A/N: I've deleted the chapter and reposted to let everyone know the review thing is working again. No, I'm not a review whore...I'm just two stinking reviews away from 600, and that stupid stats section is MOCKING me, I tell you...can you blame a girl for having a bit of ambition?

Oh, and I changed a few things here and there. Nothing major, just some small added in dialogue and such. Because I have this thing where I can't stop editing...

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Well, here's the next chapter! Long one, loo-hoos. Twenty pages on Word, aren't you proud?

Read and review!

-h

Disclaimer: I disclaim everything except Lionel and Bubba.

Sodding Sod and his Sodding Laws of Sodiness

For orders to clean my room.
Because without you,
I'd have nothing to procrastinate for.

"You attacked an old lady?"

Lionel the police officer leaned back in his creaking, obviously strained wooden chair and stared at me through the thick metal bars of my prison cell. Emptied cans of tuna littered the top of his desk, the yellow fish juice left congealing on the bottom, along with various crushed soft drink cans and the occasional stack of food-stained papers.

My mother would have a seizure if she saw it. And then go in to cardiac arrest. And then return from the dead to nag poor, fat Lionel until he burned every single piece of grossness on his desk and scoured the wood with three bottles of Sally's Sanitary Solution.

That, rather than anything else (such as the desire to remain in possession of my head), was the reason I had not used my one fellytone call to dial the number of the Burrow.

Why did we have a Muggle fellytone at the Burrow, you wonder? We'd gotten one during the War. In case we ended up in situations such as the one in which I found myself currently engaged. As of right then, it had never been used. Mainly because I was the only one who was forced to learn how to use the thing, but also because getting into trouble in the War usually constituted one of three things:

1) Being in a state of forced captivity.

2) Being unconsciousness.

Or 3) Being otherwise incapable of using a tone. In particular being deceased and/or slightly to mostly incapacitated due to loss of limbs or other such grievous states of being.

So the whole fiasco of purchasing the tone and hiding all the magical objects in the house and receiving numerous lectures from Mum before the Muggle ekeltrician came and then, of course, obliviating the ekeltrician because Gred and Forge managed to set his mustache aflame, was really quite pointless.

Dad, however, would probably be thrilled if I called the tone and asked for him to come pay the bail, getting to see a Muggle jail and talk on the tone and handle Muggle currency. Mum, however…

Well, like I said, she'd probably die upon seeing Lionel's desk, and I didn't really want her to die, seeing as how she's my Mum. And I love her. And occasionally she feeds me when I have no money. Which is a lot, considering I'm a mere intern Healer and I get the worst hours imaginable and the lowest pay St. Mungo's can get away with. However, being the friend of the three most famous war-heroes of all time has it's perks, and since two of them were joining in hell-holey matrimony, I was spending a luxurious two weeks off from work.

In a prison cell.

Which wasn't exactly how I'd originally planned it.

I was losing hope of being rescued at any time in the near future, seeing as how I didn't know any other tone numbers besides the Burrow's, and so I figured I might have to try to talk my way out of my predicament.

Talk. Not yell. Which was bad because usually in the sorts of situations where I'm not particularly happy, I like to yell a lot. And being in a prison cell with a she-man named Bubba and a mountain of loo rolls does not make me particularly happy.

In fact, it rather makes me particularly unhappy.

So when Lionel accused me of attacking an old lady, I refrained from telling him to kindly let me out of the cell before I was obliged to shove one of his empty tuna cans up his arse. Which would hurt. Sharp edges, soft organ tissue, you know? If I was particularly malicious, I could describe the tearing of the soft organ tissue, being that I knew all about it due to Healer training and such.

Instead though, I chose to be diplomatic about it. "Well, I didn't exactly attack her, per say, it was more of a…noticeable persuasion to return my loo roll package."

Bubba the she-man grunted from the left corner of the cell. I couldn't tell if the grunt was a laugh or a growl, so I scooted a few more meters away from her. Lionel snorted and leaned back further in his chair.

I felt sorry for Lionel's chair. Lionel was fat because he ate so many cans of tuna at such regular intervals. I was fairly certain tuna juice even seeped out of his pores. He even had flabby skin at the sides of his neck that, if one were so inclined to postulate it, might be a mutation in the form of gills.

But maybe he was just exceptionally obese round the neck.

"You threw an innocent old lady into a tastefully displayed mountain of tuna cans."

I did not.

Well, partially perhaps.

