Moonlight crept in through the window, illuminating the room in an almost magical glow. It crept across the floor and up the bedpost and then over the figure lying on top of the sheets, brushing across the smiling mouth and tickling the nose then, finally, resting heavily on top of a freckled eyelid.
Ginny’s mouth twitched and her fingers wrapped themselves around the soft patched quilt that lay beneath her. Her eyes, however, remained firmly shut until the last set of thundering feet was carefully stowed in its own room and the strange muffled outbursts coming from Fred and George’s room were becoming less and less frequent. She counted to twenty for good measure and then sprung out of bed, her eyes flying open.
She could not help the grin that spread across her face for the hundredth time that night as she pulled the small scrap of parchment from beneath her pillow and the treasure from her pocket. She was going to Hogwarts this year. She would see Harry Potter everyday and learn the coolest spells and finally find a best friend that wasn’t her brother. Of course brothers were alright in their own way, especially Bill, but a best friend would be different.
Today Ginny was going to perform her first bit of Magic. She had overheard the twins talking about the underage magic laws and discovered that the Ministry could detect that magic was being used, but not who had cast the actual spell so she was eager to finally try her hand at it.
She spread her things out on the floor. Some of the ingredients from her mother’s First-Aid potions cabinet including Hellebore and powdered moonstone – Lockhart’s book said those were used in the calming draught – and some ginger roots and peppermint. Ginny set the tiny cauldron she had found in the attic in front of her and dropped in some lemon juice which she thought might be a good substitute for pomegranate juice…they used that in Strengthening Solutions and she knew she would need to be strong if she was going to help Harry in his adventures.
She cut up the ginger roots first and dropped them in, remembering her mother’s instructions about cutting things carefully when you were making a salad. Of course this wasn’t exactly a salad but she supposed you had to be even more precise for important potions. The hellebore went next and then the peppermint and then she slowly added the moonstone as if she was adding salt to a soup. The potion turned a very nice shade of purple and Ginny’s eyes lit up. She stuck her hand in her pocket and took out the puffer-fish scales she’d stolen from Fred and George’s room.
“What do you think you’re doing child?” a voice interrupted her just as she was about to add the scales.
Ginny looked up quickly and found herself face to face with a small fiery figure. It floated down to the edge of the cauldron and sat on the edge. She could now see that beneath the strange fiery halo the tiny thing looked like an old lady with a strangely misshapen nose.
“Who are you?”
“Fiona Flitterwig,” the old woman answered, sniffing at the contents of Ginny’s cauldron and then she suddenly looked up at Ginny and continued with a slight grimace, “I believe I’m what some humans might call a ‘Crumple Horned Snorcack’, but don’t repeat that silly name if you please!” Fiona trailed off mumbling something about jealous humans.
Ginny nodded, she wasn’t stupid enough to offend a strange creature she knew nothing about, and watched fascinated as Fiona dipped the tiny twig (which must be her staff) into the potion. “You’re very lucky there was no fire underneath this,” Fiona said waving her staff around above the mixture now, “I don’t think we’ll be wanting this any longer.”
“Hey!” Ginny protested, “I was doing something!”
“Clearly, child, you were doing something, do you have any idea how dangerous this is?”
“You sound like mum, go away.”
“What were you brewing?” Fiona flew up to eye level with Ginny and Ginny could see that she had deep black eyes, darker than the night sky. She decided not to answer and wondered briefly if this was a dream.
“Let’s see, Hellebore and Moonstone and you have this book open on the page for the Strengthening draught, you have very willful eyes, what were you trying to prepare yourself for then?”
“Hmph,” Ginny crossed her arms and glared at the strange creature.
“If you tell me what it was I’ll grant you one wish.”
Ginny’s eyes widened, “Wishing potion,” she breathed quickly, hoping that this was true, “Can you really do it?” She didn’t really like the fact that ‘I thought so’ was written all over Fiona’s face, but decided she’d ignore that if she was getting her wish.
“Well yes, I’ve been a little bored lately and one only has to tweak the circumstances, here and there, give a little push occasionally. What is it you were trying to wish for?”
