Another short companion piece to my story, 'Stupid'. Ginny's POV.
She was twenty-six and pregnant the night the four of them went to the ball.
It was planned months in advance, and put on by a little group of women who, having grown tired of living in peace without some sort of celebration, decided to stir up some source for gossip so they'd have something to talk about for the next year or so. Ginny couldn't blame them for being bored. She was bored with her life, too. The only thing driving her on was her ambition to be a successful Auror, and that was working out splendidly for her. It was her home life that was a disaster. She had found that she could lost herself in her work and forget all her domestic troubles that she tried to pretend didn't exist. Once she would have faced them, taken them by the ears and shaken them until they'd disappeared; but that was a long time ago.
Ginny Weasley was a hardened young woman, now.
As a child, she had learned early on that having six older brothers meant that she would have to be stronger than them all, more defiant, more stubborn; either that, or succumb and be trampled. She decided very young that she would never lie down and take it. Or anything else. Ginny turned herself into a warrior.
And then he came along.
Dark windswept hair and piercing green eyes...and only a year older than her, but already much, much more than she would ever be. He frightened her. His quiet, self-contained manner confused her. Where was the fire in him? She expected fire from everyone, having grown up with six boys pestering her constantly. She knew it was in him somewhere, waiting to challenge her, taunting her even before he ever really looked her way. She could sense that he was meant for bigger things by the second time she laid eyes on him. The crush her brothers teased her for was born out of fear and confusion, and quickly grew to a fierce love that burned inside her. Ginny Weasley was made of fire. Some part of everything that made her up burned.
As the years passed and he still didn't notice her, the flashfire love faltered and began to go out. It smoldered somewhere; she hid the embers and forgot about them. She was thirteen, halfway through her third year at Hogwarts, when she woke one morning with a gasp and realized that if she was free of him, she could shine on her own. It was a wonderful, thrilling idea. She had seen what being his friend was doing to Ron; jealous Ron, resentful Ron, Ron who would never be able to accept his lot to walk in his best friend's shadow...but he loved Harry too much to ever leave his side for long. Ginny had shuddered, thinking about the power the black-haired boy could have over people. What she would give to be able to effortlessly command such fierce loyalty from friends who resented living in her shadow...it was terrifying. She promised herself that she would never let him take hold of her like he'd done to Ron. She would be Ginny, and her own person.
Over the next couple of years she came into herself as she had always longed to be, but had not been able to while under his spell. She felt free, liberated; it was a joyous time. Boys were drawn to her new confidence. She felt beautiful, and it made her so. She laughed to herself sometimes. She had her own power now. Hexes became her specialty, and in her fourth year she proved to everyone that she could be powerful on her own. She fought in the Department of Mysteries and relished in the battle, in the feeling of fighting the bad guys and winning. She kept it to herself. Sirius's death threw a shadow over it all. Ginny hated shadows.
In her fifth year it all changed again. She met every aspect of her life with fire, for good or ill. Dean Thomas was drawn to her fire and drank it in. She let him. He was better at handling her than Michael Corner had been. But Dean couldn't match her, wasn't passionate enough about anything. She liked him, sure. But he wasn't enough.
He was.
He called to her every time she saw him, though he never said it out loud. She knew anyway. It was all over his face. At first she raged about it—how dare he look at her now, when she was finally free of him? Why hadn't he seen her before, when she was his? Maybe that's why he noticed; the chase instinct. She cursed him. Him and his quiet calm exterior that she knew hid a fire equal to hers, if not one that surpassed it altogether. What right did he have to see her now? He'd effortlessly ignored her for four and a half years, and then he decided to turn that deceptively dispassionate gaze on her, as though he were just waiting for her to come and fall into his arms. What right did he have? She wanted to hate him.
But she couldn't. And that made her even angrier. The same power he held over Ron and his other friends, he was now turning on her. She hated most of all that he excited this reaction from her, made her want him again like she had never stopped; like the years she spent getting over him had meant absolutely nothing.
But she couldn't resist. And so she was fifteen—almost sixteen—when he first kissed her, and she bloody well let him. They were together for a blissful month and a bit before he told her it had to end. She didn't understand why. He said it was too dangerous for her to stay attached to him. Ginny pretended that she understood, then, and privately didn't believe it. He was her match, she knew he was. What about the fire that burned hungrily beneath both their skin? How could he leave her behind and go off to save the world alone? He must have needed her, during that long year that was the worst of her young life. The Carrows tortured Ginny and her friends. She would weep bitterly at night, thinking, 'How could he have left me to this? He said it was too dangerous to go with him, but is he being tortured like this every day?' She hardened that year. She grew so bitter that she started scaring her friends. Neville Longbottom was the only comfort she had. She took his virginity one night in a time of weakness, yearning for Harry and not knowing if she would ever see him again. Neville hadn't said a word about it afterwards, and when she sought him out to apologize later, he told her seriously, "You needed it, right?" Neither of them spoke of it again.
