Sunshine or Shadows

Chapter 5. One Normal Day

Ginny woke up on the morning of her birthday -- a clammy, dank, and dark, though not unwelcome day - in great spirits. If she had been having a dream, she thought, it must have been a good one. She closed her eyes and held them tightly while she tried to find any loose, juicy threads that might still be lying about inside her head, hoping to uncover something yummy and Harry-related. When nothing came to mind, she frowned and sat up, pulling her quilt around her and resigning herself to getting out of bed and surrendering to the day.

The old window of her bedroom hadn't been secured well enough before going to bed and Ginny noticed that a cool breeze had come in, whipping up the light cotton of her curtains and pushing around some scrolls of parchment on her desk. She shut her eyes again and performed her usual getting-out-of-bed ritual: counting backwards from ten and then holding her breath before throwing the covers back and preparing to jump down. The technique had been taught to her by her mum ages ago -- probably when she was a toddler -- and it still served well to prepare her mind and body for the cruel shock of icy hardwood flooring beneath her feet and the frigid caress of cold air on bare shoulders.

It didn't take long for the autumn-like atmosphere inside her bedroom to revive her, and Ginny felt completely awake by the time she pulled open her bedroom door to head to the bathroom. She planned on taking a long, indulgent shower, sprinkling herself with her mum's best powder - one that smelled like lilacs and that she'd borrowed on more than one occasion in the past -- and playing around with her hair a bit. It wasn't every day, she thought, that a girl turned of age, and she'd always imagined herself to be the picture of glamour on her seventeenth birthday. Present circumstances hadn't exactly allowed a lot of time to pay attention to her looks, and Ginny didn't consider herself to be a primper by nature, but she was willing to put forth the effort today. If nothing else, she'd look good in her own memories when she ever in the future bothered to think back on her "big day".

After emerging from the shower and getting dressed in what she considered to be her best jeans and a blue, long-sleeved, Weird Sisters t-shirt -- her favorite and a gift from Bill last Christmas -- Ginny skipped down the stairs and entered the kitchen with a full-blown smile plastered on her face. She greeted her mum and dad, noting to herself how positively odd it felt to actually act happy in the Burrow. People didn't smile often here these days, and most tried specifically to tone down any emotions that might be thought of as inappropriate in the face of Fred's passing: as if Fred himself was looking down on all of them, poised to jump in and confront anyone who didn't still show evidence of personal loss on his behalf.

Ginny's parents were huddled together at the table, lifting their coffee mugs in unison and nodding their heads in reaction to something or other that they were reading.

"Good morning," Ginny sang, still smiling despite her awareness that she was being insensitive. "How are you today?"

"Fine, and you?" Arthur replied automatically without lifting his eyes from the parchment.

Molly looked directly at her daughter and crinkled her eyes in a kind smile. "Ginny," she said, "it's your birthday. Come sit sweetie, I want to talk about your plans for the day. Would you like something special for dinner? What kind of cake shall we have?"

The smile Ginny had appropriated dropped slightly at her mother's caring inquiries. "I don't want a cake, Mum," she said. "We've got more important things to think about." She lowered her eyes, a little embarrassed and trying to avoid directly engaging with her mother: she knew a protest was about to ensue. "Harry said he'd like to take me out to Muggle London...to a restaurant," she said, cutting off any potential argument at its base, "so I won't be home for dinner at any rate."

Arthur raised his head at this and smiled. "That's good," he said. "It's about time you kids got out of the house and started acting normal."

"That's right," Molly agreed. "It would do you some good to go out and have a nice time."

Ginny's chest tightened a bit. She hadn't been prepared for her parents to encourage her to "move on" so soon, and it hurt to know how much she truly did want to feel ordinary again. It filled her with a kind of guilt that she couldn't quite place. "I'm not so sure," she muttered, still avoiding eye contact with her mum. "I kind of just wanted to tackle the garden."

