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100 Ways To Say I Love You: “Wow”
She did it on purpose. Harry is sure of it.
“And then we spent the rest of the day studying different stakeout strategies, and the circumstances under which they work – or don’t – and that was actually pretty fun, but don’t tell Hermione I said that.”
“Strategy’s Ron’s favourite”, Harry told Ginny, to which she responded with a gesture and a face that Harry understood to mean, you don’t say. “Which is fine by me, but if he starts looking forward to homework, I’m filing a complaint with Head Auror Chadwick.”
“It reminds me of chess!”, Ron said defiantly. “That’s why I like it. The logic is the same, it’s about planning your own moves, but also about predicting and responding to your opponent’s moves. Without being predictable yourself. It’s a bit of an art, really.”
“I see what you mean”, Ginny said, turning to Harry. “It’s like as soon as Hermione is over a hundred miles away, she starts haunting him.”
“Oh, shut up, both of you”, Ron told them with flaming ears.
“Yeah, Ginny, look, you’re embarrassing him.” George. The delivery was a little half-hearted, but it was a joke nonetheless, and the other faces around the dinner table softened in response. Ron didn’t even bother with a comeback.
Ginny grinned at Harry. “Sounds like you had a good day, then.”
“Strategy’s useful”, Bill chimed in from the other end of the kitchen table. “But it’s a handful, and it can be overwhelming. I hope Chadwick is going easy on you, it’s still your first year.”
“She’s not”, Harry and Ron said in unison. Ginny snickered.
“You know, considering they need Aurors so desperately, you’d think they’d try to make sure the programme is survivable at all, by, well –“
“People who aren’t Hermione?”, asked Ron.
“Pretty much. You’d think they’d hate us just a little less”, Harry said. “And you’d think they’d actually let us duel for a change instead of loading all this theoretical rubbish on us.”
“I thought they did”, Ginny said with a frown. She had been listening rather intently, Harry noticed. Her chin rested in her hand, her right elbow – the one closer to Harry – propped up on the tabletop, and she‘d barely broken eye contact, least of all to eat.
“Not enough, if you ask Harry”, Ron grinned.
“I just think”, Harry said, “remembering all the characteristics by which to identify a curse may not be my top priority if it’s coming at me at the speed of fucking light.”
“Language”, said Arthur, who was sitting next to Bill, deeply engrossed in his Evening Prophet, though there was a hint of amusement in his voice.
“And some of these tossers in our group could bloody well use the duelling lessons”, Harry muttered under his breath. Ginny seemed to find the snarky remark rather hilarious.
“He’s right about that one”, Ron said, pointing his fork at Harry.
“Some of these idiots wouldn’t last five minutes in an actual duel”, Harry said darkly. “Wonder if the Death Eaters are morons like them.”
Ginny laughed, and Harry turned back to his food, weirdly pleased with himself.
That was the moment he noticed Ginny’s leg against his. He wasn’t sure when exactly it got there, or why it had taken him until now to notice. Just that it was there, under the dinner table, one layer of jeans pressed tightly against another.
When he looked up, she raised an eyebrow, and Harry saw a smirk tug at the corner of her mouth. Just as he opened his mouth to say something, she turned away and said: “Pass the butter, Bill?”
Harry fixated his eyes on his plate. Then, very slowly, when he was sure the two of them had nobody else’s direct attention, he moved his foot around hers and tucked it firmly on the other side.
Ginny opened her mouth, but remained silent.
“So, Ron”, Harry said, looking up with utmost concentration. “Anything new from Hermione?”
Next to him, he could hear Ginny let out a quiet, amused huff, but he was very deliberately not looking at her right now.
“Oh, you know her”, said Ron warmly. “Buried up to her ears in library books.”
Harry laughed, perhaps a little too loudly – was she really rubbing her leg against his right now?
When he reached for the jug of water, he dared to glance at her again. Again, there was that raised eyebrow. Almost playful. Mostly, asking.
Harry leaned back in his chair, with a perfectly casual expression, and carefully lifted his heel off the floor to join in on the slow movements under the tabletop.
