PART III
Dumbledore was wrong.
Her parents did not sleep for a mere week. It took thirteen long, interminable days before their eyes blinked open and Ginny could see reason inside them.
The first four days had been optimistic ones. It was during these days that she began feverishly writing what Harry dubbed "The Ballad of Ginny the Seeker". She'd been caught up in his idea completely; it whirled her around and kept her in its grip until she was physically too exhausted to hold her quill any longer.
But then, the morning of the fifth day, she looked at the stacks of parchment, blinked, and stood up from her desk. Harry's idea, which had been so good, was responsible for this pile of meandering words that described the first six months of being the Seeker.
"This is rubbish," said Ginny. "It's rubbish."
Harry looked at her, astounded, and adjusted his glasses which had sat slightly askew on his nose for the last few hours. "Pardon?"
She gestured toward her pile. "I've written countless words in the last few days, and none of them come to a point." Frustration sizzled in her belly. "It's astonishingly bad."
"But—"
"Trust me," she insisted. "I'm better off just burning it."
She flicked her wand and sent the whole mountain of papers on her desk flying toward the fire behind her. Harry leapt out of his chair and flung himself in front of it, blocking her. Ginny's mouth fell open as he used his own wand to set a shield around it.
"What was that for?" They both asked at exactly the same moment.
"It's rubbish," Ginny said. The frustration burned out through her words.
"But… why?"
"It's just… I know that to effectively write an article, it has to have a logical progression," she said. "This doesn't. It's just a series of events strung together. It's pages and pages and pages of facts but it doesn't say anything."
Harry looked at her.
He had this way of looking at her with sharp, steady interest. Of course, this had only been since he'd joined The Turnip; in the beginning, the looks were a mix of bafflement and curiosity. But somehow, that had changed the more they'd worked together. Curiosity melted into approval, and then one day, Ginny'd noticed desire. Despite the fact this was simply not the time, Ginny could not help but feel a wave of pleasure.
She put away her wand and sighed. "I'll never show it to them, Harry. It's empty. All those hours and I just don't think it's right."
Harry sighed. "I hate writing something and having to bin it."
Then he stepped aside, and nudged the floating papers into the fire.
Warmth toward him made short work of the rest of her frustration. "I still think it was a good idea, you know," she said. "What I was writing just… wasn't right." She lifted her shoulder in a shrug. "I will try again. But not – not yet." The flames flickered higher in the fireplace as they burned through her work. It was the right thing to do, Ginny was certain of that, but it was more than a little disorienting to watch the work she'd done the last few days be destroyed.
She was just wondering what she would do now when Harry enfolded her in a tight hug.
"Ahhhh," she sighed.
She pressed her ear to his chest and sagged against him. Her eyelids drooped. After all the writing she'd done, she was knackered.
"What do you want to do?" Harry's voice rumbled against her ear.
"Do?" Ginny asked.
"We could go to the church, see if Neville and Luna need help," Harry suggested. "We could check on your parents again, see if Ron needs help."
It would be good for her to get to the church; it would be even better if she went over to the Burrow. Guilt nagged at her; she'd only spent an hour or so at her parents' bedside today, and surely Ron and Hermione needed some help? But the thought of traveling by floo, or even Apparating, made her heavy with exhaustion.
"You know," said Ginny, "I think I need a nap. We can go to the church… or the Burrow… later, can't we?"
"Of course," said Harry.
Her nap lasted longer than expected. That first day, it turned into a full sleep. She woke up in the middle of the night, went to the Burrow to find Ron sitting at their bedside, and sat silently with him until the sun began to filter through the windows. After that, despite not doing anything, Ginny was tired down to her bones. Just a nap, she thought, sliding into bed next to the lightly snoring Harry. I'll just take another nap.
This cycle repeated itself over the next three days.
Ginny was just coming out of a doze when the bed dipped down with Harry's weight. His arm sat lightly on her back, and his fingers brushed her shoulders, right where all her grievances were centered. To her own shock and annoyance, tears immediately began to prickle the backs of her eyes.
