Over Time: First Friends

Christmas. Our two favourite people bump into each other while Christmas shopping. Their meeting turns into coffee.

Required item: a 'mini'-sized parcel or bag.
Required phrase: 'Did you reduce that, or is it really that
small?'
**Bonus: if you mention Scrooge, Snoopy or the Grinch.

Five years later:

Ginny pushed her way through the crowds, reminding herself that going to Azkaban would be horrible, and so stupefying hordes of muggles was not an option. She enjoyed looking at all the decorations, and the things that muggles got up to with electricity, and even the exotic things that she could find in muggle stores. Shopping on December 24, however, was not one of her brightest ideas. She had just rounded a corner when she bumped into something solid and went sprawling onto her backside. "Watch where you're going!"

She heard a rich laugh from somewhere above her and she scowled. "Between that hair and that temper, it's got to be a Weasley." The bearded man held his hand out and she took it, standing up and looking him over.

"Malfoy? Is that you under that mass of hair?" The man's face broke into a smile and she gasped. "It is you! What on earth are you doing here of all places? I'd heard you were in Australia."

"I was, but then it seemed somehow sacrilegious to spend Christmas sweltering, so I came home for a while. My mum's thrilled, but I had to get out for a bit, so here I am." His eyes roamed over her, taking in all the changes that the years had wrought. "You grew boobs."

She laughed. "Yeah, puberty finally hit sometime around age 20. Come on, let's go have some coffee. I'm cold." They fell into step easily, the companionship of their school friendship coming back easily. Her eyes flicked over the bag dangling from his belt. "So, did you reduce that, or is it really that small?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "I see you haven't changed much. How a girl so innocent could come up with innuendo from anything always baffled me."

"Education, my dear Malfoy. I'm still the world's best educated virgin." She grimaced before stepping into a diner.

They'd slipped into a booth in the back corner when he said sympathetically, "I read about it. The wedding that wasn't, they called it."

"Yeah, it was something." She winced. "I don't know who was more upset, Rita Skeeter or my mother."

"Want to talk about it?" It had taken her a while to train him, but he still remembered at least the rudiments of the whole comforting thing.

She grimaced. "Maybe later, after we've progressed to hard liquor. Or at least massive amounts of sugar." He grinned and she grinned and it was as if they'd never lost touch after he left Hogwarts. "So how the hell are you, Mister I've-got-two-broken-hands-and-can't-send-an-owl?"

"Fairly well, Miss Has-no-room-to-talk." They ordered, chatting about what they had done in the intervening time. Draco had spent a lot of time traveling the world and learning about his family's investments, while Ginny had gone to university and was now doing post-graduate work in the field of integrating muggle technology with the wizarding world. After dinner they started walking around aimlessly, looking into store windows and talking about anything and everything.

Finally Ginny said, "Okay, forget the liquor. What happened was, I was walking up the aisle, thinking about how this was it, I, Ginny Weasley, the homely little redhead, was marrying Harry bloomin' Potter, the Boy Who Lived."

"No false modesty, please. I saw the pictures of you in the dress, and you looked marvelous." Draco patted her hand as she squeezed his arm affectionately.

"Maybe moderately stunning. And Harry looked so adorable, all in his nervous but brave heroic mode, trussed up in a tuxedo because he'd refused to wear formal robes." Ginny sighed and seemed to drift off into her own thoughts.

Draco waved a hand in front of her face. "Weasel, telling a story generally involves the movement of the mouth in order to produce sounds."

"Sorry, I just thought that those Scrooge McDuck boxers would make a good gift for someone I know." Ginny shook her head and started walking again. "Anyway, as I'm walking up the aisle on my dad's arm, it dawns on me that husbands and wives generally have sex."

"I sincerely hope so, given that I'm getting married on New Year's." He cut off her congratulations with a hand wave. "I'll go into raptures about my fiancee in a minute, finish what you were saying. You were walking down the aisle when something perfectly obvious to anyone above age ten occurred to you."

"Not much more to tell, really. I started having a panic attack and just as we reached Harry I blurted out, 'I can't do this', and he kind of wobbled and said, 'Oh, thank God'." Ginny shook her head. "You know, that's the second time in my lifetime I've gotten that reaction when I let someone off the hook for being involved romantically with me. I really need to work on that."

Draco nodded solemnly. "It's a terrible habit of yours."

Ginny giggled. "Well, the Wizard Wireless had us hooked up with microphones, since it was a Big Event, so everyone in the world knew at once that the wedding wasn't going to come off. We just kind of looked at each other and grinned, then we turned and invited everyone to go on to the reception."

Draco followed her as she ducked into a store and exchanged money for a hideous looking stuffed green thing. "What on earth is that? And what about those pictures with Granger?"

"It's the Grinch. Fred's daughter adores Dr. Seuss." Ginny ducked into an alley and looked around shiftily. "Cover me."

