She was sitting next to Harry on a bench. They were surrounded by trees; maybe they were in the Forbidden Forest?
There was a curious texture to the air – or was it liquid? It was like honey; it had that same thick, sticky feel to it, only infinitely more nauseating. It mangled the shapes of everything around them; the bench, the trees, the clouds all bent into shapes that were slightly, subtly wrong. Only the both of them remained untouched.
She noticed that he was holding her hand. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him; his words apparently muffled by the same thing that weighed her movements down. The foliage around them was moving almost ominously, slow, thick rustling.
All she could feel was that muffling pressure; Harry didn’t seem to feel it, judging by his gestures, economical and clean cut as always.
She flexed her fingers and watched in fascination as they sent slow waves through the heavy liquid they were in. The leaves beyond his shoulder, warped in the odd movement of light through the fluid, shook sluggishly.
She looked up in time to see his lips shape her name.
She could see the moonlight (was it?) reflected strangely in his eyes. Peering up, she noticed that even the moon was distorted; now the man’s face that the Muggles were always on about was clearly visible. She noted through her growing, awful dread that now it looked more like a death’s head than anything else.
Someone burst through the leaves, movements indicating that they had as much trouble moving through the viscous fluid as she did.
It was Draco, the lines of his body also uncontorted by the honey-air. He reached out to shove at Harry, but Harry, reflexes that were originally sharp trained far beyond that, spun around to point his wand at him.
The both of them, outlined in the bilious light of the not-moon, wands pointed at one another. Standing there for an eternity, a second, an age, one quick beat of her fluttering heart.
The pressure on her lifted.
They shouted curses, but she was moving.
No time to think, to get her wand, just ACT!
There was a thump. She felt an impact as she flung herself at one of them, the one of most import, covering him with her body.
Silence.
She raised her head to look at him and
flung the blankets off.
Ginny lay there, recovering.
She was panting and drenched in sweat; evidently realistic nightmares, no matter how inconsequential, did take their toll on other parts of you than your mind and subconscious.
She shoved the bundle of warm blankets aside (so that was what had weighed her down!) and padded over to the window, where a clear beam of moonlight spilled over onto the floor.
She shot a quick glance at the moon to check that the skeletal face wasn’t still leering at her (no, safe there) and leaned out.
The sharp breeze outside chilled her and raised goose pimples through her thin nightclothes, but its coolness was refreshing (rather like a slap in the face, really, her mind supplied inconsequentially).
The grounds were steeped in essence of moonlight. She was distinctly reminded of the liquid in a Pensieve; bright, white light, almost tangible.
She could see the Forest clearly, beyond the lake. Ginny shuddered and looked away.
The moon was reflected in the surface of the water. She looked at it, bright white and unforgiving even in its reflection, vivid glow touching everything.
She reached out, mesmerised, fingers almost shrinking from contact with the bar of pure luminescence shining down from the break in the rafters just above her head, and was momentarily disoriented when they slipped into the light, becoming, briefly, brightly illuminated before she snatched them away, feeling slightly foolish for having been taken in.
She turned around and went back to bed, snuggling into the warm hollow her body had left. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the light from behind her eyelids.
She faced away from the open window and pulled the bedclothes over her head.
It always surprised her how the moon, basking in the light from something else, could shine so brightly.
“Morning, Ginny,” Colin chirped as Ginny hurried into the Great Hall, dragging her book bag behind her. She’d had trouble finding her favourite quill, so was slightly late for breakfast.
She flashed him a surprised look; Colin usually knew never to say anything to her in the mornings unless it was of vital importance.
Training him had been so easy when he was already pliant under constant, if unspoken, threat of having his head chewed off.
Apparently he was better at reading moods than she’d thought, though. She greeted him with a smile and hefted her bag onto the seat beside her.
Ron slid into the seat beside her, all freckles and effusiveness and Weasley jumper and carroty hair. She felt the usual rush of affection, this time accompanied with more than the slightest twinge of irritation.
She shot him a distinctly unfriendly look and he jumped.
“Look, I’ll just… sit over here, all right?”
