Chapter 2: Returning and Turnings
Disclaimer: I own The Green Letter and Wakanda Library. That's it. Draco is mine! *Big people in suits come and drag morgyse off Draco while J.K. glares at her* But he's so beautiful! Okay, so I don't own Draco. How about Snape? *J.K. shakes a fist, and morgyse goes quietly back to her writing. * Oh, and for all you non-Brits out there like me, they have a product in the U.K. called "sellotape", so three cheers for J.K. who is wittier than we can even begin to imagine. Chapter 1 has been updated- not too different, but the Green Letter's editor is now a female, for those of you who have been reading this story since I first posted. I now have a plot, and hopefully new chapters will come faster. I must finish before the real thing come out!
On August 25, at 11:00 in the morning, a sleek back car with two ornate "M"s entwined in a circle of stars as a hood ornament, and MOM23 - which nearly ruined the professional appearance of it - on it's license plate rolled up to number 4 Privet Drive. A man who said very little rang the door bell, and expertly carried Harry Potter's trunk to the car. He opened the door for Harry, closed it when he got in, and then wordlessly drove him to the Burrow. Harry was looking forward to the Weasley's company after the depressingly quiet ride that had provided him with an opportunity to think about the end of fourth year, which he didn't appreciate at all. The events from that graveyard felt like a rock that had been spellotaped to Harry's head all summer.
He tried to purge the relentless images from his mind by squeezing his eyes shut and shifting his center of gravity to and fro, but strangely neither seemed to help. He was out of the car like a projectile when it rolled into the Weasley's drive.
The twins were sitting in the yard. Fred was reading aloud from a book, and George was staring very intently at a nearby chicken as though expecting or hoping it would suddenly burst in to flames.
"'...one must picture the exact spot in one's mind. It is suggested to picture the place of arrival in both a vague and detailed way.' What are they on about, George?" Fred asked. "Oh hello, Harry." George snapped out of his reverie.
"Oh, hiya Harry. Didn't hear you pull up." George waved merrily at the limousine driver, who was walking toward them with Harry's trunk.
"Where do you want this, Mr. Potter?" he asked gruffly.
"I'll take it the rest of the way, thanks," Harry replied. The man scowled, but put the trunk down. Harry wasn't particularly fond of his presence. The man looked appraisingly at the Burrow.
"Tip him," murmured Fred to Harry.
"What? Oh yeah." Harry dug around in his trunk for his money bag. "How much?" he muttered back to Fred. When the limousine driver realized what was going on, he embarrassedly mumbled something about that not being necessary and drove away.
Fred blinked curiously at the driver, and then turned back to Harry. "Honestly Harry, you associate with the weirdest people. GEORGE, WILL YOU STOP STARING AT THAT CHICKEN!" Fred suddenly shouted, startling both Harry and George quite a lot.
"I was trying to get an idea for Wizard Wheezes," George explained. "All this learning is making it hard to think."
"There, there, George darling." Fred patted his brother's hand. "Soon you'll be back at school, and then you won't be learning anything, I promise."
"Thank you, Fred dear," George sniffed, and Fred took him in a tender embrace.
"How is Weasley's Wizard Wheezes going?" Harry asked because he couldn't decide whether to laugh or be frightened by the twin's antics.
George answered as he and Fred disengaged. "It'd be going better if Mum didn't have crazy notions about us needing more sun-"
"Malignant sun," Fred said, shaking his fist at the heavens.
"-and more O.W.L.'s," George finished his sentence.
"Inimical O.W.L.'s," Fred growled, cracking his knuckles menacingly.
"We're stuck out here reading," George explained. "Plus, we still haven't heard from Bagman about setting us up with Zonko's like he promised. Then again he's rather on the lam for gambling debts, so I don't think we should be expecting to hear from him for a bit."
"Come inside," Fred invited, dropping his angry pretense. "Mum will want to see you, and if she forgets to send us back outside we can show you our newest bit of Wheezes' inventory. She doesn't know about it yet, so George and I may have a few days left in which to enjoy ourselves while she's deciding on how best to conceal the evidence of our imminent murder." Fred scooped up the book on Apparition, and the three of them raced each other to the door, leaving Harry's trunk in the yard. When Harry remembered his trunk and came out to get it later, the garden gnomes had discovered it, and had deified it- making it their apparent God of the Harvest. They were throwing gnome garlands everywhere, and it took all the Weasleys and Harry a very noisy and unsanctified half hour to get the trunk safely inside the house.
