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SIYE Time:12:52 on 13th December 2024
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The Gift
By swishandflick

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Category: Post-HBP
Characters:Harry/Ginny, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley
Genres: Angst
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: PG
Reviews: 28
Summary: Five days in the life of Ginny Weasley, signed, sealed, and delivered with a kiss.
Hitcount: Story Total: 6906







ChapterPrinter



“Name?” said a bored croaky voice.

“I — I — don’t want to give my name.”

“Not your name.” The dwarf sighed, looking as though his spirit was breaking from the sheer tedium of it all. “The name of the sender. We need a name. Unless you want us to pick someone. How about that boy over there?” The dwarf lazily indicated a very tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered seventh year who had just wandered past.

The very short, very young girl with long, flaming red hair and a blossoming blush to match quickly shook her head, her brown eyes very wide.

“All right then,” said the dwarf again, looking disappointed that this was going to be a long drawn out affair. “Give me the name.”

The little girl opened her mouth again but no sound seemed to come out.

“The — name — ” The dwarf grunted, sounding a little like a troll. “Why can’t you girls ever give us a — ”

“Harry Potter!” the girl said very quickly.

“”Arry Potter,” the dwarf repeated lazily, oblivious to the fact that the girl’s face had just gone from scarlet to chalk white. His quill scratched across a parchment.

“And the Valentine.”

The girl reached into her pocket, gasped once, and then sighed as she found a very tattered, very torn looking piece of parchment. She opened it up to reveal several lines of verse that had been crossed out and re-written many times. She handed it to the dwarf as though it were a hot coal.

The dwarf peered at it for a moment, then took an odd-looking monocle out from underneath its golden wings. He studied the writing through the monocle for a moment, and then shook his head and handed the parchment back to the girl.

“Can’t read it. You read it.” The dwarf poised its quill again.

“Well, I don’t want — ”

“Read!” came the impatient troll-like voice again.

The small girl took the parchment in her hand and stared back down at it again, her fingers trembling slightly. Her eyes darted from right to left and then back again, but although students continued to file out of the hall left and right all around her, no one seemed to be paying her the slightest bit of attention; even the dwarf looked only bored and impatient. Slowly, her face flushing brightly again, and with the quiver of a small songbird, she began to read out loud.

“H-his — his — eyes are as green as a — as a fresh-pickled toad,
his hair is as dark as a blackb-b-board.
I-I wish he was mine, he’s really divine.
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.”

The girl’s voice trailed off very quietly at the end. The dwarf wrote very quickly for a moment and then stopped.

“But I don’t want all those — those breaks and stammers and things in it!” the girl protested suddenly.

“No breaks and stammers,” the dwarf repeated monotonously, scratching something else with his quill. “Author?”

“Pardon?”

“Who wrote the poem?”

“Well, I — I did, but I don’t want — ”

“Who’s the bashful little bard?” asked a booming voice from somewhere behind the girl.

She gasped and looked around and found herself staring straight at the towering figure of Gilderoy Lockhart.

“Miss Weasley!” he exclaimed, a broad overdone smile now plastered on his face. “I knew you had the beginnings of a nasty little bat-bogey hex but I didn’t know you had such a talent for verse! But don’t be shy, Ginny!” The smile grew so wide it looked as though Lockhart’s teeth would fall off. “Greatness needs greatness!” He clapped a hand around Ginny’s shoulder so hard she winced in pain. “I daresay Harry will be getting a lot of Valentines today, and not all of his admirers will be so bashful to tell him who they are.”

“But I don’t want to tell him.” Ginny bit her lip and added. “Do you really think he’ll be getting a lot of letters? Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after - ”

But she turned around to find that the dwarf had already left.

“Ginny, Ginny!” chided Lockhart. “Of course he will! But how many as noble in spirit and well penned as yours, I wonder? Take me for example: why I’ve had more than fifty letters already, four more than even five minutes ago, but which of these do I remember?”

Lockhart continued to carry on at length about his favorite Valentines. He didn’t seem to notice as a strange faraway look formed in Ginny’s eyes.

“I must tell Tom,” she muttered to herself. “He’ll understand. He’ll know what to do. I’ve never had such a good friend.”

Her face twisted.

“No,” she said again. “No, no, I mustn’t. He’s the one who’s been making me do all those horrible things. I can feel it. I — I- besides I already got rid of the diary.”

