'Perpendicular', Harry/Ginny, 12+
Title: Perpendicular
Ship: Harry/Ginny
Summary: AU: Harry Potter, member of Stonewall High’s sixth form, meets a pretty redhead at a party.
Rating: 12+
Word Count: ~4500
Notes: Vaguely HBP-themed yay! Many thanks to pumpkinpasty for the typo catching and many re-reads.
Perpendicular
This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where he could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn’t be with Dudley. Dudley had a place at Vernon’s old school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local comprehensive.
-----
‘Do you mean ter tell me,’ he growled at the Dursleys, ‘that this boy - this boy! - knows nothin’ abou’ - about ANYTHING?’
Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren’t bad.
‘I know some things,’ he said. ‘I can, you know, do maths and stuff.’
-----
~ J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter has a headache.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asks Tom over the music as he joins Harry in the corner of Graham’s living room, holding two bottles of Stella.
‘Nothing,’ says Harry with a wince.
‘Look, stop standing in the corner and pining over Julie and try and enjoy yourself, for God’s -’
‘I am not pining over anyone, I have a headache,’ snaps Harry.
Tom sighs. ‘You’re such a woman.’ He uses his teeth to open the bottles in his hands - a trick Harry’s never managed to master - and hands one to Harry. ‘Who’ve you got your eye on, then?’
Automatically, the both of them cast their eyes over their fellow guests - what appears to be the whole of Stonewall’s sixth form.
Harry is not particularly in the mood for this.
‘I’m not -’ he starts. ‘Not going to - if something happens it happens, but I am not going to plan anyth-’
‘What about that one?’ asks Tom, nodding his head at a waif-like blonde.
Harry gives up. ‘Too scrawny,’ he says glumly.
‘Her, then,’ says Tom with a roll of his eyes and another nod.
‘Too tall,’ says Harry; Tom snorts.
A couple of people enter the room that Harry doesn’t recognise from school: a tall black boy and a relatively pretty redhead. ‘Who’s she?’ He takes a large gulp of his Stella.
‘Nice tits.’
Harry ignores this. ‘Who is she?’
‘Dunno.’ Tom leers. ‘Her, then?’
‘She doesn’t go to Stonewall, does she?’
‘No. Even better - you never even have to see her again. Get in there.’ He claps Harry on the back.
Harry panics. ‘What do I say to her?’
‘You’re useless.’
‘But - what -’
Tom balances his bottle on the piano lid and pulls a lighter and a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘How about: will you please snog me in front of Julie Arliss so that she thinks I’m suave and dashing and wants to go out with me?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Or how about: why is it that Julie Arliss is willing to get down on her knees for everyone in school except -’
‘No smoking in my house, dickhead,’ says Graham, coming up behind them and snatching Tom’s cigarette from between his fingers. ‘My parents come back from Barbados tomorrow.’
‘Who are they?’ asks Tom, nodding at the couple hovering by the door.
‘My cousin and his girlfriend - you know, Dean, from London. They go to some weird boarding school.’
‘Girlfriend? Shame. Harry thought he was in there.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I saw her first, but I gallantly offered him first pick. You know, what with his heart being broken by Julie again.’
‘What about Julie?’ asks Graham.
‘How she’s going out with Ben.’
‘Julie’s not going out with Ben. She dumped him.’
‘She what?’ Harry asks, his head snapping up.
‘Yeah.’ Graham’s face is impassive. ‘She’s going out with me now.’
Tom bursts out laughing.
Harry’s mouth falls open.
‘Sorry, mate,’ says Graham, grinning, ‘but I couldn’t exactly say no, now, could I?’
Harry fumbles to say something cutting but can’t think of anything better than Well your party SUCKS, so instead, he shoots a look of loathing at Tom and stalks off to the kitchen, muttering something about getting another drink.
He’s sitting on the top of the steps leading down into Graham’s garden, drinking another Stella. He checks his watch. It’s getting late. If he didn’t have his watch he’d still be able to tell the time from the increasing drunkenness of the music choices - less and less Blur and more and more Take That’s Greatest Hits - and the rowdiness of the other people in the garden.
He hopes Graham will let him stay over - he better, he thinks fiercely, he owes him that at least - because he really doesn’t fancy stumbling back to the Dursleys’ at four in the morning.
Although, if he stays, he’ll have to help clean up.
He’s morosely weighing up the pros and cons of spending tomorrow morning cleaning with a frantic Graham versus facing Uncle Vernon’s wrath, when the door behind his back opens. Shifting aside so that whoever it is can pass, he looks up and sees that it’s the pretty redhead.
She walks down the two steps and into the paved garden, but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere specific. She eyes the other guests, and then looks back at Harry with a smile.
‘Hi,’ he says wittily.
She walks back up the steps and sits down next to him.
Glancing mistrustfully at the alcopop in her hand, she says, ‘Weird stuff you drink, here.’
‘Here?’ He remembers what Dean said about her going to school in Scotland. ‘Surrey, or England?’
‘Neither.’ She rolls her eyes, but he doesn’t get the joke. ‘I’m not Scottish.’
‘You don’t sound it.’ There is a silence. ‘Where do you live, then?’
‘Devon.’
‘Long way to come, just for a party.’ He wants to add, It’s hardly the greatest party in the world, but his loyalty to Graham, despite his being such a smarmy bastard, overrides his desire to sound nonchalant.
‘I needed to get out of the house.’
‘How come?’
‘Well …’ Her eyes dart up to the side and a tiny smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are bright brown. ‘It’s my brother.’
‘What about him?’ asks Harry and she looks away, narrowing her eyes off into the dark garden. Harry uses this opportunity wisely and finds himself having to admit that yes, Tom was right: she is rather curvaceous.
‘I think he’s going to make the holidays ... difficult,’ she says.
‘He a bit of a twat?’
‘No, no,’ she says, and Harry immediately worries that he’s overstepped the mark. ‘We get on pretty well actually, he’s only a year older than me, same age as you lot ...’ She sighs theatrically. ‘OK, the thing is, he’s best friends with this girl, who’s also one of my closest friends. But ... they’re really good friends, right, but there’s a bit of a thing between them.’
