One – Beginnings from an End
Just past the southern edge of a small, insignificant village named Ottery St. Catchpole, there stood a giant black alder tree, towering over the rolling countryside, its topmost branches stretching like contorted fingers grasping at the heavens. It was an old thing. The bark was gnarled, the branches twisted, and the leaves drooped miserably as they weakly shuffled about in the wind. Undoubtedly, there were times when the tree reminded one of a stooped old man, hunched over his walking stick and carefully hobbling his way down the street. Yet despite the many years it carried on its knotted, grey trunk, the tree stood straight and proud – prevailing over any other ordinary alder tree, wise from the passing ages to which it stood witness – and every few years, it would muster up that old sap and produce forth a magnificent explosion of catkins and flowers, dusting over the entire countryside with shimmering gold pollen.
This remarkable black alder tree stood alone in the middle of a field of wild barley, where an especially high stalk would sometimes reach up and brush the tree’s lowermost branches as the breeze gently swayed the barley back and forth. The field was found just southeast of a particularly dense ring of trees which circled a little orchard, sweet-smelling from its hidden trove of fruits and flowers. There – once upon a time – a gaggle of red-haired children used to zoom about on brooms, laughing and calling to one another, screaming from delight in the manner that children tend to do when they are extraordinarily happy.
If one were to climb to the topmost branches of this particular black alder tree and sit, leaning back against its warm sunlit trunk, one would hear nothing but the rustle of green leaves in the wind and the joyous calls of birds as they flitted across a summer sky, see nothing but undulating meadows, endless trees and the general splendor of Mother Nature. There was no sign of human life or the loud, smoky pandemonium that generally accompanied those abrasive beings, save for a cluttered jumble of a house that made a small crooked blot on the eastern horizon. But the tree didn’t mind the family living in that crooked house – no, indeed at times it was quite amused as it watched them go about their daily lives – working in the garden, reading outside in the sunlight, the children shrieking at each other as they ran around on their short, stubby legs. And as time plodded on, the tree came to realize that it actually enjoyed the company of the red-haired family as they lived and changed and grew.
The father and mother would go on walks together at dusk through the fields and they always paused to admire the black alder tree’s convoluted branches, twisting up and over one another unto eternity. The tree generally found the boys to be unbearably loud – the whooping as they chased one another around the field, their noisy yells that ensued if one got his broom stuck in its branches, the general crash and clatter that always seemed to accompany these rambunctious, redheaded boys. The one with glasses would sometimes sit against its trunk and read, something the black alder tree didn’t mind, though the other boys would always turn up not long after his arrival, shattering the compatible silence with their stampeding feet and hollering for their brother to join the never-ending stream of games.
But it was the girl that the tree liked best – the freckled, brown-eyed girl with a slight bump on her nose and strawberry hair that shone in the sunlight. The girl had a habit of strolling down to the field on windy afternoons, singing to herself as she idly wove a path through the barley, her hands buried deep in her pockets. She had her favorite perch on the tree’s uppermost branches – sixth from the top –and there, in her own little niche, she would lean back against the tree’s weathered trunk, glimpse the dappled sunlight pouring through the tree’s sparse canopy, and watch the days pass her by.
As the years lumbered onward, following the lazy, swathing trail on which time treads, the brown-eyed girl’s visits to this extra-ordinary black alder tree dwindled until it was only in the summertime that she plucked her way across the countryside towards that familiar, twisted trunk. The tree found itself looking forward to the time when the world grew warmer, when the sun hung lower in the sky – because then the tree could whittle away its days in the girl’s soft-spoken company.
Then one summer came when the girl didn’t visit at all. That spring, the black alder tree had brought forth its most magnificent batch of flowers yet – golden catkins dripped from its blossom-laden branches, blue-white buds bloomed until the tree blended in perfectly with the perpetually azure sky, and delicate pollen covered the entire field, brushing over the barley and wildflowers with a soft, iridescent gold. The tree was disappointed that the girl did not visit and see it in all its flowered glory. The days lengthened, then shortened again, and still she did not come. Then the time arrived when the tree’s leaves turned red as the curls that spilled down her back, the barley white-gold as sunshine, and the skies black as night from the flocks of birds flying south in search of their winter roosts. The tree resigned itself to the fact that she would not come that year and began to withdraw into itself, preparing for the cold and barren winter ahead.
Then, one day, she appeared.
