Disclaimer: I own nothing except for my muse and this plot.
Prologue: Just a Little Less Pathetic
Ginny Weasley was in her fourth year of Hogwarts when she took what she would always think of as her "reality check". It was Christmas holidays at Grimmauld place. Ginny had sat down in front of her mirror and cold bloodedly assessed herself. She was a little girl, dysfunctional and stumbling on her own, so pathetically desperate to fit in that no one in their right mind would ever want her. She had no friends outside of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. And if Ginny was honest with herself, even they weren't her friends. They were the golden trio, and she was just the tagalong—that was how they saw her.
Ron had made his own friends; he didn't want or need to share with his baby sister. Hermione always shared Ginny's room when she stayed at the Burrow, but would leave for Harry and Ron's room as soon as possible, making it clear who her real friends were. And as much as it broke Ginny's heart, Harry would never wake up one day in love with the little girl who followed him around like a puppy. He was kind, but that was all that could be expected.
Her status as the youngest in need of protection had been cemented with Harry's rescue of her in her first year. She was an insecure little naïve girl, easily duped by a diary, and would be in the eyes of her family as long as she continued on in the way she was.
Ginny looked in the mirror and saw a little girl wearing secondhand robes with plain brown eyes, childish features, red hair that fell halfway down her back all in one length—a most old-fashioned, unstylish cut. She was short, and that added to her childishness, and her curves were still underdeveloped. Ginny looked hard at herself, making a decision.
When she went down to dinner that night, no one noticed at first, but then Molly Weasley gasped. "Your-your hair," she stammered at her daughter and everyone took notice of Ginny's new look. Her hair was cut in choppy layers around her shoulders—not high fashion, or even pretty, but the best she could pull off. She had only wanted a change. Harry, Hermione, and her father each said something nice about it, Ron rolled his eyes, Molly was horrified, Tonks looked delighted, Sirius nodded amusedly at her, and the twins each ruffled her new hair, pleased at the first sign of individuality from their little sister.
When Ginny had gone back to school, nothing changed. She was still the same mousy, spineless little Weasley in secondhand robes that she always had been, only now with shorter, choppier hair, and with the exception of a random comment from her potions partner, Loony Lovegood, and a snide remark about her family's not being able to afford a proper barber from Draco Malfoy, no one noticed.
But Ginny no longer chased after the trio around like a homeless animal, joining uninvited into their studying at the library or following them to the kitchens for a snack. Instead she did her homework first thing in her new spare time, having no hobbies or social life to speak of, and found her marks actually improved to the point of reasonability. Having more time left over, Ginny took to checking out stacks of novels and magazines from the library to read up in her dorm to kill time.
Hermione, Harry, or her brother would occasionally invite her to go with them to Hogsmeade or to visit Hagrid when the trio ran into her, but Ginny, determined not to impose herself where she obviously didn't fit in, always declined. The three would exchange subtle looks of relief, and it still stung, but Ginny had long ago accepted the fact that Hermione wasn't her best girlfriend, Harry wasn't interested, and Ron, though overprotective, would rather be so from a distance. Ginny even stopped sitting with them at meals, listening to their conversation, and instead took to sitting next to Neville Longbottom, who wasn't much of a conversationalist either, and Colin Creevey, who was a fellow scorned Harry Potter admirer himself, and did all the talking besides.
Despite her newfound declaration of independence from the trio, when she took up doodling, which she later tried to turn into a hobby, the three—especially Harry—were often the subject of her rather horrid efforts. She would sit on her bed in her dorm trying to perfect the soulful eyes of the boy-who-lived when she tired of her reading. When sketching at meals, trying and failing miserably to capture the essence of Harry Potter in ink, after she crumpled up her parchment Neville would look at her with something akin to pity in his eyes and Colin would playfully suggest she take up photography. Once in a while, Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil would nudge each other and look over at her efforts and smirk knowingly at each other, the bitches, seeing the lovesick little Weasley being just a little bit more pathetic. It made Ginny want to cry.
Surprisingly, it was Luna Lovegood that made Ginny into an artist. During a potions lesson, Luna was mumbling something about blue-tailed burbells and Ginny looked at the girl, really looked at her, and realized that after her own fashion, Loony was really quite pretty. Luna had a doll-like look about her with a rounded face, porcelain skin, huge quavering blue eyes, and long lanky blonde hair, if a little scraggly. It was this look that inspired Ginny to doodle her partner instead of notes on her parchment in class, and to teach herself how to space features correctly and to accurately draw shapes she saw in human faces.
As a result, Ginny did abysmally in potions that year, but she also began to refer to Loony Lovegood as Luna in her head. Luna noticed Ginny's drawings and was quite flattered and ready to give drawing tips. As it turned out, Luna was a bit of an artist herself and drew political cartoons about the Ministry that, while sometimes were witty, often made no sense. Ginny found herself talking more and more with the girl during lessons, and by the end of the year, she had gone for coffee at Madam Puddifoot's at Hogsmeade with Luna and enjoyed herself thoroughly. She and Luna had a lot in common. Both outsiders, both struggling with loneliness, neither thought of highly in popular opinion. Each girl had found relief in the other. After all, with someone to spend time with in public and write to over summer, one's life seemed that much less pathetic.
On the last night at Hogwarts, Ginny took Luna to the girls' bathroom on the second floor (haunted by Myrtle and less likely to be interrupted) and brought Colin with his camera as well. She outlined Luna's eyes with kohl and put a zigzag part in her hair, brushing it out to be wilder than ever. The effect combined with Luna's natural dreaminess was incredibly ethereal. She looked beautiful, in an untamable way, and Ginny knew Colin was incredibly impressed. Having created her model, Ginny had Luna pose while Colin took picture after picture, practically panting with happiness. Ginny tried to sketch a little, but mostly admired Luna.
Colin, declaring Luna the most photogenic thing since Harry Potter, promised to send Ginny copies of the photos over the summer after they developed so that she could copy them for sketch practice. Ginny walked back up to Gryffindor tower with an impassioned Colin, who was coming up with mad plans for opening a modeling agency with Ginny. Luna had gone back up to Ravenclaw tower, still fully done up. Ginny wondered what Luna's dorm mates would think.
On the Hogwarts Express, Ginny rode back in a compartment shared with Luna, Colin, Neville, Dean Tomas, and Seamus Finnegan. It was the perfect ride back, because with the return of Voldemort (there had been an attack on the Ministry at the end of the year), the conversation revolved around what an idiot Fudge was, and Ginny felt at ease spending the ride back trashing Britain's Minister of Magic with the boys. Luna would occasionally throw in one of her strange theories from the Quibbler, her father's magazine, prompting further discussion. There were no awkward pauses or lack of conversation and Dean Thomas actually looked at Ginny in awe (with a flattering look that maybe hinted at something more) at one point when she let loose a string of artfully crafted curses borrowed from the twins to describe Fudge.
Ginny got off the Express and rejoined Ron and her parents with not only the original two planned correspondents for the summer, but with an additional three.