A/N:  You guys are wonderful!


Disclaimer:  What do you think?

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The next morning, Harry woke up feeling much more at ease than he had in a long time.  He knew immediately that he was at the Burrow, a place where people knew and understood him and didn't judge him.  It was one of the few places in the world that he could actually feel completely at ease, and he was thankful for this.  The Dursleys, while not really being as horrible as normal, still made him feel like an outsider, and he wasn't sure that he would ever be able to feel totally comfortable with being at Hogwarts anymore, especially since so many of the students viewed him as someone who was either supposed to save them or destroy them. 

The Burrow, though, was filled with people who didn't care that he was the Boy Who Lived.

Actually, though, 'filled' was a bit of an overstatement.  It was actually the emptiest he had ever seen it, and when he went down to breakfast with Ron, he was surprised to see the normally crowded table being occupied only by Ginny and Hermione.  Mrs. Weasley was cooking, and she handed them plates stacked high with sausages and eggs after smiling fondly at them both.  They joined the girls at the table, and Harry took the seat beside Ginny since Ron got to the table first and claimed the seat next to Hermione.  Harry watched with mixed feelings as his two best friends shared a quick little grin before turning back to their breakfasts silently; he hadn't asked either of them about anything yet, and he wasn't really sure if he would.  Perhaps it wasn't really as big of a deal as he'd imagined.  He hoped it wasn't anyway.

He was surprised that both of the girls were already dressed for the day, since it was still quite early.  Hermione seemed to realize that it was far too early to be totally awake, and though she was dressed, she still looked tired and appeared to be stifling several yawns.  Ginny, on the other hand, looked very much awake and alert, and Harry couldn't help but notice that she had apparently put more effort into her appearance than she would have on any other normal morning at home.  He suspected the reasoning behind her silvery eye shadow and pink lip gloss had quite a bit to do with the fact that Dean Thomas was supposed to be making an appearance at the Burrow today.  Ron had told him the night before, and they'd had a rather lengthy conversation about Ginny and Dean, which had thoroughly amused Harry and slightly angered Ron.  It had been the only thing, really, that they'd talked about after Hermione had tried for several minutes to convince Harry to go through with the spell she'd found before finally giving up and leaving in a huff.  They hadn't talked about Ron's new... whatever with Hermione.  And they hadn't talked about anything having to do with school or Voldemort.  Actually, Ginny and Dean had been a rather pleasant conversational topic; it was interesting at least.

She grinned at him when he sat down beside her, having not seen him the night before.  She had a nice smile, Harry decided; it was very white, and it made her eyes crinkle up a bit in the corners.  She had nice eyes, too, come to that; they were brown but much darker than Hermione's, a sharp contrast with the light eyelashes and pale skin that framed them. 

"So, glad to be away from your family?" she asked brightly. 

Harry rolled his eyes and took a sip of the orange juice in front of him.  "What do you think?"

She laughed and said, "Well, good.  And now that you're here, Ron's not the only boy anymore."

Harry had heard more than once from Ron over the summer how crazy it was to be in a houseful of women, which was a sharp contrast from what he was used to.  Harry glanced across the table and saw that Ron was paying them no attention and was whispering something to Hermione that was causing a grin to play on her face.  He felt Ginny kick him underneath the table, and he looked over to see her rolling her eyes.  "Ignore them," she muttered.  "It's disgusting."

Harry took his friends' oblivion as an excuse to ask something he'd been wondering for awhile but had been rather reluctant (and scared) to ask.  Silently, he looked at Ginny and mouthed the word, "How?"

She rolled her eyes slightly and leaned a bit closer to him, whispering, "I'll tell you later."

She smelled nice.

Harry didn't know where that had come from, but he couldn't help noticing the scent of vanilla that seemed to radiate off of her hair, which she had tied into a very high ponytail.  For her first few years at Hogwarts, she'd worn her hair to her shoulders, but it had grown during the last year, and Harry hadn't realized it until just then.

"So, is Dean coming today?" he asked, mostly out of wanting to make conversation but partly out of wanting to quit noticing things about her.

"Yes," she said, grinning brightly.  "He should be here soon, so I better go get ready."  Harry didn't know what else she had to do to get ready, since she was already dressed and looked completely put together to him.  However, there were some things about girls that he just didn't bother to question. 

He questioned himself, though, when she stood up to put her breakfast dish in the sink and he found himself staring at her.  She was dressed only in a pair of jeans and a pale blue tank top, but the jeans were sitting quite low and her shirt appeared several inches too short, leaving more than a bit of her lower back revealed.  He averted his eyes quickly when she turned around and he noticed that just as much of her stomach was revealed. 

