Cheap Trick Lullaby

section four ::. miss ginevra and randy harry's all-night shag fest

Ginny and Harry had agreed unanimously on Friday night for the big event, because it seemed obscene to schedule sexcapades on a proper weekday. Besides, Madam Malkin had Ginny's entire week booked solid, and Harry was busy himself teaching intermediate flying lessons to vast amounts of third, fourth, and fifth year students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Headmistress McGonagall had assured him that there would not be much interest in the lessons, and that it would be a great part-time starting position for him until the Defense Against the Dark Arts spot opened up again --as she and everyone else were sure it would.

That had been two years ago. It turned out that loads of young witches and wizards were interested in being taught fancy broom techniques by the man who had finally defeated He Who Could Not Be Killed. It also turned out that Professor Emelia Douglas, after becoming the first DADA professor to last for more than one term in nearly fifty years, had proceeded to stay on for an unprecedented two more years, and the thirty-five year old witch did not look ready to retire anytime soon. It now appeared to many who were once quick to dismiss such a thing as sheer luck on Professor Douglas' part (these including the headmistress herself) that Hogwarts finally had a DADA professor who was there to stay. All of these circumstances culminated in the converting of Harry's promising, part-time beginner's course to teaching at Hogwarts into his tiring, full-time teaching position at said establishment. Needless to say, Friday evening found him very near the point of exhaustion, and nursing a tenacious state of irritation that could only be caused by thirty over-excited third years, all post-lunch, pre-weekend energized.

Not to even mention the fact that he kept receiving owls that contained such annoyances as: "That sex thing you asked Ginny, was it REALLY a joke?" Or, "Just ask Dobby when you're at work! He'd tell you anything!" Or, "No really, ARE you trying to shag my sister?" Or even: "Harry, you should really think about settling down in a commited relationship." The last was from Hermione, of course, and the rest of the letter contained some glaring "hints" about just whom he should be thinking about settling down with. Harry was beginning to suspect that they hadn't bought the story he and Ginny had contrived out of thin air to explain why he might have been asking her for a shag. That being a poorly executed lie about him relaying to her a funny joke. To which Ron had predictably replied, "So, what's the joke?" Harry had had to feign coincidental forgetfulness. Not the strongest of falsehoods, but he'd at the very least expected them to take the hint, and stop pestering he and Ginny for information. No such luck.

That is why he wasn't surprised in the slightest when, approximately three paces from the door of his flat, he was accosted be a buzzing, minature puff of an owl that went by the name of Pig. Automatically, he fished around in his pockets for a few spare owl treats, and passed them to the twittering maniac while seizing the letter attached to his leg. Opening it, he warily began to read whilst he took out his keys, Pig flitting around his head the whole time.

Joke Man-

As you already know, we're going to have a party tomorrow to celebrate FINALLY finishing up work on Shag End (Don't tell Uberwitch I called it that!), and you're coming whether you like it or not. Hermione wanted me to send this official invite anyway. She wants to lay down a few rules which are as follows: 1) Don't bring any muggles. (She really means don't bring Ryan.) 2) Bring a date if possible. (Here she means Ginny. Which reminds me... I'm going to have a little talk with you about this shagging business.) 3) Don't be rude to any of the guests. (She means Luca Pagano. She heard about what happened at the Ministry Yule Ball! She didn't hear it from me, I promise!) 4) No snogging, touching, breathing on, or having shag-thoughts about Ginny in mixed company. (That one's my rule and the most important of all!) That said, bring that bottle of Odgen's you've been saving. This is the emergency situation you've been waiting for. It's going to be a long night, and I plan to get so pissed that Hermione has no choice but to throw me out.

Yours Truly,

Rono Shaggins

By the time Harry entered the small building, he had come to the end of the message and the beginning of a headache. The last thing in the known universe that Harry wanted to do was 'have a little talk' with Ron Weasley about potentially shagging his little sister. It was bad enough that he'd have to face him after actually having done the deed. What was he supposed to say? "Yes, I shagged your sister, but only the once!"? Stopping just inside the flat, he seized one of the spare bits of parchment kept in the small sidetable near the front door, and hastily jotted down a suitably ambiguous response. He then rolled up the noted, tied it to the restless bird's leg, and shooed him back out the door, watching as Pig flew away in his signature, darting, vaguely-lopside manner.

"Freein' the wildlife again, are you, Pot?" The strongly Irish and equally suspicous lilt of his flatmate sounded from the end of the hall, and Harry automatically turned to greet her. There she stood with her short-cropped, spiky, magenta-colored hair sticking out in messy disarray, in her favorite Smiths T-shirt --that used to be neon-pink before she wore it down to a more mute shade-- and wearing knee-high stockings with thick black and white horizontal stripes under her ever-present, dark-green, punctured, patched, and extremely worn, pleated mini-skirt. Ryan Finnigan was not the sort for understated attire. Many would surely have at least flinched at the sight of her, but Harry simply smiled the fond smile of someone who had come home to the very same sight almost every night for over a year and a half.

