Facing Danger
Chapter 16: Did He Just Say It's Time? (Year 5)
By Anne B. Walsh
Chapter 16: Did He Just Say It’s Time?
One of the perks of being Headmaster of Hogwarts was that one could choose whether or not to make an appearance at breakfast. Today, Albus Dumbledore chose not to, since he had a feeling that good humor would be in abundance elsewhere.
"Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place," he said clearly, and stepped into the Floo fire.
The sound of laughter greeted him as he emerged from the flames on the other side of the connection.
It seems my feeling was accurate.
"—ran circles around them, and the best part is, they have no idea who it was!" Danger waved a hand in the air, giggling as though she and not Hermione were the younger of the sisters. "We could take credit for it, or some Aurors who’ve done work off the books—"
"Even better," Sirius broke in. "Spread around four or five different stories. It was us, it was Aurors, it was real animals on some kind of intelligence potion the Department of Mysteries dreamed up, it was animals under Imperius by other Death Eaters making a power play, it was shape-shifting American kids playing superhero—"
"Not that one," Aletha said, shaking her head. "Too close to reality."
"Coupling reality with absurdity will make them less likely to believe the real story if they ever do hear of it," Remus disagreed. "And the less likely they are to believe the real story, the better, in this case."
Danger caught her breath, looked up, and smiled. "Oh, Albus, hello! We’re just talking about last night, and the cubs—they did good work, if I do say so myself, though Meghan... but we’ll talk to her. Come for breakfast?"
"I admit I harbored some such hope."
"And there’s only good news to talk over, for a change," said Sirius, standing up to shake Dumbledore’s hand. "Whoever’s been keeping Letha on double-shifts at the hospital finally gave up."
"Excellent." Dumbledore turned to take both of Aletha’s hands in his. "You have my apologies for the inconvenience," he said, "since it was likely our association which caused it."
"I’d sacrifice far more than a few sleepless nights for such an association," Aletha answered. "Besides, there were... compensations." She winked at Dumbledore with the eye farther from Sirius. "My loving husband felt it his duty to repay me for the times we missed together."
"I see." Dumbledore released Aletha’s hands and went around the table to take his usual seat. "And did these repayments eventually take on... a separate physical form, shall we say?"
Aletha raised an eyebrow. "I’d ask how you do that, except I doubt I really want to know."
"Separate physical form?" said Sirius, sitting down across from Dumbledore. "I don’t think I get it."
"Nothing new there," muttered Danger.
"Sirius, let me put it this way," Remus said, adopting the tone he might well have used with the cubs when they were small and didn’t seem to understand something. "When a man and a woman love each other very, very much..."
Sirius rolled his eyes and put his hands over his ears. "That I know," he said loudly. "If there’s something else going on, would you all please stop speaking in code and just say it in plain English?"
"Only if you take your hands off your ears," Aletha said just as loudly. "I don’t want to be shouting this all over the house."
Sirius snickered. "Oh, no. The hands stay where they are."
"That will tend towards awkwardness when you attempt to hold your son for the first time," said Dumbledore conversationally.
The hands came down in a hurry.
xXxXx
Remus slipped out of the kitchen with a mental sigh of relief. Call me when I can come back in without being in danger of strangling on estrogen fumes.
I will. Sissy. Danger’s affectionate laugh was accompanied by a slight mental shiver as she closed her barriers against him, leaving only the sensation of joy behind.
And no jealousy, thank God. She may still want a child, but she isn’t angry with Aletha for having one.
That fear had lurked at the back of his mind ever since he’d noticed the difference in Aletha’s scent a few days ago, but it seemed groundless at the moment. I’ll just keep an eye on things, but I doubt there’ll be anything to keep an eye on after this...
So a new cub for our Pack. Will we even remember how to do this? It’s been so long since they were little—we’ll be back to diapers and midnight feedings and colic—
But we’ll also be back to bright round eyes and big toothless smiles and all the firsts. First time rolling over, first time sitting up, first time crawling—first step, first word, first "NO!"—
He smirked. And best of all, I can always hand the baby off to his "real" daddy whenever he gets too troublesome.
I doubt it, murmured a voice in the back of his head. For one thing, he wouldn’t let you, and for another, I’ve seen you with babies. You get besotted awfully fast.
I thought you were blocking me.
I had my blocks up. You didn’t. It takes both of us, these days. And you were thinking pretty loud. But I do have one question.
Yes, oh my beloved and oh the delight of my eyes?