But then her face changed again.

“I must get it back,” she mumbled, almost hypnotically. “I’ve got to get it back somehow.”

And then Ginny turned around and walked out of the Great Hall, unnoticed by anyone, least of all Lockhart.

***

“I wouldn’t go near her if I were you. I mean - ”

“She’s scared us off! I didn’t know she could be — so — so — well, anyway, I don’t think she’ll be going — ”

“Oh, she’ll be going,” said a third voice, and then more quietly but with equal certainty. “I’ll take care of this.”

The owner of the voice walked into view. She wore a light blue dress and her normally bushy-brown hair was done up into a bun. She walked quickly over to a lone table at the far end of the Gryffindor common room near the window. As she approached the table, it became apparent that it wasn’t empty. Sitting on a chair pulled up to the other side was Ginny.

It was hard to recognize Ginny from the short, frightened-looking girl who had composed her singing Valentine two years before. Her face was longer and more slender, the baby fat of childhood now erased. Her hair, still flaming red, had been tied up in curls anchored with a simple red ribbon at the back. She wore a bright yellow dress that hung low on her shoulders revealing a galaxy of freckles broken only by the chain of a simple gold necklace.

Simply put, she was beautiful — beautiful perhaps for the very first time — but certainly not the last. And she remained beautiful even as she folded her elbows ungracefully on the table in front of her and tears ran down her cheeks.

“Ginny?”

Ginny looked up with a frown. She seemed ready to tell whoever it was to go away but when her eyes rested upon the brown-haired girl, she couldn’t seem to suppress a look of surprise.

“Hermione, I — aren’t — where — you’re going to be late for the ball! Isn’t Viktor waiting for you?”

Hermione sat down.

“Viktor can keep waiting,” she said, matter-of-factly. “On the other hand, if you keep sitting here crying, you’re going to ruin all your makeup and I don’t think Demelza would appreciate having to do her work over again.”

Ginny gave Hermione a mirthless smile and returned to putting her face in her elbows.

“Demelza told you to come over here, didn’t she?” she said listlessly.

“Actually, she told me not to,” Hermione replied.

“Then she gave you good advice.”

Hermione sighed. “Ginny, I know you’re upset, but — ”

“You don’t know, Hermione,” snapped Ginny, like an angry cat that wanted to be left alone. “You don’t know anything!”

“I do know, Ginny,” said Hermione sympathetically.

Ginny looked up then. Tears still stained her eyes and she let out a small sob. She looked on the point of saying something more but then looked down again as though deciding against it.

“I hope you don’t,” she finally muttered. “It would make things even worse.”

Hermione took a deep breath. “I do know, Ginny,” she said again. “I know about Harry.”

Ginny looked startled then and the resemblance to the eleven-year-old girl who had been cornered in the Great Hall by Gilderoy Lockhart was suddenly striking.

“But — but — I — Hermione,” she hissed in an urgent whisper, leaning over the table. “You can’t tell him! I know you’re his — oh, Merlin, he already knows, doesn’t he? Am I that obvious?”

“He doesn’t know, Ginny. And, yes, you’re horribly obvious, but not to him — or to Ron for that matter,” she added, a note of bitterness creeping into her own voice. “I doubt either of them would notice if a troll had started bashing about the common room so long as there was a steady supply of Veelas for them to stare at.”

Ginny giggled and then immediately looked cross, as though she was angry with Hermione for trying to trick her into believing she couldn’t feel sad. Hermione, however, seemed to eagerly seize onto the brief opening in Ginny’s mood. Her eyes lit up, her own acerbic mood apparently forgotten.

“Look,” she said. “You can’t go moping on about Harry forever. You’ve been invited to the ball. You’re not going to let Neville down, are you?”

“Of — of course not,” said Ginny sighing. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I just — I — I — was — I’d finished dressing — and I was looking at myself in the mirror and then I started to think — ”

Fresh tears made their way down Ginny’s cheeks followed by a few breathless sobs.

“ — I-I-I really th-thought m-m-maybe he’d a-ask — I-I-I didn’t kn-know about — ”

Ginny buried her face in her arms again and seemed to determine not to say anything more.

