Chapter Text
Harry pushed open the door to the Three Broomsticks only to find an even hotter and stickier environment than the summer night outside.
Flush with bodies and low lit, the bar’s density suited Harry just fine. It was easier to hide in a crowd, and he wasn’t looking to be observed tonight. But he was looking to find someone else, so he stood straighter, eyes scanning over the heads of the patrons with the practiced pattern recognition of an Auror fresh from training, seeking her signature shape and color —
There she was — face a bright reflection in the bar mirror. Fiery red hair and eyeliner like a cat, Ginny Weasley sat twirling a straw in cherry drink, looking utterly beautiful and utterly alone.
Harry leaned against the door and folded his arms, watching her tap her nails on the wood. The bartend Rosmerta was bending over as she wiped down a glass, mouth moving rapidly with what could only be the pub’s latest gossip. Ginny had that look in her eye that made any conversation partner’s defenses melt, that look that made you feel that she was speaking to you, and only you, and that no other conversation but yours would satisfy her.
He longed to be on the receiving end of that look.
As if by divine answer, Rosmerta pulled away to tend another customer, and Ginny looked up. Her eyes locked onto Harry's in the mirror, and her eyebrow rose just as slightly as the corner of her lip.
That was a signal as good as any. Trying not to grin, Harry wove his way through the patrons toward her.
When he reached the bar, he squeezed between Ginny and two burly, purple-robed wizards arguing genially over tankards of mead. He leaned sideways, facing away from the wizards, elbow on the wood so that he and Ginny were almost facing each other. He was careful not to touch her — he didn’t want to cross a line. Not yet.
Ginny had looked away from him by now, bringing the drink to her lips and sipping as she gazed vaguely ahead. She looked almost bored.
“Here alone?” Harry asked.
Her eyes flickered to him, looked him up and down noncommittally. A finger lifted off the glass to point at him.
“Aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.”
The way she rolled her eyes told him he’d embarrassed himself with that line, but he didn’t care. The only thing on his mind was the condensation dripping down her fingers as she took another sip of the drink.
“I wanted a break from it all,” she answered, eyes drifting lazily away from him again.
“Busy week?”
“I’m getting married tomorrow.”
“Lucky bloke,” Harry said. “Do I know him?”
“Probably, as he’s horridly famous.”
“More famous than me?”
“Successful, too,” Ginny added.
She pulled one of two cherries out of her drink and bit down on it. Harry felt the pop of the skin all the way down to the soft spot just below his navel.
He angled himself closer to her, leaning in to see her face, but she kept her gaze relaxed and just out of his eye line.
“Sounds like a bit of a tosser,” he goaded.
Ginny shrugged. “I’m only marrying him for his money, anyway.”
“Ah, marrying rich and famous. And you have a new starting position on the Harpies, I hear.”
“I’m the pride of my family.”
The tone in her voice told Harry he ought to choose his next words carefully. He leaned yet closer, shifting his elbow so that his arm was undeniably in front of her, hand dangling off the bar just over the hem of her miniskirt, and kept his voice low.
“So, why are you really here then? Girl like you, high profile athlete, marrying rich, out the night before her wedding… People might talk.”
“And what might they say?”
“The things they’ve always said.”
“People hate a girl who revels in her own freedom. I’m just enjoying my last night of it.”
“I could help with that.”
A smile, finally, deliciously, twitched at the corner of her red lip. Now she looked at him, cat eyes lidding in a satisfied flutter. She pulled the second cherry out of her drink, closed her mouth around the stem, and popped the fruit off with a snap, her appraisal of him sustained through the chew, swallow, and pursed lip that followed.
“Now that’s tempting.”
“Go on, then,” he said, his face an inch away from hers. “Give me a go.”
Ginny’s eyes flicked down to his mouth for just a second. Then she lifted her leg, and the smooth flesh of her thigh brushed his dangling fingers. A breath, a jolt of electricity, and before he could grab her, thigh or elsewhere, she had slipped past him and was making her way toward the back of the pub.
The crowd parted for her so easily. There was something about the way heads turned when she passed that made the feeling in Harry’s abdomen burn like hunger. He pushed off the bar to follow, dog after a bone, fooling nobody.
When he finally emerged out of the noise and into the back hallway, he saw the tail end of her hair disappear into the bathroom. In two effortless steps, he opened the door and followed her inside.
The bar bathroom had one stall and a swinging oil lamp that illuminated graffiti on every inch. There was barely any time to appreciate how pretty Ginny looked sitting up on the white sink, legs open and vivid hair reflected double in the dingy mirror, before she yanked him to her by his collar.
