Liberating the Tin Man

Chapter 5. And the Rust Flies Off

Tuesday marked the second day back from the short holiday for members of the Puddlemere United team and Harry Potter sulked heavily as he trodded along the pavement outside of his Apartment building. He'd had another terrible, restless night and was trying to calculate just how many hours of sleep he'd gotten in the last two days. "Couldn't have been more than six, all together," he surmised as he turned onto 6th Avenue. At this rate, Harry estimated, he was setting himself up for a very embarrassing display on the pitch, as the team had begun a string of very long and intense playoff practice sessions.

A brisk wind met the tired wizard as he arrived at the corner of Venice Street, and Harry closed his eyes, imploring the cold air to revive him. The pavement was coated with a fairy-light dusting of snow, and it gave off a pretty glow in the early morning lamplight.

"Bloody tired..." Harry muttered into the air.

He was exhausted and worried, and had toyed briefly with the idea of owling Ginny earlier that morning, telling her that he wouldn't be able to meet for coffee so that he could try and get just a bit more rest before heading off to his daily torture. But, just as his mind wouldn't let him sleep at night for thoughts of the ginger-haired witch, it hadn't let him follow through with this particular deed either. It seemed that all his brain cells were busy, Harry reflected, with dreaming up clever little one-liners that he should have shouted out in the coffee shop days ago, and conjuring heroic images of himself marching up to Ginny Weasley years ago - seconds after killing their foe -- to sweep her up into a passionate embrace, or running alongside the Hogwarts Express, shouting something durable and romantic while Ginny prepared for her long year away. Harry's imagination was becoming a right nuisance.

When he opened his eyes and allowed them to focus on where he was, Harry broke his stride and stared ahead of him at the Caffé dei Dolci. Therein, he thought, was the source of all his troubles. He knew that he should do something about Ginny. He wanted to, he knew that now. But the difficulty now sat within himself in a place that Harry wasn't sure he could control.

Will. He needed to will it.

Harry realized something deep into the night, last night, and this thing looked so powerfully obvious now in the dim light of the Venice Street lamps that it almost physically shook him even all these hours later. Clear and brutal, the cluster of thoughts now stood out prominently, shining far brighter than anything else his mind had come up with during the restless evening, and he felt a complete and utter fool. It suddenly dawned upon Harry that he hadn't exerted a will of his own since his last seconds with Voldemort. Quidditch, finding an apartment, meeting Ginny for coffee: these were all things that were suggested to him; he merely had to shake his head back and forth or up and down, and the details of his existence were plotted out. Sure, Harry had worked hard to get onto a professional team, but had he ever in the past desired to be a Quidditch player? Standing outside a door, in the snow, flanked by two gloriously endowed goddess statues, Harry felt suddenly small and insignificant.

He took another deep breath of cold air and pulled open the door to the Caffé dei Dolci, catching his reflection as he did so in the dingy glass.

"I look revolting," he mumbled to himself, slightly offput that the purple hue which had taken residence around his eyes was still evident, even in the hazy reflection that was granted by the caffé's door.

"Hi," Ginny greeted from her place at the table when Harry finally summoned the courage to enter the shop and took up his usual seat.

"Hi," he returned, trying to smile but failing.

"Here, take this," Ginny offered. She slid her mug over to Harry's side of the table. "You look worse than yesterday. I'll just get another cup." She smiled sweetly and peered questioningly at her friend. "I'll be right back, okay?"

"Okay," Harry said.

When Ginny returned with a fresh cup of coffee, she studied Harry with interest. He didn't look good for a young man who'd just come off of a week's worth of vacation. His hair was uncombed and his face was shadowed with at least a full day's worth of growth, by her estimation.

"Anything wrong?" she asked, reaching her hand across the table and setting it on top of Harry's.

Harry looked down at Ginny's fingers, and she withdrew them almost immediately, slightly embarrassed at her presumptiveness. When her dreary-looking friend continued to stare at his hand with what she swore looked like a melancholic sort of expression, Ginny's face became more serious, and she repeated her question. "Harry, what's wrong? You look like dragon dung."

"Do not," Harry quipped, looking up at Ginny. His lips had begun to smile just a bit and his right cheek was showing a dimple.

"Yes you do," Ginny said. "Maybe you should go back to sleep for just a bit more today, forget the coffee. Don't you have double sessions this week down at the pitch?"

Harry didn't answer. He was thinking, or trying to, but his tired mind was finding the endeavor to be quite daunting. He realized something now that he hadn't admitted to himself until just a moment ago, when he felt Ginny's pale and warm little hand on top of his own, and even more so when she pulled it away. He wanted more. Meeting for coffee, sharing tidbits of their days together, laughing with eachother...it had all been wonderful, but suddenly it wasn't near enough. Harry now knew with every cell in his body that he wanted Ginny to come back to his flat with him and let him kiss her.

This had been Harry's torment for the past few days and nights. In his waking moments, this is what he kept picturing, over and over: the two of them in his flat, kissing. And, unfortunately, in his few sleeping moments Harry's mind pictured them doing a bit more. Ginny had said that she wanted to "snog the living daylights out of him," and the part of Harry's brain that guided his dreams was well aware that snogging could imply loads of activities in addition to kissing. He was a mess, and he was tired, and he didn't trust his mouth to speak for him at the moment.