“Ginny.” Hermione reached out her hand and touched Ginny’s forearm. “Ginny, listen to me. Harry — ”

“He d-d-doesn’t e-even n-n-notice I’m th-th-there, Hermione! It m-m-might as-as w-w-well be m-m-me wearing the-the-the Invisibility Cloak. Or worse,” she added, taking her wand from the table top and flicking it aimlessly to conjure a very small piece of tissue which she used to blow her nose. “He thinks I like him because he’s famous Harry Potter and he hates being famous, but he doesn’t understand!” she went on, seeming to forget there was anyone at all there listening. “I know he doesn’t like it — I just — I-I know him so well but he doesn’t even see — ” Ginny sighed, shook her head, and ran her hands through the bangs of her hair, threatening to unravel the gelatinous substance holding together her curls.

“Ginny,” said Hermione again very steadily. “First of all, Harry doesn’t know you like him, not really, not the way you think of it.”

“But you know, it seems, and you’re his friend, so — ”

“Yes, Ginny, I’m his friend and I’m Ron’s friend, too,” she added, a bit unnecessarily, “though there are times — ” She shook her head as though she could make the thought fall out from her hair into an invisible pensieve. “But I’m not going to say anything to either of them. This is between girls, all right?”

Ginny looked at Hermione a little uncertainly for a moment as though the words sounded strange on the lips of the older girl, but then she nodded, her tears temporarily halted.

“I-I don’t want him to know.” Ginny averted her eyes. “I — I — ”

“Then how do you think he will like you?”

“I-I suppose — I thought if I — ” Ginny shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Ginny, listen to me, you’re just not yourself around Harry. He doesn’t see you’re there because, well, in a way, you really aren’t. It is like you’re wearing an invisibility cloak. When you and I used to talk in your room over the summer, or at the Quidditch World Cup, you were happy, funny, out-going — but as soon as Harry’s there, it’s like — I don’t know, Ginny, but I don’t think he can ever like you if you don’t show the most likeable bits of yourself around him. And even if he did, it wouldn’t really be you that he liked.”

A light seemed to turn on in Ginny’s eyes.

“So you think he could like me?” she said, suddenly a different person altogether.

Hermione sighed and the light faded a little but she added quickly:

“Ginny, I honestly don’t know. I just know that he needs to see the real you. Otherwise, you’ll never really know if he could have or not. But,” Hermione hesitated as though unsure how to put what was coming next, “maybe you need to think about, I mean, just in the meantime, you really can’t just wait forever for Harry.”

Hermione looked across at Ginny meaningfully. It was hard to read Ginny’s own expression, though. She seemed to have gone very quiet and stoic.

“I mean,” Hermione went on cautiously, apparently sensing that Ginny was not going to reply. “Maybe you should think about maybe, you know, having a bit of fun, maybe even, well, maybe even seeing someone else for a while. You’re a — ”

But Hermione stopped talking. Ginny had given her a small but very certain shake of her head. There was a look in her eyes that was difficult to read. It was hard and determined but also deep and almost sorrowful. It was as though a part of Ginny’s soul had just risen up out from the surface of its many disguises like the tip of an iceberg drifting across the horizon of a placid sea.

“I don’t think so, Hermione,” she said, after a moment’s pause.

“You never know, though,” Hermione persisted in a whisper. “You might even meet someone tonight.”

“Neville?” Ginny looked doubtful.

Hermione smiled. “Maybe not Neville. But someone, I don’t know.”

Ginny looked at Hermione again for a moment and then slowly pushed her chair back. Hermione followed suit and the two girls slowly walked away from the empty table.

***

The scene changed yet another time. The Great Hall loomed into view once more. The long tables were laid out as before but the Valentine’s decorations were missing. It seemed to be warmer and later in the year: most of the students had loosened their ties; one young witch absently fanned herself.

They were sitting at the table again together, Hermione and Ginny, their robes forgotten on the chairs behind them. They were a little older again and although she was no longer dressed up, Ginny looked even more beautiful than before. There was still a sad, almost vacant expression on her face, however. She was looking down at a book but it seemed she wasn’t really paying it too much attention. Hermione, who now looked far easier in Ginny’s company, was a little more engrossed in her book, but she nonetheless kept looking up every now and then at her younger friend.

“So how are things going with Michael?” she finally said.

“Oh, all right,” said Ginny, a little absently, seeming to peer down at her book a little more intently than she had the moment before.

“I haven’t seen you with him as much lately,” Hermione persisted.

