Sample 3rd Person - Harry Potter
feat. Ginny Weasley, for a private storyline


If Remus wasn't already having enough trouble concentrating on appearing concentrated, there was a clatter on the back staircase that led into the kitchen, and a female voice exclaiming, "Oh! Damn, I'm sorry!" That was Ginny.

"It's ok. Are you ok?" The answering voice was Harry, grateful no one had seen the girl barrel down the stairs and smack into him. Not for himself, of course. It wasn't embarassing to be run into, but he wouldn't want anyone to think Ginny was being clumsy, and...Well, it was slightly for himself. He wished even Ginny couldn't see him, because he suddenly looked rather nervous, as it dawned on him that his arm was snugly around her waist, preventing her from falling off the bottom step. He let her go and took a step back. There was a mug of tea, hovering half an inch off the floor. Some of the liquid had spilled out, but the mug was intact. Harry bent to pick it up, and when he looked back at Ginny, he felt even more embarassed: she, too, had a nervous flush under her freckles. He felt instantly horrified for having placed himself in such a position that she could embarass herself by smacking into him.

"I'm fine," she said. "I was just...I was hungry, and Mum wouldn't let me get at those biscuits, earlier." She indicated a covered plate on the counter, now left unattended, as most everyone else had gone to bed.

"You weren't hungry," Harry prodded, familiarity returning with a grin, as he set the mug in the sink. Drinking tea didn't seem very interesting, anymore. "You wanted the first go at them."

Ginny, her fist already clutching a wide stack of four biscuits, raised the index finger of her other hand to her lips, and shushed Harry. "Shut up, you're not supposed to know that." She grinned, and took a bite out of the fifth one, shaped like a clover leaf. "But I better get back up there. Hermione thinks I'm in the loo."

"You're going to eat them in the loo?"

Ginny shushed him again. "Don't tell. See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," said Harry, still grinning. He liked Ginny. He liked that she was a girl, and would still do things like steal sweets and eat them a yard shy of the toilet. Hermione wouldn't do that, and what's more, he knew that even a fellow girl wouldn't be immune to Hermione's looks of thinly veiled disgust and irritation, if she figured out what Ginny was doing.

"Sorry about your tea." Ginny was halfway up the stairs, and halfway through another mouthful of biscuit. Another un-girlish thing about her.

"It's tea," Harry shrugged. "I'll make another."

"Ok," said Ginny. A door creaked, up above. "Gotta go!" She turned and thundered up the staircase as quietly as possible.

Harry had quite forgotten the point of being in the kitchen. Tea no longer seemed very vital to his wellbeing. What seemed preposterously important, was going back up to the room he shared with Ron, and waiting very anxiously for the sound of Ginny returning to her room, so that he could "conveniently" appear in their doorway with Ron, in search of adventure, if Hermione started in on the other girl. Yes, that seemed like quite the right thing to do. They could find Sarah, and go out for a swim, or a romp with the dogs. Ginny rather liked the dogs.

But as Harry was rinsing the dredges of the spilt tea (which had cleaned itself off the kitchen floor) out of the mug, he noticed he wasn't alone. Through the open doorway, he could see Lupin, book on his lap, seated in one of the house's sitting rooms. Oh. He and Ginny must have disturbed the man, and yet he hadn't said anything. But that wasn't like Remus, Harry didn't think. Remus seemed to prefer getting on with his business, in spite of atmospheric noise. It must have been a side effect of living with Sirius, for so long.

Something flared in Harry, quite different from the nerves that had bubbled up when Ginny fell into his arms. (What was that about? It was just Gin.) He became palpably aware of how little he had spoken to Remus, since this visit began. Remus knew he was in the kitchen. If he didn't say hello, he was going to look like he was purposefully ignoring the man. He wasn't. Quite. A part of Harry would very much like to talk to his former professor. When they first met, Remus had been the first person to give him much honest information about what his parents and Sirius were like. Aside from McGonagall, Remus had been one of the first professors to behave as though Harry might actually know something. After all that, Harry knew it would be unfair, not to talk to him.

Setting the mug down on the counter, hands tucked into the front pocket of his sweatshirt, he came into the sitting room. "Remus?" It was still sort of strange, not to call him "Professor Lupin," even after two years. "We didn't mean to disturb you, just now." He paused, just briefly. "How are things?" It occured to him, only after it was out of his mouth, that if his aim was not to disturb, he was doing a bad job of it, by asking questions.