“They’ve been switching up everyone’s mail,” Ron told his parents pointing to Fred and George.
“Ouch!” Mr. Weasley yelped massaging the back of his head when a letter Errol had been carrying shot out of his claws due to his uncontrollable twirling. “I think we’ve caught our culprit right here,” Mr. Weasley announced picking up the letter from the ground.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to test your crazy inventions on Errol?” Mrs. Weasley yelled at her son’s. “Ever since you gave him that ditzy blitz he’s been completely unreliable!”
Fred and George cowered silently in the face of their mother’s rage giving Ron the opportunity to retrieve his letter.
“Looks like you’ve got a letter Harry, best open it to make sure it’s yours,” Mr. Weasley advised.
Harry opened the letter he had assumed was Lupin’s birthday card and was surprised to see that it was actually a letter from Mafalda to Fred and George.
“Mafalda says thanks for the latest shipment and that the box pox is brilliant. Dudley’s convinced he’s caught the chicken pox even though no one else can see the dots.”
“Only chicken pox?” Fred inquired.
“He got off lucky,” George added.
“Too bad he didn’t get the small pox,” Fred continued wistfully.
“What have you done?” Mrs. Weasley advanced on them menacingly.
“Don’t worry mum…”
“It’s only an illusion…”
“…he doesn’t actually get a disease!”
Seeing the nasty glare that Fred shot him for getting them in trouble Harry did some quick thinking, “So who has my letter?”
Mr. Weasley turned over the letter in his hand and opened it up.
“Sorry,” he told Harry, “this isn’t yours. Molly, I believe this belongs to you.”
Mrs. Weasley took the letter and scanned it. Flustered, she looked at Mr. Weasley attempting to explain, “I didn’t know if he would…I had to ask…Sent an invitation…”
Mr. Weasley nodded grimly looking around the room, “I got a letter earlier from Charlie confirming he’ll be here one week before the wedding,” he told them looking penetratingly at Mrs. Weasley.
She looked at all of them in the cramped room and garbled something about rearranging the furniture. Mr. Weasley coughed, a warning cough, in the background.
“Looks like Percy will too,” she told them in a would-be casual voice, “Well I best be off to bed,” she turned and scuttled out of the room refusing to meet her children’s eyes.
“I’ll join you,” Mr. Weasley set off after her.
“We’d better get the extendable ears,” Fred told George, they apparated at once.
“So you can write to love letter to Luna but I can’t be friends with Viktor,” Hermione stated in an accusing voice.
“What’s that? Jealous?”
It looked as if Ron and Hermione were going to pick up where they left off.
“Of Luna? Are you crazy? Why don’t you just take her to the wedding if she’s so great?” Hermione taunted him.
“You know what, I think I will!” he replied storming out of the room.
Several moments passed by in silence after Ron’s exit. Hermione looked stunned. Her eyes seemed to well-up with unshed tears.
“Bathroom…” she said to no one in particular and left the room to be alone.
“I’d better go after her,” Ginny stood up, a letter in her hand. “I believe this is yours,” she handed the letter over to him and left the room.
Hoping for cheer in any form, he turned the letter over and opened it.
Harry,
Happy birthday! I apologize for not being able to come to your party but I had other business to attend to. I hope you are reading this letter far from prying eyes. I have just been to see Professor Dumbledore about you and received quite a shock. I can not believe that you did not share the contents of the prophecy with me. I do not presume to know how you must feel about it but I do hope you know that I am here whenever you need someone. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future.
Moony
So Dumbledore had shown Lupin the prophecy. He probably had assumed that Harry had told those closest to him about it already, although he hadn’t shared it with a soul. Had Ginny read his letter? Did she know about the prophecy? She could have realized it was his letter by default. Deep down, he hoped she’d read it. He needed someone who was constantly around to talk to, someone who would not pity him as Hermione would, or fear his imminent death like Ron was sure to do. As he sat on the edge of Hermione’s bed to think he felt something beneath him. He pulled out a letter. I suppose this is Ginny’s, he thought to himself. She was the only one that had not received her letter. This meant that she could not have known it was his letter by default; she had to have read his letter. He decided that he would wait for her to come to him to discuss it. Nevertheless, his curiosity about her letter got the better of him and he opened it.
Ginny,
It was really wonderful having you over for the weekend. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to your brother’s wedding, really sorry. Anyhow, my mum has a business trip to Spain next week and she said I could invite someone so that I don’t get too bored. I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go since you said your home is so crowded and hectic right now. If so, please send back an owl by tomorrow. If I don’t get an owl from you I’ll have to take Seamus (can you imagine Seamus on an aero plane?) Sorry for not telling you about this earlier…I’ll understand if you can’t come. If you can’t make it, at least save me a seat next to you on the Hogwarts Express!
Love,
Dean
Harry was flabbergasted by the letter he had just read. He felt the heat rise is the back of his neck. Dean had a lot of nerve asking Ginny away for an entire week, to a foreign country no less. He scanned the letter once more growing more irate with each word. This time there would be no Lavender and Seamus with them and Dean’s mother would be working. He felt a bizarre sense of possessiveness surge through him. There was no way Mr. and Mrs. Weasley would let Ginny go. What could that crazy git be thinking!
