Disclaimer-If you like it, assume I don't own it. The Potterverse belongs to JKR, Steve Klowes, Scholastic and WB. Fanon belongs to the multitude...I'm simply paying homage. Most of this scene is from GoF by JK Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended, and no money is being made.
Author's Notes—Progress has been a lot slower in this work, but I hope you'll all stick with me anyway. As you all know, I may not own it, but I work hard, and I love it, so if you read it and enjoy it, please review it! Please don't print or post this elsewhere without my knowledge.
Congratulations, all! Book 6 is on the way! Yay!
Raiining-- I'm glad you enjoyed it…I think more fun is on the way…Oh, I REALLY want to see a Harry-Ginny conversation about Tom—it's SOOO overdue! I'm anxious for Book 6 as well, but hopefully this story will continue to keep us well entertained in the meantime…I'm glad you want to see my version of Book 5…I thought I might be the only one! Thanks for the good wishes—I have a portfolio coming due, so I'm pretty nervous! Best of luck to you in RL as well! J hugs
EEDOE—Thanks for all your advice…I hope chapters 42 and 43 prove worthy of it! hugs
Bill—I hadn't thought of it like that…but I guess it was the start of the HP fan club…I wonder if that was a mistake…you certainly make a good point about the parallels between Ginny and Dobby…now I'm interested to see if they're linked further as well…Yeah, perhaps I need to stop strumming my Tom Riddle harp now…but…well...I really do think all these things WOULD be constantly reminding Ginny of that experience…it wasn't exactly a little thing! …pouts Yeah…that was one of the few times I REALLY didn't like Harry. I agree…Ginny, Harry, and Ginny's relation to Tom Riddle are going to be important…so I strongly believe. Though I hadn't thought about the united parts of Voldemort in Ginny and Harry…hmm….food for thought…hugs
"Will you look at all this?" greeted George as Ginny climbed through the portrait hole, having offended the Fat Lady with her sullen attitude. "Even Fred and I never managed to filch this much at once. You've made us proud to call ourselves your brothers today, Gingersnaps." He sniffed, wiping a mock tear from his cheek, "truly."
"Even if it did take you an inordinate amount of time," Fred added in—mostly—mock reproach. "You're just lucky Harry's taken his own sweet time in the Owlery."
"The Owlery?" Ginny repeated blankly. "How do you know Harry's been in the Owlery?" Fred and George raised their eyebrows at her and shook their heads, but she hadn't really expected them to tell her anyway, and was already asking, "But who would Harry be writing?"
"His muggle relatives?" George shrugged vaguely.
"Maybe…" Ginny allowed skeptically. Harry had always seemed indifferent to the Dursleys—at best. And even if he'd been moved to make an exception, Ginny doubted he'd be able to delude himself into thinking his magic-phobic relatives would be happy, or even willing, to hear about something as unmistakably magic in nature as the TriWizard Tournament. But who . . . Professor Lupin? Possibly . . . but Professor Lupin's never mentioned getting letters from Harry, and I think he'd tell me . . . what if -- could Harry . . . I wonder if . . . Harry's writing Sirius Black? It was certainly a startling, but not altogether outrageous idea, and it was an idea Ginny entertained previously, over the course of the summer. But it was also not any of her business, and being well aware of that, she did her best to dismiss it in spite of her curiosity on the subject. Besides which, he might have just been visiting Hedwig. . . .
Harry, Ron, and Hermione returned to the Tower not long after she did. Lee, with impeccable timing, set off a string of Filibuster Fireworks the instant he caught sight of them through the opening portrait, so they seemed to enter in a shower of sizzles and sparks. The glittering explosions dazzled Ginny's eyes, coalescing with the emotional jolt seeing Harry always seemed to give her, leaving her with a disorienting sense of surrealism, as if Harry's presence was a hallucination or a dream . . . a thought she didn't care to acknowledge, let alone pursue.
An unearthly shriek echoing through the Common Room brought reality rushing back. Someone had opened the large golden egg Harry had snatched from the Horntail.