After an immensely pleasant evening, when the attempts not to talk about certain defunct Hogwarts students were not obvious, Harry lay cradled on a cot in Ron's room, staring up at the ceiling. A strange feeling of unbelievable contentment had come over him just from being at the Burrow. Being here made Harry feel like he had found a safe alcove, which he believed was a word associated mainly with doves but was the best he could do that late at night. Hogwarts felt like what he thought a home should feel like, the Dursley's was what he assumed hell must be like, and the Burrow was a haven, away from the world. Harry was consumed by an overwhelming sense of belonging and being understood. With the ghoul in the attic singing "I'm Too Sexy" and banging the piping, Harry fell into a contented sleep.
* * *
The following days blurred together in their pleasantness, accented only by a few colorful incidents. Percy came home one evening about the time that Harry had forfeited a chess game to Ron. Ron's bishop had "taken" Harry's rook (Harry thought that "defabricated" was a better word, but Ron said that was too unorthodox) and part of the tower had flown into Harry's eye. Harry saw Percy's face in the mirror where Harry was trying to pick the bit of wood out of his cornea. Percy looked irritable.
"Hi, Perce," Ron said. "Say, can you help us?" Percy glowered, but listened to their plight and managed to get the fragment out of Harry's eye with a clever spell.
"Next time, try to avoid injuring your more reputable friends, Ron," Percy sighed as he went into the kitchen to clock in with Mrs. Weasley.
Harry went crimson at Percy's comment, but Ron grinned maliciously and didn't respond to the gibe as Harry thought he might. "Want to know what's got his knickers in a twist?" He asked Harry. "He hasn't got promoted since last Christmas. The new Head of Department doesn't like him, so she keeps him in an out-of-the-way job. She probably guesses that he's a fanatic. He says she's repressing his 'professional enthusiasm.'"
"Didn't Percy have a girlfriend at Hogwarts?" Harry asked, remembering when Percy had been at school just a few years ago.
"Yeah. I don't think he's heard from her in ages." Ron grinned again at the new thought.
Harry rubbed his eye as he watched Percy trudge up the stairs. He remembered talking to Ron about Percy's ambition. What might this universal rejection drive Percy to?
"Let's go throw some gnomes about, shall we?" Harry said quickly.
"Uh, alright," said Ron, sensing that Harry was trying to get away from something. For Ron, it was like having someone suggest that they both go out in the forest and chop firewood, but he and Harry hurled gnomes until it became too dark to see.
* * *
It was only Monday, and Fred, George, Ron, and Harry had been shooed out of the house into the orchard with the irksome Apparition book. In their attempts at deciphering, they had managed to cleverly grasp what the title and by-line meant. After that, the main reactions were "You've got to be kidding me.", "It doesn't really say that, does it?" and "Skip it. Maybe it'll make sense later."
"Maybe the author's never actually Apparated," Fred mused. "Or maybe he's a teacher, and this is what he wishes Apparition was like, so he could give loads of nasty tests on it."
"'Wish Hermione was here. No, I wish Hermione would Apparate here, and then explain how she did it. When's she coming about anyway, Ron?" George asked.
"She's meeting us on the train. She's in Bulgaria with.... She's there until the end of the summer," Ron said.
"Now you tell us," George sighed.
Ron shrugged. "You didn't ask," he said with a little grin, though Harry noticed the expression in his eyes was more dampened than playfully annoying.
"You think Mum will notice if we started playing Quidditch?" Fred asked, studying the windows of the house to see if Mrs. Weasley was looking out at them.
It turned out that she did notice, and she didn't share the twin's theory that using the Apparition book as the Quaffle was a valid way to study.
* * *
The night before they left for Hogwarts, the greater part of the evening was spent in the living room. Mrs. Weasley had discovered the newest bit of Wheezes inventory, and in attempts to get back on her good side, the twins were feigning a new found interest in Apparition. For his birthday, the Weasleys had bought Arthur a large framed picture that showed the Quidditch World Cup- Brazil vs. Uganda- from the year Arthur was born, and Ron, Harry, and Ginny were watching each play, controlling what they saw with spells that made the images progress, regress, or slow down in either direction.