There were some thoughts he just didn't want to have...

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Dean showed up later that morning, and he and Ginny disappeared pretty quickly.  Ron spent most of the time they were missing brooding and making half-muttered comments that usually included the words 'murder' and 'football-obsessed git.'  Harry and Hermione, for their part, successfully ignored him for the most part, and as the three of them sat in Ron's room working on last-minute homework, Hermione even managed to shut Ron up for a moment.

She stopped mid-Charms' homework and looked up at Harry.  "So, what's with you and Luna Lovegood?"

Harry dropped his quill at her question and looked up to see Hermione and now Ron both staring at him with slightly amused looks on their faces.  "What are you talking about?"

She shrugged nonchalantly and said, "Nothing.  I was just asking."

"Asking what?"

"Well, you've been writing her, haven't you?  I just wanted to know if there was... anything else." 

Harry stared at her, his mouth slightly gone slack.  Surely, she hadn't suddenly turned stupid...  "She wrote me, so I wrote her back."

"Okay," said Hermione breezily, turning back to her homework.  Ron snickered.

"What?" Harry demanded.

"Well, it's just odd, isn't it?" she said with a sigh.  "I mean, it's not like you know her all that well or anything."

"Well enough for what?"

"For anything."

"For anything what?"  He looked at her very pointedly, and she sat up a bit straighter as she usually did whenever someone questioned her.

"For anything anything," she said in a tone that made him wonder once again about her sanity.  "But Harry, she's a bit odd, isn't she?"

"She's really nice," he defended immediately.  "You just don't know her.  She's not all that weird."  Ron snickered again, and Harry turned his stare on him.  "She's not," he reiterated.  "And she helped us last year."

Neither of them could argue with that.


"Do you like her?" Hermione asked.

"As a friend, yeah."

"No," said Ron, cutting in.  "Do you fancy her?"

Harry nearly choked on his own tongue.  "Are you mad?!  Of course I don't!"  He laughed at the atrocity of the suggestion.

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," he said, exasperated.  "But she's nice, and she's interesting."

"And she's crazy," said Hermione firmly.

"She's not, either.  She just has a lot of faith in things."

"Like Crinkled Snackcakes?" said Ron with raised eyebrows.

"Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," corrected Harry without realizing it.  Ron and Hermione exchanged looks that were somewhere between hilarity and disbelief.  Harry rolled his eyes and said, "Look, she helped us, okay?"

Hermione opened her mouth to reply, but they were interrupted by the appearance of Ginny and Dean, both of whom looked rather pleased about something Harry was sure he didn't want to imagine and was even more positive that Ron didn't want to imagine. 

Ginny walked over and pulled Hermione to her feet.  "Can you help me?" she asked, her tone not hiding the fact that she was about to spill something very important to Hermione that would undoubtedly make them both squeal and giggle like little girls.  Without so much as a word to the boys, she dragged the other girl out of the room, and Harry could hear their feet disappearing quickly down the staircase.

Dean took a seat next to Harry and glanced over at his work.  "Can I copy that?" he asked, nodding at the nearly finished take-home Charms examination.  Harry nodded and took Hermione's absence as opportunity to snag the last few answers from her paper, a task which Ron was also partaking in.  He quickly glanced over his other answers and fixed the ones that didn't match directly with what Hermione had written. 

"Just make sure you give it back when we get to school," Harry said, passing the paper to Dean, who folded it up and tucked it in his pocket. 

Dean nodded and watched with half-amusement as Ron got up and hurried to the door, locking it quickly before returning to his bed and diving into the stack of Hermione's homework, looking for anything else she had that he could copy.  "Do you two always copy off of her?"

"Only when she's not around," Harry said, quickly following Ron's lead and stealing Hermione's Potions' essay as his best friend hurriedly scribbled down the answers to Transfiguration.  They would trade later, so that they both benefited.  Dean, apparently realizing a good thing when he saw it, grabbed a spare piece of parchment from Harry's stack and took to jotting down the answers for the Care of Magical Creatures questions that had been set for them at the end of last year. 

The three of them spent the next few minutes copying in silence until Ron got up to use the loo.  As soon as he was gone, Dean nudged Harry.  "So, Ron and Hermione, huh?"

Harry looked up, knowing exactly what the other boy was asking about and, not really knowing anything, shrugged.  "I guess."

"How did that happen?"

Harry shrugged again.  "I dunno.  I haven't really asked, but Ginny said she'd tell me later."

"Why not just ask Ron?"

Harry made a face and suppressed the thought of what that conversation would be like.  "Because I don't want details about what it's like to snog Hermione, so I figure Ginny's a safer bet than Ron."

