They didn't even acknowledge her presence when they brought up the Hogwarts Hopefuls meeting the next day. Ginny thought the least they could've done was invite her to go, she had almost been a Hopeful after all. She might have wanted to be not treated like a baby anymore, but she didn't want to be forgotten.
"With it not being until noon," her mother was saying to Harry, "it gives you plenty of time to have a bit of a lie-in."
Ginny made a quick mental plan. If she was down in the kitchen when Harry and Percy left, they might invite her along.
"Actually, I've still got all my shopping to do," Harry said with a bit of a blush. "I didn't manage to get anything today, so I'll be doing that with Hermione tomorrow."
"Seeing her again so soon?" George asked with a teasing smile.
"You can see a girl more than once a summer, George," their mother scolded. "Percy's seeing Penelope again tomorrow too," she revealed, causing the boy in question to bury himself in his plate. "What was it you were saying about Lockhart, dear?" she asked the particularly pinkish Percy.
Apparently, Gilderoy Lockhart had a very bad day too, even after her father had been thrown out of the shop for fighting. From what Percy said several of the women gathered for the book signing started questioning how he could have vanquished a werewolf or wrestled a yeti into submission if he had such a poor performance in fending off some decrepit old man. Why anyone would want to attack him though was beyond her.
As the story went on and on one thing became painfully clear: she was going to look stupid using the peacock-like quill now. With old clothes, battered books, and now a new quill people would make fun of her for, Ginny just couldn't catch a break. At least her wand was new, though that probably had more to do with no one selling hand-me-down wands than anything else.
As her mother carried Dobby off to get his sleeping arrangements figured out Ginny dawdled just out of sight of the kitchen, hoping to hear how Harry's not-a-date thing went. What she heard though was something else entirely.
"Do you guys have anything to start a fire with?" Harry asked Fred and George.
Looking down into the backyard from her room some time later, Ginny saw the tiny flames slowly devouring some old pillowcase. Horribly dirty, the soiled cloth sack didn't burn well and she could smell it from her window, but none of the boys seemed to mind. The elf seemed to scarcely believe it was happening, and that was before Fred and George produced some Filibuster Fireworks and had small stars whizzing about all over the place.
She didn't know whether Harry knew what to do with a house-elf or not, having sent him off to "go play" by chasing the stars around rather than having him clean or do laundry. Her brothers seemed to think it funny though, watching the elf run around the fire like that. Ron had even gone inside to get the Quaffle and added a game of catch with him into the mix.
It wasn't until her father had doused the smoldering ashes, Ron had gone inside to ready the chessboard, and Dobby had disappeared to find some work to do that Fred and George had managed to corner Harry about the most important bit of the day.
"So how'd it go?" the dark blob of Fred asked in the deepening darkness.
"How'd what go?" Harry asked.
"Your date with Hermione, of course," he prompted.
"We never said it was a date," Harry hedged.
"Ah, but did you ever say it wasn't?" the bit of darkness George occupied asked.
There was a very pregnant pause after that.
'Why did he have to ask that?' Ginny thought to herself.
"Well, no," Harry answered. "Was I supposed to?"
"Normally, yeah, people would."
"But keeping things uncertain like that, that's brilliant," Fred said. Ginny was sure he'd be grinning, but it was too dark outside and the angle from the window too steep for her to even begin to tell if that were true.
"What? How?" a confused Harry asked.
"Because if she thought it was a date, and it went well - then you can go back later on and say it was a date," Fred quickly explained. "But if it didn't go well, or if she didn't think it was a date - then it didn't matter because you can always claim it wasn't a date. As a dating strategy-"
"Don't mind him, Harry," George said, cutting off his twin. "He's just looking for a way to get things started with a certain Quidditch witch."
"Oh, like you're not," Fred beat the Bludger of an allegation back at his brother.
"Whether I am or not has absolutely no bearing on this conversation," George said smoothly. "I can keep those issues completely separate."
"-And all I'm saying is if Harry can turn the biggest walking, talking library Hogwarts has ever seen into an actual girl, he just might be someone to pick up pointers from," Fred pointed out.
There was another pause before anyone spoke. "Good point," George agreed.
"I don't know what pointers you can get from me," Harry said, trying to deflect attention away in that humble way of his. "I've never had a girl like me before."
"Well, I guess we can put it down as natural talent, next to youngest Seeker in a century-"
"Yes, and at the rate he's going, before you know it our little Harry will have his first kiss," Fred joked.
The silence that came from below was deafening and Ginny felt her stomach plummet. 'Why wasn't anyone laughing?'
"Did you snog her?" Fred's jesting voice asked.
"What? No-" Harry tried to protest.
"-Ah, so she snogged you," George needled. Why did Ginny ever think he was a good guy?
"She kissed me on the cheek to say goodbye; that was all," Harry said, probably embarrassed. "No one snogged anyone."
Up in her room, Ginny closed the window, shutting out the sound from below. She didn't want to know any more.
'A kiss on the cheek? How could he say 'that was all' to something like that?' she thought. 'It was only the purest, most chaste way to show true love that ever existed .'
Hermione had played it smart; Ginny couldn't even say that she was a strumpet for kissing him so soon by doing it like that. It was awful, but only she'd be the one to see it. Her mother certainly wouldn't. Luckily she had someone to turn to.
Taking out the diary she wrote, 'Oh, Tom, this is awful. The most horrible thing's happened .'