Casting a gaze out into the family room, where she could just make out the old oak tree framed in the glass of the back door window, she let out a little breath of air. "I've been reading up on how to use magic to improve your gardening techniques, and I thought I'd like my very first spell used at the Burrow to be a weeding spell. If it's done right, it would be tremendously satisfying, I think."

"Your very first legal spell, you mean?" Arthur asked, smirking.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ginny quipped, smiling back at her dad. "I've not used magic here nor in the hallways of Hogwarts in my seventeen years of existence."

"Right," Arthur relented. "I must have invented that little episode with the racing, flying turtles that I walked in on when you were five."

"Yes," Molly added, "and the time when you were six or seven and decided to play 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' with the garden gnomes."

Ginny flushed. That was not a memory she liked to recall. In the midst of a rather girly spell, she'd become infatuated with the idea of becoming a Muggle princess, and had talked Charlie into transfiguring a pile of laundry into little dwarf outfits for the gnomes and a beautiful gown for herself. She then asked him to immobilize the poor gnomes so that she could dress them, and went about the day having a lovely tea party with her dwarfs, chatting at length about the handsome Prince Harry Potter who would be coming along to join them soon. Of course, she was caught red-handed by her other brothers and was teased mercilessly for months about it.

"I didn't use magic then," Ginny said, brazenly, "Charlie did. So that doesn't count."

"Maybe not," said a masculine voice from the family room, "but I'd love to hear about it all the same."

Ginny turned around and flushed again. Harry was now standing in the kitchen entrance, leaning against the plaster doorway with an adorable grin on his face.

"Good morning, Harry dear," Molly said. "How long have you been up? I hadn't heard any movement in the house."

Harry ran a hand through his hair and took a seat opposite Molly and Arthur. "I've been in the family room," he said. "I used the Floo network for a bit and then camped out on the sofa while I read over some things," he replied simply. "I'm surprised you hadn't heard me."

"We've been preoccupied, I suppose," Arthur said. He shoved the parchment that he and his wife had been studying toward Harry and pointed at it. "It seems that they've officially appointed a new Head of Muggle Relations now."

Molly beamed at the statement and Ginny walked over to stand behind Harry, reading the inky text over his broad shoulder and taking in a bit of the musky smell of his aftershave. On the table was an open copy of the day's Daily Prophet, which displayed a small, smiling photograph of her father. The caption above his head read, "Kingsley Appoints Head of Muggle Relations," in large, bold-faced type, and Ginny quickly skimmed over the attached article. which gave a short biography of Mr. Weasley's career at the Ministry of Magic - mentioning his "natural predilection" for Muggles and describing him as a warm, family man.

"Dad," Ginny said, startled to see her own father's face staring back at her from the Prophet, "it's you! Why didn't you tell us they were writing an article about you?"

"Didn't know," Arthur said.

Over a week ago, Mr. Weasley had come home to announce that he'd been asked to take on an acting position as the head of the new Department of Muggle Relations, and in fact had worked furiously to pass a number of new ordinances in the short week that he'd been in office. Ginny, Hermione, Ron and Harry had listened eagerly as he told them of the new laws, which were set up to allow and appropriate funds for Auror task forces specifically established to help people that were caught up in Voldemort's brutal attempts to eradicate Muggle-borns and half-bloods. Hermione's parents, of course, were first on the list, but there were also many other families still wandering Europe and beyond, hiding and yet unaware that the war was ended.

Harry had assured Ron and Hermione that the Auror department was indeed mobilizing already with a small scouting team sent to Australia several days ago, and Ginny was both relieved and disappointed at the news. Aurors, of course, would be the best people to trust with her friend's mum and dad, and she knew that they would all be reunited very soon. But, it was hard not to feel a little bit let down, when she had been secretly looking forward to an exotic adventure with Harry.

At night, just before falling asleep, unbidden images kept creeping into her mind of herself and a tanned and sweaty, shirtless Harry, running together at top speed along an endless beach. She wasn't sure why they would be running, and where her brother and her other friend were during these particular times, but the image kept appearing, and she was growing more and more smitten with the idea behind it as the nights progressed. Perhaps tonight, she thought, the dream would develop more fully: Harry could trip; she could fall on top of him...

