Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1104561.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Harry_Potter/Ginny_Weasley, Remus_Lupin/Ginny_Weasley
  Character:
      Harry_Potter, Ginny_Weasley, Remus_Lupin
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-12-27 Words: 651
****** "I have only words to play with" ******
by chimneysmoke_(recension)
Summary
     "Ginny/Harry & Ginny/?; If I tell you what you want to hear, / Will
     it help you to sleep well at night? / Are you sure that I'm your
     perfect dear, / Now just cuddle up and sleep tight."
Notes
     For the Welcome Home Harry Potter LJ ficathon.
     Original prompt: "Ginny/Harry & Ginny/?; If I tell you what you want
     to hear, / Will it help you to sleep well at night? / Are you sure
     that I'm your perfect dear, / Now just cuddle up and sleep tight."
She lays on his chest while he reads, tucked up in the corner room of 12
Grimmauld Place in the dead of night. There's one candle lit in the room, and
it's on the other side but he sees just fine and reads out the legends to her.
King Arthur and his Knights. Muggle stories she's only heard of in passing.
It's one of the books Hermione's brought and leant her, but she likes the
stories so much more in his voice. Calm, steady, soothing, with his heartbeat
low and his comforting smell of knit and Darjeeling and something musky she
assumes is the wolf in him.
 
When they're making breakfast, her mother expresses a strong recommendation
that she stop bothering Remus at night. "It's really not proper, Ginny. He's
not your father, for goodness' sake."
Ginny nods and says she'll stop but crosses her fingers at her side when she
does it.
 
Remus runs his fingers through her hair, his lips kissing her temple as she
starts to doze off against him. Night after night since her father's attack she
knocks and enters, she crawls under his covers. At first he thought it was
because he was most like Arthur, but the closer she cuddles the more he
realizes she must know something about Lily. About how Lily was Remus' friend
first, before she was James'.
He misses her most of all.
 
Sirius tells him he shouldn't worry about it. She's only just a girl. She can't
possibly know.
Remus doesn't tell Sirius that she's stirring something within him. He's afraid
of admitting it to himself. He's afraid of admitting it out loud.
He's afraid of doing something he shouldn't.
 
Ginny's a sweet girl, but she's just a girl, he tries to remind himself.
Younger than Harry. But there's flame and there's fight in her that's untamed
and wild and youthful and enthralling.
He's afraid of the woman she'll become when she realizes the effect she has on
men.
He's afraid of the woman she'll turn into if he missteps. She's had enough
trauma for any one lifetime.
 
Remus is quick to see her paired off with Harry. Someone age-appropriate, and
she'd always liked the boy. Anyone but him.
Arthur recovers and she grows up but still she clings to him. When he stays at
the Burrow, or when she stays at Grimmauld Place, she crawls into his room at
midnight and he reads to her. Indulges her.Sometimes she grows bold enough to
mingle her legs with his as she drifts off. They've worked through an Anthology
of Muggle Mythology, and four of the thickest modern British classics before
she has the courage to kiss him.
Remus lets himself forget, for a brief moment, that this is a fifteen-year old
girl and he is over four times her age. He kisses her back briefly before he
pulls back strangled and ashamed, as if the wolf in him came out between moons.
"You have to go," he tells her, somewhat coldly, shaken, and she never returns
to his room after that. By the next summer, he's engaged to Nymphadora and
though he feels her eyes on him she never talks to him alone again.
 
Harry runs his fingers through her hair but he loses his concentration when
he's reading to her. He trails off in the middle of his sentences or drifts off
before her. It's an experience that's less than satisfactory but Harry also
thinks it's incredibly stupid and pointless so she's proud he's trying at
least.
She curls up against her husband's pajama-clad body and shuts her eyes. She
imagines threadbare cardigans and the musky wolf smell of Remus. Loose,
strained Darjeeling tea leaves in an infuser on the nightstand. She imagines
the brush of his unshaven face against hers as she—a girl—kissed him—a man—in
the hopes of a restful sleep free of nightmares.
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