SIYE Time:1:56 on 9th December 2024 SIYE Login: no | | |
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Wait By MagEd
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Category: Post-DH/AB
Characters:None
Genres: Romance
Warnings: Mild Sexual Situations
Story is Complete
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 36
Summary: Despite their best efforts, the word "wait" is always in the vocabulary of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley. Kicking off after the Final Battle is done and Voldemort is gone, this is how Harry and Ginny sent "wait" to the wayside. *one-shot*
Hitcount: Story Total: 8534
Disclaimer: Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions in this story are my own and in no way represent the owners of this site. This story subject to copyright law under transformative use. No compensation is made for this work.
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Chapter | |
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Wait: /weIt/
—verb: to remain inactive or in a state of repose, as until something expected happens.
The corridors were eerily silent.
All the bodies had been taken to the great hall and the House Elves had already done quite a job cleaning up most of the blood and lesser debris. Still, there were portraits in ruins on the floor, chunks of wall scattered across the ground, and doors hanging off of hinges. She suspected it would be a while before the Castle was back in good condition again.
It didn’t matter. That wasn’t her concern right now. She turned a corner and saw that where the portrait of the Fat Lady had once been there was now only a gaping hole. From where she stood in the corridor, she could easily see into the Common Room. She sighed sadly to herself. She hoped that where ever the Fat Lady was, she was okay.
She climbed through the hole and into the Common Room. The furniture was overturned and in tatters, the drapery lay torn down and trampled upon, and there were some rather sickening scorch marks staining the far wall. But the wide expanse of the window let the bright morning light shine through, and it lit the Common Room, despite its disrepair, rather pleasantly.
It was poetic, she supposed. It was a new day, after all. She wished for a moment that she was the sort of person who appreciated that. She really wasn’t. She crossed the Common Room to the dormitories only to hesitate at the last minute.
Perhaps she should wait. Perhaps she should go up to her dormitory, to her bed and to sweet, sweet sleep. Perhaps that would be easiest all around. The thought of going the easy way, however, made her back stiffen. Now was not the time to get hit by girlish nerves. Steeling her resolve, she turned and started up the stairs to the boys’ dormitories.
She didn’t waver outside the door to the Seventh Year Boys’ room but simply gripped the knob, turned, and pushed the door open. Daylight poured into this room, too, and it was easy to see that he was the only one there. He lay sprawled across his bed on his back, still wearing his ragged coat and muddy shoes. His glasses were perched crookedly on his face, and though his eyes were closed, it was clear he wasn’t asleep.
She stood in the doorway watching him. He was thinner than she could ever remember him being, so thin that it sharpened his jaw and made his long face even longer, so thin that it stretched the skin tightly over his nose and made his collar bone protrude in a sickly way. His hair was thick, messy, and much shaggier than in years past, and it was matted to his head with dirt, blood and even a twig of all things.
When she had seen him earlier in the Room of Requirement, she had taken in his sunken eyes, yellow skin and dried chapped lips. She had only gotten a cursory glance of him, though, and now that she really looked him over, it all seemed worse. It broke her heart.
“Are you just going to stand there and watch me, Ginny?” he asked, letting out a deep, weary sigh. He didn’t bother to open his eyes or turn towards her.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked softly. She had been so sure that she had to find him, that despite all the anger and grief that gripped her, she needed to find him, but now all her bravery was flickering and fading.
“Hermione would have immediately started in on me about eating or showering or something, and Ron would have made more noise.” He paused. “And no one else would be looking for me right now, besides the three of you.”
“Actually,” she said, gaining a little more confidence as she stepped all the way into the room, “a lot of people are looking for you, on account of you being a hero and all. They’re calling you The Saviour of Great Britain. I think it’s going to stick, too.”
“Great,” he replied sourly. She didn’t know what to say in response, but he saved her the trouble.
Using his elbow for support, he abruptly pushed himself into sitting position. The next moment she was met with those bright green eyes. “I’m sorry about . . . everything,” he told her, his voice trembling slightly. She didn’t know exactly what he meant; there was so much for which to be sorry, things that ought to make him sorry and others that were in no way his fault but were sorrowful nonetheless.
It didn’t really matter. That wasn’t why she had come to find him.
She crossed what little distance was left between them and climbed up onto his bed beside him. She had never been in his bed in the few, glorious weeks they’d been together the year before. Ron would probably have had a heart attack if he’d found her anywhere near Harry’s bed.
She wasn’t sure what exactly she had come to do. Had she come to slap him for scaring her so badly by almost dying? Had she come to yell at him for abandoning her and then trying to keep her out of the Final Battle? Had she come to hug him and kiss him and beg him to take her back?
Before she could decide, his hand reached up and touched her hair, curling a wisp of it around his finger. She didn’t push him away. How could she? “You smell good,” he said. He was only a hand’s breadth away from her now, and she could feel his breath on her face. It smelt like Pumpkin juice. He must have gotten his hands on some food and drink in the few hours since the battle ended.
“You smell like arse,” she replied. “When was the last time you showered?”
“It’s been a while,” he answered bluntly. He didn’t look away, though. Last Spring, had she made such a teasing comment, he probably would have blushed deeply and glanced bashfully away. He didn’t this time. He held her gaze.
