My Beloved Ferret
by StopBlowingHolesInMyShips/Krystallia

AN:
This was a really strange chapter for me to write. As most of you know, this story is pretty much a romcom. Lol. But as you've read I've been setting up for a little more than that and this is the chapter where it comes. It's more than just the ferret now. I am afraid that you will find no comedy in this chapter (although if you do, I didn't mean to write it, lol...It's happened before).
This chapter contains really sad and painful memories for Ginny, including a darker side of herself that I haven't exposed in this fic.
You might think I went over the top with the storyline, but it's what I had to do for this story.
The story remains PG-13 as what's in here isn't too graphic, but it can be depressing.
There is a lot of backstory in this chapter. Actually, the chapter pretty much IS backstory. Most of it takes place in the past.
Before you correct me about the 'February-on' remark, I would like to remind you that this story is not fully HBP canon. This means "although some events from HBP remain unchanged they have been dramatically altered to the point where I should really say that it's not HBP canon but H/G still happened so whatever", i.e. H/G happened and Dumbledore died but nothing happened in the same way.
I'd say that there are about four more chapters in this story...so there would be twelve chapters.
Thanks for reading...the "adventure" returns in Chapter Nine!
Love,
Ships 3

Chapter Eight
The Bridge

Ginny's legs trembled as she stood up, biting her lip and rubbing her eye like the insecure little girl she used to be. Although the fight between Ron and her had seemed stupid, it went a lot deeper than the ferret. Ginny and Ron had never been extremely close, but lately they had been fighting more than ever. Like the last one, it started with something as stupid as a misplaced quill or a single remark in a previous conversation and evolved into something bigger that left Ginny upset and usually crying. She didn't understand what had happened to her brother to make him so...well...stupid.

She wallowed in tragic thought, until she halted suddenly. Cocoa was kneeling before her, his ferrety eyes glinting with the hint of a human smile. Ginny shook her head uneasily. Ron's obviously moronic suspicions shouldn't get to her now. She picked up her pet and carried on with her slow walk to the Gryffindor common room.

Nearly A Week Later
Hermione shot down the stairs to the Common Room, hand in hand with Harry, flushed and angry. Her messy, wavy hair flew out behind her as she made her way by the fire. In an old, rickety chair, Ginny sat with Cocoa in her lap, a small tear falling onto his fur every now and then.

"What time is it?" asked Harry in a low, quiet voice. She could tell he was feeling the same as she was right now: lost, reckless, and in a whirlwind of strange emotion.

"It's nearly five o'clock. Dinner will be soon," came Ginny's voice, crackly like that of someone with a hoarse throat.

Hermione bit her lip, ashamed, and looked at Harry uncertainly. Neither of them understood nearly as much as they thought they did, and truthfully, they didn't care about what they thought they should be thinking about caring about. Rightfully.

"You don't have to..." started Ginny, but her voice died like a flying kite that had lost its wind midway on the rise. She didn't move at all, just stared unblinkingly at the fire with her thumb moving in slow, steady rotations on Cocoa's head.

"Finish," urged Ginny's inner conscience. She sucked in a deep breath and continued, her voice low, cold, and utterly, painfully real. "You don't have to dance around me. I'm not stupid, you know. I'm only a few months younger than the both of you."

"Ginny, please..." pleaded Hermione, seeing the outcome of this conversation far ahead of time, "You don't understand..."

"Oh, really? Well, if I don't, then why don't you just tell me what happened yourself?" Ginny turned around the face them, Cocoa sitting, not quivering in her lap still. "What was the note? What just happened over the past few hours? Why are...?"

Hermione shushed her gently. Every blink was uneasy. Every breath was light. It was like tiptoeing when an irritable baby was sleeping, they didn't want to wake her wrath. "Ginny, we're really sorry about--"

"Tell it to my brother," she snorted. "What have you been keeping about him from me, anyway? What do you know that I don't? Why haven't I found out anything? Why is it that you two are always off somewhere while it's been a week since anyone has seen my brother?"

"Ginny, please," begged Hermione, tears glistening in her eyes. "We didn't mean to keep anything from you--we just--"

"Shut up, Hermione!" Ginny shouted, struggling against her tears. "Just...shut up and go away."

"Gin, we'll just tell you now and get it over with!" yelled Harry. "If you really want to know."

The faces and voices of all three speakers softened, but the melancholy setting and crackling fire, winking in the darkness, only sharpened.

