#1000 words on ginny weasley's imaginary wardrobe

[whinlatter]

please talk about something subtle you've put in a story that you hope readers pick up on

Oh man, it was a mistake to ask me this. But I have been desperate to talk about Ginny's t-shirts in Orchards so - let's get into it 👕👚🌳🌿 (Thank you for asking and sorry I can't answer anything like a normal person.)

On Ginny's t-shirts... The slogan t-shirts Ginny wears in Orchards symbolise the dynamics between Ginny and all the people in her life in the summer of 1996, especially her relationship with Harry and the rest of the Weasley family. When Ginny wears a particular shirt, I wanted it to be both a wink to the reader about the arc of that summer - little flags for the plot and for shifting dynamics in characters' relationships - and also a way to smuggle in little headcanons about Ginny's relationships, often with her siblings (and a bonus one, for a surrogate sibling, if anyone spotted it - spoiler below the cut)

I always wondered, with all the Weasleys' secondhand clothing, what Ginny must wear. I loved the idea of her rotating her family members' old t-shirts, as a little love letter to each of them. (I like to think she has a Percy t-shirt somewhere - a t-shirt from some academic competition, no doubt - that she'll dust off and wear again after the war, when they've made their peace with each other.)

So here's a a truly deranged full breakdown of the significance of each of the t-shirts, which I've pulled from my mad writing notes document and share with anyone even a little bit interested, haaa. They're in the order they appear in Orchards, so you can hopefully see their place in the arc of the plot, and broken down by writing/plot and headcanons. Ok let's goooo! 🤸🏻‍♀️

T-shirt 1: Dragon-Tamers’ Guild, Class of 1994 (Relationship: Charlie) 🐉

Writing/plot: Ginny wears this in her opening scene, where Harry and Ron come up to demand she joins them in two-a-side Quidditch. T-shirt 1 had to be a Dragon Tamers' t-shirt, given Ginny's about to spend the summer taming one particularly grouchy dragon (Harry James Potter). And it had to be yellow, because this is Ginny's entrance, so it has to be bright bright bright, sunshine and summer and happy colours from the get-go.

Headcanon: Of course Charlie would give Ginny, the only other animal-lover of the Weasley household, a dragon-themed t-shirt. 1994 is also the year the Triwizard Tournament kicks off, and Charlie comes back to England that summer, so would be the perfect time to hand over a t-shirt to his little sister.

T-shirt 2: My Brothers Started a Joke Shop and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt (Relationship: Fred and George) 🤡

Writing/plot: Ginny wears this at breakfast early on in the fic (the structure of the fic loosely follows the time of day - it starts with breakfast, it will end with evening after sunset). I wanted this t-shirt to flag to the reader that a new phase of Harry and Ginny's relationship is about to kick off - they're about to enter their own comedic double-act era, à la the twins (and, like the twins, a lot of their jokes will be at Ron's expense).

Headcanon: This is definitely a new t-shirt. Fred and George will have given it to Ginny earlier that summer to wear to promote their products at school in the new academic year. The twins may not like that their sister is cool and getting a lot of attention these days, but they're determined to make a few galleons off of it.

T-shirt 3: The Weird Sisters t-shirt (Relationship: Tonks) 🎸

Writing/plot: This actually ended up as my favourite, completely by accident. I originally meant for this t-shirt to be Ginny's own, as a reference to the Weird Sisters poster Harry discovers on her wall in DH. Purple just seemed like a wizardy colour. Ginny wears it in this early flirty scene where Harry, for the first time, seeks her out alone, and comes up to her bedroom. Although he won't enter the room - it's important that that happens for the first time in DH - I liked the idea of her cracking the door open a little and wearing a t-shirt that teases hints of the room inside.

It was only when I was doing final edits and canon checks did I remember that Tonks wears a Weird Sisters t-shirt to pick Harry up at King's Cross at the end of OotP, and also that it's purple??! And then I remembered that great moment in OotP where Tonks turns her hair red, and Harry says she looks like Ginny's older sister. I love that scene. It's so full of early Harry/Ginny hints: Harry noticing more details about Ginny; Ginny, Tonks, and Sirius chatting and cheering Harry up, and Ginny and Tonks showing clear signs of bonding in a little sister/cool big sister way. I love that it ended up as an accidental nod to happy hints from an earlier time.

Canon details: Now I think of this t-shirt is a gift from Ginny's honorary, weird older sister. Tonks has definitely promised to take her to a Weird Sisters concert one day. As Ginny will also spend the summer wishing Bill was marrying Tonks instead, this t-shirt is therefore a subtle anti-Fleur protest.

