the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
ever since i was a little girl i knew i wanted to deny location sharing and turn off personalized ads and reject all non-essential cookies and not set up siri and face ID
I'm so late to answer this but let's give it a try anyway ! ☺️ Thank you @honeydukesheroine for the tag
What is the origin of your blog name?
I love sewing and the only seamstress known in the HP universe is Madam Malkin's 😉 I loved that it's not a very known character too.🧵
What’s your “I will always order this” food?
Ok I'm gonna be very french on this one but a nice warm "crêpe" (the one that comes with melted dark chocolate and salted butter) on a cold winter afternoon with a cup of tea *chef's kiss* 🤌
What’s your overused emoji?
The pointeeee fingers !!! 👉👈 And the italian hand ofc !🤌
What’s your current comfort show/movie/book?
I'm a Pride and Prejudice fan (the hands... !) but also a New Girl/The Office fan and - believe it or not - a Stargate SG1 nerd too 🤓 Did I mention watching LotR extended version snuggled under a blanket with my husband ? Highly recommand it. 🫖
Song you’ve had on repeat this week?
I recently discovered Wicked soooo, i can't stop listening and singing to the entire original soundtrack and yelling Fiyero in my kitchen 😂💚
What’s the last thing you hyperfixated on?
I love sewing and knitting and I can spend hours looking for the right combination of pattern and yarn together, see what people chose, what color would fit me, etc etc...
What’s an oddly specific thing that brings you joy?
Buying fabric 🤓😅🧵
What smell instantly makes you happy?
The smell of the sea ! I love spending time at the beach, summer & winter too, when it's all greyish and windy.
What’s something you loved as a kid that you secretly love now?
Filling jars 🤭
What’s your phone wallpaper right now?
My baby girl when she was three month old and sleeping in my arms 🐭
Are you a morning person, night owl, or something else entirely?
I could've written the same thing as @honeydukesheroine ! I used to be a night owl but having kids changed that and now I understand how you can achieve so much on a single morning.
Lastly, if you work, what is your work profession? And do you like it?
I'm an interior designer and I love my job but I'm thinking about changing it. I wish I could work with kids and families, taking care of people and helping them in a way. I think I'm done with rich people and their white design kitchens. 😌💅
Harry flopped himself onto the sofa in the living room of the Burrow, the familiar sag of the old cushions cradling him as he let his head rest against the back.
He’d promised to stay up with the rest of them for New Year’s Eve and to help testing Fred and George’s new line of Valentine’s Day products. But as the fire crackled on and soft holiday music mingled with the sound of laughter, he wasn’t convinced he’d last until midnight.
He yawned, his eyes slipping shut, one hand spread over his stomach. He allowed himself to appreciate the feeling of fleeting complete freedom from school work, tracking Malfoy, and drawing up Quidditch plays. Instead just feeling lazy and stuffed with the overabundance of comfort food.
He might’ve fallen asleep entirely if he hadn’t heard the sound of Ginny’s shuffling footsteps or felt the dip of the cushion as she sat down beside him.
Normally that would’ve done it.
His heart would’ve spiked into a sprint, his chest feeling tight and arms clumsy. But tonight, it only gave a slow, steady thump, like it was content to simply be aware of her.
“Sure you’ll make it to midnight?” He could hear the smile in her voice.
“N-no,” Harry managed through another yawn.
“Just so you know, if you fall asleep now, we’ll all draw on your face,” she said, finally making him open his eyes to look at her. “I wonder what you’d look like with a mustache.”
She was smirking at him over the rim of a lopsided, cylinder-shaped mug, its uneven ridges covered in splotchy painted shapes that if he squinted looked something like insects.
“Your mug is missing a handle,” he said, nodding toward it.
“That’s because I made it when I was ten,” she replied, lifting it to admire before resting it on her knee, her legs curled up toward her chest. “One of my hobbies when Ron left for Hogwarts. Some people read or cook… I had a beginner’s pottery kit and a glow-in-the-dark bug colony.”
“That explains the - er - paintings.”
“I can make you one, if you like. Can’t guarantee you a handle, though. Or an even bottom.”
“Sorry,” Harry said, grinning up at her. “I like my bottoms even.”
“How superficial of you.”
He tried to suppress the smile tugging at his face, just like earlier when he’d tried not to admire how good she’d looked when she came down in those pajama bottoms, or how easy it was to joke with her like this. He wondered if Dean had ever seen her in her pajamas or if they ever talked like this. Ever laughed like this.
