Carousel, H/G, PG-13, 4666 words
I got tagged for the music meme by scarlett711777 so that will come later, once I decide. Gear yourself up for lots of Shakira and Ani DiFranco, though, because I am pathetic and know practically no music, and once I find something I like I just listen to a lot of it :P
Title: Carousel
Summary: "She can live without him. She's heard women whose husbands died in the war say that their men were all they had, that it was impossible to live without them, and she doesn't quite believe them. He wasn't hers, anyway, and she never wanted him to be."
Rating: PG-13. But probably closer to PG.
Word Count: 4666
Notes/Warnings: thanks to r_becca for the look-see; I super-appreciate it. And also, thank you guys, aka future and past reviewers, because I often forget to reply to comments, but I really do appreciate all the nice words and good criticism and so forth :)
I.
Heart in my breast,
'Tis half a year now since you broke in two;
The world's forgotten well, if the world knew.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay, "The heart once broken is a heart no more"
II.
The days seem longer now, though she knows they aren't. Not tragically, angrily longer, but simply longer. She's found things to occupy her time, though, and she prefers long days to long nights.
She can live without him. She's heard women whose husbands died in the war say that their men were all they had, that it was impossible to live without them, and she doesn't quite believe them. He wasn't hers, anyway, and she never wanted him to be. It's not that she didn't love him, because she did, and she does. She still cries herself to sleep. She still wakes up expecting a warm body beside her. How long has it been? Six months? Seven?
The days swim together in her mind. Probably eight months. Possibly nine.
III.
Everyone gushed about his eyes-so green, they said, so desperately, amazingly green-but they were so shuttered that she found they taught her nothing about him. His scar was an identifying mark, but she didn't want to identify him-or at least what she wanted to identify was not his name, his age, his heroics, but rather, stupidly, his heart, his voice, his thoughts. She often felt ridiculous for it, and kept it to herself lest others laugh at her.
She liked his hands. They were a bit large, compared to the rest of him, and his fingers were long and very slender. His nails were usually dirty. When her hand brushed against his-which happened increasingly, in later years-she found that his hands felt hotter and larger than she had realized.
When he grabbed her hand for the first time, walking down the corridor, his palms were sweaty against hers. She had always hated the feel of that-clammy, damp skin against hers-and yet his touch was electric, and she thought, His hands are sweaty for me, and she hadn't wanted to let go, ever.
IV.
In her sixth year Hagrid was killed.
"I don't think we should date anymore," Harry said to her the night after they found out, as they sat very close to one another in the library. At the look on her face, he added hurriedly, "I mean, publicly. Privately, we should."
"That's stupid."
"I don't want you to be a target."
"I'm already a target," she said.
"Yeah," he replied, and she knew he didn't have an answer. "That's not the point."
"That's exactly the point."
"I'm afraid something's going to happen to you."
"Well, how do you think I feel? You keep making these dumb heroic gestures and you don't think about what I want at all."
He was silent for some time, and she looked at him, thinking she had won. Finally he spoke.
"I just want to survive this," he said very quietly. "I want both of us to survive this and then I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to you."
So she agreed. The next morning they had a huge public row. Ron punched Harry. The rest of her brothers exacted their revenge in their own ways.
Though she knew it was pretend, she felt hollow for days at the thought of losing him.
V.
Though she hadn't fixated on his lips before, once he kissed her they had become the center of her attention. She spent too long staring at them as he talked, thought about them when he was sitting across from her at meals, kissed them whenever she could. He smiled every time he caught her looking at him-not a stupid, suave smile like so many boys liked to play pretend with, but a slightly bashful, slightly disbelieving smile, as though he couldn't fathom that she would like him at all.
It made her feel powerful and beautiful and wonderful, and she wondered if she had the same effect on him.
VI.
He left on a Wednesday.
"Ginny, I-" he began, and she knew by the look on his face what was coming.
"You stupid ass," she said, but it sounded more morose and whingeing than take-it-or-leave-it-no-nonsense-I'm-sick-of-your-indecision, which was how she had intended it. Her eyes felt like they were burning. She gave a watery little sniffle, but she was not she was not she was not going to cry, because it was just Harry. It was just Harry who was amazing and unbelievable and ridiculous and weird and she could live without him.
There was a long pause.
"I'm not good enough for you," he told her. "I want to be but I'm not."
"What, but you're worthy of a stacked brunette?" she demanded. He gave her one of his stupid wounded looks.
"It's not like that."
"Well, I wouldn't know, would I, since you never tell me anything!" she screamed.
"Ginny," he said quietly, and she wanted him to just yell, because she was tired of tiptoeing around things and never knowing where she stood.
"Sometimes I wish I could just have you all to myself," she said, looking away. The room was a bit blurred. She didn't want to look at him. He put his arms around her and kissed her neck and apologized wordlessly a thousand times, touching her collarbone, her elbow, her fingers.
"I'm afraid if I stay like this I'm going to rip us apart," he said.
"So you thought it would be best to do it now?"
"I'll come back."
"No," she sighed, "you won't."
"Maybe not," he said carefully. She reached for him and clung to him, liking his smell and the feeling of being pressed up against him, but after a while he left anyway. She had known he would. He wasn't really one to go back on his word.
VII.
Marie Sencelles, one of Ginny's good friends, invites Ginny to her nineteenth birthday party.
"It is going to be amazing," Marie gushes on the telephone. "I asked The Ferocious Three to play-and you know that Gregory is still single-and there will be many lilies and I invited Harry and he said he would come, which is so great since you know he has been in France for so long."
