A/N – I know I'm working on so many other fics that need to be updated right now, but the good news is that I'm almost done with the next chapter of "Just a Theory." I've got the chapter all typed up and everything; all I need to do is revise it a few times because as it is right now, I don't really like it. So I thought I would post this, one of my Draco/Ginny one-shots. I've written lots of one-shots but this is only the second one that I've actually posted. Most of my one-shots don't get posted, they stay on the hard drive of my computer because I don't like something about them that I need to fix before I post them. But I really, really like this one-shot. It's one of my favorites, along with "The List," the Inuyasha one-shot I posted. I just think that this one…I dunno, whenever I read it, I just feel…hmm, well I can't really explain it, so you guys should read it and come up with an explanation yourself .
Disclaimer – I don't own the Harry Potter characters. Nope nope, not at all. I would be broke if I owned the Harry Potter stuff…
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Finding Me and Finding You
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Ever since her first year, she had been different. Her brother didn't notice and if he didn't notice, I doubted anyone else noticed. After all, if your own brother didn't notice something up, who would?
But I noticed…which is strange considering I'd be the last person anyone would expect to notice anything having to do with her or her family. But I noticed.
She became much quieter, which is saying something since she was a chatterbox before she left her first year. She became more distant from her friends and you'd see her in the library more often even than Hermione Granger.
In her brother and everyone else's defense (though why I'd bother defending them is beyond me), the changes weren't obvious. No, they were only noticeable if you were looking closely. But that's not to say I was looking closely, of course. Why would I look closely at her?
Anyway, the changes weren't obvious. She did pretty well at hiding them, even. She'd smile when her friend looked her way and she still did well in school. But as soon as she thought no one was looking, her face would change. Well, you know how when you take a deep breath and hold it? You're tense and forcing yourself to hold that breath, but then you release it and return to your normal state of regular breathing? It seemed like she was doing something like that every time she thought no one was looking, releasing her breath and returning to her "normal" breathing. But it didn't used to be normal for her. She would always smile and chatter. Somehow, her quiet, meditative attitude had become normal and her smiley cheerful self was something else, something not normal; she didn't think anyone noticed though.
But I was looking. She didn't know it, of course. Who would expect me to look? Even I didn't expect me to look. But I did look and I saw it.
I wanted to say something sometimes, but me being who I am and she being who she is, I decided against talking to her every time the thought entered my head.
But maybe I should have said something?
Why do I think I should have said something?
Because in her sixth year, and my seventh, I looked for her at the Gryffindor house table at the welcome feast and she wasn't there.
I looked for her the next day at breakfast; still no sign of her.
I looked again at dinner; she still wasn't there.
Either she had become invisible or she was gone.
It was clear that her brother wasn't expecting her disappearance just as much as I wasn't. I saw him shouting at his friends. I saw his friends trying to calm him down. I saw him stomp towards the headmaster. The headmaster tried to calm him down. It didn't work. Her brother just got redder and redder with anger.
I was curious as to why she'd gone, though why I gave a damn I couldn't say.
The next day, apparently her family, including her still furious brother, received a letter from her.
Why had she gone?
Where was she?
She didn't say where she was, but she did say why she was gone.
She had gone to find herself.
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What does it mean? To find yourself, I mean. Is finding yourself something you can do while walking around a park? While eating lunch at some deli in downtown London?
And why exactly was 'herself' lost to begin with?
Finding and losing yourself were concepts I didn't quite comprehend. Maybe that was because I thought I had myself.
But she had lost herself and was on a mission to find herself.
And that was way back when I thought I had myself. As it would turn out though, I really didn't have myself. Somewhere along the lines of my life, I had lost myself as well.
But, unlike her, I didn't notice that I had lost myself.
She did though. Maybe it was because she had once had herself but I never had?
I mean, if you never had yourself to begin with, you can hardly lose yourself. So maybe that was what happened with me? I didn't notice because I hadn't really lost anything? But then again, if I hadn't ever had myself, I couldn't exactly find myself, now could I? Because myself didn't exist. But herself was real and it existed so she could look for it.
But before the incidents of her first year, she had had herself. She had had a life. She had friends, a loving family, a future for herself, hazy and uncertain as of yet, but there and existing nonetheless.
In her first year, she must have lost herself because five years later she had disappeared, leaving everything behind her as she searched for herself.
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At the end of that year, I graduated. At the end of that year, there was still no sign of her, no letter announcing her return.
She was still lost.
And I had yet to be found.
So what did I do?
I left everything behind to find a me, and maybe find her too.
Not that I cared, of course; I was merely curious as to how she was getting along with her search. Had she accomplished it yet? That and I wanted to find myself as well.
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So I left two days after graduation. My father, through his many connections at the Ministry, had set up an interview with the Minister of Magic so that I might get a job at the Ministry, just like him, but I didn't go to the meeting.
At 7:30 in the morning, the time when I was supposed to be in a meeting with the Minister of Magic, I was waiting in a Muggle airport to catch the 8:00 flight to the United States.
At 8:10, the time when my father would undoubtedly be storming around the manor or tearing up all of England searching for me, I was sitting on what Muggles call an airplane, looking out the window and watching England getting smaller and smaller as the plane ascended into the clouds.