And then in rode Harry on a white horse (or dragon, she heard), his too-loyal friends trailing behind him, and he took Hogwarts' shattered world by storm and saved the day by killing Lord Voldemort once and for all, just before he turned eighteen. If that wasn't fire, she would never know what was.
She had too much pride to go to him, so she'd let him come to her during the aftermath. Their relationship progressed quickly from there on in. She moved into the house in Godric's Hollow with him when she was twenty and he twenty-one. They got married later that same year. They were young and in love, and their fire burned merrily. She loved his spontaneity; he loved her passion. They were happy.
It couldn't last.
Over the years, he slowly started drifting away from her. She, used to always having her way, tried to recapture his attention, but couldn't. So she pretended the problem wasn't really there. She found solace in her work, tracking the movements of witches and wizards who thought they could get away with breaking the law. And Ginny hunted them down. Her orders were to find them and attempt to make them come quietly, and only use force if necessary. It never seemed to turn out that way. She usually had the jump on them, but even then, something about her would always provoke them into attacking. Perhaps they saw the fire in her eyes and were afraid to be scorched. It didn't matter. They never came quietly. Ginny started provoking them deliberately to get it over with. Other Aurors talked about her behind her back, saying that she was like a new Barty Crouch or Mad-Eye Moody. Ginny held her chin high and let them talk. She was just doing her job, and she did it well.
At home, things were getting worse. Harry, once overjoyed at the sight of her greeting him when he got back from Quidditch, would just call out a "Hello" when he came home and go straight to the living room to turn on their bewitched TV, and watch his favourite show for an hour. Then he'd trudge into the kitchen, make dinner, they'd eat, and neither of them would have anything to say to each other. Sometimes Ginny would start to tell him about a particularly violent fight she'd had to engage in to bring a person in, but Harry would get a distant look on his face and half-ignore her. She never understood why he quit Auror training after only a year. He said it reminded him too much of the war, and he'd had enough violence in his lifetime already to last him the rest of it. Ginny would shake her head whenever he quietly reminded her of it. How could it remind him of the war? There were no Death Eaters around anymore or anything. It was totally different.
Ginny began to get scared when he'd go all distant. She was losing him. His fire was burning down, and hers was building higher. One evening she was ranting about something or other—she still couldn't remember what—and Harry interrupted her.
"Do you have to live life at this level all the time?" he's burst out. Ginny broke off mid-sentence and stared at him. "Why can't you ever be calm? About anything? Is there some—some thing that's under your skin that riles you up like this? Where does all your energy come from? I can't be around you all the time anymore, it's exhausting!" They'd stared at each other for a moment, she bewildered and he exasperated. His words echoed in her mind in the silence. Harry had never raised his voice to her before. Ginny had felt a shivering sensation spread through her as she heard the anger—fire—in his voice. She snatched for it. They tore each other's clothes off and went at it on the couch, and Ginny didn't use a protection spell.
She took maternity leave from work to have the baby and care for him. They named him James. He looked like Harry but he had her eyes. Harry took one look at his son, in the room at St. Mungo's, and he was under the baby's spell. Harry would spend hours in the evenings sitting by James's crib, letting the boy play with his fingers. Ginny, throughout the whole process, felt a little detached from it all; like Harry was raising his son on his own, and she just lived there. Contrary to what she thought would happen, they grew apart after the birth of their first child. Harry had claimed James as his own, and Ginny just breastfed him.
They'd always spent half their time at the Burrow anyway, but now Harry started going alone. He fought with her often. She'd rant and rage and unleash her anger on him, and he would seem smug, almost satisfied. It infuriated her every time he left and stayed at the Burrow with Ron and Hermione. She was left to take care of his child, the one who only had one thing to show she had born him—her eyes in his small face. She began to hate him. She hated herself—how could she harbour anything but love for her own baby?—but he didn't feel like her baby. He was Harry's all the way through. Ginny threw herself into her job and got promoted. Harry spent more and more time over at the Burrow. Their Godric's Hollow house no longer felt like a home.