Ginny tries to sound nonchalant when she replies, "A man after your own heart, then."
"Well, yes." Ginny can practically hear Marie shrug over the telephone. "I rather always thought there was something between you two, though."
"Hmm, did you?" A thousand images rush to Ginny's mind: Harry kissing her shoulder, Harry doing crossword puzzles with her, Harry counting the freckles on her arm, and she thinks there was so much something between them that Marie cannot have any idea what she is talking about.
"Yeah," Marie says. "I did hear the rumors about him and boys, but I saw him look down your shirt too many times in the pubs to believe this."
Ginny almost laughs, half with pain and half because the irony is too perfect. "Hmm," she says, trying to sound disinterested.
"Oh, well. Perhaps he is not your type." Marie laughs and adds, "Ou ton type."
And yes, Marie is right again. Harry was never Ginny's bloke, not in French or English or any other language, and suddenly she feels a bit upset at the thought.
"But will you come?" Marie asks, and Ginny realizes she's still on the phone. "It is the nineteenth, isn't that wonderful? My nineteenth on the nineteenth."
"Yes, I'll be there," Ginny says, because Marie has been there for Ginny for years, and Ginny does want to go to the party, and she isn't going to let Harry ruin her life anymore. "Yes," she says again, with more certainty. "I'm looking forward to it."
But she isn't looking forward to it at all.
VIII.
She never was quite sure why she agreed to the public breakup.
In the end, she was captured and tortured anyway; but after she escaped and wound up broken and sobbing in Harry's arms in the hospital and told him that his stupidity hadn't helped at all, he said, "But you're still alive, aren't you?"
He touched her as though the question were not rhetorical.
"Yes," she replied, kissing his face gently, because while under the Cruciatus, she had found that she missed most the feel of his skin under her lips.
"I want to keep it that way."
"I can take care of myself," she said angrily, pulling away. He looked at her. His face was unreadable.
"I know," he told her. "I know that. I swear I know that. But sometimes I want to take care of you, too."
He lay down tentatively beside her on the bed. She put her good arm around him and he buried his face in her shoulder. They lay there like that for a long time, until the nurse came in and he jumped away.
The nurse gave them knowing looks but said nothing; Ginny was terrified Harry's scheme had worked.
IX.
When she was young, she wanted a hero. She wanted someone to save her from danger and destruction and herself, and she dreamed of that-of tall and handsome men that carried her away from everything she wanted to be carried away from, and kissed her throat and told her she was amazing.
Tom had wrecked that as completely as he wrecked the rest of her.
And though it was Harry that carried her away from the Chamber, she figured out one night that sticky summer, lying awake in her bed, that she had saved herself, too.
She had saved herself-others may have cracked, but she was still whole-she was whole and strong and independent and she realized then that she would have to be for the rest of her life. She wept, then, a little, because her friends wouldn't figure it out for years.
X.
It was cruel irony, then, that she fell in love with a hero. With Harry Potter, the stupidest, most annoying hero that ever lived, and of course he would try to save her, and he did.
One night, while she and Harry were still publicly dating, Ginny's dorm mate Rachel said, "Well, if you ever get into trouble, he can save you!"
"No," Ginny told her, staring at the ceiling and sighing. "No, if I ever get into trouble, I can save myself."
And she did.
XI.
"Ginny!" squeals Marie as she swings open the door. Ginny laughs a little.
"Happy birthday," she says, kissing her friend on the cheek. "Swingin' party?"
"Oooh, The Ferocious Three just began to play-and Gregory's hair is newly cut." Marie wiggles her eyebrows and Ginny shakes her head.
"No, you take Gregory. You're the one who's always talking about him."
Marie shrugs as she beckons Ginny inside.
"If you say so." She takes Ginny's coat and squeals again. "I like your dress!"
"Marie, you'd say that if my dress were a burlap sack."
"No, I wouldn't," Marie says, but Ginny knows her better, and rolls her eyes. She looks over Marie's shoulder, but just a bit, because she's not really looking forward to seeing anyone in particular, not really.
"Harry's not here yet," says Marie knowingly. Ginny gives her a cool look.
"I know," she says calmly. "I'm looking for Patricia."
"Hmm," Marie replies, in the kind of voice that means she doesn't believe Ginny at all. "Well. I knew there was something between you."
"Between Patricia and I?"
"No, between you and Harry, of course."
Yes, all right, thinks Ginny. There was something between them, but there isn't anymore, and there isn't going to be, so it doesn't matter if he is here or not. She sees someone with black hair and her heart flutters but of course it is only Louise Collen. Ginny's heart flutters again, but in a different, worse way. The breaking kind of way.
XII.
Keeping their relationship a secret was, in the end, not as hard as Ginny thought it would be. They moved in together, and though Molly threw a fit when she found out, Ginny managed to convince her that they were just friends, and insinuated a few things about Harry's sexuality that probably spread to the rest of the family.
The news that Harry preferred wizards to witches had spread across the tabloids soon enough. Ginny asked Harry if he minded.
"A bit, I guess," he said, shrugging. "I mean… I don't know. Gossip is always weird." He winked at her and added, "But it means I get to shag you."
XIII.
She said to Harry one night, as she lay next to him, "You know, I don't want you to be anything you're not."
"Huh?" asked Harry. She knew he hadn't been listening.
"I just want you to be Harry," she said. "Just you. Not any stupid idol or anything."
For a long time, he didn't say a word. Finally he spoke, and his words came out guttural, as though he were choking on them.
