THEN
There was once a time when Ginny was so nervous around Harry she always felt like she might vomit around him. She was just ten then, barely old enough to know what a crush was, let alone to identify that she had one on her older brother’s new best friend. It didn’t help that the first time she met him, she was staying at his house.
It was Christmastime, and her parents wanted to visit her brother Charlie in Romania, but money was tight and they couldn’t afford to bring Ginny with them. Her brothers had figured out their own things — Bill took extra shifts in Egypt, where he was working, Percy and the twins got invitations to friends’ houses, Ron said he was happy to stay at Hogwarts — but Ginny didn’t have friends and wasn’t yet old enough to be in school, so it was decided (much without her consent) that she’d spend the holiday with her batty Great-Aunt Muriel. She felt like she was being rescued from a terrible fate when she got a letter from Ron not a week after her parents informed her saying that his new best friend, Harry, had invited them both to his house for Christmas. Ginny didn’t know much about Harry — just that he was in Gryffindor with Ron and the two of them met on the Hogwarts Express — but she immediately felt indebted to him. He saved her from a fate she dramatically thought to be worse than death: having to spend Christmas with Aunt Muriel.
Lily was actually the first Potter she met, when the auburn-haired witch arrived at the Burrow to pick Ginny up for her stay at the Manor. Lily and Molly shared pleasant conversation, and it was obvious they’d spoken to each other prior to Molly agreeing to the arrangement. It struck Ginny then how young Lily Potter seemed in comparison to her own parents; in hindsight, she was so young at only 31. Ginny loved her immediately, latching on to her warm demeanor, kind green eyes, and bright way of speaking. Ginny addressed her as Mrs. Potter and Lily laughed, said that Mrs. Potter was her late mother-in-law, and insisted Ginny call her Lily instead. Ginny had never met a grownup so cool, so informal. Even her own parents were called Mr. and Mrs. Weasley by her brothers' friends.
Harry was an only child then, but the house was massive, with more bedrooms than a family of three could ever need. Ginny had never been anywhere so grand as Potter Manor, but even with the high ceilings and seemingly-infinite number of rooms, she was also pleased to find the place felt warm, even cozy, despite its size and grandiosity. She felt at home the second Lily brought her through the floo and showed her up to her room for the next two weeks; rather than being a standard guest room, it seemed decorated as if a young girl was always destined to live there. The walls were painted a delicate shade of green, the metal bed frame was a pale gold, and the linens were all white with subtle ruffles. There were stuffed animals and dolls and a selection of novels on the bookshelf.
“James — that’s my husband, Harry’s dad — always wanted a little girl,” Lily explained, sounding a bit nervous that Ginny might not like it. Not all girls liked ruffles and dolls, after all, and as a girl with six older brothers and no sisters, Ginny hadn’t been given much time to explore the more feminine side of herself. “He may have gone a bit overboard when Harry invited you to stay with us, too. It’s all right if you don’t like it.”
Ginny ran her small, freckled hand over the gold bed frame, marveling at the size of the double bed. She’d never slept in anything bigger than the single she had in her room at home — a room that this room could contain at least three of — and a big bed felt like the most grown up thing in the world. She smiled shyly at Lily. “Oh no,” she breathed, mesmerized by all of the things James and Lily had gotten just for her. “I love it.” Certainly, the decor wasn't what she would have picked herself, but she did love it, simply because for one of the first times in her life, she didn't have to share. It hadn’t yet hit her just how wonderful these people must be, to have gone through all of this effort for a girl they’d never met, someone who was essentially no one to them, the sister of their son’s new friend; she didn’t yet know enough about their family yet to know that kindness like this was basically in their blood. She was loved by a person their son loved, and that meant they loved her, too.
Lily relaxed and grinned so wide her smile could have lit up the massive Christmas tree in the parlor. “I’m so glad.” She paused for a second, glancing around the room, before speaking again. “Ginny, do you like baking?”
“Baking?” Ginny repeated, sounding every bit as excited as she felt. “Like biscuits?”
Lily’s head bobbed enthusiastically, her perfectly voluminous hair bouncing up and down. Ginny had grown up in a family of redheads, but she’d never seen a shade of red quite like Lily’s. Rather than being light and bright, Lily’s hair was dark, rich, and warm. Ginny touched her own hair and turned the ends toward her eyes to examine its color: gingery, but not orange; more copper than anything else.
“I was thinking you and I could bake biscuits for Christmas and decorate them before the boys get home,” Lily elaborates. “What do you think?”
Ginny snapped her attention back to Lily Potter’s youthful, unlined face and nodded.
