Cinderella

*

Harry doesn't come to stay with them after this birthday either: he's let out a room above the Three Broomsticks, just like he's been doing for the past couple years, though this time, it seems that he's out of the Muggle house permanently. The food at the Broomsticks, he points out, is pretty good, and his room's not bad, but when he comes to visit the Burrow, he shovels Mum's shepherd pie down like a starving man. He takes the biscuits on with the same frank intensity, then demolishes an entire plate of vanilla custard without breathing very much. Mum looks pleased and makes a point of telling Ron and Ginny how nice it is to be appreciated like this, but Ginny forbears telling her that as small as the Burrow is, it's certainly bigger than an under-the-stairs closet. Normal boys do not eat as if the food in front of them will be taken away at any minute. Normal boys do not stare up at Mrs. Weasley like she's a religious icon come to life, and they really don't look like they're going to burst in tears at the mention of somebody packing up leftovers for their lunch tomorrow.

No, Ginny thinks. Harry very much isn't your normal boy, and Mum loves him like he's Percy with Bill's good looks, Charlie's sweet temper, and the twins' skill at Quidditch. Maybe he is, though his grades aren't as good as Percy's, and he's certainly not as clever as Bill or even Ron. He's really very good at flying Has plenty of money, beautiful green eyes with thick lashes. Is actually wonderfully pretty with black hair hanging low over his forehead and those soft lips and strong, sloping shoulders. You never have to worry about dropping things around him because he always catches them, and he does it with these long, brown hands that have fingernails trimmed to the quick, hands that are nothing but speed and strength.

Sitting at the table and leafing through the ads in the Prophet, Ginny catches him looking at her with such quiet intensity that it her stomach flops, and she whips back to staring at the smudged print.

"I don't know I've been spending a lot of time, actually, at the beach. I don't know how I could repay you for dinner tonight, but maybe I could take Ginny with me tomorrow?" Harry stops, puts down his tea cup and turns to Ginny. "Ron says that you've been at home all summer, pegging away at your books to get ready for the OWLs. Why don't you come with me to the shore for a bit of a holiday?"

Mrs. Weasley is just thrilled with this. Ginny, though, knows better: he would've taken Ron, but he and Ron just had a blazing row about Harry stealing his family from him. They'd been in the garden, pulling weeds, and Harry had yelled back something about how Ron needed to appreciate it more.

Which is true, Ginny thinks. Ron tries to pretend he's not a Weasley half the time. Tried to dye his hair last week, and it just went disastrously because everybody knows that Weasley red hair and the normal sort of magical colorations just don't work. It has something to do with how every Weasley for three hundred years has been redheaded, but Ron wouldn't listen, and now he's got splotches of brown mixed with green for his hair.

"Well, don't you feel special," Ron says to her that night when they're brushing their teeth in the bathroom when Harry's left for the day. "Cinderella is going to the ball with Prince Charming." He spits into the basin with force, then fixes her with a venomous glare. "Just make sure to get back before midnight or his stupid Firebolt's going to turn back into a pumpkin."

So Harry takes her to the beach the next day. By Floo powder, though he brings his broomstick. They spend a couple hours in the sea, and since she insists on paying for her own lunch, he buys her ice cream from a vendor, and they wander down the boardwalk, licking their cones and playing arcade games. Ginny dares Harry to ride the merry go round; she takes a picture of him, the largest person on the wheel, with his knees drawn up to his chest and smiling like a fool.

Dinner is sandwiches bought from a shop and eaten in the sand with dusk curling down around the edge of the sea. Ginny supposes it's a date all right, especially when Harry offers to give her a ride over the bay at night -- really quite spectacular, he says, with the town all laid out around you and the moonlight catching on the waves. And up they go, the broomstick rising smoothly since it's a Firebolt, and over the black water with the invisibility cloak wrapped around them both so the Muggles don't see. It makes a faint, pleasant hum in the back of Ginny's ears since it's expensive too -- a good one costs the better part of year's salary for a official like Dad, and when Ginny's sandal slips off her foot, Harry takes them on a breathtaking dive to get it.

Sixty, seventy miles an hour straight down. Ginny feels like the breath is pressed out of her lungs, but Harry brings them to a stop a good thirty feet above the water, and he turns around, grinning, with the shoe white in his hand.

Yes, Ginny thinks, later, as they're flying home on the broomstick, sometime past midnight with her arms wrapped around Harry's waist and her cheek pressed against his shoulders, the wind whipping at her hair and the stars gleaming even behind her closed. I do feel like Cinderella, and Harry really is Prince Charming. But the truth is that the horses that took me to the ball were my brothers, that what the Prince really wants is a fairy godmother, a stepmother and sisters who love him and he can call his own.

*

End