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He meets her in a Marks & Spencer of all places. Pansy drags him along to look for something-or-other and he complains the whole way there, making excuses that he wasn’t even listening to. He doesn’t really mind but he has appearances to keep up.
“Couldn’t you have brought Daphne with you?” he asks her.
“Daphne’s busy. Besides, don’t act like you don’t want to be here. We all know you like this kind of stuff, Blaise.” She tosses her sleek hair and strides away from him, the heels of her shoes clicking loudly with each step.
He is perusing a display of flower vases, trying to decide if the stainless steel ones are modern-chic or just tacky when a force roughly equal to that of an angry rhinoceros collides with him. He turns to see a tall, thin girl glaring angrily up at him. She doesn’t look like she is nearly capable of hitting anything as hard as she had just hit him and he is a bit impressed that she did. She wears scuffed Converse, leggings and an oversized sweatshirt that reads, bizarrely, “Hogwarts”. Her vibrant orange hair is pulled to the top of her head in something that vaguely resembles a topknot, although at least half of her hair had escaped its confines. It doesn’t look like one of those up-dos girls like that was messy in a deliberate way but rather like she actually couldn’t be bothered to do anything with her hair when she woke up that morning. She is messy in a way that screams self-confidence, unlike Pansy, who has worn high heels every day since she was eleven years old and whose self-confidence is only firmly in place underneath an immaculate mask of makeup.
“You should watch where you’re going, you know,” he tells her, his face deliberately blank and his voice calm. She doesn’t need to know that she has affected him.
“Well maybe if you weren’t standing in the middle of the aisle, I wouldn’t have ran into you!” she exclaims, folding her arms over her chest and adjusting her stance. She looks as if she is ready to box him.
“That doesn’t change the fact that if you had watched where you were going, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.” He isn’t sure if he is entirely displeased with this situation.
“It’s common courtesy to move out of the way when someone’s coming at you,” she says smartly. He notices that the tips of her ears are tinged with pink.
“I hardly expected a girl with the grace and foresight of a drunken elephant to be running around here.”
She tenses up in a confrontational sort of way and he wonders if she really is going to box him. “A drunken elephant?! Excuse me, Mr-“
He doesn’t have the pleasure of hearing whatever insult she had planned on telling him because at that moment they are interrupted by a darker girl with impossibly large unruly hair that looks big enough to have its own address. She steps between Blaise and the redhead in a clear attempt to terminate this disagreement.
“Gin, come on, we’re supposed to be at the restaurant soon,” she tells the angry girl, grabbing her arm and tugging her away.
“But-“
“Let’s go, Gin.” She drags her away, shooting Blaise an apologetic glance over her shoulder before they turn the corner and disappear from sight.
He turns around and sees Pansy standing behind him, her impeccable fingernails tapping away at her phone. She doesn’t look up when she speaks.
“She was cute.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Her friend’s hair was atrocious.”
A week later, he is at the university library with Draco, reading an article in the newspaper about the men’s fashion industry. He has just noticed Draco glancing at something for what must have been the hundredth time in the last five minutes so he sets down his paper and follows Draco’s gaze.
He is looking at the girl with the hair from the home goods store. Her large mane is pulled onto the top of her head and yet is still looks as if another person could fit into it. She sits with two other girls at a table covered with notebooks and papers and food wrappers. One of them is a cute dark-haired girl who is somehow managing to pull off an atrocious fringe and the other is her. She is facing away from him but he knows it is her instinctively, knows by the vibrant orange hair streaming down the back of the chair, knows by the large sweatshirt she wears, knows by the casual manner in which she lounges, her long legs propped up in the seat next to her as if she is at home instead of a public library.
He jerks his gaze away from her and clears his throat. “Are you looking at something?” he asks Draco, his voice tinted with amusement.
Draco flushes, the pink showing up very clearly against the pale skin of his cheeks. “I- no- er, I have to go, I have- somewhere- to be.” He stands up very quickly and shoves all of his books into his bag before practically running away.
