Ginny Weasley and the Heir of Slytherin

It had been almost a full year since Ginny Weasley had chased the Hogwarts Express as it carried Harry Potter away to Hogwarts. Her brothers were now home for the summer holidays and she was finally approaching her eleventh birthday. Looking out her lonely bedroom window, she saw that it was a beautiful August morning, but she still felt tired. She laid back down on her firm bed and closed her eyes. She could vaguely remember that she should be happy about something, but couldn't remember what that might be. She knew it wasn't her upcoming birthday -- it was something else -- something she had really wanted for a long time...

Incredibly, Ginny had had about the wildest luck in that her brother Ron had managed to become Harry Potter's best friend. Consequently, she had heard quite a lot about Harry as well as about a girl named Hermione, who seemed to be the third member of a kind of unofficial trio. Harry, Ron and Hermione had the distinction of managing to save some kind of powerful magical stone the previous year, but poor Harry had come face-to-face with You-Know-Who for a second time. Ron told it like it was a rousing adventure tale, but Ginny felt keenly aware that Harry might not have survived.

Ginny's family had invited Harry to stay at their house about a thousand times, but he strangely seemed to be ignoring their letters. Of course, given how awful Ron said the Muggles Harry lived with were, it was possible that he simply wasn't able to reply. This caused Ginny to remember what had happened that had made her feel so happy; Harry Potter was coming to her house -- famous Harry Potter might, in only a few days time, be standing in the same room as her.

Ginny opened her eyes and sat up again, not feeling quite so tired anymore. The events of the previous night were coming back to her. After she had overhead her parents decide to pick Harry up if he didn't write back by Friday, she had become so excited that she hadn't been able to get to sleep for hours -- which explained why she was so tired now. This excitement was coming back and she jumped out of bed and ran downstairs. The various greetings she had been dreaming up for when she met Harry began flowing through her mind -- in only a few days, she might actually be able to use one...

"Hi, I'm Ginny Weasley and you must be Harry Potter."

"I'm Ginny; you must have heard a lot about me from Ron. I've heard a lot about you, too."

"Hello, my name's Ginny. I've always wanted to meet you."

"You're Harry Potter? Wow! I'm Ginny. I never thought I'd have the privilege of meeting you."

"So you're Harry Potter? I never imagined I'd get to meet you personally."

In the kitchen, to her utter astonishment, she found the very person she was thinking about had arrived two full days early. Harry James Potter himself was less than ten feet from her and she was standing before him, her hair still standing on end and clothed only in a plain nightdress. She involuntarily squealed, turned around and, the next thing she knew, she was running back upstairs, hoping he somehow hadn't seen her. Before she knew what she was doing, she had collapsed back onto her bed, breathing heavily.

This had to be a dream -- it just had to be. It wasn't possible.

After lying on her bed for a few minutes, she sat up again. She felt faint and her chest felt very close to exploding, but she had gotten over the initial shock and could now force herself to think rationally. Harry Potter couldn't really be there -- in her home -- but she knew it was him -- she had glimpsed him again at the end of the last school year. But maybe this was a just some kind of dream. Ginny pinched herself on the arm, but it hurt and a cold reality settled over her like frost.

It wasn't a dream.

She looked down at her bare feet. Somewhere beneath them, famous Harry Potter himself was talking amiably with her brothers Fred, George and Ron. As she looked back on what had just occurred, Ginny found herself feeling shaky and horrified. If he had seen her, which he probably had, what would famous Harry Potter think of her? She laid back on her bed and took a few breaths to compose herself. When she felt calmer, she closed her eyes, which, for some reason, were now full of tears.

She liked Harry -- she really liked him. Based on how Ron had described him, he was very friendly and not at all full of himself as you would expect someone so famous to be. Even though he now had Ron and Hermione, Ginny felt he was still all alone in a sense and that she could change that if she could just be his friend. Obviously her problem was that she must not have created a very good first impression by running away at the very sight of him.

