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#birthday smooches
littlelionpaw · 24 days
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Happy Birthday, Aloy! You deserve all the smooches 😚
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saltygilmores · 5 months
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THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS: SEASON 3, EPISODE 2: HAUNTED LEG-TUMBLR IS HUNGIE AND KEEPS EATING MY POSTS
The Netflix synopses (synopseses? Synposi? Where are you, Jess Mariano? You're my only hope) made this episode seem like it was going to be heavily En-Crusty'd (Christopher focused) but then the lovely @frazzledsoul told me that in this episode Rory takes Christopher to school (metaphorically) and this is also the episode where Jess takes RORY down a peg in a GLORIOUS confrontation at Doose's Market. If there's one thing I love seeing in Gilmore GIrls it's a good peg lowering. In fact, it gives me such immense satisfaction to see Rory in particular get taken down a peg that the three times Dean does it to her are the only times I actually side with Dean. Let the Notch-Taking-Down Party commence. But first....Happy 18th birthday, Jess! You're legal, mister! I am solidly and forever in the Late August/ Early September Birthday Camp (I have my reasons) and we're already there on the show! It's been almost a year since he arrived in Stars Hollow as a 17 year old! I'm gonna make it easy and say it was September 1st.
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Now you can visit the strip club, and buy porn and cigarettes legally! You're a man now! (well, at least you could buy cigarettes at 18 years old 20 years ago. It's 21 now). Episode begins with Emily still being predictably salty about last week's FND, where Lorelai snuck out of the house while her parents were fighting over her breakup with Crusty.
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Don't listen to her. You do can do whatever you want, even while you're on the clock. My little shmushkins. My apple dumpling. My peach tart. My banana muffin. My jelly donut. You're gonna make a bazillion dollars with your books some day and show em all. *pinches his cheeks* Lorelai is coming down with an illness which I shall diagnose as mononucleosis (aka the kissing disease) that she contracted from making out with Dean Forrester.
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Lorelai has no qualms about leaving the house to eat out every single day in a crowded diner and spread her germs all over town, instead of keeping her ass in bed, I guess. She's also incapable of purchasing and opening a can of soup and dumping it in a pot on the stove (or hell, even sticking it in the microwave) so she wakes up each day and chooses to be a Disease Vector. If she wasn't (presumably) still married to Luke in 2020 to cook her meals for her at home I don't know how she survived the pandemic. Luke: You know what helps a cold? A healthy immune system. You know how to get a healthy system? By not eating crap and blowing out your brain cells with coffee. Eat a vegetable now and then or some high fiber cereal. At least eat the carrots in the soup? Three minutes in and he's already Insulting Lorelai (while, uh, also insulting himself at the same time?) Whee, I'm loving this episode already! More Peg-Lowering, please! Several people on this show are going to be HUMBLED and I am HERE for it. But why is Luke always downselling food that he puts on his own menu? I know Lorelai and Rory don't ever pay him anyway, but doesn't he want to attempt to make some money? "My food will make you fat and sick and kill your brain cells. Don't eat it. Go eat somewhere else." Or is it that he's a-okay with poisoning the rest of Stars Hollow with copious amounts of junk food but wants to spare Lorelai and Rory the same fate? One would also suppose he doesn't actually have said vegetables or fiber rich cereal on his menu in the first place (it's a fucking diner) and that would mean Lorelai would have to pour herself her own cereal at home. Perish the thought. Is Luke secretly some kind of California Hipster in denial? Would he be more at home opening some kind of vegan cafe where he serves wheat grass shots and kombucha and avacado toast, you know, all the stuff Milo Ventimiglia eats. (But Milo’s a big junk food junky too, he's a bit of a paradox, that man). What does he feed Jess, by the way? In his first appearance he was planning to stuff his already neglected and malnourished nephew full of Corn Flakes and Pop Tarts.
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Grandpa here is going to live to be 115 probably, but only if you shut up, you're already sending him to an early grave.
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EVERYONE STOP EATING AND TALKING. THE QUEEN HAS ARRIVED! Anyone else think its funny that Lorelai and Rory and Luke are ilke the mayors of Stars Hollow who know everything down to when the mailman's dog farts but nobody knows who Shane is, where she came from, who her family is, when she moved in, where she lives, how she ended up with Jess...ANYTHING? Nobody even seems to know her name? Silence from Miss Patty and Babette? Lane and Dean never informed Rory that Jess was never in school, that he supposedly pulled the fire alarm, stole 500 baseballs, etc etc. again, shouldn't Lane be absolutely losing her mind to spill this piping hot tea that Jess has been hooking up with some mysterious blond skankbag all summer? And Dean too, shouldn't he always be dying to tell Rory anything that would cast Jess in an unfavorable light and make her think less of him? What is with this town where they'll hold an emergency meeting because he drew on a sidewalk with some chalk but when he actually does something worth talking about, nobody wants to narc on him? They fear him, that's what it is. What is Shane's last name by the way? I made up a poll and asked you to decide on her last name and I'm currently awaiting the results, which I will use going forward.
