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Ginny watched the back of Dean’s head disappear through the portrait hole and made no attempt to stop him. It had become a routine, one of them –usually Dean – said something seemingly innocuous; the other one –usually Ginny – took offence and all hell broke loose.
She cast a glance around the common room, unsure of who she was looking for. Amrinta, Leoni and Lizzie had left for the library forty minutes ago, and in hindsight perhaps Ginny should have gone with them. Maddie was probably in some broom cupboard somewhere with the Hufflepuff sixth year she was currently attached to, whose name Ginny hadn’t bothered to remember. Luna was out of reach in Ravenclaw Tower and Hermione was probably off somewhere with Harry and Ron.
She collapsed onto the faded sofa behind her, knowing she wouldn’t go to any of them even if they were here. None of her roommates had taken her side when her mother’s howler had arrived (thankfully well into the evening and in the privacy of her dormitory thanks to Errol’s skittish flying). Hermione was far too practical to side with Ginny on this and Luna was well, Luna.
It was a last resort but Ginny really was out of options, she would have to write to Tonks. She’d been putting off doing so as Tonks hadn’t answered her last letter and Ginny was sure she must be busy with Order business and didn’t have time to deal with Ginny’s petty, teenage problems.
She might not even send it, maybe just the act of writing her grievances down would help, it used to before.
Her quill scratched dutifully down the parchment, a torrent of thoughts emerging from it and still Ginny didn’t feel any better. No, writing her thoughts out had lost a great deal of its soothing effect since first year.
She was seriously considering tossing the half-finished letter in the fire, watching it burn might at least be satisfying when she sensed someone take the seat across from her. She kept her eyes on her parchment, bracing herself for round two of her fight with Dean.
Finally, Ginny made herself look up; it wasn’t Dean’s dark eyes looking back at her. She was caught quite unexpectedly in Harry’s green gaze.
“Where’s Ron and Hermione?” As far as greetings went, it wasn’t the friendliest, but she suddenly felt entirely caught off guard.
Harry didn’t blink, seemingly used to be asked this whenever he appeared somewhere alone. “I went to the Room of Requirement and they didn’t want to come with me. They said they’d meet me here, but they must have gone somewhere else first.” His gaze held firm with hers; her heart rate increased. “Why are you all by yourself?”
She considered answering with some quippy remark about how she’d obviously been waiting for the great Harry Potter to grace her with his presence but the retort died on her tongue.
“We don’t all have two best friends who want to share their every waking moment with us,” She said instead.
Harry snorted in disbelief. “You have loads of friends, you’re too popular if anything.”
“There’s a difference between having loads of friends and having best friends. It’s a subtle difference but it becomes quite clear when you need to speak about something a bit deeper than what colour you should paint your nails this week.”
Ginny didn’t know what made her say it, she never talked about this. Not with anyone. Not even Dean.
It wasn’t even strictly true, she could talk to Hermione, it was just that they had fundamentally different outlooks on life and she wouldn’t get any sort of support on this particular issue and despite her loud and frequent assertions that she didn’t need anyone, Ginny really would appreciate someone being on her side right now.
Harry sighed wistfully. “Ron never tells me what colour to paint my nails, he’s a rubbish friend.”
And really, despite her bad mood, how was she supposed to stop herself from laughing?
“When we were little I used to paint his toenails pink when he fell asleep.”
Harry’s eyes lit up as though she’d just given him an unexpected gift. “You didn’t.”
She nodded, the smile on her face wider than it had any right to be. “I did. I needed someone to practice on.”
Harry’s laughter was musical. It was so rare to see him like this, he’d been walking around like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders for most of the year.
“The fact that it’s taken you five years to tell me this is extremely disappointing,” He informed her, as though he’d entirely forgotten that it had taken her three years to work up the courage to so much as talk to him.
“Please accept my sincere apologies. I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you.”
Harry stopped laughing suddenly; his eyes took on a faraway look, Ginny longed to know where he’d gone but he blinked and seemed to come back to himself almost immediately.
“I’m your friend,” He said, his expression back to its usual serious self.
“I know,” Ginny said quietly. She’d worked so hard to get to a point where his statement was true, so why did his words feel like a knife to her heart? They don’t she told herself firmly. It wasn’t Harry she was upset about, it was Dean. And her mother.
“You can talk to me.” She couldn’t though, not about this. Not about Dean. “Just don’t ask me about nail colours.”
“Not your area of expertise?” She asked through a smirk.
“Definitely not,” Harry said emphatically.
“Well you’re off the hook either way -” Ginny waved her quill over her parchment. “I’m enlisting Tonks.”
Harry nodded, his messy hair falling further into his face from the movement, he reached his hand up automatically and pushed it back. “Must be serious if you need to get an Auror involved.”
“I had a fight with mum.” She really hadn’t planned on telling him. Harry had his own problems, stuff the rest of them would never have to deal with. He didn’t even have a mum and here she was complaining about hers. Merlin, he must think she was pathetic.
“What about?” He was looking at her with concern, not as though he thought she was pathetic at all.
“I had my career talk this week,” Ginny explained. “She’s not very impressed with my plans for the future.”
“You don’t want to open a competing joke shop, do you?” Harry asked lightly.
“Worse,” Ginny said, somehow smiling again.
Harry’s eyebrows rose in question. Ginny took a deep breath before continuing, preparing for Harry to tell her the same thing everyone else had; that she was kidding herself. “Quidditch. I want to play Quidditch.”
Thankfully, Harry didn’t laugh at her. He did smile though. “You do look very at home on a broom. What did McGonagall say?”
