Chapter Five: September First

Part One: Final Days of Summer

The following Saturday was Percy’s birthday. Ginny wrote him a birthday poem and drew the words so the letters could be colored in. She spent a couple of hours making sure every letter was neat and tidy the way Percy wrote. She could never mimic his hand writing, but he would at least appreciate the craftsmanship.

When she colored in the words by hand she randomly changed the color of every individual letter to deliberately annoy her extremely organized brother. She didn’t know what Ron, Harry, or her father did for him but her mother once more cooked a rather large feast and the twins set off fireworks again. This time in Percy’s favorite colors purple and white.

At his dinner feast, before everyone began eating Ginny presented the card to her brother:

Neat, tidy, and orderly is he,
My brother, who does look out for me.
Studious, and well-read you’ll agree,
I hope he becomes what he wants to be!

“It’s beautiful, Ginny,” said Percy genuinely. “You have the colors completely random on purpose, don’t you?”

“YUP!” she said grinning mischievously. Even though she was able to talk in front of Harry now, she still kept her words short and to the point. Percy made to pass the card around the table for everyone to see, but Ginny snatched it back, “Mum and dad have already seen it. It’s for you to keep.”

“Ok,” and he laid it down next to his plate where it stayed for the rest of the dinner. Ginny did not need her other brothers taking the mickey out of her, especially in front of Harry, for writing a poem.

After the celebrations, Ginny’s curiosity about her wand finally got the better of her and she started pulling her things from Diagon Alley out of their shopping bags. She opened her school trunk and very carefully packed the telescope that her father finished putting on a new tripod. The scales went into it with the telescope along with all the miscellaneous items like parchment, quills, and potions ingredients. She set aside her school robes to take downstairs to her mother. Molly told her to bring down everything that would need patching up before term began while Ginny had been helping to prepare the feast for Percy’s birthday.

She pulled out all of the sleek Lockhart books and put them into the trunk with the other items ready to go. Then she slowly began to sort through her second hand books for her other classes. The ones that did not need to be repaired went into the trunk, the ones that required a bit of mending went back into the cauldron which also needed to be brought downstairs. The temporary levitation charm her mum had put on it in Diagon Alley had long since wore off, so Ginny left it where it was and decided to just put everything inside it that needed to be worked on ready to be dragged back downstairs in the morning.

Finally, she came to her last book. It was so roughed up, the binding was coming off the back and it flopped about quite a bit. Ginny began to put it in a proper book-looking pile when out of nowhere, a smaller book fell out of it. She delicately placed the mangled text book back in her cauldron and picked up the smaller book. The black cover was a little beat up, and inside all the pages were empty. No, not all the pages, flipping through again Ginny saw on the first page was a name, T. M. Riddle and the other pages had date marks. It was an empty diary. The second hand book her mum found for her must have belonged to this Riddle, who left the diary in the book. The year was from fifty years ago.

A little worse for the wear, the diary was not in need of repair. However, instead of putting it in her trunk or the cauldron Ginny stood up from her floor and laid it on her bed to look at later. Then she scooped up her robes and tossed them into the cauldron to go downstairs with the rest of her broken hand-me-downs. Finally, she pulled out what had been on her mind since leaving Diagon Alley… her wand.

Ginny went over the wrist movements her mum had been having her practice as far back as she could remember with the new wand. She loved the way it felt through the snappier movements. It didn’t wobble at all. Now that her mum wasn’t making preparations anymore for anyone’s birthdays she would be having her practice in the mornings again.

She was careful not to think any thoughts of producing magic while waving her wand around. Young children and those that didn’t know any better but accidentally performed magic weren’t given warnings. Now that she was eleven and owned a wand though the trace was officially on her and any magic where she lived would be detected. Living in a wizard home at least provided some shade from the Ministry, not like where Harry lived and apparently even the magic of a House-elf was blamed on the only wizard who lived in the vicinity. The Ministry could only detect magic, not the caster, so they relied on wizard parents to monitor their children.

The following morning Ginny’s mum spent nearly half an hour watching her practice wrist movements with her new wand. Molly was very impressed by Ginny’s upswing in doing it correctly more often than not now she was using something that matched her preference. After Arthur came home from work he heaved the cauldron full of items needing mending to the living room where it sat while the family breakfasted. Afterwards, Molly produced a roll of Spellotape from a junk drawer and showed Ginny how to mend and reinforce the bindings on her text books.

Her mum put all of her books in a pile and told Ginny to leave them there when she wasn’t working on them so they wouldn’t be in the way of daily traffic and then set her robes in a basket next to them. With the cauldron empty, the two of them began cleaning it together. They soaped it out by hand first and used a soft cloth to dry it with. The surface was still severely scratched but her mum had a recipe for pewter polish ready to go.

After they finished making the outside shiny and perfect again, her mum tested the original charms on the cauldron. The levitation charm came back sparingly and the heat resistant charm balked as well.

“Why does a cauldron need to be heat resistant?” Ginny asked her mum, “Aren’t they supposed to get hot?”

“Yes, but pewter doesn’t seep into magic like other metal alloys can and it's a better metal for students to use. However, it has a very low melting point,” replied Molly. “Sticking a Muggle pewter kettle over a fire will result in a puddle of hot metal. Spelled heat-resistant, a pewter cauldron shouldn’t interfere with student mishaps and it allows you kids to have longer simmering times to fix mistakes or add ingredients.”

Her mum wasn’t pleased with the levitation charm. Molly pointed her wand at the cauldron and said quite forcefully, “Scourgify!” to clean and banish any residual old potions, dust, and soap from inside the cauldron. After a moment it emitted a barely noticeable glow for a fraction of a second and then easily floated up to chest height for Ginny. She pushed the cauldron away and it gently floated a few inches from within her grasp and back again. “Well, that at least all appears to be in order now,” said Molly.

Next her mum used a charm that shot heat out of the end of her wand. Ginny saw that she was ever so slightly melting the interior surface and dissolving away all the scratches on the inside. Afterwards her mum went over it with a short-lived freezing charm to keep the re-surfaced form exactly as she left it until the metal cooled completely on its own. “Your father’s friend at the Ministry taught me that one when I was agonizing over throwing out my own cauldron I’ve had since I was a girl back when Bill and Charlie were children,” said Molly proudly. It didn’t look as shiny on the inside as the outside did with its polish layer but it did look brand new again.

“Why couldn’t we just polish the inside?” asked Ginny. A few swipes with a cloth seemed like a lot less work than slowly covering every square inch with spells.

“Polish just fills in the scratches temporarily, and you don’t want it mixing with your potions,” said her mum. “This way the abrasions are actually gone and there is no where for your potion residue to sit and hide from a soapy washing.”

They left the cauldron alone to let the metal finish re-hardening and over the following week Ginny helped her mum wrangle her brothers one by one so all the Weasleys could have their robes tailored. In years past Molly would fold lengthy robes so that every fall she simply had to undo the stitching and let more down in the arms and legs or out in the torso. Then she would use a mending spell to get rid of the lines of thread holes the boys had worn in over the past year. Ginny tried on all three sets of robes nearly every day until her mum thought they matched the pictures in Witch Weekly she was subscribed to featuring a few back to school articles.

The original heat-resistant charm must have also come back after the resurfacing stabilized the interior because her mum finally deemed the cauldron satisfactory when she tried to heat it to melting again. This time though the cauldron had nicely boiled the water her mum poured into it to test with. Ginny finished adding Spellotape to her text books and had put them back into her cauldron one at a time and then grasped it by the handles to lightly pull it to a hover position and took it to her room to pack with the rest of her Hogwarts stuff.

In her room, Ginny put her books, robes and cauldron into her trunk. She pulled out all her wizard day robes from her wardrobe which she’d patched over the summer while grounded and packed them as well. She didn’t see an occasion that would require any of them before leaving for King’s Cross in a few days’ time.

All that was left were her Muggle clothes to sort through and to decide what she wanted to take. Ginny decided to leave that task for another day though. Instead she picked up the old diary and leafed through it again.

Every night since she found it she had picked it up and rifled through its pages absentmindedly. At first she felt guilty about having it, knowing it had belonged to someone named T.M. Riddle. But after a few nights she decided that since it was fifty years old and nothing was written inside, it was fortuitous that it was now in the hands of someone who could actually use it.

Ginny didn’t see herself as a writer exactly, but she liked to come up with little four liners to describe what was going on around her. These were usually for her own amusement though and not really shared with anyone else. Giving one to her brother for his birthday was a rare public display.

She decided to work on artfully covering T.M. Riddle’s name with her own and practiced on scratch paper first. When she was confident that she could cleverly cover his name with her unsteady makeshift calligraphy she began to ink her name over his own. About half way through, she noticed that the ink in the G of her name began to disappear. She waited and sure enough, every stroke of her quill turned lighter and lighter until it was gone. Like a paper left out in the sun for months at a time and the effects fast forwarded until it looked blank again.

Enthralled, Ginny began to draw squiggles all over the first page with T.M. Riddle’s name on it. Sure enough all of it disappeared. She flipped to random pages and made similar messy lines all crisscrossing over each other each. Every single one slowly disappearing. She began to draw pictures: a smiling sun, a rainbow pouring from a cloud, a crooked version of the Burrow. All of them disappeared. The diary seemed to have an endless capacity of absorbing the ink.

Finally, confident that she could write the words and nobody would see them again, Ginny wrote a stanza about Abellios that she thought up earlier that day while out in the woods with him and the other squirrels.

His fur is very sleek and dark,

A clear contrast with snow,

I found you when you were alone,

My baby squirrel, Abellios!

Pleased, she wrote it quickly so that she could see the poem in its entirety before it disappeared. After the last drop of ink vanished Ginny was about to put the diary turned poetry book on the nightstand and get ready for bed, when she noticed some ink starting to seep back onto the paper. Slowly a message scrawled across the page she was open to in the very ink she had just used and thought was gone for good.

“That was delightfully, sweet. Tell me more about Abellios.”

Ginny slammed the book shut and tossed it into the back of a drawer. Someone was watching her write in the diary after all! Someone read her words that were meant only for herself! Shaking a bit, she changed into her pajamas and got ready for bed.

The next morning Ginny was sitting at breakfast after her father had come home. He was going on about one of his raids where a pull-out couch ended up in a second hand shop that had been spelled to roll back up after Muggles had already laid down upon it. It wasn’t outrageously dangerous per se but required quite a few task forces from different departments to show up.

“Dad, why are some spells on Muggle things outlawed but others aren’t? Like… why is my cauldron allowed to float?” Ginny struggled to ask her father questions she wanted answered but tried to seem curious rather than worried. Despite the scare the night before she wasn’t ready to give up on her diary just yet.

“A spell is only outlawed if it allows the enchanted object to make its own decisions, or if it deliberately harms an unsuspecting victim,” he replied. “A levitation charm only levitates, and cauldrons aren’t so much a Muggle artifact anymore as they are a wizard’s anyway.”

“What about magical animals? Can’t they think for themselves?” asked Ginny.

“Yes, but with magical animals you can see where they keep their brains, besides they aren’t spelled, they are born magical,” he said knowledgeably. “Anything born with a brain and you can see where it keeps it, should be allowed to think for itself,” laughed her father. This prompted another conversation between her parents about the under-representation of magical creatures such as Centaurs and House-elves at the Ministry. She had heard all this before though and went back upstairs to her room before her brothers came down.

Ginny knew where her parents stood on such matters and one-hundred percent agreed with them about magical creatures, but she didn’t need to hear it rehashed out. She was still worried about her diary.

Sitting in her room later, Ginny had pulled the diary out of the drawer and now she sat cross-legged, staring at it while it laid harmlessly opposite her at the foot of her bed. She had been deciding how best to figure out if the person in the diary was a threat or not and decided in the end that she would simply ask it straight out.

Fingers shaking only slightly, she opened the diary. The pages were blank as ever. She dipped her quill into a dark blue ink and began to write, “Who are you?” A reply came back almost instantly.

“My name is Tom Riddle.”

“All I know about you is that your name starts with G I N.”

“How did you find my diary Gin?”

Ginny realized the diary must only know what you write in it and quickly made a note to herself not to tell it any more specifics until she figured out if it was dark magic or not. “It was inside a book I bought for school at second hand store.”

“Interesting.

"It shouldn’t have been in a second hand shop.”

Confused about the diary's "tone of voice," Ginny decided to get as much information from it as she could before deciding whether or not to tell her father about it. “How old are you? Are you a wizard? What are you? Are you trapped in the book? Are you going to try to hurt me?”

“Yes, I was a wizard, I attended Hogwarts. Now, I am a memory.”

“I don’t know what year it is, so I don’t know how old I am.”

“I suppose you could say I am ‘trapped’ in this book, though I would say I am not.”

“Now, do be polite. Who are you?”

Ginny was conflicted. She didn’t want to tell the diary any more about herself just yet but at the same time she wanted more answers. “My surname is Weasley. Are you going to try to hurt me? You didn’t answer that one.”

“Weasley? I’ve known many Weasleys. Very old wizarding family.”

“No, I have no intentions of hurting you, my dear Miss Weasley.”

“How do you know I’m a MISS Weasley?” Ginny asked Tom in the diary.

“Rainbows and sunshine my dear. You drew pictures of rainbows and sunshine.”

“You also wrote a poem, about a baby squirrel.”

“Tell me more about Abellios.”

An odd sensation of happiness overcame Ginny as she wrote out Abellios’ story. How she found him in the orchard with no other squirrels around. How her mum let her keep him in the house. How she trained him to live outside where he’s been for the last three years. How sad she was that she couldn’t take him with her to Hogwarts this fall. How her parents couldn’t afford to give her any pet to take with her to Hogwarts. When she was finished, Ginny couldn’t believe how quickly it had all poured out.

“I couldn’t afford anything of my own at all during my first year at Hogwarts.”

“I grew up in an orphanage and the school bought all my things for me.”

“No extras here either.”

