Of Scrolls and Sleeping

Chapter Two: Hindsight

Harry was stunned. He had looked up at Ginny, his eyes blurry from reading nonstop for hours. He had closed his eyes for a moment to clear them and refocus on her face, and before he had had a chance to open them again he had felt her lips on his, soft and warm and filled with more fire and tenderness than he had ever felt in his whole life. It had never once been like that with Cho, and somehow Harry knew it never could have been, but that didn't at all bother him. He had felt Ginny reach in and gently brush aside the debris he never before realized was so deep and had uncovered beneath it all herself, already in his heart. Harry had never known such a blissful realization. But when he reached for her she was gone, his eyes opened to see her hair rustling and flashing like red maple in the fall sun, so beautiful, so natural, and so not supposed to be running away. He blinked in disbelief and she was gone, up the stairs to her dormitory. The farther and fainter her footsteps, the more his heart seemed to spring up through his chest and out his mouth, as if on a wire pulled more taught with each step.

Harry heard a faint shifting sound near him and turned to see Ron and Hermione half sprawled on the table, now fully in each other's arms and still fully asleep. He watched as Ron's sleeping lips brushed soft kisses on Hermione's forehead, the forgotten scrolls strewn beneath them. He went and grabbed a pillow off the nearest couch and wedged it gently beneath their heads, while sliding the parchments out, so as not to disturb their sleep-permitted affections. They only nestled closer and smiled, still blissfully asleep. As he gathered the parchments together and slipped them back in his bag Harry hoped that they would finally admit a few things to each other when they eventually woke. It would certainly be good for them, and make the world a more livable place.

His thoughts immediately flew to Ginny, he would have followed her up there this minute and taken her in his arms to offer in kind all she had just given him and more, were it not for the alarms and that stone slide. He walked back to the couch and slumped on it, he couldn't believe he'd been so slow, had someone transfigured his limbs to lead? He wished he could do it all over again, but this time he'd fold her in his arms without delay and give her his whole soul in one glorious kiss. All his triumphs and fears and joys and mistakes, all the days he had lived till now, all in offering, a promise to the future. But she was up there and he down here with no way to reach her. Harry wished not for the first time and certainly not the last that Sirius was still with them, he would have had some useful advice for certain. Harry sighed heavily and went to retrieve his bag from next to the table, then moved to the armchair closest to the girl's dormitory stairs, dropping the bag beside it before slumping into it. He resolved to stay there till she reappeared, even if it weren't until the morning. As his mind turned over again and again that perfect kiss, he also thought about how he would approach her and what he would say and do. And as the scenarios played out in his head he drifted off to sleep, his dreams with Ginny just a few stories up and just out of reach.