(no subject)
Title: Parenthetical
Rating: R
Requestor: magicofisis
Claim: "Harry tries to win Ginny back, but she doesn't make it easy for him."
Rating: R
Summary: The strange evolution (and even stranger inner monologue) of Ginny Weasley in relation to Harry Potter, post-Wizarding War. [Harry/Ginny, humor/romance/crackiness]
Warnings: Um, abuse of parenthesis--see title.
Notes: Silly, sarcastic fun for everyone! This was so much fun to write, and is dedicated to all my HG'ers on my flist who have been waiting patiently for more fic. Here ya go, lovelies!
- - -
Sometimes Ginny thinks life would be easier if Harry had been horribly disfigured during the war.
It's not a terribly kind sentiment, but at least that way, he wouldn't be able to torment her with this new, frankly appalling habit of becoming more and more attractive with each passing day.
(As habits go, there could be worse, Ginny admits. Ron, after all, has taken to sleeping with a night-light and stringing garlic around his bed, the result of a particularly traumatising event with an amorous vampire. So while Harry has gotten impossibly good-looking, and it is quite inconvenient, at least he doesn't smell like a combination of Mum's garden patch and feet.)
It's something only Ginny and an entire legion of prepubescent girls have been clever enough to spot. Now that Harry's fulfilled his destiny and destroyed an evil Dark Lord bent on ruling the world, he's blossomed into some sort of Wizard Idol pin-up. Dragon-leather--tight dragon-leather-- and all. He doesn't look like he used to; normal, a bit on the malnourished side; homely.
No, now he looks amazingly, wondrously, uncharacteristically good.
Frustratingly good.
Whereas once, Harry had pleasantly green eyes, if a bit squinty behind coke-bottle specs, now he's got new wireframes that make the creepily vivid emerald really pop.
(It's no exaggeration, Ginny has spent more than a few hours of her days wondering if Luna will interpret Harry's new look as some sort of hidden mating call for the bug-eyed--)
Whereas once, Harry had a bit of a weak chin and trouble growing even the stubbliest hair, now he's got a chiseled jawline, with dark, edgy-looking hair lining the hollows of his cheeks.
(After much furtive inspection, Ginny has deduced that the artful growth most closely resembles the patch of dying weeds out in the fields, the ones Ron used to take a tinkle in when he was small--)
And most of all, whereas once, Harry was all chicken legs and bony wrists, now he's got broad shoulders and muscled arms and an extremely nice set of legs.
(Ginny has felt Harry's new physique firsthand after stumbling into him on a few very platonic, not-at-all-invasively-feeling-him-up occasions--)
Bottom line is, Harry went into war a scared, scrawny, nervous young man. He has come out of war, however, the physical embodiment of everything Gilderoy Lockhart tried--and failed--to sell himself as: a true hero. Complete with the outthrust Chest of Righteousness, and a chorus of sighing girls following in his wake.
(Really, walking down Diagon Alley with Harry is practically impossible, and if Ginny sees another pair of breasts with lightning bolts on them, drawn "especially for him, so could he please sign them?" she's going to murder someone--)
Perhaps she's being a bit unfair, actually. After all, Ginny knows how it feels to be that infatuated. Doesn't mean she excuses it, however. In fact, standing in the front hallway of the Burrow, taking in the way Harry's new professional Quidditch robes drape over his lean, muscular body, she feels her knees shake in an entirely unnacceptable way.
"We broke up," she snaps, pointing her finger accusingly at a bemused-looking Harry. "Stop trying to entice me! It's not very sporting, you know." Watching him like a very irate, redheaded hawk, she walks backwards through the house, her retinas burning with the image of Harry's sexy smirk.
(And anothing thing--sexy smirk? Since when does Harry know how to do anything other than smile like a loon?)
What kind of game is he playing at?!
(The sort of game, Ginny thinks suspiciously, that involves driving her completely around the twist with this sudden unexplainable propensity to comb his hair and wear clothes that fit.)
Maiming would be quite useful right now.
Yes, perhaps a bit of his nose lopped off, or an eyebrow singed permanently clean. That should be good enough to cure Ginny of her silly, lusty ways. After all, Harry's no good to her at all if he's not pretty--she's shallow enough to admit that. (Or desperate enough to pretend that's the truth.)
She fingers her wand slowly as Harry gives a jaunty wave and his shoulder muscles bunch under his Cannon's uniform. Just because Voldemort kept Harry intact doesn't mean she will. If she does, Harry's head is liable to inflate to ten times the admittedly rather nice size it is now, and Ginny?
Ginny is liable to go mad.
- - -
Harry's got to be doing it on purpose.
That's the only explanation Ginny can come up with. The last few times he came to stay at the Burrow, the only way she ever saw Harry was if she was near his boyfriend's--oh, sorry, Ron's--room, or if they all decided to play a pickup game of Quidditch. But now Ron's holed up with his other love-bunny Hermione--
(Ginny wonders if Harry was too terribly jealous when those two finally decided to add sexual to their tension, or if he always knew his secret love affair with her brother was doomed.)
--and Quidditch is out of the question seeing as Harry "gets awfully tired of it, playing professionally and all."