He rather thought that he’d had enough experience being at the wrong end of a wand she was holding, thanks.
He inched away and she gave him a sweet, if slightly malicious smile, before turning to greet Harry.
“Ginny!”
“Good morning, Harry.”
She stood up to give him a small hug, then sat him down beside her and heaped his plate with food.
“Grub’s up!”
She tucked in with a small noise of contentment.
Ron stared at her open-mouthed, Hermione treated her to an intense look of scrutiny, and Harry looked dazed.
She managed to make it through the day without letting up her cheeriness or general good-will towards man-kind (not extended, of course to any of the following: Slytherins, Draco, Snape, bumbling first years who bumped into her when she obviously had right of way and caused her to drop all her books, even if they helped her to pick them up, Filch, Mrs Norris, and Draco).
Not that he tried to talk to her, of course.
Of course. She’d told him not to, hadn’t she? Quite firmly, too. Perfectly understandable.
That night they all sat in the Common Room and basked in the warmth of the roaring fire; there was still the slightest nip in the air from spring.
She sat with Harry in one of the armchairs by the fire, snuggled together. It was one of the rare times they’d had physical contact since they began their relationship; Harry would walk her to class when convenient, and they always sat next to one another at meals, but that was it, really.
Harry and Ron were engaged in a gripping game of Wizard’s Chess, and Harry was losing abysmally. Much more so than usual, actually.
If that was even possible, the Draco part of her whispered.
Hermione was in a chair nearby, alternating between watching, and reading her book.
“You two look like you’re two halves fitted together!” Lavender gushed from across the room, smiling across at Gryffindor’s Golden Couple.
Hermione’s head snapped up. Ginny looked at her questioningly.
Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’, understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes, as Ginny watched in considerable interest.
“I’ve got to go to the Library,” she muttered to no one in particular, and practically ran from the room.
Ginny shrugged and turned back to the game, snuggling her forehead into Harry’s neck.
Of all the things she’d ever been through, Ginny tried her most never to think about the Struggle, the second war with Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
Then the insidious darkness had been everywhere. Corruption had already been rife in the Wizarding World, of course; witness Lucius Malfoy’s clout with the Ministry.
But this now it wasn’t just corruption (despite Arthur Weasley’s private opinion that it was never just corruption). Now when people eyed you on the streets, when someone behaved suspiciously, you could never quite tell.
Was it a Death Eater there, true visage of cold black countenance hiding behind the mask of living flesh schooled into blank expressions?
No, you could never tell.
Even Snape had only been able to provide them with so much information about who was Dark, who was still hiding in ambiguous shades of grey, who the next target was.
Voldemort, after all, wasn’t a fool. He who was master of espionage, who had a hand in every pie, was hardly going to discount the possibility of spies in his own inner circle; he only disseminated information essential to the part a particular Death Eater had to play in his plans.
It had been during the holidays of Ginny’s Fifth Year that everything finally culminated.
The Order had been at the frontline for the better part of two years; they’d worked covertly, neither helping or hindering the Ministry’s own half-hearted efforts.
Neither side had sustained very much substantial damage, but the war, however much cloak-and-dagger, was taking its toll on each of them.
Snape regularly missed classes. Hermione told them once, almost shivering in fear, that when she’d dropped by Snape’s office to collect a reference book when he’d been ill, that he’d been tucked up in bed, swathed in bandages, and had called her by her first name!
The dark rings under McGonagall’s eyes were much deeper now; instead of looking a well-preserved early-fifties, she now looked a rather tired late-fifties.
Even Lupin, now hired as Defence teacher again (the Wizarding World had been in too much turmoil over Voldemort’s return to make more than a feeble protest) but living at Grimmauld Place, was showing more wear and tear than his monthly affliction could account for.
When Harry saw Lupin tiredly rubbing away the crease between his eyebrows, he remembered that Sirius’ death had taken away more than his godfather, but had taken away Remus’ last true friend, the only other Marauder left.
It was, perhaps, more his anger abut Sirius having been taken away from him that spurred Harry to throw himself, heart and soul, into researching and practicing ways to get at Voldemort.
