Fanfic / The Meaning of One

The Boy and Girl Who Lived in Each Other's Heads.

Harry: Do you, err… do you know how to get to Platform 9 ¾?
Ginny: Sure, it’s easy. I can show you.
She held her hand out to him, and he surprised himself by taking it.
Harry’s world exploded, and reality twitched.

If two people are deliberately created to be together, how will the challenges in a world of magic and Dark Lords be dealt with? What would it mean for two people to truly become one? When a prophecy is involved, who will be The Chosen One?

The Meaning of One is a Harry Potter fanfiction by Sovran. Harry and Ginny have been designed by the universe as soulmates, and when they first meet at King's Cross Station, their bond snaps into place, causing them to experience everything that the other one does. After adjusting to the initial shock, they quite like the results — but her family, especially her parents, are less enthused, resulting in a mixture of happiness and heartache as everyone adjusts to a pair of pre-teens who are joined at the hip in more than the usual ways.

Years one and two are complete, each written as their own parts. It doesn't appear that there will be more.

Part One: Stone and Fire
Part Two: Chambers and Secrets

---

The Meaning of One provides examples of:

A-K

• Abusive Parents: Firmly defied by Ginny, who is incensed by the Dursleys' treatment of Harry and doesn't intend to let them get away with it for a moment longer now that she's in his life. It's not until after the end of first year that Harry learns his own middle name; the Dursleys never told him.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Harry was just trying to tweak a colour-changing spell from pink to brown when he tried Brunesempra, but the result was an impressive piece of Transfiguration, turning a towel into a stuffed rabbit.
• Adaptation Expansion: Considering that this fic is currently six hundred thousand words long when its source material (Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets) is only a hundred and fifty thousand, there's a lot of this. In particular, there are extensive scenes in the Weasley home, as she and Harry and her family talk and argue and grapple with the implications of the bond.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Harry's relationship with the Weasleys is subject to this, due to his bond with Ginny and their various reactions to it. Some, like Ron, aren't that different from canon. While others, like Molly and Arthur, have a more strained or closer relationship than they do in canon.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Being entwined with Ginny's life, Harry meets Arthur Weasley within a few days of starting Hogwarts, and Bill and Charlie just a few months later. Ginny introduces him to Luna the summer before she starts school, too.
  • On the other hand, Scabbers still belongs to Fred and George at the start of the story, so he doesn't show up until much later.
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: After knocking Ron down with accidental magic, Ginny gets concerned about what she might do if she gets properly angry, but Harry reassures her that they'll keep an eye out and help calm each other down.
  Ginny: What if we both get mad at the same time?
  Harry: Then we’ll ask Dumbledore to put the castle back together for us.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": Ginny decides that the pink stuffed rabbit Harry accidentally transfigures for her is "Bun-bun".
• And I Must Scream:
  • Bill explains to Harry and Ginny that he's seen Egyptian traps that transform the victim into a rock or a pane of glass, for several hours, resulting in total sensory deprivation, and the sufferer is never quite the same afterward. Ginny tells him that it almost happened to him on Christmas Day when he threatened to forcibly separate them. Fortunately, that's behind them.
  • It's revealed that stunning Ginny or Harry causes this instead of unconsciousness. When this is first discovered (by Dumbledore stunning Ginny after she startled him in a high-stress situation), Harry flips out and almost kills Dumbledore.
  • This actually happens to Peter Pettigrew, since rats are in the category of animals that are not believed to suffer harmful effects from Transfiguration; he's turned into a goblet, for a week.
• Anger Born of Worry:
