Chapter 1: The Shakeup
I disclaim
Ginny Weasley heaved a sigh as she looked over at the clock that was stationed beside her bed at the Burrow. Mum would be calling her down for dinner soon. Well, just calling it dinner was an understatement.
It was a family dinner.
"Everyone is going to be here. Bill says that he might be a little late coming from Egypt, but at least he is coming. Charlie is bringing that little nurse of his. I can't decide if they are always together because it's her job, or because there is something going on between them. Oh I do hope that there is something going on between them. She's such a nice girl. And of course Harry and Hermione are going to be here."
It was her graduation dinner.
"This is such a momentous occasion. All of the Weasley children, graduated from Hogwarts. Oh I remember the day that Billy got his Hogwarts letter. He was so excited. He made me take him shopping for his wand right away. He couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to use it at home. And now my little Ginbug is all grown up. She's going to leave me. Oh I am so proud of you dear, and I really am happy for you. These are happy tears."
It was the dinner when she was going to tell the truth to her family. They were not going to like it.
"Ginny dear, come down for dinner. Hurry along now."
"...he wasn't able to catch the barrel in time so everything, including Lee, was covered in vomit sented slime." George was saying. He and Fred had been telling a rather humourous story about an incident with Lee Jordon and one of their new inventions to the family.
"Pass the potatoes, Gin," Ron said for the second time that evening. Bill had not yet shown up, and Ginny was waiting anxiously for his arrival. She wanted to get her big announcement out of the way. She passed the dish of potatoes to Ron.
"Ron, how can you eat so much," chided Hermione."I am not going to be the one rubbing your stomach tonight while you wonder out loud what on earth possessed you to eat so much food. Besides, I am sure that Mrs. Weasley has prepared a wonderful dessert."
"Leave off, Hermione," Ron whined. "It took me living on my own away from mum's cooking to make me realize that I should make the most of it while I can. Honestly mum, great meal. Better than any Hogwarts feast that I have ever eaten."
"Why Thank-you Ron, but flattery won't make me forget that you and your girlfriend are living in sin."
"We are not living in sin. Hermione has her own room. Besides, Harry lives there too."
"Which was fine when you first moved in, but now that you and Hermione have decided to become a couple it is no longer appropriate for you to be living in the same flat as her. We have been over this. You said that you understood."
"We do understand," Hermione interjected. "I have found a nice, two-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment in a building close to Ron and Harry's. I'll be moving in at the end of the week. It would be a little too expensive for me to be living there on my own, so Ginny can be my roommate."
"Ginny?" Mrs. Weasley asked. "So soon? I was hoping she would be staying here at the Burrow for a couple months."
"She doesn't have to move in right away. She can stay here and job search, and then move in in a month or two."
"Oh that does sound wonderful. I was worried that she would be living alone once she moved out now that her friend Jessa got engaged to that boyfriend of hers."
"Unless Hermione's flat is in Canada, I very much doubt that I'll be moving in with her," Ginny said, not angry but amused that her mother was making plans for her again. This time she was of age and no longer a Hogwarts student. It felt good to be able to make her own decisions in life and not be vetoed by her mother.
"Nonsense, Ginny," her mother said with a laugh. "Fred and George are too much of an influence on you. Canada, Honestly. Where do you come up with these things?"
Her mother's response only made Ginny smile. She had predicted this response almost word for word. "Even if I wasn't going to Canada, I wouldn't move in with Hermione."
"What?" Hermione asked, and it was clear that she was quite insulted by what Ginny had just said.
pop
"What?" her mother echoed, sounding even more insulted than Hermione.
"Uh oh," Bill voice came from behind Ginny. "Who's in trouble now?"
"Bill!" several people at once exclaimed, and there was a general rush as Bill was hugged or slapped on the back by most of the members of his family.
Once he had gotten seated, and Mrs. Weasley was satisfied with the amount of food on his plate, Bill spoke up again, turning to his mother and asking, "So what have I missed?"
"Hermione found a new flat that she is going to move into, and Ginny is going to join her in a couple of months, but Ginny is being a sass about it."
