Ginny Weasley and the HBP

Ginny Weasley and the HBP

Ginny sat, picking at her French toast, staring across at the two raven-haired boys who were staring at her.

It was rare enough that a student transferred into Hogwarts; Richard Printz had come from the Wakantanka School in Calgary as a sixth year, of all things, and neither Ginny nor any of her brothers had ever heard of anyone coming to Hogwarts after third year.

Then again, Ron, Hermione and Harry's year was, along with Ginny's own, the smallest the school had seen since the defeat of Grindelwald. The baby boom that had greeted Harry's first defeat of Voldemort was slowly straining the school's resources in the classes below Ginny.

And Dick's mother had been a student at Hogwarts, a Slytherin, before she'd moved to Canada and married a Muggle doctor.

Strange enough that Dick was here. Strange enough that he'd been made a Gryffindor. Stranger that he and Harry, whom he so much resembled, though his eyes were sapphire, not... fresh pickled toad, should have become so close, with Ron and Hermione sneaking behind tapestries at every opportunity. Exceedingly strange that the two of them had begun an increasingly desperate competition for her--Ginny's!--affections.

No, the strangest thing of all was that Ginny, flattered to be receiving such obvious attention from both the green-eyed boy she'd been obsessed with as a young girl and from this intense, blue-eyed Canadian, found herself nonetheless brought to mind of another black-haired sixth year. A brown-eyed one. A Slytherin. From around 1945.

Ginny wasn't sure how she felt to find her dreams once again boiling with the Boy Who Lived. But to have those dreams crowded with Tom, Dick and Harry!...

"Ginny," Harry said, and she couldn't have been more annoyed at the way the sound of his voice saying her name made her middle go all warm and runny, "Dick and I... we've been talking."

"Yeah," Dick said, head bobbing ever so slightly, and--blast--now her throat was quivering too. "We've gotta get something settled. 'Cause I don't know about you, but this is killing us."

Ginny smiled at the two boys, trying to meet there matched, jewel-tone gazes. She struggled to reply, but couldn't think of anything that would be at all helpful or to the point or devoid of gibbering, since that was all that Ginny's mouth seemed to want to do. She looked next to her, hoping to get some help from her brother and Hermione, but they were. Oh. Disgusting. Right there at the breakfast table.

She grabbed the last two pieces of bacon from Ron's plate and he didn't even notice. After gumming a piece briefly, she swallowed; deeming her throat to be finally clear enough for speech, she risked a look back over at the two boys.

They were still gazing at her, eyes piercing, pleading.

Taking a deep breath, she dove in. "I don't know what to do. You want me to choose, is that it?" They both nodded slowly; it really looked as if each of them had decided not to nod a millimeter more or less than the other. "But I... No matter how I choose, I'm going to feel terrible, don't you see? I like you both, and I hope you won't be surprised when I say I find you both very attractive...." She sighed, then started as she saw Harry and Dick look over her shoulder.

"Oh, look," drawled Draco Malfoy loudly from behind Ginny. She refused to turn. "How do you think she managed that, Pansy? The little blood-traitor Weasley has two admirers now: potty Harry Potter and the half-blood, Printz...."