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Jess and Shane continue to give Rory Gilmore a sexual awakening so immense it could knock our fucking solar system out of alignment. That boom you just heard was Jupiter and Saturn crashing into one another from the sheer force of Rory Gilmore's quivering loins.
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Tomatos Sign. I wonder how much money Jessica Kiper was paid to stick her tongue in Milo's mouth and say "Hey" and "Jess". Did she have to audition? I would do the job for free. I would keep screwing up just so the director could yell "Cut" and I could do as many takes as possible. Warner Brothers could own me for the rest of my life just for that opportunity.
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Meow! All she did was say his name, lol. Someone's cranky. You know what would cure that bad mood? A good handjob from Shane (last name soon to be announced). This whole "no strings attached sexual gratification" deal that was seemingly dropped in his lap? Meh, whatever. He'll do it, but he'll be reading the entire time. Meanwhile, this is Dean waiting 5 years for Rory to put out:
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(By the way, Mr. Mariano, don't ever tell a woman to "relax") Jess sighs and leaves in the middle of his shift (Lorelai should be proud), leaving his customers wondering where their pancakes are, to go have sex with Shane somewhere public and indecent, leaving Rory in their horny wake. Perhaps Jess has the intuition that the cold, clammy, looming hand of Celibacy (aka his own hand and a jumbo size bottle of lotion) will soon be upon him so he better seize these opportunities.
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Love it when she says shit like this as if her boyfriend Dean Forrester is some fucking chatterbox (he'll grunt a few words as he's also a typical teenage boy like Jess and she'll go "That's So INTERESTING Dean! Do go on. I love you, little buttered croissant"), and also like she should actually expect Jess to talk around her when he knows she's going to pick on him even worse if he does have something to say.
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Too late. That's hilarious- I forgot that Dean was about to show up just now and prove my point.
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She's still wearing that stupid quarter on a string on her wrist. I will give this show credit for being very consistent with some of the small details like this. Every day for 2+ years straight, Alexis Bledel shows up at Wardrobe and they slap that thing on her wrist. That cup is HUGE.
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Yeah. What? I could teach a comatose goldfish to say "I already ate breakfast." The hell is your point?
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Oh god. It's that episode where Kirk and Lorelai go on a "Date". I do not remember how it goes but I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and predict that it was sufficiently awkward. Honestly...Lorelai has done MUCH worse before and will continue to do much worse than Kirk. Mommy issues aside, Kirk has more redeeming qualities than Max or Crusty. Like, at least Kirk is ambitious. Lorelai is still only a few months removed from banging Crusty who wouldn't know the meaning of hard work if it bit him in the ass. I hope something bites Crusty in the ass. Like a rabid possum. Kirk...."Let's go out...In two weeks. I heard you have a cold. It takes two weeks for a virus to leave the immune system." He's also smart and would survive the pandemic. "You might be the prettiest girl I've ever seen. Outside of a filthy magazine."
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It's the first day of senior year for Rory and our other Stars Hollow teens.
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It's all downhill for Rory after high school.
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Nobody tell her. L: I cannot go out with Kirk! R: Why not? L: He's Kirk! Poor Neurodivergent Kirk.
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Fixed it.
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i was about to say "What the what! Lorelai is actually pouring her own cereal?" but it's Rory wno's making her own breakfast and Lorelai is just pouring marshmallows into the bowl (who does that? That's not a thing. Here in The United States of America, there are already cereals that come with marshmallows). I mean, at least she's eating at home and "helping". Good for you for helping to feed to your chiild, Lorelai. Even if she's eschewing the (marginally) more healthy Raisin Bran in favor of Rice Krispies. I'm going to add a new feature to the ends of these posts: I call it: Things Googled While Watching GIlmore GIrls. Birthday Party Icons, How Old To Buy CIgarettes in Connecticut, Definition of Proclivities, How Many Words Can A Parrot Learn
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danger-bird · 18 days
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For Mhin's birthday, I'm catering to the *checks notes*... 2 people from the pole whose fav LI ship is Ais x Mhin.
Yall have been starved to death, and that's unacceptable. Your religion is valid, it's cute and I'm presenting to you my offering.
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magicshop · 4 days
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seokjin + iconic solo performances for @cordiallyfuturedwight ♡ [cr. namuspromised]
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ollieartie · 1 year
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A lil indulgent Sanuso, as a birthday treat.
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spitepress · 1 year
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Some soft smooches for the bestest boy~ He's been my main since the beginning of the game, and he's staying as a dps FOREVER
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w.count: 1.1k - golden birthday wishes for him only (っ◔◡◔)っ ❤
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evening was settling in when you came face to face with zhongli's front door. you knew he was cleaning up around his home today, he told you so after all.