She had magicked the scales into a small pouch now and then she waved her staff over it and it disappeared. Ginny was eyeing her grey hair suspiciously, this Fiona had to be at least a hundred years old, she wouldn’t really understand. But maybe she didn’t have to.
“I wish,” she said at length, “I wish for a perfect best friend and for Harry to love me. I wish for perfect love.”
“That’s three wishes.”
“No,” Ginny shook her head, she knew it; this old woman would never understand, “No, it’s just one!”
“Are you sure this is what you want?” the fiery halo around Fiona seemed to grow all of a sudden and Ginny could barely contain her excitement.
“Yes!”
“And you’re certain you’ve thought this through?” there was something intimidating about Fiona’s voice now; it was as if she knew some secret that Ginny didn’t.
“If you don’t want to do it I’ll just make the potion.”
“No, no! No more potions for you until you’ve learned a thing or two about mixing ingredients. Even expert potion-makers need to be careful with inventing new potions and you’re too young, even for a human.”
“So you can do it?” Ginny asked hopefully.
“We shall see, child, we shall see.”
And with that vague promise Fiona disappeared leaving Ginny a little disappointed in her wake. There had been no flamboyant display, she hadn’t even felt any strong magic.
…
Ginny stared down at the quill in her hand. The essay on uses of Moonstone was lying unfinished on the table, and it was getting late, but that didn’t matter right now, none of it did. She had just realized this was the same quill, the exact same one that she had always used to talk to Tom. Everybody in her family, without exception, would flinch whenever she used his name so she tried to stop herself from doing it, but he would always be Tom to her.
Her fingers were rigid and unmoving, the quill lying loosely between them. Think about Fred and George, she told herself firmly in her mind, think about something funny or, or think about your friends.
That was, however, quite the wrong thing to remember right now. Her friends…friends…he had been her first friend, her closest friend. Her perfect friend.
You got your wish, a voice that sounded like Percy droned mockingly.
“Hey, Ginny!” she almost jumped at Neville’s interruption of her thoughts. All she could manage in response was a very short “Hmm”.
“Can I borrow some parchment?”
She looked down at her hands and the now broken quill. “Sure, Neville.”
Any sane person would have rejoiced because the dilemma was solved, the blasted quill was broken. Ginny couldn’t manage more than half a smile as she handed Neville the parchment. Tom had been perfect at first, and a tiny messed up part of her still wanted him. She sighed and scratched her left shoulder before fishing out another quill and continuing Snape’s essay. She wondered what it might feel like to be someone like Professor Snape, if his Dark Mark still hurt, if there was any way to get rid of it.
…
“Let me see that!” Ginny pouted. Dean was purposefully avoiding her gaze, but she saw a small smile tug at the corner of his lips.
Someone began throwing rocks in the lake so there was an occasional plop that interrupted the calm spring morning.
“So, how many hours have you been putting into OWL revision?” Dean asked absentmindedly, his concentration still on the sketchbook before him.
“I dunno…” she suddenly realized her hand had been ripping up grass without her permission and stopped, “Three maybe… you know with Quidditch and everything…”
Dean got up and started searching the grass for a pencil he’d dropped. He found it close to Ginny’s hand and they’re fingers brushed as he retrieved it. She allowed herself a small smile as she saw him inspecting his work. “Good,” he said finally, “That means you’re not losing your mind yet. Look at this.”
He finally handed her the sketchbook and she gave him a small smile before examining it more closely. He was very good. There was a lone figure sitting on a rock beside the lake and one of the Giant squid’s tentacles was protruding from the water’s surface, it looked very real and Ginny expected it to begin moving like a photograph any time, she briefly wondered if she could remember a spell for that.
“Hey, Dean?” what she loved about Dean was that they could talk, could share almost everything with each other and they knew the other one wouldn’t laugh. She had never been this comfortable around Michael. She had never really been this open with anyone else but Tom, but Dean was one of the people that helped her forget about Tom…that helped her remember how horrible Tom had turned out and convinced her that he was nothing to cry over.
“Hmmm?”
“Do you ever feel like you’re just waiting and you don’t even know what for?”
“Don’t we all, these days?”
