Being Bored

Being Bored

or

Skinny Dipping and the Stink Sap Fight

It was the last night. We had all just finished our end-of-term exams, and none of us had the focus to go to sleep. Hermione was snuggled next to the fire, leaning against Ron. She was reading a small book on disappearing charms, or pretending to. Ron was staring alternately at his girlfriend and the fire. Harry was throwing a package of self-stacking cards all over the room, only to watch them zoom into a neat stack in front of him over and over again.

The other sixth years were lying about in various states of semi-consciousness, as Colin Creevey tried desperately to find something to photograph. But he had various rolls of film on every person in the room, so he was having more than a little trouble.

I was watching this strange group of people, who I had only recently become able to call friends, but my eyes were half-lidded with the remembered strain of studying for days on end. My gaze kept wandering to the windows, attempting to see past fiery reflections and into the clear night sky. I love astronomy, and Hogwarts is so far from civilization that you can see a million more stars than anywhere else.

Ron snatched Hermione's book with an angry growl, and hurled it away from them into the fire. The fire bit wasn't on purpose, but Hermione didn't care. She flicked her wand at it aggressively, and it flew back into her hands as she turned her face up to his.

"Do not throw my belongings into the fire, Ronald!" she hissed, her face centimeters from his. Neville looked around nervously at the pair, who were sitting on the same couch as he was.

"Come on," he wheedled, adopting a Fred-and-George tone of voice. "You weren't reading it, you were just looking at it!"

"That does not mean that you can dispose of it without first asking my permission, does it?" she snapped. Harry rolled onto his back contentedly, staring at the ceiling. I recognized the expression on his face from personal experience. It was very comforting, knowing that even after Ron and Hermione had admitted to being in love, they still argued just as bitterly as ever.

While I had looked away, Ron had made some redeeming sort of apology, and kissed Hermione. I suppose that's the one difference. Now they literally kiss and make up. I looked away, attempting to see onto the moon-tossed grounds. But the fire's trembling light reflected back at me, and I had to look back into the room to avoid Ron and Hermione's reflection as well as their real counterparts.

"It's true I wasn't reading it," Hermione murmured apologetically to Ron. "Let's do something."

"Sleep?" drawled Seamus unenthusiastically, from his half of the chair he shared with Lavender. She rolled her eyes at him.

"No. I mean do something," Hermione repeated.

"Hermione. It's midnight. What do you mean, do something?" Harry quipped lazily from his place stretched out on the floor.

"Harry. We're sixteen. What do you mean, it's midnight?" Ron snapped.

That was when I had my truly inspired idea. For Christmas that year, Fred and George had sent me a box full of strange prototypes, "to continue the Weasley pranking legacy" they claimed. I leapt up without any explanation, and ran to get it. I could always find something to do with a little help from Fred and George.

"Ginny, what are you doing?" Ron demanded when I came back down with the large brown box. I smiled at him, and turned the box so he could see the bright WWW label on one side. As soon as he saw it he subsided with the residue of a grin on his face. I settled on the floor, in order to have enough room as possible, and began to search for something to do. I pulled out a Skiving Snack Box, and set it aside. Next I unveiled a half-used bag of extra-specific dung bombs that could be spelled to affect only certain people. No one dared to wonder why it was only half full.

Finally, I pulled out the perfect thing. It took a little bit of suggestion, but I was still the one who initiated it. It looked like an innocent bag of Muggle water balloons, but there were three tubes of interesting material that made it all very wizardly. The tubes were labeled in fancy moving letters, the first marked Confusion and Befuddlement Draft, the second with a label that screamed Exploding Fluid in letters that danced about excitedly and got confused every once in a while. But it was the third tube that elicited the idea. Harry reached over me and snatched the tube from my lap, examining the label carefully.

"Stink Sap?" he demanded incredulously. "What for?"