They spent the whole holidays doing it; Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville, who’d been entrusted to Dumbledore by his grandmother.
The old woman had turned up on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place one day, had thrust the shaking Neville at Dumbledore.
“Take him,” she had said fiercely, “And he will, for his parents, become so much more than they will ever be.”
Dumbledore had understood. He always did.
Neville had lived with Ron and Harry in one of the old bedrooms in Grimmauld Place, while Ginny and Hermione shared a room.
Neville had done some growing up very quickly. Or, the other four realised, his maturity had always been hidden from them under his… wibbling, for a lack of a better word.
He’d actually been capable of so much more than they’d thought. Knowing that someone was responsible for your parent’s mindless stares, for them looking straight through you, unrecognising, tended to toughen you up a mite.
And, of course, his Herbology skills often came in quite handy during their compilation of useful spells.
They often stayed up late into the night checking up the old arcane spells from the Black library.
Harry had stayed up later than all of them. That summer, he’d managed to bottle up his needless, pubertal tetchiness, and had instead focused it into one pinpoint of burning hatred; he’d turned his angst, all his existential anger, at the one thing that mattered; getting back at the creature responsible for the death of his parents, of his parent’s best friend, of his own childhood.
He’d been all strong presence, brooding anger, controlled fury, and they were all treated to glimpses of the forceful personality he was well on his way to becoming.
They didn’t know Ginny often stayed up with him, though, researching, reading the dusty books by the lights of their wands.
He wasn’t the only one Voldemort had wrenched childhood away from, after all.
And then all their plans had gone to pot before they could come to fruition.
Voldemort had launched an attack on them while they were in Knockturn Alley, buying ingredients for the newest potion Harry wanted to try his hand at.
Remus had been there, indestructible snarling man-flesh of hatred, but someone had made the terrible, terrible mistake of forgetting that there were many Dark Creatures in Voldemort’s ranks as well.
Tonks had been accompanying them as well; there was only so much one witch could do against two opponents however, and she had been hard put to hold them off.
Neville had managed to get in a lucky shot in at one, effectively knocking him out before he’d rushed over to help Ron who had been dodging spells from the another Death Eater.
The air was thick with dust and spells, thick with the sounds of children being stripped of their naiveté, of the hopelessness of it all.
Hermione was the first to go down.
She’d just cast a Befuddlement Spell over her shoulder as she’d run for shelter behind a shopfront, temporarily handicapping a Death Eater so Ron could Stun him, when a flash of light hit her in the back.
There wasn’t even time for a scream before she went down, brown hair flying out, looking strangely like something from a badly-shot Muggle movie.
And the worst thing, the absolute worst thing, Harry reflected later, was that he hadn’t noticed.
That was the thing about battle. It wasn’t at all like how they’d described it in books; there was no time to think and consider, choose between this stroke and that.
It was all in the here and now, and if you couldn’t make split-second decisions or move instinctively then you went down.
It wasn’t that suddenly the hero was transformed from a clumsy oaf to a nimble swordsman, that suddenly he noticed everything around him, but rather the opposite; fear narrowed what you saw, giving you tunnel vision. Suddenly all you could see were details; the exact pattern of the brick wall opposite, the acrid smell of battle, the precise feeling of hope extinguishing.
And if you turned out to be the hero, that was just because you’d managed to keep your head and had won, whichever side you were on.
And he’ll always remember that when Hermione was hit by a Cruciatius Curse, all he’d been focusing on was the way the smoke in the air parted as he moved his wand through it, cursing the Death Eater advancing on the barrel of dead rhinoceros beetles he’d been hiding behind.
Then Harry had seen him. It. His face had been unmasked, snake-like slit eyes glowing red.
Smoke had bellowed out in front of his black robes.
‘Very theatrical,’ a distant part of Harry’d commented dryly, while all the other bits had been instructing his body to get to its feet, to hold its wand-arm out, face Voldemort.
They’d advanced on one another.
“This is it, boy,” he had hissed, “Now you’ll be joining your parents and that sorry excuse for a godfather.”
