Go skinny-dipping. Soak up the sun.
Ginny splashed her feet in the small brook that ran through the woods by the Burrow, lost in deep thought. The early summer sun beat down upon her, seeping into her damp hair, drying the water on her skin. Overhead, tree branches waved in the wind, shifting back and forth to reveal a cloudless sky between their cheerful green leaves.
She still didn’t know what to make of what had happened between her and Draco last night. He never showed up for dinner; later, Ron said that he had stalked through the garden and Disapparated at the gate, leaving without a word to anyone. Too tired and confused to go home, Ginny had spent the night at the Burrow and then called in sick the next morning, skipping her first Harpies’ practice in ages. It was a golden and sun-drenched day, perfect for skinny-dipping, and before long Ginny had found her feet wandering through the trees to the brook where she had first learned to swim.
The water babbled pleasantly as it rushed passed, momentarily pausing to pool around her ankles before continuing downstream. Ginny let her feet bob in its current. The day was warm, the scenery peaceful – but Ginny was anything but relaxed. The words that Draco had said last night hung heavily around her in the forest air like oil on water, refusing to mix or meld or disappear.
She tipped her head back, relishing the brush of patterned sunlight across her bare skin. The seed of doubt Draco had planted with his words had erupted into a tree overnight, casting a shadow over her every thought.
Maybe he was right about the way that Harry treated her, Ginny mused darkly, flicking droplets of water into the air with her toes. Things had been unspeakably awkward between the two of them since the breakup, and up to this point he had brushed off all attempts she made to reconcile or establish some sort of friendship like what they had had before her fifth year. But deep down, Ginny wondered whether Harry ignored her because he was simply that much of a jerk, or if maybe, just maybe, he ignored her because he could somehow sense that she in fact wasn’t completely over him, and therefore would not be able to be just his friend.
Of course, Ginny thought gloomily as she threw a hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sun’s rays, that meant Harry was enough of a pompous arse to assume that she couldn’t get over such a fine male specimen as himself. Well, he had always been somewhat ego-centric, but then again, she was best friends with Draco, sister to Ron and Percy – arrogant blokes seemed inevitable in her life. Unless Harry actually wasn’t indulging in his bigheadedness and it was simply just that obvious to him and everyone else that she was somewhat still hung up on him. Draco’s voice seemed to echo across the sunlit air – you are clearly not over him, everyone can see that…
With a groan of frustration, Ginny flipped herself over onto a warm boulder, feeling the roughness of the rock rub against her shoulder blades. “Why does all of this have to be so difficult?” she muttered to herself. It had been two years, and fine - all right, she could say it, at least to herself. She still wasn’t able to completely let go of Harry. How pathetic was that? He had undoubtedly been able to move on – he was getting married soon, for Merlin’s sake – and here she was, sunbathing on a rock and feeling like crap because she still wished that she was the one he was getting married to.
Well, no, not exactly. Ginny shook her head, trying to unscramble her thoughts. The actual person of Harry Potter – well, Ginny was almost positive she could say that she didn’t need him anymore. He was sweet, yes, and reckless and stubborn and selfless and brave – but in the end, he was just another boy. Someone she hadn’t talked to in two years, someone who Ginny doubted even knew her anymore. She had changed so much since they had been together – a fact, she thought grudgingly, mostly due to her effervescent friendship with Draco – and she was sure he had too. Despite their long and shared history, it seemed that they were nearly worlds apart now.
No, Harry Potter himself was not the problem. There was still some truth in the words Ginny had uttered over and over like some sort of enchantment – and she knew, despite whatever she may have wanted in the past, that Harry wasn’t right for her. What they had together, it was predictable, ordinary. Boring, even. Again, Draco’s words from last night rang out amid the bubbling water and birdsong – unremarkable. Completely unremarkable.
It was just everything else that had come attached to the name Harry Potter. It was everything that he had meant to her – the promises and the security and the future she had set her heart on when she was ten years old. How could she just let go of the life she had dreamt of for all those years?
Ginny dipped her hand in the stream, watching the water as it slipped through her fingers. “But then again,” she murmured ruefully, “how pathetic is it that I had planned my entire future around one boy?” And one who no longer planned his around her, no less.