Ginny didn’t seem to mind Hermione’s question as much as she might have the night in the common room. She looked up then and fixed her friend with a shrewd expression that wouldn’t really have suited the teary-eyed girl that had dressed up for the ball.

“We usually hang out in the Ravenclaw common room. They’re very clever at inventing all sorts of little hiding places. I don’t really fancy one of my brothers walking in on us, thank you very much.”

Hermione giggled a little then and Ginny seemed to smirk but then she looked at Hermione a little crossly and the look in her eyes suggested she was only half-joking.

“I wish you could have kept it a secret altogether actually.”

Hermione turned more serious then. “Well, you couldn’t have kept him in the dark forever, could you? What if you want to bring Michael home one day?”

Ginny’s eyes seem to grow very large with this remark.

“I’ll admit he’s been a bit of a bastard lately, but I wouldn’t wish that on him.”

“Well, one day you’ll have to bring a boy home. You won’t always be able to disappear into the Ravenclaw common room.”

“I’d rather not think about it sooner than I have to. I can’t imagine anyone they’d like.”

Ginny once again peered down at her book but after a moment she looked up again thoughtfully.

“What was it you told them, anyway? Ron and Harry,” she clarified as Hermione seemed confused.

“Oh, I don’t know, Ginny, it was months ago now. I wasn’t really thinking actually; I’d forgotten they didn’t know and it came out a bit by — ” Hermione stopped short suddenly and looked up at Ginny, a strange look on her face.

“What?” asked Ginny, but a slight glow had already started to reach her cheeks.

“You didn’t want Harry to know, did you? Never mind Ron.”

“Oh.” Ginny looked a little non-plussed for a moment but then quickly changed gears. “Well, it didn’t make any difference, did it?” Before Hermione could respond, Ginny quickly added: “Anyway, what’s up with Harry? He seems so depressed now.”

Hermione let out a great sigh. “I don’t know, Ginny. I wish I — I suppose — I suppose it must really just be the O.W.Ls this time.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Well, what else could it be? I mean — he hasn’t been getting on with Cho much lately so it could be that, I suppose, but, well, whatever it is, there’s no use talking to him.”

“You mean you haven’t even asked him what’s wrong?”

There was an obvious edge to Ginny’s voice now and she had abandoned all pretense of looking down at her book. Hermione, however, hadn’t seemed to notice this and looked across at Ginny in an ever-so-slightly patronizing manner.

“Ginny, Harry’s been on edge all year. And there are a lot of reasons why. I’m not making excuses for him but…. sometimes he just needs to be left alone; sometimes he needs to just sort things out himself, otherwise — ”

“He’ll jump down your throat?”

“Well, this year I’m afraid he’s been — he has had a tendency to — oh, I’m sure it’s just — he’ll come around, Ginny, you’ll see, he’ll — ”

But Ginny had now turned the color of a fire engine. It seemed almost as though smoke would pour out of her ears any moment.

“Why are you so afraid of him?” she demanded hotly. “I’m tired of this! You and Ron are supposed to be his friends! You act as though he has some kind of disease. He doesn’t need to be left alone; he needs his friends, he needs you and Ron. If you want to know what’s bothering him, why don’t you just ask? What’s so funny?”

A smile had found its way onto Hermione’s face. She studied Ginny curiously.

“You don’t know how much you’ve changed.”

“I haven’t changed at all!” Ginny retorted, not the least bit amused. “I’ve always cared — ”

She stopped talking suddenly and looked at Hermione in disbelief, though the surprise on her face clearly had come from her own words. There was a sudden pause in the conversation, during which Hermione’s smile only seemed to grow wider. Whatever either of them had been about to say next though, neither found out, for at that moment a tall shadow fell over the table.

“Oi!” said Ron. “What are you sitting around here for? Come on, we’ll be late for practice!”

Ginny’s eyes suddenly widened.

“Merlin, I forgot!” she said.

“How can you forget about Quidditch?”

“Perhaps she was too busy studying,” said Hermione acidly. “Speaking of which: have you been keeping up to schedule?”

Ron shrugged. “Well, it’s practice time, isn’t it? I mean, I can’t really put it off till later; homework, on the other hand — ”

Hermione gave a sigh and then frowned again as she noticed an open package in Ron’s hand.

“What’s that?”

“Easter Eggs from Mum,” explained Ron. “I think she might have given you one, too.” He put the package down on the table and began rummaging around inside, then frowned. “Funny, I could have sworn — ”

“Maybe you ate it,” suggested Ginny.

