I really don't want to be an idiot, it's not something I aspire too, I don't wake up every morning and say to myself "I think I'll go make Ginny's life hell today". Well, not often, anyway. But really, I mean, if she's going to insist on absolutely shoving herself into my life I might as well embrace it. But I will, just once more, make it clear, no matter how happy I am to have Harry as a brother-in-law, your best mate simply does not marry your baby sister. It isn't done, as my sister-in-law Fleur would have said, had she survived. But it doesn't do to dwell on the deaths, does it? I mean, look where it got Ginny, the top of the Astronomy Tower on a cold December night screaming at the top of her lungs, but that was seven years ago.
Fourteen years ago (to, approximately, the week) my sister and I met Harry James Potter. My sister absolutely idolized him, she fell in love with him very, very fast. Harry was rather indifferent to the ravings of a ten-year- old redhead at the time, I think. Harry and I soon became good friends, to be joined by Hermione Granger later that year. Ugh, it still makes my head hurt to think about Nicolas Flamel, so we won't go into to much detail on that one. I'll simply say that in those nine months I went from hating everything about Hermione to loving everything I hated about Hermione. Yes, that does make sense, think about it for a while, why don't you?
Our second year, Hermione paralyzed comes quite quickly to mind, but aren't I supposed to be talking about my traitorous best mate and amorous sister? Ginny was controlled by Tom Riddle (let's not get into how to spell THAT name, I still don't like to say it anyway), she was taken to the Chamber of Secrets and Harry rescued her. Have I mentioned Lockhart? He was an absolute waste of cells, that man. I couldn't stand him, Harry still makes a horribly contorted face whenever he hears the words Witch, Weekly and Smile all in the same sentence. Ginny will occasionally put one of Lockhart's books on their dining room table in order to watch him turn a brilliant color of magenta. Ginny really is Fred and George's sister, well, Fred's now. I don't want to talk about that, though, I don't particularly think anyone does.
The third year, of course, Ginny began her rather fast process of "getting over Harry" she wore a lot of makeup that year and would even occasionally speak to Harry without even blushing. Harry even commented to me once that she was rather good looking when she wasn't being a flustered idiot. We were introduced to Sirius Black that year, Harry's dad's best mate, Harry's godfather, convicted mass murderer and (drum roll, please) Petunia Evan's ex-fiancé, yes you read that correctly. When Vernon put her under the imperious curse when she was seventeen, she left Hogwarts before she finished her NEWTs, married Vernon and left Sirius just a little bit hanging out in the empty. He finally had to settle for living a pretty much celibate existence for the remaining nineteen years of his life. I always felt sort of sorry for Sirius, the way Harry spoke about Petunia must have really hurt him, I know that even after years of not seeing Hermione and knowing that she couldn't even really remember me, I would still feel a bit of a sting every time someone talked about her like Harry would of Petunia. But now, now it isn't much better, when Vernon was killed in the final battle (by some anonymous Auror who I'll possibly never meet, but always love just a little bit), the curse wore off slowly. And when Petunia remembered her relationship with her older sister and her treatment of Harry she went a little bit mad. Then she remembered Sirius, then Petunia found herself in St. Mungo's for a few months. She was fine for a while, this was just after Lilly was born and Harry brought his wife and daughter to his Aunt's Diagon Alley flat to meet her and later on described her as "a very sweet woman, but very..." then he had trailed off and said quietly, "there aren't words for it." I don't think there are. Petunia 'met' her son several weeks after she and Harry had spent the day together, and she collapsed, literally, all of her memories were obliterated. She's living in Bulgaria just now, at a rehabilitation clinic, but they don't expect her too heal.
Off topic.
My fourth year, um, are there words for that? No, probably not, but I can try. It was sort of horrible at the beginning because Harry and I weren't speaking, and well I do love Hermione with all my heart she makes an absolutely horrible best mate. Sorry, love, but it's true. Then there was Vicky, how much I hated him, if only because he had the guts to ask Hermione to the ball. All of you people didn't honestly believe that I'd never noticed she was a girl before that, did you? Ginny went to the ball with Neville and Harry was practically green about it, because I think he realized that he would have at least had a decent time with Ginny, I made a rather clumsy attempt at matchmaking as well that year. But stupid Ginny had already made plans! And then she went off and met Corner! Why don't my friends and siblings do what I tell them to? Not that I would have let them get married if I'd had any say in the whole thing.
