Chapter 5: Conversation by the Lake
The boys didn't have as easy time getting to know Ginny as they thought they would. That night, the proximity to James, Lily, Peter, Sirius and Remus got to her. Although she had enjoyed their company so much during dinner, she hadn't even thought about their futures, once she was alone in bed it came back to her.
A combination of nightmares about the boys and Lily, and about Ron, Harry and Hermione, left her both physically and emotionally drained the next morning. She turned up for her first class, which fortunately was Transfiguration, and was immediately sent to the hospital wing and told, "Get some sleep, real sleep, before you come back."
Madam Pomfrey, the young Madam Pomfrey, was sympathetic when she saw her. She gave Ginny some dreamless sleep potion, with a warning to use it no more often than once a week, and shooed her back to the Dormitory.
For the rest of that week she successfully avoided nearly everyone with the plea of catching up on Tuesday's missed work and tiredness. She woke early on the Saturday. It was a coldish day so she figured very few people would be outside. Wrapping herself up in a couple of jumpers, she took her books down into the grounds and found a place to sit by the lake. Leaning against a tree, she cast a warming spell on herself and settled down to read.
Lily was in a 'panic about NEWTS' mood that day, and with Peter in detention, that left Sirius, Remus and James to their own devices. They spent a about half an hour flying around the Quidditch pitch, James showing off as usual, when Remus spotted the girl by herself. He swooped back down to the ground and started heading off towards her, carrying his broom.
"Hey Remus, deserting us?"
"Jenny's over by the lake, I haven't seen much of her this week so I thought I'd go and say hello."
"Good idea Moony!" Sirius said enthusiastically. Faced with the desertion of both his friends, James decided to join them.
"Hi Jenny!" The boys called out as they approached. She looked up at them with drawn eyes, which, although they didn't mention it, worried all three boys. "What are you up to?"
"Um. I've got lots of work to catch up on, from when I was ill on Tuesday."
"Looks like you've been working for a while. Well don't mind us, we'll wait until you fancy taking a break." Sirius said firmly.
"So" said Ginny when it was obvious that they were going to stay and talk to her, no matter how much work she pretended she had to do, "where's Peter?"
"Detention." Said James.
"Oh." She was glad really. It was difficult to keep up a civil conversation with him when she knew what he would do. Not as difficult as with Snape, obviously, but thankfully she needn't bother about civilised when talking to him.
"So, um, Jenny I wanted to, you know, thank you for the help you gave me on Monday." Sirius couldn't help feeling that this would have been easier if the other two idiots hadn't been sitting opposite him grinning. "You should have seen the GAGA Professor's face when I performed the charm better than he can!"
Ginny turned pink. "Oh, it was no problem honestly."
"I'm not sure how useful it'd be if I can only do it with the meditation stuff though."
"Oh you just need practice now. Practice filling yourself up with your happy memory – you know how it feels when you've succeeded." She thought a moment and grinned wickedly. "See if you can get to the stage where you're completely full of your happy memory when you encounter that dreadful Snape boy – after all, if you can hold on to your happiness when you are talking to him, how much harder can a Dementor really be? I've only been her a few weeks and it seems to me he has much the same effect!"
The others laughed appreciatively. "Snape the Dementor!" was a popular idea with the boys and they lined it up alongside "Snape the greasy piece of human wreckage" as useful ammunition for the future.
As Sirius offered to pay Ginny back somehow, the conversation reminded Remus of something he had been curious about. "I was going to ask you something." Remus began. Ginny turned towards him, quite thankful as, for some reason she couldn't immediately discern, she was finding Sirius a bit flustering. "When you first arrived, you said something about this werewolf you knew,"
"Uh huh." she said warily, trying to think of a way she could back out of the conversation. She really didn't want Remus to know it was him, twenty years in the future.
"Well I was wondering," the other two were looking at him, nervous about where he was going with the conversation, "what was your reaction, when you first found out?"
Ginny looked at the ground for a moment then, deciding that honesty was probably the best policy, looked him straight in the eyes. "Fear. Plain, stupid, ignorant fear." Remus looked steadily back at her. "I was twelve years old and I've been brought up on the same tales as every other pureblood out there you know. But" she continued with emphasis, "he was the same person he has always been. The same kind, considerate, teacher … the same man who had spent what, to him, must have been a very boring Saturday afternoon listening to the troubles of a lonely second-year girl and given her a few words of advice that completely turned her life around. And it didn't take me long to realise that."
