13A/N: Huge thanks to Rochelle (slightlysmall) for looking over this for me!
"Every fairy tale needs a good old fashioned villain." – James Moriarty
Hearts are fragile things. Yours has always been more fragile than most. It's easily pierced, easily shattered, and easily broken.
The world, you learn, is riddled with broken-hearted people just like you. And maybe that should make the pain a little easier to bear, but somehow it does the opposite. You ache with your own pain and the knowledge that other people share it and know it and there's nothing you can do for them or, it seems, for yourself.
Your heart has belonged to Harry Potter since you were a little girl, and your mother told you the story of the baby boy with no parents and a lightning bolt scar. At that point, you were intrigued, and at the tender age of ten years old, when you saw him on the platform, you were star struck. When he saved your eleven-year-old self from the devil you'd convinced yourself was your only friend, you were indebted.
It is only when you are fourteen and fifteen, and you begin to know the boy behind the mask, that you think it might actually be love. And by that time, you can clearly see all the things that have kept (and will keep) you apart.
.~.
i) your timid, too-big heart
It makes you blush and stutter and stammer when he's around, it leaves you as a shadow of yourself, and that's all it allows him to see. Before you learn to master it, Harry sees nothing except his best friend's shy little sister, and you're so much more than that.
Your delicate heart fills you up with so much emotion that there are times when you can't even move. Keeping your composure is an effort, let alone putting up a front or trying to impress the most famous boy in the wizarding world.
You just ache, and sometimes, it's the only way you know you're alive.
.~.
ii) Tom Marvolo Riddle
Or, as you eventually muster up the courage to call him, Lord Voldemort.
With his pointless ideas and pointless war, he leaves the world in ruins, and leaves you all by yourself.
He makes you feel (and look) weak and stupid and childish, so desperate for a friend that you'll confide all your secrets anywhere they'll be heard. You are not weak and you are not stupid; you survived with him in your head and your sanity intact, - far longer than many adults could have done. He haunts your dreams regardless, keeping you trapped in recollections of the terrible things you did, the life you nearly lost.
Slowly but surely, you shake him out of your head. Your nightmares decrease in frequency and your confidence grows as they diminish. You start to look Harry in the eye, to talk to him, even. You start to grow into the strong-willed, fiery tempered Weasley you were always destined to become.
And then comes the Tri-Wizard Tournament, the return of the tyrant, and Harry being far too occupied with all of that to start a long-term relationship. (Because while Cho Chang was surely important to him, he never loved her like he loves you.)
Deliberately or not, Tom Riddle has been the greatest barrier to your happiness. He is the hammer that leaves you shattered and simultaneously the common ground with Harry that no one else could hope to share.
.~.
iii) his brave, even bigger heart
He left you, stupid girl.
The truth is far more complex than that, and you know it, yet as you crawl into your four-poster bed for your first night at Hogwarts under Snape's reign, those and other vindictive and self-pitying thoughts swarm your mind.
You toss and you turn and eventually force yourself to take deep, even breaths and drift off to sleep, pushing those ideas aside. Harry loves you. You can see it in the way his eyes immediately search for you when he enters a room, the way they light up when he finds you. The greatest proof he has given you is, ironically, leaving you behind to keep you safe.
You vow to fight the Carrows and their regime with everything you have, for yourself, for the DA, for the younger students who have no idea what lies ahead, and for Harry.
This year is the most difficult of your life so far.
You are lost and you are fighting a battle that doesn't seem to end and why do you even bother? Sometimes (not often), you cry yourself to sleep thinking of everyone you know and love and the danger you're all constantly in. You think of Ron and Hermione and Harry and the mysterious mission they've run off to complete. You wish you could be angry at them – at him - for leaving you behind, because a little righteous indignation would be more productive than the apathy that weighs you down instead. Anything would be better than that.
You know Harry too well to be angry at him, though. He left to protect you, and how can you possibly be mad at him for that? He has lost so much already, and you are the one person to whom he cannot bear to say a final goodbye. So you don't hold it against him. If anything, his self-sacrificing nobility makes you love him even more.
All you ever do – all you've ever done - is wait. Wait until you're old enough to go to Hogwarts. Wait for Harry to notice you. Wait for Harry to come back. Wait, wait, wait, like the helpless little girl you despise yourself for being.
No longer. Harry will come back to you when the war is over, you have to believe that. Until then, you refuse to sit idly back and let the Carrows have their way.
.~.
If HarryandGinny were a story, all those things that kept you apart would be the villains. And if you were a story, you'd have a happy ending. Those if's mean nothing in the end, for your lives are real, they continue beyond the war, and they demand that you live. Nevertheless, for a long time, you believed in the lie of happy endings.
For a long time, you waited for the day the stars would align, for the day your life would finally reach a perfect harmony. It's only many years after the war that you realise that there's no such thing. There are harmonious moments – even the occasional harmonious day – but a harmonious life is an impossible contradiction, and the only choice you have is to accept it.
You cope as best you can in the unreal world that topples and teeters and rights itself time and time again, and the two of you topple and teeter right along with it. After the war, you start again. You grab his hand (and claim his heart) and you never let go.
That heart of yours, it's stronger than you think. Sometimes it will dance in your chest, beating wildly with a joy you can't contain and sometimes it will slow beneath the weight of all you've seen. The one thing you know is that if Harry is the Boy Who Lived, then you are the Girl Who Loved, and together you will live and love like no one has before.
Written for:
A Jury of Your Peers Competition: Canon
The Ultimate Het Love Competition: Slytherin (prompt: complex)
The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. Prompts: dance, harmony, Sherlock quote
The Doctor Who Appreciation Competition: Rose Tyler
The Flower Language Challenge: Rose
The Florence + the Machine Challenge: Never Let Me Go
The Sherlock Competition: Part 2, Prompt 3