–YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY’S BOOK!†(1)
Ginny woke the next morning at her usual time, which explained why she was very surprised to hear her mother yelling at her brothers already this morning. It sounded like they were outside. In her sleepy haze she could hear her mother still hollering at her brothers, but her mum must have toned it down some because she could no longer make out the actual words.
She combed her hair her so mother wouldn’t nag her but didn’t style it, and very few of the kinks from sleeping actually smoothed out, but at least it was tangle-free for the time being. She didn’t bother to get dressed yet this morning either, wanting to see if she could figure out what all the fuss was about downstairs before she was shooed away. Ginny whole-heartedly believed in people minding their own business, but also knew her brothers loved to know terrible things about each other to hold it over one another, and learned from an early age if you don’t play this sibling game you’ll automatically lose.
As Ginny crept very slowly to keep boards from creaking, all that drifted up to the top of the stairs were muffled voices at first. Now everyone was in the kitchen instead of outside, and it sounded like her mum was still telling them off. About three quarters the way down the steps Ginny could make out Fred saying, –It was cloudy, Mum!â€
–You keep your mouth closed while you’re eating!†their mum snapped.
–They were starving him, Mum!†said George.
–And you!†said (2) their mum.
Cloudy? Starving him? Ginny was in disbelief. Did her brothers actually fly to Surrey and back last night to visit Harry? Thinking back to how the twins got real quiet when she mentioned the idea yesterday, Ginny couldn’t figure out whether or not they listened to her and took it to heart or if they had already planned a rescue themselves and she had surprised them by thinking of it also and voicing it aloud. What if they told mum it was her idea in the first place?
Bracing herself just in case, ready to say she was only joking at the time if her brothers tried to bring Ginny in on their punishment, she walked into the kitchen. The first thing she noticed was that there was someone sitting at the kitchen table eating next to her brothers. Someone who didn’t have Weasley red hair.
Holy Freaking Crap! It was Harry Freaking Potter! It had to be! It was the same boy who got off the train with Ron at the end of the school year last spring and everything!
Frozen to the spot for a millisecond, and then realizing she was still in her pajamas, Ginny let out a small squeak of humiliation and raced back upstairs. She barely heard Ron say, –Ginny. My sister. She’s been talking about you all summer.†(3)
Ginny was completely taken by surprise that her brothers did not just go to visit and check on him. They brought him here! HERE! THE Harry Potter was in HER house! THE Harry Potter who saved all of Britain and Europe and quite possibly the world from an evil wizard as a mere baby and again a few months ago saving that stone thingy was eating breakfast made by HER mum off of plates SHE’D washed! Ginny was mortified that she had ignored her mother’s voice in her head this morning which always said to get dressed and look presentable before coming downstairs.
She also grew slightly angry that Ron said she had been talking about Harry Potter all summer. Well, how could she not? Ginny was going to be at Hogwarts with him for the next six years! Her very own brother was his best friend! Her very own brother was worried about him nearly all summer, and the only times Ron and Ginny or the twins and Ginny ever had a conversation it had turned to their concern for Harry Potter. She was sure that anyone who talked to Ron asked him a ton of questions about The Boy Who Lived.
Ginny got up off her floor and got dressed. Harry Potter had been wearing Muggle clothes, although they looked much too big for him. She didn’t know if she should put on her comfortable Muggle clothes or not. What if she had been wearing them wrong somehow? Muggle village girls wore t-shirts with jeans, didn’t they? Ginny had seen pictures of other forms of Muggle clothing from Muggle books her dad had, but nobody in the village that she ever saw wore it. She didn’t own any of those tartan skirts or triangular blanket things or anything of the sort anyway.
While looking through her wardrobe, she heard voices drifting up to her window from outside again. All of her brothers who were at breakfast and Harry Potter were now outside in the garden. They all started digging around in the bushes. It looked like they were going to be out there for some time. Ginny threw on some clothes and pulled her hair back again like she’d been wearing it lately and went down to the kitchen to ask her mum what was going on while everyone else was outside.
Molly had a plate ready for her when she got downstairs, –Mum, why is Harry Potter HERE?†asked Ginny. She glanced out the window to check that the boys were all staying outside.
–Apparently, your brothers rescued him. I have a mind to go to these relatives of his and demand to know why the poor boy was locked in his room all hours of the day for half a week bored, angry, and starving. Imagine if a wizard did such a thing to one of them, there would be an outrage!†Molly went on, –That is no way to a treat a child or anyone for that matter, not ever! I haven’t discussed it yet with your father, but the boy is not going back to Surrey for the rest of the summer. He’ll stay here with people who understand him and we’ll get to the bottom of this underage magic incident.â€
–Harry Potter is going to stay here? With US? For a whole month almost? Mum! We’re going to be famous!†Ginny’s eyes got big as she wondered at what people at school would think when they found out she lived with Harry Potter.
–No, we are not, dear. You’ll keep quiet about all this and mind Harry’s privacy. As far as we are concerned, he is just Ron’s friend staying for a few weeks and that’s all. He’s a person, not a zoo animal to be gawked at, and I expect you treat him as such. You carry on like normal; that’s what I expect of you,†finished her mum.
–Why was he locked in his room? Were they punishing him for doing underage magic and getting a warning from the Ministry?†asked Ginny.
–I don’t know, dear. Usually when I hear about these things it’s because Muggles are afraid,†said her mum.
