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SIYE Time:10:51 on 28th March 2024
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I'll Be There For You
By Kezzabear

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Category: Alternate Universe, Buried Gems
Characters:All
Genres: Comedy, Fluff, Romance
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 311
Summary: When your life's a little bit ... sucky, you can count on your friends. Well, most of them anyway ... well, some of them at least ... maybe just one.
Hitcount: Story Total: 80260; Chapter Total: 10082





Author's Notes:
Thanks once again to goingbacktosquareone for the beta!




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Ginny Weasley slammed the door shut on her locker. Her gloves fell out haphazardly and the door thumped on the worn leather instead of clanging shut with a satisfied bang. She scowled at the offending items for a moment before she sighed and scooped them up. Shoving them tightly into a free space in the tiny locker she leaned on the door and twisted the handle until it stayed shut.

“Coming for a drink?” one of her team mates called. Ginny shook her head wearily. She wanted nothing more than to go home, have a long soak in a hot bath tub and curl up with the game on the wireless.

She’d desperately wanted to be a Quidditch player and some days could hardly believe her dream had come true — because she found herself the one running the drinks. She reminded herself time and time again that she wouldn’t always be the junior player and that some day she might be allowed to get on a broom and actually play some Quidditch; but right now, the water bottles were her only friends.

“Come on, Weasley!” called one of the Chasers. “I’ll get the first round!” Ginny grimaced. She hated buying rounds. The salary wasn’t bad if you actually played a game, but if you were just the water girl like her … well, she could barely cover her rent and was positive George was supplementing something, somewhere.

He’d been her unexpectedly ally in helping her move out of home. If there was anyone who their mother hovered over more than Ginny, it was George. With George she made sure he was eating, sleeping, bathing, shaving and once she even Flooed in to see if he’d been going to the loo frequently. To be fair, she had accidentally mixed some old U-No Poo stock into the stew once when reaching blindly for some split peas. Ron hadn’t been happy for a week after that little incident.

So when George found Ginny pacing the kitchen and fuming at her own eighteenth birthday party, he had complete sympathy for her story.

“She invited every single male she has ever seen!” Ginny had wailed when George asked what was wrong. “And I mean every SINGLE male. It took me all year to convince her that Dean and I were never going to happen so what does she do? The first chance she gets, she’s lined up a plethora of men for me to … investigate!”

“One of them could be the one,” George suggested, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Ginny scowled at him.

“I can find my own boyfriend,” she said stubbornly. “If I want one. Which I don’t.”

“She can be a bit much, yeah?” George asked, suddenly sober.

“I know she means well,” Ginny sighed, leaning against the table, “it’s just …”

“Yeah …” George agreed.

“I have to listen to her at the breakfast table and during the morning chores and at lunch time and before I go out after lunch and when I come in again and during tea time preparations …” Ginny trailed off and George opened his mouth to say something, but Ginny wasn’t finished. “And then at tea, she asks dad who he’s seen at the Ministry that day and after tea she looks at all the marriage announcements in the Prophet and comments on who’s getting married — did you know that Eloise Midgen is married? And I haven’t been kissed in two years and she knows it.”

“Really?” George asked intrigued. “I thought Brett Lovelace …”

“You know as well as I do that you can’t count someone who tripped over you trying to get to Harry and landed on your face.” Ginny crossed her arms and scowled unpleasantly at her brother. George laughed.

“You sound like you could do with a break from her?”

“I would love to move out,” Ginny agreed, “but I don’t exactly have the finances.”

“I have a spare room,” George had said, looking out of the kitchen window. “Rent’s cheap.” Ginny stared at him.

“I … but …” she stood up straight. “That’s Fred’s room.” George said nothing, only shrugged slightly, still staring out of the window. Ginny hugged him tightly, pretending not to notice the lone tear running down his cheek.

She’d moved in the following week and by mid-September had joined the Harpies as a junior team member. Everything was fine until George had announced his engagement just before Christmas and moved out shortly after Easter. Paying for the place on her pitiful salary was difficult but somehow she always had just enough. Ginny knew George was supplementing her rent and leaving food in her pantry.

“I’m fine,” Ginny called to the rest of the team. “Chores … you know …” She waved her hand vaguely and the rest of the team nodded and shuffled out. Ginny knew there would be a bevy of beautiful men waiting to socialise with the Harpies, there always was at their favourite pub. None of them had ever taken much notice of her though. Still, she couldn’t compete with the like of Briony Marshall with her long blonde curls and her tanned legs that went all the way …

It was Friday night and eighteen year old Ginny Weasley headed home to a Quidditch game on the wireless followed by a hot bath, hoping George had leftover Chinese from lunch. She could usually count on that for Fridays. Ginny Flooed to the Leaky Cauldron and Hannah Abbott waved at her as she stumbled out of the grate. Hannah was sitting at one end of the bar giggling at something Neville was saying. Ginny waved back with a sigh and glanced around at the patrons. Seamus was dancing rather closely with a witch of indeterminate age and Romilda Vane was sitting at a table flirting with five men at once. Ginny grimaced slightly when she realised the blonde plastered to Dean was one of her Hogwarts room mates and she made her way quickly to the back alley way and into Diagon Alley. In the dark, the newly neon pink walls of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes glowed fluorescent and Ginny stumbled towards it berating herself for her lonely, friendless existence.