“That’s terrible!” Ginny genuinely replied. Now that she was no longer writing about Abellios, that happy feeling was ebbing away and she was very empathetic towards Tom the orphan. “So, why are you in a diary?”

“I was simply trying an experiment for the first time.”

“I made a complete copy of everything I knew about the world and preserved it here.”

“In this diary, I am eternally sixteen years old.”

“And I only remember what I knew up until the day I made this.”

“So, you aren’t actually trapped then?” Ginny wrote back. “I’m just talking to a copy of a real person? Someone who in real life is sixty-six years old now? The real you might still be alive somewhere!” Ginny felt a little intimidated that she was talking to a sixteen year old boy, but resolved to not make it into a big deal.

“Well, I should hope so.”

“Otherwise, this version of me may be all that is left.”

Ginny felt sad that that could be a possibility. “I could do some research at school. If I’m not too busy with homework. I could look you up and see what happened to you.”

“Would you take me to school with you?”

“I could help you, with your work. All the teachers said I was quite gifted.”

“Really?” Ginny wrote back. “That would be excellent.”

Over the following day Ginny learned that Tom was a half-blood, that he’d reunited with his surviving Muggle father and grandparents and that they had been very surprised to meet him. He didn’t have any memories after their first meeting though because he had chosen to preserve this diary right after what he termed the happiest day of his life. Ginny was happy that he had reunited with his family after so long. She found out that Tom was an only child and Ginny told him all about how her brothers would tease her endlessly, but that she wouldn’t have it any other way. She couldn’t imagine life without any of them.

She told him about Ron’s friend Harry Potter who was staying with them for the remainder of the summer and how she had learned not to be so star-struck around him over time since he was so popular everywhere he went. Tom teased her back that maybe she was more than star-struck, maybe she actually liked him. Ginny furiously wrote back a denial, but she could see Tom’s amusement when he wrote that he was sure she would find other people at Hogwarts to be attracted to and then this Harry Potter wouldn’t seem like such a big deal to her.

When she replied back, she mentioned that what he said reminded her a lot of what her mother told her when Harry first came to stay with them. That Harry was just another of her brother’s friends. It didn't occur to Ginny at the time that Tom Riddle wouldn't know anything about Harry Potter and his defeat of You-Know-Who. Then she told him about how he brought his Nimbus 2000 broom with him and that she really wanted to try it but was too embarrassed to ask.

“You know, you could just take it like you do your brothers’ brooms.”

“This Harry would never to know.”

Ginny got that same feeling of elation that she did when she wrote about Abellios’ story. Her mind slightly hazy, she got up and drifted downstairs. All of her brothers were out front, so when she went out the back door, nobody noticed her disappear down to the broom shed. Ginny opened the door and there it was. Harry’s Nimbus 2000. She reached out her hand to touch it. As soon as she grasped the handle she could feel it begin to hum and for the smallest of seconds her instinct to put it down and walk away reared up. Because it belongs to Harry! Her guilty-self tried to stop her only to be squashed away again when she saw that it hovered just a little higher than she would have liked to be able to mount it.

Once she was in the air, flying cleared all the haze from Ginny’s mind. She was still guilty that she had taken something without asking first. Her moment of joy dwindled away and she silently landed in front of the broom shed and shoved the Nimbus back inside.

Confused, but mostly angry with herself. She marched back up to the house. There her mother wrangled her into helping prepare their last dinner before leaving for King’s Cross tomorrow. It was a welcome distraction as she made Harry’s favorite treacle pudding, an old recipe from her mum’s side of the family. Fixing the pudding helped Ginny calm down from her horror at herself. She couldn’t think what would have possessed her to take out Harry’s broom without permission.

All through dinner Ginny’s stomach was in a tighter knot than it had ever been in while she worried about her invitation letter from Hogwarts. Shaking internally from both guilt and shame, it was difficult for her to enjoy the last of her twin brothers’ fireworks, this time red and blue stars after the meal. Afterwards, she headed back to her room on the pretense of needing to pack last minute items, and then she quietly closed her door to sit by herself and reflect on her uncharacteristic behavior.

A closed door, however, was meaningless to Molly, who popped her head inside Ginny’s room not a half hour later to check on her packing progress.

“You have everything all set, my dear?” her mother asked gently as she bustled over to Ginny’s trunk to check the contents herself.

“Yes. Everything on the list, and everything I couldn’t possibly live without while I’m away. Just like you said,” Ginny attempted a winning smile for her mum but her face betrayed her.

“First-year jitters getting to you?” her mum asked patiently.

“I guess so,” Ginny replied.

"My last baby is going to school!" her mum sniffed.

Ginny wasn’t ready to hash over her emotions after taking Harry’s broom without permission, and she certainly didn’t want that to be her last memory with her mother before leaving.

“Well, your father’s going to have a little chat with you before bed, just like he did with your brothers,” said her mum. “One of his little traditions in this family. Now you put the last of this laundry I brought you away and I’ll go get him.”

“Okay.”

Ginny sorted through the last of the clothes her mum brought her and put most of it in her wardrobe to be left behind. She picked out what she planned on wearing to King’s Cross in the morning and prepared an entire set of Hogwarts robes to change into on the train. Then she closed her wardrobe for the last time until she returned home next spring and heard a knock at her door.

Arthur Weasley popped his head into Ginny’s room and beckoned her to sit next to him on her bed. “I’ve spent nearly this whole day looking around the house and imagining it without anyone here but your mother and I, and I still can’t see it,” he began. Ginny smiled, she knew her parents were both sad and happy that all of their children were now officially Hogwarts students. “Now, I’m going to tell you the same things I’ve told all your brothers, and ask you the same questions I asked each of them. Ok?”

Ginny nodded.

“First off,” Arthur began, “don’t try to be friends with people who ultimately make you unhappy. The kids you go to school with, are going to be around for the rest of your life. Take it from me, surround yourself with people who love you for who you are and help build you up; and furthermore, love those people for who they are and do your best to help build them up to their best selves. Okay?”

Knitting her eyebrows together, Ginny replied, “Okay,” this was going to be heavier than she anticipated.

“Secondly, Hogwarts, is first and foremost a school. I know you are going to make friends, and you’re going to want to do activities with them, but as a parent I must tell you that your school work is your first priority. Am I clear?”

Ginny smiled, “Yes, dad.”

“Good, now along with that, Hogwarts is secondly your home away from home. You got your letter, no matter what anyone will ever say to you, no matter what House you are placed in, you belong there okay?”

Ginny thought about her brothers, each one of them looked forward to going back to school every year. Even Ron after his first year, which ended in a scary sounding disaster. “Okay.”

“Now, tell me honestly. Just out of curiosity, which House do you think you belong in?” asked her father.

“I want to be in Gryffindor, like everyone else,” said Ginny immediately.

“Do you want to be in Gryffindor because everyone else in the family has been in Gryffindor, or do you think that’s where you belong?” asked Arthur gently.

Ginny racked her brain for all the qualities of the different Houses from the stories she’d heard from her brothers. “Gryffindors are brave, Ravenclaws are smart, Hufflepuffs are hard-workers, and Slytherins are … mean?” she finished questioningly.

“Close,” replied her father. “Gryffindors are chivalrous, dauntless in the face of a challenge, and always stand up for what they believe is right. Ravenclaws are curious, about all sorts of fields and satisfying that curiosity most often leads to their renowned intelligence. They are also extremely creative, original, and believe in accepting everyone’s individuality. Hufflepuffs are hard-working yes, but they are more than that. They are fiercely loyal to the people they care about, they are absolutely tenacious when attempting to achieve a goal, they are also incredibly kind, tolerant, and utterly believe in fairness."

"Now, as for Slytherins. I can see where your brothers see them coming off as mean, but it only seems that way on the outside. Slytherins excel at not only amassing useful information, but at using their intelligence. They are resourceful in the face of an obstacle, they have the capacity to both think outside of the box when necessary and maintain traditions, and leadership is a natural desire for them. Slytherins don’t settle for just doing what they love most. Slytherins want to be the best at what they do, and so sharing that same belief, they do all they can to help each other achieve some sort of status in life. And they expect that same regard in return. The other Houses aren’t nearly so exclusive which is why your brothers see Slytherins the way that they do. Now, after hearing all that, tell me where you think you belong.”

Ginny felt only a little uncomfortable admitting to her father what she thought, but decided to name the House that she identified the most characteristics with, “To be honest, I think I can see myself in any of the Houses after you said all that. But if I had to pick, I guess Hufflepuff?”

Her father smiled at her, “That is exactly the right answer, not the Hufflepuff part, the first part. Everyone has some of all of the other House’s qualities inside of themselves. Now, why do you think Hufflepuff over all the others?”

“Well, I think I’m resourceful, like the twins, and that’s a Slytherin quality. But I also think that I always say and back up what I believe is right like a Gryffindor, and I know I’m always curious about all sorts of off the topic details in my studies like a Ravenclaw. But I really like what you said about Hufflepuffs being fiercely loyal and kind and utterly fair,” said Ginny.

Her father smiled, “Bill said he was going to be a Ravenclaw for sure, Charlie a Hufflepuff, Percy worried he would be put in Slytherin for his ambition to be in the Ministry, and Ron didn’t have a clue except that he absolutely didn’t want to be in Slytherin after some of your other brothers’ stories. Only the twins knew for sure they were destined to be Gryffindors. They both had talked about it since they found out your mother and I were there and before Percy even started school.”

“Really?” asked Ginny. It never occurred to her that any of her brothers considered being anything other than a Gryffindor. “But, what if I’m not a Gryffindor?” and then she asked one of the questions that had haunted her while she waited for her invitation letter, “What if, I’m the only Weasley in this family that isn’t a Gryffindor?” She had just thought of her mother’s math lessons again and remembered that the odds of seven kids in one family being in the same house were not in her favor. She looked up at her father as he put his reply together.

“I’m going to tell you the last thing I told each of your brothers. Your mother and I will still love you and be proud of you, no matter which House you are chosen for,” he said. “Now, is there anything else on your mind?”

For one split second, Ginny thought about showing her father the diary. It was his area of expertise after all. But she had already grown fond of Tom and he was just a copy of a memory after all and she didn’t want him taken away with no chance of getting him back before she left tomorrow. So she shook her head no, and gave her dad a weak smile.

After her father bade her good night, Ginny had a hard time falling asleep. Sure she was nervous about her train ride tomorrow, but she was also still guilt ridden. She needed to tell someone what she did who would tell her that was wrong so she could get on with making amends.

In the flickering light of her relit candle, Ginny once again opened the diary to write to Tom. “Dear Tom, after I told you about Harry’s Nimbus 2000, the weirdest thing happened. I remember being excited that one was in our broom shed, and being embarrassed about asking to have a go on it. Then all of a sudden, I couldn’t think of anything except riding it. I felt like, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else until after I knew exactly what it felt like to be in the air on the Nimbus. I don’t know what came over me, Tom. It was like I couldn’t control what I thought about or what I did. I’m a horrible person.”

Ginny waited for Tom’s reply, and started to wonder if the “memory” needed to sleep and that perhaps she just woke him. But sure enough, ink started to trickle back onto the page, and Tom’s reply was not what she was expecting.

“Did you enjoy riding the Nimbus?”

“Well, yes.” She wrote back, “but that’s not the point. I didn’t ask. I feel terrible.”

“Did anyone find out that you took it without asking?”

“No.”

“Did you damage it?”

“No.”

“Then I fail to see why this is such a big deal.”

“You found an opportunity to do something you dearly desired to do.”

“I am quite proud of you.”

Ginny was taken aback that anyone would be proud of what she did, but she thought back to what she discussed with her father about feeling close to Hufflepuffs, “No, it was still wrong not to ask. I should feel bad.”

“Do you feel bad when you take your brothers’ brooms out?”

“No, but we’ve always shared our things with each other. It’s different with Harry, he’s not my brother,” Ginny wrote back.

“Does your brother see him as a brother? Do you parents treat him like a son?”

“Well, yeah. Harry’s an orphan, just like you. His parents died when he was a baby, their whole house blew up actually. Nobody knows how Harry survived, but that’s why he started school so famous already. He’s the Boy Who Lived.”

“Well, there you have it. Everyone sees him as family. You should too.”

“Don’t think on what you did as wrong.”

“Think of it as treating Harry like you would any other brother.”

“Perhaps that will get you over his crush on him.”

“I don’t have a crush on Harry Potter, Tom! He’s just famous!” Ginny wrote back, Tom didn’t send a written reply but Ginny swore she could feel him smirking even though she couldn’t see him.

Writing to Tom had the effect Ginny was looking for, albeit in a very indirect way. She confided in someone who ultimately made her feel better. “Thank you, Tom. I still think that I was in the wrong. But I suppose, what you say makes sense. If I treated Harry as one of my brothers like my father and mother sort of suggested I try to do, then I shouldn’t feel bad for taking his broom out for a ride.”

“You see? And now you can go off to Hogwarts with a clear conscious.”

“So, have you decided to bring me with you?”

“Of course I’m going to bring you to school with me, Tom. You’re like a friend I can carry around in my pocket,” Ginny replied.

“Most excellent. Now pay attention.”

“Write to me as soon as you can after you get settled.”

“I know tomorrow will be a very busy day and class days will be as well.”

“So promise me that you will set aside a good long chunk of time on the first Saturday.”

“I want to hear about everything that happens at school. Okay?”

“The first Saturday. I hope I’ll talk to you before that, but I got it. I’ll find time to write to you on weekends for sure,” Ginny was excited that Tom wanted to keep talking to her. She vaguely wondered how he would know whether or not it was a Saturday when she wrote to him, but decided he was right that the other days would she would be busy with classes.

Ginny said goodnight and put the diary down on her nightstand. Then she blew out her candle and fell asleep almost instantly.

Part Two: September First

On the morning of the first of September Ginny had a stomach full of butterflies. The Weasley house was chaos, and as much as everyone tried to be prepared the night before it still took hours to get the car packed. Ginny’s mum had a simple stack of toast and eggs ready for everyone to snack on while other family members helped each other bring down school trunks.

