"How did you get it?" she asked, then realized how stupid the question was. "Wait, never mind. That's pretty obvious. That had to be really expensive though. I knew you had a lot of money, but I can't believe you just bought something like that."
"Well, I do have a lot of money," he admitted quietly. "And I've never really bought much of anything for myself. So this summer I bought myself lots of things: a new wardrobe, both muggle and wizarding, this trunk, lots of books, contact lenses to replace my glasses, and a wand holster. I have more money than I know what to do with, so I thought I'd spoil myself a bit for once." He sounded almost defensive about it, like he had to explain himself before she got mad at him.
"Relax, Harry," she soothed him. "I'm not going to jump onto your case for treating yourself to something nice. It's your money, so you might as well spend some of it. If you don't, then it just sits there and doesn't do anybody any good. The fact that you have expensive things doesn't make you like Malfoy."
He looked immensely relieved to hear her say that. "Thanks." And he truly meant it. "So anyway, how is the potion coming along?"
And so they moved back to the reason she was there in the first place. She explained that she barely even got started. He pulled up a chair and gave her a hand preparing the ingredients. Before long they were dumping things into the cauldron in specific quantities in a specific order being stirred a specific number of times in a specific direction in between. It was all very exact but not terribly difficult as long as you are paying attention.
After some time, the potion was simmering, all the ingredients added, and now all that was left was to wait. They had just missed the end of dinner, so the two decided to kip down to the kitchens to get something to eat.
Harry tickled the pair, pulled on the doorknob that appeared, and had barely taken a step into the threshold when he felt something collide into his legs. "Harry Potter sir! Harry Potter has come to visit Dobby! Harry Potter is a great and powerful wizard. He is too kind to come visit Dobby. And he has brought his Wheezy, but it's not his usual Wheezy."
"Dobby," Harry said as he pried the elf's arms from around his legs. "This is Ginny, a friend of mine. Ginny, this is Dobby."
Ginny was giggling behind Harry at the scene before her. She stepped to the side of Harry and held her hand out to Dobby to shake. "It's nice to meet you Dobby."
Dobby looked at the hand in front of him with large, awe filled eyes. "Never before has Dobby been asked to shake hands. Harry Potter's new Wheezy is a great witch. She must be to be friends with Harry Potter and to be so nice to Dobby."
"Dobby," Harry was struggling to control his mirth, "don't you think it would be polite to shake her hand."
In all his praise, the elf had completely neglected the hand that was stretched out before him. "Bad Dobby," he scolded himself. "Dobby is a bad house elf. Dobby is not worthy to shake Harry Potter sir's Wheezy's hand."
"Nonsense, Dobby," Harry interrupted him. "You are very worthy to shake her hand. In fact, it would be offensive to refuse to do so."
"Dobby is sorry, sir," the elf pleaded, as he tentatively shook Ginny's hand. Ginny was still struggling to gain control of her giggling.
"It's very nice to meet you," she managed to say. "I've heard a lot about you."
Harry didn't think it was possible, but the elf's eyes grew wider at that statement. "You has heard of Dobby?"
"Uh huh. I've heard Harry and Ron and Hermione all talk about you a couple times," she explained.
"Harry Potter and his friends are truly the greatest wizards in the world," Dobby praised.
"That's enough of that," Harry said. "Dobby, we missed dinner and were wondering if you could possibly pull something together for us."
And the house elves were only too happy to provide. Dobby bustled away and not more than a couple minutes later, a magnificent feast that could have served the entire Weasley family was laid out before the two of them. They began to slowly eat their fill, talking and laughing all the way through it. They spent over two hours in the kitchen before heading back up to Harry's office. They passed the rest of the time reading and doing homework.
When the potion was finally finished, Harry bottled it up and presented it to Ginny with instructions to drink it that night when she was ready for bed. He warned her that she should probably be in bed already when she drank it, to avoid the possibility of letting the potion induced sleep claim her before she managed to make it under her covers.
When the two returned to the common room, they managed to side step the inquiries on where they had been and why they missed dinner. Ron seemed especially upset over their absence but didn't speak up about it. Harry decided it was best just to let things be and not call any more attention to it than necessary.
The next day, Ginny seemed to be full of life and energy, and Harry found himself wondering what it was she had seen. But he couldn't manage to get her alone to ask her about it. At meals there were always too many people around. He caught a couple glimpses of her in the halls, but she was always surrounded by people.
It wasn't until well after dinner, in the Gryffindor common room, that Ginny practically burst out in a whisper, "I'm a lioness," to Harry the second she was able to get him out of ear shot of all of their house mates. Harry was excited for her. He thought her form was a fitting one. She did have a certain feline grace to her. Maybe once she made the full transformation they could go running together through the Forbidden Forest. That thought left him excited. As fun as it was to play around in his animagus forms, it was a pretty lonely experience. When in his owl form, he occasionally got the chance to fly with Hedwig, which was nice. But in panther form he never had any company.
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