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On love and fresh water

Summary:

Ginny doesn't want to date Gabrielle Delacour.

Notes:

This work is fulfilling a wish for "lenapinewoods"!

The title comes from the French idiom, "vivre d’amour et d’eau fraiche", which pretty much means, "to live on love alone", but it can be literally translated into "to live on love and fresh water".

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Ginny doesn't want to date Gabrielle Delacour.

It's not a problem with Gabrielle herself - Ginny has met her before, knows that she's as brave and clever and beautiful as her older sister, but without all of her (many) flaws. The problem is, Bill is married to Fleur. Ginny has spent the last eighteen years of her life under her brothers' shadows, not because they're so great, necessarily, but because she has a lot of brothers. It is quite a large shadow to avoid, that's all.

Dating a French, silvery-blond woman with Veela blood? Bill has done that. And Ginny is not bitter enough to hold herself back from taking what she wants only because one of her brothers has done so before, but she's definitely bitter enough to avoid making an unnecessary effort to walk right into something like that.

So she goes to the date, and sits with Gabrielle, and they share French cuisine (Gabrielle was missing home, and Ginny is not a monster) and they talk all night, and Ginny tells her that she doesn't want to date her, can't. Gabrielle is incredibly understanding. And because she is also incredibly intelligent, she points out that her sister and Ginny's own brother are not likely to let it be that easily.

What Ginny definitely wasn't expecting: an offer to pretend to date for a while, so they're both left well and truly alone, and stage a break-up fight uncomfortable enough to make Bill and Fleur swear off matchmaking for the rest of their lives. It's in that moment in which Ginny's suspicious are confirmed, the entirety of the Delacour family, had they gone to Hogwarts, would've been placed straight into Slytherin.

She's alright with that.

They date for a week and everything is perfect. They date for a month and everything is- still perfect, and Bill and Fleur have definitely left them be by now, more interested in actually raising their children, but Ginny refuses to ask Gabrielle to break up (fake break up), because she doesn't trust those two not to get right back to it if their matchmaking fails miserably so soon.

They've been dating for four months, and Ginny is in the middle of an important Quidditch game and she's supposed to be playing, but a glimmer of light catches her eye, and she turns her head and there she is, Gabrielle (easy to spot because of her hair, which Ginny is absolutely not jealous of), sitting in the stands among the sweaty, screaming spectators, like she's been doing for the past few months.

She's grinning. And then their eyes meet, and Gabrielle waves at her, the sweetest look in her face, and it hits Ginny like a Bludger (although thankfully, no actual Bludgers are thrown her way).

She's in love with Gabrielle Delacour.

And she's not actually dating her. Yet.

So the game ends and Ginny ignores the score, for the first and probably last time in her life, to run to the stands with probably more dramatism than the situation deserves, but- she's a professional Quidditch player, she can do whatever she wants. She's already cool.

Gabrielle takes Ginny's hands as soon as she's close enough to, beaming, and she opens her mouth (perfect, beautiful mouth Ginny now wants to kiss, really, really badly), but Ginny's faster, as usual.

"It's not fake anymore," she hisses, gripping Gabrielle's hands for dear life. "It's not."

And Gabrielle blinks, once, twice, and perfect understanding spreads across her face.

"Ah," she says, smiling again. "No. Not for me, either."

They quietly transition from fake dating into real dating, and it's as easy as everything always is with Gabrielle.

They tell no one.

Until the day of their wedding, when Gabrielle cheerfully recounts the whole story, ignoring Ginny's attempts to hush her. Bill laughs so hard he nearly chokes to death.

Ginny throws a sausage roll at his face, and then turns to kiss her wife.

Notes:

I hadn't ever even considered this pairing before, but I saw it mentioned in the rarepair-shorts community and went *thinking emoji*, basically. Also, it's femslash, so <3

This was a fantastic idea, actually. Let's all go fill rarepair wishes! It's clearly a win-win.