[UNEDITED]
A/N: I just had the urge to write these two.
A Certain Slant Of Light
A flame. A flicker. A spark. Shadows moving in, whirling in circles, engulfing her. She crying out for help and then suddenly arms started wounding themselves around her.
Harry
Harry
HARRY...
Ginny Weasley awoke with a start. With a trembling hand, she reached for the the flask which she kept beside her pillow for such thirsty nights. Drinking half of the water in one go, she wiped the river of sweat from her forhead, peered around in the darkness of her dormitory and once again laid down to sleep fitfully.
Ginny had been having these nightmares in which Harry came to save her at the eleventh hour since the incident with the Chamber of Slytherin in her second year. With each imagination of her subconscious mind, she believed herself to be more and more in love with The Boy Who Lived. She was positively sure that he loved her too, just didn't express himself. Oh, she was so sure...
O
"And did you know, then Dennis..." he rambled on until he noticed that Ginny was no longer beside him. What he also noticed was that she had gone over to oogle over Harry while he and Ron played chess in the common room. Ugh.
Couldn't she take a lesson from him, and leave Harry Potter alone for once? Even he, Colin Creevey, the ultimate fanatic left the famous wizard alone these days. So why couldn't Ginny Weasley do it? Was it too difficult? He didn't think so.
Colin understood that Harry was under a lot of stress for being a Triwizard Tournament Champion and he knew that the boy needed some relaxation time without his interference. Then why couldn't she understand this?
He watched her keenly. She was getting all rosy cheeked and shiny eyed while she advised Harry on which moves to play. Colin watched and watched and watched and he continued doing so until his eyes burnt with anger - until they hurt from the fire and he was forced to look away.
Rage. His blood boiled. And the he didn't know why. Maybe it was because she had left him mid-sentence or maybe it was because she never got rosy cheeked while she talked with him. Yes, that must be it.
When she did come back to him, he tried to pay no attention to her, just to see if it would have any effect on her. He wondered if she would get angry at being ignored and maybe lash out at him and finally understand what it's like being ignored by a friend.
She didn't do any such thing. Instead she sat a little distance away from him and continued to blankly watch the hustle and bustle of the common room, as if viewing a beautiful sunset.
"Harry asked me to play chess with him tomorrow evening!" she exclaimed in a wistful voice.
"Didn't he." he muttered darkly and she missed out both his statement and the sarcasm in it because frankly, she was too giddy right then.
I'll play such a lovely game with you Harry...
O
The next evening, Colin didn't even bother being in the Common Room. He was out with Dennis, playing some strange sort of 'Catch Me If You Can' game with the Giant Squid.
He didn't see the way Ginny flirtatiously twirled her hair with her index finger while she pretended to contemplate about her next move. He didn't see the mild touching of their feet. Or the fact that she was all rosy cheeked again.
He hadn't wanted to witness all those things and that's why he was out.
The children lost themselves in the sunset - Colin in the real one, and Ginny in the fake one, a product of her imagination in which she and Harry sat together while watching the sky darken gradually and finally kissed each other under the stars.
She got checkmated.
She beamed brightly at losing and Harry thought it was very unnerving. Though he didn't voice that out.
O
All Ginny could think about was... Harry.
'Harry this...Harry that...Harry kiss...' she mumbled in her slumber.
'Harry, Harry, Harry' her mind chanted at the breakfast table, during her lessons, in the evening and in the night the incantation lulled her to sleep.
But this night, it didn't, because this night, she wanted him all for herself. She knew that he loved her because he had asked her to play with him, hadn't he? That surely spoke volumes on the matter, didn't it?
The flame haired girl quietly got up from her bed and tiptoed all the way out to the boys' dormitory.
Colin couldn't sleep and he decided that some minutes outside his stuffy dormitory might help him.
Ginny hadn't counted on a boy standing listlessly, just outside the door to her heaven. A forgotten boy, distant memories of whom were buried somewhere in the graveyard of her mind was standing at the door.
"Colin?" she whispered shakily before fainting. He caught her limply before she could touch the ground. In all his wildest imaginations he had never thought that Ginny's obsession with Harry would grow to such an extent that she would try to sneak in the boys' dormitory. Perhaps, he had been wrong because the disproof was lying in his arms.
He decided to risk Filch's wrath and took her to Madam Pomfrey all the while wondering why the hell had she fainted.
O
The next morning he visited her before anyone else did, intent on tightening her loose screws.
"Ginny, you're obsessed with him! Stop thinking about him all the damn time. Even Madam Pomfrey said that you were concentrating too much on a single thing. Of course she didn't know what, but Ginny you have got to -"
"Breathe! Don't you need to breathe, Creevey?" She cut his ramblings short.
He stopped. When had he come back to 'Creevey' from 'Colin' in her dictionary?
"I am breathing just fine. But you won't if you keep obsessing with him. Your whole power is channeled on him and him only. That's unhealthy Ginny! It will drive you mad." he snapped back.
"Maybe I want to be mad. And why do you care? What's it to you, eh?"
Not bothering to answer her, he turned on his heel and said, "Maybe you are."
And he left her.
O
The first twenty-three days of December, 1994 were absolute hell for Ginny Weasley. She was lost in general as she cried in secret, praying to God that Harry Potter would ask her to the Yule Ball. She was desperate. Very desperate.
On the twenty-fourth, she gathered the courage and finally asked him and the end result was disastrous.
