Debt to be Paid
By Pisciculus "Little Fish"
Author's Note: First, a mega thanks to NeddyZeeKat for letting me use her email to set my account up…as well as various other accounts… She knows the reasons. And I also have to thank Em for the lines, "Look at the divorce rate. It's appalling. All these damn kids don't know what love is; they just cling onto the first person who claims to love them and accepts to be their partner for life. Who gets married to their first love? Or even their second!" Your online rant is what made the romance line in this story real.
Next, a huge thanks to my beta, James 'Mr. Trelawney' Potter of the Portkey Forums, who agreed to help me out even though I warned him that I would attach my annoying self to his hide and probably never let go. And also a thanks to my previous beta, Jamie, who would have murdered me if she ever found out that I was writing H/Hr and not H/D (not that I ever wrote H/D). Always a slash fangirler, that one. And as cliché as it is, I have to offer thanks to my mother, who is actually really cool and let me attend an MFA Workshop with her, and helped me meet my hero, Orson Scott Card, in person.
And I offer my endless gratitude to everyone in the fandom, who have helped me so much since that first day nearly seven (or is it six?) years ago when I stumbled across a Mary Sue story and decided it was the best effing thing since sliced effing bread. Gawd, I'm so glad I never posted any of those earlier stories. Seriously.
Anyway, this story is dedicated to Kar and Mac, who have inspired me by being inspired by me. I've never been so shocked.
Chapter One
Of Second Thoughts and Memories
Three days.
Three days, four hours, twenty-one minutes and thirty-eight seconds.
Thirty-seven… Thirty-six... Thirty-five...
The clock read seven o' nine and Ginny felt that waiting for the remaining twenty seconds until seven ten would be just too much for her to take. But she had to wait.
Three days, four hours, nineteen minutes and fifty-two seconds.
Fifty-one… Fifty…
She blinked. Had the second hand just gone back a notch?
Great.
Two weeks ago, Ginny had left Hogwarts for the last time. And at the tender age of only seventeen, she was engaged. A part of her cried that he'd proposed for all the wrong reasons.
The war, in a sense, was over. The Dark Lord had been captured and frozen in time, thanks to the brilliance of one Hermione Granger. And Harry said that the aurors were close to finding and destroying the last Horcrux. The Daily Prophet front page had been splattered with headlines such as, "THE PERFECT ENDING – A NEW BEGINNING FOR THE BOY WHO LIVED' and 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT – THE CHOSEN ONE'S REWARD.'
Yes, Ginny thought bitterly. The perfect ending. The Chosen One's reward. And it was, really, The Perfect Ending. Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, and his first love married right out of Hogwarts. The two sidekicks in a relationship more unstable than half the patients at St. Mungos. But "It's so cute," some said, even as the reporters at Witch Weekly came up with the radical idea that Hermione was now pregnant.
She wasn't, of course.
Ginny gnawed at her lip, afraid to get out of bed. The same bed she'd slept in every summer for the past seven years, and every night for the previous eleven years before that. The bed which had given her so much comfort was now a curse. It was where she and Harry had first discovered just how far a physical relationship could go.
It was where she had discovered that Harry didn't really love her like that.
So why had he proposed?
Seven thirteen, the clock read.
Three days, four hours, forty-seven minutes, and eleven seconds.
Ten… Nine… Eight… Seven…
You should get out of bed now, she chided herself. You have a wedding to plan.
Six… Five… Four… Three…
Ginny couldn't even tear her eyes away from the clock, counting down to her doom. The one she had been waiting for more than seven years to face with girlish anticipation.
Two…
She couldn't even swing her legs over the edge of her bed. Couldn't even throw the blanket away from her body. For such a lovely summer, the morning of July eleventh had left Ginny shaky and shivering.
One…
Seven fourteen. What an ominous minute. It was her date. The day she'd picked out. And now each and every morning and night she would look at the clock; she could not ignore it as the minutes chimed down.
Seven fourteen.
Ginny didn't wait to see the minutes pass on. Seven fifteen would signify only the first day of their marriage. Seven sixteen and they'd be somewhere in Italy, holding hands as they floated down the watery streets of Venice. So romantic…
And yet so utterly depressing.
She swung her feet to the floor, sitting up with a gasp because of how cold the hard wood was. Ginny stood and examined her surroundings. Her room. Still decorated with the girlish vanity stand and contradicting Quidditch posters she had collected throughout her youth. It was strange to think, now, of herself as an adult. She had been only sixteen exactly eleven months ago.
You're not old enough to be married, a small part of her thought. She closed her eyes tight and tried to quell every similar thread in her mind. Get rid of all the evidence. She was happy to be engaged.
She loved Harry more than she could have ever possibly imagined and she could wait for him to fall for her, if it came to that. It was destined to happen, in time, right? That's why they were getting married, right?
Right? She asked herself, with no small amount of desperation. She scuttled around her room and got dressed. Ginny had never been one to just throw on her clothes without a thought. Though she had no meticulous fashion sense, she usually at least cared how she presented herself.
For the past two weeks, she'd been unable to recognize even if her socks were matching. She wore such an odd combination of muggle and wizard attire that even her father was worried for her sanity. Her mother would have, had she been there to care.
Ginny pulled on a pair of beige-colored trousers and a wrinkled t-shirt, probably the same one she'd been wearing the day before. She bounded out of her room and down the stairs and came into the kitchen half expecting to see breakfast set out on the table, even though she knew it wouldn't be.
