Shoelace - H/G - PG-13
Title: Shoelace
Author: shocfix
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Words: 1169
Rating: PG-13 for language

Written for the 'shoelace' challenge on catchmysnitch.


Shoelace
****
Gryffindors are supposed to be brave, right? And there are some things we're really unnaturally good at. Rashly standing up to Death Eaters, riding dragons, wielding swords; things that normal people are scared of.

Death.

Harry died for fuck's sake.

Sort of.

Well, he thought he was dead and we thought he was dead and that's what's important.

So, compared to walking to his death, how scary can girls be? I know I'm no better – my girl took no chances, after the battle, following me up to bed and curling up beside me and not letting go since. And while I know you can't be with someone just so you don't have to get up the courage to ask a girl out, ever again, it's certainly worth bearing in mind.

Don't tell her I said that.

But Harry?

Harry saved the world and then curled up in bed with a dot.

I woke the next morning… afternoon? I have no idea how long we slept – we'd been awake for several days – or two lifetimes, in Harry's case. When I woke next, and pushed Hermione's hair out of my face, Harry was lying in his bed staring at the Map.

I had a real live woman in my bed; Harry was pining over my sister's dot. Which is kinda sweet and kinda pervy, especially with the whole his dad made the Map thing.

When he saw me watching her sleeping dot, he pushed it under his pillow and stretched and yawned extravagantly and reached for the plain black robes the house elves had provided. I smiled to myself and nodded to him and tried to get up and join him in the bathroom, but Hermione literally wouldn't let go of me, and I had to shake her awake and send her off to get dressed.

By the time I'd shaved and dressed - been latched onto by Hermione as I arrived downstairs in the common room - and joined Harry at one of the large tables, he was sitting on the far side from Ginny, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a lion-shaped coffee pot and talking to Percy in a low voice.

I couldn't sit beside him, as there was only one empty seat, and there were now, apparently, two of me, so I hauled Hermione over to sit with Ginny and we propped our bleary eyes open and drank our own body weight in coffee.

I dunno why Harry had decided it was a good idea to avoid her. I know my Harry and was pretty sure he wanted to talk to her, but was probably feeling all unimportant-compared-to-Fred, or something.

Didn't he hear her scream, when he was dead? That's not a sound I'll forget in a hurry.

Ah.

Maybe that's it. How d'you chat up a girl, when you've heard her heart break, when you died. How could he expect her to date someone, so soon after seeing him dead?

How could he be her rebound relationship?

I shook myself and watched him carefully not watching her.

I s’pose it’s possible he was fascinated with what Percy was saying – but it was too much of a coincidence that he was also fascinated with Neville’s wrist, the bandage around Parvati’s arm, Hermione’s left shoulder and the handle of his coffee cup.

Ginny sighed, beside me, and leant against my shoulder, her hands wrapped tightly around her cup.

Seriously. How long was he gonna give her to get over his death? Did he expect someone else to comfort her and help her mourn, before she was... ready to love again? Was he really that much of an idiot?

He finished his coffee and didn’t look at her, and rolled his shoulders and ignored her, and he was obviously getting ready to go and do Important Stuff, and he kicked me in the ankle, as he stretched his legs, and I looked down at his shoe, right beside Ginny’s, and I took out my wand and murmured a spell to untie their shoelaces and tie them together.

I didn’t have time to think it through, obviously; I just wanted them to be together.

I felt smug for about a third of a second before Harry got briskly to his feet, in a very Harry-like and purposeful way, and Ginny disappeared beneath the table, with a squawk. People leapt up and shouted and whipped out wands and Harry stared at the Ginny-less chair and I buried my head in my hands and Hermione elbowed me sharply, in the ribs.

I tentatively bent and looked under the table; Ginny blinked back up at me, covered in coffee, one leg tied to Harry’s, the other doubled under her, Harry’s free foot resting on her crotch as he tried to regain his balance.

“Oh, shit,” I muttered, as her expression turned from confused to furious.

“Ron?” she said, her jaw set.

Harry sat back heavily in his chair, and he and everyone else ducked down to investigate her sudden disappearance; a ring of baffled faces, whose eyes were drawn irresistibly to the foot planted firmly between Ginny’s thighs.

Either his brain froze, or too much blood was flowing away from it, to inappropriate places, but it took him rather a long time to realise he could move his foot. Tucking both feet under his chair dragged Ginny’s foot with them, and revealed the Mystery to the increasingly amused onlookers.

Maybe this was just what we needed, to cheer us up.

It’s possible.

Harry managed to push his chair backwards and join Ginny on the floor, their hands touching as they both reached to untangle their laces.

They simultaneously stilled and looked up, becoming aware of the collective silence around them, as their friends watched their fingers automatically curl around each other.

“Why?” Ginny asked me, looking back over her shoulder.

“What?” Harry asked.

“Why did you tie their shoelaces together?” Hermione asked me.

Something in the back of my head sighed in a rather resigned way, as it realised that Hermione and Ginny had both immediately known that it was - and blamed – me. Call it women’s intuition, or something, but they always knew when Harry and I had done something wrong.

“Um,” I said, wittily stalling. “I just sort of wanted them to stop pussy footing around, avoiding each other.”

“And you thought tying us together would work?” Harry asked incredulously.

“Not in a kinky way,” I assured him.

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” Hermione muttered, getting out her wand and Finiting the Charm on their shoelaces. “Everybody out from under the table – not you two.”

We all sat up and Hermione herded us away from the table, leaving the Chosen One to make up with his girlfriend in private.

“And you can stop looking so smug,” she said to me, with my favourite tiny smile on her lips. “Tying someone up is not the way to solve relationship problems.”

I smirked and she blushed and thumped me and all was well.