""Ginny was a redhead, but not in an orangey, carrot-top kind of way. Her colour was more auburn, deep and red mixed with browns that made her green eyes seem almost luminous. Her skin was pale, with masses of freckles for the first few years I knew her; as we grew older, they faded into a sprinkling across her nose, as if they'd been scattered there by hand. She had a scar on her stomach that looked like a mouth smiling from when she'd gotten her appendix out. She was beautiful in all the unconscious, accidental ways that I wasn't, and I was jealous more than I'd ever have admitted. To me, Ginny was foreign and exotic. But she said she would have given anything for my long wavy hair and tan skin in the summer, for my thick eyelashes and hazel eyes. It was an even trade, our envy of each other; it made everything fair.""
""We always believed we lived perfectly parallel lives. We went through the same phases at the same times, Ginny was more confident, able to make friends faster, where I was shy and quiet, hanging back from the crowd. Without her I knew I'd be hanging out at the quid ditch pitch alone, with the nerds and Neville Longbottom. Without her, I didn't make sense. That was, I was sure, the destiny in store for me until the day Ginny looked up at me at Platform 9 ¾ and made a spot for me next to her for the rest of my life. And I was grateful. Because life is an ugly, awful place not to have a best friend.""