Sorry about that, Harry just stopped by with a very distressed looking Lilly in his arms, he didn't look all too pleased, either. He wanted me to take her for a few hours, maybe even overnight, because something was wrong with Ginny. It would have been Dad's sixtieth birthday today, and Ginny wasn't doing well with it, Mum has busied herself with Bill these past few weeks more than usual, and even I've been finding excuses to go nowhere near the Departement of Muggle Artifacts recently.
My fifth year can be called interesting, it can be called the-year-Hermione- pretended-not-to-date-Vicky-and-then-showed-up-in-my-dorm-crying-her-eyes- out-because-he-broke-up-with-her. It can be called the year Ginny changed, obscurely, but she changed. She was still happy on the surface, but everyone could see that the glimmer in her eyes was a little bit less, that he trust in the justice of the world was fast fading. I think that if she and Harry had just gotten a little closer that year, if they had just pushed their friendship a little more than they would have gotten together, and maybe Ginny's trust in the world would be just slightly more. Her sense of just deserts is well-tuned now, though, and her sense of humor is almost back. Though she doesn't pull practical jokes any more, it hurts too much, for her. Well, what else, Sirius died. Harry and Ginny both decided that now was not the time to plunge into depression, but rather the time to go into a sort of convoluted guilt/denial that they both seem to favor so much. Potters, I'll never get any of them. Even Lilly has a weird tendency to hold all her emotions inside and she'll only tell her parents what's wrong with her, it makes babysitting pure hell, let me tell you.
The sixth year, the sixth year...what can I say? Hermione and I finally admitted our feelings for each other, and began to spend a lot more time "studying" together. Harry and Ginny were thus thrust together and became quite good chums, but Harry, the great, blind fool, was dating Luna Lovegood, then Georgia Wood, though she was Georgia something else back then and in three months she'll be Georgia Finnigan. Ginny was, well, Gin was Gin, that's all that can be said of her. She tried to date Dean Thomas and a few others, but if you looked carefully, she was always watching Harry, and he was always watching her. That's part of the reason they're such a good match, they'll always take good care of each other. They still do it, they'll care for the other no matter what, that's something they both need.
The seventh year can be defined in a single moment, when Ginny was told Harry was dead, she didn't think. She just ran, and ran, and ran, for almost a kilometer, until she hit Harry's arms, and then she struggled against him, but he pulled her back into his tent and tried to comfort her. I think that was the first time either of them even remotely considered admitting their feelings to the other, but it was successful. The next time we saw them they were screeching at each other, the conversation was rather memorable and stupid, showing exactly how little Harry really knows about us Weasleys.
"Gin, I've got to go," he said to her, just loud enough for Hermione and I to hear with our ears pressed up against his door. We're his best mates, we've got rights, after all!
"No," she protested.
"Yes, and you...you stay here, you hear me, Gin?" He actually told her to do something, let me tell you something about that relationship, Ginny is normally in charge, and the rules weren't going to break just then.
"I'm not letting you go," she said stubbornly. I heard one of them get up and begin to pace, I suspect it was Harry, he adores pacing. It's been driving me insane for fourteen years now.
"To bad, because I'm not going to let you out of this tent," Harry snapped back at her.
"Then you'll be safe," Ginny screeched, now they had begun the yelling, this was going to be painful, wasn't it?
"You'll stay here, then?" Harry asked.
"Not without you," she asserted her point yet again.
"Too bad," he said, then his voice became much lower, "look, Sugar, I love you way to much to let anything happen to you-"
"Then you understand how I feel!" Ginny interrupted him, "you're not leaving this tent without me."
"And you're not leaving this tent period." Harry retorted, his anger competing with his despair.
"You kiss me and then you expect me to just stay here and wait for you to die?" Ginny screamed, George turned his head from where he was standing nearby, saying his goodbyes to Angelina.
"Thanks for the optimism, Sugar," Harry replied and he made to storm out of the tent. That just didn't work out. She followed him. She followed him even as he walked into McGonagall's private tent, where he knew Professor Dumbledore would be.
"I'm going," he informed the wizened wizard quietly.
"Are you taking Miss Weasley?" the Professor asked in a tone of voice that clearly indicated that even if Harry didn't know it himself, Harry didn't have any sort of choice in the matter. I always knew there was a reason everyone thought he knew everything.