T-shirt 4: Blank t-shirt (Relationship: Ron 1) 👕

Writing/plot: I wanted Harry to have started to notice Ginny's outfits to such an extent that the first time she wears a blank t-shirt, he's like - excuse you? But then Ginny suggests she'll write her own slogan on it later (‘I’ll write one on later. What do you think of Ron Weasley: Stop Bringing Shame on This Household?’) The t-shirt therefore becomes a way to tease Ron, but it also hints at the tensions in Ginny and Ron's relationship that will be partly resolved by a later t-shirt (Ron 2)

Headcanon: Ginny's clothes are mostly secondhand. But she's also the only girl, and increasingly looks very physically different to her brothers, so when her mum does buy her clothes of her own, they're cheap and non-descript, probably from a multipack.

T-shirt 5: IKEA t-shirt (Relationship: Arthur) 🏡

Writing/plot: Ginny wears this in a scene where Harry and Ron are both watching Ginny and Hermione like dorks. Though they don't know it, both couples are slowly starting to build something, just like you build IKEA furniture (slowly, agonisingly, with no clear instructions and lots of tears/tantrums).

Headcanon: Arthur Weasley definitely has heard of IKEA and longs for the day he, too, can push a trolley around a big Muggle furniture warehouse with a little pencil and tuck into some meatballs in the cafe. A Muggle-born friend definitely gave him this t-shirt knowing he'd be thrilled, and he has passed it onto his daughter who also, secretly, shares his love of all things Muggle.

T-shirt 6: Witch Weekly’s Knitter of the Year Finalist 1984 (Relationship: Molly) 🧶

Writing/plot: Ginny wears this in a scene where she is making her mother tear her hair out over her lack of interest in being a prefect/behaving herself at school, and she and Harry team up as a comedy duo again. I liked the idea of Ginny both wearing her mother's t-shirt while she drives her to distraction, showing all the ways Molly sees herself in her daughter and projects some of her own worries onto her. I also wanted to suggest the idea of Harry and Ginny working together like two knitting needles, colluding to wind up Mrs Weasley. (Molly also spends this scene beating some dough into a pulp on the counter top, and fighting a losing battle there, too).

Headcanon: In 1984, Molly and Arthur had five children under the age of ten running around, squabbling and generally tearing each other apart around the Burrow. Bill and Charlie will have gone to school, and probably have received first batch of Weasley jumpers. I like the idea that Molly took up knitting when pregnant in the late seventies/ early eighties. By the mid-80s knitting is less of a creative outlet and more a slightly manic, neurotic and cheap way of reusing old wool to make new clothes for growing children (and also to take her frustration out on some wool by spearing stitches with sharp needles).

T-shirt 7: Gringotts Curse Breakers' Team-Building Day, May 1993 (The Hardest Curse to Break is a Bad Attitude!) (Relationship: Bill) 🔑

Writing/plot: Ginny wears this in a scene where she's trying to get the trio to lighten up and joke around with her (she's our little bad-attitude breaker). This is another favourite of the t-shirts and I would pay a lot of money for a workplace comedy fic about Bill at this away day.

Headcanon: This is one of those t-shirts you get given at an event and never really want to hold onto (I imagine a team-building day involving grumpy goblins was not a day Bill remembers fondly). But he has seen Ginny has a t-shirt from all her other brothers. The small, petty part of him that always wants his little sister to revere him wants to make sure she has one from him, too.

T-shirt 8: The Chudley Cannons jumper (Relationship: Ron 2) 🧹

Writing/plot: At her birthday dinner, Ron lends Ginny his favourite Chudley Cannons jumper when she starts to get chilly in the evening. Ron and Ginny's relationship won't be fixed completely by the end of the summer - in fact, they're about to go to school, where it'll get a whole lot worse. But this gesture holds out the promise to the reader that things will be alright between them again, that they're going into this new school year with a base level of deep love and affection for each other. Ever the over-protective big brother, Ron will not let his sister be cold on his watch.

Headcanon: It broke Ron's heart when Ginny picked the Holyhead Harpies as her team - she used to support the Cannons with Ron, but picked the Harpies out of spite the first year Ron went away to Hogwarts and she was left at home alone. Seeing his sister wear the Cannons jumper again makes him really happy.

T-shirt 9: Discarded t-shirt (Relationship: Harry) ❣️

Writing/plot: The fic ends with this suggestive, hopeful scene from summer '98, where Harry wakes up on the right side of Ginny's bedroom door for a change, and wonders where the t-shirt she wore the night before has ended up. He spent the summer of '96 inspecting her t-shirts, and then, somewhere along the way, he finally realised he's actually much more interested in what's underneath Ginny's t-shirts. Two years and a whole war later, the reader is reassured to know that Harry James Potter finally gets to take Ginny Weasley's t-shirt off, at long last.

Headcanon: (It's definitely one of Harry's t-shirts).