Title: Slow Summer, Hot Air
Pairing: Ginny/Fleur
Rating: PG-13 at the very highest
Word count: ~2,500
Warnings: me trying to write a French accent!
Summary: Ginny feels a little lost in the heat of summer.
Notes: Written as a pinch hit for peskywhistpaw in the femmefest exchange. Even *more* huge thanks to Lena for the beta, because this one really needed some re-direction. Thank you for helping me out! <3

Slow Summer, Hot Air

At the hottest, deepest end of summer, Fleur took to wearing shorts. Not the square, boyish kind Ginny used to wear before Hogwarts, but soft, short, light linen things rising high on her hips. When Ginny looked at her with the sun as a backdrop, she could make out the silhouette of the top part of her legs.

The rest was already visible.

Everyone was sweaty, starting out with light clothes in the more forgiving hours of the morning, clothes that grew more and more damp as the sun climbed, but Fleur was crisp and fresh; impossibly so, aggravatingly so.

While Ginny plucked at her too-girly sundresses that stuck to her shoulders and the back of her knees when she sat, Fleur floated and exposed long, long, never-ending glowing skin.

Fleur’s shorts were great, honestly.

Ginny hated them.

*

They still flocked to The Burrow in summer, even though almost everyone was off living on their own now. (Almost because Ginny wasn’t, yet – her mother never said she should start looking for a place, but every morning over breakfast Ginny thought she felt her think it. Her parents probably stayed silent because she, unlike all of her siblings, had come out of Hogwarts without a partner, and without a goal. She wished they’d tell her to go, couched in softness if necessary, but still stronger than a request.) She was eighteen, almost nineteen; but in summertime there was still this haze of childhood. The Burrow’s garden grew hot very quickly. Everything vibrated in it, in that strange almost white light only high summer produces. It felt like lying down to sleep for months, without a worry in the world. It felt like being fifteen and having finished your exams successfully. A sea of time. A holiday, even as George left for the shop every morning, consistently reminding Ginny that she didn't have a job.

She forced herself to scan the Prophet for job openings every morning. She wrote some letters and got some standard answers back. In reality, she felt like there was nothing that could feel as purposeful as being in the resistance, even if she had only contributed a very small piece. It had felt like something that was inherently good, and worth almost everything – and she never had that feeling when she stared at the job vacancy ads in the Prophet. She felt slowed down, wrote short, too-snappy letters. Maybe the sluggishness came from the heat, maybe from something else; she didn’t want to think too much about the possibility of never feeling useful again. The job openings were being filled impossibly fast because everyone wanted to rebuild. She just didn’t seem to have that strength, and instead spent hazy days lying around the garden.

*

Fleur had found a job working with the Wizarding Wireless. She wanted her own program in time, which Ginny thought was ridiculous (with that accent? seriously). Right now she was busy looking for and contacting interesting, well-known or semi-well-known people and booking them for interviews.

Bill had laughed when Fleur had announced this to the rest of the Weasleys and said nobody would be able to refuse when it was Fleur who asked, and that the wireless probably wouldn’t get round to playing any music anymore.

Everyone laughed, even Harry, and Fleur smiled at Bill, and Ginny rolled her eyes.

*

“Ginny dear,” her mother said, “don’t you think it would be nice to meet up with some of your friends from Hogwarts once in a while?”

Ginny looked at her, her open and warm face, her smile.

“I don’t really see them anymore,” she replied, feeling a little cold despite the sunshine.

“I know, but if you owled them I’m sure they’d be pleased. You can’t just wait around for friendships to happen or to stay strong. You have to do something to make something happen.” And by the way the words came quickly Ginny knew her mother had been burning to say this to her for some time.

“Yeah,” she mumbled, and promised to write them – when she put the quill to the parchment, she didn’t really know what to say other than: ‘so what’ve you been up to since the war?’

She was a little afraid of the answers, but sent the owls anyway (because her mother was right, she always was, and she did feel rather restless in a way that girl talk might be able to cure).

When she came downstairs, Bill smiled at her and Hermione squeezed her shoulder – and just from that she knew everyone had been talking about her just minutes ago.