Merlin, Ginny hated to cry.
"I went to the church," he said.
"I had a feeling you would go today," said Ginny.
"Of course, I wanted to see if there was anything I could do, but Luna and Neville have it well in hand," said Harry. His voice rumbled over her and Ginny sagged a little more into the bed. His scent was on the sheets, she noticed, not for the first time.
"Of course they do," said Ginny.
It was to his credit that he did not say another word. He didn't ask if she planned to go to the church that day. He didn't resume the conversation they'd had in the Forbidden Forest, and hint that Ginny was stuck. It had come to her sometime in the last few days that she needed to… rest a moment before she resumed her work. Everything hung in the balance.
"Bill's here," said Harry.
Ginny sat up, her tears drying up. "He's… what?"
"He's downstairs in the sitting room," said Harry. "He's hoping to talk to you."
It was the first time since their parents had been tortured that a brother – other than Ron, of course – had sought her out. That it was Bill…
"Do you want to see him?" Harry asked.
Ginny mulled it over for a bit. "Yes," she said. With only a minor struggle, she made it out of bed and lurched toward the bathroom. Already she felt more awake than she had before Harry had come into the room. Part of it, she knew, was because of Harry himself. The other part… had Bill come to extend a branch to her? Or was he here to have a row? Either way, Ginny splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth, and changed into something more substantial.
Harry was waiting for her, eyeing her steadily.
"Pleased I got out of bed before noon this morning?" she asked.
He lifted his shoulder in a shrug and gave her a fleeting grin. "I admit, I don't mind it when we stay in bed in the mornings."
"Of course you don't mind," said Ginny.
They went down to the sitting room together. Bill stood next to the fireplace, staring down at the charred wood and grey ash. When they entered, he looked up.
"Hi, Ginny," he said. He nodded at Harry. "Harry."
"It's been a while," said Harry. "A good ten minutes, I'd say."
Bill ignored this. Never before had Ginny found it particularly difficult to read any one of her brothers. Even Bill, who was more subtle than the rest, had never been closed to her. Except now, when she looked at him, she could not see even a flicker of his thoughts. Slowly, her eyebrows rose and his matched hers.
"Is this some sort of sibling duel?" Harry asked. "Do you need a moment to call for a second, Bill?"
Bill sighed. "No, August," he said. "Not today."
"Or any day," said Ginny.
"Or any day," Bill muttered. "Though I will have you know that the rest of us – except Ron, whom you two have seemed to dragged into your madness – are damn confused by the ruse." This was true; Ginny saw a hint of bafflement writ over his face before it closed down again. "You… both of you were at Godric's Hollow, on a date, and the next day, Harry's dumping August with the rest of us."
Ginny exchanged a glance with Harry; despite the gravity of the situation, she couldn't help a smirk. And it only grew stronger at Harry's sheepish look.
"You know what?" Bill said, with great haste. "I… I don't think I want to know."
"You probably don't," said Ginny.
Bill sighed and fiddled with the fringe on his shirt. "You know, we used to try to keep you two apart," he said, looking from Ginny to Harry and back again. "This – it's just odd for us. Except Ron, the idiot."
"Yeah, Ron told me," said Harry. The humor had gone out of his voice. Ginny reached over and took his hand, warming his in her own.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," said Bill. "Young girl with a crush. And, to be perfectly frank, Harry, you're a good bloke, but… we didn't want Ginny's feelings hurt." He pinned Ginny with another shrewd glance. "What Mum and Dad said was harsh, Gin," he said. There was a softening in his features. "But it's true that it doesn't seem like we know you very well at all."
She let go of Harry's hand and folded her arms across her chest. It hurt less, coming from Bill, than it had from her parents.
"I'm sorry you feel that way," she said. "But what else was I supposed to do?"
Shock flitted over his features, drawing in his werewolf scars. "What do you mean, what else were you supposed to do?"