He rolled his eyes, but kept a lookout while she shrank the toy to pocket size. "So you didn't want to bang Potter, which is perfectly understandable, but why Granger? I mean, there's better looking women out there if that's what you're into."

"Pig." Ginny punched his arm and he winced. "And I'm not a lesbian, and neither is Hermione. We just sold pictures of us kissing to the Daily Prophet."

Draco smirked. "This almost sounds like a better story than giving Potter the old heave-ho."

"A longer one, at any rate. You probably wouldn't remember him, since he was a Gryffindor, but there was a boy in my year, Kevin Entwhistle. Since Colin got special permission to bring his muggle camera to Hogwarts and have it work, Kevin asked for and got permission to set up his computer." Ginny laughed. "The boy was a regular whiz-kid with it, outsmarted all of the staff."

"How so? I've seen muggles with them, but I've never used one, myself." Draco shrugged and looked into a store window at a huge display with a caricatured beagle and the word 'Snoopy' written above it for incomprehensible reasons. "I still don't understand muggles at all."

Ginny shook her head dismissively. "That's because you have no interest in learning. Kevin, however, did... And so he had the entire Gryffindor tower on camera at all times."

"You mean... How?" Draco had stopped and was looking at her in disbelief as she giggled.

"In simple terms, all of the cameras were part of his computer. The only difficult part, according to Kevin, was getting the cameras set up properly, especially in the girls' showers." Draco whistled and she nodded. "Not that I knew about this at the time, mind you, or he wouldn't have lived to see his next birthday."

Draco shook his head in admiration. "I may have to learn a bit about these things after all. But what does this have to do with-- Ah, that's where the one from when you were thirteen came from."

"Precisely. I'm glad life amongst the toffee-nosed hasn't completely ruined your ability to think." He growled and she danced out of reach of his playful swipe. "In any case, he and Neville... You remember Neville, right?"

"Of course I do. He's the git to blame for my acquiring a red haired shadow in seventh year." Draco gave a half smile and rumpled her hair. "I'll have to send him a thank you card sometime."

Ginny scowled and tried to bring her hair back to a semblance of order. "Do that again and I will break your aristocratic fingers." He sneered and she stuck out her tongue at him before continuing. "Anyway, he and Neville have been together for a couple of years--"

"Wait, I thought he was a perv who got his jollies watching women shower."

"I do recall saying ALL of Gryffindor tower, try to keep up. Surely you've encountered the concept of bisexuality somewhere in your checkered past." Ginny tried out the Malfoy smirk and Draco laughed. "At any rate, the funding for victims of Voldemort tends to focus on ones from the last battle, and Neville didn't have the money for getting the new Cruciatus treatment for his parents. Kevin dug out that old picture of me and Hermione practicing how to kiss and sold it for enough to pay for one of Neville's parents to be treated."

They walked on and she continued, "Neville was furious when he found out, tried to get the sale cancelled. When he couldn't, he made Kevin confess everything to me and Hermione." Ginny shrugged. "So, we talked about it, and we had him take another picture of us kissing so that we could pay for the other treatment. We even had some money left over, which is what I'm spending on gifts this year."

"I'll never understand the way your tiny little mind works. I'd have expected you to hold out for castration." Draco shook his head and looked up to see it was starting to snow. "You know, we should find someplace warm to continue this reminiscing. Possibly with alcohol."

"All right, I think I'm done for tonight. Let's find a pub." Ginny looked around and started walking with purpose.

Draco jogged a bit to catch up with her. "I didn't say you could stop talking, Weasley. Why'd you let the miserable sod live? And what'd Granger say about your decision for mercy?"

Ginny sighed and looked off into the distance, her chin lifted in the way that he remembered meant that she was holding off tears by force of will. After a few moments, she shook her head and said, "Because Kevin's voyeurism is the reason that bastard didn't get a chance to kill me when the Battle of Hogwarts happened."

"Weasley, I... I never said..." Draco looked like he was in pain, and with good reason. No one knew for sure why it was that Lucius Malfoy had targeted Ginny Weasley when the death eaters had attacked Hogwarts in Draco's fifth year. The consensus was that it was either connected to the Chamber of Secrets or to the man's hatred for Arthur Weasley, but the combined hexes of about twenty Gryffindors had blasted his body to shreds just as he was about to finish her off.

Ginny put a hand up to his lips. "Yeah, you did. I was awake in the hospital wing, Malfoy. Just not able to talk back." She gave him a small, lopsided smile as she remembered him sneaking up to her bed after the battle was done, stammering out apologies before sneaking back to his own bed. "Anyway, that's done with, and there's the pub. Now you can start telling me about the woman who reeled in the Slytherin Sex God."

He laughed, as she'd intended him to, and followed her into the pub. Over quite a few pints of lager, he told her about the wonderful, marvelous woman he was about to marry, and Ginny made fun of him mercilessly for being completely, hopelessly besotted.