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Ginny has known how to write for a whole year when she decides it's time for her to take the story into her own hands, and starts writing about a boy with green eyes, a girl with red hair, and a series of incredible adventures.
She has grown up hearing the story of The Boy Who Lived, who honestly is just Harry in her head. Harry, like a boy she knows, even if they've never met. It's mainly Bill and Charlie who tell her the stories, they always loved adventures the most. She secretly prefers when Charlie tells them because, with him, there's always some dragon involved, she won't tell Bill that, though. But even in Charlie's stories, Harry always saves Ginny. And it's fine, really, the idea makes her even blush a little, but Ginny wants to go on the adventures too. She'd like that, she thinks. She also thinks Harry would like a friend. Ron says she never shuts up, so she is sure she and Harry will always have plenty of things to talk about.
Harry is hidden in a little corner of his classroom when he listens to the other boys discuss how pretty Alice Jameson is, and he supposes they are right, she is pretty with her long shiny hair. But Harry frowns a little when his classmates say blonde hair is the best for a girl. Suddenly, it flashes in front of him the memory of a girl with hair so red that it looked like fire.
He hadn't seen her face properly. He had been in London with Aunt Petunia and Dudley, and before he had been able to get a better look at the girl, Dudley had tripped him, and his Aunt then had scolded Harry for being such a stupid boy, nothing like her Duds. By the time he had looked back, the girl hadn't been there anymore, and Harry had wondered if he had imagined her. Regardless, Harry thinks the prettiest girl would have hair like hers, like fire.
John Holland marches confidently to Alice and asks her to be his girlfriend, and Harry sees her nod excitedly. Harry realises it doesn't really matter what girl he finds the prettiest because no one will ever like him. With his clothes that are far too big, and his knobby knees. Uncle Vernon says women want big strong men. Harry is short, and a bit too thin, and he always has to adjust the glasses on his nose.
Ginny has just separated from Ron for the first time in as far as she can remember, and as sad as that is, what seems to completely occupy her mind is that she has seen Harry. That Harry. Harry Potter! She can't believe she hadn't recognised him. She thinks it was the glasses, she had no idea he wore glasses. Now, all the stories she has written feel inaccurate. She is half tempted to go home and write a new one. But she doesn't. Because Harry Potter feels more real than he has ever felt. It's clear now that she and Harry are not friends, yet she hopes they will be.
Harry thinks the Burrow is the most wonderful house, full of peculiar things, like a pretty girl that likes him. He knows Ginny likes him, even if Ron and the twins weren't so mean to her about it, it is pretty obvious. He is not really sure what to do with it. It had never occurred to him that this could happen. He forces himself to not stare at her, it's a bit hard because her blush is really really pretty, and when he smiles a little he hopes she knows he is not making fun of her, she is just rather adorable. He tries to talk to her but she seems to be under some sort of silencing spell.
She talks for the first time to defend him from Malfoy, and while Harry's chest fills with something warm, the blonde rat accuses Ginny of being Harry's girlfriend. His mind seems to go blank at that. He only knows how, after the incident, Ginny doesn't magically start talking to him. So Harry doesn't think anymore about how she glows when she blushes, about the girl who had run after the train, the girl whose name he had remembered after hearing it his first time at King's Cross and never hearing it again for a whole year.
Ginny wakes up on a cold stone floor and she can't stop crying, she can't stop thinking about Tom, and how stupid she is, and she really wishes she could just stop crying. For some reason what breaks through the mess in her head is not the destroyed diary, and is not Ron's attempts at making her laugh. What makes her feel better is Harry Potter's green gaze and his steady composure. He is not hugging her, yet there's something in the way he doesn't linger too much on her tears, in how he takes the situation in his hands and doesn't waste time, that makes her feel weirdly warm.
Harry is in the hospital wing when Ginny Weasley brings him the most stupidly adorable get-well card. It's a really pretty card and it sings the most atrocious melody.
Harry won't ever admit it out loud but he kind of loves it.
He puts it under a bowl of fruit to make it stop singing and when he is finally able to go back to his dorm, he carefully places it in his trunk. He briefly wonders if one day he'll know Ginny Weasley well enough to understand how on earth a second-year knows how to cast a singing spell on a card.
Ginny is trying not to laugh at Ron's misadventures with women, everything is perfectly fine, normal, happy even, and then Harry arrives, with his stupid glasses, and his stupid grin, and he has to tell about how he wants to go to the Yule Ball with the Ravenclaw seeker but she is already taken. And Ginny doesn't know if she wants to be swallowed by the ground more at that moment or when she has to shut down her brother's suggestion of her being the one going with Harry instead.
She is so tired of having stupid feelings for stupid Harry Potter, with the stupid hair, and the stupid green eyes.