"I am twenty years old," she said with great dignity. "I am twenty years old and you continue to treat me like I'm about fourteen. You wanted me to be some – some flighty girl. I gave you that."
His mouth opened and shut. "While we could have treated you with a bit more… I suppose you would see it as…"
Guilty pride surged up inside her. "You lot treated me like a child. I got tired of it and simply did my own thing. You saw what you wanted to see."
Bill tucked his hands in his pockets and cocked his head. His face was a blank slate now; the shock had receded. Puzzlement gathered his brows together and he sighed. "I don't think you're being entirely fair," he said. "None of us wanted you to have to do any of this – put yourself in danger, put yourself in the way of a dark wizard, have any of this touch you."
"Again, you mean," Ginny said softly. "You didn't want any of that to happen to me again."
He shuffled his steps. "Again," he allowed.
Ginny thought over all the words she'd written, scrawling them across the parchment; they'd burned out of her like Fiendfyre. The truth was that it boiled down to one simple thing. "I know that you lot wanted to protect me. You still want to protect me. There's a lot of darkness out there that none of you want me to go near."
"Can you blame us?" Bill muttered.
"If I weren't actively investigating stories for The Turnip, I still wouldn't be able to ignore what is going on in our world," Ginny told him. "I try to shed light in the darker corners, because—" her breath hitched, damn it—"I'm afraid of what's happening under the cover of that darkness. I will never be able to just assume that everything around me is light and happy – Bill, the way Voldemort got to me was through an old diary, for fuck's sake. I have to look closer. I have to investigate."
"I—"
"I have to know," said Ginny. She clasped her hands in front of her to hide the fact her fingers trembled. This irritated her so much she glared at Bill. "I'm sorry if you feel that because of that, you no longer know me. But you lot were equally part of this, you know; if you hadn't been so damn pushy about keeping me shoved in a safe place, you wouldn't have been so blind."
"But we—"
"No," she said. Her anger burned the last of the heavy, tired feeling from her limbs. "No. You caught me sneaking into the broomshed how many times?"
"I don't—"
Her voice cracked out like a whip. "How many times?"
"Probably sixteen times," he said, with great reluctance.
"And yet you assumed I'd become more docile as I grew older," she said. A sneer lifted her lip. "I won't hear it again that you thought I was a different person and now you don't even know me. I won't, Bill. You lot have known me since I was born. I'm sorry if you got so caught up in keeping me safe at all costs that you assumed that I was doing exactly as I was told."
"You—"
"When have I ever done exactly what I was told?" Ginny asked him. "You boys would tell me: 'you're not allowed on the brooms, Ginny'. And what would I do?"
Bill's stubborn stance softened. "You'd crawl out your window before sunrise and sneak into the broomshed and do your flying then." His hand scrubbed his jaw. "All right, Ginny. You've given – that's quite a good argument."
"Good," she said.
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Author's note: Welcome back to Peverell! It has been a bitch to get into Ginny's head for this. It's probably one of the more difficult writing exercises I have ever undertaken. So I'd like you to know that I know this chapter isn't perfect. I hope you will continue reading anyway as I get my feet under me. What I want to do is get through this family part and then get back to the episodes. I have so many ideas for those. I just have to get there.
Anyway, if you're reading this, thank you! I hope you are safe and well. I'm homebound.
If you, like me, are bored, we can be in this together! Here is a link to the Ginny Lovers discord (ffn doesn't allow links so just take out the spaces). We do fun things like watch movies together and share covid memes. One thing that we do that I'm particularly proud of is that we have finished one anthology of original works (all that is left to do is the formatting, and then we're going to publish it!), and we are working on another one. If you're a writer and this is something you're interested in, please join us:
INVITE LINK: Discord . gg / pnV9ZC (obviously take out the spaces)
Also, I am playing Animal Crossing! Here's my code if you wanna be friends: SW-6622-8561-2810.
Thanks for reading.
