The wedding was a dreadful affair.
There are several reasons for this, of course. The perfect colour coded venue, for one—shades of pink and baby blue juxtaposed with the snow white, teeth-like rows of chairs on the ground of the impromptu venue, her backyard. The drapers keeping them inside are pear gray silk, the shine of it emanating off on the guest, giving her the familiar queasy feeling that she tried to swallow, has been trying to swallow.
It’s a romantic setting, she had heard Astoria Greengrass prune in her decrepit nasal voice to another bridesmaid. It’s all flowers and confetti and exotic linens in shades of soft, baby-cot colours. There are a hoard of lavender scented candles scattered over the banquet table on the other end. The groom has sewn a picture of his bride’s face on the inside of his tux, his brilliant green eyes seemed even brighter when he showed it to her.
It’s earnest and conventional and expensive. Everything she hates in her already pretty compromised views of weddings.
It also happens to be the wedding of her ex boyfriend—almost fiancé—Harry Potter with Pansy Parkinson. But Ginny Weasley is not leaning into that too much.
The wedding started at noon, sun-drip and unusually sticky before George charmed the backyard. The guests apparated sparingly, a close-knit group at a time. Ginny felt a cool burst of discomfort scratch at her throat at every new pop — a war criminal there , she thought sourly, a former death eater, that girl’s father tried to stun Hermione at the battle, and that boy ran away. It was all run-of-the-mill essential, traditional—the hoot of appreciation when Harry walked inside in his dark bridegroom’s robe, the hushed silence when Pansy did in her perfect designer gown.
(The groom shed a tear when the bride walked in, then he laughed. And the entire ceremony fell in a hush of peculiar intensity. Like a spark of electricity in still water. And Ginny was unnerved, not for the first time, probably not the last, at how uncomfortable she felt. The groom had a blood red flush on his cheeks, the tip of his nose and his eyes had that look— the look, glazed over and iridescent—as if he was simultaneously there and not there—somewhere in the future perhaps, thinking up a picture of him in his dusty robes coming back home, her in a midnight blue dress as they drink tea in the evening. The bride looked as if she’s right there, too. In the future— their future, without a hundred people looking in. Her lips quivered and she stops in her track for a moment, for a second before her mother coughed and she laughed—a snort, intense, painfully happy chuckle—and as Ginny, against her wish, cursing herself, turned to the groom, she saw a small pearl-like tear running down his cheeks.
Everyone fell silent.)
The wedding was boring , really.
The only mildly entertaining thing happening in this entire fiasco was when the plump, mustached pastor asked anyone to raise their hands if they had any reasons the couple should not be joined together and the endnote of his question vibrated off in a rather awkward silence. Ginny could hardly help herself before taking a short glance at Parkinson’s hawk-like mother before realising that the rest of the eyes were fixed on her . A blazing warmth crept on her cheeks and she steadied her breath with deathlike precision, just like she does when she realises she’s taken a bludger. The moment hung in the air like the tenseness of a guitar string pulled sharply before… before Blaise Zabini had walked straight up and kissed Harry in the mouth, proclaiming his undying love for the boy who lived.
Harry had chuckled, abashed, before returning the kiss. The venue erupted with laughter.
Ginny kept her mouth pressed in a suffocatingly polite smile for the rest of the function, even though no one was looking at her anymore.
Somehow the wine-drunk, surreptitiously clingy couple she met at Hermione and Malfoy’s wedding and the one she met a week ago are both exactly the same and drastically different. The couple she met was all lingering stares and careful touches and an insistence to not look too happy, too comfortable. Waltzing away from the crowd, sneaking off to drink together, not talking much, not to other people anyway. This one though —
“It’s been four years,” Harry had said, his words branching off like the high end of a happy smile. “But I knew it the moment I saw her again.”
Pansy Parkinson chuckled, a breathy, hearty laugh. Ginny tried not to stare at the ring on her slim finger—signet, archaic, an heirloom — as she smiled politely at them. The corner of the restaurant had been darker than she expected. The ruby red jewel glinted preposterously. Hermione and Malfoy had slipped out, Ron and Daphne following shortly after. And Ginny—
She stayed. She smiled. Her mind glitched and her lips twitched, teeth gnawing at some invisible, invincible guilt simmering in her chest.
