A Luna/Ginny story with a side helping of Drarry and Pansimoine for queer-pansy
No matter how many times other people tried to tell her so, Harry had never been Ginny’s salvation. Maybe he had pulled her alive from the Chamber of Secrets, but the saving had happened afterwards, and it had been all her. She refused to be his shadow, her brothers’ shadow or her mother’s golden seventh girl. She had every reason to sink into herself after having lost so much of her soul to feed the growth of another’s, but the soul she had left was so strong that it didn’t matter that Riddle had been eating away at her for the better part of a year. She built herself up from the smoking wreck Tom Riddle had left her with and emerged better than she ever could have been before. This was not Harry Potter’s work, nor was it Tom Riddle’s. It was all Ginny’s and she was sharper, brighter and more powerful than those dark haired orphan boys with the tongues of snakes.
They just never thought to look her way, she was pretty, but she hadn’t been chosen the way Harry, Ron and Hermione had been. She wasn’t destined for greatness like Neville nor was she funny like Fred and George. She was fierce and feisty and shiny and beautiful and all those adjectives girls are given when they are too much to pin down but you still want to fit them in a box and make them likeable. If people told the truth when they described Ginny, they would have talked about how her mouth was twisted more often into a determined frown than it was in a smile (her smiles were never carefree), how she would snap first and ask questions later and usually only after she had thrown a hex or two. No one ever talked about how easily she got into violent fist fights, how she emerged panting and victorious from these fights, looking more alive then than she ever had before. There was something brilliant about the tangible connection of her fist against someone else’s face, something that helped to remind her that yes, she was still breathing, yes, there was still blood pumping through her veins. Sometimes she forgot, when she was alone, that she hadn’t died in the Chamber. She didn’t like to be alone much, after her first year. But she had never been able to be alone that year, so she learned to relish the silences, even if she had to remind herself to breathe. She didn’t like being alone as much as she liked knowing she could be alone, if she wanted to.
All these reasons and more are why Ginny tried to forget about her childish infatuation with Harry Potter. She no longer wants to belong to him, to be claimed as “Harry Potter’s Girl”. She has learned exactly how dangerous it is to give yourself up to someone, and no matter how sweet Harry’s smile is, no matter how green his eyes are and no matter how much she wants to be loved by him, she can’t let herself fall for him. That would weaken her and weakness is the last thing Ginny wants to show. Instead she builds up her walls and lines boy after boy up between her and Harry. She cares for them, in her own way, but they only serve the purpose of toughening her heart for Harry. She may have stitched her broken pieces together after Tom Riddle siphoned her soul out, but that doesn’t mean she has no cracks. She did have fissures in her foundation, but she has long since filled the holes with titanium, with unforgiving diamond, because she is now harder and sharper than flesh and that means no one can cut her down.