Like Water on Charcoal

***

Like Water on Charcoal

Ginny Weasley

***

When she was a very little girl, Ginny stood beside her mother, her small, bright red head barely reaching the kitchen counter top. Ginny pouted angrily as she watched her mother's warm hands make quick movements with her wand.

"I didn't mean to break it, mum," she murmured petulantly.

Her mother's own red hair gleamed.

"When you take something, whether it wanted you to take it or not, you become responsible for it and when you become responsible for something, you give it a part of yourself. It didn't matter that you didn't mean to break it, dear, but you did. Now, go apologize to Ron."

Ginny stalked out of that sunny, happy childhood and made her way into an impossibly future.

***

He was Harry Potter and he sat at her table and he talked with Ron and he didn't understand what he meant. It wasn't so much that he was a hero or that she used to play games where she and Harry Potter would go on adventures while her brothers looked on in envy. It wasn't that he was a hero.

It was that his hair was scruffy.

It was black and it stood out all over the place as though it had every right to inhabit the air that it contained. It was the way that he chuckled at Ron's stupid jokes and the way his hands moved when he ate.

It was the fact that he was a legend made out of flesh and Ginny had never seen anything like him.

He was a kid, just like her and Ron, but he was Harry Potter too - all at the same time. It was the idea of a gallant Prince raise under dusty stairs that kept Ginny awestruck and she should have known that it would be dangerous to fall so deeply engrossed in an idea rather than a person.

Because ideas could happen more than once and people couldn't.

***

Tom's hair was a shade lighter than Harry's. It was still black, but with an odd gray conotation to it, as though he had grown old much sooner than he should have. Ginny believed that the ideas and the ambitions his mind conjured forced a premature lightness in his hair, but his age had kept it from actively showing.

Ginny saw it and imagined that her hair was a shade more orange than the rest of her family's. Well, everyone except Percy that is. Percy had the same hair as her and she used to wonder, sometimes, if they were molded from different clay than the rest of the Weasley clan. She doesn't wonder that anymore because she knows that Percy's hair is light by choice.

Hers isn't and it feels less like a betrayal that way.

***

What do you want, Ginny?

She bit her bottom lip. Her hand trembled as the quill marked onto the page.

I want to see you, Tom.

***

Ginny didn't have Ron's inferiority complex. She didn't see herself as some poor underling who was overshadowed by her brothers and their accomplishments. She was not the culmination of her brothers combined shadows. She was, instead, the thin line of invisible thread binding their shadows to them. Bill, who needed to run. Charlie, who needed to fly. Percy, who needed to know. Fred and George, who both needed to laugh. Ron, who needed to exist and be. Each of them believed that if they followed a certain means, it would bring them to a certain ends.

Ginny, who needed to know that someone who didn't have red hair could care for her.

Raised in a house of love, one begins to fear if the rest of the world was like that.

Ginny wished she had something as easy and simple to analyze as Ron's inferiority complex.

***

I will do great things.

Will you, Tom?

Yes.

Harry did something great.

I know.

Do you think he'll be able to see me if I didn't have red hair?

I can't see your red hair, Ginny.

***

The Weasley family, whether they cared to know it or not, were very respected among the good wizards and witches. Their sons and daughters grew up to a certain expectation from society. As Draco Malfoy was expected to be haughty, elegant, and evil, the Weasley children were expected to grow up to be honest, honorable, and good.

Ginny Weasley was supposed to be the sweet little sister who would sit with their mother and wait for her brothers to come home from fighting. If they didn't come home, she was supposed to cry great tears for their lost, but still feel proud that they did a great deed. When she did, they would nod and say, "Ah yes, little Ginny. So fragile and yet so strong on the inside. Her brothers loved her so much." Good little girl with red braids and a path paved out for her.

She thought Harry knew what that was like.

***

"You can't take without giving, Ginny," her mother had explained. "It's simply impossible. By simply taking, you're giving off a part of yourself."

Her mother had always been right.

***

Dumbledore gazed benevolently at her from behind his bespectacled glasses. Her small hands wrung at the edge of the hospital sheet and she dared not meet his eyes. She dared not tell him what she did.

It was Voldemort. Not you.

They had told her this, friends and family alike, as though stating it would make it true. If everyone agreed then it must be true. Only, not everyone agreed.

It was Voldemort, Ginny thought desperately. But it was me too.

"Was there anything else Tom made you do?" the Headmaster asked her gently.

She did not look at him. Instead, she looked at her hands, absent of quills, tearing at the sheets.

"No, Headmaster," she mumbled softly. "He did not make me do anything else."

***

I want to keep a part of Harry, Tom. Just so I know if he ever leaves, that he was in my life once. Just so I know that I had known something great once.

I understand, Ginny.

Only he didn't.

***

The sound of tearing parchment only fed her already befuddled, fevered mind.

She only needed one page.

Ginny quickly crumpled it up and tasted bitterness as the paper and magic entered her mouth.

It was only one blank page out of dozens of blank pages, but it was enough.

***

They should have realized that people don't always follow the path set out before them. Look at Malfoy and what he did in order to keep Harry alive. Who knew?

Ginny Weasley was born in a family of heroes and she would be damned if she sat at home, waiting for her brothers.

***

He was alone in the towering room and when she entered, he turned blood eyes to her.

He sneered and she imagined she could see a resemblance to who he had once been. Would Harry change this much after he fulfilled his destiny and became the great hero they all imagined him to be?

"I'm sorry, Tom. I lied."

He didn't even deign to speak to her. Just aimed his wand at her and hissed out the words.

She smiled as she imagined the surprise blasting like ink across his parchment face.

You were all about secrets and surprises, Tom. It's about time I had my own.

***

They found two bodies in the room.

One belonged to a very old man whose mother never told him that when you take, you also give.

The other belonged to Ginny Weasley, a lover of ideas.