Rated: K+

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

The International Wizarding School Championship

School: Durmstrang

Theme: Dursleys' Fifty Pence Piece

Prompts:

Main prompt: [Character] Ginny Weasley

Side prompt: [Setting] Any Hogwarts House common room

The Worth of a Family

Family.

Just how much meaning did that word have?

It's a word that has immeasurable depth if one would think about it. The closest way to define family would be how one would define the word, 'friend'.

Before Harry came to Hogwarts, he had neither.

The Dursleys – it was a disgrace to call them Harry's family. Or at least that's what he told them.

Them, as in Ron, her and the twins. After they (excluding her) had rescued Harry from Privet Drive, he'd told them. 'They won't care if I'm gone anyway,' 'Dudley is a bully anyway,' 'It's a disgrace to call them a family.'

Disgrace, huh?

Ginny bit her lips as she entered into the Gryffindor common room. Sometimes she'd think. Think about Harry – how his life was before he came to Hogwarts, how the Dursleys treated him and how he got through all those years living like he was a Muggle.

"Speak of the devil," she muttered as she spotted him. He was sitting by himself, scribbling down something on his scrolls among several textbooks. She smiled to herself – how did he always manage to look so cool even when he was doing something as dry as studying?

"Mind I sit here?" Ginny said as she slid across the opposite chair.

Harry looked up from his homework and smiled wearily, "Sure."

Ginny had already gotten past the time where she would freeze over his smile, but she'd be lying if she said her heart didn't beat a tad bit faster.

"How're things?" Harry said, glad to find something to do other than homework.

"All right," Ginny shrugged. "How about you?"

"Nothing much – just trying to get by with all this homework," Harry gestured to his Potions essay.

"Right - you've got OWLs this year," Ginny said. "Have you seen Ron anywhere?"

"He's practicing Quidditch," Harry shrugged. "I don't know if we'll even win this year – not after all of us got kicked out because of that old hag."

"Yeah," Ginny said and decided to change the subject to something more cheerful. "So Christmas is coming around. Have you thought of any gifts?"

"Err, I haven't put much thought into it," Harry admitted. "What about you?"

"Kind of," Ginny nodded, as she looked into the fireplace. "I'm just worried if everyone will like what I pick."

"I'm sure people will like whatever you pick," Harry said simply, as he continued with his homework. "I know I will," he added honestly, unknowingly making Ginny's heart flutter a bit.

A comfortable silence settled between them, and noises of other Gryffindors chit-chatting, the fireplace cracking and Harry's pen scratching were the only sounds to be heard.

"Hey, Harry?" Ginny said, breaking the silence.

"Hmm?"

"How did you feel when you first got a present from Mom?"

"In… first-year?" Harry asked, to which Ginny nodded. He paused for a bit and then smiled gently. "I felt really happy."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "It was like I was accepted for being who I was."

"It wasn't weird?" Ginny asked as the answer she got was certainly unexpected. "Because you didn't know her at that time."

"Oh no," Harry shook his head. "Because it wasn't like others, you know? If a random fan gave me gifts, it would feel weird – but it was different this time."

"I think your sweater was a green one?" Ginny said, scrunching her eyebrows in thought.

"How did you know?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Oh – I, uh, saw her," Ginny said hastily. "Yeah – I saw Mom stitching the sweater and asked who it was for."

"Oh."

"What else did you get?" Ginny asked quickly. "In first year."

"Umm, I got the cloak and a flute from Hagrid," Harry said. "I think I still have the flute somewhere."

"You play the flute?"

"During summer sometimes," Harry shrugged. "When the Dursleys are out and I have nothing better to do." Then he added chuckling, "It annoys Hedwig to no end."

"Oh, you must've gotten something from them too, right?"

"Huh? Errm, yeah I did," Harry said. "A fifty piece pence."

"What's that?"

"Muggle money," Harry shrugged. "It's not worth anything, really. I gave it to Ron because he was so fascinated."

"Can you equate it to Wizard money somehow?" Ginny asked curiously.

"Around…two knuts*, I think," Harry said after he thought for a while.

"You only got that much?" Ginny said, indignant.

"What do you expect? That's probably just how much I'm worth to them," Harry said bitterly. "I mean, these are the people who'd lock me up in a cupb- err, I mean, in my room."

"Lock you up where?"

"M-my room," Harry said, as he automatically scratched off something he had written. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about them with anyone. And it wasn't like he had lied. They did lock him up in his room. He was just hiding some other facts…

"Okay…" Ginny said, feeling suspicious and a bit sad that Harry wouldn't confide into her. He never really talked about himself, and she wanted to know more about him.

"What's he like?" Ginny whispered, looking down. "Your cousin."

"He's scared of us," Harry said light-heartedly. "I pretend as if I can turn them all into frogs with a swish of my wand if they don't listen to me."

"Really?" Ginny smiled a little. "But surely not. I mean, hasn't he ever checked your textbooks and figured it out or something?"

Picturing Dudley bothering to read Harry's textbooks gave Harry a strange feeling. If they even saw his textbooks, they'd probably try to burn it. The only thing that was keeping them from doing it was the fact that they were afraid of how Harry's freaky school might react.