"I do believe that she was being serious about Canada, Molly," Mr. Weasley told his wife.
"Forget Canada," Hermione said. "What did you mean about not moving in with me? I'll have you know that it is a very nice place, and it's very reasonable rent, especially with it being right in the heart of London."
"Would I really be moving in with you, Hermione, or into the empty flat that you are keeping just to placate mum?" Ginny asked.
"What?" Hermione asked again, this time anger was evident in her voice.
"You think that I'm safe, that I'm used to standing in the shadow of the 'dream team.' Don't you think that I know that you'll still be over at Ron and Harry's all the time? I can't take that any more."
"That's not how it would be, Gin," Ron protested.
"No? Isn't that how it's always been? 'Go away Gin.' 'Get lost Gin.' 'These are my friends Gin.' 'You're too little Gin.' 'No you can't have Looney over, Hermione is already in your room, Gin.'" Ginny's smile was gone now, as she remembered all the times that Ron had said those hurtful things to her.
"Oh come on."
"No you come on. That is another reason why I want to leave. No one ever takes me seriously."
"We do take you seriously."
"Oh I beg to differ. What about all those times that I wanted to play Quidditch with you guys, but you just laughed at me. When mum insisted that I did have friends and that I was being over dramatic. All the times that Percy has told me, 'it's all in your head.'" She felt a tear slide down over her check.
Her speech had stopped Ron for a moment as everything that she said was true. She could tell the moment that he had thought of something to say, though, because he lifted his chin slightly and shifted in his chair. "But what about that summer that we spent playing dragon ball."
Ginny smiled sadly, not sure if she had wanted that summer to come up or not, but she was too worked up to change the subject. "That summer made it so much harder for me when you told me to leave you alone."
Ginny took a swig of the glass sparkling cider in front of her, and then started to reminisce,"We were late to the station and were lucky that there was still an empty compartment, as I recall. I went in to follow you and I can remember the exact words that you said to me. 'Go away Gin, we put up with you for dragon ball because you need four or more players for the game, but we don't need you anymore. Why aren't you leaving?'"
"Ron!" Mrs. Weasley said sternly, but Ginny was lost in the memory, and continued to prove her point with one of the bleakest memories that she had.
"I looked into every compartment hoping to find one empty, or with just a couple of first years who would be too scared to tell me to go away. I looked into the compartment that the girls from my dorm were in. They were all laughing, and then Kaiya looked up and saw me looked through the window and then turned back to the other girls.
"I got to the end of the train and the only glass that there was left to look through was from the door in the back. I looked down at the track that seemed to be moving as the train moved over it and my hand was on the door handle and I was wondering who would miss me if I opened the door and walked off the short platform that I would find there and I turned the handle.
"It was locked. I couldn't even pull that off. I don't remember how I got there, or why I thought of it, but there's a small compartment of sorts that used to hold coal before Hogwarts bought the train and turned it magical. I opened that door and there was Luna, sitting on her trunk. There was Luna. Dear Luna."
Ginny broke off her story with a sob. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She had wanted to tell them enough to make them understand why she was leaving, but some things she had wanted to stay secrets. But she relished the looks of shock and horror on their face as she looked around the table through her tears. Even the twins were silent and somber.
"You promised to write to me every day. You said that we would always be best friends. But then you didn't send me any letters and you had a new best friend and you would tack on a 'say hi to Gin' on your letter's to mum like I was an after thought. Sad thing is that you're still probably my best friend, now that Luna is gone, and I am still only an afterthought."
Ron was crying now. He was trying to hide it, but she could tell. Ginny wondered why she was revealing so much, but it felt good. She felt dizzy with the sense that she was loading some of her pain back onto them. She did not feel guilty to see Ron's tears. She felt almost giddy by the way that her mother was shaking her head in disbelief.
"But you have friends," her mother argued. "You are always talking about Jessa in your letters home. Surely you are forgetting about Jessa." Her mother sounded almost desperate, and Ginny almost felt guilty for her reply. Almost.