She wasn’t the only one who’d changed in the last year, it seemed.
As suddenly as he had sat up earlier, he dropped his hand and pulled slightly away from her. Looking down at his lap, he said, “I tried to get some sleep. I came up here while Ron and Hermione went to find your mum, and Kreacher brought me some food and I ate a little bit, and then I tried to fall asleep . . . but I couldn’t.”
“Honestly, as tired as I am,” she told him softly, “I doubt I could sleep now, either.”
“It’s all replaying in my head on this endless reel,” he went on, “just going on and on. I see it all happening over and over again . . . all of it and I. . . .” His voice trailed off tiredly again. This time she was the one who reached out and put her hand to his hair, brushing the messy fringe out from over his eyes. She let her hand cup his cheek and he leaned into it, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment. He let out a sad breath.
She ran her thumb over his cheek. “I’ve missed you,” she admitted, and she almost felt ashamed saying it. She had tried very hard not to miss him, and she’d tried even harder to make the rest of the world believe she didn’t miss him. It was only at the latest of hours, when it was pitch black out and she lay alone in her dormitory bed that she would let memories and thoughts and feelings consume her.
She always made sure all evidence of tears was gone by breakfast the next morning.
“I’ve missed you, too,” he replied. His eyes opened and he met her gaze again. He looked away. She dropped her hand. It was awkward in way, not knowing what to say or what to do. Yet it wasn’t awkward at all, because she knew no matter what she said or did, it would all be okay. She was here and he was here and she was alive and he was alive and . . . and even if her brother was . . . gone – but she couldn’t think about that right now, she couldn’t deal with that right now – even if so much had gone wrong. . . .
It would be okay.
“Can I tell you about it?” he asked abruptly, his eyes suddenly roving over her face as if searching for something.
“Can you . . . tell me about it?” she repeated in confusion. He nodded. “You’re asking my permission to tell me . . . what?”
“Everything,” he breathed. “Or at least . . . what I can get out. I need you to know, Ginny,” he said earnestly, scooting a little closer to her. He once again seemed confident, more confident than he had been the year before. “I need you to know what it was like and what I went through and how much I missed you. I need you to know. I need you to –!”
“Then tell me,” she cut in. She was dying to know. And more importantly, she was dying to be his confidant, to hear it all and be there for him and comfort him. She had been afraid he would cut her off. She had feared he would close himself off after everything and even Ron and Hermione would have trouble getting through to him.
She was still a little worried about that.
But if he was so willing to tell the whole story here and now, perhaps she didn’t have to wait it out. She’d been waiting for the story, she’d been waiting for him, for a long time now.
And then he started. He began in his sixth year, before they had gotten together, with the secret lessons he and Dumbledore had. He talked for a long time. At some point they both lay back on the bed and she nestled into his shoulder, not caring about the dirt or blood or smell, so entranced as she was in his story, so comforted as she was by his warm body beside hers, so happy as she was to hear his voice floating through the air for real rather than in her imagination.
He explained Horcruxes and what had happened to him and Dumbledore the night Death Eaters had attacked Hogwarts and nearly killed her brother Bill. He spoke of what he, Ron and Hermione had gone through in the last year, of the desperation they felt, of their constant running and hiding, of the fights they had between one another as they grew more hopeless.
He spoke of watching her dot on the map, of missing her in a gut-wrenching way that he hardly even understood. He spoke and spoke and spoke until his voice grew hoarse and she offered to conjure him a glass of water. He explained what Ron had done – damn him –, and how he had returned; he spoke of their meeting up with Neville and finally coming to Hogwarts.
His voice broke as he spoke of the Final Battle from his point of view. Her breath caught in her chest as she listened to his explanation of seeing Snape’s memories and realizing what they meant. She started to cry as he described his walk to the Forbidden Forest and seeing his parents. He was crying, too, and she wondered when he had last cried.
After an unknown span of time, he was finished. He was silent for a long time. All she could think to do was say gently, “thanks for telling me everything.”
He nodded. She turned slightly and pressed her face into his neck. She could feel his pulse racing against her nose. “Ginny,” he finally said softly, “was it bad for you, too? This past year, I mean?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “It was bad for me.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I know. But I . . . I waited for you.” It sounded like a submission, like a weakness. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t wrong to care so much about someone that even when he’d left you alone and angry and afraid you still cared about him. For a few months that winter she’d tried to convince herself it was wrong, that she had to be strong and independent.
She and her mother had talked all night Christmas Eve, though, and Ginny had cried to her mother as she hadn’t in years. Her mother had given her a piece of advice that night: it was okay to wait. It wasn’t wrong or weak or a submission of any sort.
“You didn’t have to,” he told her hesitantly. “I didn’t ask you to wait for me.”
She sat up and caught his eyes for the first time since they had laid back. “You wanted me to, though, didn’t you? You wanted me to wait for you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Of course I did.”
“Good,” she answered, and she lay back down beside him. “Because I did.”
“Thanks,” he replied softly, and she smiled to herself as his arms wrapped around her and hugged her still closer to him. She thought of Fred and her throat closed up slightly, shame spilling through her for smiling when he would never smile again.
