Written for the Pairing One Hour Challenge.
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Crash. Ginny suddenly awoke from a nightmare she'd been having and tip-toed to her window to see where that noise was coming from.
"Ron, you can't slam the door like that, or you'll wake Percy or Mum!" she heard her brother's whisper through the silent night. After a moment of silence she suddenly heard rumbles and the bright headlights of their father's car lit their yard.
What were her brothers up to? Now the car pulled onto the street and lifted into the starry night. Ginny quickly ducked down before they saw her and crawled back into bed.
But she simply didn't feel sleepy anymore. In addition to the nightmare to worry about she was now also wondering where her brother had gone to and why they'd done it so secretly and in the middle of the night. Ginny turned around in her bed. Then she pushed her blanket away energetically and silently sneaked into her brother's room.
She didn't have a wand yet so she had no light to lead her. But after a while her eyes got used to the darkness and she was able to make out Ron's furniture.
Ginny quickly went to Ron's bedside table where she knew he kept his photo album. Leafing through the pages, she finally found what she was looking for. There it was!
With a little sigh she sank into her brother's bed and held the picture of him and his two new best friends as close as she could to her face to see it in the dark room.
This summer Ginny had come to Ron's room much more often than he knew to look at this picture. Every time her brothers had been outside to play Quidditch or de-gnome the garden she had tip-toed upstairs and spent as much time looking at this photo as she could.
She simply couldn't stop looking at Harry Potter. And every time she did so, she felt a funny feeling in her stomach as if she'd eaten too many Flying Ice Mice.
She'd of course heard the story of Harry Potter a hundred times from her mother and pictured him in her head. But in reality he looked even nicer! He had this jet-black hair, which simply looked cool. Much cooler than her family's red hair. And his eyes... Ginny sighed again. They were of the brightest green she'd ever seen. And then there was this scar on his forhead. The scar which was just as famous as he was himself.
The way Harry smiled into the camera always gave Ginny the feeling that Harry was smiling directly at her, which was simply wonderful. Oh the thought of Harry Potter really smiling at her. It must feel like heaven!
Ginny slumped into Ron's pillow and smiled into the darkness imagining herself being the one Harry smiled at and with this thought in mind she fell asleep.
"OUT OF MY MIND WITH WORRY – DID YOU CARE?"
Ginny was again woken by a loud noise, this time apparently coming from the kitchen. Ginny blinked once or twice before she realised where she was and who the yelling came from. Obviously her brothers had returned from where ever they'd been. She rubbed her eyes and jumped out of Ron's bed. He'd better not find her in there or he'd be really angry. And he'd better not find the photo album with her in bed either, she thought and put the album back on her brother's bedside table.
Then she went down to see what was going on in the kitchen where her mother was still arguing with her brothers.
But she certainly wasn't prepared to what she found in the kitchen. Sitting right next to Ron at the breakfast table was none other than Harry Potter himself! Ginny rubbed her eyes again. Was this another dream? But it couldn't, could it?
She stared at Harry in trance for what felt like hours. Then, when she realised what she was doing she turned around on her heels and ran back into her room.
There she spent some time just sitting on her bed and staring at the wall, trying to understand what had happened. After quite a while her reason got the better part of her, got dressed (she certainly didn't want to meet Harry Potter in her night dress again) and went down into the kitchen again.
She found her mother washing the dishes and preparing breakfast for her dad who had just come home from work.
Ginny sat down at the table.
"What was going on this morning, Mum?"
"Oh, didn't you hear it? Your brothers have taken your father's car to fly it all the way to Harry's house and brought him here!" her mother replied, rubbing the pan she was cleaning very angrily.
"Oh!" Ginny just said. So it hadn't been a dream or an illusion or a trick the twins had played on her. It had really been Harry Potter. In their kitchen.
Suddenly the door flew open and Ron, Fred, George and Harry walked in and sat down around the table.
Immediately Ginny felt like she was in a trance again. Her eyes became huge and she had to stare at the plate in front of her. Also she wasn't able to talk anymore. The only thing she could think of was Harry Potter sitting in the chair opposite hers. After gathering all her courage, Ginny finally ventured to lift her head a little and take at least one look at the real-life Harry Potter.
When she did so she found Harry grin at her and quickly looked away again.
'But...', she thought later, back in her room, '...at least he smiled at me' and she knew that she would always keep the memory of the real Harry Potter smiling at her over the breakfast table in her mind and that she wouldn't need to sneak into Ron's room anymore because now she had a picture of Harry all for her own in her head.
