McGonagall nodded somewhat disappointedly. “Right, well you three will need shelter during your stay. All three of your beds are unoccupied in Gryffindor tower if you would like.”
A gratified smile spread across each of their exhausted faces at the thought of curling up beneath soft down comforters behind the familiar maroon hangings fringed in yellow-gold of their own four poster beds.
“I think that would be just what we need, Professor,” Harry spoke with relief.
A small smile broke out on her own face at anything she could do to make their journey easier. “You should get going if you hope to be in bed before tomorrow; I expect you’ll have a crowd of curious ears to fulfil before the rest of the Gryffindors will allow you rest.”
He nodded in agreement, and the three of them turned to leave. The other two already descending down the spiral staircase, Ron, bringing up the rear, had the sense to stop before he was through the doorway to turn and ask the Headmistress a very important question.
“What’s the password?”
After a long night of ecstatic welcomes, hugs, tears, and slaps on the back, Harry, Ron and Hermione were ready to turn in. Harry pressed an envelope into Hermione’s hand as they passed, and when she caught his eye before he turned from her to follow Ron up the stairs to their old room, she saw a mixture of liberation and yearning lingering in his gaze, pleading with her to see that the envelope made it into the right hands. She nodded and smiled encouragement in that long second, having seen the disappointment on his face in missing the one person he had been most looking forward to seeing.
Before retiring to her own room, she tip-toed into the sixth year girl’s room and laid the envelope on top of an alarm clock next to a bed with its curtains already drawn for the night. Assuming the girl inside the hangings to be asleep, she left the envelope there knowing that the first thing the girl would see as she reached to silence the deafening sounds of consciousness would be that untidy scrawl shaping the curves of her own name. Hermione entered her own room smiling as she imagined the girl ripping open the encasement of words from her beloved, the happiest witch to be woken by such an awful noise.
She found his note on her alarm clock the next morning when she snuck into her room before the other girls had awoken, most likely left by Hermione; she hadn’t even fathomed their return to Hogwarts so soon, and it warmed her heart to know that they were close and safe. The penned letter in that familiar, scratchy writing sounded as if it had been written and re-written until it was perfect, certain phrases sounding less and less like his own words until it could have been selected and copied out of a book of great letters written by lovers separated by time, space, or death. The words described the ache he felt in his heart when he realised he couldn’t know if she was alright, how much he missed how her hair always smelled like lavender, and how much he was looking forward to seeing her again. She may have laughed at the corniness in the way he requested her presence where they used to meet, if her heart hadn’t weighed so heavily at the thought of what she would have to tell him.
Ginny waited nervously under the great oak tree by the lake, their tree, tugging absentmindedly at a lock of hair pulled over her shoulder and crunching snow beneath her boots as she shifted from one foot to the other. Her eyes scanned the surface of the lake, searching for a ripple, a murmur of movement upon the still, pristine sheet of glassy water, but even the giant squid seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the climax about to ensue.
Closing her eyes to steady her nerves, she forced herself to remember why she was about to break the heart of a perfectly good man, why she was about the collapse his image of a woman, a girl he had left behind, the perfect image he had modelled in his mind during the long nights of waiting, hoping, and dreaming. Draco’s face was clear behind her eyelids, and the impression of the kiss they had last shared the night before still vivid as she held two fingers against her lips in remembrance. She was everything to him; he had told her so last night as she lay in his arms, gazing up into his haunting eyes of deepest mist. She had never felt so needed by anyone, a feeling she knew she couldn’t live without once she heard those words leave his lips.
She could no longer be the incentive for a job well done, cast aside in a shadow of heroism. Even she and Harry’s first kiss had modelled the depths of their relationship: He had won the House Cup, therefore all restraint of his attraction towards her was no longer a factor. Not that she had complained; she had been in love with him since she was a little girl, with her hero. Alas, he was still the hero, but she was no longer the school girl with a crush, and the enchantment in fulfilling a little girl’s daydream had worn thin as her heart found where it truly belonged, where it was truly needed.