  • Ginny's reaction to Harry after the fight with Quirrell. He gets caught in Dark Fire during the fight after deciding to not teleport to the Hospital wing with her.
    Ginny: When you hurt, I hurt! Can you imagine how hurt I would’ve been if he’d killed you?
  • A big part of Molly Weasley's character arc stems from this; she has a very hard time accepting the bond as a good thing for her little girl, but her worry is borne of genuine love. The tension spills out of her in both overt and subtle ways.
• Ascended Extra: There are multiple cases of this.
  • Ginny turns from a minor recurring character into a main protagonist alongside Harry.
  • The whole Weasley family becomes a lot more involved as a result.
  • McGonagall becomes a prominent mentor figure to Harry and Ginny and is their go-to confidant for many of their problems.
• Battle Couple: Not yet, but Harry and Ginny certainly have the potential to be one as their magic is much more powerful when in contact.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: After Hermione speculates that a lot of scientists and inventors, like Isaac Newton, may have been magical, Ginny informs her that Newton was a squib.
  Ginny: He put that apple in the tree himself, balanced on a limb, and sat underneath it. Apparently he was trying to will it to come to him, to prove that he was a wizard. A breeze came along, and the apple fell and hit him on the head. He spent the rest of his life trying to convince people that he could do magic without a wand.
• Berserk Button: Ginny flips out upon receiving a book for Christmas. Because it was a book for each of them about propriety, bundled with their jumpers, pulling a gut-wrenching Bait-and-Switch on Harry. He thought his jumper was a sign that Mrs. Weasley had been able to accept their relationship and welcome him into a family for the first time in his life, but the book inside shows that she doesn't trust them, that she's still very suspicious of their closeness and only permitting it because she has no alternative — completely poisoning the meaning of the jumper. And Ginny witnesses his every thought and feeling.
  Ginny: Do you have any idea what you just did to him?
• Beautiful Dreamer: Considering that Harry and Ginny have to be in contact to be able to get a good night's sleep, this happens quite often. Due to their bond, the person asleep can see their asleep selves through the other's eyes. They can also mentally communicate with each other even if one of them is asleep.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Goes hand in hand with Mama Bear, particularly for Ginny's oldest brother Bill, who attempts to forcibly break the connection, causing Harry and Ginny to draw wands on him.
    Harry: She. Said. No.
  • With Ginny present when the troll attacks, Ron is more aggressive than canon, not just knocking it out but clubbing it repeatedly until it's dead.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Arthur Weasley's reaction to learning that Bill attempted to forcibly break Harry and Ginny's connection — after Arthur had reassured them that they could safely go home and no one would try to separate them.
  • Hermione when she learns that Fred and George glued Harry and Ginny together with her copy of Hogwarts: A History.
• Boy Meets Girl: Harry meets Ginny, Harry and Ginny become Mindlink Mates, Harry gets Petrified, Ginny get kidnapped by Tom Riddle's Diary, Harry wakes up from petrification and goes to the Chamber of Secrets, Ginny defeats Basilisk, Harry regains Ginny, and Ginny regains Harry.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Harry and Ginny. Though they do inevitably rub off on each other.
• Chastity Couple: Harry and Ginny have barely reached adolescence, so of course, the most they have done is kiss each other. A lot of the conflict with Mrs. Weasley comes from her wanting Harry and Ginny to stay this way at the cost of their personal freedom and privacy.
• Chekhov's Gun: While there are plenty of examples from canon, the fic has plenty of new ones:
  • Brunesempra, a spell Harry makes that transfigures fabric into a toy bunny, is later used to distract Fluffy when they first encounter him.
  • McGonagall gives Harry and Ginny pendants that can be used to contact her in case they get into trouble. While it has Mundane Utility in that Ginny uses it to invite McGonagall for her birthday, they also use it to call her after Ginny destroys her pyjamas after the security charms keep going off.
