Author's Note: Hey... been awhile, hasn't it? Well. I've scarcely written a word in this story in months, and even when I have, they haven't been very good words. I'm starting this chapter fresh, new, from the top—and I apologise greatly, but all contests are off. It's been hard enough to simply write this thing, I can't keep track of contest entries. Anyone who wants that promised wallpaper, just let me know in a review of the EPILOGUE, so that they're all right nice together... or just do it now, but I won't get it to you for awhile, since I might have to actually make it again, since my computer broke down in October.

Hey... I don't usually put the author's notes at the beginning, do I? Well... things are changing round here anyway, so... yeah. I have a lot of work cut out for me in tying up this story, and writing the next one as well—I have absolutely no idea how many years that'll take, but I sincerely do not want to give up on this. There have been times of doubt, when I just haven't seen the point, but I need to finish this. I've contemplated just finishing it off on this fic, but that feels like cheating, somehow. If you all will be here for the long haul, then so will I.

Oh, and by the way: next chapter should be up very soon, at MOST the "normal" five days, because this and the next chapter were originally going to be only one chapter, but it got too long so I had to split it. You'll be thankful I did, it would have been much too much to read at once... and now you have a near-future update to look forward to (because I've only got like a scene to go in that chapter. Woo!)

Please review.

Yesterday's Tomorrow
Potter47

Part Three
October

"Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid."
— Alexander Pope

"If they give you lined paper, write the other way."
— William Carlos Williams

Chapter Fifteen
The Notebook

Ginny felt the cold whip about her face—and along with that nasty little twig, a thought struck her. It most likely should not have been this cold, this early—it was only Halloween morning, now, after all, why was it so very frigid?

She shivered and held tighter to the broom, huddling herself closer to the wooden handle and keeping herself as small as she could, so as to gain speed.

Was she really doing this? Had she really, honestly, truly broken out of that damned prison of her mind? Was she really going to see Harry again... today? Oh, Lord, how long had it been? Only two months, really, but it felt so very much longer... she wanted to hug him, more than anything else, she wanted to hug him and be hugged by him, she could almost—but not quite—remember what that felt like...

Ginny suddenly felt an indescribable pain, sharp, stabbing... all over her body, OH... oh... ow...

And then she felt a distinct pain in her shoulder, even though the stabbing pains were still encompassing the rest of her, this was new, this was different... and she realised she'd fallen off the broom, and hit the ground, and then the world was black.

——

Ginny stared determinedly at her ceiling as the clock struck midnight on the first of October. She'd taken up biting her lips at some point in the past month... she couldn't remember when, but she knew now—even now as she gnawed at that last little scrap of skin that was still attached, that she would regret this later and her mouth would sting terribly when her mum forced the orange juice into it in the morning.

There, the scrap was gone... and she was just about to start on another when her ceiling was suddenly illuminated, just for a moment, by a flash outside the window. She sprung up to a sitting position far too quickly and swayed dizzily for a moment before she could stand the rest of the way—when she finally did manage it, she went to the window to see what had caused the flash—

She squinted out into the darkness, and was vaguely surprised to see nothing out of the ordinary. She grabbed her wand on the bedside table—thankful once again that she was supposed to be doing magic, in school, so it wasn't being monitored—and muttered "Lumos!"

She directed the light upon the overgrown grass and leaned as far out the window as she dared, while making sure never to let a foot off the ground...

"Damn it," she muttered. "Nothing..."

Aggravated, and thinking perhaps she'd been foolish and that she'd been hoping against hope for something exciting to happen for so very long, that maybe she'd imagined the flash entirely... or at least blew it out of proportion, maybe it was a car's headlights down in the village...

She slammed the wand back on the bedside table a bit too hard, but just as she did, the walls lit up white again with another flash—

She was back at the window before she even realised what had happened, before she consciously could tell herself to go there—and she saw the origin of the flash:

The broom shed.

For a moment she was disappointed... it was probably just her father messing about with some Muggle appliance, after all... but then there was another flash, brighter than before, and she heard hushed voices in the silence, drifting up and into her open window from the kitchen three levels below:

"You mustn't, Arthur... we have to call someone, what if it's them?"