Before his thoughts could spiral further he tore his eyes away, fixing them on the floor where Ron, Fred, and George were sniggering over a spread of cards from their game DoubleTaire: A Card Game for Couples Who Dare.
“So,” Ginny said, nudging him back into the moment, “do you have any New Year’s resolutions?”
“Same as usual,” Harry said, waiting until she took a sip from her lopsided mug. “Don’t die.”
Ginny snorted hot cocoa up her nose.
Harry’s chest warmed at the feeling of making her laugh, even if from the morbid joke. She wiped her nose with her sleeve, lips pressing and sliding together to catch the spill of chocolate, and Harry once again deliberately forced his eyes back to the card game happening below them.
“That’s shitty,” she said once she recovered. “You should pick a new one.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Hm.” She hummed, thoughtful. “Mix it up. Go full positivity. Bright side, cheery, happy-go-lucky Harry. Total personality makeover.”
“You know how to make a bloke feel good about himself, don’t you?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I like your personality,” she said, one hand pressed to her chest as she shifted. Her leg slid over the edge of the sofa, stopping only inches from his. “But some say a positive outlook makes all the difference. Who knows? Maybe this’ll be the year you ace your classes, win the Quidditch Cup, discover the cure for Dragon Pox, fall in love, and win the Grand Prize Galleon Draw.”
Harry huffed. “That’s it, is it?”
“You never know,” she shrugged. “Even one or two would be worth it.”
“Glass half full,” Harry said.
Ginny grinned at him over the rim of her mug. “Exactly.”
She lifted it again, both hands wrapped around the chipped ceramic and took another sip and Harry felt he must be going mad for being jealous of a cup.
“So what’s your resolution?” he asked.
Maybe ditch your boyfriend?
“Resolutions are stupid,” Ginny said. “They never stick.”
“There’s the silver lining.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Harry leaned back into the cushions again, eyes drifting shut, smiling despite himself and his whole body humming with comfort, almost as if he’d tasted chocolate.
Harry swung his leg over the broom handle, positioning himself further forward than usual to allow Ginny space behind him but realized she was making no moves to get on.
“Ride … on the back?” she asked.
“Yeah, what’s the problem?”
“Oh… I just thought you said you didn’t want to get caught.”
“I thought you said my broom was overrated,” Harry said, starting to smile at the way she was trying to hide the gleam in her eyes as she eyed the broom. “You want to fly it, don’t you?”
“Look, Harry, I’m not one to brag, but -”
“Really? Because it feels like you’re about to brag.”
“ - But sneaking and flying is sort of my brand and I know I’m the one in the skirt, but if you’re imagining date nights with me riding on the back of tandem bikes with my hands free to weave flower crowns, then you should know that I ditched the last guy for helping me through a door, so -”
“Just say you want to fly it, and you can fly it.”
“Of course I want to fly it,” Ginny said, her face breaking into a grin. “It’s a Firebolt.”
Fun Fact: I took the video above on our trip to Scotland last year. This hike always stood out in my memory and is where I pictured Harry and Ginny in this chapter. I posted the video above to help us enter their world together.
All my love (or is the right word "happy"? I'd better go ask Harry.)
Please keeps the asks going! I don’t mean for this to be rude and it’s going to come across as that and I apologize beforehand…. But the hinny community can be a little dull compared to other ships. There’s so many interactions and asks in other fanon ships they keep ppl engaged or want to read about the troupe more, but lately (for a while now) it’s crickets in the hinny community… not sure if ppl have moved on or life is getting in the way but it’s not as fun as it used to be. There’s not that many new writers, or fics coming out, and hinny fanart has died compared to to other ships. So you flooding my dash with answering asks is like a breathe of fresh air! Again, I’m sorry if it comes across as rude, I really don’t mean for it to be 🫣
Hi anon,
I don’t think this came across as rude but I do have some thoughts I’d like to share…
I agree, the hinny fandom can be a little less busy than a lot of other ships. I think part of that is that hinny just isn’t the most popular of the HP ships (a travesty but when has the human race ever had good taste???) so there’s fewer hinny shippers in general.
This does mean that if you’re writing for engagement hinny is not the ship for you. I’ve joked previously that if I really wanted to try and be popular I’d switch to drarry (alas, my brain refuses to accept a world in which hinny aren’t together).
I do agree that sometimes I scroll tumblr for hinny content and it feels like Dudley in the zoo trying to make the snake do something, but engagement works both ways.