“I haven’t — I haven’t touched them!” said Ron, a little too defensively.

“I suppose that must be leftover Marmite on your mouth, then,” said Hermione, a knowing look on her face.

Ron wiped absently at his face but quickly recovered.

“Look, I’ll give you Harry’s then. He won’t know he’s got one.”

“Oh no, you won’t.”

Hermione quickly snatched the box out of Ron’s hand and gave it to Ginny.

“Ginny’s going to keep the eggs safe and after practice, she can find Harry and give it to him. It might be just the thing to cheer him up.”

Her eyes bored into Ginny with great significance as she said it.

“What?” said Ron incredulously. “Don’t be daft! Ginny never sees Harry. I’m his roommate and I’m in all of his lessons; I’ll give — ”

“No,” said Hermione firmly, still looking meaningfully at Ginny. “I don’t think you can be trusted.” She quickly got to her feet and picked up her book. “I think I’ll go find somewhere a little quieter to study. Have fun at practice.”

***

“Upset?”

“Well, he is.”

They were in the library this time, Hermione and Ginny again, their voices hushed not only because they feared the wrath of the vulture-nosed librarian Madam Pince but because at the very next table sat several Gryffindor girls, among them Parvati Patil and Romilda Vane, both of whom kept throwing suspicious glances over at the two now long-time friends. Three tables over sat Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas. Ginny had just thrown the most furtive of glances toward Dean before quickly snapping her head back as though it was caught on the end of a taut rubber band. Dean had been throwing even more than a few glances in Ginny’s direction, none of which were returned. Seamus, who was doing all the talking on his end, kept trying to return Dean’s attention to him, but Dean, looking very sullen, seemed little interested.

“I asked if you were upset,” said Hermione in a meaningful whisper.

“Well…no,” said Ginny, going slightly red. “I suppose I should be but — well, it was stupid, really, but it just finally got on my nerves. He just always had this stupid thing of helping me up into the common room as if I was some bloody invalid. I suppose it was his way of being chivalrous or something but it’s all so stupid. It was like I was his trophy or something.”

“Were you?”

“Yes, I think that was how he saw me,” Ginny decided, after a moment’s thought and a hiss of angrily whispered spittle. “So I’m not upset. To be honest, I feel a bit relieved. Is that wrong?” she wondered, half to herself.

Hermione shook her head, a full and slightly mischievous smile on her face.

“You certainly seem quite happy about it.”

“What if I told you Harry went out to Hagrid’s last night?”

Ginny frowned, clearly confused.

“In his invisibility cloak,” Hermione added, her tongue resting playfully on the top of her teeth.

“And?” said Ginny, still not too clear.

“And it was at exactly the same moment that you and Dean were coming in through the door.”

Ginny looked perplexed for another moment but then her eyes widened.

“Are you saying — ”

“Are you sure it was Dean who pushed you?”

“It was a bit odd, actually,” said Ginny, now looking deep in thought. “I thought he was off too far to my right, but I hadn’t been looking, so I — but then Harry would have had to have come through the portrait hole at that precise moment.”

“I think he may have done. It was just after he left us. It’s hard for me to be absolutely certain, mind you, since I was bit preoccupied with Lavender realizing her life’s ambition to become a human howler.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. Why would Harry do that? That’s not like him. He would wait for us to pass, especially if he was trying to keep himself secret.”

“Perhaps he wanted to help things along a bit with you and Dean.”

The mischievous smile seemed unable to leave Hermione’s face.

“And how would Harry know that I don’t like a bit of snuggle in the portrait hole?”

The grin grew even wider.

“Maybe he didn’t have to know. Maybe he just sensed it.”

Ginny frowned again. She looked as though she knew that Hermione hadn’t quite revealed everything and was taking great pleasure in drawing it all out.

“Perhaps we’re not talking about the same person,” Ginny suggested, refusing to take the bait. “I wasn’t aware Harry was blessed with a tremendous amount of intuition, at least when it doesn’t involve creating conspiracy theories about Draco Malfoy.”

“Maybe he had a bit of help.”

Ginny folded her arms. “All right, Hermione. What do you know?”

“Harry took a spoonful of Felix Felicis last night,” she said in a very quiet voice.

“I suppose you shouldn’t be telling me this.”

“Absolutely not.”

