Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition
Chudley Cannons
Round12
Chaser 2: You can't see color until you meet your soulmate.
Word Count: 3000
Optional Prompts:
1. (dialogue) "This isn't what I wanted.
7. (emotion) startled
9. (word) direction
...
Perhaps, it's the colours that started the story
...
The colour she sees first is the colour of his eyes. Of the boy she singles out in the crowd, just barely eleven, she can tell, yet she doesn't know why she chose him, why when she sees him, she sees the colours.
His eyes are… they're this colour. This colour she's only heard of from her mother. But she doesn't know what it is, but it isn't black, it isn't white. It isn't grey like the trees. Or perhaps, they are and she doesn't know, because it's the first time she's seeing them. The colours.
But it starts with him.
"Mum," she breathes out, and her eyes are burning, she can hear her heart beating painfully fast, and nothing else. She's trying awfully hard not to cry, but it seems so impossible at the moment.
The boy doesn't see her, but she knows it's him.
"Yes, Ginny dear," she hears her mother say, but she knows her mum's not really listening to her.
"I can see them, Mum. I can see the colours."
Ginny doesn't think her mother hears her, but like a firework in the sky, her world suddenly explodes. She blinks once, twice, and when she opens her eyes the third time, she gasps, for she can see them.
She can see the colours.
His name is Harry, like the Harry she's heard stories of, and she's looking at him, taking all of him in, for he's here. He's finally here.
He wants to know how to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
She can't bring herself to say.
Ginny doesn't know why she chose him, if it was his eyes, or because he was handsome - but because, for the first time in her life, Ginny finds herself silenced in his presence. The Ginny Weasley, the girl who had to be told to shut up a thousand times every day, had finally done so. And all because of him.
She wonders if he'd started seeing the colours too. Or maybe he just hadn't seen her yet.
She thinks it's a good time to step forward now. To make her seen.
"That red wall, dear? You need to walk right through it," her mother says. "Right in the middle."
"Um… I'm sorry ma'am," he gulps. "R-red? What wall?"
Ginny's heart sinks at that, but she still keeps on repeating to herself.
He just hadn't seen her yet.
Her mum frowns, and then as if realising something crucial to the story, like she had, she smiles. "You can't see the colours as well, can you, dearie? Our Ginny here too` can't see them."
I can see them now, Mum. I can see the colours.
Her mother pulls her in front, and Harry looks at her, grins, but there's no spark. No glint, no surprise, like she thought she'd see. She'd hoped she'd see. He doesn't see them.
He doesn't see the colours.
"Hello," he says, but she can't bring herself to say it back. She's too busy holding back tears.
His eyes don't seem so magical at the moment.
Why couldn't he see the colours too?
What did she do wrong?
"Can't you," she whispers, "can't you see them?"
"See what?"
"The colours."
He smiles ruefully, shrugs, as if it didn't matter to him. Ginny wants to scream at him, tell him it mattered to her, tell him she was seeing them, for the first time in her life, why wasn't he?
"Maybe I'm not meant to."
Her heart sinks, and she struggles not to cry, slowly slinking behind her mother's back.
After they all go home, her mum and her dad, and only her, she lies on her bed, late at night, and cries her eyes out.
…
The colours were simply hues of grey to lift her from her monochrome existence. Each one was like a subtle sea over the other, noticeable, but submissive to the stone underneath. She'd shown just a glimpse, just a fraction of her inner spirit, and he'd flocked to her like a lost child.
Except he wasn't the one lost. She was. He'd used that. He'd used her.
Once, he'd told her she was stupid. Stupid to be running after someone she couldn't reach.
Ginny agreed with him. She thought he was right.
"When are you going to stop clawing for something that's never going to happen?"
At least Tom had been right about something.
If she thinks about it, he'd been right about everything.
"When are you going to accept that you were the only one meant to?"
Sometimes, she doesn't know if it's his voice in her head or hers. If it's him speaking or her. She'd lost that ability months ago when she'd let him speak for her. When she'd let him be her.
She was never going to let anyone do that to her. Ever again.
And if that meant she'd have to let Harry go, then so be it. If she had to believe that that day, she'd been the only one with colours, then that would have to do.
"Soulmates don't exist, you silly girl."
She'd been stupid to believe they did.
…
Ginny moves on.
It takes time, but it's not just overnight you wake up and finally feel like yourself.
But fifth year, when she makes the Quidditch team, she feels this might be it.
Ginny knows she should have made it her second year. Not three years later. But second year, when her days had gone by with her mostly avoiding the looks of disgust she got in the corridors and the pity she didn't ask for from her professors, her brothers constantly looking over her every second of every day, tryouts had been a mere lingering thought in her mind. And if that hadn't been enough, the team hadn't been holding any that year.
In a way, her second year had been far worse than her first. In a way, it hadn't.
Ginny moves on though.
She moves on.
