Harry loves Ginny and hates Draco, Draco is with Ginny but doesn't love her, and Ginny is with Draco but can't love him because she loves Harry. Very convoluted and slightly teen-angsty.
Chapter 02
Chapter Summary:
Ginny chooses one of the two boys she's cared about for so long. Draco sighs, Harry sleeps, Dean draws, Lavender laughs, Ginny runs...among other things.
Posted:
09/09/2003
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349
Author's Note:
I think this is the last part in this oh-so-short fic. If I ever get inspired to write more, I will, but until that time I believe this will be sadly abandoned. Oh no, don't cry. Har har.
if you're sleeping are you dreaming
if you're dreaming are you dreaming of me
blue october - calling you
"Oh, God," Ginny whispers in his ear, her fingers curling in his hair to pull him closer as his lips move to her neck. "Oh, God, Draco."
He can tell when he hears her voice that something is dreadfully wrong (more than is usually wrong), and he pulls away. She is staring at the ceiling, purposefully keeping her eyes away from him while they brim with tears. "What - ?" he begins to ask, his hand automatically moving to brush the errant tears away.
"It's nothing," she says swiftly. "Just - you don't mind if I go, do you? I don't feel well," she says, knowing it is a weak and overused excuse and that he will see through it; she has always been transparent to Draco. "It's just one night."
"No," he says, acquiescence warming his voice. "It's fine." It is not fine, of course, and he knows it and she knows it and she being devoured by guilt even as she slips out the door and up the stairs. There are so many stairs but she has never bothered to count them - flights and flights and her legs are burning because she's never run up them as fast as she's running now.
She doesn't know exactly why she's running, why she's bounding up the stairs in sets of two and then three and then two again; Harry will not disappear if she does not make it to him. Her courage will disappear, though, all the frantic desire inside her will dissipate and she'll be left numb and lonely and so cowardly.
"Have you seen Harry?" she asks, the words spilling and tumbling and tripping out of her mouth faster than she can think them as she spills and tumbles and trips into the Gryffindor Common Room. It's packed and busy and bustling tonight; it has been for the past three years - everyone is afraid of the dark and of sleep and of silence and of solitude and of their absolute vulnerability, so they stay awake and together and in the light...there is no safety in the light or in this large group, but there are comfort and company.
"I think he head on to the dormitory," Dean said, glancing up from his sketchpad. He's drawing Lavender, who is sitting across the room and laughing at something Ron is saying - she's laughing in Dean's drawing as well, but it is a subdued laugh rather than the loud, intrusive one that echoes on the stone walls of the Tower and hurts the insides of Ginny's ears. Maybe Dean is recreating her laugh the way he wishes it was, or perhaps it is how he hears it.
"Thank you," Ginny says, and then she is moving up the last staircase and flinging open the door before she loses her nerve; her mouth is open and I love you is pressing against her lips.
But Harry is stretched in sleep across his bed, wrapped in a sea of pristine, fine white cotton sheets and tattered maroon pillowcases as red and dark as blood; his jumper has resituated itself several inches above the waistline of his trousers, a stripe of pale flesh showing in shocking contrast between the two hems.
She has never seen him sleeping - Harry has always been awake and alive and attendant when she has seen him; she sees him clutching his pillow in his sleep in a death grip, the muscles of his face slack, and he looks almost dead to her. Perhaps he is dreaming and in his dream he is dying and he is clutching someone who is perhaps also dying or dead and perhaps it is her.
Ginny blinks, watching Harry's features contort. For a terrifying moment she imagines he is dying - but it is just her imagination because he is only adjusting to the light in the room as he wakes. She is standing by his bed now, unsure as to when she moved from the door, and she inhales sharply in surprise, the breath coming through her clenched teeth just as her courage exits the same way, out of her mouth where I love you so recently lay.
Harry sits up too quickly as he wakes, surprised at her presence. She moves just as quickly away even as he reaches out to snatch her hand and pull her back, swinging his legs over the side of the bed for leverage.
"Stop," he says, his voice frantic though still bleary with sleep as his fingers scrabble against hers for purchase. "Stop," he says again as he stumbles to his feet and finally manages to grasp her wrist and pull her back. He wraps his arms around her and she does not move away so he buries his face in curve that connects her neck and shoulder, and he breathes. His hold on her tightens as he recognises the sharp scent that he knows is Malfoy and knows that she has come from him. "Stop," he pleads, "just stop."
"I have, Harry," she says, a tiny nervous breathy sigh hanging onto the end of his name as her hands cup his cheeks and tilt his face so she can look at him. "I've stopped. I'm not going anywhere."
He tries to form words but she is already tilting her face and guiding his down to meet hers. Ginny kisses exactly how he has always imagined - she is fire, warm and enticing and she curls around him like flame, all-consuming.
"Wow," he whispers, his eyes still closed, and he leans against one of the four tall posts of his bed. "Ginny - wow." He holds her at arms length to examine her carefully. "You have stopped," he says, disbelieving and pleased and when he inhales he can no longer detect the clinging presence of Malfoy.
She smiles, the corners of her mouth tilting up secretively. "And I've started," she says softly.
Harry is surprised that his heart hasn't stopped, and he joyfully gives himself over, letting Ginny guide him back down into the cotton and maroon of his bed, pulling the hanging curtains closed.
Privacy, Harry decides, is a wondrous thing.
And so is Ginny, divine in her absolute inconsistency.