It Only Took a Tragedy

Ginny stowed away to her room as slowly and quietly as possible, trying not to squeak as her high heels hit the rickety old steps. Five more steps to go... Four more.... Three more... What's that?

She froze to hear the noise again, fearing she might have been caught. She looked over her shoulder to see her impending doom, and certainly enough, her mother was at the bottom of the staircase. Ginny's stomach lurched as she locked eyes with her mother's. She knew she was in for some hard punishments.

"Where have you been, young lady?" Mrs. Weasley screamed up at her daughter, arms crossed and cheeks puffed out. "You know you have to ask permission before you go anywhere! We've been looking for you for over two hours!"

Ginny had never been a good liar. "Umm, well...," she stammered as she walked down the steps as slowly as she had come up them.

"Speak up right this minute and maybe your father and I will go easy on you."

Ginny sighed. "I can't tell you," she whispered, her eyes looking down at the pool of water that was collecting from the drips running down her robes.

Mrs. Weasley's fists were clenched and her right foot was tapping sporadically, something she only did when her temper is rising. "Oh, my word. What on earth have you done that you can't bring to tell me?"

Did she not understand what I just said?

"Mummy, please. I can't." As hard as she tried to fight back her tears, they started to well up in her eyes and burn. She tuned out her mother's ramblings, her best coping mechanism, until she couldn't hold her emotions in any longer. Bursting into tears, she ran up the steps and locked herself in her room.

She buried herself under her covers and cried, wishing she could just lay there for a month or two. After crying for a good half hour, she stopped and began replaying the scene in her head. She thought about what her mother had said and started to get angry. Ron doesn't have to ask permission to do anything. George and Fred always got away with things. I leave one afternoon and she freaks out! She began punching the feather pillow over and over again, something she did often when her brothers teased her or her parents griped at her.

She had the sudden urge to do something drastic - rebel. It's not like she'd never felt like that before, but today was the first time she gathered up enough courage to so blatantly break rules. Why not act upon her spontaneity again? Maybe I should prove to everyone that I'm not a child anymore.

So a plan, which had begun as an angry and cruel thought, started to form in the mind of the young, barely sixteen, Virginia Weasley. I'll run away for awhile - make them wish I was there and regret what they've said and done to me all these years. She gathered up some clothes, of course all hand-me-downs, her secret junk food stash from under her bed, a hairbrush full of bright red, tangled strands, and all the money she had saved up, which was close to around ten dollars. She pondered to herself how she'd never been a good money saver. Hands shaking, she put them in her tattered brown backpack.

She opened her window and examined the old oak tree she would climb down. The branches were swaying back and forth from the strong, howling winds, reminding her of the Whomping Willow located at Hogwarts. They were casting eerie shadows in her bedroom, and she remembered how she thought they were trying to capture her when she was a little girl with her covers pulled over her head.

Ginny quickly changed from her black dress into a stained white tee-shirt and some old, long jeans that were frayed at the bottom where she had walked on them. She put her hair up in a ponytail rather clumsily and filled with bumps, but she didn't mind her appearance. She didn't know for sure where she was going, but she knew she wanted to be in solitude.

She took once last glance at her room before grabbing hold of a sturdy, thick branch. She had climbed this tree a thousand times before, and it had become second nature to her where exactly to put her feet so she wouldn't fall. But the slipperiness of the bark from the rain and the darkness of the night was making it very difficult to maintain her balance. Halfway down, she fell face first onto the ground, with only the muddy puddle under her to soften her fall. Her clothes drenched and her body bruised, she bit her lip to keep from crying. She was outside her parents' window, and she didn't want to be discovered... yet.

She walked slowly up the gravel path, hearing every crunch her steps made while being imprinted into the pebbles. Ginny looked back to notice rainwater collecting in her footprints. Suddenly she had a nervous feeling in her stomach, and it hit her the seriousness of her actions. She stood there in the rain, thinking about her options. I can't climb back up the oak to my room - the window doesn't open from the outside. I can't walk through the door and up the steps - it's too risky. I can't run away because I don't know where the hell I'd run to - the nearest city is about five miles away. She finally decided to hide out in the shed, even though she felt pathetic and wimpy for doing it.

She opened the creaky, rusted door to the shed and turned on the light. Filled with garden tools, gnome repellant, and cobwebs, she sat down on a cardboard box and tried to make herself as comfortable as possible. She turned off the light and instead used her wand as a mini flashlight, using the Lumos spell. She was slightly afraid of the dark, so she couldn't stand to not have any light whatsoever. Being as quiet as possible, she could hear the sound of her own breathing, crickets living in the crevices of the worn down shed, the cackle of thunder, and the ping ping of heavy raindrops and hail hitting the metal roof. It was all too noisy, and she prayed that lightning wouldn't strike her dead or a tornado wouldn't mow her over.

