#batsbogey

Percy looked up from the armchair in which he was seated. “Merlin--I wasn’t expecting you to be here. Should I get Mum?”

Having an identical twin means never having to find a mirror – doesn’t it? But the range contained within “identical” can be a lot vaster than it looks from the outside. It wasn’t until she got to Hogwarts that Padma encountered the idea of “the pretty twin” – but encounter it she did, and hard.

“Your sister’s so pretty!” her housemates told her. “Wow, Parvati’s gorgeous,” they gushed, “just totally stunning!”

And Padma agreed, when she thought about it; Parvati had never looked like anything special to her, the face her sister wore having been as familiar to her as her own – moreso, really, since it was Parvati’s face she saw in front of her every moment of every day and her own only showed up when she looked at something reflective. It wasn’t until she got to Hogwarts that Padma started to feel like she was seeing her sister’s face every time she looked in the mirror too, rather than her own.

They never told her she was pretty; just her sister. Even though they looked just the same, the compliments were always directed toward Parvati – or so it seemed from Padma’s place in her tower, at least. (Maybe the same thing was happening to Parvati too, off in her tower. Padma never asked. It never occurred to her that it might have been; that people were more comfortable giving compliments to an absent party than straight to someone’s face – even if they were the same faces.) So she started to wonder: what made them different? These two girls with the same faces, the same rich black hair, the same stylish robes, the same delicate jewelry? What made one pretty, and the other…the sister?

For a while during her third year, Padma thought maybe it was weight; Parvati was more active than she was, wasn’t she? Gryffindors were always running around after something or other, while she preferred slow walks with a book in her hand or a brisk argument around the common room. Maybe Parvati was in better shape than she was – but when they got home, when they were sharing a life the way they always had, Parvati’s clothes fit Padma the same as her own. There was once again no difference between them. Whenever they went home, the differences evaporated like they had never been.

It was only at Hogwarts that Padma felt a distance from her twin; that she felt different from Parvati.

In her fourth year, she fretted and fidgeted up in her tower before the Yule Ball, wishing she and her sister could dress together; what was the point of having an identical twin, if you couldn’t check your reflections in each other’s eyes before a party? Of course, she wasn’t the one who would be dancing in front of everyone with the second Hogwarts champion so probably Parvati was fretting even more – but Parvati had Lavender. Padma had…well, friends, yes. But none of them were anything like a sister, and Padma suspected sometimes that Lavender was almost more of a sister to her twin than she was, for all that they looked almost nothing alike.

Fourth year she got compliments of her own, from boys and girls in Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, who were not used to looking at Padma through the reflection of her sister. She felt pretty on her own merits, then – although the occasion was somewhat marred by not being as pretty as Hermione Granger, apparently (and even when Padma had been at her most insecure, she had never thought to compare herself unfavorably to Hermione Granger, but there it was!). And Parvati hadn’t enjoyed her night with the champion, either, save for that first dance in the center of everyone’s eyes. It hadn’t been a very nice evening for either of them…but there had been a few moments.

Padma tried to treasure those instead of fretting over her sister’s face (her face) and where the line fell between them.

Joining the D.A. didn’t help. She’d thought it would; it was an opportunity to spend more time with her sister at school, so shouldn’t doing that have made their time at Hogwarts feel more like it did at home? But there were too many other Ravenclaws there with her, and it felt like all they ever wanted to talk about with her after a meeting was her sister – how pretty Parvati was, how talented, how funny; how nice it must be to get to practice all these spells with someone just like her…but if Parvati was just like her, why was it that Padma’s housemates never talked about how pretty she was, how talented she was?

It was nice to spend more time with Parvati. It was nice to become friends with Lavender Brown on her own behalf, instead of feeling like she’d inherited that friendship from her more outgoing sister – but it didn’t help clear up the question of how two identical girls could be separated by which was the pretty one.

          Papers are scattered around the coffee table in a sort of organized disarray. The people in various pictures glaring at the ceiling with dark looks on their faces, clearly not happy to be there. The list is in the center — names of the escaped death eaters they’ve yet to found in Harry’s untidy handwriting. He’d copied it from work even before he’d become an official auror. Rodolphus Lestrange mockingly at the top. There’s notes in the margins, things that seemed important to one time. Anything to catch one — to be able to cross the name off with a sense of finality.

