Train Ride: Revelations From an Unlikely Source
She had honestly thought she could do this. Ginny had been convinced she could survive this train journey, these hours forced to spend in a sweltering hot comparment with her stupid big brother, her bossy best friend, and her…well, he wasn't really her anything anymore, not if you asked him he wasn't. For the twenty-second time (she had counted them) Ginny turned her face towards the window, resting her forehead against the cool glass, trying to force away her tears. She would not cry. For his sake, as much as for hers, she would not cry. She would not make this harder than it already was. Harder than this? Is that even possible? Watching his scrawny, crushed looking reflection, the his set jaw and faraway eyes, she felt ready to explode. The numbness she had felt since the beginning of the funeral was lifting, the self-imposed narcosis was vanishing, and, looking at Harry's reflection upon glass, waves of feeling, of pain, crashed upon her. She wanted to cover him in kisses and hex him into a slug; she longed for his arms to hug her, but felt she might break them with sheer will power if they came to close. She jumped up from her seat- she needed to not be around him for awhile. She did not want to spend their last hours together like this.
Like a sleepwalker, she drifted through the corridor. The train was going so steadily, she could hardly feel it speeding through the country, towards the end of this wonderful, dreadful year. She drifted through the stangely quiet train; the only sounds she could hear were sobs and snatches of serious conversation. She reached the middle of the Express and, there, the girls bathroom.
Silence. A single lamp, swinging from side to side; the gentle drip-drip of the cracked sink, the slow rumbling of the train- calamity. She sank down on the seat of the empty of the two cubicles and started to cry. The tears she had not cried all morning were spilling out of her, tears of grief, of anger, of fear, but most of all tears of a broken heart. She just sat there, letting the tears pour down her sweaty cheeks, unto the collar of her stupid second-hand robes, crying and crying.
"He broke with you, didn't he?" She suddenly heard a voice snap next to her. She jerked her head upwards. Standing at the sink, her cheeks blotchy, her eyes red-rimmed, her voice constricted and shaky, Pansy Parkinson was sneering down at her. How all the mighty falleth.
"I don't see how that's any of your business," she replied, with as much dignity as she could manage as she pulled up her nose.
"Of course he broke up with you. That's what they all do. He left you." Pansy snapped. She didn't seem to be listening to Ginny at all. Her voice growing steadily more hysteric, she continued: "He needed me. Of course he needed me, he needed me to help him, and he needed me to be there for him. But I didn't know! He never told me!" she exclaimed defensively. "He kept pushing me away, he said I was being ridiculous. And he broke up with me, that night. Just before he let…just before…he broke up with me. I should have known! I should have known he was up to something dangerous, he never would have broken up with me on his own free will." And to Ginny's horror, Pansy Parkinson broke into tears, right in front of her.
"They all do that," she sobbed. "They're about to…do something dangerous…and then…then they break up with you…for some…" her sobs got harder, "for some stupid noble reason! They put themselves into danger for a silly cause, and they think we can't handle the strain, and they just…leave us," Pansy wiped her eyes furiously. "Like my dad. My dad, he left my mum…she was so angry…and then he was found dead…Aurors killed him…she's never forgiven herself, because she should have helped him. She wanted to help him. He just wouldn't let her. And then…he died," Pansy's sobs became more and more racked. Ginny felt paralyzed, frozen in horror, shock, disgust, and pity.
"And now Draco's broken up with me, and look where that's landed him! He didn't do the Dark Lord's orders…he's going to pay. And I would have wanted to help him, I just never knew what he was doing! I even thought he was cheating on me with those little first years he was always with, but if I had known…I would have helped…he needed my help most the day he broke up with me. I know that now, I know now…" she wiped her eyes. Glared at Ginny, who knew at once she would never tell anyone about this, and said, in a voice somewhere between cold satisfaction and intense pity: "Potter's broken up with you, hasn't he? Well, let me tell you, he's about to something really dangerous, and really stupid, and chances are, he won't survive it." At with a last, watery glare, she swept from the bathroom.
Ginny was paralyzed. It wasn't just that Pansy Parkinson had burst out crying in front of her, it wasn't even that Pansy could cry…it was that everything she had said had resounded inside Ginny. Some stupid, noble reason…hadn't she just said that to Harry this morning? Hadn't she just asked her how she was supposed to be there for the boy whom she loved, when he had made it perfectly obvious he wanted her out of his life? Hadn't she just felt the way Pansy was feeling, like a discarded toy, treated like a naive child?
I should have known he was up to something dangerous, he never would have broken up with me on his own free will. Suddenly, Ginny felt sick. Fear twisted her insides, made her gasp and gag so violently she had to hold to the toilet seat for support. She knew he was going to go after Voldemort. She knew he was going to try to destroy the most powerful Dark Wizard that had ever existed, she expected nothing less of him; she loved him for his. But suddenly, it fell like scales from her eyes: Harry Potter was not expecting to come back. He had led them all into the Ministry without a second thought, because he knew they were coming back. And now, he had released her, not for her own sake, but because he wanted her to be free of him, in case he never came back. The train suddenly turned. For a brief moment, the world spinned around Ginny. When it had fallen back into place she had made up her mind.
Harry would come back from wherever he was going, whatever dangerous quest he was pursuing, because she would make him. She would give him all the help and support she could muster, and more. She would use the summer holidays to reactivate the DA per owl, recruit new members. She would teach herself every spell in those books from Sirius and Remus. And when she came back to Hogwarts, if it reopened, she would use the DA to help Harry in any way she could. She'd do everything he didn't dare ask for, and he would come back. He would come back to her, alive and whole, because she had helped him.