The first time she heard about Harry with Pansy Parkinson —that’s how she thought about the name, with an intensity bordering on incredulity—she’d thought it was a cry for help. Perhaps it was a mistake to leave so early after their breakup. Perhaps she had been too selfish. Perhaps she should write back and let him know he could do better, he shouldn’t let people take advantage of him. That the only reason someone like her would be with him had nothing to do with love. Minutes passed. She had stared at the parchment, a blot of tar-like ink finally plopped on the corner of the page.
She never tried to write to him again.
She sits by the open bar, alone, sipping on the dry martini that tasted too sharp and too sweet. The clatter of conversation around her blocks the soft, barely-there hum of the music. Ginny rests her elbow on the tables and hitches herself up to stare at the dance floor in its glitzy, disco-light motion, trying to guess which of the six couple dancing now would fuck by the end of the night. Ronald with Daphne Greengrass sit at the top of the list, puppy eyed, flushed. Dean and Seamus are a close second. She has a hard time picturing Kinsley Shackelbolt having sex with anyone but the way he’s been trailing after the newly divorced Ms. Zabini… well.
No one had asked her to a dance.
She doesn’t mind it, Merlin’s sake. But... the familiar shiver of uncomfortableness creeps in. She had been preparing herself for a million spidery eyes sticking on the back of her shoulder like quick glue, tireless string of increasingly invasive questions about her life and her future from her family members and at least three lascivious featurettes from Rita Skeeter and a plethora of microaggressions from the bride herself. She had been preparing herself in bathrooms of some three star hotel or another. Always a fuzzy, glossed over mirror with overhead light blinking over her head, making the red of her hair more vibrant, like a blot. Her reflection stared back with scathingly polite smiles and words that would trot in her mind were rings of sugary passive-aggressive comebacks and sarcastic quips to come to her defense. Though words were not her weapon of choice, she wasn’t horrible at it.
So the isolation felt... disconcerting.
Parkinson—now Potter, for fuck’s sake —unfortunately, was nice , as it turned out. Quiet. Shy, almost, with her presence wafting over the cramped space of the Burrow like a wisp of fresh air. Not too sharp, not too pressing, just settling into the space like it wasn’t a fucking preposterous idea that it was there. Parkinson exchanged greetings with Ginny politely, dodged her rather pointed questions with the same brand of soft aggression she’d practiced— and the rest of the time, ignored her politely.
Parkinson, now Potter. All her small, inconspicuous imperfections built up a picture of her that was all too human, harder to twist her into some distortion of a malignant Barbie, or a wicked gold-digger. Ginny would’ve liked to associate her with bubblegum pink colours and sharp, acrylic nails and the musky, lewd smell she gets at seedy bars where her teammates pick up groupies. Not this. Not someone who remembers Teddy’s favourite brand of chocolate, or brings a hand-stitched quilt for her mother. Someone who flushes a deep roseberry red when Harry sneaks his hand across her chest from behind, brings her closer until her back meets with his chest. Ginny felt intrusive, even in the middle of her own living room, when Pansy—then Parkinson—tilted her head for a short, fleeting peck on his lips.
Ginny had wondered, at that moment. If she made a wrong choice and he’d made a right one and if both of these can be true this uncanny version of reality.
Pansy was nice . She even picked a dress for Ginny that wouldn’t contrast with her hair. It was expensive though. Well above her budget for the wedding of a former love of her life.
So Ginny decided to be pissed about that.
By the side of the three storey cake, she sees the newlyweds chatting up with two of the reporters from the Prophet. In Hermione’s wedding they looked as if they were on the run, turning rigid whenever a camera pointed at them. When a guest snickered if Pansy was pregnant— be honest, that’s why you’re with her— Harry broke his nose.
She wonders—flippantly, of course, what other way could she?— if Pansy was pregnant.
She wonders how happy Harry would be.
Ginny takes a sip of her drink to counteract the uncomfortable knot in her throat.
“Of course,” Ginny said through her teeth, trying painfully hard to show how little she cared, “I’m okay with it, mum. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Her mother pressed her lips in an incurious slant of defeat. The wind rustled the lemon-yellow draper of their kitchen window, a dry, solitary branch of the birch tree kept trapping against the glass. The bacon on the stove sizzled, the air tinted with warm spice.
Honey… I was thinking, what about if we —it’s just an idea, of course. Just a thought. But. What if we… offer to have the wedding here? A hired venue is so… impersonal. I know he’d love it if we…
Her heart lurched uncomfortably.
“The wedding?” she said dumbly. “Harry’s wedding?”
“Yes, darling.” Her mother smiled, worry etched on her look.
