Chapter One: Leaving
Sometimes she wondered what would happen if they knew the truth. How would they react if they knew that there supposed "little sister" wasn't so little any more? What would they say, if they knew that little Ginny who had spent the year away on exchange in Australia was returning to them a fully grown woman, with friends that they had never heard of, powers they could only imagine, and a boyfriend?
It was the last of these changes they were going to find the hardest to accept, although to be truthful they shouldn't…
Sure, when she and Harry had both gone on exchange for the past year, they had made comments and him looking after her for them, but she was sure that they hadn't meant like that, and that if they knew the truth they would try to cause trouble.
Well, she wouldn't let them! She was old enough to know what she was doing, and she wasn't going to let them baby her anymore!
Or, at least, that was her plan…
Smiling softly through her tears at her friend Leah DeWitt, who had supported her and guided through the tough times she had faced during her training at A.A.G., she wondered how on earth she was going to manage without her; without seeing the spectacular views of the opera house and harbour bridge as soon as she woke up every morning; without those wonderful lessons in healing that made her feel like all the pieces in her life were finally coming together and her eyes were open to the world for the first time in her life. She was looking forward to seeing her family and the friends that she had left behind, but leaving was going to be hard! Never mind, she had to do it and do it she would. Did she really have to do it now? Why not it ten years, ten months, ten days, ten minutes?
Silently she berated herself for feeling like this. This wasn't what her teachers at the Australian Academy for the Gifted had taught her. She was a healer now and healers had to be strong, make instant decisions for the benefit of everyone, not just what she wanted. She could do it, had proved that by doing that so many times, so why when it came to leaving this wonderful place to go back to her family and friends who she had missed so much over the past year was it so difficult to say that final goodbye. Why was it so difficult to hug Leah one last time, and go and join Harry over by the port key and say the incantation that would take them back to Hogwarts, back home?
When she thought of the horror that she had felt on being told that she would have to spend a year on the opposite side of the world to her friends and family, away from everyone and everything she knew; to go some place where she didn't know anyone and to attend a school that she had never heard of, she felt like laughing at how naïve she had been. At that time she had been the child that her parents and brothers still thought she was. Coming to A.A.G. was the best thing she had ever done, and even though she still hated the Dark Lord Voldemort for all the hurt and suffering that he had caused, in a way at times she was silently grateful because were it not for the danger that she and Harry had both faced she would not have been forced to leave Hogwarts and go into hiding under the Fidelius Charm here at A.A.G., she would not have met her fantastic friends or learnt about healing or fallen in love.
That had been another problem she had stupidly thought she would face. Ever since she had first seen Harry asking the way onto platform nine and three quarters before his first trip on the Hogwarts Express she had had a crush on The Boy who Lived. She had never expected that he would fall in love with her. All she had been able to think was that without Hermione around to help her and stop her when she was about to make a fool of herself she wouldn't be able to manage around Harry, and that she would simply have to avoid him for the entire time they were abroad. However, before they had even boarded the Muggle airplane he had shown her a side to himself that she had never seen before, and she had resolved to simply do the best she could around him and if she messed up, she messed up! What a result it had been… two months into their stay he had suddenly and unexpectedly kissed her during a moonlight walk past the opera house and they had been together ever since.
Squaring her shoulders she pulled away from her friends and walked to the window to take one last look at that magical view, before bursting into tears and running into Harry's waiting arms.
******
As he held his sobbing girlfriend in his arms Harry looked back over the past twelve months and wished that he could do the same as Ginny and break down and cry.
*******
He had been devastated to hear that thanks to Voldemort he would have to leave the only home he had ever known, say goodbye to his friends and surrogate family and not contact them again for at least a year.
So many of his friends and family and even strangers he did not know, both wizarding folk and Muggles alike had been affected by Voldemort, and it was all his fault for failing to stop the events after the third task of the Triwizard tournament leading to the resurrection of the dark lord. Now he was going to have to give up something that was the best thing he had ever had, his school, to go hide away somewhere and his best friend's little sister was going to have to go too
Eventually he had begun to love Australia and his new school and the chance to be somewhere where people knew him as just "Harry" and not as the boy who lived. It was a refreshing change and gave him the opportunity to grow as a person and be himself, without the pressure of being famous for something that he couldn't remember and which had left him an orphan to grow up with his only relatives who loathed him
Now it was time to go home. The only thing was, he wasn't sure he wanted to go