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Keeping The Faith | ||||
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Category: Post-DH/AB, Post-DH/PM Characters:All Genres: Angst, Drama, General, Romance, Tragedy Warnings: Dark Fiction, Death, Sexual Situations, Violence Rating: R Reviews: 7 Summary: *** The author has been reminded via the e-mail address on file that this story is listed as incomplete and has not been updated in over 2 years *** While the world around her is in tatters, Ginny’s sixth year is not quite how she had imagined it. With Harry, Ron and Hermione gone, possibly forever, Ginny struggles with fear, the need to stay strong, and her confusion with who she is and will become. Set during DH. Hitcount: Story Total: 4023 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: Okay, this is the story that people may have heard me obsessing about for a while. Effectively, this is very much Ginny Weasley and the Deathly Hallows, except obviously her concerns weren’t the Deathly Hallows in the slightest. It is her year at Hogwarts, her struggle against the new regime with Snape, her need to do something and not sit at Hogwarts like a good kid, and, of course, her dealing with her changing feelings for the Boy Who Lived and working out where she actually stands as a person. So, read and review, let me know what you think on my take of her year. This is cross posted at ff.net and livejournal. |
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She’d never been one for fairy tales. Not since she was six and had loudly exclaimed over dinner that she was going to grow up and become the long-haired princess that would marry the token hero, because there was no way that he could be anything other than smart and brave and generally wonderful. Yes, she hadbeen that girl. Her twin brothers, even at age nine, had nearly wet themselves as they squealed with laughter, and Ron had told her rather cuttingly that there was no way that the famous Harry Potter would want to marry her because she was a girl and girls were gross and so was kissing. While her mum and dad swapped one of those swooning, all-knowing parental ‘isn’t she growing up quickly’ looks over the chicken stew, Ginny Weasley had blushed to the roots of her hair, despising the three brothers who hadn’t yet ran off to Hogwarts for exposing her while being a silly little girl and believing nonsense things like that life was a fairytale. It was because of that moment of utter humiliation and embarrassment that the seemingly dormant Weasley ‘defiant’ gene in her kicked in, raring to go and defend her from any more teasing. She now sought to disagree with everything that people expected of her. She hated being the girl her mother expected her to be, with her peach walls and frilly dresses; the perfect little daughter. Her brothers were used to the obliging little sister, the cute baby of the family that was doted on by Bill, preached to by Charlie and scolded by Percy, the flobberworm for Fred and George’s experiments and the one Ron could act bigger than. So she stood against that too, stealing their brooms when they tried to prohibit her from flying, and forcing them to treat her like she was another brother. They then eventually started treating her that way, no matter how reluctantly. And she loved it; they were doing what they had never done, including her in things. So she hid her illustrated copy of ‘Beedles’ in her underwear drawer, and her tap-dancing Sally doll (enchanted by her mother to tap out any beat that was clapped to her) now lived under her bed, lest her brothers discovering them and making the assumption (no matter how correct it may actually be) that she had lingering affection for all things feminine. In the true spirit of older brothers, pink, dresses and all things girly were weakness, and she didn’t really want to become the sweet girl that they all presumed she would one day be. From then on, much to the dismay of her parents, who had dreamed of their wonderful baby girl, and to the surprise of her brothers, she stood against all expectations of her. She stuck out her lip and refused to become who they saw her as. That was until Ron left for Hogwarts. Molly Weasley, the wonderfully conniving witch, saw a year at home with her daughter away from the influence of her brothers as a gift, a chance to manipulate her daughter away from become an argumentative teenager whom one day she would greatly regret being. And my, she did a good job of it. Where Ginny had in the past kept away from all dresses, preferring yet hating Ron’s hand-me-downs, Molly had her wearing a nightgown to bed by New Years, and Easter brought about a specially, flowery shampoo. By the time that Percy, the twins and Ron got back from Hogwarts, pink sheets adorned her bed and she would wear skirts on occasion. And that summer, all of the witty self-respect and boldness she had developed in her short ten years flew out the window as surely as the stolen car, driven by the twins had flew back in. While Ron had wrote home to inform the family of his placement in Gryffindor, he had also, too briefly in Ginny’s opinion, mentioned his burgeoning friendships with a muggle-born girl named Hermione Granger, and also the same boy that Ginny had announced her engagement to all those years before, Harry Potter. Until Harry had arrived, Ginny had had a normal summer with her brothers. She had harassed the twins as to why they didn’t end up sending her a lavatory seat, and listened excitedly to Ron as he told her about the place Bill had described all those years before, the wonderful castle where she would join her brothers the next year. But then she had ran down to the kitchen one morning, and was greeted by a scrawny boy with big emerald green eyes hidden behind overly large glasses and perpetually messy hair. And because of his presence, her mild hero worship, and the realisation that he was smart and brave and generally wonderful, and not just because that’s what he had to be, she was no longer the same Ginny. She wasn’t the girl who stole brooms or had somehow managed to turn her bedroom walls bright yellow at the age of eight just to bother her mother; she was quiet, shy Ginny who blushed lots and had butter dish related incidents. The full blown sedation around him had continued from there, her entire first year blurring past in a mix of chaos, guilt and those eyes glinting with concern for her, begging her not to die and leading her from the damp chamber into Ron’s arms. It was not until Hermione had told her to grow up a bit and to be herself around him had things changed. And then before it could truly sink in, she was fifteen, she was snogging him in the middle of Gryffindor common room, rather unabashedly too. The whole house was watching gleefully, because it seemed that everyone had known that Harry wanted Ginny, yet it seemed to her just moments ago she was the little girl who thought she was in love with him. It was not until he broke up with her a short few weeks later did Ginny realise she had became the person she had sworn at age six never to become. She was the clichéd smart, funny, athletic girl who loved life and had finally got the boy she had pined over. It was the age old fairytale. Boy meets girl. Girl likes boy. Boy finally likes girl. Boy runs off to save the world after a tearful goodbye with girl, full of promises of waiting. Things got a little sketchy from there though. Not all fairy tales had happy endings, and for them, this wasn’t a book where you could just skim to the end and see if everything had a happy ending. The hero didn’t always come back. She was the girl left behind, something that was rather easily interchangeable with the damsel in distress need be, and sometimes the leading lady was left with nothing more than a broken heart, fond memories and the knowledge it was all for her. And since Harry seemed to fit the tragic hero with a tormentuous childhood and troubled past rather well, there was no denying her natural spot in the scheme of things. She had somehow fallen into a life where many people could predict her next move without too much problem. While she hated that, she couldn’t and wouldn’t just up and change who she fundamentally was as a person to avoid the assumptions of others. She didn’t want to. But to what extent was she to play the role that was carved out for her? Was she to sit around like a good girl, patiently wait for him to return to her? Was she to fight because that was what he would want? Or was she just to ignore what was expected from her, and do what she personally knew was right? Wasn’t that just a mixture of both anyway? While it was crude for her to align her life to a fairytale, Ginny didn’t care anymore. She was going to act in the way that she needed to, and if that shattered her goal of avoiding expectations, so be it. It didn’t matter how things were supposed to work, or how she was meant to act. What mattered was how she chose it to be. ------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- --------- A/N: Reviews are loved. And possibly responded! |
| Reviews 7 |
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