Holiday

-a day of festivity or recreation when no work is done.

-spend a holiday in a specified place

CW mental institutions

Ginny Weasley was on a holiday.

Switzerland, if you asked her mum. Brussels, if you asked Ron. A Normandy beach, if you asked Hermione. Once the family had decided on a uniform cover story, the answer was much simpler: Northern Ireland.

It was true, too, unfortunately for Ginny, who hadn't fit into any of her old winter clothes since leaving Hogwarts and was left with little defense against the strong winds by the sea.

They were brought to walk by the beach - not so much a beach as a collection of sharp rocks stuck in grey sand melting into green mucky water - every Wednesday and so Wednesday became Ginny's favorite day of the week.

Not because her threadbare sweater protected her against the chill or the opaque sea itself was particularly scenic, but because these walks on the dusky beach, where everything turned into a shade of grey and everybody faded away into muted shadows, were so much better than being confined to the institution (retreat, she corrected herself in her head) with the twenty five other patients (participants, the voice was getting snider) and forced to do trust activities and mindless mindfulness and getting blasted with experimental spells only to wake up hours later with no sense of time passed.

Here, by the ocean, at least a couple hundred feet from watching eyes, Ginny felt in control again. She inhaled the wind and it cooled her flesh as it went down her throat, tickled her spine, wiped the insides of her abdomen clean, and came back up, cleansing her as she exhaled.

"What are you here for?"

Ginny kept walking, hoping that whoever had tried to talk to her took the hint. She didn't care for the others; even if they were interesting, which they weren't really, just people of assorted nationalities cobbled together from all over Europe and dealing with various forms of PTSD related to the war, Ginny was not interested in making a friend. She was here to spend a couple of weeks, get that Healer's certificate of rehabilitation that would put a stop to her mother's glossy eyes and her the look of pity on her father's face, and get out.

"Weasley?"

She stopped. How was this happening? Nobody here knew her; she had looked over everybody as soon as she arrived. Hell, her father had called in a favor at the Ministry and gotten a list of all the patients just to make sure nobody who knew her would be there. Nobody here should know her; that was the whole idea behind keeping this all a secret.

But somebody clearly did, since everybody only used their first names in the institution, and now she'd have to fix that. Ginny shoved her hands deeper into her pockets - was that a hole? fuck - and turned.

She'd seen the man in front of her in a couple of the workshops, but he never volunteered to speak up and was almost the first out of the door every time they ended. She knew because she always beat him to first.

Platinum hair, almost white, fell in waves around his eyes and covered his jaw and upper lip in a beard. He was tall and lanky and hunched over a bit, but the most striking thing about him were his eyes, which she hadn't had a chance to look into until now.

She'd only ever known one person with eyes that particular shade of silver. "Malfoy?"