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After several dances, Hermione finally pulled away laughing. "Seriously, Ron," she said. "I can't dance anymore. My feet are killing me."
Ron raised his eyebrows and let her arms slip away, his touch lingering. "That's because you're wearing shoes you aren't used to," he said sensibly.
Hermione flushed, self-consciously touching her hair. "It's a wedding. I couldn't exactly wear my usual trainers."
They moved towards the edge of the dance floor so they wouldn't get in the way of others still dancing. "Okay," said Ron. "You go find Harry, and I'll get us some Butterbeers, yeah?"
Hermione beamed at him, her brown eyes bright and her cheeks pink. "Yeah," she said and disappeared into the crowd while Ron headed in the opposite direction for the bar.
It was growing darker, the floating lanterns lit, casting gilded shadows beneath the canopy. Moths were fluttering against the filigree frames, attracted by the light. The music and increasingly drunken voices mingled into a hectic murmur. The bar was behind a group of Ron's and Fleur's relatives, talking incomprehensibly to each other in a mixture of bad English and even worse French. Ron wove past them, ducked beneath someone's impassionedly waving arm — then stopped without thought as he saw Ginny. She was alone, holding a Butterbeer and looking carefully neutral — which usually meant she was feeling unhappy.
Ron hesitated before he told himself he was being stupid. It was just his little sister.
"Hey," he said, leaning on the bar and grabbing three Butterbeers. "Tired?"
Ginny looked up at him. Her hair was braided in one of those complicated coiffures that girls liked, wisps of it escaping after several hours and dances. Ron pretended he didn't feel the itch to brush them behind her ears. Ginny shrugged and looked away. "I guess," she said.
She watched the crowd, a faraway look in her eyes. "Did you have fun? Dancing with Hermione," she asked in that same dispassionate way she used to talk about Lavender.
Ron could feel his ears heat. "Ah. Yeah. It was — fine."
He hadn't been sure about asking Hermione to dance, but then Krum had sat at their table, and he'd just wanted to get her away from him.
"You've come a long way from the Yule Ball, Ronald Weasley," Ginny said with feigned solemnity.
"Well, yeah," said Ron, humouring her with a shrug. "You didn't do so bad yourself. You didn't have Neville stepping on your toes this time."
Ginny laughed, glancing up at him from the corners of her eyes. There was a lull, filled with music and ambient chatter from the crowd. Ron should go, but instead he said, "Did Harry—" because sometimes he couldn't help but put his foot directly into his mouth. He didn't finish the question, his mouth snapping shut.
The look in Ginny's eyes went hard. Her mouth thinned, her jaw clenched subtly. Ron tried not to notice how the gilded light looked on her red hair, her fair skin. "Did Harry what?" she said. "Ask me to dance?" When Ron didn't answer, she went on, "Not after what you pulled on his birthday."
Ron didn't — It had felt like fire ants beneath his skin, the thought of them being alone in Ginny's room. Ron hadn't been to her room in years. He tried not to think about the night they'd gone to get Harry from his Muggle relatives' house. How he'd stopped by the threshold of her room just to ask her how she was feeling. The way Ginny had looked up at him wistfully with her familiar brown eyes. Ron tried not to think about a lot of things. Not that anyone expected him to, anyway.
And then Ginny seemed to relent and added, "Well, it's not like Harry dances anyway." Her mouth quirked up in a small secret grin, and Ron tried not to think about how Hermione's eyes were brown too, and maybe that was why he went a bit mad and blurted out, "Want to dance?"
It wasn't weird. The band was playing some fast-paced music. And just a few hours ago, Fred and George had been slow dancing as a lark while reciting sappy lines at each other, for gods' sake.
It wasn't weird.
But the way Ginny blushed in surprise and flicked a hesitant, furtive glance at the crowd was making it a little weird.
"I—" she said, her expression torn and conflicted and longing — and then the wedding came to a screeching halt as a lynx patronus appeared in the middle of the dancers.
"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming."