Ginny was lost.
The thought, which should probably have been distressing, simply brought a smile to her face. She'd never been directly involved with the war effort, or spying, or anything that might place the precious girl child of the Weasleys at the slightest risk for harm. If there had been a way to protect her from paper cuts, Harry and her family would have insisted on implementing it. She had allowed it, because it seemed to make the people she loved feel better, but towards the end of the war she had started to wonder if she would ever be allowed to take a bath without someone knocking on the door to make sure she hadn't drowned herself in the tub.
She had paid attention, though, and listened and watched until she knew every job that was done by the people around her. She'd read endless books, cookbooks which covered everything from dressing the game to putting on a dinner party for twenty, survival guides which explained how to get down from Mount Everest with Swiss army knife and some duct tape, textbooks and atlases and novels. She hadn't noted at the time that she seemed to concentrate on muggle books, or that all the information she was digesting might be useful; she had just thought that she was entertaining herself through the long, dull hours of waiting.
It had been two weeks since she left, left her family, her home, and Harry. The first week had been spent laying down a false trail, using the documents that they knew about and making sure that her distinctively long red hair was spotted at various intervals. Then she had bundled her hair into a scarf, donned an ancient mackintosh and emerged from the restroom at Madame Tussaud's with a crowd of elderly American tourists. A small glamour allowed her to make her face look older, and she stayed with the tourists until the next stop of their package tour. Hearing their stories of home, she'd come to an impulsive decision. What better place to get lost in than America?
She had long since made arrangements through Gringotts to have her money available to her anywhere. The key to her vault was a plastic card which worked in the muggle world as well as the wizarding one, automatically transferring funds from her vault to whomever she was paying. It was the one weak spot in her escape plan, but she was fairly sure that the goblins wouldn't risk thousands of years of reputation by divulging any information about her, even to the great hero Harry Potter. She would deal with him eventually, but right now she needed time and space.
So here she was, somewhere in America, holding a small bag of clothes and wondering what to do next. She didn't dare use magic, because her wand had been duly registered with the proper authorities and thus could be tracked. She couldn't find work until she'd gotten a chance to see what kind of paperwork would be needed, even if she was confident her forging abilities would be more than equal to the task. Ginny reached up to finger the pendant around her neck, an absent gesture that always seemed to help her think more clearly.
Her eye lit on a newspaper that had been discarded on a park bench and she shrugged before sitting down to read it. She'd walked a fair distance from the bus station, just meandering with her thoughts, and her feet were grateful for the rest. The top of the newspaper told her she was in Savannah, which she remembered as being to the south and east. It explained the oppressive humidity, at least. Still, the park squares she had walked through were pretty, and there was something soothing about the bizarre way that people spoke.
She had just pulled the hair off of her neck for what felt like the millionth time when her eye lit on an advertisement for something called "Locks of Love". It sounded like a lovely thing, giving hair to sick muggle children, and perhaps it was time for a change. Now to find her way around.
"You all right there, ma'am?" Ginny turned to see a young black girl with her hair in braids and a friendly expression. "You look a bit lost."
Ginny smiled thankfully. "I'm afraid I am. I don't know where anything is."
"Girl Scout Leela Granger, at your service." The girl grinned impishly, and Ginny found herself smiling back. "I was just visiting the Lowe house, but I can do that any time."
"I have a good friend named Granger." Ginny thought wistfully about Hermione, but then shook herself out of it. "And now it seems like I have two, doesn't it? Do you think you could help me find this place?"
Leela's face twisted a bit into a grimace, but only momentarily. "Yeah, my mama's there. She'll put me to work."
"Maybe you could leave me outside the door? My mother always used to put me to work, too." Ginny felt a pang as she thought about her mother, the one person who would be most hurt by the lack of a fairy tale wedding at the end of the saga of Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter. She knew that Molly would be constantly checking the clock at the Burrow, only to see Ginny's arm permanently over 'travelling'. She sighed before turning back to Leela, who was chattering about her school, the Girl Scouts (Ginny wasn't sure what they were, but they were apparently really important), her mother, her brothers and sisters, and a thousand other things. She reminded Ginny of herself, before the Chamber, before Hogwarts... Before Harry Potter.
They reached a place with a large sign that said "House of Beauty" and had a mural of stunningly beautiful black women painted on the side. One of them looked so much like Fred's wife Angelina that Ginny felt a tremendous pang of homesickness. She reached up to touch the painted face and wondered yet again whether she was doing the right thing. She looked down into Leela's inquisitive face and said, "She looks like my sister-in-law. I miss her a lot."
Leela grinned. "That's one of my cousins posed for that. She plays sports and when she visits, she lets me play, too. Anyway, come on."
