Days passed easily. She's surrounded. Constant noise. All her family. Harry and Hermione who are almost family anyway. She can talk with them, laugh with them, run and fly with them. She can reach out and touch, be touched. Hermione's warm thick curls. Harry's scratchy oversized jumper. Charlie's easy kisses. She can coax smirks and pinches from the twins. Get swung squealing by grinning Bill. A conspiratorial hug from Ron when no-one else is watching. A squeeze from Daddy. Bury her face in Mum's apron and that near permanent smell of baking. Days passed easily. Then the sun goes down.
She's first to bed. Lingers hard, but always first. Kisses them each goodnight. Hovers on the stairs, listening. On the landing, listening. In the bathroom. Slips on her nightgown. Sits at her dresser. Brushes her hair, fifty times each side and the back. Strains to hear. Holds hard to the filtered dregs of conversation. Smiles at every footstep, every soft good night from outside her door, spread apart till evening turns into night and night into late. Harry. Ron. Mum and Daddy. The twins. Bill always last if he's home. Until the house is still. Cold and silent around her.
The brush comes to the bed with her. She leans into her pillow. Slides the brush handle between her legs. Hand squeezes the bristles, biting against her palm. Sometimes thinks she's going crazy. Knows she isn't. Mad people don't know they're mad, do they? Pumps the handle inside her. Bites her lip against rough pain and rising heat. Makes a small sound, too loud in her empty room. It's not enough. It's never enough. The gap inside her won't stay filled. She flings the brush away. It bounces off the mirror with an unsatisfying smack. Her pale reflection starts, subsides.
The silent house breathes out. She watches herself in the mirror. The room grows dark. Night leeches all laughter and warmth from her body. Takes back all she's stolen during the day. Takes it all from her, till she's hollow. Till she's thin. Like parchment. Paper. Brittle and yellowed. She thinks if there was anyone to touch her she'd break. Crumble and flake until there was just dust. She can't see herself. The mirror's sheer, dark, empty. She's on her feet, at the door, out on the landing before she knows she's moved, poised on tiptoe trembling in thin moonlight.
She holds, no destination to flee to, lost. Hears a low moan. Not her own. Ghosts down the stairs. Bare feet make no noise. Easy shuffle. The door to Percy's room is temptingly ajar. Swings a little at the house settles. Like breathing. In. Out. She slides through the gap. Sees the quilt half on the floor. Sees Percy dreaming, eyes quick flickering under closed lids. Hand pawing at the air. Clawing at clammy sheets. Sees that pale expanse of goosefleshed skin. Comes close, kneels beside the bed, close enough for his sleep whimpers to warm her hair. Watches him.
Percy, she thinks, but. No. No ready association there. Not like Ron. Or Harry. Or Tom. She has nothing of him to keep to herself. No tiny treasured fragment to take out, turn over and over till it's shiny smooth. No little star in her void marked Percy. A sudden, frighteningly deep sadness, and her hands leap to him, flat against his chest. Feeling it rise against her. Hands sliding. Feeling him rise. The heat of him, burning up through her fingertips. Warming her. She needs to be closer. She needs him closer. Distance hurts. She crawls onto the bed.
There's a weight to him, a soft hardness, reassuring in its solidity. She thinks, Tom was hard too, like marble. like summer mist, and closes her fingers around Percy. Lightly. Hard. Her hollow gravity, pulling them together. Needs him. Around her. In her. The feel of him. The scent. The taste. Needs him filling her. Ducks her head, swallows him down. Enthusiasm denies the necessity of breath. She finds her rhythm. Savours him, the twitching against her flickering tongue, the sweet salt, the buck of hips. Doesn't realise Percy's waking till she pauses and his whimper's strained through clenched teeth.
She looks up. His eyes on her, fuzzily focused. Moves into his gaze, stalks it up his body. Pressing herself against him. Feather heavy. Like his hands on her. His lips on her. Defining her. Shaping her. Making her real. Feels him breathe against her. Stiffen and shift against her. His blood rushing, so loud in her head, pounding away the silence. She tucks her head into the crook his neck. Breathes in his breath. Heat expanding inside her. His heat. Tongues the line of his throat. Sucks at his pulse, quivering and jumping, alive and buzzing at her lips.
The nightgown itches. She moves against his sliding hands, lets it ride up. Coaxing his fingers onwards. Her knees bookending hips, thighs squeezed around waist. Settled on his stomach, her hands on him, skin to skin, drawing him in, absorbing him. Hot, fast blood just beneath her digging teeth. He arches up. Into them. Into her. His fingers almost, almost, where she wants them. Close enough that he has to feel her raw, wet, gasping need. Pushes back. Stretches herself along him, grinding down. Presses her hungry mouth to his temple, like she's tasting thoughts. The way Tom ate hers.
Sliding fingers shape a shudder in her skin. Cup curves. Crease her gown and tease the flesh beneath. Feels his need mingling with her own. Feels that something she needs to complete her, held just out of reach. Kisses the words he can't quite form from his lips and gives them back to his ear. I want. I want you to-- His fingers inside her panties lifting them away from her anticipatory slickness, down and away. She lifts to help him. His hands hinder her. Holding her in his reach but he not in hers. The gap hurts. She begs.
He's outlining a nipple with his tongue. Please. She's sobbing. Percy. He's positioning her against him. Please. Pressure forces words from her, slipping, one by one. Want. A push. Need. Stretching heat and weight. Please. Gasping into him, around him. Clenched tight around him. And he's thrusting and it's almost. She needs. Just a little. More. Please. Twisting to get the better angle. Get him deeper. Hands bruising her hips as she rises, falls, thrusts. Bites down on her lip. Keeps her moans inside where they hurt so much better than the nothing. Fuck. Closes teeth in his shoulder. Perce.
--and it overtakes her, this sweet upwards spiral, rising, rushing, a tight, tingling, all over shiver, blooming sweat slicking her skin, pressure expanding in the depths of her, thrusting heat, muscle clenching against her fingers, her body moving against his, forcing burning circles against his fingertips, pulling air in, great gasps filling her lungs, full, bursting, head snapped back, hair coiling against her shoulders, sweat slicked against her back, blood beating, her own heart drumming, pounding for her now, and heat explodes in her skull and she comes, twisting and tightening so hard it feels like breaking, like breaking free--
He follows after, pumping, whimpering, eyes squeezing closed, wet shooting heat, filling her, fills her, overflowing. She collapses into him, melts against his shaking chest, matches his ragged breathing. His hands still twitch, spastic against her. She squeezes once around him, tightens as she slides carefully off, satisfyingly sore and holding the reminder of him inside. Drops heavily off him into the space beside, curling up in the dip of their combined weight. Leans her forehead against him, listens to his breathing slow, steady, deepen. Breathes with him, slow and deep, exhausted and sated, filled and fulfilled all at once.
She's cooling, slowly but cooling. Tomorrow will come and maybe nothing will have changed. Maybe it will be same. Tomorrow. And right here, right now, the dark tide is drifting back but if she tilts her head just a little she can see Percy's eyes keep flickering open and as long as someone's looking she knows she's real and that it's okay to let go. Wrapped up tight around herself, hands still softly sliding over her skin, the slick heat of him still curling in her stomach, warming her, filling her, Ginny closes her eyes and drifts slowly into sleep.