"Oh, Ginny..." Hermione breathed, her voice almost under a whisper, "Percy's dead."

Ginny nodded solemnly. "I knew." Give me something I haven't heard. She bit back the ugly words, but she still felt that they were true...On the inside, she was dying for information about the status of everything.

"That's not all," continued Hermione shakily. "They did everything they could, Gin...but...he's gone. Your father's gone."

Ginny turned around and met Hermione's eyes with shock. She wanted to curl up and weep to death, until the tears choked her. It was Hermione's soft mumblings that kept her from doing so. Ginny stared at Hermione in search of something...She wasn't quite sure what.

For a few moments, they sat amid Hermione's uncontrollable, yet quiet crying, and Ginny's stiff sniffling. It took Ginny a minute, actually, to start crying, and after she started, it took her five to start thinking. She was still searching...but for what?

"Hermione," fished Ginny, "You said something about a note before. ...What note?"

Hermione bit her lip and bowed her head. "I can't tell you, Gin. I can't..." Hermione's eyes welled up in the darkness, her hand clutching Harry's forcefully. Ginny's eyes scanned the two of them. Now it was getting desperate. They were hiding something. Something truly awful had happened and they were trying to make sense of it without letting anyone in. Knowing Harry's hero complex, he probably wanted to carry the burden all by himself on his own shoulders. Knowing Harry, Hermione only knew because she was the one who found the information in the first place. Unless...something else had happened? Ginny shook her head. No. It had to be more than just a minor threat--oh, I've kidnapped a student, come find me. No, it had to actually be somewhat serious, and that's why Hermione knew. And it was most likely precisely the reason why they would keep it from Ginny.

Ginny felt like she was being suffocated. This was something she'd swore to herself she'd never think about. There was a great chasm in her mind where all of the unpleasant thoughts went, and she had desperately tried to stop the bridge that crossed one side of her mind to the other from being built. But the bridge was finally completed, and it felt as thought something else were pushing her onto the unsafe side. And there lie the painful memories of Harry and Ginny's relationship. There lie the painful memories of watching her close friend and confidante die. There lie the memories of killing his chances of living herself.

Ginny wanted to run away, both physically and mentally, but her legs didn't respond to her brain's orders and her brain wasn't letting itself tell itself to go. To flee and never come back to this place. But now it was there, and Ginny was being thrust over it.

Over the end of last school year...spanning from February on, she'd say...Harry and Ginny had begun to date. They had been, pretty much, the Golden Couple of Hogwarts. Everything was wonderful...except that something big was missing and making Ginny feel hollow. She didn't tell anyone. Not Luna, not Hermione...only Blaise. He was a Slytherin, but he had been nice to her. He was good-looking, too. He was tall and built, if a little on the stocky side, with tanned skin--almost an olive shade, light brown hair, and eyes that seemed to be a violet color. He had become Draco Malfoy's first mate, and his handsome but darker features contrasted with Malfoy's fragile, pale ones. They made a good team, Draco with his loud attractiveness and smart-ass drawl and Blaise with his quiet smarts and timid ways. Ginny admitted it only to herself: she had liked Draco for years...Still, Blaise was very cute and Ginny wanted to be friends with him.

Meanwhile, Harry's life and his relationships were falling apart. Ron and Hermione kept flipping between either not being on speaking terms or snogging all over the place. Harry didn't know which was worse. They were an annoying couple romantically--the sickening type that was sweet, but after awhile made you want to beat the two of them over the head and tape their mouths shut--and when they weren't romantic they would not give the other a glance--except when they thought that the other wasn't looking, of course.

Either way, their turbulent relationship kept Harry from being able to be close to either of them. He kept his emotions bottled inside and the lack of Hermione's help and guidance in his mission to destroy Voldemort. (He had, in fact, been able to kill Voldemort or banish him or something with Hermione's help at the end of the summer, but neither of them had told a soul how they'd done it.) Still, Harry told Hermione everything--everything. There was basically nothing in his life she didn't know about. Meanwhile, he never told Ginny anything. He had always been trying to protect her, and she had always been wanting something else. There was something Ginny and Hermione had in common, and it was that though Harry tried to protect them, to lock them away in thought far away from the twisted ones of the Dark Lord he had to see, the girls would both rather be unsafe and by Harry's side to the very end. But there was a difference, and it was the difference that separated Ginny and Harry and bound Harry and Hermione together. Ginny was a strong, smart, resourceful girl for normal circumstances, but she wasn't nearly strong enough to hold Harry up during these difficult times. Hermione had been with him the whole time, experiencing it all, and so she was. Ginny knew this, but she was too upset to bring it up with him.