"True," said Dean and was silent for a moment before grinning rather cheekily.  "But that would be pretty hot, huh?"

"What?"

"If Ginny could give you details on what snogging Hermione's like," said Dean as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Harry tried and failed at stopping his brain from conjuring up the image that immediately filled his mind.  He felt his face heat up slightly and was brought out of his thoughts only by Dean's continuing talk.

"Course, I don't really Hermione would go for that.  But I bet Ginny might, though."

Harry nearly choked on his tongue for the second time that hour.  "What?!"

Dean just nodded, and Harry recognized the telling glint in his eyes.  "She's very, uh, forward..."  He grinned.  "I'm pretty sure she'd be open to lots of different things if tempted."

"Really?"  Harry mentally slapped himself for finding the possibility so... interesting.  Jesus, what was the matter with him?

"Yeah."  Dean sighed a bit.  "She's definitely not shy at all."

Harry tried desperately to recall the image of the eleven year old little girl who used to put her elbow in the butter dish but found himself only able to come up with the fifteen year old who wore pink lip gloss and shirts that showed off more skin than her mother probably appreciated. 

Just then, though, Ron came back into the room, and Harry nearly tipped over his inkwell as he stumbled to appear busy.  He wanted desperately to appear as though he were simply copying Hermione's homework and certainly not talking about Ron's little sister in any sort of inappropriate manner.

Yes, there were definitely some thoughts he didn't want to have.

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That evening, after Dean was gone for the evening, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were all sitting around the living room floor playing a game of Exploding Snap, despite Hermione's complaints that the game always gave her a headache.  Mrs. Weasley was in the kitchen making a list of supplies that she needed to buy the next time she went shopping, and Mr. Weasley had still not returned from work.

"I wonder when our school letters are going to show up," said Ginny out of nowhere as she threw a card into the deck and waited to see if there was going to be an explosion.


"They came late last year," said Hermione as she took her turn.

"They need to hurry up," added Ron, tossing a card into the pile.  "We need to make sure our schedules got approved."

"I'm sure they did."  Hermione winced as Harry's card finally set the deck into flames with a loud bang.  When the smoke cleared, she rolled her eyes at the stupidity of the game and went on with the subject.  "You might get Prefect, Ginny."

Ginny, though, laughed as she scooped up the cards that weren't singed and prepared to deal them.  "No chance," she said flatly.  "Bria Myers is in my class, remember?"

Bria Myers was almost as certain of a pick as Hermione had been the year before.  Hermione, though, just shrugged and said, "Well, you never know."

"Yeah, I do," Ginny finished.  "It'll be Bria and Josh Truman."

Everyone knew that she was probably right, but no one said anything.  They just started a new game and played on in silence for a few moments until they heard noises coming from the kitchen.


"Dad must be home," Ron said, looking up at the connecting door.  All four of them heard the footsteps approaching and the secure locking charm that was placed from the other side.  Ginny and Ron glanced at each other, apparently both getting the same idea at once, and jumped up, nearly knocking each other over as they shot to the door.  Ginny hit the floor immediately, her face as close as possible to the crack at the bottom; Ron opted for the ear tightly against the door bit.

They were very clearly eavesdropping on a conversation that was very obviously not meant for them. 

Surprisingly enough, though, they didn't receive even a hint of a scolding from Hermione.  Instead, she and Harry just watched silently as their friends listened in on their parents.  It was only a few moments later when Ginny rolled over onto her back and stared up at her brother, their eyes meeting wordlessly for a second, strange expressions on their faces.  No words were exchanged between the two of them as Ron reached a hand down and tugged her to her feet. 

They walked back over to the game and retook their seats, Harry and Hermione watching them closely.  When it was evident that neither of them was going to say anything, Hermione finally took the initiative to ask.

"What happened?"

Ron looked over at her and then turned his gaze back to his cards.  "Dad's been sacked," he said simply, though his voice was a bit uneven.

Harry stared at him and wasn't surprised to find that the stare was one-sided.  Ron seemed very intent on his hand of cards.  He glanced at Hermione, who returned a look that clearly said she didn't know what to say or do, either.  It was Ginny, who finally broke the silence. 

She drew in a slow breath and then said, "Tonks, too."

"But..." Hermione stuttered about uncertainly.  "But that's completely stupid!"

Ginny shrugged, her eyes no longer holding the brightness that they had for the rest of the day.  Ron still didn't lift his gaze from his cards.

Harry felt anger and guilt pooling in the pit of his stomach.

This was all his fault.

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Yes, yes, I know.  It's a bit shorter than normal, but that's okay.  We're moving quickly toward the start of the school year, so short chapters are okay from time to time...


Anyway,  I love reviews!!!!