SIYE Time:7:42 on 3rd December 2024 SIYE Login: no | | |
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An Imperfect Art By BeccaFran
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Category: Post-DH/AB
Characters:None
Genres: Angst
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 8
Summary: Divining the future is an imperfect art, but Ginny feels obligated to try anyway. How else can she find out what's to come?
Hitcount: Story Total: 4669
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: Written in the Changing Seasons exchange for i_autumnheart. Thanks to Margo, LilyValley73 and Magnolia_Mama for beta-reading.
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Ginny lays out the cards just the way Trelawney said to, lays them out again and again, but they never tell her anything. They're just cards covered with line drawings, reds and yellows and blues with no real meaning. Oh, she can look in her book and write down what it says about the symbols but they never reveal anything about her own future, the days and months to come.
Although the castle has been damaged, it is still standing; a structure built of magic and stone is hard to destroy. The sun shines brightly outside the windows, the sky is blue and the air is a hot wind calling her outside to fly circles around the goalposts, to bob and weave and dive in the clear September air that's still holding on, somehow, to a tiny bit of summer.
And really, who is she to refuse the summer wind? Throwing books and cards on her bed, Ginny grabs her broom, taking off out the window. The seventh-year dormitory is set high up in Gryffindor Tower, and the moment she is airborne she's already high above the grounds, soaring away from it all.
The air is warm outside, and the light is bright in her eyes. Below, the forest is spread out in a sea of greens and the lake reflects the brilliant blue of the sky. Ginny pulls the tie from her braid and lets the wind undo it, unraveling her hair and blowing it in a wild tangle all around her face, pulling airy fingers across her scalp. She tightens her grip on the broom and leans forward over the handle, flying in a straight line toward the pitch as though drawn there by an Accio from an invisible wand.
She dips and weaves and bobs, shooting invisible goals and flying loops in the air, ducking low and skimming only inches over the Hufflepuff stands. Then up, up over the back where the best seats are, closest to the sky and the goalposts, and down near the field again into a series of barrel-rolls, her favorite maneuver since she was a little girl. She pulls out of the last one, her head spinning and her blood singing, and sees a small figure on the pitch, standing near the center of the field, plain black robes and messy black hair and the sun reflecting off his glasses, with a broom in his hand.
He chucks the Quaffle at her and she catches it, without a word, and then they rise into the air together, just a boy and a girl and a ball. There's not much talking between them, but then they never needed that. She passes to him, and he back to her, and they spin and dive and weave together in the warm air.
Across the wide green lawn, the castle sits and soaks up the sun. Class is in session, life goes on, and Ginny's cards sit where she left them, waiting to tell her the future. She doesn't think of them now. The sun is shining, and Ginny has other things on her mind.
~~~
As the weather grows colder the world intrudes more and more, and it becomes harder to push it away and forget its nagging presence. Harry seems to be everywhere, eating in the Great Hall and asking stupid questions in the back of her classes and hanging about in the common room even though all the "eighth-years" are living in their own dormitory somewhere else. Wherever he goes, speculation seems to follow in his wake, the buzz of conversation rising and falling like a river in flood. Did you see? Do you know?
He smiles at Ginny in passing in the hallway and touches her hand, when she's on her way to Divination, and then he is gone but she is still left in the speculation, just trying to keep her head above water in the rush of talk.
Look at Harry and Ginny, do you know I saw them down by the Quidditch Pitch-- Think they'll get married? --Never last, Cho Chang was much more-- She thinks she's better than the rest of us just because her boyfriend's--
They talk about her like she's not even there, and the rising tide sweeps her along the hall until she reaches the staircase and struggles out of the seething mass of people, then stands there on the landing and struggles for breath before finally beginning the long climb up to Divs.
She wonders with startling clarity, was this what it was like for Harry all along?
