Prologue: An Interesting Development
"It's Valentine's Day," said Hermione morosely to a bleary-eyed Ginny as she sat down in the Great Hall. Still dressed in her rather revealing powder blue nightgown, Ginny yawned in reply and stretched, her muscles rippling like those of a cat. If the boys hadn't been staring before, now they were. A chorus of shrieking, irate girls beat their boyfriends about the head like magpies guarding treasure. Ginny and Hermione had grown used to this jealous chorus, as it was repeated every day religiously.
"Wha-" Ginny asked before being possessed by a rather large yawn. "What did you say, Hermione?" she asked, still in the throes of her sleepiness. She groped blindly for the potatoes, nearly knocking over Neville's water glass, which managed to right itself. Harry and Ron were apparently still fast asleep.
"I said," Hermione repeated, all too aware of the boys longing to be the potatoes entering Ginny's mouth, "It's Valentine's Day. You know, the day on which the entire female population alternates between smacking their boyfriends' mouths shut and gossiping about me and Ron? Of course, they envy us because he is your brother and therefore not suicidally attracted to you." More quietly, she added, "Even though he only buys me socks," letting out an involuntary chuckle of amusement at her boyfriend's ineptness.
"What's suicidal about it?" answered Ginny with her eyes shut, blithely unaware of the stares, both glaring and longing, following her actions. Hermione snorted derisively, rolling her eyes.
"Don't act like you don't notice, Ginny. I know you're not that naïve."
Ginny whirled, her eyes flashing with headstrong spirit. "Don't presume you know anything about me, Hermione. I've learned that in life, you never truly know a person." It was true. During her years of being ignored, then captured, then loved, then ignored again, Ginny had been tempered like a delicate blade. Her classic beauty belied the tenacity she possessed.
Silence stretched long as Hermione shifted awkwardly on the wooden, knotty bench in an attempt to avoid looking at Ginny. She noticed a small scuffed patch on the toe of her black shoes. Wow, she thought sarcastically. That's new.
The pause was broken by a high-pitched, schoolgirl titter which would have broken all the glass in the Great Hall, had not the house elves switched to plastic as a precaution. No, Pansy Parkinson's laugh was not something anyone wanted to hear on a Hogsmeade weekend.
Her fists clenched, Ginny swiftly turned and swept out of the Great Hall, her nightgown slipping off her shoulder as she went. Stifling a laugh, Hermione turned back to her porridge but paused with her spoon in midair.
Across the Hall at the Slytherin table, Draco Malfoy sat frozen in his seat, a lock of blonde hair in his eyes. He was staring at the doors of the Great Hall with such an intensely peculiar expression on his face that Hermione let out a small yelp.
As if awakening from a long sleep, his unfocused eyes moved to Hermione and she flushed and looked down at her somewhat dingy shoes. In a moment, he had flicked his eyes away; she looked up to see him laughing with his housemates. She quickly composed herself, slurping her porridge abruptly. She gathered up her books and left the Hall to go to the library.
Halfway through Borgin and Burkes' A Classification of Dangerous Magical Objects, she realized with a jolt that she knew that expression. She had seen it many times before in Harry's scrapbook when James and Lily looked at each other. And suddenly Hermione knew why Ginny had left that morning in a huff; Draco Malfoy had looked at her with something akin to infatuation in his gaze, and she was scared.
Ginny Weasley was an abnormality. She ha always been a misfit, a baby to coddle, a guinea pig to test inventions on; no matter how her parents had attempted to get her and her brothers together, at the sound of a boom she would escape to the cramped, unadorned room she called home.
At an age when Fred and George would have been ransacking the house and Percy would have been reciting Cicero in the kitchen, Ginny could be found upstairs, lying on her mattress and staring at the ceiling blankly. At first, Molly and Arthur Weasley had assumed she was just shy, but as the years passed and the explosions grew infrequent, it was common to hear a pronounced sigh accompany each smash as feet pounded upstairs for the third time that day. Molly and Arthur held whispered conferences in their candle-lit kitchen, not knowing that Ginny was just above them, hanging delicately in the ancient system of crawlspaces running throughout the Burrow.
"Arthur, I really am worried about her. Her brothers won't play with her, and with all good intentions in mind, I can't go with her to Hogwarts."
"You know I would never ask you to do that, Molly. I think, quite frankly, that her alone time is beneficial. No, don't look at me like that, Molly. You know Fred and George were quite rambunctious at that age – and still are – but I support any form of peace and quiet in this house."
"I know, Arthur." A sigh. "I just…"
"I know, Molly. I know."
For that moment, the Weasleys were perfectly happy in their bubble of warmth and the vision they had created for themselves, a vision that blocked out the emotional absence of their daughter and the vulnerability she must have been feeling. If one listened hard enough, perhaps they could have heard the light footsteps tracing their way back to a room in a house too small for happiness.