Harry’s lips had tightened.
“Avada kedevra!” he had shouted, voice cracking in desperation.
But Lord Voldemort hadn’t been the most feared wizard in five hundred years for nothing.
In that split second, he’d taken his wand out, pointed it at Harry, uttered the exact same curse.
And it had been fourth year Triwizard Tournament all over again. Single beam of light connecting the tips of both wands, both putting in their all.
The beads of light in the beam had begun to move towards Harry.
Sweat was beading on his forehead. The one vein in the northwest of his face began to pop out.
The first bead had reached the tip of Harry’s wand.
Pop! had gone his wand. Not sound, but feeling.
He had felt it shudder.
Pop!
He’d tried harder. The movement of the beads’d slowed, but didn’t come to a halt.
Pop!
His wand had begun to shudder. The light in Voldemort’s eyes had been maniacal.
Pop!
It had started to glow intensely, and he’d looked away from the terrible brilliance as the last trembling bead moved ever closer.
Then he’d seen Ginny.
She’d just looked up from her epic battle with Wormtail, who’d held off as if on purpose to allow her to watch.
She’d screamed, “Now!”
He hadn’t understood.
Then the wash of pure energy hit him, he’d thrown himself behind the beam of light, the curse shot backwards through Voldemort’s wand and hit him in the chest, and Voldemort crumpled.
There should have been a thousand trumpets, fanfare, the cheers of a million people.
Instead there had only been only one or two thin screams, dull thuds and thumps, as the battles around them continued.
Harry’d turned around to face all of them.
Then the backlash from Voldemort’s death had hit the Death Eaters and every last one of them had doubled over, clutching their arms.
Harry had walked over to Voldemort’s corpse, rapidly crumbling without the preserving spells on it. He’d rummaged in the thick robes and taken his wand, broke it in his two hands.
Just like that, with a small snap.
The members of the Order had stood there, staring at the two thin pieces of wood in Harry’s hand.
Then Lupin had shook himself.
“We should get Ginny and Hermione to St Mungo’s,” he had said in the voice that’d aged ten years with Sirius’ death.
Harry had felt an immense wave of guilt. How hadn’t he noticed the two bodies sprawled on the ground?
Then the Ministry lackeys had arrived and had taken care of all the details.
And that had been it, really.
Ginny’d recovered, eventually regained the energy she’d transferred to Harry.
What had always seemed unbelievably ironic to her was that she’d cast the very same spell that Tom Riddle had used to drain her of her energy; she’d hadn’t only learned how to slaughter chickens from that episode.
Everything comes full circle, in the end.
Hermione had been weak and shaken for months, but after plenty of recuperation and Ronnie-love, had recovered as well.
They’d all expected Harry and Ginny to be especially close, after that. Sharing magic, one of the most personal things a wizard can do, would be expected to nurture intimacy, wouldn’t it?
And for a while, they had been, actually. For a while they could only bear to be in the company of one another, whether in opposite armchairs or seated on opposite sides of the huge table in the ballroom at Grimmauld Place.
But then she’d gotten increasingly irritated with Harry’s new dazed look when he was with her. She became, unfathomably, increasingly on edge around him, so she stayed away, and put the memories in a tightly locked cupboard in a corner of her mind.
And the Wizarding World had gone on semi-permanent holiday. All the Order members present that day were cried up as heroes, even (or perhaps specially) Lupin, for standing up to fellow Dark Creatures, for listening to his rational mind against all other instincts. And for Tonks, who’d stood up for Muggles despite being of Pure Blood heritage.
Eventually the media hullabaloo had died down, except for the occasional article run on the ‘Saviours of the Wizarding World’.
Ginny had tried to forget about it as well, one of the darkest periods of her life.
But when Harry’d had smiled down at her, and told her to ‘think about’ going out with him that very first time, he’d suddenly sparked a recollection of the rush of absolute trust she’d had as she’d cast that spell.
And now, being with him, seemed to dredge up unwanted memories.
But it didn’t matter, she told herself, as she slid her arm around his shoulders, it was going to be her conscious governing her actions, not her subconscious, if it was the last thing she did.