Ginny sighed, “I miss the DA, but every time I think about it I wonder if that was ever enough. It’s all so much bigger than Umbridge and even the stupid Ministry now, and it feels like no one’s doing anything.”
“Oh, they’re doing stuff, did you see Dumbledore’s hand? There’s definitely more than we know going on.”
“Sure,” Ginny whispered, “Sure, Dumbledore’s doing stuff but what about us, it’s all about OWLs and NEWTs now and it’s just so…pointless.”
Ginny held her breath. This was something she had been wanting to say for a long time now, ever since the Ministry she thought she would be playing a more important role in the war, but of course she wasn’t of age yet and even that wouldn’t convince any of those gits she had for brothers to talk to her about it all.
“It’s not pointless, they’re teaching you things you need to be successful and I hate to say it, but Snape’s a good DADA professor.”
“He is,” Ginny agreed.
“Look, Ginny, I know you want to go off on some mad adventure like you all did last year at the Department of Mysteries, but this is getting really serious and really dangerous and I don’t think any amount of DA meetings would prepare us for that.”
“So then what was it all for?” It used to be for Harry, she thought, it used to be because you wanted to be around him, to help him, but now. Now there’s Dean and you don’t really mind that Harry doesn’t seem to see you, so what is it all for now?
Dean sat up and moved closer, looking her in the eye. “They’re going to come for us sooner or later, Ginny, all of us and we need to know how to fight back when they do, but looking for trouble, that’s crazy.”
“Crazy now, am I?”
“Look you know I didn’t mean that, but do you honestly want your job to be to bring in and kill Death Eaters everyday, to watch people die every day?”
Something like denial rose up within Ginny’s mind and she turned away from Dean. “I have to do something, Dean, I have to try.”
“I know, but there’s other things you can do to help, not everyone has to be an Auror. And you know, the people who love Aurors must have it the toughest because they’ll go out in the morning and you’d never know if they were ever coming back.”
Ginny knew there was truth behind these words, a truth she was not willing to accept. She needed to be angry at her parents and her over-protective brothers and even Harry right now. She needed to believe that she could help fix all of this. She didn’t think she had taken that conversation too seriously but over the next few weeks every time Dean put a hand on her back in that way that made her feel safe and loved she practically lost it. People who always had to protect you were just bloody selfish in her opinion. She would always have a place in her heart for Dean, would always remember those days by the lake and she didn’t really hate him now, because she knew what he said for her he also said for himself, he wasn’t about to go off and become an Auror and leave her behind anytime soon, but it just wasn’t enough.
…
Ginny was staring fixedly at something she couldn’t even see, the phoenix’s song was still playing in the back of her mind. That same phoenix had helped save her when she had had the life sucked out of her, the bird’s tears had healed Harry’s wound and flown them off to safety. Why couldn’t it have saved Dumbledore? She set her jaw as she felt the people around them begin to get up. Dumbledore had been so powerful, with him around she had always felt safe, but now…now things were different, scarier. Now the war felt much more real.
“Ginny Listen…” Harry’s words brought her thoughts off the dangerous road they were taking. And somehow those two words were enough. Ginny knew before he opened his mouth again that he was leaving, going off on some crazy adventure and clearly not intending for her to come along. It still hurt though, hurt to hear it, hurt to know that he didn’t want her there, that she wasn’t important enough to confide in like Ron or Harry.
“We could’ve had ages…months…years maybe…” What? a voice that sounded a lot like Tom protested from the pit of her stomach, What the hell is that supposed to mean?
And anger suddenly flared up inside her. She wasn’t some sort of distraction; it wasn’t all about the snogging sessions and the hand-holding, not for her. It was supposed to be about love, and whatever the hell love meant Ginny knew that you had to be able to confide in the person you loved and understand them.
Harry will understand, the voice mocked her, Harry will let you do what you want to do, Harry won’t lock you up at home and leave you behind to protect you. Look at Hermione, he’s never tried to leave her behind. Isn’t that what you thought, Ginevra, isn’t that what you believed?
She clenched her fists and walked back up to the castle to pack her trunk alone. At fifteen she had been just as silly and love-struck as she had been at eleven, but the Harry in her mind wasn’t the real Harry. The real Harry didn’t even come close. No matter what she did and no matter how hard she tried Ginny would never be anywhere as close to Harry as Ron and Hermione were. Even if she forced them to take her along like that night last year she’d never stop feeling like a nuisance.
