"Harriet?" her voice broke as she whispered the name, like a prayer, down the phone. There was a pause, a raggedy breath barely audible on the other side of the line, before the response was muttered back,
"Ginny?" the girl in the phone booth of a crowded street in muggle London, almost collapsed at the sound Harriet's voice. It had been so long, it physically hurt her to hear her once best friend, back before everything fell apart, that is. Ginny cleared her throat, she had spent so long planning what she was going to say, but when faced with it, the sound of her voice down the phone, Ginny felt all her strength leave her, what could she say? No amount of 'I'm sorry' could make up for the damage she had wilfully inflicted, yet, opening her mouth, she tried, tried to breach the gap, permeate the silence she had brought upon them.
"I was wrong." she said, "I was so wrong about everything and I don't know what to do. I can't…" she choked on air, "I need to see you, I need to fix this. I miss you." She wiped furiously at her eyes, pleading with herself not to cry.
"It's been three months, Ginny." came the soft response, but no amount of softness could hide the steel beneath the words, you had three months, "I'm sorry you're hurting, but I can't go back, your world, it's like playing with fire and I can't let myself-"
"I need you!" hysteria sunk into Ginny's voice and her fingers knotted the phone chord, eyes wild,
"Gin." the voice was hard as it snapped the old nickname like a barb, "I'm sorry, but this is goodbye."
Harriet bounced back the words as though they hadn't been the ones that had sent her running from the magical world three months ago, as though Ginny hadn't sent her away one stormy night with the wind blowing dark hair around rouged cheeks, disappearing on a rickety broom with a white owl attached to the back of it, because girls weren't meant to fly brooms, so why would she have a good one? Ginny could recall everything from that night with icy clarity, as she clutched the phone, which let out a dull beeping sound that notified her she had been hung up on, she could still hear the breaking glass and shrieks.
"What do you mean, this is the end? I need more explanation then that!" Harriet's voice, usually ever quiet, was practically a shriek, Ginny had never heard her raise it until that day,
"I mean, we can't do this anymore, it was wrong, it wasn't... It wasn't natural." Her voice was cold, as she cut down the girl who was watching her with green eyes that seemed to shatter like stained glass before her. She scoffed, a hand resting on her hip as she surveyed her friend and more with thinly veiled disgust.
"It felt pretty natural to me." She snarled, "And you weren't complaining about what was natural when I was-"
"Stop!" Ginny shrieked, "I don't want to talk about this anymore. It was a mistake, all of it, why can't we just go back to how we were before?" Her once girlfriend just stared at her, running a hand through her long dark hair, making it even wilder then usual.
"You don't mean this…" Harriet said, taking a step closer, "You can't mean this, I though you, of all people, were better then this." she reached out a trembling hand and brushed Ginny's cheek, the girl batted it away sharply, her touch burnt. She pushed the girl away from her, chest aching and heart pounding as she forced herself to remain solid, calm,
"I'm sorry, but this is goodbye." She said, pretending that her heart wasn't breaking as she said the words.
Ginny walked out of the phone booth, drying her eyes on her sleeve as she made her exit, heeled boots clicking on the pavement as she wove through the gaggles of pedestrians until she was as far away from people as she could get, before she could safely break down. It had been a long shot, checking the muggle phone book for the girl, it was surprising that she owned a phone, and it had been an even longer shot that she would agree to meet, but Ginny had to try at least once.
She had met Harriet Potter when she was eleven and Harriet was twelve. The girl had long dark hair, tied into a messy plait that hung down her back, and had smiled at her as she passed, arm linked with a girl with curly brown hair who was talking exceptionally fast. Ginny had watched the girl in awe, taking in her oversized glasses and zig zag scar on her forehead, not needing to ask for a name, because the heroine of the wizarding world had just smiled at her, and she would hardly be the girl's biggest fan if she didn't recognise the lightening bolt scar. She had ran to her brother, who was sitting in a compartment with several other boys, and asked him about the girls, watching as the boy coloured slightly, and informed her that Harriet and Hermione were in his year and were very nice girls, to which the other boys tittered quietly for reasons Ginny didn't yet understand, but that they were occasionally odd. When pressed, Ron wouldn't answer, so Ginny left it at that, because what could be so odd? She learnt soon enough.
Harriet and Hermione were muggle raised, the standards of etiquette for girls in the wizarding world were high, and, as shown by Harriet expressing an interest in Quidditch, neither girls really understood it. They spent too much time reading in the library and throwing things around, laughing in an undignified manner, and yet, they always looked to be having so much fun that Ginny wanted to befriend them none the less. She succeeded, and was quickly pulled into the ranks, proceeding to meet others from the year above and her own, who talked different to any girls her mother had ever talked about, and wanted to play sports and do things so radical she could barely believe it, yet she did, and soon, she understood it, she wanted to fly a broom, and to play quidditch, to live a life outside of having a boyfriend.
She never expected that as the years went on, and her friendship with the girls only strengthened, she mightn't want a boyfriend at all. Never, in her wildest dreams, would she have pictured herself at age 16, kissing a girl with glowing green eyes, a long fringe and a wicked smile, yet Harriet Potter always exceeded people's expectations, and perhaps she should have expected that she would enchant the Weasley family's prized daughter. That was a long time ago, though, when they were still in school and secrets stayed behind broom closet doors, where magic was used to hide love bites and bruises and everything was fine because mother and father dearest would never find out, until they did.
And when they did, she suffered a hailstorm of anger and disappointment, of 'where did we go wrongs' and denials, until Ginny was questioning herself, questioning every feeling running through her veins and she wanted nothing more then to be eleven again and stay away from Harriet Potter (though she thinks even if she had they would have been drawn together eventually). She's twenty when she bids her love farewell with cold words, a rough shove and a goodbye that she knows is crueller then she deserves after four years of nothing but devotion, but if she's any kinder, she might just take it all back, and she knows she mustn't.
Hermione finds her slumped on a park bench in muggle London. They hadn't spoken since Harriet's departure and the loss had hit Ginny harder then she could have imagined, yet, under the sun, the look in Hermione's eyes is almost pitying. She pulls Ginny to her feet and walks her down to a coffeeshop, where she hands her a hot beverage that smells like safety and sits her down. Ginny slurps the coffee, hurting so much that she barely notices the trousers worn by her old friend, something that would have shocked her once upon a time. She talks then, pouring out her heart and soul a girl who clearly doesn't care for her, at least, not as much as she used to, when she's done, she feels hollow and Hermione has finished her coffee as she addresses her, voice sympathetic but not kind,
"She won't come back. You know that. But it's not about her right now. You, when you called her, broke free of the grip that the magical word has on you. What are you going to do now? You could go back to Mummy and Daddy," her voice was condescending, "and they'll set you up with a boy, and you can live your life out as a glorified baby maker, or you can follow your own path. It's up to you." and she left.