One of the Guys
Hermione has always been one of the guys, ever since Halloween first year when she and Ron and Harry decided that the only way to be was together. She never has anything to say to Lavender or Parvati or any of the other girls in their year, never learned how to talk to them and it's not like Harry or Ron are going to help her there. So she falls back to walk with them after classes, sits with Ron and Seamus and Dean at Quidditch games, and learns the cadence of male voices. She discovers how to fit her own in around them and how to put up with the eye rolls because they come with Ron patting her on the back and telling her that she's hopeless, but with a smile. Besides, even if they've got nothing else in common, there's always saving the world.
But they do have things in common. She and Harry have the Muggle world, the out-of-place-ness that still comes over her sometimes even after she's been at Hogwarts for years. With Ron it's harder to pin down: maybe it's the fear of being left out, overlooked, the way she'll bump his shoulder sometimes in a crowd and he'll look at her almost like he's grateful to have been seen. Whenever he gets mad at her, whenever they're not speaking, she feels more invisible than she's ever felt.
Hermione doesn't know when she first started liking Ron Weasley; she thinks it's probably been from the very beginning. Harry's always been out of reach. He's got a grand destiny and his eyes are always far away. The only girls he ever brings his gaze back to earth for are people like Cho or Ginny—bright flashes of girls, pretty and shining and sharp, girls who can fly and fling words in ways that Hermione never learned, ways she wouldn't even know how to begin to try.
But Ron, he's always been right there (except when he's not, when he's off in a strop before he's been brought back round by something or other), a solid presence next to her, slumping against the wall in a way that seems so permanent, seems to indicate that he'll never go away. And that's what Hermione wants, isn't it? Someone who's there for her even if he never fully understands her. Someone who stays by her side even if he can't quite keep up all the time. Someone who needs someone as much as she does, and because of that need he'll never leave. Isn't that what she wants? Isn't that what she's wanted all along?
Lately, Hermione isn't always sure.
xXx
Ginny's always been one of the guys, even longer than Hermione. Growing up in a house full of boys, you have to learn to be loud if you want to be heard, and Ginny wants to be heard. But once Harry starts coming around, she finds that something has happened to her voice. She can't make it go loud anymore, can't shout over Fred and George at breakfast or even tell Percy to stop being a prat and just pass the butter. When she's around him, her vocal chords fold up and her heart starts beating fast. She's eleven, and another boy—a different boy—tips the scales, and everything feels like much too much.
After the diary, after Tom Riddle, after Ginny learns how to stop waking up at night screaming, she still finds her tongue tied around Harry, still feels blushes creeping up her cheeks, and so she knows it wasn't just youth, wasn't just possession. When a boy invades your lungs and your throat for years at a time, takes up so much space that your own words can't squeeze past, that must mean that you love him, right?
Ginny watches Harry from her place at the Weasleys' dinner table, her spot in the Hogwarts Great Hall, watches as his hair grows and his chest widens and his mouth splits open in a smile, watches him talking to her brother and Hermione and the three of them glowing in the light of being chosen. She yearns to enter that light but doesn't know how to get there, can't imagine the path she would walk or the passwords she would give. She can't even open her mouth, so how is she going to say a secret code?
xXx
Hermione and Ginny get thrown together a lot, two girls in a world of boys. In the summers they share rooms at the Leaky Cauldron and tents at the Quidditch World Cup, and they come to know the way each other's whispers sound in the dark, telling one another about their parents, their dorm-mates, the boys they both know so well. They know the sounds the other makes in sleep—the tangled moans Ginny buries in her pillow, the sighs Hermione tosses out like they're trying to catch an unseen wind and be borne away.
At school, Hermione finds herself seeking out Ginny in the common room when she needs to talk about something Harry and Ron wouldn't understand—or worse, would laugh at her for—advice about how to do her hair for the Yule Ball, an opinion about Professor Flitwick's comment on an exam, an explanation of the Quidditch move Harry and Ron won't stop going on about and she doesn't understand but she's not going to give them the satisfaction of asking them. Around Harry Ginny is quiet, but alone she is a font of information and smiles and gentle jokes that make Hermione laugh but never make her feel stupid, and so she seeks her out again and again.
During her third year, Ginny finds herself doing the same, after a particularly embarrassing incident in which Harry walked right into her and she just opened and closed her mouth like a fish until he gave her a quizzical smile and walked away again.