Ginny let out a small sigh. “Keeping secrets has never really been your strong point, has it? But please don’t stop now, I’m all ears.”

“I’m still not going to tell you why he took it,” said Hermione, looking only very slightly put out, “but I can tell you that Felix Felicis works by aligning the centers of consciousness and reason in the brain with one’s surroundings.”

Then followed an even longer and more technical explanation of the powers of the potion which sounded as though it had been memorized from a large dusty tome of sixth-year magic. Ginny waited until Hermione had finished and then said neutrally:

“And so?”

“And so, while he took the Felix Felicis, Harry would have had his way with anything, anything that was in his power to change last night, well, anything simple enough. A bit odd, don’t you think, that he would be strangely unlucky with you and Dean. After all,” she added, sarcasm flowing ever more richly, “he was, as he told me and as, in our last conversation, you managed to believe, so very concerned about you and Dean staying together so as not to upset his team.”

There was a long pause.

“He didn’t want to keep you together,” said Hermione, her smile now threatening to graduate into a giddy giggle. “He wanted you to break up with Dean, which is exactly what he got. He — likes — you, Ginny.”

For a moment, Ginny seemed to be casting around for another excuse for Harry’s behavior but when she found none, her eyes grew wide again. For the briefest of instants, Hermione Granger was sitting across from an eleven-year-old girl who had just stuck her elbow in a butter dish.

“B — b — but, Hermione,” whispered Ginny fiercely, her face lighting up like a lantern. “I can’t — after all this time, it just doesn’t seem — ” Ginny threw up her hand.

“Possible?”

“I suppose it must be possible,” said Ginny very quietly. “But Hermione, I don’t understand, why now — I mean after all — it just doesn’t — ”

Apparently unable to finish any sort of sentence, Ginny settled for burying her hands in her burning cheeks. Hermione reached over very gently and took hold of her forearm exactly as she had the night in the common room two years prior. Ginny looked up.

“I can tell you why, Ginny. Not because he’s told me anything,” she said in reply to a questioning look on Ginny’s face, “but because of all those reasons I told you: you showed him who you really are, you touched him in ways that Ron or I didn’t even know how to.” The mischievous smile returned. “And since half the boys in the school fancy you, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t. The question is: what do you want, Ginny?”

“What do I want?” Ginny repeated, as if it was the strangest sort of question in the world.

“Yes, Ginny. A few years ago, a little girl had a crush on a dashing young seeker,” she said softly. “Is she still there?”

There was another pause.

“She’s changed a lot,” Ginny finally replied.

“I know she has.”

“I don’t know about a crush,” said Ginny, looking less at Hermione than at a bookshelf behind her, an odd expression in her eyes. “But I think I care about him. I think I care about him very much. I suppose I always have.”

When Ginny finally looked back at Hermione, she found her friend wore her widest smile yet.

“I — I thought I’d given up on him,” Ginny went on, “but I — I don’t think I really did now. Not really. I just — I just didn’t want to be hurt anymore.” She looked down. “I suppose you think I should finally tell him how I feel.”

But when Ginny finally raised her head again, she seemed surprised to find Hermione shaking hers.

“No, I don’t,” she said seriously. “I think he owes you enough to say it himself. But I want you to show him how you feel, Ginny. Just go on doing what you’ve been doing: be yourself. And make sure he notices.”

***

And then the scene changed completely. It was no longer Hogwarts at all. Lush, green grass fell under the weight of tentative footsteps. A grey, misty sky hung ominously overhead. It was as though the owner of the footsteps had found herself plunged into a frightening limbo where the only constant was uncertainty.

Then a small stone shed-like structure came into view. Its outside was covered with peeling white paint and its roof looked like it had only been kept on by magic. The footsteps slowed as they approached the shed and then finally moved into view.

It was Hermione who was walking. She couldn’t have been much older than the Hermione in the library but somehow she seemed to have aged considerably. She was dressed in a long flowing pastel robe and her face was made up as it had been the night of the Yule Ball years before. But it was not that which seemed to have aged her. There was an unnaturally hardened look in her eyes. As she approached the door, a soft moaning noise could be heard coming from the inside. It was obvious someone was in trouble, yet still Hermione hesitated. She reached the door to the shed and raised her fist as though to knock on it, but then her face twisted in confusion. She stood there and listened for a moment as the moaning continued to ebb and flow. It seemed that someone was crying.

