Disclaimer: .:checks:. Nope. Still not mine.
A/N: Another for principessa05. Whee...

When He Knows the Truth

It was a rainy day, and Ginny was very bored. She sat by the kitchen table while her mother was bustling in the background, making something that smelled sweetly of chocolate.

Ginny sighed deeply to show her boredom, taking a peek at her mother as she did so. When she got no reaction, she sighed again, much louder than before. Molly took a break from making a knife chopping walnuts and turned around to face her daughter.

"What are you sighing about, dear?" she asked kindly.

"I am booored, mum!" complained Ginny and stretched out across the table. "There's nothing to dooo!"

"Nonsense," said Molly soberly. "There are tons of things for you to do. You could help me baking, for an example. Or play with your brothers."

"Fred and George are in their room, and I'm not allowed to go in there," pouted the little redhead. Her voice was a little muffled since she was speaking into the table. "And Ron is still asleep."

Ron had come down with a bad cold and had had a high fever that morning. Molly had allowed for him to stay in bed out of fear that he would infect his siblings. Fred and George were darlings when she knew she could force them to go outside if they got too much to handle, and they were always such a handful when they got sick.

She sighed. "Very well. And I suppose helping me would be out of the question?"

Ginny merely made a face at this.

"But when it is time to taste the cookies, then you surely will be ready to help." Molly shook her head. "What about drawing, then? You still haven't used the crayons you got for your birthday. You can make a pretty picture and give to your father when he gets home from work."

Ginny hesitated. "Can I send one to Bill and Charlie at Hogwarts too?"

"Isn't Percy going to get one?"

"Percy's stupid. He said I was too small to start flying on broomsticks."

Molly decided not to have this discussion again, but merely nodded and went to get the crayons. Ginny had gotten them for her sixth birthday in August, and they had been lying in a drawer for the past two months, unused. Time to get them out. Molly placed them and a couple of sheets of paper on the table. In that very moment the kitchen clock chimed, and the one hand was pointing at "Time to make tea."

"Good," said Molly. "You sit here and draw, dear, and I put on the hot water. Then I'll call your brothers and we can all have tea together. How does that sound?"

Ginny shrugged. She was already working ferociously on a picture. While Molly went back to her baking, Ginny drew a princess. She was very pretty with blonde hair and blue eyes, and she wore a long dress. Since the crayons were magical, the dress was shimmering in pearly pink, and the princess was waving at Ginny with a hand that was slightly too big for the rest of her body. Ginny looked at her drawing critically, her head tilted to one side.

'Bill can have this,' she thought finally. 'He'll like a pretty princess. Now I'll make one for Charlie.'

She took a new piece of paper and had just started on a dog (which was jumping up and down and chasing its own tail so much that his ears got uneven) when Fred and George came rumbling down the stairs. They poked two identical, red-haired heads into the kitchen.

"Hey mum," said George cheerfully. "Can we get cake?"

"Sit down and wait for tea," answered his mother patiently. "We don't have any cake, but you can get a cookie later. If you behave," she added in a sort of resigned tone.

The twins sat down.

"Hey Gin!" said Fred and leaned over half the table to look at her drawings. "Gross. Princesses. You should draw something cooler."

"Like what?" Ginny asked and carefully chose the brown crayon to give the dog spots.

"Portraits of your two favouritest brothers, maybe?" suggested George and grinned widely.

Ginny wrinkled her nose and shook her head so that her hair flapped around her head.

"Try a self-portrait," said Molly from the counter as the kettle started whistling loudly. "Oh good. I'll go upstairs and see if your brother wants something. Fred, George, you clean the table while I'm gone. And don't you dare try and levitate the teacups again!"

She swept out of the room. The twins grumbled to themselves. To have to clean the table by hand, without magic, was so boring. When dad was home he sometimes let them use his wand for simple tricks, but mum was much more stern when it came to that.

As they started to gather Ginny's papers and put them on the counter, she looked at the dog she had made. It looked at her with large black eyes and wagged its tail. Charlie would have that one, she decided. Now she'd make one final picture for dad, and that would be enough. Maybe she would try a self-portrait?

She selected the black crayon and started with a head. It quickly got a mane of red hair and freckles all over its face, and then she made a body and dressed it in a blue cloak, much like the one her mother was wearing today. Then she was sort of at loss for what to do with it. The girl on the paper blinked at her dumbly. There was something missing.

Ginny nodded to herself and grabbed the black crayon again.

Once, when Ginny's parents had had guests over, she had been unable to sleep and walked down the stairs in the hopes that maybe mummy would come and read her a goodnight story, but she had stopped outside the kitchen as soon as she heard what the grown-ups were talking about.

There was a boy. His name was Harry, and he had a very sad life. Professor Dumbledore, who Ginny liked because he smelled of a sort of lemon candy that she'd gotten once when she'd had a sore throat, had spoken of him in a low voice, but Ginny had heard it anyway. She had heard that Harry didn't have any parents, and that made her feel very sad, because she loved her mummy and daddy very much and wanted Harry to have parents too. She'd liked listening to Professor Dumbledore speaking of Harry. It sounded just a little bit like a fairy tale: a boy who had no idea that he was famous and a wizard, who lived with relatives that didn't like him...