"it's pleasant starting off the new year with a fresh start, and there's no better start than your own home," he had told you.
staring at the liyue styled door, you sway between knocking or just using the spare key he keeps stashed away not far from the entrance. on one hand, you felt like it would be rude to just interrupt his progress- even if the both of you had plans once the sun set. on the other, wouldn't it be just as rude to barge in unannounced- even if he was partially expecting you?
not coming to a proper conclusion, you decide to cut your awkward standing at his doorstep short. quickly finding the key, you crack open the door and with the little space you granted yourself, peek your head inside. the small lamp inside the doorway on the small shelf he kept was lit, so he was at least home. you didn't see him or his shadow anywhere though.
stepping further inside, you knock on the already open door twice before shutting it behind you. why chose between two options when you can just do both after all. toeing off your shoes, you step cautiously inside. although less than likely, you didn't want to startle the fake geo vision holder if you could help it.
"zhongli?" you call out, stepping into the main room. looking back and forth and even moving to check to see if he was in the kitchen; maybe he would be rearranging his tea leaves because there is no way he'd use his kitchen for cooking. lord of geo he may have used to be, that man cannot be trusted in the kitchen.
walking back, you stand at the bottom of the staircase that leads up to the second floor. he must be up there- and upstairs he was. once you reach the top, you could hear him rummaging around in a room with the door half shut. and old storage room he kept all sorts of things in if memory serves.
approaching the door, you knock softly a few times before peeking in just like how you did at the front door.
"zhongli?" you parrot from earlier and are met with his back. he was stood in front of an old wardrobe crafted from sandbearer wood- common to liyue. "well, don't you look handsome," you compliment when he turns to face you. walking inside, you come to his side and flick his long hair that rested on his chest over his shoulder to behind his back where it now rests along his spine.
the outfit he wore was one you didn't even know he had. though different from his normal whengsheng funeral attire, it had a familiar pattern to it. deep shades of brown lined with gold and flickered with designs that mimicked golden stars. the scaling pattern along the fabric was a nice touch as well; no doubt a nod to his golden form that had put on quite the dramatic show at his 'death'.
"i've never seen these pieces before," you tell him, reaching up to straighten the collar that crawled up his neck. zhongli's chest jumped in light chuckles at both your actions and words.
"i had forgotten i had them in truth. though, a long time ago, i used to wear them often." turning back to the open wardrobe, you notice an over coat with large shoulder guards that obviously went over the skintight under-layer he currently wears. "i came across them while tidying up, and in the spur of the moment decided to... remanence a bit."
"hmm," you hum in acknowledgement. seeing his normal clothes hanging neatly up away from him you indeed notice how similar they are. "did the person who made your clothes of today also make these?" his eyes blink in astonishment at your query.
"that is correct. you have sharp eyes to notice."
"i wouldn't go that far." you look up at him and brush his bangs around his face, fixing him up in small and rather passive ways. still, zhongli allowed you to do what you wanted. he enjoyed your preening; it made him feel cared for. your fingers move to brush around his ear that held a golden cuff that curled around his earlobe instead of his normal white dangling one. "are you planning to wear this out then? im sure it's creator would love to have it seen the moonlight of liyue on the eve of a new year, no?"
"the thought had crossed my mind," he admits. "perhaps i shall."
"then we better have a good time, or else the moonlight on the fabric will be wasted." you turn away from him to search the nearby dressers for shoes that aren't his daily ones. maybe a nice pair of boots instead... and maybe longer gloves to hide the golden veins running across his wrists. as you rummaged around, he watched you with stars in his eyes.
the way you encouraged and even prompted his whims filled his chest with so much warmth- it was like he could bleed gold.
"dear," he calls. when you turn to offer him your attention, his hand is outstretched towards you. a silent plea for you to come to him. and you do. placing your hand in his, he holds it tightly and tugs you gently so his lips can be pressed into the crown of your head. "you'll stay with me into the new year, yes?"
"where else would i be?" you notice over his shoulder the last rays of the evening darkening into a blanket of night. "but if you wish to see the festivities of the end of this one, we should hurry out soon." pulling his lips away from your head, he agrees. you help him into his coat- as out of style on an 'ordinary' man it was, it still looked far too good on him.
standing at the front door, you slip on your shoes you had left there earlier. and with his hand on your back, he falters when you stop suddenly before turning to face him. he blinks down at you and you wonder if he still remembers his birthday, or if he even cares at this point in his long long life.
"happy birthday, rex lapis," you tease. seeing as he was wearing his archon clothing, it felt right. zhongli just shut his eyes in amusement and thanks you by nuzzling his nose into your temple before leading you out into the harbor's busy streets.
call him greedy, but a part of him wanted to stay home so only you could see him like this. and additionally, only he could bask in your presence for the turning of the year.
perhaps he could sneak you away just before the clock ticked fully down and spend the first few minutes of the year of the dragon alone- even if it's hidden in an alley.