"I'm not sure I know how to be just me."
Incidentally, he left the next day.
XIV.
Ginny mingles at the party. It's a brilliant party, of course. Marie always throws brilliant parties. And many of the people are Ginny's friends, or at least her acquaintances; and she likes many of them, so it really isn't torture.
Except the entire night, though she tries to ignore it, she feels like she is in a vise-like her stomach's twisted, like her lungs are crushed, like her skin isn't really her skin-and it's terrible.
And is this what she's been reduced to? Is this how far she's come, she thinks, since Harry left, that the idea of seeing him makes her forget everything? She knows worrying about him is useless-she knows these things will or will not mend in their own time, as they may-but still she is anxious. Still she is terribly, terribly anxious.
She's never liked the notion that women have to wait around and sob for their lost loves, but she feels perhaps like that's what she's doing. Yes, of course, she can live without him, but she doesn't want to.
She sees someone with black hair. It is not Louise Collen. She knows she is somewhat insane.
XV.
Three weeks after he left, Ginny heard that the final Death Eater base had been captured, that the war was finally over. People rejoiced, and Ginny thought, Yes, perhaps this is what he needed, and waited, telling no one, for him to return. She was more optimistic then than she is now.
As the months go, people quickly forget the war and the dead. Soon Ginny thinks they must have been Obliviated not to remember the struggles, the scars. He still does not return. Leaves fall from the trees. She is alone.
XVI.
After waiting so long to be near Harry, naturally she avoids him. The entire night she can just barely see him out of the corner of her eye. Finally, Marie drags him over to Ginny by the elbow.
"Hi," says Ginny neutrally, trying to convey that she is all right without him. She knows she is failing.
"Hi," he responds, and looks at her for a very long time without saying a word. As is his custom, Ginny supposes.
"Ooh, Janet is here!" exclaims Marie. She runs off. Ginny looks at Harry with more than a little trepidation.
"How was France?" she says, and she sounds like she is twelve.
"Oh, good." He takes a long sip of his drink, but he's not fooling her; she knows him well enough to know when he's avoiding something. Which is pretty much all the time, she thinks, a bit sadly. She is in the middle of regretting when he says suddenly, "You know, it was business."
"Huh?"
"I went to France on business. I mean, I didn't-ah-go because of business," he says, and she can tell that he's frustrated, "but that's why I was in France. It wasn't, er… Fleur Delacour's sister or anything."
"Oh," she says, because she can't think of anything else to say.
"I don't know," he says, looking really uncomfortable. "You just seemed to think I was running off with another woman, and I didn't. Not at all." He gazes at her for a while, and Ginny can't help but think of how many times he has stared at her like that before-how many wonderful, amazing times.
She's probably misinterpreting it, she knows. But he is so close, and it is almost impossible not to misinterpret it, if only to make herself feel better.
"I've missed you," he says. He looks wildly uncomfortable, and Ginny can't blame him.
"Yeah," she replies. "Me too."
"Yeah." He nods. Yes, he's definitely wildly uncomfortable, but he doesn't leave, which is strange. She'd understand if she did. She herself half wants to leave.
And yet she doesn't. Uncomfortable or not, she wants desperately to be here, standing in front of him, so close she can see that his shirt is wrinkled and his tie isn't knotted properly. She wants to untie it-untie it and retie it, again and again, until they are both old and withered and gray-headed, and then tie it a final time, and lay down in the grave beside him, and dream of eternity.
And she understands, finally, with complete certainty, the entire meaning of the word "want".
XVII.
Ginny doesn't remember a lot of things, though she likes to think she does.
She doesn't remember their first kiss, for instance, even though after a while people began to ask her that a lot. But the thing is, it's hard to separate the kisses out-she doesn't recall all of them, but those she does recall are all blurred together in her head, a strange carousel of love. They may have first kissed in Zonko's, in the library, in the common room as they sat studying together.
Before it mattered more when he kissed her last than when he kissed her first, but now that there are no more kisses she wants to know. She wants to be able to put a label on this, to know when it started and when it ended.
She doesn't know either. Does that mean it didn't exist? She's beginning to think time is useless. She's sick of ultimatums.
XVIII.
She is not precisely sure how it happens. One minute she and Harry are standing there awkwardly, then she is volunteering to get drinks for cocktails from the kitchen, and then Harry is saying, "Can I come?" and she half-nods and he follows her out. And then it is just he and she in Marie's brightly decorated kitchen, and somehow it is very different to be with him alone than it is to be with him with others around.
She doesn't know if there's anything to say to him that doesn't sound anticlimactic. "I love you"? "I like being in love with you"? "You make my stomach turn upside-down"? "I want to jump your bones"? All of these things have been said, to some extent, before-when she could, when he shivered at it and said it back.
Things have changed, but she doesn't know how much, so she feels as though it's a merry-go-round that everyone has been spinning forever, that she's only just jumped onto.
"Ginny," he says, reaching into the cabinet to get more tequila. Ginny resolves not to look at his bum as he does so, and then does anyway.
"Hmm?"
"Don't you think we should, er…"
"Should what?"
"Talk," he says very quickly, pulling the tequila bottle out of the cabinet and turning to her, wiping his hands on his trousers.
"Er. Well." Because even though she wants to fix this (if it can be fixed), she is afraid that if she begins to talk she will tell him about how cold the bed is, how she needs him to count her freckles to remind her they're there, how she can't figure out a four-letter word for "adoration" without him.