She spotted him walking down towards her, taking the beaten path stomped down by countless students making a rendezvous under this very tree for hundreds of years. He held his winter cloak close around his thin shoulders as his red and gold scarf, knitted by her own mother, blew lazily behind him. There were several indications of battles fought over the past few months adorning his face and hands that she noticed right away as he drew closer, and the guilt in her heart reared its head to growl. The famous lightning bolt scar stood out darker than ever against his pale forehead. His ruffled hair looked long, as it hadn’t been cut in months, but even the unruly way it settled against his brow couldn’t hide that scar. Dark circles stood out underneath the green eyes seeking her out beneath the tree, and when they found hers, his anxious face broke into a grin, and she could see the quiescent depths of emerald light up at the sight of her.
As he approached, she opened her mouth to let out a formal greeting, but “hello” or “good morning” sounded so cool, so impersonal that it caught in her throat and she continued to hold his gaze with her mouth slightly agape. Finally reaching her, he silently held out both hands and pulled her into a tight embrace. Relaxing into his strong arms, she noted that he seemed taller than she remembered, emanating a confidence only achieved through an experience of something no one else has gone through.
“I’ve missed you so much, Ginny.”
“Harry… I need to tell you something,” she whispered.
“It’s almost over. We can pick up where we left off, finish what we started.”
She struggled with little effort against his hold, willing herself not to breathe in his intoxicatingly familiar scent too deeply.
“Please, we need to talk.” Her voice heightened in volume, in case he hadn’t heard her.
“I’m so glad that you’re here, that you’re safe.”
“Harry… stop. Harry, listen to me!”
Her tone escalated to angry within a few short phrases, and she pushed at him hard in her frustration that he wasn’t paying attention to her words. Taking a few steps back from her, his eyebrows furrowed together in confusion beneath his dishevelled hair.
“Ginny, what’s wrong?”
She sighed; there was that look, that broken puppy-dog look that she knew she’d have to fight.
“There won’t be a place for us to pick up where we left off. I’ve moved on.” Blunt, and to the point; if only it could be as simple as that. If only they could just hug and walk back to the castle as friends, like in the mirror.
His shining green eyes clouded instantly with anger, making them dark as his features contorted to make the puffiness under his eyes and his pale skin look scary in the gloom cast by the low clouds.
“What’s the bloke’s name?” he asked in a mock offhand voice.
“That’s not important, what matters–”
“You bloody-well better believe it’s important!” he cut her off, incensed at her lack of denial. “Why would you need to move on if there wasn’t someone else to move on with?”
She paused, biting her bottom lip to find the right words without making him angrier, a lost cause as she blurted out the first words that came to mind.
“You left! You left me here! I never said I’d wait for you!”
He stared incredulously at her.
“I left to save you, to save the effing world! This is the thanks I get? I come back to see you before I might die, and you… you’re…” he trailed off, appearing repulsed by the destination this string of thoughts was leading him to.
She flinched as if smacked in the face with that word: die. Shoving it aside, she focused on the offensive words before that one, unwilling to let it sink in that Harry had contemplated facing his own death. How can she be doing this to someone so brave?
“The thanks you get? Was that my job, to just stand around and thank you?” Her eyes blazed at that remark, taking his anger down several notches in shame.
“No, of course not,” his voice softened as he looked away from her fury.
“You don’t need me; you were always on your own! He needs me. I could have come with you, I could have helped, but you couldn’t be bothered; you were too busy playing the hero.” Grasping at straws to give him an excuse she knew had no substance, she avoided the real reason, as she knew it would hurt him even more.
His eyes snapped back to hers in shock. “Playing the hero? Hi, my name’s Harry Potter, have we met before? Do you know me at all?”
The hurt in his voice told her she was going about this in the wrong way; if she was going to hurt him, she would do it with the truth.
“No, I know you never wanted to be the hero. That was stupid of me to say.” She paused to pull together her nerves. “I love him, Harry,” she whispered as a warm tear slid down her rosy cheek flushed with cold. He turned away from her to look out at the lake, to hide the mist gathering in his eyes and sighed shakily. She continued to speak to his back as tears collected at the inner corners of her eyes and fell without restraint. “I’m so sorry to ruin what we had by falling in love with someone else, by acting like you didn’t mean anything to me. Being with you was magical; it had been a dream come true for me, but he makes me feel…” she trailed off, not wanting to voice to him exactly how Draco made her feel.