They were decorating biscuits together, Lilly showing Ginny how to best spread royal icing for smooth results, when James arrived home with Harry and Ron, their school trunks in tow. The boys were excitedly jabbering away about Gryffindor Tower and feasts in the Great Hall. “Lily, I’ve got the boys,” James called, his voice echoing into the kitchen. His voice carried so well, Ginny was positive the walls of the house must have been charmed. (They weren’t. James Potter’s voice just travels that well.)
“Ginny and I are in the kitchen,” Lily called back. “Harry, please stop here before going up to your room.”
Moments later, Harry entered the room alone, looking somewhere between nakedly excited to see his mum and somewhat embarrassed to still be subjected to the childish ritual of it. At only ten years old, Ginny hadn’t consciously noticed boys yet, but her heart felt like it jumped to her throat when she looked at him: seeing him in pictures around his parents' home hadn’t prepared her for how nice his smile was or how alarming his eyes were when paired with his olive complexion and jet black hair. But he didn’t pay her any mind at first; he came to the kitchen because he had a duty to fulfill.
“Hi Mum,” Harry waved to her, looking a bit sheepish, his cheeks flushing pink. He approached the table to give his mother a half-hug where she sat, but Lily clearly wasn’t ready to accept such a half-hearted gesture from him.
Instead, she stood and gathered him into her arms, hugging him close. He hadn’t yet had the growth spurt that would make him tall, so he looked small in comparison to his mother, only coming up to her chest. Lily kissed the top of his messy curls and said: “My sweet boy. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Mum,” Harry whined, acutely aware that his best mate’s little sister he hadn’t even officially met was in the kitchen with his mum. But he’d never withhold the truth from Lily, either. “I missed you too,” he muttered as if he didn’t want to be heard.
“Is Dad showing Ron to his room?” Lily asked as she released her son from her embrace.
“Yeah, but you could just put a camp bed in mine and we could share,” Harry told her, sounding genuinely bummed that his parents wouldn’t put his friend in his room with him.
“He’s right next door to you, Harry. I know you get used to having dormmates at school, but I think you’ll both survive,” Lilly laughed
Harry merely shrugged and reached to grab a biscuit off of the table. Lily scoffed. “Harry, those are still setting . They’re not ready to be eaten.”
“But I’m ready to eat one so that means they’re ready,” Harry responded cheekily, a mischievous smile on his face, taking a bite instead of putting it down. Ginny couldn’t help but laugh. So her brother’s new friend was funny as well.
Lily shook her head in exasperation and muttered something about him being too much like his dad, before James returned back downstairs with Ron. It was strange to her, how much her brother seemed to change in just a few months; she thought about the pictures on the walls of Potter Manor, of Harry growing up, how different the boy looked in person, and wondered if he had a little sister, would she think the same thing?
They sat down to dinner that night, a feast of takeaway that Lily referred to as Chinese food. Ginny and Ron had shared a wide-eyed glance. They’d never really gone out to eat growing up, and certainly had never gotten anything more exotic than fish from a chippy. Otherwise, they ate home-cooked British classics like cottage pie and roast chicken around their mum’s table; occasionally, something like a simple pasta was added to the rotation to keep things interesting. But neither Weasley child had ever seen noodles prepared like the ones in the paper containers on the table at the Potters’ that December day — with a dark, slightly sticky sauce and thin slices of meat and vegetables mixed in. They learned how to use chopsticks to pick up the doughy little purses filled with minced pork and vegetables, and Harry taught them that these delicacies were called dumplings. For the first time in her life, Ginny felt worldly; she had Harry and his parents to thank for that. It made her love all of them, but especially him.
On Christmas day, James — who was once a star chaser at Hogwarts and for Puddlemere United, before he retired to focus on his charitable endeavors — called for a game of quidditch. The boys and Harry’s uncle were predictably enthusiastic, but as badly as Ginny wanted to participate, she held back. It was Harry who saw her through the door to the garden, where she watched them get ready to play. And it was Harry who decided to talk to her
“Hiya Ginny,” he greeted her brightly, opening the door. He appraised her — in her trousers and sweater and socks — and without any indication that he may have expected anything else, nudged her: “You have to put on your boots if you’re going to play with us.”
Ginny didn’t know how badly she wanted to hear those words until he said them. It made her feel warm and fuzzy inside, though she didn’t quite know what that meant; she simultaneously wanted to hug him and throw up on him. She’s never experienced a sensation so odd. She was so flustered that when she first opened her mouth, no sound came out. So she swallowed, paused a few moments, and tried again. “I don’t think I can,” she said finally.
Harry, who had patiently waited for her to find the words, cocked his head to the side. “Why can’t you?” His question was soft, gentle, like a warm blanket. It felt safe to talk to him, not threatening. (Harry always had a good bedside manner, even before it mattered.)
“Well,” Ginny wrung her hands nervously. “My brothers don’t ever let me play with them, and my mum says girls can’t play quidditch.”
