A/N - This started out as a chapter for 'Magic', my Next-Gen fic, but it twisted around ever so politely and turned out to be this. Enjoy 3
Forgetting
Ginny storms out of the castle, shoulders set under her thin cardigan, gangly arms wrapped around herself against the cool summer air. She's angry with Ron, angry with Harry, angry with Dean for messing it all up and she just wants to get away from them all. So she strides out around the huge, looming building, through the tangled bushes that form their own little palace on the way to the pitches – one made of soaring silvered branches and thin green leaves that make the light soft and sleepy.
She perches on one of the branches, leaning back against the natural curve of the tree for a moment and letting the leaves fall back into place, hiding her from view.
She closes her eyes, letting the fury subside a little. She breathes deeply, slowly, gradually relaxing every limb, and stays like that for a l o n g moment.
Then, she hears footsteps coming towards her, and freezes in fear for a second - before realising that she's perfectly in her rights to relax in the castle grounds on a Sunday evening. So she peers out at the people through her lacy green curtain, still invisible to them.
It's a boy and a girl who she doesn't recognise. The boy is tallish, about seventeen she thinks, with powerful shoulders hunched over slightly as he walks, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans, messy dark brown hair. The girl is pretty enough – oval face with dark blue eyes, hair like golden syrup and a dusky pink scarf thrown around her. Her arms are folded, and an expression of utter sorrow is etched into her face
"I am sorry." He offers weakly, glancing at her hopefully. Her eyes remain fixed on the ground.
"It's okay." She replies, dully. She sounds resigned, almost disinterested.
"I never meant-"
"It's okay." She sighs deeply, stopping and raising her eyes to the fairytale roof that shelters them and blocks out the stars. "In a way, I sort of knew. That you loved her, I mean. It just sucks that you didn't."
"I wish-"
"No." She stops him "there's nothing to wish, nothing we could do."
Silence falls, the silence of two people who know the truth and want it not to be the truth, with that sick, trembling feeling in their stomachs that tells them it is useless.
They walk onwards, and once they are out of sight Ginny emerges, a little shaken. She walks back through the bushes, along the Western wall of the castle, watching the sunset, absorbed in her own thoughts. And as she goes along the top of the huge lawn that stretches out there, she sees another couple – a very different couple.
The girl is blonde, blonde in a way that makes you think of warm sunshine and lemonade and childhood memories all doused in golden light, and the boy is the kind who appears in daydreams the world over – bright, charming, eyes that melt knees.
They are laughing, loudly and unashamedly, too happy to try to quieten. Besides, as far as they know, they are the only ones there.
He stoops a little to whisper something in her ear and she shrieks in surprise as his breath tickles, spinning out of reach so that he has to chase her.
He runs, catching her wrist and pulling her back into his arm. His face comes close to hers, and Ginny feels rather than sees the night grow quieter as he kisses her.
And then all of a sudden they are laughing again – cheerfully dancing across the lawns to their own music, messing around, being perfectly enchantingly happy.
They make her smile, envy them a little for their carefree pleasures, their joy in just being with each other.
But she walks on, almost completing her circuit, almost back to the little door she discovered long ago – and she finds another couple, the last couple.
They are standing in the light of the dying day, in the corner of the terrace, against the balustrade, unaware of anything else in the world. They are the least remarkable – a perfectly ordinary girl and a perfectly ordinary boy. Utterly forgettable.
Except for the way they are together.
The way she seems to know his arms as if they were her own, the way he tucks her hair back as if he did it every day. How he looks at her with quiet wonder, worshipping her with every blissful glance. How she holds his hand in hers gently, smiling a calm little smile of contentment.
The way they seem to be souls rather than people, taken up with some strangely sacred love.
Ginny looks away, as if she is intruding on this. She hurries back inside through another door, mulling over the three couples she has seen tonight in her mind.
And she is overcome with longing. Yearning with the very heart of her own soul for someone who loves her as totally, as beautifully, as naturally as that.
She'd forgotten that it existed, that perfect, shining feeling that had all the bubbly, childlike excitement and the sweet, old-fashioned knowledge of other loves. She'd forgotten how much she wanted it.
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