~~~
It is hard for Ginny to imagine what will happen next when she is sitting on a pink footstool in Trelawney's classroom, the same exact spot she first sat in four years ago. Things are different now of course, Voldemort defeated and gone and Trelawney back in her beads and bug-eye glasses, almost as though she'd never left. All the dark horror of last year is gone like a bad dream, and except for the crews of witches and wizards constantly at work repairing the castle, Ginny can almost pretend that it never happened at all.
But the truth is that it did happen. It happened, and her family is left with a huge gaping hole in the middle of it, one that seems far bigger than one person ought to take up. And it's not just the Weasleys, the loss is everywhere -- Professor Lupin will never come around for dinner again, nor Tonks meet up with her for milkshakes and girl talk, nor Dobby fix midnight snacks, nor Moody lecture them about Constant Vigilance.
So everything is the same, but different.
How does a person move on from that? Ginny doesn't know.
That's what the war was about, she knows. Voldemort's vision of the future or Dumbledore's, and now neither one of them is here to see what happened after all. The Prophet talks about Harry as if he's the next Dumbledore, the one to lead them unblinking into whatever's to come. When she looks at him, though, all she sees are warm green eyes and soft kissable lips, with scrawny arms and ink-stained fingers. She gets distracted. Then later, when she thinks about it with all the objectivity she can muster up, she still doesn't see a fearless leader, just a boy with messy hair who's good at spells and Quidditch. That doesn't make a leader, does it?
Back in the tower room, perched on her pink footstool, Ginny tries to concentrate on that question as she drinks her tea, all the force of her thought and her magic pushing down on the china cup and the swirling leaves. She needs a prophecy of her own, one that will tell her what to do and which way to go.
Instead, she turns the cup over and slams it down on the saucer with too much force, shattering cup and saucer both, and shards of broken porcelain go flying every which way. Her hand is bleeding, and blood and china and tea leaves are everywhere, pieces of her fortune unreadable now all over the tablecloth.
~~~
W hen Harry touches her, she supposes things might become clearer, but they don't. It's just a mad rush of feelings and sensations, pressed up against a wall or floor or desk somewhere, hands and lips and hurry and wanting. They can't be seen or caught and they shouldn't be doing this anyway but Ginny wants it just as much as he does and she's barely caught her breath before they're pulling their clothes back into place and rushing off as if they'd never been there at all.
That's their present, a moment Ginny can hardly hold on to as it flies past. Maybe one day, she thinks, they'll have time to really enjoy themselves. One day she might not have carpet burn on her knees and back. Perhaps they'll even share a bed. Other than that, the clarity she seeks escapes her.
~~~
It's hard to get away from the crowds sometimes at Hogwarts. It's an enormous castle but when she wants to be alone, it seems to Ginny that there are people everywhere. Still, she has Harry's note balled up in her fist, crumpled and damp with sweat, and when she finally breaks away from the group after Herbology class and darts behind the corner of the cracked and broken heap of glass that used to be Greenhouse Five, he is there.
He's just Harry, standing next to the old glass wall by himself, his robes rumpled and his glasses smudged and crooked on his nose. She can't resist standing up on her tiptoes and kissing him lightly on the lips. Up close his eyes are bright green, like the green of the Quidditch pitch in September, when the air was warm and soft and the rest of the world didn't intrude.
Today, the air is colder and the wind just a little bit sharper, and Ginny wraps her arms around herself as she tries to look behind Harry. All she can see is just him, his old black robes and worn-out trainers, but she knows there must be something else.
"You said you had something to show me," she says, waving the note at him. "Where is it?"
"Right... here." Harry takes something out of his pocket and enlarges it to its original size.
"Harry, we're not playing polish-the-broomstick out here in the open."
Harry grins at her. "No, just hold it for a second." Then he takes another one out and enlarges it, and as it grows it turns into her own broom. "Here," he says, trading, and she gets a beat-up Cleansweep instead of Harry's brand-new Cumulo-Nimbus.
He throws one leg over his broom and rises up into the air above her head, and Ginny doesn't need him to tell her to hurry up, she jumps on and follows him up into the air.
The higher up they go, the colder the air is, thin and sharp like the blade of a knife. In the distance, the Forbidden Forest has turned to red and orange and yellow, and the setting sun echoes those colors in a vivid swath of color spread across the sky. Even the light itself seems to be colored, a thick rich golden shade that falls on her hands and makes her pale skin look like marble.
The wind cuts through her robes and Ginny can feel goosebumps rising on her skin, but she feels warmed from the inside out by the sun and its stunning display. "Harry, this is--"
"Over here," he says. "Come on."
She feels silly again, for thinking that the sunset was the thing he wanted to show her, but she follows him anyway.
He swoops and dips and soars through the air, flying rings around the turrets and gargoyles of the castle, funny little nooks and crannies she's never even tried to investigate that he seems to know by heart. Then finally, just when she's decided that it was the castle itself he wanted to show her, he lands on a flat section of roof near an unfamiliar tower.
"Sit here," he says, a secretive smile on his face. "Just a minute." And then he is scrambling awkwardly over the rooftop toward the tower, one hand on the roof tiles for support, and she is left watching him, heart in her throat and wand in her hand so that she can levitate him in a second when he falls.
He doesn't fall, though, and a few minutes later he is back carrying a covered basket.
"A picnic?" she asks, incredulous. "That's--" But then she stops herself. It's quite sweet and romantic, actually. Nothing she herself would ever think of, nor any other bloke she's ever known, but Harry is not like other blokes and this is just one of the ways he's different. "That's brilliant," she finishes. Harry's smile in response lights up his entire face, and she knows she's said the right thing.
"Winky packed it," he says. "I just thought-- well, I thought it would be nice."
"It is," she says, and he smiles again. Harry unpacks the food, and Ginny casts some warming charms on the hard slate of the roof, and they sit together and eat their dinner as the sun sinks below the horizon in a blaze of crimson and orange and the forest glows as if it's on fire.
Harry wraps his arm around her shoulders and produces a dish of pudding from the basket, with two spoons. Above them, the sky is growing darker and a few stars are appearing.
"You take Divs," Harry says. "What do the stars say about us?" He squeezes her shoulders, and she laughs. All her cards and tea leaves and crystal balls have told her nothing.
"You're the one in Astronomy," she answers. "You tell me, Copernicus."
She feels him press a kiss to the top of her head. "Maybe it's better not to know," he says seriously.
"Pretty sure I'd want to know."
He is silent then, and when she looks up at him, she sees that his face is turned to the stars, pale light streaming down and illuminating his features. His skin almost seems to glow in the low light, and he looks like more than just the messy-haired boy she plays Quidditch with and snogs in broom closets. Ginny thinks that maybe she can finally see the visionary leader that the newspaper keeps talking about.
"The time for prophecies is over," Harry says. His voice is low and even, but it comes as a shock in the quiet night air.
"What?"
"I mean," Harry explains, "That I'm done with that prophecy now. I did all those things, I-- I even died because of it and I'm not going back to that again." His voice is rising, and it carries on the night air. Ginny thinks she has never heard him so adamant, so passionate in words before. "From now on, I'm the one who-- no."
Her hand is laying on the roof tiles between them, and Harry picks it up and holds it in one of his, looking down at her fingers as though they're something new and unusual.
"Listen," he says. "From now on, Ginny, you and me, we can do what we want. Do you get what I'm saying?" He seems frustrated with his own words, but Ginny thinks she finally understands.
"Yeah," she says, squeezing his hand tightly in her own. "It's our future," she says. "Both of ours, together." She looks up into his face. "And that means we can choose -- it's up to us what happens now."
Harry nods, and then the time for words has passed, and he leans close and kisses her.
Above, the stars and planets continue to spin in their age-old pattern, and the moon shines down on them as they lay intertwined on the rooftop the whole night through, and take their first steps into the unknown.
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