"Well," Molly said, getting up from her chair and brushing the front of her apron to straighten it, "it's a fine article, Arthur. And you look positively dashing in that picture. I couldn't be more proud."

"Congratulations, Mr. Weasley," Harry said, looking up from the newspaper article and flashing a grin at Ginny's dad. "Hermione will be thrilled to know that they've made it official. We've more or less assumed it'd be you since Kingsley announced the formation of the department."

"Oh, well," Arthur said, standing up as well and carrying the coffee mugs over to the sink, "I'm not one for pomp and circumstance. I'll just be glad to get back to work on Monday. There are so many new cases that we keep uncovering every day." His voice trailed off as he left the kitchen. Ginny guessed, by the way her father was decked out in old sweat pants and a dingy shirt, that he was headed out to his shed to work on his "wood project", whatever it was.

"I'll be gone most of the morning," Molly said, addressing Harry and Ginny. "I promised Andromeda Tonks that I'd stop by for tea. You kids have fun tonight, and," she turned her head toward Ginny and gave a solemn nod, "do let me know what kind of cake you'd like? I won't take "no" for an answer."

"Okay, Mum," Ginny smirked. "Strawberry?"

"Strawberry it is, then," Molly returned, untying her apron and hanging it on its hook before Apparating from the family room.

"You look really good," Harry said once he and Ginny were alone. "Do you really want to stay here and weed the garden or can I take you out?" He gave her an irresistible pout, one that Ginny had never seen him use before and that left her to melt in its wake. "Is that a yes?" Harry asked, smiling now. Ginny nodded. "To the garden part or to the dinner in London part?"

"Yes to dinner, you dolt," Ginny replied. She smacked Harry's arm and plopped down in the seat next to him, ignoring his fake grimmace of pain. The two shared what was left of the toast and coffee and went through the rest of the paper while waiting for Ron and Hermione to arise.

The day, to Ginny, seemed to crawl along as if it had been weighted down, somehow, by a huge sack of boulders. Some of the clouds had parted, and the weather had improved, slightly, to warmish and overcast with much less of a chill to the air. Ginny and Hermione locked themselves in Ginny's bedroom for a good hour or so, discussing wardrobe and making more adjustments to her long, wavy hair before she finally begged the girl to let her be.

"I'm not going to ever be glamorous, no matter how much poking or prodding I'm subjected to," Ginny whined.

"I think that Harry finds you glamorous enough," Hermione responded, flashing one of her knowing smiles at Ginny while they both stared into the dresser mirror. "And he'll find you all the more so when he gets a load of you in my cousin's sundress, all powdered and perfumed with your hair up in a twist."

Ginny stuck her tongue out at her friend, but had to agree. A hand-me-down, sage green strapless number that Hermione had found in her closet on her last trip home might possibly have been made for Ginny's small frame. It was difficult to remember when she'd ever looked so feminine, and Ginny knew that Harry -- his penchant for tomboys notwithstanding -- would be reduced to stuttering when he saw her. A bit of rouge, salmon pink lip-gloss, and a thin line of deep brown eyeliner brought her features out nicely, she thought. Though it felt quite silly, to Ginny, to be standing there admiring her own visage in the presence of perhaps the most intelligent person alive, she also felt uncommonly powerful: attractiveness, to a young woman, is as much of a power as magic and Ginny was feeling a bit charged with both at the moment.

"I'll just poke into the boys' room and get Harry. I think you're ready for your first date now, don't you?" Hermione asked.

"Okay," Ginny said. She sat down on her bed and folded her hands in her lap, taking care not to crease the rayon of her dress. Hermione used her wand to set Ginny's dressing table back in order, and left the room to go upstairs. As she waited, Ginny's hand flinched. She had been experiencing this all day, struck with sudden impulses to grab her wand and use her magic.