But just because her life didn’t turn out the way she dreamed – well, Ginny was starting to wonder whether it was the one that ended up suiting her perfectly. She had the best job in the world, playing Quidditch professionally with a team that was both incredibly talented and unsurpassably passionate about the sport. And she still loved her family more than anything else in the world. True, they were a little frayed, different from how they were when she was young – and they all still missed Fred, but they had gotten through it together. Hermione and Luna were always there for her, with the love and support and laughter she needed but never had to ask for. And she never would have thought that she could have found as much joy as she did in the children – her nieces and her nephews and, of course, Teddy. In fact, it was the parts of her life that she never could have predicted that Ginny had found she cherished on the most. Draco Malfoy – with his smirk and sarcastic remarks, his insufferable arrogance and raised eyebrows – had offered her an unexpected, surprisingly easy friendship and she realized just how much she had come to depend on his presence in her life and the endless, bantering talks they had each day. It had gotten to the point where Ginny was starting to feel as if nothing that in her life was real until she shared it with Draco.
And if she hadn’t broken up with Harry, Ginny wondered, would she ever have become friends with Draco? Would she have come to treasure these other people in her life as much as she did now?
Suddenly, a loud crashing noise came from the brush on the other side of the stream, as if someone were pushing aside branches in the forest as they headed towards the sound of the brook. Ginny squeaked from surprise and scrambled over to her pile of discarded clothes, hurrying to cover herself.
He appeared at the water’s edge right as she pulled her t-shirt over her head, the dappled sunlight glowing on his pale skin. Ginny spied the bits of leaves and twig in his hair, the dark mud clinging to the bottom of his trousers. She looked at his sweaty, flushed face and tried not to smile. Clearly, someone had gotten lost.
“Bloody hell, Weasley,” Draco grumbled, trudging across the rocks to her side. “Only you would voluntarily choose to go gallivanting off in some forest overgrown with weeds and mud pits. How are you supposed to get to this stupid steam without nearly dying three or four times?”
Ginny raised an eyebrow. “There’s a path that leads from our garden, through the woods to here.” She pointed behind her.
Draco gaped at the path for a minute before closing his mouth and glowering. “Damn,” he muttered darkly.
Overhead, the birds chirped. Sunlight skipped lightly down the stream's rippling surface. And an uncomfortable silence fell across the two of them; wrapping around the pair like an unwanted cat twists itself between someone’s legs.
Ginny cleared her throat nervously. She was glad that Draco had come to her – she hated having to initiate any kind of awkward confrontation – but his arms were folded stubbornly across his chest. He shifted his weight back, avoiding her questioning looks. Then he turned away from her, walked over to where Ginny was sitting before his arrival and settled himself down on the riverbank.
She hesitated briefly before joining him, slipping her bare feet into the water. Neither of them said anything. The leaves rustled.
“Look,” Ginny said finally, figuring that if he approached her than it was only fair that she break the silence, “I don’t really know what to say, how to explain why I flipped out last night. In fact, I –” Her words were cut off abruptly as Draco reached over and pressed his hand over her mouth.
“It’s fine.” His gaze was steady, his eyes the color of the smooth rocks sprawled across the edge of the riverbed. “I don’t do the whole ‘I’m sorry,’ cry and apologize thing, alright?”
Ginny nodded mutely. She took his wrist, gently removing his hand from her mouth. “But I’m still sorry for completely – I mean, you’ve been here for me more times than I can count in the past two years and it wasn’t fair for me to dump all that confusion –”
“Ginny,” Draco interrupted again, “I said it was fine.”
“No.” Ginny shook her head. “I just need to say – well, you just need to know that – uh –” She trailed off helplessly.
Draco raised an eyebrow, amused, and Ginny felt herself flush. “All right,” she started again, “what I’m trying to tell you is that you – you were right. About everything. Well, almost everything, I think I’ve actually gone out with six guys since we started actually being friends and – wait, no, I’m getting sidetracked.”
She paused, trying to collect her thoughts. “Basically, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, about what you said. And it’s true. I was scared. Maybe I still am scared. And Harry Potter is an arse, not that you had to scream it in my face or anything.”
Draco grimaced. “Yes, I could have been a little more tactful about that point. And I’m sorry too, for unloading all of that on you at once. But we were both tired, you know? We both said some things we didn’t mean.” He kept his gaze averted.
