A Girl's Song

Chapter Six: What Do You Mean I Shouldn’t Love You?!

It was an excruciatingly long day for poor Harry when he left Ginny’s room that morning. Not to mention nerve-wracking. All throughout the day, people had been whispering about Ginny’s whereabouts, especially the Gryffindors who had last spotted her speaking to Harry.

Ron confronted Harry after Potions, in fact. The conversation went something like this:

Ron: *corners Harry* I heard that you were speaking to Gin before she disappeared.

Harry: Er, yeah, Ron. Why? *gulps*

Ron: I dunno. Just wanted to straighten that out. I know you’d never keep information from, erm, your very best friend, right? *glowers*

Harry: *blushes and squirms* ‘Course not. We’ll find her, Ron. Just you wait.

Ron: *slaps Harry on back* Right, mate! We will. *stormy expression crosses face* Otherwise we BOTH can expect Howlers from mum.

Harry: *gulp* Er, I’ve got to go.

And off he had gone, swept into the exciting world of Transfiguration.

Prof. McGonagall had of course heard of Ginny’s disappearance, which was why she was a tad bit softer with Harry than she normally would be. Harry had just accidentally made his poor hamster levitate instead of turning it into a frog, and equally as accidentally placed it onto Neville Longbottom’s head. Poor Neville had to go top speed to Madam Pompfrey, wailing all the while at the scratches imbedded into his skull. Harry just muttered a distracted sorry, oblivious to the wand dangling aimlessly from his fingers.

From Harry’s point of view, Ron didn’t seem as choked up over Ginny’s ordeal as Harry did. Later, during Herbology, he explained why.

“Gin used to go off on her own lots when she was little,” the red-head explained, shoving mounds of dirt over the scraggly, sorry plant he had just potted. “Mum figured she’d grow out of it, and she did, but who knows what’s going through her crazy head? I mean, what with all that’s been going on, she’s probably a bit lost. I know I was a bit put out when Snape came back, too…”

Harry had stopped listening about then.

In the Great hall around dinner, things hadn’t been any better. Angelina had cornered Harry during lunch, preventing Harry from going up to see Ginny, but he had counted on escaping around dinnertime.

No such luck.

Hermione had grabbed Harry’s sleeve to have a private chat with him, her brown eyes red with tears.

“Oh, Harry,” she had sobbed, while Harry rolled her eyes and patted her back, “It’s terrible! Poor Ginny! And poor you, all those people saying that you did it! They don’t know the half of your situation, those gits. Harry, this is absolutely horrid.”

Harry had paled. “People are saying what, Hermione? That I did, exactly, what?” But he had known, from the wide eyed glares from Ginny’s fellow fifth years, to the shrieks of “Potter! You finally snapped! Come join the table for Murderers!” from the Slytherins. Hermione had answered back with a cold, “Maybe you should be at that table, Malfoy,” but it hadn’t helped.

How could they think he would hurt Ginny? He shook his head. He still didn’t understand what he felt for Ginny, and why she had been so bloody dramatic up in her dormitory, but he was determined to find out.

It was around ten o clock when he reached Ginny’s dormitory undetected. All the girls were downstairs, chatting with McGonagall about a knitting club or something, while the boys were discussing a recent Quidditch game. Harry had stolen away.

Now, he pushed open the door determinedly, twirling his wand with his fingers.

“Gin?” he asked, swinging to see the mirror.

He touched it lightly. Nothing appeared. “Gin?” he whispered, his heart beating faster. “Gin, where are you?” The feeling was coming back. The mind-bending, intense feeling of being spun around and the world stopping at the same time. Was this Ginny? Or was this love? Or were they one and the same?

He violently shook his head, his glasses slipping gown his nose. He hardly knew Ginny in ‘that’ way.

“Harry, I’m here.” Ginny spoke from somewhere deep within the mirror.

“Ginny? Why can’t I see you?”

He could almost hear Ginny smile. “Because I am not real. This is just a manifestation of my spirit. I don’t technically exist.”

“Why?” the question was abrupt, but apparently not unexpected. Ginny sighed.

“I had hope you’d wait awhile…maybe even blindly wonder. But no, you of all people have a right to know. Harry, there was this spell…a love spell..” she trailed off, and harry knew she was hesitant.

“Go on, Gin.” He touched the mirror gently.

“Well…basically, it all boils down to…um…I enchanted a piece of parchment to make you fall in love with me, but it backfired, and now I am stuck in this mirror until the man who loves me proclaims the same words of love that I have written on the parchment.”

Harry was stunned. “So what exactly is the problem?” he asked sarcastically.

Ginny gulped. “There are two: Since I enchanted you, you technically don’t love me.” Here her voice caught with shame. “The other is that when your hands touched the parchment, the words erased…so now we have no record of the words that came out of my heart. And when those words left…so did my love. I-I’m an empty shell, Harry. This place? It’s a Loveless Land. They used to tell stories of it when I was a child. I never knew how dark it really was.”

Harry stopped. He couldn’t grasp this all. “I-I don’t understand,” he whispered desperately.

“Harry…you shouldn’t love me, it was all a spell, all of what you feel now. And unless we can find someone who loves me enough to make me love them, and who can recite a poem using the same spell and words that I used, there is NO WAY I’ll get out of this mirror.”

Harry stood for a moment.

“What do you mean I shouldn’t love you?!”