(The perfection just continues, Ginny thinks irritatedly, but on the plus side, perhaps someone from Falmouth with push him off his stupid broom next tournament.)
The thing is, despite not haunting the usual spots, Harry still manages to be everywhere.
Ginny would be fine, nay, overjoyed, to just ignore Harry, as has been her determined wont to do ever since he up and left.
(To fight the greatest evil of this generation, but still, an ex-girlfriend is an ex just the same. Anyway, he hasn't really given her a compelling-enough reason upon his return as to why she shouldn't ignore him and refuse to be anywhere near him even though he smells very, very good and makes her insides go liquidy. So with her eyes valiantly shut, Ginny tries to refuse the evidence of Harry's continued existence, and only sometimes catches herself watching Harry with her gaze gone glassy and mouth slightly more drool-friendly than usual.)
The trouble is, Harry simply won't let her go, despite her damndest to erase him from her radar. Every time she sneaks a surreptituous look up past her lashes, there he is, standing next to her and looking good enough to eat (or punch, she corrects hastily, or punch) and it's often all she can do to clench her fists and breathe through slightly--and unnattractively, damn you, Potter!--flared nostrils.
Harry capitalizes on his burgeoning attractiveness and her obvious inability to control her body's reactions. It's his fiendish plan to get back into her good graces, Ginny's sure of it.
His hand will brush hers more often than it ought to during dinner, caused by clumsiness she can't really explain.
(Because really, how many times does a person drop their bloody fork in one sitting, especially if said person was steady enough with his wand to obliterate pure evil?)
He's also taken an extra effort to taming his hair.
(Which is a bit like coaxing an angry lion into an extremely tight cage, but the cowlicks are less wild than usual, and while the Muggle hair gel smells awful, it is endearingly still better than Ron's garlicky-feet smell. Hermione's a brave woman, Ginny often thinks.)
He wears the color green because Ginny once told him it was her favourite, and he watches her with disturbingly attentive eyes when she speaks.
(The bastard, she discovers during one dinner, doesn't even blink. Though she does, and often--his robes and his eyes all at once makes her feel a bit like she's living in the inside of a green jelly.)
When Harry inexplicably blows her a kiss after the food's been cleared, Ginny ends up being restrained by Hermione, who tells her crossly that under no circumstances is that castration spell legal any longer, and could Ginny please tell her how she came about it?
Research, Ginny answers darkly, and waves her wand around threateningly. Harry blanches, but Ginny knows, with a sinking gut, that her own body is betraying her. There's no way she can bring herself to spell away the body part her own body parts are longing for.
The worst has happened. Even in her greed to maim, scar, and generally bring Harry down a rung or two, she's gone and fallen head over heels in lust with him.
- - -
She almost has an apopleptic fit when Harry comes out of the shower the next day wearing only a towel and some lazily falling droplets of water.
"What are you doing?!" she shrieks, pointing her wand at him. Little trails of water are slithering down his chest and stomach, disappearing behind his towel.
(That color shouldn't be so becoming on him, and what are pink towels doing in a household of redheads anyway?!)
"Gah!" Harry raises his hands in surrender, his eyes wide with confusion. "I'm taking a shower! What are you doing?"
Ginny looks down at the hand clenching her wand, pointing at Harry. She blinks, then hastily drops her wand-hand and rubs her neck. "Clothes on. You should really put some clothes on," she grits. "You could catch a cold walking around here without any clothes on. Go put some clothes on. Please."
Harry gapes at her for a moment before his face melts into a knowing look. "Ah. Nice of you to be so worried about me, Ginny," he says casually, stepping closer. "If I didn't know better, I'd say it's actually very hot in here." His thumb fingers the edge of his towel, his eyebrow cocked smugly.
"Towel!" Ginny squeaks, slamming her eyes shut. "Control your towel--I mean, yourself!"
(His voice is low and husky next to her ear. His breath is warm against her skin. Ginny feels like she's baking in some sort of oven of sexuality, feeling her insides flare up. She feels a horrible sympathy for cakes.)
"Are you sure you want me to control myself, Ginny?" he asks. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather control me, using me in all your wild, wicked games--"
(A blow to the gut and the resounding "oof!" that escapes Harry's lips seem to be answer enough for the moment. All those self-defense classes worked, although how the man destroyed an evil overlord is beyond Ginny, if he missed seeing the pointy edge of her elbow coming right at him.)
"If you're trying to seduce me," Ginny says wildly, "It's not working! You and your sexy words and your pretty eyes and your--your stupid abdominal muscles! I'm on to you, Potter." Her eyes slit as Harry gasps and wheezes. "Oh, get up, you whinging fool." She prods Harry in the stomach with her shoe, rolling her eyes when he clutches his belly. "Very clever avoidance tactic, this 'can't-breathe, woe is me' ploy. You don't fool me for a second. I've got your fellytone number, oh yes."
She walks away, her eyes flickering suspiciously to Harry, who is still lying on the ground, looking pained. Her eyes narrow, debating whether or not to feel pity or triumph.
