which she had heard Madam Pomfrey describe as 'snapped in half,' seemed to be functioning again, and was not particularly painful.
There had been people in the room earlier, a lot of people. She remembered Madam Pomfrey shooing the Gryffindor team out the door, Harry putting his arm around Ron's shoulder as they went — Ron had looked quite shattered, Ginny would have been touched if she hadn't been so far gone on Anti-Pain Charms. She remembered Charlie coming in later, sitting by the bed and holding her hand, and bits of snow dropping off him and melting on her wrist. There had been other people in the room, but she remembered mainly Charlie. 'What happened?' he had said. 'What happened to her up there?'
And another voice had replied:
'We don't know. We're looking into it. No one has had a broom accident like that in years, not since Harry Potter fell off his broom his third year — '
'But that was Dementors. Ginny's a good flier, she always has been. She wouldn't just lose control of her broom like that.'
'The broom is being checked for curses and hexes, Professor Weasley.
Please do not overexcite yourself.'
'She's my sister,' said Charlie tightly. Something in his voice had reminded Ginny of her very early childhood, when Charlie had been her absolute favorite brother. She remembered him coming home from Hogwarts at Christmas, picking her up as he ran in the door in his black school robes, lifting her into the air and dangling her upside down until she screamed with laughter. Charlie had been her favorite then, although more recently she had realized that her allegiances had switched a bit, and she was now much closer to Ron. She supposed it wasn't possible to go through what they had both been through together over the summer and not become closer. 'My only sister,' Charlie added, for emphasis.
'Yes, I know she is your sister. We're all very fond of her, Charlie. We'll find out what happened…and you, you should get some rest.'
The dizziness of the pain relieving charms had taken over then, and Ginny had slipped into a dazed state where the room seemed full of shifting forms. She cast her mind back: she had thought she heard George and Fred talking above her, and then she thought she heard Ron, or it might have been Harry, and she even thought she heard Snape and Dumbledore, and she definitely heard Madam Pomfrey shouting at someone, but not before whoever it was bent over her and kissed her on the cheek.
She did hope it hadn't been Snape.
She rolled over now and looked at the clock again. The number marching across its face now said that it was half past two, and she didn't feel sleepy at all. There were a number of books stacked on the tabletop -
Hermione had undoubtedly left them so that she wouldn't miss out on her schoolwork. She wondered if there was anything in A Short History of Cursing (Harry had been very excited about that book second year, she recalled, until he had found out it contained nothing more than hexes and the like) that would explain why she had fallen off her broom. She reached out her uninjured arm and felt amongst the stacked books, then jumped in surprise as a lighter-weight paperback fell out and onto her lap. It was her copy of Passionate Trousers.
Hermione walked slowly down the corridor, wrapped in Harry's Invisibility Cloak, trying to muffle her footsteps by slowing her pace. She was well aware of the irony of the whole situation — herself, Head Girl, in charge of making sure other students didn't break rules, sneaking around the school long after curfew. She was aware of it, but she didn't care. She had gone beyond that.
She found the door in the wall where the floor plans had told her it would be. She put her hand to the door and pushed; it swung wide, and she walked inside.
The room was dark. There was one window set like a cold jewel in the north wall, looking out over the grounds. She could see the snowcapped ridge of the Forbidden Forest, and a diamond half-moon shedding its milky light over the ice-black world below.
On the wall facing her, across from the window, there was a visible shimmer, like sunlight on water. She turned and walked towards the shimmer, which coalesced as she approached into what she knew it really was: a gold-framed mirror.
I show you your heart's desire.
Your heart's desire.
I guess, Harry's voice said in the back of her mind, a person's heart's desire can change.
She recalled his voice when he had told her that, the look on his face -
hope and horror mixed.
No, she said back to him fiercely. I have never changed towards you. I have always been the same. I will always love you. I will always want you.
Whatever I have ever done, or said, it was always and will always be you.
In a single motion she dropped the cloak, and raised her head, and looked into the mirror. One heartbeat's time passed as she stared, and then a second, and a third. On the fifth beat, her knees gave out. She sat down very suddenly in the middle of the room, on the cold marble floor, and put her face in her hands.
REFERENCES:
“Is there some problem with the bridge they normally meet under?” — Frasier
“I love syphilis more than I love you” — Buffy
— LC
The worst part of being in the hospital wing, Ginny soon determined, was the flood of people who came along to 'cheer you up.' It wasn't bad seeing Hermione, Harry and Ron, and she didn't mind Elizabeth's visits, but when the whole Gryffindor team descended upon her at once it gave her a headache, and Charlie's fretting over her made her nervous. She felt perfectly fine and wished Madam Pomfrey would let her out of the infirmary, but she insisted on keeping Ginny there 'for observation' -
doubtless, Ginny assumed, because she was worried that the fainting fit that had struck her while she was flying would resurface unexpectedly.
Lavender and Parvati came to visit her on the second day she was in the hospital wing. Ginny pretending to be partly asleep while they giggled about gossip (Eloise Midgen had broken up with Justin Finch-Fletchley, declaring him to be 'not enthusiastic enough about their relationship'), fashion (Pansy Parkinson had showed up to History of Magic class wearing 'very dodgy-looking barrettes') and the Pub Crawl (Parvati was going with Dean Thomas, Lavender with Mark Nott.)
'But Mark's a Slytherin,' Ginny protested, momentarily surprised out of her reverie.
Lavender looked unmoved. 'So what? Being anti-Slytherin is so last year, Ginny.'
'Unless you're Seamus,' said Parvati, and giggled.
Ginny blinked. 'What do you mean?'