He could still recall the moment when Seamus Finnigan, an old dormmate from Hogwarts, had told Harry of a muggle cousin who would be willing to split the rent for the London flat that had once been his and Ron's --this was before Ron had moved back to The Burrow in order to save up for the wedding and the new house. Harry had been a tad concerned when Seamus had described her as "a bit of a loon, but fairly easy to get on with if you didn't mention The Corrs. Just nod and smile when she starts going on about music. There was an incident once... I don't like to remember it." Here, his left eyelid twitched involutarily, and he added in a shaken voice, "Just nod and smile." In truth, Ryan wasn't all that bad. In many ways she was more normal than Seamus himself. She cooked rather well and was always willing to share, didn't like pets, and could be counted on to make the dullest of outings more interesting than they had any right to be. She was, however, prone to compulsive bouts of cleaning that tended to include his room as well. It had been strange the first few times, but then turned out to be oddly convenient. In the end, he and Ryan had grown exceedingly fond of one another. Still, Harry had never failed to "just nod and smile."

"Er... yes?" he said uneasily in answer to her question.

Her slate-grey eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms. "I don't believe you anymore, Pot," she announced. "I mean what are the odds that that same little owl, and quite a few others like it, would regularly fly in through the windows and front door? In broad daylight no less! And I could swear they have little notes attached to their legs. And you just happen to own one of the mangy creatures? Are you training animals for the circus behind my back?"

"Yes, Ryan, you've caught me. Circus owls are my trade. I've been hiding the fact all this time, because I know how much you hate our animal brethren," Harry deadpanned.

"Whatever. I'm going to find out what you're hiding. Mark my words."

Harry calmly ignored her proclamation. "How would you like to go to a housewarming party with me tomorrow?"

"Pot, darling, you do realize, after almost two years of living with me, that I'm a dyke, right?" He crossed the space between them, and, as he approached her, she ruffled his already hopeless locks with much affection.

"It wouldn't be a date, obviously. You'd just be my guest for the evening. Mrs. Weasley's going to bring some of those little cakes you like," he added in the hopes that it might effect her answer.

"You can't mean Ron and Hermione's housewarming? I thought I was preemptively unoffically banned from Shag End?"

"Yeah, well, the ban's been lifted. I need you there to run interference in case Ron starts asking too many questions."

"Oh, you mean about Miss Ginevra and Randy Harry's All Night Shag-Fest?"

"It isn't--"

"Like that? Yes, that's what you keep telling me. By the way, are those new sheets on your bed?" Ryan asked, displaying a not so innocent little smirk.

"Oh shut it already. Will you go with me or not?"

For a moment she feigned the act of thinking it over, and then finally relented with an extravagant sigh. "I'd go to the ends of the earth for you, Pot, you know that. Just keep me away from Mrs. Prissy Granger-Weasley."

"You're a saint. I worship you. Now leave and don't come back until tommorrow."

"Oh God, that's right!" she exclaimed, eyes wide and mouth a perfect 'O.' "Your Shag-Fest is tonight! My Dykes on Bikes group is meeting here to watch the cycling tournament!" Harry was just on the verge of heart failure when she cracked a wicked grin. "Just messing with you, Pot."

"You're a hag. I despise you. Now get out and never return," he supplied dryly.

Still grinning madly, she pinched his cheeks like the doting aunt he'd never had --nor wanted--- even as he stood his ground, glaring at her sternly. Then she said, "I'll be at Gina's, but if Kat rings I'm with Seamus. He's off shagging Dean so if Gabby rings he's at the cinema with me, 'right? The pasta's on the boil, and the sauce is ready. I doubt even you can muck it up. Happy Shag-Fest!" With that, she grabbed her jacket and bag, and sailed out of the front door, humming an upbeat tune to herself. There had been a time when Harry had thought his life couldn't get any more strange. Then came Ryan Finnigan. Sometimes he was left wondering if he should even bother making the effort to be normal.

