SIYE Time:13:57 on 12th December 2024 SIYE Login: no | | |
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Pour By Syn
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Category: Post-OotP
Characters:Harry/Ginny
Genres: Angst, Drama
Warnings: Sexual Situations
Story is Complete
Rating: R
Reviews: 41
Summary: "He invades my doorway, foreign, his features weighed down by shadow."
Hitcount: Story Total: 6091
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Chapter | |
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He doesn't know I'm here, standing just inside the kitchen door, arms hugged close against the chill sweeping in with the rain. It pours down in buckets, a steady drip-drip that soaks the baked, dry yard of the Burrow, churning the dirt and dust into dark mud and the pond into a roiling, swelled ocean in the sea of tall, unruly grass.
His head is bent, his back to the garden wall. His hair his plastered to his head in black, sodden spikes, his glasses slipping down his nose and his clothing completely drenched. My breath catches in my throat. There's a hunch to his shoulders, a sad shadow upon his face. He looks utterly lost and my heart spasms in my chest for him. I ache, watching him in the rain, watching him when he doesn't realize it. He would never be so open if he knew.
This isn't the first time I've watched him. No, I've always watched him. But lately he's been watching back. I've caught him so many times, watching me with burning eyes. There's torment in his gaze and it makes me ache to see it. Something I thought I'd never feel again has come back and I wonder if I'd ever stopped.
I love him. I love him so much it hurts.
But his hero's heart is so hard these days. He would not crack so easily before my eyes if he knew I were here. His head lifts, turning to the tumultuous swirl of the gray clouds above him, water pouring down his pale face, his t-shirt clinging to his skinny, beaten frame.
I cannot watch this. I cannot stand seeing him in pain. One glance back at my home, the sounds of my family coming from the other room reaching my ears, turning them warm with the familiarity, and I turn, step out into the rain toward him.
Its cold, far colder than the summer air should allow. Mud squishes between my bare toes as I walk toward him, rain drenching me to the skin, stinging my face and flowing over my lips. I blink droplets away from my eyes as my red hair becomes plastered to my sunburned face. The sundress--almost too small, but I like the daisies on the hem so I've managed to fit into it one more year--weighs down on my skinny frame and I feel like I'm all legs and arms and awkward.
There are barely three paces between us, but it feels like kilometers. His eyes are closed, his head to the sky.
"Harry?"
He starts and his eyes open, piercing me, fixing me to the spot so that I'm afraid to move. Water pours down his lips. There's strain around his eyes and a waxen quality to his face. He's cracking inside and I wonder if he even knows.
"Ginny...what are doing out here?"
"I could ask you the same. It’s raining."
"I know," he says, his eyes not meeting mine and I see him watching the air beside my head. I move to fill his view and he takes a sharp breath. "Its cold. Go back inside."
"Not until you do," I say, blinking the rain away. His eyes meet mine for a moment and he pleads with me unspoken. He wants to suffer alone and I can't let that happen. There's too much he suffers through alone. This will not be one of them.
"Please..." he says with characteristic stubbornness, his lips pressed to a thin, white line so that rain spills over them and down his chin. I follow the trail of one fat drop as it runs from his dark, shining hair down the curve of his nose, his mouth, his chin and then dives into the abyss, the essence of his skin washing away with it.
I have the sudden urge to touch him, run my fingers through his unruly hair and feel the hot blast of his breath on my mouth.
"No, Harry. It’s not safe for you to be out here. Not without someone else," I say just as stubbornly, trying to shake away the sudden want charging through my system. His eyes rake over my form suddenly and I hug my arms close. The sundress is drenched and my white bra is showing through the thin material. I shudder slightly beneath his close scrutiny.
"You care about me," he says simply, raindrops on his eyelashes. I don't know what to say. He's looking at me expectantly.
"Yes. We...we all do," I stammer, unsure of what's going on with him.
"No. You." His eyes tear up face, and his lips part.
"Harry...what's...?" I ask, swallowing hard. He reaches out, a quick motion, his fingers closing over mine. I look down at our joined hands, his skin cold and soft against mine. "What's the matter with you?"