Arthur started taking trunks out to the car one by one and when the twins burst into Ginny’s room to heave her trunk downstairs she volunteered to get all the boys’ broomsticks from the shed outback like she did for them every year.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Molly called to Ginny, she had almost made it out the backdoor to the broom shed.

“Out to get the broomsticks…,” she said hesitantly.

“Oh, no you aren’t!” said her mother, “You have to finish packing for yourself this year. The boys can pack their own brooms. Go feed the chickens, they’ve been bothering your father every time he takes a trunk to the car.” With that Molly turned around and filled the sink with water by magically turning on the tap, floated the dish soap over to it, and laid out bread to make sandwiches for the train ride all with a few flicks of her wand.

Ginny sighed as her mother waved her away. She really wanted to hold the Nimbus again, but instead she filled a sack with feed and went out the backdoor to find the pesky birds. She walked all the way around to the front of the house where she found them trailing after her father who had just gone into the front door.

Throwing the corn grain well away from the door but still in view, Ginny began to call to the chickens. All but one of them, the one who nearly followed Arthur into the house, ran over to her in a flurry of feathers and clucking noises. The one on the porch noticed the other chickens flocking towards Ginny and started to amble its way back down the front steps. Arthur reappeared, carrying Ginny’s trunk. Just noticing the stray chicken, Ginny began calling it more urgently, but it was too late. Her father was already at the bottom of the steps and the chicken wasn’t quite fast enough to get out of his way.

The chicken connected with the same foot Arthur was using to step off the last step, and trying not to squish it, he and the trunk pitched forward. Ginny watched in horror as her father ended up kicking the chicken off to the side while her trunk flew forward out of his hands. The trunk was heavy however, and didn’t fly very far and still unsteady, her father promptly tripped right over it. Her dad planted his face straight into the dirt in the front walk-way and immediately the kicked chicken ran over to peck at his arms in anger.

Her father yelled quite a few swear words when he told Ginny to call the chicken off of himself. She ran over and scooped it up away from him and Arthur rubbed his neck as he got up to put her trunk into the car. After she set the chicken down with the others to feed, she quietly skulked back around to the backdoor and into the kitchen again.

“Ginny! Are the chickens out of your father’s way?” hollered her mother.

“They are now!” Ginny called back, then she heard her mother telling the boys one by one to go get their own brooms this year. She ran up to her room and did a last check for things she wanted with her in her dorm room. Her bed was made, wardrobe was checked last night, vanity top was empty, bookshelf organized and books piled to read during breaks were on the nightstand by her bed. Her mum called for everyone to get loaded into the car as her dad loaded Harry and Ron’s trunks last, Ginny climbed into the front with her mum.

“Dad, stop. I gotta go back and get my box of Filibuster fireworks!” George said. He popped out and returned within a couple of minutes. While he was gone, Fred asked Ginny how all the brooms fit together this year with the extra trunks.

“Didn’t you pack yours?” Molly asked, “I told you boys to pack your own things this year. Ginny had to worry about her own luggage today.”

In disbelief, Fred got out too, to fetch his Cleansweep.

The car was trundling past the village and they were near the highway when Ginny started doing a mental check and decided she couldn’t wait to write to Tom about today. It would definitely be a day she would never forget. That’s when an image of the diary on the stack of books on her nightstand appeared in her mind. “Dad! Turn around! I forgot my diary!” she shrieked.

They finally arrived at King’s Cross Station with only fifteen minutes to get onto the train. They went through the wall to Platform 9¾ in pairs, Ginny and her mum second to last with Ron and Harry bringing up the rear. Once her and her mum were through there was only a couple of minutes left to board the train. In a slight panic Molly began dashing up and down the platform to find at least a partially open carriage.

Then a voice sounded over the milling crowd of families saying their good-byes, “Ginny! There you are! I saved you a spot!” Hanging out an open window, where his dad and brother stood under it still on the platform, was Colin Creevey.

A look of relief fell over her parents’ faces and her dad heaved the trunk to the carriage, Colin’s father helped to lift it onto the train’s steps and Colin whisked it away to his compartment while Arthur lifted Ginny onto the steps and gave her a quick kiss good-bye on the forehead before hurrying off to help Ron and Harry. Molly went up to Ginny and gave her a hug, and after promising that she would write home as often as she could, Ginny was allowed to go into the compartment with Colin and wave out the window.

For as long as Ginny could remember, she was the one standing on the platform waving good-bye and watching the train recede into the distance year after year as the train carried more and more of her brothers away one by one. Except of course when it took the twins as the same time. She watched her mother shake Colin’s father’s hand, thanking him for helping with her trunk and then scan the windows and waving farewell to her brothers. The train was already moving when she saw her father race back to her mother’s side. They both had concerned looks on their faces and rushed away.

This year there was no one to chase the train as it slowly picked up speed. Colin’s father was still standing there waving with little Dennis next to him. Ginny politely waved back with Colin until the Hogwarts Express turned a bend in the tracks and the platform disappeared out of sight.

Settling in for the long journey, Ginny and Colin sat on opposite sides of the compartment when they heard a rumbling in the corridor. Another student popped her head in, “You guys first-years too?” She had very dark colored skin and eyes, and her hair was pulled back in what looked like a million tiny equal sized braids that trailed off, held together with nothing at their ends yet still staying in place with no magic. It fascinated Ginny just like Luna’s hair did when her mum cut it.

“Yeah,” said Colin, moving over and making room, “You can bunk with us for the train ride.” Ginny helped the girl heave her trunk into the luggage rack while Colin made introductions, “My name is Colin, and this is Ginny.”

Sitting down on the bench next to Ginny, the girl replied, “Everyone just calls me Ash,” looking at Ginny she said, “Ginny, as in Ginny Weasley?”

“How did you know?”

“Everyone talks about the ONE Weasley girl when talk of the old families come up. Plus, my family follows your brother, makes sure he doesn’t give the goblins wizard artifacts,” said Ash.

“Oh,” said Ginny, “you’re a Burke aren’t you?” She had heard some of the stories from Bill about the Burkes breathing down his neck, constantly inspecting his work before it was turned over to the goblins at Gringotts. Bill understood their work was important for the wizard community, but he wished they trusted him more to do his job well.

“Yup,” said Ash smiling, “I’m going to be the first person in my family who is both a historical wizard artifact expert and a curse breaker. That way we’ll be there on sight when ruins and tombs are first opened and explored so nothing is missed or lost.”

Ginny remembered the name of the shop that Harry came out of when they couldn’t find him in Diagon Alley, “Is your family connected to that shop in Knockturn Alley? Borgin and Burke’s?”

“Kind of,” replied Ash, “that’s one of my dad’s distant cousin’s side of the family. The Borgins run the shop and we procure the merchandise. They only get the sellable artifacts of course, my father’s side focuses on keeping and maintaining historical ones.”

Colin, who had been listening with interest asked, “What do you do with the historical artifacts? Put them in a museum? Do wizards have museums?”

Ash looked at him puzzled and Ginny answered, “Usually, the old families just hoard them,” she explained.

“Are you a Muggle-born?” Ash asked Colin.

“What’s a Muggle-born?”

Ash began nodding her certainty that yes he was, “Muggles are non-magical people. So if a wizard is born to two non-magical parents, your status is called Muggle-born. Oh, and by the way, if you are a wizard, you say ‘Do we have museums,’ you’re one of us officially now okay? Since the day you received your letter,” she said it as though she were debating someone who wouldn’t consider Colin a wizard. Ginny inwardly smiled at Ash’s personal convictions. The Burkes come from a long line of Slytherins, most of whom believed in Pure-blood statuses only.

“Okay,” said Colin, “what does Status mean?”

“It’s just a classification, it doesn’t have anything to do with magical ability,” said Ginny, catching Ash’s eye to silently convey her agreement.

“These days it’s just an easy way to gage how long someone’s family has been part of the magical community,” added Ash.

“… And you guys are both from old families?” asked Colin.

“Yeah, but you’ll find most students are half-bloods and everyone starts at the same place at Hogwarts,” said Ginny.

“You know what?” said Ash, changing the subject, “I like that idea of a wizard museum, my dad will hate it but I can do what I want with what I find.”

“You can put it in Diagon Alley,” said Ginny. “That’s where I met Colin, we were getting our wands at the same time at Ollivanders.”

“That reminds me!” exclaimed Colin, “I have your picture!” He dug around inside his trunk and pulled out an ordinary folder. When he opened it there were all sorts of little strips with miniature looking pictures inside plastic sleeves and black and white photographs of varying sizes. Colin rifled through a specific stack that looked like places from around Diagon Alley and pulled out the photograph of Ginny.

“That’s beautiful!” said Ash recognizing Colin’s potential talent from growing up surrounded by relics.

It was pretty amazing, Ginny had to admit. It made her a little self-conscious that she was the subject in something someone said was beautiful but she glowed a little inside too.

She was perfectly clear in the picture and everything behind her was slightly blurred out of focus, the sparks emitting from the wand made little bright spots that formed a perfect arc around her upper body following the trail through the air she had made when she had felt that it was her wand. She wasn’t looking at the camera, like in the pictures she normally took with her family, but that somehow made it better. Instead, it let the observer see what she was seeing and feel what she was feeling in that particular moment.

“Why doesn’t it move?” asked Ginny.

“All Muggle photographs are stationary,” said Ash knowledgeably. “Only wizard ones brewed in a special potion are animated.”

“You, I mean we, have animated photographs?” asked Colin in awe.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty easy potion, every family has it in their household potions book,” said Ash.

A couple of hours into the train ride, Ginny, Colin, and Ash were having a great time getting to know each other until Percy popped his head into the cabin just before midday. “Ginny! There you are, I thought you would be sitting with the twins,” he said.

“Why?”

“Never mind that,” he said, “Ron and Harry are missing. Hermione just found me in the prefects’ compartment and she told me that she searched the entire train after asking the twins if they were supposed to have been on the Hogwarts Express with the rest of us.” He rushed back out of the cabin.

"Is he talking about Harry Potter?" asked Ash.

Ginny froze in indecision, does she let on her family is close to THE Harry Potter?

“Does your brother know Harry Potter?” asked Ash.

Worried about Ron and knowing that there is always a slight danger being with Harry, Ginny was a little reserved when she said, “Yeah, Ron is one of his best friends.” They were going to find out at school eventually she decided.

“That’s so cool!” exclaimed Ash, “Can you introduce me?”

“Uh, to be honest, I’ve never actually talked to him myself,” admitted Ginny. She was also not going to mention Harry staying with them this past summer.

“Who’s Harry Potter?” asked Colin, “Who’s Ron?”

Ginny and Ash looked around at each other, not knowing where to begin. Ash started, she told Colin Harry’s basic story that all wizards knew about him defeating He-Who-Must-Be-Not-Named and Ginny recapped his Quidditch achievements and the finding of the Sorcerer’s Stone last year. Colin was amazed that Harry Potter was only a year older than them.

Ash asked Ginny more questions about Bill’s work and conversation centered around the Weasley boys for some time, all of whom Colin found compelling. Talk of her brothers being on the Gryffindor Quidditch team led to further explaining Quidditch which led to the House tournament every year at Hogwarts.

“What do you mean 'house'?” asked Colin. Ash took over explaining again, the histories, the founders, how some families are all over the place and others tend to be legacies in certain houses.  Colin admitted remembering some of this when a school representative visited to tell him he was invited to Hogwarts, but at the time he was too excited about being a wizard to remember it all.

“Most of my family has been in Slytherin,” said Ash, “It’s the best for making political connections, but I wouldn’t mind being around older Ravenclaw students who like to pursue all sorts of knowledge.”

“What House is Harry Potter in?” asked Colin.

“Gryffindor,” Ginny replied, “just like my whole family. Not just my brothers, my mum and dad too.”

“So you’re wanting Gryffindor then?” asked Ash.

“Yeah, my parents won’t mind which house I’m in, and I actually told my dad it would probably be a toss-up between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff,” she answered.

“Why Hufflepuff?” asked Ash.

“I’m the youngest of seven,” said Ginny smiling, “sometimes I think I’m the only kind, honest, and fair kid my parents had.” That garnered a laugh from everyone in the compartment.

“I have an older brother too,” said Ash, “Dax is a sixth year Slytherin. Dad’s been grooming him to take over the family business our whole lives because he’s the one who’s going to pass on the Burke name,” she said bitterly. “It’s not fair, Dax doesn’t even try and any time he does manage to do something right he gets all this praise. That’s why I’m going to do my own thing.”

“What about you,” asked Colin to Ginny, “do you have an old family business to get into?” He seemed to feel better when she shook her head no.

“My father works for the Ministry,” said Ginny.

Hermione and another boy entered the compartment late that afternoon. Hermione was still trying to piece together Ron and Harry’s disappearance.

“Ginny, do you remember me?” she asked.

“Yeah, you were shopping in Diagon Alley with my brother,” said Ginny then she quickly made introductions for Colin and Ash and Hermione introduced the boy as Neville Longbottom. Colin looked excited at meeting two more of Harry Potter’s friends.

“Do you remember exactly the last time you saw them?” Hermione asked.

“Not exactly. My mum walked with me through barrier at King's Cross and she told Ron and Harry to come together right after us. They were supposed to be the last ones through,” said Ginny.

“So, maybe they never even got onto the platform,” pondered Hermione.

“Percy will know what to do,” said Ginny reassuringly. Ash and Hermione furled their eyebrows at that statement, but faith in her family was one of the few things Ginny felt one-hundred percent sure about.

“I don’t think Percy is capable of safe guarding against the kind of trouble that manages to find Harry,” said Hermione flatly.

With that, Hermione and Neville left to go change into their Hogwarts robes. Ginny suggested to Colin and Ash that they should do the same.

When they felt the Hogwarts Express pull into the Hogsmeade Station and a voice told them to leave their luggage, Colin had the idea to walk all the way to the train door that led outside, that way they would be the first ones off.

“Firs’ years this way!” Ginny saw Hagrid calling over the heads of all the disembarking students.