"I was rather hoping not to," Harry said, and both Ginny and Dumbledore laughed. Only Harry speaks like that in moments of crisis and emotional stress. Ginny's laughter died out soon, though, and Dumbledore began to speak.
"Harry, Miss Weasley," he began, rasping slightly, the many years suddenly evident in his voice. "I will only give this advice, if you truly care for each other the strength of two is far better than that of one. But if in any way there are misgivings, falsities, or deceits in your relationship, then I advise that Miss Weasley remain here, in the camp. Voldemort has no qualms about hitting below the belt, so the cracks in your trust for each other must be either nonexistent or long forgotten," his voice brightened, "they are hard requirements to fill, but perhaps simple for some." I heard Ginny clear her throat and Harry take several steps, and I'd be willing to bet he took those steps in order to wrap his arms around my sister. Hermione was at this point busily making the door see-through for herself, ask her for more accurate descriptions of these events.
"Sir, Voldemort is an excellent Legilimens, and, well, with his connections to both Ginny and I, would it be... um...safer for the rest if we were to separate ourselves from you?" Harry asked.
"Harry, don't," Ginny snapped, the two words she says every single time he starts to blame himself for anything. She'll do it at least once a day, and more or less for fear of Gin's retribution he'll stop.
"I don't want to hurt her, Sir, I want her to stay safe," Harry said quietly, Ginny let out a small sob and I heard Harry murmur something into her ear.
"This is not my decision to make, but, Harry, the auguries say that tonight is the predestined night for your confrontation. It is your decision whether you go unaccompanied or not."
"I can't live without you, Harry," Ginny said, a loud and desperate last attempt to get him to take her. She knew that if it came down to it, if his mind was truly made up, she was staying whether or not she wanted too. I think he knew that if he made her do anything against her will, she'd fight against it no matter what he did, and she'd probably win. Harry has this weird weakness, he just won't curse the people he loves.
"Then you have some sort of guess as to how I feel!" Harry snapped back, you'll notice they were arguing in circles at this point.
"If you die..." she said, half ominously, half despairingly. Fred was walking by, Alicia would be fighting too and she was saying goodbye to her family. God, everyone was saying goodbye that night, and it scares me to think how many of them were really saying goodbye forever.
"I'll try not to," Harry responded sarcastically, choosing to ignore the desperation in her voice. I know, I'm getting to sound like a bad romance writer, if you're this far into it you just can't get out.
"If you die," Ginny fought to continue her sentence, but I could tell she had to be crying to hard to get the whole thing out. "If you die I'll have to follow you." Dumbledore and Harry both took in their breath quickly, but Harry had soon regained his senses.
"No," he told her, quietly, "no dying, Ginny, no dying."
"Why on earth not?" Ginny asked him, sound for all the world like mum asking me why I wouldn't eat spinach. They needed to take less things in stride, these two.
"Because, you're much to great of a person to waste your life on me," Harry replied, with emotion in his voice. I've made a great show of being Ginny's overprotective big brother these past seven years, but at that exact moment, I knew those were hands she could be trusted in.
"If I'm such a great person let me choose life without you!"
"Then choose it!"
"No."
"YES!"
"NEVER!" I don't know what happened, perhaps she looked at him strangely, but he relented.
"Fine."
"Good." They left the tent from the back, we assume.
The next time I saw either Harry or Ginny was almost a week later, they had been put in St. Mungo's most restricted ward and no one was allowed anywhere near either of them. All we knew about that night was what Harry's brief letter had told us. Voldemort was defeated, he and Ginny weren't dead but, as he put it, "closer than we would prefer," he said he'd see us when he saw us. That they both loved us all and didn't want us to worry about them. Not worry when our baby sister and the boy we'd all come to think of as a brother or son were in the part of St. Mungo's said to be reserved for hopeless cases? Not worry when the same little sister was apparently "in no condition to write yet, but it's coming along,"? I will never understand Potters, or potential Potters. Ever.
Harry was reading over my shoulder, having come over to (finally) fetch his daughter on his way to work and told me not to worry, they didn't get the Weasleys either. He then went into the kitchen and proceeded to steal half my breakfast, convincing my wife by saying "But, Mione, what if I just...accidentally, of course... forgot to pick up your kids next Saturday night...and just accidentally turned off the Floo and the telephone and put up wards?" At least he knows how to get to her. He agreed to take our son next Saturday so that Hermione and I could go out on a date of sorts at Diagon Alley.
