After she opened the Chambers, Mum told her time heals all wounds. Ginny believed her then, because at the time, she could only believe Mum and no one else. She couldn’t trust Ron or the twins or Bill or even Dad (she was so ashamed of herself for not trusting Dad.) Mum was warm and she let her stay in bed for however long she wanted and gave her extra marshmallows with hot chocolate on the nights when Tom visited her, paper thin and so real, in her dreams.
So, Mum told her time heals all wounds and Ginny believed her. She didn’t tell Ginny that while time heals all wounds, it also gives you new wounds.
The knowledge comes to Ginny after she turns sixteen, when Ron and Hermione are Merlin knows where, and Harry, too. He visits her though, in hazy dreams, where they kiss and touch and do it.
She’s at Muriel’s then, it’s the season of Lent. When they reach there, mum and dad and she and the twins, they’re one week into Lent, and Muriel insists on abstaining from eating bacon and prohibits alcohol. She is outraged at first; at the Burrow they never did this Lent shit, they just celebrated Easter: painted eggs and chocolates and a big meal in the garden that she decorated with white, three-year old paper lanterns that Mum kept in the attic.
And so, the first couple days that they spend at Muriel’s cathedral (because yes, it’s a cathedral, old stone and unnatural coolness and the smell of incense that Muriel burns “to keep the evil away, especially now since we’re at war”), Ginny refuses to eat food.
She surprises herself with this act of rebellion. She has never been picky about food; she learned early on that though they are less privileged than most Wizarding families, they’re not not privileged. There is difference between the two.
Mum presses her lips, and even Dad tries to talk her into eating, but she won’t. On the fourth day of her fasting, the twins smuggle in a paper box of three bacon and eggs sandwiches.
Gin-bug, Fred says offering the box.
Where did you find this? she asks them suspiciously. Muriel’s cathedral is in the middle of nowhere; when she looks out of her window, she only sees tall grasses and the sluggish outline of the hills beyond.
We went to Diagon Alley to check on the shop and then popped into Muggle London, George says easily, cracking his knuckles. Her throat constricts, and she says, what were you idiots thinking, going to Diagon in the middle of a fucking war?
Chill sis, they say in unison.
Where’d you find Muggle money?
Ah, Gin-Gin, we raised you better than that.
Two pairs of eyebrows lift in amusement and mischief.
We shop lifted, sister dear, George says.
For you, Fred adds. It was my idea of course; you know Georgie can’t come up with shit.
She doesn’t know it yet, but this is not the only act of outrageous bravery Fred (and George) will do for her. They have lifted a Muggle shop today, less than a month later, they will let her tag along to Hogwarts, they will stand up for her in the Room of Requirement when nobody will, not even Harry, and Fred will die for her in the war. And for the Wizarding World, of course.
/
That evening, after devouring the smuggled sandwiches, she goes and apologizes to Muriel. Not because she’s sorry, but because she needs to borrow parchment and ink. The old lady gives Ginny a piece of her very ancient and rotten mind. Ginny observes the intricate patterns of the tapestries over Muriel’s shoulder, and only catches a few phrases: “unladylike behavior,” “stubbornness doesn’t become a woman,” “whoever will marry a wild girl like you.”
At night, she unrolls the yellow parchment on the desk. It is smooth, crinkled slightly at the edges, it smells old. She hasn’t written a journal since Riddle happened in first-year, but today she does. She begins to write a letter and addresses it to the boy she thinks of in bed while using her fingers deftly to make herself come.
Harry, she writes,
I won’t ask where you are, because I know you won’t tell me. You didn’t tell me then and you won’t tell me now. I guess it’s safer this way, but sometimes I feel like spitting on your face for keeping things from me. But that will not happen either, will it now? You won’t come home on Easter.
We’re at Muriel’s now and she won’t let us eat bacon. I’m sure you don’t know this, but we’re in the Lenten season; Easter is only a couple weeks away. When she told us, I didn’t eat food for four days. While I was not eating, I didn’t understand why I was not eating. But now that I’ve eaten, I think I know why.
I was fasting. Like the religious folks do.
I’m not religious, but I’m in love with you. Mum says love makes people do all the craziest things. So I was fasting, and at a deeper level, I was fasting for you. Not for your safety, but for you, Harry James.
You see, the truth is, I don’t care if your right eye is blasted off, or your fingers are chopped, or your legs are amputated. So long as you come back, Harry, so long as I get to see you every day, I don’t care what state you’re in.
It’s a little selfish of me, isn’t it. If anything happens to any part of your body, you’ll obviously be in so much pain. But I’d rather see you living life on a wheelchair, than see you being buried in your grave, black suit and a red rose in the buttonhole.
I’m in love with you Harry. I always have been. I don’t regret not telling you this while we were together because I don’t think you’d be ready to hear it then. I know you wouldn’t have been able to say it back, either. And now there is an entire war standing tall between you and me.
I think of you when I touch myself. And not just at night. I think of you when I’m doing the dishes and when I’m moping the floor and when Mum listens to war news on the wireless. I think of your lips on my tits and how you sucked them. I think of your moan when I rubbed myself against you.
I crave you when Dad comes to braid my hair at night, and I fantasize about you fucking me when I’m in Muriel’s chapel, where she makes us say the sodding rosary every evening.
If I could fall in love with someone else, I know I wouldn’t fall in love with anyone.