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‘Yeah, and then apparently he told her he “had enough to cope with” at the moment without her crying all the time-’
‘Oh my God, what a complete arsehole!’
‘I know!’
‘What did Cho say?’
‘Told him to go off and cope with it then.’
‘Good for her.’
‘Someone needed to say it - what an insensitive wart.’
‘I don’t know why she’s been putting up with him for so long - I told her, after that horrible date, I said don’t let him come out with some sob-story to excuse it and make you feel sorry for him, that’s his go to-’
‘It really is, isn’t it? She never got an apology-’
‘Right, and then what happened? The article came out and all of a sudden she’s all “poor Harry, he’s been through so much too, no one understands him”-’
‘Too right we don’t.’
‘She’s too nice, Cho, that’s her problem. Bless her.’
Trying to keep her eyes downcast and her face neutral (though she could feel her ears growing hot with anger), Ginny exited the cubicle and went swiftly over to the sink, where the gaggle of Ravenclaw girls were gathered, all reapplying their makeup in the age-spotted mirrors over the sinks. She did not know their names, only that she had seen them often with Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe, and that they seemed to be a collection of the most popular sixth and seventh years in the school. They had not noticed her, quietly washing her hands and silently forbidding herself from hexing them.
As though she had subconsciously picked up on the vicious threats Ginny was thinking, one of the girls paused in applying her mascara and said, ‘that article was proper sad though.’
‘Yeah, wasn’t it? Heartbreaking.’
‘If it’s true,’ said another snidely, dusting bronzer over her cheeks.
‘No, I think it is, to be fair - Cho’s right there was a cover up and it was quite convincing - I just think it’s not fair of him to use that against her, you know?’ said the original girl. ‘It’s like he expects her to just forget Cedric, but at the same time he uses it to tug on her heartstrings.’
‘That’s so manipulative.’
‘Isn’t it?’
One of the girls seemed to do a slight double take in the mirror as Ginny slowly leaned over for a paper towel to dry her hands, and then loudly said, ‘I’ve got loads of Ancient Runes work still left to do, I’m getting so nervous for that exam - do you really think Professor Babbling will stick completely to the syllabus or do you think we definitely need to do further reading?’
The other girls looked taken aback and confused from the abrupt change in conversation, but obeyed swiftly, and began to discuss obscure texts and artefacts Ginny had no knowledge of.
She dried off her hands, and left the bathroom, though lingered for a few more moments at the door, tilting her head towards the tiny gap she had left open.
‘Shit, that was that Ginny girl,’ she heard one of them whisper.
‘Who?’
‘You know - one of the Weasley kids, they’re really close to him, aren’t they? He stays at their house and stuff.’
‘Oh. Oh well. I don’t care, I’d say all this stuff to his face if he was here.’
Clenching her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt, she stormed off, so infuriated at how they had spoken about Harry that she could not even find a glimmer of happiness that he had apparently argued with Cho yet again.
She saw him at lunch, pushing his food around his plate but eating nothing. ‘Is Harry all right?’ she asked Neville in a low voice, nodding towards him.
Neville glanced up the table, then back at Ginny, his eyebrows raised in a grim sort of expression. ‘Exams are getting to everyone, I think. He’s been in a bad mood for a few days, but so’s everyone.’
‘I heard he might have had another argument with Cho.’
‘Oh, really? He hasn’t said anything. It was O.W.Ls he was huffing about the other night, and Umbridge, obviously - I think we’re all worried about the Defence exam.’
‘Yeah…’ she said vaguely.
‘It’s rubbish the D.A’s been shut down, isn’t it? It was our best chance - I really think it might have helped a lot of people pass. And it was really social too, I wasn’t expecting that when I first joined, but there was a camaraderie, wasn’t there?’
‘Yeah, there was…’ She wondered if that was it - if the D.A had offered a solid group of people that had believed him, that had looked to him to lead, that had given him a sense of belonging when he most needed it. And then Marietta bloody Edgecombe and Cho bloody Chang had spoiled it all - let him down. And now her friends were bitching about him in the loos and although they weren’t quite casting his story into doubt anymore, it probably wasn’t long before the school gossip mill slipped back into its old way of using the famous kid as a bludger to whack around the pitch.