The next year, George died around November eighteenth, Ginny's birthday. And on December twenty-first, she threatened to throw herself off the Astronomy Tower, she was that depressed. We'd known, of course, that she wasn't dealing well with the war the summer before, when she had still been weak from that night, and had come to rely on Harry as her only means of communication with the outside world. Well, Harry, Hermione, George and I. It hit her so hard that he died, even though he had been ill for months, the only person who sunk lower was Angelina. George's Angel. No, I refuse to dwell on that, she's as close to happy as she's ever going to get again now, without her George, and I'm trying not to remember. Trying not to think about my father and my brother- brothers, George, who "died like a hero" as Moody would say, Bill, Bill, we've all lost Bill, he was so... God, there aren't words for Bill. And Percy, we don't hear from him much, well, Hermione, Harry and I don't. Gin does, Mum does and Fred never does, he simply kept himself separated from everyone he didn't think he could "help". He never did really believe anything anyone told him about the second war, no ministry officials really do, to this day. Denial (sigh). Gin even takes care of his kids on occasion, but Harry rarely comes into contact with them, and Percy is forever encouraging her to leave Harry. Percy hasn't noticed that wizarding marriages are damn near impossible to end just yet. Harry and I were at the Auror academy, Hermione was working at Hogwarts, but living with me on the weekends, since her parents had divorced a year previously, and she couldn't stand going back there. And after Christmas, Harry and Ginny were living together. Everyone agreed that:
Mum had enough on her hands as it was
Harry and Ginny had been through something together, alone, and it wasn't something that they were ever going to forget or leave behind them, but healing was necessary together.
Have we mentioned that Ginny wouldn't leave and Harry still won't curse the people he loves into submission?
The second and last year of Auror training with Harry and I was also the year Harry and Ginny were engaged and Ginny graduated then a year later, in a ceremony with almost two thousand attendants, they were married, then they ran off and weren't heard from or seen for a month and a half. When Ginny came back she started training to be a Healer, and they were sort of on the outs with each other mostly because they both wanted to deny that life was pretty much rolling along fine, and no one was going to come take happiness away from them.
The year after they had their first daughter, Lilly. Lilly stole Harry and Ginny's hearts the moment they saw her. She is their world, they are possibly the best parents ever, except for my mum and dad, of course. Lilly, and any of their other children, are, of course, the best possible target for a death eater, or anyone else particularly wanting to make the whole world go kaplooey. Harry would murder them if they hurt his little girl, then Gin would bring them back to life so she could kill them again. Honestly, that little girl isn't overprotected, Ginny wouldn't stand for that, but she's hardly ever out of her parents earshot. Harry adores his daughter, he thinks the world of that baby, she's brilliant, I'll give you that, and, as Ginny says, even if she looks a bit like her dad's mum and Ginny I'm a manticore if she hasn't got Harry's sense of humor, and that grin he always gives when annoyed. It drives us all mad! As Gin says, we all love him, we all love Lilly, but we'd quite like it if they were quite entirely different.
Harry once said that in seventeen years he might get to take his wife out to dinner on their anniversary, but since Lilly was born on their first, that didn't happen. They spend the night together though, somewhere close to the house, and they leave Lilly with Hermione and I, or with mum.
Right now life is just going for both of them, they are actually happy. Once, when we were seventeen, Harry told me that if he was ever happy he'd know he was dreaming. Then he kissed his girl, and he married that girl. And a few weeks ago, our wives had gone out for the day and the kids were asleep and we were talking, he told me that he was happy. He actually told me that he was feeling like nothing could make him unhappy as long as he had these two people by his side. He referred to someone as his family. Harry loves them so much, they're his girls. And Ginny, what can be said of Ginny? She smiles again, she takes care of Bill, sometimes. She falls asleep in somebody's arms every night and she doesn't have too worry that her papers are going to write back to her. Ginny isn't scared any more. Sometimes she has bad days, but we all do. I knowI do, Gin tells me Harry does, and Hermione does. Lilly and Allan are sort of what twenty five years of hell equaled, their generation. Their parents lives through wars, they can live in a world that is peaceful, and they are loved. Nobody tells them what names to be afraid of, everyone (but me) says Voldemort loud and clear. And we won't forget the people we lost, ever. I should just add that even if everyone, even Harry, is happy again now, we'll never forget that two-year-long purgatory we lived through. Never.