"Duh, Harry," I cried. "It's for filling the balloons with! It's Fred and George's new idea. You squeeze a tiny bit of the contents into the balloon, tie it as quickly as possible, and it fills up until it's so full that if you drop it, it will explode all over you. Or you can throw it at people..." I waggled my eyebrows, which is embarrassing to admit, but everyone has bad habits.

"Perfect!" Ron yelled, sitting up so that Hermione slid off his lap. She glared at him reproachfully. "We'll have a stink sap battle! Like a snow ball fight, only with stink sap balloons!" Ron seemed incredibly proud of himself for thinking of this. I figured no one but me would be enthusiastic though. I mean, stink sap? It's pretty hardcore, and way too sticky to play with lightly. It NEVER comes off your clothes, unless you pour some sort of scouring potion all over yourself. Or jump in a bath of it.

But I wasn't accounting for the idiocy that late spring stir craziness brings to boys. Dean and Seamus stared at Ron as if he were Harry Potter. Well, that's a phrase from before I met Harry, but you get the idea. Lavender giggled and looked askance at Parvati, who hadn't been participating in our little fireside chat until now. Colin Creevey set down his camera, and looked at Harry enthusiastically. I swear, that boy will do anything Harry endorses. And Harry endorsed this. Suddenly, everyone was elated over the idea. It must have been the summer air. Or some of the Confusion Draft had leaked out of its tube.

"Ginny, pass me the balloons," ordered Harry. And because it was Harry, I complied. Soon we had a whole mound of them, so full I was suspicious that they might explode if we looked at them too hard. But no one was looking at them. Lavender and Parvati, in the true spirit of flirty girls, were going along with what the guys wanted to do. They had dragged Hermione up the stairs to change into more serviceable clothes. So I leapt onto the proverbial bandwagon and changed into a ratty old sweater of George's, who always gave me his because we share our letter. I tucked my wand up my sleeve, rolled the ends up so it wouldn't come out, and changed my school skirt for a pair of very baggy pants that would give me full mobility.

I followed the three older girls down the stairs, where all the boys were waiting excitedly to begin. All the Gryffindor sixth years were coming, plus Colin and me. I tried not to consider it, because it made me think I was tagging along, which was too familiar a feeling to be comfortable. Harry had the Marauder's Map out, and Ron and Hermione were clustered around him to prevent people seeing what it was. There was no use getting out the invisibility cloak, as there was no way it could cover all ten of us.

"Okay, coast's clear," Harry said so authoritatively that no one thought to question how he knew. They all simply filed out of the portrait hole, while Hermione winked conspiratorially at the fat lady in the hopes that that would get her to keep quiet.

"That's right dears... have fun," she murmured sleepily. Harry broke into a quick trot, and somehow I found myself jogging beside him. Ron had dropped back in respect for Hermione's shambling run, and the others were spaced out according to varying degrees of fitness. Harry glanced over at me with an unidentifiable look on his face, but then kept his gaze straight ahead as we tried to evade the clutches of any wandering teachers.

As we entered the great hall Neville sneezed and the sound echoed through the cavernous space. Hermione threw a sharp look at him, and he turned red. I clapped my hands over my mouth and looked away, a laugh bubbling up my throat. Neville hadn't changed since he was twelve. I loved him for it, but it was adorable in a bit of a pitiful way. I flicked my gaze away from Harry as I found it resting on him, and tried to control the resulting tumult of thoughts.

I had a crush on Harry when I was eleven. Maybe that was only four years ago, but that is a very long time for me. I didn't like him after I turned thirteen and realized I didn't know him. It was only recently, when Ron let me in on his friendship with the other two, that I've begun to wonder if it isn't cropping up again... But really, it was just a schoolgirl crush, with no real feelings behind it. Now that I'm a capable fifth year, I'm beyond such things. I can have serious relationships with people, and serious relationships are not based upon fame or sticking elbows in condiments.

We emerged into the night in a clump, and the night air burst the giggles out of me. I reddened as I glimpsed Parvati falling on Lavender in just the same way I was leaning on Harry. Then I jumped back as I recognized the meaning of the name Harry.