That evening, she looked over at him in the common room. Ron and Hermione were bickering at his side, Crookshanks was batting at his hand, but Harry was staring distantly at the opposite wall, his face as still and troubled looking as it had been last year, when Ron hadn’t been speaking to him at all…
The boys went to bed first, for which she was glad, because she could slip over to Hermione, cast around for eavesdroppers, and say, ‘what’s plunged Harry into his latest bout of misery?’
Hermione shook her head in an exasperated sort of way. ‘More rows with Cho about Marietta.’
‘I did wonder,’ said Ginny, and she told her what the girls in the loo had been saying.
‘For goodness sake,’ Hermione tutted. ‘Harry’s not exactly… well he hasn’t been tactful about Cho, but he spends most of his time trying to avoid talking about it all, he’s certainly not playing it as a card against her.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t think that sounded like him.’
‘I expect Cho just wants him to open up and be honest with her,’ said Hermione thoughtfully. ‘She wants to bond over their shared trauma.’
‘Healthy,’ Ginny muttered snidely.
‘Not really any less healthy than Harry bottling everything up, is it?’
‘I suppose not. Is he shutting himself away again then?’
‘Sort of. Zoning out a lot, but he did talk about how angry he was with Marietta, so that’s something I suppose. Anyway, I do think some of it might be exams - did you know the boys didn’t realise they’re only six weeks away? I’ve had to make them timetables to try and squeeze everything in, they’ve left it so late, it’s so typical - and Harry was still staring out the window during Charms! Honestly, I told him - I understand he can do the summoning charm very well now, but that’s not enough, he’s got to be able to write a timed essay on the mechanics of it as well-’
It was no wonder Harry zoned out, Ginny thought as Hermione discussed the topics they all needed to cover.
***
Quidditch practice came to a quick finish on the final Sunday of the Easter holidays. With her arm around Jack Sloper’s waist, supporting his heavy, unconscious body as much as she could despite Ron taking the brunt of it, she snarled all the way back to the castle.
‘-And I still think it’s bloody unfair that both George AND Fred got banned just in case they took it in turns to play-’
‘Which they would have done,’ grunted Ron fairly, as he heaved Jack’s arm further round his shoulders to get a better grip.
‘Well, yeah, but it’s still unfair, and now we’re stuck with this moron! Was it really his own bat?’
‘Dunno what else it could have been. There was nothing else around him. Ughr, he’s getting blood on me - come on, you muppet…’
They heaved him through the doors to the castle and towards the hospital wing. He moaned vaguely.
‘Stop whining,’ Ginny told him, though she was quite sure he couldn’t hear. ‘God, we’re screwed, poor Angelina.’
‘I know,’ said Ron darkly. ‘It’s absolute bollocks-’
‘Hello, hello, what’s going on here then?’
Weighed down by their unconscious teammate, Ron and Ginny awkwardly turned to see Fred and George, their arms full of hastily wrapped brown paper packages. They howled with laughter as they told them what had happened.
‘You see, George? They’re falling apart with out us.’
‘We’re the kind of beaters that only come along once in a lifetime, Fred, it’s not their fault they’ve been spoiled by our talent.’
‘Here,’ said Fred, suddenly noticing Ginny struggling under Jack’s weight. ‘I’ll take him - you take these.’
‘What are they?’
‘Easter eggs from Mum, they only just got through Filch’s grubby hands.’
‘Did I get one?’ Ron asked hopefully.
‘No, Mum doesn’t love you.’
‘Favourite children only.’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Course you got one, you knobhead, we all did. And there’s one for Harry too. Me and Ginny’ll take them up.’
‘Harry’s in the library,’ said Ron. ‘According to Minister Granger’s Rigid Schedule for No Fun.’
‘I’ll take it to him,’ said Ginny.
‘Ooh,’ said Fred, waggling his eyebrows. ‘Better not let Michael know.’
‘Oh, shut up, that was years ago, let it go.’
She took her own egg, and Harry’s, and parted ways with her brothers, Ron’s shouts at George not to eat his egg echoing behind her.
They had missed dinner because of practice, and her stomach was growling like a wild animal, so she ended up devouring her own egg without really tasting it, swallowing the last of it as she entered through the grandly carved door to the library.