...if you ever do that again, I shall find you and turn you into a donkey.
Remus chuckled. Hee-haw. I am ashamed. What was your question?
How on earth did Dumbledore know the baby’s a boy?
xXxXx
Maya Pritchard poked a sausage moodily with her fork. Nothing was going right—well, things weren’t actively going wrong either, but that wasn’t much comfort. The DA meetings were the best times of her week, since there she could let loose her feelings in the spells Harry Potter was teaching them—
It’s like Professor Moody said last year, and like Professor Longbottom has been saying all along. Any spell can cause damage if you use it wrong—or maybe I should say if you use it right. Because sometimes there are things, or people, that need to be damaged.
Her Disarming Charm was one of the strongest in the class, and although she couldn’t do a Full Body-Bind well yet, her Leg-Locker was reliable. Now if there was just an Arm-Locker, so we could be sure whoever we down won’t pull out their wand anyway and get us from where they are—
Her thoughts dissolved as a sharp point poked her in the arm.
She looked down. A small note protruded from the hand of the girl next to her—Natalie McDonald, if she recalled correctly—and it was addressed to her.
Delicately, Maya slid the note from between the girl’s fingers. Natalie never looked at her, instead continuing her conversation with Meghan Black across the table, but then, that was good note-passing etiquette.
The elaborate folds gave way after a few moments of tugging. Maya looked down at the paper and sighed.
There was nothing there.
Just a silly prank—
Wait, there is something. There in the corner. Something very small.
Maya sneaked looks at the note in between bites of eggs. "Walk Me"? "Warn Me"?
No, that’s an M. It says "Warm Me".
She slid the note under her leg and left it there for the time it took to clean her plate.
Then she pulled it back out.
The neat copperplate handwriting was faint and brown, but visible.
DA place at noon. "Cracker".
Maya slid the note into her pocket, her mind working furiously.
The DA place is the Room of Requirement—that last word must be a password—but why tell me about a meeting this way? Why not just use those coins Hermione made for us? And what’s with a password? They’ve never had that for meetings before...
Wait. Noon. We can’t be having a meeting then, we wouldn’t have time. We’d run into afternoon classes.
Something strange is going on here.
The hours between now and noon suddenly looked much longer than they had a few moments ago.
xXxXx
Harry was awakened by someone knocking on his bedroom door. "C’min," he mumbled, shoving the covers off his head.
Graham Pritchard opened the door. "What is this place?" he asked. "A guest suite?"
"Sort of." Harry rubbed his eyes with one hand and located his glasses with the other. "See you found the bathroom."
Graham ran a hand through his wet hair. "Theirs was small. And not too clean."
A sudden flash of a small and blindingly white room which smelled excessively of Lysol came to Harry, and he grinned in sympathy with Graham. "Hungry?" he asked, pushing down the covers and swinging his legs out of bed. "You can call a house-elf from the kitchen if you haven’t eaten. Just tell them what you like, and they’ll bring it. I do my own cooking sometimes, but that’s because I like doing it."
"This is where you’ve been hiding, isn’t it?" Graham asked. "Meghan was telling me last night about everything I’ve... missed."
Harry nodded, then stopped. The last word had held a brittle tone, and Graham’s scent had a sour twist to it that Harry hadn’t encountered before. "Did Meghan tell you we got one of them?" he asked off-handedly. "One of the Death Eaters who chased us here?"
Graham’s eyes widened for an instant, and the sourness was momentarily overwhelmed by triumph. It was still there, Harry knew, but some of it had been washed away by the knowledge that at least one of the people responsible for what had happened to him would pay.
The rest of it... well, deal with that when it’s time.
"No, she didn’t," Graham said belatedly. "Thank you for telling me. And the lady in the painting in my room told me about the house-elves, so I’ve already eaten. I kept some over for you if you want it."
"Thanks, I might—wait, the lady in the painting?"
Graham nodded. "The one with the red hair and the glasses. Should I not have talked to her?"
"No, it’s just...never mind." He definitely needed to have a word with Alex, Harry decided. Assuming Alex was still around when he went to look. "I’ll probably shower first myself, though. There’s a library under one of the blue banners if you’re bored, or an indoor Quidditch pitch under the other green one."
Graham’s eyes widened. "You’re not serious."
"Go have a look."