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melancholymegumi · 4 months
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Melody's current thoughts 💭
it was your daddy's best friend's birthday! what else would your daddy gift him other than letting him fuck you?
warnings : 3some , oral (female receiving) , like one praise , borderline dubcon , pet play implied , unprotected sex (don't be silly, wrap your willy!) , anal :3 , izuku's kinda a meanie
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"shh shh, baby, you promised you would be a good and quiet girl didn't you?" yeah, you did , but not when his best friend has his cock up your ass — literally. He wasn't even halfway in- but it hurts so bad. But your daddy keeps saying it's his birthday, so you have to be a good girl for him, even if it means crying and holding onto your daddy's head , pushing him deeper into your pussy.
"d-daddy it hurts! unfair!" you heard the lube cap being closed, soon feeling a familiar cold sensation. "aht aht puppy, we promised that you'd be good for shoto, we agreed. Are you gonna break your promise? hm? You wanna get punished for being a liar?"
You just shook your head no, after all punishments are the worst. Last time you got punished by the two of them— you couldn't sit for a week.
"f-fuck.. takin' me so well puppy. I'm already halfway in." You've completely forgotten that he was in the room— there were too many things going on at once.
I mean, at least you helped him, right?
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captainhysunstuff · 6 months
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19 more images below the cut (WARNING: Some PG-13 saucy shenanigans ahead)
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Part three of their date: an unconventional visit to a nearby alley so Light can clear his head and try to get to the point of the outing. The events lead him to becoming confident enough to move onto the next stage...
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Master List
Transcript
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kharonion · 20 days
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🎂 birthday boy ✨
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mercymaker · 5 months
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𝐂𝐀𝐙𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐙𝐀𝐑𝐑 🦇 for @ruinbringer
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jojo-schmo · 1 year
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Sworn Partners at their weekly Dreamland protection strategy meeting
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rani-ki · 1 year
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Hero-King Lucina
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quinns-art-box · 7 months
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and an extremely late thing i did for saimatsu week day 7!! tiny little comic the prompt was birthday :] absolutely adore the hc that kaede's bad at cooking but she is trying so hard and that's always good enough. plus they can just do it together <3
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procrastiel · 21 days
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Petition to recreate this with Michael and David
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whinlatter · 1 year
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Harry’s thoughts of Ginny in the Forest: a meta
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‘Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you... I wanted you to have something to remember me by.' - DH, p. 99 (UK edition)
Here I am, on a rainy Thursday, doing re-reads for some writing and thinking about the parallels between Harry and Ginny's kiss on his birthday, and Harry’s thoughts of Ginny as he goes to his death. 
I’m thinking differently about Ginny’s motivations for the kiss these days. I used to think about her words to Harry that morning, and the act of kissing him, as a promise she’ll wait for when he comes back. Lately, I’m wondering if it’s not something sadder, and more profound. I think what Ginny does on Harry’s seventeenth is the act of a person who is starting to process the fact that the person she loves is likely going to his death — that he might not be coming back. It's a scene of a person bracing for grief and thinking about love after death, and it will set the stage for how Harry meets his own death in the Forest.
So here’s a much-too-long meta to help me think through these ideas - about the kiss, Ginny’s suspicions about Harry’s fate, and what it means that Harry returns to the memory of Ginny at the end of his life. (Stick the kettle on for this one and if you worked this all out long ago before me, just give me an eye roll and forgive me).
I’ve always taken Ginny's words to Harry before their kiss at face value. I thought of it not quite as a fun scene - it’s certainly sad - but sweet, a little sexy, and sort of reckless, even a bit mischievous on Ginny’s part.
It’s the birthday of the boy Ginny loves. They’re not together anymore. She knows he's going away. She wants to give him a birthday present, but she doesn't want to give him something he has to haul around or might lose. She does want to let him know that, despite their separation, her feelings are still the same. She craves a moment with him before he goes. She is still in love with him, she is deeply attracted to him, and part of her still feels a bit possessive. Although she’s not really concerned Harry’s going to crack on with some Veela, she does want him to have a memento of their time together. She wants him to have a happy memory, of physical intimacy and emotional comfort, to keep him going while he's away, to feel less alone.
Most of all, I used to think of the kiss (and whatever Ginny imagined might come after the kiss) as a promise. I still love you. Even though we’re not together and I respect why you have to go, I’m still all in on this. I’ll wait for you for when you come back. I want you to have the memory of this, as proof.
Harry’s reveal
But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think about the context of when this kiss happens, after Harry and Ginny's last conversation before his birthday. It's the one a few days before, when Harry and Ginny are laying the table for dinner, and Harry lets slip to Ginny what he, Ron and Hermione will be doing when they leave:
'‘And then what does she think’s going to happen?’ Harry muttered. ‘Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?’ He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.‘So it’s true?’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re trying to do? ‘I - not - I was joking,’ said Harry evasively. (DH, 78-9, UK edition)
This is a desperately sad scene, but it’s also an important moment. Harry, so used to having his guard down with Ginny, realises he’s accidentally confessed something big: that he’s going on the run to try and kill Voldemort himself, with Ron and Hermione’s help. 
