The Slug Club had a quiet but heartfelt party at the start of term which Harry declined to attend. Ginny had spent a few moments reassuring him that she didn't feel bad about their abrupt and necessary (she agreed) break up at the end of last term, which as a consequence made her late to the function.

The conversation had limped along for several minutes at the beginning. She knew it would have started with an enthusiastic story as Slughorn tried to lighten the air with an anecdote and failed. There would be a general mumbling, some back and forth as he reminded everyone of who they were and why they were there and what importance they had in the world. As though his idea of importance matched everyone else's, but she hadn't minded when he tried to make them believe it with such cheer. It was, at least, well-intentioned.

She waited outside the door for a moment with her palm pressed to the wood and her sleep-drunk mind trying to question her ability to hold a smile.

The conversation was giving up its last breath as she opened the doors and walked into the circle of boys and younger women. They all turned to stare, as people do when a silence is interrupted. She stood on the threshold with one eyebrow slightly cocked and waited for them to respond, appropriately or not, as they chose.

"Miss Weasley!"

Professor Slughorn was the first to approach her with his usual too-loud and boisterous attitude but she smiled anyway. She'd missed him, and she was a little startled to discover that in herself but she'd gotten used to these gatherings the last year. Whether or not anyone else would understand. It was the one place in the school where everyone can feel equally welcome and uncomfortable, and there weren't many of those. Sometimes she despaired of anyone understanding what the Sorting Hat meant by standing together.

That Slytherin boy is watching her again with his disdainful perplexity.

She smiled a little and extricated herself from the Professor at the earliest point, turning to ease a Ravenclaw's argument with McLaggen. He smiled at her because she wore Gryffindor colors and she smiled at him because he couldn't help it, really.

She can feel his eyes between her shoulders where the robe feels transparent and the shirt underneath plunges down in a V over her spine.

Voices started to fill the room with an easier kind of babble that was less forced if less rowdy than Slughorn might have wanted. She started a debate that quickly turned to whether or not she was going to play Quidditch this year with everything that had been going on and whether or not she would succeed Harry as Captain, if he was going to step down. Refusing to engage in conjecture, she smiled and diverted them to guessing who the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher would be, since that place had been empty at dinner.

The only other Gryffindor girl there complimented her on her hair in a gaping first-year sort of way and she smiled with the bemused light in her eyes that wondered if she had ever been that young.

She knew what she looked like in the mirror. Too little sleep or too much had given her a pale expression and widened eyes. Pale and wide-eyed might be in this season or whatever the word for it was but that didn't mean she had to like it. She looked like she'd come down with a bad case of consumption. Or lurgy. There was nothing romantic or beautiful about lurgy.

But she had taken some care with how her hair looked and tried makeup for the first time. Not for the first time, but for the first time for such a small event. And just a little bit of cosmetic around the eyes, to hide the circles, and around the mouth, to hide the fact that her lips had gone cracked and peeling. Malnutrition, Hermione had said. The fact that none of them were eating or sleeping properly anymore was going to make them all sick, her mother had said. The fact that Voldemort was still out there and he was no closer to finding that last Horcrux was going to make them all dead, Harry had said.

She didn't feel sick, or tired, or malnourished. She didn't feel threatened either, anymore, although she knew Voldemort would kill her given a snailsbreadth of a chance. She felt fine.

Someone commented behind her back how they had never noticed she was the pretty one in the family, and someone else added that of course she was the pretty one with six brothers who all looked like lumpy potatoes. She giggled a little at hearing that, even if it was only to herself.

That Slytherin boy looks confused when she turns around, as though she shouldn't be looking that way.

A Hufflepuff boy looked at her the way she remembers Ron looking at Fleur and stammers out an invitation to Hogsmeade. He was cute. She declined.