He doesn't answer as he tugs me closer, his head bowed toward mine. His mouth is so close and I can see the light stubble on his chin. My breath stutters over my lips as his eyes droop to half-mast, a strange light still in them. Without meaning to, I lift my face upward, waiting for the gentle touch. One hand touches my face, his thumb sweeping a tickling droplet of rainwater from my cheek.
"Ginny..." His voice is barely audible over the pounding rain. I strain to hear, to listen to anything he has to tell me. I want to understand what would make him so forlorn and unlike himself.
"Ginny! Harry! Come on! Arthur's just come from the Ministry with news!" Tonks' voice tears through the garden and he steps away from me in an instant, his back against the brick wall. He pulls in a swallow of air and won't meet my eye.
"Coming!" he calls, then brushes past me, leaving me alone, wet and confused in the garden.
I watch his retreating back, the feel of his warm breath still upon my chilled face. Something's wrong and I don't know what.
****
The bed is warm and my chilled bones slowly sink into its embrace, the covers up around my chin. Rain tickles the window above my head, lulling me softly into sleep. I think I'm dreaming...I can't be sure. There are voices and my fingers are red and sticky and there's hissing sound in my ear. I can almost see what it is and where I am, but something tears through the warmth. I sit upright, the fog slipping over my brain, blinking in the wavering darkness.
Someone's knocking on my bedroom door. Blinking, I glance at unbuckled watch next to my wand on the bureau and see its nearly three in the morning.
The knock sounds on my door once more, gentle but persistent. Thoughts screech through my skull--what if we're being attacked? I grab my wand, clutching it tight in my fist, and then swing my legs off the bed, the floor cold on the pads of my feet.
Before I can reach the knob, the door swings open, a dull light flooding my room from the dimly lit hallway.
Harry stands before me, his head bowed, rakish locks of gleaming black hair loosened in his eyes. He invades my doorway, foreign, his features weighed down by shadow. One hand slides up the frame of the door, his hand starkly pale against the weathered, warped wood.
"Harry?" My voice comes out a startled whisper, my eyes rounding in surprising. My heart bangs in my chest at the sight of him. He lifts his eyes to meet mine and flicks his tongue across the dry curve of his lower lip. The movement makes my stomach tighten; my limbs feel strange and disconnected. With a shaking hand, I take his wrist in my own and pull him inside, shutting my bedroom door behind him with a soft click of the lock.
The sound is final and haunting.
"What's the matter?" I whisper, suddenly aware that I'm clad only in a thin nightdress, my legs bare to mid-thigh. My hair is tangled on one side and there are pillow creases on my cheeks.
"Ron said I should talk to you," he says in a low, breathless voice, his fingers plucking at the hem of his t-shirt.
"About what?"
He doesn't answer me right away as he looks around my small bedroom, at the pinned, moving Tornado posters covering the childish pink wallpaper my mother put up years ago, which is now a faded, dull color. He picks up one of my old dolls and turns it over and over in his fingers, the button eyes glittering in the darkness. "I like you,"
"What?" I ask a little too loudly, too surprised to keep my voice low.
"No...no, not like, love. Love," he says indefinitely, heaving out a great breath and staring me right in the eye. His eyes are sunken into the darkness of his face, glittering like the button eyes of my doll. I can't seem to breath. All those nights...all this time...
I love him. My God do I love him. So much it hurts to feel it.
"What are you saying?" I choke out, feeling tears rising in my eyes. I want to tell him, shout it out, but I can't.
He puts the doll down on my bed and approaches me, his bare feet creaking the floor ever so slightly. He touches my face again. His voice his heavy with sorrow as he speaks, "I'm in love with you, Ginny."
"Then why are you saying it like its a bad thing?" I hiss at him, my voice frantic and hurt. I don't know what's going on. I want answers, not this tortured Harry. This isn't him. I don't want him to feel this pain.
"It is. I can't love you, Ginny."
"Why not?"
"Anyone close to me is a target for Voldemort." I whimper at the sound of the name and clutch his arms tightly. "He knows when I'm happiest, when I feel anything at all and he'll find out and he'll hurt you just to hurt me."
"I don't care!"
"But I do! I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you."
"But you'll risk Ron and Hermione?" I say in a tight voice. His fingers tighten on my skin.
