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Instincts
By Calixa

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Category: Post-OotP
Characters:Harry/Ginny
Genres: Drama
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: PG
Reviews: 15
Summary: Instincts, she discovered, were often misleading. (Written for the hpgw_ficafest on livejournal)
Hitcount: Story Total: 5887







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Instincts

Oh, instincts are misleading
You shouldn't think what you're feeling
They don't tell you what you know you should want.

(Deathcab for Cutie - Lightness)


*

Harry was laughing. Genuine, honest-to-Merlin laughter. She was smiling up at him, her hair swishing, and he was laughing at something she'd said. It was almost painful to watch.

Contrary to popular belief - consisting mostly of her brother Ron, and Hermione (who seemed to find this whole development a great cause of worry) - Ginny was not the only person who could make Harry Potter laugh.

Evidently, Cho Chang was also capable of that feat.

She was at it right now, the two of them sitting together in the courtyard outside Harry's Charm's class, perched on the edge of a jovially spurting fountain, talking and laughing about who-knows-what. Something funny. Hilarious. Harry seemed to be enjoying himself, and Cho certainly was too.

Sunshine was pouring down; it was one of those lovely May afternoons, not a single cloud in a sky so blue it hurt to look at it for too long. Blue, like the ribbon in Cho's hair, the stripe in her Hogwart's tie. Green grass at their feet, blades crushed by shuffling shoes, pointing towards each other. Green like Harry's eyes.

Ginny, who was passing through this particular courtyard to get to her Transfiguration class (which she was already late for), tried to pretend she didn't see what was going on right in front of her.

Or, at least, tried not to care too much about it.

Rationality had always told her it was impossible. He didn't look at her like that, didn't think of her like that. He liked her well enough, as far as she could tell, and they got along fine, but she knew deep down it took a lot more than just friendly respect and a sense of camaraderie to kindle romantic attachment. There had to be chemistry, a spark, a regard for each other that was... mutual. Everything was all one-sided. It was not meant to be.

It still hurt, though.

Intellectually, she could comprehend this; she could see with a startling, painful clarity just how obvious it was. There was no Harry-and-Ginny. There was a Harry-and-his-friend-Ginny, Harry-and-his-best-friend's-little-siste r-Ginny, even Captain-Harry-and-his-Chaser-Ginny, but no relationship in which Ginny wasn't following some precursor or other. In his eyes, she was perpetually linked to him through someone, or something else. Never on her own account, or on his. If it weren't for Ron, if it weren't for Quidditch, if it weren't for Michael Corner and Cho Chang - where would they be?

Everyone thought she was over him, that she didn't like him anymore. That wasn't true. She liked him more than ever. And, because she did, she had to respect him. Had to treat him like a normal human being, like a friend - things he deserved. Which, to her own credit, she had managed flawlessly because her gut instinct had told her that this was the only way to get closer to him, the only way to get to him, the only way to get him.

Instincts, she discovered, were often misleading.

*

He slid into the seat next to her in the library so quietly that an entire minute passed before she happened to look up from her book and notice him there. She was surprised, but was too tired to show any evidence of her startlement. Michael smiled - a smile not so different from the one she used to get from him all the time last year - only, this smile was a little bit sad, a little bit helpless, and somehow that made her feel worse.

"Hey," he said, lacing his fingers together on the table in front of him. He leaned forward, and his hair flopped forward too, having gone a tad too long without a haircut. It looked slightly silly on him, as though he were trying to follow some stupid new trend.

"Hi," she replied, closing her book.

"Homework?"

"Yeah, trying to catch up on as much as I can before practice," she said ruefully, tucking a curtain of red hair behind one ear so she could see him better. "And failing miserably at it,” she attempted a joke, and earned a feeble grin. “What about you?"

He had no books, no parchment, nothing on him. Obviously Michael wasn't here to study.

"I was just looking for… something," he said slowly.

“Couldn’t find it?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Lack of motivation, you could say,” he said, looking at his fingers intently.

“I’m guessing it’s not a book.”

“Not quite,” he admitted, clearing his throat. He caught her sneaking a glance at his wristwatch, and startled her by asking, candidly, “Can I walk you down to the pitch, Ginny?”