"You were always saying that I was too dramatic. You never believed me when I said that I didn't go to Hogsmeade because I had no one to go with, or what not. You kept telling me, 'That Jessa McKay is such a nice girl.' 'That Jessa McKay is so pretty.' 'I went to school with Jessa McKay's mother. Was Head Girl when she was a prefect. Such a lovely, responsible girl, why aren't you and Jessa close? You're not being rude, are you Ginbug?'
"I got sick of it. I would listen to snippets of conversation that Jessa would be having in the dorm with the other girls and include them in my letters. 'Jessa did this,' and 'Jessa said that,' I wasn't really lying. She just didn't say those things to me."
Her mother spluttered, "But Jessa is such a nice girl, surely if you had…"
"No, mum. You are doing it again. Maybe if I had in my first year everything would be different… but I didn't. My first year I acted weird and reclusive. First year is when you build the foundation of lifelong friendships. All I built with my dorm mates that year was a wall between us because of my snappishness. By second year they had already begun to see me as someone below them."
"But surely if you had talked to them… you must have had some stuff in common. Boys, classes, family. You could have tried."
"Mum, I tried. Not often, but I did. One time I tried to enter a conversation about boys with them and they just told me that I was pathetic and that they didn't blame Harry for avoiding me since I turned into a slobbering idiot when around him. But I don't. I haven't since first year and people still tease me about it."
Fred and George looked extra sheepish at this last comment. Her old crush on Harry was a favourite subject for them. They loved randomly breaking out into musical versions of the poem that Ginny had sent to Harryvia Lockhart's 'cupids.'
"Well maybe if you had told them why you had acted like that your first year," her mother tried again.
"Everyone knew mum. Everyone knew, but they pussyfooted around the issue. Isn't that one of the unspoken rules in our house? Don't talk about the big, bad diary. If we don't talk about it it will be like it never happened."
"Ginny, I don't think that this is the time…" her father cut in.
"When is the time, dad? It's never the time. It won't go away if we don't talk about it. It's still there, it still happened. I thought that you would be the one who would be able to understand. Remember when I tried to talk to you, daddy? You told me to hush, that everything would be ok. Well it's not ok. It's not. I used to long for the diary. Tom had been a manipulative bastard, but he had been there for me. And I loved him. I was in love with him. It wasn't like the silly crush that I had had on Harry.
"I cried a lot that summer. I heard you talking sometimes, mum and dad. You came to the decision that I would come to terms with what happened to me, and to the others, and that I would realize that it wasn't my fault. My fault? I had never thought that before. I was crying not because of what had happened to me or what I had done, but because of what had happened to him. I didn't understand. I didn't understand that he had been using me. I didn't want to think that he had done wrong.
"It wasn't until I was staring at the markings ona wall of one of Bill's pyramids that I understood what had happened. The wall told a remarkably similar story. Mum hustled me away from that pyramid and didn't let me go to any more so I spent the rest of my time coming to terms with it. It took me a long time, and I didn't have anyone to talk to, and I was too scared to write in a diary, but I got over it. For the most part. I still have nightmares sometimes. And sometimes when I am particularly lonely I will find myself longing for Tom."
Ginny's tears had stopped at his point, but her father was sobbing into his hands.
"Ginny, Princess," He said into his hands. He did not say anymore, but the anguish held in those two words told a great deal.
"I'm not a princess, daddy," Ginny whispered. "I'm not a little girl who likes dolls and unicorns and flowers. I never was."
This time it was Charlie who spoke up, and Ginny's eyes lingered for a moment on the wheeled chair that he was sitting in. His face mirrored the expression of many of the others sitting at the table, and Ginny decided not to take any pity on him because of what the war had done to him. Charlie's wounds were physical and could be dealt with, many others were not so lucky, and Ginny was not thinking about the people who had lost their lives. "But we always gave you clothes for your dolls as your presents, and you seemed to love them."
"Seemed to," Ginny said humourously.
"But for your 10th birthday you got that doll, and you were so happy you cried… oh."
