Title: Realization in the Life of the Average Hogwarts Student: What a Weasley Possesses
Rating: PG ish
Disclaimer: I am not a Scottish gazillionaire, that title is restricted to JK and Mr. MacDuck. I own nothing. I only wish I did.
Summary: Ginny's turn to realize something.
"You have to go someplace safe," Dad said quietly. He said it absentmindedly. I didn't know if he was really thinking about my safety, but it's not as if I really cared about that either at the time.
Grimmauld Place was a buzz with activity. Aurors were running to and fro getting constant updates from the Ministry over the wireless, Muggle phones they assembled and Muggle mobiles, heads popping into every available fire place, owls like mad. No matter where the adults sent me I caught smidgens of the conversations. The security at Harry's had been increased tenfold. The Burrow was going through a "sweep" and Madeye himself was leading it. Make sure the search can find him, even if he's dead. I had heard similar versions of that at least four times. It was getting out of control. Hermione's whole family had to come for their own safety. But, apparently, Grimmauld Place wasn't safe enough.
That was probably a lie. They just couldn't deal with us anymore. So many wizards amassing at one place... Well, the misdirection spells could only hold so much. They wanted to take us somewhere where the Death Eater's would never suspect, but could hold good, strong wards. It wasn't only Hermione and myself that were in danger, according to the Order. The boys in Harry's dorm, more specifically Neville, than Dean and Seamus, but they were still at risk. And Luna. There were even people being sent to Parvati's, Lavender's and Cho Chang's houses to keep an extra eye on them. But the Order people knew who was really in danger. Harry's closest friends; we who broke into the Department of Mysteries. But that's something I still can't discuss.
So in one fell swoop, they took care of the boys in Harry's dorm, Hermione, Luna and myself by taking us to Seamus' house. I thought it was odd, but I guess that was the point. It must've been Dumbledore to persuade Seamus' mother to let the Order keep us children there. I don't imagine anyone else getting through to her.
Dean, who had already been there, went straight for me when we arrived. I didn't want him. I wanted to be home. I wanted my parents to comfort me. I wanted my brothers to hold me. Not this... stranger. Dean Thomas, my boyfriend of the length of the summer, was not my family and I didn't want him to think he was that important... but I was desperate. I was desperate to be a little girl again and have someone's hug cure everything. So I clung to him, like I had clung to Luna when I saw her. Like I had to Hermione when she arrived at Grimmauld Place. Like I had to my Mum the previous night. And you know what? I wasn't little anymore and all the hugging in the world wasn't going to bring back my brother.
Seamus was very reserved and quiet and he and Neville retreated to the living room. Luna, Hermione and I followed Seamus' mother, Nora, to the spare room where we were to sleep. It was no reflection upon Nora's bland, but very clean spare room with three small beds, conjured of course, but it made me want to die. The toupe, the cleanliness, the order, the lack of strange smells gathered over the years. It was all so anti-Burrow. And that was the only place I wanted to be. Home. Not at Seamus' house. Not at the bloody Grimmauld Place. Not even at school. I wanted to go home.
I avoided Hermione's face because I knew what it looked like and I didn't need to see it again. She had been crying ever since she heard the news and excuse me for my lack of caring, but that bitch stole my brother from me... Sorry, it hardly ever comes out, but I still feel a touch of bitterness. He was mine. My brother. I know I have six, but Ron was mine. Everyone else was so much older. Too cool to play with us little ones, who were not even eleven months apart. So for ten years, Ron was mine... Then he went to school. I could and did forgive Harry for taking him away. Boys make friends with other boys, it's what they do, Mum told me. And their sisters are always there, always important, she told me. Then I found out Ron made friends with not only a boy, but a girl. And I knew right away it was different. Ron and Harry were best mates... but Hermione was just there. Taking my brother's attention away from me. So much that he hardly wanted anything to do with me when he came back from school. Even though Hermione and I are friends now, I will always feel a little subconscious anger towards her for creating that rift between Ron and myself.
Then, looking at the neat, un-burned, un-matted, un-muddied, un-trampled carpeting, it was Death Eaters taking my brother away from me. At least Hermione had the decency to return him every summer. What were they going to do with him?