‘Ah,’ says Harry. He wonders if there’s any chance of him having a thing with this girl. Then he remembers the boyfriend.
‘And now, finally, for the first time in his stupid, inept life, he’s managed to get himself a girlfriend, so the other girl - the best friend - is obviously quite upset. She isn’t speaking to him.’
‘Right …’
‘Which - whatever, I’m leaving them to work it out themselves. But it means that she isn’t coming to stay for the Christmas holidays, which she usually does. And now I’m stuck in the house with him wandering around moping about how he’s going out with the wrong girl - though he won’t admit it,’ she adds with a glower. ‘He’s pretending he thinks Lavender’s the best thing since self-stirring cauldrons.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, Lavender’s the girlfriend. Not the best friend.’
‘No, I meant the bit about …’ Harry shakes his head, giving up; he’s not sober enough to want to pursue what she said about witches’ cauldrons.
After a second, she says, ‘Sorry about that. I’m sure that was very boring.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ he says quickly, and truthfully, because it wasn’t, though it should have been; she seems to be one of those people who has a way of telling a story that makes it funny, and the story itself was quite sweet. A lot of boys, most of Harry’s friends among them, proclaim, often and loudly, how much they can’t stand “chatting” with girls, but Harry’s never found that talking to girls necessitates boredom; in fact, he’s always quite liked female conversation, though he’s never said so out loud.
Unfortunately, he can’t think of anything to say to continue this conversation that isn’t Will you please snog me, preferably in front of Julie Arliss, but actually I don’t care if she sees or not because you’re very fit and I’d like to get off with you anyway. This is possibly because he is quite drunk.
‘I like your hair,’ he says instead.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Try living with it for fifteen years.’
This is the part where, if he were a boy like Tom, he would make some sort of smarmy comment about how Ginger Spice is the best looking one anyway and the pretty girl would roll her eyes at the cheesiness but would somehow, somehow, end up sitting on his lap five minutes later.
Harry looks down at his drink and wishes he was better at flirting.
‘I’m Ginny, by the way,’ she says, extending a hand.
‘Harry,’ he says, returning the handshake.
‘They your friends?’ she asks, jerking a thumb at the gang at the other end of the garden.
‘Yeah, sort of,’ he says. Actually, they annoy him a bit, but he wants her to think that when she found him he was spurning their company out of choice rather than necessity. Of course, he had been spurning their company out of choice, he could have sat with them if he’d wanted to, it wouldn’t have been that weird, but by saying he doesn’t get on with them much he’ll imply that he’s not sitting with them because he’s not cool enough rather than because they’re twats -
‘Really?’ She eyes them distastefully. ‘They seem annoying.’
He grins. ‘They are.’
She catches his eye and smiles back, and then quickly looks back at them. ‘What are they arguing about?’
Harry gives Kenneth Bollard and his mates another glance: they’re lolling around and smoking something that doesn’t smell like a cigarette.
‘Look,’ Kenneth’s saying. ‘Look, all right, it’s like this: it’s aliens. There’s nothing the government or whatever can do because, BECAUSE,’ he shouts above the jeers of his smoking-partners, ‘because there’s nothing humans can do about it - am I right? Am I right or what?’
‘What are they talking about?’ asks Ginny.
‘You know,’ says Harry. ‘How everything’s kind of …’
She’s staring at him intently.
‘Kind of … weird, now. You know, with the disappearances and everything. Hurricanes in Somerset.’
There is no comprehension in her expression, but there’s no confusion either. It’s unsettling; he stares at his drink.
‘Who do you think is doing it?’ she asks.
‘My uncle says it’s the government,’ he says with a shrug, ‘but he says that about everything. My maths teacher says it’s global warming.’
‘Global what?’
He shakes his head. ‘Never mind.’
He looks up again: she’s staring off into the dark. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she says. ‘Everything is kind of weird, now.’
There is another silence between them. Harry hears Kenneth Bollard saying rather placidly, ‘I’m telling you, we’re doomed.’
‘So,’ says Harry. ‘What GCSEs are you doing?’
‘The usual ones.’
‘As in …?’
She looks hesitant. ‘Maths.’
He laughs. ‘Any others?’
‘Nope, that’s it.’ She grins. ‘Just Maths.’
‘Hey, Ginny -’ Harry and Ginny look up quickly and see her boyfriend - Dean - standing behind them at the open back door. ‘We’re gonna have to go in a minute, Fred’s picking us up in five -’
‘Oh God, yeah,’ she says. ‘Um -’
‘I’ve just got to say bye to Graham -’ says Dean, and then he vanishes back into the house.
‘Here -’ says Harry as Ginny makes a move to stand up, and this is a stupid thing he’s about to do, but what’s the point of beer if not to legitimise stupid things - ‘can I have your number?’
She stops moving. ‘My what?’
‘Your … phone number. Telephone number.’ He wishes he’d never said anything. He wishes he hadn’t spent all night talking to someone with a boyfriend.
‘Oh, I don’t have one of them,’ she says cheerily.
‘I mean … a normal phone. Not a mobile phone.’
‘I don’t have any kind of phones,’ she says. ‘It’s … my dad. He hates ... gadgets.’
And Harry thought Vernon was bad. At least he’s noticed it’s no longer 1950. Just about.
‘Oh,’ she says at his bewilderment. ‘I know, I could telephone you, if you give me your - number.’
‘But -’ But you have a boyfriend. ‘Um, yeah, all right - my uncle gets really pissed off when people call the house for me, but there’s this payphone at the end of the street that accepts incoming calls that I use - I know the number … I mean, if you want.’
The corner of her mouth quirks up as if she’s going to laugh, but then she says, ‘Yeah, I do want. Do you have a ... pen?’
She borrows a biro from one of Kenneth’s friends and writes the number of the payphone on her left hand. ‘When will you call?’ he asks, and when she raises her eyebrows he adds hastily, ‘Because, you know, it’s a payphone, so I have to know when it’s going to ring. Or I’ll miss it.’