Ginny is shaken by this. As a character, she tends to either take things in her stride, or yells first, processes later. But this catches her off guard. Her words suggest there has been speculation about what it is the three of them are going off to do (‘So it’s true?’ suggests that Ginny, and perhaps other members of her family or the Order, have been speculating about this for some time). But both she and Harry realise here that he’s flippantly confirmed something huge that Ginny did not already know for sure. He’s spoken aloud the task is that Dumbledore has left him. 
It is a sign of how close Harry feels to Ginny, how safe he feels in her company, and how difficult he finds managing keeping secrets from her, that he lets this slip. He won’t come as close to telling the truth to anyone else, even people he trusts. The scene before this, in his conversation with Mrs Weasley, he didn’t let on nearly as much (though he admits that he found affirming the importance of secrecy difficult when he looked at Mrs Weasley and saw Ginny’s eyes staring back at him):
‘Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stuff to do,’ mumbled Harry. ‘Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too.’ ‘What sort of ‘stuff’?’  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t—’  ‘Well, frankly I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Granger would agree!’ said Mrs. Weasley. Harry had been afraid of the “concerned parent” attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did that they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not help… ‘Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley (…)  I didn’t misunderstand,’ said Harry flatly. ‘It’s got to be me.’ (DH, 77-8)
Later, he’ll also refuse to give any information to Lupin, for the same reason. 
'‘Can you confide in me what the mission is?’  Harry looked into the prematurely lined face, framed in thick but greying hair, and wished that he could return a different answer.  ‘I can’t, Remus, I’m sorry. If Dumbledore didn’t tell you I don’t think I can.’  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Lupin, looking disappointed.’ (DH, 173-4)
But with Ginny, he’s accidentally gone much further. He hasn’t said Horcruxes, but he’s as good as. The trio are setting off to try to kill Voldemort, the most dangerous task imaginable in this war. He tries, in vain, to undo it, but the damage is already done. Ginny knows more now than she did before: that the journey he’s about to go on is one that very likely will claim his life. 
What does Ginny know about Harry’s fate before this moment? 
It's clear from this interaction that Harry has never discussed any of this with Ginny before. In their breakup scene, Harry repeatedly said that he was breaking up with her for her own safety. He said he did not want her to be used as bait, as she already had been previously, and as Sirius was: 'Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up...' (HBP, 602). The focus was entirely on the risk to Ginny's life, a risk Harry says he cannot live with.
Ginny’s remarks at Dumbledore’s funeral told us something about how she, at that point, understood the path ahead for Harry. She made her half-joke that Harry was always busy saving the Wizarding World, and says she thinks he 'would never be happy', never fulfilled or satisfied, unless he were 'hunting Voldemort' (HBP, 603). She showed she interpreted his actions as choices being made by someone brave, determined, and personally committed to bringing about the end of Voldemort, not someone destined to. Harry’s motivations and reasons are ones she respects and empathises with. She knows the path ahead is dangerous. She doesn’t yet think of it as lethal. 
Harry didn’t respond to her assessments at the funeral, neither correcting nor confirming them. He didn’t let her know, at that stage, exactly what it is he is going to set off to do. The closest Harry came to revealing the road ahead for him in the break-up scene was this:
'It’s been like… like something out of someone else’s life, these last few weeks with you,' said Harry. 'But I can’t… we can’t… I’ve got things to do alone now.' She did not cry, she simply looked at him.’  (HBP, 602)
This is a pattern throughout their relationship, both as friends and later as romantic partners. Ginny knows a little, but not a lot, about Harry’s path. She thinks of it almost entirely as a decision he has made himself. Conversations about Harry’s destiny - about the Prophecy, about being the Chosen One, and, eventually, about the Horcrux hunt - happen near Ginny, but never with her. She does not seem to believe that Harry is the Chosen One or in any way bound to Voldemort's own fate. At the start of HBP, on the train in Slughorn’s carriage, Ginny states publicly her belief that any speculation about Harry being the Chosen One is nonsense: 
‘We never heard a prophecy,” said Neville, turning geranium pink as he said it. ‘That’s right,’ said Ginny staunchly. ‘Neville and I were both there too, and all this ‘Chosen One’ rubbish is just the Prophet making things up as usual.’ (HBP, 140)
Ultimately, before DH, Ginny has been given very little information. We can assume that she’s decided to respect Harry’s decision to keep any information from her and not to push for it. She has reason to fear he might be in danger, but she doesn’t yet know the full extent of it.
Ginny’s response
The immediate aftermath of Harry’s confession at the Burrow is very telling. 
‘They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been alone with her since their stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He was sure she was remembering them too.’ - DH (79)
It’s important that, immediately after this confession, Harry’s mind immediately takes him to private time spent alone with Ginny at the end of HBP. His certainty that Ginny, too, is reminiscing about them is typical of their wordless displays of understanding. They both reach for memories. And the memories of the last time he was alone with her, when they were still together, suddenly trigger an intense emotional and sexual tension. They are soon interrupted, and the dinner afterwards is extremely awkward. Harry wishes he were further away from Ginny, and tries, with great difficulty, to avoid touching her at the dinner table. The energy between them is intense and charged, anticipatory and frustrated. There are lots of ‘unsaid things’ that have just passed between them, and both are aware of it (DH, 79).
