She liked him because he never made her feel stupid and young like all the other boys she knew, and because he'd saved her life. She respected him because he was courageous, brilliant at Quidditch and always called You-Know-Who Voldemort. She loved him because he had brave green eyes, and large, soft hands, and when he smiled it made her feel safe.

But her heart feels bleak.

She hates him now, because she has to. She hurts him because he has made her grow up, because he has saved her life, because he is brilliant. His brave green eyes are dark, ringed with tired circles and murky with defeat. She despises him because there are more important things than her, and nothing is more important than the Boy Who Lived.


She is young and follows him around like an adoring fan; she watches him from the other end of their house-table and writes his name, handwriting loopy, in the back of her Charms book.


At six she listens attentively as her older brothers tell tales of the Boy Who Lived and is awed.

At eight she pulls on one of her father's cloaks and makes-believe she is him. Her wand is a wooden spoon from the kitchen, her scar streaked on with ink, and her expression a mixture of mischief and defiance.

The arms of the robes are long and she keeps tripping over the tails, but nevertheless she continues her game until Ron proclaims himself a Death Eater and chases her round and round and round the kitchen table. At eight she doesn't understand what it means to Eat Death, and her childish innocence doesn't allow for thoughts on an impending war. She is scared because she doesn't like to be tickled, and that is her brother's favourite form of torture.

At ten she sees the Boy Who Lived face to face and is intrigued by his reality. He isn't as tall and as brave as Ron is, or as handsome as Bill, and doesn't have smiling eyes like Charlie. He isn't outwardly comical like Fred and George or upright and sturdy like Percy. From behind her mother she can't tell if he will be kind like her dad. This surprises her because for years she has moulded him on the only men she knew and cared for.

On the station that day she meets a boy who is like nothing she has ever experienced and yet…his smile seems humble like her brothers' and safe like her father's.

At fourteen she brings him chocolate in the library and tells him anything is possible.

She stops following him around after the night when she tails him to the Ministry, but promises herself that if he needs it she'll follow him to Azkaban and back. She learns that school-girl crushes almost always come to nothing; but her heart still retains a small flame, which flickers every time he smiles.

When she is sixteen he gives her flowers and a kiss and a promise.


He tastes of Quidditch. Of grass and wood and the air when you fly so high on your broom it makes you dizzy. And she remembers thinking that she would rather die before pulling pack from their first kiss, not that she could pull back if she wanted to, for his body is pressing hers into the Willow tree with such force she can't even breathe.

No, this wasn't how it was. She thinks that maybe she's added some of these memories with time.

But his kisses do make her dizzy and if she could drown her soul in his body she surely would. And she thinks she might die when he kisses her for the first time, one warm summer's evening in the fields beyond the Burrow, because she's panting and gulping for air and burning with need.

Ginny, he had breathed – and she remembers this quite plainly – Ginny, you're beautiful. And green eyes don't lie in the milky evening light. And she blushes and feels beautiful for a moment


She is sixteen and still looks about ten with her straight red hair and centre parting. And she is still referred to as the 'baby' of the family, or 'little Ginny.' She is of age when she decides that things need to change. The lady in her mirror nods earnestly and knits her brows, Yes, dear, your look is rather dated.

It is this summer, THE summer in which she begins to reinvent herself. This summer – the one after her fifth year – she decides once and for all that she and Harry Potter are just good friends.

Of course, to do this she must ignore that strange intuition in the pit of her stomach that has been brewing for a number of years. She passes this feeling off as hunger and eats another biscuit.


There he is. Harry. Her fifth year. Spring.

In real-time she doesn't see any of this happening, but now she watches like a bird from above, and sees more than before.

It is one of her favourite days: cool and clear and sunny, the water and the air are very still and very quiet. It's a Hogsmeade Weekend and she is asked to go by three boys who weren't Harry.

Just because she isn't in town drinking Butterbeer doesn't mean she isn't having a nice time, just sitting and looking. The sky is eggshell blue, and when she breathes little wisps of smoke appear before her eyes. And it is better than magic to be there, eyes squinting from the sun, and knuckles cold and sore, because looking out over the water makes her feel like she is the only thing in the world. Powerful.

He approaches from a distance with large purposeful strides – he isn't afraid of her in her memories – he is cool and confident. This is her truth.

From above she is invisible, covered by the green overhang of her favourite tree. The bird can't see that her back is against the trunk and her cold fingers are pressed into warm earth. The bird sees that before the tree is water, gallons upon gallons, and from above it looks silver, calm and fragile like glass or ice. Behind is grass and further back is the school building.

There he is. Harry. A blurred dot streaking towards her like a saviour. And the bird wonders why he isn't in Hogsmeade with that beautiful Hufflepuff girl who had been brave enough to ask him. No. There was no overhead bird to wonder it.

He moves the air with his purposefulness and it lifts her hair gently as he drops beside her and joins in her silent reverie. There are no words for a moment because she wonders if her feeling of power in this place is the same as his. His power over her. Over the world.

They talk, and they laugh and she is thinking that maybe she could be more to him than Ron's little sister. And he looks right into her eyes now and thinks that the only time he ever feels this wonderful is when they're together.

Stop.

She is a Prophet and Seer, not a mind-reader.

But he does look into her eyes and she blushes at his tenacity. It's intense. She trembles. He licks his lower lip. She mirrors the movement. Then her bird chirrups lightly.