Her mouth quirks again; she looks as if she can’t believe what she’s about to say. Harry knows the feeling. ‘Two days,’ she says at last. ‘Lunchtime.’
The phone rings at one thirty, but Harry’s been leaning against the door to the grey phone box since quarter to twelve, of course. When it finally happens he almost has a heart attack.
‘Hello?’ he says.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘It’s me.’
‘Hi,’ he says.
He asks where she is.
‘At a friend’s house,’ she says. ‘I’m bored. Are you doing anything?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Do you want to ...?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Where d’you live?’
‘Little Whinging.’
‘Is there a ... a train station?’
‘Yeah, there’s Little Whinging Station - but trains don’t come often, you’ll have more luck with the station in Greater Whi-’
‘I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ she says, and then she hangs up.
It wasn’t easy, getting out of the house and getting hold of some Muggle money so I could use the ‘pay-phone’ in Ottery St Catchpole, but I managed it. It took me four goes to make the phone work, as well, but I did that, too. I got the twins to Apparate me to the station - I’m going to have to get them to pretend that I’m at the shop with them when I meet up with him.
I don’t know why I’m doing this.
It better be worth all my trouble, that’s all I’m saying.
She lives in Devon, but goes to school in Scotland; she has six older brothers - ‘One of them we don’t talk about,’ she scowls - and two parents and spends a lot of time playing what she describes as ‘a weird Scottish game that’s a bit like basketball’.
They walk around Wingworth Heath, a stretch of grey grass on the outskirts of Little Whinging, where no one ever goes, except to have sex or smoke in the bushes, but luckily today it’s far too cold for either of those activities.
They talk and talk, never about anything of any significance. It is wonderful.
Four days later, she comes back. He greets her at Little Whinging Station with a (ridiculous, he realises afterwards) wave and she grins back (which makes it slightly OK). They start to walk and before Harry’s realised where they’re going, they’re walking through Wingworth Heath again. He should really take her somewhere better, he frets, but where? They could take a bus into Greater Whinging and go to the cinema or get some food, he thinks as he gallantly takes her arm and steers her round a used condom lying in the middle of the path, but those options seem a bit - date-y. He could buy her a kebab from one of the local takeaways. (Being a bit strapped for cash, he’s not the best date ever - working the night shift at Sainsbury’s all summer improved his finances significantly, but now it’s approaching Christmas, he’s running low again, and he’s having to rely on cat-sitting for his mad neighbour in order to keep himself in pints.) The most realistic option for somewhere to go is the Red Lion, but there’s bound to be people he knows in there, and he’d have a hard time explaining himself if one of them was Graham. Maybe if it was only Tom - but for some reason Harry can’t quite put his finger on, he doesn’t really want to introduce her to Tom.
So instead, they sit on a bench and she tells him about her parents and he tells her about the Dursleys, and after what feels like ten minutes but is actually ninety, she goes home.
Lying in Wingworth Heath, Harry tosses an apple into the air and catches it.
Tom props himself up on his elbow. ‘So, let me get this straight: you’re falling in love with a posh redhead from boarding school who doesn’t own a telephone.’
‘Yeah, pretty much,’ says Harry, taking a bite of his apple.
Tom considers him. ‘What about her boyfriend?’
Harry can’t help it; all he feels able of doing is shrugging. ‘Do you think I’m being immoral?’
Tom falls back down on the grass. ‘There’s no such thing as good and evil.’
‘So it’s OK, then?’
‘If you want to get beaten up by Graham.’
Harry winces.
‘Not to mention her boyfriend,’ Tom continues. ‘He looked a bit scary.’
‘Don’t be racist.’
‘Harry, he was about double your height.’
‘All right, all right, you don’t have to be so bloody depressing about it -’
‘Hey, I’m not the one who’s getting off with someone else’s girlfriend -’
‘We aren’t! I haven’t even kissed her!’
‘You what?’ Tom stares at him. ‘What are you doing, then?’
Harry crunches his apple and avoids Tom’s eye. ‘Talking, mostly.’
Tom doesn’t stop staring at him.
‘What?’ Harry asks. It’s not the weirdest thing to ever happen, for God’s sake.
‘But - but -’ Tom struggles for words; the effect is rather amusing. ‘Fucking Christ.’
‘I know.’
‘Graham’ll still kill you if he finds out.’
‘I know.’
Another silence falls.
‘You’re seeing her again, aren’t you?’
Harry grins. ‘Yes.’
But the thing is, she isn’t posh at all. It’s strange. She has a weird sense of humour - slightly old-fashioned, maybe - and seems endlessly amused by the strangest things. If he had to guess, he’d say that her parents must be liberal, earthy kinds that run an Oxfam shop and only eat organic vegan food and don’t let their kids watch TV.
Which would explain her lack of knowledge of Will Smith. And the Spice Girls. And Eastenders.
She’s not that weird, though. Well. She’s more normal than you’d think, anyway.
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ she asks abruptly one day as they lie on the grey grass.
‘A pilot.’
‘Really?’ she asks seriously.
‘No. I’m just concentrating on getting to uni.’
‘To what?’
‘Uh,’ says Harry. ‘University?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Where?’
‘As far from Surrey as possible.’
‘Will your relatives pay for that?’
‘Dunno,’ he says. He prefers not to think about the stilted conversations he’s had with Vernon and Petunia about His Future.
‘Is university expensive?’
‘Do you not ...’ After a second, he says, ‘I thought they were good at university stuff in boarding schools. Training you up for Oxbridge from birth, that sort of thing.’
She says nothing, instead choosing to continue chewing her plait of grass.
‘Do you know anything about university?’ he asks her, but he has a feeling he knows what the answer’s going to be.
‘Not much.’
But he doesn’t ask her any more questions because he’s scared that if he does she’ll vanish like a fairy.
She pulls the piece of grass she’s chewing out of her mouth. ‘What are you going to study?’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe politics.’
‘Politics?’ She rolls onto her front. ‘Are you going to work in the government, then?’
He shifts himself up onto his elbow. ‘I’m going to be the Prime Minister.’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘I don’t see you as the government type.’
