Chapter One
Dancing with Demons
“Mmm.” Harry breathed in the scent of her hair, the scent that was so purely Ginny Weasley. “Ginny?”
“Hm?” She stirred against him, questioning.
“I love you. I… I just wanted you to know.”
Ginny sat up, her face red and flushed from sleep. “What?”
“I said I love you.”
“No, I heard that, you silly prat. It’s just that, I do know. I know more than you could possibly imagine.”
Harry’s face flushed red with pleasure. “Yea?”
“Yes, you oaf.” She pinched his arm affectionately. “And you. I love you too. You should know that.”
“I do,” Harry replied, his hand moving to her head and stroking his fingers through her hair. “I do.”
“Good.”
A companiable silence settled over the couple as they rested comfortably on the settee in the Gryffindor common room, watching the fire on the other side, licking the grate of the mantle. Ginny’s hair was teeming with life as only the light from the fire bounced off it this late at night.
It was the times like these that Harry treasured most. The times like these with Ginny Weasley, when he forgot everything but her, everything but them. There was no world, there was no horror, there was no pain. There was only Ginny and her crimson halo of light.
“Ginny, can I ask you something?”
“‘Course, Harry,” she mumbled against his thigh where her head rested peacefully. “What is it?”
“I just… well, I wanted to ask you a favour.”
Ginny sat up at his nervous tone and turned to face him.
“Tell me. You know I’d do anything for you Harry.”
“I just… will you be there for me?” he asked.
“Harry?” She didn’t understand at all.
“Will you… will you be there for me? If it looks like I might lose, or die, could you be there? You wouldn’t need to help, but just be there?” The silence was deafening as Harry waited, his face and neck flushed.
The air hissed out of his lungs and he turned to stare at the fire. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, Ginny!” he cried, hitting his head with his palm. “How could I be so horrible? This is my curse, not yours! You could die. I’m sorry, forget I said anything, please, I’m an idiot! I’m so sor--”
Ginny silenced him the only way she knew how, and it worked much better than either of them could have anticipated.
“What are you sorry for, you fool?” she whispered, her forehead pressed hard against his. “Of course I’ll be there. I would never leave you do it alone, Harry, never! You never even had to ask. I didn’t understand what you meant before… Oh god, Harry how could you ever think--”
“Ginny, shut up,” Harry said, smiling. And then he took her lips prisoner.
Ginny jerked upright in her bed, sweat pouring down her temples as her breathing became less labored. The silencing dark all around her made her shudder despite the hot July air, and she scrambled to find the lamp switch that would grant her respite from its cold embrace.
With her breathing controlled and the light to keep out her nightly demons, Ginny had a chance to calm down. Closing her eyes, she exhaled loudly, telling herself it was only a dream, it had been a figment of her memory, faded and worthless.
Not worthless, she corrected herself, and it felt as if someone were stabbing her. No, nothing was ever worthless, it could always serve some purpose.
However, telling herself that it had only been a dream was becoming harder and harder to believe. Every time she said it, it seemed to lose a little bit of its meaning, a little bit of its reassuring quality. Bit by bit, her sanity was slipping off into the night to play with the demons she tried so hard to avoid.
The whisper of his breath against her neck was enough to drive anyone up the wall, but it never seemed to cease. She could almost feel his fingers run through her hair, or hear his uncertain chuckle in the swish of her curtains. Every sound that made her home come alive to her sounded exactly like the ghost of him, and she was damned if he wasn’t haunting her unrelentingly.
Realizing that it was unlikely she was going to get any more sleep that night, Ginny slipped out of her bed and, winding her bathrobe tightly around herself, she made her way to the kitchen in order to make herself some coffee.
Contemplating all meanings of the term ‘best substance ever made’, Ginny poured over her latest report on the Druid population of Africa and vaguely considered pulling the hard liquor out of the hidden cupboard under her sink.