Now she was all play, mouth coming up to nip at his as she popped his shirt buttons open. He pushed her jaw back with one hand, tilting her face and deepening her flirtations. She squirmed, but Harry held her steady, opening her mouth with his, and she gave into him the way he’d wanted her to all night.
In the blinding kiss that followed, he thought to himself that this, her, the way she was melting with him right now, was all he’d ever need — damn the Auror’s exam, her Quidditch career, the wedding, Ron, Hermione, or anything else. He could subsist perfectly happily if this moment were every moment for the rest of his life, Ginny’s hand inside his shirt, his fingers grasping her bare thigh, their kisses strung together like an infinite candy necklace unto death.
She pulled away, warm brown eyes tilted up at him, and he was completely lost in the fluttering of her eyelashes.
“Come home with me,” he suggested.
She held up her left hand and pointed at the ring on her finger. “I’m staying at my mum’s tonight. The wedding, remember?”
“Worth a shot,” Harry shrugged, and went for another bite of sweetness at her bottom lip.
She laughed, a sound like a chiming bell, and pushed him away. He gave her only a few inches.
“Seriously Harry, I should go. Mum’ll go postal if I’m back too late before the big day.” She wagged her pointer finger in front of his nose. “‘Gin-ev-ra Weas-ley! Out Godric knows where the night before your wedding! How the neighbors will talk!’”
Now it was Harry’s turn to laugh. He caught her hand in midair, kissed the tip of the errant finger, and released her.
“Fine,” he said. “But find me after, okay?”
“If I don’t see you during,” she countered.
With a final chaste kiss, she slipped out of his arms, straightened her skirt, and opened the bathroom door. He caught it before it swung closed and lingered there, hand on the knob, head in the hallway, watching her hips swing all the way to the back exit.
Warm night air washed through the opening door, and, with a single wry look back, Ginny slipped through the portal and into the darkness.
It seemed like mere moments, then, until Harry’s next awareness of consciousness: A flash of gold as Hermione straightened the fastening on his dress robes, happy tears in her eyes; Ron’s firm handshake and true smile; the Burrow decorated all in green and gold; and he found himself at an altar under a tent, where the officiator held the hand fastening ribbons as a player cello hummed a wedding march.
Then his eyes found hers again, over the heads of their friends and family, and that familiar swell of happiness rippled through his body. A sheath of shimmering white fabric made a long line down her body, and she had as many flowers in her hair as freckles on her face. Her small hand was in the crook of Bill’s arm, but the formality lasted only moments: A second later, Ginny had kicked off her heels, picked up the folds of her dress, and was running — running — down the aisle at Harry.
He opened his arms to receive her. She leapt into them, and he was sweeping her around, kissing her and kissing her, savoring this morsel of pure sugar in the lifetime of sweetness they were about to build together.
There, in front of everyone, they became one, and the rest was a blur: The silken sensation of the hand fastening ribbons slipping between his fingers — then it was her hair, long and beautiful and undone as he had always loved it, in his grasp as he tilted her face up to his on the dance floor — the sputter of Hermione laughing into her glass through Ron’s toast — the simmer of tears in Ginny’s eyes when Molly clasped their hands and offered her blessing as well as Arthur’s — and how Ginny never stood still, not once, streaking into and out of Harry’s arms, slinging an elbow around Luna one second, dragging her brothers to the dance floor the next — how she was always just out of his grasp, like trying to catch a petal on the wind, only for her to flash him a dare-you smile as she stole away behind the tent curtain —
And at last, the two of them were alone up in Ginny’s room, somehow new to him though they had kissed and fought and fucked here a thousand times before, and he dimmed the lights so they plunged into romantic purple. He had his wand knocked clean out of his hand as she climbed on top of him and hiked up her wedding dress, the rip of her skirt mirroring the rip of her laughter through the air, and he clutched her close, flowery scent filling his lungs like the first breath of fresh air in spring.
When they were finished with each other, she settled into the crook of his arm.
“Good day,” she sighed.
“Good day,” he repeated, dizzy.
“Oh, I forgot.” She yawned, stretching an arm over his chest. “I’m supposed to meet someone later…”
“Who?”
“Some Harry Potter bloke… he’s horridly famous…”
Harry closed his eyes. Warm, heaving happiness held him to the spot as she curled into him, bare thigh soft over his, sticky with lovemaking.
The feeling of Ginny’s body in his arms lingered until he drifted off, waking only once as she adjusted herself against him, entwining them still further. Towards morning, when a yawn swelled him out of sleep, he tried to clutch her closer, to bury his nose in the happiness of her scent.
Instead, he found that all he held were bedsheets, cold as a corpse, empty as death.