“Of course girls can play quidditch!” Harry seemed almost offended that anyone would suggest otherwise. “I play with a bunch of girls on the Gryffindor team, like Alicia and Angelina and Katie! My dad’s played with loads of women, and my Aunt Marlene is still a beater on the Harpies!” Then he paused, looking at Ginny thoughtfully again. “Unless…do you know how to fly?”
Ginny bit her lip. “Yes. But Ron doesn’t know,” she amends quickly. “None of my brothers do. I sneak out to the broom shed really early in the morning and teach myself.” She cast a glance out the door, to ensure her brother was still in the field. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Harry reached a hand onto her shoulder — the first time he ever touched her — and the fluttering in her stomach returned. It wasn’t unpleasant, though; she was surprised and delighted to find she liked the feeling. She liked it quite a lot.
“Ron isn’t going to get you in trouble,” he told her gently, his green eyes so earnest she actually trusted him. “He really loves you, you know. He told me he could only come for Christmas if you could, too, even though I don’t think your mum said that. I think he’d probably like it if he knew you could fly with him. He thinks your brothers leave you both out, but he’s never said he wishes he didn’t have siblings like me or Hermione. I reckon he’d keep you first of all of them.” Then, he patted her shoulder and tipped his head toward the boots. “So put on your shoes. My dad will teach you to play. He’s been wanting to train up a chaser.”
…
Ron returned home from his first year at Hogwarts in June, and Ginny accompanied her mother to the station to fetch the Weasley boys for the last time before she would join them. They took their place on an empty platform to wait for the train, and were soon joined by James Potter, who looked positively ebullient, like he was about to combust with joy. Ginny remembered from Christmas that James was a typically cheerful wizard, so it didn’t seem all that unusual for a man bringing his only child home after a year away.
He and Molly chatted pleasantly, Molly telling James that Harry was more than welcome to come to the Burrow during the summer, and James assuring her that they’d love to have Ron at the Manor again.
“You, of course, are always welcome too,” James told Ginny with a wink. “We loved having you at Christmas.”
Ginny grinned. She knew James would let her fly and play quidditch with the boys again. “I’d love that!”
The parents — Ginny’s mum, Harry’s dad — promised that they’d be in touch to arrange it, if the boys didn’t do so first, just in time for the train to pull up to the station. Ginny was so wrapped up in hugging each of her brothers that she barely even got a glimpse of Harry, just the back of his head as his dad led him out of the station. It could be ages before she saw him properly, and for some reason that thought saddened her beyond words.
But it wasn’t ages. It was only a day later that the floo at the Burrow glowed green and Harry walked out, looking excited and exhilarated. He glanced around the room before his eyes settled on Ginny, who was the only one inside. The boys had chores in the garden — degnoming, cleaning the chicken coup — that Ginny got out of simply because she’d been doing them on her own all term.
“Oh, hi Ginny,” Harry waved. “Is Ron here?”
Ginny shrugged. “I think he’s degnoming,” she told Harry boredly. “You can go outside and join him.”
Harry laughed and said, “Sounds fun.” But he made no effort to leave the sitting room. Instead, he settled on the couch next to her. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Ginny slammed the book she’d been reading shut and looked up at Harry with wide, eager eyes. “A secret?”
“Well, not really a secret,” Harry amended. “My parents told me it’s not a secret anymore, but Ron doesn’t know yet and I came to tell him.” Ginny continued staring at him, urging him to get on with it. “I’m gonna get a baby sister in January.”
Ginny’s eyes widened. Because Harry was an only child at nearly twelve years old, it never occurred to her that he wouldn’t always be an only child. In her mind, people only had many children in quick succession or one child and that was it. “What do you mean?” Ginny asked. And then she realized she must have sounded thick and blushed.
“I mean my mum is pregnant and she’s going to have a baby in January. And the baby is a girl so she’s going to be my sister,” Harry explained patiently. “I’ve always wanted a brother or sister,” he confided in her, voice dropping to a whisper. “I was so jealous over Christmas that Ron had you.”
She didn’t know why it’s back now — the feeling of warm fuzzies in her belly — but she knew she found it very charming that Harry was trusting her with this: the news of the baby, his deep desire to have a sibling of his own. But she couldn’t find the words to say congratulations before Ron bounded back into the house.
“Harry?” Ron looks and sounds genuinely surprised. He glances down at his shirt — covered in mud from his chores — and grimaces. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to tell you something,” Harry stood from the couch, practically bouncing. “It was too exciting for a letter.”
“Too exciting for a letter?” Ron was bouncing now, too, no doubt thinking the surprise involved him as well. An invitation to a quidditch match, maybe. “What is it?”
“I’m getting a baby sister in January,” Harry blurted, eyes wild with joy at sharing the news. “My mum is pregnant!”
