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2009-11-14 . chapter 1 It started harmlessly enough.
Enough, of course, was relative from Virginia Weasley's perspective.
She'd once had a crush on Harry Potter-famous Harry Potter-in her first year at Hogwarts. Before that, even, when Ron had arrived home from his first year and all he could talk about was fabulous Harry and their friend Hermione, after he hadn't bothered to come home at Christmas to see her.
The little fact that she had instead gone to Romania to visit Charlie meant nothing, of course; it interfered with her version of events and had to be generally dismissed. Besides, if Ron had wanted to, he could have gone with them. She had been Ron's tagalong sister because Percy was too prefect-y to follow around all the time and he had a girlfriend anyway, and the twins...only someone with a wish for death followed them around for extended periods of time. So she'd stalked Potter in her first year, had generally been ignored by all and sundry, and had become bemired in trouble that wasn't neck-deep but rather so far above her that she couldn't see the surface.
Now she was fifteen, two months into her fifth year at Hogwarts, and it had long been time to put that admiration and longing aside.
If she thought about it, she hadn't really loved Potter since she had come to know him. She hadn't loved him in the first place, because she had been just a child. She'd worshipped the ground that he walked on, yes, but it hadn't been real. Instead, it had been something to... cling to. He was a boy her mother approved of, and he had saved her from a basilisk and Tom in her first year.
Harry had been nice enough to her, certainly, particularly when desperate for a date to the Yule Ball. It had been a last resort for him, after Cho had turned him down. Neville had already asked her to go with him, though, after Hermione had declined because she was going with Viktor, and Ginny had accepted his invitation. Honour wouldn't let her agree to Harry's later request and tell Neville she'd had a better offer, and for all that Neville couldn't dance he'd been happy to let her wander off after a few rounds in search of a better partner. He'd been using her so he wouldn't show up at the dance alone, but she'd been using him, too, and lorded her attendance over the other Gryffindors in her year for weeks after. There was no malice on either side, and Neville was a nice boy, if a little slow.
It was her fourth year that her childhood dreams had come true, only for her to realise they weren't what she wanted at all. Harry had turned to her for... affection, she supposed, but she had been stupid, naïve, and eager to please. Not so eager to please that she listened to his breathless words of affection, went weak at the knees, and raced him to his bedroom-even if the thought of Ron being in the next bed over wasn't enough to clamp her legs shut, the thought of being known as the school broom and the realisation that she didn't even enjoy it when Harry kissed her and fumbled in her shirt were more than sufficient to make up her mind for her. |
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