[ okay so -.-' i gave harry one long bitch ass story for you guys to read. that way, you wont be angry while i neglect him. it should take up all your time until my next harry entry. i actually have this posted on one of my first rp xangas, a ginny one, but lets not get into that. -_- READ AND LIKE IT YOU BUMS. <3 ]
Finally! The sun was just starting to set. The Griffindor common room was almost completely empty. No Fred, no George, no Ron or Hermione, and—Ginny thought with a small pang of disappointment—no Harry Potter. Right now they’d all be in the Great Hall, starting their dinner. She jumped up as subtly as possible and sprinted up the stairs towards the boys’ dormitory.
There was no one inside. It was a mess of clothes and candy wrappers. Boys. Ginny didn’t find what she was looking for. Harry’s Firebolt. Instead, she kept searching until she spotted Ron’s Cleansweep propped up against the wall beside the second bed. Although it was an older, obsolete model, it glittered in the false lighting above her. Even the sun outside the window was trying to catch the handle in its glare. She looked around for a few moments longer for Harry’s invisibility cloak. She didn’t find it, and she didn’t want to miss her chance to escape unnoticed, so she left quickly.
She sprinted though the hallways; the Cleansweep slung haphazardly over her shoulder. She hoped she could get to the locker rooms before anyone caught her. She would wait there until the sun had completely disappeared, and then she would go out and have a ride.
Very luckily, she made her way across the grounds and to the locker room inside the Quidditch stadium before anyone spotted her. It may have seemed impossible, but this wasn’t the first time she’d done this. In fact, she’d missed dinner every alternative day to come out here and practice. It was an even bigger risk with Umbridge running around, sacking teachers and giving detentions to students left and right. As a fourth year, Ginny believed she’d spent too much time and effort in this school to get kicked out of it.
As usual, there were some spare uniforms waiting for her on a shelf next to the lockers. It was dark, and she picked the smallest one and tugged it on. It might be a bit risky, but did she really expect to be able to fly on a broom in her robes? Of course not. She tied her hair up started searching the rest of the room. She was more like Fred and George than she wanted to admit. Sneaky little Weasley.
She pulled a box from a lower shelf and pulled it open. With a gasp of displeasure she noticed the snitch was missing. Wonderful. This was the only spare box they left laying around, she was sure of it. Instead, she pulled the big, hollow Quaffle out and juggled it absentmindedly. This would have to do for now. She wasn’t about to run back inside the school after all of this. The Bludgers squirmed in their holders.
She walked out onto the playing field and mounted Ron’s broom, or at least began to, when she stopped short. Luckily she had been examining the sky or she wouldn’t have noticed a figure on a broom zipping high up around the goalposts—literally flipping tricks off them—in impressive corkscrews. Every once and a while they would spring forward, grab something, and then let it flutter away. She could barely see it, but it was obviously the snitch. She narrowed her eyes through the hard rays of light trying to make out the details. She wasn’t worried about her or him noticing her. She was very far away and whoever this was seemed to be enjoying themselves entirely too much to care.
First the Firebolt missing, then the snitch gone, and now some mysterious git was taking up her practice time on the pitch. She wasn’t going to make the Griffindor House team by standing around in the uniform. Her aggravation kept her from noticing as Harry Potter came soaring down a few yards in front of her and fluidly dismounted his broom as he walked forward. She only noticed his presence when the rush of air behind him caught up to him and hit her, bringing with it Harry’s scent—warm sun, spring air, and soil from the Quidditch field.
"Harry!" she was too shocked to say much else.
"Ginny? What’re you-"
"I just… I just fancied a ride, that’s all."
He looked a bit out of breath, and his scarlet and gold Quidditch uniform was dirty. He wiped the back of a hand over his sweaty face, leaving a smudge of dirt on his cheek. "Yeah. Me too."
They stood there silently for a few minutes, while Harry caught his breath, clutching a stitch in his side. Ginny watched the dying sun reflecting off his unruly black hair. The fresh sky was blowing it sideways. "So you’re the one," he accused suddenly.