Never one to consider his words, Ron responded: “Ew.”
“That’s not nice,” Ginny admonished her brother almost instinctively. “I’m going to tell Mummy you weren't nice.”
Ron, at the very least, has the good sense to look abashed at that. “It’s just…now you know your parents are, you know. Doing it.”
Harry blinked. “Well, I exist, so I already knew that,” he tells Ron, sounding completely unphased by the revelation.
Ginny, of course, had six older brothers who told her things long before they were age-appropriate. She knew even then where babies come from and how they are made. But it never occurred to her until that moment that it’s how she and her brothers came to be as well.
Both Weasley children continued to gape at Harry, who laughed. “My mum is a witches’ health healer, remember? None of this has ever been a secret to me.”
“Oh my gods, there are seven of us,” Ginny groaned, putting her face in her hands. “What if they decide they want to do it again and there are eight?”
Harry burst into giggles. “It doesn’t really work that way,” he assured her gently, once he’d gotten a hold of his laughter. “There are ways to, er, prevent the baby part. If you want to.” (Harry already knew he was not a planned baby by then, of course, but it wasn’t his job to explain unplanned pregnancies to his best friend’s younger sister.)
Ginny breathed a sigh of relief. Harry grinned again.
“So?” Harry prodded his best friend. “What do you think? Me! A big brother!”
“Good luck, mate,” Ron joked sarcastically. “Little sisters are a lot .” There was fondness there, even as he said it, though. Everyone knew that Ginny was Ron’s favorite sibling, even if he wasn’t always hers.
In retaliation for the comment, Ginny elbowed him in the side hard enough that he yelped. Then she turned to Harry and flashed him her biggest, brightest grin. “It’s brilliant! You’ll be a brilliant brother. And I should know — I’ve got six of them.”
Ginny couldn’t have known it then, but her encouragement meant more than nearly anyone else’s to Harry.
…
When Ginny was sorted into Gryffindor during the Welcome Feast, no one cheered as enthusiastically as Harry Potter did. The Weasley boys — Percy, Fred, George, and Ron all present at the table — were loud, but it seemed Harry Potter was louder when he wanted to be. He certainly drew attention to himself, not that Ginny needed a reason to pay attention to him. She couldn’t help but notice him, observe him.
Everything seemed to come easily to Harry: school and socializing and sports; to Ginny, those things felt like a struggle. As badly as she’d wanted to go to Hogwarts as a child, she found the experience of actually being there stressful beyond words. The other Gryffindor girls in her year were nice enough, but having grown up in a house full of boys, Ginny sometimes felt like they were fluent in a common language of femininity where her proficiency was elementary at best. She was far from dumb or dim-witted, but she knew others were cleverer than she was, too, which was often discouraging. The only place she felt confident was during flying lessons, where she was leagues beyond the other students. But the Gryffindor team was not hard up for players enough to try out a first year — as they had been the year before when Harry earned the seeker spot — so her flight time was limited to just those lessons, and so too was her time feeling like she excelled.
Ron and Harry were practically attached at the hip, and you never saw one without the other. Ginny wouldn’t have approached Percy with her feelings (he would have tried to solve them, and she wasn’t sure feelings needed to be solved ), nor would she talk to Fred or George (who would have just tried to make her laugh) about them. But Ron felt safe enough. And since she never saw Ron without Harry, she approached him too.
Her youngest brother wasn’t dismissive, but he also wasn’t good at giving advice. He listened to her, told her he understood, and promised her she’d figure it out. “We all feel like this sometimes,” he had told her encouragingly. “I reckon it’s part of growing up. Don’t you, Harry?” And Harry had nodded, added some words of his own, about how if she feels like this, she can be sure most of her peers do, too. But unlike her brother, Harry went out of his way to help her feel like she belonged.
It was subtle. He’d wave her over to sit with him and Ron and Hermione at meals, making sure she felt explicitly welcome and not like some accessory that came with her brother; he offered her his owl, Hedwig, to write home when she felt homesick; when his mum and dad sent chocolates, he always had some for her, too; and when Ginny didn’t feel confident about her school work, he’d read her essays and help her practice spells and tell her she was doing great. Harry gave her the gift of believing in herself, and she was quite sure he wasn’t fully aware that he was doing it. She even stopped wanting to puke when she was around him.
She was at the age where she could identify having a crush on him now, but she was still young enough to feel shy and tentative about it.
Christmas at the Burrow that year was lovely, of course. Charlie and Bill came in from Romania and Egypt, respectively, and everyone else was home from school. But when the boys played quidditch on Christmas Day, Ginny’s mum held her back to help with lunch, and Ginny couldn’t help but feel somewhat bitter; last Christmas, she’d been playing, too. She longed to be back at Potter Manor, where James didn’t blink an eye before putting her on a broomstick and teaching her quaffle drills, her brother playing keeper and Harry laughing as he searched for the snitch. To her, that was paradise. Having to go back to being sidelined — especially after a term of being able to fly somewhat-freely at school — hardly seemed fair.
