AN: For Kristen (playwright82). Thank you for the beautiful free verse you wrote me, and I really hope you like this!
The castle is cold and dark, unfamiliar and foreboding. She runs blindly, desperately, through the halls, panting and terrified. Her red hair billows behind her, and the echoes of her bare feet slapping against the floor and the pounding of her heart are magnified in this empty eerie setting.
She is so confused, not sure where she is or how she got here, and she can't shake the feeling that she's done something terrible and very, very wrong.
Keep going Ginny, says the voice of her friend in her head, do exactly as I say, and everything will be okay. Instantly, a calm acceptance settles over her – the voice is always right, it will guide her in the right direction; it will not let her down.
She keeps running, face flushed, and accidentally catches sight of her hands, letting out an ear-splitting scream. Her hands, her arms, her night-gown, all of her, is covered in shockingly scarlet blood. What has she done?
Ginny sits bolt upright in bed, pale, shaking and clammy with sweat. Mercifully, the other girls in her dorm are still asleep, she mustn't have screamed this time. Remembering the number of times she's inadvertently woken them makes her stomach tighten with shame, as if she hasn't made enough mistakes already. It's only a nightmare, she tells herself firmly, taking deep breaths and trying to relax. It's not real. Tom is gone now; he'll never hurt you again. Just like Harry said, it's all just a memory.
There's little chance she'll fall back to sleep at this point, so she slips on her night-gown and goes into the Common Room, hoping that some time by the fire might lull her into a restful state.
However, when she sinks into an arm chair, she discovers that she's not alone in her inability to sleep. "Harry?" She asks, proud of the way she doesn't blush, and her voice sounds natural – or as natural as it possibly can when it's two in the morning and she's scared and sleep-deprived.
He looks up, startled, obviously as surprised to see her as she is to see him. "Ginny? Oh, hi…"
"Hey," she responds, letting the greeting hang awkwardly in the air. She is not prepared for this, and it's certainly something she'd rather have avoided, for what do you say to your older brother's best friend, who also happens to be your long-time idol, when you see him unexpectedly in the middle of the night?
She's saved from having to think too much about it, because Harry opens the conversation. "Can't sleep?"
"No," she admits, unwilling to confess that Tom Riddle has haunted her dreams for the past two years, not when Harry has far more reason to fear him.
"Me neither," Harry says. He doesn't ask what's troubling her, and doesn't seem to consider her ordeal with Tom Riddle at all. Then again, sensing he doesn't want to talk about it, she doesn't enquire as to the subject of his worries, either.
Instead, they move onto safer topics, like Quidditch and the Yule Ball. Harry doesn't mention his own role as a champion once, in fact, he steers carefully away from anything that might lead to it, and Ginny gets to see another side of Harry Potter, the boy who hates and shies away from the fame that has been thrust upon him, never quite able to escape it.
Her feelings for him change dramatically because of that conversation. Rather than idolising the unreachable hero she's placed on an impossible pedestal, she falls in love with the infinitely more human and relatable Harry Potter who stands, mortal and fallible, as her equal.
(She's in love with a human being, not a hero, and it's like another part of her childhood falls away. He doesn't love her, and it hurts.)
It is Harry Potter she dates in her fifth year, not the Boy Who Lived, not the Chosen One, and certainly not any sort of hero. People might point and whisper behind her back, and she knows this. She knows that any sort of association with the most famous person in wizarding history is bound to have its consequences, and she's prepared for that. She chooses to let them call her what they want, because she knows the boy behind the legend and he is inarguably worth any and all of it.
They have a few blissful weeks together, and Ginny has never been happier. Her nightmares, which have all but gone, disappear completely, and her dreams are filled with enchanting green eyes and lips that gently meet hers.
Her favourite times are those they spend by the Black Lake, when they can sit side by side, basking in the glorious feeling of the sunshine, and each other. It's just the two of them, and Ginny forgets that there's exams to be taken and battles to be fought. She pretends, all too briefly, that she comes first, even though she knows that Ron and Hermione hold a place in his heart that she can never hope to share.
Then Harry will absentmindedly trace circles over her palms, or play with her hair, reminding her that she, too, holds a special place in his heart.
"It's so bloody scary, Gin. Sometimes I think it's impossible, this war. I've had him inside my head, and it's – it's indescribable, it makes everything so uncertain..."
"I know, Harry," she says, and she does know, far more than anyone else can.
She wishes she can hate him, or even summon up anger or indignation to dull the sting when he breaks up with her, but she can't. She's been expecting something like this, after all. Harry Potter is far too noble – and in some respects, far too heroic – to endanger her any more than he can avoid.
(He loves her, and then he leaves her, and it's a different hurt altogether.)
Completing her sixth year without him and Ron and Hermione, under the Carrows' brutal regime, is one of the most difficult things she's ever done, on par with her first year.
The Room of Requirement, in the shape it assumes for the fugitives of the DA, contains the Mirror of Erised, as though Hogwarts recognises how hopeless their situation is, and wants to give them something to hold onto.
Ginny never looks into it, although she knows that many of the others do, unable to resist the temptation the Mirror provides. They keep it covered with heavy blankets for the majority of the time, mindful of the dangerous potential for addiction it represents.
Once Tom Riddle has been defeated for the final time, and so much has been lost, Ginny wishes she had looked into the Mirror earlier, if only to be reminded that the heavy losses she and everyone else have sustained have not changed her as irrevocably as she feels they have.
(Harry is back and Fred is dead and hurt doesn't even begin to describe how she feels, or the magnitude of what she knows. Nothing ever hurts us or heals us more than love.)
Ginny doesn't need to look into the Mirror to know that it will show Harry beside her. It's always been him, she knows that in her heart, and it always will be.
Written for:
Ginny Weasley Appreciation Challenge
The Gemstone Competition/Challenge – Topaz
The Legendary Gods and Goddesses Competition – Durga (write about a female warrior)
The HP Potions Competition - Death-Cap Draught (write about a nightmare)
fan-fiction terms category competition – ship (write about someone popular)
The Hugs and Happiness Challenge – playwright82 (Kristen)