That’s right Ginevra, she threw a pair of oddly misshapen socks into the trunk angrily, stop feeding his already enlarged ego. Stop waiting for his highness to grace you with his presence, or his approval, or his permission to fight.
Ginny spent the train ride home watching the rain hammering down over the world outside the window. There was a frightening sensation running through her veins. When she was eleven she had mistaken it for happiness. And now, now she didn’t know what to call this feeling. Tom’s spells. Dark Magic? Dumbledore was gone; he couldn’t protect her from those nightmares anymore. He couldn’t convince her that you could be touched by Tom, marked by Tom, and still be perfectly alright, because Professor Snape was gone too.
Her hand itched up to her shoulder and she traced the familiar pattern on top of her clothes with a finger. Dean had listened too, it wasn’t just Tom, and she had felt this same feeling sometimes when she was talking to him, when he listened, said he understood.
“Then it can’t be Tom,” she whispered to her room, throwing the trunk down beside her bed and letting her eyes scan the small territory that was hers, “Besides, Tom wouldn’t be telling me to fight against him.”
“GINNY!” Ron bellowed from downstairs, “HURRY UP MUM SAYS DINNER’S READY!”
Did he not realize how bloody loud he was or did he always do it just to annoy her? Maybe he was bored now because Dear Harry and Darling Hermione weren’t around. She rolled that around her tongue again, every bit of it, and the sarcasm felt good. And it was hers. Not Tom’s and not anyone else’s. She made a pact with herself that day (those were the best sort because you didn’t have to depend on anyone else to keep their end); a pact to stop pretending it was all about Harry. Stop pretending that a perfect little fairy tale was going to come to her all by itself.
“COMING RON,” she finally bellowed back, “DO YOU HAVE TO BLOODY SHOUT?”
…
Ginny sat seething on her bed, in the same position they’d left her in when they locked her bloody door, her wand raised before her and eyes narrowed angrily. Nothing would get the damn thing open.
“Stay here where it’s safe, Ginny,” she imitated in a mocking voice, “Stay here and let us kill the big bad Death Eaters for you.”
“They’re Pure Evil, Gin, you wouldn’t understand.”
The dinner plate her mother had hurriedly shoved at her shattered into a million pieces, meat balls flying every which way.
“You’re not of age, Ginny darling, you’re much too young.”
This time she swished her wand and then gave it a flick and the now empty school chest went flying. But all she had to do was be patient for just a little longer. They could fight and leave her behind today, but she was going to Hogwarts, she’d be there in a week and she’d be damned if she came back anywhere near this place once she was free. She would figure something else out, find a way to train herself to fight and then she’d go off on her own bloody missions without being a nuisance to anyone. She’d show them.
The crashing bangs and shouts of the battle were getting closer and she tried all the unlocking spells she knew once again, but none of them worked. If she blasted the door open Mum would have a cow and then she’d probably never get out of this place.
They all pretended she was some soft little breakable child that thought the whole world was flowers and games, as if any of them had ever been bloody possessed by the Dark Lord. Ginny let her wand drop from her hand and ripped the left sleeve of her shirt apart. There it lay, throbbing, searing into her bones and making her vision blur. It wasn’t black like the other ones, it was just a knife wound really, but even though Dumbledore had assured her it would heal eventually she knew it never would.
“Ginny I need to get you out of…” her heart was wrenched violently up to her throat as she heard the familiar voice of her favorite professor trail off. Ginny looked up slowly, dreading the shock she would see in his eyes, the pity. But when she finally locked eyes with Professor Lupin there was no pity there.
The silence stretched between them for a while, broken only by the squelching noise the door made as he secured it once more behind him. He walked closer, finally setting himself down Gingerly on the edge of her bed and reaching a hand out. He stopped short of touching the horrible scar though, and Ginny realized he was asking permission.
“Some bites never heal, do they?”
Ginny set her jaw and glared at him with her fiercest stare. “You won’t tell anyone. I want- I need to go back to Hogwarts. I don’t care about being safe, I never am safe anyway; I want to fight.”