Dreams, scheams.
There was a curious texture to the air – or was it liquid? It was like honey; it had that same thick, sticky feel to it, only infinitely more nauseating. It mangled the shapes of everything around them; the bench, the trees, the clouds all bent into shapes that were slightly, subtly wrong. Only the both of them remained untouched.
She noticed that he was holding her hand. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him; his words apparently muffled by the same thing that weighed her movements down. The foliage around them was moving almost ominously, slow, thick rustling.
All she could feel was that muffling pressure; Harry didn’t seem to feel it, judging by his gestures, economical and clean cut as always.
She flexed her fingers and watched in fascination as they sent slow waves through the heavy liquid they were in. The leaves beyond his shoulder, warped in the odd movement of light through the fluid, shook sluggishly.
She looked up in time to see his lips shape her name.
She could see the moonlight (was it?) reflected strangely in his eyes. Peering up, she noticed that even the moon was distorted; now the man’s face that the Muggles were always on about was clearly visible. She noted through her growing, awful dread that now it looked more like a death’s head than anything else.
Someone burst through the leaves, movements indicating that they had as much trouble moving through the viscous fluid as she did.
It was Draco, the lines of his body also uncontorted by the honey-air. He reached out to shove at Harry, but Harry, reflexes that were originally sharp trained far beyond that, spun around to point his wand at him.
The both of them, outlined in the bilious light of the not-moon, wands pointed at one another. Standing there for an eternity, a second, an age, one quick beat of her fluttering heart.
The pressure on her lifted.
They shouted curses, but she was moving.
No time to think, to get her wand, just ACT!
There was a thump. She felt an impact as she flung herself at one of them, the one of most import, covering him with her body.
Silence.
She raised her head to look at him and
flung the blankets off.
Ginny lay there, recovering.
She was panting and drenched in sweat; evidently realistic nightmares, no matter how inconsequential, did take their toll on other parts of you than your mind and subconscious.
She shoved the bundle of warm blankets aside (so that was what had weighed her down!) and padded over to the window, where a clear beam of moonlight spilled over onto the floor.
She shot a quick glance at the moon to check that the skeletal face wasn’t still leering at her (no, safe there) and leaned out.
The sharp breeze outside chilled her and raised goose pimples through her thin nightclothes, but its coolness was refreshing (rather like a slap in the face, really, her mind supplied inconsequentially).
The grounds were steeped in essence of moonlight. She was distinctly reminded of the liquid in a Pensieve; bright, white light, almost tangible.
She could see the Forest clearly, beyond the lake. Ginny shuddered and looked away.
The moon was reflected in the surface of the water. She looked at it, bright white and unforgiving even in its reflection, vivid glow touching everything.
She reached out, mesmerised, fingers almost shrinking from contact with the bar of pure luminescence shining down from the break in the rafters just above her head, and was momentarily disoriented when they slipped into the light, becoming, briefly, brightly illuminated before she snatched them away, feeling slightly foolish for having been taken in.
She turned around and went back to bed, snuggling into the warm hollow her body had left. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the light from behind her eyelids.
She faced away from the open window and pulled the bedclothes over her head.
It always surprised her how the moon, basking in the light from something else, could shine so brightly.
“Morning, Ginny,” Colin chirped as Ginny hurried into the Great Hall, dragging her book bag behind her. She’d had trouble finding her favourite quill, so was slightly late for breakfast.
She flashed him a surprised look; Colin usually knew never to say anything to her in the mornings unless it was of vital importance.
Training him had been so easy when he was already pliant under constant, if unspoken, threat of having his head chewed off.
Apparently he was better at reading moods than she’d thought, though. She greeted him with a smile and hefted her bag onto the seat beside her.
Ron slid into the seat beside her, all freckles and effusiveness and Weasley jumper and carroty hair. She felt the usual rush of affection, this time accompanied with more than the slightest twinge of irritation.
She shot him a distinctly unfriendly look and he jumped.
“Look, I’ll just… sit over here, all right?”
He rather thought that he’d had enough experience being at the wrong end of a wand she was holding, thanks.
