A/N: Written as a challenge to myself that I couldn't write anything 'clean'. snort Let's see how long that lasts, eh? For Aurelia, whose mind I have corrupted, and Sanaya, because according to her I 'ruined Harry Potter' for her. Pfuit!
Feedback: Catch me at IDon'tCare (No, you idiot, this isn't a real address, it's a statement.)
Rating: G. dies
Daisy-Love
He loves me, he loves me not...
In the middle of the meadow, there stood a little girl–little by size and naivete, but not by age. She was twelve and too old to be standing in a light blue cotton dress amongst the wild-flowers and mess of daisies and long grasses, but she wanted to be a child, just for the moment. Just for the moment.
She was plucking the petals off a daisy like she'd seen so many other girls her age do: the famous 'he loves me, he loves me not' game that often left those with odd-numbered petaled flowers smiling and those who had even-numbered petals frowning. Ginny–for that was she–didn't cheat. She didn't like to cheat. That, she believed, was messing with kismet, and did horrors to your karma. (Yes, next year she wanted to take Divination.) She preferred to close her eyes, grab what felt like a daisy, and uproot it from the ground. Not to look. Not to peek.
Ginny Weasley believed in honesty.
Stupid, really. She believed in honesty too much and that was why she'd gotten herself locked into a chamber with the menacing Tom Riddle, pale and almost dead, and all because she'd spilled her most intimate secrets with him in a diary. She sighed and threw the daisy down: he loves me not. Who was she plucking for? She didn't really know. Tom had been awfully kind and everything, but to love He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named–? She grimaced. Awful! And what about those other boys in Gryffindor; Seamus (who was funny), Dean (who was really good at drawing), Neville (who was really, really shy)? Was it them?
"Nooo," Ginny giggled to herself, flopping backwards onto the soft carpet of green. "Not them."
Harry Potter, that's who.
She knew they called her names (Tag Along, Misfit, Nymphet), and they called her obsession names (soon to end up heartbroken, no use, a childhood crush, a schoolgirl's fancy)–but they could all just go jump in the lake. Ginny loved Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived, not just because of that incredible lighting-bolt scar, or his amazing green eyes, or his infallible bravery, or just simply because he was a really nice boy. Her cheeks, she was sure by now, matched her hair perfectly. Oh, soddit...
Harry Potter was Ginny Weasley's daisy-love, and that it would stay until she grew out of her summer dresses, long red ribbon-tied plaits, and pudding-dimple cheeks, which was perfectly fine with Ginny. She much preferred the longing; the yearning; the blushing, the daisy-picking. For goodness' sake–she was twelve. She wanted to laugh with her friends and write notes to each other and learn how to do things with magic. Daisy-love and love were two entirely different things.
Lazily, Ginny shut her eyes and groped for another daisy in the tangled grass around her. I hope it's odd-petaled, she thought eagerly, grinning.
Well, a girl can dream, can't she?