Seamus' dad, Frank, suggested that we all watch a movie to take our minds off what was happening. After all, some of us had never seen a whole Muggle movie. We watched 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' Seamus said it was a classic, but no one got into it, not even Seamus. I couldn't think of anything but Ron. The thoughts of what they could do to him made my insides jerk. I saw him after the Department of Mysteries last year. Concussed and blabbering, bleeding from the mouth. I saw him third year with a broken leg. And last year, Luna and I had been bored, looking around in the Library for stuff about Death Eaters, just in case. We came across a book about torture. (Luna had used a Restricted Section note. Most Ravenclaws had spare ones and no one really suspected anything.) It had pictures. Even though they were censored it made my sense of justice queasy.
"Ginny?" Luna said, looking worried. Her eyes were rarely focused or concentrated, but they were looking at me. "Do you want to talk about it?"
All the guys in the room shifted uncomfortably. I wanted to laugh, but I stopped myself. Only because then I wouldn't be able to stop and they'd have to drag me off to Mungo's, screaming like a madwoman, because I couldn't stop laughing over something so stupid.
"I want to scream about it," I said automatically.
"They'll find him," I heard Hermione say. She wasn't talking to me. She wasn't talking to anyone. She was wringing her hands and staring into the floor. "I've never been more sure of anything else. They'll find him. They have to." She nodded, still not looking at anyone else. "They'll find him."
"Hermione?" Neville said with trepidation. He was the only one who would look at her face. "Are you okay?"
"What?" She said in a dangerously low voice.
I looked at Neville purposely so he wouldn't go any further. He was treading on bad territory. But he didn't notice me.
"Are you okay?"
Her gaze raised from the ground to Neville's. She looked furious. "Of course, I'm not okay. I can't see my family. I don't know what's going on. I don't know if Harry is safe... And Ron... Ron is... Oh god, I think I'm going to be sick." She suddenly keeled over and Neville held her up by her arms. She pushed him away and even after she did, she slapped him multiple times across his arms and chest. She backed him, cowering against the wall, until Dean and Seamus pulled her off him. She managed to get out of their grasp and fell to the floor of her own accord.
"Ron!" she yelled like a banshee. It brought Seamus' parents in the living room wide-eyed at the sound. Hermione kept screaming and crying and yelling Ron's name so hard, Luna and I had to walk her into the spare room they had for us. Nora rushed into the kitchen to "brew up somethin' to calm the gurl." After forcing her to drink whatever they had in the mug, the adults left the room and told us to make sure that she got some rest. The drink had ceased her wailing, but tears where still running and she was a little shaky. Luna sat with her and pet her hair, but she may as well not have. Hermione was totally within her own world, shaking and muttering to herself and trying to stop crying.
I was angry. At Death Eaters. At Hermione's hysteria. At the fact that I couldn't yell and scream and cry. At how unfair it was that I couldn't and she could because I knew him longer. At everyone for just assuming Ron was dead, even though, in the dreaded deep of my stomach I thought so too, but I couldn't let it out for fear of breaking... breaking down? Is that what it's called when someone you've loved your whole life dies? I would have to ask Professor Lupin. But the anger built up in my chest. It teemed over my size. I wished one of my brothers had been in the room, then I could justify my anger and not feel so bad for what I was about to do. But they weren't and I couldn't hold it anymore.
I walked straight up to Hermione, grabbed her hands and shouted in her face, "Stop muttering, you deranged bitch! Stop crying. He's not dead yet! You'll make people think he's dead with the way you're carrying on. Just stop it!"
She tried squirming away from me, but she isn't as tough as she looks or impresses upon people. I grew up with six brothers. I've learned the art of being rough. She tried getting further back on the bed to kick me away from her, but I pushed her back myself and wound up sitting on her, straddling her waist and holding her arms over her head.
"STOP IT!" I yelled. "He isn't dead! You don't have a right to cry. I do. I should be able to cry because he's my brother! Mine! What are you? Eh? What are you? You stole him away from me! I should cry! Stop crying!"
"Ginny," Luna said in a low hiss. "Stop it. Stop it right now."
Luna tried pulling my arms off her but I squeezed my hold on Hermione's wrists tighter. Hermione winced and squirmed and tried bucking me off of her, but she couldn't so after a while she just gave up. My need to push and cause her pain was immediately eliminated and I suddenly couldn't think of the reason why I did it in the first place. She looked so... pathetic, really, lying there, not fighting back, with quiet tears rolling off the side of her face into her ears. I let go and got off her quickly. Not fighting back was so un-Weasley like. That thought brought into sharp reality that not everyone was a Weasley or Weasley-like. So where Fred or George or anybody else would immediately forgive me and forget about it, Hermione probably wouldn't.
