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SIYE Time:20:14 on 28th March 2024
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Just Introduce Yourself
By Mojomig

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Category: When Ginny Met Harry Challenge (2007-1)
Characters:Harry/Ginny, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, Ron Weasley
Genres: Fluff, General
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: G
Reviews: 19
Summary: Molly helps her daughter to make friends with Harry Potter.
Hitcount: Story Total: 5954



Disclaimer: Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions in this story are my own and in no way represent the owners of this site. This story subject to copyright law under transformative use. No compensation is made for this work.



Author's Notes:
Many thanks as always to Daley, my fabulous beta, despite his forgetfulness




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“Look at all this stuff!” Exclaimed Molly Weasley in despair as she emptied the large cupboard under the sink. “I told your father to clear this out weeks ago.”

Ginny wasn’t listening; she was too busy opening the first letter that her youngest big brother had sent back from Hogwarts. It was a few days after Halloween, and although Ginny was upset not to have heard from Ron before now, she was still excited to read his letter. Paying no attention to her mother, or to the breakfast things still around her on the kitchen table, Ginny began to read.

All of a sudden, Ginny let out a loud squeak, causing Molly to drop the box of old tins she was carrying across the kitchen. The resulting crash made Ginny jump so much she stuck her elbow in the butter dish.

“What on earth is it, Ginny?”

“Do you remember, at the station, you helped Harry Potter through the barrier?”

“Of course I remember, what about him?”

“He’s Ron’s best friend at Hogwarts.”

“Oh, that’s nice dear,” said Molly, although she had already begun picking up the tins and was not really paying attention to her daughter any more.

“Harry Potter.” Ginny’s voice was barely audible as she whispered the name of the boy she had dreaming about for as long as she could remember. Ever since she was about two years old, her parents had told her the story of the little baby who defeated the most evil man ever. Only a handful of weeks ago she had seen him for real. He had looked lost, alone and terribly shabby in oversized clothes and with nobody to help him find his way. Fixing the picture of his face in her mind, she read the rest of Ron’s letter and all about the adventures he and Harry shared.

By the end of the day, Ginny had read the letter from Ron about twenty times. Not because she missed her brother, but because she wanted to read about Harry. She tried to imagine him doing the things Ron had written about. Eventually, she came to the decision that if Ron could be friends with Harry, then so could she. Seeking out her mother, she asked for advice on how to make friends with Harry Potter.

“Why don’t you write him a letter, sweetheart?” Molly suggested kindly.

“I suppose. But what should I write in it?”

“Just introduce yourself, tell him that you saw him at the station, what things you like to do, that sort of thing. I wouldn’t mention that you’ve been told his story every night since you were two, or that you’ve got a pretend Harry doll. You could ask him about the things he’s been doing at Hogwarts.”

“Thanks Mum. You’re the best.”

Ginny settled herself down at the desk in her bedroom, with her favourite parchment and ink. She thought about her mother’s suggestions. “Introduce myself. Well that’s easy,” she thought. Eventually, she came up with a good plan. She would introduce herself, explain that her mum and brothers helped him at the station and that’s where she saw him. She would ask him about some of the things Ron had said in his letter which she wasn’t quite sure whether she should believe or not. This way, she could act as if she was writing to verify Ron’s stories. A brilliant plan she thought. First of all, Ron had said that Harry was as good as Charlie at catching the snitch, having never played before. That was hard to believe, as Charlie was really good, but being biased towards Harry as well, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to be true in this case.

The second of Ron’s stories that sounded a bit farfetched was the troll incident. That couldn’t have been how Ron described it, could it? Surely it would have been Harry that knocked out the troll. She would definitely ask Harry about that. Now, she just needed one more thing to ask Harry about…

-0-0-0-

“…and then Goyle broke out in hives,” laughed Ron, as he Hermione and Harry stepped out of the portrait hole. “You should have seen the look on his face!”

