A/N My first submission and a pretty simple one-shot that I had to put on black and white. Let me know what you think, I have lots of ideas I want to put out there. Please read and review, I won't know if you like my writing unless I get some feedback. This is post-DH and epilogue compliant.
Late Night Lecture
by: Flynhghr
Okay, pretend that you're famous. Pretend that everyone knows your name, age, birthday, hair color, eye color, dressing style, and especially everything about you that's even remotely controversial. What they don't know, is the most recent event that will change your life. Could the change be for the worse, or for the better? That depends on what comes out of Arthur Weasleys mouth in the next 10 minutes. Wow, 10 minutes that are going to change your life, what do you say to that? At the time, I know I was terribly embarrassed, and probably blushing enough to make any Weasley jealous.
It was three weeks after Ginny returned home after taking her NEWTs, and we were celebrating the results. The night started early, and was finishing up late. Her parents were cleaning up, and most everyone was in bed, or heading that way. We were cuddling on the couch, softly talking about the future, when Molly came in and said something I'll probably never forget.
"Dears, please don't stay up too late, I know you have Auror training in the morning Harry, and Ginny never was much of a morning person." she said this with a smirk, and continued. "Harry, I know you prefer to apparate to your apartment, so if you're going to be taking Ginny, it's best if you leave soon, since side along apparition does make quite a bit of noise." At this Molly continued upstairs, following Arthur who had left a few minutes previously.
I was still picking my jaw up off of the floor. My apartment had been somewhat of a touchy subject with the elder Weasleys over the past months. First, it was in muggle London, so it didn't have a fireplace to hook up to the floo network, which was the Weasley's preferred form of communication and travel. Second, they were bothered that I wasn't taking one of the free rooms of theirs since many were going unused. They offered me Bill's or Percy's several times, but it never felt right to accept. Not only was I seriously dating their youngest child and only daughter, but my Auror training had me out of bed every morning at around 4:30. Ron, who was now working with George to get the store back on track, made it a point to regularly complain about this during the few weeks after the battle when I did live in the Burrow.
Despite all their misgivings, here Molly was talking about me taking Ginny home with me as if it wasn't particularly upsetting to them. The first time Ginny had stayed with me it was a huge issue. The arguments about that night were quite legendary, even amongst the Weasleys, with all their fiery tempers. While nothing had happened that night, and nothing was planned to happen, Ginny was sure to send a patronus home to explain the situation. Ginny and I were out late at a club in muggle London celebrating the school year being over, and I knew side-along apparition would have been a bad idea, as I had consumed a few too many drinks to trust myself not to splinch one of us. We walked back to my apartment only to be woken up at 6 AM with Molly pounding on the door, demanding I open it immediately.
Things had been smoothed over since, and this night was one of the first times Molly had casually mentioned my apartment. Not wanting to tempt fate, we quickly gathered up our cloaks, a change of clothes for Ginny, and walked together to the apparition point. The night was laid back, despite all the celebrating, so I turned on my wireless to a low volume, and sat down on the couch. Ginny seemed tense. We had been taking our relationship slowly ever since we got back together after the battle. I didn't want to rush into a physical relationship, especially when I was still trying to understand the depth of my feelings for Ginny. Thankfully she completely understood, and wouldn't complain if I paused or froze when things were getting intense. The snogging was progressing nicely, my hands were around her waist just under her blouse, and hers were in my hair or on my neck. I was uncomfortably aroused, and Ginny seemed to take notice.
"It would probably be more comfortable to continue this in your bedroom." she offered.
While I wasn't against Ginny being in my bedroom(not having a spare bed), I wasn't sure if I could restrain myself. I wasn't drunk, being sober enough to apparate, but I had enjoyed enough of Arthur's preferred firewisky to lower my inhibitions. Despite my worries, I quickly agreed. From there things proceeded accordingly, and after much convincing on Ginny's end, I undid her tight-fitting jeans without taking them of. Caressing the skin under her knickers' elastic band my hand started to move lower when a pain shot into my hand, forcing me to quickly withdraw it. The simultaneous buzzing noise was quite loud, and even though Ginny jumped, she later admitted she felt nothing.
"Bloody hell, Ginny! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"
"It wasn't me, I don't know what made that noise!" she replied.
"Noise!? It felt like I stuck my hand in a light socket, do you have some kind of chastity charm?"
While these types of charms/wards were very uncommon, they weren't unheard of in the pure-blood families, where the females virginity was often a condition of betrothal contracts. I highly doubted that the elder Weasleys would have used anything of the sort, but then again they were allowing Ginny to stay the night quite unexpectedly. Perhaps this is why they were unconcerned about it? Ginny had no knowledge of such a charm, she actually thought it more of a George-type prank. I knew enough to back off, as these types of charms typically were either password or wand-locked so only the wand that placed the charm or a certain password could dispell it. While it wasn't particularly worrysome that it was protected, it was worrysome that they typically alerted the responsible party of the activation.