"Oh is right. I was so excited that day. The 10th birthday is when all of you guys got your broomsticks. I don't think I slept a wink the night before,imagining what it would be like to fly a broomstick since no one would let me take theirs, or even take me up on theirs. I could usually hold my disappointment when I got girly presents like that, but I hadn't been expecting it that time. I cried for hours. The next day is when I started breaking into the broom shed after dark and borrowing brooms."
"But Ginny," her mum protested. "We spent good money on those dolls. And you always seemed to like them. Why didn't you tell me."
Ginny smirked, "I did tell you. Your usual response was about how proper young girls played with their dolls and didn't fly around on their brother's broomsticks.
"Don't you see why I have to get away, now? I won't be gone forever. I'm just doing my healer training there, but I have to make a new start. It sounds so stupid to say this, but I need to find myself. Grow into myself. I need space. I can't be the Ginny that people expect me to be any more, and I can't be the invisible Ginny anymore, either."
She could see several people around the table nod at this. Hermione looked thoroughly chastised, but Harry looked even worse, no doubt thinking about his own shitty upbringing and also feeling guilty for hers. Her eyes fell on Charlie's nurse who looked embarrassed and out of place and felt her first tendrils of guilt that night for bringing her into this. Charlie, Bill, and Ron looked horrified, butwere nodding their heads with different levels of vigor. The other three at the table did not look convinced though. It was Percy, ever the practical one, who spoke.
"Even if you have a good cause to go, Ginevra, packing up to go toCanada is irresponsible. I know that there is a real need for healers after the war, and I am proud that that is what you have chosen as your career, but you can do that in England. Training costs enough money, and that is not counting board. Even if you stay at the Burrow you will have to take on a job just to support your training."
"I've got that covered," Ginny said.
"What?"
"I said that I've got that covered. The ministry has given me a full scholarship, as long as I did well on my N.E.W.Ts, but I was even more prepared for those that for the O.W.Ls so that shouldn't be a problem."
"I find it hard to believe that the ministry gave you a full scholarship for healer training without even seeing your N.E.W.T scores, even with the demand for healers. How many O.W.Ls did you get, even?"
"Thirteen," Ginny said, and waited in the resulting silence, wondering who would react first, Percy or Hermione. It was Mrs. Weasley who spoke first, surprising Ginny.
"Thirteen O.W.Ls?" She asked in a disbelieving voice. "But that is as much as Percy and Hermione. It's a 13 point scale. You can't get any higher."
"Yeah."
"Why didn't you tell me? We could have thrown you a party like we did for Percy. 13 O.W.Ls and you weren't made prefect. That's strange."
"I got the results when Hermione and Ron received their head badges, and Ron made quidditch captain. High scores on tests in nothing new in this family, and I did try to tell you a couple times, but you were gushing over Ron. After that it just didn't seem important."
"Well dear, it's not too late for a party now."
"Don't bother."
"Thirteen O.W.Ls in fantastic, Ginny," her father told her. "And I would understand if the ministry gave you a scholarship to study in England, but that doesn't explain the full scholarship to healer training in Canada. And what's the guarantee that once you've graduated you won't stay inCanada and they would have wasted all of that money."
"They offered me the scholarship in England, but I had already made up my mind that I was going to leave the country after graduation. I sent them an offer for them to give me a full scholarship to another country's healer training that is compatible with theirs, along with a recommendation from Madame Pomphrey, and a promise that I would come back after my training. I wasn't expecting an affirmative answer from them, but they sent me a contract the next day. I guess the letter from Poppy was really good. I had been doing an apprenticeship of sorts with her all year and she seemed to have been very impressed."
"A contract from the ministry? You signed that contract from the ministry? Those are irreversible. They could have locked you into any number of things."
"Relax dad, I haven't signed anything. I've been a lot more careful about things after the diary. I brought it home. I thought that you would know someone trustworthy who could go over it for me."
"It does seem too good to be true, but for your sake, Princess, I hope that everything checks out. I'll have Ruttington look over it tomorrow."
"Arthur!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed. "How can you tell her that this is ok? She's my baby."