She’d tried to make plans with Luna but she’d been busy with her latest Muggle beau and Hermione had promised to take Ron to the cinema. Ginny had spent precious minutes of her life reassuring Hermione that her new beige lipstick — which was the same colour as all her other beige lipsticks — did not clash with her tan coloured blouse. It had left Ginny with a rather pitiful collection of friends who all turned out to be busy. The lowest blow was mousy, little Frieda Kirk who’d been trying on a pair of black stilettos when Ginny Flooed her–and asked Ginny if they looked all right with her new electric blue mini skirt. Frieda’s boyfriend, whose name escaped Ginny entirely, was taking her to a disco and while Ginny had no earthly idea what that was, it was painfully clear that everyone in the world was attached except plain Ginny Weasley, without two Knuts to rub together and her love life dead in the water.

Ginny fumbled for her key and swore loudly when she dropped it. The key bounced carelessly across the ground and landed somewhere Ginny couldn’t see.

“What a stupid, bloody, buggering night,” Ginny fumed as she stalked around looking for the key.

“Lost something?” a deep voice inquired. Ginny whipped her head around to see Harry Potter standing in the shadows. He was holding something cradled in his left arm and in his right hand was her key. Ginny blushed, grateful the darkness hid the evidence.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, taking the key and shoving it mercilessly into the lock. “What’re you doing, skulking around?”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Harry said, affronted. “I come bearing gifts and you … snark at me.”

“I snarked?”

“Yes, you did,” Harry said smugly.

“What gifts have you come bearing?” Ginny asked as she shoved the heavy door open. “Twenty-carat diamonds?” Harry groaned.

“I don’t know why I agreed to help George out with that!” Harry exclaimed, frustrated. “It’s just like the Prophet to think I was buying an engagement ring — for what girl, I ask you? And anyway, they were clearly not rings and the largest one can’t possibly be more than seven carat.”

“Since when do you know about diamond sizes?’ Ginny asked archly as she motioned up the stairs. Harry sidled past her and took them two at a time.

“Since George dragged me to jewellery stores looking for the perfect bridesmaid gifts,” Harry called over his shoulder. “I promise you’ll love it, you just have to wait until next week to see it.”

“Yeah, and you can wait to see the dress until then, too,” Ginny retorted as she reached the top of the stairs and the door to her flat where Harry was waiting.

“That bad, huh?” Harry teased.

“Did you bring food or not, Potter?”

“Of course,” Harry said, holding a box out to her. “Chinese, what else?”

“And how’d you know I’d be home?”

“I didn’t, but …”

“Why aren’t you out tonight, then?”

Harry shrugged and handed Ginny a bottle of Butterbeer.

“Ron and Hermione had plans?” Ginny asked as she took of her cloak inside the door and kicked off her shoes.

“Yeah,” said Harry, divesting himself of his own cloak and wandering into Ginny’s tiny living room. He put the Chinese cartons on the coffee table. “So did Neville and Seamus and Dean. Even Parvati was busy.”

“You know you haven’t got a chance with her, don’t you?” Ginny said, handing him a fork she had retrieved from the drawer in the tiny kitchenette. “The Yule Ball is still a vivid memory.” Harry glowered and threw himself onto Ginny’s couch, picking up one of the cartons as he did so.

“I know that,” he grouched. “I just … everyone else has someone.”

“That’s not a good reason to start a relationship, Harry,” Ginny rolled her eyes as she searched the cartons on the coffee table for the lemon chicken.

“I don’t necessarily want a relationship!” Harry said, waving a forkful of Mongolian lamb at her. “But it’d be nice to talk to some female younger than old Mildred in the office and not be stuck at home on a Friday night!”

“You have a point,” Ginny mused. “We should set her up with old Bert down at the Harpies and then we’d really be sad … just once I’d like for him not to be the only bloke under a hundred I speak to apart from George — and he doesn’t count. Between Bert and old Mr Johnson at the Post Office …”

“Is your mum still sending you daily letters?” Harry asked sympathetically. Ginny nodded, her mouth full. “I only get one a week.”

“Lucky,” Ginny murmured.

“She tried to set me up with your cousin — that one … the one with the accountant for a father,” Harry said, stabbing a piece of pork viciously with a fork.

“Mafalda?” Ginny asked incredulously. “Is she mad?”

“Yes,” Harry muttered belligerently.

“Well … look at it this way,” Ginny said brightly. “At least you don’t need a date to the wedding.”

“Here, here,” Harry said, raising his Butterbeer bottle and taking a swig. “Even if I don’t know what she’s wearing, at least there’s a girl on my arm.”

“Charming, Potter, you’re just charming,” Ginny rolled her eyes as she selected a spring roll. Harry snatched the box from her and crammed two of them in his mouth at once.

“Oos no mai foolt,” he protested through a spray of pastry. “I dint ask t’be a groomsman.”

“No,” Ginny said wryly, “just like I didn’t ask to be a bridesmaid. Don’t you love how they just assumed?”

“We could have said no …” Harry mused, staring into the corner, his Butterbeer halfway to his lips.

“This way we don’t need a date,” Ginny reminded him as she pulled the old, tattered blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around herself.

“Excellent point, Weasley!” said Harry, draining the Butterbeer and putting the empty bottle down on the table. “Are you going to share that blanket? It’s cold over here.”

“Turn on the wireless and I’ll think about it,” Ginny smirked.

“What’s on?” Harry asked, jumping to his feet and twirling the knobs on the old set.

“Puddlemere versus Montrose,” Ginny said. She picked up the almost empty lemon chicken container and extracted the last piece.

“Montrose wins, you take out the rubbish,” Harry said, flicking the knob one last time and diving onto the couch and beneath the blanket.

“Puddlemere will annihilate them,” Ginny replied, “and get your freezing hands off my ankles.”

Harry flicked her on the foot as he settled himself more comfortably against her legs and they listened to the match. This was much better than stilettos at a disco — whatever that was — or worrying about which lipstick went best with your blouse — which no one would see in the darkened cinema — this was ... comfortable, easy, no pressure, just hanging out.

Just friends.
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