“Any time,” she answered breezily. It wasn’t wrong to take comfort in Harry. Fred would have wanted that, right? He had told her a few months ago that if he had to see his baby sister fall for a boy, it might as well be for a really wealthy, famous one who appreciated a good joke. She knew there was sincerity under his teasing; Fred had always liked Harry.
“I’d wait for you, too,” Harry told her, his voice an unnecessary whisper.
She whispered back. “Good. And honestly – and don’t repeat this, Potter –, but if I had to do it all over again, I’d wait for you again. I’d wait for you for a very long time, Harry Potter.”
“A very long time?” he asked. “Not forever?” He spoke with a bantering tone. She smiled.
“Twenty years, give or take a month,” she replied. “I’d wait.”
Wait: /weIt/
—verb: to be available or in readiness.
The start of the summer passed slowly and she savored every moment. At first it was dreary, what with funeral after funeral and the unending train of reporters that came around the Burrow looking for Ron, Hermione, and Harry. But she made it through the funerals. When George set off fireworks at Fred’s funeral, when the colours exploded in the air, reeling in circles and reflecting in the tears that swam in her eyes as George gave her a small smile, she knew she’d be okay.
The darkness started to fade.
Ron and Hermione went to Australia to get her parents and ended up deciding to spend the whole summer there with Mr. and Mrs. Granger. Percy spent a lot of time with George, helping him reopen the store and get past all that had happened, and with Bill and Charlie working during the days to help repair Hogwarts and sitting up with her mum at night, that left Ginny in the company of one person for most of the day: Harry.
It was the first time in a long time they were free to be kids without exception. Day after day they would sleep in, spend the morning playing Quidditch until they were exhausted, eat a huge lunch and then go swimming out in the lake. They would end the day lying on the grass drying off as the sun fell behind the horizon. They’d stay up late reading books and simply talking until finally they’d tumble into their beds hours after midnight.
For those first few weeks, they would hold hands and snuggle, but that was about all. They talked often, but it was about their favorite songs, their childhood memories, their differing beliefs in the proper way to make cookies. Very rarely was it anything too serious and it was never about Voldemort or Horcruxes or the Carrows.
And it was never about their relationship. There were no kisses and certainly nothing more than that. It was as if they were thirteen, the age when the biggest part of being a couple was simply declaring you were a couple.
Of course, they hadn’t even done that.
Then she gave him a hair cut. He’d gotten one a few days after the Final Battle, but she’d declared it wasn’t very good, and she’d finally gotten him to sit still in the Burrow kitchen and was going at his bird’s nest of a head with a pair of her mother’s clippers.
Her mum was out with a few friends and her dad was at work, leaving Harry and Ginny alone, and he was telling her a story about growing up with Dudley. It was one of the funnier ones; he saved the unhappy ones for late at night when they were lying on the couch and talking in soft, secretive voices.
“So then, Dudley marched up to me proudly and told me that he, Dudley Dursley, had gotten himself a date for that night,” Harry said.
“Who’d want to go on a date with him?” Ginny snorted, snipping at the hair on the nap of Harry’s neck. “And by the way, you’ve almost got a rat’s tail back here. Way to go, Potter,” she taunted.
“I’m going to ignore that statement,” he replied. “The girl was named Susie McLennan. She had blonde hair and a really pointy nose. I think her mum was friends with Aunt Petunia. But anyway, Dudley told me he had a date with her. I asked him what you do on a date, and he told me you take the girl to a picture, you buy her some popcorn and candy, then you take her home and she’ll love you forever.”
Ginny laughed. “I bet your eight-year-old self loved that,” she said.
“I really wanted to get a date after that, actually,” he told her. “I wanted somebody to love me forever.” Ginny felt the slight shift in the air, in his voice, and she realized they’d entered the territory she hated: how horribly Harry had been treated as a child.
“He told me, though,” Harry went on, “that nobody would ever want to date me.” He went quiet after that, his story ending abruptly, and he shifted slightly where he sat.
“Sit still or I’ll cut a chunk of your head off,” she reprimanded. He went still. It was quiet for a few more minutes; the only sound was the soft clicking as she trimmed the hair around his ear. “It’s not true, you know,” she finally spoke. “Plenty of girls would sell their souls to the devil to go on a date with you.”
He spun around in his seat suddenly and she cut off a rather large lock of hair in surprise. She glared at him. “What are you doing?” she asked, giving her best impression of her mum.
“Would you?” He looked up at her eagerly, the slightest gleam of anxiety in his eyes.
“Would I what?” she asked, frowning.
“Would you go on a date with me? Would you . . . would you let me take you to see a picture and buy you popcorn and candy?” She wondered how long he had been waiting to ask that.
“Would I love you forever after that?” she asked softly. She meant to tease, but it came out more seriously.
He shrugged sheepishly, a slight blush tinting his cheeks. “You could at least go steady with me if it’s good candy.” He looked up at her hopefully.
“I’m sorry; did you just talk of ‘going steady’ in 1998, Harry Potter? You do realize it’s not 1955?” She was definitely teasing him, but his sudden way of asking her out had taken her by surprise. For nearly a month they’d been in a state of childhood bliss and the question of their relationship had been almost a taboo subject.
“It’s the best I could come up with, okay?” he said, his blush deepening. He had proven himself to be much more confident and comfortable in his own skin since the start of the summer, but she suspected Harry Potter would always be a bumbling, blushing boy when it came to girls. “So, what do you say? Will you, Ginny Weasley, go on a date with me to see a Muggle picture?”