That was her mum's voice, worried, desperately worried... Ginny's eyes flew back and forth in a panicked, useless glance, and she threw her head out the window as far as it could go, to listen closer:

"Yes, Molly, what if it is? We can't simply wait here for help if the Death Eaters have broken down our wards, can we? We have to do something—"

"Dumbledore, Arthur, Dumbledore! He told us to call him, don't be stupid—this is just what he was talking about—send out the message, Arthur, he told us to, don't you remember?"

"But what if they see it?"

"Send it out the other way, idiot!"

"Oh... yes, of course..."

"My goodness, who left the window open...?"

That was the last of the voices... Ginny started biting her lip again, and stared out at the broom shed in a mix of apprehension and fear...

What was going on?

——

Ginny heard nothing of the night's events next morning at breakfast—she would have been convinced it had all been a dream if not for the tension-filled glances her parents were giving each other all through the meal... well, that and the fact that her dreams had been rather monotonous recently...

Part of her wanted to bring the subject up herself, but the rest of her said not to. Harry's aunt had started coming out to meals the previous week, and Ginny didn't think it prudent to mention anything out of the ordinary in her presence, even if it was urgent.

"Your bacon is very tolerable," said Petunia suddenly, as though she'd been trying to make herself say it for days—but then she looked upset with herself. Ginny reckoned she hadn't meant to say 'tolerable' at all, and that she had instead intended an actual compliment, but hadn't managed it.

"I'm happy to hear that," said Molly, and she almost sounded it, if not for the disinterested look on her face.

Ginny finished her eggs then, and walked as surreptitiously as she could to the door to the garden—

"Where are you going?" said Molly sharply.

"To sit in the garden," said Ginny, as though nothing were amiss...

"Bed, Ginny, you are supposed to stay in bed..."

"Mum, I'm fine, it's been forever since I've been out of the house..."

"I seem to remember you sneaking out your window a bit less than forever ago, young lady—"

"That was only one time!"

"So?" (It had actually been a few times...)

"I want to sit in the garden!"

"It's not safe—"

"Why not?"

"Because of—" Molly hesitated. "Because you're supposed to be in bed."

"Molly?" said a very small voice—Arthur's, actually. "Perhaps it wouldn't do any harm to let her out for just a little while..."

Molly hesitated again, and she said, harshly to her husband: "Are you sure?"

He nodded, and it was as though there was some secretive communicating going on between their heads, Ginny reckoned...

"Fine," said Molly. "A half-hour, you can sit out there for one half-hour and then it's back to bed. And I'll be watching."

Ginny smiled. "Thank you."

She turned towards the door, and as she left, she noticed an absolutely bewildered look on Petunia's face.

Ginny grinned as the cool October air hit her face.

——

Days went by, then, and the first week of October disappeared into the second—each morning Ginny was allowed to sit a half hour in the garden, and each morning she spent that half-hour staring at the broom shed and trying to work out in her mind what on earth had happened there that night. Surely it couldn't truly have been Death Eaters, or else she would have heard something... she would have noticed the Order coming to get rid of them, and the whole family would likely have been packed up to a safe house, or put under a Fidelius Charm, at the very least...

Ginny blinked.

How would she know if they had been put under a Fidelius Charm? She had not left the property, had she, so how did she know for sure that it was still visible to outsiders? Perhaps the Death Eaters had found them, and now Dumbledore had put a charm up...

She stared harder still at the broom shed, as though convinced that she could force it to divulge its secrets...

"Bed," said a voice simply, then, a tired voice that Ginny knew was her mum's. Molly had been showing increasing signs of fatigue with each passing day, and Ginny reckoned that she had reached her wit's end with Petunia's hardly-hidden displeasure with her house and the ungratefulness to her hospitality... Petunia seemed to think she was some sort of queen locked away in a servant's house for her protection while her castle had been overtaken by the enemy. Ginny figured that wasn't really too far from the truth, except for the "queen," "servant," and "castle" parts...