“That’s Hagrid,” said Ginny when she noticed Colin and Ash’s eyes bulge at the sight of him.

“I saw him in Diagon Alley!” said Colin excitedly, “He’s huge!”

Hagrid was leading them all to the side of a lake where scores of little boats were calmly floating. Ginny saw a familiar cascade of white blonde ringlets sitting in a boat by herself.

“Four to a boat,” boomed Hagrid who was still herding first-years. Ginny beckoned Colin and Ash to the boat with the lone girl and introduced them both to Luna.

Once all the first-years were seated, the boats began to glide across the lake and a silence fell over all the passengers. Everyone was eager with anticipation to see the Hogwarts castle for the first time. It was beginning to grow dark so when the turrets of the castle became silhouetted against the sky there were many audible intakes of breath.

Colin fumbled for his camera and waited with it pressed to his eye for their boat to be precisely positioned before taking a shot of the castle. He took a few more after fiddling with some of the knobs. “I can’t wait to see how these turn out, especially that first one,” he exclaimed.

After they had sailed quite a bit closer Ginny watched him focus his lens a bit more and asked everyone in the boat to duck down so he could clearly see over them. From her crouched position, Ginny watched as he rapidly took a series of shots with a slight change in angle from left to right in between each.

“What was that for?” she asked after he let them straighten up again.

“A panoramic, they’re pretty difficult to take. Especially from a moving platform, but I think it’ll turn out okay,” Colin replied.

“Lucky the lake was so placid today,” remarked Ash.

“What’s a panoramic?” asked Ginny.

Colin took a deep breath like he was going to give a lengthy explanation, but seemed to decide against it. “I’m just going to have to show you.”

They neared a cliff that the castle was sitting at the top of and Ginny heard Hagrid’s voice boom out again, “Everybody! Heads down!” For the second time Ginny bent down low within the boat as the fleet went under hanging ivy, disguising a cave opening within the cliff. Once there, they all sailed through a dark tunnel coming to a landing underneath the castle itself. Hagrid led them all up a narrow path which ended at a door, three booming knocks and the door swung open. On the other side was a tall dark-haired witch with a stern face. “This year’s crop of firs’ years, Professor.”

“Thank you, Hagrid. That will do,” she said. “All of you, my name is Professor McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress to Hogwarts. Form a line please, and then follow me.”

All the first-years scrambled into a haphazard line, Luna led their little foursome group to a place somewhere in the middle and Ginny stood right behind her. Colin motioned for Ash to get in line next in a lady’s first fashion but Ginny glanced over and met Ash’s eyes. They had a silent acknowledgement to protect and stand in solidarity with their new Muggle-born friend in this unfamiliar environment while the pack of first-years moved through the school. At the same moment, both of them put their hands on Colin’s shoulders and thrust him in line between themselves, Ginny ahead and Ash bringing up the rear of their section of the line.

“What the heck…?” Colin started to say, but Ash just shushed him and faced him forward. Professor McGonagall had looked over to see what the commotion was and Colin clamped his mouth shut and stood quietly. When the line began to move Colin glanced between them, clearly puzzled, but started to look around in wonder, and picked up his camera to take pictures once they reached the Entrance Hall.

Professor McGonagall led them to a small empty chamber where she addressed the first-years more formally, “Welcome to Hogwarts. The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room.”

“The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history, and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn you House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours.”

“The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting.”¹

Ginny knew from hearing her brothers talk about their Sorting Ceremonies that Professor McGonagall was telling them all exactly what she told every group of first-years. Nevertheless, it was still intimidating when her eyes lingered on Colin’s camera he had raised to take a picture of the room they were in. Realizing that Professor McGonagall was looking at him, he slowly let it hang around his neck again and backed up a bit. Moving as one, Ginny and Ash stepped a little closer together in front of him as if shielding Colin from Professor McGonagall’s shrewd look.

“I shall return when we are ready for you,” said Professor McGonagall, the smallest glint of a smile in her eyes as she glanced away from Colin. “Please wait quietly.”²

Ginny, Colin, and Ash listened as many of the students began to whisper about what sort of examination they would have to go through with the whole school watching.

“What if you don’t pass, what if none of the Houses want you?” asked Colin worriedly.

Ash gave Colin a reassuring smile, “You got your letter, you’ll get a House too.”

Professor McGonagall returned, and looked around with approval that they were still formed up in lines. Beckoning them all to follow her again, she led them into the Great Hall.

It was just like Percy had described it. Candles floating in mid-air lighting the giant space. The ceiling bewitched to reflect the sky outside. Four long tables were filled with the older students and at the other end of the hall was a fifth table were the teachers and staff sat.

Ginny quickly looked around and found the table where most of her brothers were sitting, and where she imagined Bill and Charlie once sat. She saw the twins taking part in jeering at the first-years and Percy gave her a small wave. Hermione and Neville were sitting near them at the same table but she couldn’t spot Ron or Harry anywhere. Professor McGonagall had them all line up in one long row in front of the staff table and then turn around and face the older students, the teachers table to their backs.

With no cue that Ginny noticed, the entire hall quieted down at once. Professor McGonagall silently placed a three-legged stool in front of the first-years, and on top of that an old pointed wizards hat. When she stepped back everyone turned their attention to the hat. Colin once more made to raise his camera, but trying to avoid any more embarrassing attention both Ginny and Ash silently put a hand over it and forced him to lower his arms again.

Colin jumped a bit when a rip near the brim opened and the hat began to sing:

Welcome! Salutations!
Let’s begin with this address.
For many generations
Young students, I assess.
I’m the Hogwarts Sorting Hat,
I’m really quite astute.
Once chosen, arguments fall flat,
As I don’t allow dispute.
So step on up, don’t be shy,
And place me on your dome.
Deep inside your mind, I’ll pry,
So I may find your home.
Hear me now, as I speak,
Each House’s noble lore.
Which of these does interest pique,
Exceptional Houses four?
Loyal Badgers show their grace,
Steady, sure enough.
Fiercely protective of their space,
Tenacious, kindly, Hufflepuff!
And nothing dares too daunting,
For the intrepid Lion’s roar.
Courageous spirits flaunting,
In gallant Gryffindor!
Or perhaps an Eagle in the sky,
Broad visions they may draw.
All endeavors aiming high,
In passionate, Ravenclaw!
Or once the Serpent’s on your side,
Elite brotherhood within.
Cunning and ambitious stride,
Do not mistake, great Slytherin!
Now upon your noggin, I will sit,
Your thoughts I shall decipher.
Once decided, ‘twill be writ,
Good luck to all, whomever!

Everyone, staff and students alike, began to clap for the Sorting Hat’s song. Professor McGonagall walked to the front again and held a long roll of parchment. “When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted,” she said.³ “Alderton, Katherine!”

A girl with dark brown hair and green eyes walked over to the stool, lifted the hat, sat down, and placed it on her head. A heartbeat later, the brim of that hat opened wide again and shouted, “RAVENCLAW!” loud enough for the entire hall to hear.

The second table from the main entry door burst into applause, some of the students standing up whilst cheering on the newest addition to their house. The dark haired girl took off the hat, grinning from ear to ear and set it back on the stool and ran to join her Hogwarts family.

“Archer, Terra!” A dark skinned girl apprehensively approached the stool.

After a moment the hat shouted, “HUFFLEPUFF!” The table next to the one where her brothers were sitting erupted into cheers this time.

“I can’t believe we have to try on that nasty old hat,” said a snobby looking girl a few people down on the other side of Ash. “It’s so old and dirty, it’s disgusting.” Ash rolled her eyes so that only Colin and Ginny could see her.

“Avery, Kindra!”

“That’s another old family last name,” Ash whispered to Colin. The girl who thought the hat was disgusting walked up to the stool. She picked it up touching it as little as possible.

She hadn’t even sat all the way down on the stool while lowering the hat over her head at the same time, when the hat shouted, “SLYTHERIN!” All the Slytherins began shouting, “AVERY! AVERY! AVERY!” Kindra Avery happily tossed the hat back onto the three-legged stool and sauntered over to the table on the far right nearest the main entry door, the one farthest from the table where Ginny’s brothers were sitting.

“Baker, Charity!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!” Charity went to sit next to Terra Archer.

“Burke, Ashantae!” Ash gave Ginny and Colin an excited look and walked over to the stool. She sat down, took a deep breath and placed the hat on her head determinedly. It was several moments before the hat moved, significantly longer than any of the other first-years so far.

Finally, the hat shouted, “SLYTHERIN!”

Once again all the Slytherins began shouting, “BURKE! BURKE! BURKE!” The loudest Slytherin had stood up and was leading the rest of them in the shouting, punching his fist into the air with every shout of her name. He looked like he was probably the brother Ash had talked about on the train ride, Dax.

“Calhoun, Connor!” was the first boy Professor McGonagall called out of the line.

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Carpenter, Dylan!” followed Connor into Ravenclaw, and then it was “Cassidy, Thaliana!” who became the first Gryffindor. The table Ginny’s brothers sat at on the far left exploded with applause. Thaliana went to sit at an open space near Hermione.

Ginny was sure Colin was going to be next, but Professor McGonagall then called, “Cooper, Cepheus!”

“SLYTHERIN!” The Slytherin table exploded again, but this time there was no chanting of “Cooper! Cooper! Cooper!” Ginny supposed this was because it wasn’t one of the old family last names. Nevertheless, many of the Slytherins still greeted little Cepheus with enthusiasm.

“Creevey, Colin!” Ginny started when she heard Colin’s name. She was watching the Slytherins and forgot that alphabetically he would be coming up.

Colin went to sit on the stool and jammed the hat on his head. In next to no time, a big smile cracked across Colin’s face just before the Sorting Hat shouted, “GRYFFINDOR!”

Once again the table Ginny’s brothers sat at exploded into applause. Colin went and sat in another empty spot near Hermione and motioned that he was saving a seat for Ginny. Then he looked over across the hall to the Slytherin table and a look of concern fell over his face that Ash sat all the way over there. Ginny just shrugged with a “that’s life,” look when Colin’s pained expression came back to hers.

“Deverill, Charlotte!” and “Faulkner, Emerson!” became back to back Gryffindors right after Colin. The Gryffindor spots were filling up fast now Ginny noticed. Knowing Weasley was going to be at the very end of the line, Ginny settled into waiting for the majority of the first-years left around her to be sorted.

At “Jones, Gwendelyn!” a staff member who hadn’t been watching the Sorting came into the room from a door behind the staff table. He had dark-black, oily-looking hair and he bent his head down to whisper into the ear of a man with half-moon spectacles and a long white beard. The wizard with the beard motioned to a very short staff member who stood up and went to speak to Professor McGonagall. He took her long roll of parchment and she pointed to where she was at on the list. Professor McGonagall, the oily-haired wizard, and the wizard with the long white beard went to stand in a quiet corner and had a discussion that seemed urgent to Ginny.

After the Sorting Hat shouted “SLYTHERIN!” and Gwendelyn Jones went to join Ash and Kindra, the short staff member introduced himself.

“Hello, I’m Professor Flitwick, I’ll be finishing the Sorting for Professor McGonagall. Up next is, Lawless, Logan!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

“Li, Mei!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Lovegood, Luna!”

Ginny watched as the last person she knew who was still standing in line with her approached the stool. Luna picked up the Sorting Hat and dramatically placed it on her head as though she were doing a scene in a play. Well, she is technically on stage thought Ginny, smiling.

“RAVENCLAW!”

Well, will you look at that, Ginny thought to herself again. I arrived here at the castle knowing all of three other first-years and wouldn’t you know that each one of them was put in a different house? That means I must be going to Hufflepuff. It would round everything out nicely she thought worriedly.

There weren’t that many people left to be sorted now.

“Pyrites” . . . , “Reilly” . . . , “Riordan” . . . , then a “Rosier” for whom which the Slytherin table had leaned forward with bated breath only to be disappointed when he was placed in Ravenclaw. “Ruiz” . . . , “Smith” . . . , “Sullivan” . . . , and then a “Vasquez, Ana Lucia!” Finally, there was only two people left waiting to be sorted.

“Weasley, Ginevra!”

Ginny rolled her eyes at the use of her full first name and that alone was enough distraction from the butterflies in her stomach to allow her to walk towards the stool and place the Sorting Hat on her head.

“Well, aren’t you a force to be reckoned with?” asked a small voice in Ginny’s ear. It could only be coming from the Sorting Hat. She hadn’t heard it talk to the other students it had Sorted, so she must be the only one who could hear it at the moment. “I wouldn’t expect anything less than a powerful force from the first Weasley girl in seven generations though,” said the hat with genuine interest.

“You have a very inquisitive mind,” said the hat and Ginny was surprised that maybe it was considering putting her in Ravenclaw. “Ravenclaw?” whispered the hat, “There I’m sure you’d do well, but that isn’t where you belong.”

Sensing her thoughts that she belonged in Hufflepuff, it muttered again, “Yes, I could see you fitting in with those who are fair-minded, and they would certainly help you develop an inquisitive mind.” Heart plummeting, anticipating the hat proclaiming her a Hufflepuff Ginny began to mentally fight against the hat’s obvious choice.

She decided right then and there that she WANTED to be a Gryffindor. No longer was she just happy to be attending Hogwarts. She was just as magical as anyone else here and she would fight for where she wanted to be. She wanted to hang out in the common room with her brothers and with Colin, she wanted to try out for the Gryffindor House Quidditch team and wear the same robes in scarlet and gold as her brothers with her own number on the back. She mentally demanded that the hat let her Hogwarts family and her Weasley family be one in the same.

Throughout this emotional mental tirade Ginny went through, the Sorting Hat had been quiet. It listened to the fire that brewed up so easily seemingly out of no where, a fire that fueled Ginny’s determination to stand up for herself. It stayed patient while it let Ginny find out for herself that she had goals, she had expectations, and she had a spine to throw behind exactly what she thought.