She can still see the colours. They haven't left yet. She doesn't think they ever will. It's the same with Harry. He's there, but he isn't. Not in the way she'd like him to be, but she figures, maybe it's just her screwed over. Maybe while putting two people together, they did her up wrong. She doesn't mind. Or maybe, she does.
Right now, she feels, the right word is indifferent.
That's why, when she kisses Dean, she does so, because she wants to. They're not soulmates, they could never be, but in all true sense, he's a good kisser, and she likes him.
And in all true sense, when he tells her he loves her, she's guilty because she knows she'll never really say it back. Even though he deserves to hear it. But she won't. She can't.
"Hey." Ginny turns around, grinning at Harry while he jogs over to her. "Sickle for your thoughts?" he says as he comes to a stop, and she tosses him his gloves, while she slipped on hers. All his years playing Quidditch had done him good, clearly, and once when, she had been the one taller than him, had turned into him standing well over a foot above her.
"Oh, you're going to need much more than a sickle," she teases, walking beside him to the castle grounds. She's early for practice, she nearly always is, and she suspects it's partly because she knows he'll be early too.
"I'm sure."
Ginny glances at him through the corner of her eye, wondering if he could see the colours now. It's been years since she'd asked him. She didn't want to now. Now, she never did.
"Lucky for you, I'm in the mood for some chit-chat," she continues, and he shoots her a mirthful glance, and Ginny wiggles her eyebrows.
"Lucky for me."
"Oh, you bet it is." She shoves him, and he laughs, his voice deeper than what it was before. It's more attractive too, she can't help but notice.
"I've a date with Dean today," she announces, beckoning him to set into a run. She easily keeps pace as they jog around the field, her, slightly tense as to his reply.
But he's silent. Ginny frowns. Her dates are usually a good conversation-starter for her brother, and Harry isn't much different from him. She'd expected him to at least balk, like the numerous times Ron had done.
"That usually requires a reply, you know?"
"Do you want to go?" Harry asks, surprising her, and she looks at him, appearing to be amused when she really wasn't.
If she had been in the mood to be truthful, she'd have said no. Ginny didn't want to go. Not with Dean Thomas.
"Why do you ask?"
"No reason."
They're silent then. They're silent after. Ginny can't help the tugging feeling in her gut, that's pushing her to ask that one question, that single piece of information that she's been dying to know since… forever. But she won't, because it's been years since she'd chased something she couldn't reach and she wasn't going to do it again.
But in the end, she wins. Tom loses.
"Can you see them?" she asks finally. "The colours?"
It's like a flash, like a jolt. His expression changes, and he grins at her, his ridiculously handsome boyish grin, and she's almost dreading the answer because she knows what it's going to be. Because she knows this is where she finally learns she's not the one.
"I do," he says, and his grin widens. "I can see all of them."
She nods, smiling at him, when really, she feels crushed, defeated.
She chose him. Evidently, they didn't share the same equation.
"I do want to," she says finally, "go on that date with Dean."
Ginny turns away after, blinks back tears.
...
Ginny wasn't a Seeker.
She was a damn Chaser.
She didn't catch the Snitch.
She caught the Quaffle.
So, the fact that she currently had a bright, golden Quaffle, clasped in her fingers while she lay squat in the middle of the field was something that she should be positively yelling about.
And yet, she sits still, Snitch clasped in her fingers, for really, yelling is the last thing she wants to do now. All she can really do is look at it.
And all she can think is that if this was what it felt, catching the Snitch, holding it taught against her palm, its wings fluttering against her skin, then she finally understood why Harry did it. The thrill he felt. The thrill she feels now. She's felt it before when she beat out Cho for it, but this, this feels different. This feels more real somehow.
And then she hears yelling, and she's laughing, yelling along, as Peakes and Coote lifts her up in the air, as she raises her hand, showing her team the golden snitch.
This, this is where she belongs. Where she's meant to be.
Ginny jumps down, letting Peakes and Coote pull her into a hug, pulling Ron into one herself, and through all of it, every single smile, and every single laugh, part of her is just dying to see Harry. Part of her just wants to tell him that she caught the bloody Snitch.
So, when she sees him, at the bottom of the stairs of the boy's dormitory, she laughs, and sets into a run, and as she launches herself at him, he pulls her close by her waist, and kisses her. In front of fifty watching Gryffindors, he kisses her, his lips like a dream against hers, as she wraps her arms around him.
And after several long moments, when they do finally break apart, she's laughing, startled, of course, but she's laughing. She's happy.
Harry grins down at her, his green eyes like the tinted glass jars her mother kept at home (as if he was already part of her home), and gestures wordlessly at the door.
She's smiling, but when she nods, she allows him to guide her away.
…
"I see the colours," he tells her as the Common Room door closes behind them.
She smiles, walking along beside him, letting the walls guide them to the grounds.