(Can't be too careful with sneaky little bounders like Harry, Ginny decides firmly. Can't be too careful at all. They break up with you and you think that's that, and all of a sudden, they're walking around with shapely behinds and perfect hair, enticing you.)
"It's war now, Harry. Watch out... I'll get you before you get me, mark my words. When you least expect--whoa!"
She falls down the stairs and ends up sprawled on the floor, looking up at the ceiling as she begins to plot.
- - -
It figures, really, that Ginny would interpret Harry's skewed attempts at wooing her as grounds for declaration of war.
(It figures even more that Harry would miss the point of Mr. Weasley's rumblings entirely. "Seven kids wasn't my idea, m'boy," the eldest Weasley had intoned sagely. "The missus must have inherited that Prewett woman fire." A fire that seems to rage through Ginny's veins, too, and bullocks for Harry if all he took from her dad's warnings was, "Ew, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had sex. A lot.")
She starts with the little black robes.
It's an age-old maneuver, really. Harry can pretend to be the greatest thing since hair-removal charms all he wants, but in the face of the teeny, tiny, leg-revealing robes she bought on sale at Gladrags, he's toast. Worse than toast--dry, stale, mouldy bread.
Harry's mouth drops open as she descends the stairs, letting her hips wiggle for added effect. She almost stumbles, but catches herself by leaning over the banister. Leaning way over the banister. The cut of the black robes, are, needless to say, less than modest, and Harry's throat works as Ginny practically spills out of her dress.
"Oi," Ron says, his voice clearly annoyed. "Why are you dressed like a slag?"
(Though it's a fair point, as it's not even breakfast quite yet and she's made up like she's about to traipse down Knockturn Alley, Ginny chooses to ignore her dear brother and instead sniff the air delicately. "What smells like garlic?" she asks, in response, and Ron turns red. He always was overly sensitive.)
"Leave off, Ron," Harry says, his voice distant. "She looks brilliant."
Ginny gives a prim smile. "Thanks, Harry. Do you want to shag?"
There's a thud as Ron faints dead away.
Harry flounders for a moment, his arms fairly flailing. "I...uh...I...well, yeah," he says earnestly.
Ginny eyes him up and down, her eyes cool. She steps closer, her breasts pressing against his chest, her chin tilted up so she can direct the full force of her gaze at him. "Then you shouldn't have sacked me, should you have?" she retorts, stomping her foot. Then she turns on her heel and stomps away, wincing as every 'stomp' threatens to topple her right over.
(It would've been a great exit and a rousing success, too, but the entire debacle is ruined a bit by the fact that now Ginny has to go around the entire day wearing the very best of Gladrag's evening wear. She makes sure to stay away from Knockturn Alley, but even so, a gaggle of third-years try their best to look up her skirt when she pops into Flourish & Blotts for some nice light reading. She's never had to go through so much trouble for A Wand in Time.)
Beauty can mean pain, Ginny reasons. Although, watching Harry smirk and shake his head, instead of looking properly chagrined, she thinks, sometimes beauty is a pain.
A pain in the arse.
- - -
Her mission is to make Harry crazy with desire, beg her to return to him, and then dump him with nary a glance, thus negating any lustful feelings she had for him and turning them into dripping scorn. So far, its going smashingly except for one fact:
None of those things are happening. At all.
(Admittedly, perhaps situations such as this require more finesse than wearing the equivalent of a black silk dishrag and propositioning the Boy Who Lived to Be Clueless, but still.)
She's tried everything. The little black robes caused five members of her family to blush so hard they turned purple, and very nearly caused her mum to pop a major blood vessel in her wide-eyed rage. But Harry carried on eating his breakfast, serene as you please. And then he had the gall to squeeze Ginny's shoulder--
(Squeeze her shoulder! The nerve of that man, taking those sort of bleeding liberties. She wonders how smug he'd be if she pasted his face on a sign that said The Boy Who Lived to Lech!)
--and go about his merry way, much less perturbed than she that he wasn't about to get any action.
Then she tries more overt approaches:
"Harry," she says, one day at breakfast. "We're friends, right?"
Harry looks at her for a moment before nodding slowly.
"Friends sit in each other's laps all the time, right?" she presses. Harry arches an eyebrow.
"Uh, yes?" he tries. His spoon drips milk steadily into his cereal, as he looks up at her with suspicious eyes.
Ginny nods cheerfully. "Good answer!" With a plop, she lands in Harry's lap, upending a few utensils and sending milk dribbling from Harry's lips. She wriggles around, making a show of trying to get comfortable. Harry's fingers tighten on her waist. "Merlin, it's hard getting comfortable in--I mean on--you, hmm?" She wriggles some more.
A chair thuds as Ron faints again.
(Really, Ginny thinks, her family ought to invest in heartier health. This is the fourth time in a week one of her brothers has lost consciousness. She's starting to get a bit embarrassed, actually.)
"Take as long as you need," Harry says, his voice higher than usual. Ginny smiles smugly as she feels the tell-tale rise in his trousers, and her mum and dad busy themselves with breakfast so as not to notice their little girl squirming around like a fish in her ex-boyfriend's lap.