Ginny had no visible response to this whatsoever, except that her eyes glazed over.
As the slow rubbing of jeans against jeans continued, two very different parts of Harry were going berserk. One was feeling decidedly dizzy and thought she was positively insane for even starting this in front of her entire family – the other one agreed, but found that he was rather enjoying the whole thing.
Ginny laughed at one of Ron‘s jokes, leaning back in her chair as she did, and let her right hand fall on Harry’s thigh, as though by accident.
Harry nearly choked on his water.
One day, he found himself thinking, that girl is going to be the death of me, and I won‘t even complain about it.
“Are you okay?”, she asked innocently, looking directly at him.
Harry pressed his knee into hers, holding the eye contact. “Spectacular”, he said, with all the nonchalance he could possibly muster.
Ginny’s eyebrow twitched. Her eyes lingered on him far longer than they usually would have, and Harry cast a glance around the dinner table to make sure no one else had picked up on … whatever it was they were doing.
But no one did pay them any attention. Ginny’s hand was still resting on his thigh, her fingers slowly bending and trailing along the fabric of his jeans, their legs were still touching under the tabletop, and Harry’s mind was running full-speed in a direction that had everything to do with the way she was biting her bottom lip.
Which is why, seventeen excruciating minutes later, they’re practically running up to Ginny’s bedroom and slamming her bedroom door behind them. Harry swiftly grabs her face between his hands and crashes his mouth into hers, and together they tumble backwards. Ginny gasps into his mouth when her back touches the wall, where Harry’s body pins her into place.
“I hope you had fun”, he mutters, when they’ve run out of oxygen. “Doing that under the dinner table just to mess with me, really?”
Ginny bursts into laughter. “Yeah, actually. I’m sorry”, she says and wraps her hand around his neck. “That must have been the longest dinner of your life.”
She’s still chuckling when he kisses her again, but not for long. Soon, she is gasping and arching her body into Harry’s, opening her mouth to his tongue.
“You did seem to enjoy yourself”, she mutters into his neck when they’re catching their breath again.
“Maybe I did”, Harry breathes, struggling to maintain composure while Ginny kisses along the side of his neck and his jaw. “Still a bit confused where it came from, though …”
“Just thought it was a spectacular idea”, Ginny grins, pausing when he kisses her again, and slowly pushing her hands under his t-shirt. “And then, well … maybe – the Auror thing is a bit sexy.”
Harry raises his head to look at her, and Ginny laughs at the state of his hair and his face. “It is?”
She rolls her eyes and pulls him into the next kiss. Her tongue finds his mouth with an urgency that turn his legs into jelly: for a second and an eternity nothing is real but Ginny’s fist pulling at his hair and her short fingernails that dig into his back under the t-shirt, and her mouth, her hot, gasping mouth that is kissing him like there is no tomorrow.
“Wow”, Harry gasps, when they break apart. Ginny smirks and buries her face in the crook of his neck to press kisses into his heated skin. Harry feels shivers run down his spine – Ginny’s hands are all over his back, then tugging impatiently at his t-shirt, so Harry pulls it over his head and tosses it away without looking, melting into her arms around his body.
He nimbly reaches for the top button of her green plaid shirt, undoing the buttons with the hands of someone who has unbuttoned this exact shirt several times before.
And Harry is aware of the way Ginny gasps into his mouth. He’s aware of the fact that their t-shirts have ended up on the floor a lot lately. He’s aware that their hips are locked tightly together, and that these past few weeks, Ginny’s hands have been finding their way to his belt and much as his have to hers. He’s aware they haven’t gone further, not yet.
He’s not sure why. He’s not sure he cares. Even though every time their hands start to wander, so does his mind. It does when they’re just kissing. It does in the shower. A lot.
He wonders if Ginny’s does, too.
But then she kisses him again, and it’s a simple kind of bliss that just doesn’t seem to get old: That he’s eighteen, alive, half-naked and snogging his girlfriend against her bedroom wall like it’s the only thing that matters in the world.
And that is more than enough.