Finally, Hermione looked around and then cautiously knocked on the door. The moaning noise stopped abruptly but there was no other sound as though the owner of the voice had decided to become invisible. After a few moments of silence, Hermione knocked on the door again.

“What do you want?”

The voice was low and haunting through the stone. It was almost unrecognizable but not quite.

“Ginny, it’s me. It’s Hermione.”

There was another moment of silence.

“Ginny, please let me in.”

Another pause.

“I’ll be out in a moment,” came Ginny’s voice, still sounding oddly deep and thick as though she was speaking underwater.

“Ginny, don’t try to tell me something to make me go away. Let me in. I know something’s wrong with you and Harry!”

“Go away, Hermione,” came the reply, this time quick and slightly savage. “Please. I don’t want to talk. To anyone.”

Hermione sighed. She hesitated once more and then took out her wand and aimed it at the door.

“Alohomora,” she said, almost resignedly.

The door opened to reveal a small, sparse shed filled with a few old broomsticks and much dust, cobwebs, and spiders. In one corner, on a stack of even older-looking boxes, sat Ginny. She wore a gold dress; her silky red hair flowed long down her back, kept in place by a matching headband to which several yellow carnations were magically attached. Parts of the dress were now dirty and dusty, however, from sitting in the shed and her cheeks were covered with fingerprints from her dirt-covered hands.

Hermione sighed and crouched down next to Ginny who watched her movement but made no move to resist. Hermione absently flicked her wand at the door to the outhouse and closed it.

“What happened?” she asked.

For a moment, it looked like Ginny was simply going to ignore her but then she said in a tired, defeated voice:

“I tried to keep it in all day but I just — I just couldn’t — ”

“He broke up with you, didn’t he?” Hermione said in a whisper.

“Did he tell you?”

“No, of course he didn’t tell me. I have eyes. You two wouldn’t go anywhere near each other all day.”

Ginny lowered her head. “I didn’t want to spoil Bill’s day. After all, it was my idea to move the reception here after Fleur’s — ” Ginny left the rest of her sentence unspoken. “And I — I thought I could — ” She sniffed again. Fresh tears sprung from her face, then suddenly, without warning, Ginny let out a long, horrible wail. It sounded like a cross between the rattle of a dementor and a phoenix lament. It was as though a horrible monster was struggling to break free from her body, a creature borne of the fathomless sorrow she could no longer hold inside.

“Ginny,” said Hermione. “Ginny, please — ”

But Ginny did not stop crying. Hermione finally reached over and held onto her friend, wincing only slightly as the horrible wailing continued into her ear. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Ginny’s cries faded into spasmodic sobs that racked her body up and down. Only when these, too, subsided did Hermione release her embrace.

Ginny rubbed her hands unceremoniously in the sleeves of her dress. Hermione waved her wand and a handkerchief fell out of thin air. Ginny took hold of it and blew her nose.

“Thanks,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I could conjure a dead mouse right now.”

“Ginny, please tell me what happened,” said Hermione softly.

“He said — ” Ginny stifled another sob. “H-H-he said — he has to go on alone, Hermione. He has to be the one to stop You-Know-Who. I think that’s what he meant, anyway. He said — he said that if — if You-Know-Who knew we were going out, I’d be a certain target. H — he couldn’t bear it if any — if anything happened to me.”

Hermione buried her own face in her hand. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “Bloody Harry. Doesn’t he know he can’t do this all by himself?”

“But he has to.”

Hermione looked back up at Ginny, an unusual look of surprise on her face.

“Hermione, listen to me,” she added. “Don’t try to go with him. He’ll just be worried sick — for you and for Ron. He has to do this alone.”

Now apparently over her initial shock at Ginny’s unexpected words, Hermione began shaking her head.

“No, Ginny, no he doesn’t! He needs us and he needs you, too! It was you who taught me that? Don’t you remember? Voldemort was alone. He was always alone. But Harry isn’t. He has his friends; he has you. He has love and Voldemort doesn’t. If he abandons us, he’s giving away his greatest strength!”

Ginny paused for a moment, a teardrop suspended halfway down her cheek. She seemed to be considering what Hermione had just said.

“Ginny, Harry still loves you.”

“I know,” said Ginny quietly. “And I didn’t say I was giving up on him.”