(Ginny thinks dryly that her mum wouldn't be half so scandalised if she was married to Harry--fornication at breakkie is fine in the Weasley household, as long as it's marital fornication. Look at Bill and Phlegm--Ginny is fond of cooing to ickle Jean-Paul that his auntie and uncles were privy to his conception, and won't that be nice for future years of long, arduous therapy?)
Unfortunately, Harry realizes he's running late for his game against Falmouth, just as Ginny is really hitting her stride, so to speak. He plucks her off his lap, downs the rest of his milk, and Apparates with a hasty, "Bye, all."
Just like that. Not even a "Thanks for the tumble, love." Not even the deceny to tell her he'd call her later! What a cad.
"Harry's certainly a tease, isn't he, darling?" Mum comments. "I know how that is. You father was forever flitting about with Melinda Waddleton, just to get a rise out of me. That is, till I cornered him in an empty Charms classroom and--"
Another thud, this time her Dad.
Ginny looks at her Mum in surprise, momentarily distracted. Mum just shakes her head, obviously disappointed in the love-'em-and-leave-'em tendencies of her future son-in-law, and the weak constitution of her own husband.
"Harry is a tease, Mum," Ginny answers darkly. "A girlfriend-dumping, seduction-resistant tease that I'm going to get if it's the last thing I do. Oh, and shove off, Ron, don't even think about fainting again." Ron, who had woken up and paled again at Mum's proclamation, just winces and ducks his head into his arms.
Ginny goes back to stewing silently, breathing a bit heavier than normal, and vows to get Harry back, if it's the last thing she ever does. Which, she realizes with a sinking heart, is entirely possible.
- - -
In the end, all she has to do is get pissed, good and proper.
Harry oftens accompanies Hermione and Ron to a wizarding club in the heart of London, From Dusk till Dawn, and on a whim, Ginny decides to tag along.
(The sight of Hermione and Ron in the middle of the dance floor, sticking out like a sore, flaming-red, bushy-haired thumb, is incentive enough. But the added bonus of Harry in tight pants is so fantastic that Ginny has a Pepper Imptini to celebrate. And then another. And then one more.)
"Yay, dragon-hide," she says giddily, threading her arm through Harry's. For once, she doesn't have any designs on him, nor does she spare (much) thought for the press of Harry's muscles against her hand. She's too busy floating on the lazy, sweet haze of being drunk.
Harry casts a bemused look down at her. "Dragon-hide?" he asks. He sips his water.
(Apparently Boys-Who-Lived were also teetolars. Probably best that way--Ginny can just see a smashed Harry staggering towards Voldemort drunkenly picking a fight. "Wanna go?" he'd bluster, waving his wand ineffectually. "Huh? Wanna go?" Ginny laughs so hard at this imagined scene, Harry has to hold her up.)
When she finally regains her composure, she pinches his arse. "Dragon-hide," she says meaningfully.
Harry nods, eyes widening. "Ah," he says. "Right. Okay. Look, Ginny." He takes Ginny's hand from his arse and holds it gently, tugging her close.
Ginny looks up. "You have big eyes," she informs him. "Big and...buggy. Like Luna. Like a frog." She mimes picking things from the air. "Catching flies in the air, eating them for lunch. Or Dark Lords--careful, they're bad for digestion. Say, are frogs asexual, do you suppose?"
"Uh, no, pretty sure they're not."
Ginny giggles. "Shame; it'd be another thing you and frogs have in common."
Harry shakes his head, annoyed. "Ginny, I'm not asexual."
(Could have fooled her.)
"Could have fooled me," she says. She takes a sip of the water in Harry's cup, and is disappointed to realize water is non-alcholic even when drunk by a drunk person.
"Just because I'm not responding to your tawdry attempts at seduction doesn't mean I reproduce asexually," Harry says, scowling. "It just means I have more respect for you than that. I knew you were hurt when I broke it off, and that it would take more than just an apology to get you back. I worked out and got sharper specs and even cut my hair so you would like me again, and all I get is you trying to shag me to even some sort of score? I'd rather have a mini-Harry sprouting off the back of my skull than pander to that, Ginny!"
Ginny is too busy imagining a mini-Harry on Harry's head to answer.
"Oh, sod it all," he mutters. Then he hauls her close and kisses her, effectively short-circuiting her brain and making thought extremely difficult.
(Also, breathing becomes something of an issue.)
"Well," Ginny says dazedly, once Harry lets her go. "I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to take you back. You are much easier on the eyes, now that your clothes have started fitting and your hair doesn't resemble a pterodactyl's nest."
(Ginny's actually not too sure what a pterodactyl's nest looks like, it's just Harry's hair was always such a disaster that a mere bird's nest could never do it justice. Now, though...she supposes it's a good thing Harry wasn't disfigured in the war, after all.)
"Thanks," Harry says, eyes wide. "I think it's a blessing, too." Off Ginny's look, he says, "You think out loud. Always have. Oh! That reminds me...what's this about mine and Ron's secret love affair being doomed?"
(Bloody hell.)
- - -finis- - -
...I know. What is this crack!fic? It's just that. Crack!fic. Live with it. Embrace it. Thank God this is over.
