There was no conclusive way to prove it, but Harry was pretty sure that this was one of the best days of his life. At least, that he could remember. He liked to think that maybe, before his parents had been killed, he had a few days like this in his babyhood. A day that glowed with a warmth that seemed to emanate from within him and was magical in a way that had nothing to do wands or spells. A day when he felt loved, and safe, and nearly exploding with good feeling. And he knew why. The biggest reason had her flushed cheek resting on his shoulder, her hair cascading over the back of his dress robes, as they revolved dreamily around the dance floor.
“Ginny?”
“Hmmm?” A sweet sigh. She didn’t move.
“Thanks,” he started. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, to convey the sense of gratitude he felt towards the wonderful, funny, stubborn, strong young woman in his arms. The girl who hadn’t given up on him, really, ever. From the time he was an overwhelmed eleven year old trying to cope with the fact that he was a wizard and she was just some red-haired little sister of Ron Weasley’s. He tried to think back to the time when she was almost invisible to him, when her existence had hardly registered to him at all. He couldn’t do it. Now, the minute he entered a room or a group of people, it was her face he sought out, her smile, her laugh.
“My pleasure,” she picked her head up, shook her hair away from her face, and smiled at him. “Whatever I can do to help.”
“You don’t even know what I’m thanking you for!” Harry chuckled at her, kissed her near her left ear, breathing in the flowery smell of her hair. Her arms tightened around his neck.
“Sure I do,” she replied, “You mean, ‘Thanks, Ginny, for getting it through my brave but terribly thick skull that I could never get rid of you with some ridiculously noble speech about keeping you safe, when really, no one is safe because there an evil lunatic wizard loose on the world’ right?”
She really was something else. He burst out laughing, “Right, something very close to that. What have you been doing this summer, practicing Legilemency?” He teased.
“Well, actually not, I just really “ oh! My, my, my,” she interrupted herself, a satisfied smirk on her face. She was looking at a spot away from the dance floor, over his shoulder.
“What?” He asked. She grabbed his chin in her hand and turned it in the direction she was gazing. He suddenly got a very odd sensation in his stomach. There, partially screened by the deepening shadows on the side of the pavilions, Ron and Hermione were sitting very very close on a bench. Snogging. How…weird. How…expected.
“Oh, Harry! The look on your face is priceless. You alright with all that?” She gestured towards his best friends, then continued, “Ron seemed to have polished his technique a little in the past few months,” she noted critically.
Harry mulled it over a bit, tearing his eyes away from the pair of them. It was certainly going to take some getting used to, but for the most part, he felt pretty good about it. I mean really, was it so terrible that two of the people he cared the most about in world fancied each other?
“Poor Harry!” Ginny clucked teasingly.
Her voice drew him out of his reverie. He grinned at her. “It’s fine, just a little, erm, bizarre. They’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years at each other’s throats, you know?”
“Well, it looks like they still are,” Ginny replied saucily, “Though, I guess you’d call ‘at each other’s necks’ in this context, I suppose.”
Harry thought about the look on his friends’ faces if they could hear Ginny talking about them like this. He burst out laughing. “I’m happy for them, really.” And he meant it. How could he resent Ron and Hermione for wanting the same thing he did? Someone to love and understand him? Which, thank goodness, he had.
“I guess I can deal with it,” he began in a mock-sorrowful tone, trying to hide a grin, “I mean, I suppose I can get used to that “” he gestured towards the pair of them, “ “if Ron, and, geesh, I guess the rest of all those endless brothers of yours, can get used to this,” and he pulled her close and kissed her soundly, right there on the dance floor. It was a wedding after all, wasn’t it?
Ginny didn’t seem the least bit abashed by this very public display of affection, even after their kiss received a whooping round of applause from Fred and Angelina, who were dancing nearby. The slow, smoochy song they had been dancing to ended, and a much faster-paced one began. Harry was loathe to let go of her in order to dance, and so he led her to one of the tables, where he could keep her close. He stared at her profile as she watched the people spinning and twirling on the dance floor. The corner of her mouth crept upward, and she eyed him without turning her head.
“What?”
“You’re the mind reader, right? What am I thinking about right now?” Harry ran his fingers lightly over the elaborate burnished braids at the crown of her head.
“You’re…you’re thinking, I’m the Sickle in your shoe,” she began, turning to him, brushing his obstinate hair off his forehead.
“What are you talking about?!?” He was honestly stumped.
“You know,” her eyes were sparkling, “that old saying, about what a new bride needs for a successful marriage, what she has to have with her on her wedding day.” She cleared her throat and recited, “‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue “ and a Sickle in her shoe!’” Harry remembered the Muggle version of this little rhyme, which was pretty near what Ginny had just said, but not what the meaning behind the odd little phrase was.
“Ginny, are you trying to get me into a wedding dress?” He joked.
“No!” She slapped him, and he caught her hand, kissed it, held it. “No. I don’t really remember what the other things stand for, but the reason a witch tucks a Sickle in her shoe on her wedding day is, not only to bring her prosperity, but for luck. So long as she can feel it there, in the tip of her shoe, nothing can go wrong for her on her special day.” Ginny smiled at him proudly.
“Well, Ginny Weasley, if that’s the case, than you certainly are the Sickle in my shoe,” he whispered in her ear. “Because I couldn’t feel luckier than I do right now, sitting here with you.” He meant it, and kissed her smiling mouth. Had he really thought there was any reason to deny himself this happiness? Had he?
“Oi! What’s all this?!? Can’t you two ever snog in private?!?!?” A very familiar voice, very close by. Harry looked up to find Ron and Hermione standing over them.
“I’m sorry. Ron, is that you? It sounds like you but I can’t be sure since my eyes popped out of my head and rolled away after what I saw happening a few minutes ago on that bench over yonder,” Harry replied, and Ron chuckled sheepishly. Hermione was flushed and dreamy-eyed, and not very like herself. But they both also looked a bit nervous and unsure, waiting to see what else he was going to say.
Ginny stepped softly but firmly on his foot, and he took this as a sign to continue. He laughed a bit, then said, “Took you two long enough, huh?!?” Ron and Hermione grinned at each other, laughed, and then looked back at Harry.
“Aaaahhhh, romance!” Ginny exclaimed, jumping up and giving Ron and Hermione goofy, sloppy kisses on their cheeks. Harry she saved for last, and the kiss she gave him was of a different sort. “C’mon, you lot! Let’s dance! This is a party after all, isn’t it?”
And the four of them ran out to the dance floor, losing themselves in the music, lights, and laughter of each other, feeling that nothing could harm them, on this last golden evening together.
The Time is Now by Hermione816
Chapter Notes: Harry muses happily on this wonderful, romantic night - with Ginny dancing in his arms.