There are important themes being introduced here. Whenever Harry thinks about memories of his time with Ginny in DH, he does so consistently in two clear ways. To him, those times were private, intensely intimate moments which carried huge personal significance. It is strongly implied those were moments of sexual intimacy between the two of them, and where they shared an emotional closeness neither has found with any other character. But those moments with Ginny are also something Harry feels he was wrong to take. His relationship with her was something that, in retrospect, he embarked upon against his better judgement. He now feels it was something he was not entitled to, on account of his own burdens and obligations. Those were ‘stolen hours’ that were ‘something out of someone else’s life’. If we look to the wedding scene, we can see this most clearly:
‘‘Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely,’ said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. ‘But I must say, Ginevra’s dress is far too low cut.’  Ginny glanced around, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again. Harry’s mind wandered a long way from the marquee, back to afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds. They seemed so long ago; they had always seemed too good to be true, as though he had been stealing shining hours from a normal person’s life, a person without a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead…’ (DH, 121) 
There are certain tropes at play here, that will that recur again and again in Harry’s thoughts of Ginny until the point of his death: the memory of time alone, the feeling of shared emotional and physical intimacy, to an intense degree; the sense of their time together being something stolen, both in the sense of it being snatched from within darker times, but also being forbidden, given with Harry’s fate when it comes to Voldemort. That Harry recalls these moments at a moment as two other characters make lifelong vows of marriage to each other is not insignificant: all is set up to maximise the sense of tragedy.
Ginny processing Harry’s fate
Ginny is not naive. Harry’s confession seems to change something about how she thinks about what he’s about to do. She may once have dismissed the prophecy of Harry as the Chosen One as nonsense. But she now has reason to suspect that might not quite be true.
She may well re-trace what she does know. After all, she was at the Department of Mysteries two summers prior, where she learnt that Voldemort, at least, thinks there is a prophecy of significance that involves Harry directly. She knows Harry has been having one-on-one lessons with Dumbledore: she even gave him one of the invitations (HBP, 228). She also knows that Harry and Dumbledore left school for a secret mission alone on the night the Astronomy Tower was attacked and Dumbledore was killed. She observed how Harry saw Dumbledore���s death as a catalyst to prepare for a path that required him to step back from her. Above all, we also know that Ginny is a character who understands Tom Riddle intimately. She is one of the people who comes closest to understanding the stakes of your life being bound, in some way, to Voldemort.
It is also significant that Ginny is a character canonically intrigued, and touched, by death, and by powerful Dark magic. The diary, and her own near-death experience, is the most obvious example. But in the Department of Mysteries during OotP, we are told she is also one of the characters most drawn to the veil, despite having far less direct experience of loss and grief than Harry, Luna, or even Neville:
‘[Harry] took several paces back from the dais and wrenched his eyes from the veil. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to — well, come on, then!’ said Hermione, and she led the way back around the dais. On the other side, Ginny and Neville were staring, apparently entranced, at the veil too. Without speaking, Hermione took hold of Ginny’s arm, Ron Neville’s, and they marched them firmly back to the lowest stone bench and clambered all the way back up to the door.’ (OotP, 775)
I don’t mean to suggest Ginny knew what was coming for Harry, that she foresaw him having to go to his death. She knows nothing of Horcruxes, she doesn’t know the contents of the Prophecy, and she certainly doesn’t know Harry himself is a Horcrux. Harry, of course, doesn’t yet know the certainty of him going to his own death, at this point in the text. But given the information she alone has been handed, inadvertently, by Harry, she has plenty of reason to begin to suspect the path Harry is on is one that might end in death, moreso for him than for an anyone else in this war.
Ginny doesn’t appear much in the following pages, other than in her role helping to prepare the house for the wedding. Over the next few days, she has lots of time to consider Harry’s words. We know she’s also sharing a bedroom with Hermione, who is actively preparing for their imminent departure, and watching the three of them try to sneak off together to make plans. This is time for Ginny to start to digest the information Harry has unwittingly divulged. She can now begin to think about how she ought to respond to the prospect of him leaving for a mission that will, likely, cost him his life.
The kiss itself
We can see Ginny has planned this interaction with Harry in her bedroom. The false casualness of how the scene opens - ‘Harry, can you come in here a moment?’ - and the actions of the bedroom’s other occupant, Hermione, suggests some level of premeditation and collaboration. For the first time, Ginny brings him into her bedroom, with the door closed. The setting is obviously intimate and suggestive.
Harry describes Ginny as seeming nervous, but purposeful, like she is readying herself for something - she ‘[takes] a deep breath’. She is looking at him ‘steadily’. Harry is nervous, too: he cannot bring himself to look at her, finding it almost painful, like ‘gazing into a brilliant light’ (DH, 98). Her trademark blazing look is in full force. She doesn’t entertain his attempts at small talk: she is serious about what she’s about to do.