Deciding against it seeing as she had work in only a few hours, Ginny pulled together what little concentration she had left, added the finishing touches to the most wholly mundane and highly inappropriate report she’d ever had to write before trudging off to the shower and hoping, in some vague receptacle of her mind, that she might drown in the doing.
Some hours later, much to Ginny’s consternation, she was very much alive. Picking herself up off the floor of the Ministry of Magic with as much elegance as she could possibly muster, she brushed the soot from her already disgraceful robes and nodded apologetically at the poor woman on the floor beside her, who had been subject to an abrupt appearance of one red-haired witch at the wrong Floo terminal, on top of her no less.
“So sorry,” she apologized, nodding as she walked away. “My mistake.” She had disappeared around the corner before the woman could utter anything more than an owl-like hoot. That, Ginny thought sourly to herself, would probably be the first and last person to truly notice her today, and that’s only because she was sat on!
“Ah, Weasley, there you are!”
Ginny plastered a fake grin on her face as she was ushered into Mr. Rowdry’s office, trying not to grimace at his choice of décor. A chubby bald-headed man grinned back with heinously yellow teeth as he moved to sit in his faux leather chair and gestured her into a modern-styled black thing that might have resembled a deranged heffamalump if it wasn’t for the leopard fur plastered all over it. Over the years, Ginny had come to notice that the increasingly decaying smell led to the conclusion that it might just be real. She had yet to test out this theory properly, however. “Please, sit.”
Ginny obligingly perched upon the suspicious piece of furniture so as not to offend the man, managing to control both her facial features and her gag reflexes. “What can I do for you, Mr. Rowdry?”
“Well, it appears I’m going to be leaving the Ministry,” he told her, nodding sagely as if it were the worst possible thing. “Indefinitely, I’m afraid. I’ve been offered a position as the Head of Magical Cauldron Distribution and Management in New York, an opportunity I simply couldn’t turn down.”
“Of course,” Ginny answered, wondering how anybody could be both so pompous and so stupid at the same time as she absent-mindedly picked lint off the suit robes against her thigh.
“Ah good, so you understand, then?”
Ginny looked up sharply, eyes trained on the uneasy pudgy face of one of the silliest men she’d ever met. How he had come to be the Head of Interracial Relations, she could never know or even guess at. “Understand what exactly, Mr. Rowdry?”
“Well,” he said, shifting slightly as he jerked at the tie around his neck as if it had suddenly become too tight. “That, uhm, promotion that was promised at the uh… culmination of those reports I gave you…”
“What about it?” Ginny snapped, knowing exactly what was coming next and wondering if she was going to make this month’s rent.
“Well… it’s now out of my, uh, jurisdiction, after handing in my resignation and all, to, well, give it to you.”
Ginny swallowed loudly. “And the replacement? Couldn’t you just inform them of my impending promotion?”
“Well, it’s not really my place to tell someone how to run their department now, is it?” he told her, his confidence coming back in waves now that she seemed to be taking the news with some modicum of acceptance.
“No, of course not, you’re right,” she told him, You sodding bastard! “I suppose I’ll… get back to work then.”
“Good lass,” he said, grinning as if he’d been truly sporting and had done her a favour. “The replacement comes in this afternoon, I’m sure you’ll find her a right hoot!”
Ginny took deep breaths and she walked to her cubicle, third row from the left and fourth row up. She dumped her bag onto the desk and buried her face in her arms, trying oh-so-hard not to rush back in there and throttle that man with every fibre of strength she had.
“So,” chirped a voice over the top of her cubicle, “heard who the new boss is yet?”
“No,” Ginny groaned through a mass of hair and arms. “But I’ll bet you have, Luna. Who is it?”
“Elaine Parkinson,” she said, that ever constant element of dazedness sharp in her voice. “Pugface’s mother, no less.”
Ginny laughed. She couldn’t stop herself. She laughed terribly loud, and a few heads poked out over the tops of their cubicles and looked at Luna enquiringly. Ginny wasn’t sure if she was laughing because of the extreme irony of it all, or just because she was becoming hysterical. Quite frankly, she didn’t care.