“And if I say yes, what’s in it for me?” she asked.
“Besides buttery popcorn, sugary candy, a good film, and the pleasure of my company?” Harry replied, cocking his eyebrows. The nervousness had faded slightly from his eyes, and she knew he must have realized what she herself had just realized: there was no way she would say no. She’d been waiting too long as it was.
“Besides that,” she nodded, crossing her arms.
“How about getting to be my girlfriend? If all the girls out there would sell their soul to go on a date with me, what do you think they’d do to be my girl?”
“I’m not all the other girls out there, Potter,” Ginny told him.
He didn’t miss a beat. He moved to the edge of his chair and, reaching out, grabbed her hips and pulled her closer to him. His hands were burning where they rested on her waist as he looked up at her. “That’s why I’m not asking them, Weasley,” he said. “I only want you.”
She smiled, going mushy inside despite herself. “I’ve been waiting a long time to hear you say that,” she told him softly.
“Is that a yes?” he asked.
She nodded, and suddenly he had her sitting in his lap. She laughed at the look on his face, at how giddy and childish he suddenly was with his crooked smile and half-cut hair. “Yes, Harry,” she told him, “I’ll go on a date with you and I’ll let you buy me popcorn and candy and yes, Harry, I’ll be your girl.”
“And that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear,” he whispered.
“We should probably seal the deal, shouldn’t we?” she questioned, tilting her head at him. She actually had butterflies in her stomach. Everything had been chugging along so slowly up to this point, and now it was happening so fast she could hardly keep up.
She didn’t mind.
“Dudley said you have to shake on it,” Harry said matter-of-factly.
“Dudley was an idiot,” she told him before doing what she’d been dying to do all summer: she bent her head and kissed him.
He tasted like the chocolate pancakes they’d had earlier.
He wrapped one arm around her back and pressed her against him, burying his other hand in her hair as he trailed kisses along her jaw while she laughed until he finally caught her lips again and plunged his tongue greedily into her mouth.
He tasted like Harry.
She shifted into him, her whole body heating up as one of his hands came to her face and stroked her cheek and suddenly the kiss went from long-awaited and heated to long-savored and gentle. They broke apart and he pressed a few lingering, chaste kisses on her lips.
He tasted like home.
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” he murmured. “The wait’s been killing me.”
“You shouldn’t have waited,” she said, aware that her face was glowing pink. “I was waiting for you to make the first move.” He kissed her again.
Wait: /weIt/
—verb: to remain neglected for a time.
The rest of the summer passed at the same slow pace as the first half; the only difference was the date nights and stolen kisses. It seemed as soon as she and Harry officially got back together, her mother decided she needed to be with Ginny at all times and prevent any inappropriate behavior.
In a way Ginny enjoyed trying to steal time with Harry.
She liked getting notes from him when her mum was making her scrub the loo that told her how much he missed her and asked her to meet him outside in an hour. She loved holding his hand under the kitchen table and watching him try to eat with his left hand while Charlie and Bill rolled their eyes across the table. It made something inside her warm to stare at the door of her bedroom until it opened and he whipped off the invisibility cloak with a cocky little grin on his face.
But summer ended and he saw her off at Platform 9¾. Hermione had decided to go back and finish her seventh year alongside Ginny, while Ron was going to work at the shop with George and Harry was starting Auror training. Hermione and Ron had a rather tearful goodbye that included a lot of kissing and brought on a lot of teasing.
Harry just hugged her and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Write me,” he said. She promised to do just that and he promised the same. She started to walk away only to turn around abruptly. He looked as if he expected as much.
“Harry –,” she began.
“Don’t worry,” he told her softly, smiling. “I’ll wait for you.”
She started school again with Hermione and it was different than ever before. The last year hadn’t really been a real school year and it was strange to be at Hogwarts and have her greatest worry be an upcoming test or assignment again.
Ginny was the Captain of the Quidditch team and that was fun, as was endlessly mocking Hermione about the short novels she wrote Ron. But most of the time Ginny simply missed Harry. A part of her was angry at him for that; wasn’t she supposed to be enjoying her youth? She couldn’t help it, though, and she knew it wasn’t his fault.
She’d just have to wait until she finished school.
For a while they exchanged letters on a daily basis. Slowly, however, his letters grew few and far between, on account of his schedule. Kingsley hadn’t even wanted Harry to bother with Auror training; he had offered to make Harry an Auror right away. But Harry had insisted he ought to have training, so they compromised: Harry would do training, but he would do a condensed version in one year.
And condensing three years into one made for one very hectic year. He always made sure not to go more than a month without writing her, but his letters were often hurried. They included a few jokes, a couple of lines on where he was and what he was doing, a sentence or two commenting on her last letter and then finally a reminder of how much he missed her.
Most of her classmates thought she was making up her relationship with him. He had come to the first Quidditch game and she’d been delighted to see him cheering her on in the stands. But he’d had to leave before she could speak with him, and he was too busy to come to any of the others.
He was never able to make it to Hogsmeade weekends, and his inability to see her got to the point that a boy from Hufflepuff asked her out despite her ardent insistence that she and Harry were dating.
