Chapter 20: I Can Have a Friend

Ginny Weasley boarded the Hogwarts Express for her second year as quietly and inconspicuously as she could. It shouldn't have been all that easy to do, what with four of her six brothers still clambering onto the train with her. Thankfully, however, Percy had boarded early to hobknob with his fellow Head Boys and Girls and direct the Prefects; Fred and George had gone off by themselves to make mischief; and Ron was no doubt sequestered in a compartment somewhere with Neville and Hermione.

Lugging her trunk down the narrow corridor of the locomotive, Ginny kept her head down, her long auburn strands falling into her face so that she almost missed the first empty compartment she came across. Ducking into it, she pulled the glass door to and attempted to swing her trunk onto the luggage rack above. But the rack was too high, so she had to settle for placing it on the cushions next to her. At the very least, it would cover an empty seat. She wasn't sure what she would do if another student tried to come in here, only that the prospect was likely – the Hogwarts Express tended to fill up quickly. Ginny dreaded it.

What a difference a year made. Last fall, she had been practically dancing at the knowledge that at last, she would get to join her big brothers on the train bound for school, instead of being held back by her mother from the time she was a small toddler, at least that she could remember. (In those days, it had been watching Bill and Charlie and eventually a much younger and incredibly less snooty Percy climb aboard). Ginny had been so excited to take her place at the school, indeed in her family, that she hadn't noticed until she'd been at the castle for several hours that Ron and Neville had never actually made it onto the train. They had needed to hijack Daddy's car in desperation and fly it – well, more like crashland it – onto the grounds. The escapade had only cemented Ginny's beatific admiration of the Boy Who Lived; a bloke like that who could be so…. daring…. was quite a catch. Born into a family where she stood out simply by virtue of being the only girl and yet still had to fight to be noticed, Ginny thought it must be nice to acquire attention so easily. She wished she could capture Neville's somehow.

By the end of the year, she had gotten her wish – though not in the way she had been expecting and for all the wrong reasons.

The small, gooey feeling of knowing that Neville had come to rescue her – her! – was nevertheless offset by the reality that she had been unwittingly made a pariah in her own school. Dumbledore could, and did, assure as much as he liked that Ginny's true involvement in the Chamber of Secrets fiasco would never come out. And even if it should, questions surrounding topics such as agency, even sanity, especially as they applied to an eleven-, nearly twelve-year-old girl, would compel those without authority or intelligence to keep quiet about the matter.

Except Ginny knew. She knew what she had done. She might not have remembered it in the immediate aftermath, but the compiled evidence presented later by Neville (though thankfully with no malice towards her) was clear and damning enough. And though she never wanted to speak of it again, Dumbledore's pontifications regarding her awareness, or lack thereof, in her own decision-making skills regarding the Chamber had made her second-guess herself throughout this summer. Agency…. Sanity…. Dumbledore had made it sound like these were defenses against Ginny's culpability, as though she might one day be a defendant on trial for nearly helping to shut down a centuries-old institution that she'd been attending for just a year. She felt like some of her voice had been taken away, letting others question her state of mind and hinge such state of mind on the issue of accountability, even while being quick to point out that Ginny wouldn't be held accountable personally.

If anything, there had been more reward than punishment. Though it had felt like restitution and thus hadn't made Ginny feel much better. Her brothers had been free enough in their whispering for her to suspect: though everyone would insist that Arthur had won their all-expenses-paid trip to Egypt fair and square, Ginny had now come to believe the Ministry had rigged the prize to spirit the Weasleys away somewhere they could regroup. It had only helped that Bill was at work in the area. Where her eldest sibling was concerned, Bill had managed to make several aspects of the vacation fun. Ginny did not remember going on a vacation that didn't involve traipsing across the series of rolling hills to visit Great-Auntie Muriel in her cottage filled with gaudy colors and pictures of cats. Touring Egypt was lavish – more lavish than her parents could have afforded to pay on their own. Unfortunately, her suspicions that the vacation prize had been fixed in their favor had only caused her to wallow all the more. Everyone pitied her – they might not say it in so many words, but she had seen the looks, sometimes even from her own brothers. Poor, naïve little Ginny, hoodwinked into a dangerous situation until big brother Ron and Neville (mostly Neville) had to come charging in to bail her out. She expected there to be more drippingly sympathetic looks to come her way from other classmates, despite Dumbledore's firm vow that her involvement would never become public knowledge, at least among the student body and faculty. Which is why Ginny sat here, hoping against hope that no one else would come and claim this compartment, so she could be left alone.

Unfortunately, what she hadn't realized was that someone already had.

"You're not going mad, and you're not worthless." The voice, high and lilting and singsong, was coming from somewhere to her left and across from her. Lifting her head, Ginny was shocked to see she wasn't alone. The girl seated opposite her, by the window, was just lowering an inverted magazine down from her face. The girl's face was round, framed by curly plaits of blond hair, a pair of silvery eyes simultaneously inquisitive and yet somehow omniscient all at once. For in her rebuttal, Ginny felt it was as though the girl had managed to read her thoughts.