“You’re kidding!” she said between snorts, and Luna only smiled.
“I wish.”
“Better stop calling Pansy ‘Pugface’ then, unless you want to pick up with your father and the Quibbler again.”
Luna paused as she was about to turn back to her own cubicle and looked as if she was considering it. “You know…” she began, cocking her head to the side. “That’s not such a b--”
“No!” Ginny snapped, making a startling slashing motion with her arm through the air. “No. No, no, no, no, no. Sit down. Forget I said anything. Just no, all right?”
Luna shrugged and disappeared behind her cubicle wall.
“Miss… Weasley, come to the Head Office at once.”
The elegant and clipped tones that could only belong to Elaine Parkinson were transmitted across the room, reverberating off everything as multiple employees turned to watch Ginny make her way to what used to be Mr. Rowdry’s office. She had the indescribable feeling of being a convict on her last walk as a free woman before she was to be thrown and locked up in Azkaban.
“You must be Weasley,” came the sharp tones before Ginny could even knock. All she could do was nod. “Of course, who could mistake you? Your hair is like a beacon, child. Sit down.”
Ginny obligingly did so for the second time that day. This time, however, was a mite less pleasant, elegant gilt-lined seating not withstanding. Ginny watched as Parkinson pulled a file from the bottom drawer of the desk, taking her chance to covertly examine the woman who was to be her new boss.
She was dressed in fine grey robes, obviously tailored for her as they seemed to flow naturally with the shape of her shoulders and the angles of her face. Her eyes were a murky blue, and her lips were large and pouty, as if she was constantly in want of something. The resemblance to Pansy was uncanny.
Her hair was ebony black and pulled into a tight French knot, done with the kind of expertise that screamed ‘old money’ and ‘overly expensive hairdresser’. At least, Ginny reasoned, Elaine Parkinson looked the part of the Head of Interracial Relations. Though, if her daughter was anything to go by, Elaine could hardly be the best candidate.
“It says here, in your file, that you are a dedicated and proficient reporter on the effects of interracial interaction and unification. Is this true?”
Ginny nodded. “Yes, M’am,” she answered, twisting her fingers together nervously.
The woman looked Ginny over with calculating eyes, and Ginny flushed red as she remembered not having any good robes to wear this morning, curse of not having any spare change for the washer lady the day before. It felt as if every stain and patch on these old robes were standing out to be made large red marks on her folder.
The woman tutted loudly and marked something down on a clipboard on the desk, glancing over to Ginny’s employment folder also.
“And Mr. Rowdry trusted you?”
“Yes, M’am,” Ginny agreed again. “He thought I had potential to move up in the Ministry.”
Parkinson looked up at Ginny sharply, disdain marring her features. “He also thought that orange snakeskin made a good rug. Forgive me if I’m not prepared to trust his judgement.”
“No, M’am.” Ginny was inwardly fuming, and flashbacks of Hogwarts years flew across her mind, taking her back to the days when she would sit at dinner and contemplate throwing a dinner fork directly at Pansy’s head, and watching as she spluttered and gasped, running from the hall in a panic. It almost made her laugh.
“Something amusing, Weasley?”
“No, M’am,” she answered, vaguely wondering if the rest of her career was going to be spent like this; a broken record player.
“Good, because you’re this far,” she snapped, holding up her thumb and forefinger excruciatingly close, “to being fired. Mr. Rowdry has proved himself to be an imploringly stupid man, and I believe his confidence in you to be more than misplaced.”
Ginny’s eyes flashed dangerously as she stood, fists curled inwards as she curbed her anger. She could hear the unsaid insult that Elaine Parkinson didn't dare to voice. Because you're a Weasley.
“I make no pretenses here, Weasley. You’re on probation. Any reason I can find to fire you, and you will be gone. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal,” Ginny snapped, turning and stalking from the room.