She widened her eyes at him. She could see her mock-innocent face in his glasses. "What do you mean?"
"You’re the one who’s been taking my Firebolt out late at night."
"I-..I-" she stammered, "What are you talking about, Harry?" she pretended to be shocked.
"Well, you’re rather good." She stared. He continued, slightly abashed. "I mean, I’ve seen you through the window is all. Never really knew who it was. But I figured I might as well come out here to practice since I seem to have such a competition for next year."
"Competition?"
"Ginny! You’d make an amazing Seeker!"
"Oh!" she looked at her feet. Her face was hot. Famous Harry Potter was actually complimenting her on her Quidditch skills. "No… no, I’d rather be a Chaser, actually. But practicing that position is sorta hard by myself." She looked up to meet his shining emerald eyes.
"Well?" he asked, and eyebrow quirked.
"Well what?"
Before she could react he reached out and tugged the Quaffle from under her arm. He hopped on his broom and kicked hard off the ground, sending dark earth and grass up on her shins. He was a few dozen feet above her, looking down. He flew lazy circles over her head with one hand gripping the Quaffle and the other pointing at the locker rooms. "Go get a Bludger. Just one. Then we’ll play." She started walking away. "Oh. And my arm-guards. They should be in the seventh locker."
Before Ginny knew what she was doing, she’d exited the locker rooms with a Bludger struggling in her firm grasp, and Harry’s wristguards stuck under one arm and threatening to slip away.
"All right there, Ginny?" Harry called to her from far up and away. She released the bucking Bludger and it soared out into the air towards nowhere in particular. He glided down fast in front of her and pulled back on the front of his broom to stop, sending dust up in Ginny’s face.
"Harry, really!"
"Sorry Ginny," he said, unconvincing, and she noticed he’d already taken the guards from her and was fitting them over his forearms. Then he kicked off again, careful this time so that he left only a minimal wake. He turned back only when he’d reached the goal hoops and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Are you coming or what??"
With a determined lift off, she sped through the air until her broom handle was centimeters from Harry’s. She noticed right away that the Cleansweep would never be able to outdo Harry’s Firebolt. And her skill was probably lacking compared to his as well. -
"Ron’s Cleansweep is horrible," she heard herself say.
Harry shrugged. "Ready? I’m gunna be Keeper for now, and you can take this—" he threw the Quaffle at her and to her surprise she caught it quite easily—"and take a real quick lap around the pitch, then try to score on me."
She nodded and sped away without answering, because he was already positioning himself in front of the middle hoop. The sun was still struggling to keep its head up, but soon it would sink below the bleachers of the stadium. She closed her eyes against the pleasant air, just as the Bludger zoomed past her ear. With a tiny shriek of fright that she was relieved Harry could not have heard, she turned and started at him as fast as she could go.
Harry was waiting for her. She felt a bit humiliated coming at him like an idiot, with the Quaffle in her clutches and her hair falling out of its tie with the speed.
She went over her plan in her head as she drew nearer. She would try to fake him out; make him think she was going for the right hoop (his left), and only switch directions and go for the far ring at the last second, before even the speed of his Firebolt had time to react.
It worked. Harry bolted to guard the right goal while Ginny veered and threw the Quaffle in the air, long enough to spin her broom and smash the Quaffle with the tail. It soared past Harry’s outstretched hand and perfectly into the goal.
He straightened up and gawked at her. She felt a triumphant smile on her face.
"Well," he said, flying slowly towards her and positioning his broom beside hers, "I guess that’s why I’m not a Keeper."
She pushed his shoulder and he wobbled a little. "Just admit it, Harry. I am a better Quidditch player than you are." Asking him to say that was like asking him to hug Snape.
"Well, maybe," he admitted. Ginny was taken aback. "But I bet I could still catch the snitch before you." He turned his broom to face hers. "On the count of three, we’ll both look for it. Whoever gets it first is obviously the winner."
"Right." She watched his eyes carefully.
