Author's note: Ginny melodrama, Ginny/Hermione drama. Uh oh!

"Everyone I know could die in this war," said Ginny out loud. Testing the phrase, seeing what it meant. No, it was too much – it was purposeful melodrama. "Most everyone I love is in mortal danger." That was better. What it meant:

This is all wrong, thought Ginny, shaking her head. If she shook it hard enough, her red hair would fly in front of her face for a moment, a wild mane. And somehow that had the exact same quantity of significance as her second observation, which was, incidentally, true.

It was conceivable that Ginny would be widowed in heart a dozen times over. Brothers, parents (this had already come close to happening, at least with her dad), schoolmates, literally everyone who meant anything to her. Ginny wasn't afraid of being widowed. Ginny wasn't even sure she would feel it.

When she was younger, she had played games with herself to pass the time. One game had been the horror-genre favorite What if x Died? "X" was replaced over and over for hours on end with members of her family, with Hermione Granger, with Harry Potter, with Tom Riddle. There was nothing so scintillatingly horrifying to young Ginny than to realize that none of the imagined deaths brought her any real distress. Except for Harry, and for Tom. (How the little woman-child had cursed herself! Mere romance!) Time had passed, and with it both Tom's and Harry's names had dropped from the list. And now, eons later, Ginny took up her game once again, it seemed.

This time the horror she felt was muted into a vague distress – hardly satisfying. I wish I could feel them (If wishes were horses…). But even that wish was meaningless, because Ginny knew from long practice that she would feel something only when her inner self was absolutely convinced of it. And that was a process that nearly always took even Ginny by surprise. She could not make herself love her family and friends. Nor did she feel the need to try: she was what she was, after all. Anything else was dishonesty.

Lying to herself, Ginny knew, was one of the few wrongs that could elicit a genuine response within her. She called that response, with a conscious nod to irony, the Riddle Alarm.

Somehow, with the help of the Riddle Alarm and of the entrance hall, Ginny was … different. Whether it had started this summer or not, it had happened this summer.

And of course, the whole thing could be a simple illusion.

"Hermione!"

She paused with her hand already on the doorknob. The sounds of a recently-adjourned Order meeting made it a feat to even be heard – especially from the next room, which was where Mrs. Weasley had called her from.

"Hermione, dear, come here a minute." Mrs. Weasley was waving her over. Hermione began a walking-shuffling trip through the kitchen, kin more than anything else to a dance. Not that she minded being kept here longer. Nor with the woman who had arranged for her to attend this meeting in the first place. She'd been called to a meeting of the Order. She. Not even Fred or George, two years her senior and long since of age, could lay claim to that.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind she shunned it, of course: no need to get cocky. And now Mrs. Weasley was calling her to stay even after the meeting.

Life was very good right now, from Hermione Granger's point of view.

We're in a war, Hermione thought. Deadly. Sirius gone already. I've only been to one meeting. We're in a war. Deadly…

A suitable response was shame at herself. Hermione summoned it, her cheeks flaming. And here was Mrs. Weasley, smiling now.

"My dear – now don't look so upset. I just – well – lately you seem to be the only person my daughter will talk to."

Hermione nodded mechanically. And after a brief moment's reflection, realized that it was indeed true.

"Is Ginny – well, this sounds silly – is she really as gloomy as she looks, Hermione? Is there anything we can do to…cheer her up, perhaps?"

Hermione was taken by surprise. Then again, this was the natural question to ask about Ginny Weasley right now. The girl's sudden withdrawal from the human social order had sparked several conversations among those who knew her.

Hermione thought for a moment. "I'm not sure."

Now that had been helpful. She cleared her throat. "I don't think she's properly gloomy. Whenever I'm around her, she looks like she's trying to discover…oh, the meaning of life. Something. She's very pensive." There was truly nothing like being flippant toward a worried mother asking about her daughter's mental health!

"She's not depressed, if that's what you're worried about," said Hermione quickly. "She seems quiet, but alright – "

Mrs. Weasley looked at her for a moment, and then she laughed, breaking the tension. "Well, good luck to her, and tell her to share her revelations with us once she's done. Go on, Hermione dear. And just make sure Ginny knows she's not, in fact, among strangers."

