Disclaimer: I own nothing.
The boy sniffled, wiping his nose on his baggy sleeve and leaving a long sticky trail that he took no notice of. His eyes were watery with tears and his nose was running but he couldn't help it. He had only asked for another blanket, as it was dark and cold. He had asked as nicely as he could. And in return he had received frustrated shouting and time in his cupboard. His dark, cold cupboard under the stairs.
The thunder rattled again outside and the small space was faintly lit for a few short seconds as lighting flashed through the little grate on the door. And then it was dark again. The storm had caused the power to go out a few hours ago, and the resulting darkness and lack of electricity had caused Dudley to whine to his mother that he was missing his favorite television show and Uncle Vernon to grumble about straining his eyes, reading the paper by candlelight. Uncle Vernon insisted on reading the paper every night. He was very particular about doing things a certain way, doing the same things every day. But it didn't storm like this everyday and Harry took a small foreign pleasure in the idea that things were not going as exactly as his uncle liked them to.
Harry usually loved it when it stormed, but the lights had never gone out like this that he could remember. Though he would never admit it out loud to anyone, he was scared. He had tried to ask his uncle what had caused it, why the lights wouldn't work, but as he was being shoved into the cupboard by the flustered man, he either hadn't been heard, or had just been ignored. Neither would have surprised him.
Curling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them in an attempt to get warm, Harry sat on the little cot and, rocking back and forth, he gradually fell into an uneasy sleep.
Two figures flew through the hall causing the flames of the candles to flicker higher and cast floating, creeping shadows on the walls. Their mops of red hair were illuminated by the yellow glow and they seemed to be on fire.
"Fred, come back here this instant!"
The little girl spoke with an authority that didn't suit a child only six years old, though there was still a trace of a whine. Her tone suited the violently dancing flames and the red of her hair. She chased after her brother, but her short legs couldn't keep up, and he was soon out of sight around the corner of the hall. She stopped her pursuit abruptly and stamped a foot onto the carpet in frustration.
"Mum! Mum, Fred's teasing me!" she screamed, her voice reaching a shrill pitch.
A distant voice came from somewhere else in the house. "Fred, don't tease your sister!"
Another voice answered, this one more muffled, "Ginny started it!"
"Did not!" she screamed again. Following the other voices she came upon her mother and the source of her annoyance down in the kitchen. "He stole my doll," she stated firmly when she stepped into the room, glaring at the world in general.
The doll in question was in Fred's hand, hanging limply. He grasped it tighter in his fist with irritation when he spoke next.
"She wouldn't leave me and George alone! She's so annoying!" He spoke as though this completely justified his theft. He glowered down at his little sister. Ginny stuck her tongue out at him.
The maternal voice of reason then spoke up. "That's no reason to take her things," Mrs. Weasley said, sending a disapproving glare at her son, her hands moving to her hips. She looked a bit foreboding and her tone was sharp, but her voice didn't rise in volume and her face remained calm.
Thinking that she had won the little tiff, Ginny pushed a little farther saying, "They won't play with me!" in hopes that she would get to share in whatever her twin brothers were plotting this time. But her mother was having none of this. As usual, she took neither side but instead turned to her daughter with the same disapproving glare.
"You don't always get your way, Ginevra."
Ginny grimaced at the name.
"Yeah, Ginevra," Fred sneered.
Out of arguments but convinced that she was right, Ginny shouted, "Give me my doll!" and lunged at Fred in an attempt to retrieve her precious toy. She grabbed it tightly and pulled, but Fred pulled back. The dolls silky yellow hair became quickly disheveled, her dress wrinkled, and before their mother could pull the two quarreling siblings apart, there was a loud ripping sound and Ginny burst into tears and ran from the room.
Harry jerked awake as a loud clap of thunder sounded and seemed to echo through the house. He heard Dudley yelp with shock in the other room and Aunt Petunia cooing and trying to calm him down. He imagined that she had thrown her arms around her precious boy in a fierce hug to comfort him. He imagined Dudley sitting with a blanket wrapped around him and embraced by his mother's arms.
Aunt Petunia never did that for him.
But Harry never admitted he was scared. Dudley was always complaining about something or other, no matter how trivial and without fail, Aunt Petunia would rush to his rescue. If the thunderstorm scared Dudley, he had his mother to make him feel better. Harry didn't need that. No, he was never scared….