And they don't kiss or anything, but he does hold her hand. And she feels faint and closes her eyes and drowns in thoughts that she didn't follow him here. He follows her now, he seeks her out in her secret places because he knows things, has taken the time to learn.

And she feels triumphant, but it quickly passes.


One voice haughtily says, The way she follows him around, it's embarrassing.

Pathetic. Another hisses.

I don't think she even knows she's doing it. A third reasons carefully.

Aw. The second draws out the vowel sounds sarcastically. The group laugh.

It's sad really. The first returns with something that might be genuine sympathy, but it's unlikely.

I guess she must really think they have something. The third voice tries to save her.

But she's only a Weasley. He's The Boy Who Lived… says the final voice, and it sounds like she's raising her eyebrows. Gorgeous. Talented. Clever. Sexy. And she's so…plain.

And she wants to be sick because she agrees.


She makes him feel all sorts of wonderful things that don't have names yet.

He thinks about her at times when he shouldn't, like now, in bed, late at night with Ron sleep-talking right there and Seamus snoring loudly. But it's like that now. She's his best friend and has been ever since Ron and Hermione started kissing last summer. Which is why he shouldn't. She is Ron's little sister, and Ron has a good aim.


She is always there: at Quidditch practices, in the rain, barking orders and telling her six male team-mates that they're prats. He thinks she would make a brilliant team-captain and turns to say just this and her cheeks are already red and she's smiling, so instead he mumbles and it gets lost in the wind.


In the common room she is popular. Friendly and funny. Flirtatious. It isn't the boys in her year she's interested in, he notes with a pang in his stomach, but his friends. And they all adore her when she is like this: hair long and straight, skin dewy, tie loosened and one leg crossed over the other.

He hears them talking while she undresses in the dorms above, removes her shirt, sweeps up her hair and slips into her nightclothes. He's seen her sleeping at the Burrow, duvet kicked off, creamy thighs visible from underneath her bed shirt, eyelashes shadowy against her cheeks.

He thinks of her undressing for bed and stiffens for her warmth. He is lost to the thought of her. Her small hands touch him and he struggles not to groan. He forgets that late night in the common room when Ron isn't there to hear the boys speak of her. He forgets how he'd snapped at them for Ron's sake. He feels her hands rather than his own and never wants it to stop.

His cheeks burn.


She wants to slap him. Hard.

How dare he? How dare he.

She gets asked to Hogsmeade by Dean and says yes. Her school-girl crush will never amount to anything, so she thinks no harm will be done by dating a cute boy who smiles a lot.

She's wrong.

His green eyes darken with jealousy when he hisses that the sixth-year Gryffindor boys are taking bets on which one of them will be the first to sleep with her. And she wants to cry, but instead she suggests that maybe that isn't a bad thing.

He calls her names and she wants to cry some more because what gives him the right to judge her? She doesn't shout when he kisses Cho and any other girl who catches his fancy, or curse when he eyes-up some girl from Hufflepuff. Tosser.

And she doesn't go into town that weekend because, as much as her temper would love to smash his face against a wall (or at least force him to watch her have a great time with Dean), she can't bear to leave Hogwarts.

She sits underneath her tree, in the frost and gloom and wishes it would snow soon.


He knows he's a tosser. She doesn't have to say it: her red face tells him everything.

He wants her to slap him. Anything for human contact.

They have a huge fight, bigger than any of Ron and Hermione's, but no one is in the common room to hear it.

He doesn't go into town either even though his two friends pester him continually for about an hour. He has other things to do. Yes, he's an idiot. And yes, she should never speak to him again but…unlike her brother, he knows when to apologize.

He has been watching her for years. Watching, listening, learning, and knows exactly where she'll be. He started following her around somewhere near the beginning of her fifth year, first with simple excuses like Quidditch timetables and because he was sick of tagging along with Ron and Hermione, 'the couple.' But his truth was different: he liked her.

He likes her.


She makes him grovel for at least thirty minutes, even though his first sentence (Gin, I'm so thick) softens her anger. They talk that day about things that matter: life and death, dreams and ambition. But they don't mention Dean.


And it is time for supper and no one has come to find them.

They sit in silence now and somehow they have shuffled close against the tree so that her right side is pressed against his left. But they pretend not to notice.

I like our time together, he stutters over his words but is determined not to mumble into the wind, when we're alone.

And they both blush, but thankfully it's dark and they can pretend that nothing has changed.

They stop going into town after that, and Hogsmeade weekends underneath her tree become a tradition.


He is falsely accused of kissing a bushy-haired know-it-all who is nothing more than a best friend, but no one ever thinks he has been snogging her.


Her kisses remind him of summers at the Burrow and the hue of lavender by the water, which makes his head foggy and eyelids heavy. Her kisses are desperate as though he is her life-support, and she buries her hands into his hair and presses him close.

She doesn't want to let him go. Or maybe it is him clinging to her that makes their first kiss feel so intense? He has wanted this for so long that not even the swarm of butterflies in his stomach can make him ignore the impulse to kiss her, against the Willow tree, in the fields beyond the Burrow.

Her kisses stop the world – not his heart, which is pounding loudly in his ears. Everything fades with her kiss: time, worries, thoughts, life. And if she stops it will all come rushing back, so he doesn't, until they are both gasping for breath. Her eyes are wild and he wants her.

Ginny, he says huskily, you're beautiful. You're the most beautiful thing

And her brown eyes become brighter than the stars in the moonlight.


And she blushes and feels beautiful for a moment.