But she wanted to be more than just a friend -- she wanted to be a very, very close friend. She supposed what she really wanted was to be his girlfriend. While Ginny liked the idea of having a boyfriend, wanting famous Harry Potter as her boyfriend was simply too embarrassingly impossible a goal to even consider. She did want to be close to Harry though and before it became clear that Hermione wasn't that kind of friend to Harry the thought of Hermione had made Ginny feel very angry. Was that jealousy?

In any case, Ginny did want to be a very close friend to Harry -- she wanted to talk to him and be near him. She wanted to touch him and be touched back. Most people would probably be interested in feeling his scar, but Ginny wanted to hold hands with him -- she wished she had gotten a better look at his hands. She wanted to be close to him. She wanted to put her arms around him and make him feel better after all he had been through and he had been through so much...

There was no doubt about it -- she definitely wanted to be his girlfriend.

Was that really so bad? In romantic novels -- Ginny spent a lot of time reading as she found real life rather dull -- it seemed that everyone had exactly one person out in the world that they were "meant" for. Maybe she was the one person that Harry was "meant" to be with -- the one person who truly understood him and only wanted to make him happy.

Of course, it was a bit silly for Ginny to compare her feeling about Harry with fictionalized romances. Besides, what was she going to do? Marry him? Ginny's heart beat harder. Marriage seemed awfully serious, but it would be the ultimate aim of all her feelings, wouldn't it? Ginny was smart enough to know that getting married to a person you hardly knew -- at the age of eleven no less -- would be extraordinarily stupid. For that matter, it probably wouldn't even be legal.

On the other hand, if she and Harry became close friends now they might get married when they were older. For now, she could be his girlfriend. Of course, first she would have to be his friend and to be his friend she would have to get to know him. Well, he was inside her house right now -- what was she waiting for? Ginny stood up, head throbbing, and checked to make sure her door was locked before turning to look at herself in the mirror.

Is this me? a voice in her head asked as a pale girl with freckles, disheveled red hair and a pair of bright brown eyes stared back at her. Her petite build made her look younger than her years and gave her an unwanted look of delicacy. Why did she have to look so young? Maybe she wouldn't be so "too young" if she didn't look it. Ginny pushed all her angry thoughts about being "too young" aside and focused on how attractive she looked. Her appearance seemed suddenly important.

Well... her hair would have looked fine if it was combed properly. Her left arm was still bandaged up where she had hurt it tripping over a root in the garden, but she could live with that. Her eyes actually looked rather nice and her freckles were, more or less, acceptable. She turned away from the mirror quickly -- she didn't like looking at herself -- and walked over to sit on her bed again. Her appearance wasn't all that great, but, on the whole, she looked fine.

But was "fine" good enough?

Well, she could only make-do. Maybe she couldn't control her physical appearance, but she could control how she dressed. Ginny ran to her closet and eagerly dug though it, looking for something that would make her look more attractive and mature. Unfortunately, her family was fairly poor and almost all of her clothes were secondhand. Their home was the Burrow, which was basically a ramshackle house that would have collapsed long ago were it not held up by magic.

After trying on about twelve different outfits, Ginny's heart had sunken back down -- everything she owned made her look small and dainty. Discouraged, Ginny let herself fall backwards against her bedroom door and slide down to the floor. She felt completely miserable. Holding back tears, she looked up at her bedroom window to see it was still a beautiful day outside. It was quite extraordinary that anyone could feel so horrible on such a nice day. Ginny sighed.

Maybe she didn't really have that much to be upset about. She had always been told that it was what was on the inside that counted. Besides, Harry probably wouldn't even give her appearance a second look -- it would be foolish for her to spend so much time worrying about it. Ginny pushed herself back up, gave herself one final look in the mirror -- the blouse and skirt she was wearing looked okay on her, but made her look like she was about six -- and decided she looked as good as she ever would.