All the same, why risk it? The plan materialized instantly in his head as he pocketed Dean’s letter along with his own. Truth be told, Ginny would be safest around him, Harry. He was the one who fought Voldemort repeatedly and lived to tell the tale. He had even rescued her from Riddle's memory. He recalled that during their third year, Dean’s boggart had turned into a silly severed hand. There was no way that Dean could protect her as well as he could. Harry instantly decided that it would be best for all those concerned that Ginny stay with him at the Burrow. He didn’t feel an ounce of remorse.
One week later while he and Ron were doing the yard work, Harry ‘found’ a misplaced letter addressed to Ginny. Ron, no longer on speaking terms with Hermione, refused flat out to deliver the letter to Ginny due to the high likelihood that Hermione would be with her. Therefore Harry was forced to go to Ginny’s room to deliver it. He knocked nervously at the door of her room, patting down his hair.
“Come in.”
Here goes nothing.
He turned the knob of the door and stepped into Ginny’s room. Hermione sat cross-legged on her bed. Several books lay open around her. She was in the process of writing an essay for one of her classes. Relief and disappointment seeped over him at the same time as she looked curiously at him.
“Yes, Harry?”
“I was just looking for Ginny.”
“She’s gone with Bill to Diagon Alley.”
“Oh, do you know when she’ll be back?”
Hermione gave him a shrewd look.
“Why don’t you sit down Harry?”
He did as she asked and took a seat on Ginny’s bed. Hermione wore a rather serious look on her face.
She probably wants to talk about Ron.
“I want to know what’s going on with you,” she said without preamble.
“What do you mean?” he asked thoroughly confused.
“It’s very obvious that you’ve changed, Harry.”
She seemed upset with him. He mentally kicked himself for spending all his time with Ron since ‘the fight.’ He knew she cried everyday but Ginny promised to take care of her.
“Hermione, you know I’m just not good with that kind of…girl stuff,” his explanation sounded lame to his own ears.
“It’s just not fair Harry, I expected more from you.”
His conscience gnawed at him.
“I’m sorry.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Did she want him to make it up to her somehow?
Cautiously he asked, “What should I do?”
She shook her head, “Harry if it was anyone else…”
She stopped to collect her thoughts, “You’re both my friends, but I just can’t see how this is going to work out.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Harry I don’t mean to upset you. I know when a guy and girl are friend’s things can become…complicated.”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t work it out,” he persisted.
“True, but when the odds of that happening are slim to none…”
“Maybe,” he interjected, “the two of them should admit their true feelings and get together!”
“If they were both free, perhaps they could.”
“There’s nothing stopping them!” he insisted hotly.
“She has prior commitments! She is already seeing someone else!”
It was the first time he had ever heard Hermione admit to a “commitment” with Krum.
“I don’t know what she sees in that big git!”
Hermione looked as though steam would soon billow out of her ears.
“Dean is a nice boy!”
Dean? Did she have a thing for Dean now?
“What does Dean have to do with you and Ron?”
Hermione seemed to falter, “What? Me and who? What are you talking about Harry?”
“I’m talking about you, Ron, and Victor or Dean. Whoever it is you’re using to torture Ron!”
“Torture, Ron?” Hermione wore a dazed look on her face and shook her head slowly.
“Harry, I was referring to you, Ginny, and Dean.”
A tense silence ensued as Harry attempted to replay the conversation in his head. He wondered how the miscommunication about whom they were discussing had occurred. Before he could thoroughly consider the matter an over exuberant Ginny bound through the door.
“Come in,” she hissed at the door.
Harry’s confusion grew as he considered what sort of a loony bin he’d been thrown into. He heard a small whoosh before a sharp stab of pain shot through the back of his head. A floating wooden box had collided with him.
“Harry! Are you alright?” Bill appeared over him looking quite concerned.
“I’m fine,” he reassured them signaling for them to give him some space as he sat up.
“What’s in that thing?”
“China,” Ginny told him hastily.
“What?”
“A set of dining ware that, I hope, you haven’t broken!”
“What’s it for?”
“It’s my gift to Fleur,” Bill chimed in, “On our first date we were walking along in Diagon Alley and she went mad over this set of china that reminded her of the set her grandmother has.”
“I know what your thinking,” Ginny misinterpreted Hermione’s continued silence, “I didn’t think China would be the best present for Bill to give her either but when you hear his story I think you’ll agree that the sentimental value makes this perfect.”
“I’ll just leave you to it,” Harry said as he pushed himself off the floor.
“Don’t you want to hear the story Harry?”
“Next time Gin,” he promised, “For now I better get some ice on this head before it swells up any more.”
“I didn’t know it could,” Ginny retorted tartly.
He couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his face at the way she was smarting off at him.
“What was it you wanted from Ginny?” Hermione’s question snapped him back into reality.
He hesitantly fingered the letter still lingering in his pocket.
“Can’t remember,” he fibbed.
The likelihood that Hermione would put two and two together if he gave Ginny the letter now made him far too uneasy.
“Well if you get your memory back, you know where I’ll be,” Ginny teased.
As he walked down the stairs something Hermione had said continued to trouble at him.
Harry, I expected more from you.