Rating: R
Requestor: magicofisis
Claim: "Harry tries to win Ginny back, but she doesn't make it easy for him."
Rating: R
Summary: The strange evolution (and even stranger inner monologue) of Ginny Weasley in relation to Harry Potter, post-Wizarding War. [Harry/Ginny, humor/romance/crackiness]
Warnings: Um, abuse of parenthesis--see title.
Notes: Silly, sarcastic fun for everyone! This was so much fun to write, and is dedicated to all my HG'ers on my flist who have been waiting patiently for more fic. Here ya go, lovelies!
- - -
Sometimes Ginny thinks life would be easier if Harry had been horribly disfigured during the war.
It's not a terribly kind sentiment, but at least that way, he wouldn't be able to torment her with this new, frankly appalling habit of becoming more and more attractive with each passing day.
(As habits go, there could be worse, Ginny admits. Ron, after all, has taken to sleeping with a night-light and stringing garlic around his bed, the result of a particularly traumatising event with an amorous vampire. So while Harry has gotten impossibly good-looking, and it is quite inconvenient, at least he doesn't smell like a combination of Mum's garden patch and feet.)
It's something only Ginny and an entire legion of prepubescent girls have been clever enough to spot. Now that Harry's fulfilled his destiny and destroyed an evil Dark Lord bent on ruling the world, he's blossomed into some sort of Wizard Idol pin-up. Dragon-leather--tight dragon-leather-- and all. He doesn't look like he used to; normal, a bit on the malnourished side; homely.
No, now he looks amazingly, wondrously, uncharacteristically good.
Frustratingly good.
Whereas once, Harry had pleasantly green eyes, if a bit squinty behind coke-bottle specs, now he's got new wireframes that make the creepily vivid emerald really pop.
(It's no exaggeration, Ginny has spent more than a few hours of her days wondering if Luna will interpret Harry's new look as some sort of hidden mating call for the bug-eyed--)
Whereas once, Harry had a bit of a weak chin and trouble growing even the stubbliest hair, now he's got a chiseled jawline, with dark, edgy-looking hair lining the hollows of his cheeks.
(After much furtive inspection, Ginny has deduced that the artful growth most closely resembles the patch of dying weeds out in the fields, the ones Ron used to take a tinkle in when he was small--)
And most of all, whereas once, Harry was all chicken legs and bony wrists, now he's got broad shoulders and muscled arms and an extremely nice set of legs.
(Ginny has felt Harry's new physique firsthand after stumbling into him on a few very platonic, not-at-all-invasively-feeling-him-up occasions--)
Bottom line is, Harry went into war a scared, scrawny, nervous young man. He has come out of war, however, the physical embodiment of everything Gilderoy Lockhart tried--and failed--to sell himself as: a true hero. Complete with the outthrust Chest of Righteousness, and a chorus of sighing girls following in his wake.
(Really, walking down Diagon Alley with Harry is practically impossible, and if Ginny sees another pair of breasts with lightning bolts on them, drawn "especially for him, so could he please sign them?" she's going to murder someone--)
Perhaps she's being a bit unfair, actually. After all, Ginny knows how it feels to be that infatuated. Doesn't mean she excuses it, however. In fact, standing in the front hallway of the Burrow, taking in the way Harry's new professional Quidditch robes drape over his lean, muscular body, she feels her knees shake in an entirely unnacceptable way.
"We broke up," she snaps, pointing her finger accusingly at a bemused-looking Harry. "Stop trying to entice me! It's not very sporting, you know." Watching him like a very irate, redheaded hawk, she walks backwards through the house, her retinas burning with the image of Harry's sexy smirk.
(And anothing thing--sexy smirk? Since when does Harry know how to do anything other than smile like a loon?)
What kind of game is he playing at?!
(The sort of game, Ginny thinks suspiciously, that involves driving her completely around the twist with this sudden unexplainable propensity to comb his hair and wear clothes that fit.)
Maiming would be quite useful right now.
Yes, perhaps a bit of his nose lopped off, or an eyebrow singed permanently clean. That should be good enough to cure Ginny of her silly, lusty ways. After all, Harry's no good to her at all if he's not pretty--she's shallow enough to admit that. (Or desperate enough to pretend that's the truth.)
She fingers her wand slowly as Harry gives a jaunty wave and his shoulder muscles bunch under his Cannon's uniform. Just because Voldemort kept Harry intact doesn't mean she will. If she does, Harry's head is liable to inflate to ten times the admittedly rather nice size it is now, and Ginny?
Ginny is liable to go mad.
- - -
Harry's got to be doing it on purpose.
That's the only explanation Ginny can come up with. The last few times he came to stay at the Burrow, the only way she ever saw Harry was if she was near his boyfriend's--oh, sorry, Ron's--room, or if they all decided to play a pickup game of Quidditch. But now Ron's holed up with his other love-bunny Hermione--
(Ginny wonders if Harry was too terribly jealous when those two finally decided to add sexual to their tension, or if he always knew his secret love affair with her brother was doomed.)
--and Quidditch is out of the question seeing as Harry "gets awfully tired of it, playing professionally and all."