I'm never scared, he thought firmly and nodded with a grim, determined look on his face, even if he didn't believe it. More thunder caused him to shiver. He tried to peer out through the small grate on the door but there was only a small sliver of the hall visible. He could hear the rain pounding on the windows and the branches outside creaking in the wind. The rain and the wind didn't bother him. But- another loud rumble- the thunder…. Harry shivered again.
However Harry was very brave for being only seven. He hadn't even cried last week when he'd skinned his knee on the pavement and had had to go to the nurse. Dudley had pushed him, and when the kind nurse had told Mr. and Mrs. Dursley that their nephew had been roughhousing, Harry had gotten in trouble again. But he hadn't made a fuss nor shed a tear and that felt like a small victory.
By now he knew that there would be trouble for him with every note he brought home from school no matter if he had done anything wrong or not. "Maybe that was the way things worked," was an unconvincing thought he often had, but he didn't want to believe it. Dudley never got in trouble, and Dudley had everything, but he was also a git and a mean bully of a pig. Harry didn't have much at all really, and he got into loads of trouble, but he wasn't a piggy git either. Apparently every situation had its ups and downs.
There was really only one thing that Harry envied Dudley for, but he would never admit it to anyone else.
He would never admit that he wanted to be loved. He thought again of Aunt Petunia's arms wrapped around her son and Harry wrapped his arms around himself to keep warm.
"But, Mum! I didn't do anything!"
"Don't you pull that on me, Fredrick Weasley!"
Mrs. Weasley was turning red in the face and her eyes were narrowing with every word. This was never a good sign.
"It was George!"
"Was not!" The other half of the troublesome duo that was the Weasley twins had arrived in the kitchen shortly after Ginny had fled in tears.
"Fine, it was both of us."
The two brothers resigned themselves to the unpleasant future as their mother towered over them in anger.
Down the hall, Ginny was wiping her eyes, trying not to listen to her mother's shouting. It didn't make any difference anyway. A few minutes ago, she wanted her mum to make her brothers play with her and she wanted her doll back but now that would never happen. Her doll had been torn to shreds. A child's exaggeration had taken over and she insisted that it would never be the same, even though Mrs. Weasley had insisted she could fix it. It wasn't the same.
Ginny went into the dark living room and sat on the tattered couch listening to the storm outside. It hadn't stormed this hard any time that she could remember with rain lashing against the windows and the wind howling. She used to be terribly scared of all the thunder. But Bill had once told her that it was just the people in heaven bowling.
She had asked what bowling was and a very long and complicated answer had followed. Something about pins and lanes.… She didn't really understand, but Bill was taking Muggle Studies and Bill was always right, so she supposed it had to be okay.
Even so, this was a scary storm, and Bill wasn't here.
As she sat there, sinking into the large cushions, Ron walked into the room.
I suppose he'll have to do, she thought, and patted the seat next to her, indicating that he should come and sit down.
As the night rumbled slowly on, Harry tried hard just to go to sleep so that morning (and hopefully sunshine) would come sooner, but every time he was about to drift off, a clap of thunder would cut through the air and jerk him awake. After what felt like hours but was really much shorter, Harry sighed and put his glasses on, despite the fact that it made no difference in the dark.
Voices sounded from the living room so he knew it wasn't too late. Dudley was still awake.
"Dudley, darling, why don't you have a snack?"
A pitiful moan answered her question.
"Well we have...apples. And crackers." Not likely to be very appealing to the ever-growing Dudley. Silence followed and Harry could just see his cousin making a disgusted face, his nose scrunched up and his eyebrows pinched together. He held in a snicker at the thought of Dudley's nose sticking up like a pig's.
Undeterred, Aunt Petunia continued spouting increasingly desperate suggestions to occupy Dudley's time but Harry soon tuned them out again, unwilling to listen to Dudley whine at his mother's obvious attempts to please him.
She tries so hard to make him happy. No one ever tried to make Harry happy. This had been true for as long as he could remember and so he tried to convince himself that it was supposed to be that way but he could never come up with any logical reason. He frowned.