👫: four headcanons about our muse’s relationship

Neither of them remember this, but Molly does. Percywasn’t the first of the six boys to hold Ginny when she was a baby, but he wasthe first to take initiative. When Ginny wouldn’t stop crying, Percy was theone to take her out of her crib and try to rock her to sleep. This was probablyhow Percy started to cleave soclosely to duty, especially since he eventually was the one who made sure Ginnydidn’t smack her face into anything when she started walking and eventuallychasing her brothers around the Burrow.

Most of the children’s stories that Ginny knowsis because of Percy reading them to her at night when they were kids. Therewere some that Ginny loved hearing over and over again, but Percy never mindedreading them to her. Sometimes he would do voices. Most of the time she alreadyhad some of the dialogue memorized and would interrupt him reading because she knew how to say it right.

When Ginny made the team, Percy’s congratulationsgift was a pair of professional Quidditch gloves. Blisters are a concern whenyou’re flying that often! And Ginny may have invited Percy to her first match,but she probably didn’t count on him buying season tickets for the Harpies. Mostof the time he preferred to watch by himself though, so he didn’t tell anyone hehad done that. But Ginny knows; Percy stuck out like a sore thumb in the crowds.

Padma hesitated, drumming her fingers nervously on the back of the book she held pressed to her chest like a shield or a security blanket. She scanned the bustling Great Hall -- somehow the lack of Muggle-born students made the room feel the room so much emptier than the absence of such a comparatively few number of bodies should logically produce -- as her stomach turned over and over again, leaving a sour and sick feeling that clawed up the back of her throat.

She didn’t know why she was wasting her time; Padma already knew she wasn’t going to find who she was looking for here, not when there hadn’t been any sign of her in Ravenclaw Tower last night...

But when a flash of fiery red hair moved past her to the Gryffindor table, Padma couldn’t help following. She hesitated several times, almost turning back to the comfort and safety of her fellow Ravenclaws -- but something dragged her feet onward. Guilt? Curiosity? It was impossible to say but suddenly there she was, at the edge of the Gryffindor table, but several feet down from where her sister sat bent in hushed conversation with Lavender Brown. (Everyone seemed to speak in hushed conversations this year. Padma had never thought she would miss the annoyingly raucous cacophony that usually characterized breakfast in the Great Hall, but this sepulchral quiet weighted on her worse than the noise ever had...)

She stepped toward the bright red mane, cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me -- Ginny? I was just -- I was just wondering, have you...have you heard anything from Luna? Luna Lovegood, I mean?” Padma bit her lip, feeling her cheeks go hot with embarrassment; what other Luna could she mean? Even if there were another girl by that name here at Hogwarts -- which she doubted -- only Luna Lovegood held any shared connection between her and Ginevra Weasley. She would be lucky if Ginny didn’t laugh in her face, after that. “I was just wondering if she’s...all right, you know?”

You know? When you get right down to it: Ginny Weasley is a good example of why its a bad idea to be friends with Harry Potter. Truthfully, a lot of what happened Ginny’s first year is a mystery to Seamus and he’s totally okay with that.

Seamus knew Ginny generally for most of his Hogwarts career up until the DA and, more specially, his 7th year. While Seamus did not always agree with Ginny’s choices, and in some ways doesn’t respect them, he does actually respect Ginny as a person. Just because they had different ways of coping with what was happening doesn’t mean either was wrong. Of course, Seamus still think’s he was more right about it all--but he doesn’t need to shout about it unless prodded

The exception is outside the classroom and every day bullshit of 7th year. Its not the ‘leadership’ Seamus admired (he’s not sure how much leadership there was that year) but the wand work skill in dueling/battle. There’s survival and there’s fighting--he admires the fighting.

