Downfall, by GW

Rihaan

Rating: R
Genres: Angst, Humor
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 7
Published: 27/06/2014
Last Updated: 27/06/2014
Status: in_progress

Every phoenix has to go through a Burning Day.

Chapters

1. Prologue

1. Prologue

Downfall, by GW

My life is pathetic.

She has him. After seven long years, she has him. I can't believe it. I tried so hard to get him, and I almost did â€“ I almost bloody did. I love him. With all of my heart and soul, with everything that I am.

But I refuse to have sloppy seconds.

Fred bought me this diary, shortly after You-Know-Who's defeat, by my ex-future husband's hand. I've never actually written in the bloody thing. Maybe I'm deathly afraid of diaries now? That's a laugh. If I was in a laughing mood, I would laugh.

I just never felt the need to share what I was feeling. Now, however I have a few things to get off my chest, much like those funbags Granger has, something else I apparently won't get.

I guess it all started when I was four, when I was old enough to actually listen to my mother's bedtime stories instead of hearing her voice to go to sleep every night. I listened in rapt attention of everything that the "Boy-Who-Lived" has done. It may have been one thing, but it was the greatest thing ever to be done. I fell in love with him. I knew, in my heart, that he was the one for me. He was my knight in shining armor, and he was only a year older than me. I swore one night, as my cute chocolate brown eyes fluttered into a dream-filled slumber, that I would make him mine.

Four-year-old Ginny would punch me in the bloody nose. And I wouldn't blame her.

I asked my mother one night to tell me everything that she knew about him. I was in luck, as she knew my parents when they were in school during her time. They weren't close, but they knew each other. She told me that the Boy-Who-Lived's father was an exceptional Quidditch Player, especially at the Chaser and Seeker position. I decided then that when I was old enough, I was going to try to get on a broom and learn. I knew I was going to one day anyway, considering we have our own pitch (the only good money-making decision our family has ever made), but right then, I had incentive.

Occasionally, I have to reiterate how stupid I was, am, and apparently, forever will be. He has shaped my life. He made me into the person I am today. He crafted me, molded me, and what do I get? What good karma comes my way after this? If I never liked himâ€¦ how different would things be?

I probably shouldn't dwell on the past. Nothing but heart-ache. Not like the present gets any better. If anything, my reflections are making me feel better about myself. Maybe here I can find out what went wrong, or what mistakes I made.

So, I guess I'll continue.

My mother went on, telling me that no one knows where he is now and everyone wonders if he's still alive, but I knew, even then, that he was alive. If you can defeat You-Know-Who when you were a baby, you had to be alive. After all, I couldn't have a dead husband, now could I? We may not have known where he is, but I knew there was a big chance that he would be at Hogwarts, since his parents attended there.

I suppose I should've mentioned earlier that when I was four, mum told me his name was Hairy. That's not a typo. That's what I heard, and that's what I believed for the longest time. I was so inconceivably stupid.

I decided to learn as much as I could about this boy, who I then discovered, at seven, was Harry Potter. I still thought the name is pretty weird, though. First and last name, really. I guess if you put the name through your head a few times, you'll get used to it after a long while. Ginny Potterâ€¦ Ginny Potterâ€¦ weird, but still doable.

Oh, how I bloody wish for that reality.

Anyway, I learned that his mum was a muggleborn around that time. Even then, I remember having mixed feelings about non-magical folk. My parents may like them, but I'm not my parents. I mean, it really isn't fair! Think about it, someone who doesn't know about us, someone who never even knew we existed, born with magic and can do the same thing we do. I say that magical abilities should've stayed within magical families, who actually deserved them.

Still, I remember how I was somewhat glad that Harry's mum was dead. One less mother-in-law to handle.

I'd figured something else out when I was seven. It turned out that the Potters are an Ancient and Noble House, unlike us Weasleys. In my young mind, that automatically meant that must've been incredibly RICH! At the thought of him having a bigger castle than Hogwarts, My love for him grew.

I figured that I've done as much as I could do to study up on him; after all, he had limited information. I learned everything about his parents, (mostly his dad's family) a man named Sirius Black, the person who sold out Harry to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I still have no idea why You-Know-Who personally came to their hideout to kill them, but rumors say that they were a key part in slowly dismantling him, and given more time, could have actually defeated him. I may have been a bit sad about him trying to kill a baby, I would have to say, even if he killed Harry's parents, that it was worth it, considering what happened that night, what with You-Know-Who gone and all.

When I turned nine, I became frustrated that I could never find a picture of him. My mum and my dad, who works at the Ministry of Magic by the way, helped me, but I still couldn't find it. It's pathetic, really. I didn't even know what my future husband's face looked like. All I knew was that he had brilliant green eyes and he had a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. I bet he would look chiseled and well-tonedâ€¦his hair smoothed back without the need of a gel or potion. I bet he would look perfect.

Imagine my fucking surprise.

September 1, 1991 â€“ I don't need to remind myself what happened that day, or where I went. The only thing I will never be able to recall that day is the look on my face when I saw a dreadfully pale boy with incredibly messy hair as he glanced cluelessly around the muggle train station, King's Cross. He looked pathetic! In retrospect, even now I could say that had I known Filch at the time, he would have been a dead ringer for his son. I quickly turned away, but before I could wretch, I had to do a double-take on him. I thought I saw something on his forehead. It had to be coincidental. But it wasn't. Not only did he have the scar, he had the green eyes of his mother, and some features of his father.

