Pretense

PRETENSE

CHAPTER 5: The Midnight Hour

"So..." Harry grinned down at the unsmiling redhead sporting that familiar irritated look. "Didn't manage to ensnare the poor bloke with your womanly hooks, eh?"

Ginny huffed as she boarded the bus, and plopped down into the squishy red armchair next to Harry's, all the while sending him a lethal death stare worthy of Hermione. "No! No one was ensnared with any kind of hooks, womanly or not!"

Harry smiled. "Aha! Looks like I touched a nerve."

She sighed as they sped off into the night with a flash, and leaned forward with an apologetic wisp of a smile. "Sorry for snapping. I just..." She began to wring her hands nervously. "It didn't work! How could it not have worked?! I tried every trick in the book, but still... How could he resist? Oh my God! I sound so big headed!" Ginny rounded her shoulders, incensed. "You know, he wasn't really that good looking! Then why did I fail? I shouldn't have failed! I must be losing my touch- I could have got him just a few years ago. Oh my God...I'm an old maid at twenty-five!"

Ginny looked at Harry, horrified at what she'd just concluded, but he had always found her random streams of consciousness rather amusing and had to fight hard not to laugh. He lost.

"Why do you find my losing my touch so funny?" Now, she looked angry.

Thank God.

He'd found from past experience that in situations like these, where she was perturbed by someone or something, it could go one of two ways. She'd get tearful, or angry. Anger, he could cope with, but tears...he just wasn't cut out for handling female hormones. He always said and did the wrong things, which would inevitably cause her to cry harder, and for longer.

It had taken him a good portion of the eight years that they had really been friends to realise that slapping her on the back and handing her a Heineken as a response to her sobbing did not work at all. Finally, he had discovered the recipe for a tear- free Ginny, through trial and error.

'Take one Ginny, and add a big box of tissues, a soppy muggle movie (preferably, 'It's A Wonderful Life', when in season) and an enormous box of chocolates. Leave for several hours, and 'hey presto!', one relatively normal Ginny Weasley.'

Sometimes, that wouldn't even cheer her up, so he was forced to move onto Plan C- hand puppets. And that was never a pretty sight.

He was an expert in the anger department. Not literally, of course-he'd been thrown out of classes for suggesting that anger didn't need controlling , and attempting to provoke the skinny instructor into a thumb war. Harry lost not only his pride, but part of his thumbnail, when the scrawny sixty-two year old turned as vicious as a shark who'd forgotten to take it's happy pill.

Harry could deal with Ginny's anger. He liked to provoke her, in fact. He knew it was cruel, but he got a big kick from winding her up and watching her explode, which soon outweighed the guilt. He found it quite funny. That is, until she punched him in the arm. Hard.

"Oi! I need to rant, and you're off in La-La Land with the pixies. Now, listen...I need to unload my heavy burden..."

After he was pulled away from his musings, rather violently, he might add, Ginny told him what had happened. He didn't find any of it at all shocking (except, of course, for the terrible, and unjust, snubbing of her infamous seduction technique- what friend wouldn't be outraged?), but ooh-ed and ah-ed in all the right places, and issued the cursory insults and hexes towards the poor bloke in question.

"Ah, I can just imagine you; the young Audrey Hepburn at work!" Harry grinned at the thought of his friend imitating one of the most famous witch actresses of the 20th century.

"I was actually going for Marilyn Monroe."

"There's your problem, then."

"What? Are you saying that I can't pull off a Marilyn? Let me tell you, I could do a Marilyn if I wanted to!"

"All I was saying was that you're not as naturally... you have a whole different- thing- going on for you than Marilyn did." Harry began to get worried. He'd done it again, set her off. Only, he didn't mean to this time, and she could get very rambunctious when talking about the All- Time Greats.

"What did she have 'going for her' that I don't have?" She now had that 'watch what you say, because you could very easily get punched' look on her face, and her eyes pierced him, dared him.

"Well, I've only seen one of her films but, damn, she was sexy-" he said hesitantly.

"You're saying that I'm not sexy?! I can be sexy if I want to be!"

"What I meant is that you're more of a...a...Julie Andrews than a Marilyn! Shit!" Harry clamped a hand over his mouth, disbelieving that he had just said what he had though he'd said. Could he get any thicker?

"Now you're comparing me to bloody Mary Poppins!!" She looked ready to explode at the mere suggestion. He knew that the reason for her outrage was that for her whole life she'd been little placid Ginny, who could never be considered to be attractive, as she was too meek and mild. She was now determined to be more. Her anger was a defence mechanism, but still she scared the Hell out of him.

"I always thought she was kinda hot," he murmured to himself.

"Yeah, says the bloke who thought The Little Mermaid had- and I quote- 'nice seashells'! I can't believe you don't think that I could be sexy enough to seduce a man. Let me tell you, if I turned the whammy on you right now, you'd be begging for it!" she informed him, calming down just a little, but not enough for Harry to consider himself out of danger.

"I'm sure I would."

"Is that sarcasm, Mr Potter?"

No, it hadn't been, but 'Hey!' Harry thought. 'Presumptions are fun!'

She saw him squirm, and must have decided to ease up on him. "Dug yourself into a nice big hole there, eh?"

"Yup."

"You're right." Harry breathed a sigh of relief, as Ginny sat back in resignation. "I never could seduce a bloke. All I ended up doing tonight was making a fool out of myself. Ooh- I must've looked ridiculous tossing my hair, and giggling all the time. You know, if I could be bothered, I'd blush at the thought of it."

*******************************************************************************************************************************

EIGHT YEARS AGO,

THE BURROW

"Three cheers! Hiphip!"