Of course Professor Dumbledore had noticed her standing outside the kitchen, and he had invited her in to hear the rest of the story. At first she'd been a little shy, because she knew that Professor Dumbledore was a really powerful wizard, and even Bill respected him. If seventeen-year old Bill respected someone, that someone must be really special. But Professor Dumbledore had been very nice and let her sit right next to him to listen.

She remembered what he had told her about Harry's appearance. Black hair and green eyes, and he had a scar on his forehead. Ginny's version turned out rather well. Her tongue was in the corner of her mouth as she drew a lightning bolt with the red crayon. She took the black one and wrote "HARRY POTTER" as neatly as she could underneath the picture of the black-haired boy, and "ME" underneath the self-portrait.

"He's not feeling very well," said Molly as she came back down again. She was looking a little worried. "Perhaps I ought to prepare a tray of tea for him... Oh, where did your brothers go?"

She sighed deeply and waved her wand towards the counter, where the ladle which had been stirring the cookie dough suddenly stopped and the mixing bowl turned itself upside-down to pour out dough onto a baking tin.

Ginny looked around. "They were here. They cleaned up, then they ran off."

"Oh for Merlin's sake... Fred! George! The tea is served!" She took a look at Ginny's drawing and smiled. "That's lovely, dear. Now up you go and take your crayons. It's teatime."

Ginny obeyed, but she carried her newest creation carefully, almost reverently. "I want to send it to Harry Potter, so that he won't feel so sad because he doesn't have any parents," she said hopefully. "Can I do that?"

Her mother shook her head. "Oh, I'm sure he'd love it, but you know Professor Dumbledore said that Harry mustn't know that he is a wizard. And he might wonder why a girl that he's never met send him a drawing. I tell you what, though," she continued as she saw Ginny's disappointed look, "I'll save this drawing, and when Harry gets a little older and he's found out the truth, we can send it to him. Does that sound good?"

"I guess," said Ginny and shrugged. "But you have to promise!"

"I promise, dear. Absolutely promise."

After a moment's hesitation, Ginny let her mother take her drawing and place it on top of a kitchen cabinet for safekeeping. Fred and George showed up again, this time they were grinning madly. That was never a good sign.

"What is this we hear about Harry Potter?" asked Fred. "Curious minds want to know."

"Well, you are not going to," snapped Molly. "It is not your business. And where have you been, by the way?"

"Out," said George simply.

"We have very important business to attend to," said Fred.

"Very important, mum."

She crossed her arms, not believing them for a moment. "If I find out you've been messing with the garden gnomes again, I shall make you do the dishes after dinner tonight. Without magic," she added menacingly.

The eyes of the twins widened in identical looks of astonishment and hurt feelings.

"Oh mum, we'd never mess with the gnomes," said Fred innocently.

"Because you have told us so many times not to," added George.

Molly snorted, but let it pass. "Just sit down."

The twins did as she told them, much to her surprise. Both of them still sported devilish grins, however.

"Is it you who is so into this Harry Potter, Gin?" asked George.

"Our sister," chuckled Fred. "Mrs. Boy Who Lived. Makes a brother proud."

"Warms my heart."

"Restores my faith in love."

"Makes me feel sad for the poor bloke, though."

Ginny poked her tongue out at them both. "Shut up."

"You two lay off your sister," said Molly sternly.

"But she's so easy to tease, mum!" complained George. "And now that Percy's off to Hogwarts, we've lost our favourite target."

"Really, you should pity us," agreed his twin.

"Well, you're not making Ginny your new one," said Molly and opened the oven to remove the finished cookies. "Here you go." She levitated three of the cookies to the table, where she placed them in front of her children. "Be careful, they are hot. I'm going to go upstairs with a tray for Ron now. You behave while I'm up there."

She gave her twins a warning look as a tea mug, a pot of honey, some milk and a cookie placed themselves neatly on a tray.

"And if I see that more cookies have mysteriously vanished when I get back..."

"We know," said Fred sullenly. "Dishes. No magic."

"And don't you forget it."

Molly took the tray and, careful to not spill anything, she made her way out of the kitchen and up the stairs to Ron's room. She had barely vanished until Fred and George went up to the plate of cooling cookies and reached out their hands to grab a few extra...

With a pair of shocked cries they withdrew at the same time, and started sucking their fingertips with annoyed looks on their faces.

"I was hoping she'd forgotten to put up the wards," sighed Fred sadly. "Alas."

"Mum never forgets that," said Ginny and giggled. "Serves you right."

She pulled up her legs and leant back in her chair, nibbling on her cookie. She was smiling to herself as she glanced up on the cupboard where her drawing lay waiting for the day when Harry Potter would get it. One day she would meet him, and he'd be delighted to receive it. He would put it up on his wall and look at it and feel better for knowing that there was someone in the world who cared about him.

Ginny laughed a little.

One day.