By Christmas break she missed him terribly. She arrived home at the Burrow to find a letter from him telling her that he had been assigned a training session in France and he wouldn’t be able to make it home for her break. After Ron and Hermione had stopped their reunion snog, Hermione tried to comfort her.
“He misses you as much as you miss him,” she assured Ginny.
“It’s not just that!” Ginny complained. “It’s that once again, I’m the one who feels like I’ve been left behind! When I left for Hogwarts he told me he’d wait for me, but now it’s as if for the second time in a row, I’m the one who’s waiting around on him! It’s not fair.”
Hermione had insisted that wasn’t true. She’d only glowered at her bushy-haired friend. She spent the next few days of break in a terrible mood, yelling at anyone and everyone and even going so far as to send numerous hexes at Percy when he mentioned she needed a haircut.
She finally sent a long, nasty letter to Harry telling him that she had waited long enough for him and she wasn’t going to keep waiting. She told him she was officially detracting her earlier comments and that he was a complete and utter prat and she couldn’t be more furious with him.
An hour after she’d sent it she felt horrible. He had agreed to condense all his training into one year so that he’d be finished when she’d finished school. He was doing so much work for her. Not to mention the fact that she was seventeen years old and most certainly not a crybaby.
That same night, however, he came to the Burrow. It was nearly two in the morning and she was on the couch drinking Hot Chocolate and reading a Muggle book Hermione had lent her when someone started banging on the door. She was so surprised she spilt scalding Chocolate all over her night shirt.
Saying a few expletives, she went to the door, opened it and was ready to tell off whichever of her brothers had been out drinking and forgotten a key. All words left her when she saw it was Harry. His hair was long and unruly again and dark circles were under his eyes, but he didn’t look nearly as thin or haggard as at the start of last summer.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I got your letter and I . . . I feel horrible. I came as soon as I could.” He looked at her sheepishly, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. She didn’t let him into the house. She only stood there in the doorway, trying to process everything.
“I thought you couldn’t get away for break,” she said. “I thought they wouldn’t let you leave the program.” She realized her voice was slightly accusatory. She couldn’t help herself. She didn’t appreciate the neglect she’d been feeling, whether it was his fault or not.
“I couldn’t get away for break and they wouldn’t let me leave,” he confirmed, nodding his head.
“Then what are you doing here?” she questioned.
“I kind of, ah,” he began awkwardly, looking away for moment before guiltily meeting her gaze. “I kind of quit the program. I said I had to go, they said I couldn’t, I said they could do without me, then. And, er, here I am.”
“You quit Auror training because I sent you an angry letter?” she asked him, slightly disbelieving.
“Um, yeah, yeah, that’s right,” he said, nodding again.
“Harry, you’re an idiot!” she exclaimed.
“I – what?” he said, his brow furrowing as he frowned. She stared at him for a moment, at his shoulders hunched from the cold, at his messy hair and earnest eyes searching her face for some sort of clue.
“You shouldn’t have quit like that,” she said, sighing. “I was just upset. I didn’t mean what I said.” She really didn’t know what to think at this point. It shouldn’t be this hard, that was all she knew.
“I didn’t want you to be upset,” he told her softly. “And I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to lose you.” Suddenly it didn’t seem like it was all that hard. It was actually rather simple.
“You wouldn’t have lost me,” she said. “I was just letting off steam. I would have kept waiting for you. Honestly, I don’t think I really have a choice in the matter any more. Even if I didn’t want to, I’d always wait for you, Harry.”
“Well,” he said, stepping closer and blocking off some of the cold. “I don’t want you to have to wait. Not when you’re the one thing that means the most to me. I’ve never . . . I’ve never said this to anyone before, Ginny, but I think I love you.”
“You think you love me?” she asked critically, not fully processing what he’d actually said.
“I do,” he replied earnestly, stepping closer still. “I’m not sure I know what it means to really love somebody, but over the summer, all the time we spent together . . . and the whole year I missed you . . . and the way you put your hand on your hip like that is just so. . . . I love you.” He paused and asked nervously, “is that bad?”
Maybe he wasn’t the most eloquent person, but it was moments like that, admissions like the one he had just given, that made Ginny realize why she would always wait for him, as much as she hated it.
“I love you, too,” she told him, and he looked so happy at her response that she couldn’t help but stand on her tiptoes and kiss him. Not breaking the kiss, he backed them into the house and kicked the door shut with his foot.
“You know,” she told him between kisses, “you’re going to have to ask to be accepted back into the program.” He steered her to the couch and then nearly toppled on to it with her. He never broke their embrace.
“I know,” he said, starting to kiss her neck. “It’s not like they–,” he paused, kissing his way across her collar bone and nudging aside the thin strap of her nightshirt with his nose so that he could press a kiss to her shoulder. “– Like they wouldn’t let me. . . . I’m Harry Potter!” He finally stopped kissing her to smile.
“That makes you quitting less romantic, you know,” she informed him, cocking an eyebrow teasingly.
“I was never very good at romance. But I love you,” he added eagerly.
“I know,” she laughed, “I love you, too. We’ve established that. But about Auror training –?”
“Training can wait,” he told her, resuming his kisses, “but making sure you know how important you are to me? That,” he declared, kissing the tip of her nose, “cannot wait any longer.”