“Things we didn’t mean?” Ginny asked softly, “or – or things that we’ve been keeping inside for too long?”
Draco looked at her quickly, startled, before flicking his eyes downward to where she was still holding his wrist. He faltered for a moment, pulling back from her a bit, before slowly drawing his arm out of her grasp.
He got to his feet and stretched, his back turned to her, still not meeting her eyes. Ginny looked up at him. Unbidden, a string of memories from last night flickered across her mind – the sound of his laugh, unrestrained and triumphant as his fingers closed around the Snitch; the agitated movement of his hands as he argued with her, trying to make her see something that had been so plain to him all along; his eyes when he had looked at her, sorrowful, limpid, burning; the white arch of his neck in the starlight as he turned away from her.
She rose to her feet, walking around him so that she was standing in front of him. “Draco?”
He twitched. “What?” A particularly exuberant wave of water leapt over the riverbanks, splashing the two of them standing on the rocks.
Draco rubbed the back of his neck, the tips of his ears turning just the slightest shade of pink. “Look Gin, don’t – well, I mean, I didn’t –” He let out a puff of frustrated air. “Let’s just go back to the Burrow, alright? I skipped dinner last night, and you know I’ll internally combust if I don’t have some of your mum's cooking at least once a week.” He grinned at her hopefully.
Ginny opened her mouth to tell him that no, who did he think she was, of course she wasn’t letting him off that easy, but then she shut it again. Suddenly, Ginny wasn’t so sure she wanted to know his answer if she asked him just exactly he was trying to tell her last night. She didn’t know what she would say back to him, or even worse – she didn’t know what it would mean for them.
So instead, Ginny smiled at Draco, taking his hand without a word and leading the way through the woods, back home.
Ginny splashed her feet in the small brook that ran through the woods by the Burrow, lost in deep thought. The early summer sun beat down upon her, seeping into her damp hair, drying the water on her skin. Overhead, tree branches waved in the wind, shifting back and forth to reveal a cloudless sky between their cheerful green leaves.
She still didn’t know what to make of what had happened between her and Draco last night. He never showed up for dinner; later, Ron said that he had stalked through the garden and Disapparated at the gate, leaving without a word to anyone. Too tired and confused to go home, Ginny had spent the night at the Burrow and then called in sick the next morning, skipping her first Harpies’ practice in ages. It was a golden and sun-drenched day, perfect for skinny-dipping, and before long Ginny had found her feet wandering through the trees to the brook where she had first learned to swim.
The water babbled pleasantly as it rushed passed, momentarily pausing to pool around her ankles before continuing downstream. Ginny let her feet bob in its current. The day was warm, the scenery peaceful – but Ginny was anything but relaxed. The words that Draco had said last night hung heavily around her in the forest air like oil on water, refusing to mix or meld or disappear.
She tipped her head back, relishing the brush of patterned sunlight across her bare skin. The seed of doubt Draco had planted with his words had erupted into a tree overnight, casting a shadow over her every thought.
Maybe he was right about the way that Harry treated her, Ginny mused darkly, flicking droplets of water into the air with her toes. Things had been unspeakably awkward between the two of them since the breakup, and up to this point he had brushed off all attempts she made to reconcile or establish some sort of friendship like what they had had before her fifth year. But deep down, Ginny wondered whether Harry ignored her because he was simply that much of a jerk, or if maybe, just maybe, he ignored her because he could somehow sense that she in fact wasn’t completely over him, and therefore would not be able to be just his friend.
Of course, Ginny thought gloomily as she threw a hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sun’s rays, that meant Harry was enough of a pompous arse to assume that she couldn’t get over such a fine male specimen as himself. Well, he had always been somewhat ego-centric, but then again, she was best friends with Draco, sister to Ron and Percy – arrogant blokes seemed inevitable in her life. Unless Harry actually wasn’t indulging in his bigheadedness and it was simply just that obvious to him and everyone else that she was somewhat still hung up on him. Draco’s voice seemed to echo across the sunlit air – you are clearly not over him, everyone can see that…
With a groan of frustration, Ginny flipped herself over onto a warm boulder, feeling the roughness of the rock rub against her shoulder blades. “Why does all of this have to be so difficult?” she muttered to herself. It had been two years, and fine - all right, she could say it, at least to herself. She still wasn’t able to completely let go of Harry. How pathetic was that? He had undoubtedly been able to move on – he was getting married soon, for Merlin’s sake – and here she was, sunbathing on a rock and feeling like crap because she still wished that she was the one he was getting married to.