“Well, let’s see now,” it whispered, “Inquisitive mind, fair in the heart, fearless in scores, belongs in … GRYFFINDOR!” The hat shouted the last word for the whole hall to hear and the Gryffindor table burst into applause as they welcomed another Weasley into their fold.

Colin scooted over and laughingly said, “See? I saved ya a seat again!”

“It felt like I had that hat on for forever,” said Ginny.

“You weren’t the longest person,” replied Colin, “but you weren’t exactly quick either. What’d it say to you?”

“Um, we fought … maybe,” said Ginny, puzzling out how the hat incited her into fighting for what she wanted instead of just going with the flow like she usually does. “Did it talk to you too then?”

“Yeah, it said I could work on my ‘passion for photography’ in Ravenclaw, but I wanted to be in the same House as Harry Potter, and the one you would most likely be in,” said Colin. “I guess it eventually agreed.”

Just then Ginny heard someone with an Irish accent lean over and ask Hermione if she’d heard about the rumor going on about Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. Ginny and Colin both leaned closer and listened intently as a boy named Seamus said someone had a copy of the Evening Prophet with an article of a Muggle car seen flying north from London.

Professor Flitwick announced the name of the last student standing that was waiting to be sorted, “Zhang, Tai!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!” With that the Sorting Ceremony was over. Professor Flitwick rolled up the parchment and picked up the Sorting Hat and the three-legged stool and carried them all out of the Great Hall. Professor McGonagall went out the door behind the staff table with the oily-haired wizard.

The wizard with the long white beard moved to address the students next. “Welcome! Welcome to yet another year of learning here at Hogwarts.”

“Is that Dumbledore?” whispered a first-year boy who would be sharing a dorm room with Colin. Ginny racked her brain for his name but couldn’t remember it from the sea of names that was announced during the Sorting.

“Yeah,” whispered another one back to him.

“Before we begin, let me say a few words,” announced Dumbledore. “Feast founds, forthwith!”

Many from the Ravenclaw table burst out laughing. Hermione and Percy were among the few Gryffindors who understood and chuckled to themselves. Colin caught Ginny’s eye to see if she understood what the Headmaster said but they both just shrugged and applauded along with everyone else in the Great Hall until Dumbledore also disappeared through the door behind the staff table. Before either of them could ask what that meant, the golden plates on the table magically filled with food. Ginny saw all sorts of dishes she was familiar with from her mother’s cooking, and a few odd things that she had never seen before.

Colin’s initial surprise was short lived, for soon after he elbowed Ginny and nodded in the direction of Hermione and the twins, who were in deep conversation with some other Gryffindors Ginny didn’t recognize. She caught the words flying car, tree, and expelled.

The Welcoming Feast couldn’t be over soon enough. Sick with worry for her brother and Harry Potter, Ginny followed Percy's example and quietly listened while the other first-year Gryffindors were introducing themselves to the older students. The boy who asked about Dumbledore was named Jasper Greene, a half-blood who loved Muggle sports. The one who answered him was named Jai Misra a pure-blood of Indian heritage. The other boys in Colin’s dorm, Emerson Faulkner and Blake Sullivan, were also Half-bloods.

The only first-year girl sitting close enough to Ginny for her to learn anything about was Thaliana Cassidy, she had dirty-blonde colored hair and talked about some of the instruments that she liked play. She seemed somewhat interesting to Ginny, except that when she spoke it was always with an air of authority. The other three Gryffindor first-year girls were seated too far away for Ginny to get introduced to. After finding out she was another Weasley, none of the older students asked Ginny any personal questions. Although that would normally bother her, right now it was a welcome relief.

After her and Colin had finished eating, Ginny glanced back up at the staff table again and was surprised to see that all three members who had left earlier were now back and enjoying the feast. When Professor Dumbledore cleared his plate, long after most everyone else had, Ginny was taken aback that all the dishes were magically wiped clean at once.

Leaning back when it happened, Colin looked at Ginny with a look of fascination on his face and said, “That was so cool! It appears, and then disappears!” Now Ginny knew why her mum said to be happy that her brothers at least carried their plates to the sink after meals at home. They literally had to do nothing here at Hogwarts.

Everyone in the hall quieted down when Professor Dumbledore got to his feet to address them once more, “Now that we are all fed and watered, I have a few start-of-term-notices.”

Professor Dumbledore explained to the first-years that the forest was forbidden to all students, no magic was allowed in the corridors, and that Quidditch tryouts were to begin next week. These were all things Ginny already knew though from stories from her brothers, she just wanted to find out what happened to Ron and Harry.

"Finally, I want you all to give a nice warm welcome to our newest Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart," Professor Dumbledore gestured towards Lockhart who was sitting between Professors McGonagall and the oily-haired Professor. Lockhart stood up, waved his hands in a few quick circles, and took a deep bow for the applause that broke out around the hall. He was wearing robes of what Ginny could only describe at grape and clearly stood out from the rest of the staff members, all of whom were wearing black for the Welcome Feast. Ginny was among the few who did not clap exuberantly at the idea of a celebrity being everyone's new teacher.

Once they were released, Percy began to call for all of the first-years to follow him and the other prefects up to Gryffindor Tower. Ginny thought about going with a different prefect for a moment but then thought better of it. With Ron missing she dutifully got into Percy’s line with Colin right behind her. Percy gave her a nod of acknowledgement and then began to explain tricky parts of the castle to her group as he showed them secret passageways and short cuts up to the common room. Colin picked up his camera again, and pulled Ginny to the back of the line so they could straggle a little way behind everyone else.

“I just want to take some shots of these hidden passageways for my dad,” said Colin.

“That’s not very secretive of you,” commented Ginny. She really wanted to laugh but was still too filled with worry for her brother.

“Dad won’t know the difference.”

When the group made it all the way up to the portrait of the Fat Lady, Percy told them that they would need to give her a password every time they wanted to enter the common room. The password changed regularly but for now it was ‘wattlebird.’

Everyone scrambled through the hole behind the portrait and Ginny and Colin got their first look at the Gryffindor common room. It was spacious, round, and full of squashy armchairs with some tables for doing homework and a large fireplace on one side. Percy directed the boys to one door that led up to their dormitory and the girls to another that went up to theirs.

Ginny glanced at the door to the girls’ dormitory and looked back at Colin. It was the first time they would be separated since they began this journey together of leaving behind everything they knew.

“Meet for breakfast tomorrow? Here, at like 7:00,” asked Colin.

Immense relief swept through Ginny, she knew she could find her way back down to the Great Hall in the morning with one of her brothers and sit with them at breakfast, but it made her feel much better knowing that she would be with a fellow first-year who wanted to hang out with her and would actually be attending classes with her. She smiled and nodded her head yes and went to explore her dorm room.

She found a door with a plaque that read First-Years on it, and when she opened it saw that the only other girl who had so far arrived was Thaliana.

“Lights out within the hour. I want all of us fresh for our first day of classes tomorrow,” she immediately said to Ginny. Thaliana sat at her vanity and began to brush out her hair.

“No problem,” replied Ginny rolling her eyes. She located the bed her trunk was next to and pulled out Tom Riddle’s diary. She thought about writing in it, but put it down again in favor of picking out her clothes for the next day and putting them on top of her own vanity folded up. Then she checked her bag and put the general class materials inside it: parchment, quills, and some folders. She would add the necessary books after getting her schedule.

Then she went back down to the common room. Colin stayed up in the boys’ dormitory, no doubt taking more pictures. Downstairs, Hermione was pacing. Eventually Hermione couldn’t take no real news anymore and declared that she was going to go talk to Professor McGonagall. While she was away, the twins and their friend, Lee Jordan came back down from their dorms and excitedly talked with more confidence about Ron and Harry having arrived at school in the Weasley family Muggle car. People were passing around copies of the Evening Prophet, reading some sections out loud.

Less worried about where her brother and Harry were, and now only concerned if they had been expelled or not, Ginny waited with many of the older students for them to finally arrive in the common room. Everyone grew quiet when they heard a commotion on the other side of the portrait hole.

“Skip the lecture,” said Ron impatiently, “and tell us the new password.”

“It’s ‘wattlebird’…”⁴ Ginny heard Hermione say before the twins and Lee Jordan shoved the portrait hole open and grabbed Ron and Harry and yanked them back through the hole, drowning out the rest of Hermione’s words. Everyone started yelling and clapping them on their backs and praising them for their unbelievably awesome entrance into the school year. Hermione was left to scramble through the hole by herself after them and stood there with a scowl on her face while the rest of the common room talked excitedly.

Ron and Harry confirmed that yes they drove the car to school, yes they crash landed, but no they weren’t expelled. Fred and George claimed that they would have went with them, if they had known. Lee Jordan couldn’t stop going on about them using the Whomping Willow as a landing site. Then Percy came back downstairs from his dorm and Ginny watched Ron and Harry immediately disappear up to their room before he could tell them off.

Percy went over to check on Ginny after they disappeared upstairs, “Our brother is fine, are you going to be able to sleep okay?” Ginny nodded her head yes. “Off to bed then.”

Ginny went back to her dorm room. The other three Gryffindor girls were up there now.

“Lights out in twenty minutes!” said Thaliana. A girl with very tan skin and dark chocolate brown hair and eyes rolled them behind Thaliana’s back. Another one with light blonde hair who was already sitting on her bed in her pajamas smiled over the book she was reading at the dark haired girl in some sort of covert agreement. Ginny’s last roommate didn’t roll her eyes or smile. She had merely glanced at Thaliana when lights out was announced and obediently finished getting ready for bed. Ginny pulled her pony tail lower so it was more comfortable to sleep in and decided to puzzle out these girls tomorrow.

If Thaliana wanted to be large and in charge, that was fine with her. If the other girls wanted to giggle and rebel that was fine too. Ginny didn’t want any part of any of it. She snuggled under her covers and fell asleep almost instantly. She thought about her first night sleeping so far away from all her family members only for a few seconds before drifting off.

Quote References:

¹SS/PS Page 114
²SS/PS Page 114
³SS/PS Page 119
⁴CoS Page 84

To Read The Following Chapter Please Click "Newer Post" Below.

Chapter Four: Diagon Alley

Over the following week, Harry Potter surprisingly blended in very well with the family. Ginny was alone in getting nervous and flustered around such a famous person. If Celestina Warbeck were living with the Weasleys maybe it would be a different story. Her brothers and dad would fall over themselves trying to be helpful around her and their mum would probably be all in a dither during her entire stay as she was Molly’s favorite singer. However, where Harry Potter was concerned, her mum treated him almost similar to the orphan Abellios when Ginny first brought him home and seemed just as determined to show him wizard family life until he could be on his own.

Her mum insisted on feeding Harry Potter extra helpings of everything which he gladly took, she magically mended all of his clothing after he unpacked and brought his laundry down with Ron’s the day after arriving. Ginny spent many evenings after dinner with her mum learning how to tear the Muggle clothing apart at their seams and cutting them down to a more appropriate size for Harry Potter.

Molly was more amazing at looking at a person and tailoring their clothes than she even was at cutting hair. She merely glanced at Harry Potter whenever he sat and finished his summer essays with Ron in the kitchen and made new seams so his Muggle clothes would fit him better. Ginny supposed it was all the practice she had had with her brothers over the years. Her mum did comment once though that she had to take some extra care because Harry was thin like Percy but short like the twins and had to combine techniques she used to only use separately when redesigning his clothes.

One of those evenings Ginny was working with a Muggle seam ripper on one of Harry Potter’s old jumpers while her mum worked with her wand on a piece of one of his blue t-shirts. Molly firmly believed that Charm magic was much stronger if you could very clearly see what the magic was supposed to be doing and that by doing it by hand first helped with understanding the physical concepts. This was why Ginny worked with the Muggle tool.

It occurred to her that it wasn’t just some of Harry Potter’s Muggle clothes that were too big for him, looking at his pile, she noticed ALL of his clothes were several sizes too large. Pausing, Ginny turned to Molly, “Mum, if Harry Potter’s parents died when he was a baby, isn’t he an only child? Why do none of his clothes fit him?”

Molly turned to her daughter and smiled when she said, “You have more in common with Harry than you think dear, nearly all of his clothes are hand-me-downs, just like most of yours and all of Ron’s are. Harry’s cousin is considerably bigger than he is and gives his clothes to him when he no longer wants them, or so I’m told.” She paused before she added, “Harry never had his own clothes before going to Diagon Alley and buying a set of brand new school robes last year.”

Ginny looked over at Harry Potter sitting with her brother in the kitchen, he had a Nimbus 2000, a beautiful rare Snowy Owl, school robes tailored just for him when purchased, and glossy new text books. Hearing that Harry Potter had to wear hand-me-down clothes his whole life prior to going to school at Hogwarts, was the first time Ginny found him relatable.

“Why didn’t his aunt fix the clothes so that they fit him better?” she asked.

Molly didn’t answer right away, she kept right on manipulating the thread into a strong overlocking plain seam pattern to connect the two new pieces she’d finished cutting before finally saying, “Not everyone is capable of mothering other people’s children. That doesn’t make them a bad mother, just a very protective one. It probably wasn’t a priority. As long as Harry had clothes that’s all that really matters.”

Ginny thought about Luna’s hair, and the extra time her mum put into Harry Potter’s Weasley sweater she made him last year. She smirked to herself when she thought that if Ron were sitting here with them he would ask what about mothers who mother other people’s children better than her own?

“How do you always know the answers to my questions, Mum? Especially about Harry Potter?” Ginny asked, puzzled as to how her mother knew so much about him already.

“Your brothers don’t go to bed as early nor as easily as you do. They don’t need to be outside anymore after dark so if they want to stay up I make them stay in the living room or kitchen with me while I butt into their lives asking tons of questions,” she laughed. “When they get annoyed or tired of answering they go to bed.” Glancing at Harry her mum said quietly, “I think, he wanted us to know that he didn’t do the charm that gave him his warning from the Ministry, that he doesn’t try to do things to get into trouble but it seems his Muggle family tends to blame him for everything. Whether or not it’s his fault. His first couple of nights here Harry spilled quite a bit of his home life after your father left for work and stopped interrupting with his Muggle bumbling.” Picking up on her mother’s protective instincts Ginny began to understand Ron’s concern for him all summer long not answering his letters.