Ginny thought that maybe he had found what he’d come to look for. She nodded. “Sure, as long as you’re willing to carry my books for me.”

Normally, Michael - or the Michael she’d dated - would have laughed at that. He only nodded, clearly distracted by something. Ginny had a hunch what that was.

“Just like old times,” he muttered under his breath, taking her books from her absently.

She stood up, a furrow in her brow. “Excuse me?”

“Oh. Nothing,” Michael looked surprised. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud, she realised. Ginny understood. People often believed that not saying something kept it from becoming true. That wasn’t always the case.

“It’s not like old times,” she said, once they were outside the Castle, walking slowly towards the Quidditch Pitch where her teammates were waiting.

Michael was walking perceptibly slower than usual - despite the fact that Ginny had always had this impression from him; that he was too tall, and she too short, and as a result he had to lessen his pace in order for her to keep up with him. It didn’t bother her as much now as it had used to.

“I’m sorry?”

“What you said,” she explained, hoping he understood. “It’s not like that.”

It only took him a moment. Then, crimson flushed into his cheeks, and he stopped completely, turning to face her.

“I - no, Ginny, I didn’t mean…”

“I know,” she said quickly, embarrassed. “I just wanted to make sure that - well, that we both understood that.”

“God, what a prattish thing that would be to do,” said Michael, sighing. “Trying to get back with you because my girlfriend decides to go back to her ex-boyfriend.”

Ginny looked at him anxiously, ignoring the little ache his last few words had made in her heart. “I didn’t mean that, Michael, I was just - ”

He peered down at her, but started walking again. “I wouldn’t, you know.”

“Of course,” she murmured, slightly ashamed.

"I just... well, I guess it's true, what they say..."

"What's that?"

"Misery loves company."

Ginny had no answer for that.

They were nearing the Quidditch Pitch now. In the distance she could see Harry and the other members of the team zooming about on their brooms in the air, quaffles being tossed about. It was a consoling sight. A warm breeze tugged at her hair, and for a moment, admist all this warmth and familiarity, Ginny forgot that Michael was beside her.

"Ginny?"

She snapped out of her little reverie. "Yes?"

“You’ve had the miserable experience of having dated me,” said Michael, with a brave face and little humour, “So tell me, Ginny - what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” she replied, reaching out to touch his arm. She knew that he would never understand exactly how truthful she was being. “You just picked the wrong girls.”

*

They had another walk the following evening, this time farther out into the grounds, by the lake. Michael was depressed; he'd informed her that he'd caught Harry and Cho making plans for the next Hogsmeade weekend. Ginny didn't have the heart to tell him she wasn't surprised.

"I thought things were going so well," he said, trying to skip a rock over the water. It plunked once, and then sank. He kept trying. "I mean, we were fine on Monday night. I don't know what's changed since then..."

Ginny didn't know either. She herself had thought things between her and Harry were finally reaching a level where she could allow herself to... hope. Then... this.

"I suppose she's not over him," said Ginny softly.

Michael threw another rock, this time very badly. She winced inwardly.

"I don't think what you said yesterday was true," he profferred, throwing the last rock into the lake. He brushed his hands off, and settled down beside her, wrapping his arms around his knees. "I don't pick the wrong girls."

Yes, you do, she insisted in her head. You pick girls who can't seem to forget that Harry Potter exists.

"That would be saying that what we had was a mistake." He grinned a little. "Okay, so maybe it didn't exactly end on the best of terms. But you're a dear friend, Ginny. The very fact that you're sitting here, listening to me whinge about Cho is testament to that."

It was a very sweet thing for him to say, and as such, completely unexpected. Ginny couldn't help but smile a little.

They sat on the grass and chatted for a while longer, until it became obvious that the sun was going to set any minute.

"Thanks," said Michael again, regarding her with gratitude. They stood on a little hill, and he leant down, putting his arms around her in a hug.

For some reason, this overwhelmed her. She had to fight back tears. Ginny just wasn't sure if they were the good variety or not.

Before she could decide, a voice broke into their moment.

"Ginny!"