There was a single-minded look in Ginny’s eyes now. The same look she had given Hermione the night of the Yule Ball when she’d suggested Ginny might try to get over Harry and date someone else.

“It might be a year; it might be twenty years but I’m not going to stop waiting for him,” she added. “I don’t want to lie to myself anymore.”

Hermione looked at Ginny for a moment, a faraway expression in her eyes, almost as though she was wondering if she, too, could feel that way about someone.

“Then you’ve got to make sure he knows that, Ginny,” she said. “You’ve got to make sure he never forgets!”

“Actually I already did.”

If there was anything more unusual than Hermione being surprised, it was Hermione being surprised for the second time in the same afternoon.

“What did you say?” she asked, looking very curious.

For the first time since Hermione had walked into the shed, Ginny’s face broke into a reluctant smile. Her cheeks were still stained with dirt and tears, but she suddenly looked very much like the sister of Fred and George Weasley.

“I didn’t say anything,” she said.

***

Harry looked into the swirling Pensieve for a moment, then watched as its contents emptied slowly back into the small vial he held out in his hand. He felt his hand trembling as he slowly re-sealed it. Taking it between his fingers, Harry examined the small message that was scrawled on the outside. He already knew what it said, but he still wanted to look at it again. Something told him he would never tire of doing so.


To Harry,

Happy Anniversary

Love,
Your singing Valentine


Harry looked at the message a little while longer, then quietly put the vial back onto the table. He moved his feet noiselessly into his slippers, then picked up a lantern and made his way along the narrow corridor to his bedroom. He reached the door and silently opened it, gently snuffing out the light as he did so.

The moon was high and full in the sky; even with the curtains closed, it bathed the room in a pale, ghostly light. Harry didn’t need the lantern to see his way across to bed. He carefully placed his slippers underneath his side table and then noiselessly slipped under the covers.

He had laid there for a full minute when a voice by his side said:

“You opened the vial, didn’t you?”

Startled, Harry turned around to look at the witch lying beside him. Ginny’s brown eyes were open wide. She did not look as though she had been sleeping.

“I — I’m sorry,” said Harry. “I thought — ”

He heard rather than saw a smile form on Ginny’s face.

“You never could wait for anything.”

“I suppose not.”

Harry turned on his side to face her. He watched her hair snake down the length of her shoulder. As she turned to face him, too, a few strands came onto her face and fell into her eyes. In a very deliberate motion, he reached out and replaced them carefully behind her ear.

“Were they all your memories?” he asked idly.

“One or two of them were Hermione’s.”

Harry nodded his understanding. That was why he’d been following her before the ball and then again to the outhouse at the Burrow and not Ginny.

“I promise to get you something a little more cheerful for your birthday,” Ginny said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. The smile slowly left Ginny’s face. In its place was an expression Harry could see clearly even in the dim light from the moon, an expression he knew very well. It was the same hard, blazing look he had seen on her face the day in the common room when he’d first kissed her and also the day long ago when he’d told her he had to leave and face Voldemort alone. It was also, he now knew, the same look she had worn the day she had recited her singing Valentine to a bored and impatient dwarf; when she’d first told Hermione how she really felt about her best friend; and the day when she’d sworn she would wait forever for the only boy she truly loved. It was the look of an old soul that had transcended her young years, a soul that long ago had known its other half and had set about trying to find it. As a child, Harry hadn’t been prepared to understand; at times, he hadn’t really wanted to. But now as an adult, perhaps he could. He very much hoped so.

“I wanted you to know,” said Ginny quietly, her expression unchanging. “I wanted to you to understand how I really felt about you, how I’ll always feel. I hoped that might be the best present of all.”

Harry wanted to tell her she was right, but any words that came to mind seemed hollow and unworthy of anything she had said or shown him. Besides, he thought, their relationship had never been one where words had spoken the loudest.

Harry eased his fingers through Ginny’s hair once more and cupped her face to his. He briefly saw Ginny’s eyes burn with the intensity of the firelight he had once seen reflected in them so many years ago. Then their lips touched and Harry felt at once a rousing passion in his body and a cool, calm stillness in his heart, the paradox of sensations that in all his twisted existence, Lord Voldemort had never once been able to understand. As their passion deepened, Harry cherished the hope that the girl whose life had flashed before his eyes in the pensieve had finally gotten exactly what she’d wanted. And that tonight, and every night, there would be no more nightmares.
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