In the morning, she'd insisted on cleaning up for breakfast alone, and had made quite a to-do out of levitating everything in sight to a different location. She had to do most of the washing by hand - learning quickly that she did not have a good hold on the Cleaning and Scouring charms that she'd watched her mum use with such skill all these years - but knew enough about levitating objects to be able to put things away. By the time Ron and Hermione came in to wish her a happy birthday, she'd rearranged the cupboards and the shelves in the pantry and felt exhilarated at the speed of it all.

Later that afternoon, when her mum had returned from her visit with Andromeda Tonks, she found Ginny in the garden as promised, and they went over some of the new spells in Ginny's "Secrets of Magical Gardening" book together. They only managed to pull a handful of weeds -- the dandelions refused to let loose of their strong hold and the two witches weren't able to make a thistle so much as flutter under their spells.

"Well, I'm sure there are spells out there that can deal with these weeds, dear," her mum had said. "I'll have a look in Diagon Alley, when we get to the bookstore. Perhaps Gilderoy Lockhart has published something on it."

Ginny had giggled and assured her mum that they would be master gardeners by the time she went back to Hogwarts, although she rather thought that pulling weeds in the Muggle way or asking George to invent some eradicating powder would stand a far better chance of making progress than relying on old Lockhart. When Ginny left to go find Hermione - she made a point of spending time with her friend every day and lending an ear to lost-parents-related anxieties -- her mother stayed behind with Ginny's spell book and continued to work under the cloud-obstructed, August sun for another hour or so.

At tea time, there had been a short exchange of presents: a pretty sweater from Hermione; a subscription to a monthly sports magazine, Quidditch Today, from Ron; a shiny pocket watch from her parents; and a heart-stopping gold bracelet from Harry. It had made her blush right there in front of everybody to open the neatly wrapped little rectangle of a present that Harry handed her with a shy smile. Jewelry felt so personal, so much like being told, "You're my girl and this is the proof of it," that it seemed a scandal to receive such a thing in front of other people. And her parents, of all other people. The greater family was not there, but as tomorrow was Sunday, she was assured that there would be a special, birthday dinner awaiting her when Bill, Percy and George came over. Charlie was rarely seen these days, having taken off to Romania on a new assignment, but would undoubtedly send a small parcel and a friendly, heart-felt note as he'd always done.

Now Ginny sat, alone in her bedroom, hand itching to make good use of her wand and heart brimming with longing, admiration, gratefulness and a host of other feelings. The mixture of it all was beginning to make her want to take a swig of firewhiskey from Fred and George's old secret stores in the basement, but the opportunity vanished when she heard a gentle wrap on her bedroom door. Harry.

"Ginny," Harry said, speaking loudly through the thick oak door. "Are you ready? Our reservations aren't until seven-thirty, but we've got a bit of a walk ahead of us, once we get to London."

"Be right out," Ginny yelled back. Taking one last, approving glance in the mirror, she stood up and opened the door to the gorgeous sight that was her boyfriend, all pressed and clean, hair almost neat and smelling just a tad more of musk than usual. For one brief moment, she felt as normal as any teenaged girl, and as lucky as every girlfriend of a handsome boy, and she smiled goofily, offering her arm.

"Okay if I Apparate you along with me?" Harry asked, squeezing her elbow and drawing out his wand. "It's the only way I can think of for us to get to London without having to ask for a ride."

Ginny grimaced. "No thanks," she said. "I've seen it done plenty of times, I'll just Apparate myself."

"You will not," Harry returned, looking surprised and amused at the same time at Ginny's defiance. "If you'd like to splinch yourself, Ginny, you're going to have to do it while I'm not around to witness the results."

Within seconds, and despite the fact that she hadn't yet agreed to it, Ginny was transported to the basement of the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley in a whoosh of pressurized, suffocating and twirling wind. "Apparition," she thought, "is highly overrated."