…Maybe just slightly. Still though, I took objection at his word choice.

"First of all, that old lady is in no way innocent, Mr. Lionel policeman, sir. She is a blatant stealer of other people's loo rolls," I said, ticking off my objections on my fingers, "Second of all, I didn't throw her into the tuna can mountain, I threw a package of loo rolls at her and she landed in the tuna can mountain. There's a difference."

I stopped talking for a bit, looking at Lionel's unamused face. His fat, soggy looking lips were curved downwards in the corners and he was frowning so deeply his eyebrows looked as if they were contemplating jumping right off his face and attacking his eyeballs.

Against my better judgment and because I have about as much control over my mouth as Fleur the Flirtacious has over the amount of phlegm perpetually residing in her throat, I continued speaking.

"And third of all, that tuna can mountain was not tastefully displayed. You can't tastefully display cans of tuna. It's impossible. Because tuna doesn't taste good, and if it doesn't taste good you can't make a tasteful display of it."

Stupid, you say? How do you figure that?

My statement seemed to hang in the air for a bit, molding both Lionel's and Bubba's faces into two identical masks of irate indignation. Lionel, in particularly, looked a bit like a pit bull who's dead animal carcass has been withheld from him. Bubba just looked like a she-man who's been deeply insulted because someone called her a she-man.

Apparently, both Lionel and Bubba were great lovers of tuna and great haters of loo-roll-pelting red-heads who only want to inflict justice upon the Wheatie Stealers of the world.

I reckoned that meant I was pretty much a grindylow out of water.

"Miss Wizzleby," began Lionel angrily.

"Weasley," I grumbled, folding my arms and tucking my chin into my chest in a full-fledged proclamation of how little I wanted to hear the obviously intended lecture. Lionel glared at me from beneath bushy brown eyebrows.

"Miss Whirlyby," he began again.

"Weasley."

"Miss Whelterly!"

"Weasley!"

"MISS APPLEBY! I do not think you realize how much trouble you are truly in!"

"Well, I don't think you realize how much your smell truly resembles that of a rotting pile of regurgitated fish, Officer Loonel," I told him, glaring out at him from atop my mountain of loo rolls, "And it's Weasley!"

Lionel turned purple with fury. He puffed himself up to such an extent that I was strongly reminded of my pet puffskein, Arnold. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and bellowed, "Are you calling me a loon, Miss Turnlee?"

I looked at him blandly. "Of course not, Officer Loonel."

Lionel's mustache began to quiver like an enraged caterpillar as he heaved himself up from his chair in anger, and I tossed my hair back in defiance. We glared at each other. We opened our mouths to continue insulting and otherwise throwing tantrums at one-another.

"Come on, Dung. You've got to help me out a little here. Can you at least try to walk properly?"

The glaring ceased as both Lionel's and my heads snapped to the doorway of the grungy little prison, whereupon I perceived a sight so extraordinarily unexpected, so extraordinarily out of place, so extraordinarily astonishing, that I found my attention entirely fixed upon that doorway, as opposed to contemplating the best way in which to get Bubba to stop cracking her knuckles in threat.

It was stupefying.

It was time-stopping.

It was a dream come true.

It was a combination of all the other cliche phrases in this world, compiled into one giant, monster of a phrase, meaning 'Thank Merlin, Agrippa, Flamel and Aberforth's goats, I'm saved!'

It was Harry James Potter, Muggle clothes rumpled and torn, hair more amuck than usual, supporting one Mundungus Fletcher as the man's head lolled to the side in a drunken stupor.

I gaped at him as Dung made noises that could only be described as intelligible in the company of a school of merpeople holding a merperson convention above water.

Mundungus Fletcher was attempting to sing opera. He discontinued this practice, however, upon hearing Harry's request, and spent ten seconds attempting to sing and answer Harry at the same time.

Eventually, he sorted himself out, and slurred, "No can do, 'Arry. Me legsh aren't coopat-…cooport…coportating…thash no' righ'…"

Harry sighed, "Cooperating, Dung?"

Mundungus beamed and pointed up at Harry, "Thash the one! Copercolating!"

Harry sighed again. "Come on then. Time to sleep it off. I'm sure Lionel has your cell ready."

Dung let his head drop back to his shoulder and rolled his glassy, feverish eyes around the room. He briefly mentioned an affinity for tuna as his gaze passed over Lionel's desk, though it was incomprehensible to anyone who'd never witnessed a drunk Dung Fletcher, and then his eyes landed on me.

