What's in a Face

by Cottonpaw

Ginny looked between her old self and the self she was seeing in the mirror and tried not to count the differences. She wondered what had happened to her to change her so much in only twenty-five years. ONESHOT

March 28, 2011
What's in a Face?

What's in a face? Ginny Potter sat at her vanity and stared at her reflection. A brush, worn with use, was clutched in her hand, poised to take another go at her tangled hair. She propped her chin in her hand and rested her elbow on the glass surface of the table. The weak morning sun creped through the drawn curtains and fell across the thick-carpeted rug, illuminating half of her face. What's in a face?

With a tentative finger, Ginny outlined the curves and hollows of her face. She traced the shadows under her eyes and the thin scar that snaked its way along her jawbone. She stared into her deep brown eyes filled with so many emotions of the past and present. She played with her hair, graying slightly under the strands of vibrant red. She tried to feel the freckles that marked her skin, already starting to fade with age.

A photograph she saw in the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she snatched it from its place on top of her wardrobe. It was a picture of her and her husband, Harry, when she was still in school. They were young and happy, laughing and having a wonderful time. Ginny looked between her old self and the self she was seeing in the mirror and tried not to count the differences. She wondered what had happened to her to change her so much in only twenty-five years.

She snorted as soon as the thought crossed her mind. That shouldn't have even been a question. Her life between ages eleven and seventeen contain more than enough reasons for her youthful look to deteriorate faster than she would have wanted. It's hard growing up in such turmoil, thrown into a massive war at such a tender age. Evil lurked behind every corner, and one would be hard pressed to find someone whose sleep wasn't riddled with nightmares. No one was ever truly safe, especially after the death of Albus Dumbledore. His power seemed to cancel out everything wrong with the world while in the safe confines of Hogwarts.

Ginny twirled a lock of her hair around her finger, remembering the horrible time she had trying to rid it of ink when she was eleven. She remembered seeing the ink running from the mangled diary along the dirty stone like obsidian blood, pooling around her body and caking her clothes and hair. She remembered Harry's face, bloody and apprehensive, looking down at her.

She believed nothing could be scarier than being possessed by the memory of an evil wizard until her fourth year at Hogwarts. That was the year she started trying to make a difference in her chaotic life. She joined Dumbledore's Army, privately dedicating her life to Harry and the war. She fought with the best of her ability against Voldemort's death eaters in the Department of Mysteries. Aside from joining the cause, she showed everyone she wasn't a helpless little girl with her elbow in the butter dish. She wasn't Ron's kid sister with an idiotic crush on the Boy Who Lived. She was her own person who could stand up for herself and fight against the evil that permeated the very air they were all forced to breathe.

Her sixth year was the worst of all. It was bad enough her boyfriend left her with his best friends to travel abroad, living in secrecy to find pieces of a dark wizard's soul with the risk of being captured, tortured, and killed. When she went back to school after the summer holiday, she found the school had been over run my death eaters. She traced the scar that lined her jaw. Detentions, given for absolutely no reason, were carried out by serving as a dummy for students to practice the Cruciatus Curse. Though the torturing curse wasn't as effective when Slytherin students with less-than-average intelligence performed it, she was always sent to bed aching from head to foot.

The final battle most likely left the most scars of all, not necessarily the ones visible to the eye. Ginny suffered too much pain a normal sixteen-year-old girl should be able to handle. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were missing for nearly a year. Her closest friends were killed, one of them being her own brother. Harry almost died, which would have meant the death of her and everything she had known. It was a whole year of death, pain, and destruction, and she had to live though it all.

However, not everything that caused her stress was bad. A sigh and the rustle of bed sheets made Ginny turn her head to see Harry roll over in his sleep. His hair was sticking up in all different directions and his mouth was tipped up in a contented smile. The part of his bare chest that was exposed by the sheets showed multiple scars and bruises that will never heal. His face, which was normally creased from the wear and tear of his rough childhood, looked younger and happy, which made Ginny smile fondly.

Harry was a difficult man to live with. Ever since he appeared at the Burrow, scrawny and disheveled, he had posed an obstacle in her life. Even after her hero worship had worn off, she was inexplicably attracted to him. It was definitely not from his temper, skepticism, or inability to trust other people. She could never be mad at him, even after he broke up with her with no explanation. They've been through so much, him more so than she, and there was a special connection, always unspoken, and linked by their understanding of each other.

A thud and a wail sounded outside her bedroom door and across the hall. Now that was the reason for her youth to fade. Her mother always said her and her brothers gave her grey hair. A child can age a person in a week, so three children must have made her ancient in nine years. Those three were the reasons for the tired circles under her eyes and the faint lines starting to mar her face. Between James's trouble-making attitude, Al's sly and sneaky ways, and Lily's stubbornness, she and Harry always had a handful. However, they were the reason for the care worn expression in her eyes which lit up every time they smiled.

Harry woke from his contented sleep and started grumbling about the time and how, at this moment, they were her children, not his. He untangled himself from the sheets and stumbled towards the door. His muted speech, unnecessarily loud from his mood, could be heard down the hall.

Ginny's gaze fell on the abandoned hair brush that lay on the vanity before her. She picked it up and started running in through her hair. The tangles smoothed and her hair shined with a healthy glow. She stood up and smiled at her reflection, content with the woman she had become.