Though it was unusually busy for so late in the evening, the library was as oppressively quiet as usual, the dusty tomes soaking up every whisper and rustle of the quietly studying students. Her Quidditch boots creaked underfoot as she wandered up and down the study tables, until, finally, in a tucked away little corner, she saw him sitting alone, a pile of closed books in front of him.
Stop it, she told herself. Don’t stand there and stare like a pathetic little girl. Yes, he’s very attractive. You need to get over it.
‘Harry,’ she whispered as she approached. Even in the low light she could see the glint of his green eyes, unmoving behind his glasses, staring blankly down at his book, which sat open on the contents page. She stood right next to him. ‘Revision not going well then? Nevermind, got a present from home for you,’ she said.
He did not move, or react - it was as though he were very far away, one hand holding up his head above the desk, his fingers buried in his thick hair.
‘Harry, I’m talking to you, can you hear me?’
‘Huh?’ He gave a slight start, and looked up at her. ‘Oh, hi.’ He looked a little flustered, and he pulled his books closer towards him, as though trying to appear busy. ‘How come you’re not at practice?’
She told him what happened, and handed over his easter egg, which he unwrapped at the table. He stared down at the carefully iced snitches, and his jaw seemed to clench, his lips pressing together. He looked so utterly miserable, that all Ginny could think was that something awful had happened.
‘Are you all right, Harry?’ she asked quietly. She felt his own misery reflected in herself, like a great swell of unhappiness.
She saw him swallow, his adam’s apple bobbing, and to her astonishment when he spoke it was with the hoarse voice of someone fighting back tears. ‘Yeah I’m fine.’ he said gruffly.
He clearly wasn’t - it was his go to thing to say, and she doubted that he even thought about it when he said it. It was like an innate reflex that he couldn’t help. ‘You seem really down lately,’ she tried gently. She thought about what the girls had said in the bathroom, and what Hermione had told her, and how while Harry was very right that he had a lot to cope with at the moment, he did always seem to feel better if he felt like there was a way of fixing things.
Even if Cho couldn’t know everything that was happening to him at the moment, couldn’t know about the Order and Grimmauld Place and his fugitive godfather and the horrible private lessons with Snape, if she at least understood a few things, if she could understand why he was the way he was - why he didn’t like to dwell on the things that had happened or what might happen in the future, perhaps she could understand that he couldn’t be used like a bludger. That he couldn’t handle feelings of rejection or abandonment and he would withdraw rather than cling closer, like she expected. Ginny had noticed that with he and Ron last year.
‘I’m sure if you just talked to Cho-’ she began, but Harry interrupted her.
‘It’s not Cho I want to talk to,’ he said, with such an air of impatience and carelessness that Ginny immediately grasped that this was about something far more important.
‘Who is it, then?’
‘I…’ He glanced over his shoulder, and when he turned back, she was surprised to see an embarrassed awkwardness in his expression - almost like shame. ‘I wish I could talk to Sirius,’ he muttered. ‘But I know I can’t.’
She understood immediately. Just as, in her first year, she had drowned in the despair of wanting her parents, to speak to her mother at her lowest points but being so vastly separated from her.
And Harry, she thought, as she watched him burn with more embarrassment and reach for his chocolate egg, had not had that option before. It wasn’t enough, she thought, to try and reassure him with the promise that he would see Sirius in the summer, because she knew full well that when you wanted words of comfort or advice or reassurance or even just to have a good shout at them or whatever reason Harry wanted to see his godfather, the natural desperation to see them only fed the misery within. For someone like Harry, who finally had a person to be that comfort, how useless it would be to nod sadly and say ‘I know it’s hard, but you can’t.’
‘Well,’ she said, absent mindedly helping herself to his chocolate, ‘if you really want to talk to Sirius, I expect we could think of a way to do it.’
‘Come on,’ he said despondently. ‘With Umbridge policing all the fires and reading all our mail?’
There were always gaps. Always loopholes. Always opportunities in chaos. ‘The thing about growing up with Fred and George is that you sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.’
Harry was staring at her, as though he had never seen her before. She stared back, beginning to smile, ready to plot and fill him with that fierce determination of getting on with a good plan of action that she had so loved in all the D.A classes.