"'Allo, Gin," he waved at me limply before turning his gaze to Bubba. "'Allo, Bubba."

Bubba grunted and lifted a large, shovel-like hand in what must be assumed to be a greeting. Astonishment passed through me briefly as I contemplated the fact that Dung really did know everyone who liked to hang about the dark alleyways at night, but I recovered myself, however, in time to fix a mask of indifference upon my face and sigh apathetically.

"Hi Dung," I said, resting my chin on my hand in a bored manner. I turned to Harry. " 'Lo, Harry."

Harry looked up at me briefly before turning back to adjusting Dung's arm more securely about his shoulders.

"Hi Gin," he said distractedly.

He finished adjusting Dung's arm and straightened himself as best he could, examining his attire with a grimace and a hand through his hair. No doubt he was imagining Hermione's lecture when she observed his clothing at her rehearsal of the rehearsal dinner. I didn't blame him for looking so melancholy. She was going to boil his eyeballs in dragon excrement and force feed it to him through his nose.

He sighed and shifted under Dung's weight.

Then he dropped the man altogether.

"Ginny?"

I stopped examining the fingernails of my left hand and looked up at him inquisitively. "Yes?"

Harry ignored Dung as the man groaned and reached feebly up for help before becoming transfixed by the sight of his hand waving in front of his face. He wiggled his fingers to and fro like a newborn first discovering movement and faintly began to sing again while Harry stared at me, dumbstruck.

"You…in…but…you're…you're in prison!"

I raised an eyebrow at him coolly before looking back to my fingernails. "Good observation."

Harry floundered over Dung's pathetic form and came to stand in front of my cell. He looked at me intently through the bars. I stared back at him blandly.

"Do you need something?" I asked.

He didn't respond.

"Can I help you?" I tried again.

He only shook his head. "You're really Ginny," he said, still staring at me.

I blinked and reached down to grab a package of loo rolls as an idea flitted into my head. I held the package out to him.

"Can I offer you some toilet tissue?"

It was completely random, of course, and not at all the witty retort one would expect to come after the rather idiotic statement, "You're really Ginny," but I was counting on his astonishment at my being in a Muggle prison for my plan to work.

And work it did.

Absently, he reached a hand between the bars, and I sprang to action immediately.

Throwing the package of loo rolls to the side, I leapt up and grabbed Harry's outstretched arm, hauling it inward until his front was pressed against the metal bars of my prison cell. He made a small grunt of surprise as I wound his arm downwards and out, so that the elbow was positioned at an odd angle. Then I maneuvered myself so that I was standing directly in front of him and looking over his shoulder at a stunned Lionel.

"I would suggest to you, Officer Loonel, to take those keys from your belt and come unlock this prison cell."

Lionel stared at me. "Why?" he wanted to know.

I fixed my face into a mask of indifferent seriousness.

"You are a male, are you not, Officer Loonel?"

Lionel stared at me again, completely at a loss as to what to say. I raised an eyebrow and asked my question again.

He mouthed incoherently for a moment before finally uttering, "Y-yes. Yes. Yes, I am."

I nodded briskly. "And as such, unless there was a very serious mishap during your circumcision, you are in possession of, shall we say…male…parts?"

Lionel's eyes widened to the size of galleons. I took this as an affirmative answer.

"So you will therefore sympathize when I say that I have a hold of one Mr. Harry James Potter's, shall we say, family jewels. A very strong hold."

Lionel turned white as he gaped at me. Harry turned red as he gaped at me.

Both of them said, as they gaped at me, "You do?"

I widened my eyes in a significant manner at Harry. "Play along, would you?" I whispered to him. He only continued to gape at me.

I looked back at Lionel. "Yes. I do."

Lionel didn't seem convinced. He turned to Harry. "Harry? She does?"

I looked expectantly at Harry. It takes a certain amount of concentration, but if you stare hard enough at a person, you can convey to them an entire threat without uttering a single word.

My eyes were conveying very obviously to Harry the threat, "If you do not answer 'yes' to that question, I shall not only Bat-Bogey you to hell and back, but I shall also make it so that your balls are numb for the next year and a half."

Harry turned white, and I took that as an indication that he understood my meaning.

He nodded his head. Lionel sucked in a sharp breath.

"Is she…" he seemed to be struggling for the right words. "Does she…" he stopped again and rubbed a hand over his cheek agitatedly. "Alright mate, I'm just going to ask you straight out. How hard is her grip?"

