I realized after rereading the first chapter that I never mentioned who the narrator was. Sorry about that. The story is from Ginny Weasley's point of view. She was Draco's fiancé, and after he died she got very depressed, and that is why she was sent to the HNC. Again, I'm sorry about that!
I had an entire room to myself at the HNC, but it always felt awkward to me. Some days it seemed so big that I would get lost just walking to the bathroom, while other days I felt like no matter how I moved something would be in my way. Because of this, I took to sitting in one place unless I had to move. This meant that I frequently sat in the window seat. Draco had left me all of his money, so I had been put into one of the nicer rooms in the establishment, complete with window seat.
The only problem with my seating arrangement was that I was reminded of memories whenever I looked outside, which I tended to do often. By looking outside I was reminded of another world that I hoped to be in soon, a different world than the one that I was currently residing in. I felt like I was in a bubble, and the rest of the world was outside of my bubble. By looking outside the window, I was seeing outside the bubble.
This was my 65th day at the HNC. I kept track by marking the ground with chalk every time I woke up in the morning. The employees at HNC would be fine with telling me what day it was and when I arrived there, but it was something that I could do for myself, and it was something that I felt that I needed to do. My first month here had been scary and unpleasant. As I tried to forget about my first month here, I turned towards the window, which I regretted instantly as memories flooded my brain and demanded to be attended to.
It had been a winter morning about a year ago, still months before the war started. Draco and I had taken to bird watching when we could drag ourselves out of bed at six in the morning, which didn't always happen.
We'd woken up at five fifty-five and had made it out the door by six-fifteen. I had refused to leave until I had a cup of coffee in my hands that I could take with me. Draco always let me have my way on inconsequential things like that. "You have to pick your battles," he'd tell me.
Draco was excited, because a neighbor had spotted a Redwing yesterday and he was determined to see one himself. Draco was like that. He'd get really excited about something, and then the only way to calm him down would be to let him do whatever he was excited about. If you didn't let him do it, then he'd either get really grumpy, or he'd sneak out to do whatever he was excited about by himself. Being his girlfriend, I just wanted to spend time with him, so I always went with him.
We were bundled up because it was still really cold outside this early in the morning. Although it was approaching spring, the weather seemed to have missed the memo. It was only slightly warmer than it had been in winter, and everyone was waiting for spring to show its signs.
We were walking slowly, hand in hand as I sipped my coffee slowly and carefully. As we walked, I suddenly stopped walking and made a surprised noise. Draco turned to me and raised his eyebrow.
"What is it," he had whispered to me. It was so quiet in the mornings that we both always felt that we had to whisper to keep the peace in tact.
"The ground's thawing! It's the first sign of spring!" I whispered back excitedly, almost forgetting to whisper as I pointed straight ahead and a little to the right of where we were standing.
Draco looked towards where I had pointed and tilted his head slightly to the side. Standing lonesome on the side of the trail was a purple flower that I didn't know the name of. It was short and almost looked like a dwarf kind of tulip mixed with some other kind of flower. Although I had seen prettier flowers before, at that moment, that single flower was the most beautiful flower in the world.
Draco slipped his arms around me, kissed my forehead, and leaned closer to my ear to whisper in my ear.
"You're right. It's almost spring." We stood there standing in each other's arms for a long time, staring at the little flower all by itself.
I was startled out of the memory as a precariously placed hairbrush fell off of the bathroom sink to hit the floor with a thud. As I jumped at the sound, a tear fell off of my chin to hit my thigh. It was then that I realized that I had been crying. Thinking of Draco only made me sad that he was gone. I wish he was still here.