________________________________________
Ginny sat on one of the uppermost branches of the black alder tree that stood in the field behind her house, just past the orchard where she and her brothers used to pass the summer days away in their endless games of Quidditch. She swung her legs back and forth, relishing the sensation of the cool autumn air rushing in between her bare toes, just as she had relished it when she was younger – one of the few things that did not change with time.
She sighed and slumped back against the worn trunk, feeling the tree’s knotted bark dig into her back. She had hoped that visiting her old childhood haunt would calm her down, wash the memories away. Instead, it just gave her a silent place to think, dwelling and obsessing, each sunlit moment reminding her of all that had come to pass in the last year.
Everything should have been fine. The evil psycho-maniac was dead and the Wizarding world was being put back together again by those who would do it right. Life was slowly returning back to equilibrium – and yet, nothing was fine. Ginny had spent all summer watching her father work himself to exhaustion as he endeavored to fix everything that Voldemort had broken, watching her brothers struggle to track down the remaining Death Eaters, watching her mother attempt to draw their lives back into a state of normalcy. They all tried to ignore the hole left behind by Fred.
A squirrel scampered across a branch overhead, dislodging a couple of amber leaves and a single orange one that reminded her of glowing embers. Ginny watched the leaves flutter downwards, drifting lazily towards the earth. She wondered what she would have been doing at this very moment, had she not decided to take a year off before completing her seventh year at Hogwarts. Classes would’ve been over for the day by now – she probably would have been making her way down to the Quidditch field for practice, chatting with Demelza and Jimmy, her broom balanced jauntily over her right shoulder.
It would have been amazing to captain the team this year – they had worked together quite well last year and probably would have won the Cup had it not been for the blatant Slytherin favoritism yielded by the Carrows – and McGonagall had offered the post to her. The stern professor had even paid a personal visit to the Burrow one drizzling afternoon in early August to appeal for Ginny to return to Hogwarts, but even an appearance of the professor whom Ginny respected the most wasn’t enough to tempt her back to the school that had sheltered her and given her a home for the past six years. She loved Hogwarts – it was her second home, after the one in her rickety old Burrow – but Ginny couldn’t bear to return to the place, knowing that he wasn’t also somewhere inside those towering stone walls.
Her brothers didn’t understand – she hadn’t expected them to. They all thought she had quite literally lost it and made a point of telling her so every time she saw one of the big stupid lugs. Her mother was disappointed, frustrated and understanding all at once, agreeing to the plan only if Ginny stayed at home with her, and only after she made Ginny promise that she would return to finish her schooling the following year. Her father was the only one who had accepted it without any protestations. He had just smiled that worn, crooked smile of his and wrapped his warm arms around her shoulders like he always did when she was troubled – never asking questions, never critical.
It was madness. Ginny knew that and still she couldn’t bear to return. All because of him. She should have just – no, she couldn’t. Ginny hated it, in a way, hated how a boy – especially that boy – had overturned her entire life, caused her to be unsure and tentative of everything. And she hated how he had done it all with that insufferable smirk plastered across his face.
Ginny screamed in frustration, digging the palms of her hands into her eyes, covering her face. She had stayed home to get away from it all. She had come to her old spot on the black alder tree to be in a place where she had been happy before she knew him, before she had ever looked at him and wondered if there was someone else below that cold, stony exterior. But she couldn’t escape, couldn’t escape the images now swimming before her eyes – glinting grey eyes framed by a set of surprisingly-long lashes, a narrow and aristocratic nose set above lips that almost never smiled, smooth and barely curved collarbones jutting out of skin so pale that it fairly glowed in the moonlight. Every time she closed her eyes, he was there, whether it was the sound of his soft chuckle or the lingering scent of his skin twisting across her body.
Ginny inhaled sharply, shaking her head violently back and forth, trying to dislodge the memories like they were cobwebs clinging to the insides of her skull. She hated this, hated how she couldn’t get away from his cool, calculating gaze – judging her, condemning her.
The memories she had suppressed deep inside her mind came rushing up again, swelling to the brim. Unbidden, a brief sensation overtook Ginny – icy fingers gently caressing her scarred palm, a long arm winding lazily around her waist, soft lips pressing against her shoulders, her back, her mouth, tender and damp and scorching every surface of her skin. Ginny buried her head in her arms as the memories spilled over the edge, bubbling as they ran across her mind, taking over her thoughts, overwhelming her.
