I Still Miss My Valentine (But My Aim is Getting Better)

Harry glanced up at the large beam directly over the dance floor in the middle of the Great Hall, the one with a large pink heart-shaped boiled sweet suspended in the middle of it. Said sweet had also been serving as a disco ball earlier in the evening, flashing red heart-shaped speckles of light over the walls, but after eager students had taken a number of bites out of it, that function had ceased to work. Colin Creevey slithered down the beam, hung off the very end of the sweet for a few moments, made one of his shoelaces into a trapeze, swung from it briefly, leaped into a net that had woven itself from the other shoelace, and dropped down to the floor. There was no sign of Malfoy, who Harry thought he'd definitely seen trying to untie the smaller boy. However, the air between ceiling and beam shimmered in complex patterns caused by any number of equations from the back pages of his Irrational Arithmancy book. "That's a bit strange," he said absently, before turning back towards Ron.

Harry's definitely a lot more perceptive than he used to be, thought Hermione. With time, he actually may be able to see things written in red ink a metre high and shoved directly under his nose. Thick as a brick, but it's rather sweet... But then she heard the frenzied cry of "REFRESHMENTS!' She jerked her head up at the word, overlapping some uncountable number of times as it was repeated by nearly every male voice in the hall, and sighed in relief. The three of them had been trying to separate four sixth-year Ravenclaws who'd gotten into a vicious fight over the miniature roses that formed the centerpiece of one of the tables. The argument over which of them was most susceptible to winter colds and, therefore, had greatest need of the Vitamin C contained in the petals, had threatened to turn ugly. They heard the word, too, and scrambled up to get to the other end of the hall. Knocking their heads together absentmindedly, Ron breathed a long sigh, too, one that had something almost beatific about it. Come to think of it, Ron had been acting oddly for the past several days, thought Hermione.

It rather reminded her of the time over the summer hols when she'd stayed with the Weasleys for a week, and Fred and George had tricked him into testing out their new line of refreshing fizzy drinks, now available in peyote flavor. The twins had agreed afterwards that they definitely needed to start informing their test subjects, as even they really had no desire to go through that particular ordeal again. Although, as they'd repeatedly and rhetorically asked, "How were we to know that Ron would become thoroughly convinced that he was being chased by kilometre-high coyote-and-Mexican-hissing-cockroach mutants, and, as a result, would tear all his clothes off and run about on the roof of the burrow whilst doing the merengue to music from a salsa trio that only he could hear?" There never really seemed to be any answer to that question. Anyway, after the other five Weasley brothers had wrestled him down from the roof, Ron had been remarkably calm. Very much as he was now, Hermione thought.

"Maybe things will calm down now," she said. "Thank God the refreshments showed up."

"I really thought we were going to have to use electric cattle prods for crowd control," Harry said.

"What?" asked Ron.

"Oh, a Muggle thing... Uncle Vernon used to chase me around the house with one," said Harry, brilliantly green eyes intense, one lock of hair falling over his brow in a very Byronic fashion, every inch the tragic hero. "In fact, he had a selection of them. Aunt Petunia used to knit fluffy little prod cozies for them. Also a cat o'nine tails kept in salt water, a selection of sixteenth-century torture devices from the Spanish Inquisition-- that was rather my uncle's hobby; he loved to putter about in the basement with them-- and Fluffy the hamster, who I always had to feed. I just didn't get on with that hamster at all."

"Poor Harry," whispered Hermione, her dark eyes going liquid and large as she pressed his arm sympathetically, looking at up at him. "No-one knows how you've suffered. Nobody could ever understand... except, perhaps, for, well, er--"

Draco Malfoy's head popped into view from above. "Touching scene. Hear that, Potter? It's a miniaturized house-elf playing the world's smallest violin. 'My Heart Pumps Purple Piss For You.'" Then he shot out of their field of vision again.

"Eat fermented pond slime and die, Malfoy,"snarled Ron. "Er, I mean, no, not even he's going to disturb my state of cosmic tranquility. Stay in the moment, Ron, just stay in the moment--it's all good, it's all good. Wait--" He paused for a moment, scratching his head. "Wait, hold on a sec. How is he doing that?"