“Well I don’t think it was very funny at all,” harrumphed Hermione. “The poor boy is going to have bright green spots on his entire body for weeks. I read about it in Moste Perilous Potions Accidentes. When you add dandelion extract to essence of burdock the results are always ghastly.”

After their brief walk through Hogwarts’ hallowed halls, the trio arrived at the Great Hall and took their seats at the far end of the Gryffindor table. Part way through breakfast, post owls in myriad of shapes and colours delivered newspapers, letters and parcels from home to the students and staff. Just as breakfast was finishing and most were making their way towards their first lesson, a ragged grey owl swooped into the hall and crash-landed in the large tureen of muesli that was in front of Harry.

“Isn’t that Errol?” Harry asked tentatively, while picking oats and dried fruit out of his lap.

“Yup,” answered Ron. “Looks like he’s got a letter.”

Ron fished the tired old owl out of the muesli by his feet and extracted the letter that was still firmly help in his beak. He threw the bird into the air in a manner that suggested he’d done it before.

“Gotta give him a good start to get him airborne. He’s alright once he’s going.” Ron then looked at the letter in his hand, expecting it to be for him.

“Hey, it’s for you Harry!”

“For me? Who’d be writing to me?” asked Harry, clearly surprised. He’d only ever received one letter before — although, thanks to Uncle Vernon, several thousand copies of it arrived.

“Looks like it’s from my sister. Although….” Ron was about to carry on but Hermione interrupted.

“Well whoever and whatever will have to wait. It’s time for Transfiguration.”

-0-0-0-

Harry was distracted throughout his Transfiguration lesson. It was a mixture of deep curiosity as to why she had written to him and excitement at the thought of having a letter to read and maybe a response to write. He had seen Ron’s sister briefly when he got on the Express at King’s Cross, but he hadn’t spoken to her.

“Harry Potter!”

Harry was startled out of his reverie by the stern voice of Professor McGonagall cutting across the classroom. “Mr. Potter, I believe I can count on one finger the number of times I’ve seen you paying attention so far in this class. Five points from Gryffindor.”

“Sorry Professor,” said Harry meekly.

As the austere teacher’s attention moved elsewhere, Ron turned to him and whispered, “Hey, Harry, have you seen my ladybird? It was right on my textbook a moment ago?”

“Honestly Ronald," interjected Hermione, “I don’t know how you get dressed in the morning. Your ladybird is currently crawling up your left nostril.”

-0-0-0-

Eventually, after a long day of lessons followed by an essay on the pitfalls one faces while attempting to transfigure camembert cheese into long-handled pitchforks, (the two tine version) Harry made his excuses and headed up to his dormitory. He sat on his bed, pulled the hangings closed around him settling into his own sanctuary to read his letter from Ginny Weasley.

The letter started quite formally, but soon settled down into more amiable, friendly chatter, as you might expect from a ten year old girl. She said that she’d written because she wanted to know if Ron’s stories were true, but there was so much more in her letter that Harry could tell there was more to it than that. The way she was tentatively hinting at his past was gentler than the normal enquiries he received from inconsiderate classmates. Harry definitely enjoyed reading his first ever personal letter. He decided he would write back to her — it was only polite after all. Despite his terrible upbringing by the Dursleys, Harry was not rude by any standards.

For the remainder of the evening, Harry crafted a letter back to Ginny. It was the first time he had really ever done anything like this, so it took a while. He was determined to do a good job. He wrote a little about himself and where he lived before coming to Hogwarts, but with no real detail. He spent a long time writing about quidditch and flying and the sense of freedom it gave him.

He explained about troll incident, insisting that it had been Ron who cast the spells that knocked out the troll. Playing down his own role, Harry pointed out that jumping on the thing’s back had in fact been incredibly stupid. Harry quite modestly explained how he’d discovered his talent for quidditch and that his father had played too. He hadn’t meant to, but somehow ended up mentioning that it was Hermione who’d known about his father, not he himself. Finally he had backed up Ron’s description of Hermione’s hair, that it was incredibly bushy, although he thought likening it to a Devil’s Snare plant was a bit harsh.