  • The security spells on Ginny's pyjamas are activated by Dobby as an attempt to keep her and Harry away from Hogwarts.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: After they reflect on some of the conversations her parents have had, Ginny concludes that it's pretty much inevitable that she and Harry will someday marry, and Harry agrees that they make each other happier than anyone else ever could. But they also agree that there's no rush to do anything about that.
  Ginevra?
  Yes, Harry?
  Where am I going to get a white horse?
• Contrast Montage: Harry and Ginny simultaneously watch the Dursley and Weasley families get ready for breakfast — even seeing Vernon Dursley and Arthur Weasley reading the newspaper and having a drink at the same time — but with stark differences between them. Vernon is irritable, while Arthur is calm. The Dursleys demand that Harry cook breakfast for everyone, with Petunia frowning suspiciously at him the whole time, while at the Burrow, Mrs Weasley offers to take care of it. The breaking point, however, is when Vernon slaps Harry's hand down into the table for attempting to take a piece of bacon to go with his single slice of toast, while Dudley has four slices of toast, six rashers of bacon, five sausages, and four eggs. Vernon apparently intends to reserve the rest of the bacon for him too.
• Converse with the Unconscious: Both played straight and inverted.
  • If one of either Harry or Ginny is asleep, they can still converse mentally. Through this, others outside the bond can talk to the one that's asleep through the person that's awake.
  • When one of them is either hit with a stunning spell or petrified, they can still communicate, though it feels more like the memory of the unconscious person than as if they were actually there.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: As punishment for going after the Philosopher's Stone, Molly Weasley makes Ron and Ginny (and Harry) trim the grass in the paddock. With scissors.
  Molly: Cut it to three inches tall. The width of your palm should be close enough. You’ll do this on weekdays between breakfast and lunch.
• Cosmic Plaything: The prologue suggests that this is literal in regards to Voldemort, Harry, and Ginny, and that Ginny's entire existence is the Powers That Be's attempt at keeping Voldemort and Harry away from each other. It doesn't seem to be working, since Voldemort is very interested indeed in their bond and their unusual magical power, but Harry and Ginny are happy about the results anyway.
• Deadpan Snarker: When Professor McGonagall tells Harry and Ginny that "I have been known to enjoy a casual conversation on rare occasions myself," they're pretty sure she was making a joke.
• Demoted to Extra: The Dursleys appear only very briefly before Ginny pulls Harry back to the Burrow and Mr. Weasley goes to remonstrate with them.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: As Harry and Ginny are both prepubescent, it's not particularly dirty, but they know exactly what each other's bodies look like, for example, to a degree that Ginny's parents and several of her brothers find alarming. Harry and Ginny eventually decide to just stop worrying about it; it's who they are, and they can't change it.
• The Dog Bites Back: Mr Weasley warns the Dursleys about this trope when discussing Harry's living situation and the changes that he expects to happen.
  Mr Weasley: Be careful, Dursley. If you poke a dog long enough, it will bite you, and this dog has very, very big teeth.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Fred and George explain that they can't really talk silently, they've just been saying the same things for a long time. Harry and Ginny, on the other hand, have the real thing.
  Ginny: No one
  Harry: would
  Ginny: ever
  Harry: guess
  Both: that
  Ginny: you're
  Harry: not
  Ginny: reading
  Harry: each
  Both: other's
  Ginny: minds.
• First-Name Basis: After they've been meeting regularly for a while, Harry and Ginny persuade Professor McGonagall to call them by their first names. She tries to offer the same but struggles to get the words out, and Ginny offers to just keep calling her "Professor."
