CHAPTER THREE- The Duplicity of Identity
It's amazing how the human brain-and the human heart-can be so divided. In my youth, everything was straightforward, and whatever captured my attention did so completely.
With age, with experience, I learned, as we all do, to divide myself. To become, as it were, duplicitous in thought and in emotion.
My thoughts that day… how many places they had to go, thoughts of my parents, my brother, my training, the prisoner… My thoughts were so very scattered, you see, and my emotions so raw…
Is it any wonder a few of those thoughts spilled over?
Is it any wonder duplicitous, sneaking, pervasive thoughts can find their way into emotions?
~~~
There was really no small talk to be had in the halls of St. Mungo's between two women who had each, in her own way, for her own reasons, grown out of girlhood early. They had been called to this place, and so in this place, they were frank.
"I wanted to be out there," Cho said, walking around the hospital and pointing carious things out to Ginny-on-the-site training was common now, she'd said, now that the demand was so high. "You know, for Cedric. But they needed me here."
For a moment, Ginny found herself wanting to snap at the Ravenclaw graduate-after all, none of them, least of all Ginny, had actually wanted a bloody, fatal battle. But she understood the girl's feelings, and so merely nodded.
"They didn't mean anything by it, about your father," Cho continued, turning down yet another hall, leading Ginny farther and farther through the labyrinthine hospital. "It's only that it's so different-"
"You don't have to tell me," Ginny said. "I hadn't a clue he was doing that." But how was it any different from Arthur's experiments of her youth? Dotty Arthur Weasley, constantly playing with Muggle contraptions, squirreling away useless Muggle artifacts. It was just one more mystery to the wizarding world-what the hell was going on in Arthur Weasley's head?
With a start, Ginny looked around them and realized they were back where they had started, near the front of the large building. "Oh," she said in a small voice, her face coloring red. "My mind was elsewhere."
Cho smiled, the lines of her face softening into true beauty, and in that moment Ginny could see, without jealousy, why Harry had been so taken with her. "Listen," she said, putting a hand to Ginny's arm. "Come back tomorrow, and we'll get you started right, training and the like." She paused for a moment, worrying at her lip. "It'll be good to have someone around I know."
Ginny smiled and gave a little wave, then started out the doors, her step hitching with Cho's quiet afterthought.
"We need all the good we can get around here."
~~~
Where to go?
There were too many questions she had, too many things to say, to ask, to think, to feel. Ginny made her way to Diagon Alley, instinctively seeking out family, the lighter side of the Weasleys; Fred and George, unbeknownst to anyone on the outside, had been bearing the greater burdens of their family for years, all with a pair of charmingly identical, wickedly crooked smiles.
When she walked into Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, Ginny breathed a sigh of relief; George and Fred stood at the counter, no Harry or Ron in sight.
"Gin!" George looked up from the order he was tallying and winked broadly. "Be with you in a bit, love," he spoke to Ginny first, then addressed the teenaged wizard in front of him. "Twenty Dungbombs, there y'are. Never go wrong with a classic, mate." He wrapped up the boy's package and handed it to him, and the twins both stared at Ginny, waiting for the boy to leave, feeling her uncertainty.
The moment was tense, strangely suspended as the baby-faced mischief maker gathered his purchases and left the store. Ginny stood precisely where she was until the door shut firmly, and then she and both her brothers resumed movement. George hopped up to have a seat on the counter, Fred propped his elbows on the glass counter, studying Ginny intently, and the youngest Weasley herself leaned on the counter and took comfort in the presence of the court jesters, they who took the kingdom's mind off war and famine and entrapment and evil.
"Some Dungbombs for ya, Gin?" George asked, breaking the silence and ruffling his sister's hair, enjoying the way her nose wrinkled, the way she looked younger for just a moment.
"You can go visit Malfoy, throw a few in his cell as presents," Fred sniggered, and though it was mostly good-natured, uneasiness lurked under the laughter.
"Speaking of," George picked up easily, "Y'think they'd let us in?"
Ginny's eyes shot sharply to George's and she leaned back, letting his hand slide from her head. "Certainly, now that Dad's decided the whole world can visit whomever they please."
The twins exchanged an uneasy look. "Why so upset, love?" Fred asked carefully.
"Where's Ron?" Ginny asked, craning her neck to look around the store. She wasn't quite certain she wanted to discuss the topic of her father's latest Muggle-inspired action in front of him.
"Out with Harry and a few girls. You'd be amazed at how much attention of the feminine type you can get from being a 'hero,'" Fred said. He buffed his nails on his shirt and looked over at George, who struck a ridiculous pose.
"We, of course, never needed that distinction."
Impatient for once with the bantering, Ginny shook her head tersely. "Does Ron know? About Dad's visitation policy?"
Another distinctly uncomfortable look passed between the twins.
"Ah… yes?" George said, deciding it would be safest to restrict himself to as few words as possible.
"Ron knows," she stated. "And neither of you seem too perturbed about the idea." An idea, unpleasant but certain, crept into Ginny's mind. "You all already knew. Dad told you?"
She hadn't any particular reason for being so upset about the prospect of Malfoy receiving visitors-it was only that it was so soon, and how was there any way to tell what would happen? If he would be helped to escape?
Somehow it seemed to Ginny that it wasn't quite safe to hold someone like him behind bars and then place people in front of him.
Could you really cage a dragon?
"Dad told us," Fred stated. Arthur had told-Fred thought-all of them a few nights before.
Apparently that was not the case, and Fred hadn't the slightest idea of how to break it to his baby sister.
"Though you knew, love," George added cheerfully.
"Everyone knows," she stated flatly.
"Well, yeah," Fred said. "You know, Da told Bill and Charlie because… well, because they're Bill and Charlie. And of course Percy knew-"
"Because Percy's a know-it-all," George chimed in.
"And they told us because everyone tells us everything so we can make a joke of it. And of course they told Ron, because-"
This time, it was Ginny who finished the sentence, her voice flat and distant. "Because Ron's a victim. And no one told me, because I'm not the protector, I'm not the bureaucrat, I'm not the jokester and I'm not the victim. So, no one told me because I'm… what? Nothing?"
For once, the twins were speechless, merely blinking in the face of their sister's brutal-and somehow true-statement.
"I'm going to go speak to Dad," she said, her voice trembling on the edge of something-hurt, anger, confusion. They were all too closely twined to be separated. When she left the store, slamming the door with a flick of her wand, the twins looked at each other, and Fred grimaced.
"I have the feeling, dear brother, that we didn't handle that as well as we could have."
~~~
Nothing.
I had nothing.
I was nothing.
I'd be a liar, as well as a fool, if I said I was surprised at that particular implication. I had spent my entire life under someone else's protection, in someone else's shadow, and predominately wearing the names of others. I was a Weasley, not Ginny. I was a Gryffindor, not Virginia.
But even those who bore the same names forced upon me had seen me as nothing.
You must understand this, this mindset-if you are nothing, how can you do wrong? If even your family looks past you rather than at you, then what opportunity have you to disappoint them?
I was too old to want attention from my parents.
I was not too old to want attention.