For Play

Archiving: Just ask! [email protected] (Anisky)

For the first time in a very long time, Ginny wished that it were a school day. Then at least she would be able to go to her classes and keep her head down and not have to go places and do things and see people...

She lowered her head and rushed past the Great Hall, glad that nobody was in the corridors right then.

Well... almost nobody.

"Ginny!" She heard a voice exclaim. It was familiar and male, which was the only reason she looked up and paused.

"Hi Terry," she said quietly, stopping for a moment.

"Is everything OK?" he asked. "You seemed pretty upset before. So did Hermione. What´s going on?"

"Nothing," Ginny said, pushing past her friend. "Don´t worry about it."

"Ginny..." his voice sounded pleading.

"What?" she whirled around to glare at Terry, tears beginning anew.

Terry jumped, staring at Ginny. "What--" he began to ask her, backing up a bit in fear of her sudden anger.

"You want to talk to me, is that it?" Ginny stepped towards him aggressively. "Well, I was just through that little song and dance with Hermione. Ask her how it went."

"No..." he said. "I don´t want to talk. I want to listen." Both of them stood there awkwardly. "If there´s anything you want to discuss, you know. We could go to Hogsmeade. Or just go somewhere private, and you can talk about what´s wrong."

"Thanks," said Ginny, "but no thanks. I´m just going to Gryffindor Tower." She turned and sped away, walking as quickly as she could down the hallway and away from the sweet-as-usual Terry.

"The offer stands!" he called down the hallway.

Ginny paused, and then turned, striding quickly towards Terry before she lost her courage. "Terry?" she asked.

He looked surprised that she came back so soon. "Yes?"

Ginny took a deep breath, then quickly spit it out: "Did you think that I was going out with Cho?"

Terry blinked, taking a closer look at Ginny. He saw how red and puffy her eyes were and guessed that she´d been crying for a while. He hedged, not sure what the right answer was. "Well, you know, there was that rumor of course... but I didn´t assume anything since I was with you a lot and you never mentioned it."

It was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. "Rumor? What rumor? There was a rumor? Between who? Who did you hear it from? When--"

"Hey, hey, calm down there!" Terry cut off his hysterical friend.

"Calm down? Calm DOWN?" Ginny´s voice was becoming both shriller and louder, not a good combination. Clearly, she was not about to follow Terry´s very good advice.

"Ginny, if you don´t quiet down people will hear you." He thought fast. This might in fact be one of the best times to get her to open up. "Come on." He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down the hallway until they came to an old classroom. He pulled her inside and turned to the door, pulling out his wand. "Silencium," he said, and a light flashed. Nobody would be able to hear them.

Terry turned back to Ginny. "Are you sure that you don´t want to talk about it?" he asked.

"Yes, I´m sure," snapped Ginny.

"Alright then," said Terry. "You can leave." He stepped aside so that she could open the door.

"It´s just that it seems like everybody´s on her side!" Ginny kicked the wall in frustration. "It´s like I´m the one who´s wrong and I´m just hurting her and being stubborn. Me!"

Terry didn´t quite know what Ginny was talking about, but he did his best to comfort her. "I´m sure that not what anybody really means..."

"Well it´s what she said, isn´t it? Hermione thinks she´s so fucking smart. Yeah, you´re hurting poor Cho, Ginny! She had every right to just grab you and kiss you without asking and of course that´s a perfectly normal thing for friends to do, yeah, of course, and now here you are, just like her, trying to be the concerned friend and I bet you´ll just tell me the exact same thing!"

"Ginny..." Terry took a step towards her and moved to hug her.

Ginny hit him. "Don´t touch me!" she said. "Don´t you dare." Ginny knew that she would not normally be this harsh towards kind, understanding Terry, but she had already been pushed far past anger and into an insane rage.

"I just want to understand," he told her. "Why are you so upset? I mean, yes, I know it´s unconventional and everything, but you didn´t react anywhere near this way when Neville kissed you. Why are you taking it so hard?"

"Everybody´s a psychology major these days, aren´t they?" Ginny spat. She pushed by Terry and made her way to the door. "I´d tell you not to tell anybody--but obviously everybody already has a COMPLETELY screwed up belief about my personal life anyway, so who cares if a true one is thrown into the mix?" With that, she slammed the door behind her, so hard that it practically fell off its hinges.

Terry stood there, watching the door. He sat in one of the dust-covered seats and sighed. "Well, at least she got it out," he mused to himself. "Who knew that sweet Ginny Weasley had such a nasty temper?" He paused for another moment. "Isn´t talking to yourself a sign of insanity?"

Then again... this time he just thought it... it was much less insane than falling for a girl who was just about to realize that she was a lesbian.

****

Ginny threw herself onto her bed, just as she had the night before. Why did she even bother getting out of bed this morning? Everybody just wanted to blame her and take sides with Cho. It just wasn´t fair.

The red haired girl just lay there for a long time, hoping that nobody would come into the room. It was frustrating in a way. The day was getting worse and worse: first with Hermione blaming her for upsetting Cho and telling Ginny that everybody thought the two were already dating, and then with Terry trying to be the concerned friend and essentially doing the same thing as Hermione. She was getting madder and madder, her temper even worse, and Ginny just wanted to scream and hit somebody right now.

Unfortunately, she was still just lying here on her bed.

She started with wallowing in her own self-pity, but her annoying brain would keep going over what both Hermione and Terry said. Were those two in league or something? Out to make her miserable and play some sort of creepy mind trick on her? Ginny wouldn´t be surprised.

But there was truth to what Terry had said. Or at least he had screwed with her brain enough to make her thing it was truth. Ginny was reacting much more strongly to this kiss than she had to any other.

Well of course! She told herself. Cho is a girl.

But that never bothered you before, her annoying brain-voice insisted. Everybody knows that Padma had a girlfriend over the summer, and you never thought less of her.

It still wasn´t me doing it.

Still, the voice insisted.

Ginny wasn´t hearing a voice in her head per say, she was just having a very strong internal argument. She had to admit that something was strange about why this was tearing her up so much.

Ginny sat up suddenly as she heard two voices whispering outside the room. The first one was Hermione´s, which was enough to make Ginny wince.

"Please, I really think she needs some time alone right now," the voice was saying.

The voice that responded didn´t just make Ginny wince; it made her freeze in terror.

"I need to talk to her!" Cho argued. "She´s really taking this hard, maybe if I can just make her understand, if I apologize... Terry wouldn´t say much but he did say that she was really upset when she spoke to him."

"That´s why you shouldn´t talk to her now," Hermione insisted. "She´s still too upset to be rational about this."

I´m rational, thought Ginny stubbornly. She was just sitting there, hoping that Cho would go away but also strangely angry at Hermione.

"I think I can make her see reason. I have to try," Cho´s voice sounded pleading now.

"Fine. But don´t say I didn´t warn you."

Ginny watched, frozen in her place, as the door opened and Cho slowly stepped into the room.