The most hurtful part was his perception of her. Oh yes, Ginny and Harry loved each other. But it was a sibling-like love, one that caused them to fail in any other relationship...obviously. Some people said that Ginny would never get over believing in Harry as the sort of superstar boy she had grown up hearing about. Some people predicted that this would be their downfall. And maybe she would never get over it. But it wasn't her screwed-up view, it was his. He would always, always see her as the little girl he saved from the Chamber of Secrets, the one he needed to protect at all costs. The one who was part of his family...the Weasleys.

And that was why he never told her a word.

At least, about anything that mattered.

A thousand times, Ginny had cried on Blaise's shoulder, searching in her heart and others' for an answer. A thousand times, she had expressed to Blaise her innermost thoughts. And a thousand times, he had comforted her and made her smile and laugh.

Harry was always trying to push away others. He knew that being with him made other people targets. But Ginny hadn't realized that since she was number 2 on Voldemort's hit list, that it worked that way for her too.

She got the note in July. It was a bright, sunny day, a week after Fleur and Bill's wedding and a few days after Harry and Hermione had disappeared mysteriously on their venture. Ginny's life was mildly shadowed with worries of the two, but all in all she felt good for once in her existence. The note was scrawled on a piece of old parchment. Oh, Blaise, that poor boy. No clue what he's gotten himself into. That was all it had said. Ginny felt shivers going up and down her spine, and she suspected it wasn't because she was wearing a tank top.

She went to bed a little bit after dinner, tired and dreary. It was the middle of the night when she opened her eyes to stare at a Death Eater. She couldn't see who it was. "Give me the Horcrux and Blaise lives...Refuse and he dies."

Ginny was jumping. What Horcrux? She wracked her brain and remembered a conversation between Harry and Hermione she'd overheard the night of Fleur and Bill's wedding. The pair of them were trying to get comfortable after being in dress clothes all day and Ginny was about to bring refreshments, but after hearing his words, she had scampered away, frightened. "Hermione, I don't know what I'll do...Ginny's a Horcrux."

Hermione had cried, and Harry seemed deeply distressed.

Well, the Death Eater wanted Ginny then, right? Ginny swallowed.

She didn't know why she did it, but something possessed her to shake her head.

"Won't...give...Horcrux," she squeaked.

The Death Eater Disapparated, leaving Ginny to shudder in her bed for the entire night. At 5:00 AM, something willed her to sleep...A soft, shushing noise that flooded her ears. She woke up two hours later to see Blaise lying on her desk.

Dead.

Ginny had remembered the funeral only in waving, dizzying chunks that floated in and out of her brain with the lilt of the sea. She had her hair up, and she wore black entirely. Her eyes were downcast the whole time as she felt like throwing up. Or possibly dying. Blaise was dead...not only dead, but murdered...and it was her fault. She had practically murdered Blaise.

Ginny remembered staring down at her hands, afraid of finding blood. So ensued flashbacks of her first year at Hogwarts, an equally traumatic time. Ginny would have nightmares about Tom Riddle and wake up in her bed shrieking and drenched in sweat. Fleur hardly got any sleep, for after the incident she agreed to share the room with her, and comfort her in the middle of the night as she screamed and screamed.

Harry and Hermione came back mid-August. They didn't talk about anything for a long while. Their days consisted of dressing, eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping, eating, dressing, sleeping. It was the last week of August when they awoke from their "slumber".

The three of them--Harry, Hermione, and Ginny--took off the first two weeks of school. They were traumatized and only beginning to heal. Harry learned that he no longer needed to worry about Voldemort--though he still kept his guard up--and Hermione eased back to her normal personality (besides the fact that whenever she and Harry were in a room together, they fell silent). Ginny...she learned to heal. She sealed up the gaping hole in her soul as best as she could. And she kept far, far away from Draco Malfoy.

That had become the Golden Rule of Ginny's current life. Stay away from Draco Malfoy.

For, previously, wherever there was Draco there was Blaise.

And now, wherever there was Draco...there was still Blaise. His memories were lurking around the castle, haunting two young students, one a Slytherin boy, one a Gryffindor girl.

Both still incredibly upset, and both hiding it incredibly well.