Rainbow Fragments

Emerald Green

It was a week after Dumbledore's funeral, and Ginny found herself sitting in her bedroom at home, cross-legged on the bed with a trashy romance novel open in her lap. She wasn't actually reading the novel right at that moment, but it was easier to use it as a prop than to explain to anyone who walked in why she was staring blankly at her bedroom wall. She had been doing a lot of this lately, since arriving home for the holidays. Her resolution to avoid the wedding plans being made downstairs by Fleur and Mrs Weasley, Fred and George having moved out and her inclination to avoid Ron and his constant mentions of Harry, who she really didn't want to consider at the moment, had meant that she was more or less in self-isolation.

As to her wish to avoid the subject of Harry, that aim was proving more difficult. She had been nearly obsessed with the boy hero from the time she was ten until she was fifteen, and as a consequence knew more about him than even she had realised. Her mind had been filled with memories of him for the first few days after the events following Dumbledore's funeral, memories that she sometimes didn't remember creating, and memories that refused to fade.

The lost look on his face the first time they met. The inner strength in his voice when he had battled Tom in the Chamber of Secrets. His scent when he kissed her after the Quiddich game.

All these thoughts and more had swirled around her head for days, until she was sure that she would shortly go insane. Eventually, though, these memories receded slightly, leaving her with only a feeling of restlessness and despondency, and the vaguest imprint of those memories on her consciousness.

It was the eyes that got you, Ginny decided as she sat there. Those bright, emerald green eyes that sparkled with boyish hope and refused to let you go.

But whatever she felt about him, Ginny realised, Harry had no such qualms, and had let her go with as much thought and feeling as a dead fish.

She was just musing on the aptness of this comparison, and trying desperately to steer her thoughts firmly away from emerald green eyes and similar paths of madness when Fleur burst into the room.

Ginevra, ma chérie!" she exclaimed brightly, "Come downstairs, ma belle. The dressmakers will be here any minute!"

Ginny sighed, but walked downstairs as requested. When she walked into the living room, she found Gabrielle sitting primly on the couch, a bored expression clear on her face, and Fleur dashing excitedly to and fro around the room, directing streams of conversation at her sister in very fast French.

The dressmakers arrived shortly thereafter, bearing an array of dressmaking paraphernalia. Mrs Weasley walked in when they arrived, then very quickly left again. Ginny knew that her mother was still put out that Fleur had decided to use some of the money her parents had given her for the wedding to pay for professional dressmakers instead of letting her sew the dresses.

The dressmakers worked fast, the basic dress design having already been made up to each girl's measurements and this fitting being merely to make any final adjustments. Fleur, watching from the sidelines, made a comment about the colour of the dresses, and with a swish of her wand the dressmaker was able to transfigure the shade.

When they were done, Ginny and Gabrielle were able to step down from the stools they were standing on and gaze at themselves in the mirror. Ginny scowled as she looked at their reflections side-by-side. The dress itself was alright, a knee-length strapless gown with an empire waist, but the colour, a dusky pink, was simply not suited to someone with red hair. Bill walked into the room at that moment, and Fleur rushed over to him.

"What do you think, mon coeur?" she asked, kissing him on the cheek, "They look très magnifique, non?"

"Non," Ginny replied, before Bill could answer her. "Bill, reason with her, would you? I look like a tomato."

Bill smirked, but acted accordingly. "Fleur, my darling," he said, "I know you had your heart set upon pink dresses for the bridesmaids, but perhaps there is something better suited to both girls."

"Tu as très impossible," she replied, smiling. She looked at Gabrielle and Ginny again and made a face. "But perhaps you are right. I shall ask what can be done."

An hour or more later, Ginny was standing in front of the mirror once more, everyone involved having finally settled upon a shade of emerald green for the bridesmaid dresses. The colour was much more suited to both girls, and would not clash with the already arranged colour scheme. Ginny's only objection, one which she would never raise but the privacy of her own mind, was the similarity of the colour to the one pair of eyes that had recently filled her thoughts.

~*~*~

That evening at dinner, Ginny found herself by a tragic accident of seating arrangements stuck between Hermione and Madame Delacour, who were conversing in French about the vineyards of Bordeaux. Not understanding any French herself, Ginny was reduced to making half-hearted conversation with Charlie, seated across the table, about the Harpies' chances in the national Quiddich cup this season.

It was a real family dinner that night, which is to say that it was a bit like a three-ring circus, Charlie being back from Romania for the wedding and Fred and George having decided to drop by under the guise of family togetherness to eat some real cooking for once. Madame and Monsieur Delacour had also arrived that afternoon in preparation for the wedding, which was to be next Saturday, and Hermione and Harry had arrived only an hour after them on invitation to stay until the end of the summer. In addition to all this, Fred had seen fit to invite Angelina Johnson, whom he had been dating on and off since his sixth year at Hogwarts and seriously since the beginning of the year, and George had invited Amy, a blonde piece of American fluff that he had met a few weeks before.