I am so thrilled with how much people have been engaging with me recently — and I’m not gonna sit here and say my fics have ever really been overlooked bc I’ve always had really positive responses from the hinny fandom and I don’t want to be disingenuous about it (and again, in case it isn’t clear, I’m really really grateful)— BUT I have been in the position of seeing a handful of other writers getting all of the asks/love on tumblr while I get one or two sporadic ones and it does kind of suck.
AGAIN I’m saying this as someone who has never really been neglected by this fandom. I am not the poor little orphan writer who nobody loves (even if sometimes my brain would like me to believe that’s true) and I’m not complaining for myself here.
What I’m saying is, if we want the hinny fandom to thrive we (me included) need to engage with EVERYONE more. I’m not saying read fics you don’t like, or lie about what interests you but there are other hinny authors that would love to talk more about hinny and their inboxes are neglected.
I guarantee if you ask a dozen hinny fans the same question you’ll get a different answer. We had this yesterday on the @ginnystrophyhusband server when discussing if Harry got tattoos after the war. The takes were wildly different and everyone had really thoughtful reasons why they had their opinion. We can drop the same asks into several people’s inboxes to keep discussion alive and it’s as easy as copy and pasting (or you can mix it up a little, I’m not the police).
I was thinking about doing drunk prompts one weekend because I feel like, currently, I would actually get a lot of prompts through and it’s a fun way to have a little hinny party on the dash. That only works because I’m confident people would engage with it rn (I did do it a while ago and got basically nothing 🫠)
I know some hinny writers have stopped reblogging ask games because when they do reblog them they get nothing (which is way more disheartening than if you never tried at all).
@ginnystrophyhusband is also trying to put together a year in review to celebrate not just writers, but beta readers and commenters. They need submissions for this to work and I’m not sure what the response rate has been like bc I’m not a mod, but it’s a great way to get involved even if you don’t write!
And I get that sometimes it’s hard to reach out to writers because you don’t want to say the wrong thing or maybe you just really love them and it’s intimidating but it’s the only way to keep hinny going.
So, if you’re a hinny blog, and you would welcome more engagement in your inbox, maybe reblog this?
And if anyone wants to drunk prompts with me, PLEASE let me know bc I’d rather not drink alone 😂
We're approaching 11am so I think it's time to give my September 1st contribution to the @ginnystrophyhusband microfics.
Prompt: School
Words: 995
Ready.
It’s become Ginny’s word of the day. Her motto. Her mantra.
It had been the first thing that her mother said to her when she’d entered the Burrow’s kitchen that morning.
‘Ready?’ She’d asked grimly, looking up with red-rimmed eyes from the pot of porridge she’d been stirring on the stove.
Ginny had nodded, steadfastly ignoring the crack in her mum’s voice much as she’d done a thousand times over this summer that had felt like eternity but was finally drawing to a close.
The question had been put to her again not two hours later.
‘Ready?’ Her father asked, stooping to grab one end of her trunk awaiting beside the back door.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ Ginny quipped as the other end was quickly taken up by Harry. She allowed her mother one bone crushing final embrace before following them out into the early autumn air.
‘Ready?’
This time, the question was muttered softly into her ear. The trunk had been safely tucked on the train and it was just Ginny and Harry, shrouded in the privacy afforded by the billowing smoke from the engine.
This time, Ginny wavered.
Her lips parted and she wasn’t sure if a ‘no’ or a wail of despair might escape them.
‘I’ll write to you tomorrow,’ Harry promised before she could say either.
His solemn expression was enough to coax a reassuring smile onto Ginny's face. ‘Very keen,’ she teased. Anyone would think you're obsessed with me or something.’
‘According to Ron, yes.’ There was no hint of embarrassment in his smirk. ‘I prefer to call it a healthy level of interest.’
The last lingering hints of Ginny's trepidation escaped with her laughter as she took a look into those green eyes that had stared down death and were now alight with amusement.
‘I'm ready,’ she said.
But she wasn’t ready at all.
She didn’t even realise how not ready she was until the train had pulled back out of Hogsmeade station and she was being stared down by a blank white eye, the sight of which was accompanied by a sharp twist of realisation deep in Ginny’s gut.
‘Thestrals.’ Luna’s voice drifted to her on the soft evening breeze.
Absently, Ginny nodded. The skeletal being in front of her battled for her attention against the memory of the dozens of deaths she’s witnessed that allow her to see it at all.
‘You’ll get used to them.’
But Ginny didn’t want to get used to them.
She didn’t want to get used to moving through the grounds where she’d seen Harry’s body carried towards her and Neville’s head set ablaze.