Just past the southern edge of a small, insignificant village named Ottery St. Catchpole, there stood a giant black alder tree, towering over the rolling countryside, its topmost branches stretching like contorted fingers grasping at the heavens. It was an old thing. The bark was gnarled, the branches twisted, and the leaves drooped miserably as they weakly shuffled about in the wind. Undoubtedly, there were times when the tree reminded one of a stooped old man, hunched over his walking stick and carefully hobbling his way down the street. Yet despite the many years it carried on its knotted, grey trunk, the tree stood straight and proud – prevailing over any other ordinary alder tree, wise from the passing ages to which it stood witness – and every few years, it would muster up that old sap and produce forth a magnificent explosion of catkins and flowers, dusting over the entire countryside with shimmering gold pollen.
This remarkable black alder tree stood alone in the middle of a field of wild barley, where an especially high stalk would sometimes reach up and brush the tree’s lowermost branches as the breeze gently swayed the barley back and forth. The field was found just southeast of a particularly dense ring of trees which circled a little orchard, sweet-smelling from its hidden trove of fruits and flowers. There – once upon a time – a gaggle of red-haired children used to zoom about on brooms, laughing and calling to one another, screaming from delight in the manner that children tend to do when they are extraordinarily happy.
If one were to climb to the topmost branches of this particular black alder tree and sit, leaning back against its warm sunlit trunk, one would hear nothing but the rustle of green leaves in the wind and the joyous calls of birds as they flitted across a summer sky, see nothing but undulating meadows, endless trees and the general splendor of Mother Nature. There was no sign of human life or the loud, smoky pandemonium that generally accompanied those abrasive beings, save for a cluttered jumble of a house that made a small crooked blot on the eastern horizon. But the tree didn’t mind the family living in that crooked house – no, indeed at times it was quite amused as it watched them go about their daily lives – working in the garden, reading outside in the sunlight, the children shrieking at each other as they ran around on their short, stubby legs. And as time plodded on, the tree came to realize that it actually enjoyed the company of the red-haired family as they lived and changed and grew.
The father and mother would go on walks together at dusk through the fields and they always paused to admire the black alder tree’s convoluted branches, twisting up and over one another unto eternity. The tree generally found the boys to be unbearably loud – the whooping as they chased one another around the field, their noisy yells that ensued if one got his broom stuck in its branches, the general crash and clatter that always seemed to accompany these rambunctious, redheaded boys. The one with glasses would sometimes sit against its trunk and read, something the black alder tree didn’t mind, though the other boys would always turn up not long after his arrival, shattering the compatible silence with their stampeding feet and hollering for their brother to join the never-ending stream of games.
But it was the girl that the tree liked best – the freckled, brown-eyed girl with a slight bump on her nose and strawberry hair that shone in the sunlight. The girl had a habit of strolling down to the field on windy afternoons, singing to herself as she idly wove a path through the barley, her hands buried deep in her pockets. She had her favorite perch on the tree’s uppermost branches – sixth from the top –and there, in her own little niche, she would lean back against the tree’s weathered trunk, glimpse the dappled sunlight pouring through the tree’s sparse canopy, and watch the days pass her by.
As the years lumbered onward, following the lazy, swathing trail on which time treads, the brown-eyed girl’s visits to this extra-ordinary black alder tree dwindled until it was only in the summertime that she plucked her way across the countryside towards that familiar, twisted trunk. The tree found itself looking forward to the time when the world grew warmer, when the sun hung lower in the sky – because then the tree could whittle away its days in the girl’s soft-spoken company.
Then one summer came when the girl didn’t visit at all. That spring, the black alder tree had brought forth its most magnificent batch of flowers yet – golden catkins dripped from its blossom-laden branches, blue-white buds bloomed until the tree blended in perfectly with the perpetually azure sky, and delicate pollen covered the entire field, brushing over the barley and wildflowers with a soft, iridescent gold. The tree was disappointed that the girl did not visit and see it in all its flowered glory. The days lengthened, then shortened again, and still she did not come. Then the time arrived when the tree’s leaves turned red as the curls that spilled down her back, the barley white-gold as sunshine, and the skies black as night from the flocks of birds flying south in search of their winter roosts. The tree resigned itself to the fact that she would not come that year and began to withdraw into itself, preparing for the cold and barren winter ahead.
Then, one day, she appeared.