"I'm telling you, Gin, Brazil was just better," Ron insisted to Ginny.
"They were not. Uganda hadn't changed their game plan in years. They were predictable. Brazil wasn't better; they'd just got a more studious coach."
"I don't see the coach out there flying."
"I don't see you out there flying for Gryffindor."
"Hey!"
"All I'm saying is, it doesn't matter who you 'see out there flying'."
"But, Ron doesn't study Hufflepuff's strategies for us," Harry said, turning to Ginny.
"Well, now you've gone and killed my analogy, haven't you?"
Her prissy statement was accompanied by a grin. She realized that actually talking with Harry was even better than admiring him from afar. (Plus, this way, her elbows remained more butter-free.) Ginny's soft expression was quickly replaced by rolled eyes as Ron chimed in with 'Uh, yeah, that's right! You've got a cruddy analogy.'
"Ron, do yourself a favor and don't wander too near four syllable words," George called. "So," he returned to studiousness after a look from his mother. "You can Apparate to where certain people are?"
"Yes, but it's very dangerous, and takes utmost skill. Most don't bother," said Mrs. Weasley with not too subtle implications about whether the twins should attempt it.
"If," Fred began thoughtfully, "if I wanted to Apparate to where Madame Hooch was, to ask her some Quidditch questions, could I get into Hogwarts?"
"I thought Hermione was always saying you can't Apparate into Hogwarts," Ron commented.
"So, that'll be a thousand points to Ronny for 'Most Obvious Statement of the Year', am I right, George?"
"Why do you think he asked?" George said with an incredulous twitch of his eyes.
"No, boys, I don't think you could get into Hogwarts," Mr. Weasley answered. "Firstly because contrary to popular belief, teachers don't live in schools, and secondly because of what Ron was talking about. There are magical barriers around Hogwarts."
"And don't tease your brother," Mrs. Weasley put in.
"Thanks, Mom," said Ron loudly. "That really makes up for how you burned my face with the frying pan this morning when you were trying to kill my owl."
"Well, really, darling, you shouldn't have let him out of the cage in the first place," said Mrs. Weasley coolly. Pig had gotten out that morning when Harry was putting Hedwig in. Hedwig had returned from delivering the letter to Hermione, and looked very tired and thirsty. Harry had not anticipated that trying to take proper care of his owl would lead to the Weasley's kitchen being covered in bacon confetti. Ron's face was still tender from the burn, and it didn't smell too nice from the healing salve that had been on it all day. Ron hadn't been too bitter about it though, because Hermione's letter was long and detailed. She had evidently begun writing it before Hedwig arrived, because toward the end of the third page she commented on the owl's arrival. Harry wondered how she had so much time to write considering all the places she said that she and Viktor Krum went to. There seemed to be a great many things to see in Bulgaria, but Harry didn't get the sense from the letter that Hermione was enjoying them. She didn't talk very much about Krum, which Ron found merciful and Harry found odd. She lamented the difficulty of finding the schoolbooks she needed in Bulgaria, and explained that she had to send away for many of them. She looked forward to returning to Hogwarts and seeing Ron and Harry on the train. There was more, and Ron had read the letter several times over before depositing it under his pillow.
"I just hope my face heals up in the night," Ron muttered to Harry and Ginny as the others went back to talking about Apparition.
"As do I," Ginny whispered, wrinkling her nose at the smell.
"Ron, don't hex your sister," came Mrs. Weasley's automatic response to the tussle that broke out in the far corner of the living room.
* * *
The morning of September 1st, Ginny found Ron sitting in a tree in the orchard. The "orchard" was not one of those impersonal monstrosities of trees in militant rows. The orchard was mostly open space, dotted with six apple trees and only about five other trees that didn't really bear fruit. There were some blackberry bushes that formed the border on the side away from the house, but there was little else, making it an exceptional Weasley Quidditch Pitch.
When Ginny heard Ron's steps on the stairs (She could tell each of her family members apart by their footfalls- including Fred and George.) she followed him, mainly because she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Hearing rather than seeing Ron leave the house, Ginny peeked out a window into the backyard. The sun peeked back, shy but amicably orange. By the time Ginny encountered her brother, the sun had gotten too arrogant, and she could no longer look at it directly. "Well, nobody else can afford to be playful in these times either," she thought.
