For Play

For Play (8/?)

By Anisky

Cho always walked with a light grace. It was one of the things that had fascinated Ginny while they were working on the play. She could walk without making a sound, looking sleek as a leopard or a panther or some other large, graceful cat. Still, it seemed to Ginny that the tap of the older girl´s shoes against the ground were as loud as thunder.

Or was that Ginny´s heartbeat?

"H...hi, Ch-ch-cho," she stuttered, turning red and pressing back against the wall, trying make herself tiny.

"Ginny," said Cho quietly, walking over to Ginny´s bed, making the red head slink down under the covers in her attempt to hide. Regardless, Cho sat on the bed, and even pulled back the covers to look at Ginny. "Look, I´m sorry, alright? I wasn´t thinking. I shouldn´t have done that."

Ginny wanted to say, No, you´re right, you shouldn´t have. She wanted to say, Just go away and leave me alone. She wanted to yell at the top of her lungs. No matter what she wanted, though, all she could do was lie there, wide-eyed, staring at Cho. Her lips were small and red and even they moved with grace when Cho talked. She remembered what it was like to feel those lips against hers...

Ginny! the girl yelled at herself. What are you doing?

"Ginny?" asked Cho quietly, eyes searching the girl´s face.

Ginny blushed, feeling Cho´s eyes on her, wondering if the Asian girl could see what she was thinking. Gods, she hoped not. "Yes?" she whispered.

"I just...I´m so sorry for hurting you, it was never my intention."

Ginny didn´t know what to say. She shivered, and felt goose bumps rise up all over her body. She didn´t want to yell at Cho anymore. She didn´t know what she wanted. So she just stayed there, not moving, buried in her covers. She closed her eyes.

Cho must have taken this as a sign that Ginny didn´t want her around, because suddenly Cho´s warmth was gone from beside Ginny. To Ginny´s surprise, she missed it, and suddenly wished that Cho were still there.

"Don´t go," she murmured, before she even realized she was saying anything. She opened her eyes, not believing what she´d said, looking to see if Cho had heard.

She had. The look on Cho´s face was one of hope, and the older girl smiled slowly and sat back down on the bed, hesitantly reaching out her hand to stroke Ginny´s hair. Ginny made no move to stop her.

Instead, the red haired Gryffindor just sort of opened her mouth and let loose all that she was thinking. "Oh, Cho, I don´t know what´s going on. It felt like nothing I´d ever experienced before, and I didn´t know what to think Cho, I had no idea what to think. I just wanted to sort everything out for myself, and then there was Hermione getting all angry at me over it, and that just made it worse, because...oh, I don´t know. I never thought it would happen to me, and I didn´t think kissing felt so good..."

"Shhh, shh, it´s alright," whispered Cho, smiling now at what she´d heard, moving her hand down to stroke Ginny´s face. "It´s alright, I promise."

Cho had a million questions, but they could wait. They stayed there for a while, Ginny gasping at air to stop crying, and Cho stroking her face and hair. Eventually, after Ginny was quiet for a while, the Gryffindor girl spoke.

"So..." Ginny said, fidgeting a bit, "what does this mean?"

Cho idly took one of Ginny´s hands and held it, looking into her chocolate-y brown eyes. They looked sweet an honest, exactly like Ginny really was. "It means whatever you want it to mean, Ginny. Friendship, or...more...whatever you´re ready for. Whatever you want."

"I think..." said Ginny quietly, sitting up and looked at Cho´s black eyes. "Well, can we go slowly?"

Cho´s face split into the biggest grin. It was sort of goofy, the wide, ecstatic grin on the girl who usually looked so serious. Ginny thought that it was absolutely beautiful. "Of course we can, Ginny. Of course we can."

Ginny cautiously leaned in and kissed Cho´s lips briefly, pulling back immediately and giving a hesitant little smile.

Cho smiled and kissed Ginny´s cheek. "We can go as slowly as you like, Gin. No need to rush things."

"Well..." said Ginny, rather slyly truth to tell, "maybe not that slowly."

