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Tony Stark waved his hands in the air, causing the three-dee projection to wobble alarmingly. It was approximately a foot and a half, both wide and long, and varied from an inch to six inches deep on the surface, which resembled nothing so much as one of those pin games where you press your hand into one side and get an imprint of it on the other.
“You see?” he asked the redheaded woman standing a little too close. She stared at him, a little blankly, and he registered the blown pupils and the reddened cheeks. He took a half step back. This reaction he was used to from faceless girls at parties and bars, from awards presenters and even journalists, but with professional consultants, he was used to a little more subtlety. Especially the ones who were married, he added, remembering that she had introduced herself as Mrs. Wright.
“Not really,” she said, unsurprisingly. “Can you go through it again?”
“It’s really quite simple,” he said irritably. “JARVIS, on.”
The pins began to move up and down at random, causing a rippling effect in the hologram.
“This is us, moving and talking, going shopping, having this conversation. JARVIS, off.”
The pins froze.
“This is us when time is stopped. Time is the space in which we’re doing all of this. If time was stopped, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, we’d be frozen solid and wouldn’t even know it. Physically, it isn’t possible. That’s why something more complicated than a basic timestop is going on.” The woman’s staring was beginning to unnerve him. “As anyone with basic common sense should know.”
The woman took a step back as though slapped. “I’ve been telling my boss that we have a form of rapid, widespread, involuntary time travel occurring, not merely stopped time, but he said to ask you, so here I am, asking you. There’s no need to be rude about it.”
Tony Stark felt the urge to point out that the woman had been acting like a hormone-addled idiot only seconds before, but had the vague idea that this line of discussion wouldn’t get him anywhere. He made a face at her, tried several times to come up with something both polite and sense-making to say, and gave up and returned to his first thought. The world was going to hell anyway, what did it matter if he yelled at one of SHIELD’s employees? If any of JARVIS’s calculations made sense, nobody would remember it anyway. He didn’t even think this woman used to work for SHIELD, but she had enough official documents to grant her access to his holos as he tried to explain, ostensibly to Nick Fury, that the simplest explanation simply wasn’t possible.
He drew breath to make the argument about hormone-addled idiots, and pointed a finger in her face.
She opened her mouth, engulfed the finger, and bit it clean off.
Tony Stark howled in shock, pain, anger, and a good amount of sheer ‘wtf’.
Ginny Weasley swore a blue streak, withdrew her wand, and tried to remember what Healing spells she’d learned from playing Quidditch. She tried a few, but either she was getting the incantation wrong, or there was more to those particular spells, like for the Patronus. She continued swearing, snatched Stark and severed finger, and turned on the spot.
“Harry!” she bellowed at the front door. “Open up!” Harry did, a moment later, and let his mouth fall open. She supposed they did make a sight—her dressed as a Muggle, mouth bloodstained, holding onto a struggling, bleeding billionaire who hadn’t had the decency to pass out (though, then again, she did suppose he’d survived worse in Afghanistan) and holding a severed finger.
“Let me in, you twit, and help me unbreak the Statute of Secrecy!”
Harry stood back and let Ginny manhandle Stark over the doorway.
“Why didn’t you use an Incarcerous?” She glared at him, not having thought of that, and passed him the finger. He made a face and took it delicately, and she felt a perverse sense of revenge. (The Sorting Hat also considered putting Ginny Weasley in Slytherin. The Hat is never given the credit it deserves. It knew all of Ginny’s family were in Gryffindor, and how badly she’d be ostracized by both them and her fellow Slytherins, just as it knew Padma and Parvati Patil would get more out of being placed where they belonged than out of being together.)
“Stun him for me?” said Harry. She did. Harry caught Stark and lowered him gently to the ground, then, concentrating hard, reattached his finger. “What in Merlin’s name happened?” he asked her, adding Cleaning Charms for the blood.
“Stuck his finger in my face,” she muttered. “Still haven’t lost my Death Eater reflexes.” She recalled what exactly she’d done to get a finger in her face, and hoped her blush blended in with her flush of exertion. The Weasleys hate being ginger, sometimes.
