Two – First Impressions
Dark storm clouds wheeled in large, twisting corkscrews above the Great Hall. Streaks of lightning played across the churning grey, cutting through the gloom and illuminating the vast room with its pale, electric fingers. The candles flickered, throwing long shadows against the back wall as students trudged through the towering entryway. In the dim light, their faces looked haunted – the hollows of their eyes shadowed and the angle of their cheek bones gaunt. Rainwater dribbled down their craned necks and trickled from the bottom of their drenched black cloaks. The water pooled on the uneven floor, forming puddles that ran across crevices of the cool stone like miniature, winding streams.
Ginny stopped at Neville’s side, taking the time to pull her red curls up into a sloppy, dripping bun. A chilly draft wafted upwards as she passed the stairs that led down to the dungeons, and she couldn’t help but shiver, ever so slightly, from something other than the cold.
She slid into her usual spot between Neville and Seamus at the Gryffindor table and waited for the rest of the students to file in. So much had changed over the summer. Seamus was not his usual cheerful, charming self. Dean had not been on the train this year although, hopefully, it was because he had made a run for it and not because the Ministry had gotten to him. Seamus’s brow was furrowed in a deep crease – he was worried about his best friend. They all were.
Ginny looked around the room expectantly, only to see a multitude of faces missing from the crowd – Harry, Ron and Hermione, of course, but also many others like Eliza, the girl who always sat next to her in Herbology, and Thomas, who sometimes would take her study spot in the library, and even the fair-haired Ravenclaw whose name she always forgot but who could perform the best Wronski Feint she had ever seen. The faces that were present were mostly tightly-drawn and anxious, fretting over the terror that controlled the world outside the castle walls or keeping close track of friends inside. The professors, too, were troubled, and Ginny couldn’t help but notice how McGonagall’s eyes darted across the room as she silently took stock of which of her students had returned and, more notably, which of her students hadn’t. Hagrid was also missing, but he was most likely still battling his way across the windblown and stormy lake.
Ginny kept her eyes averted from the plain yet regal, tall-backed chair sitting at the very center of the High Table where the rest of the professors had congregated, overlooking the Hall.
There was a brief commotion at the front doors before the first-years finally straggled in, their eyes huge as dinner plates as they took in the floating wax candles, the assembled rows black-clad students, and the rolling mass of dark storm clouds swelling overhead. A sharp crack of thunder suddenly rang out, rattling the gold goblets, and one of them shrieked, the sound echoing across the Hall. The others merely huddled closer together, shivering as they slowly made their way towards the front of the room. Hagrid tramped in after them, shaking his head and throwing great beads of water over an unfortunate huddle of Hufflepuffs off to his left.
Ginny was surprised at the decently large class size of the first-years – with everything going on, she expected parents to keep their little ones closer to home – and she leaned over to tell Neville so. But just as she opened her mouth, she saw his drop wide open, his brown eyes round as dinner plates as they fixated on something behind her. His face was white as a sheet. Ginny whirled around.
Snape swept into the room, his black cloak billowing out from behind him as usual, flanked on both sides by two hulking, vulture-like individuals – a man and a woman. Ginny’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. She recognized both of them from pictures published in the Quibbler, which she had taken to reading due to a suggestion on Luna’s part. They were Death Eaters, both of them – brother and sister, the Callows or the Carries or something like that.
But her attention was merely momentarily diverted. Ginny’s spine stiffened as she watched the hulking form of Severus Snape stalk its way towards the High Table. She repressed a wave of anger and hatred that surged upwards at the sight of the man who had so recently injured her brother, who had killed one of the greatest wizards she had ever known, who had betrayed them all and caused so many people pain and grief and suffering.
The Hall quieted quickly. It became silent as everyone’s eyes followed Snape stride across the room – some eyes widening in fear when they saw the hook-nosed man, many narrowing in hatred. Snape seemed oblivious to all of this as he approached the High Table, his face devoid of any expression. Then, without a word – without even sparing a glance at the gathered mass of students watching his every move – he lowered himself onto the Headmaster’s chair, the Carrows settling themselves on either side of him.