• Foodfight!: Harry and the Weasley children have a dough-conjuration battle in the backyard. Technically it's useful for educational purposes, since the size, colour, and texture of the dough can all be controlled by the caster, but mostly it's an excuse to play paintball. As a bonus, the conjuration vanishes after a short time without needing cleanup.
• Frame-Up: Harry and Ginny insist that they haven't been behaving inappropriately in any way, but her enchanted nightgown says otherwise, and even Hermione suspects that they're not being truthful (though she thinks that 'exploration' would be normal and doesn't condemn them for it). Eventually they establish that Dobby was deliberately activating the alarms as part of his campaign to keep Harry away from Hogwarts.
• Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand: Mr. and Mrs. Weasley showcase this. Mr. Weasley is more immediately accepting of Harry and Ginny's relationship, the fact that they neither chose it nor have any way to end it nor want to, while Mrs. Weasley is more stubborn, addressing her letters only to Ginny and insisting as much as possible that they have supervision and spend minimal time in each other's rooms and that Ginny have a nightgown with charms designed to set off an alarm if she unbuttons or doesn't wear it overnight. Yet at the same time, it's made clear that Mr. Weasley is uncomfortable with the situation too, and Mrs. Weasley loves Ginny very much and is simply struggling to adjust in her own way.
• Gone Horribly Right: Ginny's Bat-Bogey Hex works very well for her because it gets a lot of effect from a little bit of power, and she's magically very weak, nearly a squib. Until she bonds with Harry, whose magic is very powerful, and suddenly the results of her hex are much more violent.
  Madam Pomfrey: What did this to them? I must know if I am to treat them properly.
  Mr. Weasley: Small objects grew rapidly into large, moving objects inside their noses.
• Heroic BSoD: Harry and Ginny don't cope well whenever something occurs to make the other inaccessible to them. Ordinary sleep won't do it, they both inhabit the awake body, but magically stunning one of them will disable almost all of their consciousness and cause the other to freak out. Harry's Petrification renders Ginny nearly non-functional for months.
• Holding Hands: Harry and Ginny's bond works at any distance, but physical touch is important.
  • The first time she took his hand at the train platform triggered the bond to form.
  • Their magic is linked together and greatly amplified in strength when they hold hands. To the point where they have to be careful what types of spells they cast if they don't want to kill the target. When they prepare to defend themselves from several of her older brothers who were panicking about the effects of their bond, Harry takes Ginny's hand and the ambient temperature noticeably rises as their magic responds to their stress levels.
  • They can no longer sleep comfortably without touching in some way. This doesn't have to be holding hands, necessarily, but it can be.
• Hope Spot: Harry is overcome with emotion upon receiving a Weasley jumper, like canon, making him feel like part of a real family for the first time in his life. Until he discovers the book bundled inside, all about propriety and gentlemanly behaviour, letting him know that Mrs. Weasley hasn't really decided to accept and trust him after all.
• In-Series Nickname: Luna decides to address Harry and Ginny collectively as "Alex".
• In Spite of a Nail: Ginny's possession by the Diary is delayed but not averted, and just as in canon, she spends a lot of the year quiet and withdrawn — because Harry is petrified and she's not coping.
• Insult to Rocks: When discussing whether it's more offensive for the Twins to refer to herself and Harry as "titches" or "midgets", Ginny decides that "midgets" is worse, because "It offends us, but it also offends actual midgets. And the goblins. And maybe female midges, too, for all we know."
• I Resemble That Remark!: Invoked word for word by Ginny after Fred mentions that, "Stranger things have happened. Mostly to our baby sister."
  George: She's stealing our lines, Fred.
  Fred: They're just really good lines, George.
• Is This What Anger Feels Like?: Ginny has quite a sunny disposition throughout her childhood, but exposure to Harry's memories of the Dursleys ignites a grudge in her against them, and she becomes fiercely protective of him, causing several unprecedented confrontations.