‘‘I couldn’t think what to get you,’ she said.  ‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’ She disregarded this too.’ (DH, 98-9)
Ginny opens by revealing how difficult it has been for her to work out what she could give him, under the circumstances. She is, in her own way, acknowledging how hard she is finding processing what it is he has to do now. She has been struggling with the prospect of Harry’s departure, and the possibility, even the likelihood, of his death. But she has decided she wants to make that path easier for him. Despite his reassurance, she insists she wanted to give him something. 
‘‘I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.” He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful...' (99)
These lines are so significant. The first two lines in particular are deeply profound. They read very differently to how I first thought of them, if seen in this light. I didn’t know what would be useful, she says, because she doesn't know what she can say that will be useful. What could possibly make this easier, to help Harry think about the enormity of his situation, or to help guide him on a path requiring him to accept his own likely death? 
She doesn’t want what she gives to him now to be too heavy, too sad, or too serious, because she knows Harry will not be able to deal with it (‘nothing too big’). Anything too declaratory, too sentimental, or too enormous, would be impossible for him to leave with. In the last part of the sentence, her words are deliberately vague: because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you. 
I think this is the most poignant part, and it suggests the part of Ginny's mind that believes in, and is curious about, what happens beyond, after death: the voices on the other side of the veil. I think there is some part of her that thinks Harry might be going somewhere she can’t reach him - what Dumbledore will later call going on. Ginny does not openly speculate about where Harry will be taking whatever she gives him. That it could be to his own grave, or beyond, is left unspoken. He looks at her, finally, after these words, because he seems to understand, on some level, what she is trying to say to him.
‘She took a step closer to him. ‘So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.’’ (DH, 99)
Ginny has decided: the thing she will give him is a memory, one that he can take with him when they part. Something to remember me by. She wants the memory of her, of them, to be useful, to serve him in some way, and to be something that he might be able to take on with him after death. She tries to soften what she’s trying to convey, with the joke about the veela. But both seem to understand what she is really saying: that she isn’t really asking for his loyalty or fidelity. She doesn’t say she’s giving him ‘something to remember me by’ for when he comes back and they can be together again. Her words are very final. The joke is supposed to make it easier for him to hear what she is saying: she’s telling him, quietly, how to think about her when he leaves, whatever leaving might mean.
Harry, for his part, continues the joke. (‘I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.’) She plays along, sort of, in a very sad way (‘there’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for’). But both seem to know that there is no real silver lining to this. 
And then there’s the kiss itself: 
‘There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,’ she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than Firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair —’ (DH, 99)
It all comes to a head here. Harry recognises that this kiss feels exceptional, unlike any other they’ve ever shared - that Ginny has never put so much into a kiss before. It is ‘blissful oblivion’, this moment of extraordinary intensity, where she kisses him and allows him, for a moment, to think only about her and them together. It’s heady and sexual (‘the feel of her’). It’s a gift for Harry  to be able to forget everything and let this moment be a vacuum, to focus only on her. The crescendo effect of the short causes and run-on sentences allows the moment to build and build, a crescendo effect that anticipates something to come. 
Of course, their moment gets interrupted, again. Unlike when Ron interrupted her with Dean, Ginny doesn't rage at him this time: she is subdued, a response that is far more appropriate for her processing the fact that she may have just had her final kiss with the boy she loves. Harry suspects she has started to cry, something he notes is out of character. Ginny had imbued a lot of meaning into this interaction: this is a portrait of a character whose heart is breaking.
When Harry and Ron are discussing the kiss outside on the lawn, after the initial shock of being yelled at by Ron for going anywhere near Ginny, Harry has his own, shattering realisation of what all of this means for himself and Ginny:
‘Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes up again—’ ‘She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, she’s not expecting us to— to end up married, or—’  As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless, and unpleasant stranger. In one spiralling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his . . . he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.’ (DH, 100)
Thinking aloud, Harry says it would be idiotic for he or Ginny to imagine they could be together, either now, or at any point in the future. He expects her to find someone else; he cannot even begin to imagine a future for himself after the task set out for him. He does not say his inevitable death - he has not yet embraced that reality - but he remains caught in the certainty of an existential battle with Voldemort that he knows he may well not survive.
Later that day, Harry will receive the snitch from Dumbledore’s will. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he now holds the resurrection stone, the item that will open at the close in the forest. It is a birthday that starts and ends with hints about what little time he has left: the stage is set for an arc that, now, has to end in his own death.
Foreshadowing Ginny and the Forest
Moments foreshadowing the significance of the forest are all over Deathly Hallows. Sometimes, they mirror the moment of his own death; often, they are related to Ginny. When they leave the Ministry, with Ron splinched, clutching the Horcrux locket, they arrive in a forest. For a moment Harry’s heart ‘leaped’ at the thought that they were back in Hogwarts’ grounds, the site of so much of his earlier happiness with Ginny (DH, 221). When the trio hear that Ginny, Neville and Luna tried to steal the sword of Gryffindor, it is the Forbidden Forest they are sent to by Snape as punishment (248-9). Harry does not fear the Forest, and is consoled by the thought of Ginny serving detention there rather than anywhere else.