*

The job thing came up.

Fleur was working in the garden, trying to shape some sense into the bushes (which Ginny thought was amusing, because that wasn’t the way Weasley gardens grew).

“Why don’t you just use magic?” she half-shouted at Fleur from across the garden, where she was kicking her feet in the pond with Hermione.

“I like working! I suppose zat isn’t somezing you’d be familiar with!” Fleur half-shouted back, and although she knew it was meant as a joke, Ginny felt something hot flaring in her chest.

*

It took a little over a week for the confrontation to come.

“Geeny,” Fleur singsonged, as they had by a stroke of misfortune ended up next to each other at dinner, “zere are ‘onestly a lot of job openings at Saint Mungo’s. Why not apply?”

“I don’t really want to be a nurse,” Ginny mumbled angrily, quickly filling her mouth with mashed potatoes to smother the desire to curse at Fleur.

Fleur looked at her, kindly, and it was that kindness, that sympathy that made Ginny furious. She swallowed the lump of potatoes and couldn’t stop the flood of words anymore.

“You don’t know what you’re on about, okay?” she spat loudly, almost shouting. She was vaguely conscious of the conversation around them falling silent, and of the fact that she had pushed her chair backwards and was now on her feet. Her focus was only on Fleur’s face, and her small, red mouth pulled taut. “You just, you don’t know what the fuck I’m looking for! You don’t know anything! Sure, it’s – it’s all pretty easy if all you have to do is bat your pretty eyes and have interviewees falling at your feet! It’s all a pretty freaking glorious day in the park when all you’re looking for is admirers!”

She was spluttering incoherently now, and she could hear Bill saying her name in an odd tone, and Ron asking Harry what the hell was going on.

Fleur got to her feet slowly and looked at Ginny – she looked sharp, with flashing eyes and bared teeth. She stepped closer to Ginny.

For a moment Ginny thought she was going to hit her, but then Fleur – hugged her, hugged her of all things, wrapping her long arms around Ginny and pressing Ginny’s sweaty face into the soft hardness of her collarbones.

Ginny stood there, not doing anything, utterly flabbergasted. Something in her stomach seemed to be moving.

After a moment or two – in which Ginny thought the blood rushing up to her head was going to splash out of her ears – Fleur let go, still wearing that sharp frown.

“You’re so young, Geeny,” she said, into the silence that hung motionless over the table, “but you ‘ave to pull yourself togezzer now, or you will never have ze feeling zat you can do somezing. Ze time for ‘eroics is over, and now it is time for less grand zings – be grateful zat you can still contribute!” Even her voice was knife-like, and everything about it cut, and Ginny was running away before she even knew it.

*

There was just so much different after that.

Everyone thought Fleur was right, that much was obvious. Even Harry looked at her now sometimes, and when he did she knew it was because he was upset with her for not moving on more quickly. He wasn’t exactly moving on either, but he was allowed to – he had seen so much and been through so much not only the last months but every moment of his life that he was completely forgiven for sulking and not sleeping.

Ginny hadn’t really been through anything bad, had she?

Except she had felt so right then, so good about being on the side that wanted to make things better, that it was hard to feel satisfied with anything they had now. She couldn’t say that to Harry – she couldn’t say that to anyone. It was so wrong to be nostalgic of those horrible times. She knew this. She couldn’t help it.

She was furious that Fleur had read this in her, Fleur of all people, with her outrageous shorts and immaculate hair even after a day that was too hot to move.

She started to imagine pulling at that perfect hair until some of the silvery strands would stick to her sweaty palm. She started to imagine pushing Fleur into the pond so she’d come out looking like a drowned dog. She started to imagine pulling at Fleur’s clothes until they came off, and then wearing them herself. She imagined shredding those bloody shorts. She started to imagine biting Fleur, and then sometimes kissing Fleur, and that’s where she started to think she was going insane.

*

She would have ignored Fleur, except Fleur didn’t ignore her. In fact, she seemed to sense what was going on somehow.

In the kitchen, when Ginny was helping her mother with dinner, Fleur would stand too close – to grab this pot or that glass, reaching over Ginny’s shoulder to get to the cupboard. The contact wasn’t really there, but Ginny could feel her warmth and her breast almost pressing into her back.