She didn’t want to get used to the entrance hall that she’d had to wade through pools of blood and scattered rubies to get through the last time she’d been here.
She would simply never be able to get used to the great hall that had once housed Fred’s lifeless body.
The mere thought turned her stomach. Professor McGonagall's speech was little more than a distant buzz in her ears, and, though the traditional mountains of food appeared upon the Gryffindor table, Ginny's plate remained pristine in front of her.
She left the hall as soon as doing so wouldn't cause a scene.
Ghosts walked with her as she traversed the cold hallways up to Gryffindor Tower. They lingered on every corner; accompanied by long-silenced screams that echoed with each of Ginny's footsteps.
There was no relief in reaching the common room. The winding staircase to her dormitory felt almost as steep as it had that fateful morning after the longest night of Ginny's life, the night she was beginning to worry she was going to spend the rest of the year reliving.
Exhausted, Ginny collapsed onto her awaiting bed without bothering to undress. Her arms wrapped around her pillow, clinging to it like a lifebuoy against the wave of despair threatening to overwhelm her.
She didn't know long she stayed like that, mere minutes or hours may have passed while Ginny's head remained burrowed within the pillow's soft surface.
Eventually, a distant tapping penetrated the blackness surrounding her, pulling her back from the abyss.
Slowly, she lifted her head from the pillow and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the soft light of the moon shining through the dormitory windows.
She blinked again, worried she was hallucinating the bright white shape silhouetted against the window nearest to her bed. Fortunately, the whoosh of wings as Ginny flipped the latch and permitted the owl entrance was definitely real.
Unbidden, her fingers shook as she untied the note tied to the owl's leg and smoothed out the short piece of parchment:
Ginny,
I know I said I'd write tomorrow (seriously, I'm not obsessed with you no matter what Ron says), but I just remembered about the thestrals and I figured they might come as a bit of a shock. Well, they came as a shock to me anyway…
Her eyes continued down the hastily scrawled note, a small smile crept onto her lips with each word of reassurance. A little spark of hope flared in her chest as she reached the bottom and read Harry's words over again.
She read the missive – one she couldn't have dared to hope to have received a year ago – three more times before looking up to find the little barn owl blinking up at her.
His face was familiar, but still new to Ginny. For a moment, Hedwig flashed through her mind, accompanied by another sharp stab of grief but Ginny breathed through it just like she had every single day since the battle.
‘I'll reply in the morning,’ she told the expectant creature. ‘You've had a long flight – you need to rest, and so do I.’
Knowing it was true, Ginny turned back to her bed, determined to face tomorrow well-rested and refortified.
She wasn't ready, but she never had been and she’d survived this long.
The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Written for @hinnymicrofic February 2024, using December 2023 Prompt 28
Written with love, because everyone gets busy sometimes, and the world always needs more hinny! Also - as usual, stretching the definition of micro!
Rose sat on the bench, watching as the flock of pigeons pecked in the dust at the foot of Nelson’s Column. She enjoyed watching the birds. Everyone else seemed to hate them, to regard them as a menace, but she always found them comically amusing.
She tried to come here most weeks, though it wasn’t as often now. The journey was too much for her aching hip. But she’d force herself if she possibly could, because what was the alternative? Sitting alone in her little flat? Rose much preferred to be out in the fresh air, especially on a day like this.
Besides, coming here, to Trafalgar Square, always made her feel closer to her Stanley. It reminded her of trips to see the paintings in the gallery behind her, when they were first courting. They didn’t know much about art, her and Stanley, but the gallery was free, and neither of them had much spare cash in those days. Besides, it made her feel very posh, dressed in her best frock and hat, looking at the paintings. Afterwards, he’d buy them an ice cream, and they would sit together on these very benches, watching the pigeons, laughing together and falling in love.
She sighed to herself. He’d been gone eleven years now, and it still felt like she was missing a limb, but sitting here, on a bright, sunny day, he didn’t feel so very far away. She smiled to herself, and closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply as she allowed herself to imagine that he’d left her for just a minute to go and buy those ice creams from the little kiosk by the steps.
Her eyes drifted open once more, and wandered over the other people gathered in the square. There was a group of school children, racing back and forth, and scattering the pigeons, while their increasingly harassed teachers attempted to corral them. Three young women that she thought were probably nannies chatted in Spanish as they pushed their young charges in buggies in the direction of Admiralty Arch and St James’s Park beyond. A man in a smart business suit carrying a briefcase was talking to someone on one of those new-fangled mobile phones.