Emotionally Yours Ron
Fourteen years ago (to, approximately, the week) my sister and I met Harry James Potter. My sister absolutely idolized him, she fell in love with him very, very fast. Harry was rather indifferent to the ravings of a ten-year- old redhead at the time, I think. Harry and I soon became good friends, to be joined by Hermione Granger later that year. Ugh, it still makes my head hurt to think about Nicolas Flamel, so we won't go into to much detail on that one. I'll simply say that in those nine months I went from hating everything about Hermione to loving everything I hated about Hermione. Yes, that does make sense, think about it for a while, why don't you?
Our second year, Hermione paralyzed comes quite quickly to mind, but aren't I supposed to be talking about my traitorous best mate and amorous sister? Ginny was controlled by Tom Riddle (let's not get into how to spell THAT name, I still don't like to say it anyway), she was taken to the Chamber of Secrets and Harry rescued her. Have I mentioned Lockhart? He was an absolute waste of cells, that man. I couldn't stand him, Harry still makes a horribly contorted face whenever he hears the words Witch, Weekly and Smile all in the same sentence. Ginny will occasionally put one of Lockhart's books on their dining room table in order to watch him turn a brilliant color of magenta. Ginny really is Fred and George's sister, well, Fred's now. I don't want to talk about that, though, I don't particularly think anyone does.
The third year, of course, Ginny began her rather fast process of "getting over Harry" she wore a lot of makeup that year and would even occasionally speak to Harry without even blushing. Harry even commented to me once that she was rather good looking when she wasn't being a flustered idiot. We were introduced to Sirius Black that year, Harry's dad's best mate, Harry's godfather, convicted mass murderer and (drum roll, please) Petunia Evan's ex-fiancé, yes you read that correctly. When Vernon put her under the imperious curse when she was seventeen, she left Hogwarts before she finished her NEWTs, married Vernon and left Sirius just a little bit hanging out in the empty. He finally had to settle for living a pretty much celibate existence for the remaining nineteen years of his life. I always felt sort of sorry for Sirius, the way Harry spoke about Petunia must have really hurt him, I know that even after years of not seeing Hermione and knowing that she couldn't even really remember me, I would still feel a bit of a sting every time someone talked about her like Harry would of Petunia. But now, now it isn't much better, when Vernon was killed in the final battle (by some anonymous Auror who I'll possibly never meet, but always love just a little bit), the curse wore off slowly. And when Petunia remembered her relationship with her older sister and her treatment of Harry she went a little bit mad. Then she remembered Sirius, then Petunia found herself in St. Mungo's for a few months. She was fine for a while, this was just after Lilly was born and Harry brought his wife and daughter to his Aunt's Diagon Alley flat to meet her and later on described her as "a very sweet woman, but very..." then he had trailed off and said quietly, "there aren't words for it." I don't think there are. Petunia 'met' her son several weeks after she and Harry had spent the day together, and she collapsed, literally, all of her memories were obliterated. She's living in Bulgaria just now, at a rehabilitation clinic, but they don't expect her too heal.
Off topic.
My fourth year, um, are there words for that? No, probably not, but I can try. It was sort of horrible at the beginning because Harry and I weren't speaking, and well I do love Hermione with all my heart she makes an absolutely horrible best mate. Sorry, love, but it's true. Then there was Vicky, how much I hated him, if only because he had the guts to ask Hermione to the ball. All of you people didn't honestly believe that I'd never noticed she was a girl before that, did you? Ginny went to the ball with Neville and Harry was practically green about it, because I think he realized that he would have at least had a decent time with Ginny, I made a rather clumsy attempt at matchmaking as well that year. But stupid Ginny had already made plans! And then she went off and met Corner! Why don't my friends and siblings do what I tell them to? Not that I would have let them get married if I'd had any say in the whole thing.
Sorry about that, Harry just stopped by with a very distressed looking Lilly in his arms, he didn't look all too pleased, either. He wanted me to take her for a few hours, maybe even overnight, because something was wrong with Ginny. It would have been Dad's sixtieth birthday today, and Ginny wasn't doing well with it, Mum has busied herself with Bill these past few weeks more than usual, and even I've been finding excuses to go nowhere near the Departement of Muggle Artifacts recently.