Ginny reached her room in a rather melancholy mood—she was dreadfully bored, as always, but for once she didn't want to do anything about it, she felt no urge to attempt an escape, or to think about the broom shed, or... anything, really... In fact, the only thing she really wanted to do was to see Harry, because she always wanted to see Harry regardless of what mood she was in.

Ginny sat in the old wooden chair by her desk—which likely would have snapped in two had she weighed more than a large sack of potatoes, and had it not been magically reinforced—so that she wouldn't have to return to her bed. She rested her cheek on her hand and stared at the desktop, stared at nothing at all...

When had she last sat here...? It took her a moment to recall—it had been the day after Harry and the others had departed for school, she had sat down and written him a letter... she couldn't quite remember what she'd written, but it didn't matter because she hadn't been able to send it. They still weren't letting letters into the school unsolicited—her dad had told her that, when she'd asked to borrow Errol... and there was no point trying to send a love letter past Percy...

Her eyes fell on her ink bottle as she thought of Percy. It was almost funny, to think of him as High Inquisitor and all... it suited him so well, didn't it? But then, she couldn't imagine what he must be like in the position... had he sacked anyone, she wondered? She wasn't disappointed that she didn't have to deal with him herself, but...

Thinking of all that made her think of all she couldn't do, all that she was missing, staying here away from Hogwarts... and thinking of that, she thought of Harry, because she was missing him most of all...

Ginny's eyes refused to leave the ink bottle, for some reason... whether voluntarily or not, she did not know... Did she really find it that interesting, the shiny scarlet through glass? It looked a bit like blood, actually, now that she thought about it, and she didn't want to think about it, so she wrenched her gaze away.

It fell upon a Muggle notebook stashed inside a small, open, cupboard-esque compartment at the edge of her desk. It was blue, and proclaimed '70 LEAVES' in large letters on its cover, almost as though it were bragging. It wasn't brand new, it was actually very old... she couldn't remember how she came to possess it, actually, but it had always sat there in that cupboard, never written in, scarcely ever touched...

She touched it now, pulled it out and began paging through its blank 'leaves'... She found nothing, of course, or else nothing but white, lined sheets... Did Muggles really need little lines to keep their writing straight? Were they just for show...? What good did they serve, really?

Ginny flipped back to the first page and turned the notebook defiantly horizontal, to spite the lines—she folded the cover back on the little spirally thing, and reached for her ink bottle—

No, she said to herself, looking at the blood red liquid—no, I'm not going to use that...

She bit her lip a moment in thought and then reached into the cupboard that had held the notebook—at the very back she knew she'd find a stack of Muggle pens... when her father gave her one, she'd throw it in here, having nowhere else for it... and now they would have a use.

Spreading the pens across the desk, she picked a nice blue one, and pulled the cap off of it—it stuck a moment before coming free—and then stuck the cap on the other end of it, so she wouldn't lose it.

She put the pen to the paper and began to write across the lines, just to write, and write, and she wasn't really even aware of what she was writing until she'd covered half the page with her vaguely loopy, unpractised script...

Then she stopped, and read what she'd written—it almost came as a surprise to realise that the blue pen actually contained black ink, but yes, the words were all in black.

Dear Harry, she had written,

I love you. When was the last time I told you that, when was the last time I told you anything? When was the last time I hugged you, Harry, when was the last time I saw you?

What am I, now, some damned princess locked away from her love? I don't WANT to be a princess, damn it, I never wanted to be a princess, what's so great about princesses, anyway? They never do anything, do they? Luna has the right idea, she's always been a Queen. You didn't know about that, of course, but she did...

No, I'm not a princess, I'm... I'm Dorothy, stuck in... Kansas, is that how you spell it...? while everybody else is in Oz... Should I write a song, will that help? Then I can sing it and then a tornado will come and take me over the rainbow, and I'll be back with you on that tower just where we were when you first kissed me, when I first kissed you, when the rain stopped and there was my rainbow and everything was perfect and WHY DID WE EVER LEAVE?

Ginny blinked as she finished reading her words—had she really written all that? It was so different from anything else she'd ever written...

Without even meaning to, she thought back to Tom, and she knew that she never would have dared to write anything like that to him... she was always nothing more than a pitiful little girl to him, she never had a real voice...