Ginny gulped. Her fork remained suspended on the air for a moment too long before she dropped it, took a breath, and managed the most unbothered smile she could.
Her mother was a traditional woman. Full of old proverbs and hearty premonitions and encouragements. Her mother knew how to make an immaculate Sheppard’s pie from scatch, make quilt from cotton balls and bleach and clean. She knew how to find love and marry and be content, eternally, with a bunch of kids wreaking havoc in her home.
She knew how to make a home.
Ginny used to tell herself she liked hotels. At first. The typcast, bleak furniture, the bed spread starched and clean. She changed the covers religiously and organised her sunscreen and lotions on the dressing table and commend herself on her make-believe home. It smelled like freedom, the lemon-zest spray. But then. There was no one to call her to dinner and scold her for not flossing and brush her hair, lovingly, delicately. She hadn’t realised how much she missed being baby of the family.
She used the room service once and twice and thrice before her mind toppled and time stretched into infinity. Her chest fluttered with an ironic rendition of the ache she felt in her joint and she —
Her bed still smelled like rose, the tacky brand which her mother claimed had a very slow progress. But remarkable longevity. She remembers drawing the sheets over their heads—her and Hermione’s, when she’d come visit—and the smell and the texture of the cloth brushing her forehead. She used to consult with Hermione, bare up her soul in hushed, embarrassed voice about how Harry Potter used to run a blizzard through her heart.
“I am okay, mum,” she tries again. “Just tired ”
Something in her mum fluttered. A stint of emotion, a resistance before closing in on itself. She nodded. There were more lines on her than Ginny remembered.
There was time Ginny used to get tired of her mother running after her. Her mum used to poke her with consistent inquiries, impertinent, invasive questions to guess what was going on her mind. Ginny had never been an easy child. Never made anyone’s job easy.
But she tried. She stayed. She smiled. Her mind glitched and her lips twitched, teeth gnawing at some invisible, invincible guilt simmering in her chest.
She thinks that was the night she started sleeping with Blaise Zabini.
Hermione told her about the invitation in advance, before Harry had the chance to ask her. Ginny could physically feel the cautiousness springing off the parchment. Every scrawl of her neatly tucked sentence was another shot of migraine. It irked her like a headache. Ginny didn’t need the soothing, motherly voice of Hermione to convince her to come to Harry’s wedding. He’s Harry . He’s the boy she loved since she was eleven. Surely, Ginny of all people realises how important this day was for him? Surely she isn’t so selfish ?
Ginny knows she’s nit-picking at this point. That the the reasons everyone is concerned about, that makes her family and her friends titter over her—a if she’s a ticking time-bomb with the wrong wire cut—are the ones she personally handed out.
She hasn’t been here for all the changes, is what she tells herself, and Luna, when she was asked. She’s not as comfortable as the rest of her family about their backyard being filled with purebloods and social climbers and politicians is because she’s been away too long. When she was too busy being the youngest woman playing for Holyhead Harpies, people had brushed off the invisible set of boundaries that were set before the war. Hermione doesn’t care that she’s wearing a set of goblin-made earrings. Malfoy does charity. Parkinson is a healer. Ron… well, he’s pretty much the same—minus his innate understanding of the world as us and them. It rattles something inside her. Makes her feel like an alien in her own family home.
She still stayed. Because it’s about Harry , not her. It’s about the one person she knows—with all her heart—who deserves the wedding of the century, who has earned his happy ending. Even if it was with someone Ginny could never understand.
Just as Hermione takes the dancefloor with Malfoy, and the bride reappears from the backend of the patio, exchanging hushed giggles with Daphne, she feels someone slip into the empty chair next to her.
“Hey,” Harry says.
A shiver of something insidious down her spine. She turns her head to look at him. “Hi.” She blinks. “I think Hermione’s been looking for you.”
His cheeks flush. He turns his face to the dance floor and Ginny tries to stay very still as he smudges at the cherry red cloud smeared asymmetrically on his lips. “Okay. I’ll—I was just—”
She follows his eyes to find an equally conspicuous Parkinson—no, Potter— with one of her bridesmaids fixing her rather disheveled hair.
Ginny scrunches her nose. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.”
He chuckles. The same boyishness, breathless, exalting happiness in his laugh pricks at something brittle inside her.
“Are you good?” he asks finally.
The words—the too vague, inane interpretability of the word good —sound ridiculous before she realises that it was just a rhetorical question. A polite question. He doesn’t have the time to hear her honest answer. It’s his wedding today.