"Hurray!"

"Hiphip!"

"Hurray!"

"Hiphip!"

"Hurray!"

Harry turned tomato red with embarrassment. It was his twentieth birthday, and the Weasleys seemed to want to make this his best birthday yet, but all he could think was that, if they stopped trying so hard, it would be so much more enjoyable. All he had wanted was a nice, rowdy family dinner, but they had shocked (and horrified) him with a 'nice', rowdy party.

'Oh God,' he thought. 'This is awful- why is Parvati Patil here?!'

It seemed as though the Weasleys had asked every single person he had ever met to come to his party, and come they did, bearing gifts and fake smiles. Most were just there for the gossip. He had a new girlfriend, and he just knew that Parvati was desperate to know all the juicy details.

Harry suddenly noticed that the entire room was grinning at him. What had he done? Was he meant to do something? Had he done something wrong?

"Huh?"

Ron stepped forward, and slapped him on the back, in a brotherly fashion. "Go on, Harry, give us a speech!"

Oh. Shit.

"Erm...well, thanks- for coming, I mean...it's been fun... thanks... means a lot..." Harry shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortably, and decided that another attempt was due, as it had been a whole thirty minutes since he'd last tried it. "...A bit thirsty... gotta go...thanks, again..." He shuffled out of the kitchen quickly, knowing how stupid he looked, claiming that he was off in search of a drink, when he had been surrounded by tables full of Butterbeer and fruit punch.

When he stepped out into the refreshing night's breeze, he let out a sigh of relief. He had escaped! He loved the Weasleys, but all those people, who had trooped across Britain just to get a look at Harry Potter, annoyed the Hell out of him.

Harry swayed aimlessly on the garden swing by himself for quite a while, just thinking random philosophical thoughts, until he was interrupted by a rustling sound, which he immediately dismissed as just an over- enthusiastic gnome.

"Oof!"

This time Harry sat bolt upright, and all his senses sharpened, waiting for another noise. That was definitely not a gnome sound. He had distinctly heard a swear word that he was sure even the Irish Quidditch team would blush at, and he was positive that a gnome wouldn't even know of such things. Anyway, hadn't it come from above him...?

Suddenly, a dishevelled redhead landed, not very gracefully, in front of him, in a heap. Harry's eyebrows shot North in surprise, and he glanced quickly at the far off branch that she had just jumped from. As she stood up gingerly, he looked at her, impressed that she could fall that distance and not have broken every bone in her body.

"What are you doing out here? It's your party." She brushed herself off, and eyed him with suspicion.

"Ah...Well, I'd actually say it's more their party." He nodded towards the house that was now teeming with people and throbbing with the sounds of Abba. "And, why are you playing Tarzan, instead of cavorting and cajoling in there with the rest of them?"

Ginny smiled at him. "No offence, or anything, but I got bored."

"You have a short attention span, too?"

"Only when I'm cornered by Justin Finch- Fletchley, and he's telling me how you two are such good pals." She looked thoughtful for a second, then grinned. "I think he has a crush on you, you know."

Harry smiled back. It'd been a while since he'd had a conversation with Ginny. In fact, with a 'hello, how are you?' here and there being the exception, the last proper tête-à-tête he'd had with her had been the night of the Yule Ball at Hogwarts when they'd...

He didn't like to think about it.

It had happened a long time ago, but at the time she had broken his heart in only an hour, without even knowing it. But he had matured since then. Now, it was commonplace for him to decide that he was 'in love' with a girl, and then for her to slap him down within the hour. However, he had never felt as much pain and bereavement as when she had run off, and left him alone in the dark with his rejection.

Harry glanced up at her flushed face, and realised that she had been stood there, chattering and gesticulating wildly while he was in his reverie, and he hadn't heard a word.

"Hey!"

She broke off mid- sentence, and widened her eyes, questioningly.

"Slow down, will you? You talk too fast."

She plopped down onto the ground, and crossed her legs. "I'll stop talking so quickly, but it's not because I'm a fast talker; you're just too slow."

They sat like that for, what seemed like, hours, and chatted, and gossiped, and squabbled, until they were hoarse. It had been one of the most enjoyable conversations he'd had for a long while. Ron just complained about the Chudley Cannons all the time; Hermione wasn't around much, because of her new job; and the only other person he had to talk to was his girlfriend. When he ever had a discussion with Cho she either just talked about girly stuff, or went really intellectual on him, and blathered on about really inane facts, that no normal person would ever find an interesting topic of conversation.

"I can't believe that we've been out here for so long!" Ginny yawned, and stretched out her tired body with a smile.

"Jesus! Have you seen the time? It's morning!" Harry exclaimed, with a glance at his watch.

"Well, everyone went home hours ago- what did you expect?"

"It's five past six."

Ginny bolted upright in shocked anxiety. "I have to be at work in an hour!"

"Whoops," Harry deadpanned.

Ginny's worried frown gradually dissolved into a grin, as she looked at Harry's serious face. "I guess, I'll have to say I'm sick. Do I look ill?" She dramatically raised a weakly hand to her forehead.

"Yeah, you look positively deathly, but that's nothin' a good ol' English breakfast can't fix!" He jumped up, and pulled her to her feet after him.

"We can't wake mum up, she likes to stay in bed until seven on a Sunday. It's her restful day." Ginny pulled him through the garden, and around the Burrow, until they reached their parked broomsticks. "Know any good places for breakie? I'm in the mood for pancakes."

And that was the start of a, very nearly, beautiful friendship. 'After all,' Harry had thought. 'What better way was there to understand where he going wrong with women, than to infiltrate the enemy camp?'

*******************************************************************************************************************************