The Hall erupted in whispers, cries of outrage and, from the Slytherin Table, some unrestrained cheers of victory. Ginny sputtered, her mind unable to put together a complete, coherent thought as she tried to grasp the concept that Snape – Snape – had been chosen to succeed Dumbledore. Snape, the man who had murdered the greatest headmaster – and the greatest wizard – that Hogwarts had ever seen, now honored to follow him? Was this really what life would be like now that Voldemort was in control – the good people dying, the bad usurping and leeching and taking over?
McGonagall approached the stool sitting at the center of the hall, Sorting Hat in hand, tight-lipped and determinedly ignoring the loudening clamor. Ginny stared at her professor, at the spectacles perched on the end of her nose, so much like another pair – a pair shaped like two half-moons – perched on the end of a different, much longer nose that she had seen not so long ago. A nose with a slight bump in the middle, as if it had been broken at least twice before and hadn’t healed properly.
Ginny looked down at the table. Her own image – the golden reflection from her dinner plate– stared back at her, her hair tangled and her eyes hard. She couldn’t take this anymore, couldn’t take being here at this school that was no longer the one she had loved and had called home for the past five years. It was something else entirely – certainly, this wasn’t her beloved Hogwarts. Dumbledore wasn’t here and her brothers weren’t here and Harry wasn’t here. Her entire family was out there, fighting for their lives and instead of being there to help them, she was in here, trapped by the immense stone walls of this wretched school that she no longer recognized, that was run by a murderer and –
She bolted. Without even thinking about it, Ginny was up off of the bench and shoving her way through the crowd of tiny first years, sprinting across the Entrance Hall and out onto the front lawn. Overhead, the wind screamed and icy raindrops splattered onto the wet ground, tears fallen from unforgiving heavens.
Ginny huddled into a ball on the front steps of the castle, wrapping her trembling arms around her knees. Her robes were already soaked, her hair dripping, but she paid no mind. She just sat and stared at the tumultuous clouds above, feeling the rain wash her tears away and wondering how the world got to be this way.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, gazing up at the blackness until – there, over the howl of the wind and the rush of unceasing rain – footsteps. She turned her face to the side, not caring to speak with whoever decided to take a walk on such a terrible night.
“Oh, are you sure this is safe?” The voice was soft but pinched with nervousness, maybe even a bit of fear. It did not sound like the voice of someone Ginny would expect to hear sneaking out across the grounds on a night like this, not until she heard the second voice reply.
“Stop whining. I couldn’t stand another moment in that room with those imbeciles. It’s just a little rain.” The second voice was cold, flat – Ginny would have thought emotionless, had there not been a hard and bitter edge outlining every word. She knew that voice.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the dark scene, where Draco Malfoy was standing on the front steps, his blond hair plastered to his face by the pouring rain, a slight girl with wide, doe-like eyes fluttering tentatively behind him. Ginny recognized her as a fifth-year from Slytherin the same moment that the girl saw Ginny. She raised a perfectly manicured finger, tapping Draco on the back and directing his attention towards the sodden redhead shivering on the steps not a meter away. The customary sneer crossed Draco’s face. Of course – what else would a Malfoy do but sneer in the presence of a Weasley?
“What are you doing out here, you stupid little girl?” he said dismissively, not even bothering to look at her as he addressed her.
Ginny said nothing, instead just glaring at him from behind her curtain of sopping copper hair. He paused for a moment, waiting for a response, and when she didn’t reply, he snorted.
“Go back inside,” he all but spat at her, “inside where you’re surrounded by your pathetic friends and sheltered from the big, bad world.” He turned away. “It’s where you belong.”
She didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the fact that she was drenched and freezing, or that her best friends had run away to try and save the world, or that the school that she loved was now under the control of a murderer, or that anyone in her entire family could be killed at any second, or that some deranged and spiteful supremacist was basically destroying everything that she had ever known – but something inside Ginny Weasley snapped. All of the anxiety and the fury and the terror that had been building up inside her over the past two years suddenly broke out and manifested themselves in a deep, bone-aching hatred for Draco Malfoy. She hated him for everything that he had done and everything for which he stood, and now was the time when she would make him pay for it.
Without thinking, she was on her feet and in front of him, breathing heavily, her nose inches away from his. She clenched her hands into fists, imagining what it would be like to punch him in his slick, pointed face and surprising herself with the amount of satisfaction that came with the thought.
“I despise you,” she growled, her voice quivering with rage. “Don’t ever tell me what to do again, or believe me, I will hurt you.”
Draco didn’t even flinch, instead raising an eyebrow at her. “Little Ginny Weasley, are you threatening me?” he asked softly, his voice barely audible above the lashing rain. “As if you could even touch me.” Another bolt of lightning played across the shadows in the sky, throwing its strange light on his pale skin.
It was the contempt in his voice that did it. Ginny thrust her fist upwards, yearning for the gratifying crack that would come when her fist connected with his slimy face. It never came. He caught her fist – albeit with both hands – and when he spoke, his eyes had turned hard.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” he said calmly, though his grey eyes flashed. Ginny saw, just for a moment, the despair and wrath that burned within those silver orbs and suddenly, irrationally, she thought of a sun-filled morning over the past summer when Remus Lupin had sat down next to her during breakfast and they had discussed the death of Albus Dumbledore over buttered toast and coffee.
“He had to do it, Ginny,” she remembered Lupin saying, his soft voice coated with sadness and something that could be described as pity. “You-Know-Who was threatening to kill his family – he had had no other choice. Dumbledore knew that, and he never condemned him for trying to murder him.”
A sharp crack of thunder brought Ginny back to the present and the bitter, steel eyes of Draco Malfoy. She remembered how weak and exhausted he had looked at the end of last year – how defeated he had looked – and her sudden hatred for Draco Malfoy ebbed away as quickly as it had appeared.
He felt her relax, felt her rage fade, and when he dropped her arm she saw the scorn twisted into every feature on his face. “I knew you didn’t have the courage.”
Ginny didn’t say anything back at all, instead wondering what lengths she would have gone to if someone had threatened to hurt her mother, her father, any one of her exasperating, idiotic brothers. And in her heart, she knew that she would have voluntarily Avada Kedavra-ed Harry freaking Potter if it meant sparing the life of someone that she loved. What a terrible choice to have to make – and what a weight it must have been on his soul, given that Draco Malfoy had a soul. What must it be like to know that you could save to save your parents, but only at the cost of ending another innocent man's life?
Draco took a step back, and she knew that he was unnerved by the lack of response from her, someone who was usually so angry and belligerent. She saw him take in the look of almost-sympathy on her face and she knew that it confused him.
“Come on,” he muttered to the other girl, stalking off into the rainy darkness, not looking back. The fifth-year threw a fearful glance at Ginny and then bobbled after him, her footsteps light and skittish. Ginny sat back down on the front steps, feeling the torrential rain hammer against her skin and watching the pair until they disappeared from sight.
________________________________________
Ginny tilted forward, loving the feel of coarse bark underneath her fingertips. The black alder tree leaned against the wind, its limbs bending ever so slightly.
That rainy night on the front steps of the castle had been the first time anyone on their side had seen him since the disastrous events that ended her fifth year at Hogwarts. The subject of Draco Malfoy had undoubtedly been brought up over the summer within the Order – it was impossible ignore what he had done and what had happened as a result of his actions – but no one, not even Harry, seemed to blame him. No, that particular resentment rested with Snape, who had betrayed them all in the worst way possible.
A lonesome nightingale cooed in the distance, its melancholy song harmonizing with Ginny’s dark mood. She idly snapped a dead twig off of the branch, relishing in the sharp cracking sound it made as the twig broke in half.