My fifth year can be called interesting, it can be called the-year-Hermione- pretended-not-to-date-Vicky-and-then-showed-up-in-my-dorm-crying-her-eyes- out-because-he-broke-up-with-her. It can be called the year Ginny changed, obscurely, but she changed. She was still happy on the surface, but everyone could see that the glimmer in her eyes was a little bit less, that he trust in the justice of the world was fast fading. I think that if she and Harry had just gotten a little closer that year, if they had just pushed their friendship a little more than they would have gotten together, and maybe Ginny's trust in the world would be just slightly more. Her sense of just deserts is well-tuned now, though, and her sense of humor is almost back. Though she doesn't pull practical jokes any more, it hurts too much, for her. Well, what else, Sirius died. Harry and Ginny both decided that now was not the time to plunge into depression, but rather the time to go into a sort of convoluted guilt/denial that they both seem to favor so much. Potters, I'll never get any of them. Even Lilly has a weird tendency to hold all her emotions inside and she'll only tell her parents what's wrong with her, it makes babysitting pure hell, let me tell you.
The sixth year, the sixth year...what can I say? Hermione and I finally admitted our feelings for each other, and began to spend a lot more time "studying" together. Harry and Ginny were thus thrust together and became quite good chums, but Harry, the great, blind fool, was dating Luna Lovegood, then Georgia Wood, though she was Georgia something else back then and in three months she'll be Georgia Finnigan. Ginny was, well, Gin was Gin, that's all that can be said of her. She tried to date Dean Thomas and a few others, but if you looked carefully, she was always watching Harry, and he was always watching her. That's part of the reason they're such a good match, they'll always take good care of each other. They still do it, they'll care for the other no matter what, that's something they both need.
The seventh year can be defined in a single moment, when Ginny was told Harry was dead, she didn't think. She just ran, and ran, and ran, for almost a kilometer, until she hit Harry's arms, and then she struggled against him, but he pulled her back into his tent and tried to comfort her. I think that was the first time either of them even remotely considered admitting their feelings to the other, but it was successful. The next time we saw them they were screeching at each other, the conversation was rather memorable and stupid, showing exactly how little Harry really knows about us Weasleys.
"Gin, I've got to go," he said to her, just loud enough for Hermione and I to hear with our ears pressed up against his door. We're his best mates, we've got rights, after all!
"No," she protested.
"Yes, and you...you stay here, you hear me, Gin?" He actually told her to do something, let me tell you something about that relationship, Ginny is normally in charge, and the rules weren't going to break just then.
"I'm not letting you go," she said stubbornly. I heard one of them get up and begin to pace, I suspect it was Harry, he adores pacing. It's been driving me insane for fourteen years now.
"To bad, because I'm not going to let you out of this tent," Harry snapped back at her.
"Then you'll be safe," Ginny screeched, now they had begun the yelling, this was going to be painful, wasn't it?
"You'll stay here, then?" Harry asked.
"Not without you," she asserted her point yet again.
"Too bad," he said, then his voice became much lower, "look, Sugar, I love you way to much to let anything happen to you-"
"Then you understand how I feel!" Ginny interrupted him, "you're not leaving this tent without me."
"And you're not leaving this tent period." Harry retorted, his anger competing with his despair.
"You kiss me and then you expect me to just stay here and wait for you to die?" Ginny screamed, George turned his head from where he was standing nearby, saying his goodbyes to Angelina.
"Thanks for the optimism, Sugar," Harry replied and he made to storm out of the tent. That just didn't work out. She followed him. She followed him even as he walked into McGonagall's private tent, where he knew Professor Dumbledore would be.
"I'm going," he informed the wizened wizard quietly.
"Are you taking Miss Weasley?" the Professor asked in a tone of voice that clearly indicated that even if Harry didn't know it himself, Harry didn't have any sort of choice in the matter. I always knew there was a reason everyone thought he knew everything.
"I was rather hoping not to," Harry said, and both Ginny and Dumbledore laughed. Only Harry speaks like that in moments of crisis and emotional stress. Ginny's laughter died out soon, though, and Dumbledore began to speak.