“Well,” he almost had laughter in his eyes now as he began to trace the throbbing scar, “I knew three very brave people who said the same thing. They never waited for permission, either, and I don’t think any amount of locking up would have deterred them from their goals. They fought in the Order eventually and it seems you have much more right to be in this war than they did.”
There was another short silence and Ginny suppressed a shudder as his finger traced the outline of the skull again. “Just remember that there’ll be people like me who survive and have their hearts broken.”
“Yes well, I can’t just sit around and be useless all the time just because of that!”
“I know.”
…
Ginny stared at the proffered palm for a few moments before grabbing it resolutely and hurrying raising her wand a fraction or two. A chill crept up her spine and she wasn’t really sure if it was because of the Dark Magic in the air of the warm hand that enclosed hers.
“Watch that broken bottle to your left.”
She stepped over the thing carefully and let her eyes take the place in. Crows were cawing overhead and something told her that there were other creatures around here she would prefer not to meet.
This wasn’t like any battle or obstacle course she’d ever imagined. There was a calm sort of timelessness about the whole place and no sinister Death Eaters or Snakes attacked them, not yet anyway. There had been, however, a little tussle with a patch of ground that acted like quicksand, some venomous plant they’d studied in Herbology in her fourth year and a blocked gateway they had to open with a very complicated bit of magic Zabini had performed while she protected his back from the bloody crows that were now trying to gouge their out and peck their ears off.
Finally they stood on both sides of the small, beautiful thing staring at each other, both afraid to touch it just yet. “Know any good spells, Weasley?”
“I don’t suppose a simple revealing spell will tell us anything since we already there’s a seventh of a Dark Wizard’s soul in there.”
Zabini fell into that thoughtful mood again and Ginny’s hands were now itching to touch it. She could still remember the dark, dead looking hand Dumbledore had raised before them at the feast last year, but her curiosity and need were overwhelming. She reached out with her left hand, but it was stayed by Zabini. “Doesn’t make any sense for him to put a spell on it that would make anyone want to touch it and carry it away.”
When minutes passed without him coming up with anything tangible to try Ginny let out a sigh of frustration. “What about that thing Slughorn made us cast on the poisons, where you separate the potion into a billion different ones and figure out how each of them works.”
Ginny decided that she was very glad Zabini rarely smiled as he looked down at her with a mixture of awe and pride. “Let’s hope there aren’t a billion different ones this time then, Weasley.”
They had to perform some pretty quick spell-work, one filling in for the other when they lagged behind, but in less than a minute Zabini’s eyes lit up as if he’d just found gold even though Rowena Ravenclaw’s brooch was still intact. Ginny stared at him as he mumbled under his breath and then watched him conjure some parchment and a quill and begin scribbling rapidly. She was suddenly struck with the realization that there was nowhere in the world she would rather be than this disgusting, Dark Magic infested place trying to solve this mystery with this arrogant git.
And then, as if it was on of Fred and George’s fireworks multiplying in her brain, Ginny was hit by realization after another. She had got the perfect best friend she’d wished for in first year with Tom, but it had gone horribly wrong because there simply was no such thing as a perfect best friend. No one listened to everything or understood everything, she knew that now. The important thing was, she supposed, that they understood the important part of you that you valued the most so that they could understand your dreams and your goals and help you get there.
Then there was Harry and her silly infatuation. She had wanted the made-up version of Harry in her head that did things the real Harry would never do. Ginny knew now that it didn’t have to be Harry couldn’t be Harry.
“Alright, I’ve got it.”
She shook herself out of her thoughts and concentrated her full attention on the parchment he was pointing at before her. The spell seemed simple enough but they were going to cast it at the same time so it obviously needed to be pretty strong if it was going to destroy the spells on the object and a piece of Tom’s soul.
“Ready, Weasely?”
“Always, Zabini.”
Maybe love was only perfect if you stopped trying to make it fit your imaginations. She took a deep breath and raised her wand thinking briefly that if she died here in this tussle with a stupid pin at least the last thing she would have seen before her death would be that gorgeous smile that was there solely to annoy her. Who needed perfect anyway?