Wait: /weIt/
—verb: to postpone or delay something or to be postponed or delayed.
When summer came around again, Harry invited her to come along on a road trip with him. It was at the graduation party that the Weasley clan threw for Hermione and Ginny, and she and Harry were both punch drunk from a combination of too much butterbeer and the happiness of seeing one another again.
“Ron helped me pick out a car and I thought maybe we could just, you know, start driving. Hermione got me a lot of maps to go along with the car, and she lectured me on all the things you have to do – gas and oil and all that – and I just . . . I want to get out of here for a while, yeah?”
She knew how he was feeling. The press was hounding him worse than ever before now that he’d officially become an Auror, and more importantly, now that he’d consented to participate – though grudgingly – in an Anniversary Ceremony for the Final Battle.
She had immediately agreed to come with him. She could already see this summer shaping up to be even better than the previous one. She would be seeing the English sights and scenery of which her mother had always spoken, she would be spending an unending amount of time with Harry, and hopefully, she would be able to decide what to do the following fall. She had hoped to play Quidditch professionally, but she hadn’t heard a word from any of the teams and she’d given up on the dream.
Two days before she and Harry set out, however, she received a letter from the Harpies. They wanted her to start as a reserve chaser on their team. She was thrilled, her whole family was delighted, and Harry was even more ecstatic than all of them. It was only after her initial jubilation that she read the fine print: training would start in a week.
If she wanted to join the team, she couldn’t go on the road with Harry.
He told her they’d wait. He told her he’d wait. “This is your dream, Gin,” he said, using that nickname she hated yet found rather endearing coming from him. “And my dream is to have you get whatever you want.”
“That’s a bit cheesy, Potter,” she replied cheekily.
“Go to training,” he said seriously, not missing a beat. “Maybe next summer we can go on the road.”
That summer was one of the best and one of the worst of her life. Living in the Harpies Team House was like living in the Gryffindor girls’ dormitories with triple the PMS: cat-fights, gossip, tears and nail polish were all a part of her day-to-day life. She loved it, though, as much as she loved soaring through the air under the banner of her favorite professional Quidditch team.
At the same time, however, she missed Harry terribly. She and the other girls on the team always got Sundays off, and nearly every Sunday she would see Harry, but it wasn’t enough. The older women on the team would cluck their tongues at her. “Better watch out, Weasley,” they’d tell her, “or before long you’ll end up married and pregnant and your Quidditch career will be over.”
None of them were in serious relationships. They tried, she knew, but not a single one of them could find a boy better than Quidditch. Ginny had, and that was all there was to it. She would marry Harry someday, she was sure of that, and she would have his children. Not for a while, though. They’d wait.
The next year passed in a blur. She hardly ever got any playing time, but going to the games and sitting on the bench was still a rush every time. She grew faster, leaner, and stronger, and she took to running every morning. She cut her hair short to make it more manageable and Harry looked at her like she’d stolen his favorite toy.
He started work as an Auror, quickly earning clear respect from the Aurors who had previously only been in awe of him. She knew it was dangerous, but she knew it couldn’t be helped: Harry would always be a hero, not for the fame but for the complex that plagued him. He couldn’t sleep at night if he wasn’t doing his part to save lives during the day.
She saw him often in the time they would find between his work as an Auror and her position on the team, and each time left her desiring more. She’d never gone as far with Michael or Dean as she went with Harry. Michael had been hand-holding and sloppy kisses; with Dean it never got past first base, despite how passionately they would kiss.
Part of it was age, she knew, and his looks were certainly a factor: his shoulders had broadened and his muscles thickened through his job, much to her delight. But really, it was because of the way he made her feel, as corny as it was to say. When his fingers ghosted their way up her back under her shirt, when he pressed hot kisses to her pulse point, when he looked at her with those damn eyes of his, she was unable to resist. Of course, his innocence also had something to do with it. When she guided his hands to her breasts for the first time, his eyes had nearly popped out of his head.
But he certainly hadn’t protested.
Their meetings were always brief, though, and almost always interrupted by someone at whom Ginny would then glower for a month. Despite how heated they would get, things never went too far. How she ever survived that year being apart from him more often than not, she never discerned. She supposed it was because she knew that it was all temporary. They were just waiting a little while, and as Harry would ardently swear to her, he’d wait as long as she needed for whatever reason she required.
At last summer came yet again, and this time Ginny asked special permission to have all of July off. It took a little wrangling, but she managed to get what she wanted, promising to return by August. She packed her bags in a rush and at seven in the morning, she and Harry hit the road at long last, with Mrs. Weasley sleepily waving them off.
Ginny started off the trip by regaling Harry with the speech her mother had given her the night before about virtue. “‘It’s the greatest gift you have, Ginny, and you can only give it to one person,’” Ginny repeated her mother’s lecture. “I told her that I was well aware, but as I didn’t plan on ever being with anyone else in any capacity, didn’t that mean I could just go ahead and give you the gift early?”
“You said what?” Harry glanced away from the wheel to look at her incredulously.
“You heard me,” she replied, grinning. “Of course, then she got all flustered and yelled, ‘Ginny Weasley, under no circumstance whatsoever are you allowed to have sex with Harry!’ And that woke up Charlie, who –.”
“You know,” Harry broke in, “I’m not really sure I want to hear this whole story.”