Ginny let herself be dragged into the shop, which smelled like lye and perfume and the nasty stuff that Lavender used to use on her nails. There were mirrors everywhere, and chairs that moved up and down. There were women bustling everywhere, and there was music playing that sounded distinctly American. One of the women was singing along soulfully, and Ginny had never felt more awkward and out of place in her life. No one she knew would ever be brave enough to sing along to music in public.
"What's the matter, honey, you don't like my singing?" The woman who had been singing stopped to look at Ginny, her tone sounding more like teasing than hostility.
"Oh, no, it was lovely." Before Ginny's brain could stop her, her mouth said, "I just wish that I could be so spontaneous, it seems like a nicer way to be."
There was a moment of absolute quiet while Ginny fidgeted and felt like every eye in the place was staring at her. Finally, the woman laughed and said, "Well, honey, don't feel bad, you can learn." There was a burst of laughter and Ginny grinned, foolishly pleased by the feeling of being accepted. "Now what can I do for you, sweetie?"
"She wants to give her hair to those poor kids, mama." Leela's voice piped up from behind a screen, where she pulled out a broom and dustpan. "She was lost, but I helped her."
Ginny looked from Leela to her mother. "Yes, she was a credit to the scout girls and your family." There were hoots of laughter and Ginny frowned. "Girl Guides? Youth scouts?"
"Girl Scouts!" Leela frowned at Ginny before flouncing through the room with the broom and dustpan, much to the amusement of the older ladies.
"All right now, back to work girls. Beauty doesn't just happen." Leela's mother cast a look around and then gestured for Ginny to follow her. "Come on this way, baby, and let's see what we've got to work with. My name's Nicolette, but most people call me Neeko."
They had stepped into a small alcove which was mostly out of sight of the rest of the shop, where there was a single chair backing onto a large sink. Ginny timidly reached up and took off the scarf she'd been wearing constantly since she'd first slipped out of sight, then started pulling out the pins that held up her braid. She stopped when Neeko sucked in her breath sharply and said, "Ginny Weasley."
Arranging her face into a puzzled frown, Ginny said, "Who?"
Neeko shook her head, then rummaged in a pile of newspapers behind her. Ginny got two nasty shocks in a row as she first noticed that the publication in question was the Daily Prophet, and the other was that her picture was plastered on the front page. She looked into Neeko's eyes and knew that there was no prevarication possible. With a sigh, Ginny said, "All right, that's me. But I wasn't kidnapped, and there's no foul play involved."
"I can see that." Neeko gestured towards the chair and Ginny sat down, not sure what else she could say. Neeko's hands were gentle as she lowered Ginny's head towards the sink and worked shampoo through the mass of hair. "Did you see the picture outside? Recognize anyone?"
"You know Angelina?" Ginny almost sat up from the surprise, but Neeko's grip on her hair prevented her from going far.
Neeko grunted as she sprayed warm water over Ginny's hair, then started pulling a comb through it, gently. "My sister met a Brit while she was stationed overseas, and she stayed with him after she got out of the Army. Angie's my niece." Ginny took this in while a part of her was already planning where and how she would run. As if she could read minds, Neeko continued, "Now, if you didn't get kidnapped, you must've run. Can't have you running some more."
Ginny's glare was less than impressive from her prone position. "I explained why I had to leave, and I see no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to make my own decision simply because I happen to be the youngest in my family and a girl."
"Angie told me about you, you know. She said you helped her a lot when she married your brother." Neeko wrapped a towel around Ginny's head. "That should be dark enough now no one will notice the color until after it's cut."
"You... You're going to help me hide?" Ginny looked at the older woman in shock.
Neeko shrugged. "Like I said, Angie talked about you. She thought you were too good for that boy, anyway." Her mouth curled up in a mischievous smile that was exactly like Angelina's. "Besides, I always wanted to help out a spy on the run."
Ginny smiled and followed Neeko out to one of the styling chairs. Perhaps being lost didn't mean having to be alone.
It wasn't long before she settled into a routine. She was absorbed seamlessly into Neeko's extended family, all of whom knew her as Sarah Kingsley. Her hair was short now, hanging in black spikes all around her face in a style Neeko called "friendly punk". She thought of Draco often, fingering her pendant but resisting the urge to open it and find out whether he'd forgotten her after all. She'd managed to fake documents that allowed her to work, and she'd taken a job as a waitress to minimize how much she needed to dip into her savings. She even had her own apartment, even if it was just across a breezeway from Neeko's house. She worked and she slept and she learned to sing gospel, and she was content.
Until the day that Neeko looked at her and said, "You been to a doctor yet about that baby?"
(I /should/ be finishing my other fics. Instead bits and bobs of this one keep knocking on my brain and saying 'Hi! Write me and you might stand a chance of someday having your brain to yourself again. Argh.)