They sat in silence for a moment and then she continued, "I know now how life had been tough for him. He'd never been able to hold down a steady job, sooner of later they'd find out and he'd be sacked. But still, he was such a good" she paused "man you know? He wasn't bitter, he didn't rail at fate (although I'm sure he must have wanted to) he'd been bitten when he was a child and didn't really remember anything before that. He was lonely, most people react so badly to knowing about his condition he had a tendency to close himself off from them. He went through such terrible pain every month. Of course I didn't know back then how painful werewolf transitions are, I've found out since that they are so bad that a werewolf can hold up to the Cruciatus Curse (for brief periods at least) better than others, simply because they have to have a so much higher pain threshold."
Remus blinked, "I didn't know that." He said quietly.
"Well it's not much of a compensation for everything else, but it is an advantage of a sort, especially if your enemy doesn't know."
Remus nodded, content to let that be an end to the conversation for the moment. Ginny, however, hadn't finished. She looked down at the grass, deliberately not making eye contact with any of them. "Withdrawal from people is the wrong thing to do, of course. One of the things he said to me once was 'trust in your friends, if you withdraw from them, they'll withdraw from you and that is the one thing that will tear a friendship apart quicker than anything else.' It sounded like he was speaking from experience and later I found out … well let's just say both he and a friend of his had gone through a painful learning process with that one." She felt the tone needed to be lightened. "And like I said, he's got a new girlfriend now and she is really cool!"
"Yeah, what's she like?"
"About 25, pretty, wild. Intelligent though, she's an Auror – back in New Zealand of course."
"25? How old is he?"
"Late thirties I guess, does age really matter though when it's the right person?"
"I guess not." The four of them sat in silence for a moment.
"So, how are you settling in at Hogwarts?" Sirius asked.
"Fine, thanks. Getting to know people." Suddenly she saw an opportunitiy to tease. "Of course, I hear a lot of gossip about you lot you know, I feel I know you already!"
"Well, obviously, when you're gorgeous" Sirius said, modestly, "girls are bound to talk about you."
"Absolutely!" Ginny grinned wickedly. "Half the Gryffindor girls fancy Remus like mad, he's got this whole shy good looks thing that a lot of girls really go for." Ginny pointed out.
"Hold on! Remus isn't the good-looking one! I'm the good-looking one!" Said Sirius firmly despite James' laughter and Remus' shock at Ginny's statement.
"In a different way though." She responded. "Remus is good looking because he doesn't know how attractive he is. He's got this whole modest 'good boy' thing going. You however," she continued with a smug smile "do, I admit, have the whole 'bad boy' thing but it's coupled with a bit too much arrogance. The only reason you're attractive is your pretty boy looks and they'll fade pretty soon, probably about the same time that girls grow out of their 'bad boy' thing anyway. And a lot of them are put off by the attitude."
Sirius looked mildly offended as James commented, "So basically, Sirius might get some action now, but long-term, Remus will be the winner!"
"Kind of." Ginny said, "You see the whole attraction to bad boys that some" she emphasised the some quite strongly "girls have is the desire to turn the boy good. Whereas the attraction of good boys is the possibility for turning them bad." She raised her eyebrows at them. "Therefore, I'd say, Remus is likely to be both the short term and long term winner!"
Remus laughed, he couldn't help noticing that although Ginny was talking about him and ostensibly answering James, her attention was almost entirely on Sirius – not her face which was consciously turned away from him (apart from the odd glance) but, well, everything else about her. He felt sure that Ginny, however much she might put the idea down, was probably basically a 'bad boy' kind of girl – at least in Sirius' case. "Basically mate, what she's saying is that I'll get the girls who want to corrupt my innocence, while you'll get the ones who want to force you to wait for them!"
Sirius scowled at him while Ginny grinned wickedly and winked "Precisely!"
"Sounds a good deal to me." He said. Sirius threw a handful of grass at him in response.
"Better practice getting some grass stains then 'good boy'!"
The three boys threw friendly insults around a bit while Ginny laughed at them. It was so easy to forget, while she was in their company, so easy. It was just as she was thinking that, she was suddenly struck by fear for Ron, Harry and Hermione. James noticed the way her face suddenly froze immediately. "Thinking about Harvey?" He asked astutely.
Ginny looked down at the ground and nodded. "Sorry, I'm just worried, you know?"
"Its OK." Remus said to her quietly as he put his hand over hers. "There's nothing wrong with being worried about your friends you know."
She smiled at him briefly. "I know, I'm sorry though, I didn't mean to bring the conversation down, I was enjoying myself."
The boys were silent for a moment. "Hey Jenny, do you play Quidditch?" James asked suddenly.
"I don't have a broomstick."
"We'll borrow one of the school brooms." He leapt to his feet. "Coming?" He offered her his hand. Quidditch, she thought, might be just the thing to get her mind off things.