Author's Note: I do not and never will own Harry Potter.
Written for Luna (foxinspace).
Also written for the Psychological AU competition (Other: pyromania) and The Second Competition That Must Not Be Named.
Word count: 714 words
She likes to burn.
She tries to hide it before Hogwarts, with pilfered matches and a Muggle lighter she stole from down the road. She justifies it to herself with the cheap feel of the plastic, the way someone left it out under a picnic table. Justifications don't matter though, not when she flicks it and the flame sputters up, not when it mesmerizes her with the heat of it. The tip of her finger slides into the yellow-orange light and she winces, drawing it back.
She can't burn anything at Hogwarts, but she wants to. She checks advanced books out under the watchful eyes of the librarian, reading them under her covers with only the light of her wand, propping her chin up with her other hand. Incendio, she whispers under her breath when she's alone, and grins at the feeling of warmth that seems to spread through her body.
She's cold the rest of the time, though, cold and so empty. The hollow inside her is slicked with ice and everything that tries to fill it is dead. She knows why, but she doesn't want to admit it, doesn't want to believe that the boy she thought her friend is a monster. Paint drips down her front and her fingers smooth the chicken feathers in her pockets. When she's taken to the Chamber, she almost resents her savior. Monsters like her don't need to be rescued.
The Headmaster clucks over her and tells her parents that she'll be just fine, and she doesn't have the strength to correct the lie. Her fire is extinguished, and she has no idea how to get it back. The days until summer holiday drag on like saltwater taffy, the kind that she got at the beach one year when she was small, from a nice Muggle woman with freckles on her cheeks and a sun hat that was too big for her. She'd smiled and said what a nice-looking girl as she folded a handful of taffy into the small hand. The Muggle woman was sweet and sunburnt and the monster that had so recently emptied her insides out would have loved to murder her.
It will be okay, everyone tells her, but she doesn't believe it. Her brothers close ranks around her and even the ones who have already graduated find more and more excuses to stop by the house when June arrives. Her favorite steals her away for hours in the afternoons, sitting on a tree stump beside her and telling her of dragons. She's fascinated, enthralled by the creatures that still burn with their own inner fire, the beasts that breathe flames and smell of heat.
In July, he stops by and gives her a magic lighter, a twin to the one he carries in his pocket.
So you can burn, he explains and gives her that little half-smile he does when he's particularly happy but doesn't want to show it. She asks what he means, turning the metal over and over, feeling the heat pulse beneath her fingertips.
You know, he says, and she can see the fire flicker in his own eyes, echoed by the dragons he calls home. He tells her to be careful and kisses her forehead and she can't bring herself to mind.
He leaves her sitting cross-legged on the hill, spinning the wheel over and over. The flame wavers at first, growing steadier. When she looks at the flickering oranges and yellows (with the hint of blue deep within, if she squints just right), she thinks of letting her hand drop, how her fingers would relinquish the still-blazing lighter, how the grass around her would go up first, how perhaps she would go up with it.
She doesn't though. Instead she lets her fingers brush the top of the flame, dipping in and out of the nearly liquid heat. It doesn't hurt this time. She finds herself laughing and lets the flames die away, the metal burning against her palm.
There is still a hollow inside Ginny Weasley, but at least she's not so damnably cold anymore, she'll never be cold again.