When James was two, Hermione announced in her shyly joyful way that she was pregnant. Ginny got pregnant again about a month after. Sex was her and Harry's refuge from fighting with each other, and the rarity of it happening made it more powerful. She kept the news to herself for a little while, deciding that this child would be hers. If Harry could claim a child, so could she. She was so wrapped up in her fierce protectiveness of the baby starting to grow inside her that she didn't notice things she should have—Harry's growing attentiveness to someone else, his distance from her, and the fact that his fire—the fire that she had first ignited in him, and then which was lost to her—was being rekindled. He was moodier. They fought more. The sex was better, at least to her. She loved him, hated him, hated to love him and hated to hate him. She hated herself. Ginny's world began to revolve around her secret hatred. She hated her husband, her child, herself; she spent the nights alone in their big bed, hating the bitter tears she shed. It was a dark time for her.
And then came the ball.
Those silly women had made it known throughout the wizarding community all over England and Scotland that they were organizing a fancy, old-fashioned ball to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the fall of the Dark Lord. Ginny thought it was stupid. Shouldn't they have waited for the more appropriate tenth anniversary to throw their ball? But all her friends and family were excited, and everyone she knew bought tickets. As the weeks passed and the event neared, even Ginny started to get a little excited about it. She and Hermione bought their dress robes together, and Hermione took the opportunity to talk to Ginny about her growing concern for her. Ginny very nearly told her friend everything. It would have been so good to get it all off her chest...but her stubborn pride won out, and she allayed Hermione's fears with smiles and laughing apologies for being grumpy lately. She told her about being pregnant too. They celebrated the news with divine ice cream sundaes, Hermione's treat, because she was so delighted that they would go through it together since they were almost the same length along.
The night of the ball, Ginny was lovelier than anyone else. Her robes, a deep green that shifted to brown depending on the light and when she moved, were of a beautiful cut that emphasized her curves without being too showy. She didn't want to look like a teenager—she was twenty-six years old. Her shoes made her taller. Her luscious red hair was piled on her head with ringlets falling down all around. She felt beautiful again, and, she noted with fierce satisfaction, she was holding the eyes of half the men in the room.
Harry danced with her. He told her how beautiful she looked that night and she just smiled. When she tired, he led her over to the side of the room to the little table where Ron sat with Hermione, who also looked lovely in her periwinkle blue, silvery robes. Ginny sat down. Harry didn't.
"Dance with me?" he murmured, holding out his hand to his sister-in-law. Hermione blushed. Ron grinned. Ginny kept her face perfectly still as Hermione took his hand, her cheeks still pink, and watched as her husband led their friend on to the floor.
"Great night, eh?" Ron commented, taking a drink from his wine glass. Ginny made a noncommittal noise, still watching the couple move around the room. Harry was looking at Hermione with a strange expression on his face; half-smiling, half wonderment, as though he wasn't sure of what he was seeing. Hermione was smiling too—a little sadly, Ginny noticed. They couldn't keep their eyes off each other. His hand seemed to fit perfectly in the small of her back. They never missed a step of the dance. Ginny's heart started to beat faster as Harry twirled Hermione away from him and then spun her back into his arms. The looks on their faces...it was the atmosphere of romance and the old-fashioned dancing that was confusing her, Ginny reassured herself, but still...the looks on their faces...
It was surely nothing, and yet their movements proclaimed what their eyes confirmed. Harry bent to dip Hermione, her arms around his neck, and their mouths came too close for Ginny's comfort. She couldn't be seeing what she thought she was seeing—but there it was plain and clear, right in front of her. She glanced over at Ron. He hadn't noticed anything. He was just enjoying the music and the food. She felt her muscles tighten and sat, rigid, on the edge of her seat, sharp eyes narrowed slightly as the dance built up to the finish...and with one last whirl, it was over. Everyone clapped except Harry and Hermione, who stood where they'd stopped, both of them breathless, staring at each other. They seemed to Ginny as if they were standing on the edge of a cliff. She didn't dare approach them yet. She couldn't bear it if she went to Harry and his eyes followed Hermione away. She knew how it worked. He was infatuated with her; if Ginny went to him, and he compared the two of them now, right after he'd just had that experience with Hermione, he would consider leaving Ginny. But if she waited, and he came back to her once he'd cleared his head, everything would be fine.
It had to be. She was carrying their second child. This would pass. He was only twenty-seven; of course he would sometimes have urges about other women. It was just the atmosphere of the ball. And it was Hermione. Of course this wouldn't last long. He would come back to her eventually.
Hehad to.