Everyone looked older. Even from last year, everyone looked older. She, herself, felt older, and she wondered if that was because of what had happened last year. How strange that being in a life or death battle in the middle of the Ministry hadn't done anything but Dumbledore's death had changed everything. She understood, when she hadn't before, what her mother meant by growing up too fast. She felt like a woman and it had nothing to do with boys, or makeup, or snogs in the broom closet.

The tiny advantage to that was that if she felt like a woman, she carried herself like one too. It made the other boys nervous, and gave the girls someone to look up to. There was a small part of her that was glad at how they all stared, as though something remarkable had happened over the summer. Not just makeup.

He finally gets up the nerve to talk to her. No, not the nerve, but the courage. No, not the courage, but the resolve.

Makes the decision.

"Gin..."

"Blaise." She treated it as though he'd addressed her by nickname, giving them an immediate ground of familiarity to start on. He blinked.

"Ready for your sixth year?"

"Ready for your last year?" Her eyes sparkled. She liked putting him on the defensive and he didn't know why he didn't mind. She read the puzzlement like a placard over his forehead.

"I guess." He shrugged.

"You don't sound ready...?" But she made it a question, to salve his dignity. She even looked at him with a ducked gaze as though she wasn't sure of herself. Concern wasn't like her.

"No, I'm ready," he said. "I just haven't decided whether or not ..."

She knew that look in his eye by now, had seen it in the eyes of half a dozen Slytherins. Draco had been a busy little recruiter bee, but that didn't mean Blaise would want it trumpeted around that he was even considering becoming a Death Eater.

"... to keep coming to these parties."

Weak. Very weak. She let it pass.

"Why did you come in the first place?" Logic could be applied to any situation.

He shrugged. "It was Slughorn. He's supposed to be very well connected. Could help my future."

"Do you know what you're going to do after Hogwarts?"

He shook his head. "Go into the Ministry, I guess."

"Why the Ministry?"

"It's what ..." It's what's expected. What's required. What my mother wants for me. All the possible answers spread between them both in a heartbeat.

"What do you want?"

He would have been forced to admit he didn't know if they hadn't been interrupted by Marcus Belby. She smiled and let him back away with his dignity and impression of self-composure intact. Not from the conversation, just from the question.

"Sorry," Belby mumbled.

"It's all right." Ginny's hand was on his arm, making both the boys tense. "I'm sure you had your eyes on more important people."

It wasn't as though she'd missed him staring at Lucy Belmont, a Hufflepuff in her fourth year. "Well..." Even if he wanted to think she had.

"I hear she's partial to Chocolate Cauldrons," she added, moving out of his way so that the snack table was in full view.

Blaise was staring at her. "You can be just as sneaky as any Slytherin, sometimes."

"Thank you."

It was supposed to have been an insult, and he didn't know how to react. Perhaps it was safer to retreat to earlier ground.

"What are you going to do after Hogwarts?"

"That's two years away," she pointed out, leaving him with a sense of further urgency and a vague disquiet. After a moment she gave him mercy, too. "But I was thinking of going into the Ministry."

"What position?"

"I thought I'd eventually aim to be Minister of Magic."

Blaise choked.

There was very little he could say to that, so he fled rather than be confronted with her smiling sincerity.

It had been the truth, anyway. Her brothers had taught her never to aim small with her plans, and her father had indicated to her how much work would be forthcoming for the Ministry. Someone else could lead them through the war, she wasn't any good at that. But she would be in a position, by the end of it, to take them through the reconstruction. And she knew just where to start with that.

This party was a good place. Professor Slughorn was connected, and she had never seen that as a bad thing although she didn't see why it was necessary either. He could help her. And, more importantly, he didn't think along class or house lines, not as much as everyone else seemed to anyway. Even Harry, whom she still cared for, couldn't see past the silver and green. She'd learned, sitting quietly on the sidelines at the Slug Club meetings, that they weren't so different from each other if you got past the posturing for everyone else's benefit.