"I just-" he says, but stops and looks away before he finishes. She sees, as he breaks the seal on the tequila bottle, a long scar running across the back of his hand, and she feels a little broken inside. It's the first scar of his she's ever seen that she hasn't moved her lips over, that she hasn't touched and kissed and grown used to, and it's a strange thought. Does he have any other scars? she wonders. She knows he must.
"Do you-" he continues unsteadily. "-do you want a drink?" He holds up the tequila bottle.
"No," she says faintly, wondering how it would even work if they were to get back together. How could she relearn those scars? There's so much that she doesn't know and that he doesn't know. He doesn't know she had a bad case of the flu two months ago, or that she now only drinks white wine, no red. He doesn't know that she kissed a man drunkenly in a bar, and she doesn't know if he did the same, or more, in France. She wants terribly, desperately, totally to be able to kiss him and unbutton his shirt and smile at him in the way she's never smiled at anyone else, but is it even possible anymore? She isn't sure at all.
"Me neither," he says, and it takes her a minute to realize he is talking about the tequila.
XIX.
In Hogwarts, before the public breakup, when Ginny told Hermione that she and Harry were dating, in an off-handed way, in the way that meant I-want-you-to-be-okay-with-this-I-know-we're-friends-but-I'm-worried-you-don't-think-I'm-good-enough-for-him, Hermione smiled.
"I'm glad for you," said Hermione. "For both of you."
"Thanks," Ginny replied.
"I know this is premature to say this," said Hermione, "but I think you two could be together forever."
Ginny thought so too.
XX.
Marie's kitchen is pretty but a little stuffy, and the only sound is the hum of the yellow refrigerator and the clink of the tequila bottle when Harry sets it down on the counter.
"Ginny-" Harry says, and she knows he is very very nervous, perhaps even more nervous than she is, but that could mean a thousand things, none of which she is ready to deal with. "I know-I know-this is all my fault; I know that. And I left, but-"
"Harry," she cuts him off. She looks away and wishes she had never come to the party in the first place.
"No, please," he says, putting a hand on her arm. "Please listen to me. I know this isn't the right place for it, but there'll never be a right place for it, and I just want to say that-"
"I don't want your apologies!" Ginny says, nearly screaming, nearly crying. "It's not something you can just get rid of with a few stupid words. And I don't want to be your friend, so don't ask me to, because I'll say yes and it'll just make everything worse."
"It won't-"
"Yes, it will," she said. "It's hard to be without you but it's harder to be with you. I never know what you're thinking, and it's just-it's awful, because I can't even look at you without thinking about-about everything-and I-"
"I wasn't going to ask to be your friend," Harry interrupts.
"Well, good," Ginny retorts, upset with herself for telling him everything. She crosses her arms over her chest and wants to leave but doesn't. Her hair is not nearly as nice as it was when she came, and the dress she loved when she left the house feels stupid now. Part of her wants to get this over with but a larger part doesn't, because it means she and Harry will be done, too-really, really done-and it is a terrifying thought.
"What were you going to say, then?" she asks impatiently, because he is still stupid and she still has to prod him to get him to say anything.
"I was going to say that I-I know I left, and it's my fault, and you have every right to blame me, and I know you do, but I-I won't leave again. I won't, because I figured this thing out-this thing where I thought I could fix everything, and break everything, and I know I can't now-I know you're okay without me, and I can be okay without you but I don't want to have to be-do you know what I mean?"
"No," she says, just to be contrary, and then she nods and says, "Yes."
"I know we'll probably-" he swallowed and took a deep breath before continuing, "-we're probably going to mess up again, but I want to, I'd rather have you for a while and mess it up than never have you again, and we can fix it if we do mess up, because… because I want us to."
"You can't just have me," she answers, sniffling a little. He is very close; she still wants to reknot his tie, and so it is hard to have conviction when she says, "You can't just say I'm yours and then that's it-it doesn't work that way, it-"
"I know-I just-I know you're not mine, and you won't be, but I… I want you."
She stares at his shoulder, because she knows if she looks at his face she will do something stupid. Probably she is supposed to make this more difficult for him: play hard-to-get, stand her ground, make him beg-but she doesn't want to have to wait anymore. She thinks probably she should be independent and feminist and stubborn and, yes, she is all those things, but she is also in love.
"Well, you have certainly gotten cheesier since I saw you last," she says with a little smile, giving up on the no-crying rule. She knows what he meant, but still feels like she has to say, half-seriously, "'I want you'? That's a really clichéd pick-up line."
"I don't mean it like that," he says. Behind his glasses, his eyes are bit glossy, and she wonders if possibly he is crying as well, and loses her train of thought completely. His leg is nearly touching hers. Very, very slowly, she places her hand on his cheek, runs her thumb across the corner of his mouth, nearly collapses at the familiar feel of his stubble against her palm.
"I don't want it to be a secret, then," she says. She is not quite sure what she is agreeing to but she is sure that she wants it more than anything.
"Okay-no, that's true, because I-I don't want you to-"
She can't really understand what he's trying to say, but it stops mattering when they kiss, and the pressure of his mouth against hers is as clumsy as it always was, and his hand moves to her breast immediately, which is probably ridiculous and overconfident of him, but she finds she really doesn't care as his hips move against hers and her back arches and he groans very quietly into her mouth.
He has lipstick all over his mouth when they pull away, and she smiles a little bit. Her hands, shaking a little go up to his tie and unknot it. She has not tied a tie in a while, but she remembers how, and the kitchen is still quiet when she pulls it tight, more neatly than before but still a little askew.