She goes to Hermione and asks her what to do, asks her how to be a girl who does not love Harry Potter, and Hermione smiles with white, even teeth and bright brown eyes and tells her to play the field a bit, give in to the flirtations of Michael Corner and whoever else, and see what comes of it. And Ginny cannot help but trust her advice, cannot help but feel a fizz of excitement in her stomach at the thought of liking someone new, excitement that bubbles over when Hermione hugs her and says to be sure to come back and tell her everything.
xXx
During Hermione's sixth year, in the midst of the Lavender Brown fiasco, Hermione is crying in an empty classroom when Ginny walks in.
"I just saw my brother going the other way, and I figured I'd check on you," Ginny says, and of all the people to find her crying, of course it would be Ginny, who is so strong and whose hair always looks windblown and as though it has been strewn with fairy lights. Ginny hasn't cried over a boy in years, not since she gave up on Harry and began making her way steadily through all the boys in Hermione's year. And Hermione feels a slight twinge with each new one, because for Ginny it is so easy to move on, or perhaps for some other reason Hermione can't give a name to.
She shrugs and sniffs and looks at Ginny. There's no point hiding the truth from Ginny, as though she doesn't already know. "I love Ron," she says, "but sometimes I'm afraid he's never going to look at me. Never going to look at me and really see me."
"I love my brother too," Ginny says. "But he is an idiot if he doesn't look at you."
Hermione raises her head. "What do you mean?"
Ginny shrugs. "I mean, look at you, Hermione. You're the smartest person in your year, if not the whole school, and you've saved his life probably hundreds of times by now"—Hermione snorts, but it turns into a weak laugh and a small nod, a smile—"and you've got lovely hair, and you're beautiful, Hermione."
Hermione has lifted her head completely now, and Ginny finds herself blushing, that familiar feeling, but instead of being at a loss for words she finds that she cannot stop talking. "I've felt the same—you know, about Harry. I've wanted him for years and then I've tried to forget about him, but there's always still that little voice in the back of my head saying, Why isn't he looking at me? What do I have to do to get him to look at me?"
"I always thought Harry was ridiculous for not looking at you—at least, not until lately, and even then I don't really think he knows what to do with the looking. I'm not sure Harry knows how to look at anybody that way, honestly, at least not until all this is over." She gestures, and it seems to encompass the room, the castle, Voldemort, the whole world.
Ginny feels a little hitch in her chest, but then something blossoming, something that grows large and warm through her middle. Something like letting go. "Maybe you're right. And even if he did look at me, it's not like we've ever had much to talk about. It's always been hard to talk to him, and I always thought it was just because I was nervous, but maybe it's just because that's how it is."
They are sitting side by side on the desks, and as Ginny says this she opens up her arms and leans until she is lying on her back, her hair fanned out around her head, tickling the back of Hermione's hand. Hermione turns and looks down at her, sees the peace settling across Ginny's face, the lively, warm beauty shining through her freckles and her upturned lips.
"Maybe," Hermione says, and Ginny snaps open her eyes and looks at her. They are a lighter brown than Hermione's, like cinnamon, and Hermione can't look away. "And maybe the second Ron looked back at me I'd remember how much he drives me crazy already and I'd realize that that's not what I want after all. I just always felt like he would be mine one day, you know? And every time he wasn't it made the wanting stronger, but now I'm not even sure what was at the core of it."
Ginny reaches up with one finger and loops it in a curl hanging over Hermione's shoulder. "Yeah," she says, "my brother is definitely an idiot."
Hermione can feel her heart inside her chest, but everything else feels like it's tipping: her hands braced against the desk are wobbly, the desk itself might pitch over any second, the whole world might turn upside down. But Ginny has hold of her hair, so she knows she wouldn't fall far before she was caught and held, safe.
Carefully, so as not to tip the scales of gravity, Hermione lifts one of her hands and strokes the fringe back from Ginny's face. "You have lovely hair too, you know. I've always admired it."
She leans down closer, closer, and still the world does not fall apart, still Ginny does not move away but instead lifts her head until their mouths are only inches apart.
"I guess Harry and Ron aren't the only ones who haven't been looking," Ginny says.
"Yes," Hermione breathes, and then her breath catches as their mouths brush together. "They're not the only ones who've been idiots."
"Idiots," Ginny says, sounding wondering, dreamy, like something is about to fly out of her that she won't be able to keep back. Hermione feels a fluttering in her chest, in her mouth, in her hands, and knows that things are lifting and moving in the room, in the space between their mouths, cheeks, eyes, hands, breaths, things that even magic can't explain.
"Yes," she says again, and then they are kissing, and their words and their eyes are lost for a while, though both Ginny and Hermione know that with each other they will never be lost for good.
xXx
Ginny will always be one of the guys. So will Hermione. They will always love the boys they have loved, in one way or another, and there will always be world-saving to do. But now they are also one of the girls, and they look at each other and see themselves reflected back, whole and light and happy, just as they were always meant to be.