Ginny only smirked at him.
She couldn’t name all the places they traveled, but she enjoyed every minute of it. She enjoyed staying at seedy hotels as much as the pricy ones Harry so preferred; she enjoyed the greasy diner breakfasts and expensive dinners to which Harry would insist on treating her. She even thought of the day in which the car broke down and she and Harry were stranded in the middle of no where for the entire afternoon a good day.
As July came to end, her heart felt heavy within her: she didn’t want to go back to the real world. She had never spent this much time with Harry and only Harry, not even that summer after the Final Battle, and she loved it. She had never known someone so well before; she doubted she even knew her own brothers as she had come to know Harry, as she knew his preferences, his odd quirks and his deepest, darkest fears and desires. She even became rather good at dealing with his moodiness, something in which she took great pride.
It was the second to last day of the trip when it happened.
Harry drove the car up to a secluded area near the beach at which they’d ended up spending the last week. He bought them ice cream and they lay on the hood of the car, trying to eat the sweet, sticky dessert before it could melt and staring up at the sinking sun. As they finished the ice cream, he grew quiet, and she turned her head slightly in concern.
“Is everything okay?” she asked softly.
He sighed, looking away. Her concern deepened. He pushed himself into sitting position and then jumped down from the car. She slid to the edge of the hood and he came to stand between her legs. “I’m not very good at this sort of thing, so just don’t say anything until I’m done, alright?” he asked.
Puzzled, she agreed.
He took a deep breath. “I love you.” She opened her mouth to repeat the phrase to him, but he covered her mouth with his hand. “Don’t say anything, remember?” She nodded obediently, and he removed his hand.
“You’re everything to me, Ginny. I know it sounds like a line, but I really mean it. Hermione and Ron are my best friends, but you give me what they never can: you make me feel alive, you make me have hope and faith and you make me believe that I’m really worth something and that I can actually be happy, and Ginny, I don’t think that’s common. I don’t think everybody finds a person who can . . . can complete them the way you do me.”
Ginny desperately wanted to say something, but she bit her tongue in silence.
“I know we’re young, and I know we’re both just starting out in this world, but I don’t think that really means anything. During that year, we had to grow up, and we know what it takes to fight for something, to believe in something, to believe in someone. We’re young, but that doesn’t mean we’re too young for this.”
“Harry . . .” she whispered. She knew where he was going with this.
He shook his head as if to silence her. His hands were clamped tightly on her legs and his eyes were staring earnestly into hers. “Ginny, I will always love you. I can’t imagine a day in my life that doesn’t have you in it, and I know that if my love changes it’ll only be to grow greater.”
He pulled away from her, and, taking another deep breath, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box, opening it to display the ring as he got down on bended knee. “Ginny, will you marry me?”
Ginny only stared at him. She should have known this was coming, but she honestly hadn’t seen it, not until he’d begun his speech. “Ginny?” he asked nervously, his eyes shining as he looked up at her, a halo of light around his head from the setting sun behind him. “If you want to wait, that’s okay, but . . . I mean, we’re going to get married eventually, right? Why not sooner rather than later? And if you – if you just want to have a long engagement, that’s okay, too, I don’t mind waiting, I just want –.”
“Yes!” It burst from her before she knew what was happening, but it was the truth. She laughed slightly at her own enthusiastic shout, even as she beamed at him.
“What?” asked Harry, taken a little off guard.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” she repeated, nearly yelling, as she leapt from the car and greedily grabbed the box from him. She shoved the ring on her own finger, staring down adoringly at the white gold ring and the diamonds that reflected in the dying sunlight.
Harry laughed and relief was thick in the sound. “You want to get married?” he asked.
“Of course I do! Yes!” She laughed again, a giddy feeling rising up within her, as if a balloon were expanding inside her chest. She hadn’t felt this way since she and Harry had stumbled clumsily out of the Gryffindor Common Room having just shared their first kiss. He was ginning at her now, much the way he had then, and she grabbed his neck and yanked his face to her, pressing her mouth to his heatedly. When they broke apart they were both a little breathless.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait, because –”
“Harry, did you want me to say yes?” Ginny asked, rather amused. Her heart fluttered as she looked into his pale face and dark green eyes, framed by long, dark eyelashes. The ten-year-old within her was doing somersaults in celebration. He was hers.
“Of course!” he exclaimed, his eyes going wide, as if afraid she would change her mind.
“Then don’t say another word about waiting. No more waiting.” She captured his lips in another kiss, pressing her entire body against his.
“No more waiting,” he murmured into her mouth.
That night, in the dark of the beachside inn, Ginny directly disobeyed her mother. And as their clothing lay strewn across the room, as she lay on the bed, her hand tangled in his hair, her ring standing out starkly against the jet black locks, as Harry hovered over her, pressing kisses to her sweaty face, he asked her again, “are you sure you don’t want to wait?”
“I hate waiting,” she replied. When she finally started to fall asleep afterwards, her last sleepy thought was of how that night was most certainly the best of her life.
Wait: /weIt/
—verb: to look forward to eagerly.
Her entire family had been overjoyed when they’d announced the engagement. The press found out only a few days after their return home, and it was all over England in a day. Letters poured in congratulating them both.