(The perfection just continues, Ginny thinks irritatedly, but on the plus side, perhaps someone from Falmouth with push him off his stupid broom next tournament.)
The thing is, despite not haunting the usual spots, Harry still manages to be everywhere.
Ginny would be fine, nay, overjoyed, to just ignore Harry, as has been her determined wont to do ever since he up and left.
(To fight the greatest evil of this generation, but still, an ex-girlfriend is an ex just the same. Anyway, he hasn't really given her a compelling-enough reason upon his return as to why she shouldn't ignore him and refuse to be anywhere near him even though he smells very, very good and makes her insides go liquidy. So with her eyes valiantly shut, Ginny tries to refuse the evidence of Harry's continued existence, and only sometimes catches herself watching Harry with her gaze gone glassy and mouth slightly more drool-friendly than usual.)
The trouble is, Harry simply won't let her go, despite her damndest to erase him from her radar. Every time she sneaks a surreptituous look up past her lashes, there he is, standing next to her and looking good enough to eat (or punch, she corrects hastily, or punch) and it's often all she can do to clench her fists and breathe through slightly--and unnattractively, damn you, Potter!--flared nostrils.
Harry capitalizes on his burgeoning attractiveness and her obvious inability to control her body's reactions. It's his fiendish plan to get back into her good graces, Ginny's sure of it.
His hand will brush hers more often than it ought to during dinner, caused by clumsiness she can't really explain.
(Because really, how many times does a person drop their bloody fork in one sitting, especially if said person was steady enough with his wand to obliterate pure evil?)
He's also taken an extra effort to taming his hair.
(Which is a bit like coaxing an angry lion into an extremely tight cage, but the cowlicks are less wild than usual, and while the Muggle hair gel smells awful, it is endearingly still better than Ron's garlicky-feet smell. Hermione's a brave woman, Ginny often thinks.)
He wears the color green because Ginny once told him it was her favourite, and he watches her with disturbingly attentive eyes when she speaks.
(The bastard, she discovers during one dinner, doesn't even blink. Though she does, and often--his robes and his eyes all at once makes her feel a bit like she's living in the inside of a green jelly.)
When Harry inexplicably blows her a kiss after the food's been cleared, Ginny ends up being restrained by Hermione, who tells her crossly that under no circumstances is that castration spell legal any longer, and could Ginny please tell her how she came about it?
Research, Ginny answers darkly, and waves her wand around threateningly. Harry blanches, but Ginny knows, with a sinking gut, that her own body is betraying her. There's no way she can bring herself to spell away the body part her own body parts are longing for.
The worst has happened. Even in her greed to maim, scar, and generally bring Harry down a rung or two, she's gone and fallen head over heels in lust with him.
- - -
She almost has an apopleptic fit when Harry comes out of the shower the next day wearing only a towel and some lazily falling droplets of water.
"What are you doing?!" she shrieks, pointing her wand at him. Little trails of water are slithering down his chest and stomach, disappearing behind his towel.
(That color shouldn't be so becoming on him, and what are pink towels doing in a household of redheads anyway?!)
"Gah!" Harry raises his hands in surrender, his eyes wide with confusion. "I'm taking a shower! What are you doing?"
Ginny looks down at the hand clenching her wand, pointing at Harry. She blinks, then hastily drops her wand-hand and rubs her neck. "Clothes on. You should really put some clothes on," she grits. "You could catch a cold walking around here without any clothes on. Go put some clothes on. Please."
Harry gapes at her for a moment before his face melts into a knowing look. "Ah. Nice of you to be so worried about me, Ginny," he says casually, stepping closer. "If I didn't know better, I'd say it's actually very hot in here." His thumb fingers the edge of his towel, his eyebrow cocked smugly.
"Towel!" Ginny squeaks, slamming her eyes shut. "Control your towel--I mean, yourself!"
(His voice is low and husky next to her ear. His breath is warm against her skin. Ginny feels like she's baking in some sort of oven of sexuality, feeling her insides flare up. She feels a horrible sympathy for cakes.)
"Are you sure you want me to control myself, Ginny?" he asks. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather control me, using me in all your wild, wicked games--"
(A blow to the gut and the resounding "oof!" that escapes Harry's lips seem to be answer enough for the moment. All those self-defense classes worked, although how the man destroyed an evil overlord is beyond Ginny, if he missed seeing the pointy edge of her elbow coming right at him.)
"If you're trying to seduce me," Ginny says wildly, "It's not working! You and your sexy words and your pretty eyes and your--your stupid abdominal muscles! I'm on to you, Potter." Her eyes slit as Harry gasps and wheezes. "Oh, get up, you whinging fool." She prods Harry in the stomach with her shoe, rolling her eyes when he clutches his belly. "Very clever avoidance tactic, this 'can't-breathe, woe is me' ploy. You don't fool me for a second. I've got your fellytone number, oh yes."
She walks away, her eyes flickering suspiciously to Harry, who is still lying on the ground, looking pained. Her eyes narrow, debating whether or not to feel pity or triumph.