There hadn't been time nor opportunity during her last school year to officially learn how to Apparate, and Ginny had become more desperate by the day to master it. She might have insisted too, if it hadn't been for the day a month or so ago when she'd seen Ron emerging from the bathroom in a towel and had gotten an eye-full of his own scarred and lumpy flesh wounds. Here in the Leaky Cauldron's basement, Ginny stumbled forward, grabbing onto Harry's arm again as she waiting for the last bit of nausea to subside.

"All right?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," Ginny said, standing up taller and straightening out her dress. "I'm fine. Let's just go." She stumbled again and Harry let out a small chuckle before clamping his lips together in response to Ginny's glaring look of disapproval.

From Diagon Alley, Ginny was led on a pleasant stroll down several idyllic streets in Muggle London and finally to a pretty little restaurant that stuck out of the street-level floor of a high, gray-bricked building. The city looked amazing, and she and Harry gawked simultaneously at the sheer wonder of lights and craftsmanship that comprised it.

"Lovely, isn't it?" Ginny asked, stopping just feet from the restaurant's entrance and turning her head in a half-circle to take in the sights.

"Yeah, it is," Harry returned. "Ginny," he said, taking her hand and causing her to look up at him. Something about the way he had said, "Ginny," let her know that she was in for something good -- something serious or sweet. "Ginny," Harry repeated, "you are absolutely the best-looking witch I've ever seen. Did I ever tell you that?"

Ginny nodded.

"Then, have I told you how terrific you look tonight?"

"No," Ginny said, smiling, "as a matter of fact, you haven't. And here I was beginning to worry that you hadn't bothered to read that book my brother gave you at all."

"You know about my book?" Harry asked, staring now at Ginny as if she were a shiny Christmas bauble, or an exquisite orchid in full bloom.

"I do," Ginny said, smiling again. "You left it behind when you took off on your big adventure last year, and I found it in Ron's room."

"And, why didn't you assume it was Ron's?" Harry asked.

"Because on the inside cover, it's inscribed to you. It says, 'Use with care and caution, mate, Ron' or something along those lines."

"It does?"

A tiny breeze tickled the back of Ginny's neck, which was exposed due to the loose twist that her hair had been teased up into. She laughed and gave Harry a "you're hopeless" look. "You never opened it, did you?"

"No," he said. "Sorry."

"Well, I think I can forgive you. After all, you did manage to compliment me all on your own, without even having been told to do so by Ron's rather thoughtful present."

"How could I not?" Harry asked, innocently. "I can't stop looking at you."

Ginny couldn't bring herself to come up with a clever response, and she felt humbled by Harry's apparent sincerity. All of the powerfulness she'd felt earlier had now morphed into something closer to helplessness; she was being sucked further and further into the influences of Harry's considerable charm, like a lost little seagull that flew too close to a whirling storm. If it was possible, Ginny reflected, she was falling even more in love by the minute as she and Harry ventured through their first real slice of alone time since...forever.

Harry tipped his head toward the restaurant door and gave a little eyebrow signal that meant that Ginny was supposed to accompany him in their now. She chuckled. "Swept me off my feet there, didn't you?" she teased.

"That was the plan," Harry quipped.

They entered the building quietly and were soon ushered to a tiny little table-for-two on the edge of a shiny, black marble dance floor and not far from a huge, ultra-modern bar. Ginny had heard of places like this -- "clubs", she'd heard them called - but had never been inside one and felt instantly more refined, just for being there. Several dozen other patrons were sitting at chrome-rimmed tables like the one she and Harry were at. They all looked to Ginny like couples in various states: deeply in love, grappling with a first or second date or maybe married and enjoying a peaceful night out without the kids.

"We're quite a bit younger than anyone here, aren't we?" Ginny asked.

Twisting in his chair, Harry scrutinized the scene and frowned. "I think so," he said. "I don't see anyone else younger than about twenty-two, certainly."

A short, skinny waitress, dressed in black from head to toe, came up to their table and flashed a grin at Ginny and Harry. "What'll you have to drink?" she asked.

