"… And that is why you must be practicing your occulemency and leglimens regularly," Ginny groaned, it was like being in Hogwarts, but harder and without the social network.
The past few weeks had been stressful and her stomach was still acting up, she was throwing up more now than she did in the seven years at Hogwarts. To top it all off she had only seen the Tall Stranger (whose name happened to be Dane Albright) a few times, and their conversations were brief and rushed.
She had been right about a lot of the people that attended the academy, were smug, arrogant and completely addicted to work. She had been relieved to find that the pub down the mountain was a regular visiting space of most of her colleagues, who seem to be giving her the cold shoulder.
On certain occasions she had caught people looking at her with the eyes of cats, judging her every move. God only knows what they must have been saying about the girl who throws up all the time, maybe that Potter boy was too much stress.
Though she had deemed her problems on stress there was a suspicion creeping that had nothing to do with sickness and everything to do with her future. She had decided if it didn't get better in a week she would see the medics about it.
"Ginny!" she heard from behind her,
"Hey Dane!" he looked out of breath and his clothes were dischevled but it was nice to see a kind face every once and a while
"When are you free?"
"Well I have my dueling class until eight, and after that I usually go to the pub"
"Well could I escort you?" he asked noticeably nervous, yet at the same time excited
"Sure, meet me outside the West Gate at 8:15?"
"Will do, well I have to run I have to be at my Beasts Class in 10 minutes"
"Alright see you soon" with that he was off again in a flurry.
She had a few hours until her next class and with an overwhelming sense of homesickness she broke down and wrote her first letters since she had arrived.
Hermione,
How are you? Is my brother treating you alright? If he's not give him a bat bogey hex from yours truly. Classes are hard, but I am learning a lot. Its strange being surrounded by so many people older than I am. I got your post about visiting, and I would love to have you, unfortunately it could only be you, they have specific rules about visitors of the opposite sex, and more than one at a time. They don't like us to be too distracted here.
Hope to see you soon!
Ginny
Family,
Everything is spectacular here. I love it and I'm learning loads. I miss you though, I miss Fred and George and their witty humor. I miss the smell of the Burrow in the morning, I miss moms cooking and dads daily updates on the ministry, I miss you all so much and I hope that I will be home for Christmas and if not… I'll come home when I can.
I love you all very dearly!
Ginny
Harry-
she stopped, she didn't know what to say, should she drone about how much she missed him, how every time she looked at a lake or underneath the trees she saw him. No she shouldn't.
Everything is going well at school. Its hard, boring a times and they are trying to teach us occlumency and leglimens and it's a lot harder than I ever dreamed. Things are going well though. Hope everything is going right with you
Ginny
It was hard to write to the man you love and pretend not to care. She had to abandon those thoughts though, she had to move on. She had told him she would and she planned on doing so. Not necessarily on to some one new but, on as in past him. For now anyway.
Dueling club wasn't as hard as Ginny first thought, most of the first few weeks her classmates spent bragging about who they had fought, yet when asked Ginny didn't want to brag. She knew if they knew anything about real battle they would know its nothing to brag about. Its nothing you want to relive, who wants to relive watching innocent people be murdered by a man whose sole purpose was to kill. It was sick when she thought about it and it pushed her even harder to be a better dueler.
More than once her dueling coach had commented on this inner drive she was able to come up with and every time her classmates looked at her and rolled their eyes. They would see soon enough though that Ginny Weasley wasn't just some pint sized pixie… she was a fireball.
"Harry Potter!" the coach called as Harry mounted his broom,
"Yes sir"
"Ah, I saw you play at Hogwarts, wicked fast flier boy," he said nodding to his colleagues
"Yes sir"
"Oliver Wood tells us you're a hell of a competitor too"
"Not as much as he is but I would like to think I am" he replied
"Well let's see then" he grabbed his whistle "On my mark one two TWEEEEET" and harry was off, zipping through the air rising quickly keeping his eye out closely for the snitch, and there just above the middle goal post he saw it. The broom almost flew out form under him as he sped across the sky, he followed the snitch in a heavy dive where it hovered not more than 2 feet off the ground. And then,
"Three minutes and seventeen seconds!" shouted one of the scouts.