Ginny grinned as she realised that she had a voice now... and also that she was no longer melancholy by any stretch of the imagination, she was exhilarated...

Ginny closed her eyes a moment, and put the pen back to the paper... and she wrote.

——

Ginny took her notebook everywhere with her now—and with it at least two pens, should one ever run out of ink. When the blue-pen-with-black-ink had run out, she'd nearly panicked... she didn't know pens did that... and she'd thought when the words stopped showing up that she'd lost the magic writing touch she seemed to have acquired...

She wrote about everything, anything at all... she wrote about the Mystery of the Broom Shed (as she'd dubbed it), and about things she remembered, good things... and sometimes bad things as well. She wrote about her feelings, her thoughts, poured them all into that blue notebook, feeling utterly perfect knowing that only one person would ever read them:

Harry.

The book had become a diary of sorts, a diary of letters, all to Harry... she'd started marking down the dates so as to make it more diary-like, and she often found herself adding P.S.s to make it more letter-like. She would give it to him the next time she saw him... the Christmas holidays, likely... and then he'd write back whether he wanted to or not, she'd see to that.

She grinned at the thought of Harry scribbling madly away, perhaps with a bit of hair falling in his eyes, leaning over one of the tables in the Gryffindor common room... and she realised how much she'd been grinning lately.

Ginny sat now in the garden, watching the broom shed as her hand jotted away of its own accord...

She glanced down at what she'd written:

...perhaps it's a conspiracy. Yes, the Ministry is breeding Snorkacks in my broom shed, that's it, why didn't I think of it before? And the lights, Luna mentioned something about it once, I think that Snorkacks glow when they're cuddled by virgins, it's like unicorns except more Snorkacky, because unicorns don't glow. Oh! That means Fudge must be breeding them himself!

Ginny snorted... that was awful, just terrible... and yet she loved it because she'd actually managed to write it down.

"Bed."

"Coming," said Ginny cheerfully, and she jumped up off the garden bench, covering her pen.

Molly looked almost worriedly at her. "What's happened, Ginny? Just a few days ago you did nothing but mope about begging to be set free of this terrible prison... and now you're so... happy."

Ginny grinned once again. "And is there a problem with that, Mum? Would you rather I continued moping about?"

"Of course not... but..." Molly bit her lip and looked her daughter up and down as though inspecting her— "Ginny, I have to ask, as your mother... you haven't been stinging yourself with Billywigs, have you?"

Ginny blinked—"Of course not, Mum, I'd never do that—"

"You're sure?"

"Yes, Mum, I'm quite sure—I'm not an idiot..."

"Good," said Molly, nodding and looking relieved. "I told you father not to worry..."

She did no such thing, thought Ginny. There's no way that was Dad's theory...

"Are you all right, Mum?" said Ginny, then, noticing once more how fatigued her mother was looking. It was getting a bit ridiculous... you would think that eventually it would become impossible to look twice as worse as you had the day before...

"Oh, yes, I'm fine, dear..."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Ginny, I'm quite sure—I'm perfectly all right..."

They were both silent for a moment, and then:

"You know that I don't believe you a bit?" said Ginny, a small smile on her face now.

"Yes...yes I do..."

Then Ginny smirked.

"I think you should go to bed, Mum."

"Oh, no, there's far too much to be done..."

"Like what?"

Molly hesitated a moment, and then: "The dishes, the living room has to be cleaned, the floors are dreadfully dusty, I have to find a charm for that squeaky door..."

Molly had begun to walk away from Ginny as she spoke, heading for the kitchen sink for the dishes—Ginny caught up with her, and took hold of her arm.

"Mum, you sound like a Mrs Skower's advert—has Harry's aunt been complaining again? You shouldn't listen to her—"

"No, oh no, Ginny, Petunia hasn't complained in weeks, hardly..." She lowered her voice, then: "But I can tell she doesn't like it one bit, and since she hasn't even complained I think that it's only fair for me to... try to make her stay happier..."

"Mum, you're driving yourself mad," said Ginny, locking her arm round her mother's now, and walking her out of the kitchen. "Rest. I'll do the dishes, and you don't have to worry about the other things... it's not that important, really. You need some sleep."

