Words - 631
Rating - PG13
Warnings - Mild math
#8 – LIKES, DISLIKES, AND LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS
Ginny likes hot chocolate in the summer and lemonade in the winter.
She likes riding her broom breakneck fast, jumping on the bed, and doing the dishes. She likes spicy foods and dark colors to contrast with her vivid hair. She likes toads more than she does cats, though she loves owls best of all, and she's always had an affinity for writing down her thoughts but never sharing them aloud. She likes swimming and Potions and honor and arguing and plushy chairs and challenges and annoying her brothers. She likes setting foolish people right and climbing apple trees and tickling her chin with a quill whenever she's trying to think. She likes misunderstood people and cold, dreary days and sarcasm and lasagna and singing along with bad music on the radio. She likes jokes and sappy romance novels and horror novels and smart people and handsome people and somehow, mixed in with all those inconsistencies and random enjoyments, she's added up several ingredients and stirred them to a bubbling cauldron of trouble:
Liking + (dark colors + potions + arguing + annoying her brothers + setting foolish people right + misunderstood people + sarcasm + smart people + handsome people) = Draco Malfoy.
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Ginny dislikes coffee in the morning and hot milk at night.
She dislikes toffees and magazines, tofu and the awkwardness of trying to date people who were friends first. She dislikes unburnt toast and overly-long essays and people who don't know how to leave you alone. She dislikes dim lamps and condescension and guilt complexes. She dislikes curly hair and messiness and spending all of her time with Ron. She dislikes feeling stupid and being left out, the color purple, waking up early, and having to wear hand-me-downs. She dislikes satin and echoes and looking back rather than focusing forward. She dislikes taking the easy way out and Astronomy and being late, lying to herself and being caught lying to others. She dislikes potatoes, too-nice guys, and studying on her own, and once she's started something she has to finish it, so she plucks out the relevant points and adds them into the mix:
Disliking + (dating friends + not enough privacy + guilt complexes + curly hair + messiness + spending all her time with Ron + being left out + always looking backwards + too-nice guys) = Harry Potter.
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Ginny likes to be honest with herself, and dislikes discovering these sorts of things when it's almost too late.
But she dislikes doing nothing, and she likes writing down her thoughts, so she lays it all out as though it's a list of Potions ingredients, then examines what she's got in order to form the best mixture possible. She's got two choices.
She's always liked Harry Potter and she knows that's what is right. It's the easiest course and wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes of simmering before the mildly enjoyable result appeared. It wouldn't be bad. She wouldn't actually dislike it, but she disliked the ingredients, and she'd never be quite satisfied, no matter what anyone else thought.
She's always hated Draco Malfoy and she ought not to even consider this. It will be a long and difficult process, more temperamental than Polyjuice Potion and more frowned-upon than using a Mind-Sharpening Elixir before the O.W.L.s. But the end product might very well turn out to be her own Felix Felicitus, and how could she turn that sort of challenge down? People had thought Felix Barnaby insane when he first undertook brewing it, after all, and look how they swallowed their words, twenty years later, when he unveiled his completed invention, that lucky liquid gold, made up of everything he enjoyed.
Ginny likes a challenge, after all, and has always disliked taking the easy way out.