-0-0-0-

The following morning, a beautiful snowy owl swept regally in through an open window and landed gracefully on the kitchen table at the Burrow. She dropped the letter that was in her beak by the place at which the youngest Weasley usually sat. Molly walked into the kitchen just in time to see the bird disappearing back out of the same window. As she made her way to the sink, she glanced down at the envelope that was waiting in Ginny’s spot. Seeing her daughter’s name, she smiled to herself and decided to make an extra special breakfast for her little girl.

All thoughts of eating were quickly forgotten when a sleepy, tousle haired Ginny mooched into the kitchen. Snatching up the letter she tore it open and started to read. Soon however, tears stained Ginny’s cheeks as her heart broke at Harry’s words.

“…you probably know more about me than I do…”

“…it was the first letter I’d ever received…”

“…cupboard under the stairs…”

“…told me about my father…”

Ginny was quiet for the rest of the day. Having such a loving family herself, she couldn’t understand why that boy with the beautiful angelic face could have been so badly treated. Harry hadn’t written very much about his family, and what he had said was passionless and factual. It was this contrast to how she wrote about her own family that made Ginny realise what a lonely life he must have led up to now.

He’d asked about what it was like having such a big family, but she wasn’t sure she had the heart to tell him just how great it was.

-0-0-0-

A few days before Christmas, following an entire evening spent in the library looking for information about Nicholas Flamel, Harry settled himself on his bed, and retrieved his letter from Ginny. It had become a bit of a ritual for him. Every Friday evening, he would retreat to his dormitory, shut the curtains around his bed and read that week’s letter from Ginny Weasley. This small space was his and his alone. It was his moment, where no-one interrupted him, or called for him to do chores or homework. In this little sanctuary, he could just be Harry Potter, normal boy with a quill-pal, instead of Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived or Harry Potter, freak.

After reading through the letter several times, Harry lay back on his pillows to think about what she had said. At last, she had written about her family and it was the images that her words painted that floated through his mind. Except that in Harry’s mind, all the children were Potters. His brothers and sisters…

A wooden house sat on the hillside, overlooking a lush valley with a river at its centre. The wooden house is surrounded by wild flower gardens in which bees buzz and butterflies dance on the summer breeze. A man is working in the vegetable patch, a man with messy black hair and glasses. Beside him, his son is helping and they laugh together as they dig the ground.

On the veranda of the house, a woman with beautiful red hair sits in a rocking chair feeding a baby. Both mother and child have amazing green eyes. As the baby suckles, the woman watches as three more children run through the flower garden…

… It is Christmas morning in the wooden house. The smell of roasting goose wafts through from the kitchen into the family room, where five children and their parents are laughing and playing with all their new gifts. The oldest child is eleven. He is wearing a red scarf that has been made by his mother and reading a book about quidditch. The boy’s youngest sibling, a girl of fifteen months wants him to play with her, so he puts down the book and scoops up his sister, making her giggle…


As Harry played through all of the images in his mind that Ginny described, but with his own family instead of hers, he gradually drifted off to sleep, dreaming of brothers and sisters and love and happiness.

-0-0-0-

Ginny woke up late on New Year’s Day, having been allowed to stay up until midnight. The letter from Harry had lain at her place at the kitchen table for several hours before she found it. His last letter had come on Christmas Eve, so this one was a day behind their normal schedule. Ginny hoped there was nothing wrong — maybe he had just had a cold or something.

In actuality, as Ginny soon found out, Harry was quite well, but had simply written an extra long letter as he had lots of free time. Her pleasure at seeing the long missive was soon replaced with sorrow. In response to her stories of the Weasley family, Harry had decided to tell her about his ‘family’. Suffice it to say it had not been an enjoyable read for the young girl. To hear that his own family despised the boy who had lived in her heart for so long was simply incomprehensible to a sweet natured, sensitive child like Ginny. Maybe he could come and live with them. He clearly didn’t want to live with his ‘family’ and they didn’t want him either. Ginny determined to ask her mother straightaway, just as soon as she’d written her reply, anyway.