Ron was sitting as high as he could comfortably get in one of the four good climbing trees in the orchard. He was barefooted and his feet were wet from the dew. He nursed a splinter out of his big toe, and wrapped the leg around a branch to steady himself.
"'Morning," he nodded to Ginny, who stood at the bottom of the tree in bare, wet feet as well.
"Something wake you?" Ginny yawned.
"Me," Ron answered, and Ginny nodded, too tired to appreciate his humor, and still a little sore from having her Weasley red hair hexed to butter- yellow the night before. "Mum won't be up for another hour or so?" Ron asked.
"That's right," Ginny answered, wiggling her toes in the wet grass. Ron nodded and looked east.
"How's Harry?" Ginny asked. She didn't look at Ron, but she had no reason to be embarrassed. Ron knew how she felt about Harry- actually, everyone knew how she felt about Harry. She wasn't revealing obscure secrets by openly showing some concern over his welfare.
"We don't talk about it," Ron informed. Ginny understood that he meant the Triwizard Disaster.
"Well, what do you think?" she prompted. "Do you think he feels guilty about Cedric?"
"I don't know."
"You're worried about him," Ginny inferred. Ron shrugged, but not dismissively. He shrugged inarticulately. His sex did not allow him to talk about the concern and dread with which he pondered the lives of Harry, Hermione, the Dark Lord, his family, and sometimes, if there was any worry left over, himself.
And Ginny shrugged too, because her sex required raw, vulnerable feelings, desperate midnight chats, and words. And words failed Ron. Words wouldn't mean what he would try to make them say, because Ron did not know how to harness and steer words. His articulation was a defective dogsled; he could go nowhere because he could not catch the husky powers he needed to begin to move.
Ginny, however, knew eloquence. Eloquence shifted, contingent on situation. Eloquence, at this moment, had nothing to do with gender. With sibling articulation, Ginny climbed the tree, sat on the branch just lower than Ron's, and fell back asleep with her head against her brother's leg.
Well, perhaps her action had more to do with how tired she was instead of how eloquent she was, but nevertheless it made Ron feel better. Mrs. Weasley caught him red handed with a smile on his face when she came to call them in for breakfast.
Disclaimer: I own The Green Letter and Wakanda Library. That's it. Draco is mine! *Big people in suits come and drag morgyse off Draco while J.K. glares at her* But he's so beautiful! Okay, so I don't own Draco. How about Snape? *J.K. shakes a fist, and morgyse goes quietly back to her writing. * Oh, and for all you non-Brits out there like me, they have a product in the U.K. called "sellotape", so three cheers for J.K. who is wittier than we can even begin to imagine. Chapter 1 has been updated- not too different, but the Green Letter's editor is now a female, for those of you who have been reading this story since I first posted. I now have a plot, and hopefully new chapters will come faster. I must finish before the real thing come out!
On August 25, at 11:00 in the morning, a sleek back car with two ornate "M"s entwined in a circle of stars as a hood ornament, and MOM23 - which nearly ruined the professional appearance of it - on it's license plate rolled up to number 4 Privet Drive. A man who said very little rang the door bell, and expertly carried Harry Potter's trunk to the car. He opened the door for Harry, closed it when he got in, and then wordlessly drove him to the Burrow. Harry was looking forward to the Weasley's company after the depressingly quiet ride that had provided him with an opportunity to think about the end of fourth year, which he didn't appreciate at all. The events from that graveyard felt like a rock that had been spellotaped to Harry's head all summer.
He tried to purge the relentless images from his mind by squeezing his eyes shut and shifting his center of gravity to and fro, but strangely neither seemed to help. He was out of the car like a projectile when it rolled into the Weasley's drive.
The twins were sitting in the yard. Fred was reading aloud from a book, and George was staring very intently at a nearby chicken as though expecting or hoping it would suddenly burst in to flames.
"'...one must picture the exact spot in one's mind. It is suggested to picture the place of arrival in both a vague and detailed way.' What are they on about, George?" Fred asked. "Oh hello, Harry." George snapped out of his reverie.
"Oh, hiya Harry. Didn't hear you pull up." George waved merrily at the limousine driver, who was walking toward them with Harry's trunk.
"Where do you want this, Mr. Potter?" he asked gruffly.
