Disclaimer: Sadly, no matter how many chapters of fanfiction I write, I will still not own Harry Potter.

Author's Note: Ok guys, I'm sorry I know it's been a while but I promise I'll be good at updating from now on. Except for when I'm going out of town… OH KAY so you're not reading this to listen to my rambling so without further ado here's chapter 8… read, review, have fun! 3

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Big thanks to the reviewers! Keep it them coming guys!!

Two days after my conversation with Harry, once the entire Weasley family once again inhabited the Burrow, I was awakened early in the morning not by people, but by sparkling, red and green fireworks streaking through the house. Whizzing into my room, they wound around spelling out the words "Two days 'till Christmas" before leaving to enter Ron's room down the hall. Though it was eight forty-five – positively early by my normal standards – Hermione had already left the room, her bed neatly made and her pajamas folded. I love her dearly, but I do not understand her sometimes. Mornings, in my belief, were made for sleeping – period.

Shoving my feet into my slippers and pulling a sweatshirt over my head, I went downstairs to see if I could help with breakfast. Ordinarily, it could be counted on that I was the latest riser out of my family, so I didn't doubt that it wasn't made yet. My assumption was correct, but when I offered my services to help Mum she suggested something altogether more horrible.

"O.W.L. practice papers? Are you out of your head?" I asked incredulously. Hermione opened her mouth to speak, which I promptly headed off with an acute look. Her study habits were one of those things about her I didn't understand.

"Well, Ginny, the fact of the matter is that you do in fact have the exams this year and now is as good a time as any to practice." Surely my Mum had lost her mind,

"Mum, it's December twenty third. In case you've forgotten, that's two days before Christmas. How do you expect me to concentrate on anything besides… family pursuits or napping or relaxing or shopping – shopping! Mum we have to go to Diagon Alley today!" With horror, I realized that I had, in fact, left my Christmas shopping to the last minute again.

"Next year, Gin, you'd do well to shop sometime before the week immediately before Christmas." She continued pulling mugs from the shelf until eventually fourteen sat on the counter.

"Muuum!!" I pleaded.

"Do two O.W.L. papers before we go and you have a deal."

Two hours later I had finished the Transfiguration one and was halfway through History of Magic, having only taken a short break to get an English muffin and a cup of hot chocolate. Blessedly, at this time Hermione came in and said that my Mum was taking pity on me and had decided that two hours of schoolwork during the holidays was enough to compensate for my needing to shop so late in the year.

"That, and she's tired of waiting for you to finish," Hermione added as an afterthought. Twenty minutes later I was dressed and ready to go, at which point the three of us flooed to Diagon Alley. As soon as we got there I criticized myself mentally again – not only would it have been much cheaper to shop in Hogsmeade earlier this winter, but Diagon Alley was positively flooded with people who were, like me, shopping at the last minute.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the games begin," I muttered as Hermione and I bid my mum goodbye and pushed our way through the throngs of shoppers.

We'd left the Burrow at around eleven fifteen, and by two thirty I was starting to tire of shopping. When most people go out to buy their holiday gifts, they shop for their family first because it's easiest to get it out of the way and then they shop for their friends. But when you have eight family members to shop for, this makes a plan like that distinctly more difficult. Miraculously – and I say this since I'm notoriously picky, a bit of a perfectionist even in shopping, and the term bargain shopper only begins to cover me – at the end of three hours and fifteen minutes I'd gotten gifts for nine out of the twelve people on my list. Hermione, Fred, George, Percy, Bill, Charlie, Ron, my other best fifth year friend Melissa, and Lia were all taken care of, but I had yet to find anything suitable for my parents and Harry.

"I don't understand this, why are they so much harder to shop for?" I complained to Hermione as we stopped for ice cream.

"Well parents are hard to shop for because they've given you exactly the gifts you want for your entire life and you feel the need, whether consciously or not, to repay them for their generosity. Also you never want to disappoint them," she philosophized between bites of her butterscotch sundae.

"Thank you Professor Trelawney," I remarked sarcastically.

"She spews up garbage about the future, I'm merely explaining to you the workings of your mind," Hermione replied with a slight smirk.