"Well, we're having a little problem here. Sweet of you to care." Draco chucked Ron affectionately under the chin. He was now floating just above them in the air at an angle that exceeded three hundred and sixty degrees, a position easier seen than described. "Seems that Creevey had accidentally tied his shoelaces into the original Gordian knot, the one that replicates the impossible geometry found in M.C. Escher's designs. Several basic laws of Arithmancy governing the universe were broken, and, well, the space-time continuum didn't care for that too much. Whilst he escaped, I was unfortunately caught right in the middle of an energy pattern virus; probably originated in the Crab Nebula and was brought here by tourists on the Googles of Galaxies in a Gigaparsec cruise--" But then he winked out of existence in the middle of a sentence, reappearing a few seconds later. "I never knew that the sixty-third dimension was so uninteresting," Draco sighed. "Anyway. Don't worry about me; I'm sure I'll figure it out... In the meantime, Granger, get to that door!"

"Why?" asked Hermione. "It's only that the refreshments finally showed up; true, it seems a bit disorganized, but I'm sure it'll work itself out."

"It won't," Draco said grimly. "Listen, the lower half of me's been temporarily transported through a space warp to the 'Planet of Scantily Clad B-Movie Actresses' in the lost Roger Corman galaxy. Now, normally, I'd say that's a good thing, but not today... oops, there goes my other leg... anyway... those aren't the refreshments from the kitchens."

"What? Have the house-elves finally gone on strike to protest their intolerable working conditions?" asked Hermione, eyes flashing.

"Do dry up, Granger. At least they don't have to work at Wal-Mart. That's what I've heard some grindylows have had to start doing."

"You do have a point, Malfoy," she agreed, shuddering at the thought. "So what is it then?"

"Ginny," he replied.

Hermione gasped in horror. "You mean... Ginny and her plate of cookies... and there aren't any other refreshments... oh no, oh no! Why didn't I think, why didn't I realize--"

"Brains thrown into torpor by too much Sleekeazy's Hair Potion dripping in through your ears?" Draco offered before vanishing again. The smirk on his face disappeared last.

She whirled on Ron. "Hurry! I think we can get there in time-- maybe you can help clear a path."

Ron beamed at her. "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence."

She goggled at him. "What on earth are you on about? You've been acting really strangely lately."

"Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit," he replied serenely.

"Ron!" Hermione pulled at his arm. "We've got to save your sister! Can't you see what's going on over there, by the doors? Ginny's caught in the middle of it. There's no time to explain properly now; just come on!"

"Hermione," he said benignly, "the old Ron would have jumped right into the middle of the madness. But this is the new Ron. The kinder, gentler Ron."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I was trapped in a sensory deprivation tank in a lower dungeon for several hours last week owing to a Transportation spell that went wrong, and it just happened that the only reading material I had on me was that book you gave me for Christmas two years ago. And I finally read it! Then, I started hanging around with Luna Lovegood."

"Hello," said Luna, waving serenely at Hermione. She was wearing a dress made entirely of red construction-paper hearts stapled together.

"Why didn't I see her before?" demanded Hermione.

"Well," explained Luna, beaming, "the vast majority of this fic was written well before I made my first appearance in Order of the Phoenix."

"And the author's too lazy to go back and change it?" asked Hermione, glaring at some indeterminate point past Hubble's Ultimate Horizon.

(Too busy, Hermione. Too busy!)

"Don't you find it rather interesting when works of fiction break the fourth wall, though?" asked Luna, winding one strand of pale blond hair around a finger. Each of her nails had been decorated with pink sparkly Valentine hearts. The overall effect called to mind that one Japanese cartoon that got yanked off the air because it caused fits in epileptic children.

"Not at all," said Hermione. "It's a cheap, meretricious effect. Give me a good plain five-act structure any day."

"Hermione," interrupted Ron, "the point is, everything's come together for me. I'm on the road to spiritual enlightenment now. I'm never going to be the Ron you knew, the one who jumped to conclusions, picked fights, and did mad things. Whilst practicing kundalini yoga, I came to realize that it was futile for me to try to protect Ginny from the outside world. Yes, I'm finally finding inner peace, and it's all thanks to you! And Luna...." He and the Ravenclaw girl looked googly-eyed at each other for a moment. "But I still care for you deeply in a platonic way, Hermione," Ron hastened to add. "Now how about a hug?"

"Oooh!" Hermione stamped her foot in utter frustration, turned on her heel, and ran towards the other side of the hall, and the gathering mob around Ginny.