She smiles. “Yeah… I’m cool.”
He smiles. Marriage suits him. Hair askew. His happiness shines bright as he orders a trail of shots. His eyes pinch shut and Ginny stares, a little wistfully, with reminiscence, at the three crows feet lining the side of his eyes.
“She looks so beautiful,” he says wistfully after the third shot.
“She does.”
“It feels like a dream.”
Ginny thumbs at the complementary silver bracelet all the young women have been gifted. Pearls to suit the furnishings. “A rather expensive dream.”
“Yeah.” He chuckles, abashed. “I have to get drunk.”
He takes another shot. When he realises that she’s still staring at him, his flush darkens. “I’m just so happy,” he says, smiling drunkenly, “It’s almost painful. I... don’t laugh, okay? But I feel like I have to be the tiniest bit drunk so I could feel it. I want to dip my toes in my happiness, not drown in headfirst.”
Her lips curl. “Sure she hasn’t slipped you a love potion?”
“I don’t know, maybe she has,” he says, before bursting into a hearty laugh. The music deepens. His hand reaches on the deck to touch hers. When he stops, he says, “Thank you for coming today. I’m just so happy, Gin. I’m just so... I never thought I’d be this happy. Like... my life is finally mine.”
“I’m glad.”
He nods earnestly. “I’m happy for you, too. About the Harpies and the deal you struck. We finally got what we wanted.”
She doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. The last match went comically bad. She’s fearing a backlash. Her meticulously planned future is dwindling on thin rope.
She smiles back instead, and returns the pressure.
“I have to go now... I miss my wife.” His lips quirk up in a boyish, wistful smile. “Oh god, I can’t believe I can say this now. I miss my wife. ”
She feels him pat her wrist one last time before sauntering off, his robe swishing, balanced despite being tipsy. The ache, the all to familiar ache, starts to make an appearance again. She taps on the table, and thinks… thinks—
“I guess that’s what you call sickeningly sweet,” a familiar voice rasps from behind her.
Ginny can’t help the dry, impulsive chuckle that scratches out from her throat. It hangs into the warm air like a tarty quip as she turns back before she could catch herself—settle her expression into something formal, something blank, something she has never been good at mastering—and stare at Blaise Zabini.
He stares back. Calmly. His light eyes stay on her as he leans back, clicks his thumb for a dry Martini.
“She used to have a voyeuristic relationship with her own pain. Liked scratching and poking on the past just to the implications.” He trailed his finger across her collarbone. The room smelled like flowers. “You know… like a cutter ”
Ginny nudged closer to his side, feeling an uncomfortable tingle down her spine.. Something distinctly like scratching, the meaty feeling that creeps up when you see someone skewer a hook inside a slab of meat. “Did she—?”
“Oh no.” A cloud of smoke rises towards the wall. “No, Cynthia would have killed her.”
“Oh.”
There was something else in the smell. Like everything about Blaise Zabini, there was something that would make you cautious. Something metallic. Reminded her off clipping her nails with her teeth, the sharp taste of blood when she pulled too hard. Naked despite the comforter covering them, she found herself wishing he would stop talking about Pansy as if she was a full, complex being.
“She used to skewer her self-worth.” He shrugged. “And now she likes being happy.”
“And Harry, too.” She sighed. “He looks…”
“Yeah.”
Time slipped like molasses. She tapped on his elbow, the perfect skin, and sighed after an eternity. “I left him brutally.”
Technically, he was the one who called it quits. But in reality, he’s waited her to fight back.
“There’s no other way to leave,” Zabini muttered. “That’s a pinch of wisdom I got from my mother.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’m traveling again,” he said after a moment. “Middle east.”
“Start afresh?”
He snorted. “Something like that.”
“I have a match there,” she said softly, closing her eyes. “September.”
“Oh.” He didn’t acknowledge the question. She didn’t bother asking again.
A hum-like silence hovered at the end of his sentence. He didn’t have to say it out loud.
“Yeah,” Ginny says eventually, cringing at her own insincerity. “Perfect.”
His hair is slicked back, cuffs made, robe meticulously tailored. He hums instead of answering, a small, characteristically suggestive smirk hangs loosely by the side of his lips. He always does that, Ginny thinks annoyedly, always. As if he knows everything about her.
“Bet they’re already trying for kids,” she blurts out like an afterthought. “A boy and a girl named James and Lily within three years.”
