She found him in the broom shed, cast in a dim yellow light from the bare bulb overhead. He was polishing the handle of his old Firebolt.
He looked up as the door snapped shut. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi.”
She slid down the wall and sat beside him on the dusty floor, watching him work. They sat in companionable silence for a few moments. She was toying with the bristles of her old Cleansweep when Harry spoke again.
“Why’re you here?”
She smiled smugly at him. “That’s very rude.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
Ginny hummed to herself. “Well, I was thinking of going for a fly,” she said. “Actually, I was looking for you. I thought we’d go together. But you know, I don’t mind just sitting here either.”
Harry raised a brow. “You don’t?”
“Bit hard to find alone time around here, isn’t it. You get to leave when you’re sick of it all.”
He smiled coyly. “Why don’t you come by Grimmauld Place?”
Ginny wrinkled her nose. “That place is awful.”
“I’ve done some work on it.”
She snorted. “You?”
“Yeah, I’m quite adept at household chores.” Harry snapped a stray twig off the firebolt and rolled it between his fingers. Another curtain of silence descended over them, everything left unsaid hanging thick in the humidity. And really, where were they meant to start?
“Fred and -” Ginny closed her eyes and took a breath. “The twins hid liquor in here, if you’d like.”
Harry raised a brow. “Are you trying to seduce me, Ginny?”
“Oh, hush.” She crawled over him and unlocked a chest filled with old beat-up quaffles and bludgers. Pushing them aside, she uncovered a handle of Firewisky and held it out to Harry. “Are you game, or no?”
Harry grinned. “Of course I’m game.”
They passed the bottle between them for a while, taking gulps and trying not to wrinkle their noses as it went down. Last year, this would have been a massive act of rebellion - drinking in the broomshed, alone with a boy. Now it seemed mundane, even tame. Ginny doubted Mum or Dad would do more than scold her and chalk it up to teenage disobedience.
She and Harry carried on a wonderfully normal conversation about quidditch and how muggle cars worked and why couldn’t they go faster. Their coherency dissolved as the alcohol set in, and eventually they ended up sitting rather close together, staring at one another.
“I missed you,” she said, at the same time Harry blurted, “I’m sorry.”
Ginny laughed. “Oh, I like that. You go first.”
He shrugged, smiling easily. “I thought about you a lot, you know. About my birthday.”
She snorted. “So you thought a lot about getting a good shag in.”
“No, I thought about you - I mean, yeah, that was part of it, but not all of it. Not even most of it.”
He was looking somewhere over her shoulder, deep in thought. A few moments passed in which Ginny simply watched him, drank in the sight of him, alive and intact.
“We didn’t say goodbye,” she said at last.
“No,” Harry agreed, “we didn’t.”
“I was angry at you about it, for a while.”
Harry smiled softly. “I was angry at myself.”
She squeezed his hand, freezing despite the heat. “I wish you weren’t.”
He stared at her. Somehow, they’d drifted closer - Ginny didn’t know who had been the one to move. In a swift, synchronized movement, she cupped the back of his head as he leaned down to kiss her.
They made out hungrily. His fingers dug into her back and she grasped fistfuls of his hair. Close wasn’t close enough. She would have liked to morph with him entirely, to become a single entity, HarryGinny. HarryGinny HarryGinny HarryGinny.
His hands traveled up her shirt and made quick work of the clasp on her bra. Ginny smiled into his mouth.
“Eager, are we?”
Harry pulled back, grinning sheepishly. “I mean, yeah. A bit.”
“Good.” Her fingers fumbled with the button on his jeans. “Me too.”
“Wait.” Harry grabbed her hand where it rested on his fly. “I have to tell you something,” he breathed.
Ginny groaned. “Oh, excellent timing, Harry.”
“No, really.” He smiled softly, shifting so that they were face to face. He held her hands gently. “When I say I thought a lot about my birthday, I wasn’t just thinking about sex, y’know?”
“I was joking, Harry -”
“You were the last thing I thought of,” he said, “when I thought he was really going to kill me. And I - and when I came back, I thought, I get to see Ginny again.” He swallowed, and Ginny watched the muscles in his throat contract and release. “And I’ve never felt this way, about anyone. So yeah. You make me very happy and I’m sorry for leaving.”
Ginny touched the side of his face. There was a thin sheen of sweat at his hairline, and the scar on his forehead stood out livid in the heat. She traced the angle of his jaw.
“I love you, Harry.”
He swallowed and shut his eyes. Ginny was nervous he might start crying - she’d only ever seen Harry cry once, at Dumbledore’s funeral, and she didn’t think she’d know what to do. “Sorry,” she said quickly, “that was intense, you don’t need to say it back.”
Harry stared at her. “Did you mean it?”
“Well, yes,” she said, backtracking, “I might be a little drunk right now, but I’ve thought it for a long time.”
“No, me too.” Harry pulled closer. “I’ve felt it too. I just don’t think I knew what it was.” His voice was slightly stilted. Ginny glanced at the handle of Firewisky - it was nearly empty.
She buried her head into his chest, listening to the steady thump thump of his heartbeat. “You don’t have to say it back if you don’t want,” she repeated.
“No, I want to,” Harry said. He carded his fingers through her hair. Quietly she marveled at how gentle he was when he touched her - Harry, to whom so few people had ever been gentle. “I love you, Ginny.”
It felt right. They laid together for a while longer, and Ginny would have been content to fall asleep there, in the broomshed. She would have been content to stay there forever, really, warm and happy and -
“I dunno, Mum. They aren’t outside.”
She shot upright, as did Harry, glasses askew. The empty bottle went skittering across the floor. Ginny seized it and shoved it back down into the chest.
“You go,” Harry hissed at her, though he was smiling. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll see you soon.”
He disappeared with a CRACK. Bewildered, Ginny tried desperately to flatten her hair before stepping outside, where it was nearly dusk.
Ron caught sight of her from the lighted doorway. “Where the hell have you been? Where’s Harry? Mum’s going batshit.”
Ginny shrugged. “I was gonna go for a fly, but its too dark now,” she said. “And I haven’t seen Harry all day.”