------

Precisely forty-five minutes later, Harry was certain he had indeed mucked up the pasta. What had the Naked Chef said? Something about the noodles not ending up a massive pile of gelatinous goo? Still not sure how that had come about, Harry waved his wand at the useless mess, and watched it evaporate into thin air. The pasta hadn't stood chance against the pre-"date" anxiety that had assailed him moments after Ryan's departure. As he had not felt such jittery nervousness in a very long time, it had taken him quite by surprise. He'd found himself doing all sorts of silly things like putting on a nice shirt and a fancy pair of trousers he hardly ever wore, and tidying up his room just as if he were having someone other than Ginny over. It was only Ginny after all. She'd seen his messy room loads of times, and she certainly wouldn't care what clothes he chose to wear. Ginny was Ginny. He was Harry. And, frankly, the entire situation was becoming very troubling; very troubling indeed.

To make matters worse, he could presently discern an incredibly irritating noise that sounded ominously like his doorbell ringing. It was the horrible, drawn-out yowl of some indistinguishable animal (possibly a cat) in pain; remnant of the one and only Halloween party he'd ever let Ryan talk him into having. That was the time he had learned that she was just as mad about All Hallow's Eve as she was about her music. Needless to say, he'd made certain he had other plans the following year's Halloween.

Odd thing was, Harry was decidedly more disturbed by the fact that Ginny had rang the bell in the first place than the actual sound of it. He couldn't remember the last time she hadn't just let herself in. Accordingly, the very first thing he said upon opening to the front door was: "You never ring the bell."

If the redhead was at all surprised by this bizarre greeting she didn't show it. That is, she was busy wincing presumably at the tortured, animalistic cry that had sounded when she had pressed the button. "I now recall why."

Harry shrugged vaguely. "That's Ryan for you. Some people collect figurines..."

"Some collect recordings of the agonized howling of defenseless creatures in horrendous pain?" Ginny finished, her grimace even more pronounced. "Do you ever wonder why she didn't help the poor thing instead of documenting it's misery?"

"She's not exactly an animal lover," the dark-haired wizard replied diplomatically as stepped aside and motioned for Ginny to enter, all the while being overly aware of the general absurdity of the act itself. She had her own key after all. But then Ginny, facing away from him, was devesting herself of her light outer robes, in the process revealing the slim-fitting, Muggle dress beneath, and he suddenly couldn't recall why he was worrying about something so trivial as having to invite a beautiful woman into his home. In fact, he couldn't really think beyond the now exposed curves of her lightly freckled shoulders.

"What's that smell?"

Harry's response to her question was unintelligable at best, he thought it resembled something like "Marspat?", but at the moment he couldn't be arsed to care all that much. That was, until he caught a whiff of the aforementioned "smell" himself. The acrid stench of thoroughly burnt pasta sauce has an uncanny way of bringing one to their senses. By unspoken consent, the pair traversed the hall, and entered the kitchen.

Once there, Harry quickly muttered a spell to disperse the thin, greyish cloud of smoke that obscured their view of the rangetop. At which point, they both got a good look at the charred remains of Ryan's Infamous Pasta Sauce.

"You never cook," Ginny said, still gazing at his failed attempt.

"Obviously," he snorted good-naturedly.

Primly, she extracted her wand from, what seemed to Harry, thin air, and banished the thoroughly blackened sauce from their sight.

Harry just stared. "How did you--"

"Magic, Mr. Potter. Magic," she smiled. At Harry's blank look, she elaborated, "It's an InvisiPouch. It's for keeping your wand near at hand when you're wearing Muggle clothing. I'm test-running it for Fred and George before they commit it to mass-marketing. They've been tinkering with various illusionary charms for the last month or so, and now they think they've 'discovered the secrets of lasting invisibility.' Those were their exact words."

"Ah, said Harry. "So, what you're saying is that we should all be afraid."

"Very afraid," she agreed. "D'you want to see it?" She removed what looked like an intricately-woven golden bracelet from her wrist, and passed it to him. "So to speak," she added with a smile.

He accepted it, realizing only then that the bracelet was attached to a small, invisible pouch. It felt similar to that silky fabric of his Invisibility Cloak, except it stayed invisible even when no one was wearing it, the gold bracelet handle the only visible part of the whole contraption. It was so incredibly obvious, while at the same time being something one wouldn't normally think of, that Harry found it ingenious. "That's pretty brillant actually," he said, returning it to her.

"The twins like to think so."

Here came a pause in their easy dialogue in which Ginny gazed at Harry expectantly, and Harry became single-mindedly occupied with finding a place to put Ryan's lime-green, "Kiss the Dyke" oven mitt which had inexplicably found itself on the counter unattended. After a minute or so of this, Ginny calmly took the mitt and placed it on its hook; the one both she and Harry had witnessed Ryan nailing to the wall above the range not two years past. "So, there's no food now," Harry said to fill the awkward silence that followed. "Are you hungry? Because we could order something, or we could go out. I recently discovered an amazing Mediterrean place near here. Or--"

"Harry?" Ginny interrupted his babble, looking highly exasperated.

