Ack, life is really eating away at me, but I've finally go this done. Written for Round 9 of the Fanfiction League Quidditch Competition; I had to write a fic where Harry died at the end of GoF. My prompts were birthday, blankets, and "She's too quiet these days." :)
"It would have been his birthday today."
She whispers it to herself, alone in her room. She spends a lot of time there now, wrapped up in blankets and doing nothing important, nothing worth while except lamenting. And why shouldn't she? Harry Potter is dead.
Harry Potter is dead, and she is not.
She wishes they had both died in the Chamber of Secrets, that Harry had stabbed the diary and died of poison, that Fawkes had not swooped down and given them both another two cruel years. That way, they'd be dead together. That way, Harry would be dead and so would Voldemort. And so would she.
She doesn't really wish that. Not always. Not even often.
She wonders if Cedric Diggory is having a hard time. She wonders if he holes up in his room wrapped up in blankets and does nothing important. Does Harry Potter's death affect him like it does Ginny?
Cedric Diggory didn't have a massively stupid crush on Harry Potter, though, so probably not. Cedric Diggory has Cho Chang, and Ginny bets they talk to each other and Cho is the one who cries.
Not that she cries a lot. She mostly huddles in the blankets and traces the silhouettes of each member of the Holyhead Harpies, wondering if someday she could be one of them, wondering what's the point if she's just going to die anyway.
Ginny isn't an especially morbid person or anything. At least, she didn't used to be. Now, everyone talks about her in hushed tones, saying things like "I'm worried about her," and "She's too quiet these days."
She is having one of her days, looking out the window and watching the twins degnome the garden, tracing her posters with a finger and brooding when things change. There is a knock on her door.
"Go away," she mumbles, so low she knows the person outside the door won't be able to hear. "I don't want you."
There is another knock, and Ginny wonders if it is her mother. She hopes not. She cannot tolerate her mother at the moment.
A third knock. This person is impatient. She thinks, and realizes that eliminates no one in her family. Well, except Bill. She wishes Bill was there to comfort her. Bill is never there to comfort her anymore.
She mumbles her assent to enter the room, and the door opens to reveal Ron.
She has to admit, she didn't expect that.
"What do you want?" she says, losing some of her gloominess in sheer surprise. "Do I have something of yours?"
Ron shoots her a withering look, and she feels bad.
"Harry was my friend," says Ron. "My best friend."
"You don't know how I feel," she says.
Ron stares at her.
"Did you listen to a word I said?" he asks incredulously, red hair flopping on his forehead. "I just told you that Harry was my best friend! I know what you're feeling!"
"No," she practically growls. "You don't! Maybe you know what Hermione's feeling, but you don't know what I'm feeling! I wasn't Harry's best friend, Ron, and now I never will be! I barely knew him, hardly spent any time with him, and this may sound selfish and awful, but he died thinking I was this shy little girl who couldn't even look him in the eye!"
Ron pauses, and Ginny wonders if he is regretting his decision to come. When he finally moves, it is only to sit on the bed and draw some of the blankets towards himself.
"I didn't think of it that way," says Ron slowly, and Ginny cruelly thinks that he is pausing only because he's too thick to string two words together. "I'm sorry."
Ron puts his arm around her shoulder. She relaxes into his grip even as she's trying to understand it.
"When I was eleven," said Ginny. "I thought I loved him."
There is another long stretch of silence. Then, "I know."
"I know you knew," she replies hotly, rolling her eyes. "You teased me about it all the time. You all knew, and you never let me forget it. Don't tell me that thinking it's some big revelation."
Ron laughs awkwardly, and Ginny almost feels bad. Then she remembers the nights where she'd put her face in her pillow and cry because everyone thought she was silly and no one understood her. She remembers the diary she ended up taking refuge in, and she doesn't feel bad. They thought they were just dealing her brotherly teasing, and maybe that's what it was, but it hurt. It still hurt sometimes, when Ginny cannot sleep and all she can think of are bloody rooster feathers and Tom Riddle's handsome, smiling face.
Not that Ginny ever still thought about her Tom.
"He saved my life," says Ginny.
"He saved mine too," says Ron.
"Finally," says Ginny, wracking her brains to figure out when this had been. "Something we have in common."
"We're both redheads," says Ron, grinning despite himself. "We're both Weasleys."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
Ron laughs half-heartedly. She doesn't blame him. It's a bad joke.
"When did Harry save your life?"
Ron shrugs. "There a lot of things we did other people don't know about. I can't exactly pinpoint a single event, just...Harry was always in charge, and I know if he hadn't been there, I would have been dead. All the way back when we were attacked by Sprout's plant thing in our first year to the Chamber to saving...to the stuff we did last year."
"That makes sense," she says, because it does.
Ron squeezes her shoulder. Ginny doesn't think he even realizes it as he does it.
"Why can't you talk about what happened last year?"
Ron doesn't answer at first.
"Tell me, Ginny," he says, his voice cracking strangely. "If you'd met someone you'd been waiting to meet for ten years and they were taken away a year later, what would you do?"
Ginny isn't sure where this is coming from, but she is touched by Ron's uncharacteristic thoughtfulness, so she thinks.
"I would be doing what I'm doing now," she says. "I would huddle in my blankets and cry, but for different reasons."
"I think I would do the same," replies Ron. "I might even do something worse. If I'd been stuck somewhere, unable to see the one I loved for so long, and then when I finally did and they were taken away from me, I would be so mad, I don't think I could take it. I'd..."
Ron trails off, and then he is even quieter. Ginny isn't used to this kind of silence from this brother of hers, so she feels the need to break it.
"I'll never have a chance to prove that I'm not just a whiny little girl," says Ginny. "I'll never be able to show him that I'm not weak."
"I feel like it was all building up to something," replies Ron, mumbling into her hair so softly she can barely hear him. "All our adventures, I mean. There was supposed to be something greater, but now You-Know-Who's back and Harry's dead and here we are crying and doing nothing. No more adventures."
"Harry's dead," replies Ginny. "But he didn't own the rights to adventures. Maybe..."
The look on Ron's face stops her from suggesting it. She leans against the wall and mourns with the brother who's lost even more than she has, thinking to herself that someday, she will finish what Harry Potter started.
Reviews are love! :)