Graham disappeared. Harry shut the door and changed into his dressing gown, picking his day robes off the chair where he’d left them. His watch was with them, and he grimaced slightly at the time. 11:20—he’d have to move fast if he was going to get Graham to see his cousin at noon—
And maybe I should tell him about it before we go. He’s had enough people surprising him with things lately.
xXxXx
At five minutes to noon, Maya was waiting in the seventh floor corridor, her heart thumping painfully. She’d considered telling someone about this—Lee, maybe, or Lindz—but the fact of a password made it likely no one else was supposed to know about this, not even anyone else in the DA.
What is it about? Why just me? What do I have, or who am I, that this is so important for me to be here and no one else—
Then it hit her.
It’s who I am. But it’s also who somebody else is.
This is about Graham. It has to be.
That’s the only reason they’d be so secretive, was if they knew something about him...
Movement caught Maya’s eye. The outline of a doorframe was starting to emerge from the stone of the wall. It’s time!
She ran to the outline, found the crack between the door and the hinges, and whispered the password. "Cracker."
A moment of silence. Then the door was suddenly fully there, and Maya’s hand was on the handle—she wrenched it down and pulled—
Harry held up a hand. "Go easy," he said. "No need to rush. He’s here."
He—oh, great Merlin’s socks, does he mean—
Harry stepped aside, letting her in, and slipped around her to step out into the hall and shut the door behind him. Maya barely noticed. Her attention was focused on the other end of the room, on the too-thin, too-pale boy standing there.
"Hello, Maya," Graham said, a half-smile on his face, obviously forced.
Maya shook her head. "Don’t," she said, crossing the room to him. "Don’t pretend. You don’t have to, not with me. Not ever with me."
Graham shut his eyes, and his face began to crumple. Maya caught his shoulders, pulled him close to her, and sat them both down on the large silk puff the Room had thoughtfully provided right beneath them.
"It’s over," she told him again and again, putting her arms around him. "Whatever happened, it’s over now. You don’t even have to tell me about it if you don’t want to. I won’t ever ask, I promise."
Graham simply held tight to her and shivered, an occasional tear slipping from between his eyelids. "They never touched me," he said finally. "Except to take me places. And none of them ever looked at me like I was a person."
Maya laid a hand on his cheek and leaned back until her cousin’s face came into focus. "I see you," she said softly.
Graham looked up at her and smiled, a real smile this time, if a slightly damp and shaky one, and in that moment Maya knew they’d won. There were a few battles still to fight, but the war was over, and victory was theirs.
xXxXx
"But why not?" Meghan stared at Neville. "It’s your hand! You need it!"
"It’s my finger," Neville corrected. "My little finger, on my off hand. I don’t really need it—well, except for chording, but I can learn to do without it."
"But you don’t have to! I could heal it!"
"And I told you, I don’t want you to heal it. Not any more than you already did."
Meghan boiled up, then clenched both hands into fists and visibly pulled herself together. "All I could do while I was so scared was stop the bleeding," she said. "And make sure that it wouldn’t get infected."
"You did that really well." Neville touched the finger in question, which now had only one joint and no fingernail. "It doesn’t hurt, and the skin’s regrown over it. It just looks like I was born with this finger a bit shorter than the others."
"But you weren’t!" Meghan cried out. "You shouldn’t have to have it that way! I don’t understand! Why won’t you let me help you?" Her eyes began to glisten. "Is it—is it because I was bad? Because I got angry and made the noise? That’s why you got hurt..." Her fists tightened again. "Are you trying to make me remember, so I don’t ever do it again?" A tear spilled over, and she flicked it away angrily. "Is that why?" she demanded. "Tell me the truth!"
"It’s part of the reason," Neville began, "but—"
"I knew it!" Meghan burst out. "I knew you were just doing it for some stupid reason like that—I don’t need you to do that, I don’t need you to do anything, I don’t need anyone to do anything, I won’t ever forget that as long as I live!"
She searched her pocket for a tissue, sniffling a bit, until Neville held one out to her. "I can’t forget it," she said through the tissue. "I keep thinking about it all the time. The way my stomach felt, and my legs—I was sure you were going to get caught, and then the Death Eaters would have hurt you, and the Order would have had to come and rescue you if you weren’t already dead, and nobody would ever take us seriously ever again, and all of it would be my fault..."
Neville pulled her into a hug. "None of that happened," he said quietly. "But it could, if you do something like that again. You know that now, and I don’t think you’ll forget it. But I can’t be sure. Nobody can be sure about something like that. So I want you to have a way to always remember, a way to remember forever and ever." He reached down and brushed his hand under her chin, lifting her face to meet his. "So I don’t ever have to feel that way about you. Because in a war, if you make a noise, you’re the one the enemy will find."