Ginny gulped, sniffling, wanting to wipe away the moisture pooling at her cerulean eyes but refraining for fear that it would be too noticeable. Although, as this girl continued to study her knowingly, perhaps it was a little late for that. Here she had boarded the train with every intention not to be noticed, and she'd already managed to bollocks that up… just like everything else.

"Are… are you a Leglimens?" Ginny had heard and memorized the definition of the term while quizzing Percy on his NEWTS this summer.

"Hardly," the girl's voice didn't change in timbre or pitch, making her still sound dazed, as though she was recovering from a really long bout of snogging. "But I can feel your aura. The Wrackspurts are all over the place inside you."

Ginny wrinkled her nose in a Huh? expression. She had never in her life heard of such a thing as a Wrackspurt. Then again, she was only just in second year – perhaps the subject hadn't been taught yet. Though she could take the shortcut and just ask Hermione.

She took the silence as an opportunity to get a good look at this girl. Aside from the oval, pleasant-looking-enough face and the uncommonly astute stare, Ginny noticed the stripes of blue lining bordering the edges of this girl's robes. A Ravenclaw.

"You're in Ravenclaw, then?"

"Oh, yes, I was Sorted last year," the girl stated breezily. "I shouldn't have taken it as such a surprise as I did. My dad was sorted into Ravenclaw."

Ginny actually managed to summon a weak, watery smile. "Both…. Both my parents and all six of my brothers were Sorted into Gryffindor. They were so proud of me when I did too."

"As they should be," the girl chirped.

Ginny grimaced, folding into herself. "Sometimes, it doesn't feel that way…." She mumbled. "Mad, isn't it? I was so excited to finally come to school last year and now…" She shook her head, the tears threatening enough that she had to blink them back.

The girl shrugged. "That's what second-year is about, so I'm told. The bloom is off the rose. The novelty is gone. It has all the makings of a sophomore slump."

Ginny squinted. "What does… soft…. sophomore mean?" To her untrained ear, it sounded as though it might be a Muggle term. She filed it away for later as one more thing to ask Hermione. Or Neville, if she could ever work up the nerve to speak to him again.

"Something synonymous to 'second,' I should think." The girl started to lift her magazine – a curiously upside-down copy of Witch Weekly. Ginny wondered if the girl noticed her reading material was inverted. Then the girl stopped and pondered her over the rim of the spread. "You're Ronald Weasley's sister, aren't you?"

Ginny pursed her lips, slightly embarrassed. She had heard some variation of the phrase, often using a different brother's name each time, for what seemed like her whole life. "Yeah."

"He's Neville Longbottom's friend."

Her melancholy aura lifted just a tick. It might be trying to be associated with six strapping brothers, but being associated, even loosely and indirectly, with Neville was something she would proudly bask in. "Yes!"

The girl dipped her head. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Ginny Weasley."

Ginny blinked at how the girl already knew her name. Manners compelled her to stick out a shy hand. A slightly awkward pause in which the girl did not take her palm as would be expected. Ginny finally had to prompt: "And you are…?"

"Luna Lovegood." The two girls shook.

"So you're in my year, then?" Ginny asked.

Back to halfway reading her Witch Weekly, Luna nodded somewhat absently. Ginny waited for her to raise more disturbingly prescient questions, this time about rumors linking her to the Chamber of Secrets. To her immense relief, no such inquiry came. For lack of anything else to say, Ginny was just latching onto an innocuous bit of small talk when the glass door slid back.

"Excuse me…. Would you ladies mind? …. Everywhere else is full."

Luna lifted her head to take in the new arrival, smiling in a way that seemed almost dreamy. "Not at all." She scooted to make a place for him, even as being next to the window as she was, she had very little room left with which to scoot. The bespectacled boy gratefully deposited himself next to her and that's when Ginny recognized him: it was Harry Potter, the hapless boy in her brother Ron's year who had a reputation for losing things, chief among them his sense of dignity.

She only vaguely sensed her fear at having to be social, face others in a way she should have more naturally felt this time a year ago as a firstie, ebbing away as she left her hand extended out. "I'm Ron's sister."

Harry seemed equally grateful someone wanted to talk with him, and he smiled shyly as he hunched forward to take her open palm with relief. "Yeah. Ginny, right?"

Oddly, she blushed. "Yeah." She tried to chalk it up to lingering shame over what she was still convinced would no doubt be her infamy. But if either Harry or Luna knew of her already spotty Hogwarts record, neither let on. Turning back to Luna, Ginny swerved back onto her train of thought from before Harry entered:

"So…. what House was your mum Sorted into?"

"Ravenclaw."

Of course. Ginny tentatively smiled. Despite the notoriety she felt would still (perhaps justly) come her way, maybe not all had been ruined. Maybe…. maybe this was what it's like to have friends. Or at least, have friends who aren't related to you by blood.

For the first time all summer, Ginny felt the excitement she had felt last year. The desire to want to go to school.

Maybe this year wouldn't be so bad.