He inched away and she gave him a sweet, if slightly malicious smile, before turning to greet Harry.
“Ginny!”
“Good morning, Harry.”
She stood up to give him a small hug, then sat him down beside her and heaped his plate with food.
“Grub’s up!”
She tucked in with a small noise of contentment.
Ron stared at her open-mouthed, Hermione treated her to an intense look of scrutiny, and Harry looked dazed.
She managed to make it through the day without letting up her cheeriness or general good-will towards man-kind (not extended, of course to any of the following: Slytherins, Draco, Snape, bumbling first years who bumped into her when she obviously had right of way and caused her to drop all her books, even if they helped her to pick them up, Filch, Mrs Norris, and Draco).
Not that he tried to talk to her, of course.
Of course. She’d told him not to, hadn’t she? Quite firmly, too. Perfectly understandable.
That night they all sat in the Common Room and basked in the warmth of the roaring fire; there was still the slightest nip in the air from spring.
She sat with Harry in one of the armchairs by the fire, snuggled together. It was one of the rare times they’d had physical contact since they began their relationship; Harry would walk her to class when convenient, and they always sat next to one another at meals, but that was it, really.
Harry and Ron were engaged in a gripping game of Wizard’s Chess, and Harry was losing abysmally. Much more so than usual, actually.
If that was even possible, the Draco part of her whispered.
Hermione was in a chair nearby, alternating between watching, and reading her book.
“You two look like you’re two halves fitted together!” Lavender gushed from across the room, smiling across at Gryffindor’s Golden Couple.
Hermione’s head snapped up. Ginny looked at her questioningly.
Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’, understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes, as Ginny watched in considerable interest.
“I’ve got to go to the Library,” she muttered to no one in particular, and practically ran from the room.
Ginny shrugged and turned back to the game, snuggling her forehead into Harry’s neck.
Of all the things she’d ever been through, Ginny tried her most never to think about the Struggle, the second war with Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
Then the insidious darkness had been everywhere. Corruption had already been rife in the Wizarding World, of course; witness Lucius Malfoy’s clout with the Ministry.
But this now it wasn’t just corruption (despite Arthur Weasley’s private opinion that it was never just corruption). Now when people eyed you on the streets, when someone behaved suspiciously, you could never quite tell.
Was it a Death Eater there, true visage of cold black countenance hiding behind the mask of living flesh schooled into blank expressions?
No, you could never tell.
Even Snape had only been able to provide them with so much information about who was Dark, who was still hiding in ambiguous shades of grey, who the next target was.
Voldemort, after all, wasn’t a fool. He who was master of espionage, who had a hand in every pie, was hardly going to discount the possibility of spies in his own inner circle; he only disseminated information essential to the part a particular Death Eater had to play in his plans.
It had been during the holidays of Ginny’s Fifth Year that everything finally culminated.
The Order had been at the frontline for the better part of two years; they’d worked covertly, neither helping or hindering the Ministry’s own half-hearted efforts.
Neither side had sustained very much substantial damage, but the war, however much cloak-and-dagger, was taking its toll on each of them.
Snape regularly missed classes. Hermione told them once, almost shivering in fear, that when she’d dropped by Snape’s office to collect a reference book when he’d been ill, that he’d been tucked up in bed, swathed in bandages, and had called her by her first name!
The dark rings under McGonagall’s eyes were much deeper now; instead of looking a well-preserved early-fifties, she now looked a rather tired late-fifties.
Even Lupin, now hired as Defence teacher again (the Wizarding World had been in too much turmoil over Voldemort’s return to make more than a feeble protest) but living at Grimmauld Place, was showing more wear and tear than his monthly affliction could account for.
When Harry saw Lupin tiredly rubbing away the crease between his eyebrows, he remembered that Sirius’ death had taken away more than his godfather, but had taken away Remus’ last true friend, the only other Marauder left.
It was, perhaps, more his anger abut Sirius having been taken away from him that spurred Harry to throw himself, heart and soul, into researching and practicing ways to get at Voldemort.