She looked over to Percy for help, but he was staring at his only sister with admiration clear on his face. Instead, Mrs. Weasley turned to Ginny herself.
"Ginbug, don't do this. I know now that life must have been hard for you, but now that we know, we can change things. How are we going to be able to change things if you're going to be gone for so long. Healer training is 4 years."
"Mum, I'm not doing this to hurt you or to get back at anyone," Ginny explained. "And I am not doing this to avoid my problems. I have thought a lot about this, and I feel that this is something that I have to do. I have to step out of the shadow of all of my brothers. All my life I've gotten, 'hey, are you the sister of insert-name-of-brother-here.' I also don't have the best relationship with anyone here. I want to give it time. I don't want to dive into anything. That doesn't work."
"But are you going to dive into something in Canada? You will be all alone in a strange country. You won't know the language. You could be taken advantage of. Innocent girls like you all alone are very attractive to bad men. You could be longing for a relationship so much that you jump into things with one of them."
Ginny snorted, "I'm not going to let that happen again, mum." Ginny was angry with her mother, and had slipped the word 'again' into her sentence intentionally to get a rise out of her. She should have counted on the word getting a rise out of her brothers. It was Bill who caught on first.
"Again?" he practically snarled, though Ginny knew that he was not angry at her, but at the idea of her being taken advantage of. "What do you mean again."
Ginny shifted uncomfortably in her seat, as the rest of her brothers stiffed, and she could visualize their fists clenching under the table. "Oh, you know what I mean Bill. I'm talking about the diary and how Tom took advantage of me."
"Voldemort took advantage of you?" Fred asked.
"If he wasn't dead, I would kill him," said George.
"No, he didn't take advantage, take advantage of me. He just took advantage of me emotionally," Ginny replied, and it seemed to calm her brothers down, and the tension in their shoulders loosened.
"No, you were talking about something else," Harry said. It was the first time that he had spoken since his greeting as he, Ron, and Hermione had apparated to the Burrow, and in Ginny's opinion he could not have chosen a worse time to open his mouth as the tension returned to the shoulders of her brothers immediately. "Someone else took advantage of you. Who?"
Ginny gaped at him, and her lack of denial threw her brothers into an uproar. Ron and Bill were already out of their seats, shouting to know who had done such a thing so that they could go kill him. Charlie looked weaker than he had on the day that he found out that he would probably never walk again, and Fred and George were discussing how to kill the guy without being thrown into Azkaban.
There was no use denying it, as that would agitate her brothers more, and they would probably set up their own investigation.
"He's already dead, so you don't have to kill him."
At the sound of her voice, all of the angry fragments of sentences coming from her brothers stopped.
"He told me I was special. He told me that he loved me, and if I loved him, then why wouldn't I show him that I did? I was stupid. He broke it off when he got bored I guess. I later figured out that I wasn't even the only one at the time, but it is over now, and he's dead," she looked over at her father, who looked even worse than Charlie, realizing that someone had had stolen the innocence of his precious baby girl, and then broken her heart. He looked up and met Ginny's eyes. "Dad killed him."
Ginny was crying again. She had promised herself that she would not cry. She had promised herself that she would not reveal her deepest secrets. She had broken a lot of promises tonight. She suddenly felt overwhelmingly fatigued as she heard someone, she couldn't make out who, whisper, "Malfoy."
"Look," Ginny said, even though she herself was staring at her feet. "I am going to go toCanada at the end of the summer. I will live at the Burrow until then. You can support me in this decision, or you can not, but either way I am going.
"I do love you guys, don't ever think that I don't, and in between all the bad memories of mine are some really good ones. Don't cry for me, I have done enough of that for all of us. Be happy that I have been given this wonderful opportunity.
"I don't feel hungry anymore, mum. I think that I am going to skip dessert and head on up to bed."
As Ginny made her may up the stairs, back to her room, and the bed she had been lying on just hours before, she thought about all that had happened in that short amount of time. She did not hear a sound coming from the kitchen, except for her mother's muffled sobs, and she hoped that that was a good sign, rather than a bad one.