L-Z

• Lap Pillow: Ginny needs to relax on the Hogwarts Express, after a stressful holiday, so she rests her head on Harry's lap and he strokes her hair until she falls asleep.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Harry and Ginny learn Hermione's bluebell flames spell, which she used to set Snape's robes on fire and distract him, or carried in a jar to keep hands warm. It's pretty, it's useful, and it's not hot enough to be dangerous. Normally, that is. It turns out that it's in the category of spells that have no power cap — you can just keep feeding more magic into it to get a larger effect — and when cast with the full strength of Harry and Ginny's combined magic, it can flood a room with flames hot enough to incinerate organic material and scorch stone in seconds.
• Loophole Abuse: When the Weasleys unexpectedly need to pay Ginny's tuition fees a year early, they don't want to let Harry pay for her, but they can't really argue when Dumbledore offers to grant her a scholarship from Hogwarts' fund for deserving needy students. Dumbledore then turns to Harry and asks whether he's interested in making an entirely voluntary donation to the Hogwarts scholarship fund.
• Lost My Appetite: When Ginny asserts that despite Harry's wealth, she'd "rather butter my broomstick with Snape’s hair grease and eat it whole" than act as entitled and spoiled as Draco Malfoy, Ron complains that she's going to put him off his dinner.
• Love-Obstructing Parents: In fairness, the Weasleys have been put in an extraordinary situation, where their ten-year-old girl is effectively, but not formally, married, to a boy they've only briefly met. Molly's efforts to steer it away from becoming an actual Common Law Marriage are understandable from her point of view, but nonetheless, they cause a lot of friction and heartache, as Ginny feels the lack of trust keenly and Harry feels alienated from a family his soulmate loves dearly (doubly painful when he's never had a loving family before).
• Love Overrides the Law: Harry and Ginny are given permission to sleep in the same bed despite being assigned gendered dorms, and have to keep it a secret to everyone not in the know. Justified since they literally can't sleep apart anymore. However, it is a source of considerable ongoing tension, especially with Mrs Weasley, who struggles with having her ten-year-old daughter share a bed with a boy (and a boy they've only just met, at that, and in a relationship that is likely to result in marriage at some point).
• Mama Bear: Deconstructed with Molly's reaction to Harry and Ginny's bond. Having a boy inside her ten-year-old daughter's head full time — including when showering etc — triggers her violently protective instincts, not to mention the fact that they can only sleep properly while in physical contact. But without a tangible threat that she can fight, her fear and anger spill out onto Ginny and especially Harry, hurting those she wants above all to protect. Their clash on Christmas Day leaves Harry with a sprained ankle and Ginny with the guilt of having badly injured her mother to the point of leaving scars, and each of the children shares the other's pain.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Ginny. As we see in her introduction, she has a love of life and an abundant amount of charisma. Justified as the prologue suggests that the Powers That Be invoked this in her so she could link with Harry.
• Meet the In-Laws: Harry has to do this in order to get permission to sleep in the same bed as Ginny. Considering he's eleven and she's ten, it goes about as well as you'd expect, until Mrs. and Mr. Weasley witness the nightmares that Harry experiences without Ginny present (and Ginny is equally tormented by them). They don't personally dislike Harry, but they struggle with the idea that their little girl is basically de facto married at age ten.
• Merger of Souls: The entire premise of the Fanfic.
• Mindlink Mates: After meeting for the first time, Harry and Ginny share everything, from thoughts to proprioception. They have to coordinate their eating to avoid strange flavour combinations, can't fly brooms simultaneously in different directions without becoming dizzy, and sometimes refer to themselves as a single unit, eg "We're your friend."
• Mundane Utility: Ginny uses Harry's eyes to inspect her new hair clip.
• My Beloved Smother: Mrs. Weasley definitely qualifies as this, though even Harry and Ginny have to admit that it's understandable given the situation. A particular point of contention is that, due to the mechanics of their bond, Harry and Ginny must share a bed, something Mrs. Weasley does not handle at all well.
• Mythology Gag: Ron is a little perturbed by seeing Harry cut himself off mid-sentence and change his mind, without Ginny visibly speaking to him.
  Ron: It’s a bit scary when you do that. You know that, right?
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Mr Weasley is fascinated by everything involved in Harry washing and "whacking" the Dursleys' car, and asks Ginny to explain the details of the process to him. After they're finished with the waxing and the explanations, Ginny realises that her dad read all the manuals when he bought his Ford Anglia, and knew all about it already; he was just keeping their minds off things.
  Mr Weasley: Perhaps. But I certainly didn't have all of that excellent first-hand knowledge. And you're done washing and waxing it, aren't you?
• Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Ginny is bonded to Harry Potter, who is a massive trouble magnet even in canon. Not only do they have to go through The Stations of the Canon, but there are also new sources of conflict that spawn from their unique relationship such as the fights with Ginny's family.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: After Ginny's bedroom door is removed to ensure that she and Harry don't have privacy, Charlie wonders whether it was Bill's doing, based on an incident when they were children. Mr Weasley hasn't forgotten, either.
  Arthur: Ginny's door is out in the shed, Bill. Go get it and put it back up for them. I'm sure you remember how.
  
