Work Text:
When things were really bad—when the Carrows had done their very worst—Ginny thought about her brothers. Well, some of them.
She couldn’t think about Ron. If Ginny thought about Ron, that meant she had to think about him, and that was too much in moments when even hearing his name whispered in the corridors made her ribcage feel like it was cracking, splintering in her chest. She couldn’t do it. Bravery sometimes meant facing fears, but in the absence of being able to do that, Ginny did the next best thing: she buried them.
Ginny couldn’t think about Percy, either. It wasn’t fear that Percy ignited in Ginny’s chest—it was rage. He’d done the one thing they’d all promised each other they’d never do, on those childhood nights when they’d squashed themselves into the treehouse behind the Burrow, Ron and Ginny inevitably on someone’s lap. They’d sworn that they were Weasleys, and that meant something. It meant they’d do the right thing.
Fred and George, Ginny knew they were alright. They were living with Lee Jordan; although from what she heard on the radio late at night when she tuned in, they were constantly on the move. Hearing their voices—it was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless because it was real and tangible evidence that they were alive and still fighting. More than that, they were still laughing.
So, Ginny thought about Charlie and Bill. Specifically, she thought about the night of Bill and Fleur’s wedding, after the ceremony and before the Burrow had come under attack, when the three of them had gathered together on one side of the marquee. It wasn’t planned; those sort of catch-ups rarely were. They’d had champagne and toasted Bill and talked about Quidditch, and for those brief moments the scars on Bill’s face were a little less visible and their hearts a little less heavy.
Ron had always been her best friend growing up; the second set of twins, their father had called them with a smile. It was funny, really. Only, then Ron had gone away to Hogwarts and come home with a new best friend, a boy who was more famous than any of them could ever have dreamed of being, and how could Ginny compete with that? She didn’t want to, either, because she’d loved him for as long as she could remember, and there was no competition in love.
So she had leant on Charlie and Bill a little more when they came home to visit—she’d hang on their every word as they swapped stories about life beyond the boundaries of Hogwarts and the Burrow. Bill would tell them about drinking with Egyptian wizards in Cairo, about the Gringotts outpost there with its long marble hall and the sarcophagus in the corner that everyone said was haunted. Charlie would show off his new battle scars; a raised scar from a Romanian Ridgeback, a neat half-moon ring from a Madagascan Sandscale. They’d make jokes that sometimes she didn’t understand but would laugh at anyway because for once—just once—Ginny felt like she belonged again.
That’s what she would think of in the darkness of what seemed to be perpetual night at Hogwarts that year. She thought of Charlie and Bill, brothers who had always been a comfort even when they were far away, and she hoped to God that one day, they’d raise a glass again.