Laughter nearly burst from me at the question, but I managed to plaster what I hoped to be a fierce look on my face as Harry's eyes widened almost to the size of his glasses at the question.

He blinked twice before glancing at me. I cleared my throat slightly.

"Vice-like," he determined.

Lionel's hand fell from his face. "Good God…" he murmured in a tone that was clearly that of a defeated man.

It took some tricky maneuvering, a promise to Bubba that if she didn't stop me I'd give her all the tuna I could find in Lionel's desk, and many offhand remarks of castration and the like to get out of the prison cell and in possession of the keys to the lock, but I managed in the end. I kept Harry's back to Lionel and my hand hidden from view in front of him so the officer wouldn't discover my trickery, and I told him to clean all his drawers of unopened tuna cans and toss them into the cell for Bubba.

"Unless, of course, you'd like me to twist just a little to the right and remove poor Harry's…we'll call it a fifth appendage in order to remain at least slightly civil, shall we?"

Lionel hurried to his drawers and began tossing tuna cans through the open prison cell to Bubba. Bubba grunted happily, grabbed a tuna can, and bit into it. There was a pop and a hiss as the air rushed out of the sealed can, and then a sound like a train breaking suddenly as Bubba ripped the can the rest of the way open.

I stared at her.

"Strong jaw," I mentioned. She ignored me and ate her tuna like a starving hippogriff.

I blinked a few times before turning back to Lionel.

"Alright, now I need you to toss out all those loo roll packages. Throw them near Harry's feet."

Lionel stared at me a moment and stopped moving, the layer of fat that surrounded his body wobbling to and fro like a giant mass of gelatin at the sudden change in movement. I poked Harry in the stomach so he'd suck in a bit of air and double over slightly, as if in severe pain, and Lionel hurried into the cell and began throwing loo roll packages over his head frantically. I moved around Harry and stood at the cell door, waiting until Lionel threw the last package out of the cell. Then I shut the door with a clang.

"I imagine there's enough tuna in there to last you a while," I said, turning and picking my loo roll packages from the floor. I began piling them in Harry's arms. "Besides, I'm sure Dung here'll let you out as soon as he wakes up."

Dung snored loudly at this precise moment, rolling to his side and jamming his thumb into his mouth sloppily. I placed the keys beside his head and patted his side pityingly. With one last wave at the occupants of the prison cell, I gathered up the rest of my loo rolls and started for the door.

"C'mon, Harry. Hermione'll kill us if we're late."

Harry glanced with wide eyes at Lionel and Bubba (the latter of which was biting into another tuna can as the former eyed her actions fearfully) and then followed me out of the prison.

Bright sunlight blinded me for a moment as I stepped out of the grungy little building, and I blinked a few times to get used to the change in light. When the bright blue tint that had taken over the world slowly receded into the corners of my eyes, I examined my surroundings. I set down my loo rolls and turned to Harry.

"Where are we?"

No sound came from behind the wall of white toilet tissue behind me.

"Harry?" I asked.

Still no response.

I sighed and removed a plastic-wrapped package from the middle of the wall. Harry's baffled face peered out at me.

"You just escaped from prison," he told me.

I raised an eyebrow, but otherwise made no response.

He blinked twice. "You just escaped from prison," he said again.

I covered my eyes with my hand and took a breath. My hand slid down my face until my eyes stared over the top of it.

"Harry, how long do you think I'm going to have to wait for you to quit being redundant, because I'm serious about Hermione killing us, and I decided a long time ago that I'll always be too young to die."

Harry only continued to stare at me.

I sighed and removed my wand to shoot the countercurse of the Confundus charm at him in the hopes it would sort him out. It didn't work out, however, as I found myself quite firmly pressed up against a warm body, my wand stuffed hastily back into my pocket, all in the span of three seconds.

I blinked into the woolen sweater my face was now pressed into and lifted my head to stare at a now fully alert Harry. He was looking over my head and to the street beyond, his eyes flitting from window to window and behind the trashcans in the alleyways.

I blinked again.

"Are you insane?" he asked in a low, urgent voice, still searching the street beyond for any sign of life. "This is a completely Muggle neighborhood! Do you want to have to obliviate an entire street of people?"

Again, I only blinked.