Dancing with Demons
“Mmm.” Harry breathed in the scent of her hair, the scent that was so purely Ginny Weasley. “Ginny?”
“Hm?” She stirred against him, questioning.
“I love you. I… I just wanted you to know.”
Ginny sat up, her face red and flushed from sleep. “What?”
“I said I love you.”
“No, I heard that, you silly prat. It’s just that, I do know. I know more than you could possibly imagine.”
Harry’s face flushed red with pleasure. “Yea?”
“Yes, you oaf.” She pinched his arm affectionately. “And you. I love you too. You should know that.”
“I do,” Harry replied, his hand moving to her head and stroking his fingers through her hair. “I do.”
“Good.”
A companiable silence settled over the couple as they rested comfortably on the settee in the Gryffindor common room, watching the fire on the other side, licking the grate of the mantle. Ginny’s hair was teeming with life as only the light from the fire bounced off it this late at night.
It was the times like these that Harry treasured most. The times like these with Ginny Weasley, when he forgot everything but her, everything but them. There was no world, there was no horror, there was no pain. There was only Ginny and her crimson halo of light.
“Ginny, can I ask you something?”
“‘Course, Harry,” she mumbled against his thigh where her head rested peacefully. “What is it?”
“I just… well, I wanted to ask you a favour.”
Ginny sat up at his nervous tone and turned to face him.
“Tell me. You know I’d do anything for you Harry.”
“I just… will you be there for me?” he asked.
“Harry?” She didn’t understand at all.
“Will you… will you be there for me? If it looks like I might lose, or die, could you be there? You wouldn’t need to help, but just be there?” The silence was deafening as Harry waited, his face and neck flushed.
The air hissed out of his lungs and he turned to stare at the fire. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, Ginny!” he cried, hitting his head with his palm. “How could I be so horrible? This is my curse, not yours! You could die. I’m sorry, forget I said anything, please, I’m an idiot! I’m so sor--”
Ginny silenced him the only way she knew how, and it worked much better than either of them could have anticipated.
“What are you sorry for, you fool?” she whispered, her forehead pressed hard against his. “Of course I’ll be there. I would never leave you do it alone, Harry, never! You never even had to ask. I didn’t understand what you meant before… Oh god, Harry how could you ever think--”
“Ginny, shut up,” Harry said, smiling. And then he took her lips prisoner.
Ginny jerked upright in her bed, sweat pouring down her temples as her breathing became less labored. The silencing dark all around her made her shudder despite the hot July air, and she scrambled to find the lamp switch that would grant her respite from its cold embrace.
With her breathing controlled and the light to keep out her nightly demons, Ginny had a chance to calm down. Closing her eyes, she exhaled loudly, telling herself it was only a dream, it had been a figment of her memory, faded and worthless.
Not worthless, she corrected herself, and it felt as if someone were stabbing her. No, nothing was ever worthless, it could always serve some purpose.
However, telling herself that it had only been a dream was becoming harder and harder to believe. Every time she said it, it seemed to lose a little bit of its meaning, a little bit of its reassuring quality. Bit by bit, her sanity was slipping off into the night to play with the demons she tried so hard to avoid.
The whisper of his breath against her neck was enough to drive anyone up the wall, but it never seemed to cease. She could almost feel his fingers run through her hair, or hear his uncertain chuckle in the swish of her curtains. Every sound that made her home come alive to her sounded exactly like the ghost of him, and she was damned if he wasn’t haunting her unrelentingly.
Realizing that it was unlikely she was going to get any more sleep that night, Ginny slipped out of her bed and, winding her bathrobe tightly around herself, she made her way to the kitchen in order to make herself some coffee.
Contemplating all meanings of the term ‘best substance ever made’, Ginny poured over her latest report on the Druid population of Africa and vaguely considered pulling the hard liquor out of the hidden cupboard under her sink.