He grins. ‘I’m going to save the world.’
She shrugs. ‘Fair enough.’
‘What about you?’
She pauses. ‘Remember my weird Scottish sport? I want to do that.’
He tuts. ‘There’s no money in women’s sports.’
‘It’s mixed. And anyway,’ she says, starting to chew on her piece of grass again, ‘I’m not doing it for the money.’
‘Yeah, you are.’ He reaches forwards and pulls the grass from her pale crimson lips. ‘You want to be a big famous sporting personality who does nothing except sit on a sofa at the end of matches and give out your “expert” opinion.’
She quirks an eyebrow. ‘You just want to be a big hero.’
‘Your ambition in life is to get paid a million quid to do adverts for crisps.’
‘Glory-seeker.’
‘Gold digger.’
They laugh far, far too hard at this, and they don’t stop until she sees her watch and says, ‘Bugger - I’ve got to get to the station.’
‘Right now?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, I really have to - I’ll see you after Christmas, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, sitting up as she starts dusting herself down. ‘Yeah, cool - do you want to -’
‘I’ll call you on … Boxing Day?’ He nods. ‘I’ll call you on Boxing Day at two,’ she says authoritatively.
He grins. ‘Try not to kill your brother.’
‘What?’
‘You know,’ he says. ‘You told at me Graham’s party. Something about his friend who he fancies and his girlfriend - Lilac.’
‘You remembered?’ she asks with a smile. ‘Lavender. His girlfriend’s called Lavender. And, yeah,’ she says, standing up. ‘I’ll try not to kill him. If he stops saying things like “you know who’s pretty? Lavender”.’
‘Sounds annoying.’
She sighs. ‘He’s my brother and I love him, but he can be a complete tosser sometimes.’ She rolls her eyes.
With a wave she runs off towards the station, and Harry slouches off home.
Christmas is crap, as usual. Although, Dudley does avoid him nowadays, rather than try to beat him up, so it’s better than it used to be.
As they walk through the heath on Boxing Day a cold wind whips through their clothes and the yellow silk ribbon in her hair starts to unwind and wriggle its way out and into the bluster.
He is mesmerised as red strands and fronds and finally tresses start to tumble out of her ponytail and leap into the wind.
‘Oh, damn,’ she says, trying to catch the ribbon as it makes its bid for freedom; he just manages to snatch it out of the air.
‘Good catch,’ she says, taking it from him; stopping by a tree, she holds it with her teeth and gathers her hair back from her face.
As she takes the ribbon from her mouth, he says, ‘Here, I’ll do it.’
‘All right, then,’ she says, handing it to him.
‘Here -’ He steps around to her shoulder and replaces her hands with his on her ponytail; her arms fall slowly down to her sides.
God. What’s he doing? He’s never tied a ribbon. He hopes they work the same way as shoelaces.
He loops the ribbon around her hair, ties a loose knot and pulls it tight, trying to make the ponytail go to the position on the back of her head that it was in before. Then he ties a bow, and then turns it into a double bow, just to be sure.
‘Done,’ he says, stepping around to face her.
‘Thanks,’ she says with a smile, turning to face him at the same time.
Harry notices that they are standing rather close.
She looks up at him and doesn’t move away; instead, her eyes flit round his face like something caught.
He looks at her lips - he can’t help it, they’re gorgeous - and then their eyes meet again, and hers tell him that she knows where he’s just been looking, but she still doesn’t move away, so he puts his hands on her waist and kisses her.
After a second, her body draws a little closer, and a little higher - she must have gone up on her tiptoes - and Harry finds himself wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her again, with a little more firmness. She kisses him back, and then her mouth opens and their tongues touch; her arms slide up and around his neck and he angles his head and pours his relief into their kiss, his relief at finally, finally being able to do what he’s wanted to do since he first saw her, and then she puts a tiny pressure on his lower lip with her teeth and that’s it, Harry’s convinced that this is it, this is all he’s been waiting for his entire life, there can be nothing as good or wonderful as this feeling right now in the whole rest of life or existence.
And then she breaks away from him and looks down and says, ‘Um. Yeah.’
‘Uh,’ he says. He takes his hands from her waist. ‘Yeah - er -’
‘Yeah,’ she says with a shaky smile. ‘Sorry.’
She inclines her head towards the path and together, they start walking again, not quite as close as they were before.
On the last day of Harry’s Christmas holidays, they meet up again and go for their usual walk, but as the conversation turns to the term ahead, they stop and face each other.
‘You’re going back to school, aren’t you?’ he says.
She nods. ‘I … don’t usually come back for Easter, but …’ She bites her lip. ‘Maybe I will this year.’
Feeling a bit reckless, he reaches out and takes her hand.
She smiles at their interlaced fingers. ‘It’s just …’ She sighs softly. ‘I don’t have much to look forward to, back at school.’
He doesn’t mention her boyfriend.
‘You better come back at Easter,’ he says. ‘I want to see you again.’
‘And I want to see you again, Harry …’ She laughs. ‘I never asked you - what’s your surname?’
‘Potter.’
Her smile fades.
‘What? It’s not that awful a name, I hope,’ he jokes feebly, slightly disconcerted by her reaction.
‘Harry Potter,’ she says quietly, staring sightlessly at his shoulder.
‘Ginny?’
She looks up, blinking. ‘It’s a nice name.’
They continue to walk, and talk, but as the hours slide by, she grows quieter and quieter.
At the end of their meeting, she makes vague mmm-ing and ahh-ing noises about when she’ll next call the payphone, and it’s only after she’s left that he realises what that means.
He’s the Squib.
The Squib son of the famous Lily Potter. The receptacle of Lily Potter’s sacrifice. The son she died to save. The vessel she used to destroy You-Know-Who.
Well. Destroy him for fourteen years, anyway.
The Forgotten Squib, Dad used to call him.
At first, he curses himself for forgetting to make her arrange a time to call the phone. He spends hours wandering up and down Magnolia Crescent, staring at the plastic phone and willing it to ring.
He gives up, of course.
At Easter, he comes back, but after a few hours of circling the payphone, he gives up for good.
