Rating: PG
Pairing: Ginny/Hermione
Warnings: Spoilers for CoS and GoF
Disclaimer: I'm merely borrowing Weasley and Granger and the Harry Potter universe for my own perverted requirements, from dear Ms Rowling. I wouldn't dream of claiming them as my own and hey, if you want to sue me you will get exactly 50p if you do it before lunch, and utterly nothing afterwards. I'm poor. Love me.
centerEavesdropping/center
The covers of the book are green and cracked. They feel oddly like skin under Hermione's fingers, even though she knows perfectly well that it is a £2.99 purchase from Ham & Sewell and unless she missed a pretty huge expose on Panorama recently, they don't make a habit of binding their diaries with anything other than cow skin.
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She's a little ashamed to be doing this.
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The afternoon light streams in through the tiny window of the room she is sharing with Ginny and warms the back of her legs. She wonders when the youngest Weasley will be back from her outing with her mother, and what possessed her to stay behind.
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iCuriosity/i, her conscience whispers.
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Of course, knowing that Ginny had a diary immediately set off alarm bells in her head. After the horridness of her second year she was very careful of enchanted books in generally, as the last one had led to he being Petrified for some time, and missing out on a lot of schoolwork. For the sake of the girl's own protection - iYou were curious/i, her conscience repeats, and Hermione shushes it irritably.
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Breaking the voice-recognition charms had been simple enough, although she doubted anyone else from her year would have been able to manage it. Correspondance with Bill Weasley over the earlier part of the summer had left her a lot more adept at Charm-and Curse-Breaking than she had been; and she was somewhat impressed that a third-going-into-fourth-year had managed to learn such a complex charm.
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She opened the book, and cleared her throat.
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"Tesing ... this is Hermione Granger ..."
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The words appeared in sloppy capitals. Hermione frowned, but they would have to do; at least Ginny wouldn't think she'd gone mad and dictated something herself by accident.
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"I have to confess to something. Eavesdropping, I suppose.
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"It was, originally, only out of concern for you. You don't need reminding of what happened last time you gave all your secrets to an enchanted diary, I'm sure; and at first I was disappointed in you, breaking the laws that your father made as though you had no more principles about that sort of thing than Fred and George.
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"And then I actually listened to what you had to say.
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"Ginny; you're not the only one who feels that way. I've been trying since day one to have friends and half the time I'm still certain Harry and Ron only talk to me so I'll help them with their homework. Ron especially. It's hard. I wanted to be just like everyone else too; much more so because I was muggle-born. I wanted to prove that I could be just as good as the rest of them even without a wizarding family.
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"I don't know if I succeeded.
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"There are other things you said ... and I understand those ... gosh, I'm going red ithinking/i about what I'm going to say. I hadn't considered, before, that your crush on Harry was play-acting, it seemed so convincing, so - Stanislavskian (oh, you probably won't know who he is, will you?) - and I just assumed that that was that.
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"I assumed, wrongly it seems, that I was the only girl at Hogwarts who didn't fancy either Harry, Oliver or poor Cedric. And I thought perhaps that agreeing to go out with Krum would solve something, that it would 'fix' whatever was wrong with me. After all, not everything has a magical solution. But as you remember, I couldn't even keep my lack of interest out of my voice; I can't act like you can, Ginny.
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"Reading what you said ... about what you wanted to do ... I must be ibeetroot/i coloured by now, good grief! Reading that just made things clearer for me. It's like a veil got stripped away from my eyes; you took off a Confundus Charm that has been plaguing me all my life, if you want the wizarding equivillent. I won't say the word. But it makes sense, to me, now. But what I am going to tell you is not out of gratitude or curiosity, Ginny, it is out of - well, desire, I suppose.
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"All I ask is that you take your time. And I will acquiesce to the things you have written. I will repay you in kind. And somewhere along the line, we'll begin to understand just what this is. Information about myself isn't written anywhere I can research it except inside me and perhaps you can help me to read it. You know more about this than I do. Teach me."
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She shuts the book with a snap, and, blushing so furiously that her face is almost purple, she slips it under Ginny's pillow before leaving the room, heading outside to catch the last of the evening sun, and to dellude herself into thinking that she can carry on with her revision after what she has confessed, and knowing what exchanges may come in the night.pcenter
~fin~