Work Text:
High in the halls of the kings who are gone
Jenny would dance with her ghosts…
. . .
It wasn’t the Hogwarts she loved. The castle, her friends, the corridors, turrets and the Whomping Willow were all the same. But Hogwarts was not, and Ginny loathed it - loathed them.
She loathed the way darkness edged up next to familiar candelabras and suits of armor. She loathed the marks that Carrows left on eleven year olds. She loathed the headmaster, as dour and dark as his predecessor had been warm and light. She loathed the dungeons and classrooms that echoed with screams, forever tainted by students being tortured by other students .
Mostly, she loathed how it hadn’t always been like this. It would be easier if it had - if Hogwarts had always been dark, always a foreboding presence on the horizon. It would be easier if there weren’t so many ghosts.
Nearly Headless Nick still smiled at her, and it was like she was eleven-years-old at her first feast when he told her the pudding was a Hogwarts classic. It could be true if not for the absence of a mysterious diary that made Ginny feel cold and warm all at once.
Neville still sat close, his large shoulders and thick sweaters still carrying some of the awkwardness that used to be his trademark. It could be ignored if you witnessed him dabbing a third-year’s eye with a paste he’d made himself with Professor Sprout’s health - how could the leader of the resistance ever have been less than sure, and determined, and kind?
Luna was still as vague and crushingly insightful, all at once, like she had when she’d told Ginny she had nice ears “ideal for listening for plimpies.” It was only once Xenophilius Lovegood started telling tales very much anchored in truth that Luna was yanked from school, gone - and Ginny worried, even as she knew that Luna was perhaps the strongest of all.
But deep in the common room, once safe and secure, a sanctuary for all lions, the ghosts couldn’t be denied. There was no large bushy mane of hair bowed over a massive pile of textbooks and “light reading” materials. There was no victorious chess master swearing at a miniature owl that wouldn’t stop hooting.
. . .
And she never wanted to leave,
Never wanted to leave.
. . .
And there was no Harry. No glasses she had searched for from the moment she landed at Hogwarts, no Quidditch talk with whoever would listen, no strange potions books and golden eggs. She had searched for him since her first day, and continued for years. Even when she had forced herself to take Hermione’s advice and move on, stop looking for him everywhere , she still could always spot him in a room. His hair had always been untidy, his smile crooked and, in the early years, almost unsure — like he was used to not smiling or laughing out loud. Like he grew up in a cupboard.
Worse still of it all, leaving the common room didn’t help. From the corner of her eye she could see the ghost of Dean Thomas, absent from his final year, because Seamus had never looked so alone. Lavender and the Patil twins stuck to each other, as the best defense against an unwelcome defense against the dark arts professor’s advances was to never be alone. She walked with her wand always within easy reach, and she heard a fallen warrior’s growled warning of “constant vigilance.”
Walking to the astronomy tower was out of the question; no one went there if they could help it, which was appealing, but being caught after hours by the Carrows or one of their dogs would be more trouble than Ginny felt like feeling tonight. It wasn’t the same, anyway, staring at stars when Albus Dumbledore had crumbled to the ground far, far below.
. . .
The ones who’d been gone for so very long,
She couldn’t remember their names.
They spun her around on the damp old stones,
Spun away all her sorrow and pain.
. . .
Susan Bones had never looked more of a shell, a result of her favorite aunt never showing up for the weekly family dinner one night, or any night after. She became quite good at shield charms, even blocking Ginny’s reducto and bat bogey hexes one after the other. They had plenty of time in the room of requirement, the one part of Hogwarts where Ginny could dance with her ghosts and pretend they were here. Even when it was hard to put into words, the room knew her need.
Add in that she couldn’t visit the lake without remembering warm spring days and Harry’s ringing laughter, and soon Ginny never wanted to leave. Others didn’t. Hammocks filled the corners, first like spider webs in corners before spreading along most of the walls. Everyone had a safe place to sleep here, and everywhere Ginny could see her ghosts. Here were pillows on the floor from when they practiced stunning charms at 14; there, a huge wall of books that Hermione had read in two weeks; in the corner, a chess board that Ginny fancied held the remains of Ron’s last game.