"I'll take it the rest of the way, thanks," Harry replied. The man scowled, but put the trunk down. Harry wasn't particularly fond of his presence. The man looked appraisingly at the Burrow.
"Tip him," murmured Fred to Harry.
"What? Oh yeah." Harry dug around in his trunk for his money bag. "How much?" he muttered back to Fred. When the limousine driver realized what was going on, he embarrassedly mumbled something about that not being necessary and drove away.
Fred blinked curiously at the driver, and then turned back to Harry. "Honestly Harry, you associate with the weirdest people. GEORGE, WILL YOU STOP STARING AT THAT CHICKEN!" Fred suddenly shouted, startling both Harry and George quite a lot.
"I was trying to get an idea for Wizard Wheezes," George explained. "All this learning is making it hard to think."
"There, there, George darling." Fred patted his brother's hand. "Soon you'll be back at school, and then you won't be learning anything, I promise."
"Thank you, Fred dear," George sniffed, and Fred took him in a tender embrace.
"How is Weasley's Wizard Wheezes going?" Harry asked because he couldn't decide whether to laugh or be frightened by the twin's antics.
George answered as he and Fred disengaged. "It'd be going better if Mum didn't have crazy notions about us needing more sun-"
"Malignant sun," Fred said, shaking his fist at the heavens.
"-and more O.W.L.'s," George finished his sentence.
"Inimical O.W.L.'s," Fred growled, cracking his knuckles menacingly.
"We're stuck out here reading," George explained. "Plus, we still haven't heard from Bagman about setting us up with Zonko's like he promised. Then again he's rather on the lam for gambling debts, so I don't think we should be expecting to hear from him for a bit."
"Come inside," Fred invited, dropping his angry pretense. "Mum will want to see you, and if she forgets to send us back outside we can show you our newest bit of Wheezes' inventory. She doesn't know about it yet, so George and I may have a few days left in which to enjoy ourselves while she's deciding on how best to conceal the evidence of our imminent murder." Fred scooped up the book on Apparition, and the three of them raced each other to the door, leaving Harry's trunk in the yard. When Harry remembered his trunk and came out to get it later, the garden gnomes had discovered it, and had deified it- making it their apparent God of the Harvest. They were throwing gnome garlands everywhere, and it took all the Weasleys and Harry a very noisy and unsanctified half hour to get the trunk safely inside the house.
After an immensely pleasant evening, when the attempts not to talk about certain defunct Hogwarts students were not obvious, Harry lay cradled on a cot in Ron's room, staring up at the ceiling. A strange feeling of unbelievable contentment had come over him just from being at the Burrow. Being here made Harry feel like he had found a safe alcove, which he believed was a word associated mainly with doves but was the best he could do that late at night. Hogwarts felt like what he thought a home should feel like, the Dursley's was what he assumed hell must be like, and the Burrow was a haven, away from the world. Harry was consumed by an overwhelming sense of belonging and being understood. With the ghoul in the attic singing "I'm Too Sexy" and banging the piping, Harry fell into a contented sleep.
* * *
The following days blurred together in their pleasantness, accented only by a few colorful incidents. Percy came home one evening about the time that Harry had forfeited a chess game to Ron. Ron's bishop had "taken" Harry's rook (Harry thought that "defabricated" was a better word, but Ron said that was too unorthodox) and part of the tower had flown into Harry's eye. Harry saw Percy's face in the mirror where Harry was trying to pick the bit of wood out of his cornea. Percy looked irritable.
"Hi, Perce," Ron said. "Say, can you help us?" Percy glowered, but listened to their plight and managed to get the fragment out of Harry's eye with a clever spell.
"Next time, try to avoid injuring your more reputable friends, Ron," Percy sighed as he went into the kitchen to clock in with Mrs. Weasley.
Harry went crimson at Percy's comment, but Ron grinned maliciously and didn't respond to the gibe as Harry thought he might. "Want to know what's got his knickers in a twist?" He asked Harry. "He hasn't got promoted since last Christmas. The new Head of Department doesn't like him, so she keeps him in an out-of-the-way job. She probably guesses that he's a fanatic. He says she's repressing his 'professional enthusiasm.'"
"Didn't Percy have a girlfriend at Hogwarts?" Harry asked, remembering when Percy had been at school just a few years ago.
"Yeah. I don't think he's heard from her in ages." Ron grinned again at the new thought.