He never sees her again, but he doesn’t forget her.
END
Ship: Harry/Ginny
Summary: AU: Harry Potter, member of Stonewall High’s sixth form, meets a pretty redhead at a party.
Rating: 12+
Word Count: ~4500
Notes: Vaguely HBP-themed yay! Many thanks to pumpkinpasty for the typo catching and many re-reads.
Perpendicular
This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where he could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn’t be with Dudley. Dudley had a place at Vernon’s old school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local comprehensive.
-----
‘Do you mean ter tell me,’ he growled at the Dursleys, ‘that this boy - this boy! - knows nothin’ abou’ - about ANYTHING?’
Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren’t bad.
‘I know some things,’ he said. ‘I can, you know, do maths and stuff.’
-----
~ J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter has a headache.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asks Tom over the music as he joins Harry in the corner of Graham’s living room, holding two bottles of Stella.
‘Nothing,’ says Harry with a wince.
‘Look, stop standing in the corner and pining over Julie and try and enjoy yourself, for God’s -’
‘I am not pining over anyone, I have a headache,’ snaps Harry.
Tom sighs. ‘You’re such a woman.’ He uses his teeth to open the bottles in his hands - a trick Harry’s never managed to master - and hands one to Harry. ‘Who’ve you got your eye on, then?’
Automatically, the both of them cast their eyes over their fellow guests - what appears to be the whole of Stonewall’s sixth form.
Harry is not particularly in the mood for this.
‘I’m not -’ he starts. ‘Not going to - if something happens it happens, but I am not going to plan anyth-’
‘What about that one?’ asks Tom, nodding his head at a waif-like blonde.
Harry gives up. ‘Too scrawny,’ he says glumly.
‘Her, then,’ says Tom with a roll of his eyes and another nod.
‘Too tall,’ says Harry; Tom snorts.
A couple of people enter the room that Harry doesn’t recognise from school: a tall black boy and a relatively pretty redhead. ‘Who’s she?’ He takes a large gulp of his Stella.
‘Nice tits.’
Harry ignores this. ‘Who is she?’
‘Dunno.’ Tom leers. ‘Her, then?’
‘She doesn’t go to Stonewall, does she?’
‘No. Even better - you never even have to see her again. Get in there.’ He claps Harry on the back.
Harry panics. ‘What do I say to her?’
‘You’re useless.’
‘But - what -’
Tom balances his bottle on the piano lid and pulls a lighter and a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘How about: will you please snog me in front of Julie Arliss so that she thinks I’m suave and dashing and wants to go out with me?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Or how about: why is it that Julie Arliss is willing to get down on her knees for everyone in school except -’
‘No smoking in my house, dickhead,’ says Graham, coming up behind them and snatching Tom’s cigarette from between his fingers. ‘My parents come back from Barbados tomorrow.’
‘Who are they?’ asks Tom, nodding at the couple hovering by the door.
‘My cousin and his girlfriend - you know, Dean, from London. They go to some weird boarding school.’
‘Girlfriend? Shame. Harry thought he was in there.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I saw her first, but I gallantly offered him first pick. You know, what with his heart being broken by Julie again.’
‘What about Julie?’ asks Graham.
‘How she’s going out with Ben.’
‘Julie’s not going out with Ben. She dumped him.’
‘She what?’ Harry asks, his head snapping up.
‘Yeah.’ Graham’s face is impassive. ‘She’s going out with me now.’
Tom bursts out laughing.
Harry’s mouth falls open.
‘Sorry, mate,’ says Graham, grinning, ‘but I couldn’t exactly say no, now, could I?’
Harry fumbles to say something cutting but can’t think of anything better than Well your party SUCKS, so instead, he shoots a look of loathing at Tom and stalks off to the kitchen, muttering something about getting another drink.
He’s sitting on the top of the steps leading down into Graham’s garden, drinking another Stella. He checks his watch. It’s getting late. If he didn’t have his watch he’d still be able to tell the time from the increasing drunkenness of the music choices - less and less Blur and more and more Take That’s Greatest Hits - and the rowdiness of the other people in the garden.
He hopes Graham will let him stay over - he better, he thinks fiercely, he owes him that at least - because he really doesn’t fancy stumbling back to the Dursleys’ at four in the morning.
Although, if he stays, he’ll have to help clean up.
He’s morosely weighing up the pros and cons of spending tomorrow morning cleaning with a frantic Graham versus facing Uncle Vernon’s wrath, when the door behind his back opens. Shifting aside so that whoever it is can pass, he looks up and sees that it’s the pretty redhead.
She walks down the two steps and into the paved garden, but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere specific. She eyes the other guests, and then looks back at Harry with a smile.
‘Hi,’ he says wittily.
She walks back up the steps and sits down next to him.
Glancing mistrustfully at the alcopop in her hand, she says, ‘Weird stuff you drink, here.’
‘Here?’ He remembers what Dean said about her going to school in Scotland. ‘Surrey, or England?’
‘Neither.’ She rolls her eyes, but he doesn’t get the joke. ‘I’m not Scottish.’
‘You don’t sound it.’ There is a silence. ‘Where do you live, then?’
‘Devon.’
‘Long way to come, just for a party.’ He wants to add, It’s hardly the greatest party in the world, but his loyalty to Graham, despite his being such a smarmy bastard, overrides his desire to sound nonchalant.
‘I needed to get out of the house.’
‘How come?’
‘Well …’ Her eyes dart up to the side and a tiny smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are bright brown. ‘It’s my brother.’
‘What about him?’ asks Harry and she looks away, narrowing her eyes off into the dark garden. Harry uses this opportunity wisely and finds himself having to admit that yes, Tom was right: she is rather curvaceous.
‘I think he’s going to make the holidays ... difficult,’ she says.
‘He a bit of a twat?’
‘No, no,’ she says, and Harry immediately worries that he’s overstepped the mark. ‘We get on pretty well actually, he’s only a year older than me, same age as you lot ...’ She sighs theatrically. ‘OK, the thing is, he’s best friends with this girl, who’s also one of my closest friends. But ... they’re really good friends, right, but there’s a bit of a thing between them.’