"When did you see them?"
"I don't know. One day, I just did."
She smiles harder, not knowing if she could ever quite stop. Harry's looking at her, as if he's waiting for her to say something, but she doesn't. So he goes on.
"I think… i-it was while I was at the Burrow," he says, "or, I don't know, but I saw you, and then I saw your eyes. I saw brown, this warm chocolate brown and then it sort of, just —"
" - exploded," she said for him.
"Yeah."
He asks her now, for it's his turn. "When did you see them?"
Ginny smiles ruefully, glancing away at that. She isn't so sure if she should reveal it, for revealing that would mean sharing something that had haunted her for as long as she could remember. It was the first time she had felt unwanted, like an extra piece in a puzzle.
For her, finding her soulmate had always meant that one thing in one's life that would make them feel as if they'd found their other someone. It was what her mother had told her when she was young, it was what her mum had felt when she'd met Dad.
But at that time, hers had been anything but.
"I… uh, same," she stammers. "It happened out of nowhere."
"No, it didn't," Harry shoots her a mirthful glance. And then, like clockwork, his smile turns into a frown. "It… wasn't at the train station that day, was it?" he asks. "The day we first met?"
Ginny offers him a weak smile, and she supposes it's answer enough, as he breathes in sharply, eyes holding horror, surprise, she couldn't say.
"All this time?"
She shrugs, looking away. "It wasn't up to me," she says, her eyes prickling with tears. "I saw you," she laughs it off, for it's what she's always done, "and then my whole world turned upside down."
"You never said anything."
"How could I? I saw the colours, but you never did."
Harry stops her, grabs hold of her hand, and holds it tight, his hand warm against her cold ones, and she laughs, because kissing him might have felt like a dream, but being with him, here, with her hand locked in his, was hers.
"I'd have tried," he says, "I'd have done anything," and his eyes hold fire she's rarely seen, but that fire, it doesn't burn. It never has.
"We were eleven, Harry," she smiles, slipping her fingers through his. "I didn't even know what love was when I met you. I still don't."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
"I still am."
Ginny laughs, and she bends forward, kissing him like he'd kissed her before, and it's a kiss where she feels stirring in her chest, warm and curious, like she had felt back in the common room. It's a kiss that makes her want another.
"I like the way your hand fits in mine," he whispers against her lips, and she smiles, before he kisses her again.
…
A year and a half later, when she kisses him again, it's among dust and grey. It's among pain and anguish. It's when they're trying hard not to cry, it's when they're trying their best to stay together.
"Are you hurt?" he says urgently, between kisses. "Gin, are you hurt?"
"No, Harry, it's okay, I'm fine."
He breathes out in relief, his lips getting tenser as they stay against hers, until Ginny has to pull away, make him look into her eyes.
"It's over, okay?" she says, holding his face gently, her thumb running over the bruises along his jaw. "It's over."
He looks at her then, and his face crumbles, and Ginny has to breathe in, in sharp gasps as his tears break loose, but hers don't. They slide down against the broken remnants of a wall, and she's hiding her face in his shoulder, as he cries into her lap.
"I'm sorry," he says, over and over again, and Ginny feels her heart breaking, everytime he says so. "This isn't what I wanted," he sobs, "I never wanted them to die."
"This isn't your fault," she whispers, but at this point, she can barely say anything without her voice breaking.
"I'm so sorry," he says again, and Ginny wipes away her tears furiously against his shirt, pulling him up by her hands.
"Hey," she says, "hey, hey." Ginny lifts his face, wiping away his tears as hers break loose. "You have nothing to be sorry for, you hear me, Harry? This is not your fault."
Her voice cracks, and his face falls, and this time, it's him that pulls her in for a hug, as she rests her face against his chest, lets his shirt soak in her tears, while she feels his own against her head.
A year and a half later, when she kisses him again, among the dust and the grey, she knows it just might be for forever.
...
The life she has, it's the life she chose.
The boy she singled out in the crowd, just eleven years old - she picked him out, not because he was famous, but because he had, in the short span of an infinitely long ten seconds, taught her the art of shutting up. That he had, in the course of her life, made her feel like fireworks and danger.
Ginny marries him, builds a family with him, even though she knows it's a risk, but Harry's well worth the risk.
So, one night, a couple of years later, as Harry sits beside her on the couch, her head resting against her shoulder, while he half-pretends to read something about work, when really, he's doing that weird thing and looking at her, Ginny looks up at him and can't help but ask: why did you suddenly fall in love with me?
And it is a moment of quiet, a moment where really his answer is all she's waiting for, among the crackling fire in front of them, the sweet smell of bacon lingering in their kitchen, the steady beat of his heart against his chest, and them, as Harry drops a kiss into her hair.
"It's because when I saw you, I saw the colours. I saw all of them."
...
Thanks to Ashleigh (Fire the Canon) for beta-ing!