Later Ginny would laugh quite heartily, recalling my blanched face, and terrified expression when Arthur's weasel patronus joined us in the room. "Harry, please join me in the Burrow's kitchen." I don't think any other sentence in the history of the English language could have terrified me more. Not only was I caught with my 'hands in the cookie jar' so to speak, but it was on the very first night I was allowed to be alone with Ginny outside of the Burrow. While our activities were not considered a crime in the wizarding world, as Ginny was now seventeen, it was undoubtedly serious in a Father's eye.
So here I was re-fastening my still-warm cloak, preparing to apparate into an unknown situation. I had no idea what her father was going to say, and definitely wasn't in a rush to find out. Arthur's voice (coming from the patronus) didn't seem particularly upset, but that could have been because of the mindset needed to produce a patronus. I straightened my hair, futile as it was, and turned into the blinding compression that was apparition. Arthur wasn't at the door as I approached, but called for me to enter just as I was reaching for the knocker. I did relax when I noticed that he did not immediately have his wand in hand, but was much more relieved to notice that Molly wasn't around. While I can't recall her temper ever being directed at myself, I'd seen enough of it during my stays at the Burrow to know it was not something to take lightly.
"Good eve- err, I guess it's good morning, Sir." I sat down, quite dejectedly, wanting to appear properly ashamed.
"Harry, my boy, I can't imagine what's going through your head right now, but I can assure you that it's not to discuss what you think we're going to discuss."
"Yes Sir."
"Harry, I thought you had gotten over this 'sir' stuff, you know I prefer you to call me Arthur."
"Yes Sir - err, Arthur."
"I suppose I should start with telling you why I didn't ask Ginny to come."
"I was contemplating that, actually." While I truthfully wasn't, it did strike me as odd now that he brought it up.
"I guess it's because after years of experience I've learned not to tempt the tempers of Weasley women when avoidable. You see, I'm rather embarrassed about being here tonight, for this particular reason, and I can only imagine the tantrum that Ginny would throw if she knew why."
"She really didn't seem that upset, si-Arthur." Okay, at this point I wanted to stall, but this calm conversing kind of threw me through a loop. I was completely expecting to get chewed out, or banned from the Burrow, or any number of equally threatening things (like Molly).
"Perhaps not yet, but once she knows why what happened, happened, I have a pretty good idea of what her reaction will be. You see when Ginny was very young, she went through that terrible ordeal with the diary. While nothing untoward happened directly to Ginny at the time, she was introduced to a few things that caused her to come to us with questions that we would have rather waited to answer. As uncomfortable as it was for us to answer the questions, we didn't push her to directly discuss those concepts. We were afraid we might not have handled it effectively, so me and her mother agreed to placed a charm on her in the hopes that these -err- issues wouldn't become a problem during her second year. I had doubted it would work through the thick wards at the school, but it was good enough for our peace of mind."
"So she did have a chastity charm on her, and that's what we, err I, ran into?" I was quite worried at this point. Now the cat was out of the bag, and he knew exactly what was going on. I couldn't deny it, any more than I could say that it was an accident. Thanks to Ron's handy book, I knew this class of charm required skin-on-skin contact, in the groin area. That kind of contact doesn't happen on accident.
"Yes, I placed one on her the night of that discussion, although over the years I'll admit that since it never went off, I thought it had failed. I was a teenager myself at one point, and I assumed that by seventeen -nearly eighteen- years of age that particular obstacle would've already been -err- discovered."
"So you're saying that it's never gone off before?" Don't tell Ginny, but I was actually happily surprised, she was quite affectionate with Dean before they broke up. It was quite enticing thinking that it was 'uncharted' territory, but I quickly had to quell those thoughts, as I was still face to face with her father.
"Exactly! While I'd like to say I had expected it, I must admit to being rather surprised due to a couple of reasons. First, that my charm actually worked. Second, that it hasn't been tripped previously. I'm very proud of you two, Harry. Without embarrassing anyone, I doubt that many couples at your age would have waited that long to be -err- close. I don't want to encourage you to take it further than you have, but with you being eighteen and Ginny being seventeen, you're both considered adults, and despite Molly's protests, it's time we treated you as such. I've often been impressed with you, Harry. I have no qualms of giving you the cancellation password, yet I also feel its only responsible to offer to teach you a contraceptive spell, should you want it. So, what do you say?"
I don't know how I held myself together. It may have been the late (early) hour, or even the Firewiskey we had shared during the previous celebration, but looking back I would expect to have been a stuttering, gaping mess. Arthur was not only embarrassed that I came across his daughter's chastity charm, he was offering me the means to cancel it, AND a contraceptive charm! He was quick to explain the cancellation sequence and password once I asked, but I didn't need the contraceptive spell, as I had memorized this as soon as Ginny and I got back together. Now, how in Merlin's realm am I going to tell Ginny all this...