Sometimes, at times like this, Harry wondered if his parents had loved him before they had died. He was sure they had. They were his parents and didn't all mothers want to make their children happy? He didn't want a mother like Aunt Petunia, but Aunt Petunia was the only one there and she didn't love him, didn't want to make him happy. Why didn't the Dursleys love him? What had he done? He had accidentally spilled his milk yesterday but he'd apologized. The skinned knee, the teacher's wig, that incident with Kelly Simmons from down the street… but he'd apologized for those things, things that weren't even his fault that he could see but the Dursleys still blamed him for.
You haven't done anything said a stubborn little voice in his head.
Harry couldn't think of any reason that he shouldn't be loved. He couldn't think of anything he'd done. He could come to only one conclusion. Some children are loved. Some aren't.
"What's wrong, Ginny?"
Ron looked at his sister and frowned in concern. There were streaks along her still chubby cheeks from where tears had fallen. She wasn't crying now though. Ginny looked at her brother and asked, "Why is it storming so hard, Ron?"
He shrugged, fairly unconcerned with the weather. "I don't know. Just the way it is, I guess."
Lighting flashed through the windows and a harsh wind rattled against them. A few seconds later thunder rumbled again and Ginny shivered in spite of herself.
"Cold, Gin?"
She nodded, and Ron grabbed a large, worn blanket from a nearby chair and the two siblings curled up under it, warm and comfortable.
As they sat there, Fred and George walked in looking ashamed and a bit frustrated. Ginny noticed upon their arrival that she hadn't registered the end of her mother's shouting but the only sounds now were of the storm outside. The twins glared at the floor and mumbled something that sounded like an apology. George held out his hand, and Ginny took her doll with a smile on her face, forgetting her earlier decree that it would never be the same. The golden hair was smooth and straight and the dress was clean and neat. There was no sign that her dear doll had ever been abused in any way. Ginny then smiled up at her brothers with bright eyes. They were family after all, and family forgave each other. They forgave each other because they loved each other. Ginny knew no simpler truth than this.
Half an hour later, peace returned to the Burrow, even if quiet didn't follow. Laughter, not crying, could be heard, drowning out the thunder. Ginny played with her brothers as the doll sat on the couch, lovingly tucked under the blanket, her head peaking out.
As her mother tucked her in that night she said, "Now, do you forgive your brothers, Ginny?"
"Yes, Mum." And she did. It was said with all the sincerity of a six year old.
"Good." Mrs. Weasley smiled at her daughter. "Siblings should always be nice."
Ginny nodded. "Because we love each other." Mrs. Weasley's smile grew wider and she nodded.
"Yes, dear. Because you love each other."
"But mum," Ginny started, "Doesn't everyone love everyone?"
The Dursleys were all going upstairs to bed. Dudley had become too tired to be upset any longer and Uncle Vernon had finished as much of the paper as he wanted to read. Harry heard a stair creek here and there, footsteps going down the hall, doors closing, shuffling and a few mumbled words, probably words of good night, and then silence but for the still raging storm.
They hadn't said "good night," to him. They hadn't even acknowledged him, and Harry was beginning to realize that they never would. As he turned over on his cot a foreign thought crept into his head, desperate, almost pleading.
Doesn't everyone love everyone?
Ginny laid in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, thinking about what her mother had told her. Was she really lucky to be so loved? It had never occurred to her that not everyone had loving parents and sometimes-annoying brothers who teased you, but protected and loved you too. Didn't everyone have a best friend? She hugged her doll closely to her. "Doesn't everyone love everyone?" she had asked. And her mother had looked at her and said, "If they did the world would certainly be a wonderful place." Then she kissed Ginny's forehead and said, "You're very lucky, Ginny, that you are very, very loved."
Ginny wanted everyone to be loved. I'd love them, she thought. Everyone deserves to be loved. She wanted the world to be that wonderful place and it seemed the simple solution to love everyone. She simply couldn't imagine that there were children out there who didn't have the kind of loving family she did. Her mother said that such people existed, but not in little Ginny's world. She loved everyone, and therefore everyone had someone. That made the world wonderful, didn't it?
Didn't it?
She drifted off to sleep with a strange, foreign thought in her head.
Some children are loved. Some aren't.
End.
This is a reworked version. What did you think?