Chapter 1: The Burrow
The Burrow’s kitchen was stifling, thick with the smell of overcooked peas and wool sweaters. Harry tugged at his collar, his eyes darting to the staircase for the tenth time in as many minutes.
“He’s down with a dreadful case of Spattergroit,” Molly Weasley announced, shoving a plate of biscuits into his hands. Her voice was a mix of genuine concern and practiced chaos. “Contagious as anything. So you’ll be in with Ginny.”
Harry choked on air. The biscuit turned to dust in his mouth.
“With… Ginny?” he managed, his voice cracking. He could feel the heat, different from the kitchen’s, spreading up his neck.
“Well, it’s that or the shed, and it’s full of ghoul droppings,” Molly said, waving a tea towel. “She’s already moved her things. It’s only for a few nights, until Ron’s no longer infectious. You’re practically family, anyway.” She said it with such finality that all protest died in his throat. “And Harry,” she added, fixing him with a stern, kind look. “You’ll be a gentleman.”
The promise tasted like guilt. He nodded, muttering something about helping with the dishes.
The guest room was a museum of Molly’s abandoned hobbies. Harry stood in the doorway, his knuckles white on the frame. Ginny’s scent hit him first—not just lavender soap, but something wilder underneath, like broomstick polish and fresh air.
Her things were already an invasion. A crimson Quidditch jersey was slung over the back of the spindly chair. A pair of denim shorts lay folded on the floral quilt, which was rumpled from where she’d presumably tested the bed. The room felt charged, like the air before a lightning strike.
“You look like you’ve seen a Dementor.”
He jumped. Ginny leaned against the doorframe behind him, having crept up silently. She was wearing a thin, worn tank top and pyjama shorts that barely covered the curve of her arse. Her long red hair was tied up in a messy knot, leaving her neck exposed. Harry’s gaze got stuck on the line of her collarbone, the faint freckles there like a constellation he wanted to map.
“Just… taking it in,” he said, forcing his eyes to a dusty embroidery hoop of a misshapen gnome.
She grinned, a slow, teasing thing, and brushed past him into the room. Her arm grazed his chest. A jolt went straight through him.
“Mum’s taken the ‘practically family’ bit to heart, I see,” she said, flopping onto the bed. It creaked. She bounced once, making the shorts ride higher on her toned thighs. Harry looked resolutely at a crack in the ceiling. “Don’t worry, Potter. I don’t bite. Much.”
He muttered something about unpacking, focusing on the mundane task of placing socks in a drawer to avoid watching the way her body stretched across the mattress.
Dinner was a special kind of torture. Hermione had arrived, swathed in a chunky cardigan despite the heat, her nose buried in a book on advanced Arithmancy. She offered Harry a warm, absent-minded smile.
Ginny, however, was in full form. She reached for the butter, her top pulling tight across her chest. She stretched, arching her back with a soft sigh after eating, the fabric of her shirt straining. Every movement was casual, innocent, and utterly devastating. Harry spent the meal pushing his stew around his plate, his appetite gone, replaced by a low, insistent thrum in his blood.
He felt like a coiled spring. Every laugh from her, every glance, wound him tighter.
Later, the three of them were in the sitting room. Hermione was explaining a complex theory, her words a comfortable drone. Ginny had curled in an armchair, one leg tucked under her. She’d changed into a soft sleep shirt. It slipped off one shoulder.
Harry heard nothing Hermione said. His whole world had narrowed to that strip of smooth, freckled skin on Ginny’s shoulder. He imagined tracing it with his finger, his mouth. He wondered how she’d taste. The thought was so vivid, so sudden, he shifted uncomfortably, a hot flush creeping up his neck.
Ginny’s eyes flicked to him. She’d stopped listening too. A knowing, playful smile touched her lips. She slowly, deliberately, reached up and pushed the shirt back onto her shoulder. The gesture was worse. It was an acknowledgment. She knew.
“Harry? Are you listening?” Hermione asked, peering at him.
“What? Yeah. The, uh… the theoretical conjunction. Sounds tricky,” he blurted.
Hermione looked doubtful. Ginny snorted, a soft, breathy sound that went straight to his groin.
When Hermione finally yawned and retired, the silence in the room became a living thing. Ginny uncurled herself. “Time for bed, I suppose.”
The walk up the stairs was agony. He followed the sway of her hips, the shift of muscle in her calves. The guest room door closed with a soft, definitive click.
She moved around the small space with an infuriating ease, as if sharing a room with him was nothing. As if he wasn’t standing there, painfully hard, fantasizing about peeling that sleep shirt over her head and seeing every inch of her tight, Quidditch-toned body.
“Dean says hello, by the way,” she said casually, pulling a hairbrush through her fiery hair. She watched him in the mirror’s reflection.
Dean. The name was a bucket of ice water. Reality slammed back. She had a boyfriend. A decent one. Guilt, sharp and acidic, burned through the desire.
“Right. Good,” Harry said, his voice rough.
She turned, leaning against the dresser. The shirt dipped low at the neckline. He could see the soft shadow between her breasts. “He’s visiting tomorrow. You’ll be on your best behaviour, won’t you?”
It was a challenge. A reminder of the lines they couldn’t cross. He felt both crushed and perversely excited by the game.
“Always,” he ground out.
She smiled, that same teasing grin, and climbed into the bed, sliding under the quilt. “The floor’s all yours, gentleman. Mum left you a pillow.”
He stared. The floral quilt rose and fell with her breathing. He wanted to cross the three feet between them and kiss that smirk off her face. He wanted to push her into the mattress and find out if the skin under her clothes was as soft as it looked. He’d probably come the second he saw her naked. The thought was humiliating and intensely arousing.
Instead, he took the pillow Molly had left and a spare blanket. He lay on the worn rug, the floorboards hard against his back. The room was dark, filled with the sound of her breathing.
Just as his body began to relent, her voice cut through the darkness, quiet and clear.
“You know, for the saviour of the wizarding world, you’re a terrible liar, Harry.”
He held his breath.
She rolled over. The bed creaked. In the dim moonlight from the window, he could see her outline, facing him.
“Sweet dreams,” she whispered.
He didn’t sleep. He lay there, tortured by the nearness of her, the promise he’d made, and the terrifying, thrilling possibility that tomorrow, with Dean in the picture, the tight control he was clinging to might just snap.