He'sâ€¦ grown since that day. Spectacularly so. Maybe, had I not been such a shy little girl, I would've approached him, and talked to him, and I could have laid the foundation for something beautiful.

Unfortunately, though, my mother did it for me.

That woman knew what she was doing the moment she started screaming what platform we were on. Seriously? Could she be more obtuse? By this point, not only were she and dad both Hogwarts students, every one of my brothers except Ron have been going there for the past nine years in a row. In front of muggles, she asks Fred and George where the only transportation (for students) to the school was.

Though, I have to admit, the insanely confused looks on the twins' faces were so bloody priceless.

I needed to research him. I needed to know what his dysfunction was. Did his parents really leave him nothing? Did he get access to his money when he became of age? Is it just some new trend he was trying to start? He's the boy-who-lived, I'm sure the tatters on his person that he called 'clothes' would likely have its own wardrobe line by Christmas, and that made me shudder a bit.

I needed to know, so I stupidly asked my mother if I could go to Hogwarts.

They have really strict birthday rules, that I still fully don't understand, and it's stupid. While I didn't want to leave my friend Luna Lovegood behind, her mother just having died and all, this was my future I was talking about.

As I would eventually learn, I really should've gone to Hogwarts. It would've just been better for everyone. Luna had gone a bitâ€¦ off-kilter, and I would be beyond pre-occupied the next year I finally got to Hogwarts. Who knows, maybe if I had been Harry's friend by then, he would've noticed that I was acting strangely, and saved me that much sooner.

On second thought. I'm kinda glad it happened this way. Much more romantic. It would've been less of a story if he had just reported my behavior to the Headmaster. So, I'm grateful for what happened down the road.

Once again, this would have been the absolute most perfect story had she not shot it all to hell.

I had the forethought to make Ron promise me to make friends with Harry Potter, but then, I wasn't so sure anymore.

But I was not going to give up. Old Ginny never gave up.

Still, it took me two months to convince myself.

I even made a pros and cons list on why or why not I should get him. I still remember it.

Cons: Messy hair; broken glasses which indicate he's poor; hand-me-down robes that are worse than my brothers' robes; taped up shoes; Terribly underfed; Too pale; Makes me wonder if everyone's mad at him for killing You-Know-Who or something. Maybe he was raised by You-Know-Who supporters?

Pros: He has a cute owl and he's a hero.

Well, I would have to say that the Cons heavily outweigh the Pros, and that's just from a glance!

A few days later, Ron owled us and mentioned that he had made friends with him. I'm really starting to question if my brother has a mind of his own, and if he does, when he would start using it.

But he was perfect for some key parts to my plans, as I will tell you later.

I found out from Bill one day that Harry is, indeed, very rich, but he didn't even know it until he showed up at Gringotts, where Bill worked. How pathetic is that? Ron, in his occasional letters, also wrote that Harry was raised by muggles. I couldn't even read it anymore. I almost gave up on him completely. That is, until I found out what happened on Halloween.

He beat up a bloody troll. Well, Ron said he and Harry beat up the troll together, but let's face it, he was probably just there. Anyway, He became a hero again in my eyes. And, right then, I knew it had to have been a sign, right?

Right?

Right. Only not for me.

In the rest of the letter, Ron gave a mention about how some girl got on his nerves that got them all in the situation in the first place, but any girl had a tendency to hate him in just a few short moments.

If only I discovered just how much she would piss me off as well. How incredibly, easily, irksome she was as a person, and as a confidant.

He had misspelled her name in the letter. I remember it clearly. Hermyohknee. It's a wonder he can remind himself to breathe once in a while. Still, if I had the chance again, I would have taken that name, cursed it, and set it to memory â€“ the bitch that became my best friend in the world, and destroyed me from the inside-out.

And then began the tale of how Hermione Potter caused the downfall of Ginny Weasley.

Or, more importantly, the tale of how Ginny Weasley, from the lowest of depths, began to rise, and set the world ablaze, leaving nothing but me and Harry Potter, my one true love, and discarding the other one in the ashes.

I've always believed that if I could become an Animagus, I would become a phoenix. I can't, by the way â€“ I've tried, multiple times â€“ but if I could. I love to fly, my hair is bright, and red, and beautiful, and I come from a family of the light. I can't sing very well, but I can whistle, which is close enough, I imagine. Makes perfect sense, right? Right.

The day she married Harry Potter was my burning day.

And I've got a plan to rise again.

But I'll get to that. Right now, I've got seven years of Hogwarts to go through. Bear with me. And, spoiler alert, as the muggles say, what I've got planned is going to be fucking fantastic.

And everyone will get their chance to burn. Including Harry bloody Potter. Sloppy seconds needs to know they're sloppy, after all. And he's got a lot to apologize for.

Oh yeah, this is gonna be great. It hasn't happened yet, but it's gonna be so great!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Hogwarts. Here we go.

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Author's Note: This one-shot has been resting on my computer for quite some time now. I've got more stories, but this one, for some reason, felt like it needed to be out and open.

AU story, of course. I'm going to have to be in a special place to write this, so don't expect it to be continued anytime soon. The outline is basically Ginny being manipulative. Have we never considered Molly screaming the platform number, and Ron claiming there were no more empty compartments, for the sake of Ginny instead of Albus?

Not sure what part I want everything to go AU for her, but it would be before they could ever get together. Likely before Hermione became a bit of an itch-bay in Canon, so around the end of the fifth book.