"Harry, Miss Weasley," he began, rasping slightly, the many years suddenly evident in his voice. "I will only give this advice, if you truly care for each other the strength of two is far better than that of one. But if in any way there are misgivings, falsities, or deceits in your relationship, then I advise that Miss Weasley remain here, in the camp. Voldemort has no qualms about hitting below the belt, so the cracks in your trust for each other must be either nonexistent or long forgotten," his voice brightened, "they are hard requirements to fill, but perhaps simple for some." I heard Ginny clear her throat and Harry take several steps, and I'd be willing to bet he took those steps in order to wrap his arms around my sister. Hermione was at this point busily making the door see-through for herself, ask her for more accurate descriptions of these events.
"Sir, Voldemort is an excellent Legilimens, and, well, with his connections to both Ginny and I, would it be... um...safer for the rest if we were to separate ourselves from you?" Harry asked.
"Harry, don't," Ginny snapped, the two words she says every single time he starts to blame himself for anything. She'll do it at least once a day, and more or less for fear of Gin's retribution he'll stop.
"I don't want to hurt her, Sir, I want her to stay safe," Harry said quietly, Ginny let out a small sob and I heard Harry murmur something into her ear.
"This is not my decision to make, but, Harry, the auguries say that tonight is the predestined night for your confrontation. It is your decision whether you go unaccompanied or not."
"I can't live without you, Harry," Ginny said, a loud and desperate last attempt to get him to take her. She knew that if it came down to it, if his mind was truly made up, she was staying whether or not she wanted too. I think he knew that if he made her do anything against her will, she'd fight against it no matter what he did, and she'd probably win. Harry has this weird weakness, he just won't curse the people he loves.
"Then you have some sort of guess as to how I feel!" Harry snapped back, you'll notice they were arguing in circles at this point.
"If you die..." she said, half ominously, half despairingly. Fred was walking by, Alicia would be fighting too and she was saying goodbye to her family. God, everyone was saying goodbye that night, and it scares me to think how many of them were really saying goodbye forever.
"I'll try not to," Harry responded sarcastically, choosing to ignore the desperation in her voice. I know, I'm getting to sound like a bad romance writer, if you're this far into it you just can't get out.
"If you die," Ginny fought to continue her sentence, but I could tell she had to be crying to hard to get the whole thing out. "If you die I'll have to follow you." Dumbledore and Harry both took in their breath quickly, but Harry had soon regained his senses.
"No," he told her, quietly, "no dying, Ginny, no dying."
"Why on earth not?" Ginny asked him, sound for all the world like mum asking me why I wouldn't eat spinach. They needed to take less things in stride, these two.
"Because, you're much to great of a person to waste your life on me," Harry replied, with emotion in his voice. I've made a great show of being Ginny's overprotective big brother these past seven years, but at that exact moment, I knew those were hands she could be trusted in.
"If I'm such a great person let me choose life without you!"
"Then choose it!"
"No."
"YES!"
"NEVER!" I don't know what happened, perhaps she looked at him strangely, but he relented.
"Fine."
"Good." They left the tent from the back, we assume.
The next time I saw either Harry or Ginny was almost a week later, they had been put in St. Mungo's most restricted ward and no one was allowed anywhere near either of them. All we knew about that night was what Harry's brief letter had told us. Voldemort was defeated, he and Ginny weren't dead but, as he put it, "closer than we would prefer," he said he'd see us when he saw us. That they both loved us all and didn't want us to worry about them. Not worry when our baby sister and the boy we'd all come to think of as a brother or son were in the part of St. Mungo's said to be reserved for hopeless cases? Not worry when the same little sister was apparently "in no condition to write yet, but it's coming along,"? I will never understand Potters, or potential Potters. Ever.
Harry was reading over my shoulder, having come over to (finally) fetch his daughter on his way to work and told me not to worry, they didn't get the Weasleys either. He then went into the kitchen and proceeded to steal half my breakfast, convincing my wife by saying "But, Mione, what if I just...accidentally, of course... forgot to pick up your kids next Saturday night...and just accidentally turned off the Floo and the telephone and put up wards?" At least he knows how to get to her. He agreed to take our son next Saturday so that Hermione and I could go out on a date of sorts at Diagon Alley.