Harry is dancing with Parvati, and he is pretty sure he is doing it wrong. And he also knows it's probably not the wisest of things when you fundamentally don't know how to dance to start looking around the dance floor, but he finds himself doing it anyway. The first image his eyes settle on is the one of Ginny and Neville twirling around. For some reason, his brain refuses to focus on how Ginny is dressed, yet he can't stop watching avidly her face wincing at Neville's pathetic attempts to dance with her. Harry might not be a great dancer, but he is not that bad, and he has no idea why that fact is so important to him, so he looks away.
Ginny doesn't know how to feel. It seems a constant lately. She has been having incessant nightmares about Tom since the summer, and now Harry Potter decides no one can know what it feels like to be possessed. The idiot. But she can't bring herself to be as angry as she feels she should be. He did apologise. And she knows he was sincere. But still. And when she rants about all of this to Sirius, at first he is very sympathetic, even if he can't help but justify his godson a bit. Later, he fails at trying not to laugh. The thing is, he has convinced himself she and Harry will end up married for some reason (probably spending twelve years descending into madness in Azkaban). So, of course, her conflicting emotions are just an expression of her lingering romantic feelings for Harry. He also says something about Harry staring at her curled up in a chair, and she is not even sure she wants to know what he is going on about. The mentions of Micheal and Cho don't seem to move Sirius' convictions. She starts to wonder if the man should be checked by a mind healer. Clearly, dementors and alcohol finally did the trick, it's the only explanation for his being so utterly wrong: she is definitely over Harry Potter.
Harry is laughing like he doesn't remember laughing in a very long time. He and Ginny have just been thrown out of the library for eating chocolate. It's such a ridiculous but also normal thing, and there's not been much of that lately.
Ginny is using the wall to not fall while she is cracking up as much as he is. Her fire-like hair dancing around her is such a magnetic sight that he can't stop looking. Some of the strands fall in front of her warm brown eyes, they seem brighter than usual when she laughs.
Harry feels like he is missing something, the essential piece of the picture in front of him, the one that all of a sudden became a puzzle. He could swear that his brain was on a very specific, very important, train of thought before Madam Pince's interruption, yet he can't bring himself to remember it.
He and Ginny walk back together to the common room, and when she makes a joke and winks at him, he catches himself thinking he is glad she finally talks to him.
Ginny smirks at Harry's impression of Bill and responds in kind with one of Fleur. And it's so easy to be happy around him, it's so easy to be his friend. To think she was just a blush away from all of this for years... it nearly makes her angry, but she supposes it's better late than never.
Harry looks at his reflection in the mirror, he stares deep into his own green eyes and thinks that maybe, maybe, it's not such a tragedy if he doesn't turn it into one.
It's just a crush.
People get crushes all the time.
It's really not that big of a deal.
He should have predicted it, really. She is his friend, pretty much the funniest person he has ever met, an incredible Quidditch player, kind, warm, compassionate, brave. And well— hot. Really, as much as Harry has always tried not to think about it, it's never exactly been a secret that Ginny is very good-looking. He has had to endure for a few years now his fair share of jokes about what he gets up to with her during the summers (in those rare moments he isn't around Ron).
He has a crush on a friend of his, who happens to be very conventionally good-looking. It's normal. Manageable. He's sure he'll get over it.
Ginny fights with Dean. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Dean fights with her. They are going to Slughorn's party, and before she knows what is going on (she can admit to not being particularly good at reading him), Dean pretty much accuses her of emotionally cheating on him with Harry. Harry. And the ridiculous thing is that he seems to believe Harry reciprocates those feelings. She kind of wants to laugh. If only Dean knew how absurd that is. Before she can decide if she should dive into a monologue about the impossibility of Harry Potter ever seeing her in a romantic light, Dean starts a series of questions about who Harry is to her. A conversation that continues with Ginny admitting that he is family but not a brother, and somehow ends with Dean proclaiming that someone who is a brother to her brothers, a son to her parents, but not a brother to her, is her husband. And the thing is, Ginny is not someone who remains speechless easily, yet at those words all she can do is stand frozen in the empty corridor, unable to even blink. Dean, a mask of anger and frustration, briefly waits for a reply that never comes and then stomps back to the common room. After a while, maybe a century, Ginny feels like she can move again. She walks slowly in Dean's opposite direction, towards the party, allowing herself to focus only on a good excuse for her lateness.
Harry has always been known to have terrible eyesight, it had never occurred to him that his blindness transferred to the psychological level.