The fire crackled, the same way it had when Dean Thomas had kissed her for the first time, one late Friday night after they had talked for hours in the two squishiest common room armchairs. The moon shone through a large window invisible to outsiders’ eyes, and Ginny was in Astronomy class with Luna again, hearing Professor Sinistra’s first warnings about the seemingly oh-so-distant O.W.L.s. A homesick Hannah Abbott once made a bevy of soups and biscuits, and so too could Ginny could feel her mother wipe a gentle curl away from her face, sweaty after a nightmare starring 16-year-old him .
Someone procured a wireless radio, and they would listen each week to Potterwatch as Lee Jordan’s familiar voice informed what was really happening out there. She heard Ted Tonks’ name, and she could see bubble-gum pink hair and a pig-like nose grinning at her across a cramped dinner table, and she didn’t let Neville see her cry as he had had a particularly rough detention. Sometimes her brothers’ voices joined Lee’s, and it could almost be a simpler time when they filled the common room with laughter every night before a Quidditch match, or after they won and turned Neville into a canary…
. . .
The ones she had lost,
And the ones she had found,
And the ones who had loved her the most.
. . .
On those nights, something hurt right where her heart would be if it wasn’t in her throat, because she knew she was lucky to have such an obvious way of knowing her brave, intelligent, fiercely defiant older brothers were alive. Many didn’t have that. She suspected this is what her parents must feel like, with seven children out in a world at war: so happy to hear their voices, and so scared the moment they went off air. When Bill occasionally co-hosted, she could fancy she was three and he was teaching her to tie her shoes.
She couldn’t remember exact words, no, but the gentle voice, the patience as he wrangled brothers, filled her world with a familiar calm.
Most calming, though, was when she heard the tired, always warm voice of her father ring out from the wireless as he detailed the ways he was protecting muggles and muggleborns, even at great risk to his life and those of seven children. Harry and Hermione were in danger because of who they were, not who their fathers were, but Ginny felt a fierce sense of pride of Arthur Weasley.
Someday they wouldn’t huddle in silence - that was why they kept going, wasn’t it? That was why Ginny imitated the syrupy sweet voice of Fleur after one of Alecto’s Cruciatus curses: “That one tickled.”
It had to be. There had to be more than just visiting a room on the seventh floor to escape a castle she once called home. There had to be more than remembering the horned glasses of an irritable brother she hadn’t seen in so long.
Ginny couldn’t see Ron, or Harry, or Hermione; she couldn’t tell Dean she was sorry; she couldn’t go back in time for Susan; she couldn’t protect Neville; she couldn’t tell Percy to stop being a git and just apologize. She couldn’t tell her father and mother how proud she was of them.
One day maybe she would be able to dance with more than just ghosts, pet a fluffy ginger cat while her best friend read the latest about Crumpled-Horn Snorkacks and her other best friend hunched over a book, bushy hair in a bun. One day she might even get to hold Harry’s hand again and plan stupid, harmless pranks to get back at the Dursleys.
But meanwhile, she kept going to the room that gave her everything she needed. She could practice spells, finish a McGonagall paper, accept one of Hannah’s cookies, and turn the dial on a wireless to check in with her brothers as if they were just down the hall again.
. . .
And she never wanted to leave,
never wanted to leave,
never wanted to leave,
never wanted to leave...
. . .
From her corner tending to a second year’s cuts — big man, that Amycus, Ginny had the perfect curse for him — she heard a portrait open. Her ears perked up at the sound of Harry, and she berated herself for playing the old game of Where’s Harry now? What shade of green are his eyes today? — but then she heard a murmur, then a cacophony, and she stopped dead to look over her shoulder, and then she surely must be dead, just for a moment, because she wasn’t sure she was still breathing.
Then she felt more alive than she’d ever been at the site of glasses, a red mop of hair just like hers, a lioness mane of bushy hair...and the wishing was over.
A fleeting kiss with Harry, a promise to stay put to her mother that was instantly broken, a proud hug from her balding and so brave father, and a hug from each brother - yes, Percy was finally here.
Everyone was different now, just like her, but that was fine. Hearts still beat, laughter brayed, brothers clasped shoulders, a bushy-haired lioness walked Hogwarts proudly through Hogwarts again.
The castle began to hum a familiar magic, and Ginny couldn’t see a ghost in sight when she shut the door on the Room or Requirement. She would’ve seen it disappear if she looked back, would’ve perhaps felt the familiar feeling of never wanting to leave…
She didn’t look back.
. . .
The ones she had lost, And the ones she had found,
And the ones who had loved her the most.