They spent the whole holidays doing it; Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville, who’d been entrusted to Dumbledore by his grandmother.
The old woman had turned up on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place one day, had thrust the shaking Neville at Dumbledore.
“Take him,” she had said fiercely, “And he will, for his parents, become so much more than they will ever be.”
Dumbledore had understood. He always did.
Neville had lived with Ron and Harry in one of the old bedrooms in Grimmauld Place, while Ginny and Hermione shared a room.
Neville had done some growing up very quickly. Or, the other four realised, his maturity had always been hidden from them under his… wibbling, for a lack of a better word.
He’d actually been capable of so much more than they’d thought. Knowing that someone was responsible for your parent’s mindless stares, for them looking straight through you, unrecognising, tended to toughen you up a mite.
And, of course, his Herbology skills often came in quite handy during their compilation of useful spells.
They often stayed up late into the night checking up the old arcane spells from the Black library.
Harry had stayed up later than all of them. That summer, he’d managed to bottle up his needless, pubertal tetchiness, and had instead focused it into one pinpoint of burning hatred; he’d turned his angst, all his existential anger, at the one thing that mattered; getting back at the creature responsible for the death of his parents, of his parent’s best friend, of his own childhood.
He’d been all strong presence, brooding anger, controlled fury, and they were all treated to glimpses of the forceful personality he was well on his way to becoming.
They didn’t know Ginny often stayed up with him, though, researching, reading the dusty books by the lights of their wands.
He wasn’t the only one Voldemort had wrenched childhood away from, after all.
And then all their plans had gone to pot before they could come to fruition.
Voldemort had launched an attack on them while they were in Knockturn Alley, buying ingredients for the newest potion Harry wanted to try his hand at.
Remus had been there, indestructible snarling man-flesh of hatred, but someone had made the terrible, terrible mistake of forgetting that there were many Dark Creatures in Voldemort’s ranks as well.
Tonks had been accompanying them as well; there was only so much one witch could do against two opponents however, and she had been hard put to hold them off.
Neville had managed to get in a lucky shot in at one, effectively knocking him out before he’d rushed over to help Ron who had been dodging spells from the another Death Eater.
The air was thick with dust and spells, thick with the sounds of children being stripped of their naiveté, of the hopelessness of it all.
Hermione was the first to go down.
She’d just cast a Befuddlement Spell over her shoulder as she’d run for shelter behind a shopfront, temporarily handicapping a Death Eater so Ron could Stun him, when a flash of light hit her in the back.
There wasn’t even time for a scream before she went down, brown hair flying out, looking strangely like something from a badly-shot Muggle movie.
And the worst thing, the absolute worst thing, Harry reflected later, was that he hadn’t noticed.
That was the thing about battle. It wasn’t at all like how they’d described it in books; there was no time to think and consider, choose between this stroke and that.
It was all in the here and now, and if you couldn’t make split-second decisions or move instinctively then you went down.
It wasn’t that suddenly the hero was transformed from a clumsy oaf to a nimble swordsman, that suddenly he noticed everything around him, but rather the opposite; fear narrowed what you saw, giving you tunnel vision. Suddenly all you could see were details; the exact pattern of the brick wall opposite, the acrid smell of battle, the precise feeling of hope extinguishing.
And if you turned out to be the hero, that was just because you’d managed to keep your head and had won, whichever side you were on.
And he’ll always remember that when Hermione was hit by a Cruciatius Curse, all he’d been focusing on was the way the smoke in the air parted as he moved his wand through it, cursing the Death Eater advancing on the barrel of dead rhinoceros beetles he’d been hiding behind.
Then Harry had seen him. It. His face had been unmasked, snake-like slit eyes glowing red.
Smoke had bellowed out in front of his black robes.
‘Very theatrical,’ a distant part of Harry’d commented dryly, while all the other bits had been instructing his body to get to its feet, to hold its wand-arm out, face Voldemort.
They’d advanced on one another.
“This is it, boy,” he had hissed, “Now you’ll be joining your parents and that sorry excuse for a godfather.”
Harry’s lips had tightened.