-0-0-0-

Following a long and cold quidditch practice session, all the boys on the team were chatting amiably about the upcoming match.

“That move you did Harry, where did that come from?” asked Oliver Wood.
“Dunno really. It just seemed like the best way to get to the snitch at the time,” answered Harry.

“Oh, can you do that again, though?” pressed Wood.

“I guess.” Harry shrugged. It wasn’t that big of a deal, he thought. Just a one hundred yard near vertical corkscrew spin going through one of the hoops and between his captain’s legs.

“Not even Charlie could have pulled that off Harry,” said Fred.

“And he nearly played for England,” finished George.

“So do all the Weasley’s play?” Harry asked the twins.

“Well, Bill’s okay for a game in the back garden, although he’s never played seriously.”

“Then there’s Charlie. He was a brilliant seeker, as you already know.”

“Percy never joins in. Always too busy being pompous, or polishing his prefect badge.”

“Then there’s us.”

“And last of all there’s Ron. He’s alright. Plays in goal mostly.”

“What about Ginny?” Harry added.

“Ginny’s a girl…” began Fred.

“A little girl,” added George.

“So she doesn’t play then?”

“No Harry. She doesn’t play, does she George?”

“No Fred. Can’t even fly a broom.”

Harry chuckled to himself as he walked back up the castle. If they really thought Ginny didn’t know how to fly, they were in for a shock. She had told him, in one of her letters, how her mother had caught her sneaking out in the night and ‘borrowing’ brooms from the shed. Molly had been cross of course, but also secretly proud. From then on (and that was about eighteen months ago), Molly had been secretly coaching Ginny in the subtle art of broom-racing. According to Ginny, Molly had once been a broom-racing champion, back in her school days, and had won the All-England under 18 girls ‘Twice Round the Isle of Wight’ challenge.

-0-0-0-

Cold wintry days slowly warmed into hazy spring days. Ginny stood at the kitchen window waiting for Hedwig to arrive with Harry's letter. Harry had promised to tell her a secret, something that had happened when he was younger that no-one else knew about, and it should be in this week's letter. Harry generally didn’t write much about his life before Hogwarts and Ginny didn't ask. It was obvious he wasn't happy so she didn't want to make him think about it all over again. She may only be ten, but she was not stupid. Hedwig usually set off from Scotland at first light and arrived around eleven. But now it was already half past.

Eventually, after Molly had thrown her out of the kitchen for asking what the time was for the thirteenth time in five minutes, the graceful shape of the snowy owl swooped over the orchard and down to the garden outside the front of the Burrow. The magnificent bird landed effortlessly by the young girl who was sitting on a tree stump looking in entirely the wrong direction.

Hedwig hooted gently, announcing her presence to the agitated red-head. Ginny snapped her head round and down, slipping off the stump on to the floor in her surprise. After the letter had been retrieved, Hedwig flew up to the open window of Ginny's bedroom, where she knew the girl had a dish of owl treats on her desk. After a quick snack, Hedwig flew regally back over the orchard and disappeared into the sky.

Ginny meanwhile, had torn open Harry's letter, and was eagerly reading through, looking for the particular story he had promised to tell.

Molly looked out of the kitchen window and saw her daughter sat on the old tree stump reading. She was delighted that Ginny had been able to become quill-pals with Harry Potter. It had made being the last child easier, as she had this sense of involvement, at least to some degree. Molly smiled warmly as she heard Ginny's giggling carry across the breeze.

"GINNY!" called Molly. "LUNCH!"

A few moments later the door banged open and the youngest Weasley skipped in and sat down at the battered old oak table.

"You look happy today, sweetheart."