"All right," Ron said, as soon as Parvati subsided and the group gathered around him. His eyes shone with a manic Weasley light I usually found in my twin brothers' at the prospect of pranking someone. "The boundaries are the lake, the Forbidden Forest, the Castle, and the Whomping Willow. We each get three balloons. Use them wisely. When you've run out of balloons, come back to the castle steps and wait for the group to arrive. If someone else gets here and you want to go back, just leave a mark or something."

"Put a purple square on the step," Hermione cut in, conjuring a few swatches of cloth and handing them out.

"Yeah, right. Okay then, everybody scatter. After one minute you can start attacking each other."

I crept through the foliage at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, one balloon in each hand, the third carefully spelled to my hip, where it hopefully wouldn't explode. I scanned the grounds carefully, making sure that I would be able to see any movement. For what felt like forever, I continued to dart from bush to tree, careful to keep my cover.

Suddenly, I heard a whoop that sounded suspiciously like Ron, then a splat, followed by an angry scream that could only have been Parvati. I sprinted towards the noise, anxious to cover my brother in disgusting goo.

As soon as I emerged from behind the bush that had protected me, and moved into open territory, a sticky mass exploded down the back of my neck. I gasped and suppressed any noise, anxious not to attract Ron or Parvati, and turned around furiously. Stink sap dripped underneath my sweater and into the small of my back. It was truly foul stuff, and as a few tendrils dripped forwards onto my front, its rank smell lodged itself in my nose.

Irritation colored my vision as I advanced towards the imagined position of my attacker, and soon I found a huddled male-ish form hiding behind a tree, his body wracked with silent laughter. I dropped both the balloons I held on his back, and turned to run away from the resulting explosion. But two hands closed around my ankles and I fell hard on the ground, landing on the final balloon I had taped to my hip. This caused most of my body to be covered in the stink sap.

At least my hair wasn't contaminated. I thought about running a hand over it to check, but as both my hands were covered in dirt and stink sap, I didn't believe it would be a terribly brilliant thing to do. So I shoved myself up and turned around.

Into a stink-sap balloon. My attacker had risen over me, planning to drop another on my back, I suppose. But my change of position caused the balloon to be smashed onto my head, and ground into my hair. I felt my head, and with a yelp of unhappiness, I reached both my sticky hands out and smeared them all over his face. Then I wiped my arms across my eyes, and managed to get them open and quasi-focused in the darkness.

All I could make out was a pale face, and blotches of darkness covered in lighter patches of what must have been stink sap. But the only person whose hair would stick up even with mounds of such cloying liquid on it was named Harry Potter.

When in doubt, laugh. That's the Weasley motto, I believe. It's my motto, anyway. So I laughed, half-crouching as real amusement crept up somewhere behind my feigned entertainment.

"What's so funny?" Harry demanded, an anxious quality to his voice. My laughter slowed when he didn't join in.

"I don't know," I muttered into the sudden silence. Harry gave me a strange look, and then a smile quirked his lips.

"If I look half as messed up as you do, I guess that's reason to laugh."

I slapped him lightly; mock offense playing over my features.

"Fine, then! We'll both have to jump in the lake."

He raised his eyebrows at me. I looked away. The thing about Harry is that I understand him just as well as anyone else in his life, if not better. He's pretty much the same way with me, although he doesn't really know it. We've been through some similar stuff, so it's not that we know each other really well, it's just that we know ourselves.

"Okay," he said. I blinked, and gave him a what? look. "Let's jump in the lake then. It's almost summer, so it's warm." He wrinkled his nose. "You smell."

"Shut up!" I cried, and glared at him very venomously. "Let's go, then," I added, and took off across the grounds. By some stroke of peculiar luck, none of our group saw me as I rushed across the grass. I could hear Harry's footsteps right behind me as I neared the edge of the lake and stopped abruptly. Apparently, I stopped a little too abruptly, because Harry crashed into me and we both fell face first into the shallows. I tried to dampen my fall, but Harry's weight made it all the more uncomfortable.