This wasn't much of a comfort, but she took a deep breath -- maybe she could overcome the natural little-girl-ish-ness of her appearance by acting maturely -- and turned to face her door. She unlocked it, pulled it wide open and took a deep breath. Okay, now she just had to go downstairs, find Harry and talk to him -- it wouldn't be that hard. However, for some reason she remained standing there, trying to pluck up the courage to go down the stairs into her own house.

After standing there for a long time, she was driven out of her thoughts when she heard footsteps and looked up to see, with a sharp jolt of her heart, that ironically enough Harry Potter was standing before her once again. It was quite extraordinary how, although she had been reciting them in her head for months and months, she couldn't remember a single one of the greetings she had developed for when she would meet him. She stared at him, racking her brains desperately, before it hit her that she gawking at him like an idiot and she slammed the door shut.

"Ginny," she heard Ron say on the other side of the door, "you don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally --"

Ginny's heart was still racing. Famous Harry Potter had been right outside her, Ginevra Molly Weasley's, very bedroom -- her private space where she dressed and slept. She allowed herself to collapse into a miserable heap on the floor. Why, why couldn't she have at least said "hi" when Harry was looking at her? She must have looked so stupid. She closed her eyes, which were rapidly filling with tears.

What was wrong with her?

* * *

As Ginny soon found out, Harry had been rescued by Ron, Fred and George, who had flown to Harry's house in a car their father had illegally enchanted to fly (though he had written a loophole into the law which made it technically legal). Ginny was horrified to learn that when her brothers found him, Harry was starving and had been barred in his room like an animal. Apparently, his Muggle relatives had learned, after some kind of magical accident she could only assume, that he wasn't allowed to use magic outside of school and tried to lock him up so he couldn't go back to Hogwarts.

After she found out about this, Ginny spent a long time sitting alone in her own bedroom, imagining what it would feel like to be barred in there. As everyone knew, Harry had to live with these unfriendly Muggles because his parents had been killed by You-Know-Who. Ginny's father had met a great deal of Muggles, but none of them seemed to be nasty like the ones Harry had to live with. This seemed extraordinarily unfair and just thinking about it made Ginny's heart ache. It was so sad -- Harry's whole childhood had been ruined -- but she never heard him complain about it.

Ginny's following scenes with Harry proved to be just as mortifying as the first two. Everything was normal for her when Harry wasn't around, but as soon as he appeared she usually blushed or knocked something over. Fred and George, of course, thought this was all hilarious and had taken to teasing Ginny about her "fancying" Harry. Having grown up with so many older brothers, Ginny was quite used to being teased and normally didn't mind it. But she thought this crossed the line. Her strange feelings about Harry felt very private and if she had her way no one else would even know about them.

She just didn't know how to make a good impression with someone so famous. What if she did something stupid? What would famous Harry Potter think of her? And what did he think of her now? As the little girl who hung around in the background? She hadn't even managed to speak a word in front of him -- it was embarrassing to even think about, but no one seemed to care. Harry either didn't notice her or pretended not to, but she was actually pleased he ignored her. She was sure he was trying to prevent her from getting even more embarrassed and appreciated it.

Ginny didn't enjoy her birthday very much. While her mother got emotional about how fast her "baby girl" was growing up, Ginny escaped to the considerably more pleasant outdoors, where she went for a little walk and thought pensively about herself, the things she had done in her life (or the lack thereof) and how far she had come in the eleven years of her existence. Exactly eleven years ago, she had been a tiny newborn baby and now she was a young girl. It was hard for her to imagine that she had once been a baby though she knew she must have been.

When she got back inside, Ginny was chided for getting grass stains on her clothes. It was her birthday -- the day they celebrated her existence -- and her own mother seemed to care more about her clothes than about her. Ginny cried herself to sleep that night, but the very next day she received a letter that felt to her like a late birthday present. The address read:

Miss G. Weasley

The Third-Floor Bedroom

The Burrow

Ottery St. Catchpole

Ginny had never seen a letter addressed personally to her before. Apparently, her mother was also overcome with emotion, as she seemed close to tears. Ignoring her mother's comments about how fast she had apparently grown up -- it had not been fast to Ginny -- she eagerly ripped open the envelope, trying to not rip the letter itself in her zeal. However, her excitement was broken when Harry and Ron suddenly entered the room. She was so shocked that she knocked her porridge bowl onto the floor and had to dive under the table to recover it.

