As all Harry Potter fans will know, the Boy Who Lived isn’t exactly a hero in the conventional sense. Yes, he vanquished Voldemort and his dastardly Death Eaters, but he also goofed off, made mistakes and was a less-than-perfect student. Despite his fame, he wanted to be an ordinary boy, and in that sense, he was. The same’s true of his eventual wife, Ginny Weasley (who is not a boy, as you’d probably spotted).
It can’t have been easy growing up as the only girl, with all those brothers to contend with. Ginny too surrendered to temptation, indulged her mischievous streak and outright rebelled against authority. Here are some of the worst things she ever did.
Bonding With Tom Riddle’s Diary
As her father worked in the Misuse of Magical Artifacts office at the Ministry of Magic, he knew perfectly well how dangerous the most innocent-looking object can be. Dark wizards and witches loved to enchant necklaces and such, in order to inflict horrible curses on their Muggle owners.
Even as an excitable first-year, then, Ginny would have known better than to pour her heart and soul into the mysterious pages of Tom Riddle’s diary in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. We all know how well that worked out for everybody.
Opening The Chamber Of Secrets
“Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain,” Arthur Weasley later berated his daughter. While Dumbledore later pulled his usual you’re a Gryffindor so no punishment for unleashing a fifty-foot horrific death-snake of death on the students shenanigans, the fact remains that, as she’d bonded so strongly with the diary, the fragment of Voldemort’s soul in the diary became strong enough to control her completely.
Technically, then, Ginny herself opened the Chamber of Secrets. She didn’t know it and it wasn’t her fault, but she made the choice to confide in an object that was clearly dangerous.
Instrumental In The Formation Of Dumbledore’s Army
Ginny’s rebellious and independent nature failed to shine through in the earlier instalments of the series, because she was so enamoured with (and so shy around) Harry. Where Harry goes, the narrative goes, of course, so we didn’t get to see the best of her (or the worst of her, depending on your perspective) for some time.
By Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, though, she’d absolutely cemented herself as a fiery young woman who held as little regard for the rules as Harry herself. She played a big part in the creation of the Harry-led organization for learning defensive magic in secret, even giving the group its name: Dumbledore’s Army, a sarcastic reference to the Ministry’s fear that the headmaster was training his own student army.
Tearing The Boys’ Dormitory Apart To Get Tom Riddle’s Diary Back
As fans will remember, Harry himself gets his hands on Tom Riddle’s diary in mysterious circumstances: Ginny had finally realized that this was no lovable, huggable invisible pen pal she had here, and tried to flush the little book down a toilet in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.
Not surprisingly, though, a little toilet water is not a reliable method of destroying Horcruxes, so it came right back out again. Ginny discovered that Harry now had the diary, panicked, and snuck in to the boys’ dormitory to retrieve it, completely shredding everything in the frantic search. Knowing by this point that lives could well be at stake, why didn’t she confide in anyone?
Stealing Her Brothers’ Brooms To Learn To Fly In Secret
Later in the series, Ginny’s skills on a broom become apparent. She’s an excellent Chaser and star goal-scorer for the Gryffindor team. Her brothers, for their part, have no idea how this happened. The boys practiced Quidditch a lot while they were growing up, but never let their sister join in. How did she get to be so good?
In the books, J.K. Rowling reveals the truth: Ginny had been sneaking into the Weasley’s broom shed, taking out each of her brothers’ brooms in turn and teaching herself to fly on them. Brilliantly devious.
Her Proficiency With Forbidden Spells
As we’ve seen, Ginny was crucial to the formation of Dumbledore’s Army. Her part in the organization would have seen her immediately expelled under Umbridge’s regime, but she went right ahead defying the High Inquisitor (later headmistress) with the rest of the rebel band.
Not only did she take part, she soon proved her ability with all kinds of forbidden spells. Her Reductor Curse was so powerful that she could reduce heavy tables to dust, and her brothers were even a little afraid of her hexes and jinxes. “Size is no guarantee of power,” as George once said. “Look at Ginny.”
Her Infamous Bat-Bogey Hex
It’s inevitable that, when you’re converting a lengthy novel series for the big screen, certain things just aren’t going to make the cut. As much as fans would love to watch ten-hour movies, the line’s got to be drawn somewhere. On the subject of the small-but-mighty Ginny Weasley, one thing we’d love to have seen in the movies is her notorious Bat-Bogey Hex.
Proving that magical people really do have a spell for every possible occasion, this one sees the target’s boogers transform into little snot-bats that flap their way out of the victim’s nose. Ginny’s ability with this ridiculous and presumably forbidden spell is legendary: famous victims of her bat-booger prowess include Zacharias Smith and Draco Malfoy himself.
Taunting Ron For Never Having Kissed Anyone
Now, siblings will fight, squabble and say cruel, snarky things to each other at times. It’s just a brother/sister inevitability of growing up together. Harry’s class and Ginny’s are one year apart at Hogwarts, which sees them on the train together, barrelling into Hormone City as they reach their early-mid teens.
Ginny had a reputation for being very attractive, and Ron couldn’t handle the fact that she was getting into relationships (while also struggling with his feelings for Hermione). This led to some heated arguments between the two. In the books, Ginny cruelly taunts Ron over the fact that everybody else has had partners, which hits him squarely in the insecurities.
Jinxing Rita Skeeter
From those awkward teenage years, we’re fast-forwarding to the future, as told by Wizarding World. At the 2014 Quidditch World Cup final, attended by Ginny (in her post as a sports correspondant for the Daily Prophet), her husband Harry Potter and several other friends and family members, Rita Skeeter is also reporting and up to her usual slanderous tricks.
Right in front of Ginny Potter, she remarks that Harry is desperate for fame (as she has done before). At this point, Ginny had been getting thoroughly irritated by Skeeter’s erroneous reports, but that was the last straw. Around this time, Skeeter is mysteriously taken ill with “what some are calling a jinx to the solar plexus.” Granted, Rita Skeeter deserves just about any form of comeuppance she gets, but this may have been just a little on the harsh side.
Battling Death Eaters
Finally, we have an entry that describes one of the worst things Ginny ever had to do. As you’d expect of a confident, powerful young woman, Ginny tangled with Voldemort’s forces several times over the course of the series.
She was a member of the brave band who traveled to the Ministry with Harry to (they thought) rescue Sirius in Order of the Phoenix. She also dueled several Death Eaters from the group that infiltrated Hogwarts the following year (under the influence of Harry’s Felix Felicis). Finally, she battled to reinstate Dumbledore’s Army under Snape’s oppressive regime and played a part in the climactic Battle of Hogwarts. What a powerhouse.
