A/N: Hi everyone! For the first time, I had the plot of the story planned out before I started writing, so I hope this will help with the writer's block. I have 9 chapters planned (I know its short, but I don't want to be finishing it up after Deathly Hallows comes out), but I may be dividing some of them into shorter chapters. Please please please review if you read it, doesn't have to be long, but I would love some feedback.

Without further ado, enjoy the story!

Chapter 1: Plans

Ginny Weasley was pissed off. As she circled the Burrow and the surrounding hillside on Harry's Firebolt, (he didn't know that she had taken it), she stewed over what she had just found out. Hermione had come to speak to her after lunch earlier that day.

"Come meet me in the garden," she had whispered in Ginny's ear as they did the washing up. "I need to talk to you."

Ginny, who was still frustrated with the girl who had become her best friend over the past year, agreed, though sullenly. She made her way to a park bench that was situated on the far end of the yard, and waiting for Hermione to extricate herself from her brother and ex-boyfriend. The very thought of Harry made Ginny want to kick something these days. He was avoiding her and doing his damnedest to keep her out of every aspect of his life. Hermione was the only one of the golden trio who would even talk to her away from the dinner table anymore. Ron had reacquired his childhood habit of screaming "go away, Gin!" every time he saw her and Harry had the even more irksome tendency to pointedly avoid eye contact and be completely silent until she left the room.

Hermione walked out the back door of the Burrow. Ginny sighed to herself. She and Hermione had built a relationship over the past year based on their mutual understanding and involvement in the Wizarding War, something that none of the other girls in the whole of Hogwarts could understand. They talked about boys, but not in the gossipy manner of most teenagers. They worried about Harry's emotional fragility, and Ron's ability to put petty matters aside for the benefit of the Light. There's was not a friendship based on makeup, gossip, and unimportant concerns. It was this intense aspect of her friendship with Hermione, something that no other girl her age would ever be able to understand, that made the friendship so important to her. And it was why Hermione's refusal to discuss anything but Bill and Fleur's upcoming wedding (How should I do my hair? I love your bridesmaid's dress! Should Fleur really be wearing white?) was so hurtful.

Hermione sat down next to Ginny on the bench. "Ron and Harry don't think you should know this. They think we're out here gossiping or something, but I'm going to tell you what has been going on. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I don't think it's possible for Harry to get through the war without you."

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "He would beg to differ."

"No, I don't mean that he'll just fall apart with the pain of being away from you," she said with hyperbolic drama, "I mean that for him to kill Voldemort for good, he needs things that only you can offer him. Literally, Gin."

Ginny snorted. "Like what, Hermione? If it's so important to him, let him ask me."

"Ginny, he needs your love. We all know that you're meant for each other. I think that if Harry's magic isn't fueled by love, he won't be able to make it through this. Only you can do that. We need to fight evil with love. Dumbledore's been saying it all along."

"Dumbledore was saying it all along," Ginny corrected.

"Don't be like that, Gin," said Hermione.

"Be like what, Hermione? I spend two months with someone, which I know isn't setting any records, by the way, but he completely dropped off the face of the earth after someone died. Now I know that he and Dumbledore were close and of course its going to be hard on him, but he needs to stop being so selfish! I'm sick of all this fucking wallowing he always does! And the worst part of all of it is that he didn't just drop of the face of the earth like anyone else would – he's always right in front of me, but he won't interact with me. I can't forget him because HE'S ALWAYS THERE!"

Ginny hadn't realized that there were hot tears of anger running down her face at this point, hadn't realized that the birds that had been roosting in a nearby bush had fled the nest as her volume rose dramatically.

Hermione looked at her without saying anything for a few minutes. After Ginny had regained some of her composure, Hermione whispered, "did you ever think that the reason why he's 'always there', why he's still here, is because he knows he can't leave you, but he feels he has to?"

Ginny scoffed at what she believed to be Hermione's naiveté. "Please, Hermione. He's here because he's finished his stint at Privet Drive for the summer and he needs to wait for the wedding to be over so Ron can go with him on this ridiculous trip he has planned."