At some point between Christmas and the New Year, Hedwig arrived at the Burrow with a letter for Ron. Ginny practically bounced on the balls of her feet while she waited for her brother to open it, to tell her what it said, but boys were boys and he brought it to his room and didn’t mention it again until January 1st, only two days before they were set to return to school.
“Oh, also,” Ron mentioned to the whole family — and, to Ginny’s disappointment, not her specifically — at breakfast, his mouth full with bacon. “Harry’s going to miss the first couple of days of term, so don’t freak out when you don’t see him on the train.”
“You can’t just miss the first days of term,” Ginny burst out, feeling devastated though she couldn’t exactly explain why . Of course she’d been looking forward to seeing Harry back at school, but a few days didn’t really make a difference, did it? Anyway, as kind as he was to her, he was her brother’s friend first and foremost.
“I guess McGonagall allows it when your mum just had a baby,” Ron said casually, as if he hadn’t just given them all huge, monumental news.
Molly Weasley nearly dropped the bowl of eggs she’d been holding. “Lily had the baby?” She asked. “When? How did you find out?”
Ron shrugged. “Harry owled me a few days ago.” At his mother’s reddening face and his sister’s blank expression, Ron balked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Ronald,” Molly huffed. “When a witch has a baby, it’s proper to send them food, a congratulatory note — I’ve had a blanket and hat knitted for that baby for months!” Ron simply winced, acknowledging that he messed up though clearly still not comprehending what was so awful about it. “Did he say anything about the baby? Wasn’t she supposed to come in January?”
Ron shrugged again. “Babies can be early sometimes, can’t they? He just said his sister is named Phoebe and he’s going to miss the first few days of term to help his parents with his sister.” He paused and then added. “He says she’s very cute and has brown hair?”
Molly, of course, placed the eggs on the kitchen table before heading upstairs to write the Potters a letter to go along with the gifts she made for Baby Phoebe.
And all Ginny could think about was whether Harry would still talk to her now that he had a baby sister all his own and didn’t need to borrow his best mate’s anymore.
…
Of course, that never did come to pass.
As the years went on, Harry kept offering bits of himself to Ginny. Because having a little sister of his own didn’t seem to change his willingness to be there for Ginny, she let herself imagine that maybe he didn’t see her as a little sister. When she finally — after years of training with Harry and his dad at the manor over breaks — made the quidditch team as a chaser in her fourth year, she even let herself imagine that the proximity might give them the chance to become something more than friends.
But Ginny was fourteen then, and naive in the ways of love. She knew she could just go and snog Harry if she wanted to, because she’d snogged other boys at school by then. Still, that seemed like the wrong move, because none of those other times had ever been anything more than just kissing. And if she was going to risk her brother’s friendship with his best mate, she knew she better get a boyfriend out of it.
Ginny’s dormmate Ciara said that the best way to turn a friend into a boyfriend was to slowly build up to it, so that was Ginny’s mission in her fourth year. Building a foundation for the kind of friendship that would inevitably lead to romance. She couldn’t rush these things, so when they didn’t snog by the end of her fourth year, she figured they had time. An entire summer of playing quidditch together would only help her achieve the goal, she thought. She might have succeeded, too, if it hadn’t been for Gemma Oakley.
Gemma was a Ravenclaw in Harry’s year, who was painfully pretty and profoundly posh. It would be easy to hate Gemma, with her voluminous mahogany hair and perfect porcelain skin and understatedly expensive clothing — you could have told Ginny that her perfume was actually just the smell of privilege and Ginny would have believed you — if it weren’t for the fact that Gemma was also lovely and helpful and kind. Like Harry, she wanted to be a healer, and she and Harry became friends in a study group for NEWT-level students looking to enter the field following their exams, and wanting to get a head start on the topics covered in The Academy. And thus, Harry did turn one of his friends into his girlfriend. It was just that the friend was Gemma, not Ginny.
Ginny didn’t explicitly want revenge — that was the wrong word. Harry was never hers to begin with — she never even told him that she had feelings for him — so she knew she didn’t really have any right to hold the fact that he’d gotten a girlfriend, who was by all accounts a truly wonderful human, against him. Still, she started dating more and, if she was honest with herself (something she was never particularly good at), she might have acknowledged that she was hoping Harry would have some kind of reaction to it. Instead, his only explicit recognition of the handful of “boyfriends” she acquired in her fifth year seemed to be when he and Hermione would tell Ron that Ginny was a big girl and should be allowed to date.