Ginny’s dad was entertaining at dinner times before leaving for work. He asked Harry Potter all sorts of questions about Muggles and Muggle life. Ginny could barely follow what her father was saying most of the time and was pleased when even Harry Potter didn’t know the answer sometimes. When her father asked about plumbing without spells Harry Potter’s amusing but somewhat serious response was simply the word, “Science?”

Her father laughed so hard, “Science! That’s a good one! I gotta use that next time someone asks me questions like this at work!”

The perplexed look on Harry Potter’s face told Ginny that he didn’t understand how her dad found that as a hysterical joke but continued, “Hermione could probably explain it.” Ron nodded in agreement.

About a week after her brothers brought him home Ginny was finally getting around to thinking about the famous Harry Potter she had learned about growing up as simply Harry, one of her brother’s friends. When she spoke to her mother or father about him she was comfortable just calling him Harry now, and didn’t stare in wonder when he did ordinary things like help in the garden or set the table anymore.

Normal as she could be now when he wasn’t right in front of her, she still had problems being in the same room with him though, and often was so nervous she dropped things, blushed quite a bit whenever the attention was on her, bumped into things she normally never did before, forgot what she was doing in the moment, and worst of all couldn’t manage to speak in front of him for fear of saying something that made her sound ridiculous.

It was especially embarrassing when her birthday finally rolled around and world famous Harry Potter attended her family birthday feast. Her mum always said August was the most fun and at the same time saddest month because there were two birthday celebrations and also the last night of holidays when the family threw parties. They didn’t buy gifts to give in the Weasley family, instead they made or did things for each other.

Percy left his bedroom, abandoned his secret letters, and sat with Ginny all morning answering questions she had about Hogwarts, classes, things she found interesting in Ron’s text books, and anything she could think of about school. Ron and Harry took her outside and played Quidditch with her. They let her take one of the twins’ brooms and Ron stayed on his Shooting Star and Harry on his Nimbus. Although she practiced as much as she did with the squirrels and horses, it was nothing compared to flying with other people. Ginny had trouble watching both of them at the same time and afterwards resigned herself to training harder for her house team. Her mum spent the day preparing the dinner feast and her father just smiled and simply told her that he was working on a surprise for her at work.

Her twin brothers fired off some of their Filibuster fireworks in her favorite colors forest green, like where Abellios lived, and fiery orange-copper like the dragons in Romania. Her mum made all her favorite dishes, and Ginny didn’t have to help with any of the chores around the house. As pleased as she was for the special guest it would have been nice to be able to laugh and joke out loud with everyone without worrying about making any kind of blunder.

Ron sometimes commented how weird it was that Ginny was being this quiet lately, but nobody else noticed because they spent much less time with Harry than Ron did. The twins hung out with him when the boys went to play Quidditch together and Percy ignored him as he usually ignored everyone all summer.

One morning Ginny was peacefully eating a leisurely breakfast with both parents after her father came home from work. None of her brothers had gotten up yet. Arthur was reading the Daily Prophet and pointed out a section to her mum, “Look Molly, that Gilderoy Lockhart you go on about is having a book signing in Diagon Alley next Wednesday at Flourish and Blotts. He’s promoting his semi- new autobiography Magical Me.”

A female Little owl suddenly swooped into the owl perch through the big open window and landed with a heavy thud on one of the rail posts with a stack of envelopes tied to her leg.  Hedwig, being the only owl there, flapped and ruffled her wings in acknowledgement. Ginny was surprised, normally post owls brought the mail at the same time the Daily Prophet arrived.

“Go get the mail dear,” Ginny’s mum said to her while she read the Gilderoy Lockhart article Arthur had just pointed out.

As Ginny approached the owl it was no wonder she arrived a bit late this morning, the stack of envelopes tied to her leg was much bigger than she’d initially realized. She pulled off six letters from Hogwarts written on heavy parchment in emerald green ink.

Ginny absentmindedly reached over to pet the Little owl who surprisingly relaxed her head down and spread her wings. She really wanted to get to reading her first ever Hogwarts school list but obligingly began to scratch the owl between the shoulder blades and massage the back of her neck. Most owls her size only carry letters and this one was fairly brave to carry such a big stack alone. The bird closed her yellow eyes and her white eyebrows amused Ginny as they moved up and down while the bird was getting kneaded.

The Little owl abruptly pulled away and shook out her feathers, scattering little dust motes that had been trapped beneath them into the air before getting ready to fly again. Post owls didn’t usually stick around when delivering mail. Ginny wondered, because of the way it relaxed into her scratching, if it had been a pet before becoming a school owl.

Back at the table Ginny gave the stack of Hogwarts letters for her brothers to her dad while her mum began to compare the Lockhart article from the Daily Prophet to a calendar. Then she opened her own letter to read.

Hogwarts School

of Witchcraft and Wizardry

UNIFORM
First-year students will require:
1. Three sets of plain work robes (black)
2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear
3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)
4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)
Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry nametags

COURSE BOOKS
All students should have a copy of the following:
The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)
by Miranda Goshawk
A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot
Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling
A Beginners’ Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Switch
One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi
by Phyllida Spore
Magical Draughts and Potions by ArseniusJigger
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
by Newt Scamander¹
Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart
Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart
Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart
Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart
Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart
Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart
Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart²

OTHER EQUIPMENT
1 wand
1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)
1 set of glass or crystal phials
1 telescope
1 set brass scales
Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad

PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR
OWN BROOMSTICKS³

“Mum,” Ginny said to take Molly away from the newspaper article, “look at my school list of books I have to get.”

“Yes dear,” said her mother not looking up, “yours will be the longest as you have to get all the ones that you’ll carry for your whole time at Hogwarts.”

“No, mum, look,” said Ginny again, “half of them are by Gilderoy Lockhart!”

“What?” said Molly, taking Ginny’s list, “your new professor must be using them as the texts for your Defense Against the Darks Arts classes.” Ginny’s father leaned over to look at Ginny’s list after her mum said that and then Ginny’s parents exchanged dark looks.

“What does that mean?” asked Ginny, already thinking she knew the answer based on watching her mom scrimping and saving for Lockhart’s books when she found ones she wanted to buy for the house in the past.

“That means your brothers will probably need them all as well, and we probably won’t be able to get them second hand,” said Ginny’s dad, groaning.

“And that we might not be able to get you everything new like we talked about earlier this summer Ginny,” said her mum quietly. “We’ll know for sure after your brothers wake up and open their own letters.”

Ginny didn’t have to wait long, Harry and Ron came downstairs first. As soon as Ginny saw Harry Potter in the kitchen she put down her letter and tried to turn back to her bowl of porridge at the same time. Naturally her arms betrayed her and she knocked over her bowl somehow all the way off the table. When Ginny ducked under the table to retrieve her bowl she felt her face instantly grow hot and knew she was blushing red from embarrassment which of course made her further blush more. She took a moment to compose herself, red face and all before scooping up her bowl and its spilled contents and carefully bringing it up to set it back on the table.

Ginny could hear her father sorting through the letters looking for Harry and Ron’s all the while she was being awkward, and her Mum had been occupied with getting toast ready for the boys. Either nobody noticed Ginny’s bowl tumble to the floor or they had gotten too used to odd things happening to her when Harry Potter entered the room. Arthur had the letters sorted out to the right kids by the time Fred and George came downstairs and everyone was quiet while they read their letters for a few minutes. Ginny slowly felt the blood recede from her face while everyone was busy.

The twins caught on first that every student needed a copy of all of Lockhart’s expensive books. Molly couldn’t keep the worried look off her face when she mentioned that Ginny could get most of her requirements second hand.

“Oh, are you starting at Hogwarts this year?” Harry asked Ginny.⁴

Feeling her face start to burn again but still trying to keep her cool at being spoken to directly by Harry Potter, Ginny tried to just nod and casually lean on the table when doing so. Unfortunately, her mother must have moved the butter dish while making the boys toast while Ginny hadn’t been paying attention because right as she stuck her elbow on the table to lean on, she felt a slippery warm sensation and realized she had stuck it right in the middle of the room temperature butter stick.

Harry Potter politely pretended he didn’t notice Ginny’s sudden mortification, and instead focused on what thankfully had distracted everyone else, Percy coming downstairs. Percy seemed to be in an annoyingly happy mood and didn’t even cry out in alarm when he nearly sat on an owl after he pulled out the last chair from around the table. He simply stood up again and passed him right over to Ron who did cry out in excitement that Errol was finally back.

“Errol!” said Ron taking the limp owl from Percy and extracting a letter from under its wing. “Finally!—He’s got Hermione’s answer. I wrote to her saying that we were going to try and rescue you from the Dursley’s,”⁵ he said to Harry. That explained Ron’s evasiveness the night before he and the twins left for Surrey, thought Ginny.

Errol must have gotten in late last night or very early this morning to have beaten the Daily Prophet delivery owl and had been asleep all this time on the chair while Ginny and her mum and dad were eating breakfast together earlier. After Ron tried to stand him up on the old perch in the kitchen by the chicken feed he was too tired and weak to stay standing and Ron unceremoniously laid him down right in the way of where Ginny and her mum would be doing dishes later.

If Harry Potter hadn’t been sitting at the table with them Ginny would have told Ron off for being too lazy to walk Errol the few feet to the new perch where he could really rest. But it didn’t seem as though Ron would have paid any attention anyway, as he began reading Hermione’s letter out loud for the family.

Hermione wanted to meet in Diagon Alley next Wednesday if the Weasleys could make it to go shopping for new school books. Ginny perked up, so far there had been no discussion on when they were going to Diagon Alley this summer as the letters all came so late. Normally they waited until the last couple of weeks before school began that way Arthur and Molly could save as much as possible before going, but the family at least usually had a plan by now.

“Well, that fits in nicely, we can go and get all your things then, too,” said⁶ Ginny’s mum.

Ginny knew that that fit in nicely because it was precisely the day Gilderoy Lockhart was going to be at Flourish and Blotts doing his book signing. She only hoped that her and her mum would have enough time to find second hand supplies that weren’t too beat up before spending the afternoon in a bookstore.

After Percy went back upstairs and the other boys outside to play Quidditch, Harry was going to let them all have a go on his Nimbus 2000, Ginny asked her mum what they needed to cut back on to be able to afford all of Lockhart’s books.

“It’s not fair,” Ginny stated. “Why would a professor do that? Assign seven expensive books that every single student has to purchase brand new because nobody used them before as text books?”

“Bill and Charlie helped out more this year than usual, we’ll manage,” said her mother repeating what she had said to the twins earlier. “We’re probably not going to be able to buy you brand new robes, and Ginny, we’re not going to be able to buy you a pet to take to school either.”

“I should be allowed to take Abellios, Mum,” said Ginny. “Ron takes Scabbers and he’s a rodent! Fred and George’s friend Lee takes a tarantula! I saw it last year when they were boarding the train. Rats and spiders aren’t on the list but they can go, why can’t I take a tame squirrel?”

“Abellios isn’t tame, Ginny. He’s wild. He was born wild, and we raised him to be able to live wild,” said her mum. “Taking him to Hogwarts, will take away his wild freedom. If Abellios didn’t want to live wild and free, he would come back to the Burrow, he wouldn’t stay in the tree grove with the other squirrels where he has to fight for food and territory.”

Ginny knew Abellios was happy in the tree grove, for a fleeting second she thought about taking him to live free on the Hogwarts grounds and then remembered what her mum said about fighting for territory. She didn’t want him to have to reestablish a home all over again at a place so large she might never see him no matter how hard she looked.

Her mum tried to distract Ginny by finishing their conversation of what they needed to cut back on, “Are you ok with getting second hand robes, dear? You know I can make them look almost brand new.”

Ginny nodded her head yes, second hand clothes were easy for her to make her own. That she was used to doing. Really, all she had looked forward to was a brand new wand and a pet of her own.

“Now, I’m going to write to some of the extended family members and see if any of them have a spare wand to pass down to you,” said Molly. “Ron seems to be getting on ok with Charlie’s old wand, I’m sure you’ll do well with one too.” This was exactly what Ginny did not want to hear, but she nodded her head, accepting the unfairness of some die-hard Lockhart fan wreaking havoc with her family’s finances.

*     *     *

When Wednesday rolled around Ginny awoke much earlier than she normally did. Her disappointments after the Hogwarts letters had come were nearly forgotten and this morning all she could think about was going to Diagon Alley. Who cares if she didn’t go into Madam Malkins and get fitted and tailored robes, her mum’s been tailoring her clothes since she was born. Ginny had never cared how new her books were going to look, as far as she had been concerned a book was a book, they had the same information in them no matter the year it was printed. Furthermore, the twins went to school without a pet (although you could make the argument that they had each other and therefore didn’t need one to take care of). Mum had written to their extended family, Great Aunt Muriel claimed that if she looked around enough she might be able to come up with a wand, but told Molly not to hold her breath.

Ginny could just imagine what Aunt Muriel thought when she’d received her mum’s letter, “Wouldn’t have to ask family for favors like this if she hadn’t married into that Weasley family that breeds like gnomes.” If she ended up with an old wand or not, Ginny was determined to have a good time while out with the family today.

She jumped out of bed and began to look for one of the Weasley sweaters her mum had made her and her purple wizard cloak that draped over a wizard’s day-wear outside. Muggle clothes just would not do in Diagon Alley. She ran downstairs where her mum was already awake frying bacon and she helped finish making the sandwiches while her mother went upstairs to wake the boys.

After everyone had finished a quick breakfast Molly set the dishes to do themselves this morning and gathered everyone around the still clean fireplace, where Harry Potter admitted that he had never traveled by Floo powder before. Molly began to fret but Fred and George showed him how easy it was and after Arthur said he would be fine she let Harry go after Ginny’s dad whipped out of sight.