In the past, Arthur Weasley had taken his family to the London Wizarding Zoo several times. Ginny always enjoyed petting the baby unicorns; it generally gave her an enjoyable shiver to watch the manticore pacing in its desert habitat, and she even found that she liked the sight of blast-ended skrewts, from a very safe distance. But she'd never forgotten the time they'd gone when she was nine years old, and she had somehow gotten stranded in the mutant animatronic goose habitat. They consisted of Disneyworld castoffs who'd been rejected for biting tourists, and the argument between Fred and George over which one of them had been responsible for leaving her there as they ran to beg rides on the trolley raged for several years, off and on. Ginny had been holding a bag of RAM chips sold for feeding the animatronic animals, and at first everything had seemed to go well. The geese crowded round her, making metallic honking noises that sounded vaguely friendly. But then, rather soon, the bag was empty.

The geese, being pretty slow on the uptake, didn't quite grasp this unpleasant but immutable fact. The musical murmuring noise they'd been making turned ugly, and began to sound like ominous repetitions of "M-I-C...K--E--Y...kill, kill, maim, destroy...M-O-U-S-E..." Actually, they were all of one opinion-- if they bit Ginny hard enough, she'd start turning into a pile of fresh, sparkly RAM chips. This theory was tested repeatedly. At length, her frenzied whimpering brought Ron running, and he'd jumped into the fray with incoherent cries of "I'll save you, Ginny! Hold on! Damn you, Walt Disney, in your eternal state of permafrost beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride!" The geese made a concerted effort and tossed him headfirst onto the rocks surrounding the selkie pool. By merest chance, however, the splash as his feet landed in the water happened to soak one of the animatronic birds. Since they were all connected by a Türing intelligence web (Michael Eisner could teach the Borg a thing or two, which might be a good career option if he really does end up getting replaced by Steve Jobs,) every goose shuddered, shorted out, and lay still. The Weasley family always believed that Ron's savior complex regarding Ginny dated from that day.

At any rate, Ginny was strongly reminded of the look on the faces of the geese after the frenzied yell of 'REFRESHMENTS!" had echoed from every male throat in the room. Or maybe they were more like a herd of stampeding cattle. Not that she'd ever actually seen a herd of stampeding cattle, but during that infamous week that Arthur Weasley had had an illegal television hooked up in the garage, she'd never missed a rerun of Bonanza. She tried to back against the wall, and realized, too late, that the action only trapped her. She tried holding the plate above her head, but that didn't work any better than it had with the geese. Frantically, her gaze darted around the circle of the most determined boys, who had fought their way through the milling crowd to press around her in a circle.

"Oh, I say! Are those Valentine cookies?" Ernie McMillan asked.

"No!" Ginny exclaimed. "You don't want those. Believe me, you don't. They're awful, hideous, inedible concoctions of slop. Flobberworms would turn up their noses at these cookies. If they had noses. I'm not sure. Do they?" She was babbling, she knew, but the circle was growing smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and--

"They don't look half bad," said Justin Finch-Fletchley, grabbing the plate. Somehow, through a combination of luck and shoving, he'd ended up at the very center of the inner circle.

That gave Ginny a brilliant idea. Or at least it seemed brilliant at the time, rather like the ones that always woke her from a sound sleep in her bed in the Gryffindor girls' dormitory, and that involved large balls of string, a number of nasty hexes, and several pounds of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes chewing gum ("turns your mouth all the colors of the infrared light spectrum, or your money back!") At three in the morning, they seemed like truly inspired plans for her ongoing project of getting back at Draco Malfoy. Funny how they never made much sense by the time breakfast rolled around.

Justin Finch-Fletchley was queer as folk, absolutely flaming, as bent as the entire Priscilla, Queen of the Desert fan club. So if he ate all the cookies, she'd be safe!

"Inedible concoctions of slop?" he repeated dubiously, a cookie stopped in mid-air about half a centimetre from his mouth. "Well, they look all right-- but if you say so--"

"No!" Ginny exclaimed. "They're... wonderful! Amazing! Better than treacle tart!"

"Well, regurgitated slime from the giant squid is better than treacle tart," pointed out a sixth-year Ravenclaw boy she didn't know. "Hold on!" he added indignantly after reading the authorial commentary. "I'm Michael Corner! She dated me for a year; she bloody well ought to know me!"

(The author tactfully points out Michael's tragic lack of dead-sexiness and his many ultimately disposable character qualities.)

"That's hardly fair," said Michael, dark eyes blazing. "I was never given a chance to show any of that in the narrative."

(The author, attempting to make a point, wonders discreetly if Michael and Ginny ever shared, ahem, certain intimacies, as that would give him a much better chance of reappearing in future canon.)