The House rivalries carried towards their future lives, gave them an excuse to dislike people on the suspicion of Dark Wizardry. Not that it made Draco Malfoy any less of an arrogant prat, or Pansy Parkinson any more tolerant. But being part of Gryffindor didn't make Dean Thomas any less of a prat either, and it certainly hadn't made McLaggen any more bearable.

When she had started to treat everyone with an equal difference it hadn't made any impression on Harry. Even Ron and Hermione were too wrapped up in each other, which was all right by her, and Harry's quest for the Horcruxes. And that was fine, too. She respected that Harry felt he had a responsibility to destroy Voldemort, who certainly was a threat to life and limb. And she had a responsibility to make sure there was something worth preserving for when he was done. Not the kind of responsibility that came from prophecy or great pronouncements, just the dogged determination to write a wrong. She had seen how lonely everyone looked at their tables.

As Minister of Magic people would look up to her. They would expect her to set an example.

The newfound sense of purpose meant people looked up to her even now. She had always been a subject of some fascination, hanging around with Harry as she did. One of only two girls in their little circle, because Luna didn't count, of course. That had annoyed her, too.

Now she held another kind of fascination when she had a smile and a kind word for everyone. A real smile, a shining smile, not the kind of dutiful politeness when people nodded to each other in the halls. Everyone got a compliment on their Quidditch game if they had made a brilliant save, if they had shown courage in the face of bullying adversity from the other team. The first time she'd tried that the Slytherin Keeper had glared at her as though she was making a joke. He couldn't understand why she wasn't. They'd lost, hadn't they? Nobody liked a Slytherin, or a loser.

She wondered aloud, when McGonagall had called her a beacon of hope at the beginning of term, why no one had started before. When they had stopped being young wizards and witches together and started being Slytherins, Hufflepuffs, and Gryffindors. The older woman hadn't had an answer for her. It was maddening.

She wondered, as she slipped her way through the party and expressed optimism that the young Ravenclaw who reminded her so much of Hermione would get Os on every one of her OWLs. She also wondered when they had stopped paying attention so much that a little kindness would go such a long way.

It had been summer time and she'd been waiting for Harry to come to Bill and Fleur's wedding after he'd hemmed and hawed over having other things to do, chasing down Voldemort things to do.

"I have to go," he'd said. "There's a rumor over in Bulgaria..."

"There's some wild strawberries over on the other side of the hill..." she'd said.

"I don't think you're taking this seriously anymore, Ginny," he'd said.

"I don't think you're taking this seriously anymore, Harry," she'd said.

He had shaken his head and left as confused as he had been since Dumbledore had died. And that wasn't his fault either, but she was starting to pay so much more attention to things now. If Dumbledore was dead, if he could be killed than so could all of them. And what was the point of dying if they had never really lived in the first place?

No one here looked like they were enjoying their life. They hadn't since the start of term, even with being concerned about their studies as young wizards always were.

She touched Professor Slughorn's arm and brought it to his attention as he passed her. And wasn't this supposed to be a party?

"Why, of course, my dear," he exclaimed, patting her hand like a deaf old grandfather and dragging all eyes to them once again. They started to dance and she was reminded of the way her father taught her to dance late one night for the Yule ball, out of the way of the twins' teasing eyes.

Blaise stares, not quite willing to believe the evidence of his senses.

She laughed as the Professor fumbled around some of the moves he was no longer young and supple enough to do, but it worked. The music started to pick up a beat and if people weren't exactly turning the office into a dance floor they were at least showing signs of animation. By the time she had extricated herself she was leaning against the wall, face flushed and laughter in her eyes and breathing a sigh of relief.

Blaise stares.

She didn't acknowledge the fact that he was staring at her until the center of the room had cleared a little and she could pin him to the wall with a quick turn of the head and what might have been a casual glance in his direction. Might have been, if she hadn't been waiting for that moment. It was so easy, sometimes.

He walked over to her with a casual obscurity and made a little bow. Stiff, as always, and arrogant, but it was a bow. No one noticed them, being too busy with the music and the dancing and the part where they tried to figure out where it all had come from. The party had started out like a funeral and turned into a wake.