"That's been bothering me all night," she admits, and feels lucky to be able to kiss him when he smiles.
Title: Carousel
Summary: "She can live without him. She's heard women whose husbands died in the war say that their men were all they had, that it was impossible to live without them, and she doesn't quite believe them. He wasn't hers, anyway, and she never wanted him to be."
Rating: PG-13. But probably closer to PG.
Word Count: 4666
Notes/Warnings: thanks to r_becca for the look-see; I super-appreciate it. And also, thank you guys, aka future and past reviewers, because I often forget to reply to comments, but I really do appreciate all the nice words and good criticism and so forth :)
I.
Heart in my breast,
'Tis half a year now since you broke in two;
The world's forgotten well, if the world knew.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay, "The heart once broken is a heart no more"
II.
The days seem longer now, though she knows they aren't. Not tragically, angrily longer, but simply longer. She's found things to occupy her time, though, and she prefers long days to long nights.
She can live without him. She's heard women whose husbands died in the war say that their men were all they had, that it was impossible to live without them, and she doesn't quite believe them. He wasn't hers, anyway, and she never wanted him to be. It's not that she didn't love him, because she did, and she does. She still cries herself to sleep. She still wakes up expecting a warm body beside her. How long has it been? Six months? Seven?
The days swim together in her mind. Probably eight months. Possibly nine.
III.
Everyone gushed about his eyes-so green, they said, so desperately, amazingly green-but they were so shuttered that she found they taught her nothing about him. His scar was an identifying mark, but she didn't want to identify him-or at least what she wanted to identify was not his name, his age, his heroics, but rather, stupidly, his heart, his voice, his thoughts. She often felt ridiculous for it, and kept it to herself lest others laugh at her.
She liked his hands. They were a bit large, compared to the rest of him, and his fingers were long and very slender. His nails were usually dirty. When her hand brushed against his-which happened increasingly, in later years-she found that his hands felt hotter and larger than she had realized.
When he grabbed her hand for the first time, walking down the corridor, his palms were sweaty against hers. She had always hated the feel of that-clammy, damp skin against hers-and yet his touch was electric, and she thought, His hands are sweaty for me, and she hadn't wanted to let go, ever.
IV.
In her sixth year Hagrid was killed.
"I don't think we should date anymore," Harry said to her the night after they found out, as they sat very close to one another in the library. At the look on her face, he added hurriedly, "I mean, publicly. Privately, we should."
"That's stupid."
"I don't want you to be a target."
"I'm already a target," she said.
"Yeah," he replied, and she knew he didn't have an answer. "That's not the point."
"That's exactly the point."
"I'm afraid something's going to happen to you."
"Well, how do you think I feel? You keep making these dumb heroic gestures and you don't think about what I want at all."
He was silent for some time, and she looked at him, thinking she had won. Finally he spoke.
"I just want to survive this," he said very quietly. "I want both of us to survive this and then I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to you."
So she agreed. The next morning they had a huge public row. Ron punched Harry. The rest of her brothers exacted their revenge in their own ways.
Though she knew it was pretend, she felt hollow for days at the thought of losing him.
V.
Though she hadn't fixated on his lips before, once he kissed her they had become the center of her attention. She spent too long staring at them as he talked, thought about them when he was sitting across from her at meals, kissed them whenever she could. He smiled every time he caught her looking at him-not a stupid, suave smile like so many boys liked to play pretend with, but a slightly bashful, slightly disbelieving smile, as though he couldn't fathom that she would like him at all.
It made her feel powerful and beautiful and wonderful, and she wondered if she had the same effect on him.
VI.
He left on a Wednesday.
"Ginny, I-" he began, and she knew by the look on his face what was coming.
"You stupid ass," she said, but it sounded more morose and whingeing than take-it-or-leave-it-no-nonsense-I'm-sick-of-your-indecision, which was how she had intended it. Her eyes felt like they were burning. She gave a watery little sniffle, but she was not she was not she was not going to cry, because it was just Harry. It was just Harry who was amazing and unbelievable and ridiculous and weird and she could live without him.
There was a long pause.
"I'm not good enough for you," he told her. "I want to be but I'm not."
"What, but you're worthy of a stacked brunette?" she demanded. He gave her one of his stupid wounded looks.
"It's not like that."
"Well, I wouldn't know, would I, since you never tell me anything!" she screamed.
"Ginny," he said quietly, and she wanted him to just yell, because she was tired of tiptoeing around things and never knowing where she stood.
"Sometimes I wish I could just have you all to myself," she said, looking away. The room was a bit blurred. She didn't want to look at him. He put his arms around her and kissed her neck and apologized wordlessly a thousand times, touching her collarbone, her elbow, her fingers.
"I'm afraid if I stay like this I'm going to rip us apart," he said.
"So you thought it would be best to do it now?"
"I'll come back."
"No," she sighed, "you won't."
"Maybe not," he said carefully. She reached for him and clung to him, liking his smell and the feeling of being pressed up against him, but after a while he left anyway. She had known he would. He wasn't really one to go back on his word.
VII.
Marie Sencelles, one of Ginny's good friends, invites Ginny to her nineteenth birthday party.
"It is going to be amazing," Marie gushes on the telephone. "I asked The Ferocious Three to play-and you know that Gregory is still single-and there will be many lilies and I invited Harry and he said he would come, which is so great since you know he has been in France for so long."
Ginny tries to sound nonchalant when she replies, "A man after your own heart, then."