Hermione nodded and left, reversing the room-crossing dance with considerably less vigor, out the door and out of the sweet yellow light.

A thundering in the hallway makes Ginny sit up. The black quilt wrinkles and unwrinkles as a body leaves it. Black canopies observe the event without even a breeze-ripple. Gray carpet absorbs the impact of bare, pale feet. Another girl enters the room, and the room becomes a stage, and the two women its dancers in steps so delicate they almost don't resemble steps in a dance.

A how-d'you-do, a how-d'you-do, a circling of the other, an appraisal. Pride and friendship in turning. Communication a razor-thin string linking them. Ginny's half-wish to cut the string, broken by the other herself. Hermione's half-wish to take the string, like a lasso, and ensnare Ginny into giving up more than just a string of meaning between eyes. A desire broken by pride. Let Mrs. Weasley do her own spywork.

Is that all I was at the meeting for?...

The string – there is no changing it. At least, not for now. Ginny and Hermione are too comfortable in this dance, whirling in a circle now, only the string connecting them.

Hermione, dear Hermione – did not know how to shut up. She was a dream of a girl whose intellect and bravery lifted her far above others of their age, and Ginny had immense affection for her. But –

"Hermione!" Ginny held up a hand, laughed a bit. "Hermione, who'd have thought you liked Quidditch so much?"

The greater girl was taken aback, visibly – unless, Ginny thought, unless she is simply calculating how best to feel me out. I sense Mum's handiwork. But maybe both explanations were wrong, because after a few seconds Hermione shrugged and let her hands drop as she moved to the window. And that, thought Ginny, was quite a room-chiller.

Nothing like calling out well-intentioned bullshit to lighten the mood.

Hermione was looking out the window now, across a ten-meter stone courtyard into the mirror-image window on 14 Grimmauld Place. Ginny wondered if Hermione was ever amazed, even briefly, that barely ten meters away from their hiding-hole another family was going about a completely normal life. Well – not entirely normal – for it was a Muggle family. But then, that would be normal for Hermione. To Ginny, this fact was novel and quite amazing. Though of course she'd known for years that Hermione was Muggle-born. Blame the entrance hall.

"The Cannons do have better prospects this season, though," she added belatedly. Now that had been a transparent apology, and a second-guessing as well as a dishonesty.

Violent head-shake – not quite the most socially graceful of gestures.

Hermione turned from the window, frowning. "Now what was that for?" She looked stern, which for her was of course only natural.

A rising tide of anger in Ginny was of course only natural as well and, now she was used to it, hardly distracting in her search for an answer.

"I'm tired of just sitting around," Ginny replied with barely a pause. It was a safe explanation – something they all felt, Ginny, Hermione and Ron. She whirled around, bare heel in the carpet rubbed numb. Pace. Pace.

"That's all," Ginny said in a quieter voice. When she looked at the older girl again, Hermione was frowning in an even more oh-grow-up way.

"Ginny, I wouldn't think that you of all people could forget that we're all going through that feeling. There's no call for self-aggrandizing drama."

Pause. The carpet really was a mouldering shade of grayed-white. Of all the Hermione-like things to say, this was the most Hermione-like of all, and the one Ginny had least expected. Funny how her eyes would really only register a searing white right now.

"Just stop it, we don't need that. None of us."

The most exquisite of the last straws.

I'm going to cry. I know I am, whether I'm wanting to or not.

The carpet, mouldering gray, to the bed to the girl framed in golden-white light, Ginny slowly turned around.

"Don't we all?" Five seconds to tears. "Or are we all in the same handbasket?"

It was a fair point. Petty, and it made her exit look all the more childish – but Hermione was one to lecture her on patience, even if Ginny had cared that the older girl had attended a meeting.

I don't care, she thought with surprise. But if I have to say anything else –

In the outside world where an argument was still going on, Hermione showed just enough hesitation. Ginny turned heel again and stormed out of the room.