Deciding against it seeing as she had work in only a few hours, Ginny pulled together what little concentration she had left, added the finishing touches to the most wholly mundane and highly inappropriate report she’d ever had to write before trudging off to the shower and hoping, in some vague receptacle of her mind, that she might drown in the doing.
Some hours later, much to Ginny’s consternation, she was very much alive. Picking herself up off the floor of the Ministry of Magic with as much elegance as she could possibly muster, she brushed the soot from her already disgraceful robes and nodded apologetically at the poor woman on the floor beside her, who had been subject to an abrupt appearance of one red-haired witch at the wrong Floo terminal, on top of her no less.
“So sorry,” she apologized, nodding as she walked away. “My mistake.” She had disappeared around the corner before the woman could utter anything more than an owl-like hoot. That, Ginny thought sourly to herself, would probably be the first and last person to truly notice her today, and that’s only because she was sat on!
“Ah, Weasley, there you are!”
Ginny plastered a fake grin on her face as she was ushered into Mr. Rowdry’s office, trying not to grimace at his choice of décor. A chubby bald-headed man grinned back with heinously yellow teeth as he moved to sit in his faux leather chair and gestured her into a modern-styled black thing that might have resembled a deranged heffamalump if it wasn’t for the leopard fur plastered all over it. Over the years, Ginny had come to notice that the increasingly decaying smell led to the conclusion that it might just be real. She had yet to test out this theory properly, however. “Please, sit.”
Ginny obligingly perched upon the suspicious piece of furniture so as not to offend the man, managing to control both her facial features and her gag reflexes. “What can I do for you, Mr. Rowdry?”
“Well, it appears I’m going to be leaving the Ministry,” he told her, nodding sagely as if it were the worst possible thing. “Indefinitely, I’m afraid. I’ve been offered a position as the Head of Magical Cauldron Distribution and Management in New York, an opportunity I simply couldn’t turn down.”
“Of course,” Ginny answered, wondering how anybody could be both so pompous and so stupid at the same time as she absent-mindedly picked lint off the suit robes against her thigh.
“Ah good, so you understand, then?”
Ginny looked up sharply, eyes trained on the uneasy pudgy face of one of the silliest men she’d ever met. How he had come to be the Head of Interracial Relations, she could never know or even guess at. “Understand what exactly, Mr. Rowdry?”
“Well,” he said, shifting slightly as he jerked at the tie around his neck as if it had suddenly become too tight. “That, uhm, promotion that was promised at the uh… culmination of those reports I gave you…”
“What about it?” Ginny snapped, knowing exactly what was coming next and wondering if she was going to make this month’s rent.
“Well… it’s now out of my, uh, jurisdiction, after handing in my resignation and all, to, well, give it to you.”
Ginny swallowed loudly. “And the replacement? Couldn’t you just inform them of my impending promotion?”
“Well, it’s not really my place to tell someone how to run their department now, is it?” he told her, his confidence coming back in waves now that she seemed to be taking the news with some modicum of acceptance.
“No, of course not, you’re right,” she told him, You sodding bastard! “I suppose I’ll… get back to work then.”
“Good lass,” he said, grinning as if he’d been truly sporting and had done her a favour. “The replacement comes in this afternoon, I’m sure you’ll find her a right hoot!”
Ginny took deep breaths and she walked to her cubicle, third row from the left and fourth row up. She dumped her bag onto the desk and buried her face in her arms, trying oh-so-hard not to rush back in there and throttle that man with every fibre of strength she had.
“So,” chirped a voice over the top of her cubicle, “heard who the new boss is yet?”
“No,” Ginny groaned through a mass of hair and arms. “But I’ll bet you have, Luna. Who is it?”
“Elaine Parkinson,” she said, that ever constant element of dazedness sharp in her voice. “Pugface’s mother, no less.”
Ginny laughed. She couldn’t stop herself. She laughed terribly loud, and a few heads poked out over the tops of their cubicles and looked at Luna enquiringly. Ginny wasn’t sure if she was laughing because of the extreme irony of it all, or just because she was becoming hysterical. Quite frankly, she didn’t care.
