantic inhibition to the wind.
In moments, Ginny and Harry were one body, molded back into comfortable embrace. For three minutes Heaven opened up and enveloped the two in a shimmering purple fog of glorious wealth and contentment. Harry would not have traded all the Galleons in the world for those precious seconds.
Oblivion came when Ginny’s lips found his.
All he remembered once he had returned to his hotel after leaving the reception early was the feeling of Ginny’s fingers pressing into the back of his head, running through his hair and caressing the back of his neck. The memory of the scent of her drove him to near madness. He did not sleep in that small provincial inn, but stared out at the moon and wondered what might have been.