It's Christmas, and he is staying at the Burrow, a delight and a torture all wrapped up in five feet and a couple more inches of snarky jokes and flaming hair also known as Ginny Weasley. And it is as he watches the girl in question run wild with her obsession for homemade decorations and playfully argue with the twins over who hit Percy in the face with the mashed parsnip, that it occurs to Harry how he really doesn't want to imagine a Christmas in which his living room won't look like an explosion of paper-chains. It's the same quiet series of moments that leads him to fully, wholly, accept how truly fucked he is: he doesn't have a crush on Ginny Weasley. He has proper feelings for her. Deep-rooted, years-in-the-making, kind of feelings. And he doesn't know how he didn't get it before, because now that he looks back at his life since he discovered the wizarding world, Ginny has always been there, sometimes central, more often at the margins, and yet constantly way brighter than anyone else. It's like a spell has been lifted, and now that he allows himself to think about her he can't stop. When exactly did he learn that cats are her favourite animal, or that she is brilliant at Care of Magical Creatures? Or that her favourite band is the Weird Sisters? Why does he know the exact movement her jaw does when she is angry? Or that she harbours a soft spot for the colour green?
But nothing of this matters, does it?
Because what he also knows about Ginny is that she is Ron's sister and, more importantly, she has a boyfriend who is very much not Harry (unfortunately). And so he is left to pine in silence, slave to the consequences of his own blindness.
Ginny runs to the hospital wing faster than she ever remembers running, leaving behind a stern professor McGonagall and a worried Dean.
The second Harry appears in front of her, his green eyes meet her amber ones and she instantly knows: it was a close call, Ron is not great, but he is alive. She lets out a long sigh, closes the space between her and Harry and falls into his strong arms. Only completely embraced by him, engulfed in his warm scent, his chin on her head, she finally feels herself calming down. And when she and Harry start their obsessive conversation about what happened, she doesn't question why his presence is so grounding, why she doesn't want Dean there even if she knows he would come running if only she asked.
Harry has never considered murdering Ron, not even during that whole mess in fourth year. But if he interrupts another conversation with Ginny he might just start planning how to dispose of his body. He's sure Ginny will eventually forgive him for the death of her brother, once he explains his reasons.
He has tried, he really has, for the sake of his friendship with Ron, to stay away from Ginny, to ignore this thing that explodes in his chest every time he talks to her, or sees her, or someone mentions her, or his thoughts drift to her, which is pretty much constantly. But she is everywhere, interlaced with the very fibre of his being since way before he had any idea. Her scent is his favourite smell, the red of her hair his favourite colour, her smile his favourite sight. He just wants to blurt out his feelings and kiss her, get lost in her laugh, and trace patterns between the freckles on her soft skin. For some mad reason, he is pretty sure she would be a willing participant in his plans for them. It's the twinkle in her eyes when she looks at him, he thinks. He would trust that twinkle over anyone else's heartfelt declaration. Now, if only Ron would leave them alone for five minutes...
Ginny gets out of the classroom where she just had her DADA exam, the excitement of flaunting her Patronus still running in her veins. It was Harry's idea. Apparently, he had convinced himself that if there was one person with enough social skills to ask to show her Patronus without coming off as annoying it was her. She had disagreed but done it anyway out of trust. She still can't believe he had been right.
He had told her for how long he had liked her but it had never occurred to Ginny that his knowledge of her was on even ground with her knowledge of him.
She searches the crowd, desperate to find that brilliant pair of green eyes, and there he is, finally. Messy hair and tall frame. Their eyes meet and at his questioning look she replies nodding with a wide smile, he smiles too then and she runs into his arms. She will take any instant of this until she can have it.
Harry loves Ginny. It's not really new information, he is not surprised by it, it does seem rather ironic though that his brain decides to verbalize it the night before he's going to break up with her.
He is at the bottom of the stairs that go up to the dormitories, it's the middle of the night, and he observes Ginny on a blood-red sofa. Somehow he knew he would find her there.
It's not fair, he repeats in his head, because it isn't.
He loves her, and he can't tell her.
He is not even particularly scared of telling her. Ginny has always had that effect on him. She makes him feel confident, comfortable, safe, and happy. She has the incredible power of turning him into a functioning human being who actually knows how to be there for someone else.
He thinks a part of him has always known who she was supposed to be to him, he thinks a part of him has always loved her, since that very first time at King's Cross when he couldn't take his eyes off the little redheaded girl running after the train.
But he can't tell her any of that, so he gets closer and falls into her arms, and whispers about how she is the strongest person he knows. Because it's true, and because it's all he can afford.
Ginny wishes she could hate Harry Potter. She has wished for it so many times before in her life, and yet she never succeeds. She supposes in a way she does hate him, she hates him for not hating him, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. Quite the opposite, really. And as she crumbles in Ron's arms with a bleeding heart and tries to hide her tears, all she can do is pray he'll come back to her.