Well, no, not exactly. Ginny shook her head, trying to unscramble her thoughts. The actual person of Harry Potter – well, Ginny was almost positive she could say that she didn’t need him anymore. He was sweet, yes, and reckless and stubborn and selfless and brave – but in the end, he was just another boy. Someone she hadn’t talked to in two years, someone who Ginny doubted even knew her anymore. She had changed so much since they had been together – a fact, she thought grudgingly, mostly due to her effervescent friendship with Draco – and she was sure he had too. Despite their long and shared history, it seemed that they were nearly worlds apart now.
No, Harry Potter himself was not the problem. There was still some truth in the words Ginny had uttered over and over like some sort of enchantment – and she knew, despite whatever she may have wanted in the past, that Harry wasn’t right for her. What they had together, it was predictable, ordinary. Boring, even. Again, Draco’s words from last night rang out amid the bubbling water and birdsong – unremarkable. Completely unremarkable.
It was just everything else that had come attached to the name Harry Potter. It was everything that he had meant to her – the promises and the security and the future she had set her heart on when she was ten years old. How could she just let go of the life she had dreamt of for all those years?
Ginny dipped her hand in the stream, watching the water as it slipped through her fingers. “But then again,” she murmured ruefully, “how pathetic is it that I had planned my entire future around one boy?” And one who no longer planned his around her, no less.
But just because her life didn’t turn out the way she dreamed – well, Ginny was starting to wonder whether it was the one that ended up suiting her perfectly. She had the best job in the world, playing Quidditch professionally with a team that was both incredibly talented and unsurpassably passionate about the sport. And she still loved her family more than anything else in the world. True, they were a little frayed, different from how they were when she was young – and they all still missed Fred, but they had gotten through it together. Hermione and Luna were always there for her, with the love and support and laughter she needed but never had to ask for. And she never would have thought that she could have found as much joy as she did in the children – her nieces and her nephews and, of course, Teddy. In fact, it was the parts of her life that she never could have predicted that Ginny had found she cherished on the most. Draco Malfoy – with his smirk and sarcastic remarks, his insufferable arrogance and raised eyebrows – had offered her an unexpected, surprisingly easy friendship and she realized just how much she had come to depend on his presence in her life and the endless, bantering talks they had each day. It had gotten to the point where Ginny was starting to feel as if nothing that in her life was real until she shared it with Draco.
And if she hadn’t broken up with Harry, Ginny wondered, would she ever have become friends with Draco? Would she have come to treasure these other people in her life as much as she did now?
Suddenly, a loud crashing noise came from the brush on the other side of the stream, as if someone were pushing aside branches in the forest as they headed towards the sound of the brook. Ginny squeaked from surprise and scrambled over to her pile of discarded clothes, hurrying to cover herself.
He appeared at the water’s edge right as she pulled her t-shirt over her head, the dappled sunlight glowing on his pale skin. Ginny spied the bits of leaves and twig in his hair, the dark mud clinging to the bottom of his trousers. She looked at his sweaty, flushed face and tried not to smile. Clearly, someone had gotten lost.
“Bloody hell, Weasley,” Draco grumbled, trudging across the rocks to her side. “Only you would voluntarily choose to go gallivanting off in some forest overgrown with weeds and mud pits. How are you supposed to get to this stupid steam without nearly dying three or four times?”
Ginny raised an eyebrow. “There’s a path that leads from our garden, through the woods to here.” She pointed behind her.
Draco gaped at the path for a minute before closing his mouth and glowering. “Damn,” he muttered darkly.
Overhead, the birds chirped. Sunlight skipped lightly down the stream's rippling surface. And an uncomfortable silence fell across the two of them; wrapping around the pair like an unwanted cat twists itself between someone’s legs.