"Fine, fine. What about Harry, why is he so damn hard to shop for?" Suddenly her smirk turned into a downright sardonic smile worthy of the Cheshire Cat. I took a very large spoonful of strawberry ice cream and hot fudge; I had a feeling whatever she was going to say would be better answered with facial expressions than whatever bunch of garbage was likely to come out of my mouth, thus the latter was better full.

"Because subconsciously, you've realized you never completely let go of your attraction to him and now that Malfoy's out of the picture you can see that Harry, naturally, is the right choice. It comes down, again to the subconscious desire to note want to disappoint." She took a sip of water, looking extremely pleased with herself. I, meanwhile, swallowed my gargantuan bite of ice cream with some difficulty, and responded, "In layman's terms that would be?"

"You've yet to realize it, but you're secretly in love with him." Hermione looked nonchalantly at her nails, but I could tell it was killing her not to laugh. I can only imagine I made her efforts not to do so more difficult by coughing involuntarily.

"You don't have to answer, you know I'm right."

"I hate you sometimes, you know that?" We finished our ice cream rather quickly and headed back out into Diagon Alley, where a quick run-in with my mum informed us that we only had an hour left to finish. In the interest of saving time, at least according to Hermione, this meant we should go our separate ways. She may have had a point – without my running every purchase by her only to disregard her opinion entirely (I've already explained that I'm a perfectionist, so I feel no further need to justify my actions), I could probably shave a good twenty minutes off my purchasing time for each item.

A half hour into the remaining hour I'd finished shopping for Mum and Dad, but I still hadn't found anything for Harry. My feet aching with all the walking and my arms starting to hurt under the weight of bags full of gifts for my family and friends, I was almost ready to give up. By almost, I mean that I really, really wanted to but I couldn't. Given this, I went back into the store where I'd purchased Bill and Charlie's gifts. I spent about twenty inspirationless moments browsing, trying to find something that seemed adequate. But as I did this, something horrible happened – I started thinking. Now, I don't really mean that thinking in and of itself is bad, but what I was thinking over was. Why was I taking such painstaking care to pick out Harry's present? He was just my friend. It wasn't as if I had to impress him, I didn't have feelings for him. And yet, if I didn't in fact have feelings for him, why was I thinking all of this over for the second time in a week? Bloody hell. As I paced and pondered through the back of the store, suddenly, miraculously, I saw something. A small, highly polished black box sat on a square of bright green velvet, and a yellowed piece of paper was attached to it. I picked up the piece of paper and brought it close to my face to read the small, faded writing.

"Memory Box – by some annoying twist of fate, those things that you want to remember inevitably are the ones that escape you. But when you can preserve those memories in time, you have them forever. Made using the same principle of a Pensieve, this Memory Box works much the same way. The only difference is, this is to preserve those things you don't want to forget, rather than to store those things you don't want to remember. This Memory Box has one other particularly useful feature – very few people recall much of their childhood. By depositing those memories of ones childhood that do remain, in some cases those can be recovered." Breathing very, very fast I knew in an instant that this was the perfect gift, and with shaking hands I took it to the front register. It dimly registered in my brain that it seemed odd that I should spend what I was sure would be an exorbitant amount of money on one gift that was clearly meaningful for somebody who was merely my friend, but I didn't care. This was the thing for Harry if anything was. Maybe a Pensieve, but I sure as hell couldn't afford one of those.

Once I'd paid for the Memory Box and reconvened with Mum and Hermione, we headed back to the Burrow to wrap everything. By the time that was finished and dinner was made and eaten, I was genuinely tired enough to want to go to bed at the tender hour of ten at night – a good hour and a half earlier than my norm. But deep seated tiredness doesn't take no for an answer, and thus I settled into my bed the earliest of all those in the Weasley household. As I drifted lazily off to sleep I was hit by one fleeting thought images of Harry receiving the Memory Box and being superbly happy besotted my tired brain. And before I completely fell asleep one more question drifted ambiguously through my mind – my preoccupation over the gift and it's recipient meant nothing, right?