We struggled up, spluttering and soaked, as a red flush ate away at my cheeks. I moved away from him in the cover of standing up.

"Oops," he commented sheepishly, wiping his glasses off on his equally wet shirt.

"Oops?!" I demanded. "That's all you have to say?" I shoved him in again. A splash fight ensued, but I am proud to say Harry only managed to dunk me once. Having six brothers has its benefits, I guess.

After what I would deem to be a half hour, Harry climbed out, exhausted, and settled under the nearby beech tree that had been our meeting place on so many sunny Saturday afternoons this year. I felt like swimming, really swimming. The lake water was perfectly attuned to my skin, and the stink sap wasn't eradicated from my body yet. But as soon as I got into deeper water, George's huge sweater and my baggy pants became a great hindrance to me. They were waterlogged and very heavy.

For a single panicked moment I was sure they were going to drag me into the giant squid's sandy-bottomed bedroom, but I got control over myself and managed to pull my body back to the shallows. Glancing at Harry, I ensured that he was thoroughly engrossed in the stars, and pulled them off. In my underwear, which is a lot like a swimsuit anyway, I ventured back into the water.

It felt amazing. It was the most beautiful sensation to float in the ink-black water and stare up at the stars in the sky, washed with cool, cleansing water. Time sloshed on the shore of the lake inconsequentially, and ceased to matter. After a long time, Harry's voice floated to me on an invisible breeze.

"How is it?" he wondered. I glanced in the direction it had come from, and realized that it was so dark I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me.

"It's heavenly," I declared, flipping onto my stomach and swimming a bit closer to him, but not close enough to be visible.

"Where are you?"

"Right here."

He swam over. I sank until only my head was visible over the water. But Harry didn't seem to care that his chest was visible. Somewhere along the way, he had divested himself of his top too. His shoulders gleamed pale in the vague moonlight.

Heat crept up my face, and I quickly dumped my head in the redeeming water, in order to compose myself. He sank next to me, and stared at me with questioning underwater eyes. I blushed more, and kicked away to hide my over-exposed self. Harry's head popped above water, red. What more proof did I need? I took small solace in the fact that Harry was also dressed in his under things.

"Look," I commanded, pointing at the sky. I quickly retracted my arm as the cold air hit it. "The sky is so clear at Hogwarts." Harry looked.

"D'you like the stars?" he wondered. Something Harry didn't know about me!

"Yeah. See? There's Cassiopeia."

"What? Where?"

I reached an arm over his nearer shoulder to point to the w-shape in the sky.

"What's it supposed to be?"

"A throne. It looks more like a W," I explained.

"Why?"

"It's Queen Cassiopeia's throne. She was this Greek queen." I was trying desperately not to explain too much. I know how boring stuff like this gets if you don't care. But apparently, Harry cared, because he pestered me until I told him the whole story of the vain queen boasting her daughter was more beautiful than the goddesses of the sea, ending up in the sky revolving around the Pole Star, so half the time she has to sit upside down.

"Where is it again?"

"Harry! You were supposed to stop me if it got boring!"

"It wasn't!" Harry protested, giving me an utterly innocent look. "Only I wasn't looking at the stars."

I stared at him. I blinked a few times, but it seemed as though Harry never did. He met my gaze firmly, those green eyes forcing me to keep looking, no matter how much I wanted to turn away.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I whispered. I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

"Only that I like you." He held my gaze with those words for what seemed like an eternity, encapsulated in a few seconds. Quietly paddling to keep above water somehow brought us very close together. It seemed quite the natural thing for him to kiss me.

My brain numbed with pleasure, and I think we would have stayed there, connected by our lips, for a long time if we hadn't stopped paddling and sunk under the water.

I decided to have Ron invite Harry over for the whole summer.