Ron gave Harry a few tips and then Harry whooshed out of sight as well. Ron hurried after him, then Percy, and then Ginny and her mum went last together. Ginny wasn’t allowed to travel alone yet, her mum and dad decided that the kids weren’t allowed to be on their own when off the property of the Burrow until after their first year at school and they’d had a bit of magical training. Ron was ecstatic when he found out he, Harry, and Hermione would be allowed to wander and buy their own supplies this summer just like the twins had been able to for the past few years.

Ginny still got a little sick but knew the feeling would pass when her and her mother went through the Floo network. She did her best to keep her eyes open through the flying soot and was relieved when she saw her father and brothers on the other side before landing in the Leaky Cauldron’s hearth.

When she arrived with Molly, the Weasley boys were frantic, Harry Potter was nowhere to be found. He should’ve come out before Ron. Molly began to fret again and Arthur told the boys to stay together that way when they found Harry everyone would know at the same time.

“Harry had to come out of a wizard’s fireplace, Muggle ones aren’t connected to the Floo network normally, he probably just went one grate too far, so we’ll check Diagon Alley. Maybe Harry came out into one of the shop’s hearths,” said Arthur calmly.

The Weasleys went out the back of the Leaky Cauldron and tapped the brick to open the door to Diagon Alley. Arthur and Percy began scanning over everyone’s heads and Ron and the twins looked around for both Harry and Hermione in the sea of faces everywhere. “Hermione is looking for us too, she might find Harry first,” said Ron, “or she could help us look.”

They ran and peered into every shop, systematically eliminating where Harry definitely was not. Ron noticed Hagrid standing in front of Gringotts and Percy at first seemed exasperated, “We’re not looking for Hagrid…”

But then Arthur, taller than everyone else said, “There he is, he is with Hagrid!” The Weasley boys began to sprint to Gringotts and Ginny’s mum grabbed her hand and dragged her after them.

Ginny ran as fast as she could but it was awkward being pulled along by her mother at the same time. She could see Harry now, standing next a ginormous man and a young girl with bushy brown hair who didn’t look much older than herself. Ginny recognized her as Hermione Granger from last spring when she got off the train and walked out of Platform 9¾ with Ron and Harry. From a distance it looked as though Harry was fine, but her mother didn’t slow down until they reached the steps of the white building and she could get her hands on Harry herself.

While Ginny worked to catch her breath, her mother took out a clothes brush and began brushing soot from Harry’s cloak. She watched her dad fix Harry’s glasses and her mum thank Hagrid over and over for finding him down Knockturn Alley, of all places.

Harry told Ron and Hermione about seeing a boy all three disliked from the Malfoy family in Knockturn Alley with his father. At first Ginny’s dad wanted to know what the Malfoy’s were up to in Knockturn Alley, but changed gears when meeting Hermione’s parents. Both of Hermione’s parents were dentists in the Muggle world. Dentists were professionals at cleaning and caring for people’s teeth, a field Ginny had neither heard of before, nor wanted to think about. Wizards would brush their teeth like Muggles but on the occasion of neglect could simply take a regenerative potion or perform a spell to help with any complications.

They left Hermione and her family behind once the goblins were ready to take the Weasleys and Harry to their vaults underground. Ginny couldn’t help but think about how at ease Hermione seemed to be around Harry Potter. Like with her brothers, the idea of him being famous must have worn out its novelty quite some time ago during school last year.

She really needed to get a grip on herself she decided. Her mother was right, she needed to really act like Harry was just another one of her brothers’ friends. It was no big deal. She decided she was determined to act normal around him… and that somehow, today, she will speak… while he was within hearing distance.

Stopping at the Weasley vault, Ginny only vaguely paid attention to her mum feeling around inside of it before scooping it all into her bag and adding it to what Bill and Charlie sent weeks before. She was trying to pay attention to her brothers’ conversations so that she could add to it, and fulfill her new promise to herself to act normal. Unfortunately an opportunity never came up, as Harry’s vault was next and when the goblin opened it with Harry’s key, everyone’s eyes almost popped out of their heads.

Harry Potter was rich.

Harry Potter was not just famous, Harry Potter was the epitome of rich and famous. He tried not to show it, he tried to block what was in his vault from everyone being able to see it. But his skinny frame could not conceal the piles of gold and the mountains of silver and bronze.

He never talked about his money at the Burrow. Harry Potter would probably never have to worry about money his whole life even if he never worked after graduating from Hogwarts. He could probably leave school after his OWL’s, not take any NEWT’s to get into a real profession and still be happy for the rest of life. Ginny’s earlier courage after seeing Hermione’s apathetic attitude dwindled away. She sat quietly in the cart that took them around turns at breakneck speeds until they all made it back up to the main floor of Gringotts and met back up with the Grangers.

Outside everyone separated and Molly took Ginny to find supplies from the required list that would be easy to locate. They ghosted through a junk shop first, Molly didn’t think they would find anything remotely close to the precision instruments needed for school but said it was always worth a try. You never know what treasures you might find that other people simply threw out. All the scales they saw were lopsided, the clothes were covered in stains, books had pages hanging half way out, there was even a case filled with broken wands.

After poking around a bit Molly came across a small pewter cauldron. It wasn’t collapsible and it had a thick black mush stuck to the bottom of it. Ginny watched her mum take out her wand and glance around to look for the shopkeepers, she muttered a charm and then a spell under her breath and some of the thick mush sizzled away. Giddy with excitement Molly heaved the cauldron out from under a pile of dirty measuring instruments for potion making and again tapped the cauldron with her wand. It levitated only for a moment and then settled itself back onto the floor.

Satisfied, her mum called over the shopkeeper to help lift the cauldron to the checkout counter. Ginny wasn’t sure what her mum was up to, she knew she wouldn’t be able to haul that thing around on her own at school. Perhaps her mum planned to give her the one at home and keep this one? Probably not, the one at home was much bigger than the standard size 2 her school list called for.

The junk shop listed the dirty old cauldron at nearly half the cost of a brand new one from Potage’s Cauldron Shop. Ginny watched though, as what her mum did next was fascinating. She casually mentioned that her husband, Arthur Weasley, would be there in a few minutes to help move the cauldron after it was purchased, and she was wondering if they minded knocking down the price some? Molly was going to need to take it to a professional cleaner and then have all the old charms placed back on it after all.

The shopkeeper mentioned that by the time she did all that, it would be cheaper to go buy a new one. Ginny’s mum had an answer though, “Oh, Arthur knows someone at the Ministry who excels at re-charming these things, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. Lots of people owe him favors I’m sure it wouldn’t take him any time at all to find someone. It’s just the cleaning that will cost me later.”

By the time they finished haggling over a price, Ginny’s mum barely paid ten percent of the original cost of a cauldron from Potages. The shopkeeper knew plenty of Weasleys who visited his establishment and admitted that this particular cauldron had sat on the shelf for quite a few years in the back because he didn’t think anyone would ever be interested in buying it. The man had put it on the display floor half-heartedly to hold the measuring instruments together in one place with it.

Once outside with the unwieldy cauldron, Molly heaved it to a nearby bench and focused her wand on the thick sludge at the bottom where it began to sizzle and melt away, within a few minutes the sludge was gone. The cauldron wasn’t shiny and new, but Ginny could see that now it could easily be cleaned and polished.

“What did you do to it?” asked Ginny.

“Remember what I always say about knowing how to do things the Muggle way, then doing magic,” asked her mother with a smile, “well most wizards would try to just vanish that stuff away, except you can’t just vanish some magic away, you have kind of to neutralize it first.”

Lost already Ginny tried to pay attention to what her mother was telling her. “You see, that was a bit of magical potion gone wrong stuck to the bottom there, and the residual magic was helping to bond it to the surface. Only a true potions master can vanish away a mess like that. So I had to imagine it loosening like how food comes off of soaking dishes and use a scraping spell, then as the bits came away I vanished those pieces little by little until it was gone.” Excited at her own success Molly continued, “Now that it’s gone, it can be cleaned properly and once it is the old spells like feather lightness should return. A safety you see, because a cauldron with anything in it should not float away… and if they don’t come back, well, your father does know someone who can fix that.”

Ginny was still puzzled, “Why couldn’t the shopkeeper just do that though?”

Molly paused before answering, indicating Ginny had again asked a question with a complicated answer, “You’d be surprised how many witches and wizards expect their magic to just work, and don’t try to improve upon anything they’ve learned. Especially for something as mundane as cleaning, they suppose if you can’t clean something with a simple spell then it is damaged beyond repair.”

“Like, Ron?” asked Ginny, remembering her brother’s unwillingness to ever do more than necessary with his lessons.

“Yes, exactly like your brother, Ron,” laughed her mother.

Molly put a temporary feather light spell on the cauldron and Ginny dragged it along behind her like she’d seen Muggle children do with balloons in her village. It didn’t levitate very high though, it stayed right about waist level.

After the junk shop Molly took Ginny to a second hand book shop and bought decent copies of all of her school books with the exception of Lockhart’s. Those went into the cauldron which dropped down ever so slightly with the added weight of the books, once inside the cauldron the books also became feather light. Then they popped into Scibbulus’s Writing Instruments to buy ink, parchment, quills, and envelops for writing home and doing homework. These Ginny got new as they weren’t that expensive.

Next door to that was Quality Quidditch Supplies, where Ginny could just make out a small sign that read, “COMING SOON: NIMBUS 2001.” Before she could read the description her mum pulled her along to their next stop.

At Wiseacres Wizarding Equipment they found a decent set of scales marked down which someone had returned because the customer thought they were gold colored brass scales, not brass colored brass scales. The witch had realized her mistake after using it once at home. Ginny studied a pair of gold colored scales and didn’t see that much of a color difference, but it must’ve been enough to not match the rest of the witch’s potion making instruments.

“You said that they still work absolutely fine though?” Molly asked.

“Yes,” said the shopkeeper. “The lady who brought them back said they worked perfectly and that she tried to overlook the mismatched colors but decided to get the gold colored ones anyway.”

“Like these ones?” Ginny pointed at a comparably priced set, only slightly more expensive than the brass colored ones.

“The very same,” said the man, nodding.

“That’s kind of ridiculous, spending more money buying something just because it will match the rest of your stuff,” Ginny remarked. “Isn’t it just going to stay hidden away in their potions chamber at home anyway where almost nobody will see it?”

“GINNY!” said her mother, giving her that look that said Ginny had been impolite.

“It’s quite alright,” said the shopkeeper chuckling, “you get all sorts of customers really. Some are less about form and function than they are about appearances.”

“What do you mean ‘form and function’?” asked Ginny, before her mum could shush her.

“Well, you see, the scales you’re purchasing are a student model. You’ll need a set with a vastly greater acuity for anything more advanced than OWL level potions. But of course, Hogwarts provides those for the few students who do reach NEWT levels. The gold colored ones, which are made of brass and are simply gold colored, are also just basic student models,” replied the man behind the counter.

He must have noticed Ginny’s still puzzled expression because he went on, “meaning that those scales will probably never be used to make anything overly complicated, if they are used at all. They will probably sit, as you said, just hidden away looking pretty all lined up with their matching instruments.”

Ginny couldn’t imagine wasting gold that way, and thanked the shopkeeper like her mother did when he finished packaging up her slightly used merchandise. Into her cauldron it went with the books and onto Slug and Jiggers Apothecary to get her potions ingredients that she would be using her new scales for. While they were there they picked up a brand new set of glass phials for Ginny to use as well.

“Nobody ever thinks to buy miscellaneous potions equipment at the Apothecary,” said Molly, “but I found out years ago that they sell their phials much more reasonably priced than Wiseacres or Potages. Now, what’s left?”

“Um,” Ginny looked at her list, “Lockhart’s books, robes, a telescope, and… a wand.”

“Well, your father confiscated a telescope a few weeks ago from someone during one of his raids who enchanted it to find, well never mind what he enchanted it to find, the point is he no longer wants it now that it’s no longer enchanted. Arthur told me just this morning that he has to put it on a new tripod but that he did get permission to take it out of custody for you to have it. From what he says, it’s very high quality,” said Molly. “So let’s head over to the second hand robe shop, I’m sure tons of witches drop off their old school robes when they no longer fit.” Excited about her high quality telescope surprise, Ginny happily let herself be led away.

There, she stood in a changing room trying on many robes as fast as she could. Her mum kept bringing her more of various sizes too big so that they could alter them later at home. Finally, when she had three full sets and a cloak with silver fastenings all of which Molly was confident she could tailor for Ginny, they rushed over to Flourish and Blotts where they had agreed to meet the other kids.

It was only a quarter to noon but Molly wanted to get a good place in line to see Gilderoy Lockhart when he showed up. Ginny’s mum had brought Lockhart’s book Magical Me that she had previously bought while the boys were still in school last year. So at least her mum didn’t have to fret over buying that to experience seeing him in person.

By the time they arrived at Flourish and Blotts, there was already a line forming up inside, and Molly and Ginny jumped in to save a place for all the rest of the Weasleys when they showed up. Eventually, Arthur and Hermione’s parents came back from the Leaky Cauldron where Ginny was sure her father had been asking all sorts of questions about Muggles. Percy and the twins showed up a few minutes after them, and by then Gilderoy Lockhart had begun his signing.

Ginny looked behind her to see where Ron, Harry, and Hermione were and saw how the line had started to go out the front door and people were jostling around outside trying to get in. The trio appeared through the window and pushed their way inside and then slipped past everyone to stand in line with the rest of the Weasleys.

Ron was immediately trampled by the rude photographer who had been shoving people out of his way to get perfect shots of Gilderoy Lockhart for the Daily Prophet. Lockhart must have had the ears of a bat, for when Ron muttered his criticism to the photographer Lockhart glanced his way and saw Harry Potter standing right next to him. “It can’t be Harry Potter?”⁷

Gilderoy Lockhart grabbed Harry and yanked him up front next to himself. The photographer had a field day shoving people aside and getting shots from different perspectives, all the while Harry’s face began to turn red with embarrassment. Ginny had never seen Harry embarrassed before, it had never occurred to her that someone as famous as he was wouldn’t like being in the center of attention.