"Trip?" said Hermione, trying (and failing) to sound ignorant of Harry's plans. "What makes you think we're going on a trip?"

"Oh, not you too!" Ginny cried, now even angrier. "I knew that Harry and Ron were planning on going off on some stupid 'kill Voldemort' mission, but they never mentioned you when I overheard them."

"What do you mean?" asked Hermione, suspiciously.

"Well, I heard them saying things that sounded like they were planning for two people. Fred and George definitely only bought a two-person tent for them, apparently it's meant for honeymooners. They kept talking about what 'the girls' could do for them from the Burrow. I always assumed that 'the girls' were you and someone else, Angelina and Katie maybe. Certainly not me."

"When was this?" Hermione asked, venom in her voice.

"Yesterday. They forgot to put an imperturbable on their bedroom door. I heard voices and stopped to listen."

"Bastards!" Hermione yelled, jumping off the bench and marching resolutely back towards the house.

Ginny, with her quidditch reflexes, was quicker. "Wait just a minute," she said, grabbing hold of Hermione's arm and dragging her back towards the bench. "If you're going to make them take you, you need to get me in on this as well."

"Harry doesn't want you to come, Gin," Hermione whined. "I'm sure you could work with Angelina and Katie, though. They've joined the Order, but Harry's conned them into really working for him. And you'd still have a connection to Harry. You could do the long-distance thing."

"I'm not taking the job you leave behind so you can go off and fight, Hermione!" Ginny yelled. "No offense, but I'm better at defense than you are and if what you're saying about Harry literally needing my love to fight Voldemort is true than it is my duty if not my right to go with him."

"Look, Gin, no matter how much I agree with you, I don't know how much I'm going to be able to do about it, what with the fact that they don't even want me to go with them anymore."

"Don't be so defeatist, Hermione. When were you planning on leaving, what did they tell you?"

"Day after the wedding, why?"

"They'll be planning on leaving the night of the wedding then," Ginny said, with a knowing smile. "We'll tail them all night. Then, when they think they can sneak off, we'll show up with our bags packed and demand that they take us or we'll get my Mum and Lupin to make them stay. They'll choose us and wherever it is that they're going-"

"-Albania," Hermione interjected.

"over a furious Mum and a thoroughly disappointed Lupin," Ginny concluded. "What do you say, Herms? Do we have a plan?"

Hermione looked uncomfortable. "I'd feel bad forcing them to take us. And besides, how much room can there be for us if they only got a two-person tent? Should we buy another?"

"Nah," said Ginny, with a sly grin. "It'll be 'cozy.'"

Ginny had been excited about the plans that she and Hermione had cooked up until Hermione had gone off to be all friendly with Harry and Ron, with the intention of showing them that she didn't know that they had been planning on ditching her. Ginny had remained outside to ponder the situation, and the more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She had paced the yard of the Burrow, calling Harry and Ron a lot of names in her head for playing Hermione like that and for continuing to keep her out of it. Finally, she decided that she fancied a fly to get her mind off the whole matter. By instinct she reached for one of Charlie's battered old brooms from the very back, most cobweb-y corner of the broom shed, but upon further consideration, took down Harry's prized possession, his Firebolt, from the place of honor it held in the front of the shed.

"What he doesn't know can't hurt him," she muttered to herself, grinning almost maniacally as she mounted the broom's sleek handle and pushed off the ground. The speed of the broom turned what had been a cool summer's breeze into what felt like gale-force winds as she sped through them, touring the countryside.

Ginny found her relationship with Harry somewhat ponderous. As she had said to Hermione just that morning, dating for two months set no records, (except for Harry), but she felt like they had something unique, something that no one else could feel. Does everyone feel that way about new love, she wondered. She certainly hadn't felt that way about any of the other boys she had dated. She hadn't really loved them, not even after dating for months. But Harry, Harry she had loved through and through from the minute he kissed her in front of the whole of Gryffindor House, and she had a feeling that no amount of asshole-ish behavior on his part would change that. Harry wasn't acting like someone who had just dumped her, she realized. Sure, he ignored her and everything, but maybe, just maybe, it was an act.