After about an hour of sitting there worrying about a million things, Ginny heard the familiar crunch of footsteps walking along the path to her home. "Oh my Merlin, what is that?" she whispered to no one. She had no idea who could be walking up to her house in that weather and that late. At first she thought about ignoring whoever it was, but curiosity got the best of her. She tried opening the door to the shed quietly and just enough to peak at whoever it was, but the door squeaked loudly, making the stranger turn around.

She flashed her wand at the stranger just as he flashed his at her. To her surprise it was the person she least expected she would ever see on her property - the infamous Draco Malfoy. "Draco, what on earth are you doing here?" she said, wide eyed and shocked.

He shook his head and gave a snarl while looking at her from head to toe as she walked towards him. "More importantly, why the hell are you in the shed? Is your family too poor to even afford you a real bedroom?" He hid the fact that he was slightly turned on by the curves her soaked clothing revealed. It was the first time he'd noticed her as a girl instead of that no good Ron's little sister.

Before Ginny could reply to that rude remark, a flash of cloud-to-ground lightning struck only a couple of yards away from where they were standing. With a startled scream and jump, she grabbed Draco's hand instinctively and ran into the shed, slamming the door behind them.

Ginny was leaning against the door, shaking all over and breathing heavily. She looked over at Draco, who was wiping the hand she touched, and she became rather furious inside. Worse than that, Draco was as calm as can be and grinning at her, as if he was taking great pleasure in watching her panic.

"What do you think is so funny?" she asked. "If we were standing just a few yards to the left we could have been electrocuted to death!" She became even more offended when he started to chuckle.

"The look of fear on your face was priceless! I conjured that lightning bolt myself."

She sneered at him, her tone matching her fiery red hair. "That's bull. There's no way you know magic that powerful to where you can just whip out a lightning bolt. You're just making that up to hide the fact you were afraid too." Even though she didn't want to believe him, Ginny's stomach did a little flip-flop when he confessed just how powerful his magic was.

"Believe whatever you want," Draco said with raised eyebrows.

A long, silent pause that seemed to scream awkward occurred at that moment in the rundown shed of the Weasley family. Today Ginny had communicated with Draco more than she had in all her years at Hogwarts combined. She couldn't believe there they were, sitting next to each other, in the most ridiculous of situations. She sighed loudly.

"What was that for?" Draco asked, relieved to break the silence.

"This whole thing just seems so stupid," she said, rolling her eyes. She couldn't even remember why she had thought of running away. What was so wrong with going to Lucius Malfoy's funeral anyways? Why couldn't I just have told Mother the truth? I'm so foolish. She added as a second thought, "And you never told me why you're here."

"Well, you never told me why you're in the shed," he replied as he swatted at a spider trying to spin its web above him.

"I asked you first," she said rather boldly while starting to feel more comfortable in Draco's presence.

"Ohhh, feisty, aren't we? You should watch who you're talking to. I am a Malfoy, you know." He puffed his chest out and raised up his chin, looking completely idiotic to Ginny.

"What, am I supposed to be scared or something? Gonna turn me into stone with your evil eye?" she said sarcastically, getting right up in Draco's face. If she had learned one good thing from having six older brothers, it was not allowing anyone to push her around. At least not anymore. Over the years, Ginny had slowly grown out of her shyness, even though it still crept back up on her in certain circumstances.

Draco's smirk disappeared into a solemn frown as he took the poem he had given her out of his trench coat pocket. That changed Ginny's mood as well, from sarcastic to serious. As well as he could hide it, Ginny could sense the sorrow in Draco's silver-blue, sunken eyes.

"I came because... well...," Draco stammered, "because I wanted to tell someone about my father's death... and you came to the funeral... and your brother's life was lost to the Death Eaters as well."

Ginny backed off of him. "Yes? Did you want to talk about it?" Gently grabbing his shoulder, Ginny said in a soft and comforting voice, "I'm here for you, Draco." She couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. Here was a person who badmouthed her family, her friends, and even herself, and she was telling him she was there for him? But as much as she loathed his words, she couldn't turn her back to someone when they were reaching out to her - especially if they came in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. Honestly, she needed someone to talk to about Percy's death who seemed to understand where she was coming from. Everyone in her family seemed to ignore it as much as they ignored the frightful truth of Voldemort's power.

With tears nearly coming to his eyes, Draco asked her, "Then will you help me?"

She was puzzled. "Help you with what?"

"Help me seek revenge on the Dark Lord," he said with determination.

At first Ginny thought it was a joke. Draco's demeanor told her otherwise, and she dared not laugh.

"I would love to murder with my bare hands every one of those damn Death Eaters and You-Know-Who. But Draco, be realistic. How the hell could we possibly pull something off like that?"

He stood up and shouted, "If your dearest Harry Potter did it as a baby, why couldn't we?" She stood up to reply, but right when she opened her mouth, Draco grabbed her shoulders and interrupted her. "Ginny, do it for your brother, and his life that was cut too short."

Tears started to stream down her face for the thousandth time since Percy left her. "Okay," she whispered.

If only she knew what she was getting into.