"One," he said slowly. He was looking right at her, but his attention seemed elsewhere. "Two.."
"Three!" for a fraction of a second, his eyes flicked right above her head. Without thinking, Ginny leaned backwards on her broom and clutched at the air over her, and to her pleasant surprise her fingers began to wrap themselves around… a fistful of Harry’s robes.
She didn’t pull away because he fell on her right there. Directly off his broom and on top of her heavily. She slipped sideways and let out a screech of terror and pain as at the same time, the bludger came wheeling over and smashed into her ribcage. Her hands faltered around Harry’s uniform and she was falling, falling towards the ground below.
As she had hoped for, Harry came to her rescue. Not exactly the way she would have planned, however. He zipped below her just in time to grab her by the back of her uniform, and her fall came to a jerking halt feet from the ground. She started to choke as the material pressed into her throat. Harry dropped her onto the dirt.
"Ginny! Are you all right?!" Harry jumped off Ron’s Cleansweep and ran over to her, grasping both her shoulders very firmly and tugging her up. "Ginny!" he repeated, "Say something!"
"Harry I-..ow." she grabbed her throbbing side. "Ruddy bludger caught me in the stomach."
She noticed that Harry too was seizing his belly. "Wish I could say different for your knee, Gin."
Ginny tried not to laugh, and it wasn’t too difficult, either. She was feeling dizzy. Very dizzy.
"I think that’s enough Quidditch practice for today," he told her, his green eyes glittering with panic.
"Are you kidding?!" She pulled her wand out of the uniform and pointed it at herself "Rentrificus Reparo!" She straightened up immediately and did a similar one on Harry. He looked physically relieved.
"Wow Ginny… that was amazing."
"Maybe you should pay a bit of attention in Charms?"
"Right.."
Ginny had the funny feeling she sounded a little too much like Hermione.
"Accio Firebolt!" Harry’s broom glided right into his outstretched hand. Then—"I do pay attention in Charms."
They spent the next half hour wrestling the bludger back into its container and locating the snitch in the dark. Harry got to it first, of course. Now, the two of them were hovering in the middle of the field, in pitch black. Both had lit their wands with a simple ‘lumos’ spell, and the combined area lit up a considerable area about them. Harry was releasing the snitch every few seconds and then snatching it from the air again. It was quite impressive, Ginny admitted.
"I really like it at night, like this," he told her. He silenced her next question with an answer. "I don’t know why."
"Me too," she agreed.
"You think Umbridge is gunna catch us one of these times?"
"Oh. So now you think we’ll be doing this again?"
Harry looked at her through the wand light. She couldn’t make out his expression. She noticed the way the breeze made his hair part on his forehead. The lightening scar was more than visible. She couldn’t help but look at it momentarily. It must have been very painful.
"Do you know what it’s like, to have people think they know everything about you just through a scar?" she was startled. There was some indignation in his voice. He must have noticed her watching the top of his head.
"Can I touch it?"
He screwed up his face in confusion. "What d’you wanna do that for?"
She shrugged. "Dunno. Why not?"
He also shrugged. Then he held his hair away from his forehead and let his broom drift closer, until her outstretched fingers could meet with it. As soon as she touched him he gasped, flinched, and leaned away from her.
"Harry! Did I hurt you?" she was terrified. His scar had been abnormally warm.
"No. It’s just… just cold." He let his tousled hair fall back ‘into place’. "So?"
"So what?"
"So did it gross you out?"
"No! Well, I don’t know. I didn’t really feel it."
He looked a little disappointed. "Well I guess that’s for the best then." He reached forward and nudged her in the head with an index finger.
"What was that?"
"Well that’s basically what it felt like for me."
"Basically?" she rubbed her head needlessly where he’d poked her.
"Yeah… basically." He paused, watching her thoughtfully. She wished she could tell what he was thinking, but it was impossible. "Shall we go back now?"
Ginny nodded and they both made their way towards the locker room. Harry still had the snitch in his hand. "Gunna put that back?"
"Nope. It’s mine now." | 
