Notes: This is written for my prompt table at LiveJournal. You can see the whole thing at my writing journal: http://community. Updates will be sporadic, and don't be surprised if the plot goes wobbly. Also, I suspect that will get a censored version, as later chapters might become very violent or sexually explicit. Uncensored versions will be at my LJ.
001. Pretend.
"Ginny! Ginny! Up, now!" The sound of her mother's voice jolted Ginny out of a halfway-pleasant dream involving Harry, pillows, and a crate of butterbeer.
"Huhh?" Ginny murmured sleepily, as Harry twisted and faded into her bedroom walls.
"Up! Your Floo time is in an hour, and you need to eat and finish packing!"
Ginny sat up, rubbing her eyes briskly. "Right. Got it. Be right down, Mum."
Molly Weasley left, and Ginny yawned, stretched until her back cracked, and got out of bed.
It was the first of September, and Hogwarts was actually re-opening. It had taken a fierce battle, several petitions, and a large demonstration for the governors to agree to re-open the school. There were strict new security measures, and the train would not be running. Instead, students were Flooing straight to their Head of House's office at a pre-determined time.
Ginny dressed and brushed her teeth, then set about tossing everything into her school trunk, not caring about wrinkling her robes or crumpling parchment. Once it had all been thrown in pell-mell, she clattered down the stairs for breakfast.
Her mother and father were the only ones at the table: her father was reading the Prophet, her mother drinking tea while writing something on a scrap of parchment.
"Oh, good," said her father as she came in. "Trunk all packed?"
"Yes." Ginny served herself some porridge from the pot on the stove.
"I'll just go bring it down, then." He left the room, and she heard him climbing the stairs a moment later.
Ginny sat down at the table with her porridge, poured a liberal amount of treacle on it, and absently picked up the paper. There wasn't much interesting in it, and nothing cheering, not that she particularly felt cheerful or uncheerful anyway. There was the small column of Ministry warnings, a front-page story covering Scrimgeour's latest speech, and the usual speculations about Harry Potter.
Ginny hadn't seen or heard from Harry in over a month now. He'd sent her a thank-you note for her birthday gift, presumably from the Dursleys', but that had been the last thing she'd received. More worryingly, any owl she tried to send simply came back, seemingly unopened. Ron, too, had left, but he at least wrote once a week, letting Mum and Dad know they were all alive -- Hermione was with them as well, helping to do whatever it was Harry would be doing to defeat Voldemort.
Of course, Ginny wasn't allowed along, she thought acidly. For her own protection. She remembered Harry's words, and her own, at their breakup, and bit back a hollow laugh at her easy lies.
Ginny's spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl and startled her. She'd already finished, and she'd not even noticed.
By now, her father had brought the trunk down and was finishing his cup of tea, talking quietly with her mother about some Ministry problems. Ginny set down the paper and glanced at the kitchen clock, which read, "Almost time to go."
"Dad," she said, and directed his attention to the clock.
"Right." He glanced at his own, more conventional, watch. "Two minutes."
"Are you sure you have everything?" her mother asked, as her father got out the Floo powder. "Spellbooks, wand, cauldron--"
"Yes, Mum," said Ginny impatiently.
"If you've forgotten anything--"
"--you'll send it along, right." Ginny was anxious to go, to just get out of here, out of this empty house and away from her parents, who were so concerned for her that it made her want to scream.
"Right, then," her mother said briskly. "Arthur?"
Her father dropped the powder into the fireplace; the flames turned emerald green. Ginny stepped in, her father helped her stand the trunk upright; she shouted, "Hogwarts!" and was whisked away at last.
She tumbled out into Professor McGonagall's office and picked herself up off the carpet, dragging her trunk out of the flames a moment later.
"Good morning, Ginny," said a voice. It wasn't McGonagall.
Ginny looked up, startled -- it was Madam Hooch. "Oh," Ginny said blankly. "You're the new Head of Gryffindor?"
"I am, yes," said Hooch, sparing her a glance. "You'd best move aside; the next arrival is in another two minutes and we don't want collisions."
Ginny obliged, Levitating her trunk along in front of her.
"See you, Professor," she said to Hooch, who had returned her attention to her desk, scribbling something on parchment that looked suspiciously like Quidditch game plans.
Hooch absently murmured something in reply as Ginny left.