That is, until I stopped breathing. I couldn't, you see, because Harry had snapped his eyes down to mine, the intensity with which he had been searching the street beyond now focused entirely on me. Slowly, the indignation melted away from his face to be replaced by something I couldn't name. I was far too preoccupied with the intensity of his eyes to contemplate the other aspects of his face.

Harry's breath hitched, and we both exhaled at the same time, our breath mingling in the small space between our faces like a pool of fog that's been disturbed by a soft footstep. The warmth of it spread across my cheeks as his eyes grew ever closer to my own, and my eyelids flickered to half-closed of their own accord.

My mind went misty as I viewed his intense green eyes so close to my own. It seemed to me that if he got much closer, my eyelashes would brush gently against his glasses.

Suddenly, a flash of white flitted across the lenses of his spectacles and when it receded his eyes were once again focused over my head. A wolf whistle sounded behind me, and I turned to see a boy of about thirteen leaning on one foot from his bicycle, the sun glinting off the metal of the handlebars. He snickered and tipped an imaginary hat at us before riding off again.

I took a shuddering breath and turned back to Harry. He was staring down the street where the boy had disappeared, refusing to look at me. Finally, after searching the street thoroughly two times over, he flicked his eyes to my face.

And stepped away quickly.

The warmth that had tickled my cheeks faded to nothing. We stared at one another.

"I…" Harry started, looking at the ground. He burst into a flurry of motion so suddenly that he nearly upset his glasses from his face, and began gathering the plastic packages from the ground quickly.

"See?" he said as he grabbed another package from the ground. "That Muggle would have seen you with your wand, and then what would have happened?"

The fogginess that had consumed my head seemed to dissipate slowly with his words.

I opened my mouth, a few strangled noises coming from my throat before I managed a feeble, "Excuse me?"

Harry looked up at me. For a moment, I thought the eyes behind his glasses still contained a fragment of the intensity I had seen before, intermingled with a deep sadness, before the shutter closed swiftly behind his pupils.

"You have to be more careful, Ginny. The war may be over, but that doesn't mean we can be careless. It took an entire year for the Ministry to get to all the Muggles that needed to be obliviated because of all the chaos of the war, we can't just undo all of that."

I gaped at him, anger welling up inside my chest. I could feel my face heating as I thought about the change in him from thirty seconds before.

"Excuse me?" I said again. "Careless? If you hadn't been acting like a fool I wouldn't have had to get my wand out!"

Harry was standing up now. "Well, if you hadn't acted so drastically and pretended to hold my balls hostage I wouldn't have been so out of it!"

"Well if you hadn't sent me that damnable Firewhiskey there wouldn't have been exploded green chickens from hell, Susan wouldn't have used up all the toilet tissue, Hermione wouldn't have remembered we needed more, I wouldn't have had to go out to get it, and I wouldn't have had to attack the sodding old lady, and we wouldn't even be in this situation in the first place!"

Harry blinked at me a few times as I stood heaving breaths in before him.

"You attacked an old lady?"

I screamed in frustration. "It was a noticeable persuasion to get her to return my loo roll package, you prat!"

Harry stared. And then he burst into laughter.

I glared at him. And then I plucked up a package of loo rolls and chucked it at his head.

He laughed harder, and gripped his knees with his hands. "Is that," he stopped to gasp in air, "is that how you-" he laughed again, "how you attacked the old lady?"

He let out a howl of laughter when I only glared. "It is!" he cried joyfully, pointing at me. "You threw loo rolls at her!"

I growled at him and began stuffing loo rolls into his arms. I grabbed my share and started towards a back alley, Harry following me, chuckling at odd intervals.

"Loo roll at her," he chuckled, "Attacked her. Prison. Haaahahahaha."

I huffed but said nothing, walking briskly ahead of him.

"Aw, come on, Gin," he said behind me. "You've got to admit it's funny."

Did not.

"Would it help if I said I was sorry for yelling at you back there?"

I fixed my posture into what I hoped would convey a firm, "No."

Harry sighed. "What if I-"

I didn't hear the rest of his sentence because I'd apparated to the men's bathroom of History Hall. I heard a faint pop from the hallway and then a soft creak as the swinging door was opened.

"Ginny?"

I continued to fix rolls of toilet tissue in the stalls. Harry came into the room.

"I really am sorry, Gin," he said. I didn't turn, but my back lost some of its stiffnes despite my willing it not to. I wanted to make him suffer for looking at me like he had and making my brain go misty. I wanted to punish him for making all my old feelings come flying back.