Molly shot her a sharp look as she was led to the stairwell, "How old are you, Ginny? What have you done with my little girl?"

"Don't worry, she's still in there somewhere..." Ginny said—a thought popped into her head of her selves, and she sort of lost track of things for a moment. Then, shaking her head a bit and surfacing: "Bed."

Molly hesitated, and then finally lifted her foot to the first step and said, very softly, "Thank you..."

"Any time," said Ginny, and she smiled once again as her mum climbed the stairs. She added: "...dear."

——

15 October

Dear Harry,

Do you remember my first letter? I said, (and I quote, having the benefits of flipping back to the first page...) "When was the last time I hugged you, Harry, when was the last time I saw you!"

And I said that as though I don't remember, but I do, I remember it like it was ages ago. I was going to say "yesterday" but it doesn't feel like yesterday at all.

When you left with Ron and Hermione... I remember it vividly. I hadn't seen you in days, you had... Mum hadn't been letting you near my room, I don't think, I wanted to kill her for that... and then on that day I was allowed to come down to say goodbye, remember? And you looked awful, like you'd been sick... you'd still not gotten used to Sirius being not alive... have you by now, I wonder? I hope so, I hope you've been... happier...

I saw you that day and I didn't want to let you go, because you looked so awful, and I felt awful seeing you like that, and I just wanted to hug you forever, even more than I usually do, because you know, when two people love each other they're supposed to be together, aren't they? They're supposed to be like one person, right, and when one of them's not doing good the other's supposed to make them feel better, and I wanted to make you feel better so badly that I nearly burst into tears right in front of you, you know that?

But I couldn't hug you forever, because you were leaving. And when I did hug you, to say goodbye, it was so... not right. It was so short and so... almost cold, like you didn't want to hug me, and for a minute I was upset, I couldn't understand why... but then I pulled back and I saw this look in your eyes, it was like... it was like your soul was aching through the green... that doesn't make sense, but I could feel that you really wanted nothing but to hold me forever as well, but something was stopping you.

What was stopping you?

Was it Sirius? If it was, then... hugging helps that sort of thing, believe me. I mean, I've never actually lost someone like that, but I've felt like I have, I've lost myself... and hugging really helps, I promise. You better be better by the next time I see you, Harry—you'd better hug me like there's no tomorrow, or there's going to be hell to pay.

Oh, I love you... and I miss you something awful.

Love,

Ginevra M. Weasley

P.S.: Oh look at me, I'm so businesslike... I should intern at the Ministry, it'd give me something to do...

P.P.S.: There should be some way to show that I'm joking in a letter. I mean, if I said that out loud, I would have laughed afterward, or smiled like I just did... but you can't see that... You know I wasn't serious, right? Well, that was sort of obvious, but before that, about there being hell to pay... you could tell I was joking, yes? Well, I was. Just wanted to make sure... (smile). I'll do that from now on when I smile when I'm writing these, OK?

——

Ginny smiled once again as she set down her pen... she'd best actually do those dishes.

She hesitated then, as she reached the sink, she remembered that her wand was back on her bedside table...

She glanced up towards the stairwell, contemplating... should she go to get it? Her mum might not be asleep, though, and she didn't want her seeing Ginny doing magic... and anyway, she'd probably wake up from the creaking steps, if only to see if Ginny needed help... Better to let her rest...

So Ginny picked up the sponge herself, in her own hand, rather than by magic as her mum did it... She used to do this a lot more often, years ago... They used to rotate, so she did it once a week until Bill left, and then twice because she somehow landed the extra day. When Charlie left, Ron had had two days as well...

Ginny kept remembering, as she scrubbed. She was so used to trying to forget things, actually, that the remembering took her a bit by surprise... it was nice, really...

There were so many less plates now then there had been back then.

At some point her mum had taken over most of the days. Ginny couldn't remember when that had been, and it didn't really make sense... As they had gotten older, shouldn't they have taken more of the responsibilities, rather than less of them?

Ginny stopped her scrubbing a minute as she realised she couldn't remember how old her mum was.

She was in her forties, right... late forties...? Must be...