Harry rubbed his eye as he watched Percy trudge up the stairs. He remembered talking to Ron about Percy's ambition. What might this universal rejection drive Percy to?
"Let's go throw some gnomes about, shall we?" Harry said quickly.
"Uh, alright," said Ron, sensing that Harry was trying to get away from something. For Ron, it was like having someone suggest that they both go out in the forest and chop firewood, but he and Harry hurled gnomes until it became too dark to see.
* * *
It was only Monday, and Fred, George, Ron, and Harry had been shooed out of the house into the orchard with the irksome Apparition book. In their attempts at deciphering, they had managed to cleverly grasp what the title and by-line meant. After that, the main reactions were "You've got to be kidding me.", "It doesn't really say that, does it?" and "Skip it. Maybe it'll make sense later."
"Maybe the author's never actually Apparated," Fred mused. "Or maybe he's a teacher, and this is what he wishes Apparition was like, so he could give loads of nasty tests on it."
"'Wish Hermione was here. No, I wish Hermione would Apparate here, and then explain how she did it. When's she coming about anyway, Ron?" George asked.
"She's meeting us on the train. She's in Bulgaria with.... She's there until the end of the summer," Ron said.
"Now you tell us," George sighed.
Ron shrugged. "You didn't ask," he said with a little grin, though Harry noticed the expression in his eyes was more dampened than playfully annoying.
"You think Mum will notice if we started playing Quidditch?" Fred asked, studying the windows of the house to see if Mrs. Weasley was looking out at them.
It turned out that she did notice, and she didn't share the twin's theory that using the Apparition book as the Quaffle was a valid way to study.
* * *
The night before they left for Hogwarts, the greater part of the evening was spent in the living room. Mrs. Weasley had discovered the newest bit of Wheezes inventory, and in attempts to get back on her good side, the twins were feigning a new found interest in Apparition. For his birthday, the Weasleys had bought Arthur a large framed picture that showed the Quidditch World Cup- Brazil vs. Uganda- from the year Arthur was born, and Ron, Harry, and Ginny were watching each play, controlling what they saw with spells that made the images progress, regress, or slow down in either direction.
"I'm telling you, Gin, Brazil was just better," Ron insisted to Ginny.
"They were not. Uganda hadn't changed their game plan in years. They were predictable. Brazil wasn't better; they'd just got a more studious coach."
"I don't see the coach out there flying."
"I don't see you out there flying for Gryffindor."
"Hey!"
"All I'm saying is, it doesn't matter who you 'see out there flying'."
"But, Ron doesn't study Hufflepuff's strategies for us," Harry said, turning to Ginny.
"Well, now you've gone and killed my analogy, haven't you?"
Her prissy statement was accompanied by a grin. She realized that actually talking with Harry was even better than admiring him from afar. (Plus, this way, her elbows remained more butter-free.) Ginny's soft expression was quickly replaced by rolled eyes as Ron chimed in with 'Uh, yeah, that's right! You've got a cruddy analogy.'
"Ron, do yourself a favor and don't wander too near four syllable words," George called. "So," he returned to studiousness after a look from his mother. "You can Apparate to where certain people are?"
"Yes, but it's very dangerous, and takes utmost skill. Most don't bother," said Mrs. Weasley with not too subtle implications about whether the twins should attempt it.
"If," Fred began thoughtfully, "if I wanted to Apparate to where Madame Hooch was, to ask her some Quidditch questions, could I get into Hogwarts?"
"I thought Hermione was always saying you can't Apparate into Hogwarts," Ron commented.
"So, that'll be a thousand points to Ronny for 'Most Obvious Statement of the Year', am I right, George?"
"Why do you think he asked?" George said with an incredulous twitch of his eyes.
"No, boys, I don't think you could get into Hogwarts," Mr. Weasley answered. "Firstly because contrary to popular belief, teachers don't live in schools, and secondly because of what Ron was talking about. There are magical barriers around Hogwarts."
"And don't tease your brother," Mrs. Weasley put in.
"Thanks, Mom," said Ron loudly. "That really makes up for how you burned my face with the frying pan this morning when you were trying to kill my owl."