  Bill rolled his eyes and nodded. As he left the room to go to the back door, Harry heard him mutter something that sounded suspiciously like "twelve years!"
• Paranoia Gambit: Harry and Ginny successfully prank the twins by arranging for their parents to send a Happy Birthday letter on March 31, claiming to have found their birth certificates and realised they were actually born just before midnight and therefore their birthday is not April 1 as the family had always believed. Fred and George are gobsmacked, and feel like it wouldn't be right to go ahead with the mayhem they had planned for April Fools; "If we go around pulling pranks tomorrow, it’ll be like we’re pranking ourselves as much as anyone else." The following evening, though, they get another letter, this time a Howler, to announce that their birthday really is April 1.
  Arthur: You’ve just gone all day on April Fools' without causing any trouble. Congratulations! You've been had!
• Pummeling the Corpse: Like canon, Ron knocks out the troll by levitating its club and hitting it in the head. Unlike canon, his sister is present, and he doesn't stop hitting it until it's long dead. He doesn't realise what he did, though, since the teachers quietly dispose of the body and tell the students it was relocated overseas.
• Rage Breaking Point: After a succession of false alarms from her chastity-belt pyjamas, Ginny finally flips out and turns her wand on them, then threatens to leave if something doesn't change.
• Red String of Fate: According to the prologue, Ginevra was specifically created to be the perfect complement to Harry on a spiritual level.
• The Runaway: Threatened after the post-Christmas conflict between Ginny and the rest of the Weasley family. Mr. Weasley is forced to point out to the rest of his family that 1) Harry has full legal access to his parents' Gringotts account, which contains enough money to let Harry and Ginny live in luxury for the rest of their lives without ever having to work, and 2) the duo's unique form of teleportation will let them go anywhere that either of them can picture and cannot be stopped by any known ward or spell.
  Arthur: Haven’t you figured it out yet, boys? Harry and Ginny have the means to live completely independently. They can go anywhere they please, and they can pay for anything they may need for the rest of their lives. They don’t need us.
• Secret-Keeper: Ron and Hermione find out about the bond before even the older Weasley boys do, and help to cover for Harry and Ginny at night, such as Ron coughing to warn that Ginny is making too much noise.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: A very useful part of Harry and Ginny's bond, but they cannot fully turn it off, so it's also a source of several of their problems.
  • They initially suffer from tripping or getting dizzy when they're both moving. With concentration, they can temporarily block out the shared vision, and with practice, they can adjust to it, but it holds them back from playing Quidditch together. Just as well they can share the experience when only one of them is flying.
  • Ginny's mother is not happy to realise that they see each other showering. At first, they try to concentrate on other things while the other is showering, until Mr. Weasley innocently asks if that isn't pointless.
    Arthur: Doesn’t one of you just see the memory later on?
    <Harry and Ginny both blush>
    Ginny: Well, we hadn’t. But since you just mentioned it, we did.
• Sensory Overload: This happens several times, naturally enough, as a result of Harry and Ginny each getting two sets of sensory information. Sometimes, like their first meeting where they can't initially tell who's feeling what, it settles down on its own after a short time, but other aspects, like flying brooms together, can take a lot of practice.
• Shout-Out:
  • After Ginny is Sorted alongside Harry, Dumbledore remarks, "Curiouser and curiouser."
  • Harry refers to Fred and George as Tweedledee and Tweedledum at one point, which confuses them because they don't get the reference.
  • The twins do, however, use "Curses, foiled again!" themselves, when Harry and Ginny are able to tell them apart.