"Well, yes." Ginny can practically hear Marie shrug over the telephone. "I rather always thought there was something between you two, though."
"Hmm, did you?" A thousand images rush to Ginny's mind: Harry kissing her shoulder, Harry doing crossword puzzles with her, Harry counting the freckles on her arm, and she thinks there was so much something between them that Marie cannot have any idea what she is talking about.
"Yeah," Marie says. "I did hear the rumors about him and boys, but I saw him look down your shirt too many times in the pubs to believe this."
Ginny almost laughs, half with pain and half because the irony is too perfect. "Hmm," she says, trying to sound disinterested.
"Oh, well. Perhaps he is not your type." Marie laughs and adds, "Ou ton type."
And yes, Marie is right again. Harry was never Ginny's bloke, not in French or English or any other language, and suddenly she feels a bit upset at the thought.
"But will you come?" Marie asks, and Ginny realizes she's still on the phone. "It is the nineteenth, isn't that wonderful? My nineteenth on the nineteenth."
"Yes, I'll be there," Ginny says, because Marie has been there for Ginny for years, and Ginny does want to go to the party, and she isn't going to let Harry ruin her life anymore. "Yes," she says again, with more certainty. "I'm looking forward to it."
But she isn't looking forward to it at all.
VIII.
She never was quite sure why she agreed to the public breakup.
In the end, she was captured and tortured anyway; but after she escaped and wound up broken and sobbing in Harry's arms in the hospital and told him that his stupidity hadn't helped at all, he said, "But you're still alive, aren't you?"
He touched her as though the question were not rhetorical.
"Yes," she replied, kissing his face gently, because while under the Cruciatus, she had found that she missed most the feel of his skin under her lips.
"I want to keep it that way."
"I can take care of myself," she said angrily, pulling away. He looked at her. His face was unreadable.
"I know," he told her. "I know that. I swear I know that. But sometimes I want to take care of you, too."
He lay down tentatively beside her on the bed. She put her good arm around him and he buried his face in her shoulder. They lay there like that for a long time, until the nurse came in and he jumped away.
The nurse gave them knowing looks but said nothing; Ginny was terrified Harry's scheme had worked.
IX.
When she was young, she wanted a hero. She wanted someone to save her from danger and destruction and herself, and she dreamed of that-of tall and handsome men that carried her away from everything she wanted to be carried away from, and kissed her throat and told her she was amazing.
Tom had wrecked that as completely as he wrecked the rest of her.
And though it was Harry that carried her away from the Chamber, she figured out one night that sticky summer, lying awake in her bed, that she had saved herself, too.
She had saved herself-others may have cracked, but she was still whole-she was whole and strong and independent and she realized then that she would have to be for the rest of her life. She wept, then, a little, because her friends wouldn't figure it out for years.
X.
It was cruel irony, then, that she fell in love with a hero. With Harry Potter, the stupidest, most annoying hero that ever lived, and of course he would try to save her, and he did.
One night, while she and Harry were still publicly dating, Ginny's dorm mate Rachel said, "Well, if you ever get into trouble, he can save you!"
"No," Ginny told her, staring at the ceiling and sighing. "No, if I ever get into trouble, I can save myself."
And she did.
XI.
"Ginny!" squeals Marie as she swings open the door. Ginny laughs a little.
"Happy birthday," she says, kissing her friend on the cheek. "Swingin' party?"
"Oooh, The Ferocious Three just began to play-and Gregory's hair is newly cut." Marie wiggles her eyebrows and Ginny shakes her head.
"No, you take Gregory. You're the one who's always talking about him."
Marie shrugs as she beckons Ginny inside.
"If you say so." She takes Ginny's coat and squeals again. "I like your dress!"
"Marie, you'd say that if my dress were a burlap sack."
"No, I wouldn't," Marie says, but Ginny knows her better, and rolls her eyes. She looks over Marie's shoulder, but just a bit, because she's not really looking forward to seeing anyone in particular, not really.
"Harry's not here yet," says Marie knowingly. Ginny gives her a cool look.
"I know," she says calmly. "I'm looking for Patricia."
"Hmm," Marie replies, in the kind of voice that means she doesn't believe Ginny at all. "Well. I knew there was something between you."
"Between Patricia and I?"
"No, between you and Harry, of course."
Yes, all right, thinks Ginny. There was something between them, but there isn't anymore, and there isn't going to be, so it doesn't matter if he is here or not. She sees someone with black hair and her heart flutters but of course it is only Louise Collen. Ginny's heart flutters again, but in a different, worse way. The breaking kind of way.
XII.
Keeping their relationship a secret was, in the end, not as hard as Ginny thought it would be. They moved in together, and though Molly threw a fit when she found out, Ginny managed to convince her that they were just friends, and insinuated a few things about Harry's sexuality that probably spread to the rest of the family.
The news that Harry preferred wizards to witches had spread across the tabloids soon enough. Ginny asked Harry if he minded.
"A bit, I guess," he said, shrugging. "I mean… I don't know. Gossip is always weird." He winked at her and added, "But it means I get to shag you."
XIII.
She said to Harry one night, as she lay next to him, "You know, I don't want you to be anything you're not."
"Huh?" asked Harry. She knew he hadn't been listening.
"I just want you to be Harry," she said. "Just you. Not any stupid idol or anything."
For a long time, he didn't say a word. Finally he spoke, and his words came out guttural, as though he were choking on them.
"I'm not sure I know how to be just me."
Incidentally, he left the next day.
XIV.
