Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling, Shakespeare, or anyone else whose work I "borrow" for this collaboration to create this fanfic.

Love's Keen Arrows

Chapter 1: The Tide Falls

Little star

So you had to go

You must have wanted him to know

You must have wanted the world to know

Poor little thing

Now they know…

Everything is new again once the water rushes back into the ocean. After awhile there are hardly even traces of whatever had been previously imprinted in the sand: moats for a sand castle, holes where seashells and pebbles once were, fingerprints, handprints, footprints. Sometimes the foam off a wave is abandoned on the sand and left to turn an icky tan color, its former grace lost on the shore. Those walking in the surf have their feet rinsed clean of the sandy imperfections, which were once such a bother, resting on their skin On those seaweed days, the sand is overpopulated with dried up leaves that start out a beautiful rich green but eventually are dried into deathly black. Everything changes when the tide falls.

It's a vicious cycle, which many writers and poets have tried to use as the greatest analogy for life. So many writers were depressed at one point, but did they not realize that they ruined such an enjoyable landscape with such an idea? The beach has a way of making people forget their sorrows. Maybe it's the sun; maybe it's the breeze; or maybe it's the ocean. Ginny Weasley had always loved the shore, and she had been enjoying her day until she read a Muggle-written poem entitled "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls." She found the writer ridiculous in that he turned the most relaxing place on earth into the most dismal. Did he not realize that disheartened people did not want to think of his poem while they were at the beach, especially when those melancholy people were perfectly content with being only a little sad instead of completely shattered? "Daft Muggles,"Ginny thought as she removed her straw hat and leaned forward in her beach chair to prop her elbows on her knees.

The redhead turned her attention to the water. It was the most brilliant turquoise she had ever seen, nothing like the navy-grey waters back home. Everything from beaches to the people to the smallest grain of dirt in the road was beautiful in Greece. The past dozen or so sunsets Ginny managed to catch from her view from her gorgeous villa had been so perfect that they should have been captured in some kind of painting. If she hadn't been spoken for already, she would have accepted the many dinner invitations she had been offered by the most handsome men she had ever seen. They were all tall, dark, and mysterious with the most attractive Greek lilts to their voices, yet to Ginny they were only textbook definitions of beauty. Everything comes with a price, even perfect Greece. The youngest Weasley enjoyed the hot, sunny days and the warm yet breezy nights, but she had yet to see a drop of rain. She felt like a fish out of water without her normal British dampness. Perfection did not equate to paradise for Ginny. She longed for the chaos in the various wards of St. Mungo's and of the War. Maybe growing up in a large family ruined Ginny on the whole idea of peaceful relaxation, but she could not help to feel uneasy about the unnatural calm of Piraievs, Greece.

Ginny would have never labeled herself as a racist, but she had never in her life felt the need to see someone who was not some shade of brown, bronze, or tan. Of course most of the witches she had associated with in the past couple of weeks were truly orange because they insisted on looking like they lived on the beach even if they hadn't set foot on it. She would rather be her normal shade of white than that ridiculous tangerine color any day. To go along with the unnatural orange tinge of their skin, most of these women were the brassiest shades of platinum blonde. "How could they go out of their homes like this?" Ginny would ask herself from time to time. Their blonde was nothing like his.

The redhead could clearly picture him right in front of her. He was tall with a build that back in his days of Quidditch would have been a little too bulky for a seeker. His facial features looked like they should have belonged to someone who had lived long ago. Each angle of his face was sharply cut in such an attractive way. His eyes were all his own. They were narrow, but not so narrow that you could not see the whites of them if you weren't two inches from his face. The grey color was ever-changing. When he was tired, they were pale. Whenever he was excited or happy or in a competitive mood, they lit up like little stars. His eyes could instantly become unexpressive and flat when he was being stubborn. When he wanted to shag, they grew dark, and before he would say "I love you," they were the first part of his face to soften. His hair was a shade of blonde that could never be duplicated. If Ginny could see him as an old man, there would barely be a difference between the color of his hair then and now.

If there was one part of him that she could obsess over for forever, it would be his hands. Everyone who knew him would have expected them to be perfectly manicured, and the truth was that they were when he was at Hogwarts. The practice ended when he was seventeen. These hands were all his own, not his father's. They were a little rough, and Ginny loved the contrast of his calloused hands against her soft skin. His fingernails, while short, were still always clean. He always said that if he was going to become a surgeon, there was no point of having dirty nails if they were going to have to be clean for the most part a couple years down the road. Ginny wondered if he was going to go that route after the War was over because currently, she knew it was not a feasible option for him. The job suited him to a tee with his arrogance and his extremely gifted hands. Just the thought of his hands made her blush at all of the marvelous things he could do with his talented fingers.

The more Ginny thought about him the more she realized that he would be able to tolerate Piraievs for no more than one week. Considering that he grew up in high society, he should have been able to deal with these people, but it was his upbringing that ruined his tolerance for their fakeness. He would miss the rain and the cold of England in the heat of Greece. Ginny could picture him again in the local coffee shop with the exact same stance he had the first time she saw him at St. Mungo's. He unceremoniously leaned against the counter of the administration desk with a look on his face that feigned disinterest. She grew to know that expression well. Behind the bad-boy, uncaring glare was an array of emotions that he didn't want anyone else to see. He gave Lee Jordan the same look when Jordan announced to the entire Order about Ginny's mission in Greece.

Tears started to collect in her eyes. This was torture. How could anyone expect her to handle this? The Weasley family wasn't any support, wishing that she could just get over him already and grow accustomed to her new life. Ginny had been in Piraievs for little more than a month – thirty-seven days to be exact – and her family expected her to move on with her life. It had only been thirty-seven days for Merlin's sake! Thirty-seven days had come and gone, and before she had even conquered one week without him, she knew it was impossible. He lived in her dreams. She couldn't even close her eyes anymore without him appearing right in front of her, within her reach. He was taking over her daytime hours as well. Ginny had nothing to keep her active, since her new boyfriend could well afford supporting both of them and thought that as a lady of society she should not work. Without any distractions, his stunning slate crept into her mind all day long and she couldn't do anything but stare at the ocean – a beautiful, supposedly perfect, turquoise ocean that had no comparison (in her mind) to those grey eyes.

Ginny sighed as she felt a cool breeze wrap around her, almost whispering one of the many eloquent things he said to her that final night together.

"When the sun rises tomorrow, to the rest of the world you will be starting a new journey with him that will have absolutely nothing to do with me. But it's not the reality of the life you lead," he had breathed into her ear. "Just because the book closes does not mean that the story is finished. Our stories are so intertwined now that I understand that this is one part of your story you have to complete because if you don't do this, you won't end up where you're supposed to."

"And where is that?" she asked innocently.

"With me."

It wasn't the first time that Ginny remembered that night because she replayed it over and over in her head like a favorite movie. Each time the memories reduced her to a shaking teary mess, which her current love thought to be homesickness. She was lucky that he didn't know the truth, and that was the biggest difference between the two men: she could hide everything from one, but the other could figure out just what exactly was on her mind just by looking at her. They were probably able to read each other so intensely from the past two years together. Ginny knew Blaise would eventually get the hang of it, but would she be able to tuck away her past from him then? How was she going to hide that much history, which affected her so deeply?

Ginny looked at her watch; it was only nine o'clock. She had the entire day to relive the memories of the past two years with him. Maybe in remembering she would gain the strength to push that time with him to the darkest corners of her mind, places where Blaise couldn't read what she was truly thinking. Maybe then she could get over her first love that was Draco Malfoy.