‘WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?’
‘Oh damn,’ she hissed, as the harpy-like figure of Madam Pince came charging from the check-out desk towards them, her lined face etched with fury. ‘I forgot-’
‘Chocolate in the library! Out! Out! OUT!’
They ran, Harry’s books, bag and ink bottle enchanted to chase after them, whacking them round the head.
When they were safely out of range of her, they began to snigger, and as they finally crossed the threshold into the corridor, Harry’s belongings dropped to the ground. Panting, they slowed, and Harry bent down to scoop them up.
‘There must be a way,’ she said, continuing their conversation as though they had not been interrupted at all. ‘It’s too risky to try and get him to come to Hogsmeade, unless that cave you lot told me about is safe enough, you reckon?’
‘Nah, and I’m banned, aren’t I?’
‘Oh, of course you are! Ridiculous…’
‘I think the only way I could talk to him would be in Umbridge’s office,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It’s the only fireplace not being monitored.’
‘Well there you go then - we just need a plan around that,’ she said, frowning. ‘You probably wouldn’t get very long, but-’
‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t need that long. I just need to talk to him,’ he said firmly.
‘There’ll be a way,’ she assured him.
They had left the corridor leading to the library and were now at the top of the marble staircase to the entrance hall. The doors out into the grounds were open, and though the day was bright and students were bustling in and out, the occasional bursts of fierce wind that had been such a nuisance in that afternoon’s practice were still buffeting the windows.
‘I s’pose I should go back to the Common Room - you coming?’ asked Harry, and Ginny’s heart leapt.
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ she said casually, as they started climbing the stairs. ‘Certainly not going back to the library - she won’t let us back in there for a week.’
‘Fine by me, the revising’s driving me mad anyway,’ replied Harry, and they shared an amused smile at one another. ‘Here, d’you want some more?’
She looked down, and to her surprise, saw that he was holding out his Easter egg. ‘Thanks,’ she said, breaking off a piece. ‘But I hope you know I already wolfed mine down, so I can’t repay the favour.’
He gave a short laugh, breaking off another piece for himself. ‘Oh, I see how it is. Take advantage.’
‘That’s right,’ she said, holding her head high. ‘I take no prisoners when it comes to chocolate.’
He laughed again, and she tried not to let the fluttering in her stomach show up as a blush on her face, looking straight ahead as they climbed the stairs, skipping the vanishing step instinctively.
‘I hope Umbridge isn’t giving you a hard time or anything,’ he said, after he had swallowed his own chunk of chocolate. ‘I was really worried when she had the list of everyone’s names.’
‘Don’t worry, your position at the top of her most wanted list is safe. She’s not exactly being chummy, but at least it’s the end of term now, and she hasn’t given anyone detentions as far as I know.’
‘Thank God,’ said Harry darkly. ‘Your mum’d blow a fuse if you or Ron had one of her detentions.’
‘What’s a fuse?’
‘Erm… well…’ Harry’s explanation carried the conversation easily up the stairs and through the corridors of the castle. It was nice hearing him talk like this, about something that didn’t really matter, something he didn’t really need to think about, the chance to make a few sarky jokes about his awful family, and the the pair of them affectionately discussing her dad’s love of plugs and rewiring sockets, the snap of the chocolate mingling with their conversation, the easy way he gestured with his head making his messy hair bounce.
All too soon, they had reached the Common Room. Her good spirit felt snuffed out as the portrait swung forward and she heard the loud chatter of the many people inside. He stepped aside and jerked his head to let her go through first, and she smiled as she did, though she wished very much that the walk together could have been a little longer…
‘I’d better go hide this away before you brother polishes off what you didn’t manage to,’ he said, gesturing to the remaining carcass of his chocolate egg.
‘Yeah… I should… probably go and have a shower,’ she said, looking down at her Quidditch robes.
‘Hey - thanks,’ he said, and she looked up to see him blushing a little, just a slight colouring to his cheeks. ‘For bringing me the egg,’ he added quickly. ‘It’s cheered me up. Exam stress.’
‘No problem. We’ll have a think about a plan, yeah? I’ll speak to Fred and George.’
He nodded, and flashed her a brief smile. ‘Cheers. I’ll see you later.’