The Letter

The Letter

Chapter 1

Ginny lifted the fork of cold eggs to her mouth, with absolutely no desire to eat them, when a huge barn owl swooped down and landed an envelope in her lap. The owl then landed next to her plate and fluffed its feathers, looking quite important, apparently very pleased with itself for having found the right person. Ginny continued to hold her fork in exactly the same fashion staring at the envelope, her eyes torn away from it only by the impatient sound that the owl started to make.

"Oh right, sorry..." she said dreamily, pushing her bacon rinds onto the table for the owl.

Ginny returned her eyes to the envelope in her lap, not daring touch it, for fear held her paralyzed by thoughts of what may lay inside. It was Christmas holiday and Ginny Weasley had stayed behind at Hogwarts, hoping to catch some alone time with Harry, to confess her feelings for him. Her cheeks went scarlet at the very thought of what she had planned to say to him. Where she got the courage for such a daring idea, she would never know. However, to Ginny's extreme dismay, Harry had decided to go on holiday this year with his recently acquitted godfather, Sirius Black.

On Christmas Eve, alone in the Gryffindor Common Room, Ginny found herself in somewhat of a mild craze. She missed Harry terribly - not like she would ever admit something like that to anyone, of course. They all thought that her childhood crush had completely died out years ago. How wrong they were. She was rather glad that no one suspected in the slightest that she still had the same childhood infatuation with Harry. She enjoyed starring at him when no one was looking - his eyes such a beautiful shade of green, his hair messy in exactly the right way, as if he had tried to make it look that way to make Ginny's heart simply explode with adoration. She sighed and wondered if she would ever be able to tell him how she felt. She had worked up her courage to tell him over holiday, but when her plan was spoiled, her courage suddenly dropped as she realized what an idiotic idea actually telling him would be. Suddenly, she had a wild idea. If she couldn't tell Harry to his face how she felt, she would write him a letter! Where this newfound courage came from, Ginny couldn't say. She eagerly grabbed up some spare bits of parchment leftover from before holiday and pulled a quill out of her bag. She scribbled down nonsense, completely pouring her heart out to the parchment, confessing the feelings she had been longing to confess since she was only 10 years old. It took nearly the remainder of the night, and by the end, Ginny wasn't even completely sure what, exactly, she had written. She folded up the parchment and went straight to the owlery. Her senses were numb, and without even realizing what she was doing, tied it to the nearest owls leg and shoved it out the window. She left the owlery and stumbled back into her dormitory in kind of a blind stupor. She crawled into her bed without even putting on her pajamas and pulled the hangings around her, still not fully aware of what she had just done.

The next morning, she awoke with a start to find Ron poking her to get up.

"What is it?" she mumbled sleepily, her face still buried in her pillow.

"It's Christmas, Gin! Wake up!" he said, ripping the covers off of her, to force her to wake. "Geez Gin, what time did you get to bed last night? You didn't even change out of your robes!" he pointed out amusedly. "And what on earth are all those black smudges all over your fingers?" he pointed out yet again, throwing a few small presents onto Ginny's bed to entice her to wake faster.

"If you must know," she said exasperatedly, lifting her head from the pillow, "I was up late writing a letter to Har - " she sat bolt upright, like someone had just jinxed her.

She stopped mid-sentence, letting the full effect of what she was just about to say sink in. Ron's eyes got unusually large.

"Writing a letter to...who, sorry?" he said, a disbelieving look playing across his face.

"Um, nothing," said Ginny, going scarlet, jumping out of bed and pushing Ron towards the door. "If you don't mind, I'd like to change now," she said shoving Ron into the hallway.

He opened his mouth in mild protest, but before anything more could be said, Ginny slammed the door in his face and locked it. She stood there for a moment, paralyzed with mild shock. She slid to the floor with her back against the door, and her face in her hands. Even though there was no one else in the room to be embarrassed in front of, her face burned with humiliation and shame.

"What made me do it?" she asked the empty dormitory, expecting an answer. When none came, she sighed and shook her head, her face still burning.

"I was so crazed...I wonder if Ron put something in my drink at dinner..." she wondered aloud. But then she remembered: she and Ron were on completely opposite ends of the table at dinner. He was sitting with Hermione all night, and she was sitting with a few of her other friends at the opposite end. She realized immediately what had happened. It was not a joke of Ron's after all. She got herself thinking about Harry, and went and did something stupid! She always did stupid things when thinking about Harry, but she had only completely lost control like this a few times before. Once, in her first year when she sent the singing valentine to Harry. Oh, how her face still burned with humiliation, five years later! And again in her second year when she sent Harry that get well card after he fell fifty feet from his broomstick during a Quidditch match. Both times however, Harry had not responded in the slightest, and went about acting as if Ginny was near invisible half the time.

Well, Harry would certainly know that she existed after he read that letter. He could be reading it right now! Thought Ginny, panic rising in her chest. Would he reply? She didn't know why he would. After all, she was just Ron's little sister, and she feared that that was how Harry would always see her. Even now as she sat there, straining her mind, she could not come up with exactly everything that she had written in that letter. Ginny wasn't so sure if that was a good thing, or not. At the present moment, her stomach rumbled and she decided that she had better change and get down to breakfast. She walked numbly from the room, in the same kind of stupor as the previous night, leaving the neglected presents sitting in a heap on the floor.

***

It was a few days later, during the remains of Christmas holiday at breakfast, when Ginny had finally escaped the torment and suspicious questioning from Ron, that the owl had dropped the letter into Ginny's lap. She could tell instantly that it was from Harry - she had seen his untidy scrawl too many times not to recognize it. So, he replied. I wonder what things he's got to say to me? Is he going to turn me away? Ginny thought, as her stomach did a sort of flip-flop, and her heart started beating at what she considered to be a dangerous rate. She took a deep breath and ripped open the seal.