She pulled away from Michael, and felt a bolt run through her at the sight of Harry, looking flustered and sweaty, running up the slender incline towards them. He slowed down as he approached, a strange expression on his face.

Michael, who had fully let go of Ginny, went stiff beside her. He returned Harry's cool nod.

"It's almost curfew," Harry said quietly, in a way that made Ginny flinch with the sting of unspoken accusations. She wanted to shout back, to hurl his own less-than-noble actions at him. But she couldn't.

"Ron was getting worried."

His demeanor was unsettling. Stony-faced, and unusually polite, Harry said very little as he walked with them back to the castle. In fact, he said nothing even after Michael had departed to Ravenclaw tower, and they were standing outside the portrait of the Fat Lady. Uttering this week's password, they entered.

Her initial surprise, and annoyance at his crass behaviour towards Michael - towards her - had simmered into full out anger during their way back to Gryffindor tower.

"Goodnight," she said curtly, turning her back on him.

She was proud that she didn't look back once.


*

Quidditch, Transfiguration, how to block unfriendly spells and remove copious amounts of slime from one's face and robes? Ginny understood those things, could do them with her eyes closed.

Harry Potter? Not so much.

Their fight (if it could be called that, as no actual fighting had occurred, as far as Ginny could recall) was immediately recognizable by Ron and Hermione, the former nonplussed and annoyed when he realised they weren't talking to one another, except when strictly neccessary. The latter scrutinized them with an anxious, vaguely guilty expression that Ginny didn't understand and didn't have the energy to bother attempting to.

Harry avoided her for the rest of the day, and was completely distant during practice. Coldly polite. Gave her one set of directions for the entire practice, and ignored her the rest of the time.

Ginny's rage had died down by this point, and all that she felt was an acute, all-consuming sense of loss.

Silly, a little voice reminded her, you can't lose what you never really had.

At dinner her heart took a plunging dive into the pit of her stomach when she saw Harry and Cho enter the Great Hall together, both speaking softly to one another. She watched, with equal parts dread and eagerness, as Michael walked up to Cho, pointedly ignoring Harry, and said something. Cho nodded, smiled nervously at Harry, and followed Michael into the corner.

Michael started saying something heatedly, gripping his bag so tightly that Ginny could see the whites of his knuckles even from where she sat at Gryffindor's table. He looked upset, and got even more upset when Cho tried to cut him off. It didn't seem to be going very well, and less than a minute later, Cho started crying.

Typical, was the first thought in Ginny's head, and she was in no mood to be charitably irritated with herself about the cattiness of it.

The crying, however, seemed to do the trick, because Michael's expression softened, and he reached out to touch Cho's arm with his hand. She said something tearfully, and he looked ashamed once she was finished.

Ginny sighed, watching as they embraced. It was not a sigh of unhappiness, but rather one of frustration mingled with relief. Relief that faded into uncertainty and butterflies in the pit of her stomach, when she spotted Harry sitting four seats down to her left, watching the same scene she had been.

Harry turned his head in her direction, but his attentions were distracted by Hermione, who leaned across the table to whisper something impatiently at him.

Instinctively, Ginny got up and headed for the library while Harry was too busy to notice her quietly slipping away.

*

She heard him approach and didn't bother looking up from the essay she was writing. He slid into the empty seat next to her, just as he had done last week. She spoke first, trying to sound happy for his sake, "I saw you talking to Cho earlier..."

He coughed.

"... at dinner," she finished, looking up into green eyes instead of blue ones. Oh. She blinked a few times, then looked away to hide her surprise. "Sorry, Harry. I thought you were somebody else."

Harry shrugged, his head bent. For a moment, neither of them said anything.

Ginny observed him from behind her curtain of hair. He was staring at the table, his profile somber. The glare from the brightly lit library reflecting off his glasses prevented her from seeing his eyes. She wished she could; she wished she could tell what he was thinking. It was always so hard with Harry, and her instincts told her nothing. When it came to him, though - perhaps it was better not to go with instinct.