Training began again, and this time she was to have an actual spot on the team, despite her relative inexperience. She felt as if everything in her life was lining up as it should. Even when Ron and Hermione got into a terrible fight and Hermione spent the night crying to Harry of all people, and Ginny sat in the kitchen eating the dinner she’d made for her fiancée by herself, she was happy. It made her realize how glad she was that Harry, despite being best mates with him, was not as daft as her moronic brother.
At first she and Harry decided not to set a date but rather to enjoy being engaged and having a wide open future. Before long, though, she couldn’t help but plan for a wedding the following June. She went dress shopping, consulted Hermione on locations and let her mother spend hours trying to plan the perfect meal for the reception as Ginny basked in the happiness like Crookshanks in the sun, eagerly awaiting what was to come.
It was around April that things started to fall apart. It was raining nearly every day, Ron and Hermione were fighting fiercely again, Harry was busier than ever with Auror work, and her mother had become downright annoying, unable to give Ginny a moment’s peace.
She couldn’t deal with another pointless dress shopping trip that left her empty-handed yet again, she couldn’t stand to receive another letter from Fleur that gave her unwanted advice or hear another spiel from her mother about wifely duties, and above all else, she couldn’t put up with any more letters from crazed girls that didn’t want her marrying Harry and taking him off the market.
She just wanted to marry him and be done. It sounded unromantic to say aloud, but it was true. She just wanted to be Ginny Potter. Was that so wrong? Was it a sin to hate the long wait? She thought of how she’d been in years past, how she’d been that year at Hogwarts when she’d berated herself for missing Harry.
She’d grown up that year and she’d grown up since: she’d learned there was nothing wrong with desperately wanting to marry Harry and end the craziness. She came to the firm conclusion at the same moment a rather ridiculous notion slipped into her mind. She let the idea grow inside her, curling like wisps of smoke around her heart until the fire at its roots burned her all the way through.
Her resolve fully formed at two in the morning on a Tuesday night. She crept out of bed, dressed as quickly as she could and then Apparated to Harry and Ron’s apartment. She bypassed Ron’s room and went straight into Harry’s, not even turning on the light as she climbed onto his bed.
“Wake up,” she demanded, shaking him. “Harry!” His eyes opened groggily, widening when he saw her. He swiped at his face, as if to rub the sleepiness away, before pushing himself into sitting position.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice thick with slumber.
“Let’s elope.”
He stared at her. He blinked. He blinked again. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
“I said: let’s elope,” she answered, not at all fazed by his shock.
“Ginny–,” he began. She put a finger to his lips to stop him.
“It sounds crazy, I know, but I never claimed I wasn’t crazy, Potter. You knew that when you and I got into this whole thing. Look, I’m . . . I’m sick of waiting. All you and I ever do is wait! I want to get married and I want to do it tonight. If we leave now, we can call up Ron and Hermione to be witnesses, meet them at that Muggle church Hagrid says your parents got married in and do this thing.”
“This thing being . . . elopement,” Harry said slowly.
“Yes,” she nodded. There wasn’t a drop of doubt in her.
“You realize if we do this I’ll never be able to look your mum in the eye again?” he asked.
“We can still have a fancy ceremony for her and everyone later. But the real thing – that has to happen tonight.”
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he questioned, reaching out a hand to push a lock of hair out of her face. She already knew he was willing to elope; he would do absolutely anything she told him would make her happy, and that devotion didn’t just flatter her but made her adore him even more.
“Positive,” she confirmed.
He turned away and reached for his glasses on his bedside table. “Then let’s go.”
Hermione and Ron both protested and tried to convince them to reconsider. Ginny told them if they didn’t want to come, then she’d owl Luna to act as witness. It did the trick. “If anyone is going to be present at your wedding, it’s going to be us!” declared Hermione, her face wrinkled to display how appalled she was at Ginny’s threat.
They found the church without a problem, and Harry offered the priest who lived next door a rather hefty sum of money to marry them at five in the morning. Harry and Ron both dressed in the formal Muggle wear Hermione had purchased them the year before, and she and Ginny both found dresses to wear.
Hermione conjured her daisies to carry, and Ginny didn’t feel a single butterfly in her stomach as Ron walked her down the aisle towards the bleary-eyed priest, an amusingly nervous Harry and a beaming Hermione, who stood by his side, her chin on his shoulder as she looked happily at Ginny. The sun was just rising and its bright beams leaked through the stain glass of the church, making it more beautiful than Ginny could have imagined, and the little girl inside her was delighted.
The priest spoke the standard, protestant Muggle service, and that was all Ginny required.
Hermione was clapping and crying, the priest looked rather amused, and even Ron had a small smile dancing across his lips when Harry and Ginny shared their first kiss as a married couple.
Ron chuckled, his arm wrapping around Hermione, as he watched his best mate and sister kiss and asked them contently, “You just couldn’t wait, could you?”
Act: /akt/
—verb: to do something; exert energy or force
Antonym: Wait.
A/N: This is something that has been swirling around in my head for a while, and now that I've put it to paper, I hope it was enjoyed! All but one of the scenes were actually ideas I had for stories in themselves but it worked best to combine them all like this. Can you guess which scene I thought of while writing?
Please review! Reviews are the butter to my bread, the icing to my cake, the sunshine to my day :)
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