Michael laughed. "Are you mad? Of course not. Nobody shags anybody in these books."

"That's what you think," smirked Draco from the obscure nine-dimensional solar system where he was currently, if briefly, located.

(Growing tired of the rather silly controversy, the author proclaims that she doesn't care what happened in the books. This is fanfic, and if she wants people to shag, they'll shag! Several canon purists fall over dead from shock. The story moves right along.)

"Well. Yes. Anyway, that's a good point," admitted Ginny. "Well, they're better than ..." Life itself? No... "Better than... " That chocolate pudding we had at dinner the other night? Not quite... "Better than..." Sex? Oh, what's the matter with me! It's definitely the influence of wearing this slutty dress. In a final, wild burst of inspiration, she added, "Better than Quidditch!"

"Better than Quidditch?" said Marcus Flint. "Oi! Finch-Fletchley! Give it here!" One of his ham-like hands snatched the entire plate of cookies out of Justin's grasp.

"Oh no..." whimpered Ginny, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. Too late, she realized her mistake.

The Roman audiences at the coliseums watching barbarians being thrown to the lions may have witnessed something like the scene that followed, but the point remains doubtful. Scraps of cookie and tattered pink frosting flew through the air as the treats were viciously fought over. Ginny tried desperately to keep some sort of track of who had eaten the cookies so she'd know who she'd be running from with all the strength that was in her while screaming at the top of her lungs, but that task quickly became an impossible one. Flint was only able to scarf down one cookie before they all became lost in the fray (wasn't he ever going to finish school? she wondered.) The next time she saw the plate, several Gryffindor boys from her year had it. A lot of crumbs and pink frosting seemed to be getting scattered around after that, a sight which really caused Ginny to regret baking six dozen cookies. Neville caught a glob of frosting thrown past him, and she distinctly saw a cookie go into Colin Creevey's mouth. He threw another one that he was holding towards Dennis. "I'll take that!" growled Goyle, grabbing the cookie. The massive Slytherin then seized the entire plate as it sailed past his nose and tipped most of the rest of the cookies into his mouth. At the sight, Ginny wondered if it would have been better for all concerned if her parents had stopped after the sixth Weasley child.

"GIVE ME THAT PLATE!" demanded Hermione, marching up to Goyle and trying to snatch it from him. Although he was probably a metre taller than she, he shrank back from her blazing eyes. "You-- you-- lobotomized blast-ended skrewt!" Well, it was a novel insult, anyway, Ginny thought. Not that it was going to save her from impending doom, or anything. She tried to make her way towards Hermione, but the milling crowd was between the two girls.

"Ginny!" Hermione desperately yelled. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes!" Ginny shouted back, wriggling her way out of a dogpile consisting of Goyle, Dennis Creevey, and Neville, who had somehow gotten entangled between the two.

"You've got ten minutes before the potion takes effect. Get out as quick as you can and find Ron! I think he's gone mental at the moment, but he's your only hope! I'll see if I can talk some sense into him--" But then the mob surged towards her, seeing that she held several cookies in her hand, and she ran back towards Harry and Ron. The last thing Ginny saw out of the corner of her eye before following Hermione was Crabbe plucking the plate with its one remaining cookie from Goyle's hand and snarling something at the other boy that, while hard to hear over the wild confusion, certainly contained the words "we weren't supposed to eat any of those cookies," "beware the wrath of Malfoy, for he is subtle and quick to anger," and "you imbecile." The shock of hearing Vincent Crabbe use a three-syllable word stayed with her all the way across the floor.

Hermione was gasping for breath by the time she reached Ron and Harry; she had to put a hand on her chest and breathe deeply before she was capable of speech. The three of them agreed that perhaps not quite so many Memory charms might have had to have been used on everybody afterwards if only it wasn't for the events of those few lost seconds. Unfortunately, they did occur.

"Cookies," said Ron in the same gentle, well-modulated tone of voice that made her long to start ripping his hair out by the roots. "Why, thank you, Hermione. I didn't used to care for these, but it's important to expand one's horizons for personal growth, to grow beyond childish prejudices. Yes, the proactive thing to do would be to eat these cookies..."

"No!" Hermione tried to gasp. But it was too late, the last of Ginny's Valentine cookies went down her brother's throat.

Hermione gave a little moan and collapsed against Harry.

"Ron!" Ginny gasped desperately, running up to them and grabbing her brother's arm. "Help me! They're all after me! Save me! Hide me!"