“Right,” said Harry, tossing her a strange look. “Well, I’ll just Obliviate him; do you want me to replace his memories or just erase them?”
“I’ll do it, just needed your Auror mediwizard skills,” said Ginny, having suffered enough at the hands of her husband regarding her Charms skills today. Harry helped her haul Stark over one shoulder, and waved at her as she Disapparated.
Back in the lab, Ginny laid Stark down on the floor and prepared to Modify his memory and reverse the Stunner, in that order, but paused. Reversed the Stunner, first. Tony Stark blinked, seemed to register his surroundings, and glared at her before opening his mouth, presumably to continue his tirade.
That was when Ginny Potter kissed him, full on the mouth. Tony responded as if by reflex, for a beautiful, long second, before twisting away, and Ginny, not allowing him time to react, raised her wand and erased his memory.
“Mr. Stark!” she exclaimed. “Are you quite all right? You just collapsed! When was the last time you had something to eat?”
This reference to something Ginny knew perfectly well was quite true about Tony Stark, i.e. his propensity for forgetting to eat, planted the seed of doubt that makes for the most successful Memory Modifications.
“I have no idea,” he murmured, sitting up slowly. “JARVIS, have a sandwich delivered.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the AI.
“I think I’d better go,” said Ginny. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes, fine. JARVIS will call an ambulance if I pass out again. Have a good day, Mrs. Wright. Tell Fury I said hello.”
Since Ginny did not, actually, work for SHIELD, unless SHIELD was what the American Ministry of Magic called itself when dealing with Muggles, and thus was not planning on seeing Nick Fury anytime soon, she merely smiled.
Stark smiled back, a tired smile, not his usual paparazzi-pleasing or woman-enticing smile. Ginny collected her frazzled nerves and just managed to remember to walk out the door instead of Disapparating in front of her client.
“I kissed him,” she admitted to Harry that night in their apartment. “I’m sorry, I know I promised to ask permission. I feel like such a nymphomaniac.”
“You’re not a nymphomaniac, you’re just an impulsive woman with a high sex drive, and I love you anyway,” said Harry, smiling and pressing a kiss to her lips. He turned serious. “I know it isn’t easy, Gin. I knew from the day I figured it out that kissing and cuddling might not be enough for you, someday.”
“And I told you that sex isn’t worth giving you up, when I’m in love with you and have been for as long as I can remember,” said Ginny, glaring a little.
“And that’s why we agreed that you could look elsewhere as long as you asked first,” said Harry, and frowned at her. “Why are we rehashing what we already know? I swear we have this conversation once a year. Point is, I’m not mad, and if you want Tony Stark, you can have him.”
She glared harder. He sighed.
“Haven’t you been stubborn long enough? The only thing standing between you and getting what I know you desperately want is you! Shag Stark. I give you my blessing. Just come home afterwards.”
He kissed her firmly, and picked up the newspaper as though to say the discussion was over.
Ginny sighed and decided to go shopping, which had long been her method of stress release.
Ginny, in all her frazzlement, had forgotten an extremely important detail. That detail was JARVIS. As soon as she left the room, Tony had ordered his AI to describe exactly what had happened from the last point he, Tony, remembered. As JARVIS did so, Tony’s expression became more and more shocked. By the time JARVIS had finished, Tony was also quite confused. What, exactly, had transpired between the time Mrs. Wright (if that was her name) had made off with him and the time she had brought him back? His finger was repaired. Was that all, or had something more sinister occurred? He examined his hand. It was a very nice job, for aliens (or whatever), he had to admit. It was most unnerving that he couldn’t actually remember losing the finger.
“Fury will want to know about this,” he decided, even though his actual thought process went something more along the lines of “Fury will have any records of this woman’s employment and access to security camera footage nationwide,” and he called up the latest suit and prepared to make a surprise visit to SHIELD.