Ginny couldn't believe she couldn't remember...

Her birthday was soon, Ginny knew that, it was the thirtieth... 30 October.. what? What year?

Ginny felt ashamed to think about that... how on earth had she forgotten...? It had been so long since she'd been around on her mum's birthday, she must have completely just... stopped remembering it...

She'd have to ask her dad.

Her dad... Dad... where was her dad? He'd gone to work, yes, of course... it was only Ginny and Molly and Petunia...

Where was Petunia?

In her room, Ginny answered herself, wondering why she'd wondered, and then noting that she'd started thinking of it as Petunia's room, rather than the twins', who'd been living above their shop...

Ginny blinked as she picked up the second-to-last dish and began scrubbing it...

I'm alone, aren't I? I could walk out the door and Mum wouldn't know...

She began to scrub faster and faster, a bit rougher...

I could leave, I could fly away and see Harry again, I could hold him... she looked up at the Muggle clock on the wall and figured he'd be in the Great Hall for lunch about now... How wonderful it would be to charge through the double doors and envelope him...

"Ow!"

Her finger had slipped off the sponge in the rough scrubbing, and she had scraped it on the plate, which sent tingles down her spine—the plate had clattered to the bottom of the sink, luckily remaining intact.

Ginny wasn't thinking quite clearly, now, as she picked up the dish and scrubbed it once again... Her eyes were clouded with thoughts of freedom, thoughts of Harry, and then they cleared a minute later as she placed the plate to the side—she had one dish left.

She began scrubbing harder than she'd ever scrubbed before, as though her very life depended on it. Perhaps it did. She felt as though it did...

Harry...

"Done!" she whisper-yelled finally, and she spun around in a moment, planning on charging straight out the door...

...when her eyes fell upon the worried face of her mother, sleepy-eyed.

"I heard a noise, did you break something?"

DAMN IT!

"No, Mum, I... I just dropped a plate. It didn't break." Ginny felt her voice was a bit wobbly, and she could hardly help the words from coming out in a scream. DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT!

"Are you all right? Did it chip?"

"No, Mum, everything's fine," said Ginny somewhat roughly... then she took a breath and said: "I'm fine, Mum, I just lost my grip a minute. Go back to bed."

Please please please please...

Molly surveyed her daughter a minute, and then said: "I think I'll have some tea instead."

Damn it... Ginny felt as though it was paradise that had slipped through her fingers, rather than a coldish October day.

Then her Mum spoke once again: "Would you like some?"

"No thanks... hang on, I'll make yours, you need to rest Mum, why are you standing up?"

Molly blinked as though still half-asleep. "I heard a noise..."

"Go sit on the couch, I'll make you some tea, just rest, Mum..."

Ginny settled herself to her captivity once again, and began to prepare a pot of tea.

——

16 October,

Dear Harry,

You remember my rainbow, right? From the day when we... well... when all this came about. I mentioned it before, and today I was thinking of it, I wish I could see it again now...

I don't like the rain. Luna's always loved it, so we used to play in it all the time when we were younger, but I haven't liked it, ever... it makes me feel sick. Not like it's sickening, but it reminds me of being sick. I have these vague memories of when I was really little, when I was really sick in bed with something and it was raining the whole time... It probably isn't even really real, it was probably just like a day or something, but it felt like ages when I couldn't see anything out the window except the drops and... yeah.

I've thought of the rain a lot since being locked up here... all the lying in bed and everything. And I've been thinking of my rainbow, my refuge-from-the-rain.

I'll explain it a little more. Whenever it rained in school, you know how the pitter-patter's either really loud or really soft depending on where you are? Well, first off I always went to where I couldn't hear the rain much at all, and then I'd wait out the storm... and then I'd go—I'd run, sometimes—to the Astronomy Tower, to see my rainbow. It was an escape.

I miss it... even though it hasn't really rained much, I miss the feeling of escape.

I felt it yesterday, that feeling... or I nearly did, anyway. I was so incredibly close to just charging off to see you... remember that lady in the pub? She talked about exit doors, didn't she... that just popped into my head, I hadn't thought of that in ages...