But her brother only shook his head. "Ginny," he said gently, "I can't let you be an enabler."

Ginny goggled at him. "What?"

He patted her shoulder. "I'd like to share something with you-- the book that changed my life." Ron thrust a paperback book at her that he'd pulled from his robes.

"Meditation for Brothers Who Love Too Much?" Ginny read.

"And Luna's the one who steered me towards The Drama of the Not-So-Gifted Magical Child. You ought to read them both, Ginny, really."

Ginny shook her brother by the shoulders. "Ron, you don't understand! I tried to brew a love potion, and it went horribly wrong, and just about every boy in this hall ate it by accident! In about eight more minutes they're all going to be tackling me!"

But Ron only smiled down at her beatifically. "Luna said that I need to expect this sort of reaction at first. It's only your defense mechanisms kicking in, Ginny. But don't be afraid. I'm learning to let go and let gods. We've become hopelessly co-dependent with each other; you've got to learn to stand on your own two feet. We have to relearn the dance of sibling intimacy, and--"

"What are you talking about?" she screeched. "I need your help!"

"No, Ginny, only you can help you."

She cast a wild glance towards the doors, and saw that Dennis and Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Gregory Goyle, Ernie McMillan, Michael Corner, and various other boys she didn't know very well were all starting to rub their eyes and look at her rather differently than they had when they were fighting over the cookies. There was a collective look dawning on their faces that she didn't like.

The most recent trip the Weasley family had taken to the zoo had been a most enjoyable one. Ginny had been lucky enough to get a chance to watch to watch feeding time in the hippogriff habitat. True, it had made her a little nervous to watch the giant carnivores tear apart raw meat with their enormous sharp teeth, but it was fascinating.

She had not, however, considered what it might have been like for the person who actually fed the half-lion, half-eagles, nor for what their experience might have been if the animals were starving and there was only one plate of meat to go around. However, she now felt that she had a rather special insight into the hypothetical situation.

"I've got to get out of here!" she yelped, and started scrambling behind the dais with the cherub band.

"That's the spirit. If you love something, set it free!" Ron called back to her. "If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it flies away... hunt it down and kill it. Wait a sec... that doesn't sound right...ooh, I'm feeling really odd all of a sudden..."

Harry turned to Hermione. "Things are pretty bad, aren't they?"

"I don't see how they could be any worse," she replied, glancing at the mob of boys heading towards them and Ginny cowering behind them.

"Down to the last ditch? Fighting in the streets?" he said thoughtfully. "Time for a hero to come along and save the day?"

"Well-- yes."

"Then I'm in my element," said Harry. "I'm perfectly hopeless at the business of day-to-day life and not really terribly bright, but I am the hero. This is the sort of thing I do."

"You're my hero," she said breathlessly.

"Yes, well, I'm rather dim, as I pointed out," he said cheerfully. "So I don't half understand what you're on about. Surprised I can tie my own shoes, really. I've never tried to walk and chew gum at the same time-- Anyway, we'll figure that out later. For now--" He nabbed Ginny as she darted past him.

"If you tickle the off-kilter red shape in the Vassily Kandinksy painting on the wall behind the cherub band," Harry told her, "a hidden stairway to the dungeons opens up. You have to be careful, though. It took me forever to figure out how to do it right, but then I'm not much for Abstract Expressionism. Get down there and hide as best you can; we'll hold them off until the antidote shows up."

"Thanks," Ginny yelled back over her shoulder as she frantically ran. It crossed her mind that she hadn't even remembered until that moment that Harry was supposed to get the cookies, and she should be dreadfully upset that he hadn't tasted a single one. Instead, most of her worries seemed to revolve around the fact that she was being chased to the wall by a sex-crazed mob of teenage boys. She looked back as she poked at different parts of the painting; they were gaining on her, but Justin Finch-Fletchley, being the fastest, was obviously going to reach her first.

"Justin," she panted, "you've got to help me. Protect me from-- er-- I know we're friends and all, but this isn't really a good time to hold hands--"

"But don't you see, Ginny?" he said, gazing passionately up into her face. "The things they broadcast over the loudspeaker twenty-four hours a day at that re-education camp my parents sent me to last summer were true after all! I understand now that I don't have to be queer! I can go straight, if I just meet the right girl. I'll take you home to Mum... we'll get married and buy a house in the suburbs..."