The thought, which should probably have been distressing, simply brought a smile to her face. She'd never been directly involved with the war effort, or spying, or anything that might place the precious girl child of the Weasleys at the slightest risk for harm. If there had been a way to protect her from paper cuts, Harry and her family would have insisted on implementing it. She had allowed it, because it seemed to make the people she loved feel better, but towards the end of the war she had started to wonder if she would ever be allowed to take a bath without someone knocking on the door to make sure she hadn't drowned herself in the tub.
She had paid attention, though, and listened and watched until she knew every job that was done by the people around her. She'd read endless books, cookbooks which covered everything from dressing the game to putting on a dinner party for twenty, survival guides which explained how to get down from Mount Everest with Swiss army knife and some duct tape, textbooks and atlases and novels. She hadn't noted at the time that she seemed to concentrate on muggle books, or that all the information she was digesting might be useful; she had just thought that she was entertaining herself through the long, dull hours of waiting.
It had been two weeks since she left, left her family, her home, and Harry. The first week had been spent laying down a false trail, using the documents that they knew about and making sure that her distinctively long red hair was spotted at various intervals. Then she had bundled her hair into a scarf, donned an ancient mackintosh and emerged from the restroom at Madame Tussaud's with a crowd of elderly American tourists. A small glamour allowed her to make her face look older, and she stayed with the tourists until the next stop of their package tour. Hearing their stories of home, she'd come to an impulsive decision. What better place to get lost in than America?
She had long since made arrangements through Gringotts to have her money available to her anywhere. The key to her vault was a plastic card which worked in the muggle world as well as the wizarding one, automatically transferring funds from her vault to whomever she was paying. It was the one weak spot in her escape plan, but she was fairly sure that the goblins wouldn't risk thousands of years of reputation by divulging any information about her, even to the great hero Harry Potter. She would deal with him eventually, but right now she needed time and space.
So here she was, somewhere in America, holding a small bag of clothes and wondering what to do next. She didn't dare use magic, because her wand had been duly registered with the proper authorities and thus could be tracked. She couldn't find work until she'd gotten a chance to see what kind of paperwork would be needed, even if she was confident her forging abilities would be more than equal to the task. Ginny reached up to finger the pendant around her neck, an absent gesture that always seemed to help her think more clearly.
Her eye lit on a newspaper that had been discarded on a park bench and she shrugged before sitting down to read it. She'd walked a fair distance from the bus station, just meandering with her thoughts, and her feet were grateful for the rest. The top of the newspaper told her she was in Savannah, which she remembered as being to the south and east. It explained the oppressive humidity, at least. Still, the park squares she had walked through were pretty, and there was something soothing about the bizarre way that people spoke.
She had just pulled the hair off of her neck for what felt like the millionth time when her eye lit on an advertisement for something called "Locks of Love". It sounded like a lovely thing, giving hair to sick muggle children, and perhaps it was time for a change. Now to find her way around.
"You all right there, ma'am?" Ginny turned to see a young black girl with her hair in braids and a friendly expression. "You look a bit lost."
Ginny smiled thankfully. "I'm afraid I am. I don't know where anything is."
"Girl Scout Leela Granger, at your service." The girl grinned impishly, and Ginny found herself smiling back. "I was just visiting the Lowe house, but I can do that any time."
"I have a good friend named Granger." Ginny thought wistfully about Hermione, but then shook herself out of it. "And now it seems like I have two, doesn't it? Do you think you could help me find this place?"
Leela's face twisted a bit into a grimace, but only momentarily. "Yeah, my mama's there. She'll put me to work."
"Maybe you could leave me outside the door? My mother always used to put me to work, too." Ginny felt a pang as she thought about her mother, the one person who would be most hurt by the lack of a fairy tale wedding at the end of the saga of Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter. She knew that Molly would be constantly checking the clock at the Burrow, only to see Ginny's arm permanently over 'travelling'. She sighed before turning back to Leela, who was chattering about her school, the Girl Scouts (Ginny wasn't sure what they were, but they were apparently really important), her mother, her brothers and sisters, and a thousand other things. She reminded Ginny of herself, before the Chamber, before Hogwarts... Before Harry Potter.
They reached a place with a large sign that said "House of Beauty" and had a mural of stunningly beautiful black women painted on the side. One of them looked so much like Fred's wife Angelina that Ginny felt a tremendous pang of homesickness. She reached up to touch the painted face and wondered yet again whether she was doing the right thing. She looked down into Leela's inquisitive face and said, "She looks like my sister-in-law. I miss her a lot."
Leela grinned. "That's one of my cousins posed for that. She plays sports and when she visits, she lets me play, too. Anyway, come on."