________________________________________
Ginny sat on one of the uppermost branches of the black alder tree that stood in the field behind her house, just past the orchard where she and her brothers used to pass the summer days away in their endless games of Quidditch. She swung her legs back and forth, relishing the sensation of the cool autumn air rushing in between her bare toes, just as she had relished it when she was younger – one of the few things that did not change with time.
She sighed and slumped back against the worn trunk, feeling the tree’s knotted bark dig into her back. She had hoped that visiting her old childhood haunt would calm her down, wash the memories away. Instead, it just gave her a silent place to think, dwelling and obsessing, each sunlit moment reminding her of all that had come to pass in the last year.
Everything should have been fine. The evil psycho-maniac was dead and the Wizarding world was being put back together again by those who would do it right. Life was slowly returning back to equilibrium – and yet, nothing was fine. Ginny had spent all summer watching her father work himself to exhaustion as he endeavored to fix everything that Voldemort had broken, watching her brothers struggle to track down the remaining Death Eaters, watching her mother attempt to draw their lives back into a state of normalcy. They all tried to ignore the hole left behind by Fred.
A squirrel scampered across a branch overhead, dislodging a couple of amber leaves and a single orange one that reminded her of glowing embers. Ginny watched the leaves flutter downwards, drifting lazily towards the earth. She wondered what she would have been doing at this very moment, had she not decided to take a year off before completing her seventh year at Hogwarts. Classes would’ve been over for the day by now – she probably would have been making her way down to the Quidditch field for practice, chatting with Demelza and Jimmy, her broom balanced jauntily over her right shoulder.
It would have been amazing to captain the team this year – they had worked together quite well last year and probably would have won the Cup had it not been for the blatant Slytherin favoritism yielded by the Carrows – and McGonagall had offered the post to her. The stern professor had even paid a personal visit to the Burrow one drizzling afternoon in early August to appeal for Ginny to return to Hogwarts, but even an appearance of the professor whom Ginny respected the most wasn’t enough to tempt her back to the school that had sheltered her and given her a home for the past six years. She loved Hogwarts – it was her second home, after the one in her rickety old Burrow – but Ginny couldn’t bear to return to the place, knowing that he wasn’t also somewhere inside those towering stone walls.
Her brothers didn’t understand – she hadn’t expected them to. They all thought she had quite literally lost it and made a point of telling her so every time she saw one of the big stupid lugs. Her mother was disappointed, frustrated and understanding all at once, agreeing to the plan only if Ginny stayed at home with her, and only after she made Ginny promise that she would return to finish her schooling the following year. Her father was the only one who had accepted it without any protestations. He had just smiled that worn, crooked smile of his and wrapped his warm arms around her shoulders like he always did when she was troubled – never asking questions, never critical.
It was madness. Ginny knew that and still she couldn’t bear to return. All because of him. She should have just – no, she couldn’t. Ginny hated it, in a way, hated how a boy – especially that boy – had overturned her entire life, caused her to be unsure and tentative of everything. And she hated how he had done it all with that insufferable smirk plastered across his face.
Ginny screamed in frustration, digging the palms of her hands into her eyes, covering her face. She had stayed home to get away from it all. She had come to her old spot on the black alder tree to be in a place where she had been happy before she knew him, before she had ever looked at him and wondered if there was someone else below that cold, stony exterior. But she couldn’t escape, couldn’t escape the images now swimming before her eyes – glinting grey eyes framed by a set of surprisingly-long lashes, a narrow and aristocratic nose set above lips that almost never smiled, smooth and barely curved collarbones jutting out of skin so pale that it fairly glowed in the moonlight. Every time she closed her eyes, he was there, whether it was the sound of his soft chuckle or the lingering scent of his skin twisting across her body.
Ginny inhaled sharply, shaking her head violently back and forth, trying to dislodge the memories like they were cobwebs clinging to the insides of her skull. She hated this, hated how she couldn’t get away from his cool, calculating gaze – judging her, condemning her.
The memories she had suppressed deep inside her mind came rushing up again, swelling to the brim. Unbidden, a brief sensation overtook Ginny – icy fingers gently caressing her scarred palm, a long arm winding lazily around her waist, soft lips pressing against her shoulders, her back, her mouth, tender and damp and scorching every surface of her skin. Ginny buried her head in her arms as the memories spilled over the edge, bubbling as they ran across her mind, taking over her thoughts, overwhelming her.
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