"Look, he thinks of us as some weird secret cult freaks," Harry said sarcastically.

"Weird secret what?" Ginny asked unbelievably.

"I mean, he hasn't said it yet – he just calls me a freak – but I'm sure he thinks that."

"That's ridiculous."

"What – the fact that he thinks that or the fact that I said he thinks that?"

"The fact that he – or your aunt or your uncle would ever think that. But they don't, do they?"

"Probably," Harry shrugged. "But what I am sure of is that they think something's wrong with me. That something's wrong with all of us. That we're weird and they're normal."

"That's not true-"

"Look, Ginny," Harry said, as his voice shook a bit as he realized that maybe the self-deprecation went too far. Maybe thinking of the way they treated him when he was talking to Ginny was a bad idea. He liked to pretend he didn't care anymore, but that wasn't true. "Even in wizarding terms, I'm not normal."

"Of course not – you, you're amazing!" Ginny started. "Look at you- you're an awesome Quidditch-"

"I'm. Not. Normal," Harry choked a bit. Damn, saying it out loud hurt more than he thought it would. "E-even in wizarding terms – I'm not normal. I'm this stupid Boy Who Lived just because my parents died and I didn't. Just because I got lucky somehow. And everyone admired me because my mom died to save me. And now there's no one here who believes in me – just because no one saw what happened in that graveyard doesn't mean it was true!"

A dead silence followed.

"Harry…" Ginny whispered, breaking Harry out of his trance. That's when he realized that some students were looking his way, obviously thinking that he was not normal.

"See?" Harry whispered. "They all think I'm not normal."

"Harry," Ginny said. "Look at me."

Harry looked at her.

"You're not normal, okay?" Ginny said. "But that doesn't have to be bad, alright? You're a great Quidditch player – the best player of the century. Is that normal? You stand us for your friends and the authorities. You've stood up in front of Umbridge like no one else. You've fought You-Know-Who and got away with it-"

"I-It was just luck, alright-"

"-But it can't be just luck, okay? What about courage? Some people would've frozen and done nothing, but Harry you're brave. You have that daring courage not everyone has. That's not normal – that's beyond awesome."

There another silence when Ginny realized that maybe she sounded like a total fangirl and she slightly panicked, hoping that maybe Harry didn't realize it.

"Um, okay," Harry coughed, looking away with a slight blush on his face. "Thanks."

"By the way, Harry," Ginny started, daring herself to go further. "You're not alone. Even if the whole world is against you, you'll still have us by your side."

Harry didn't say anything.

"Because that's what being a friend means," Ginny continued. "It's like having a family."

Harry continued writing.

"So, uh, I have to go – I just remembered – oh someone's calling me!" Ginny said as someone from her dorm called her right in time.

"Because that's what being a friend means."

"It's like having a family."

Family, huh?

"Friends are better," Harry decided. "If you hate them, just leave them."

Harry wondered what it was like – to have a family and live with someone who truly cared about you. He only had a glimpse of it whenever he stayed with the Weasleys. Every time he was with them, he was always so happy and accepted and he always thought, 'So this is what it's like. To have a family.'

And then he'd see Molly yelling at the twins, Ron and Ginny laughing at the chaos, Percy and Hermione shaking their heads and disapproving. And every time he'd see that he'd laugh along with them and wonder how his life would have been if the Dursleys were like that too.

If they regarded him as their son, would they have spoiled Harry?

Harry shuddered thinking of that. Maybe, he thought. It was better to be like this.

And yet there was a voice in him, forcing him to wonder what it would've been like. If he was accepted; if the Dursleys didn't think of him as a freak; if they never locked him up; if Uncle Vernon never smacked him; if Aunt Petunia told him about his parents; if Dudley got along with him; if they celebrated his birthdays just as they did for Dudley.

Wouldn't it be strange if he actually looked forward to seeing them every vacation?

Thinking back of his conversation with Ginny, he wondered what would have happened if he told anyone all this. Arthur seemed pretty mad when the Dursleys didn't tell him goodbye the other time.

'They would probably defend me,' he thought with a smile. 'And that's exactly why they should never know.'

The truth was that they wouldn't understand. They didn't know the worth of a fifty-piece pence.

And that is why they didn't know how much worth Harry had in the Privet Drive.

*The conversion for money from Wizarding terms to Muggle terms was used referring to a post a redditor made on the link: reddit .

com/

r/harrypotter/comments/43qv9c/lets_talk_wizard_money_a_look_through_everything/

Please remove the spaces.

Now that I've read it, it sounds a bit...inconsistent? Maybe a bit fast or something? Anyways, I hope the characters weren't OOC. I also hope it seemed legit and not something that can never happen in canon.

About the practice round, since I'm new to this, I hope I've done okay enough. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to incorporate the theme properly - or as much as I wanted to - but that was mainly because of Harry's nature and how he likes to keep everything in him. Even in the occasional emotional outbursts, he barely reveals much. And of course I didn't want to make him or anyone else OOC.

That's all I have to say.