Meghan nodded, her eyes still gleaming with unshed tears. "Promise me one thing?" she whispered.
"If I can, I will."
Meghan’s hand closed around Neville’s injured one. "The day the war is over. After Harry wins. Promise me you’ll let me heal you then."
Neville smiled. "I promise. The day the war is over."
Meghan pulled his hand around and kissed the little finger. "It won’t be too much trouble to learn how to do the chords again," she said with determination. "For some of them, you can just spread your other fingers a little wider, and for other ones you’ll have to turn your hand more so you can use what you have..."
xXxXx
"Hello, is anyone—" Bartemius Crouch pushed open the door of the kitchen at Number Twelve. "I seem to have stumbled on a party," he said. "Is there an occasion?"
"I’m going to be a father," Sirius said. "Well, not that I’m not a father already, but—"
"Ah, I see. Congratulations." Crouch nodded to Aletha. "I was hoping Dumbledore was here, or that perhaps you know when he’ll be back..."
"Possibly later tonight," said Danger from the stove without turning around. "But it might not be until fairly late. Professor Umbridge has been watching him more closely in recent weeks. She thinks he knows where Harry is."
Crouch gave a dry little laugh. "I can’t imagine he wouldn’t," he said. "He seems to know most everything that goes on in that school, unless someone has made their first and only priority keeping themselves secret from him. And seeing as it’s Potter—his secret weapon, you could say..."
"Secret weapon?" Remus said, in an even tone that nonetheless drew eyes. "I’m afraid I don’t understand."
"Come now, Lupin. Isn’t it common knowledge the—" Crouch stopped and cleared his throat. "I mean, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is after Potter? And he seems unable to kill Potter, though he’s tried multiple times. With the enemy so fixated on that one target, we have more latitude, more ability to strike at him, because he’s blind to other areas from which a threat might come. Don’t you agree?"
"Of course," said Aletha, taking a sip of her drink. "And that’s why we’ve been so vigilant about teaching Harry, and all our cubs, self-defense and basic fighting spells. If they must be targets, at least they won’t be sitting jobberknolls."
Crouch inclined his head to her. "Nicely put, Healer. You taught Defense for a year at Hogwarts, didn’t you?"
"Co-taught with Sirius, yes. Though I had to finish the year alone when he got himself Petrified." Aletha laughed. "I suppose I should be grateful he thought fast enough to keep the basilisk—Sangre—from killing him and Hermione out of hand."
"Sangre?" Crouch looked intrigued. "You mean Slytherin’s basilisk had a name?"
"Has," Danger corrected. "She has a name."
Crouch frowned. "Are you telling me that Dumbledore’s allowed the thing to stay at Hogwarts?"
"She lives in the Forest," said Sirius, irritation clear in his tone. "She can’t see anymore—her eyes were wounded, then healed closed. She hunts by scent, and she agreed not to kill humans in return for being allowed to stay."
"Agreed?" Crouch’s face cleared almost as soon as he’d said the word. "Ah, yes, I had forgotten Potter’s Parseltongue. I’d imagine he acted as translator, yes?"
Danger chuckled. "I’ve heard it was quite a sight to see," she said. "Dumbledore on one side, a forty-foot snake on the other, and the skinny little Harry in between them. Harry’s become rather close with Sangre, actually. He sometimes sneaks out at night to play with her—" She stopped, her face worried.
"Or he would, if he were still at school," Crouch finished smoothly for her. "Never fear, Mrs. Granger-Lupin, I have no love for Dolores Umbridge. Besides, I had already decided he must still be somewhere at Hogwarts, or you and your compatriots—" He gestured at the rest of the Pack-parents. "—would never be so sanguine about his apparent disappearance."
"Harry has always been good at hiding when he doesn’t want to be found," Sirius said. "I think it’s a family thing."
"And yet sometimes, even those who do not wish to be found, are," Crouch said blandly.
Sirius half-rose. "What’s that supposed to mean?"
"Sit down," Aletha hissed at him, grabbing a handful of his robes and yanking. "You’ll have to excuse my husband," she said to Crouch. "I sometimes think he’s categorically unable to let go of the past."
"You should talk," Sirius muttered.
"What was that, dear?" Aletha said dangerously.