Cho laughed, still with the goofy smile. After a moment she spoke. "Oh, Ginny, with all the...excitement," her eyes twinkled, "I forgot to tell you. Dumbledore said that the cast could go to a West End performance as long as it´s at the Wizarding West End. He and McGonagall will take us, probably next weekend sometime. We´re seeing `Alas! I've Transfigured My Feet!´"

Ginny perked up--not that she was down at this moment, mind you, but she was the sort that when she was excited you could almost see her ears pricking up. "Oh, that´s great! I heard it´s very funny, but I haven´t seen it--you can´t vusher at the Wizarding West End, so I don´t get to see any of their plays."

Cho´s brow furrowed, confused by the new word. "Vusher?"

"Come on, you know that my family has no money," said Ginny, leaning back against the wall as she spoke, looking a bit ashamed. "There´s no way I could afford tickets to all those sorts of plays. So, I vusher. You sign up on a certain day--it´s different for different theatres. Then you come and help the ushers for a day, and in return you see the plays for free. It´s great fun."

"Really? I haven´t tried that. It´s not too hard, the ushering?"

Ginny grinned. "Only when you´re vushering for Cabaret. They tend to like to make it seem like a cabaret, so you don´t pass out the programmes until the end, and you have to pass them out really fast because they´re all rushing out at you. But other than that, no, not really."

Cho nodded, and they were quiet for a moment. A loud rumble from Ginny´s stomach broke the silence. .

Cho looked at Ginny, and Ginny blushed. "Um, I guess with everything that happened, I forgot to eat breakfast?" she offered sheepishly.

Laughing, Cho stood and held out a hand to Ginny. "Well, let´s go eat something, then. I think breakfast´s over, so we can beg something from the house elves."

The absolutely adorable younger girl stood up with a huge smile. "Chocolate?" she asked hopefully.

Cho grinned, then her eyes got wide and she looked at her watch. "Yes, but we´ll have to hurry and take it with us! I forgot about striking the set--it´s already 10! We´re late!"

"Uhoh. C´mon." Ginny grabbed Cho´s hand and they raced down the stairs.

****

When Ginny and Cho finally made it to the set, they were twenty minutes late, out of breath, and Ginny´s mouth was lined with chocolate icing from the cake.

Everybody turned to look at them. They were surprised that the director and the star were late, but then again, as many of them had heard from Terry some of the difficulties, they understood. As only the cast and techies were there, Ginny just waved to everyone and occupied herself with licking the chocolate off her fingers.

"Sorry everybody," said Cho sheepishly, taking out her wand to take off the colour charms off of the back curtain. "We had...things to deal with." She hoped they´d leave it at that.

They didn´t. Terry was the first one to speak. "Well, it looks like the two of you are on speaking terms again... which is amazing progress from an hour ago when I spoke to Ginny. What happened?"

Ginny shrugged sheepishly. "I came to my senses, I guess."

"So, the two of you are dating now?" asked Padma, looking up from a difficult charm to turn the huge backdrop into something much smaller and manageable.

Ginny blushed a very deep red and looked down, kicking at the ground with her foot. "Um...sort of? Um, Cho, did you ever even break up with Harry?"

Cho´s eyes got wide, and her hand flew to her mouth. (Unfortunately, it was her wand hand. Blaise Zabini´s hair turned a rather unfortunate colour of green that had been on the back curtain a few moments earlier.) "Oh my god!" she exclaimed. "No, I totally forgot about him...I should talk to him."

Hermione looked up in slight annoyance, as she took out her wand and charmed Blaise´s hair back to the normal dull-brown it had been a few moments ago. After that she smiled. "Well, much as I feel bad for my best friend, I´m very happy that the two of you finally got together. Congratulations, both of you. Do you want to go talk to Harry now?"

Cho smiled. "Thanks Hermione...but no, I´ll finish striking the set. Gin, hun, want to help me with these colours? We have to do each one individually and it´s rather tedious to do alone."

Ginny nodded. "Sure," she said, taking out her wand and beginning on the brown on the bottom left corner.

"Oh, Gin?" said Cho. "You still have some chocolate, at the corner of your mouth."

Ginny cocked her head to the side and considered her options. She gathered up her courage. She really wasn´t sure of this at all, but it was starting to feel right. She should get used to it. Finally, with a rather wicked grin, she said, "Well, go ahead and lick it off, then."

Yes, decided both Ginny and Cho, life had definitely improved quite a bit in...was it really just an hour?