Six hours later, he had determined that no Bonnie Wright worked for SHIELD, and that a woman matching JARVIS’s security footage had turned up on the security footage of a local department store. He was currently following her home by air.
Ginny, laden down with shopping bags, was preparing to enter her apartment building when the red metal figure touched down in front of her. She yelled with fright and slid a hand inside her robe, fingers closing comfortingly around her wand.
“Now, whatever you did to my memory, Mrs. Wright, don’t even think about doing it again,” said the suit in a tinny voice. “JARVIS told me everything, and he’s watching me right now, so whatever you do to me, you’ll just be in this same position when he tells me everything again.” (It occurred to Tony around this point that the mysterious Mrs. Wright might be perfectly capable of erasing his entire memory, including that of having built JARVIS, and leaving him on a desert island somewhere to wander around an amnesiac for the rest of his days. He decided mentioning this would be a very bad idea, and hoped she wouldn’t think of it. Luckily for him, Ginny either didn’t think of it, or is not enough of a Slytherin to do it. Or both. She isn’t telling.)
Ginny swore, long and creatively. Tony was mildly impressed.
“Well,” said Ginny finally, “if JARVIS told you everything, you know what happened. So you’re wondering how it happened. I’ll tell you if you come inside where everyone can’t hear us and promise not to tell anyone.”
Tony thought for a second, and then followed the diminutive redhead inside the flat and up the elevator. Once she’d shut the apartment door behind him, she threw the deadbolt and, for good measure, pulled out a wand and muttered something. The door made an ominous locking noise. She muttered a few more things, that had no effect as far as he could see, but which he extrapolated were probably to keep out eavesdroppers.
“Right,” said not-Mrs. Wright, crossing her arms without putting the wand away. “I could get in a lot of trouble for this, as in, prison time, so listen carefully. I’m a witch. Witches and wizards live all around the world, usually in secrecy from non-magic folk. Generally, we just want to be left alone, so only those who absolutely need to know about us do. I have more power in my little finger than you do in that entire workshop, but all I want to know is what’s gone wrong with time, and my superiors sent me on a wild-goose chase to rule out the basics, starting with asking the experts. That’s you. You unfortunately triggered both my PTSD reflexes, thus the biting, and, well. Not important. I’m going to put a spell on you now to keep you from repeating any of this, unless you have any questions? Legitimate questions,” she rephrased, “I’m not going to answer if you ask me if I can turn people into frogs.”
Tony put up his faceplate, looked at her thoughtfully, and appeared to consider his options carefully.
“Four or five questions,” he said. “depending on your answers. First: so it’s not you people causing all this trouble, any idea what is?”
He gestured to the city around them, and, indeed, the universe.
“Merlin, no, we’re just as confused as you are. But we’re working on it.”
“Second, I’m guessing magic and technology don’t mix, or you’d have wiped JARVIS’s film? I’ve had much ordinarier criminals try that.”
“No, they don’t,” she admitted. “I’d never even seen a computer before this year. Then my job moved me here and I had to learn all sorts of Muggle stuff—that’s non-magic.”
“Third, then you don’t have the computing power of my tech, no matter what you can do. So why don’t we join forces, technology and magic? We might be able to make something of it.”
She considered that for a long minute.
“Let me see if I can pull that off without telling my superiors that I told you this, or of telling them without getting thrown in prison. I’ll get back to you. The code word for magic over Muggle communication lines is Torchwood, look for that.”
“Fourth,” and his voice softened, “PTSD?”
“War,” she answered shortly. He nodded and didn’t ask for more.
“Fifth.” He blinked and took a breath. “Why did you kiss me?”
She reddened and looked away.
“Because I have a libido off the charts, and I’m drawn to you really fucking strongly, even for me.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he muttered.
“I’m not that shallow!” she said, hearing him. “Yes, you’re hot, you’re insanely hot, but you’re also brilliant, and intense, and you’ve been through hell and back, so you know what it’s like.” A breeze that had no source whipped through her hair.