I jumped as I felt a pair of arms encircle my waist from behind.

Harry's voice sounded to the side of my head, and I could feel his breath tickling the skin behind my ear.

"Please Gin?" he said softly, "Forgive me?"

Just barely, I managed to keep myself from shuddering. I closed my eyes and tried to compose myself before turning in his embrace and sticking a package of loo rolls in his chest, as if the small package could put a barrier between us that could block all the emotions whirling within me from spilling forth and engulfing us both in a web of tangled confusion.

"Fine," I said, "But only if you finish putting all these in the stalls."

Harry grinned and grabbed the package.

"Gladly," he said happily, and turned to leave the stall. I braced myself on the side walls and took a deep breath as I heard Harry fumbling around in the next stall.

What had happened outside the Muggle prison?

Well, I knew what had happened. I'd been forced to finally admit that perhaps I wasn't completely indifferent towards the guy. And there was really no denying it any longer. I was sunk. Indefinitely, I was sunk.

But what about him?

Something in me wanted to hope that that look he'd given me had meant something, but…well, that was Harry, wasn't it? He was always fluctuating between moods, changing his mind about all things relating to emotions, and desperately trying to keep those telling eyes of him firmly shuttered. That one look, out of all the other ones, hadn't been any different.

Hoping wouldn't get me anywhere.

Can we say angst? I was totally angsting out. Like a teenager high on Mandrake fumes.

I was depressed. My thoughts were depressed. I was leaning against a depressing bathroom stall next to the man that was making me feel depressed.

It was depressing.

I decided I needed to stop being depressed and forget about Harry. It was hard, though, since he insisted on talking to me.

"So what did you do to that old lady that landed you in the slammer?"

I took a breath, pushed off the wall, and resolved myself not to be depressed. I will not be depressed, I resolved to myself.

"I threw a package of loo rolls at her and she landed in a tuna can mountain," I said, leaning against the doorframe of the stall Harry was in.

He looked over his shoulder at me with a disbelieving look on his face. "You're serious?"

I nodded. "Perfectly."

Harry burst out laughing again. He straightened, still chuckling, and moved around me to get to the next stall.

"Merlin, I love you, Gin," he said, smiling at me before he disappeared into the next stall.

I froze.

It was like a miniature Hungarian Horntail was trapped inside my chest while her precious egg lay confined in the inner walls of my heart.

He was joking with me. He'd just told me he loved me in a tone that suggested a brotherly sort of love. Or maybe a friendly sort of love. The sort of love you have for someone because they amuse you.

That made me bitter. Really bitter. I was as bitter as a lemon wedge in a soup made of unripe apple juice.

I was even more bitter than that.

I was as bitter as…Snape when his most hated student passed his potions NEWT with flying colors due to tutoring from Hermione and a textbook that had previously belonged to the potion's master himself.

See? You see what I mean? Everything came back to Harry. It was infuriating.

I came back from my reverie to find Harry peering out at me from a bathroom stall.

"You alright?" he asked.

I looked away from him and started towards the doorway. "Fine," I said shortly. "I'm going to find Hermione."

Harry frowned. "Are you sure you're alright."

"I'm fine, Harry!" I exploded, turning at the doorway. "I don't need another brother always asking me that, alright?"

I don't have very good control over my emotions sometimes, see.

I left him gaping as I pushed through the doorway, on my way outside. Where I was going to throw something. And break something. Multiple things. I was going to throw a tantrum. A huge tantrum. I was going to throw a tantrum of a tantrum of a tantrum.

I was going to cause a premature Armageddon. And I was going to be happy about it, and in no way depressed.

I ripped open the front door of History Hall and came face to face with the bride-chicken from hell.

"Oh Merlin," I muttered, closing my eyes.

"Ginny!" said Hermione, obviously irritated, "Why aren't you dressed yet? The dinner starts in ten minutes!"

I shut the door with a sigh as Hermione pushed past me.

"Well then that gives me ten minutes to cause some serious damage to something valuable."

Hermione looked at me sharply. She seemed to be judging something, and I leaned against the door, letting her scrutinize me, unable to bring myself to care much.

"The couch hasn't been picked up yet. It's still on the sidewalk outside my flat. If you'll go quickly, and get here on time, I'll get the notecards ready," she said simply.

I stared at her a moment, before enveloping her in a hug and desperately trying to keep the tears in my eyes from brimming over my eyelids.