Because her mother was dead.
"Everybody report to the Great Hall, immediately!"
Headmistress McGonagall's voice cut through the Gryffindor common room, which had fallen silent as soon as they heard the crackle and pop of the magical audio system. Ron and Harry had been playing a game of chess, while Hermione diligently wrote an essay for potions. Ginny herself sat beside Harry on the floor, pondering their relationship.
The rest of the room had been relatively quiet. The only sound was the first years murmuring to one another about how very few peers they had. Others were absorbed in the sinister silence of their own painful memories. But the Headmistress didn't even need to finish speaking before everyone jumped up and hastily complied.
They'd been waiting for this.
One of the first years had been crying and was holding a letter in her small, trembling hands. She was the only one who hadn't moved. While Harry, Ron, and Hermione took control of the situation from there, Ginny moved to the girl, immediately recognizing the seal on the letter.
It was from the Ministry.
The girl looked up at Ginny with wide, dark brown eyes. Noticing her dark skin and dark hair, Ginny easily placed her as Dean Thomas's cousin, Virginia.
"Hey," Ginny said, kneeling beside the young girl in the midst of everyone leaving. "Come on, we have to go." Perhaps she didn't sound as soft or as understanding as her words suggested, but Virginia looked up at her as if she were an oasis in a sea of desert sand.
Ginny understood the feeling. Nobody worried about others' troubles these days. She reached out and grabbed the girl's arm, pulling her up to her feet. "Come on," she said again. "Follow me."
Ginny easily managed to catch up with the crowd of Gryffindors, who soon met up with the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws and the few remaining Slytherins in the entrance hall, where they all bustled and shoved to make their way into the sanctuary that was the Great Hall. They'd all practiced this drill several times through the last two months, yet there was no doubt in anyone's mind that this was the real thing.
The note of panic in McGonagall's voice could have suggested no less.
Reaching the Great Hall, Ginny lost sight of the little girl Virginia and instead made her way to the outside edges of the crowd, where the elder and more experienced students and professors waited for instruction. She found Harry, Ron, and Hermione talking to Professor Lupin and made a beeline for them.
Before she was able to reach them, however, somebody grabbed onto her shoulder. Turning and looking up into her mother's worried face, Ginny couldn't help but notice the sky. It was such a clear, lovely blue, and the irony of that was not lost on anybody. Several Hufflepuffs were looking up at the fluffy bunny-shaped clouds and saying that it was a sign for hope. Nothing bad could happen on a day like this. It was just too pleasant.
"You're staying behind."
Ginny stared at her mother and shook her head. No, she thought, I will not stay behind. She had to fight. She had to stand next to Harry while he faced the Dark Lord for what would hopefully be the final time. She had to be a part of it all.
"Don't argue, Ginevra Weasley," her mother continued with a note of hysteria in her voice. Ginny knew that it was hard on her. She could not stop her sons from going 'out there.' She could not hold back Ron or Fred or George, Percy or Charlie or Bill and Ginny had to let he mother know that she would not be held back, either.
"I'm going to fight, mum," she said, calmly as she could. Maybe it could be left at that.
"You're too young!" Mrs. Weasley nearly shrieked as her eyes grew wide and panicky. "You can't go out there, Ginevra." Ginny knew that her mother was serious. She only ever called her Ginevra when she reallyreally meant it. Nevertheless, Ginny felt impatience beginning to well up in her chest. The Aurors were already talking to the group of fighters about their strategy plans. Harry was there with Ron and Hermione, and Ginny would not let herself be left behind.
"I am not too young, mum; I can look after myself," Ginny snapped, wrenching her shoulder away from her mother's grasp. "I'm not going to let anything happen to them, OK? I'm not going to let them go out there and risk their lives while I just hide out in here like a…a coward!" As she spoke, a part of Ginny felt guilty. Tears were beginning to well up in her mother's eyes. When she spoke, though, she no longer sounded desperate.
"You can't go out there, Ginevra," she repeated forcefully, as if that settled matters. "You must stay in here. You are not experienced-"
Not experienced! Ginny thought, and only when she saw that her mother had shut up did she realize that she'd said that out loud. "To hell with that, mum, I am too experienced! I fought when I was only eleven, and again when I was fourteen! I am ready for this!"
She didn't even give her mother time to respond. She just turned away and spotted Harry's dark head in the crowd that was slowly slinking out of the Great Hall, away from Hogwarts, onto the grounds where the Death Eaters and Voldemort awaited their blood spilt. She followed them, and did not realize that her mother had followed as well.
Ginny looked away from the table and blinked away the guilty tears which had worked their way into the corners of her eyes. It's foolish to get so wrung up on the past, she reminded herself. It was the same thing Hermione had been saying to her over and over again ever since it had all ended. You've got to look toward the future. And only the future. How bitter a prospect.
Ginny finally decided, after searching through the cupboards and finding only food which her mother should have been preparing, that she had no appetite. She was not hungry, despite the growls of protest her stomach had been making throughout the entire trip downstairs.
You should go outside, she told herself. You should go find Harry.
But she couldn't gather up the courage.
A/N: This chapter was more for character development and an insight into the 'adult' Ginny than anything else. Plot and explanations coming in the next few chapters, and my estimate is that this story will be about fifteen. I might also end up changing the title later on because the idea has kind of changed since I first came up with it, so watch out for that. And please remember to tell me what you think via review. Next chapter should be up next Friday.