"But we, Gin, Hermione and myself, have been on almost constant detentions since mid-September when we confronted him in the Library. And when we aren't in class or detention, we're in a meeting with Professor McGonagal about our marks and atoning for them or in a study hall. Remedial usually because we, Gin and I at least, are so far behind in our studies we need those classes, Da."
Ginny grimaced even as she nodded. "We were so sure we knew what our future would be we weren't studying, Daddy. At all really and this year with everything that happened, it all caught up to us. Now we're snowed under and instead of having a shovel to dig ourselves out, we've only got a cooking spoon."
Behind them Augusta snorted quietly to herself though her eyes had turned thoughtful. Maybe the children needed to be moved back a year or so if they were truly so far behind their age group? No one wanted to see them fail out. At least she didn't think anyone did.
Ron hurried on as he really didn't know how much time they had to tell their Dad their story and get him to understand the truth. But he did know if they ever wanted to be comfortable at home again, their Dad had to know the whole story so he could calm their Mum down for them before they saw her. "Nor have Harry and Gin been dating. Quite honestly, Harry made it very clear she's the last girl he would choose to date. He has from the very first day of our third year. Her second. We always refused to hear him."
"Mione always lectured him on his unwillingness to just forgive her. She'd point out how ungrateful he was and how he should be thankful because Gin's a popular girl with her age group and could convince people Harry wasn't the bad kid they all thought he was. And I always yelled at him telling him he should be grateful a girl like Gin was even interested in somebody like him when she could have any guy she wanted. Stuff like that. we were trying to force him to accept Gin when he really didn't want anything to do with her. So naturally he doesn't like her. I mean, I wouldn't like a girl that was being forced on me all the time either. That went around telling everyone she was my girl and we'd be together when we grew up. So why should he?" He shook his head over the memories of how arrogant and highhanded they'd been with Harry over Ginny and Harry's treatment of her.
"Harry marked us that day in the library and lectured all three of us quite thoroughly making it very clear exactly why he was branding us to everyone there. And there were a lot of students in the library at the time. We hadn't really noticed when we went in. To be honest, what kids we did see, we only thought gave us the chance to show our might over him. Make sure all our peers knew we were still the leaders of the school, you know. That we had Harry Potter under our thumb and could make him do whatever we said. We wanted to confront him figuring he was interfering with our plans for the school year. Having a few people witness it, was all the better from our point of view as it'd only add to his discomfort when we forced him to give us new keys. He sure turned that around on us though. All those kids got to witness him humiliating us instead. And boy, did he humiliate us!" Ron's gaze dropped from his Dad's face to the floor and off to one side as he remembered how angry and humiliated he'd felt that day.
Ginny sighed and added, "Still, it took weeks for Dumbledore to notice. Almost until the beginning of November. I'd even had time to seek out the Runes teacher here to discover what Harry had marked me with before Dumbledore finally got around to noticing our plight. Not that he did anything. There wasn't really anything he could do. So we've, Ron and I that is, we've had time to get used to our new faces. And I've had time to realize I actually do deserve what I got branded with. I got branded as an adulteress because that's what my words and actions made me. But honestly it wasn't until Hermione got expelled that Ron woke up and realized maybe things weren't as he thought they were."
Ron nodded again. "True. I mean, up until then I'd only been waiting for Dumbledore to find a way to remove the marks for us or to force Harry to do it. I refused to admit he couldn't remove them because I didn't want to believe it was my own magic keeping my marks in place."
"And Mione was keeping my anger running high with all her efforts to discover what Dark Magic he used against us and trying to find a way to get revenge on him for it. Which only meant she was suffering a lot because the marks are monitors for us and her thoughts, words and actions were telling it she was acting against Harry again. So it kept punishing her which only made me angrier because I thought I cared about her."
"But then she got expelled for the cheating Dumbledore was paying her to do and he not only couldn't stop it but as far as I could tell, he didn't even try to. I know. I was here in the office the night it happened. She admitted bold as brass she was being paid by him to dumb down Harry's assignments so he'd get lower grades and that she had his permission to substitute Harry's work with her own when dumbing down Harry's stuff hadn't given her enough time to do her own. Gin's mark can and will go away but… mine won't. At least not entirely."