"Thanks, Hermione," I whispered. She tutted and told me to hurry up.

I apparated away to the back alley behind her flat.

Seven minutes later I was dressed in my soft yellow semi-casual dress robes and standing in front of a mound of springs, fluffy white stuffing, and torn blue fabric.

If it wasn't in one's prior knowledge that it had been a couch, one would have thought that perhaps a bomb had exploded in a fabric shop. Preferably Madam Malkin's fabric shob, as that would make me feel slightly better considering how closely that place resembled hell.

The chaos and destruction placated me somewhat. But not enough to cease my dreading going to this dinner.

I sighed and apparated back to the front hallway of History Hall.

Hermione looked up at me from the flower arrangement she was adjusting on a side table.

"Better?" she asked.

"Slightly."

"Want to talk about it in the three minutes we have before people start arriving?"

"No thanks."

Hermione nodded her head, turning back to her flower arrangement, and I managed to plaster a smile on my face as everyone involved in the wedding began arriving and I handed them their notecards.

The rehearsal of the rehearsal dinner went as smoothly as possible when you have the entire Weasley clan in one room. Aside from the flesh pile of groomsmen in the middle of the aisle when Dad had stopped suddenly to exclaim at the ekeltric lamp he saw in the corner, the discovery that no one knew who was supposed to have gone to get the rings for the ceremony in two days' time, and the involuntary combustion of a flower arrangement due to George tripping over a candle stand in the hallway, the dinner went off without a hitch.

Hermione reckoned this just proved she was right in having a rehearsal of the rehearsal dinner. Hopefully, she thought, with one more night practicing for the wedding, nothing might blow up on the actual day.

Personally, I didn't share in this hope. I'd had too much experience with the Weasley family. Things always exploded when we were all gathered in one place, be it literal physical objects or simply someone's fury. Or, in most cases, both, as Mum's fury, in particular, had a habit of exploding every time something else blew up.

Which is precisely why I spent most of the night avoiding Harry and trying to sort out the confusion brought about as a result of everyone trying to read the notecards Fred and George had managed to switch around at the last minute.

Unfortunately for me, this meant Harry had an excuse not to follow the directions of his notecard and periodically try to jump me and demand to know why I wasn't speaking with him.. This made eluding him a bit more difficult, proven by the fact that he had just jumped out at me from behind another flower arrangement as I passed down the hall to try and find Forge and tell him he had best either sort out the notecards or part company with his head.

I jumped and made a small squeak of surprise as Harry appeared in front of me.

"Talk to me," he said.

I stared at him for a moment before shaking my head and continuing past him. "I don't have time, Harry. Have you seen Forge?"

Harry trailed after me as I opened doors looking for my brother.

"Would that be Fred or George?"

"Who knows."

"Well, I haven't seen either."

"Alright, let me know if you do."

"Ginny, please talk to me."

"I am talking to you."

"No, I mean tell me why you're angry with me."

"I'm not angry with you."

"Then why aren't you speaking with me?"

"I thought we just established that I was speaking with you."

"Fine. Well then why are you avoiding me?"

I slammed the door of the broom closet I had just peered into in search of Forge and turned to Harry.

"I'm not," I said.

He raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"Well then why," he asked, "did you duck under the dining room table when I came into the room earlier?"

I flushed slightly at this and Harry nodded shortly. "Ya, I saw you do that," he said.

I turned back around and continued my search for the missing twin.

"I wasn't hiding from you," I said, looking irrationally into the depths of a ceramic vase in the hallway, "I was…looking for my earring."

"You're not wearing earrings."

I let out a short breath of frustration. "Which is why," I told him as I turned back around, "I was looking for them."

Harry grabbed my shoulders and stopped me as I started past him.

"I don't believe you," he said.

"I don't really care," I told him. "So if you would kindly release me so I can go find Forge, it would be much appreciated."

"No," said Harry simply. Probably my eyes flashed fire. I was getting dangerously pissed.

"What did you say?" I asked him menacingly.

He shrugged and kept his hold on my shoulders.

"No."

My breathing quickened as I worked myself up to a right temper. I opened my mouth to make a scathing comment. I was cut off, however, by the appearance of my dearest brother Forge.

"Uh-oh, Harry," he said, "Looks like you've awoken the beastly fire-breathing midget from hell. What'd you do?"

Harry looked behind his shoulder at Forge. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Ah, you might want to give up. She usually doesn't do much besides claw your eyes out and bite your appendages off once she gets that red."