That was one of the prominent issues that brought her relationship’s demise. It’s not that she cares now.
He scoffs. “Nah. Not Pansy.”
“But Harry—”
“He could want kids. But it’s complex for her.”
“Care to elaborate?”
He takes a short, entirely phony sip. “No.”
Somehow it makes it even worse. So the girl currently leaning against his chest, with Harry’s palms spread on her flat belly, has issues about kids, too. So they have problems, too. Still they’re marrying.
A snapshot of images cut in her mind. Harry’s voice yelling over the uproar of cheering at the last Quidditch match they attended.
Relationships are like that, Ginny. They need work.
She yelled back that she was not dumb, god, of course —
You still think I’m your twelve year old saviour. You think I’m perfect.
No, she didn’t. That came out particularly harsh.
Her concentration breaks when Zabini touches the bracelet on her wrist. He takes a sharp, precise once over at her. “You look good,” he says.
There’s always something clinically precise about his compliments. Never clouded. He likes her smile and her hair and her tits. Her fierce independence. Her callous humour. She likes his silky detachment. His unapologetic cynicism. His smile. The disarming lightness of his eyes, contrasting violently with his dark skin. Making him look sharp, agile, conniving.
Of course half of these things are never said out aloud.
It started out as an impulse. A rush of adrenaline. A shrapnel poking her gut when she saw Harry and Pansy kiss in her own living room. Settling into each other as if they were in their home. As if they were each other’s home.
Zabini had caught her staring. He had caught her red, bloody hands and somehow the only thing she could do, the only thing that seemed conceivable when they met again in the half-lit hallway, was to kiss him so desperately that he wouldn’t say anything else.
Her eyes fluttered close. A shot of electricity, or premonition striked in her skin. She clutched his biceps.
She has to admit she was a little surprised when he kissed her back.
Ginny reasons with herself about the practicality of everything. Of her mucking up the finals and the volatile nature of her sponsorship. This was surely a way to cope with the reality of her childhood crush and almost fiancé getting married. Her terrible attempt at living her life and how it wasn’t nearly as adventurous as she had dreamt. Of passing into her late twenties without a steady relationship, a house, or even money—her shot of fame primarily came from being a war heroine.
So whatever. He was hot. And smart. And a former druggie with sufficient skeletons under his bed so she would feel grudgingly at home.
She’s certain she could’ve had worse breakdowns.
“They look nice,” she says finally. Feeling his eyes breaking down her skin.
He doesn’t answer for a moment. She wonders about the buttons of his shirt under the robe. He was exciting, for sure. Capricious and snarky. Has less of a moral code and more of an aesthetic one., never sorry for who he is, never sorry. Period.
“You still love him?”
Something sharp stabs at her chest. Almost burning, almost through. She shouldn’t be surprised. This question, this… declaration has been dwindling on top of their flimsy adrenaline induced non-relationship since the beginning. And yet.
Ginny feels her cheeks flush with flame. “I love him the same way that Hermione loves Ron. The way you love Pansy.”
His jaw tightens. A flutter of something—something soft, something distinct flashes over his face. His deflecting tactics generally consisted of smirking and agreeing, amiably, to whatever she accused him of. But he’s just staring at her, his expression falling, compressing into this—
Ginny’s mouth falls open. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
His lips curl. “What does it matter?”
“It matters ,” she presses, strangely triumphant. She points her index at his chest. “Because you are being a hypocrite.”
“No. I am not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re sitting here, judging me about—”
“Oh no one is judging you, honey.” He points at her now empty glass. “You are doing that yourself.”
Ginny presses her lips.
“And yes. I did love Pansy... ardently. For a little while.”
The wine sloshes uncomfortably in her stomach. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
She recognises the impassive stare, the constant, consistent denial, wrenching the uncomfortable, inconvenient truth out. She still has bite marks of her own. “You never told her,” she says softly.
He smiles.
“Why?”
“Why does it matter? It’s all cigarette ash.”
“But don’t you—” she tries to drag the words out, she tries to not act like a child. “Don’t you wonder? This wedding, it could be—could have been—you and her, an entire future—”
He flexes his wrist. “I’m not good at staying.”
She licks her lips, vaguely feeling like she’s been struck. She said the same thing to Hermione after Harry broke up with her.
“It’s true. It’s tireless for me, trudging through everyday banality. Pansy needed someone who would stay for all that. She still does.”
Her voice comes out softer than she’s intended, “Someone like Harry.”