Lessons were resuming as usual. Draco had risen an eyebrow when Professor Snape had made that little announcement--how could they carry on as if Pansy hadn’t seen Harry Potter skulking the corridors?--but now Draco could see it made sense. The best way to keep an eye on the students was to keep teaching them as if the car crashing into the greenhouse was just a prank, nothing more, nothing less. Potter wasn’t supposed to be here. The information couldn’t get out, or everyone still loyal to him would be making even more trouble for the Carrows, and Draco knew all too well what would happen to them then. 

It was lunchtime and there was only one route from this particular classroom to the Great Hall. Draco was waiting for Ginny there, leaning against the wall like he had not a care in the world. The door swung open, letting out a wave of sound, footsteps on stone and chatter which turned to whispers the second eyes found him. Spotting her trademark ginger hair and freckles, Draco kicked off the wall and stepped in her path. “Not you, Weasley,” he said, more quietly than he usually would. The less attention he drew the better. “We need to talk.”

He was still a prefect, a role which had been oh so graciously redefined by the Carrows; his authority stretched further than ever before, even with the stain on the Malfoy name. That didn’t mean Draco expected Ginny to listen. He had played Quidditch against the Gryffindor Chaser. He wasn’t fool enough to believe she’d follow him without some resistance. If he wanted to speak to Ginny Weasley without causing a scene, he would have to sweeten the deal.

“I received a message from home which you might find interesting,” he said. “And since I know you don’t have a meeting with Lovegood to rush off to… Where is Loony anyway? Oh yes…” He pulled his lips into a smirk, but he could feel that it didn’t touch his eyes. There was something strained about everything he did, like his body was no longer his to command. One by one, the Dark Lord was turning them all into puppets.

“Before you get all pissy with me, remember who I am.” Draco was not party to every conversation, a fact which stung after all the extra spellwork he’d been practising over the summer, but he knew a lot more about this particular matter than Ginny Weasley. “Where is Loony. It’s almost a riddle. Wouldn’t you like to know?” An offer, slightly muddled, but all Draco could give under the scrutiny of the Carrows and his fellow Slytherins. 

Seamus’ first understanding of Ginny was this: she was Ron’s sister (and a sister to half the older boys), decidedly prettier than Ron (sorry, mate, but true), and she was quiet. She had a book. And Seamus never fully learned what that book meant only that Ginny changed the second year and kept changing third, and fourth, and fifth, and so on. The changes, or what he saw of them, seemed good. It had felt strange for a Weasley, excluding Percy, to be so quiet. First impressions are not always accurate--but, really, Ginny is still prettier then Ron so there is that. (Seamus would like not to think of Percy, but Fred and George are maybe slightly closer to ‘well, alright’)

Seamus talked the piss when Ginny dated Dean. Oh, there’s no doubting it here: he was a bit of a jerk. No excusing it either but a combination of his best friend having another focus (who wouldn’t be a little jealous, he told himself), and only just starting and shying way from well maybe not that straight. Wasn’t a good look for Seamus, though he did laugh at Dean trying to help Ginny of all people through the portrait hole. He was pretty relieved when they broke up but probably would hate articulating why even now.

Current year: Seamus fucking adores Ginny. Straight up. This doesn’t mean he’s always nice about it--Seamus will shit talk and tease even those he cares about--but in some ways Seamus is a bit lonely. His best friend isn’t there and it leaves him feeling a bit at loose ends. Enter Ginny whose tactics and decisions Seamus can really get behind. Being mouthy in class? Hell, yes. Stirring things up at night? Oh, Seamus is there. Its a great series of distractions, of course--even when its just plopping down next to someone and teasing or ragging them until they either smile or boil over. Seamus wouldn’t begin to think he’s become one of Ginny’s closest friends, but he does very much like her style and likes being around her because of that.

Whose a leader? Its ....not Seamus. Ever. Bad idea. One possibility is they attempted this sometime during the beginning of the year when Seamus attempting to lead a small nighttime event... and it just went pear shaped. Too loud, too ill planned, maybe even just a bad night for it--it hardly matters. The only thing Seamus would be interested in doing that involves managing other people is providing personal opinions on what areas are best to light on fire. So this is another area Seamus has grown to admire Ginny for--the ability that she and Neville have shown for stepping up to these roles. Its because of the past several months that Seamus would sooner follow Ginny then Harry and he would get snitty about that too.