[Fic] "Luxuries" -- Harry Potter
Jul. 23rd, 2004 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingIt was too hard to think of anything creative for this week's word, so I went with something fairly obvious. *sigh* Ginny tries not to react to her family's poverty.
[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]
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Luxuries
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One thing Ginny particularly likes about Hogwarts is the bathrooms. They have actual shower stalls -- tiled and separated by solid walls, with doors that latch and have towel hooks on back. They even have little wire baskets to hold shampoos and other hair potions.
Of course, showers aren't everything, and there's also a bathtub on each floor of Gryffindor Tower. Ginny couldn't believe the extravagance at first -- that's seven bathtubs on the girls' floors, and seven for the boys. Think of all that water! And all the charms to keep it at the right heat!
And the bathtubs are amazing, all polished porcelain and clawed lions' feet and room enough to lie down and float with your arms stretched wide and still not hit the edges. Each bathtub sits in its own stall, just like the showers, and has a special shower attachment for if you want to rinse your hair and wash before filling the whole tub for a soak.
The house elves manage the system, of course, or it would never work. And Hogwarts needs to be at least somewhat luxurious to stave off complaints from the rich pureblood families. But while Ginny can usually turn off her mind and simply not see all the luxuries her family can only dream of, when she sees the bathtubs there's always a nagging little voice at the back of her mind saying, "Why can't we have this at home, too?" When she tries to let her troubles bleed into the warm water as she soaks, the voice only grows louder and echoes through the scented steam.
Surely one house elf isn't that much to ask? Surely a bathtub you can lie down in instead of sitting with your knees jammed halfway up to your chin isn't too much to dream of? Surely a reliable water-heating charm doesn't need to be as expensive as the ones for sale in Diagon Alley?
Baths tend to leave Ginny aching to do something, anything. Maybe get rich. Maybe change the laws. Maybe knock things over and burn things down and scream a lot.
But she isn't going to run off like Bill and Charlie, turn it into a joke like the twins, complain like Ron, or deny her family like Percy. She's going to do it right -- whatever it is that needs doing -- until she can make that little voice float away forever.
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Inspired by the 18 July 2004![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15minuteficlets word #64: bathtub
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And in other walks of life, tonight Cat, Susan and I are going out for sushi, just because.
[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]
---------------------------------------------
Luxuries
---------------------------------------------
One thing Ginny particularly likes about Hogwarts is the bathrooms. They have actual shower stalls -- tiled and separated by solid walls, with doors that latch and have towel hooks on back. They even have little wire baskets to hold shampoos and other hair potions.
Of course, showers aren't everything, and there's also a bathtub on each floor of Gryffindor Tower. Ginny couldn't believe the extravagance at first -- that's seven bathtubs on the girls' floors, and seven for the boys. Think of all that water! And all the charms to keep it at the right heat!
And the bathtubs are amazing, all polished porcelain and clawed lions' feet and room enough to lie down and float with your arms stretched wide and still not hit the edges. Each bathtub sits in its own stall, just like the showers, and has a special shower attachment for if you want to rinse your hair and wash before filling the whole tub for a soak.
The house elves manage the system, of course, or it would never work. And Hogwarts needs to be at least somewhat luxurious to stave off complaints from the rich pureblood families. But while Ginny can usually turn off her mind and simply not see all the luxuries her family can only dream of, when she sees the bathtubs there's always a nagging little voice at the back of her mind saying, "Why can't we have this at home, too?" When she tries to let her troubles bleed into the warm water as she soaks, the voice only grows louder and echoes through the scented steam.
Surely one house elf isn't that much to ask? Surely a bathtub you can lie down in instead of sitting with your knees jammed halfway up to your chin isn't too much to dream of? Surely a reliable water-heating charm doesn't need to be as expensive as the ones for sale in Diagon Alley?
Baths tend to leave Ginny aching to do something, anything. Maybe get rich. Maybe change the laws. Maybe knock things over and burn things down and scream a lot.
But she isn't going to run off like Bill and Charlie, turn it into a joke like the twins, complain like Ron, or deny her family like Percy. She's going to do it right -- whatever it is that needs doing -- until she can make that little voice float away forever.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 18 July 2004
15minuteficlets word #64: bathtub---------------------------------------------
And in other walks of life, tonight Cat, Susan and I are going out for sushi, just because.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-23 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-23 09:24 pm (UTC)Ginny isn't my muse in the common fandom sense of a "personality" that helps me write. She is, however, one of a small number of characters who are real enough to me that they wander in and out of my head, and can go off on unexpected plot tangents simply because they feel like it. And because I have such a concrete sense of her (well, of my personal interpretation of Ginny, that is), I find it very easy to write about her.
This is bizarre to me as I never thought much about Ginny in the books, and only started writing about her because I hated a lot of H/G cliches. I think she may have become "real" to me because at that point -- pre OoP -- she was largely a blank slate with some interesting hints of personality, which let me flesh her out much like an original character.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-24 01:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-25 01:48 am (UTC)