• Squick: In-Universe; after fighting the troll and ending up in the Hospital Wing, Ginny is appalled to realise what the taste in her mouth is (having bitten the troll in the leg), and starts throwing up.
• Stealthy Teleportation: The only noticeable side effect of Harry and Ginny teleporting is a small breeze from the displaced air.
• Sticky Situation: Fred and George pull a prank on Harry and Ginny by gluing Hermione's copy of Hogwarts: A History onto both of their backs, and promising only to remove it once they are able to walk sideways all the way from the Library to the Entrance Hall several floors down. They do really well due to their shared senses and even outpace the following Fred, George, and Hermione.
• Tele-Frag: Harry and Ginny quickly learn to be careful about teleporting into spaces out of their line of sight, after an early attempt blends Ginny's knee with Harry's blanket. Fortunately, she's able to leave the blanket behind when teleporting away, and suffers no lasting effects.
• Teleport Interdiction: Attempted by Dumbledore, but unsuccessfully, to his consternation; Harry and Ginny's unique method of teleportation bypasses all existing restrictions, and he doesn't understand what they're doing well enough to create countermeasures against it. (He's not hostile to them, but it would be irresponsible for him to ignore a gaping hole in Hogwarts' protections and let underage students leave the school without supervision.) The only real restriction on them is that they don't want to reveal the existence of their ability, which limits what they can do in public.
• Tim Taylor Technology: In this continuity, spells can relate to the power required in one of three ways. Some spells, like Lumos, have one specific effect and always draw the same amount of magic. Others, like levitation, draw however much power is necessary to produce the desired effect but no more. The third category, however, allows the caster to channel as much or as little magic as desired into the effect, and scale the result up or down accordingly. Charms in this category include things like the throw-dough charm (which creates a bigger and longer-lasting doughball as more power is added) and the bluebell flame charm (which creates bigger and hotter flames as more power is added). This third category becomes highly dangerous for Harry and Ginny because their unprecedented magical strength means that it is very easy for them to massively overpower these charms.
• Trash Talk: Harry and Charlie get in some good-natured sniping before their seeker battle.
  Charlie: Ready, Harry? Even at this late stage, you can still back out and avoid total humiliation.
  Harry: Why would I want to avoid your humiliation? Ginny and I are looking forward to it.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Dumbledore references this trope when he contemplates the prospect of Harry and Ginny, who have a knack for doing things previously unheard of, trying to persuade Molly Weasley, "a unique phenomenon in her own right," to let them share a bed.
• What Have I Done:
  • Ginny uses her Bat-Bogey Hex for the first time since bonding with Harry, and instead of producing distracting and annoying bats, she destroys her mother's nose.
  • Molly is aghast to realise that her attempt to force Harry and Ginny to come home left Ginny bruised and Harry with a sprained ankle — no matter that Madam Pomfrey could easily fix them.
    Molly: It's unacceptable to hurt a child. If I heard of anyone else ... doing that, I would call them all sorts of horrible names. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was me. I hurt a child.
  • Professor McGonagall narrowly prevents Harry and Ginny from using bluebell flames at their full power to set Draco Malfoy's robes on fire when he had them cornered, and then proceeds to show them just what would have happened. They're too horrified to speak for some time afterward.
• Wonder Twin Powers: Harry and Ginny have to work together to use their teleportation (although as they share thoughts, that's not hard to achieve), and their magical power is amplified eightfold when they hold hands.

---

Goodnight, Ginny. I'm really glad you're here.
Here in your head, or here at TV Tropes?
Both.