"Well, really, darling, you shouldn't have let him out of the cage in the first place," said Mrs. Weasley coolly. Pig had gotten out that morning when Harry was putting Hedwig in. Hedwig had returned from delivering the letter to Hermione, and looked very tired and thirsty. Harry had not anticipated that trying to take proper care of his owl would lead to the Weasley's kitchen being covered in bacon confetti. Ron's face was still tender from the burn, and it didn't smell too nice from the healing salve that had been on it all day. Ron hadn't been too bitter about it though, because Hermione's letter was long and detailed. She had evidently begun writing it before Hedwig arrived, because toward the end of the third page she commented on the owl's arrival. Harry wondered how she had so much time to write considering all the places she said that she and Viktor Krum went to. There seemed to be a great many things to see in Bulgaria, but Harry didn't get the sense from the letter that Hermione was enjoying them. She didn't talk very much about Krum, which Ron found merciful and Harry found odd. She lamented the difficulty of finding the schoolbooks she needed in Bulgaria, and explained that she had to send away for many of them. She looked forward to returning to Hogwarts and seeing Ron and Harry on the train. There was more, and Ron had read the letter several times over before depositing it under his pillow.
"I just hope my face heals up in the night," Ron muttered to Harry and Ginny as the others went back to talking about Apparition.
"As do I," Ginny whispered, wrinkling her nose at the smell.
"Ron, don't hex your sister," came Mrs. Weasley's automatic response to the tussle that broke out in the far corner of the living room.
* * *
The morning of September 1st, Ginny found Ron sitting in a tree in the orchard. The "orchard" was not one of those impersonal monstrosities of trees in militant rows. The orchard was mostly open space, dotted with six apple trees and only about five other trees that didn't really bear fruit. There were some blackberry bushes that formed the border on the side away from the house, but there was little else, making it an exceptional Weasley Quidditch Pitch.
When Ginny heard Ron's steps on the stairs (She could tell each of her family members apart by their footfalls- including Fred and George.) she followed him, mainly because she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Hearing rather than seeing Ron leave the house, Ginny peeked out a window into the backyard. The sun peeked back, shy but amicably orange. By the time Ginny encountered her brother, the sun had gotten too arrogant, and she could no longer look at it directly. "Well, nobody else can afford to be playful in these times either," she thought.
Ron was sitting as high as he could comfortably get in one of the four good climbing trees in the orchard. He was barefooted and his feet were wet from the dew. He nursed a splinter out of his big toe, and wrapped the leg around a branch to steady himself.
"'Morning," he nodded to Ginny, who stood at the bottom of the tree in bare, wet feet as well.
"Something wake you?" Ginny yawned.
"Me," Ron answered, and Ginny nodded, too tired to appreciate his humor, and still a little sore from having her Weasley red hair hexed to butter- yellow the night before. "Mum won't be up for another hour or so?" Ron asked.
"That's right," Ginny answered, wiggling her toes in the wet grass. Ron nodded and looked east.
"How's Harry?" Ginny asked. She didn't look at Ron, but she had no reason to be embarrassed. Ron knew how she felt about Harry- actually, everyone knew how she felt about Harry. She wasn't revealing obscure secrets by openly showing some concern over his welfare.
"We don't talk about it," Ron informed. Ginny understood that he meant the Triwizard Disaster.
"Well, what do you think?" she prompted. "Do you think he feels guilty about Cedric?"
"I don't know."
"You're worried about him," Ginny inferred. Ron shrugged, but not dismissively. He shrugged inarticulately. His sex did not allow him to talk about the concern and dread with which he pondered the lives of Harry, Hermione, the Dark Lord, his family, and sometimes, if there was any worry left over, himself.
And Ginny shrugged too, because her sex required raw, vulnerable feelings, desperate midnight chats, and words. And words failed Ron. Words wouldn't mean what he would try to make them say, because Ron did not know how to harness and steer words. His articulation was a defective dogsled; he could go nowhere because he could not catch the husky powers he needed to begin to move.
Ginny, however, knew eloquence. Eloquence shifted, contingent on situation. Eloquence, at this moment, had nothing to do with gender. With sibling articulation, Ginny climbed the tree, sat on the branch just lower than Ron's, and fell back asleep with her head against her brother's leg.
Well, perhaps her action had more to do with how tired she was instead of how eloquent she was, but nevertheless it made Ron feel better. Mrs. Weasley caught him red handed with a smile on his face when she came to call them in for breakfast.