"They can take care of themselves!"
"And I can't? I'm not helpless Harry and you know it! I've fought at your side so many times. This past year...that's all we've done! I'm not afraid of Vol...Voldemort!" I get out through my clenched fists. "I love you! I always have!"
A tear spills down my cheek like rain. He lifts a thumb to wipe the salty, warm droplet away. "I know you're not. But he knows you already. He remembers you..."
"So I'm already marked! I always have been! I'm a Weasley, Harry! We're all marked by the Death Eaters because we challenge them! I'm not afraid. I love you," I say it again, my chest closing, the squeeze of my heart unbearable. He lets go of me and buries his fingers in his hair, pulling, his face screwed up in pain.
"The scar is burning," he says through clenched teeth, a tear squeezed out through his lashes. "He knows something is wrong. He's trying to get in my mind."
"Push him out. This isn't for him, Harry. Remember your Occlumency training. Push him out!" I say as I take his face in my hands, willing him the strength to stop the terror in his head.
His lower lip trembles and sweat breaks out on his hairline as he concentrates. The muscles in his forehead jumping, the jagged scar a livid, ugly red in the darkness.
"This isn't for you...she's not yours...she's mine..." he whispers under his breath as he shakes in my hands. Finally, it seems hours pass and his shoulders relax, tension flowing out of him, the pain evident on his face disappearing, melting away until he slumps to his knees, his head buried against my stomach.
His arms encircle my waist, his breath hot, so hot on my stomach through the thin fabric of my nightdress. With shaking fingers, I run my hands through his hair, soothing him, comforting him. He's pouring his pain into me; I can feel it. Just by touching me, letting me know, he's lightened the load on his soul. How long had this been tormenting him?
I want to cry for him, but I refuse to let him see me in pain. I have to be his rock. He's everything to everyone all the time. Even a hero's heart can crack.
"Harry..." I sink to my knees with him so that we're both sitting on the floor, the cold barely felt on my bare skin. "I love you."
"You shouldn't," he say bitterly, but not looking away from my burning eyes.
"Why not? I loved you from the moment I saw you at King's Cross. A skinny little wizard who looked so ordinary and yet...there was something about you. Something I couldn't name and that was before I found out you were the legendary Harry Potter. You had my heart at ten and you have it now at sixteen."
"I thought...I was so sure you were over me. You dated Dean for so long last year."
"I loved Dean too, but he wasn't you. Michael Corner wasn't you. No one is you, Harry. I can't settle for anything less than you and I won't now that I know," I say, reaching out and touching his face. He smiles and covers my hand with his own. He draws in a shuddering breath.
"I'm so scared,” he says in a small voice, the child still inside of him peering out through the eyes of the man he's become. I can taste his fear on the air, see it in his eyes, and feel it in his skin.
"You don't have to be. Pour it into me, Harry...and let it go," I whisper, drawing him close, one hand braced on the floor beside me.
His nose brushes my cheek, the hot swell of his breath sweeping over my lips. My mouth parts on its own and I tilt my head upward, eyes slitted, watching him through my lashes. His face is so close the heat of it scorches me. My fingers clutch his bare arms, curling, nails scraping flesh.
His lips close on mine with the ghost of a groan, tugging, pulling, the wet velvet of his tongue sliding across mine. His fingers find my hair, burying at the nape, pulling possessively at the roots until I have no choice but to move with him, tilting my face at exactly the right angle. His other arm slides down my spine, encircling my waist, his palm flattening across the small of my back. His hands are warm and shaking and it vibrates through my skin, pulling me into the strange world he has exiled himself to.
My eyes close, carrying me away with him, lost in the fear he's trying to overcome. I let him pour it into me with kiss after kiss. He adjusts, pushing me backward so that I have to uncurl my legs, my back hitting the floor gently.
He covers me, his weight breathtaking, his body familiar in its angles. One knee presses on the inside of my thigh, his hand smoothing over the soft curve of my waist and rising higher upon my ribs. His thumb brushes the underside of my breast and I arch my back toward him.
His mouth is made for torment, his tongue gentle as it sweeps against my own, scraping teeth and pulling a gentle moan from my throat. His other hand is pulling aimlessly at my hair, gently fingering the red strands and tickling my scalp in the best way possible.