"Nothing."
xXxXx
"So," Minerva said conversationally. "We have a second year Slytherin boy and a sixth year Gryffindor girl who refuse to be parted. Not to mention a pair of second year Gryffindor girls who are beginning to show the signs of wishing to join the party."
"And the Slytherin of the pair, at least, cannot at the moment return to his dormitory." Severus seemed perfectly calm, but Minerva knew well that was only the outward composure acquired by any double agent who remained alive for longer than a few days. "In fact, he may be permanently unable to return there. I can never be sure that I know all my students’ loyalties, or what they would do if properly motivated."
"It would be a shame if anything happened to Mr. Pritchard here at Hogwarts," Minerva agreed, "after what he has already been through."
Severus glanced at her, as though weighing her words for double meanings or hidden slams. Unless he was being unduly critical, though, he would find none, for none had been intended. "Indeed," he said finally, his tone noncommittal. "So we must find some alternate lodging for these two students, and do it in such a way that we cannot be faulted for favoritism."
"For Pritchard, there’s an easy answer, at least to begin with." Minerva ran a finger across the top of the framed picture on her desk, grateful that its frame was currently empty—she wasn’t up to the barbed comments Severus would toss her way if he saw the occupants of the photograph she had kept for all these years. "He can remain hidden, as...another has done." She didn’t quite dare to say Harry’s name aloud, not while Dolores Umbridge was in the castle. "I’m positive Poppy will want to see him, and probably keep him under observation for a few days before she permits him to go back to class."
"It also strikes me that a full Healer might be needed in his case," Severus observed. "One whose specialty is troubles of the mind and the heart." The faintest touch of distaste colored the last word. "Adults, fully capable and rational, usually have a great deal of trouble dealing with the aftermath of a situation such as Pritchard’s, and he is a twelve-year-old boy."
"Which may yet be his salvation," Minerva countered. "He knows, or ought to know, that there’s nothing he could have done to save himself. Most adults would feel that they should have been able to rescue themselves, even if that is completely illogical."
"Allow me to remind you of the Headmaster’s caution to me, when this situation was first made known to us," Severus countered in his turn. "‘War ages us all.’ Pritchard may have lost his childhood by this act. He will certainly have lost a great deal, if not all, of his innocence. And he will have been hurt, deeply, by his treatment among the Death Eaters, even if it was relatively kind."
Minerva nodded slowly. "We’ve worked ourselves rather thoroughly off track," she said after a moment. "We were discussing housing, and how to deal with the fact that the Pritchard children need one another after what they’ve both been through."
"We briefly discussed another," said Severus, a brief frown of distaste crossing his features. "Do you perhaps have information that I lack about the spaciousness of that other’s chosen...den?"
"Not directly. But I can obtain it. Are you suggesting..."
"That if there is room, and if it will not compromise security, the Pritchards should remain with this other for the time being." The frown had mutated into a sour smile, as though discussing Harry Potter in such coded terms appealed to some portion of what passed for Severus’ sense of humor. "He has certainly proven himself difficult to find."
"So he has." Minerva’s lips twitched as she thought of the pranksters’ latest offensive against Professor Dolores Jane Umbridge. "I believe Dolores would eat her own wand if it meant a chance to find him."
Severus snorted a laugh. "I agree."
Harry, or whoever was helping him, must have done hours of research on this latest prank, and Minerva’s ears ached to think of it. They had carefully winnowed through children’s songs and rhymes to find the most disgusting, most banal, or most unforgettable of them, with a priority placed on those which combined the three elements. Then they had enchanted the suits of armor throughout the castle to sing them whenever Dolores passed by.
Added to this were wicked little cartoons, usually illustrating a line or two from the songs, posted in some of the most public places the pranksters could find. Dolores removed them as fast as she found them, of course, but they seemed to multiply magically, so that every time she tore one down, two more appeared in its place.
Peeves, of course, had ‘improved’ upon the songs, and was not tied down to any one spot as the suits of armor were. He could, and did, follow Dolores around the castle, humming the tune of one or another of the chants incessantly and bursting into full-fledged song as the mood struck him. He had also made a suit out of the cartoons Dolores had ripped down, and the pictures on them danced in time to his humming. All in all, he was a most amusing sight to behold.
"I would love to know," Minerva mused aloud, "which of them thought of combining visual and auditory attacks."
"I have a guess," said Severus, surprising her. "Only a guess, but I would be willing to take a risk on it."
"Oh?"
"Ginny Weasley."