Ginny reached over and dragged Harry's coffee mug back, setting it aside, next to an unopened Prophet. "Right. Why don't you go on back and see if you can't get some sleep then. I have to get to the potions lab early today anyway, we've got a big research project in Alchemy coming due soon and I'm meeting with a study group to work on it."

Harry looked up at Ginny and his throat tightened. "Can I come along?" he asked.

"Where?" Ginny asked. "To the potions lab?"

Embarrassed and feeling desperate, Harry tried again. "Just...Just to walk you there."

A little place inside of Ginny's soul wanted to jump up and down or cry out in victory. This was as close to being asked out by the wizard of her dreams as she'd been in two, maybe close to three years. But that little place was currently buried way too deep beneath mounds and mounds of prideful resentment to ever see the light of day, she realized quickly as a cold chill ran up the back of her neck and seized her. Ginny furrowed her brow and threw back her hair, grabbing her bookbag while she watched ten different emotions display themselves on Harry's handsome face.

"No, Harry. I don't think that would be a good idea," she said. "I just..."

Harry closed his mouth tightly and stared at Ginny with slightly flared nostrils and a crinkled brow. Her heart gave a little lurch, but Ginny couldn't quite muster up any empathy for the wizard, not even when he looked like his little Quiddich-filled world was falling apart on him.

"I've got another set of exams coming up, and you've got the playoffs," she began, taking care not to look directly at that face. "It's not a real good time to complicate things, is it?"

Harry shook his head back and forth. "No," he said as he watched Ginny walk out of the Caffé once again.

--------------------------

Laurie and Lou both stared at a tiny lavender envelope that had come along with a gorgeous bouquet of bright flowers. Deep red roses, purple irises, soft yellow daisies and bluebells were propped up by fluffy asparagus leaves and set in a lovely, blue ceramic vase. The arrangement had arrived an hour ago, just after Lou had opened the shop, and the two were making a fun game of trying to guess which customer would come in and recognize the name "Ginevra Molly Weasley" as their own, cleaning dishes and arranging items on the counter as they did so.

"Bet it's that old dame who comes in every day at about ten," Lou said. "She looks like the type to be involved in a grand, December-May romance with her gardener or someone like that, yeah?"

Laurie laughed and turned her head to greet the customer who had just approached them. A pretty, ginger-haired witch stood politely at the other side of the service counter and she was staring at the flowers with a sad little smile playing on her lips.

"Are these from him?" Ginny whispered to Laurie, nodding her head very slightly in the direction of Lou, who had reached under the counter to grab a mug. "You're so lucky!"

"Oh," Laurie replied, looking embarrassed and speaking in a hushed tone. "No! They're for a customer, I think." She handed Ginny the little envelope and smiled. "Do you know anyone named Ginevra? We think it must be a witch in her forties or fifties, by the sound of the name, but Lou and I haven't worked out the rest of it."

Ginny laughed, and stared at the little card. "Well," she said, "sometimes a young witch with a particularly cruel mother can have a name like that."

Words were coming out of Ginny's mouth automatically, and she paid little attention to them. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably within her ribcage now, and she felt as if she might pass out on the spot. Someone had sent her flowers. Harry? Dare she even let her mind think of such a thing? She leaned forward and dropped a hand on the counter to support her suddenly rubbery legs and squinted her eyes at the envelope that was still held up in her other hand. "Ginevra Molly Weasley," it read. "How many other Ginevra Molly Weasley's could there be in London," she wondered, blinking.

"Ah!" Lou barked when he returned to Laurie's side. "It's our little couple!" He gave his workmate a wink and tapped her lightly on the arm with his fist. "You owe me a date, now. Don't ya?"

Laurie froze and her face colored.

"What?" Ginny asked, tearing her eyes away from the tightly written letters of her name to look up at the two employees. "You've been betting on your customers' love lives?"

Lou grinned. "And it's paid off too," he said, turning to Laurie. "Saturday, it is then, yeah?"

"What was the bet?" Ginny asked, feeling a bit put out that she had been delivered flowers and another witch was getting a date out of the deal. "That these flowers were for me?"

"No," Laurie replied, quietly. "Lou bet me that you and...well, let's face it, love, we know that the Quidditch player you meet here is Harry Potter..." She paused and gave her wand a quick flick, sending a set of soiled mugs into a large basin of bubbly water and casting a glance at Lou. "That you and he were lovers. I thought you were just friends." She blushed again and gave Ginny an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, that wasn't nice of us was it?"

Ginny turned her head to stare at the beautiful flowers that seemed to come along with the little envelope. "What do I care?" she thought. Someone had sent her flowers, and Ginny had never been given a romantic gift before. Sometimes a sweet offering from her Dad or a brother -- usually accompanying a plea for forgiveness for some rude prank or another, but never...

"Aren't you going to open the card?" Lou asked, giving Ginny a mild scare as her thoughts returned to the present. "And see who sent them?"

Nodding, Ginny held the envelope up closer to her face and shut her eyes as she pried it open with a shaky fingernail. When she opened her eyelids, she gasped.

"Ginny, I lied. I do want to complicate things. Please go out with me. Love Harry," it read.

Laurie gently took the card from Ginny's limp fingers and gave a questioning look. Ginny nodded, giving silent permission for the other witch to read the neatly scripted note. She needed someone to confirm its contents. She needed to know for certain that Harry Potter, bane of her existence, had just begged her to go out with him.

"Is it him?" Laurie asked. "Harry Potter?"

Ginny nodded again.

"And are you going to go out with him?" Laurie continued, giving Lou a tentative smile.

"No."