‘Ah,’ says Harry. He wonders if there’s any chance of him having a thing with this girl. Then he remembers the boyfriend.
‘And now, finally, for the first time in his stupid, inept life, he’s managed to get himself a girlfriend, so the other girl - the best friend - is obviously quite upset. She isn’t speaking to him.’
‘Right …’
‘Which - whatever, I’m leaving them to work it out themselves. But it means that she isn’t coming to stay for the Christmas holidays, which she usually does. And now I’m stuck in the house with him wandering around moping about how he’s going out with the wrong girl - though he won’t admit it,’ she adds with a glower. ‘He’s pretending he thinks Lavender’s the best thing since self-stirring cauldrons.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, Lavender’s the girlfriend. Not the best friend.’
‘No, I meant the bit about …’ Harry shakes his head, giving up; he’s not sober enough to want to pursue what she said about witches’ cauldrons.
After a second, she says, ‘Sorry about that. I’m sure that was very boring.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ he says quickly, and truthfully, because it wasn’t, though it should have been; she seems to be one of those people who has a way of telling a story that makes it funny, and the story itself was quite sweet. A lot of boys, most of Harry’s friends among them, proclaim, often and loudly, how much they can’t stand “chatting” with girls, but Harry’s never found that talking to girls necessitates boredom; in fact, he’s always quite liked female conversation, though he’s never said so out loud.
Unfortunately, he can’t think of anything to say to continue this conversation that isn’t Will you please snog me, preferably in front of Julie Arliss, but actually I don’t care if she sees or not because you’re very fit and I’d like to get off with you anyway. This is possibly because he is quite drunk.
‘I like your hair,’ he says instead.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Try living with it for fifteen years.’
This is the part where, if he were a boy like Tom, he would make some sort of smarmy comment about how Ginger Spice is the best looking one anyway and the pretty girl would roll her eyes at the cheesiness but would somehow, somehow, end up sitting on his lap five minutes later.
Harry looks down at his drink and wishes he was better at flirting.
‘I’m Ginny, by the way,’ she says, extending a hand.
‘Harry,’ he says, returning the handshake.
‘They your friends?’ she asks, jerking a thumb at the gang at the other end of the garden.
‘Yeah, sort of,’ he says. Actually, they annoy him a bit, but he wants her to think that when she found him he was spurning their company out of choice rather than necessity. Of course, he had been spurning their company out of choice, he could have sat with them if he’d wanted to, it wouldn’t have been that weird, but by saying he doesn’t get on with them much he’ll imply that he’s not sitting with them because he’s not cool enough rather than because they’re twats -
‘Really?’ She eyes them distastefully. ‘They seem annoying.’
He grins. ‘They are.’
She catches his eye and smiles back, and then quickly looks back at them. ‘What are they arguing about?’
Harry gives Kenneth Bollard and his mates another glance: they’re lolling around and smoking something that doesn’t smell like a cigarette.
‘Look,’ Kenneth’s saying. ‘Look, all right, it’s like this: it’s aliens. There’s nothing the government or whatever can do because, BECAUSE,’ he shouts above the jeers of his smoking-partners, ‘because there’s nothing humans can do about it - am I right? Am I right or what?’
‘What are they talking about?’ asks Ginny.
‘You know,’ says Harry. ‘How everything’s kind of …’
She’s staring at him intently.
‘Kind of … weird, now. You know, with the disappearances and everything. Hurricanes in Somerset.’
There is no comprehension in her expression, but there’s no confusion either. It’s unsettling; he stares at his drink.
‘Who do you think is doing it?’ she asks.
‘My uncle says it’s the government,’ he says with a shrug, ‘but he says that about everything. My maths teacher says it’s global warming.’
‘Global what?’
He shakes his head. ‘Never mind.’
He looks up again: she’s staring off into the dark. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she says. ‘Everything is kind of weird, now.’
There is another silence between them. Harry hears Kenneth Bollard saying rather placidly, ‘I’m telling you, we’re doomed.’
‘So,’ says Harry. ‘What GCSEs are you doing?’
‘The usual ones.’
‘As in …?’
She looks hesitant. ‘Maths.’
He laughs. ‘Any others?’
‘Nope, that’s it.’ She grins. ‘Just Maths.’
‘Hey, Ginny -’ Harry and Ginny look up quickly and see her boyfriend - Dean - standing behind them at the open back door. ‘We’re gonna have to go in a minute, Fred’s picking us up in five -’
‘Oh God, yeah,’ she says. ‘Um -’
‘I’ve just got to say bye to Graham -’ says Dean, and then he vanishes back into the house.
‘Here -’ says Harry as Ginny makes a move to stand up, and this is a stupid thing he’s about to do, but what’s the point of beer if not to legitimise stupid things - ‘can I have your number?’
She stops moving. ‘My what?’
‘Your … phone number. Telephone number.’ He wishes he’d never said anything. He wishes he hadn’t spent all night talking to someone with a boyfriend.
‘Oh, I don’t have one of them,’ she says cheerily.
‘I mean … a normal phone. Not a mobile phone.’
‘I don’t have any kind of phones,’ she says. ‘It’s … my dad. He hates ... gadgets.’
And Harry thought Vernon was bad. At least he’s noticed it’s no longer 1950. Just about.
‘Oh,’ she says at his bewilderment. ‘I know, I could telephone you, if you give me your - number.’
‘But -’ But you have a boyfriend. ‘Um, yeah, all right - my uncle gets really pissed off when people call the house for me, but there’s this payphone at the end of the street that accepts incoming calls that I use - I know the number … I mean, if you want.’
The corner of her mouth quirks up as if she’s going to laugh, but then she says, ‘Yeah, I do want. Do you have a ... pen?’
She borrows a biro from one of Kenneth’s friends and writes the number of the payphone on her left hand. ‘When will you call?’ he asks, and when she raises her eyebrows he adds hastily, ‘Because, you know, it’s a payphone, so I have to know when it’s going to ring. Or I’ll miss it.’