"Yes?"

"Shag me."

"Right... that."

For a very long time, neither moved at all. Then Ginny, deciding that if anything was going to happen she'd have to initiate it, abruptly pulled Harry toward her by the front of his shirt, and planted a quick, soft kiss on his lips. Just as she had hoped, that shocked him into motion. He leaned forward and repeated the gesture, lightly brushing his mouth against Ginny's lips, and swiftly retreating. They carried on in this vein, exchanging chaste pecks that were steadily becoming longer, and moving closer and closer until Ginny was pressed firmly up against the kitchen counter. It dug into her back, but she didn't care.

For Harry's part, he was focusing irrationally on keeping his hands to himself. Both his palms were gripping the edge of the counter so tightly by now that his knuckles were bone white, and he had begun to shake slightly with the sheer tension. Ginny was apparently not laboring under the same hands-off resolve. Some time ago, she had started to slowly, ceaselessly run her hands from his shoulders to his chest and back again; a process that he found more than a little frustrating. A rebellious part of himself wished to return the favor, but he quickly silenced that part before it got any more bright ideas. Then, all of a sudden, Ginny was prying his hands off the counter, placing one firmly around her waist and the other at her neck near her collarbone, all in the same manner one might adopt for forcing a partner to take the lead in a dance. Harry met her eyes with a questioning look.

"You can touch me, you know," she explained in a deceptively even tone. The exasperation she was really feeling was spelled out for him in her stern gaze. Clearly, she would tolerate no more of his well-meaning timidity. So he did the only thing he could do. He complied. He mentally sat back and let his rebellious part take the lead. He pulled her closer with one hand, and hesitantly pushed his fingers into the soft hair at the base of her neck with the other.

She smelled faintly of spring-fresh flowers, and on her breath was something creamy sweet like toffee or caramel. The scent made him want to throw hesitance to the wind, part her rosy lips with his own, and slip in for a proper taste. But before he could pluck up the Gryffindor courage to actually do it, she took matters into her own hands and coaxed his mouth open with a very thorough snogging. Definitely toffee, Harry thought distractedly. Suddenly, Ginny pulled away a bit with a small sound of discomfort. He stepped away instantly. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, its just the counter....it's hurting my back." Her words trialed off, and she assumed a thoughtful expression. "Let's find some place more comfortable, shall we?" With that, she grasped him by the wrist and dragged him bodily out of the kitchen, through the sitting room, and into his newly-tidy bedroom before he could think to do anything but follow her lead. Then his arms were full of the warm, sweet-smelling, red-haired being, and he ceased all mental function again. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought that she didn't seem so scared of this after all, but they were falling onto the newly-bought sheets of his neatly-made bed, and he couldn't seem to care.

His limited range of vision was filled with flashes of her fiery hair, the deep green gossamer fabric of her dress, her freckled skin flushed with a dozen shades of peach and rose. Indeed, his senses were virtually overloaded with her, drowning in her even. It felt too vibrant; too intense. It was as if every touch, every kiss, every sound meant more than it should; more than it ever had with anyone else. One finely-executed shift and suddenly he was lying on his side, looking up at her in surprised confusion. He understood a second later as she brought her hands to the thin straps of her dress and pushed them off her shoulders, revealing herself to him in a resolute manner that seemed to suggest that they had reached the potion of no return. They were going to do this thing. There was no going back.

Even she seemed shocked by her actions. She slipped back into his arms before he could move, pressing against him as though to hide; as though she wished to take back her previous gesture if only a little. Gently, he unfolded her limps until she lay uncovered beneath him, looking almost vunerable for the first time since she'd walked through his front door. Their eyes met and the sight of her steady, trusting gaze stopped his breath. Somehow it seemed horribly wrong that she should trust him, of all people, this much. Harry could felt a massive weight of responsibility closing in around him, yet still her every action spoke of unwavering trust. He liked to think he could handle most situations life throw his way, but this was too much.

"Sorry," he exhaled hoarsely and barely above a whisper. Gently, he gathered the fallen folds of her dress, and covered her with it. "I'm sorry, Ginny. I can't do this," He said again, more strongly. The trust that had so frightened him now crumbled from her eyes. And though he felt certain he was doing the right thing, he couldn't help be feel he'd let her down in the worst way possible.

For a long time, she said nothing, staring at some insignificant point on the ceiling. After what seemed liked ages of highly uncomfortable silence, she methodically tugged her dress back into place, shoved him roughly away, and stood. She barely spared him a glance as she left, for which he was almost glad. From what he could see her gaze was hard and unforgivingly cold.

He sank back onto his bed, a feeling like all of the oxygen being sucked from his lungs overcoming him. What have I done now?