I sat beside her in shame. I was about to tell her an apology when a hand came and slapped me across the face. I looked up to see Hermione towering over me, white with rage.
"How dare you," she spat. "How dare you say I don't have a right to cry. What am I? Oh, I'll tell you what I am, Ginny Weasley; I am here to stay. I can't believe... Have you always hated me?"
"No!"
"So it's just recently, then. I did not steal your brother away from you!"
"Well, that's what it feels like sometimes!" I took a second to breathe instead of getting angry again. "I know you didn't. Ron and I were really close before school. Then you and Harry came along and we were starting to get close again, but now... Now he..."
"Might not be coming back," Hermione finished. She countered my glare with one of her own. "I'm not stupid. The chances aren't optimistic. I know we don't know anything yet, but... Merlin, I'm so stupid."
I never stayed to find out why she was so stupid. She began to cry again and I left to let Luna take care of it. I had my own problems to figure out. I knew I would have to apologize sometime soon for being such a bitch to her, but it was too soon. I had too many things to think about, and it may sound selfish, but I didn't want to hear anyone else's. I went into the kitchen to see if they had any candy sitting out I could filch, but Nora and Frank were standing there talking to Remus.
Only few days before, when we all found out Ron was missing, Snape and Remus had gotten into a huge row in front of everyone about several things. Remus had looked ready to pounce on anyone who talked to him ever since. But I got the very distinct impression from that row that Remus had been in Ron's situation before. That would explain why Remus could extrapolate several Death Eater torture patterns off the top of his head. And this had something to do with pissing off Snape.
But he saw me before Nora and Frank and motioned me over.
"You're parents want to see you," I felt my heart rise a little and my stomach sink at the same time. "The whole family is at the Burrow. We're having a little meeting."
For some reason I couldn't say anything. I followed him silently to the Finnigan's Floo until we went to the Burrow. I ran to my Dad and hugged him, then my Mum. And The Burrow didn't look well. Dimmer, maybe. It didn't really smell the same. The Burrow was always so alive with activity and feeling, it wasn't hard for me to consider it an entity. It also went on the same idea that we couldn't really own anything like other people. It was more like one of us than a place, with the way it reacted to us. But then, with Ron gone, it made me think of what Mum and Dad must have felt with all of us at school and gone out of the house. The Burrow looked like it was on the critical list.
I looked around to examine all my brothers. They didn't realize it, but they assembled according to height. They were accustomed to it from all those years of relatives and grandmothers and old friends of the family saying, "Oh my, look how you've all grown. Now let's see who's tallest." The last time we were all together it was Bill, Percy, Charlie, Ron, George, Fred, then me, but that was a few years ago. Ron would be right after Bill now.
"How're you doing, Gin?" Charlie asked me when he hugged me. He tucked hair behind my ears and actually sat down instead of stood. Bill sat down in the other side of me.
"Do we know anything?" I switched looks between Bill and Charlie. Both of them admitted their ignorance of the situation by silence and looking to the floor.
"What's going on?"
"Madeye, Kingsley and Tobias are coming to say if there are any new leads," Bill supplied.
After a few minutes, no one was talking. What was there to say? Oh, did you wake up this morning and have a horrible feeling of dread because you think Ron is going to die at the hands of Death Eaters? I did. What was there to say that was at all appropriate? Is it okay to voice your concerns out loud to a family, already hurting? Your own family. It was at that moment with my entire family floundering around in the deadness of the living room, I felt totally lost. What could I possibly do if my brother died?
The Aurors came after a while. I didn't bother checking the time. I was in such a despondent mood I didn't care at all. The told us all again in frustrated and repetitive tones that they still didn't know anything. They had conducted a few different types of searches, but had not exhausted their options yet. I felt cold and I hated Tom more than ever. It was enough to do what he did to me. Couldn't he leave my family alone?
The adults talked and I stayed silent. I wished someone was there to say something to make us feel hopeful. I wanted to be little again, if only so I could believe Mum when she said it would be alright. I needed the simple faith that Ron would be returned back to me and nothing would happen to him, because bad things didn't happen to good people. We didn't even have that ideal. We had nothing.
