This chapter was originally going to be longer because of the scene in the commons room, but I decided to break it off where it is now simply because it seemed like a good place to stop. Good rationale, ne? Don't fret, though - chapter eight is soon to follow; in fact, I have it half-written already. Thanks in advance (and again later, I'm sure) to Jezebel Malice with her help with the scene in chapter eight. She not only deserves it, but I know it embarrasses her to no end that I cite her in my author's notes.

Unexpected

Chapter Seven: Weeping Willow

It was dinner. The Great Hall was full of small explosions of laughter and conversation, and was well-lit with hovering candles, hanging like the stars that would come within the hour on the magicked ceiling, currently displaying the hues of the sunset. Ginny had looked up at them and immediately looked away, reminded that Hermione had compared her hair like the red at sunset, dark and fiery and glorious. Then, she had beamed and felt love swell in her heart, before laying another shower of kisses on her older lover. But now…

She looked only a few people away; the movement was only a shift of an eye and the slight tilt of the chin, and she could see it perfectly: Hermione, laughing, joking, smiling. With Fred.

The already-formed knot in her stomach gave another tug and grew harder. Her pumpkin juice stuck in her throat and an especially hard swallow was the only thing that put it down. She'd have a stomachache later, she thought, but forced herself to eat anyway. As always, keeping up appearances was more important than the jealous coils in her stomach and the knives of that smile slicing away at her heart.

Fred leaned in slightly and his lips came into contact with Hermione's cheek. Ginny felt hot jealousy on her cheeks, rising up in the form of a blush on Hermione's cheeks as the girl returned the peck with a shy bat of her eyelashes. But as she pulled away from his cheek, her eyes caught Ginny and gave her a sorrowful, powerful look. Ginny looked away, the pain inside too much to return any sort of longing gaze. Instead, she closed her eyes and tried to block the brunette from her mind, her sight, her life, if only for another hour.

She cast her eyes down to her plate and found it only half eaten. I've had enough, she thought to herself, and the food disappeared. It's more than I ate yesterday, at least. She murmured a goodbye those closest to her, a few animatedly-talking boys and a first-year girl hidden behind a book, all of whose names escaped her, and pulled her legs out from under the table so they could take her away from the noise and the bright lights.

She didn't want to go back to the common room. On a whim, she took the left corridor that led to a set of doors to the outside. She looked up at the clock - she still had an hour until her year's curfew. Plenty of time to pull herself together and return to the common room to pretend that everything was okay. With that resolved in her head, she pushed open the doors and let the half-shadows of dusk take her.

Ginny knew exactly where to go, to a weeping willow tree only five yards away from the castle walls, but grown in enough so the drooping branches would hide her from prying eyes. She had hidden there a few times before, when the act had become too much to take and she needed to escape from the pretenses of her existence.

Why can't she love me? she thought to herself for the billionth time that day, that week, that month. Why doesn't she want to be with me? She fell numbly to the ground at the trunk of the tree and curled her legs to her chest, hugging them tightly to her body. She hadn't thought about the hour or the time of the year, and the November air was chill and biting, and her uniform's thin white blouse and black skirt did little to block it out. Though, in her current state of mind, she wasn't sure if she wanted it to be. She closed her eyes and imagined herself slowly, slowly freezing to death out here, a pathetic little redheaded girl that wouldn't be found until morning, or maybe a few days. Maybe a week. She was invisible most of the time anyway - who would notice her gone?

Hermione has Fred, Fred has Hermione, she thought darkly to herself, the bitterness leaving a foul taste in the back of her mind. She keeps on saying she'll talk to him, she'll leave him for me, she'll stop pretending to love him… But who is she really lying to: him, or me?

Darkness was mostly upon the school. She could see the twinkling of stars appearing between the mostly-naked boughs of the willow and the lights from the castle. The Great Hall was emptying at an exponential rate. Soon, the common rooms would be full of the same noises and sounds and goings-on as in the Great Hall. The habits of the hundreds of students never changed.

I can't stand this anymore. She hadn't noticed the tears from her eyes until the drops landed on her bare knee. She blinked, making more tears fall, and rubbed her nose with her sleeve. The sneaking around, the lying, the broken promises, were all piling up in her head and leaving her in this state constantly. Fred and Hermione had started sneaking off together from the common room to who knows where, doing who knows what, and every time they left Hermione gave her a brief, fleeting look, and a kiss on the forehead when she returned at night and thought Ginny was asleep. They were probably having sex, but she didn't want to think about that, not on top of the other thoughts flying around her mind because of the entire situation, she didn't want to feel that kind of betrayal, and she'd been too afraid to ask. How could she form that question? How?

Hermione hadn't talked to her in days besides random pleasantries in the hallways, a few exchanges in the common room while they did their homework and Fred and George talked with Lee Jordan and their plethora of admirers. Hermione hadn't asked Ginny to visit her in bed. Ginny couldn't seem to ever find the girl alone anymore. She was either with Harry and Ron, or Fred.

A clock chimed inside, reminding her of her curfew. She dragged her sleeve across her face again to wipe away the salty tear stains and stood, brushing dirt and dead leaves from her skirt. Her mask of indifference fixed back into place, she wandered back inside to the castle, back into the numb world where she wasn't anything at all.

The common room was just as she expected to be when she arrived: loud, rowdy, and including her twin brothers as the stars of the show. She ignored them, and she ignored Hermione, sitting there in her usual spot with a long piece of parchment and a book open in her lap, and chose to sit as far away from the girl as possible. Out of the corner of her eye, she could imagine Hermione's hurt expression, and couldn't muster to feel anything but the pain she'd been feeling constantly for the past week.

You're doing this to me, she thought at her angrily. You're doing this to me of your own free will. Don't you dare try to tell me I don't deserve to feel angry, or hurt, or upset. She took out her wand and waved it vaguely at the girls' dormitory steps. "Accio Potions homework," she muttered dully. Within moments, a Potions textbook, parchment, and ink and quill were in her grasp.

She threw herself wholeheartedly into her homework, an essay about the usage of dried bat wings in certain potions, and managed to fill up almost two feet of parchment when the requirement was only one and a half. She took it from every possible angle, every fine detail, until she was sure she could recite the entire thing in her sleep, only to keep herself occupied from looking at Hermione, throwing herself at the girl, begging for an explanation, a kiss, a public declaration of love, anything to prove that she cared…

"Ginny?" The voice was timid and quiet, as if afraid of being overheard. She recognized it immediately, and instead busied herself with rolling up her parchment. There was a moment or two of silence, and then she felt a hand on her open one. "Here."

Footsteps led away from her. Ginny looked down at her hand to find a scrap bit of parchment, crumpled, resting in the palm of her hand. She carefully smoothed it out, afraid to rip it, and read the note scrawled in Hermione's neat handwriting: Meet me here at 3 a.m. We need to talk.

She closed her eyes and closed her hand around the parchment.

Jealousy, turning saints into the sea.