In the Forest of Dean, the scene where Ron returns begins with Harry thinking of Ginny. He sits at the mouth of the tent, wanting to look for Ginny on the Marauders’ Map, until he remembers it’s Christmastime and she is at the Burrow (297). Later, in a moment that mirrors his later walk to his death, he follows his mother - Snape’s patronus, the doe - into the woods, in order to recover and destroy the Horcrux, inching Harry’s own life closer to its close:
Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, [the doe’s] burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety. “Lumos!” he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited. The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs…  He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out at him, no flash of green light burst from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this spot?’ (DH, 299)
Foreshadowing Harry's end in the Forest means also foreshadowing Ginny's own appearance at the moment of his death.
Harry’s ‘death’ in the Forest 
In the final battle, Ginny is the last person Harry sees before he begins his walk into the Forest. He takes the words she says to the child on the ground as her final act of comfort. Harry hears them as if they are being spoken to him: 
‘He was feet away from her when he realised it was Ginny.  He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.  ‘It’s all right,’ Ginny was saying. ‘It’s okay. We’re going to get you inside.’  ‘But I want to go home,’ whispered the girl. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore!’ ‘I know,’ said Ginny, and her voice broke. ‘It’s going to be all right.’  Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home (...) Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.’ (DH, 558-9)
Harry believes that this is his final moment with Ginny before he goes to die. A part of him wants her to know that it’s happening: he is leaving, at last. But he can't call to her, because he worries she will try and stop him, and he might let her. Instead, he walks on, and doesn’t look back. After watching Ginny comfort the girl crying for her mother, Harry then goes on to the Forest, and summons his own mother, his own family, to walk with him to his death.  
‘His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now that the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort. . . .' (DH, 561-2)
Harry is already preparing to go on from this world: his living loved ones are the ones he now feels furthest from. He stands now with the dead he has summoned, who recognise him and seem to have memories of him. He doesn't fear the dead: he is going to join them.
It’s the death scene itself that I think has subtle, but important parallels with the kiss scene much earlier. In both imagery and in writing style, the scene recalls that earlier moment, where Harry found himself on the edge of another kind of oblivion. There is this mounting, febrile sense of anticipation. There is a tension that is almost sexual, a dynamic injected into the scene through descriptions of Bellatrix’s body language and behaviour towards Voldemort:
‘Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.’  (DH, 564)
The ugly parallel of Bellatrix and Voldemort is not supposed to show the pair as the mirror image of Harry and Ginny. Rather, it is a theme that recurs throughout the series to demonstrate the gulf between Harry, with his immense capacity for love, and Voldemort, with none. Bellatrix and Ginny are memorably paralleled twice in the series: once, at the Department of Mysteries, where Bellatrix moves to ‘torture the little girl’, and Harry steps in to prevent her (OotP, 783), and again in the final battle: 
'Bellatrix was still fighting too, fifty yards away from Voldemort, and like her master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, all battling their hardest, but Bellatrix was equal to them, and Harry’s attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so close to Ginny that she missed death by an inch—  He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, but before he had gone a few steps he was knocked sideways…’ (DH, 589)
As Harry waits for the killing curse, we see the most direct parallel with Ginny's final kiss to him:
‘None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his — ’ (DH, 564)
There's such an intense physicality and breathlessness to the whole scene, and an enduring pseudo-sexual tension, with Bellatrix audibly panting. Even the sentence structure even invokes the kissing scene: the run-on build up of clauses, the repetition of the present participle to actively hold the reader in one present moment, building and building and ending on a dash, the promise of something more.
At the end of his life, Harry returns to the memory Ginny gave him. She meant for it to be useful, if he was to go to his death. And at the close of his life he chooses to use it, as he prepares to leave her behind in this world and depart for the next. Just as the Resurrection Stone helped accept death, so too does the memory of Ginny. He feels the memory of her, the sensation of physical touch and of being kissed, the look she gives him that he knows as one of love and great courage. As he is killed, he remembers her last gift to him, the certainty of her love for him impressed upon him.
--
There's a line in OotP that I think is such an underrated line that sums up who Ginny is as a character. Harry is trying to get to Umbridge's fire to speak to Sirius when he thinks the latter is being tortured at the Ministry; Hermione suggests using Ginny and Luna as a distraction, despite Harry's objections:
'Though clearly struggling to understand what was going on, Ginny said immediately, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it,'... (OotP, 736)
This is who Ginny is. It's especially who she is to Harry, during the war. She doesn't fully know what's actually being asked of Harry (and, by extension, what is being asked of her, as the person who loves him, and who has most to lose if he is to die). But even when kept in the dark, she is enormously selfless, and her biggest act of bravery is extremely quiet. She keeps the secret Harry accidentally bestows on her, and she realises, in some sense, before he does, what it will likely mean for his life. She chooses to let him go on, knowing that he is loved, to make the path that he is on a little bit easier, even when she has realised that it will take him away from her for good.
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