Her mouth quirks again; she looks as if she can’t believe what she’s about to say. Harry knows the feeling. ‘Two days,’ she says at last. ‘Lunchtime.’
The phone rings at one thirty, but Harry’s been leaning against the door to the grey phone box since quarter to twelve, of course. When it finally happens he almost has a heart attack.
‘Hello?’ he says.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘It’s me.’
‘Hi,’ he says.
He asks where she is.
‘At a friend’s house,’ she says. ‘I’m bored. Are you doing anything?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Do you want to ...?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Where d’you live?’
‘Little Whinging.’
‘Is there a ... a train station?’
‘Yeah, there’s Little Whinging Station - but trains don’t come often, you’ll have more luck with the station in Greater Whi-’
‘I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ she says, and then she hangs up.
It wasn’t easy, getting out of the house and getting hold of some Muggle money so I could use the ‘pay-phone’ in Ottery St Catchpole, but I managed it. It took me four goes to make the phone work, as well, but I did that, too. I got the twins to Apparate me to the station - I’m going to have to get them to pretend that I’m at the shop with them when I meet up with him.
I don’t know why I’m doing this.
It better be worth all my trouble, that’s all I’m saying.
She lives in Devon, but goes to school in Scotland; she has six older brothers - ‘One of them we don’t talk about,’ she scowls - and two parents and spends a lot of time playing what she describes as ‘a weird Scottish game that’s a bit like basketball’.
They walk around Wingworth Heath, a stretch of grey grass on the outskirts of Little Whinging, where no one ever goes, except to have sex or smoke in the bushes, but luckily today it’s far too cold for either of those activities.
They talk and talk, never about anything of any significance. It is wonderful.
Four days later, she comes back. He greets her at Little Whinging Station with a (ridiculous, he realises afterwards) wave and she grins back (which makes it slightly OK). They start to walk and before Harry’s realised where they’re going, they’re walking through Wingworth Heath again. He should really take her somewhere better, he frets, but where? They could take a bus into Greater Whinging and go to the cinema or get some food, he thinks as he gallantly takes her arm and steers her round a used condom lying in the middle of the path, but those options seem a bit - date-y. He could buy her a kebab from one of the local takeaways. (Being a bit strapped for cash, he’s not the best date ever - working the night shift at Sainsbury’s all summer improved his finances significantly, but now it’s approaching Christmas, he’s running low again, and he’s having to rely on cat-sitting for his mad neighbour in order to keep himself in pints.) The most realistic option for somewhere to go is the Red Lion, but there’s bound to be people he knows in there, and he’d have a hard time explaining himself if one of them was Graham. Maybe if it was only Tom - but for some reason Harry can’t quite put his finger on, he doesn’t really want to introduce her to Tom.
So instead, they sit on a bench and she tells him about her parents and he tells her about the Dursleys, and after what feels like ten minutes but is actually ninety, she goes home.
Lying in Wingworth Heath, Harry tosses an apple into the air and catches it.
Tom props himself up on his elbow. ‘So, let me get this straight: you’re falling in love with a posh redhead from boarding school who doesn’t own a telephone.’
‘Yeah, pretty much,’ says Harry, taking a bite of his apple.
Tom considers him. ‘What about her boyfriend?’
Harry can’t help it; all he feels able of doing is shrugging. ‘Do you think I’m being immoral?’
Tom falls back down on the grass. ‘There’s no such thing as good and evil.’
‘So it’s OK, then?’
‘If you want to get beaten up by Graham.’
Harry winces.
‘Not to mention her boyfriend,’ Tom continues. ‘He looked a bit scary.’
‘Don’t be racist.’
‘Harry, he was about double your height.’
‘All right, all right, you don’t have to be so bloody depressing about it -’
‘Hey, I’m not the one who’s getting off with someone else’s girlfriend -’
‘We aren’t! I haven’t even kissed her!’
‘You what?’ Tom stares at him. ‘What are you doing, then?’
Harry crunches his apple and avoids Tom’s eye. ‘Talking, mostly.’
Tom doesn’t stop staring at him.
‘What?’ Harry asks. It’s not the weirdest thing to ever happen, for God’s sake.
‘But - but -’ Tom struggles for words; the effect is rather amusing. ‘Fucking Christ.’
‘I know.’
‘Graham’ll still kill you if he finds out.’
‘I know.’
Another silence falls.
‘You’re seeing her again, aren’t you?’
Harry grins. ‘Yes.’
But the thing is, she isn’t posh at all. It’s strange. She has a weird sense of humour - slightly old-fashioned, maybe - and seems endlessly amused by the strangest things. If he had to guess, he’d say that her parents must be liberal, earthy kinds that run an Oxfam shop and only eat organic vegan food and don’t let their kids watch TV.
Which would explain her lack of knowledge of Will Smith. And the Spice Girls. And Eastenders.
She’s not that weird, though. Well. She’s more normal than you’d think, anyway.
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ she asks abruptly one day as they lie on the grey grass.
‘A pilot.’
‘Really?’ she asks seriously.
‘No. I’m just concentrating on getting to uni.’
‘To what?’
‘Uh,’ says Harry. ‘University?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Where?’
‘As far from Surrey as possible.’
‘Will your relatives pay for that?’
‘Dunno,’ he says. He prefers not to think about the stilted conversations he’s had with Vernon and Petunia about His Future.
‘Is university expensive?’
‘Do you not ...’ After a second, he says, ‘I thought they were good at university stuff in boarding schools. Training you up for Oxbridge from birth, that sort of thing.’
She says nothing, instead choosing to continue chewing her plait of grass.
‘Do you know anything about university?’ he asks her, but he has a feeling he knows what the answer’s going to be.
‘Not much.’
But he doesn’t ask her any more questions because he’s scared that if he does she’ll vanish like a fairy.
She pulls the piece of grass she’s chewing out of her mouth. ‘What are you going to study?’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe politics.’
‘Politics?’ She rolls onto her front. ‘Are you going to work in the government, then?’
He shifts himself up onto his elbow. ‘I’m going to be the Prime Minister.’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘I don’t see you as the government type.’
He grins. ‘I’m going to save the world.’