Harry leans on a column, sure that the scold he is indubitably sporting on his face is a depressing juxtaposition to the cheerful festive people around him. But Ginny is dancing with someone that's definitely not him, and being silently angry is the best he can do to not throw a fit like a toddler. All these happy people celebrating love... blissfully unaware of how he is dying inside.
He imagines himself bringing Ginny into a corner, grazing her ear with his lips, filling his senses with her flowery scent, and telling her that for once in their lives, even if it's the worst of times, they should be selfish, run away together, and leave the war behind them. They have seen enough, been through enough, they deserve it. But his daydream is short-lived. He knows he won't do any of that. If he were the kind of guy who runs away, Ginny wouldn't care for him the way she does. And if Ginny were the kind of girl who would agree to run away, he wouldn't love her, and he very much does, love her. He wonders what it says about him that he fell for the one person who is just as much of a noble git as he is.
Ginny has been banned from Hogsmeade, and she wouldn't care, really, if it wasn't for the fact that it's the easiest place to talk to the students of the other houses. So she is left alone laying on her bed, twirling her DA coin between her fingers. She has instructed Neville and Luna with a list of things to do, and it's not like she doesn't trust them but nonetheless, she wishes she could be there. If only there was an easier way to communicate... And it is as she looks at the coin that it hits her, she could modify a bit Hermione's spell... But Hermione's name has entered her thoughts, and now it's too late, she is brought back to the one person she is desperately trying to not think about: Harry.
Maybe she can think about the spell later.
She takes Harry's Gryffindor jumper from her trunk, avidly searching for his lingering warm scent, and she lets herself cry (just a bit).
Harry wants to scream. He wants to get up and punch a tree. For a mad second, he even considers apparating at the Burrow. Her dot is not there and he desperately needs to look at her, he needs to look at her because if he doesn't he'll go insane. But she is not on the Map, because she is not at school, she is at home with her family for Christmas. He needs to see her, he needs to hold her, he needs to talk to her. He needs to yell at her because she is going to yell back. He is so angry, so so angry, and he needs the one person whom he knows can deal with it. He can see her, shutting him up, all sharp and intense, and then delivering some poetic line that would suddenly bring lightness to his heart, let him see the world a little brighter. But she is not there, and the world has never looked darker.
Ginny fights with her mother and she fights with Bill and whoever else is up for the challenge. Harry is at Shell Cottage and she can't see him. He is at her brother's house and she can't see him. Because she needs to be locked up at Muriel's. She wonders if telling them what she went through at school would change anything, if they'd stop looking at her like she is four if they saw the scars on her back. But the truth is that she argues only because she knows they won't change their mind. She knows she can't go to him, it would somehow break their pact, even if there's no pact. Really, who is he to her? She owes him nothing. She might want to be there to see Ron. Or Luna. Or Hermione. Or even Dean. Ah. Wouldn't that be just perfect? Ginny arriving at the cottage and throwing herself in Dean's arms right in front of Harry. But it doesn't matter in the end, does it? Because she is at Muriel's and Harry is at Bill's, and lately Ginny feels a lot less optimistic on the whole matter of ever seeing him again. Yet she refuses to completely give into that feeling, letting this war take away her optimism seems a lot like declaring defeat without even trying to win.
Harry walks away from the Room of Requirements and prays Ginny won't hate him forever. He knows he betrayed her. Years of trust thrown out of the window in a simple look. He knows that if he were a better person, he would've sided with her against her family, and defended her right to fight. But he is selfish, so incredibly selfish when it comes to her, and he doesn't care to fight for a world without Ginny Weasley in it.
Ginny lays her head on her mother's shoulder, and wonders if it's possible to feel so many emotions that they all end up erasing one another. Suddenly she hears Luna's voice, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Harry disappear under his cloak. If she didn't feel so empty, she would laugh. They'll talk, later. There are so many things they need to talk about, and a couple to yell, but she can't deal with any of that now. She just wants to shower, sleep, and eat. In what order, she is not sure yet.
Harry looks at Ginny in her black dress and wonders how exactly was she the one who had to wait for him. He is sure somewhere there's a universe in which he was the one pining after her for years before she noticed him. She is standing proudly, talking firmly yet warmly while she reads the eulogy for her brother. It's beautiful of course, she wrote it... And Harry tells himself he is not running away because she needs him, and surely it is partially true, he has never been good at ignoring Ginny's suffering, but the darker truth, the one he feels closer to his heart, is that he can't deal with this day without her. Honestly, he can't deal with life without her.
They sit on the roof of the Burrow, the early hours of the day shower them in golden light. They have been back together for a while, maybe they never broke up, not really, but this morning they made it official. Currently, life is quite hard, but they can finally deal with it together like they were always supposed to. Dark lords and wars never meant that much when all along there was an invisible string tying them to one another.