Ginny dimly realised that Charlie was waiting for a response from her to something he had said. "Sorry," she replied, "I didn't quite catch that..."

"I just said that the Harpies actually have the advantage this season, because their Chasers have a few seasons' experience working together, while a lot of the other teams have brought in rookies or bumped people up from their reserves. And they brought in Irina Dimitrov from Bulgaria, and she's fabulous. She'd be playing internationally if the Bulgarians didn't already have Krum."

"Don't be stupid, Charlie," Fred replied to this, "The only reason you like that Irina bird is because she's gorgeous-looking. And the Harpies don't have a chance. Girls may be good at Chasing and Seeking, but they lack the strength you need for Beating."

"Fred!" Angelina exclaimed, hitting him in the shoulder, I can't believe you just said that. Amy, help me out here. Girls are just as good at any position, they just use different tactics. Don't you agree?"

Amy shrugged. "I was never much into sports. My brother used to play Quadpot, but I never really understood it all." She flicked her hair over her shoulder, giggling inanely.

"Hey, Angelina," Ginny interrupted, a sneaky tone in her voice, "what's that on your finger?"

"Oh." Angelina blushed, and moved her left hand from where it still rested on Fred's shoulder. "Well, uh, we weren't going to say anything until after the wedding..."

"But since you asked, Ginny dear," Fred said jovially, "I asked Ange to marry me, about...oh, a week ago, and for some odd reason, possibly a result of the champagne going to her head, she said...yes."

"Oh, congratulations, both of you!" Molly exclaimed, leaping up and kissing them both. "Fred, I cannot believe that you forgot to tell your own mother something as important as this. Now, Angelina, have you put much thought into your wedding plans?"

"Well, we were thinking something small, what with the war and all. Two bridesmaids, Ginny and Alicia, and two groomsmen, George and Lee, and they can wear whatever they already have. But of course I'll need a dress..."

~*~*~

Ginny nearly fell into bed late that night, having spent the last few hours aiding the rest of her family in the precarious balancing act between allowing her mother to be excited over this new series of events, and keeping Fleur from screaming in outrage over Molly's clear preference for one of her future daughters-in-law over the other. It didn't help that Ginny was inclined to agree with her mother, either.

Her resultant exhaustion meant that Ginny was in a less-than-amiable frame of mind when she was continually woken over the course of the next two hours by the sounds of several people attempting to be absolutely silent, directly above her.

Quickly tiring of simply attempting to ignore whatever was going on, Ginny sighed, slipped her legs over the side of the bed, pulled on her dressing gown and padded barefoot upstairs to Ron's bedroom.

"Haven't you people ever heard of a silencing charm?" she asked irritably. "It's two in the bloody morning, some of us are trying to sleep."

"I thought that there was a silencing charm in effect, Ronald," Hermione hissed in his direction.

"I used muffilato,": Ron replied with a yawn. "Same difference, really."

"Oh, that's just great, Ron," Hermione snapped. "We're trying to plan a way to defeat Voldemort - oh, for heaven's sake don't wince - and you use a spell invented by one of his biggest followers!"

"And you go shouting all of this information out of Ron's bedroom window," Harry accused coldly. "Are you trying to get everyone killed? It's bad enough that you're forcing yourselves along on this quest, there's no reason to put the rest of them in danger." Ginny looked at Harry's eyes as he said this, and was met with cold jade, rather than the warm sparkle of emerald she remembered.

"When do you leave?" Ginny asked.

"It doesn't matter," Harry replied, an arrogant tone creeping into his voice. "You're not coming."

"That's not what I was asking. Were you even planning to tell Mum before you left?" She looked into his eyes again, seeing a cold darkness there before he looked quickly away. "I thought not. You've been like a son to her, and you're just going to take off, bringing her youngest son along for the ride, and try to get yourself killed. You, Harry James Potter, are not the person I used to think you were."

Ginny turned to leave the room, but Harry grabbed her arm to stop her. "You're not going to tell anyone, are you?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

"I can't promise that," she replied truthfully. "The Order will need to be told sometime. People need to know that you haven't just been kidnapped or something."

He squeezed her arm harder, twisting it behind her. "Promise me that you won't tell anyone, or I'll break your arm," he hissed.

Ginny bit her lip against the pain, then twisted out of his grip. "You disgust me," she hissed back at him, pushing him away from her and running from the room.

Back in her room once more, Ginny lay on her bed and wept. She wept not from pain or shock, nor even the realisation that she was finally over her crush on the famous Harry Potter. Rather, she wept for the loss of a boy with emerald green eyes that sparkled with hope, and his replacement by a cold man with eyes of arrogant jade. The boy she loved was gone, forever.