Sometimes It Be That Way

...Bitterness in the Face of Life

*

It was awhile before Ginny had calmed down completely. Hermione led her into the living room and sat her down on the couch, sitting down beside her. Ginny looked at the book laid out on the coffee table in front of her and smiled, albeit weakly. She turned the cover so that she could read it more clearly and read aloud, "Good Magic: a Complete Witch's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft." She looked up at Hermione, a bit of bitterness in her smile. "Background reading, I'm guessing?"

Hermione nodded and leaned back against the couch. She drew her legs up to her chest and folded her arms around them, pinning them close to her body. She watched as the smile on Ginny's face slowly disappeared and she too leaned back. "If you don't want to, you don't have to answer this question," Hermione began gently, "but who's the father?"

"He's an idiot who didn't even care about me," Ginny responded immediately, bitterness displayed in her tone so openly. "He doesn't even know that I'm pregnant." She paused again before beginning more forcefully this time. "How could I tell him after what he did to me? He probably wouldn't even care. All he was doing was trying to get me for the sex, and I fell for it. I actually fell for that bastard, thinking he was the best thing in the world that could ever happen to me, that he was someone who cared about me immensely. But that wasn't even the case."

"Ginny," Hermione breathed, a nervous dread creeping into her. "Who's the father?"

Ginny looked at her again like she did before when they were in the kitchen. Her eyes were full of misery and defensiveness and challenging. She looked straight into Hermione's eyes and said calmly, "Why, it's your best friend Harry Potter, of course."

Hermione sighed, happy that she hadn't said that the father was Draco Malfoy. But when she realized what exactly Ginny had said, her blood nearly froze. The dread that had been creeping into her exploded and she mumbled blearily, "Oh my God."

Ginny suddenly stood up, fury in her posture, and started pacing around the room. "You wouldn't think it to look at him, but that bastard is more of a bastard than either of us ever knew. He was just using me for the sex, that's all it was. He said so the next day. I couldn't believe it. I nearly ripped him to pieces for doing that to me. I thought he really did love me."

"I thought you were over your crush on Harry," Hermione said a little bit too forcefully, looking up at Ginny's shaking form in something close to anger.

"I was," Ginny shouted defensively. She stopped shaking and calmed down somewhat before saying, "He turned it around on me. He made me love him again. And it was all for one lousy romp in the sack." She shook her head sadly and said, "We didn't even use protection. Perhaps if we did, I wouldn't be carrying his child, his baby." She sat back down on the couch beside Hermione.

"Are you sure you're pregnant?" Hermione whispered, looking at a spot on the floor. "Maybe it's just some kind of fluke."

"No," Ginny replied, again forcefully. "It is not 'some kind of a fluke'. This is for real. After I started throwing up, I went to Madam Pomfrey to see what was wrong and she was the one who told me I was pregnant in the first place."

Hermione gave a curt nod, even though Ginny wasn't looking at her. She was looking at something on the carpet, another faraway look in her eyes. She looked away from Ginny.

She couldn't help feeling angry at Harry. After awhile, she decided that she was not angry, but was furious. She could not believe he had done such a thing and had used Ginny as well. She had always thought that Harry had thought of Ginny as a friend and as Ron's sister, not some trash he could use to sleep with when he was feeling down. She couldn't even begin to believe that Harry would even sleep with a whore, or at least something to that extent.

It wasn't as if she thought Ginny was a whore or a slut. Ginny was far from that, even if she did have a way of going from one guy to another, searching for love. She knew that if Ginny ever had sex with a guy, she would have protection and would only sleep with the guy when she felt ready. But Harry basically treated her as if she had been some slut off the streets, by the sounds of it.

She looked up at Ginny and saw that she was sitting straight-backed and unusually still. Her eyes were transfixed on the same spot on the carpet she had been staring at when Hermione had last looked at her, but the way she stared at the spot made Hermione feel a little wigged out.

"Would-- would you like to stay here?" Hermione asked, her voice low.

Ginny tensed even more. She seemed to be debating it since a silence stilled the room. Then, she nodded. "Yes, I would," she finally said, not looking at Hermione. Bitterness crept into her voice again. "Lord knows that I'll never be able to face my family when they hear about this."