"I am. Harry's letter was really funny. Apparently, he got so mad at his cousin once that his accidental magic changed the language on Dudley's television to Spanish. Harry's aunt and uncle got really cross at Dudley and told him that he shouldn't be fiddling with the buttons all the time."

-0-0-0

The following week, Harry sat on his bed clutching his latest letter from Ginny. Excited to hear about her secret, he tore open the delicate cream envelope and pulled out the parchment inside. As he unfolded the paper, ready to read, a small photograph fell on to the blankets. It was a small, black and white photograph of a young red-headed girl, stood outside a rickety wooden house, waving madly at the camera. Harry stared at the picture for a moment, before turning his attentions to the letter.

Just like his had been, Ginny's secret had been very funny. Harry tried to imagine the telling off that the twins got from their mother after Ginny had done that. Apparently, she'd 'borrowed' her mother's wand and used it to make the twins' (and hers) favourite pudding. Then, she'd hidden the wand in Fred's clothes in the laundry basket and they had gotten the blame. Wondering if the twins had ever found out the truth, Harry read on through the letter. The photograph had been taken a few days earlier, with the camera Molly had won in a Witch Weekly competition. Obviously it was Ginny, who was standing outside the Burrow. She thought he'd like a picture of her, seeing as though they were friends now. Unfortunately though, she wanted a picture of him in return.

It wasn't that Harry minded sending Ginny a picture, but he didn't have any. The Dursleys certainly didn't ever display or even take a photograph that didn't have Darling Diddykins Dudley the human whale-boy in. Most of the other kids at Hogwarts seemed to have pictures of their family or friends. Certainly in the boy's dorms in Gryffindor Tower they did; he assumed it was the same in other houses. No, it was just another painful reminder of his sad and lonely life.

Not wanting to disappoint his quill-pal, Harry decided to ask Hermione where he might be able to get a picture from. She suggested copying one from a book in the library, but those weren't real photos, just drawings of what the authors thought he might look like. Being surprisingly helpful, Ron suggested asking Professor McGonagall. It was possible one of the teachers might own a camera. As it turned out, Minerva McGonagall herself was a keen amateur photographer. Her specialism was rare birds of the Scottish Highlands, with the jewel in her collection being a close-up of the capercaillie.

"You know the last time one of those was seen outside a pinewood forest in Scotland?" Professor McGonagall asked as she showed Harry the capercaillie picture. "1913," she continued when Harry shook his head.

"And this is a Woodcock, taken at sunset…"

Eventually, after Harry had looked through the entire album, Professor McGonagall very kindly gave him a picture she had taken at the last quidditch match, which showed him zooming through the sky after the snitch.

"Well I hope Ginny likes it," muttered Harry to himself as he made his way back to the common room.

-0-0-0-

Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley continued to correspond with each other through the remainder of the school year. Harry shared the stories of how he, Ron and Hermione worked out who Nicholas Flamel was and how they thought Professor Snape was trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone. It never even occurred to Harry or Ginny what could happen if one of their letters made its way into the wrong hands. He wrote about quidditch and lessons and the ghosts and the food. Ginny in turn told Harry all about life at the Burrow and answered his questions about the wizarding world and about her family.

Eventually though, the term drew to a close. Despite Ginny's requests to her mother, Professor Dumbledore had not allowed Harry to stay at the Burrow for the summer, but no-one would explain to her why not. The two met briefly at Kings Cross station where Ginny gave Harry a typical Weasley female hug. Harry was a little uncomfortable, not being used to physical contact but he managed to return the gesture with a quick squeeze. They promised to keep writing, it was Ginny's turn, so Harry left with Uncle Vernon comforted by the knowledge that he would be hearing from his friend in only a few days. Of course, at this time, Harry didn't know about Dobby, and how he wanted to persuade Harry from going back to Hogwarts. It was going to be a long, sad summer for Harry Potter.

-0-0-0-
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