Ginny Weasley sat in silence as she stared up at the night sky. She was silent a lot these days, and it's something she never expected. If her mother had ever told her that she'd be spending most of her nights staring out her bedroom window in silence, she would've laughed until she cried.
But that was then. Things were different now.
Life was so much easier when she was younger. Bill used to take her outside and toss her in the air, and treat her like a princess. She was always his favorite. Charlie bought her stuffed dragons and castles and they made up stories about princes who rescued the princess from the castle by slaying the dragon. Naturally, Charlie always got to be the dragon. Usually poor Ron got stuck being the prince. He pretended like he hated it, but Ginny knew he loved spending time with them.
Percy taught her how to think. He'd tell her riddles or bring her puzzles to work, and then he'd sulk when she finished the puzzle first. Fred and George loved to play pranks on her because it was a true test of their skills. She was much younger than they were, but she also had an uncanny ability to know when they were up to no good, and tended to stay out of trouble that way. And Ron, well, Ron spent his time just trying to remind everyone that Ginny wasn't the only young Weasley running around. He was never so happy as when he got to go to Hogwarts and leave her behind. It wasn't that he was mean, he was just happy to have a moment where he got to be in the spotlight. Being the youngest brother, but not the baby of the family, was tough on Ron, Ginny knew that.
Her parents treated her like a star. She was their princess in a world full of frog princes. She was encouraged to express herself and be whatever she wanted to be. They loved to read to her and tell her stories. And as each boy went off to school, they got to spend more and more time with her alone. Not that it was quiet. Ginny made plenty of noise on her own.
Harry Potter was simpler then, too. He was just a famous boy who defeated a greater evil than young Ginny ever understood. He was an icon, a hero. He was the prince who slayed the dragon to save the princess. She idolized him, as did the rest of the wizarding world. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she'd be face-to-face with him, one day. She also didn't think she'd be sticking her elbow in the butter dish, or sending him singing Valentines, or drooling over him in the Great Hall.
She definitely didn't think he'd be rescuing her from Tom Riddle's spirit by killing a basilisk with the Sword of Gryffindor in the Chamber of Secrets after she set the evil creature loose in the school. That's when the silence began.
At first it was the kind of silence that isn't silence at all, but screams in the middle of the night, waking up in a cold sweat, tangled in blankets and dreams of snakes and darkness. But except for the screaming, Ginny didn't say much at all, at least not for a while. Her mum bought her a small notebook for Christmas that year, and Ginny learned that the nightmares stopped for a little while if she just wrote her thoughts down before bed. She talked less and wrote more.
And she seemed to have a new-found connection with Harry Potter that she just couldn't explain. It wasn't a sixth sense, entirely, just a sort of hyper-awareness of his presence. If he walked into a room she was in, she knew, instantly, that he was there. She knew, at a glance, if he was agitated, excited, anxious, or sad. She knew who he fancied, and not just because he was bad at hiding it. She knew things about him that nobody else knew, even Ron and Hermione. She doubted they knew about his nighttime habit of wandering into the common room and staring at the fire. She knew, because sometimes, she was there, too, recovering from a nightmare, as Harry was likely doing. He never noticed her. He was far too deep in thought. But she watched him as he found peace in the crackling fire, and then went back up to bed. They were alike, in that sense. The common room fire was more cathartic than Ginny's well-used notebook or any Occlumency technique Harry might learn, if Snape ever got around to actually teaching him anything.
And when he faced death every year, Ginny held her breath until she knew he was safe. She knew that she would know if he was dead. That part of her stomach that came to life when he saved her would grow cold and dark when he passed from life into death. Still, she breathed a sigh of relief each time Madame Pomphrey pronounced him safe and healthy.
Ginny even knew the day that things changed between her and Harry. She was sitting in her room reading a letter from Dean in the summer after her fourth year. Harry had just arrived from Privet Drive, and the family was ambushing him in the kitchen. She went down stairs to greet him when this feeling of warmth washed over her. Instead of the smile she had intended to greet him with, she found herself engulfing him in a hug and welcoming him back. She didn't know what made her do it, but the bemused expression on Harry's face told her that things had definitely changed, though he wasn't quite sure how, yet.
It took him months to figure it out. But the moment he did, she knew. He called it the "beast inside his chest", and when it roared for the first time, Ginny felt a shock-wave through her whole being. It wasn't just the surprise of being discovered snogging Dean that made her jump in surprise, it was the energy that was radiating off of Harry, and the intensity of his gaze. She knew he was looking at her, even before she turned her brown eyes to his piercing green ones.
In fairness to Dean, and because he was a genuinely nice guy, she dated him for a while longer. But Harry was electric, and she just couldn't be with Dean when Harry kept sending jolts through her every time he walked by.
If you'd told an eight-year-old Ginny Weasley that Harry Potter would snog her in the middle of the crowded common room after an unexpected Quidditch victory, she would have called you a lunatic and kindly asked you to see a Healer.
If you'd told her that she'd rush him from across that same common room, thereby causing the kiss in the first place, she'd probably fall out of her chair in a dead faint.
The instant he came through the portrait hole she knew something was different. He was alive, charged. The Quidditch victory had turned his bad day into something new, and he was so proud of her that he could hardly contain it. He was bold, too. She could tell that without even seeing him. He had a courage she'd never seen in this boy-wonder before. And then there was that warmth again, just like she felt at the Burrow. And much like what happened at the Burrow, she simply ran at him.