My own hands wander across his body, feeling the warm, whipcord angles that I've always longed to touch beneath the pad of my fingers. His back is a scorching expanse of flesh as I slide one hand up the back of his t-shirt, smoothing over muscles, the sharp rise and fall of his spine like piano keys. I press each one and he surges into me, groaning, getting carried away by the touch our bodies.
We shouldn't be doing this. Not here. Not in my bedroom, in my house with my parents only a few rooms down. Not here, not now. But I'm not going to stop it--I physically can't. I've wanted this too hard and Harry needs this so badly.
I break away, dragging in a steaming lungful of air and Harry buries his face against my neck, his breath making hot, wet prints on my body and his mouth shaping my name again and again. I'd give him anything now and he knows it.
I will him to take it further, even though reason is telling me not to.
His hand lowers down my torso again and I feel rather than see it smooth over my thigh and slip beneath the hem of my nightdress. The air between us is warm and charged. His fingers brush my knickers and I inhale sharply, wanting and wishing.
His teeth sink into my collarbone just as a loud clang goes through the house, followed by a moan that doesn't come from either of us. Harry sits up, his eyes rising heavenward.
"What's--?"
"That damned ghoul!" I answer back breathlessly, sitting up with him, our limbs entangled. "Mom'll have his translucent hide for this! His ghouling hours are dawn to dusk, the git."
"Maybe it’s a good thing he made some noise..." Harry says, taking my hand. "I didn't mean...I mean, I wanted us..."
I smile and touch my fingers to his lips. "No, you're right. That was a little faster than I'd meant for us to go. I love you but I don't want to rush into this."
He nods his head and kisses my fingertips. "I love you too, Ginny."
"Its about time too!" I say jokingly and then stand as he laughs, low and throaty. We rise and stand in my room, the night the same, but so many things different. The ghoul moans again. "You'd better slip back into Ron's room before he wakes everyone up."
"Yeah...if Ron's not already up..." his voice trails off and he smiles a little, burden already lifted. Did I do that? I don't know, but the smile means so much to me. My chest feels like it’s going to burst, like the persistent rain has soaked into it.
"Does he know?"
"He forced it out of me when he caught me...erm...watching you. He threatened to stick my wand somewhere uncomfortable if I didn't talk to you soon. I think he's rather amused by the whole thing."
"Wait ‘til Hermione gets here though. Maybe you could stick his wand somewhere uncomfortable, just to get back at him?" I say as he takes my hand, fingers curled warmly around mine.
"Do you think that would work?"
"I doubt it. Even that would be too subtle for him."
Harry smiles and laughs a little, and then his eyes grow soft and serious. "I'd better go."
"Yeah," I whisper in response, not wanting it to end and knowing it has to. "Goodnight Harry."
"Goodnight Ginny," he answers and bends to kiss me once more. No less passionate, but calmer somehow, as if I took his fear and released it. He's poured it into me and I have taken it for myself, where it can't hurt him any longer. He withdraws as I flutter my eyes open once more, his face near and soft in the darkness. Slowly, he backs out the unlocked door and I close it behind him with a click, listening at the sounds of my family stirring in the darkness, his footsteps soft creaks as he makes his way to Ron's room. Another sigh of door hinges and then all is quiet.
The night goes on. Rain pours down harder than ever and a rumble of summer thunder threatens the sky. I trace my lips with the tip of my tongue and then smile and climb back into bed, the sheets cooled and soft against my skin. I miss his weight atop me and I feel so lonely now.
I shift position and my foot hits something lying atop the worn duvet. I sit up and reach for the end of my bed, where the doll he had discarded still sits. Its button eyes--so very like his in the darkness--stare at me. I smile and curl it up in my arms, its soft cloth body pressed to my breasts.
My head is too full for me to fall asleep right away and I lie in the darkness, remembering the torment of his mouth upon mine. I know there will be more tomorrow and the next day and I can barely contain my happiness as I smile against my pillow, clutching the doll against me.
I wonder if he's still awake even as I tumble into sleep with the sound of the pouring rain in my ears. My dreams are full of him and I would want it no other way.
THE END
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