Wishing she could instead hide under the table and wait for the earth to swallow her up, she emerged with her face considerably redder than before. Why did Harry have to come in at that moment? She knew it wasn't his fault, but she still felt angry. This had been a moment she had waiting for all her life and it had been ruined. Of course, none of the big moments in her life seemed to go the way they were supposed to...

"Letters from school," Ginny's father explained to Harry and Ron. "Dumbledore already know you're here, Harry -- doesn't miss a trick, that man."

Ginny knew Albus Dumbledore was the headmaster of Hogwarts and widely considered to be the greatest wizard of the modern age. She had never met Dumbledore, of course, but she had seen pictures of him in books and on Chocolate Frog cards, so she knew he was an old man with long white hair and a beard. Ginny had been excited about seeing him, but this excitement had faded somewhat when she realized she would probably be just as embarrassed around him as she was around Harry. Not that she had any desire to be Dumbledore's girlfriend, but he was just about as famous.

As Ginny looked over her supply list, she noticed something quite odd -- she had been asked to get the complete works of Gilderoy Lockhart, a wizard celebrity who Ginny's brothers suspected their mother fancied. Ginny didn't know much about Lockhart other than the fact that he was incredibly good-looking and had written books about his heroic exploits around the world.

"You've been told to get all of Lockhart's books, too!" Fred said, looking at Harry's list. "The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan -- bet it's a witch."

Since Harry, Ron and Hermione's adventure of the previous year had culminated in the death of their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, they were going to be getting a new one. Ginny was sort of happy that there would be at least one aspect of the school that she wouldn't know about beforehand as she had heard so much about it over the years.

"That lot won't come cheap," George said in disgust. "Lockhart's books are very expensive..."

"Well, we'll manage," his mother answered, sounding a bit anxious. "I expect we'll be able to pick up a lot of Ginny's things secondhand."

Ginny would have given almost everything she owned to have stopped her mother from saying the last part of that -- not that there was much she owned anyway...

"Oh, are you starting Hogwarts this year?" Harry asked Ginny, turning to look at her. Ginny nodded as her face turned into a flaming beacon signaling her embarrassment to everyone. Why did her own face have to constantly work against her? Why?

But she was getting a good look at Harry just the same. She had spent a long time wishing she could get a good look at him, but was afraid she would get embarrassed. Well, she was already mortified and it certainly couldn't get any worse, so she looked right into his face -- especially his brilliant green eyes -- until she realized it had gotten worse; she had managed to eloquently place her elbow in the butter dish.

All she wanted now was to know how to Apparate, so she could vanish and reappear somewhere very, very far away -- like maybe Alaska.

"Errol!" Ron said suddenly, taking Errol, the Weasleys' owl, from Percy and removing the letter he was holding. "Finally -- he's got Hermione's answer. I wrote to her saying we were going to try and rescue you from the Dursleys," he told Harry.

Ron proceeded to read Hermione's letter, which explained how she was going to visit Diagon Alley next Wednesday and suggested they meet her then. The letter sounded very much like the domineering girl Harry and Ron had described Hermione as. Ginny didn't find the possibility of meeting her a fraction as exciting as meeting Harry -- after all, she seemed rather annoying by Ron's accounts. Of course, Ginny could hardly say she hadn't met Harry seeing how he was right in front of her...

"Well, that fits in nicely," Ginny's mother said as she begun to clear the table, "we can go and get all your things then, too. What're you all up to today?"

"We're going up to the paddock so we can play Quidditch with Harry," Fred explained.

