The Broken Road - Chapter Two :: Finding Her Way
It was a brand new day, in more ways than one.
The sleepless night had been an epiphany for Ginny. She smiled to herself as she ordered her new king-sized bed from the catalog that Neville had loaned her. Making doubly sure that she had filled out all of the information on the order form properly, she sent it off with the tawny owl she'd purchased that morning.
Things had been clearer this morning; more so than they had ever been in her entire life. She was not meant to be with Harry. All of the fates had tried to point it out to her, and she had just been too thick to see the signs.
Him ignoring her until his sixth year in school.
Him breaking up with her after dating for a bit.
Him throwing up when he'd proposed to her (from nerves - or so he'd claimed later).
Him taking up with Hermione.
It was all someone's sick cosmic joke, and Ginny had been at the butt of it for too long.
Since before she'd married Harry, Ginny had been extremely money-conscious. She had scrimped and saved and refused to buy anything if it cost too much. Harry had been the exact opposite, spending frivolously on whatever he wanted, since he had the money. He felt entitled, and he tried to make her feel the same way - always buying her whatever she showed even the most passing fancy in.
She wondered now if the purchases he had made for her had been motivated by guilt.
Whatever the case was, she had managed to save up a rather large sum of galleons, since he had insisted on purchasing everything for her. Once she had come to this realization, it had triggered more realizations.
Firstly, she didn't need Harry.
Secondly, she didn't want to be married to a cheater.
And thirdly, she could buy whatever the bloody hell she wanted, without blinking twice.
Naturally, her first decision had been to replace the bed that they'd shared. She'd taken great pleasure in reducing the old bed to a manageable size and crushing it (repeatedly) beneath her foot. Then she'd shredded the bedcovers.
After that, she'd paid a visit to the most expensive clothier known to the Wizarding world, and she'd purchased a whole new set of robes for work. To add to that, she'd gone into Muggle London and done a good bit of clothes shopping there. She felt like a different person, she reasoned, so why shouldn't she look like one?
The second thing she had done that morning while she was out was to stop by the Ministry and fill out the necessary papers to begin her divorce from Harry. While Wizarding marriages took a fairly long amount of time to process (the licenses took forever to get approved, since they were looked over individually), Wizarding divorces took less than a week to be finalized.
That meant that, in five to six days, Ginny would be a free woman again. She found that she could hardly wait.
She had grabbed some take-out food for lunch before returning home, where she had proceeded to redecorate everything she could reach with her wand. The sofa was changed to a different color and material, the walls were painted, and different curtains hung at the windows. She'd even changed the floor by chucking the carpet in favor of the natural hardwood appearance.
By the time her bed arrived that evening at six thirty, she was thoroughly exhausted. She flooed Neville and asked him to come over, and he showed up at her flat around seven o'clock.
"I brought provisions," he said, grinning as he held up a brown paper sack and a white plastic grocery bag. Ginny laughed and gestured him into the kitchen behind her. He gave a low whistle as he walked through the flat. "Damn, Gin - when you said you were fixing up the place, I had no idea you meant this much!"
She shook her head and maintained her smile as she put the chocolate fudge chunk ice cream in the icebox. "I filed for divorce today."
Neville's hand froze inside the brown paper bag that held the food, and he stared at her in disbelief. "You're having me on."
"I'm not," she said simply. "Harry and I had a row last night."
"That's not reason enough for a divorce, Gin, no matter how mad you are, and no matter how bloody easy they make it," he protested. Neville had long been a proponent of the sacred institution of marriage, and believed that it should not be entered into lightly. While he approved heartily of the hoops the Ministry made engaged couples jump through, he thoroughly disapproved of the ease with which one could obtain a divorce.
"After we fought, I caught him at Hermione's, snogging her senseless."
Neville promptly dropped the Styrofoam container of soup that he'd been holding.
"What? Hermione? You've got to be mistaken, Gin. Hermione would never-"
"He admitted to me that it's been going on for three months right under my nose."
Neville's look of shock and disbelief quickly turned to one of utter betrayal and anger on behalf of his best friend.
"What made you wait until this morning to file, then?" he demanded. She smiled and cleaned up the soup. "So that's why you decided to overhaul the place," he said wonderingly.
"Absolutely," she agreed. "I'm a new woman, Nev, and I intend to start behaving like one."
"I never thought he deserved you anyway," Neville sniffed, opening a container of pasta. She giggled and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.
"I love you, Neville. I would never have gotten through this without you."
"You'd better love me - I just spilled really hot soup all over my foot. Ow," he whined, wincing. She rolled her eyes.
"How did you know to bring the ice cream?" she wondered, picking up a fork and dipping it into the spaghetti.
"You looked upset," he shrugged. "And besides, it's your favorite. So tell me what all those bags are in there," he said, indicating the living room with a nod of his head.
"The new me."
"The new you? What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that when Harry decided he wanted to chuck me for Hermione, I decided that I needed a new look - so I bought one." Neville nearly choked on the noodles in his mouth as she stood and modeled her new black boots for him.
"Bloody buggering fuck, Gin, don't do that to me," he exclaimed, still coughing a bit. She smiled. "You know what those look like? They look like the boots Pansy wears."
"How is she, by the way?"
"Spoiled as ever. I had to take her to Paris on holidays for a week," he lamented, shaking his head. "Nearly cleaned out my Gringott's account."
"Wait - where is she right now, that you got to come over here with no problem?" Ginny asked cautiously.
"She's visiting her Mum, who just happens to be in Greece. Lovely coincidence, don't you think?"
"Fortunate enough for me, anyway," she commented, sucking a noodle gracelessly into her mouth. He laughed.
"Don't get too excited," he teased. "She'll be back tomorrow afternoon, and we're already set to go to some ridiculous party that one of her friends is throwing."
"Better you than me," Ginny said flippantly.
"Thanks, I appreciate the sympathy!"
"Hey, you know how I feel about Parkinson's friends, all right? I don't envy you a bit."
"Why don't you come along and keep me company?" he suggested. It was her turn to choke on her mouthful of food.
"What?" she asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin. "No way. Huh uh. Absolutely not."
"It'd give you a chance to show off the new you," he persuaded. She cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes at him.
"This wouldn't by any chance be another of your fiancée's pathetic attempts at setting me up with someone, would it?"
"Gin, she would never try to set you up with someone while you were married to Harry," he said, putting on an innocent face.
Ginny snorted derisively. "Right. And that's why she didn't invite me to her cousin's wedding, and why she didn't keep giving my address out to random men she met at work."
"I'll bet Harry didn't like all of those men constantly knocking at your door," he laughed.
"He didn't like Pansy, period. Thankfully I caught most of the men who came to call and let them down easy. Gods, if she was like that when I was married, I'd hate to see what she's like when she finds out I'm single."
"You won't get a good night's sleep until you take up with one of her friends, you know. Why don't you make it easy on yourself and just pick the one you find the least repulsive."
"That's not going to happen, my friend," she said, sinking her teeth into a slice of garlic bread. "I just got free - you don't think I'm going to tie myself down again already, do you?"
"Someday you know that someone is going to come along, and you're going to fall head over arse in love with him, and want to marry him and be with him all the time."
"I won't," Ginny swore. "I'll never get married again."
"Famous last words."
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