(“I’ll remind you that you said that when Phoebe gets her first boyfriend,” Ron always grumbled in response. Harry usually quipped that Phoebe was quite close with a boy in her nursery class, which would in turn result in a two-fingered salute from Ron.)
Harry went into his seventh year with a serious girlfriend in Gemma, and Ginny decided she was done thinking about Harry while she was snogging other boys. She was now determined to actually enjoy the dating chapter of her youth, and instead of subconsciously picking blokes who were most likely to annoy her brother and his best mate, she went after the ones she actually liked.
Enter Andy Rogers.
Andy was a Hufflepuff in her year with neat blonde hair — a contrast to Harry’s in every way — and green eyes — though a cloudier olive shade as opposed to Harry’s emerald. He was athletic (he dabbled in quidditch recreationally, but as a muggleborn, Andy was better known for starting an intramural football club at Hogwarts), clever, and polite. He’d asked Ginny to Hogsmeade a time or two the previous year, but she’d already accepted invitations from other guys and turned him down as nicely as she could. It was not at all surprising when he asked her again in the fall of her sixth year, because in addition to everything else, Andy was also persistent. The only surprising bit was that, this time, she said yes.
Ginny’s relationship with Andy developed the way many Hogwarts relationships do: first, there was a Hogsmeade date. They walked around the shops and got butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, and he asked if it was all right to kiss her when they walked back up to Hogwarts from the village. Obviously, she said yes. They began spending more time together, exploring the castle, because when you’re sixteen, all you need to do is kiss once and spend time together in the castle to know you’re someone’s girlfriend and he, your boyfriend.
As they explored Hogwarts — its many passages, hidden rooms, deserted corridors — they explored each other, too. It started with snogging and talking, hours spent alternating between playing the question game (“What’s your favorite color?” “Green. What’s your favorite smell?” “Grass on the bottom of my boots.”) and aggressively moving their mouths together. As things progressed emotionally — feelings of attachment, learning each other’s preferences and secrets — so too did the physical exploration: first hands under jumpers, and then up the skirt or into the trousers. Eventually, they started using their mouths, too. Finally, in March of Ginny’s sixth year — following a bit too much firewhiskey at Ron’s eighteenth birthday party — they had sex.
Losing her virginity was not at all what Ginny had expected it would be. Andy was sweet and gentle, of course — that's who Andy was as a person — but there were no candles or rose petals or any romantic trappings at all; Ginny wasn’t especially idealistic about these things, but the lack of ceremony seemed anticlimactic to her. They were on a blanket in an unused classroom, not in a bed. It somehow never occurred to her that she could lose her virginity to a fellow virgin, either, so Andy’s inexperience and need for guidance irritated her a bit. She knew he hadn’t ever had sex before, but she somehow still expected him to know what to do; perhaps, if her expectations were different, she might have found their awkward fumbling charming instead of disappointing. It wasn’t unpleasurable, but it was also uncomfortable, and it didn’t last long enough for the discomfort to fully wear off. And because they were in an unused classroom and in different houses, there was no cuddling or kissing after. Almost immediately after Andy finished, they were hastily dressing once again so they could hurry back to their dormitories; if they were lucky, Filch wouldn’t catch them.
Ginny Weasley wasn’t a terribly sentimental young woman, but as she walked by to Gryffindor Tower, she couldn’t help but feel like it was a bit odd that an hour ago, she’d never had sex, and now, she experienced enough to be let down by it. She didn’t get too far down the rabbit hole, though, before she felt a tap on her shoulder. Startled, Ginny whipped her head around, grasping her wand tightly, to find no one there. She blinked twice, shook her head, and moved to continue walking before a piece of fabric rustled and fell over her head; she nearly screamed before she turned around and saw Harry, under the fabric with her. Ah, she thought to herself as she grasped her chest in alarm, the famous invisibility cloak. Before this moment, she’d only heard of it; she’d never actually seen it in action, let alone used it.
“Bloody hell, Potter,” Ginny almost choked, her heart racing. “What the devil was that ?”
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” Harry grinned. “I just walked Gemma to Ravenclaw Tower, and thought you might appreciate a bit of shelter on the walk back to Gryffindor.”
Ginny laughed, relaxing a bit as she did so. “Well, thank you. I do appreciate that, actually.”
“Where were you, anyway?” Harry asked, raising a dark eyebrow.
Ginny flushed. “Nowhere,” she lied.
“Hufflepuff dungeons?” Harry guessed. “The kitchens?”
“I was just out with Andy,” she responded, trying to sound nonchalant.
Harry, however, cocked his head to the side a bit. “He didn’t want to walk you back?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe it which, in hindsight, he probably couldn’t. He’d never dream of not walking Gemma back to her dorm, but then again, Harry had the luxury of the cloak.