"Aye but can he do it in the contents of a match?" one of the others inquired
"According to Oliver he could do it blindfolded" the scout responded
"We will be in touch Mr Potter"
Harry nodded and stepped off his broom and into the lockeroom. It was empty now, he had been given the last spot to offer privacy. It would have brought too much attention if he had been in the midst of the hundreds of other quidditch hopefuls. Yet now he wished he had someone to talk to about it, ask them how he did in comparison to the others.
He showered and headed back for his and Ron's flat. Life had been busy, everyone seemed to be doing their best to ignore the fact that Ginny was in fact gone. Mrs Weasley and Hermione were drowning themselves in the Wedding, Ron was going head to head with his Auror Training program, and Harry had been getting through, one day at a time.
He went inside glancing casually at the clock, and then through his post. Letters from the ministry, letters from witch weekly, and then he saw it. A letter from Switzerland, he put the other letters down and walked to his room, shutting the door quietly and staring at the letter.
This letter had a lot of ground, it would be the preface for their entire relationship form here on out. He opened it.
It was simple, concise and to the point. There was nothing entirely heartfelt about it, and there were no underlying themes that had anything to do with the love he knew he still felt.
This is how it would be. He would learn to cope in time, yet now he simply needed to find a way to respond with an equally dry letter.
"Miss Weasley it is now 8:18 and I was getting worried" Dane smiled
"All girls are allowed a twenty minute grace period, just the proper amount of time to primp" she replied in her most sassy of voices.
They made their way to the pub, talking primarily about school and how they both despised it. It was an easy conversation. There were no strings attached to it, no long torrid romance, it was simple, which made it intriguing and appealing.
After their meal, they drank wine and conversed easily. He was sitting closer to her now than he had in the beginning yet she hadn't moved away just yet
"So if I may ask, why did you and Harry break it off?" she had been expecting this at some point yet it was a hard question to answer.
"You know when you are going through your awkward tween years, when you feel uncomfortable in your own skin and it seems as though nothing is right just because you don't feel like yourself anymore. You don't have a hold on what you used to find so valuable?"
"I guess, doesn't everybody go through that though" he replied
"I became a slave to my relationship, I had loved him since I was ten years old, and I started forgetting who I was, and it scared me, enough that I went all the way to Switzerland to escape it" he nodded, though she could tell he wasn't completely convinced
"What about you, why did you come so far?"
"My parents were both in this program, I have been in it since I was a child, training at the 'invite only' school they offer to children starting at age nine, it was just the next step, nothing to extreme"
"I thought you said you almost didn't get in"
"Well the I didn't, after I graduated I was told I needed to go out and prove myself so I worked for the ministry of Spain for a few years, did some impressive work, not entirely spectacular though, it was really up in the air" she nodded as she took another sip of her drink
"You know I think you're my only friend in this entire school" all of a sudden she felt it again, that usual nausea that struck her generally in the mornings without so much as two words she jetted out of the booth and into the bathroom.
"Ginny?" she was hovering over the toilet dry heaving,
"I'll be out in a minute" she was scared now, she suddenly couldn't remember if she and harry had used a contraceptive on her graduation, her heart was racing, she woldnt let her self think about it. Not now.
"I'm back" she said smiling, taking a glass of water from the table and nearly inhaling it
"Are you okay?" he asked looking directly at her eyes
"Just a stomach bug" she knew he wasn't buying it,
"Really Ginny, you can tell me, do you think your, well you know?"
"I hope not, I mean I just, if I am what, would I be kicked out?"
"I doubt it, I mean you were a top recruit, and pregnancy doesn't effect magic too greatly" he was looking at her now, not shamefully, or with pity, but compassion
"I need to go to a medi-witch," she said now getting up,
"I'll go with you,"
"Dane you don't ha-"
"I know I don't have to Ginny, I want to"
They made the long trek back up the mountain. Ginny wasn't sure what to think of this newly adopted friend or her newly aquired problem. They spent the walk silent for the first few minutes until he asked,
"So its Harry's I assume?"
She nodded, "He's the only one, ever" he went on
"Will you tell him?" and suddenly it occurred to her, she didn't have to.
"I don't know I hadn't really thought about it" she said slowly
"I'm sorry I'm being pushy, who knows if you even are I mean it could be a stomach bug"
"Let's hope" she said gravely.
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW FOLKS R&R!!!
ITS GONNA BE GOOD I PROMISE!!!