It was difficult for Ginny to imagine Harry Potter as just another one of her brother’s friends. Getting up to put her dishes away she noticed a beautiful white owl sitting in the perch area with Errol. So this was Hedwig, a beautiful bird, fitting for someone so famous. Of course Harry Potter wouldn’t have a common brown owl. Hedwig was asleep at the moment, probably had been up all night with Harry Potter and her brothers while they flew here last night. Ginny didn’t disturb her and instead glanced out the window and was taken aback.
–Mum? Is Harry Potter de-gnoming our garden?†she called to Molly. –You’re punishing him? For what?â€
–Of course not, dear.†Molly walked out to the living room to stand beside Ginny to watch the boys finish the chore. –I told the boys to do it as a punishment because they could’ve been seen, or worse lost your father his job at the Ministry by exposing his enchanted Muggle car, and he chose to go, outside and help them. He really is actually very polite.â€
Ginny thought about all this. Her brothers came just as close as she did at breaking the International Statute of Secrecy, if not more so. If Ginny had been exposed, her breach never would have brought her own father’s job into question. To top it off Ginny had been still within walking distance of home if anything had gone wrong. Her brothers’ crime was much worse than hers, all things considered, and yet here they were doing their punishment all together, having fun even!
She kept watching, knowing what usually happened during a de-gnoming, and sure enough her brothers didn’t even have to finish their punishment either. After the gnomes figured out they were being kicked out, they all began to walk away to the field on the other side of the garden wall.
That was so not fair! It took Ginny hours and hours to do her punishment chore and she was grounded for a whole week afterwards. She debated bringing this up to her mum, but decided keeping quiet would be better than getting a speech on final parental authority. Her mum already poked fun at her earlier when she was at the table about not being vigilant about being dressed, and lo and behold we had a visitor, which her mum had found utterly hilarious. At the Burrow, what Mum said was the final word and that was that; even Dad became tongue-tied when she started yelling.
Even though her mum had laughed about Ginny’s earlier predicament ,it was only half-heartedly, and Ginny didn’t want to be anywhere near her anger target when Dad got home and found out about the car-flying incident. So Ginny stayed as she was and let the irritation of the injustice simmer away.
Molly had been watching the clock as she usually did in the mornings and switched her gaze to the door when Arthur’s hand switched from Work to Traveling before coming to rest on Home. The front door slammed and outside George shouted, –He’s back! … Dad’s Home!†(4)
Ginny, not ready in the least to treat Harry Potter like just another one of her brother’s friends, made the decision to not be anywhere near him today. She disappeared to the staircase and sat at the top; with nobody in trouble at the moment they all spoke loudly enough she could easily hear her father talking about his raids at work and her brothers asking him questions about Muggle baiting.
Arthur got himself into a predicament commenting on how it was unbelievable that wizards would put enchantments on the most random Muggle artifacts. He was taken by quite the surprise when Molly butted in, –LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?†(5)
Uh oh. It sounded like her mum never knew the car could fly until now. Maybe that’s why the boys got off easy on their punishment. Their mum was waiting to punish the person who made it possible for them to fly it in the first place.
How did Ginny learn it could fly again? Oh yeah, she heard the twins talking about it last summer. That’s right, she promised not to tell if they kept quiet about her accidentally breaking Mum’s old pair of knitting needles. Molly had been in a frenzy to get new ones once school started in order to get the Weasley sweaters done in time for Christmas, especially since she had taken on the extra project of making Harry Potter one last year as well.
Ginny had blamed the rocking chair crushing them, that they had rolled near it on the floor, when in reality she had made a makeshift bow in the tree grove and had used them as arrows because she didn’t want to take the time to make arrows once the bow was finished. Mum’s new needles were enchanted to knit for her, reducing her chore to only designing the sweaters, so Ginny never thought about the incident anymore now that she saw how pleased her mum was with the new ones.
Listening to what was going on in the kitchen, Ginny’s dad was now trying to make a case about the car being perfectly legal to fly as long as it wasn’t intended to be flown. Unfortunately her mum was not interested in the validity of the car flying. Instead she was trying to impress how wrong it was for the boys to have access to it to bring Harry Potter here. Ginny’s dad attempted to use Harry being there and meeting him as an excuse to try to the change the subject but failed.
It began to get awkward hearing her mum bellow at their dad, and Ginny got up to read through one of Ron’s books on charms she had taken from downstairs that he didn’t seem to miss, to avoid Harry Potter and her parents today and practice with one of her switches that wasn’t too dried up yet. Truth be told, she preferred them dried up a bit and rigid, but her mother didn’t want them flaking dirty branch particles in the house and made her throw them away when they weren’t supple anymore. As she stood up, Ron and Harry Potter began to come around the corner at the bottom of the staircase from the kitchen.
Ginny raced to the safety of her room and watched as her brother and Harry Potter walked past through a tiny crack she still had open. She thought it would be enough to have the door most of the way closed, thinking that it wouldn’t draw too much attention if she held very still.
Her heart stopped when Harry Potter’s emerald green eyes looked directly into hers anyway. Spellbound for only a moment, Ginny did the first thing she could think of to break his cheery gaze and slammed her door shut.
–Ginny,†said Ron. –You don’t know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally-†(6)
She leaned her back against her door from within her room and let out a deep breath. He is just another one of Ron’s friends, he is just another one of Ron’s friends, she repeated over and over to herself. She picked up Ron’s book, The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1), but couldn’t concentrate.
This was going to be a very long rest of the summer.
Quote References:
(1) CoS Page 33
(2) CoS Pages 34-35
(3) CoS Page 35
(4) CoS Page 38
(5) CoS Page 38
(6) CoS Page 40