Ginny mingles at the party. It's a brilliant party, of course. Marie always throws brilliant parties. And many of the people are Ginny's friends, or at least her acquaintances; and she likes many of them, so it really isn't torture.
Except the entire night, though she tries to ignore it, she feels like she is in a vise-like her stomach's twisted, like her lungs are crushed, like her skin isn't really her skin-and it's terrible.
And is this what she's been reduced to? Is this how far she's come, she thinks, since Harry left, that the idea of seeing him makes her forget everything? She knows worrying about him is useless-she knows these things will or will not mend in their own time, as they may-but still she is anxious. Still she is terribly, terribly anxious.
She's never liked the notion that women have to wait around and sob for their lost loves, but she feels perhaps like that's what she's doing. Yes, of course, she can live without him, but she doesn't want to.
She sees someone with black hair. It is not Louise Collen. She knows she is somewhat insane.
XV.
Three weeks after he left, Ginny heard that the final Death Eater base had been captured, that the war was finally over. People rejoiced, and Ginny thought, Yes, perhaps this is what he needed, and waited, telling no one, for him to return. She was more optimistic then than she is now.
As the months go, people quickly forget the war and the dead. Soon Ginny thinks they must have been Obliviated not to remember the struggles, the scars. He still does not return. Leaves fall from the trees. She is alone.
XVI.
After waiting so long to be near Harry, naturally she avoids him. The entire night she can just barely see him out of the corner of her eye. Finally, Marie drags him over to Ginny by the elbow.
"Hi," says Ginny neutrally, trying to convey that she is all right without him. She knows she is failing.
"Hi," he responds, and looks at her for a very long time without saying a word. As is his custom, Ginny supposes.
"Ooh, Janet is here!" exclaims Marie. She runs off. Ginny looks at Harry with more than a little trepidation.
"How was France?" she says, and she sounds like she is twelve.
"Oh, good." He takes a long sip of his drink, but he's not fooling her; she knows him well enough to know when he's avoiding something. Which is pretty much all the time, she thinks, a bit sadly. She is in the middle of regretting when he says suddenly, "You know, it was business."
"Huh?"
"I went to France on business. I mean, I didn't-ah-go because of business," he says, and she can tell that he's frustrated, "but that's why I was in France. It wasn't, er… Fleur Delacour's sister or anything."
"Oh," she says, because she can't think of anything else to say.
"I don't know," he says, looking really uncomfortable. "You just seemed to think I was running off with another woman, and I didn't. Not at all." He gazes at her for a while, and Ginny can't help but think of how many times he has stared at her like that before-how many wonderful, amazing times.
She's probably misinterpreting it, she knows. But he is so close, and it is almost impossible not to misinterpret it, if only to make herself feel better.
"I've missed you," he says. He looks wildly uncomfortable, and Ginny can't blame him.
"Yeah," she replies. "Me too."
"Yeah." He nods. Yes, he's definitely wildly uncomfortable, but he doesn't leave, which is strange. She'd understand if she did. She herself half wants to leave.
And yet she doesn't. Uncomfortable or not, she wants desperately to be here, standing in front of him, so close she can see that his shirt is wrinkled and his tie isn't knotted properly. She wants to untie it-untie it and retie it, again and again, until they are both old and withered and gray-headed, and then tie it a final time, and lay down in the grave beside him, and dream of eternity.
And she understands, finally, with complete certainty, the entire meaning of the word "want".
XVII.
Ginny doesn't remember a lot of things, though she likes to think she does.
She doesn't remember their first kiss, for instance, even though after a while people began to ask her that a lot. But the thing is, it's hard to separate the kisses out-she doesn't recall all of them, but those she does recall are all blurred together in her head, a strange carousel of love. They may have first kissed in Zonko's, in the library, in the common room as they sat studying together.
Before it mattered more when he kissed her last than when he kissed her first, but now that there are no more kisses she wants to know. She wants to be able to put a label on this, to know when it started and when it ended.
She doesn't know either. Does that mean it didn't exist? She's beginning to think time is useless. She's sick of ultimatums.
XVIII.
She is not precisely sure how it happens. One minute she and Harry are standing there awkwardly, then she is volunteering to get drinks for cocktails from the kitchen, and then Harry is saying, "Can I come?" and she half-nods and he follows her out. And then it is just he and she in Marie's brightly decorated kitchen, and somehow it is very different to be with him alone than it is to be with him with others around.
She doesn't know if there's anything to say to him that doesn't sound anticlimactic. "I love you"? "I like being in love with you"? "You make my stomach turn upside-down"? "I want to jump your bones"? All of these things have been said, to some extent, before-when she could, when he shivered at it and said it back.
Things have changed, but she doesn't know how much, so she feels as though it's a merry-go-round that everyone has been spinning forever, that she's only just jumped onto.
"Ginny," he says, reaching into the cabinet to get more tequila. Ginny resolves not to look at his bum as he does so, and then does anyway.
"Hmm?"
"Don't you think we should, er…"
"Should what?"
"Talk," he says very quickly, pulling the tequila bottle out of the cabinet and turning to her, wiping his hands on his trousers.
"Er. Well." Because even though she wants to fix this (if it can be fixed), she is afraid that if she begins to talk she will tell him about how cold the bed is, how she needs him to count her freckles to remind her they're there, how she can't figure out a four-letter word for "adoration" without him.