Blaise turns to take one more look at the source of his friend’s embarrassment. She is watching Draco walk away and when he catches her eye, he raises a single eyebrow. She ducks her head quickly. He grins to himself and rises, grabbing his paper and following after Draco.
The next night Draco drags him to a house party. It is a bit more lower-class than the parties he generally goes to but the girls at this type of party generally have a full grasp of what the term “one night stand” meant so he isn’t too put out.
Draco makes him wait for two hours after he told Blaise to get there before they arrive, something about not wanting to look like he cares, so by the time they get there the house is packed. He walks with Draco through the crowded halls to the kitchen to get something to drink. The house is teeming with enthusiastically careless students, girls in skintight skirts and already intoxicated athletes. It smells of alcohol and sweat, the unintelligible music thudding loudly through the speakers.
He leaves Draco as soon as he gets his drink and wanders into the front room, scanning for any attractive enough girls that catch his fancy. A small blonde with carefully messy curls and glittery eyeshadow and her friend whose dark hair is woven into an intricate braid come up to him and start chattering away. They’re both good-looking enough, the friend much more so than the blonde, so he doesn’t turn them away but he doesn’t really pay attention to them either.
The blonde is trying to feel up his biceps when he catches a flash of bright orange in the corner of his eye. He turns and there she is, the girl from the Marks & Spencer, walking into the room with a short blond boy. She’s wearing a sinfully short black dress and black heels that make her ridiculously long freckled legs impossible to ignore. He doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed before just how muscular she is, her legs and arms thin but toned. He understands then why she was able to collide with him with such force. Her flaming red hair is pulled into the half-ponytail look that is so popular and when she moves her head, it catches the low lights and she’s momentarily wreathed in fire.
Sharp fingernails dig into his arm and he turns back to see the two girls looking at him, the blonde smiling flirtatiously and the darker one looking annoyed.
“Anyway, I was saying-“
He shrugs his arm out of his grip and cuts her off. “I don’t care. Goodbye.”
She looks stunned but he truly doesn’t care. He turns around to find the red-head and sees that she is gone so he slips through the crowd in an effort to find her. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering when he just had two perfectly willing girls at his fingertips but he wants to talk to her and he’s used to getting what he wants.
He finds her in another room, chatting with another blond boy, this one tall and thin and altogether unpleasant looking. He can tell by her expression that she feels the same way. He has the sudden urge to help her, something that does not occur often. So he does.
He crosses over to her and slides his hand around her waist. It is firm and warm, the fabric of her dress smooth against his fingers. With those shoes on, she’s only a couple inches shorter than his own 6’2 and he realizes that he quite likes that.
“There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you. I was beginning to think that you’d left me,” he tells her, fixing the unpleasant boy with an unimpressed look.
She looks up as soon as he touches her but to her credit she doesn’t betray any surprise. This close to her, he can see that she’s wearing smudgy eyeliner and light-colored lip gloss. He wonders what it tastes like.
“Oh, Smith, this is-“
He cuts her off before she can hesitate. “Blaise, her boyfriend. Now shoo. I want to talk to her alone.”
Smith gapes at him like a particularly unattractive fish. “Boyfriend? I thought-“
She cuts him off. “You thought wrong. Have a pleasant evening!” With that, she whirls around and pulls Blaise away.
When they’re out of the room, she stops and faces him. “Thanks for that. I don’t know how, but he finds me at every single party I go to. I’m Ginny, by the way.”
“Blaise. You don’t plan on bowling me over and then yelling at me, do you?” he remarks drily.
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, that was a one-time opportunity. Unless you want me too?”
He chuckles. “Hardly. I can’t say that it was an opportunity that I particularly enjoyed.”
She grins and something flutters inside him. It’s an unfamiliar sensation but not altogether unpleasant.
“I don’t think it was really that bad,” she says and winks.
He agrees.
“Do I get an apology for the harm you inflicted upon my person?”
“No, it’s your own fault. You were in the way. Anyway, you called me a drunken elephant.” She is frowning but her eyes are sparkling.
