Between being the Boy Who Lived and the Chosen One's Chosen One, and being just Harry and just Ginny, they get lost. The press seems to know everything about them (in truth they know nothing): each kiss is "reckless behavior," holding hands when exiting pubs are "shameful displays of affection," and giving lost strangers of the opposite sex directions on snowy evenings translates to "cheating on his/her partners."
Mostly, they laugh it off. sometimes, they fight. their fights are heated to say the least; accusations are spat, past mistakes brought up and there is shameless ridiculing. but in the aftermath, they reach for each other, needing warmth, strength, and relishing in the fact that they're alive, that they're able to fight. when they make love on those nights (they never fuck on those nights, no), they look into each others' eyes, whispering i love you, i love you, i love you.
on one such night, when their fight has become a dream you can't recall, ginny says, "let's go somewhere. somewhere we can be who we truly are." harry is still catching his breath, he says, "what d'you mean, 'somehwere we can be who we truly are'?"
she doesn't respond for a long time, like she doesn't know the answer, then she says, "where I don't have to drop your hand when I see a reporter. somewhere we can kiss without having that printed in the Prophet the next day." she pushes herself onto her elbows, peering into his green eyes, she says, "take me somehwere where I can love you like I truly do: no charms to keep the house locked, no locking our Floo." he reaches to tuck a strand behind her small ear, "i'm sorry you have to put up with the press."
"i love you, i love you, i love you," she whispers over the scar that Voldemort's Killing Curse left on his chest a year ago.
/
a rusted key in his broad palm, ginny's calloused palm in his other hand, backpacks fitted across their shoulders. then they go spinning (oh boy do they go spinning.)
when the world shifts into view again, volterra is perched quaintly atop a green hill, looming over them, as if to say, "come find yourselves."
/
they rent a room in a white-washed hotel and the shuttered windows are painted green. theirs is a simple room: one master bed, a sunmica paneled closet and a low coffee table with two chairs in the wrought iron balcony. they dump their bags on the soft carpet beneath their feet, then harry crawls onto the middle of the bed on all fours. behind him, ginny has started a slow strip-tease.
/
the lady at the reception is an old widow. the skin at the corners of her milky blue eyes are puckered and her teeth are yellow. she warms upto them quickly, in spite of their shitty italian. she goes out of her way to arrange an english breakfast once in two weeks, runs her thick nails across shiny pamphlets to point out the tourist spots. the lady has a son who lazes in and about the place in cotton slacks and wears a blue cap front-to-back, like the skater boys on the poster in sirius' room. whenever they walk into the bright foyer, hand-in-hand, after one, two, three, sometimes four rounds of spectacular sex, harry sees the boy eyeing ginny. her bare legs and her toned arse and her flat stomach, and the faint outline of her bra through his shirt (turns out ginny packed no blouses of her own.)
when they visit a cathedral, their sweat drying on their skin in the coolness from the old stone walls, he tells ginny, "that bloke back at the hotel stares at you all the fucking time. i feel like fucking murdering him."
ginny laughs, low and breathy. she presses back to him, two lovers admiring the stained glass. she says, "very hypocritical of you harry potter. weren't you doing the exact same thing back in my fifth year?" harry breathes his yes onto the back of her pale, freckled neck.
"i still want to kill him."
she leans back further into him, rubbing her arse onto his crotch, "now, now, potter, would you really do something that sinful in a holy cathedral?"
"wouldn't dare."
he dares, though, he more than dares to commit a sin. after dinner that night, he smuggles them inside that same, godforsaken, abandoned cathedral and he fucks her against the rugged walls, on the dust coated confessional, bent over the platform which was perhaps used as an altar back in time. her moans and shouts echo off the ancient stones.
spent, he asks her, "did you want to do this when you said you wanted to visit someplace."
"something like this, yes."
"are you happy?"
"i'm happy, very happy. but no where near satiated," she says, climbing on top of him.
"minx, minx, minx," he says.
"i love you."