“Different,” he finished for her in a whisper.
She took in a gulp of air as she dashed the tears from her face. “Yes,” she confirmed.
Turning back around to face her, he took her small shoulders within each of his hands, his eyes pleading. “Please, give me another chance, I do need you.”
She closed her eyes in frustration; she knew that even if Harry did come around to needing her, she couldn’t make herself love him like she did Draco.
“It’s too late, Harry.”
“No, it’s not.”
Upon these words leaving his lips, her eyes flew open to see his closed and his face moving towards hers. With a forcefulness brought on by desperation he had never shown her before, Harry took hold of either side of her face and crashed his lips against hers. She whimpered softly into his mouth as she closed her eyes again, less from outrage and more from a relief she hadn’t known she needed. These lips had never claimed her so possessively, so hungrily before, and the animalistic gain of her full attention to his hands running into her hair and pulling her face closer, to his tongue forcing its way past her lips, to his body being so closely pressed against hers, found a spark of life to feed on in a recess of her heart she had laid to waste. The old feelings were fighting to surface within her, and it took every conscious nerve of her being not completely consumed in the physical feelings of pleasure brought on by the man before her to break away from him.
She stumbled backward a few steps to put some space between their bodies, pressing the backs of her fingers against her lips to ease their violation and met his desirous eyes with surprise. After their first kiss, he had never been so forward with her; it wasn’t his style. They stared at each other for a few moments, breathing heavily.
“Tell me that you didn’t feel that too, and I’ll leave you alone,” he dared, his voice cracking with the strain to keep it steady.
She had felt it, and it had felt… the same as before. Aside from the mounting physical attraction she felt due to a vigorousness more typical of Draco than of Harry, everything she felt for him was the same. She loved him, that much was for certain – but not enough.
“I’m sorry, Harry.” She shook her head.
Something in his eyes changed just then, and he looked as if he needed something to take his building aggression out on.
“What’s his name?” he asked in a low voice, his eyes boring into hers as his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
“Please, Harry, it won’t help you to know–”
“Tell me his bloody name!” he yelled outright, taking a step towards her, and she took several steps back in a panic.
“I won’t tell you, not when you’re like this!” she yelled back.
After a moment of glaring at each other, Harry gave up first. He let out a breath she hadn’t realised he had been holding in, and then stepped closer to her carefully. She flinched at first, but stood her ground; she was hardly scared of him, but the shouting hurt more than she thought it would. Taking one of her hands within his, he traced lines around her small knuckles with his pointer finger, creating figure eights that wove in and out of each petite bump. The pair of them watched his progress until he finally broke the silence.
“It was supposed to be you and me.” His voice had retreated to a low volume, and she would almost rather have him yell than to speak in this defeated, frail voice unbecoming of the great Harry Potter.
“Says who?” she asked softly, and his eyes came up to meet hers.
The pause that ensued seemed to last an eternity, and she couldn’t help but gaze into the most attractive features of his face. Beneath the glassy surface of moisture lay each of his beautiful green eyes, the emeralds bright beneath the film of emotion, although it looked as if they were melting down into liquid pools of the deepest jade beneath the tears he refused to let fall. This elongated moment seemed to decide whether this conversation had been real, and the first to break the silence would be the first to fully acknowledge the heavy truth: That things would never be the same between them.
“What world is worth saving without you?” he whispered.
It was at that moment that her heart finally broke, painfully, and in the few seconds it took for him to turn away from her, she was certain that she had made a mistake. On the verge of letting his name escape her lips, to call him back to her, to beg his forgiveness, she felt a tug in her chest as she took in a breath and parted her lips. That tug held her back, and she stopped. She needed to let him go; it wasn’t fair to promise him half her heart when he deserved so much more.
He walked around her with his eyes trained on the ground in defeat, then trudged up the path he had come down.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered once he was out of earshot as she watched his back recede from her vision, his winter cloak swishing back and forth around his ankles.
Author notes: I'm sorry Harry! ::ducks in shame:: Poor guy, but it had to be done! :-( Please tell me what you think, how the plot is going?
I have posted a one-shot of this chapter from Harry's perspective: Here's to The Death of My Heart. Please check it out!
Next chapter: A Common Enemy
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