"Would you care to dance?"

His words were stiff and formal and she laughed, with him and not at him. "Of course." Her hand slipped as easily into his as if she'd been doing this all her life.

"Where did you learn to dance?" It wasn't a formal dance, people weren't confining themselves to the kinds of steps one learned in class, but they were spinning slowly on the floor nonetheless.

"McGonagall taught everyone before the Yule Ball. So Gryffindor wouldn't embarrass the school." She ducked her head as though ashamed of the philosophy, although the woman's pride in her House amused her.

"You dance well." The words came out grudging.

She beamed at him anyway. "Thank you."

"For a blood traitor sc..."

Her head-shaking and chiding noises cut him off more neatly than a tirade. "You were doing so well."

And pivot and step and turn. Blaise wraps himself in silence so he doesn't have to think about why he wants to stay here for the rest of the night.

"My father taught me," she explained after a moment, and kept it quiet while the party continued around them. "He knew there was going to be a Yule Ball and he didn't want me to feel awkward or left out."

"You're not awkward."

A year ago that would have been when she tripped over her own feet to prove him wrong. She looked up at him and smiled.

"Thank you."

Two compliments in two minutes and she didn't know what he was doing, but it was clear he didn't either. So that was all right.

"Where did you learn to dance?"

He shrugged. "One of Mother's..." Something something. That was an awkward moment, and she thought for a moment what it must have been like to have a mother you had always known and more than half a dozen fathers you barely even met. "Said every young gentleman should know how to dance."

Ginny remembered something that Slughorn had said about his mother being one of the great beauties of her age. It occurred to her that she'd heard someone saying the same thing about her, and that was a scary thought.

"Do you want to be a gentleman?"

"Not really."

The song ended and left them in the center of a number of people who would be looking at them in another moment. She might not be ashamed of being seen with a Slytherin but she was still girl enough to want to keep her flirtations out of the public eye.

"Then why did you learn?"

He was taller than her. It was easier for her to slip between the people, to make herself ignored long enough to get to a smaller corner of the room. He followed her. She'd known he would.

"Something to do, I guess."

It was a lie. He was lying because he couldn't come up with anything else to justify indulging his mother, except the indulgence itself. She knew it. She let it pass.

But it laid him open to all kinds of questions, most of which she suppressed with resolute and tacit consent. She didn't poke holes in the pretenses behind which he hid from himself, and he didn't try to reduce her to tears or stonewall her completely.

"What do you want to do?" she asked. Most of the questions didn't mean all, and that was the most harmless of them anyway.

He shrugged. "I don't know."

She wanted to press, and didn't. "I know what I want to do," she admitted, "But I don't know if being Minister of Magic is the right way to do it. I think it is."

"What do you want to do?" He admitted to curiosity since she admitted to uncertainty. He'd never admit to being taken by it.

"I want to make people think."

"Shouldn't you become a teacher, then?"

She shook her head. "Not that way. People don't ... most people don't think about what a teacher says or does if it's not related to class. I want to make people think more than that. I want to make them think about their lives. About other people's lives."

"You want to be a crusader." It was almost an accusation. "Typical Griffindor."

"That's one of the things I want people to think about."

Blaise shuts up.

"I'm sorry," she said, touching the back of his hand. She couldn't have explained why.

"Do you really think it'll work?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

He touched her cheek. She smiled at him, and he smiled back for the first time that night. Maybe for the first time in the history of the Slug Club, although there had been moments when she thought he might have done if there hadn't been anyone else in the room. Lots of those moments.

"What do you want to do right now?" she asked.

He looked around. "Get out of this party. I think Belby's trying to get himself drunk on Chocolate Cauldrons."

"They're laced with firewhiskey," she laughed. "Someone copied the idea from Romilda Vane last year."

He practically grinned. "Do you want to get out of here?" It was easy. Like they'd been doing it all their lives.

Ginny smiled.

"Yeah."

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