“We, er, lost track of time,” Ginny said hurriedly. “It made more sense for us to split up. So we wouldn’t get caught.”
Harry nodded skeptically. “Okay.” He paused, as if waiting for her to fill in the rest of his unspoken questions. But she didn’t. “Where were you guys?”
“Does it matter?”
“A little,” Harry admitted, skillfully guiding them up a staircase.
“It’s not your business,” Ginny huffed.
“Maybe not,” Harry agreed, sounding calmer than she’d like him to be. She’d have liked him to take the bait, to argue with her. She wanted him to push the issue. “But — Ginny, I’m not going to tell Ron anything, I swear. I just want to know that you’re being safe.”
And in that moment, she knew that he knew. Harry might not have known that she lost her virginity that night, but he knew that she and Andy had been shagging before he found her.
“Yes,” she told him in a clipped whisper. “We used the charm,” she tells him, expecting this to satisfy his curiosity.
“Just the charm?” Harry asks, voice laced with genuine concern.
Then, she’s annoyed again. “Well, I wasn’t exactly expecting anything to happen tonight,” she spat back at him. And then she’s annoyed at herself for all but telling Harry that he was walking her home from losing her virginity in a dusty old classroom with Andy Rogers. “Why? Are you judging me?”
Harry chuckled, a little incredulous. “Not at all. It would be a bit hypocritical if I was, wouldn’t it?” Of course, Ginny realized that Harry and Gemma were shagging; Ron made crude jokes about their sex life constantly and just tonight, she’d seen the two of them heading up the staircase to Harry’s dorm room. Still, she couldn’t help that it stung a bit, hearing his confirmation of the fact. “It’s just — my mum is a witches' health healer, right? And that’s delivering babies, yes, but that’s also, you know, general health and STIs and contraception. So I know a lot about it. And, okay, the charm is good — when it’s used perfectly and takes, it works every time, yeah? But what about when the caster is rushed and it doesn’t take and they don't notice? Or what if you forget? And you can cast it, sure, but it’s really up to the bloke, because he’s the one who’s going to know if it works or not. I never want any of my, er, friends who are girls to feel like they’re giving up control over their bodies because they’re dependent on some bloke for protection.”
They weren’t far from Gryffindor Tower by now, and Ginny was growing impatient because she didn’t want to possibly continue this conversation in earshot of anyone who might tell her brother. “What’s your point, Harry?”
“My point,” Harry exhaled. “Is that my mum taught me how to brew the contraceptive potion and I brew it for Gemma. And I’d like to give you a vial of it, too.” They approached the portrait hole and looked at each other for a long moment. “I have it in my room. I can give it to you tomorrow. You just have to take three drops every morning.”
Ginny knew that there were other potions, stronger ones you could get from a healer that only needed to be taken once a month. There were implants that delivered a daily dose of potion, so you never would forget. But those would require a visit to a healer, which would require telling her mom that she was having sex. She felt a surge of fondness toward Harry, who had never stopped looking out for her, after all these years. She nodded. “Thank you, Harry,” she whispered to him.
Harry merely nodded. “Of course,” he agreed. “What are friends for?”
So Ginny finally had her answer, didn’t she? Harry didn’t see her as a little sister, and he didn’t see her as a potential girlfriend, either. He saw her as a friend. And that was an outcome Ginny could live with, even if it wasn’t the one she’d most prefer.
Harry went to lift the cloak over their heads, so they could enter the portrait hole, but she reached out and stilled his hand. If he was her friend, she wanted a male insight from him. “Harry?” Their eyes met, and he nodded as if to say what’s up? “As a friend, can I ask you something? And you can’t tell Ron?”
“You know you can,” he replied, and she believed him. She trusted him.
“Is it supposed to be…kind of disappointing? The first time?” She wrinkled her nose, a sign of being a bit embarrassed with herself, but she trained her gaze on him instead of looking away.
Harry seemed to consider this for a few endless moments before he answered. “I don’t think it’s especially helpful to think of it as what’s supposed to happen,” he tried, looking at her intently, as if trying to decipher whether or not she was all right. “But I think that’s common? I probably shouldn’t tell you this but — this is between us, right? As friends?” Ginny nodded eagerly, wanting badly to know what Harry was going to tell her; she’d make an unbreakable vow on it if he asked her to, but he didn’t. He trusted her, it seemed, just as much as she did him. “Gemma was definitely disappointed. After our first time. And I was — well, not disappointed, exactly. But a bit embarrassed, I guess. I mean, it felt great physically, but I don’t think I was really as comfortable as I could have been. And, well, it’s awkward, yeah? Figuring out how it all fits, learning the other person. I think it’s probably that way every time you’re with someone new — not that I’d actually know.” So she got an admission from him, too, that Gemma was his first. She'd assumed, but it felt like a trade of secrets, in a way.