(Can't be too careful with sneaky little bounders like Harry, Ginny decides firmly. Can't be too careful at all. They break up with you and you think that's that, and all of a sudden, they're walking around with shapely behinds and perfect hair, enticing you.)
"It's war now, Harry. Watch out... I'll get you before you get me, mark my words. When you least expect--whoa!"
She falls down the stairs and ends up sprawled on the floor, looking up at the ceiling as she begins to plot.
- - -
It figures, really, that Ginny would interpret Harry's skewed attempts at wooing her as grounds for declaration of war.
(It figures even more that Harry would miss the point of Mr. Weasley's rumblings entirely. "Seven kids wasn't my idea, m'boy," the eldest Weasley had intoned sagely. "The missus must have inherited that Prewett woman fire." A fire that seems to rage through Ginny's veins, too, and bullocks for Harry if all he took from her dad's warnings was, "Ew, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had sex. A lot.")
She starts with the little black robes.
It's an age-old maneuver, really. Harry can pretend to be the greatest thing since hair-removal charms all he wants, but in the face of the teeny, tiny, leg-revealing robes she bought on sale at Gladrags, he's toast. Worse than toast--dry, stale, mouldy bread.
Harry's mouth drops open as she descends the stairs, letting her hips wiggle for added effect. She almost stumbles, but catches herself by leaning over the banister. Leaning way over the banister. The cut of the black robes, are, needless to say, less than modest, and Harry's throat works as Ginny practically spills out of her dress.
"Oi," Ron says, his voice clearly annoyed. "Why are you dressed like a slag?"
(Though it's a fair point, as it's not even breakfast quite yet and she's made up like she's about to traipse down Knockturn Alley, Ginny chooses to ignore her dear brother and instead sniff the air delicately. "What smells like garlic?" she asks, in response, and Ron turns red. He always was overly sensitive.)
"Leave off, Ron," Harry says, his voice distant. "She looks brilliant."
Ginny gives a prim smile. "Thanks, Harry. Do you want to shag?"
There's a thud as Ron faints dead away.
Harry flounders for a moment, his arms fairly flailing. "I...uh...I...well, yeah," he says earnestly.
Ginny eyes him up and down, her eyes cool. She steps closer, her breasts pressing against his chest, her chin tilted up so she can direct the full force of her gaze at him. "Then you shouldn't have sacked me, should you have?" she retorts, stomping her foot. Then she turns on her heel and stomps away, wincing as every 'stomp' threatens to topple her right over.
(It would've been a great exit and a rousing success, too, but the entire debacle is ruined a bit by the fact that now Ginny has to go around the entire day wearing the very best of Gladrag's evening wear. She makes sure to stay away from Knockturn Alley, but even so, a gaggle of third-years try their best to look up her skirt when she pops into Flourish & Blotts for some nice light reading. She's never had to go through so much trouble for A Wand in Time.)
Beauty can mean pain, Ginny reasons. Although, watching Harry smirk and shake his head, instead of looking properly chagrined, she thinks, sometimes beauty is a pain.
A pain in the arse.
- - -
Her mission is to make Harry crazy with desire, beg her to return to him, and then dump him with nary a glance, thus negating any lustful feelings she had for him and turning them into dripping scorn. So far, its going smashingly except for one fact:
None of those things are happening. At all.
(Admittedly, perhaps situations such as this require more finesse than wearing the equivalent of a black silk dishrag and propositioning the Boy Who Lived to Be Clueless, but still.)
She's tried everything. The little black robes caused five members of her family to blush so hard they turned purple, and very nearly caused her mum to pop a major blood vessel in her wide-eyed rage. But Harry carried on eating his breakfast, serene as you please. And then he had the gall to squeeze Ginny's shoulder--
(Squeeze her shoulder! The nerve of that man, taking those sort of bleeding liberties. She wonders how smug he'd be if she pasted his face on a sign that said The Boy Who Lived to Lech!)
--and go about his merry way, much less perturbed than she that he wasn't about to get any action.
Then she tries more overt approaches:
"Harry," she says, one day at breakfast. "We're friends, right?"
Harry looks at her for a moment before nodding slowly.
"Friends sit in each other's laps all the time, right?" she presses. Harry arches an eyebrow.
"Uh, yes?" he tries. His spoon drips milk steadily into his cereal, as he looks up at her with suspicious eyes.
Ginny nods cheerfully. "Good answer!" With a plop, she lands in Harry's lap, upending a few utensils and sending milk dribbling from Harry's lips. She wriggles around, making a show of trying to get comfortable. Harry's fingers tighten on her waist. "Merlin, it's hard getting comfortable in--I mean on--you, hmm?" She wriggles some more.
A chair thuds as Ron faints again.
(Really, Ginny thinks, her family ought to invest in heartier health. This is the fourth time in a week one of her brothers has lost consciousness. She's starting to get a bit embarrassed, actually.)
"Take as long as you need," Harry says, his voice higher than usual. Ginny smiles smugly as she feels the tell-tale rise in his trousers, and her mum and dad busy themselves with breakfast so as not to notice their little girl squirming around like a fish in her ex-boyfriend's lap.