"Two glasses of Pinot Noir, please?" Harry responded, sounding as if he ordered French-sounding wine all the time. Ginny cast her eyes downward, staring at the table and hoping that the strangeness of being ordered a grown-up drink coupled with the vague knowledge that she wasn't old enough to do so in the Muggle world weren't showing on her face, betraying Harry somehow.

"Can I see some I.D. love?" asked the waitress.

Ginny opened her mouth to tell the girl that she'd changed her mind and would like a glass of pumpkin juice, but stopped herself just in time. "Right," she told herself, internally, "think Muggle. Carrot juice? No. Milk or club soda, perhaps."

But as she struggled to come up with an age-appropriate drink that a Muggle waitress would be accustomed to being asked for, Ginny heard a calm Harry responding, "Sure." Looking up, she saw her boyfriend open a Muggle wallet and hand a small plastic card to the girl, who nodded and then turned to herself.

"It's in your purse, right?" Harry said, and under the table Ginny felt a leathery parcel being shoved into her lap.

"Oh," she said. Harry had conjured an ugly, bone-colored handbag and Ginny opened it up, finding a card of her own to offer the waitress. The card was laminated and had a picture of herself, looking frightened and hair awry, next to neat columns of text giving the particulars of her birthplace, size, weight and age. "Oh," she said again, and she handed the card to the waitress.

"Sorry," the girl said, "but I'm supposed to ask. "I'll be back in two sec's with your drinks."

Throwing a fiery look at Harry, Ginny gritted her teeth. "I do not look like this!" she said, noticing with displeasure that her fury was giving Harry much amusement. He was laughing quietly, but wisely didn't say anything yet in his own defense. "And I'm only seventeen and do not weigh ten stone!"

Harry cringed. "I'm sorry," he said, laughing. "I'm so sorry. I knew that Muggles don't consider you of age yet, so I had to conjure up an identification card with a slightly earlier date of birth. There wasn't any time to figure out how much you weighed. And, by the way, that is a picture I've seen before."

Ginny looked at her I.D. card again. "Right," she thought. The picture, now that she studied it more closely, was a pretty good recollection of an actual photograph that one of the twins had once taken of her. They had taken great pride in placing it, ornately framed and in a prominent position, on the mantle every time company came over to the Burrow. The real picture was much worse, though, than Harry's version given that it was a moving, wizard photograph that featured a rather unflattering, threatening scowl. Every time Ginny thought she'd rid the world of that picture for good, the twins seemed to produce another, bigger one and she'd find herself face-to-face with it once again at the next Christmas dinner or Easter brunch.

"You're supposed to guess low on a witch's weight and shoe size, you know," she said. Harry cringed again and nodded his head. "If you'd have read that book, you'd know that much, at least. And I am not carrying this ugly purse thing around with me, so if you could just make it go away..."

"Certainly," Harry said. Under the table, Ginny felt a mild, warm current and her old-lady's handbag was turned back into the cloth napkin that it originated from. "I remember Aunt Petunia always carried one that looked like that. I'll try something more fashionable next time."

"You do that," Ginny said, smiling. She and Harry both broke out into comfortable laughter, and soon moved the conversation into a rather fun examination of Ron's use of the advice book to woo Hermione.

Wine was served without further investigation and Ginny and Harry sipped slowly, savoring their daring moment of lawlessness while they enjoyed an interesting meal and chatted happily, relishing each other's company. If the day had seemed reluctant to pass earlier, Ginny felt as if the evening had rushed by in an awful hurry. She wasn't ready to leave their posh surroundings when Harry expertly counted out Muggle bills for the waitress, and she was practically beside herself with loss when they finished their walk back to the Leaky Tavern.

"Well," Harry said when they'd reached the back of the tavern near the basement where they would soon be Apparating from, "I guess this is it."

Ginny frowned. "Does it have to be?" she asked.

