A/N: This is what
Ginny might have written in her diary during the Chamber of Secrets. This will
be a rather long story, (I hope) but here is a first chapter. I sent this out in a hurry, so I haven't
proofed it. Apologies for all mistakes
: )
Disclaimer: All characters and plot belong to J.K Rowling,
author of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1998. I am merely retelling the story from another
character's point of view. All text
taken from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets will be noted by **text**.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ginny Weasley woke up one bright summer morning, stretching
as she kicked her feet into her slippers.
It was going to be a good week, this one. Harry Potter was coming to spend the rest of the summer with her
family. Not to mention that she would
be going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with four of her
brothers this year. And Harry Potter
was going to be there too! She'd had
grown up hearing of him, how he had defeated You-know-Who when he was barely a
year old. She had heard all the
stories, read all the books on him she could find. Her brother Ron was even best friends with him! He so fascinated her; the one and only time
she had seen him was last year. He was
very quiet, had jet-black hair that stuck up in all directions, wore glasses,
and had a scar on his forehead (although Ginny had never seen it). She so wanted to meet him! He had to be a great wizard, even at such a
young age to defeat the Dark Lord. I
bet he could turn us all into toads if he wanted to, she thought.
Kicking on her bunny slippers, she groggily came downstairs
to get breakfast. She could hear her
mum fussing at her brothers, most likely the twins, and clattering plates about
as she fussed. Ginny entered the
kitchen and stopped dead in her tracks.
Harry Potter was sitting in her kitchen! Gut instinct took over Ginny as a small
squeal escaped her lips and she ran as fast as she could back up the stairs
into the safety of her room. What was
he doing here now? And why hadn't
anyone told her he was here? Surely
everyone must know how much she wanted to meet him, she had been pestering Ron
all summer about when he would be coming.
Her face flushed as she thought about how she must have looked, with her
hair uncombed and in her nightdress. He
must think she was very silly.
She heard the slamming of the kitchen door and the voices of
her brothers as they filed out into the garden. She ran to her window, looking out to see if he was with
them. He was! He was talking to Ron, and although she couldn't hear what was
being said, she could see that Ron was hunting in the bushes. Most likely de-gnoming the garden
again. Ron was showing Harry what a
gnome was, she had heard that Harry lived with Muggles all his life and didn't
really know much of her world. She
stood there, just a bit to the right of the window, peeking out beneath the
curtains as she watched him and her brothers whirl the gnomes around and around
in the air, hurtling them over the fence.
Harry's gnome had bitten him, he danced about the garden, shaking the
thing off, casting it nearly fifty feet.
She couldn't help but giggle at the sight.
Oh, it was going to be so exciting, going to school with her
brothers and learning so many new things.
And Harry Potter would be there as well, perhaps he might want to talk
to her or something. And surely her
brothers wouldn't pick on her as much as they did now that she was all grown
up! Ginny frowned at the thought of her
brothers. She had six, although the two eldest were off at their jobs. Bill, the oldest was a curse-breaker for
Gringott's Bank. Charlie was working
with Dragons. She missed them both
desperately. Percy, well, he never paid
too much attention to her, except he did manage to get the twins off her back
every once in a while. Percy was more
interested in becoming Head Boy at Hogwarts, than playing with his little
sister. He had shut himself inside his
room all summer, sending letters to someone and snapping at her each time she
knocked on his door to ask or tell him something. Fred and George, the twins, always caused trouble wherever they
went, thriving on the attention. They
were loads of fun to be around, when one wasn't the object of their
pranks. Unfortunately, Ginny was most
often the object of their pranks, however, she never let them get away with
it. One of the advantages of being the
only girl out of seven children is that her parents let her get away with
things that the others would definitely get into trouble for. It also helped to have so many other siblings
to place the blame onto, if possible, which was quite easy to do.
Ginny's favorite brother, however, was the one that right
now was the most distant from her, figuratively speaking. Ron was only one year older than her, and
growing up it had always been the two of them pitted against the twins. She had missed Ron all last year while he
was off at his first year at Hogwarts, and she had been so excited when he
finally came back home and they could play together. But Ron didn't want to play with her anymore. He was off doing stuff with the twins, or
telling her to go away, she talks too much, and to quit pestering him. It was funny how, in a house full of
people, Ginny felt so alone. With Ron
acting so mean, she now had no one to talk to at all. She could, she supposed, talk to her mum. But sometimes her mother was just so busy,
with the housework, and cooking, and everything else involved in being a wife
and mother. Her dad, whom Ginny loved
dearly, was hardly at home anymore, working late hours at his job at the
Ministry of Magic. She could talk to
him, when he was at home, he'd once told her there would always be room in his
lap for her to sit on. Her dad loved to
show her all the new things he brought home from his job at The Misuse of Muggle
Artifacts Office. He even let her watch
as he bewitched some of the things he'd taken from there, like some old car
that Muggles used as transportation. He
told her not to tell mum, which Ginny didn't.
She loved it when her dad told her all about the neat things that
Muggles did in their world.
Ginny looked back out at the garden, noticing that the boys
had all gone inside. Harry was back
inside the house. Maybe this time she
could get a good look at him, she wanted to see the scar on his forehead. She slowly creaked open her door, just a
bit, as the footsteps coming up the stairs became louder and louder. She could see the top of his head, black
hair sticking up every-which-a-way. He
wore glasses, which magnified the most beautiful pair of deep green eyes she
had ever seen. He looked so skinny and
scrawny, Ron towered over him. EEK! He
saw her! Ginny slammed the door shut,
before he could see it was her. Oh, no!
She heard Ron telling Harry it was her.