She shrugs. ‘Fair enough.’
‘What about you?’
She pauses. ‘Remember my weird Scottish sport? I want to do that.’
He tuts. ‘There’s no money in women’s sports.’
‘It’s mixed. And anyway,’ she says, starting to chew on her piece of grass again, ‘I’m not doing it for the money.’
‘Yeah, you are.’ He reaches forwards and pulls the grass from her pale crimson lips. ‘You want to be a big famous sporting personality who does nothing except sit on a sofa at the end of matches and give out your “expert” opinion.’
She quirks an eyebrow. ‘You just want to be a big hero.’
‘Your ambition in life is to get paid a million quid to do adverts for crisps.’
‘Glory-seeker.’
‘Gold digger.’
They laugh far, far too hard at this, and they don’t stop until she sees her watch and says, ‘Bugger - I’ve got to get to the station.’
‘Right now?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, I really have to - I’ll see you after Christmas, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, sitting up as she starts dusting herself down. ‘Yeah, cool - do you want to -’
‘I’ll call you on … Boxing Day?’ He nods. ‘I’ll call you on Boxing Day at two,’ she says authoritatively.
He grins. ‘Try not to kill your brother.’
‘What?’
‘You know,’ he says. ‘You told at me Graham’s party. Something about his friend who he fancies and his girlfriend - Lilac.’
‘You remembered?’ she asks with a smile. ‘Lavender. His girlfriend’s called Lavender. And, yeah,’ she says, standing up. ‘I’ll try not to kill him. If he stops saying things like “you know who’s pretty? Lavender”.’
‘Sounds annoying.’
She sighs. ‘He’s my brother and I love him, but he can be a complete tosser sometimes.’ She rolls her eyes.
With a wave she runs off towards the station, and Harry slouches off home.
Christmas is crap, as usual. Although, Dudley does avoid him nowadays, rather than try to beat him up, so it’s better than it used to be.
As they walk through the heath on Boxing Day a cold wind whips through their clothes and the yellow silk ribbon in her hair starts to unwind and wriggle its way out and into the bluster.
He is mesmerised as red strands and fronds and finally tresses start to tumble out of her ponytail and leap into the wind.
‘Oh, damn,’ she says, trying to catch the ribbon as it makes its bid for freedom; he just manages to snatch it out of the air.
‘Good catch,’ she says, taking it from him; stopping by a tree, she holds it with her teeth and gathers her hair back from her face.
As she takes the ribbon from her mouth, he says, ‘Here, I’ll do it.’
‘All right, then,’ she says, handing it to him.
‘Here -’ He steps around to her shoulder and replaces her hands with his on her ponytail; her arms fall slowly down to her sides.
God. What’s he doing? He’s never tied a ribbon. He hopes they work the same way as shoelaces.
He loops the ribbon around her hair, ties a loose knot and pulls it tight, trying to make the ponytail go to the position on the back of her head that it was in before. Then he ties a bow, and then turns it into a double bow, just to be sure.
‘Done,’ he says, stepping around to face her.
‘Thanks,’ she says with a smile, turning to face him at the same time.
Harry notices that they are standing rather close.
She looks up at him and doesn’t move away; instead, her eyes flit round his face like something caught.
He looks at her lips - he can’t help it, they’re gorgeous - and then their eyes meet again, and hers tell him that she knows where he’s just been looking, but she still doesn’t move away, so he puts his hands on her waist and kisses her.
After a second, her body draws a little closer, and a little higher - she must have gone up on her tiptoes - and Harry finds himself wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her again, with a little more firmness. She kisses him back, and then her mouth opens and their tongues touch; her arms slide up and around his neck and he angles his head and pours his relief into their kiss, his relief at finally, finally being able to do what he’s wanted to do since he first saw her, and then she puts a tiny pressure on his lower lip with her teeth and that’s it, Harry’s convinced that this is it, this is all he’s been waiting for his entire life, there can be nothing as good or wonderful as this feeling right now in the whole rest of life or existence.
And then she breaks away from him and looks down and says, ‘Um. Yeah.’
‘Uh,’ he says. He takes his hands from her waist. ‘Yeah - er -’
‘Yeah,’ she says with a shaky smile. ‘Sorry.’
She inclines her head towards the path and together, they start walking again, not quite as close as they were before.
On the last day of Harry’s Christmas holidays, they meet up again and go for their usual walk, but as the conversation turns to the term ahead, they stop and face each other.
‘You’re going back to school, aren’t you?’ he says.
She nods. ‘I … don’t usually come back for Easter, but …’ She bites her lip. ‘Maybe I will this year.’
Feeling a bit reckless, he reaches out and takes her hand.
She smiles at their interlaced fingers. ‘It’s just …’ She sighs softly. ‘I don’t have much to look forward to, back at school.’
He doesn’t mention her boyfriend.
‘You better come back at Easter,’ he says. ‘I want to see you again.’
‘And I want to see you again, Harry …’ She laughs. ‘I never asked you - what’s your surname?’
‘Potter.’
Her smile fades.
‘What? It’s not that awful a name, I hope,’ he jokes feebly, slightly disconcerted by her reaction.
‘Harry Potter,’ she says quietly, staring sightlessly at his shoulder.
‘Ginny?’
She looks up, blinking. ‘It’s a nice name.’
They continue to walk, and talk, but as the hours slide by, she grows quieter and quieter.
At the end of their meeting, she makes vague mmm-ing and ahh-ing noises about when she’ll next call the payphone, and it’s only after she’s left that he realises what that means.
He’s the Squib.
The Squib son of the famous Lily Potter. The receptacle of Lily Potter’s sacrifice. The son she died to save. The vessel she used to destroy You-Know-Who.
Well. Destroy him for fourteen years, anyway.
The Forgotten Squib, Dad used to call him.
At first, he curses himself for forgetting to make her arrange a time to call the phone. He spends hours wandering up and down Magnolia Crescent, staring at the plastic phone and willing it to ring.
He gives up, of course.
At Easter, he comes back, but after a few hours of circling the payphone, he gives up for good.
He never sees her again, but he doesn’t forget her.
END