Liberating the Tin Man

Chapter 6. A Pursuit More Noble

Excruciating. That's the word that kept bounding about inside Harry Potter's head.

There was no other way to describe the state he'd been in for days now. Excruciating and possibly humiliating, with a little bit of reckless sprinkled into the brew. All of these adjectives knocked insistently on Harry's brain stem, begging for him to notice them and to adjust his situation so that he could diffuse them into descriptors that were more easily endured. But Harry felt as powerless now to stop his relentless and seemingly fruitless courting of Ginny Weasley as he had previously been to recognize his own interest in the witch. In dating. In society. In life.

Now that he'd given the situation a fare bit of thought, Harry was beginning to realize that he'd been more or less suspended in mid-air for the past year and a half or so. He had busied himself with working toward his goals, feeling like he was in control of his life once again, and had been completely convinced that he felt good. Or if not quite good, then he surely felt better. And, since he had seemed to feel better, Harry had presumed, then he must have made the right decision with regard to shunning his love life and all that accompanied it. He had rather thought, in those days, that giving Ginny a chance to go off and find a normal, undamaged bloke was one of the keys to his contentedness, in fact.

But suspending oneself in mid-air, he now realized with a painful certainty as he entered his favorite coffee shop, only makes a person feel as if Gravity doesn't still pull steadily on their bones and muscles. The floating sensation wasn't real, he reasoned, and sooner or later he had been destined to feel the world tugging on him again. Harry had been playing mind games with himself, and he was sure that for some miraculous reason, a certain witch had been waiting patiently on the ground for him to come to his senses, and to accept the weight of his burdensome past.

The truth, Harry guessed, must have been just barely hidden within his conscience, because it had only taken a week without his favorite diversion -- his beloved Quidditch -- and he'd wised up, turned the corner, and had taken the broomstick out of his backside. It was the mind-numbing idle time that had finally exposed the farce for what it was and with startling clarity. As strange as it seemed, becoming a professional Quidditch player was suddenly leaving Harry with more free time than he'd ever had before in his life. There had been no days off when Harry and Ron were involved with the preparatory program, save for weekends, and even then Harry had taken to showing up at the gym to practice flying or to work on his muscle tone for most of the daylight hours.

Coming off of a week's worth of holiday, Harry had faced the inevitable realization that after the playoffs and before the commencement of summer training for most teams - and before preparations for the Quidditch World Cup for one very fortunate team - there would be an off-season. An off-season: days upon days and weeks upon weeks piled up into almost three full months with nothing to do. This imperturbable comprehension, coupled with Ginny's stark statements of her own private truths, had ultimately driven Harry downward toward the Earth and back under the rickety influences of a multidimensional life.

But now it was Ginny who was being a right pain about the whole affair.

For three days in a row, flowers had been delivered to the Caffé dei Dolci with a painfully written confession of Harry's feelings for Ginny, his desires laid bare on the two-inch by three-inch lavender cards. And, for three days in a row he'd arrived at the coffee shop just a little bit late by design with a chest full of hope and a carefully placed grin -- a question mark of a grin -- on his face. On each of the first two days, Ginny had looked up at him with pained resolution, shook her head to indicate "no" and brushed past him, muttering, "I'm sorry, Harry."

Today, Ginny was about to complete the cycle for the third time, and was standing at the shop's counter with a Styrofoam cup in her hand. She was obviously not intending to stay, Harry noticed, and she was wearing that now familiar, stoic look about her like a menacingly protective cloak. Harry wondered briefly whether he still thought of the witch as pretty -- looking at him like that, as though he was something that she had to endure as she would a cold or an insect bite.

He knew that he should feel embarrassed, as he threw a glance at the neatly arranged package of six velvety purple roses which Laurie was pushing toward Ginny. But Harry didn't feel embarrassed, oddly enough. He felt...emboldened. Every defiant gesture, every carefully stated "I'm sorry, Harry", every inadvertent bump on the shoulder that he received as Ginny brushed by him on her way out of the caffé and onward toward her other, Harry-free life made the wizard want to pursue her with even more fervor. And, he figured, she did keep showing up, after all.

"Go on," Laurie whispered to Ginny, but not so quietly that Harry couldn't overhear. "Take them. The least you can do is take them."

Ginny looked up at Harry and her expression faltered. While she studied his face for a while, Harry noticed that her lip quivered a little and her bright eyes gleamed just a bit, as teardrops threatened to spill over her long, auburn lashes. "Yes," he thought, "she's still the prettiest witch in London."

"Thank you, they're lovely," Ginny choked out as she reached behind her and brought the bouquet to her chest, cradling it in the crook of her arm. She shifted to balance her bookbag on her shoulder and adjusted the grip on her coffee cup to accommodate the large package of flowers, allowing her eyes to flicker over to the counter again, where a lavender note had been carefully set just moments ago.

"Harry," she said, looking back up at the miserable wizard. Ginny winced as she felt strong emotions beginning to overwhelm her. She closed her mouth, unable to complete her thought and forgetting even what it was that she had begun to articulate. These past few days, she was barely aware of what she was saying, and even less aware of why she was saying them. Ginny was running on autopilot, receiving gifts and turning down the love of her life without even so much as processing the information.

Well-meaning friends had filled her with advice and Ginny was doing her best to honor their intentions. It all seemed to make so much sense when the girls were together. Three witches from the University had taken Ginny in and had erected a sturdy foundation of support during the week before Christmas when she had stopped meeting Harry for coffee because she simply couldn't bare to do so anymore. They had huddled around a long table in the library, listening to Ginny's outpourings and plotting out designs for her future, armoring the witch to defend against her own "inclinations toward self-destruction," as they'd labeled anything the witch had done since graduating from Hogwarts.

"Don't let yourself feel sorry for him," one of the witches had repeated, over and over, and Ginny was fighting that very urge right now. Never in her life had Ginny ever witnessed anything more affecting and more beautiful than the image Harry was projecting as he stood in the entrance to the coffee shop. He looked so striking, waiting there in the entryway, and he had set his jaw at a slightly upward angle, looking every bit the tragically wounded hero. Breathing heavily and staring through distubingly distressed eyes at the roses she had tucked into her elbow, Harry was breaking Ginny's heart.

There had been so many years of yearning between herself and the wizard who stood before her; so many conversations with so many different friends during which they had urged her to move on; so many disappointments, little and big, that her body seemed now to have been pre-programmed with how to respond to certain situations, should they arrive, in order to protect herself from false hope. She felt a tear fall from her eye, and looked down helplessly at her hands, which were occupied with holding coffee and purple roses. Letting out a little hiccup, Ginny struggled to wipe her eyes on her shoulder, but couldn't quite manage it.

"Here, let me help you," Ginny heard Harry muttering softly. "Please don't cry,"

Ginny felt the rough pad of Harry's thumb wiping at the wetness on her cheek and below her eye. She wanted to turn her head and kiss that hand, but instead closed her eyes and slipped into her stony, iron-willed alter-ego, the one that had been leading her through these merciless attacks. She shook her head free of Harry's finger and threw another glance at the counter. Laurie, who seemed to be reading Ginny's thoughts, tucked the little envelope into the pocket of Ginny's cloak and gave a little sigh as she watched the girl leave.