“No, I said you had the grace of a drunken elephant. There’s a difference. Besides, most people go around people who are standing in their path.”
She smirks. “Most people are too scared to stand up for themselves then.”
“Stand up for themselves? This is hardly a matter of honor.”
She looks at him pityingly. “Oh Blaise, everything is a matter of honor.”
They end up making out in the bathroom like a couple of year nines. She is in the middle of a perfect impression of Smith’s fish face that has him doubled over laughing when he feels the overwhelming desire to kiss her. She responds to him right away, dragging him by the wrists into the nearest room.
They only separate when the banging on the door becomes too loud to ignore. Her face is flushed and her lips are swollen and her hair is messy but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She pulls out her phone and checks it, telling him that she should probably get going anyway before opening the door and coming face-to-face with an irritated Smith.
She bursts out laughing and slips out of the room. “I’ll see you later!” she calls over her shoulder, amusement tinging her voice.
Smith is staring at Blaise, looking both incredibly uncomfortable and slightly jealous. Blaise feels a twinge of satisfaction that it was him that Ginny wanted to make out with, not anyone else.
“Smith,” he nods, before pushing past him and going to find Draco.
The next time he sees her, he is walking across campus with Theo and she is in a football field, passing a ball around with some friends. She’s wearing another one of her overlarge sweatshirts and short shorts, her long hair tied back into a wildly swinging ponytail. It’s mesmerizing to look at.
Theo notices him watching and calls out to her. “Oi, Ginger! C’mere.”
He should be annoyed but she jogs over immediately and flashes him a wide smile. She’s sweating but it only makes her look more attractive.
“Hey Blaise! How are you? I can’t talk for long, practice is about to start. You should come to our match on Thursday! It’s going to be a good one.”
He realizes now why she is so fit and wonders briefly if she is talented at other athletic pursuits. Based on their encounter at the party, she is.
One of the girls on the field calls her name and she turns to see what the girl wants. It’s the small girl from the library, waving her back over. “Oh, I’ve got to go! Come to the match.” She starts to run away but she only makes it a few feet before she stops and calls back to him, “Oh, if your friend calls me ‘Ginger’ again, I’m going to kick him in the bollocks. See you Thursday!”
Blaise goes to the Thursday match and then the next one and the next one and the next one. She plays center forward and she is remarkable, a blur of orange hair on the field, aggressive and fast and altogether talented. Draco starts joining him, partially because Draco loves football and partially because her bushy-haired friend attends every match too. Her name is Hermione and she hates football more than Blaise hates his current stepfather but she never misses a match out of loyalty to Ginny.
Match attendance leads to after-match meals and after-meal movies and making out at the steps of her dorm and study dates in the library and spending nearly all of their time together. He gets to know her friends, an eclectic bunch of misfits who share her baffling beliefs about honor and bravery. She meets his friends and develops a strange (and slightly terrifying, although he would never admit it) friendship with Pansy based on their mutual love of flirting.
He learns more about her than he ever could have hoped. He learns that she watches every Arsenal match religiously, always in her worn Henry jersey and her lucky knee socks. He learns that she comes from a large, close-knit family that loves her fiercely and that her mother knits the sweaters that she wears every day in the winter and that she picked up a propensity for mischief from her twin older brothers. He learns that she can imitate almost anyone she chooses to and she is an amazing liar but she only lies to people she doesn’t care for or know. He learns that she loves every animal she comes across and she hates bullies and would live off of fish and chips if she could. He learns that she pours passion into every single thing she does.
She becomes a part of his life and he becomes a part of hers. He invites her to his family house on the Amalfi coast and she invites him to her architecturally unsound jumble of a home in Devon. He finds her underwear in his drawers and her shampoo in his shower. She gives out her affection easily and he always accepts it, always wants it. He becomes more open, friendlier and less sarcastic, a side effect of spending so much time with her loud and rambunctious family. He laughs real laughs more than he ever has in his life.
For his birthday, he receives a handmade sweater from her mother and a stainless steel vase with a single rose from her. They are happy together.