Later, when they talked about it, he said she had this unreadable blazing look in her eyes and he just knew that he was supposed to kiss her. He didn't think about it, didn't ponder it, didn't question it. He just kissed her, because he knew that if he didn't, the world wouldn't ever be right again.
There, by the lake in the sunset on a cool, Spring day, Ginny Weasley fell in love with Harry Potter.
And then, just like it began, it was over. He told her it was for her own safety, and she didn't question his decision. He had things to do that she wasn't a part of yet. He didn't love her the way she loved him. Not yet, and maybe not ever. But he still cared deeply for her, more deeply than even he knew. Ginny knew, though, because she could feel it burning inside her. She told him to be safe, and that she'd always support him, and she let him go.
Somehow, she knew that he was the only man she could ever love, and she still let him walk away from her, carrying her heart away as he went.
The next year was torture, for them both. He was miles away in unknown country, but she knew he was safe. She could feel his vitality deep inside, in that warm place that only she knew about. She fought hard for him, as she knew he'd want her to. She used her vigor during the day to sabotage the Carrows and Snivellus. At night, she stood in silence by her window, staring into the stars wondering if Harry could see what she could see. When the stars were veiled by clouds, she ventured down to the common room to gaze at the fire until she was too tired to stand anymore. Only then, when she was assured she was far too tired to dream, would she climb into her bed and sleep.
And then, one day, even Hogwarts wasn't safe anymore. So she left, and went back to staring out her own window at the Burrow, thinking about Harry, wishing him luck.
The battle was a blur. It was flying beams of green and red, puffs of smoke, pops of apparition, and the unmistakable sound of the collapse of Hogwarts' wards. She heard the announcement old Tom made about Harry coming into the forest or else he kills everyone. She felt his determination. She knew what he would do. And then, minutes later, she felt his presence move silently across the lawn behind her. She turned to look, but saw nothing. She followed the feeling of him with her eyes as best as she could, but it wasn't an exact science. She only hoped that he could see the love in her eyes, and her silent request that he come back to the castle.
She could have stopped him, but she knew that he would never forgive her. She knew this is what he wanted, what he needed. It was what he was meant to do.
She felt him die.
In the pit of her stomach, in a place that had been warmed by the life-force of Harry Potter for the past 5 years, she felt nothing but emptiness and bitter cold.
He was gone. She knew. She couldn't feel the cold anymore, but she couldn't feel anything else either. She was numb to the world, numb to her own emptiness. And yet, until Hagrid carried him out of the forest, limp and clearly dead, she refused to believe it. But there he was. Dead. Gone. Forever. The keeper of her heart had died and taken it with him.
She'd never screamed so loudly in her entire life.
And now she burned with something different. Rage. Rage like she'd never known. It started in that numb, cold place and grew until she was on fire with it. In some corner of her brain she registered that Harry had disappeared, and Neville had killed the snake with the ever-present Sword of Gryffindor. All she knew was that she needed to fight someone, someone she could destroy, but not too easily.
Bellatrix provided the perfect target. She engaged her in the most violent duel she'd ever had in her life. And she relished in it. Her Harry was gone, she had nothing to lose. Her family would miss her, she knew that, but what was a life without Harry Potter? She couldn't live with that cold emptiness for the rest of her life. Burning rage was better. Death was better. Death stared down at her with the face of Bellatrix Lestrange.
And then Death died, killed by Ginny's own mother in a last effort to protect her daughter, her princess.
Ginny would have to learn to live without him. She would…but there he was, standing in the middle of the Great Hall, wand-to-wand with Voldemort himself. He was back. He wasn't dead. Somehow, he'd defeated death, again. The burning rage inside her had hidden the slow warmth that was Harry's life. Now that her rage was spent, she could feel it, again.
Hope. He was confident. He knew something Voldemort didn't. He destroyed the most evil wizard in all wizarding history with a disarming spell, the simplest of all spells learned at Hogwarts.
Voldemort was dead.
Harry was alive.
Weeks later, and Ginny still hadn't had an opportunity to speak with him. He'd been through a lot. He was healing. She knew he would come to her when he was ready. She'd pass him in the Burrow and feel that wave of warmth, again. If she was lucky, or her timing was right, she'd even catch a flash of that lightning when he looked at her. She knew he'd be okay.
He just needed time to think.
Ginny did, too. That's why she spent her nights at the Burrow staring out her window, trying to pretend she couldn't hear George's crying down the hall, or Harry's pacing in the room above. She pretended Hermione was sleeping, even though she could hear her rolling over in bed. She pretended not to notice when Hermione slipped out in the middle of the night, sometime after Harry stopped pacing, and padded almost silently into Harry and Ron's room. She pretended not to notice when she heard the soft click of the latch on her door as Hermione was sneaking back in every morning, usually minutes before her mum's footsteps were heard coming down the stairs.
It wasn't just Ginny who was silent these days. It was everyone. People moved about the house in silence, They ate meals silently. The silence was so heavy that they could barely breathe. But Ginny knew that things would get better. Things had to get better. One day, the world would be normal, again. There would be laughter and food and family. They would smile at each other, and pick on each other, and fight with each other. But for today, there was only a roaring silence.
And with that final thought, Ginny turned from her window and climbed into bed, letting the rhythm of Harry's pacing lull her to sleep, hoping, as she'd been hoping for the past 23 days, that tomorrow would be a little bit brighter than today.