“Avada kedevra!” he had shouted, voice cracking in desperation.
But Lord Voldemort hadn’t been the most feared wizard in five hundred years for nothing.
In that split second, he’d taken his wand out, pointed it at Harry, uttered the exact same curse.
And it had been fourth year Triwizard Tournament all over again. Single beam of light connecting the tips of both wands, both putting in their all.
The beads of light in the beam had begun to move towards Harry.
Sweat was beading on his forehead. The one vein in the northwest of his face began to pop out.
The first bead had reached the tip of Harry’s wand.
Pop! had gone his wand. Not sound, but feeling.
He had felt it shudder.
Pop!
He’d tried harder. The movement of the beads’d slowed, but didn’t come to a halt.
Pop!
His wand had begun to shudder. The light in Voldemort’s eyes had been maniacal.
Pop!
It had started to glow intensely, and he’d looked away from the terrible brilliance as the last trembling bead moved ever closer.
Then he’d seen Ginny.
She’d just looked up from her epic battle with Wormtail, who’d held off as if on purpose to allow her to watch.
She’d screamed, “Now!”
He hadn’t understood.
Then the wash of pure energy hit him, he’d thrown himself behind the beam of light, the curse shot backwards through Voldemort’s wand and hit him in the chest, and Voldemort crumpled.
There should have been a thousand trumpets, fanfare, the cheers of a million people.
Instead there had only been only one or two thin screams, dull thuds and thumps, as the battles around them continued.
Harry’d turned around to face all of them.
Then the backlash from Voldemort’s death had hit the Death Eaters and every last one of them had doubled over, clutching their arms.
Harry had walked over to Voldemort’s corpse, rapidly crumbling without the preserving spells on it. He’d rummaged in the thick robes and taken his wand, broke it in his two hands.
Just like that, with a small snap.
The members of the Order had stood there, staring at the two thin pieces of wood in Harry’s hand.
Then Lupin had shook himself.
“We should get Ginny and Hermione to St Mungo’s,” he had said in the voice that’d aged ten years with Sirius’ death.
Harry had felt an immense wave of guilt. How hadn’t he noticed the two bodies sprawled on the ground?
Then the Ministry lackeys had arrived and had taken care of all the details.
And that had been it, really.
Ginny’d recovered, eventually regained the energy she’d transferred to Harry.
What had always seemed unbelievably ironic to her was that she’d cast the very same spell that Tom Riddle had used to drain her of her energy; she’d hadn’t only learned how to slaughter chickens from that episode.
Everything comes full circle, in the end.
Hermione had been weak and shaken for months, but after plenty of recuperation and Ronnie-love, had recovered as well.
They’d all expected Harry and Ginny to be especially close, after that. Sharing magic, one of the most personal things a wizard can do, would be expected to nurture intimacy, wouldn’t it?
And for a while, they had been, actually. For a while they could only bear to be in the company of one another, whether in opposite armchairs or seated on opposite sides of the huge table in the ballroom at Grimmauld Place.
But then she’d gotten increasingly irritated with Harry’s new dazed look when he was with her. She became, unfathomably, increasingly on edge around him, so she stayed away, and put the memories in a tightly locked cupboard in a corner of her mind.
And the Wizarding World had gone on semi-permanent holiday. All the Order members present that day were cried up as heroes, even (or perhaps specially) Lupin, for standing up to fellow Dark Creatures, for listening to his rational mind against all other instincts. And for Tonks, who’d stood up for Muggles despite being of Pure Blood heritage.
Eventually the media hullabaloo had died down, except for the occasional article run on the ‘Saviours of the Wizarding World’.
Ginny had tried to forget about it as well, one of the darkest periods of her life.
But when Harry’d had smiled down at her, and told her to ‘think about’ going out with him that very first time, he’d suddenly sparked a recollection of the rush of absolute trust she’d had as she’d cast that spell.
And now, being with him, seemed to dredge up unwanted memories.
But it didn’t matter, she told herself, as she slid her arm around his shoulders, it was going to be her conscious governing her actions, not her subconscious, if it was the last thing she did.
Dreams, scheams.
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