“You’re kidding!” she said between snorts, and Luna only smiled.
“I wish.”
“Better stop calling Pansy ‘Pugface’ then, unless you want to pick up with your father and the Quibbler again.”
Luna paused as she was about to turn back to her own cubicle and looked as if she was considering it. “You know…” she began, cocking her head to the side. “That’s not such a b--”
“No!” Ginny snapped, making a startling slashing motion with her arm through the air. “No. No, no, no, no, no. Sit down. Forget I said anything. Just no, all right?”
Luna shrugged and disappeared behind her cubicle wall.
“Miss… Weasley, come to the Head Office at once.”
The elegant and clipped tones that could only belong to Elaine Parkinson were transmitted across the room, reverberating off everything as multiple employees turned to watch Ginny make her way to what used to be Mr. Rowdry’s office. She had the indescribable feeling of being a convict on her last walk as a free woman before she was to be thrown and locked up in Azkaban.
“You must be Weasley,” came the sharp tones before Ginny could even knock. All she could do was nod. “Of course, who could mistake you? Your hair is like a beacon, child. Sit down.”
Ginny obligingly did so for the second time that day. This time, however, was a mite less pleasant, elegant gilt-lined seating not withstanding. Ginny watched as Parkinson pulled a file from the bottom drawer of the desk, taking her chance to covertly examine the woman who was to be her new boss.
She was dressed in fine grey robes, obviously tailored for her as they seemed to flow naturally with the shape of her shoulders and the angles of her face. Her eyes were a murky blue, and her lips were large and pouty, as if she was constantly in want of something. The resemblance to Pansy was uncanny.
Her hair was ebony black and pulled into a tight French knot, done with the kind of expertise that screamed ‘old money’ and ‘overly expensive hairdresser’. At least, Ginny reasoned, Elaine Parkinson looked the part of the Head of Interracial Relations. Though, if her daughter was anything to go by, Elaine could hardly be the best candidate.
“It says here, in your file, that you are a dedicated and proficient reporter on the effects of interracial interaction and unification. Is this true?”
Ginny nodded. “Yes, M’am,” she answered, twisting her fingers together nervously.
The woman looked Ginny over with calculating eyes, and Ginny flushed red as she remembered not having any good robes to wear this morning, curse of not having any spare change for the washer lady the day before. It felt as if every stain and patch on these old robes were standing out to be made large red marks on her folder.
The woman tutted loudly and marked something down on a clipboard on the desk, glancing over to Ginny’s employment folder also.
“And Mr. Rowdry trusted you?”
“Yes, M’am,” Ginny agreed again. “He thought I had potential to move up in the Ministry.”
Parkinson looked up at Ginny sharply, disdain marring her features. “He also thought that orange snakeskin made a good rug. Forgive me if I’m not prepared to trust his judgement.”
“No, M’am.” Ginny was inwardly fuming, and flashbacks of Hogwarts years flew across her mind, taking her back to the days when she would sit at dinner and contemplate throwing a dinner fork directly at Pansy’s head, and watching as she spluttered and gasped, running from the hall in a panic. It almost made her laugh.
“Something amusing, Weasley?”
“No, M’am,” she answered, vaguely wondering if the rest of her career was going to be spent like this; a broken record player.
“Good, because you’re this far,” she snapped, holding up her thumb and forefinger excruciatingly close, “to being fired. Mr. Rowdry has proved himself to be an imploringly stupid man, and I believe his confidence in you to be more than misplaced.”
Ginny’s eyes flashed dangerously as she stood, fists curled inwards as she curbed her anger. She could hear the unsaid insult that Elaine Parkinson didn't dare to voice. Because you're a Weasley.
“I make no pretenses here, Weasley. You’re on probation. Any reason I can find to fire you, and you will be gone. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal,” Ginny snapped, turning and stalking from the room.
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