Hi, friends! After a long (lowkey several years tbh) consideration, I’d like to apply for Ginny Weasley. I’ve spoken with Dylan and also with Ashton, and both have given the go-ahead.
I do acknowledge that my IC activity has been a bit sluggish over the past few weeks
thanks to my surgery clerkship, but that ends this Friday and the coming weeks will be substantially more flexible. Even so, I’ve managed to post all of my characters (except 2) within the past 2-3 months which, again, will only improve going forward. I miss having the major canons around and am looking forward to helping revive that movement! Thanks in advance for the consideration. <33
Every single muscle in Ginny’s body was protesting, each clamoring to be heard above the other. Muscles she didn’t know she had quivered and trembled with fatigue; her sweat-soaked practice clothes had been double-bagged so as not to contaminate the rest of her gym bag. She and Wen had left the lockers together, and were about to Apparate back home (well, Wen’s home… Ginny’s temporary crash-pad) when the Welsh woman was flagged down by one of their teammates. Wen had waved Ginny on ahead, and so the redhead had gratefully taken her leave.
She’d showered before leaving the pitch, of course, but what she wanted more than anything at the moment was a bath hot enough to turn her pink. It was July, but her body screamed for relief. Workouts had been brutal this week, no question, what with the World Cup less than a month away… but something else was tying her muscles into knots.
Producing the key her friend had given her, Ginny went straight to the bathroom, detouring only to dump her stuff on her makeshift bed without breaking stride. Closing the door firmly behind her, Ginny turned and leaned her full weight back against it for moment, closing her eyes and pressing the back of her head against its reassuring solidness. A long, low sigh left her lungs in a rush.
Two weeks, three days.
Her brown eyes opened again, and she crossed the room to draw the bath. Idly she watched the water level slowly rising, observing the turbulent churning as the water from the tap struck the water in the basin below; her thoughts tumbled similarly.
She loved Harry – she knew that in her soul. So why were they perpetually off-and-on?
The answer was perhaps, objectively, simple: they’d grown up during a war. Nothing was promised; everything was transient. There was no knowing if or when something held constant in life would be stripped away. Gone, in an instant. She thought of Fred, of Sirius… of Hedwig and Remus and Tonks. They had both lost people close to their hearts. Even now, over four years later, she felt their absences: no longer a sting, but a bone-deep ache. Some days weighed more heavily than others. Some days she could think of Fred with a smile; other days, only tears.
Ginny shed her clothes gratefully, hardly even flinching as she stepped into the near-scalding depths despite her already-flushed skin.
Perhaps that was why they kept “breaking up” – and why they kept coming back together. Every time they picked back up, whether it had been two days or two weeks, it felt like starting over. Her brain knew it already, but this was tangible reassurance: that he was still a constant in her life; that he was still there after all.
But it was more than that, too.
Ginny often lost herself in her work. It wasn’t terribly difficult, really, because the redhead truly loved what she did. Quidditch was demanding, mentally and physically, and she was all-in. She had to be.
She often lost herself – but she always came back when the day was done.
Harry didn’t.
Even when he didn’t stay late at the office – even when he was right next to her on the couch in the evenings – he wasn’t always there. It was like trying to see him through a fogged-up glass.
For a long while after she’d first moved in with him two years ago, she’d not pressed the matter. Auror training was undoubtedly stressful, and many people still had quite a bit of personal recovery to accomplish in the aftermath of the War – herself included. Who was she to judge how people coped? But as the months ticked by, it became more apparent. Every now and then, she’d catch a glimpse through a less-fogged-up part of the glass. And for a fleeting moment, she could see.
He was wearing himself down, and it worried her. And – no matter how many times she brought it up – nothing seemed to make a difference. Maybe for a day or two; and then it was right back to where they started.
The youngest Weasley tilted her head back, her mane of long red hair swirling around her, tickling her ribcage. The world went silent as her ears settled just below the water line. When she shifted the water lapped gently at her face; the comparatively cool air raised gooseflesh on her bare knees.
Ginny Weasley didn’t half-ass anything. She most certainly was not perfect, either; but wasn’t as though she was simply leaving for the dramatic flair when they broke up. Much of the time, when they argued, they just talked in circles. Sometimes she felt so numb and so frustrated that she didn’t know how else to make the statement.
And so she’d leave, hoping to remind him as much as herself of the positive things they were missing out on when they were apart. Again, for a short while, it worked; but, as was becoming increasingly apparent, it was not sustainable. It was wearing on both of them. Something had to give: the arguments, or their relationship. And she would be damned if it was the latter. They had been through too much, both together and apart, for her to want the latter ever again.
Two weeks and three days.
It was the longest in recent history that they’d gone without speaking. The longest that Harry had let her stay away. What was that saying?
Ginny Weasley rarely conceded. She stuck to her guns, come hell or high water. She was used to fighting tooth and nail for what and who she loved. But what if this time was different?
She sat up abruptly in the bath, soaked hair plastered to her neck, rivulets of water making their way down her freckled arms and off her elbows as she drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. She shouldn’t encroach on Wen’s hospitality any longer. But, more importantly, she couldn’t let this emotional torment go on any longer. She didn’t want it to.
She was going back to Grimmauld Place, tonight. And this time, she would make the amends.
Permission granted from Dylan to mention Morwen and Harry as above.