Dark storm clouds wheeled in large, twisting corkscrews above the Great Hall. Streaks of lightning played across the churning grey, cutting through the gloom and illuminating the vast room with its pale, electric fingers. The candles flickered, throwing long shadows against the back wall as students trudged through the towering entryway. In the dim light, their faces looked haunted – the hollows of their eyes shadowed and the angle of their cheek bones gaunt. Rainwater dribbled down their craned necks and trickled from the bottom of their drenched black cloaks. The water pooled on the uneven floor, forming puddles that ran across crevices of the cool stone like miniature, winding streams.
Ginny stopped at Neville’s side, taking the time to pull her red curls up into a sloppy, dripping bun. A chilly draft wafted upwards as she passed the stairs that led down to the dungeons, and she couldn’t help but shiver, ever so slightly, from something other than the cold.
She slid into her usual spot between Neville and Seamus at the Gryffindor table and waited for the rest of the students to file in. So much had changed over the summer. Seamus was not his usual cheerful, charming self. Dean had not been on the train this year although, hopefully, it was because he had made a run for it and not because the Ministry had gotten to him. Seamus’s brow was furrowed in a deep crease – he was worried about his best friend. They all were.
Ginny looked around the room expectantly, only to see a multitude of faces missing from the crowd – Harry, Ron and Hermione, of course, but also many others like Eliza, the girl who always sat next to her in Herbology, and Thomas, who sometimes would take her study spot in the library, and even the fair-haired Ravenclaw whose name she always forgot but who could perform the best Wronski Feint she had ever seen. The faces that were present were mostly tightly-drawn and anxious, fretting over the terror that controlled the world outside the castle walls or keeping close track of friends inside. The professors, too, were troubled, and Ginny couldn’t help but notice how McGonagall’s eyes darted across the room as she silently took stock of which of her students had returned and, more notably, which of her students hadn’t. Hagrid was also missing, but he was most likely still battling his way across the windblown and stormy lake.
Ginny kept her eyes averted from the plain yet regal, tall-backed chair sitting at the very center of the High Table where the rest of the professors had congregated, overlooking the Hall.
There was a brief commotion at the front doors before the first-years finally straggled in, their eyes huge as dinner plates as they took in the floating wax candles, the assembled rows black-clad students, and the rolling mass of dark storm clouds swelling overhead. A sharp crack of thunder suddenly rang out, rattling the gold goblets, and one of them shrieked, the sound echoing across the Hall. The others merely huddled closer together, shivering as they slowly made their way towards the front of the room. Hagrid tramped in after them, shaking his head and throwing great beads of water over an unfortunate huddle of Hufflepuffs off to his left.
Ginny was surprised at the decently large class size of the first-years – with everything going on, she expected parents to keep their little ones closer to home – and she leaned over to tell Neville so. But just as she opened her mouth, she saw his drop wide open, his brown eyes round as dinner plates as they fixated on something behind her. His face was white as a sheet. Ginny whirled around.
Snape swept into the room, his black cloak billowing out from behind him as usual, flanked on both sides by two hulking, vulture-like individuals – a man and a woman. Ginny’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. She recognized both of them from pictures published in the Quibbler, which she had taken to reading due to a suggestion on Luna’s part. They were Death Eaters, both of them – brother and sister, the Callows or the Carries or something like that.
But her attention was merely momentarily diverted. Ginny’s spine stiffened as she watched the hulking form of Severus Snape stalk its way towards the High Table. She repressed a wave of anger and hatred that surged upwards at the sight of the man who had so recently injured her brother, who had killed one of the greatest wizards she had ever known, who had betrayed them all and caused so many people pain and grief and suffering.
The Hall quieted quickly. It became silent as everyone’s eyes followed Snape stride across the room – some eyes widening in fear when they saw the hook-nosed man, many narrowing in hatred. Snape seemed oblivious to all of this as he approached the High Table, his face devoid of any expression. Then, without a word – without even sparing a glance at the gathered mass of students watching his every move – he lowered himself onto the Headmaster’s chair, the Carrows settling themselves on either side of him.
