exiguis aestatis

Ginny Weasley & Harry Potter

Chapter 1

We've been friends for ages. Ever since primary school when he and my brother knocked into each other in the school yard. They've barely done anything without the other since. And with having him round for family dinners, and my mum fixing up his scraped knees, and the whole lot of us playing out in the pond, I spent a lot of time with him growing up as well. And so of course we got close, he was a part of the family growing up. 

I've had a crush on him for long before I could even tell you what that really meant. I didn't know if any of my brothers knew but my mum always gave me looks when he was around. I think she caught on after I put my elbow in the butter dish that one summer he grew his hair long. That was the same summer he went from the scrawny kid jumping in the pond to me flushing whenever he took his shirt off. 

That summer, mate lemme tell you.

He kept his old swim trunks that were too small and every time we went down to the pond, I overheated. I made all sorts of excuses not to go swimming with them that summer, who knows what sort of twat I would've made out of myself if I had. 

I don't know how I made it through that year without making a fool of myself. But I got over his new found hotness and by the next summer we'd gone back to our usual friendly banter.

Ron already left for the city, off to set up his university flat and all that. It got quite quiet around here without the whole lot of the boys rummaging around the house. But mum and I got along then, past those angsty years of my early teens, and Harry still stopped by to help out around the farm. He was coming by soon actually, to help whitewash the garden fence. Mum roped him into it at Ron and Hermione's going away party. It was Harry's too, but he's not going too far, joined up as he had with the local coppers. 

We settled down with two buckets of paint and far too many brushes… I’d just scooped the whole lot of them out of the shed. Dad left out some tarps for us to cover the grass (which I thought was silly, it's just paint and grass, it's not like it won't get chopped up or washed off sometime soon!) but Harry already stretched the tarp out in front of the fence. We were down by the pond, where the garden backs into the small stream. It was still the morning and the sun was glowing through the leaves, the way it only does early on in the summer. The grass was a bit wet from the dew and Harry already had wet marks on his knees.

"Hurry up you lump, I'm going to be done before you even get started!" 

I chucked a brush at him, which he ducked, sniggering, and got to work. 

It was quite easy hanging out with Harry. Growing up together, spending so much time with him, he was practically a part of the family. It was as easy as anything for him to be around, and it was never a surprise to find him reading in our living room or swimming in the pond or lounging in the kitchen for dinner.

I got over last year's 'summer hotness' just through the normalcy of it. It was easy to get used to him all of a sudden being all muscly and hot when his shirt was always off. 

Over the years we'd had our encounters as well. My brothers don't care one whit who's in the shower, if they want to brush their teeth they'll come in to brush their teeth. And Harry  adopted that 'uninhibited' attitude as well. So I took to cramming the chair under the door knob after he'd walked in on me one time. I think he was more embarrassed than I was, having caught an eyeful of my bare arse as I was getting into the shower. I ribbed him about it mercilessly afterwards but I'm sure, at the time, I'd blushed so hard I turned into a small glowing sun. 

But that's all to say that when you grow up with someone you're bound to be comfortable around them. 

So, the easy silence that surrounded us while painting the fence wasn't awkward, it was just comfortable. 

"You're painting wrong."

"How the hell am I painting wrong Potter? My side looks better than your side!"

He rolled his eyes at me, "you've got to move your brush up and down, not just one direction." 

"Ah is that what you kids are calling it these days? I'm sure you know all about moving your 'brush' up and down."

His cheeks tinged pink but he was used to my inane ways by then and just reached over and drew a big line of paint down the side of my face.

I spluttered in indignation!

By the end of it, his whole left side was covered in white paint along with my white handprint on his face and my shorts were effectively ruined after I sat in the bucket of paint trying to escape his brush. He laughed himself silly at that. And laughed still more as I sulked about it. 

Mum just looked at us, rolled her eyes and told us to leave the clothes out in the mudroom for her to deal with. 

That left us to awkwardly strip down in the mudroom together. It wasn't like he hadn't seen me in my swimsuit over the years, but I could still feel the heat crawling across my chest and up my neck. There's something intimate about getting undressed with someone. 

Not that I'm sure Harry even noticed. He pulled off his paint covered clothes with grim straightforwardness. It wasn't like I wasn’t anything to look at. I glanced down at my chest, and sure I was just wearing a sports bra, but c'mon... give me a little blush there Potter. 

Harry kept coming round that summer. Always helping out Mum and Dad with chores or staying for dinner. We often wound up reading together in the living room or staying up late finishing a movie after my parents begged off to bed. 

Near the end of July, he asked me if I wanted to go do something.

"Do something?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah," he shrugged, "we're always just bumming around here, let's go for a drive or get ice cream or something."

"Or something," I repeated, in a bit of shock. "Yeah, sure, we can go do something Potter. You can buy me ice cream."

He beamed at me. "Cool, yeah. Alright, yeah. That's cool. I'll come by tomorrow after work."

"Sure thing," I said, a bit bemused, a bit confused, "tomorrow."

He nodded and waved goodbye as he closed the backdoor quietly. 

I stood in the kitchen for a while after he left, staring at the closed door.

Had Harry just asked me out??