"Shut it," Fred bellowed, sounding like a wounded Troll. Or how Ginny imagined that sounded when Ron and Hermione described meeting one in the bathroom their First Year. Anyway, Fred was giving excellent advice. Opening the egg had, clearly, been a mistake.
"What was that?" Seamus asked, speaking for all of them. "Sounded like a banshee . . . maybe you've got to get past one of them next, Harry!"
"It was someone being tortured," Neville contradicted wildly, dropping the plate he'd been piling with sausage rolls. One spun across the floor. An orange paw extended from beneath one of the cozy, overstuffed couches as it passed and snatched it. As she bent to help Neville retrieve the rolls he had remaining, Ginny heard a crackling purr of satisfaction issue from the darkness beneath the sofa. She and Crookshanks might have noticed his lost sausage rolls, but Neville himself hadn't. "You're going to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!" he gasped.
"Don't be a prat, Neville. That's illegal," George said immediately, making Ginny want to kick him. You're the one being a prat, you insensitive git, she thought hotly in his direction. "I thought it sounded a bit like Percy singing. . . ." George mused, oblivious of her wrath. "Maybe you've got to attack him while he's in the shower, Harry."
I wonder if he meant to do that? Ginny thought, watching the color creep back into Neville's cheeks as George spoke. If so, she could only be amazed, yet again, by the insight and resourcefulness the twins' betrayed at the unlikeliest of times in the unlikeliest of ways.
"Want a jam tart, Hermione?" inquired Fred. Hermione hesitated, eying the tarts, but Neville reached a shaky hand toward a custard cream. "It's all right," Fred reassured Hermione. "I haven't done anything to them. It's the custard creams you've got to watch--"
Neville choked. Fred laughed. "Just my little joke, Neville. . . ."
Hermione, still looking skeptical, helped herself to a jam tart. "Did you get all this from the kitchens, Fred?"
Fred might have glanced in Ginny's direction, but she was too startled to notice. Dobby! I almost forgot!
"Yep," she heard Fred answer. "Anything we can get you sir, anything at all," he squeaked in surprisingly good imitation as Ginny eased around Katie and Angelina, who were avidly discussing a few moves they'd seen Harry use during the Task, and how they could be applied next year in Quidditch, and tried to make her way over to Harry. "-- get me a roast ox if I said I was peckish."
"How do you get in there?" Hermione asked. Pausing to correct a mistake she saw in the Astronomy paper Tempest had been reduced to working on, Ginny resolved to give Hermione a few pointers on acting innocent sometime in the near future.
"Easy," said Fred, rather to Ginny's amazement; Hermione's feelings about house-elves aside, she hadn't thought the twins approved of giving away trade secrets. "Concealed door behind a painting of a bowl of fruit."
Ginny leapt nimbly sideways, avoiding Dennis Creevy's erratic shot in a heated game of gobstones, which nearly hit her in the eye, she shook her head in answer to Colin's invitation to the join them, and kept going.
"Just tickle the pear and it giggles and --" He broke off, an expression ridiculously reminiscent of Mum spreading across his face. "Why?"
"Nothing," said Hermione.
Ginny reached Harry in time to see him roll his eyes -- very much as she was inclined to do.
"Hey --" she began. George overpowered the sound of her voice, "Going to try and lead the house-elves out on strike are you?" he asked loudly. "Going to give up all the leaflet stuff and stir them into rebellion?"
Most of the Gryffindors laughed, though Ron managed not to join them, and the suggestion of a wince flitted across Harry's face, melting Ginny's heart still further in his favor. She sighed.
"Hey, Har --" she tried again.
"Don't you go upsetting them and telling them they've got to take clothes and salaries!" scolded Fred, still clearly channeling Mum. "You'll put them off their cooking!"
Hermione, looking indignant, opened her mouth to say something. Ginny hoped the situation wasn't about to get out of hand, but she needn't have worried. Before Hermione had the chance to say anything, Neville turned into a canary, diverting the argument.
"Oh -- sorry, Neville!" Fred shouted over the renewed roar of Gryffindor laughter. "I forgot — it was the custard creams we hexed --"
Neville molted about the time Fred finished. He looked happier, and much more relaxed—he was even laughing.