(Ginny thinks dryly that her mum wouldn't be half so scandalised if she was married to Harry--fornication at breakkie is fine in the Weasley household, as long as it's marital fornication. Look at Bill and Phlegm--Ginny is fond of cooing to ickle Jean-Paul that his auntie and uncles were privy to his conception, and won't that be nice for future years of long, arduous therapy?)
Unfortunately, Harry realizes he's running late for his game against Falmouth, just as Ginny is really hitting her stride, so to speak. He plucks her off his lap, downs the rest of his milk, and Apparates with a hasty, "Bye, all."
Just like that. Not even a "Thanks for the tumble, love." Not even the deceny to tell her he'd call her later! What a cad.
"Harry's certainly a tease, isn't he, darling?" Mum comments. "I know how that is. You father was forever flitting about with Melinda Waddleton, just to get a rise out of me. That is, till I cornered him in an empty Charms classroom and--"
Another thud, this time her Dad.
Ginny looks at her Mum in surprise, momentarily distracted. Mum just shakes her head, obviously disappointed in the love-'em-and-leave-'em tendencies of her future son-in-law, and the weak constitution of her own husband.
"Harry is a tease, Mum," Ginny answers darkly. "A girlfriend-dumping, seduction-resistant tease that I'm going to get if it's the last thing I do. Oh, and shove off, Ron, don't even think about fainting again." Ron, who had woken up and paled again at Mum's proclamation, just winces and ducks his head into his arms.
Ginny goes back to stewing silently, breathing a bit heavier than normal, and vows to get Harry back, if it's the last thing she ever does. Which, she realizes with a sinking heart, is entirely possible.
- - -
In the end, all she has to do is get pissed, good and proper.
Harry oftens accompanies Hermione and Ron to a wizarding club in the heart of London, From Dusk till Dawn, and on a whim, Ginny decides to tag along.
(The sight of Hermione and Ron in the middle of the dance floor, sticking out like a sore, flaming-red, bushy-haired thumb, is incentive enough. But the added bonus of Harry in tight pants is so fantastic that Ginny has a Pepper Imptini to celebrate. And then another. And then one more.)
"Yay, dragon-hide," she says giddily, threading her arm through Harry's. For once, she doesn't have any designs on him, nor does she spare (much) thought for the press of Harry's muscles against her hand. She's too busy floating on the lazy, sweet haze of being drunk.
Harry casts a bemused look down at her. "Dragon-hide?" he asks. He sips his water.
(Apparently Boys-Who-Lived were also teetolars. Probably best that way--Ginny can just see a smashed Harry staggering towards Voldemort drunkenly picking a fight. "Wanna go?" he'd bluster, waving his wand ineffectually. "Huh? Wanna go?" Ginny laughs so hard at this imagined scene, Harry has to hold her up.)
When she finally regains her composure, she pinches his arse. "Dragon-hide," she says meaningfully.
Harry nods, eyes widening. "Ah," he says. "Right. Okay. Look, Ginny." He takes Ginny's hand from his arse and holds it gently, tugging her close.
Ginny looks up. "You have big eyes," she informs him. "Big and...buggy. Like Luna. Like a frog." She mimes picking things from the air. "Catching flies in the air, eating them for lunch. Or Dark Lords--careful, they're bad for digestion. Say, are frogs asexual, do you suppose?"
"Uh, no, pretty sure they're not."
Ginny giggles. "Shame; it'd be another thing you and frogs have in common."
Harry shakes his head, annoyed. "Ginny, I'm not asexual."
(Could have fooled her.)
"Could have fooled me," she says. She takes a sip of the water in Harry's cup, and is disappointed to realize water is non-alcholic even when drunk by a drunk person.
"Just because I'm not responding to your tawdry attempts at seduction doesn't mean I reproduce asexually," Harry says, scowling. "It just means I have more respect for you than that. I knew you were hurt when I broke it off, and that it would take more than just an apology to get you back. I worked out and got sharper specs and even cut my hair so you would like me again, and all I get is you trying to shag me to even some sort of score? I'd rather have a mini-Harry sprouting off the back of my skull than pander to that, Ginny!"
Ginny is too busy imagining a mini-Harry on Harry's head to answer.
"Oh, sod it all," he mutters. Then he hauls her close and kisses her, effectively short-circuiting her brain and making thought extremely difficult.
(Also, breathing becomes something of an issue.)
"Well," Ginny says dazedly, once Harry lets her go. "I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to take you back. You are much easier on the eyes, now that your clothes have started fitting and your hair doesn't resemble a pterodactyl's nest."
(Ginny's actually not too sure what a pterodactyl's nest looks like, it's just Harry's hair was always such a disaster that a mere bird's nest could never do it justice. Now, though...she supposes it's a good thing Harry wasn't disfigured in the war, after all.)
"Thanks," Harry says, eyes wide. "I think it's a blessing, too." Off Ginny's look, he says, "You think out loud. Always have. Oh! That reminds me...what's this about mine and Ron's secret love affair being doomed?"
(Bloody hell.)
- - -finis- - -
...I know. What is this crack!fic? It's just that. Crack!fic. Live with it. Embrace it. Thank God this is over.