Really, she thought, he hadn't stopped trying to protect her. Just the other day Fred and George had spend a good 15 minutes on a tirade about her dating behavior, implying that she was easy and that no sister of theirs should act that way, and though Harry kept his head down and concentrated on his plate, she could read his feelings. When they were talking about how Michael and Dean hadn't treated her right and how they were complete idiots and how could she have ever seen anything in them, etc, etc, Harry was obviously suppressing a smile in agreement. When they met the topic of the duration of her romances, however, Harry grew a bit pink and looked (dare she think it?) just a bit angry with himself, as though he was sorry to have contributed to her poor track record.

Ginny smiled to herself. She could win him back. She was sure of it.

"Where is Great Auntie Muriel's tiara?" Molly Weasley exclaimed as she tore through boxes in the attic of the Burrow that night. "Ginerva! Don't you dare try to sneak out of here until we've found it!"

Ginny sighed. She was sick of wedding preparations and even sicker of the attic. It seemed as though her mother needed some family artifact taken down from storage every day, and Ginny had the misfortune of being the nearest Weasley child when the moment arrived most days. She had been hijacked into digging through old rubbish so many times that when ordered to help Ron make his room acceptable to offer to company, she failed to be disgusted at the mounds of possessions that he had accumulated.

"What's this?" her Mum said loudly, yanking Ginny out of her reverie. Molly was looking at a trunk made of highly polished cedar that was missing the thick film of dust covering every other surface of the attic. Someone had placed it behind stacks of old file boxes containing every note that Percy Weasley had taken during his stint at Hogwarts.

"S.C.B." Ginny read, tracing the initials that had been expertly carved into the trunk's lid. "Do we have any relatives with those initials, Mum?"

"B? Not that I know of."

Ginny opened the trunk. It looked as though it had been hastily and inexpertly packed. Nothing appeared to be in any order, and lying on top, as though it had been thrown in quickly, at the last minute, was a half-melted pile of silver that was once an ornate necklace. Ginny picked up the piece. "What's this, Mum?"

"Looks like someone tried to destroy it," Molly said, distracted from the search as well. "You know, dear, this looks oddly familiar to me."

"I know what you mean," Ginny replied.

At that moment, there was a scuffle at the entrance to the attic, and shortly thereafter, Ron appeared.

"Ginny!" he shrieked. "Put. That. Down."

"What's got your knickers in a twist?" she replied, scathingly.

"Don't mess with things that aren't yours!"

"We don't know whose it is! We just found this trunk. What do you know about it?"

"It's Harry's."

"Well then why is it up here?"

"I told Harry he could leave that stuff up here for safekeeping. It's all from Grimmauld Place."

"Why on earth would Harry want to keep this ruined old locket?" Molly asked.

"S'not just a locket, Mum," Ron said. Then, Ginny observed with much curiosity, he smacked his head and made a face that told her he had just let out a great secret.

"What is it, Ron?" Ginny asked.

"It was Sirius'. He couldn't throw it out," Ron feebly lied.

"Isn't he sweet?" Molly cooed, her eyes welling up. "Poor dear, still miserable over his godfather's death. I think I'll make that trifle he likes so much for dessert tonight," and she bustled down the rickety stairs, all thoughts of wedding tiaras completely forgotten.

Once her mother was out of ear shot, Ginny continued to grill Ron. "Why would Sirius own a necklace, Ronald?"

"Dunno…" Ron said, trying to make a break for the stairs.

Ginny jumped in front of him. "Only I've just remembered where I've seen this before, you see. It was in Sirius' house. Sirius threw it out, but Kreacher stole it back. Why would Harry want something that Sirius threw out, Ronald? And how did it get all melted?"

"Harry needed to destroy it so that it couldn't hurt anyone," Ron said slowly, obviously being very choice with his words.

"Was is cursed?" Ginny asked, through her teeth.

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Ron said, hoping that he wasn't giving too much away. "Look, Gin, he's got a lot on his plate right now. Don't mention that you know about the H-," he caught himself, "the locket, alright?"

Ginny eyed him suspiciously. "You have not heard the end of this, Ron Weasley."

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Thanks,

Mia