She watched as Lockhart forced Harry to stand next to him even after he let go of his hand and the photographer had finished taking pictures of them meeting. The longer Harry looked uncomfortable up there next to Lockhart, the angrier Ginny became on his behalf. Polite as ever, Harry let Lockhart parade him in front of everyone until Lockhart broke the news that he would be the next Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts this year.

Upon hearing this Ginny was no longer angry at Lockhart on Harry’s behalf, now she hated him all on his own. This was the self-absorbed git who assigned every Hogwarts student to buy his books as text books. This was the slimeball who made Ginny’s parents fret about being able to afford to send their kids to school this year. This professor was so dirty, the first thing he did in his new job was find a way to make himself that much richer and more famous.

It was the first time Ginny felt the longing that her twin brothers must feel all the time. The longing to rebel against an injustice. She didn’t know the first thing about making life hard for anyone, but she would do her best to make up for every promise her mother was forced to break because one man didn’t know how to play fair.

Ginny didn’t have time to think about Lockhart at the moment though, Harry Potter was walking right towards her. “You have these,” Harry mumbled to her, tipping the books into the cauldron. “I’ll buy my own –”

“Bet you loved that, didn’t you, Potter?” said a voice Harry had no trouble recognizing,⁸ but Ginny had never heard before. Harry looked up from her cauldron and right into the face of a pale haired boy whose eyes showed a hatred Ginny had never seen emanate from anyone, but based on what she heard from Ron, Harry, and the twins had to say about him, could only be Draco Malfoy.

“Famous Harry Potter,” said Malfoy. “Can’t even go into a bookshop without making the front page.”

“Leave him alone, he didn’t want all that!” said Ginny. It was the first time she had spoken in front of Harry. She was glaring at Malfoy.

“Potter, you’ve got yourself a girlfriend!” drawled Malfoy. Ginny went scarlet as Ron and Hermione fought their way over, both clutching stacks of Lockhart’s books.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Ron, looking at Malfoy as if he were something unpleasant on the sole of his shoe. “Bet you’re surprised to see Harry here, eh?”

“Not as surprised as I am to see you in a shop, Weasley,” retorted Malfoy. “I suppose your parents will go hungry for a month to pay for all those.”

Ron went as red as Ginny.⁹

Ginny watched as Harry and Hermione held Ron back before he could start a fist fight with Draco Malfoy. They didn’t have to hold him back for long though, both Draco’s father, Lucius Malfoy, and Arthur Weasley showed up to get in the middle of the argument.

To Ginny’s bewilderment, Lucius Malfoy began egging on her father just as his son had her brother. She watched as this stranger yanked one of her second hand books out her cauldron and brandished it in front of her father like he was a failure to all wizard kind. Lucius Malfoy began to tell her father precisely what he thought about them hanging out with Hermione’s family when all of a sudden Ginny’s cauldron tipped over and the contents spilled out.

Her father had rushed past her and started a fist fight with Lucius, in the middle of a bookshop, in Diagon Alley. Some of her brothers cheered him on, while Molly began shrieking for Arthur to stop and one of the store assistants tried to break them up. Ginny could only stare, until Hagrid came up and picked both of them up and set them apart from each other.

Lucius Malfoy slammed Ginny’s book back into her cauldron and said, “Here, girl – take your book – it’s the best your father can give you –” Pulling himself from Hagrid’s grip he beckoned Draco and swept from the shop.¹⁰

Molly began helping Ginny put all of her things back into her cauldron that had spilled out, she picked up her second hand books but paused when she got to the new ones, “Where did these Lockhart books come from?”

“Harry gave me the ones that Gilderoy Lockhart gave him for free on stage, he said he would buy his own,” Ginny replied to her mother while she gathered up packages of potions ingredients and rolls of parchment.

“He did?” asked her mother.

Ginny nodded, “I don’t think he liked being up there with Lockhart, forced to get his picture taken, and not being able to move until Lockhart was done talking,” she said huffily.

“Now who wouldn’t want to have their picture taken with Gilderoy Lockhart?” asked her mum.

Ginny rolled her eyes and sighed, but Hagrid seemed to be finished talking to her father and so her mother took the opportunity to scold him for brawling in public while everyone trekked back to the Leaky Cauldron. Harry and her brothers and father prepared to travel by Floo powder back to the Burrow, and everyone said good-bye to Hermione and her parents before they left for Muggle London. The Grangers seemed a bit upset from the fight at Flourish and Blotts, but Hermione was assuring them that this was not a normal wizard interaction.

Molly sent the boys home one by one and Arthur took Ginny’s new purchases. When she was alone with her mother in the Leaky Cauldron her mum turned to her, beamed, and said, “Well, I suppose we better get you a wand before we head home.”

“Really?” Ginny squealed, and then promptly clapped a hand over her mouth because she was in public and didn’t want to attract any more attention than her family already had.

“Since Harry was kind enough to give you those books that he did not need for free, that left over enough gold to get you your very own wand,” said her mother appreciatively.

“I didn’t know Lockhart’s books were that expensive,” said Ginny, feeling annoyed all over again.

“Well, not quite, and it really depends on what your wand will be made of and how rare the wood or core is, they normally cost right around seven Galleons apiece,” her mum answered, “but since we didn’t have to get the books and combined with what we have left over saved from getting your cauldron so reduced we should be able to buy you a wand from Olivanders.”

Ginny couldn’t believe her mum’s attitude change, minutes ago she was admonishing her dad, now she seemed as giddy as Ginny felt about going through one of her first milestones to becoming a fully qualified witch.

They quickly made their way back down Diagon Alley, and stopped in front of Olivanders. Inside was a boy, who must’ve been Ginny’s age but wasn’t much bigger than herself, trying different wands. With him was a man and an even smaller boy, who had a camera hanging around his neck. Ginny’s mum poked her head inside and Mr. Olivander beckoned them in, he showed them to a small waiting area and went back to his first customer. Ginny listened interestedly to what was going on inside.

“Now, how many ‘Galleons’ did you say I should be considering here?” asked the man kindly.

“I tell you what, since this is your family’s first time, I won’t have you pay absolutely no more than seven, no matter which wand chooses the boy,” said Mr. Olivander in his slow and whispery voice.

“Well, Dennis, can you stay here with Colin while I go and get them then?” said the man to the smaller boy. Turning back to Mr. Olivander he explained, “I had no idea how much to start out with so we’ve just been taking it as we go along.” He seemed to be the boys’ father.

Mr. Olivander shooed him away to Gringotts while he continued to pick wands for the older one, Colin, to try. Finally, while the father was still away, Colin took a wand from Mr. Olivander and his eyes lit up. Very excited he waved the wand and red and gold sparks whooshed out the end of it.

“Very good! Yes indeed, that’s the one!” said Mr. Olivander, very exuberant that they had found a match.

“Dennis,” said Colin getting his little brother’s attention from Mr. Olivander, “Dennis, get the camera ready like I showed you Dennis, and take a picture of me waving my new wand!”

Little Dennis brought the camera to his eye and focused it then he pointed at Colin with his hand that wasn’t going to click the camera button. Colin waved his new wand again until the sparks came out and Dennis snapped a picture.

“I can’t wait to see what it looks like!” exclaimed Colin.

“Ok, boys,” said Mr. Olivander. “I’m going to put you into the waiting room while I wait on young Miss Weasley now and we wait for your father to return,” he made to usher the boys to the seats that Ginny and her mum had just stood up from and then he turned to magically send all the boxes of wands he tried with Colin back to their places on the shelves.

Colin and Dennis watched starry eyed as the boxes picked themselves up, sorted back to their rightful places, and softly set themselves back down in neat and orderly stacks. “I can take a picture of you with your new wand, when one chooses you if you like,” said Colin to Ginny.

Molly smiled at Colin, “Are you starting at Hogwarts this year, dear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Colin, glancing up at Molly.

“So is Ginny,” said her mum nodding in her direction.

“I can take the picture now, and give it to you at school when I see you after I develop it,” said Colin politely. “I’m going to develop these straightaway, I want to remember everything about my first trip to Diagon Alley, huh Dennis?” Dennis nodded, his eyes the size of saucers.

Charmed by little Dennis’s innocent wonder, Ginny agreed, “Ok, sure.”

“This way Miss Ginevra,” said Mr. Olivander, bringing out a tape measure.

Delighted, the boys sat down to wait for their dad to return to pay for Colin’s wand and to watch Ginny get measured for her turn. Ron didn’t go to Olivanders last year, as Charlie gave him his old wand and Ginny was only eight when the twins got theirs but she had stayed home with her father and Ron that year. (Mum wouldn’t let the twins out of her sight yet at the time and together they were a handful). So while Mr. Olivander was looking through boxes to bring Ginny she asked her mother, “Mum, how does Mr. Olivander know my name?”

Molly chuckled, “Mr. Olivander has been selling wands to everyone in the Weasley and Prewett family for generations now, Ginny. He’s probably been expecting you.” Her mum left it at that.

Mr. Olivander returned with a very short wand, seeing Ginny eye its length, he began with that, “Seven inches, a beautiful Maple, phoenix feather. Give it a try.” Ginny saw her mum’s eyeballs bulge, maple wands were rare and very expensive.

Ginny began to wave it and handed it right back, it was nearly as wobbly as the switches her mum had her practice with. Molly sighed in mock relief making Ginny giggle. Mr. Olivander brought out another wand, “Blackthorn and dragon heartstring, 10¼ inches, swishy. A warrior’s wand.” Again, Ginny handed it back. “No?” said Mr. Olivander looking genuinely puzzled that the warrior wand didn’t choose her.

Ginny tried another, fir and phoenix feather, stiff, but not stiff enough, she shook her head and handed it back to Mr. Olivander. The next one was cherry, unicorn hair, thirteen inches, but again handed it back to Mr. Olivander who cried, “We’re getting closer!”

Mr. Olivander brought out more and more wands for Ginny to try, they made a much bigger pile than Colin had. She tried to figure out the pattern he was using to determine what sort of wand he would bring her next but she didn’t know enough about wand woods to guess, she was at least pleased that Mr. Olivander seemed to figure out that she preferred a wand that wasn’t whippy. Colin and Dennis’s father returned and when he noticed that Mr. Olivander was already in the throes of helping another customer sat to patiently wait and watch with his sons.

Mr. Olivander came out from the back muttering to himself, Ginny caught the words “gentle lady” and “warrior heart” a fair few times before hearing him say, “Aha! Curious combination but it could work, in the right hands, it could work.”

Mr. Olivander brought out a box and opened it, this time letting Ginny take it out herself instead of handing it to her. The wand felt warm and alive in her hand and it was the same exhilarating feeling you get during your first breath of fresh orchard air after spending hours in a dank basement. Ginny raised the wand and brought it slashing down to one side and a stream of red and gold sparks emitted. There was a flash and Colin lowered his camera, “I just knew that would be the one as soon as Mr. Olivander brought it out,” he said grinning.

“Miss Weasley,” said Mr. Olivander. Ginny turned to look at him, “I want you to know that I have never sold a rowan wand and the owner later turn into a dark wizard. One needs to be pure of heart to be chosen by a rowan wand.”

“What’s inside it?” asked Ginny.

“Rowan, unicorn hair, 9¼ inches, and… hard,” said Mr. Olivander. “Miss Weasley, you should also know that I expect exceptional magic from this wand. In general the suppleness of a wand can be an indicator of a person’s willingness to change, in your case however I should hope that a pure heart will always prevail. Be that as it may, this is no simple little girl’s wand. A rowan wand is excellent for charm work, and very protective of its master. My dear, I wish to never have to face you in a duel.”

Ginny was a little starry eyed herself after Mr. Olivander told her that little bit about her wand. Colin and Dennis’s dad paid for Colin’s wand and Molly paid for Ginny’s, then Mr. Olivander bowed all five of them out of his shop.

“Are you taking the Hogwarts Express on September first?” Colin asked Ginny once they were in Diagon Alley again.

“Yeah, most everyone does,” said Ginny, still thinking about what Mr. Olivander had said about her wand.

“Ok, I’ll see you then,” said Colin, “and I’ll bring you your picture too.” With that Colin waved goodbye good-naturedly and him and his little brother and his dad went off to explore the rest of Diagon Alley and finish his school shopping.

“Ok,” called Ginny. She’d forgotten about the picture in the wake of hearing the details of her wand. Remembering what Mr. Olivander had said about it being their first wand purchase in the family and that the dad had to go get more Galleons, Ginny asked her mum, “Were they Muggle-borns?”

Molly nodded her head, “Yes, how could they not be? The look of wonder on those boys’ faces when they watched Mr. Olivander do magic, absolutely endearing. Wizard families don’t get to see that with their children. You see magic as babes and it’s just part of ordinary life for you.”

“Is it safe, that he has a picture of me performing magic?” Ginny asked. Cleaning the fireplace was punishment enough, she didn’t want to ever come close to breaking the law again.

Molly smiled and nodded once more, “Even the Muggles in the boy’s family must abide by the International Statute of Secrecy now.”

It felt weird at first, knowing a person she just met would have a picture of her at their house. But she would see him again at school and take classes with him for the next seven years. She imagined many people in that time would have pictures of her at their homes by the end of it, and so she put the matter out of her mind.

Excited to try her wrist movements at home with her brand new wand Ginny and her mum quickly made their way back to the Leaky Cauldron and took the Floo network back to the Burrow.

Quote References:

¹SS/PS Pages 66-67
²CoS Pages 43-44 to make reading the blog chapter seamless, I again neglected to use ellipses, therefore the quote from CoS REPLACES the book for Defense Against the Dark Arts listed in Harry’s first-year letter as I imagine it would have to look for Ginny’s first-year letter.
³SS/PS Page 67
⁴CoS Page 44
⁵CoS Page 45
⁶CoS Page 45
⁷CoS Page 60
⁸CoS Page 61
⁹CoS Page 61
¹⁰CoS Page 63

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