Ginny cleared her throat nervously. She was glad that Draco had come to her – she hated having to initiate any kind of awkward confrontation – but his arms were folded stubbornly across his chest. He shifted his weight back, avoiding her questioning looks. Then he turned away from her, walked over to where Ginny was sitting before his arrival and settled himself down on the riverbank.
She hesitated briefly before joining him, slipping her bare feet into the water. Neither of them said anything. The leaves rustled.
“Look,” Ginny said finally, figuring that if he approached her than it was only fair that she break the silence, “I don’t really know what to say, how to explain why I flipped out last night. In fact, I –” Her words were cut off abruptly as Draco reached over and pressed his hand over her mouth.
“It’s fine.” His gaze was steady, his eyes the color of the smooth rocks sprawled across the edge of the riverbed. “I don’t do the whole ‘I’m sorry,’ cry and apologize thing, alright?”
Ginny nodded mutely. She took his wrist, gently removing his hand from her mouth. “But I’m still sorry for completely – I mean, you’ve been here for me more times than I can count in the past two years and it wasn’t fair for me to dump all that confusion –”
“Ginny,” Draco interrupted again, “I said it was fine.”
“No.” Ginny shook her head. “I just need to say – well, you just need to know that – uh –” She trailed off helplessly.
Draco raised an eyebrow, amused, and Ginny felt herself flush. “All right,” she started again, “what I’m trying to tell you is that you – you were right. About everything. Well, almost everything, I think I’ve actually gone out with six guys since we started actually being friends and – wait, no, I’m getting sidetracked.”
She paused, trying to collect her thoughts. “Basically, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, about what you said. And it’s true. I was scared. Maybe I still am scared. And Harry Potter is an arse, not that you had to scream it in my face or anything.”
Draco grimaced. “Yes, I could have been a little more tactful about that point. And I’m sorry too, for unloading all of that on you at once. But we were both tired, you know? We both said some things we didn’t mean.” He kept his gaze averted.
“Things we didn’t mean?” Ginny asked softly, “or – or things that we’ve been keeping inside for too long?”
Draco looked at her quickly, startled, before flicking his eyes downward to where she was still holding his wrist. He faltered for a moment, pulling back from her a bit, before slowly drawing his arm out of her grasp.
He got to his feet and stretched, his back turned to her, still not meeting her eyes. Ginny looked up at him. Unbidden, a string of memories from last night flickered across her mind – the sound of his laugh, unrestrained and triumphant as his fingers closed around the Snitch; the agitated movement of his hands as he argued with her, trying to make her see something that had been so plain to him all along; his eyes when he had looked at her, sorrowful, limpid, burning; the white arch of his neck in the starlight as he turned away from her.
She rose to her feet, walking around him so that she was standing in front of him. “Draco?”
He twitched. “What?” A particularly exuberant wave of water leapt over the riverbanks, splashing the two of them standing on the rocks.
Draco rubbed the back of his neck, the tips of his ears turning just the slightest shade of pink. “Look Gin, don’t – well, I mean, I didn’t –” He let out a puff of frustrated air. “Let’s just go back to the Burrow, alright? I skipped dinner last night, and you know I’ll internally combust if I don’t have some of your mum's cooking at least once a week.” He grinned at her hopefully.
Ginny opened her mouth to tell him that no, who did he think she was, of course she wasn’t letting him off that easy, but then she shut it again. Suddenly, Ginny wasn’t so sure she wanted to know his answer if she asked him just exactly he was trying to tell her last night. She didn’t know what she would say back to him, or even worse – she didn’t know what it would mean for them.
So instead, Ginny smiled at Draco, taking his hand without a word and leading the way through the woods, back home.
Author notes: Just a heads up – I started editing the last chapter to this fic a couple days ago and it was, to put it quite bluntly, absolute crap. I cannot believe I used to think it was a fitting end to this story that I’ve worked on for so long. So I’m throwing it out, except for about three paragraphs, and starting from (almost) scratch. Unfortunately, this means that I will in fact not be making my self-imposed September 2nd deadline. What this does mean, though, is that this story will actually have an ending that suits it, you know? And also, the people who have read this before on LiveJournal can expect something completely new and different and – well, I’m still hashing out the details, but I think it’ll be a pretty satisfying final chapter.
Thank you to all of you who have stuck with me for this long. And just think – this is the last time you’ll have to wait for an update…
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