Amidst my feeble wishes to return to a simple childhood to ease the pain, Percy's and Moody's voices elevated above the rest. Apparently everyone else was tired of talking. Then in a clearing of conversion, that silence that happens when fate knows a person is about to embarrass themselves or say something wrong, Percy spoke.
"Let's just hope we can get there before he says anything vital," Percy said.
Madeye showed no response for his part of the conversation, but then suddenly looked at me strangely. Maybe it was because I could feel my face getting redder. I could feel my ears, my cheeks and my forehead burning with unconcealed wrath. Never in the history of the world could anyone ever be as angry as I had been. I felt all the anger and hatred and gall the world could offer to me and it swelled in my chest.
"Before he says anything vital?" I said in a low, hiss.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Twins take a few steps back. Percy nodded in confusion. I bared my teeth, mimicking what I had seen Professor Lupin while fighting with Snape, when he said something rude about Sirius Black.
"Not before he loses a vital organ? Not before he gets hurt? But before he says something vital."
Nearing the end I spat every word. The entire thing, Percy's aloofness and my defense of Ron, was bad taste in my mouth. It made my bile rise. Tears were filling up my eyes, but I was the sister of six brothers and had to be tough. I had a resolve to tear Percy apart for not caring and I couldn't let my anger be dwindled by tears. I had to be an animal.
"Ginny, we don't know what Harry might have told him. He could know far more than we think, which he most likely does. People's lives are in his hands and he is being tortured. How long do you think he can hold out?"
My jaw tightened, "How dare you. You think that Ron would actually hand over information like that to Death Eaters?"
Percy didn't answer me. I scoffed and looked for the other Weasley faces to support me, but all my siblings were looking down at the ground. The Aurors were as well. Mum had her head in her hands, trying not to sob. Dad had an arm around her, he gave me a slight smile, but he didn't believe. This was outrage. I couldn't believe that no one was backing me up. I couldn't /fucking/ believe that it was just an unspoken acceptance that Ron would break! I wanted to scream... So I did.
Then a hand landed softly on my shoulder. I looked up to see the sad, worn face of Professor Lupin, but I saw it in his eyes. In his brilliant, golden brown eyes was a feeling that wasn't in the eyes of my family: hope. He believed in my brother. I knew it. I clasped my arms around him and he patted me on the back. Then, after we hugged, I felt better. Merlin's foot... I finally felt better. Nothing but dread since Ron went missing, then all of a sudden, I felt hope.
"You're all wrong!" I said with a vengeance. "None of you must know Ron if you think he's going to crack. It doesn't matter what they do to him. Maybe you haven't seen what he goes through year after year, but I watch it better than anyone else. You must not realize what he'll actually do for Hermione and Harry. Every year I've seen him come back with new scars, with a new adventure. The Chess match. He sacrificed himself then. The Forbidden Forest. He went with Harry and talked ACROMANTULAS! He broke his leg and stood up to Sirius Black. Wonder of wonders, he got over his pride in fourth year. Last year... We all went into the Department of Mysteries and Ron... He protected Luna and me and because of that I got to see him wander around stark, raving mad, bleeding from the mouth. And he won't tell them anything now. He'd rather..."
That's when I broke down and cried. Because what I was about to say I knew to be true and I just wasn't tough enough to say it out loud. Seven lifetimes of eighteen brothers couldn't make you tough enough. I knew he would die before he betrayed Harry and Hermione. And I think Hermione knew it too. That's why she wouldn't stop crying. And I knew for a /fact/ that Harry knew it too. Merlin only knows what he was doing to himself because of it.
My Mum finally put her arms around me and held me while we sat on the floor. I cried like when I was little. Mum cried too. But I listened to Remus. He talked to the Aurors and my family. He told them, in detail, about the Shrieking Shack thing from Ron's third year. In a moment of glowing pride, for probably everyone in the room, Remus said he's always been impressed with Ron's dedication. He said for everyone's sake we need to have faith in Ron. Dad stood up, a little more worn than usual, a few years older than yesterday and agreed.
"What do we have," he said, " if we don't have hope."
I always knew we were poorer than everyone else. I always knew I didn't have the toys other kids had. I always knew what we were to the rich Purebloods. I always knew we wouldn't have it easy. Percy proved that we didn't always have each other as Weasleys. What Weasleys' possess are the abstract. Love, we 've had. Tempers and stubbornness alike. Determination. Bravery. I guess Hope was another abstract we'd have to cling to. Because Dad was right. What would we have otherwise?