"I just-" he says, but stops and looks away before he finishes. She sees, as he breaks the seal on the tequila bottle, a long scar running across the back of his hand, and she feels a little broken inside. It's the first scar of his she's ever seen that she hasn't moved her lips over, that she hasn't touched and kissed and grown used to, and it's a strange thought. Does he have any other scars? she wonders. She knows he must.
"Do you-" he continues unsteadily. "-do you want a drink?" He holds up the tequila bottle.
"No," she says faintly, wondering how it would even work if they were to get back together. How could she relearn those scars? There's so much that she doesn't know and that he doesn't know. He doesn't know she had a bad case of the flu two months ago, or that she now only drinks white wine, no red. He doesn't know that she kissed a man drunkenly in a bar, and she doesn't know if he did the same, or more, in France. She wants terribly, desperately, totally to be able to kiss him and unbutton his shirt and smile at him in the way she's never smiled at anyone else, but is it even possible anymore? She isn't sure at all.
"Me neither," he says, and it takes her a minute to realize he is talking about the tequila.
XIX.
In Hogwarts, before the public breakup, when Ginny told Hermione that she and Harry were dating, in an off-handed way, in the way that meant I-want-you-to-be-okay-with-this-I-know-we're-friends-but-I'm-worried-you-don't-think-I'm-good-enough-for-him, Hermione smiled.
"I'm glad for you," said Hermione. "For both of you."
"Thanks," Ginny replied.
"I know this is premature to say this," said Hermione, "but I think you two could be together forever."
Ginny thought so too.
XX.
Marie's kitchen is pretty but a little stuffy, and the only sound is the hum of the yellow refrigerator and the clink of the tequila bottle when Harry sets it down on the counter.
"Ginny-" Harry says, and she knows he is very very nervous, perhaps even more nervous than she is, but that could mean a thousand things, none of which she is ready to deal with. "I know-I know-this is all my fault; I know that. And I left, but-"
"Harry," she cuts him off. She looks away and wishes she had never come to the party in the first place.
"No, please," he says, putting a hand on her arm. "Please listen to me. I know this isn't the right place for it, but there'll never be a right place for it, and I just want to say that-"
"I don't want your apologies!" Ginny says, nearly screaming, nearly crying. "It's not something you can just get rid of with a few stupid words. And I don't want to be your friend, so don't ask me to, because I'll say yes and it'll just make everything worse."
"It won't-"
"Yes, it will," she said. "It's hard to be without you but it's harder to be with you. I never know what you're thinking, and it's just-it's awful, because I can't even look at you without thinking about-about everything-and I-"
"I wasn't going to ask to be your friend," Harry interrupts.
"Well, good," Ginny retorts, upset with herself for telling him everything. She crosses her arms over her chest and wants to leave but doesn't. Her hair is not nearly as nice as it was when she came, and the dress she loved when she left the house feels stupid now. Part of her wants to get this over with but a larger part doesn't, because it means she and Harry will be done, too-really, really done-and it is a terrifying thought.
"What were you going to say, then?" she asks impatiently, because he is still stupid and she still has to prod him to get him to say anything.
"I was going to say that I-I know I left, and it's my fault, and you have every right to blame me, and I know you do, but I-I won't leave again. I won't, because I figured this thing out-this thing where I thought I could fix everything, and break everything, and I know I can't now-I know you're okay without me, and I can be okay without you but I don't want to have to be-do you know what I mean?"
"No," she says, just to be contrary, and then she nods and says, "Yes."
"I know we'll probably-" he swallowed and took a deep breath before continuing, "-we're probably going to mess up again, but I want to, I'd rather have you for a while and mess it up than never have you again, and we can fix it if we do mess up, because… because I want us to."
"You can't just have me," she answers, sniffling a little. He is very close; she still wants to reknot his tie, and so it is hard to have conviction when she says, "You can't just say I'm yours and then that's it-it doesn't work that way, it-"
"I know-I just-I know you're not mine, and you won't be, but I… I want you."
She stares at his shoulder, because she knows if she looks at his face she will do something stupid. Probably she is supposed to make this more difficult for him: play hard-to-get, stand her ground, make him beg-but she doesn't want to have to wait anymore. She thinks probably she should be independent and feminist and stubborn and, yes, she is all those things, but she is also in love.
"Well, you have certainly gotten cheesier since I saw you last," she says with a little smile, giving up on the no-crying rule. She knows what he meant, but still feels like she has to say, half-seriously, "'I want you'? That's a really clichéd pick-up line."
"I don't mean it like that," he says. Behind his glasses, his eyes are bit glossy, and she wonders if possibly he is crying as well, and loses her train of thought completely. His leg is nearly touching hers. Very, very slowly, she places her hand on his cheek, runs her thumb across the corner of his mouth, nearly collapses at the familiar feel of his stubble against her palm.
"I don't want it to be a secret, then," she says. She is not quite sure what she is agreeing to but she is sure that she wants it more than anything.
"Okay-no, that's true, because I-I don't want you to-"
She can't really understand what he's trying to say, but it stops mattering when they kiss, and the pressure of his mouth against hers is as clumsy as it always was, and his hand moves to her breast immediately, which is probably ridiculous and overconfident of him, but she finds she really doesn't care as his hips move against hers and her back arches and he groans very quietly into her mouth.
He has lipstick all over his mouth when they pull away, and she smiles a little bit. Her hands, shaking a little go up to his tie and unknot it. She has not tied a tie in a while, but she remembers how, and the kitchen is still quiet when she pulls it tight, more neatly than before but still a little askew.
"That's been bothering me all night," she admits, and feels lucky to be able to kiss him when he smiles.