Fleur would go swimming in the pond, and surface right next to where Ginny was floating – truly an image of golden hair and wet eyes and Ginny just couldn’t take her eyes off the way the shoulder band of her bathing suit slipped off her shoulder time and time again.

Fleur would kiss Bill in front of Ginny. He always seemed surprised, but tangled his big hands in her golden hair and grinned sheepishly when she pulled back. Ginny couldn’t recall if they’d ever done that before – she suspected they had – but still it made her want to smash something.

Fleur would pass Ginny in impossible small spaces, in exactly those spots in the house where people weren’t meant to cross each other. The ghost contacts, lost strands of hair sliding over Ginny’s face, their arms brushing – Ginny’s blood pumped as if she was going to die, and in the heat of the night she couldn’t forget the lingering imprint of Fleur’s body pressing almost into her.

And sometimes Fleur would just look at her, with that same, sharp, passionate look that was so full of pity at the same time.

*

The summer was almost over before they exchanged another word.

It was the middle of the night, finally cool, when Ginny went downstairs to get her wand and a glass of water. She always forgot to take her wand upstairs, so whenever she needed something she had to go downstairs. That was one habit that had changed since the time of the war, when she hadn’t been able to sleep without her wand under her pillow.

Fleur was charming ice cream into a bowl while sitting cross-legged on the countertop. Ginny was more surprised by this particular tidbit – who’d sit on the countertop in their pyjamas in the middle of the night? – than by Fleur’s actual presence in the kitchen.

“’Ello,” Fleur said pleasantly, digging into the ice cream.

“Hi,” Ginny said stiffly, wanting to go already. Fleur looked so strange on that countertop though, so soft and friendly and almost alien in the scarce artificial light, that something made her stay.

“Want some crème glacée?” Fleur offered.

Ginny shook her head, even though she kind of fancied it. (She didn’t really want to say yes to Fleur, somehow.)

Fleur shrugged and continued eating it. Ginny looked around for her wand, located it and stuck it in the waistband of her pyjama shorts.

“Are you okay, Geeny?” Fleur asked. Ginny knew it wasn’t the kind of question that wanted ‘Sure, thanks, and you?’ as an answer. She didn’t know what else to say, so she stayed silent.

“I am sorry I ‘ad to be so ‘arsh with you before, but you seem to be a leetle lost now and zen, non?”

“What makes you say that?” Ginny mumbled, turning around to face the cupboard. She rummaged, looking for a glass.

“Geeny, most of us ‘ave been in your place after ze battles ended. But we ‘ave tried to be ‘appy with ze fact that nozzing is quite as tragique as it was before. We try to treasure ze fact that everyzing is smaller.”

Ginny stared at her glass.

“It really is up to you. You ‘ave to do it yourself, because ze world will just keep going. You ‘ave to find your place in it.”

“Stop being such a preacher,” Ginny said, but softly, and Fleur seemed to get that it was her way of saying: you’re right.

“Come ‘ere,” Fleur said, and nothing about her was sharp now. “I know of your feelings and I know zey are looking for passion. Ze same zing happened to me when I was your age, Geeny.”

Ginny did step closer, but she couldn’t bring herself to close the gap. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stop her mouth from acting out her fantasies of Fleur: the biting, the kissing, the everything. Something stopped her from doing it – the thought of her brother, upstairs, maybe soundly asleep, or maybe waiting for his wife to have satisfied her nightly craving.

But something about it had been enough. It was enough that Fleur looked at her with smoldering eyes and didn’t inch away as their breaths mingled, noses almost touching. It was enough that she didn’t wipe the ice cream sticking to her lips, and that she didn’t look perfect then, and really seemed to understand something about Ginny even Ginny didn’t. Maybe Ginny’d look for something in the Prophet tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow – maybe she could write letters that wouldn’t get her standard answers. Yes, she could. She would, maybe tomorrow, maybe not.

They were still standing close together. Ginny hooked her finger in a belt loop of Fleur’s shorts, and then smiled a little. Something about it was enough.