By 8:30, my father might have found out where I had gone, but it was too late for him to do anything anyway as I had left England. Even if he had managed to track me down and find out my whereabouts, he would hardly skip into America, home of the strangest Muggles he'd ever heard of. He wasn't too fond of Muggles as a whole, but the American Muggles were the worst of the lot of them in his opinion.
Besides, if I had abandoned him, would he really care to come after me?
The answer is no. He never cared at all before and he wouldn't care more after I had gone and I knew that, sad as it was.
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Searching for yourself is an interesting thing really. When I stepped off the plane and onto American ground, I didn't know where to start, what to do first. It was hardly conceivable that I would know anything about searching for myself. Hell, I hadn't known I had lost myself, how would I expect to find myself? And it wasn't like I had gone looking for me before, so I was at a loss.
I first went to a bank and exchanged my British money for American cash. After that, the only thing I could think to do was wander. I had plenty of money to wander for quite some time.
And that's what I did: I wandered. I'd travel all day, pause in particular towns to visit this tourist attraction or walk through that park, and then I'd settle down at an inn for the night. When the sun rose, I'd do it all over again.
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Did I ever find myself and her?
The answer is yes and no.
The world's a big place; while I did manage to find myself, I never found her. Truth was, maybe I wasn't really expecting to. She could have been anywhere in the world and she would most likely be moving around a lot. I really had no chance of happening to meet her on some random street in some random country. The world really isn't as small as everyone makes it out to be.
But, like I said, I wasn't expecting to see her. Maybe I never really meant to find her to begin with; maybe I was really only searching for myself, but in searching for myself, I thought of her and her search for herself.
Yes, I did find myself. It wasn't an easy search, but I did find myself.
What did I find about myself? I didn't hate Harry Potter; my father hated Harry Potter. I didn't want to become a Death Eater; my father wanted me to become a Death Eater. I didn't want to be the snot-nosed little brat of a child I was; my father wanted me to be that little brat of a child. I didn't want to follow my father's orders; my father wanted me to follow his orders.
That was what I found out. What else did I find out about the real me? The me that wasn't my father? Absolutely nothing. I didn't know who I was anymore. I had only just decided that I didn't want to be who my father wanted me to be. But then what? Now that I was not "me," who was I? What was the real me like? I had no idea and still have no idea.
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I guess finding yourself can only be taken in small steps. You can only find out small bits and pieces of information at a time. You can hardly expect to find out everything all at once.
Now that I know who I'm not, I guess it's a whole new search to find out who I am.
I wonder if that's what she discovered. Did she come to this realization as well?
It makes me rather curious.
So what am I going to do now?
I'm going back to England…without the me I'm not.
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I don't know why I'm doing this. It makes no sense. Why would I want to?
Is it because my father's dead and my mother has renamed me the heir of the manor? It that it? Because my life is finally how I want it to be?
My father's gone, I don't have to be who I found out I'm not. He had long since been dead when I stood on the steps of the manor after having been away for nearly a year and a half.
My mother cried; she was happy to see me home.
But if my life's finally how I want it to be, then what am I doing here, on this doorstep, raising my hand to knock on the door?
Is it because my life really isn't how I want it to be and I'm remedying that?
Maybe…but I guess I'll find out since I just knocked on the door. Why am I so nervous? The me I found out I'm not would never be nervous. But maybe that's part of who the real me is; he gets nervous.
I'm probably just nervous because I'll look incredibly stupid, just standing on her doorstep with nothing to say.
The door is open now and that sure as hell is not her that stands in the doorway now. The elderly woman who opened the door is surprised to see me, though I was expecting that. This woman is obviously an older version of her mother, the woman I had seen so many times at Platform 9 ¾ in King's Cross Station when school time came around.
I find myself asking if she still lives at this house before I can stop the words from tumbling from my mouth.
"No, she's long since moved out," her mother answers shortly, wiping her hands on a checkered cloth. Her answer was clipped and abrupt, yet slightly warm, as if she couldn't decide whether to be rude or polite.
I turn to leave. There's nothing for me here if she's gone.
"But…" she calls and I turn to face her, "you're in luck. She's visiting us."
The elderly woman shouts her name. I hear loud footsteps running down stairs.
"Yeah, mum?"
"A young man to see you."
She purposefully didn't tell her my name, I could tell. Did she expect that she wouldn't speak to me if she knew who was waiting at the door to see her?
She's standing in the door, just as surprised to see me as her mother was.
"Malfoy…you…you're back. Where'd you go?" she asks.
"I left to find myself, Ginny."
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In the end, I guess I found myself and I found her. And she found herself and she found me. So…I guess we found each other then, so I suppose it all worked out for the better in the end. I'm discovering a little more of me every day and I'm discovering a little more of her everyday too, and maybe that's what finding yourself is all about: finding yourself in little bits and pieces at a time, learning something new about you all the time, and maybe finding someone else at the same time.
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A/N – Tada! There you go, my wonderful Draco/Ginny one-shot. So, whaddya think? Good, bad, should have kept it locked away in the deepest, darkest corners of my computer? Tell me what you all think - that means review .
YoukaiTaijiya/Pamela