The corridors were very, very empty. Ginny was prepared to bet that she was one of the first students to arrive this morning. "What an honor," she muttered. She saw no one but ghosts on her way up to Gryffindor Tower, and then came to a sudden halt in front of the Fat Lady.
"Er..." she said. "Is there a password?"
"Yes," said the Fat Lady. "Didn't Madam Hooch tell you?"
"No," said Ginny, frustrated. "She was making Quidditch plans as far as I could tell." The Fat Lady merely gazed down at her, unhelpfully. "Right. I'll be back." She wheeled around and marched back down the corridor, floating her trunk along behind her like a large, square dog with no legs.
She ran into Colin Creevey as she came into the corridor where Hooch's office was. "Did she tell you the password?" Ginny asked immediately.
"Hi, Ginny!" Colin said. "The password? No, no, she didn't."
"Great. Fantastic." Ginny marched past him, not seeing how he had to duck to avoid her bobbing trunk.
She knocked briskly on Hooch's door and opened it almost before Hooch had said, "Yes?"
"Password," she said.
"Oh! Right," said Hooch, not looking at all embarrassed or apologetic. "Sorry about that. The new password is 'Quidditch.'"
"Thank you," said Ginny, and left again, meeting her bobbing trunk and Colin out in the corridor. "Quidditch," she told him, and set off as quickly as she could so that he couldn't keep up.
Unfortunately, he'd grown several inches over the summer, so his legs were longer than hers and he easily matched her stride.
"Had a good summer?" he asked. "Mine wasn't too great. Dad kept us inside mostly when we told him about the dementors. He didn't want to let us come back, but we finally convinced him. I don't know why Dennis' arrival time isn't until the afternoon, though. It seems so random, these Floo times. You're a Weasley, so it can't be alphabetical by last name, and G and C are nowhere near each other, so it's not alphabetical by first name..."
Ginny had to listen to Colin's ramblings the entire way up to the tower. Fortunately, he didn't seem to require any answers, so she mostly blocked him out, trying hard instead not to think about Harry. She was done with Harry, done with his heroism and saving-people-thing. She would not think about how much she missed just talking to him, much less kissing him, nor how much she simply wanted to hold his hand or lean against his shoulder. She wasn't going to waste her time wondering where he was, what he was doing, or if he was safe, beyond a vague wish for his good health and success in combatting evil.
"... Ginny? Ginny? Are you listening to me? D'you need a leg up?"
Ginny blinked and shook her head. They were at the Fat Lady, and Colin had given the password, and the portrait was hanging open. "What? Oh. No, I can get through the hole myself."
She thought of Dean, how he'd always tried to help her up when she was perfectly capable of climbing in herself. She thought of Harry, who'd always scrambled in ahead of her without any regard for chivalry, and how refreshing that had been... No. No more Harry, she told herself.
"See you at lunch," she told Colin, and climbed the stairs to her dormitory.
She unpacked her trunk in a few minutes with a useful spell she'd learned from her mother, and then lay down on her bed, staring up at the draperies and wondering what the hell she was doing here at Hogwarts, and where Harry was --
"Enough!" she said out loud. "I'm done with him. My place is here, with my friends and classmates, learning more magic."
She would not think of Harry any longer. Determinedly, Ginny took out her spellbooks and began memorizing the magical properties of ginger.
Five minutes later, she had thrown the book aside and was slumped back against the pillows.
Who was she kidding? Certainly not herself. She missed Harry and she wanted to be with him, and she knew she could help him fight Voldemort. How long, she wondered, could she put up with being hemmed in at Hogwarts? How long could she stand feeling useless and ignored, when she knew how well she fought? Hadn't she been the only one of the D.A. to actually know what Tom Riddle was like? She'd been possessed by him, did everyone forget that? Clearly they had, and Ginny wasn't pleased by it.
She wondered what her mother would do if Ginny simply left Hogwarts, if she, perhaps, moved in with Fred and George and refused to do her N.E.W.T.s? What did tests matter, with the wizarding world in chaos? Ginny, for her part, didn't think they meant anything. What good would it be to know the history of the Cruciatus Curse while someone's casting it on you?
Sighing again, Ginny decided she'd walk off her anger, maybe see if anyone else had arrived yet. She left her dormitory and made her way down through the castle to the Great Hall.
tbc