Then a young couple caught her eye. They approached from the direction of Whitehall, walking hand in hand, and eating ice creams. Hers was chocolate, and his was strawberry - exactly what she and Stanley would have chosen. She wasn’t sure exactly how she knew, but it was immediately obvious to her that they were very much in love. Perhaps it was the easy way that the girl tilted her head into the boy’s shoulder, or the way he dropped occasional kisses into her hair. It warmed Rose’s soul to see it.
They made a handsome couple, she thought. The girl was extremely pretty, petite, with a wicked smile and the sort of hourglass figure that Rose had so envied in her youth. She had long red hair that tumbled down her back, and a healthy crop of freckles dusting her skin both above and below her denim shorts and stretchy strapless top. Some of her friends at the bridge club might have had something to say about the substantial amount of skin the girl was showing, but personally, Rose thought she looked cute as a button. She liked to see the young making the most of their youth. It was gone all too soon.
Her boyfriend was tall and slender. At first glance, you might think he was skinny, but the lean, whip-like muscles visible down his arms below the sleeves of his faded green t-shirt told a different story. His hair was black, and very messy, and he was wearing wire rimmed glasses that reminded her of the ones Stanley used to wear. As she watched them, the light breeze caught his hair, and Rose saw a strange scar running down his forehead and through his eyebrow. She frowned, wondering what could have caused such an injury. It was a shame, she thought, that such a handsome face was so badly marked, but the girl didn’t seem to mind and that, supposed Rose, was all that mattered.
Together, they wandered across the stone paving, stopping to look up at the statue of Nelson as the boy tossed the last of his wafer cone into his mouth. The girl gazed upwards, frowning as though confused, and the boy dipped his head to say something to her. The girl looked even more puzzled, then her face cleared, and she nudged the boy playfully, clearly catching him in some joke at her expense. The boy caught her wrists, grinning at her, and she giggled, then protested when he leaned forward to lick her ice cream. They were both laughing when he released her, and she offered him the remains of her cone. He made short work of it, and then drew her towards him, crashing his lips into hers.
Now that’s a proper kiss, thought Rose. The two of them stayed there, locked together, as though they were the only two souls in the entire city, and when they finally broke apart, Rose could see a look of euphoria on the girl’s face. Grinning broadly, she took a pace backwards, spread her arms wide, tilted her chin to the sky and began to spin around. She appeared to the woman as the embodiment of pure joy.
The boy just stood and watched her, his own expression making it clear just how besotted he was. His hand dropped into the pocket of his jeans, and even at quite a distance, Rose could see him swallow hard, as though he was bracing himself for something. A moment later the girl stilled, facing him. Rose thought perhaps he might have called her name. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, the boy dropped to one knee, and in the same movement pulled a small red box from his pocket, presenting it to her.
The girl’s hands flew to her face, which flushed bright pink, a vivid shade that clashed violently with her hair. She nodded vigorously, and her eyes brightened with tears. Gently, the boy took her hand, and slipped a ring onto her finger, then stood and pulled her back into his arms once again. A few minutes later, arm in arm, they began to stroll back up towards Charing Cross Road, passing quite close to Rose as they did so.
“Congratulations,” she told them.
“Oh! Thank you!” exclaimed the girl, beaming. The boy said nothing, only grinned.
Rose sat and watched them go. They both seemed so young, perhaps not even into their twenties. Once again, she was reminded of her and Stanley. They’d married young too, but then again, so had most people back then, eager to put down roots after the war. Stanley had worn his RAF uniform on their wedding day, and he had looked so very handsome. They’d been separated for so long, Stanley aboard a Lancaster bomber as a navigator, while she did her bit on the home front, working as a nurse at a city hospital during the Blitz, each of them facing terrible danger every single day. She remembered how terrified she’d been that he might never come back to her, and when she saw him standing at her door on that wonderful day when he did, the wave of relief was so powerful that her knees buckled underneath her. They’d been married six months later, battered and bruised and very much not the same innocent couple eating ice creams in their Sunday best in Trafalgar Square, but perhaps loving one another more fiercely because of it.
Twisting her shoulders, Rose could just pick out long red hair alongside a messy black head in the crowds, silently wishing them every happiness. She was glad they would never have to know the horror of a war that threatened their very existence, or the pain of an enforced separation where neither could be sure whether the other was even still alive. They would make a beautiful bride and groom, she was sure.
The shriek of a delighted toddler, racing through the flock of pigeons momentarily pulled her attention away. When she looked back, the boy and the girl were gone.