Ginny smiled weakly at him, wondering how she’d gone from having a massive crush on this boy to openly talking about the sex they were having with other people with each other. Her smile faltered and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth, biting it idly. “I guess I always thought that it wouldn’t be awkward, if you were experienced enough or doing it right,” she admitted.
Harry smiled comfortingly at her. “Well, I can absolutely tell you that it gets better,” he offered. “And, I mean, I don’t know. I'm only seventeen, Ginny. There's a lot I don't know. Maybe when you find the right person — the one, if you believe in that sort of thing — it isn’t awkward at all.”
He said it lightly, but it tickled something in Ginny’s brain and before she could help herself she blurted: “So you don’t think Gemma is ‘the one’ then?” She caught his eye and silently dared him to stare at her.
He didn’t take long to answer. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t. I love her, in a way, but not in the same way my dad loves my mum. I don’t know how to put my finger on it, really — just that I know people who are supposed to be together forever have something that I don’t have with her.” He paused. “Do you love Andy?”
Ginny couldn’t help that she giggled. “Does it make me a total slag if I say I don’t really know?”
Harry guffawed, loudly enough that the Fat Lady looked directly at them (although, being under the invisibility cloak, she couldn’t actually see them). “Nope. I don’t believe in that kind of language, anyway.” He moved to give her a hug — she looked like she needed it — and she wordlessly accepted, burying herself in his arms; his embrace felt safe, secure, warm. She told herself it was only because she knew him forever.
“It doesn’t have to be a thing,” he whispered with his chin pressed to the top of her head. It was a surprisingly intimate gesture for two people who were just friends, who were shagging other people less than two hours before. “Whether you love him or not. School boyfriends don’t have to be more than school boyfriends. You don’t have to marry him just because you’re dating him now.”
Ginny pulled back. “You’re right,” she told him with a weak laugh.
“I usually am,” he winked. “You ready to go back up?” He tilted his head toward the portrait hole. Ginny nodded, so Harry whipped the cloak back over their heads. Turning to the Fat Lady, he said: “Felix culpa.”
“Finally,” exclaimed The Fat Lady before swinging open and letting the two of them into Gryffindor Tower.
…
Of course, Harry did break up with Gemma, the summer after they both finished Hogwarts. Harry was set to start the academic portion of healer training — otherwise known as “The Academy” or “healer school” — in the UK, where Gemma decided to pursue her training in Canada. (Uncharitably, Ginny wondered if she was going to Canada because she was rejected from the program in London.) It was a natural stopping point for them, though when Ginny overheard Harry telling her brother about it, he said Gemma cried more than he expected her to.
(“I thought we both knew that we had an expiration date,” Harry had said, sounding completely confused by his now-ex girlfriend’s reaction. Ron responded that maybe Harry should ask Hermione or Ginny about it if he actually wanted to understand. As Ginny understood it, he never asked either of them.)
After a final year at Hogwarts that felt profoundly lonely — despite being surrounded by friends and a boyfriend — Ginny, too, said goodbye to Andy. She was being recruited to the Holyhead Harpies as a reserve chaser, and Andy had decided to pursue university in the muggle world, where he could play football and find a way to merge his two worlds moving forward. Leaving school made for a clean, amicable break. As they hugged goodbye one final time, Ginny thought of Harry’s words, that school boyfriends didn’t have to be anything more than that. And Andy wouldn’t be, but in hindsight, she was glad she chose him: he’d been safe for her, someone with whom she was able to experiment and explore comfortably and securely. And if they didn’t have love, they certainly had respect. She still couldn’t tell anyone if she was in love with him, but she loved and was grateful for him.
Of course, these years — the years immediately following Hogwarts — were the years Harry and Ginny didn’t see much of each other at all. They were busy: her with quidditch, and him with the demands of The Academy. Even when they did end up in the same place at the same time, they were distracted. Harry always seemed to be studying, which he never seemed to need to do at Hogwarts; even when he was at the pub with his mates, he was mentally running through the anatomy of the magical core or the pharmacology of healing potions.
Ginny, for her part, was always wrecked, physically and emotionally. She expected being a professional athlete to be physically taxing; what she never expected was how difficult it would be for her to handle the pressure and cutthroat nature of being on the reserve squad. Ginny was competitive, but she also expected that she would find camaraderie with her teammates at the end of the day. The fact was that support was for the women who were in starting positions. Everyone else was just fighting for their chance.
People drift apart as they get older and start their lives. And Harry was always more Ron’s friend than he was Ginny’s, anyway, no matter how many intimate moments or secrets they shared. If things had continued the way they were going, it’s entirely likely that nothing would have ever happened between Harry and Ginny. But they didn’t, so Harry and Ginny did, and the rest, as they say, is history.