"Really?" Harry asked.

Forge nodded. "Oh yes. Mum had to do a tricky bit of spell work on me once when she bit my nose clean off. Just like that." Forge made a clicking noise with his tongue.

"Merlin. Vicious," mentioned Harry.

They were talking about me like I wasn't there. I didn't like it. It was making me even angrier.

You could tell by the way my face was turning purple.

"Maybe it's PMS," said Forge.

Harry reddened a bit at the mention of the feminine affliction but otherwise managed to stay composed. "You think?" he asked, "I've never seen her like this, and that's a…well, that's a monthly sort of thing, you know."

Forge nodded sagely and they both turned to me, expectant looks on their faces.

"You're both wankers and I despise you with every fiber of my being," I said.

They exchanged a significant look.

"Yep," said Forge, "it's PMS."

I growled at him and ripped my shoulders from Harry's grip.

"Harry, unless you'd rather me make do on the false threat I used to get out of that predicament I was in earlier, I suggest you stop asking me if I'm alright, stop popping up from behind flower arrangements, stop talking about me as if I'm not here, and commence leaving me bloody well enough alone."

Harry turned a bit peakish and nodded before turning and walking back down the hall quickly. I turned to Forge.

"And unless you want to part company with your head, brother mine, you might want to go fix those notecards before Hermione explodes."

Forge looked at me mischievously before turning and wandering casually back down the hall.

"Next time you have a lover's spat with dear Harry, warn me will you? I'd like to sell tickets. It's quite amusing when you turn purple like that."

It was unfortunate there was not a Charms class I could summon to the foyer of History Hall to observe first hand the incapacitating effects of a perfectly created Bat-Bogey hex. They would have learned loads.

Harry popped his head around the corner down the hallway and examined the flailing Forge.

"I don't suppose you would consider refraining from doing that to me if I asked you, as a concerned friend, once more what I've done to make you angry?"

A giant black scorch mark graced the wall where Harry's head had been moments earlier, and he looked at it fearfully before peaking back at me and nodding.

"Right," he said. "Got it."

His head disappeared back behind the doorframe and I glanced once more at Forge before apparating away to my empty, bare-walled flat. I threw my wand on the small kitchen table, collapsed onto the shabby couch in my living room, and cried until my head throbbed and my face felt like it was ready to catch fire. Then I made myself a cup of tea.

And as I poured the hot water into my mug, I was slightly placated by remembering that I'd made an alteration to Harry's wedding apparel which he'd discover in two days' time.

It made me marginally happier.

I looked at Arnold, puffing around in his cage on my kitchen counter.

"No offense, Arnold," I told him, "But men suck."

Arnold stopped puffing for a moment to look out at me inquisitively.

"Well, maybe you don't suck so much, but most men do."

Arnold made no response.

"You're supposed to comfort me now, you know," I told him. Still, he didn't move.

Finally, I sighed and blew my nose in a tissue, deciding I'd try to play the denial game again.

"Of course, you wouldn't know because you're not a girl, but PMS really does suck. Makes you feel things that you wouldn't normally." I chanced a glance at the little puffskein, "You know, like...warm and fuzzy sorts of feelings." Still, I watched the puffing puffskein.

It might've been my imagination, but I could swear he was looking at me in a fashion that suggested he was thinking, "Right. And I'm a Blast-Ended Skrewt with eyes."

I huffed at him and stomped towards my bedroom.

"Fine!" I yelled, "See if I care!"

And with that, I slammed my bedroom door with such force that the doorknob came off in my hand.

I stared at it. Then I stared at the hole where it was supposed to be. Then I tried opening the door and discovered that I couldn't. Then I thought about how my wand was outside on the kitchen table.

"Shit," I said, and then I threw the doorknob out the window in a fit of rage. Immediately, small snowflakes began blowing through the hole in the glass.

"Shit," I said again, before I walked over to my bed, curled my covers around me in a protective cocoon, and sipped on my cooling tea in resignation.

"I hate Sod and his sodding laws," I told my mug of tea, "And I don't care if he hears me saying that, either, the sodding wanker."

A/N: There you go! Long, huh? Bit different towards the end, too, what with Ginny angsting out and all that.

But I figured she's human even if she's usually more amusing than anything else. She has feelings too, you know :P

Don't worry. Next chapter she'll get control of herself. Well…somewhat, anyways.

Review please! We're almost to 600!