"Harry, would you go to the Yule Ball with me? Please?"
She dropped the question so suddenly in the middle of their game that even she was shocked by her spontaneousness.
"Oh Ginny, I am sorry! I really am but Parvati Patil just agreed to go with a few hours back and besides I thought you were going with Neville. I am sorry but I can't."
"Oh," she uttered. Her lips formed a weak 'O'. "It's fine. Really." she replied back. But it was anything but fine. In her mind, the image of the sunset that she used to see with Harry shattered and gave way to a cold, dark void. Colin's voice rang over and again in her head.
'Maybe you are.' The phrase didn't seem to leave her anytime soon.
"Are you sure?" Harry prodded her.
And all she could was nod in return and lament on the loss of her love. Well, at least she thought it was love.
O
Her world of shining possibilities had cracked open at last and it lay shattered in front of her. Nothing was fine without Harry. He had rejected her and nothing was fine. Nothing.
On the night of Christmas Eve, Ginny wanted to die alone in a hole, away from everyone else.
As she walked out of the portrait hole and came right into the chilled atmosphere of the corridor, she didn't notice the silhouette standing against the wall, fiddling with its scarf.
"Going somewhere, Lost Lover Girl?" a boy's voice sarcastically called out to her.
Colin Creevey.
"It's none of your business, Creevey."
"The great Harry Potter rejected you, didn't he?"
"NO. HE DIDN'T!" she yelled out in rage and her scream reverberated throughout the hallway.
"If he didn't then why are you yelling?" he shouted back, equally angered.
"Shut. Up. We love each other and he asked me to the ball."
He walked towards her and shook her. "You're lying! Ginevra Molly Weasley, you listen to me right now. Harry Potter doesn't love you!"
She slapped him with a resounding thwack.
"I hate you Creevey. Harry loves me. He told me! We saw our future together! We..." She couldn't continue as she finally broke down and cried. A lot.
Colin didn't say anything and just continued to watch the girl in front of him strip down to her naked soul as her madness displyed itself to him.
"Ginny," he started once she had quieted down a little. "You don't love him." he spoke softly.
"But I do!" she cried out.
He caught her in a fierce embrace out of sheer desperation and she didn't fight back the contact.
"You no longer know what's real or what's unreal," He made soothing circles on her back with his fingers while she sobbed into his neck. "You see, Ginny, our feelings are like... light; the way they are directed reveals something and hides other things. You think you love Harry and he loves you. On that single ray, you travelled, hoping to find the source but you couldn't because simply there wasn't one."
She cried harder at that but didn't show any signs of leaving him anytime soon.
"I have been a horrible friend to you, haven't I?" she whispered in the depths of his pullover.
"I won't lie. Yes, you've been an absolutely awful friend."
She pulled herself back and looked at him, straight into his eyes and saw something that she couldn't identify. Determination? Lividity? Regret?
"I am sorry, Colin, but I hope you do understand that love many a times superseds friendship. Love is a pull, an undeniable attraction, a force which drives me and I know I love Harry. Love is -"
Before she could say anything further, Colin brought a finger to her lips and shut her up effectively.
"A disease."
Ginny had meant to complete her sentence with 'a beautiful feeling' and not the foolish thing that he had just uttered.
"Excuse me?"
"Yes, love is a disease. It breaks you and gnarls your mind," he spoke as looked pointedly into her brown irises with a fire behind his own brown ones. "It plays with you and tosses around with you heart." This time he dropped his gaze and glared at the his own chest.
She remained quiet. He let go of her.
"Love...is a player. A cruel one at that and we have to be careful of its tricks. A certain slant of light will reveal something and hide something else, something that's much deeper and purer and...way more astonishing that the crush you have on him. You need to find that light," he lifted a finger and poked where her heart was, "inside you."
And it was now that she identified the strange look in his eyes.
Sweet, sweet Merlin, Colin Creevey was deeply in love with her.
Her.
How could she have ignored something so blatantly obvious that it had been staring at he face since she had been eleven? How could she have passed up this? How could she have missed it? How could she have ran for Harry; Harry, who had all but ignored her till now and forgotten this boy who had always been there for her?
"Goodnight Ginny. I hope you that you would try to think about what I have told you." He turned around to walk to where ever he had planned on going.
But Colin Alec Creevey could never complete whatever midnight adventure he had planned because Ginevra Molly Weasley uttered the following words -
"I think I have found my slant of light."
He froze in his tracks, like a deer caught in the headlights.
"And what might it be?" he asked, hoping against hope that the answer might not be the Ravenclaw Boy that she talked about way too much or the handsome Hufflepuff Seeker.
"You."
He dropped to his knees right where he was standing, disbelieving every second of what was happening.
It was not any declaration of any sudden fit of love; he knew that fact very well but the suddeness of it was a great shock. He knew exactly what it was - from a broken heart to a broken heart, a promise of togetherness.
When he didn't get up, she dropped down in front of him, kissed him chastely on the lips, winked, smiled wryly, got up and ran. For a few seconds, he didn't move at all, as if he had been petrified all over again. After those initial seconds of shock, he got up and ran behind Ginny, intent on catching her and then pinning her against a wall.
Colin was happy. The Ginny he knew, was back. All was well.
"It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word
And then that word grew louder and louder
Till it was a battle cry
I'll come back, when you call me
No need to say goodbye"
-end-
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