Ginny let herself be dragged into the shop, which smelled like lye and perfume and the nasty stuff that Lavender used to use on her nails. There were mirrors everywhere, and chairs that moved up and down. There were women bustling everywhere, and there was music playing that sounded distinctly American. One of the women was singing along soulfully, and Ginny had never felt more awkward and out of place in her life. No one she knew would ever be brave enough to sing along to music in public.
"What's the matter, honey, you don't like my singing?" The woman who had been singing stopped to look at Ginny, her tone sounding more like teasing than hostility.
"Oh, no, it was lovely." Before Ginny's brain could stop her, her mouth said, "I just wish that I could be so spontaneous, it seems like a nicer way to be."
There was a moment of absolute quiet while Ginny fidgeted and felt like every eye in the place was staring at her. Finally, the woman laughed and said, "Well, honey, don't feel bad, you can learn." There was a burst of laughter and Ginny grinned, foolishly pleased by the feeling of being accepted. "Now what can I do for you, sweetie?"
"She wants to give her hair to those poor kids, mama." Leela's voice piped up from behind a screen, where she pulled out a broom and dustpan. "She was lost, but I helped her."
Ginny looked from Leela to her mother. "Yes, she was a credit to the scout girls and your family." There were hoots of laughter and Ginny frowned. "Girl Guides? Youth scouts?"
"Girl Scouts!" Leela frowned at Ginny before flouncing through the room with the broom and dustpan, much to the amusement of the older ladies.
"All right now, back to work girls. Beauty doesn't just happen." Leela's mother cast a look around and then gestured for Ginny to follow her. "Come on this way, baby, and let's see what we've got to work with. My name's Nicolette, but most people call me Neeko."
They had stepped into a small alcove which was mostly out of sight of the rest of the shop, where there was a single chair backing onto a large sink. Ginny timidly reached up and took off the scarf she'd been wearing constantly since she'd first slipped out of sight, then started pulling out the pins that held up her braid. She stopped when Neeko sucked in her breath sharply and said, "Ginny Weasley."
Arranging her face into a puzzled frown, Ginny said, "Who?"
Neeko shook her head, then rummaged in a pile of newspapers behind her. Ginny got two nasty shocks in a row as she first noticed that the publication in question was the Daily Prophet, and the other was that her picture was plastered on the front page. She looked into Neeko's eyes and knew that there was no prevarication possible. With a sigh, Ginny said, "All right, that's me. But I wasn't kidnapped, and there's no foul play involved."
"I can see that." Neeko gestured towards the chair and Ginny sat down, not sure what else she could say. Neeko's hands were gentle as she lowered Ginny's head towards the sink and worked shampoo through the mass of hair. "Did you see the picture outside? Recognize anyone?"
"You know Angelina?" Ginny almost sat up from the surprise, but Neeko's grip on her hair prevented her from going far.
Neeko grunted as she sprayed warm water over Ginny's hair, then started pulling a comb through it, gently. "My sister met a Brit while she was stationed overseas, and she stayed with him after she got out of the Army. Angie's my niece." Ginny took this in while a part of her was already planning where and how she would run. As if she could read minds, Neeko continued, "Now, if you didn't get kidnapped, you must've run. Can't have you running some more."
Ginny's glare was less than impressive from her prone position. "I explained why I had to leave, and I see no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to make my own decision simply because I happen to be the youngest in my family and a girl."
"Angie told me about you, you know. She said you helped her a lot when she married your brother." Neeko wrapped a towel around Ginny's head. "That should be dark enough now no one will notice the color until after it's cut."
"You... You're going to help me hide?" Ginny looked at the older woman in shock.
Neeko shrugged. "Like I said, Angie talked about you. She thought you were too good for that boy, anyway." Her mouth curled up in a mischievous smile that was exactly like Angelina's. "Besides, I always wanted to help out a spy on the run."
Ginny smiled and followed Neeko out to one of the styling chairs. Perhaps being lost didn't mean having to be alone.
It wasn't long before she settled into a routine. She was absorbed seamlessly into Neeko's extended family, all of whom knew her as Sarah Kingsley. Her hair was short now, hanging in black spikes all around her face in a style Neeko called "friendly punk". She thought of Draco often, fingering her pendant but resisting the urge to open it and find out whether he'd forgotten her after all. She'd managed to fake documents that allowed her to work, and she'd taken a job as a waitress to minimize how much she needed to dip into her savings. She even had her own apartment, even if it was just across a breezeway from Neeko's house. She worked and she slept and she learned to sing gospel, and she was content.
Until the day that Neeko looked at her and said, "You been to a doctor yet about that baby?"
(I /should/ be finishing my other fics. Instead bits and bobs of this one keep knocking on my brain and saying 'Hi! Write me and you might stand a chance of someday having your brain to yourself again. Argh.)