"I think so, yeah," Harry replied. He tugged on her hand and they walked down the basement steps to stand facing each other, awkwardly, in the empty room. "I sort of asked your dad if you could have a glass of wine, and he was kind enough to agree. I don't want him to think I'd take advantage of his good will or anything."

"You want my parents to go on thinking you're the perfect little gentleman, then?" Ginny teased, planting herself into Harry's arms as she spoke and looking up at him. "A true, blue goody-two-shoes if there ever was one?"

Harry leaned down and gave her a soft whisper of a kiss on the lips. "Something like that," he said.

She wanted to hold herself back, and had even lectured the ten-year-old Ginny inside of her not to let her be the aggressor this evening. "Ginny," she had said earlier in the night, while remembering how much her younger self used to long to be kissing Harry Potter, "sometimes it's better to let the wizard do the asking. We don't want to seem too eager." But Harry's lips hovered close to hers and she felt his hot breath tickling her as he opened his mouth to speak again.

"I want them to think I'm good enough for you," he said. "You're amazing. You know that, right?"

Ginny shook her head and grabbed hold of Harry's neck, pulling him in for a kiss to stop the painful teasing. "Next time," she thought, "I'll be the demure, shy one." Harry opened his mouth and let Ginny delve inside, working out her frustrations and longing as she kissed him with soul-satisfying vigor. They were standing in the middle of a dark basement, but Ginny couldn't have cared less. She had needed to feel this intimacy for so long now: for months and months, as she'd told herself to hang on and to be patient. As they kissed, she thought back to all the lonely nights she'd spent in her room in Gryffindor tower, replaying their one, blissful treehouse snog over and over and sending silent prayers up to the heavens, asking for her Harry back in one piece.

Harry wrapped his arms around her waist, which made her feel curvy and feminine, and he began to kiss her back in earnest. Strong thumbs played idly with the fabric of her borrowed dress and Ginny knew that some long-standing restraints that Harry had put on himself were being snapped in two. She wondered when he'd put the idea in his deft little brain that he should steer clear of intimate contact. Was it after they'd stretched the boundaries in the treehouse? Or maybe it was when he'd done whatever it was that he'd done with Voldemort, in the forbidden forest during the Battle of Hogwarts. It doesn't matter, she thought. Patience had won out once again, and her boyfriend was no longer relegating her to brief, chaste touches that were going to drive her mad, had they been allowed to continue for another day.

"Is this okay?" Harry asked after a few more long, lust-inducing kisses.

"Doesn't it feel okay?" Ginny asked, no longer in the mood to humor his reluctance. Harry didn't answer her, but bent down even lower and began to work on Ginny's exposed neck, causing tremors within her.

When the patrons upstairs at the Leaky Cauldron began to get noisy, Ginny and Harry finally let go of each other, heated and red-lipped. They Apparated back to the Burrow and cooled off by sitting a spell with Ginny's mum. She'd been trying to keep out of the way by sewing discreetly on the back porch swing when they arrived in front of the family room fireplace.

They ate thick slices of strawberry cake and chatted a bit about George, who'd been spotted by Andromeda Tonks in a Hogsmeade tavern - and not in good form - a few days ago. Ginny told her mum that it was natural for George to seek out ways to forget about his brother for a few hours, but it was Harry who seemed most able to ease Molly's worries. He told her that George seemed to be coming out of the worst of his heartache, from what he could see, and that they'd actually talked at length, last Sunday after dinner, about the joke shop. Ron, Harry and George, he said, had sat right there on the very same back porch and laid out a general plan to stage a reopening, agreeing that the world seemed ready again for a good dose of Weasley humor. Perhaps George was just out to find a bit of that humor for himself on the night that Mrs. Tonks ran into him, he posed.

After a brief goodbye at the bottom of the stairs, Ginny left Harry for her bedroom and readied herself for bed. She washed the make-up off her face, brushed her hair and pulled on an old t-shirt of Charlie's before sliding into bed and shutting her eyes to the long day. She whispered another "goodnight" to no one in particular, feeling almost normal again for the first time in months.