“That it’s nice to have aspirations and to keep training but it would be good to focus on something more realistic for the time being. Had I considered going into the Ministry like dad?”
Harry shook his head immediately. “You don’t belong at the ministry.”
“Oh?” Amrinta had told her the ministry was a very worthwhile career and Maddie had said at least it would be easy to get into with Dad already working there.
“You’d be so bored behind a desk all day.”
“That’s what I told McGonagall.”
“What did your mum say?”
“That it was unrealistic and I’m living in Fantasyland; that I’m much too clever to waste my life on a broomstick; that playing professionally is dangerous and I don’t understand the level of skill required.” That she was a stupid child. The usual.
“She’ll come round once you’re actually doing it,” Harry said easily. “She changed her mind about the joke shop once she saw how successful it was.”
“When I’m actually doing it?” Ginny repeated. “You’re not going to tell me it’s impossible?”
Dean had. He’d said he understood; that he wanted to work on his art but it was very unlikely to be a viable career.
“A very wise witch once told me anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve,” She recognised her own words immediately. “So I guess the question is, do you?”
“Yes,” Ginny said immediately. She felt like she could do anything when Harry was smiling at her like that.
“In that case, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“You don’t think I’d be wasting my life?” Harry wanted to be an Auror, which was much more worthwhile than playing ‘frivolous sports’ as her mother had put it.
“No,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I think someone who breaks into broom sheds and steals her brother’s brooms because she loves to fly; someone who can play two positions well enough to get on the team in either of them; who spends her time coming up with plays even though she’s not the Captain probably belongs on the Quidditch pitch.”
It was exactly what she’d tried to tell her mother in her response to the Howler. It was what she tried to tell Dean when he’d told her she was being stubborn again, that she never thought anything through.
“They told me to pick a back up but I said that was planning for failure and I won’t do it,” She conveniently didn’t mention that the ‘they’ she was speaking of was Dean.
Harry merely shrugged, “I wouldn’t bet against you.”
She almost told him the whole truth then. Finally, someone was on her side. The girls in her dorm always looked at her like she was crazy when she complained about Dean, they said Ginny was being difficult or ungrateful for complaining about having such a ‘lovely’ boyfriend.
Her imagination went into overdrive, a vision of Harry telling her to just break up with him if she was unhappy, that Ginny deserved someone who actually understood her, who didn’t make her want to scream in frustration on a regular basis appeared in her mind. That satisfaction that it brought her was accompanied by a large dose of guilt.
Ginny’s opportunity to give Harry every miserable detail of her argument with Dean was lost as he began to speak again.
“If it’s any consolation, I bet your career talk still went better than mine.”
Ginny snorted in disbelief. “Why? What happened at yours?”
“Umbridge declared I’d never be an Auror and McGonagall promised she’d make me one if it was the last thing she ever did. I think I destroyed their relationship forever.” The gold flecks in his eyes practically sparkled with amusement as he spoke.
“That’s a shame.” Ginny said dryly “They were such good friends up until that point.”
They both began to laugh loudly at the obvious falseness of the statement and that was how Dean found them. Ginny’s laughter died on her lips as she looked up at him but Dean wasn’t looking at her, his stony expression was fixed firmly on Harry.
“Alright?” Dean said, his tone full of steel.
Harry nodded in acknowledgement before rising from the chair and offering it to Dean. “I’ll see you later,” He said, turning to look at Ginny.
“Yeah,” Ginny agreed, purposefully keeping her gaze on Harry and not looking at Dean. “I’ll see you at practice.”
“Bring some pink nail polish for Ron,” Harry said with a smile, he seemed to be avoiding Dean’s eye just as much as Ginny.
“I think he’s outgrown pink,” Ginny mused. “I’ll bring him some red for Gryffindor.”
Harry nodded seriously. “Yeah, that will give him an air of sophistication; might help with his confidence.”
Ginny tried and failed to keep the smirk from her face, knowing it was only going to be fuel for the new fight she and Dean were inevitably about to have. “If you think it will help with performance then I’ll bring some for you too, Captain.”
“No, no, no,” Harry shook his head emphatically. “I draw quite enough attention to myself already.”
Dean cleared his throat loudly and the smile slid from Ginny’s face immediately.
Out of the corner of her eye Ginny caught sight of Hermione’s wild hair coming through the portrait hole, she waved to Harry as her feet met the soft carpet of the common room.
“Well, see you later,” Harry said, turning and heading to his, Hermione and Ron’s usual seats without another word from Ginny.
She forced herself not to watch him leave, compelled herself to look Dean squarely in the face, already knowing the accusation she would see there.
“Do you want to do this here?” He said shortly.
Ginny didn’t need to ask what. No, she didn’t want to hear Dean suggest she and Harry had been flirting again in the middle of the common room.
She didn’t want Harry to overhear something so patently untrue. He would never see her as anything more than Ron’s little sister and it didn’t matter anyway because she was over it and if sometimes her heart sped up a little when he smiled at her or she got butterflies when his hand accidentally brushed hers as he passed her a quaffle, well, that was just old habits. It didn’t mean anything.
Ginny’s only answer to Dean was to rise from her chair and make her way to the portrait hole, confident that he would follow her and they could have this argument without danger of anyone overhearing.
Her only thought as she climbed out into the corridor, Dean aggravatingly insisting on holding the portrait hole open for her, was that these increasingly frequent disagreements were becoming rather draining and wouldn’t it be nice to be with someone who actually made her laugh.