Tony Stark looked at this woman, this brave, strong woman (who had told him far more than he deserved, and revealed so much more than she’d probably banked on about herself) with the darkness in her eyes and, damn, she was gorgeous (well, he’d always had a thing for redheads), and he stood up and told the suit to collapse into the suitcase and crossed to her and slid his hands around her waist. She closed her eyes and let out a soft whimper, as though something had broken inside her, and she reached up and kissed him.
They broke apart when Tony sat down on the couch, having brought Ginny along without her noticing.
“So what’s your real name? I know it isn’t Mrs. Wright,” he asked. She laughed.
“No, it’s Mrs. Potter. Ginny Potter.” She leaned back in, but he frowned.
“Still ‘Mrs’? You’re not married?”
Ginny sighed and resettled on the couch, resigning herself to an explanation.
“Yes, I’m married, and I have an open relationship with my husband. So he keeps telling me. I haven’t had occasion to test it out before.” She ignored the little voice in the back of her head telling her she’d had plenty of ‘occasions’, all of which she’d ignored.
“I don’t believe you,” said Tony flatly. “Why would he agree to that?”
“Because he’s asexual,” replied Ginny. “And I’m not. And he doesn’t want to trap me into a sexless relationship.”
“Does that even exist?” Tony started to say, and Ginny slapped him. Hard.
“You don’t get to tell a person that what they feel isn’t real,” she said, holding eye contact. “He tells me he doesn’t feel lust, never has, not for anyone, and I believe him. He says he’s mentally and emotionally attracted to me, that he loves me, even, and I believe him. I even understand, because I’m mentally and emotionally attracted to him, too, and I love him, too. And I haven’t had sex since I was sixteen, and I miss it, and he understands that. And I remember why I haven’t taken him up on it yet,” she finished, withdrawing her wand and pointing it at him. She whispered a certain spell under her breath, and Tony blinked. “You can’t tell anyone, now,” she said. “It’s time for you to go. I’ll be in contact about the world falling to pieces.”
Tony nodded and got up. Ginny undid the spells on the door, and he left, nodding at her in goodbye. She closed it behind him, and curled up on the sofa.
That was where Harry found her, twenty minutes later.
“I was at Angel Investigations and saw Iron Man taking off from all the way over there. Couldn’t tell, was he here?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Did you..”
“No.”
“Didn’t he want to?”
“I didn’t want to,” she said, meeting his eyes. She opened her arms, and he went to her, pulling her into his lap and pressing kisses to her forehead. “I’m yours. Everything of me is yours. You don’t want this part of me, that doesn’t mean someone else gets to have it, that someone else gets one of the most intimate parts of me. It would be different if, say, you hated Celestina Warbeck, and I hung out with people who blared her so I could listen to her, but I did sex casually when I was with Dean, and I don’t like it that way. It’s too intimate a part of me to just give it to someone else.”
Harry sighed.
“I don’t know what to do, then. Unless…you’re not asking for a divorce, are you? Because I would do that for you, Ginny, if you needed to find someone else. Someone you could give your whole self to.”
“No!” She sat upright in his arms and kissed him firmly, as though that erased all doubts. “Just hold me. Hold me until it goes away.”
He gave her an odd look. “That sounds counterproductive.”
“I don’t fantasize about jumping you anymore,” she told him, flushing scarlet but holding eye contact. "I did when we were first dating, both firsts, but when I really understood who you are, it went away.”
“Am I not attractive because—” he began, and she cut him off hastily.
“Because to fantasize about having sex with you is to fantasize that you changed your mind about your sexual orientation for me,” she said. “Or to fantasize that you were doing it without any pleasure at all, just for my sake. Both are a total turnoff.”
He gave her the smile that told her he didn’t know quite what to do with her, which morphed into the smile that said, ‘I love you, and I have no idea how I got this lucky.’ Finally, he grinned mischievously and said, “You mean you have turnoffs?” She whacked him on the back of the head, understanding that he accepted her explanation, and kissed him.
“Now, I’m going to curl up in your lap and fall asleep,” she said, “because I’ve had a long day.”
“Yes, dear,” said Harry.