Well, Mum caught me without even realising she'd caught me, and I was mad at her for hours even though she didn't do anything, really.

I REALLY want to see you, Harry, it's driving me insane...

I dunno when I'll get another chance like that, but it had better be soon. I should start carrying my broom around with me, so I could just take off out the door if Mum looked away for a minute...

I love you terribly. I miss you so much. Or the other way around I guess...

Off to see the wizard, (I wish),

Ginevra M. Weasley

——

Ginny was looking over her words, from days ago, all of them straight through, reading the notebook as she tended to do, biting her lip as she tended to do... She was bored (as she tended to be) and she didn't have any inspiration to write.

So she read... and the one thing she noticed very, very much was how... futile her descriptions were. She wanted to see Harry so... incredibly much... it didn't come across fully on the page, in those words she'd written, she couldn't actually describe how much she missed him...

She looked over them again now:

...I REALLY want to see you...

Oh, how eloquent.

...driving me insane... should start carrying my broom around with me... take off out the door...

Ginny blinked. My broom... She looked over her shoulder at nothing in particular for a moment, expecting to see something but not knowing what she was expecting to see. Then, a moment later, she knew—she looked over the other shoulder, looked towards the window.

My broom...

She stood up and walked towards it, towards the window, and something heavy seemed to drop inside her chest as her eyes crossed the overgrown grass and settled on the broom shed.

My broom.

"Ouch," she muttered, tearing a bit of skin free of her lip, a bit more than she'd expected... it hurt... Oh damn it.

She was bleeding a bit, now, and she wasn't looking at the broom shed anymore, without even realising that she'd looked away. She sat down at her desk again and put the back of her hand to her mouth to stem the barely-there flow of blood. And she began to write now, she had something to write about, and bit of a fervour for it at the moment...

——

23 October,

Dear Harry,

I just realised that my broom is in the broom shed. And I just looked at that sentence and it looks so very silly, as though I'm stating the obvious, but I'm sure you understand. My broom is in the broom shed... meaning I can't very well get to you, even if I get a chance, unless I figure out the damned Mystery.

Damn. I haven't thought much of it in a while...

OK. I'm going to think all this through from the beginning again, write it all down here on one page, so I can look at it.

Round midnight of the first of the month, I see a flash. A minute or two later, another flash. They're coming from the broom shed. It's not Dad, he's not messing about with some hair drier, Dad's downstairs with Mum, they're arguing... something about sending a warning to Dumbledore. He eventually sends it... "the other way," I think... dunno what kind of warning it would be, couldn't have been Errol he was there the next morning and he'd never make it to Hogwarts and back in a few hours... probably never make it to Hogwarts and back period, if he got intercepted he'd probably have a heart attack and croak right in Percy's stuffy High Inquisitor hands...

Anyway... they were worried, they thought it was Death Eaters.

The next day Dad seems to think everything's fine. What could have happened? Was it not the Death Eaters, was it just a false alarm? How could that be a false alarm, though, broom sheds don't just light up for no reason...

Maybe there were Death Eaters there but the Order came and got rid of them. But surely I would have noticed something... right?

I have no idea...

And you know, a minute ago I was all determined to figure it all out, here and now, but all I did was confuse myself just like I've confused myself all the other times... If you're reading this all in one sitting, you must be really tired of this. I'm sorry.

Hey... have I mentioned that I love you? (smile)

You know what? The next time I see you I'm going to lunge myself into your arms and hold you tighter than you've ever been held before—and then I'm going to kiss you on the cheek, a big wet peck, like some old aunt or something, the kind of thing that'll make you blush. I want to see you blush, Harry, I want to see you smile awkwardly and look the other way.

I want to see you.

Yours forevermore,

Ginevra M. Weasley

P.S.: My mum's turning forty-seven next week. Did I tell you I'd forgotten her age? I must have... I felt awful about it, to forget my own mum's age and all... luckily I didn't even have to ask Dad about it or anything, it just came up in conversation (dunno how that happened) so it wasn't all that shameful.

P.P.S.: I just almost wrote an extra "P" in this P.S... and then I forgot what I was going to say.

Next Chapter

"I don't have a quote yet. Sorry."
— Potter47

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