Disclaimer: Not mine. If it were, Harmony shippers would be celebrating.
A/N: My response to the "Hermione's sister" challenge by Strawberry Nerd. You can find it here: http://talk.portkey.org/index.php?showtopic=26786 . I hope you'll like the story, it will start from HBP, during sixth year, but hopefully this new character will help change things, uh? ;)
Thanks to my beta Gingercat!
A Sister's Influence
Chapter Six: An Angry Redhead
Dumbledore let them know in the next few days that he would give the three of them private lessons in advanced duelling, and that he had arranged for the DA to become an official club.
This, however, meant that someone from the staff would have to chaperone their sessions, which should then be held in the Great Hall.
Harry would have preferred the Room of Requirements, but he realized that it was better to not let everyone in the school know about its existence. The old DA already knew about it, of course, and Umbitch's inquisitorial squad did too, but the rest of the school wasn't aware of it, and it should remain so.
When they had first mentioned the idea to Ron, he had been ecstatic to be able to learn directly from Dumbledore. It gave the redhead a sense of importance, so now that it was confirmed they would do it, Harry and Hermione had an hard time stopping him from blabbering about it. It was meant to stay secret, otherwise the other students may wonder why they weren't being taught by the Headmaster too.
However, for a redhead who was ecstatic about the news, there was another who was pissed. Ginny didn't take the fact that Harry would be having lessons without her very well. Since the arrival of the letter, of which she didn't know a thing about, Harry had paid her much less attention, and instead he had chosen to spend his time mostly with Hermione.
So when in one of the now rare moments they spent together he told her about it, thinking she would be happy, she snapped at him.
"Why aren't I included too? Why am I always left behind?" she spat. The raven haired boy had no clue about what had made her angry.
"Ginny, if Dumbledore could teach the whole school, then he would do it, don't you think?" he replied, crossly. "It's not my fault that I seem to have a special role in this upcoming war, and thus I have to be trained better. Plus, I will be teaching the same things to all of you in the DA meetings"
"So why do Ron and Hermione have permission to come to those lessons?" Ginny scowled, her emphasis on the name Hermione however was lost to Harry.
"They are my best friends, and because of that they are high up on Voldemort's target list. Plus, we always do these kinds of things together" he replied.
"Harry, I'm your girlfriend, as close as you may be to Ron and Hermione" she said, once more underlining the brunette's name, "I should be considered closer to you, and thus more in danger. If anything, it should be me, not them, to be there with you during Dumbledore's lessons"
Harry looked at her strangely. "Ginny, you may be my girlfriend but you will never take Ron's, or Hermione's for that matter, place. They have been my first real friends and nobody, nobody will ever replace them in my heart. Dumbledore knows this, and I'm sure Voldemort does too. So yes, you're my girlfriend, but no, you're not more important to me. You need to learn to face it, if you want this relationship to keep going" he said, his green eyes blazing, and with that he left her alone in the empty classroom they had snuck to.
--
For the next days, Ginny would constantly scowl whenever she met Hermione, so much that the brunette couldn't help noticing. Since they had always gotten along well, she thought that strange, and wondered why the redhead was angry at her.
That night, as she and Harry were the only ones left in the common room, having to finish an essay for Snape that Ron had declared he was too tired to work on, the raven haired boy noticed she seemed preoccupied. Well, he had noticed sooner, but with the others around he didn't feel comfortable asking her what the problem was.
"Hermione, what's troubling you?" he asked, a look of concern reflecting in his eyes. He hoped it wasn't something he had done, not now that they were back to the closeness they had shared for five years, and that had abruptly been ripped away in the first months of this school year.
"Did you notice Ginny acting strangely, lately?" she whispered. "She keeps glaring at me, and I don't know what I did wrong!"
Harry rolled his eyes, sighing. "She's envious that you get to come to Dumbledore's lessons with me and she doesn't"
"You told her?" the brunette asked, almost outraged. "We had to keep it secret!"
Harry looked down. "I know. I thought I could trust her, but clearly she didn't take it the way I had hoped"
"Well, this doesn't explain why she doesn't glare at Ron though" Hermione said, pensively. "Unless…"
"Unless?" Harry asked, baffled at the conclusion Hermione might have reached.
"Unless she fears I may steal you from her. She's jealous, Harry"
The raven haired boy stared at her dumbfounded.
"Don't look at me like that" Hermione giggled, and Harry realized it was maybe the first time she did that, or at least the first time he had heard it. He found he loved the sound, much better than when Parvati, or Lavender, or Ginny herself giggled, he had to admit.
He found himself grinning at her. "Well" he said after a moment, "if she's jealous then it's her problem. I told her quite clearly that she may be my girlfriend, but she will never take the special spot you, and of course Ron, have in my heart"
"And that was supposed to make her feel better?" Hermione raised an eyebrow at him. He shrugged. "It's the truth, she better learn to deal with it" he said, before resuming his work on the essay.
Hermione looked at him for a moment longer, before shaking her head and starting to furiously scribble on her own parchment.
--
The first lesson with Dumbledore was draining, but successful. The Golden Trio was taught how to produce a shield much stronger than the one obtained with the Protego spell. It was the same silvery shield Dumbledore had used in the duel with Voldemort in the Ministry a few months prior.
As they practiced, the Headmaster regarded Harry's frustrated attempts with his usual twinkling eyes.
"Learning offensive magic will be useless if you can't protect yourself long enough to use it, Harry" he had calmly advised the impatient boy, who had nodded and resumed practicing. Two hours later, the three teenagers were exhausted, but all of them had managed to produce the required shield. Hermione, of course, did it first, and hers was the stronger one. Harry was a close second, while Ron managed a grey mist, stronger than the Protego shield but not by much.
When they returned in the common room, Ginny was there to wait for them.
Sensing her annoyance, Hermione quickly bid good night to Harry and Ron and went up the stairs to the girl dorms. Ron, too knackered to stay up, trudged up to the boys dorm just as quickly, and that left Harry alone to face his girlfriend.
"So, did you enjoy your lesson?" she said in a sugary voice that Harry immediately knew was fake.
He sighed, and plopped down on an armchair. "What's your problem, Ginny?" he said, running one hand through his hair, clear sign he wanted to be anywhere but where he was right now.
"My problem, Harry, is that in the last two weeks we've barely spent any time together, you're always around Hermione, studying, planning for the DA, going to Dumbledore's lessons, anything but spending time with me!" she shrilly shouted.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Ginny, if you didn't notice, I've got to deal with a madman who wants to kill me, gain the control of both Muggle and Wizarding Worlds and purge them of those impure, as he says. I don't exactly have the time to go to a broom closet and snog, you know" he acidly replied. The redhead was quickly starting to annoy him.
"You know what, Harry, if you're so busy that you can't spare a few hours for your girlfriend, then I'll find someone else who will!" she shouted. "We're through, Harry!"
The raven haired boy slumped in his seat, sighing loudly. Why couldn't he get a girlfriend that understood him, and didn't ask him for what he couldn't give her?
However, he didn't feel particularly bad about the break-up. He would have thought this might have been strange, if he didn't know why. The letter Ophelia had sent him had made him get a right perspective on what was important at the moment, and having a girlfriend wasn't. Sure, it was nice, but not necessary, unless he was truly in love with her, which wasn't the case with Ginny, that he knew for sure.
With that last thought, he pushed himself up from the armchair and slowly climbed up the stairs to go get some sleep.
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