She waited. A minute of silence passed, in which all sorts of dreadful things occurred to her. She felt the trappings of fear - fear that this was what their friendship had boiled down to, fear that maybe they couldn't even be friends, and worse of all, fear that maybe Harry had sought her out for the same reason Michael had... to talk about ex-girlfriends who went back to their boyfriends...Ginny decided to speak first. Let it be over with.

Breathing in carefully, she regarded him through her hair. "Want to take a walk?"

"If you're not busy."

She shook her head, and quickly gathered her possessions, rolling her parchment up and carefully tucking it into her bag. She reached for her books, but was taken by surprise when Harry reached for them first.

"Thanks," she said, unsure of how to react to this turn of events. Under normal circumstances, she would have blushed.

They walked in the general direction of the lake, slowly, steps in sync. It was sunset again, to Ginny's minor pleasure, and the hills and forest were a magnificent sight to behold.

"I'm sorry," he said suddenly. Ginny lifted her eyes to his face, which was no longer a stony mask. It was soft, and worried, and altogether too familar.

"I'm sorry too, Harry." It came out sounding more tired than she meant it to.

"I wasn't very nice to her," he said, looking at her anxiously, as though hoping she could read his mind, and he wouldn't have to do this. "You were there... in my fifth year... you saw how bad ev- how bad I was..."

Ginny stared at him.

"Didn't Hermione tell you?" he asked, a bit desperately. "I went to her for advice, she knows how awful it was..."

"Hermione doesn't betray her confidences," said Ginny in mild exasperation, "Especially not yours. Even if I'd asked, she wouldn't have told me."

She'd made it a point not to ask, a fact which she wasn't about to reveal to him. Ginny could see the conflicting emotions on his face - relief that he could trust Hermione with his most private (and potentially embarrassing) secrets, and annoyance that she was so tight-lipped. She was hard-pressed to not be amused. However, considering the amount of grief he'd caused her and Michael both, Harry deserved to be tortured a little bit longer. She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

"She cried," he blurted out, clearly flustered. "Cho cried a lot. I... didn't know what to do about it. Hermione tried to explain to me about Cedric and her feelings for him and for me, but I didn't really understand... and then... the D.A... Marietta Edgecombe... I was angry at her, and we stopped talking..."

Still Ginny said nothing and listened.

"I ran into her outside Charms," Harry confessed, his voice taking on a note of hysteria. "I was thinking about what Hermione had said, and how awful things had ended between us, and I just wanted to apologize."

"Did you?"

"Yes," he seemed relieved that she had finally spoken. "She did too. Apologize, that is. We started talking again, and I- I was glad that she wasn't angry at me for treating her the way I did."

"I see," was all she could manage.

He licked his lips nervously. "You were with him... and I thought..."

Ginny shook her head. "He was upset. He thought Cho - that you and Cho were - well, getting along a bit too well." Her cheeks went pink under his speculative gaze. She tried to be brave, and straightened her shoulders, trying to add height to her small frame. "As did I, actually, so you can't blame him."

"Well, you seemed pretty friendly with him, yourself," he shot back, mildly.

"So you jumped to conclusions." His eyes widened at the implication, and Ginny felt like she could have kicked herself, for being so obvious. For doing the same thing - jumping to conclusions. But this, this couldn't be a misunderstanding, could it? This was happening, and she wasn't stupid enough to not cotton on.

"I suppose it was just instinct," he said, kicking absently at the loose soil under his shoes. His brow was creased, and he looked perturbed. "I don't... it's just... Ginny, you could have anyone."

Ginny's heart was a river, flowing from her chest, and Harry had just broken the dam, flooding her with emotions she couldn't remember ever having quite so fiercely.

So she leaned forward, and kissed him. Gently, and on the cheek, because she didn't think she could handle it if he pushed her away. If she was reading things wrong again. But she wasn't, and she was right, and he kissed her back, only on the lips this time, full and force and hands on waist and dazzling lights in the back of her head that seemed to block out everything else, and all that mattered was Harry kissing Ginny.

Harry was kissing Ginny. Harry kissed Ginny for a long, long time. No precursors.

Instinct, thought Ginny in a daze, after they'd parted, and Harry was grinning at her like a fool, and she was quite certain she was grinning back just as foolishly, was always misleading.

*
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