Ginny's family owned a small paddock, which was hidden from the nearby Muggle village by trees, where her brothers flew around on their broomsticks and practiced Quidditch. They had never let Ginny join in, saying she was "too young," but little did they know it she had been breaking into their broom shed in the garden and playing on her own for years.

"Perce, ya wanna play?" George asked Percy. Ginny doubted it; her brother Percy was strait-laced and pompous, but mercifully she hadn't seen a lot of him recently as he was mysteriously spending a lot of time hiding in his room doing who-knows-what.

"No, I'm busy," Percy said stiffly, as he got up to go back upstairs.

Ginny couldn't believe that they considered letting Percy join them, but not her. Percy! She wasn't exactly all happy with her secret arrangement -- it was especially hard when she had to listen to her brothers complimenting each other on their flying skills. For a long time now, she had been looking forward to the day when she would no longer be "too young" and she could finally show them she was a great flier too, but that day was setting itself up to be farther off than ever. Sitting silently at the table and feeling dejected, she watched her brothers and Harry walk away -- she always had to watch people walk away to have fun without her.

"You look glum," Ginny's mother told her. "I know how you feel -- you wish they could do something that you could join in."

This, of course, took for granted that Ginny somehow couldn't play Quidditch, but her brothers could. Everyone seemed to think she was innately helpless and innocent and she was sure it wasn't just from her being the youngest -- especially considering Fred, George and Ron hadn't been "too young" when they were her age.

"Oh, boys will be boys," her mother added with a sigh. "If you want you can talk to me, you can."

"No," said Ginny, who felt quite hurt. Boys will be boys. If her brothers could be themselves, why couldn't Ginny be herself instead of her mother's life-sized doll?

"C'mon, I'm your mother," she insisted kindly. "I'll understand."

Oh, no you won't, Ginny wanted to say, but she decided it wouldn't be a good idea to be so rude to her mother out loud.

"I just want to be alone right now," she muttered, as she got up to go outside.

Ginny immediately headed for the paddock, thinking of the time she had made that same trip nearly five years ago. Feeling very vindictive and sick of being "too young," six-year-old Ginny had snuck out to practice flying, thinking of it as a kind of "secret revenge." She had done fairly well on her first few attempts, but on her seventh try, overconfident after her successes, she had flown too high and too fast. After a sudden rush of adrenaline, she had found herself lying flat on the ground, unable to move. She had yelled and cried for help, but no one was near enough to hear her.

Back in the present, eleven-year-old Ginny reached the paddock and hid in the shrubbery so she could watch her brothers and Harry without being seen. Even without his top-of-the-line Nimbus Two Thousand broomstick, Harry was such a great flier that it left no doubt in her mind he was a natural. She had heard quite a lot about Harry's flying skills and how he had gotten onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team when he saved a Remembrall from a boy named Draco Malfoy after a fifty foot dive.

Ginny shivered -- there was an odd chilly quality in the air -- and her thoughts drifted back to the day of her flying accident. She could remember it as though it had been yesterday; the hard, uncomfortable ground on her body, the soft unconcerned sounds of nature and seeing the same view of trees above her for what seemed like hours. Eventually, she had managed to force herself up and walked back to the Burrow, feeling as though every bone in her body had been broken. She came in the door crying and, when asked what had happened, she said that she fell. Her parents assumed that she meant she had tripped.

However, she hadn't given up. Only a week afterwards, she had come back to try flying again. She had always prided herself on not giving up after her accident. Though it was awhile before she felt safe going fast again, she could now safely fly at about twice the speed she had been flying at when she had had her accident. But no one knew -- no one except her. They all thought she was just "too young" to handle something as dangerous as flying.

Her brothers and Harry had finished their flying game and were now heading back towards the broom shed to put their broomsticks away. As soon as they were gone, Ginny stepped out into the blazing sunlight of the paddock. Five years ago, she had stood right there feeling angry about how "too young" she was and little had changed since then. She was still "too young," she still felt angry about it and she still felt very, very lonely.