“Someone like Harry.”
And the truth—unspoken, unearthed—reaffirms itself in her heart. And Harry needed someone like Pansy. Someone whose love came as a surprise.l. A healer. Someone who touches things and mends them. Someone who understands. Pansy Parkinson, pristine and white, scarred with so many cuts she never let out. It was only a sliver of an idea, a negative image, but she sees this… this refraction of them, what she couldn’t understand in Hermione’s wedding, what seemed a little off, little too into place. Pansy understands the bad in him, the sense of tragedy, the generational horror because she’s lived inside that for twenty years. She never saw the perfect boy up close, wasn’t tpo mesmerised to notice the cracks.
She sees the bad in him, the bad that had been inflicted and she’s at home. She sees the bad, sure, but … she’s charmed by the good in him.
Ginny can’t understand her next moves. Perhaps it was the same brand of electricity that made her kiss him in the first place. She touches his hand.
“Sometimes being selfish is also being kind,” he says.
“Yeah. I know.”
He hesitates. “Hey… when you’re around Egypt... do you want to—pick this up?”
She almost thinks he’s going to scoff. Pick what up? The tattered self-reflection? Like a blurry image of someone looking back at you from a spotty mirror of a three star hotel room?
But he smiles. Third time she has seen this night. Fifth in total.
“I’d like that.”
When they look back, they find Harry and Pansy taking the first dance. The music that intensifies. Everyone is hushed, everyone is too busy looking at the bride and groom.
“Why did you kiss me?” she asks suddenly.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit late to ask that?”
“Never say it’s never too late.” She smiles. “It’s our motto, isn’t it?”
The time slips like molasses. “I slept with you,” he says carefully, he always talks carefully. As if each word is as brittle as chances. “Because I was trying to make sure you won’t try to sabotage this wedding.”
She laughs. “Yes. That’s why you fucked me.” A pause. “Why did you kiss me that night? In my house?”
Blaise takes a short breath. There’s this calm between them, the drop of silence before something more, more significant. The air smells metallic when she inches closer.
“I don’t know,” he says finally.
She licks her lips. She nods.
“I think I do.”
I hate what they’ve done to me, she had said softly. It was a secret, after all. It was an embarrassing secret that she blames others, that she cared enough to blame others.
“The patriarchy?” he asked without a hint of irony.
She was too proud to agree. She was too proud to be beaten by something she couldn’t knock down with sheer force. “Everyone. This… this idea that I have to have a family and a boyfriend and a steady job that doesn’t involve rupturing my hymen before it’s been anywhere.”
“It’s actually not that common for a hymen to rupture from riding,” he says as a matter of fact.
She laughs. “You should tell mum.”
“I could tell her that I conducted an examination, if you like… a thorough examination.”
She laughed cheerfully. She missed the times she was able to joke about her life. She remembers, like the jutted out shape of a misshapen puzzle, when it was easier to joke about it—the sheer signs of cracks in her well-imagined future. When the fumes of doubt wafted on her periphery—a failed goal, an unsatisfactory fuck, a letter from her mum. It’s premidetary midlife crisis, she’d think. Jokingly. Blithely. It was the negative image of the actual crisis, nothing real, not then.
But then the Harpies lost the finals and she sank back in the bed of a three star hotel drunk on self-pity and rum and saw, quite brutally, how it all made some morbid sense. This is it. This is it.
The truth is that she doesn’t really want Harry, doesn’t really want to be the girl in white… but the creeping, screeching wonder nips at her—what if everything in her life would make sense if she just… did. Did want Harry. Did want monogamy and sleeping in the same city every night for the rest of life and having children and giving her life for them and never asking anything just for herself. Never being selfish or impetuous or dangerous again?
“What do you want, Red?” he asks, smirking again, sure again.
Ginny isn’t. And yet. As she reaches up to undo the first button of his shirt, she feels something like an inclination. The skin under is glowing, ash-dark, nearly healed. With the door of her room shut, there’s not even inkling of the sound of the party. She intakes a sharp breath.
He touches her cheeks, leans in just an inch.
A flutter in her belly. A rush. Of adrenaline, excitement. Fear, too. Things fall in just how they are supposed to, my love, her mother used to assure her.
His breath—a cloud of martini, the lip gloss smeared on her mouth—whirls in the gap between their faces as he asks again.
“What do you want?”
His hand is on her thigh. He already knows the answer.
Ginny parts her lips.