The next year, George died around November eighteenth, Ginny's birthday. And on December twenty-first, she threatened to throw herself off the Astronomy Tower, she was that depressed. We'd known, of course, that she wasn't dealing well with the war the summer before, when she had still been weak from that night, and had come to rely on Harry as her only means of communication with the outside world. Well, Harry, Hermione, George and I. It hit her so hard that he died, even though he had been ill for months, the only person who sunk lower was Angelina. George's Angel. No, I refuse to dwell on that, she's as close to happy as she's ever going to get again now, without her George, and I'm trying not to remember. Trying not to think about my father and my brother- brothers, George, who "died like a hero" as Moody would say, Bill, Bill, we've all lost Bill, he was so... God, there aren't words for Bill. And Percy, we don't hear from him much, well, Hermione, Harry and I don't. Gin does, Mum does and Fred never does, he simply kept himself separated from everyone he didn't think he could "help". He never did really believe anything anyone told him about the second war, no ministry officials really do, to this day. Denial (sigh). Gin even takes care of his kids on occasion, but Harry rarely comes into contact with them, and Percy is forever encouraging her to leave Harry. Percy hasn't noticed that wizarding marriages are damn near impossible to end just yet. Harry and I were at the Auror academy, Hermione was working at Hogwarts, but living with me on the weekends, since her parents had divorced a year previously, and she couldn't stand going back there. And after Christmas, Harry and Ginny were living together. Everyone agreed that:
Mum had enough on her hands as it was
Harry and Ginny had been through something together, alone, and it wasn't something that they were ever going to forget or leave behind them, but healing was necessary together.
Have we mentioned that Ginny wouldn't leave and Harry still won't curse the people he loves into submission?
The second and last year of Auror training with Harry and I was also the year Harry and Ginny were engaged and Ginny graduated then a year later, in a ceremony with almost two thousand attendants, they were married, then they ran off and weren't heard from or seen for a month and a half. When Ginny came back she started training to be a Healer, and they were sort of on the outs with each other mostly because they both wanted to deny that life was pretty much rolling along fine, and no one was going to come take happiness away from them.
The year after they had their first daughter, Lilly. Lilly stole Harry and Ginny's hearts the moment they saw her. She is their world, they are possibly the best parents ever, except for my mum and dad, of course. Lilly, and any of their other children, are, of course, the best possible target for a death eater, or anyone else particularly wanting to make the whole world go kaplooey. Harry would murder them if they hurt his little girl, then Gin would bring them back to life so she could kill them again. Honestly, that little girl isn't overprotected, Ginny wouldn't stand for that, but she's hardly ever out of her parents earshot. Harry adores his daughter, he thinks the world of that baby, she's brilliant, I'll give you that, and, as Ginny says, even if she looks a bit like her dad's mum and Ginny I'm a manticore if she hasn't got Harry's sense of humor, and that grin he always gives when annoyed. It drives us all mad! As Gin says, we all love him, we all love Lilly, but we'd quite like it if they were quite entirely different.
Harry once said that in seventeen years he might get to take his wife out to dinner on their anniversary, but since Lilly was born on their first, that didn't happen. They spend the night together though, somewhere close to the house, and they leave Lilly with Hermione and I, or with mum.
Right now life is just going for both of them, they are actually happy. Once, when we were seventeen, Harry told me that if he was ever happy he'd know he was dreaming. Then he kissed his girl, and he married that girl. And a few weeks ago, our wives had gone out for the day and the kids were asleep and we were talking, he told me that he was happy. He actually told me that he was feeling like nothing could make him unhappy as long as he had these two people by his side. He referred to someone as his family. Harry loves them so much, they're his girls. And Ginny, what can be said of Ginny? She smiles again, she takes care of Bill, sometimes. She falls asleep in somebody's arms every night and she doesn't have too worry that her papers are going to write back to her. Ginny isn't scared any more. Sometimes she has bad days, but we all do. I knowI do, Gin tells me Harry does, and Hermione does. Lilly and Allan are sort of what twenty five years of hell equaled, their generation. Their parents lives through wars, they can live in a world that is peaceful, and they are loved. Nobody tells them what names to be afraid of, everyone (but me) says Voldemort loud and clear. And we won't forget the people we lost, ever. I should just add that even if everyone, even Harry, is happy again now, we'll never forget that two-year-long purgatory we lived through. Never.
Emotionally Yours Ron