“They were starving him, Mum!”
Ginny yawned and tried to flatten her hair as she descended the stairs. She wondered idly what George could be yelling about – who was being starved?
“And you!” She turned the corner into the kitchen as Mum rounded on George. There was an unfamiliar figure beside her at the kitchen table, for whom Mum was buttering a slice of toast -
Oh no.
Harry bloody Potter, of course.
She spun on her heel and fled back up the stairs, heart hammering in her throat, thinking about how she hadn’t brushed her teeth or her hair and she was still in pajamas -
“Ginny,” she heard Ron mumble in his smug way, “my sister. She’s been talking about you all summer.”
It was nearly enough to get her to march back downstairs, set the story straight - I have not.
“Yeah, she’ll be wanting your autograph, Harry,” Fred piped up.
Fuck you, Ginny thought - the most vulgar word she knew - fuck you fuck you fuck you.
On the landing, she wrenched open the door to her room and threw herself on the bed, unmade of course, a mess of pillows and blankets. She buried her face into her mattress and yelled out in frustration. Mum would have called her melodramatic.
How could they?
Laying on her side, she stared blankly at the bookshelf on the opposite wall, the spines of battered books that had been handed down through six boys before finally landing in her lap. She repeated the titles in her head, over and over. It had a calming effect, like counting sheep.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
Nancy the Niffler
Wendy’s First Wand
Whatever Happened to Harry Potter?
Oh, for Merlin’s sake.
Ginny shot out of bed and tore the book from the shelf. It was thin, soft-backed, with a cartoon drawing of a little baby with bright eyes and a lightning scar on his head. She imagined, horrified, a scenario in which Harry found it in her bedroom.
While she was at it, Ginny also purged her shelf of Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lived and Harry’s Halloween. Inexplicably, she was angry at her mother for ever buying such books - it felt grossly insensitive, now that the real Harry Potter was eating toast at their kitchen table.
Ginny wedged them all beneath her mattress and rooted around her dresser for a hairbrush.
***
Ginny vowed to stay in her room the rest of the morning as a sort of self-punishment for making such a spectacle out of herself. She sat with her ear pressed to the door and listened to Mum holler at Ron and the twins - she gathered that they had stolen Dad’s Ford Anglia and flew it to Harry’s house, early this morning.
She busied herself making her bed and leafing through some of the more grown-up books on her shelf, all while stewing in her own anger at Ron’s betrayal. She hadn’t been asking after Harry all summer, like some obsessed freak.
Rather, Ron had offered those stories up on his own volition. He’d been eager to tell her. It wasn’t her fault they all starred Harry, who by far played the most interesting role in each.
After a while she heard footsteps trudging up the stairs, and dared peek outside the door. There was Ron, followed by Harry, who glanced briefly in her direction. She snapped the door shut.
His eyes were very bright green, she thought, a nice color.
“Ginny,” Ron prattled on again. Hadn’t he already introduced her in that same, dismissive way? “You don’t know how weird it is for her to be this shy, she never shuts up normally -”
Nothing in her life was fair.
Someone knocked softly on her door. Having learned her lesson, she crouched down and glanced through the keyhole, and only opened the door when she was met with the familiar floral pattern of Mum’s apron.
“Ginny,” she said, “you haven’t eaten -” Mum’s eyes trailed downward, and her face softened at the sight of her daughter sprawled on the floor. Ginny expected she must have looked quite pathetic. “Oh, hun, what’s wrong?”
Ginny opened her mouth to say nothing,but a hot, heavy sob bubbled out in its place. Mum shut the door and led her over to her bed, where she sat her down and wrapped her in a hug.
“Ginny,” she ran her fingers through her hair, “what’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
Ginny shook her head into her shirt. She sniffed, and a sudden wave of anger washed over her. She balled the fabric of Mum’s shirt tight in her fists, pulling away.
“Why didn’t you tell me Harry Potter was going to be here?” she demanded.
Mum looked bewildered. “Well, I didn’t know -”
“You should’ve told me before I came downstairs!” Ginny shrieked. Mum cast a covert Muffliato at the door. “I looked so stupid -”
The thought of it - what Harry Potter had probably seen, a beastly little girl with bedhead and crust in her eyes - brought on another surge of angry tears.
“Ginny!” Mum said, perplexed. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit? You’re never like this -”
“We never have celebrities over for breakfast!”
Mum pursed her lips. “Don’t call him that. We really must try to make him comfortable, I expect he’s had a challenging few weeks -”
Ginny buried her face in her hands. “You don’t get it!”
“I’m trying!” Mum said frantically, reaching out to pet her hair. “I suppose I just don’t understand what the problem is.”
“Did you hear what they were saying about me?” Ginny yelped. “Ron and Fred and George - how I talk about him all the time, that I want his autograph, that I never shut up -”
“Oh, Ginny,” Mum pulled her into a gentle embrace. “They didn’t mean it.”
“Yeah, but -” Ginny hiccupped - “but now Harry Potter is gonna think -” another hiccup - “that I’m a freak.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Mum said. “Harry’s a very nice boy, he wouldn’t think those things about you.”
“Oh, so everyone knows him so well except me?”
Mum’s brow furrowed. “Well, the boys have had a whole year of school with him -”
“And now these whole seven years, he’s gonna think oh, that’s the Weasley girl, Ron says she’s obsessed with me, what a weirdo,” Ginny spat.
Mum’s face hardened. “Ginny,” she said sharply, “I don’t know why you’re acting like this, but I’ve got enough on my plate -”
Ginny groaned, and flopped back onto the bed. “You’ve never got time.”
“You try raising seven children and see how much time you have for melodrama,” Mum said flippantly, getting to her feet. There was that word again. Ginny felt a grim satisfaction at having been right - it made her feel a bit more in control. At least her mother’s annoying little quips were predictable.
Mum stared at her bookshelf for a moment. “Have you got books missing? I could’ve sworn there were more.”