**"Ginny," said Ron. "You don't
know how weird it is for her to be this shy, she never shuts up normally—"**
I'm going to kill Ron! she thought angrily, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. How dare he say something like that to
Harry! Ooooh, she was going to put spiders
in his sheets tonight if she could!
What must Harry think of her now, if all Ron was going to do is badmouth
her? She'd never leave her room if this
is what she had to face.
Unfortunately, Ginny did have to leave her room when her
mother called her for lunch that day.
Thank goodness that the twins and Ron and Harry were asleep. Her parents told her how they had stolen the
car and retrieved Harry from those Muggles he lived with. Her mother was still mad at her father, who
was trying not to grin at how successfully he'd managed to get the car to
fly. He gave Ginny a wink across the
table, nodding his head as he pretended to listen to his wife as she put lunch
on the table.
"Did you get to meet Harry, pumpkin?" her dad asked
her. He knew how excited she was to meet
Harry.
Ginny nodded, smiling.
"I like him, Daddy."
Her father's eyes twinkled merrily at her. "Good girl," he
said. His expression changed as he
regarded her intently. "Our little
girl's growing up, Molly," he said to her mum.
"She's going to be leaving us soon."
He reached out to tweak a long red lock of Ginny's hair affectionately.
"I know, Arthur," her mum replied. "But we knew this would come one day, although I would prefer to
wait a few more years."
"Mum!" Ginny said, knowing the our-little-girl-is-growing-up-speech
by heart now. "Don't you want me to
learn how to be a witch?"
"Of course I do, honey," her mum replied. "And you are going to be the best there is,
just wait and see."
Ginny smiled. "And
I'll be put in the same house as Ron and the twins and Percy, " and Harry
she added to herself.
"Yes, Ginny.
Weasleys have been in Gryffindor for the past three hundred years," her
father smiled at her. "And you
definitely have all the qualities of a Gryffindor and I know you'll do us
proud."
Ginny flushed at her father's praise. "Thanks, Daddy."
For the rest of the day, Ginny occupied herself with drawing
and painting with the set of wizard paint she received for her birthday,
thinking about starting Hogwarts and what it meant to be a Gryffindor. She just knew she could be a good one,
Gryffindors were brave, loyal, and courageous.
She could be all of those things, although she wasn't too sure what exactly
she had to do to be brave, loyal and courageous. Ron had told her she had to wrestle a troll. That didn't sound to fun, but she might be
able to handle one; she'd been wrestling with her brothers for years and they
sometimes act like trolls.
Ginny was excited about starting Hogwarts, but she was also
a bit scared. What if she wasn't very
good at being a witch? What if she
didn't know how to do anything as well as the others? What if she didn't make any friends? Ginny didn't have any friends outside of her family. She wasn't too sure how other girls her age
acted; what if they all thought she was weird?
What if Harry Potter didn't like her at all?
Ginny cleared her head of these disturbing thoughts and
concentrated on drawing. She was
sketching a picture of her room, so she would have something to remember it by
while she was at school. She loved her
room; her parents had let her paint whatever she liked on it and the walls were
now filled with prancing unicorns and dancing fairies, and one wall had a
little brook that had real water rushing inside it. Her room was a safe haven from the rest of the world; her
brothers never entered it. Only her mum
would come in sometimes to take up her dirty laundry.
Ginny suddenly wondered what Harry's room looked like back
at the Muggles' house he lived in. Ron
said that they were awful people; they starved him and locked him up in a
cupboard. Shame on them for treating Harry Potter so! She also wondered what Harry thought of her home; did he like
it? She knew her family was poor, but
they managed to get along, as her dad always told her. Personally, Ginny loved the Burrow, except
for the family ghoul who sometimes would make too much noise at night and keep
her awake. Did he think it was too
noisy, especially with the added noise coming from Fred and George's room? They were constantly blowing something up,
or setting something afire.
The light outside her window turned darker and darker and
pretty soon, Ginny heard footsteps outside her door again. She ran to peek through it again, but it was
only Fred and George. She shut it with
a snap in disappointment.
"Ginny? Come down for dinner!" Her mum just called out. Ginny opened the door, yelled "Coming!" and
dashed back inside her room to make sure she at least looked alright. Her red hair just curled down her back, and
her jeans and shirt didn't have any paint splatters on them. She went downstairs.
Supper that night was not what Ginny had hoped. She was fine until Harry entered the kitchen
and sat down next to her father, who quizzed him on everything he had heard about
Muggles. His eyes would widen in
amazement and he'd say "Did you hear that, Ginny?" which would cause Harry to
look over at her and she would suddenly forget to speak. That's not the only thing she forgot as she
constantly kept on missing her mouth
with her fork and dribbling food down her shirt. This would cause the twins to make comments and Ginny wanted to
give them both a sound thrashing, but what would Harry think if she attacked
her brothers? She dropped her fork once
and it clattered to the floor. She hit her head on the table as she bent down
to retrieve it. Fred and George
snickered, Percy scolded them and then turned to her and said, "Ginny, what's
gotten into you?" She didn't think her
face could get any redder as she felt Harry's eyes on her. She was the first one up from the table once
it was over and made a beeline for her room, where she would be safe once
again.
As she lay in her bed that night, she thought, It wasn't
supposed to happen like this. She
sighed and pulled the quilt over her head, hoping that tomorrow would be
better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A/N: Oh, yeah a few
announcements to make: First, I hope to
have the next chapter of "La Belle et
La Bete" up by Friday. Second, I am
going to take down "The Scar" for a serious re-write/restructuring. So be on the lookout for the expanded
version. Thanks all for reading! : )