Ginny jabbed viciously at the abstract painting. "Hmmph!" sniffed the shape. "I don't get any respect at all. Just because I'm not a recognizably photorealistic figure like everyone else around here... oh, all right, all right..." It swung open and she scampered down the steps and into the yawning blackness below, followed by Justin's shouts of, " I'll learn to enjoy watching football, and you can go shopping with the girls as much as you like! We'll have a vacation place at the lake and 2.5 children, Ginnyyyyy...."

"There's one good thing about it all," said Hermione, struggling to close the painting.

"And what would that be?" asked Harry, overturning several tables to block the narrow passageway between the dance floor and the alcove behind the cherub band on their dais.

"Well, I was rather apprehensive about Ron's reaction. He did eat those cookies. This all could have become quite creepy, and I suppose it hasn't, at least not in that way."

"I suppose you're right," Harry agreed, casting a complicated variant of the Tarantella spell over a group of boys who'd pushed their way past the tables. Unfortunately, the ensuing dance led the cherub band to play a spirited polka version of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, which is really better left undescribed. Even more unfortunately, several boys had already gotten past them and down into the dungeons, but there was nothing to be done about that.

Ron had leapt onto a larger table, the one that contained the holographic heart centerpiece, and whipped out his wand, casting random hexes in all directions. That did rather get the attention of the mob, and after several had grown tentacles, started oozing pink slime from their toenails, or begun inexplicably singing the Pig Latin version of Boogie Nights, a hush fell over them all.

"All right!" he snarled, a crazed look in his deep brown eyes. "All right, then. I'm going to tell you lot how it's going to be from now on, just because it's easier than killing you all one by one, and creates less of a cleanup problem. But don't tempt me! Anyone in this hall who has a forty-third Y chromosome can never talk to my sister, look at my sister, or think about my sister again. In fact, I don't want you at the same school, on the same planet, or existing in the same dimension as my sister. Or I'll shave off your skin with razor blades! Then I'll dip you in vats of sulfuric acid! Then I'll throw you into a pit of mutant flobberworms! Then I'll think of something painful."

"Who died and made you king?" squeaked Dennis Creevey.

(The author congratulates herself on having written that line well before OotP came out, and we were all regaled with Weasley Is Our King. The author will be setting up a 1-900 psychic hotline soon. Only $4.99 a minute!)

"That's it," Ron said pleasantly, leaping down from the table. "It's a good day to die."

Ginny fled through the dungeons, guided only by the flickering light from sconces stuck into the walls at intervals. She lost all sense of direction rather rapidly. However, she could still hear the clattering feet of her pursuers, and she stopped only for a moment, to catch her breath. Something tapped her on the shoulder. With a shriek, she whirled around to find that it was a disembodied hand holding a pen. It snapped its fingers, beckoning for her to hold out her palm. Trembling, she did. There was so much strange magic floating around Hogwarts that it was better not to upset any of it unnecessarily.

You do look like you could use a hand, Weasley, it wrote on her palm. Pity I haven't any to spare.

"Malfoy?" she asked incredulously.

The hand made a sarcastic motion that vaguely resembled applause, or might have done, if there were another hand to clap against.

"How on earth--"

But the hand was writing again. Well, at least now we know the sound of one hand clapping. I can't tell you how that one was keeping me up at night.

Ginny stared suspiciously at the hand. "Where's the rest of you? Not that I'm not happy to see as little of you as possible, of course, but--"

No time to explain. Having run out of space on her palm, the hand had moved to her wrist. Keep moving, and whatever you do, don't stop. They're right behind you. Get to the other side of the dungeons; there's a door that leads out to the cliffs and the lake.

She pulled herself away, ignoring the tingling sensation of her sensitive inner arm under the hand's moving fingertips. "How do I know I can trust you? This entire mess is probably your fault! That's it, isn't it? I suppose you thought it would be a laugh--"

The hand went all the way up her arm and started on her bared upper chest. O ye of little faith! I've got my other hand full in the seventy-sixth dimension right now; you'll just have to manage on your own for a bit, Weasley. Then it reached up and suddenly, unexpectedly, caressed her cheek. Ginny didn't pull away this time, although she wasn't at all sure why.

That was your face, wasn't it? I can't really see what I'm doing.

"Yes..." she whispered.

Damn. I was hoping for a bit lower.

"Oooh!" She stamped her foot in impotent fury. But the hand only threw back its fingers in a gesture of vast amusement, and winked out of sight.

And, in the next chapter...

The thrilling conclusion of I Still Miss My Valentine (But My Aim Is Getting Better)