The Hall erupted in whispers, cries of outrage and, from the Slytherin Table, some unrestrained cheers of victory. Ginny sputtered, her mind unable to put together a complete, coherent thought as she tried to grasp the concept that Snape – Snape – had been chosen to succeed Dumbledore. Snape, the man who had murdered the greatest headmaster – and the greatest wizard – that Hogwarts had ever seen, now honored to follow him? Was this really what life would be like now that Voldemort was in control – the good people dying, the bad usurping and leeching and taking over?
McGonagall approached the stool sitting at the center of the hall, Sorting Hat in hand, tight-lipped and determinedly ignoring the loudening clamor. Ginny stared at her professor, at the spectacles perched on the end of her nose, so much like another pair – a pair shaped like two half-moons – perched on the end of a different, much longer nose that she had seen not so long ago. A nose with a slight bump in the middle, as if it had been broken at least twice before and hadn’t healed properly.
Ginny looked down at the table. Her own image – the golden reflection from her dinner plate– stared back at her, her hair tangled and her eyes hard. She couldn’t take this anymore, couldn’t take being here at this school that was no longer the one she had loved and had called home for the past five years. It was something else entirely – certainly, this wasn’t her beloved Hogwarts. Dumbledore wasn’t here and her brothers weren’t here and Harry wasn’t here. Her entire family was out there, fighting for their lives and instead of being there to help them, she was in here, trapped by the immense stone walls of this wretched school that she no longer recognized, that was run by a murderer and –
She bolted. Without even thinking about it, Ginny was up off of the bench and shoving her way through the crowd of tiny first years, sprinting across the Entrance Hall and out onto the front lawn. Overhead, the wind screamed and icy raindrops splattered onto the wet ground, tears fallen from unforgiving heavens.
Ginny huddled into a ball on the front steps of the castle, wrapping her trembling arms around her knees. Her robes were already soaked, her hair dripping, but she paid no mind. She just sat and stared at the tumultuous clouds above, feeling the rain wash her tears away and wondering how the world got to be this way.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, gazing up at the blackness until – there, over the howl of the wind and the rush of unceasing rain – footsteps. She turned her face to the side, not caring to speak with whoever decided to take a walk on such a terrible night.
“Oh, are you sure this is safe?” The voice was soft but pinched with nervousness, maybe even a bit of fear. It did not sound like the voice of someone Ginny would expect to hear sneaking out across the grounds on a night like this, not until she heard the second voice reply.
“Stop whining. I couldn’t stand another moment in that room with those imbeciles. It’s just a little rain.” The second voice was cold, flat – Ginny would have thought emotionless, had there not been a hard and bitter edge outlining every word. She knew that voice.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the dark scene, where Draco Malfoy was standing on the front steps, his blond hair plastered to his face by the pouring rain, a slight girl with wide, doe-like eyes fluttering tentatively behind him. Ginny recognized her as a fifth-year from Slytherin the same moment that the girl saw Ginny. She raised a perfectly manicured finger, tapping Draco on the back and directing his attention towards the sodden redhead shivering on the steps not a meter away. The customary sneer crossed Draco’s face. Of course – what else would a Malfoy do but sneer in the presence of a Weasley?
“What are you doing out here, you stupid little girl?” he said dismissively, not even bothering to look at her as he addressed her.
Ginny said nothing, instead just glaring at him from behind her curtain of sopping copper hair. He paused for a moment, waiting for a response, and when she didn’t reply, he snorted.
“Go back inside,” he all but spat at her, “inside where you’re surrounded by your pathetic friends and sheltered from the big, bad world.” He turned away. “It’s where you belong.”
She didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the fact that she was drenched and freezing, or that her best friends had run away to try and save the world, or that the school that she loved was now under the control of a murderer, or that anyone in her entire family could be killed at any second, or that some deranged and spiteful supremacist was basically destroying everything that she had ever known – but something inside Ginny Weasley snapped. All of the anxiety and the fury and the terror that had been building up inside her over the past two years suddenly broke out and manifested themselves in a deep, bone-aching hatred for Draco Malfoy. She hated him for everything that he had done and everything for which he stood, and now was the time when she would make him pay for it.
Without thinking, she was on her feet and in front of him, breathing heavily, her nose inches away from his. She clenched her hands into fists, imagining what it would be like to punch him in his slick, pointed face and surprising herself with the amount of satisfaction that came with the thought.
“I despise you,” she growled, her voice quivering with rage. “Don’t ever tell me what to do again, or believe me, I will hurt you.”
Draco didn’t even flinch, instead raising an eyebrow at her. “Little Ginny Weasley, are you threatening me?” he asked softly, his voice barely audible above the lashing rain. “As if you could even touch me.” Another bolt of lightning played across the shadows in the sky, throwing its strange light on his pale skin.
It was the contempt in his voice that did it. Ginny thrust her fist upwards, yearning for the gratifying crack that would come when her fist connected with his slimy face. It never came. He caught her fist – albeit with both hands – and when he spoke, his eyes had turned hard.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” he said calmly, though his grey eyes flashed. Ginny saw, just for a moment, the despair and wrath that burned within those silver orbs and suddenly, irrationally, she thought of a sun-filled morning over the past summer when Remus Lupin had sat down next to her during breakfast and they had discussed the death of Albus Dumbledore over buttered toast and coffee.
“He had to do it, Ginny,” she remembered Lupin saying, his soft voice coated with sadness and something that could be described as pity. “You-Know-Who was threatening to kill his family – he had had no other choice. Dumbledore knew that, and he never condemned him for trying to murder him.”
A sharp crack of thunder brought Ginny back to the present and the bitter, steel eyes of Draco Malfoy. She remembered how weak and exhausted he had looked at the end of last year – how defeated he had looked – and her sudden hatred for Draco Malfoy ebbed away as quickly as it had appeared.
He felt her relax, felt her rage fade, and when he dropped her arm she saw the scorn twisted into every feature on his face. “I knew you didn’t have the courage.”
Ginny didn’t say anything back at all, instead wondering what lengths she would have gone to if someone had threatened to hurt her mother, her father, any one of her exasperating, idiotic brothers. And in her heart, she knew that she would have voluntarily Avada Kedavra-ed Harry freaking Potter if it meant sparing the life of someone that she loved. What a terrible choice to have to make – and what a weight it must have been on his soul, given that Draco Malfoy had a soul. What must it be like to know that you could save to save your parents, but only at the cost of ending another innocent man's life?
Draco took a step back, and she knew that he was unnerved by the lack of response from her, someone who was usually so angry and belligerent. She saw him take in the look of almost-sympathy on her face and she knew that it confused him.
“Come on,” he muttered to the other girl, stalking off into the rainy darkness, not looking back. The fifth-year threw a fearful glance at Ginny and then bobbled after him, her footsteps light and skittish. Ginny sat back down on the front steps, feeling the torrential rain hammer against her skin and watching the pair until they disappeared from sight.
________________________________________
Ginny tilted forward, loving the feel of coarse bark underneath her fingertips. The black alder tree leaned against the wind, its limbs bending ever so slightly.
That rainy night on the front steps of the castle had been the first time anyone on their side had seen him since the disastrous events that ended her fifth year at Hogwarts. The subject of Draco Malfoy had undoubtedly been brought up over the summer within the Order – it was impossible ignore what he had done and what had happened as a result of his actions – but no one, not even Harry, seemed to blame him. No, that particular resentment rested with Snape, who had betrayed them all in the worst way possible.
A lonesome nightingale cooed in the distance, its melancholy song harmonizing with Ginny’s dark mood. She idly snapped a dead twig off of the branch, relishing in the sharp cracking sound it made as the twig broke in half.
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