"Really?" Minerva frowned. "I wouldn’t have thought..."
"She remains deliberately in the background much of the time," Severus said with a degree of certainty Minerva wasn’t used to hearing from him. "I believe she wishes to be underestimated, so as to be more free to work. She has intelligence, cleverness, and the ability to plan a few steps ahead, which is more than I usually see in a Gryffindor. And she was the one in the costume near the beginning of the school year. I recently had a chance to reexamine my memory of the event, and it could have been no one else."
"But I saw her at the Gryffindor table!" Minerva protested. "She couldn’t possibly have changed her clothes and removed that makeup in the amount of time she had—not to mention that the doors were locked from the inside after she’d left!"
Severus shook his head. "I have no idea how she could have done that," he said. "All I know for certain is that it was Ginny Weasley who mimicked Dolores Umbridge so perfectly that some of the students are still laughing about it now, almost two months after it happened."
"Well, then." Minerva smiled. "I will have to watch Miss Weasley more closely, to be sure I notice all the times when she’s doing something she shouldn’t."
The two Heads of House shared a long look, for one all-too-rare moment perfectly in accord.
xXxXx
Harry shut the door of the green bedroom and looked up at the painting on the wall, empty except for the green leather chair. "Alex?" he said in Parseltongue.
A dark head poked around the edge of the frame. "Somebody calling me?"
"Yes, it’s me."
"Hello, Me, you’re looking well," Alex said cheerily.
"Har har. Look, I was talking to Graham this morning, and he said there’d been a woman in the painting on the wall of his bedroom. A red-haired woman with glasses. But this is the bedroom where he slept last night, and yours is the only painting on the wall..."
"Which means there was a redhead with glasses in my painting, doesn’t it?" Alex finished. "And you want to know who it is."
"I might like that."
Alex seated himself and folded his arms. "And what if it’s none of your business?"
"I’m hiding here," Harry said, "and that makes anybody who might know where I am my business."
"Ah." Alex nodded. "You don’t need to worry about her for that, Harry. She’d no more give you away than I would."
"Yes, but who is she? There’s only Margaret of all of you who has red hair, and she doesn’t wear glasses."
"But you’re forgetting, Harry, I have the entire castle to roam in." Alex spread his arms wide. "Or, at least, the portrait world of it. She could be anyone, couldn’t she now?"
"Yes. She could be." Harry folded his arms. "And that’s why I want to know who she is, so I know if I can trust her."
"Don’t you know by now?" Alex grinned. "You can always trust a redhead. They’re inherently trustworthy. Not to mention very attractive."
Harry’s cheeks flamed. "Shut up."
"Only if you promise to stop impugning my lady’s honor."
The blush disappeared as fast as it had come, and Harry grinned in his turn. "Oh, so she’s your lady, is she?"
"Yes," Alex said with dignity. "As it happens, she is. And she is as trustworthy as I am, quite possibly more so, because I am a Slytherin and everyone knows we are sneaky bas—"
"A-lex," crooned a woman’s voice from somewhere out of sight.
"Baskets of muck," Alex finished, rather lamely. "She doesn’t like swearing," he confided in Parseltongue. "It takes some time to get used to, but I think I like it."
"Like what?"
"Having a girlfriend again. Being able to feel this way. I shouldn’t, you know. It’s not the way we’re meant to be. But—" Alex stopped, frowned, then switched back to English. "Extenuating circumstances called for it. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised there’s no way to say that in Parseltongue. It’s a more complicated concept than most snakes could deal with."
"You’d be surprised," Harry said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "You remember Siss?" The name brought only a small pang, now, before the memories of the good times they’d shared wrapped their comfort around the ever-present pain of loss. "She was pretty smart. She knew a lot of things I didn’t know, or was too young to understand all the way."
"Well, she was a special case..." Alex glanced off to one side, rolled his eyes and nodded, then returned his attention to Harry. "Sorry, Harry, I have to go. Anything that you have to tell me right away?"
"Well, I think we found the last entrance here. The one through the indoor Quidditch pitch. I think it lets out by a big rock out near the lake—does that sound right?"
Alex looked away, his eyes suddenly shadowed with pain. "Yes," he said roughly. "Yes, it sounds exactly right. Just...don’t ask me why. Not now. Not today. I have to go. Good luck—"
And an instant later, the chair was empty.
"Good luck?" Harry repeated aloud. "Good luck with what?"
Someone knocked on the door of the green bedroom.
"Come in!"
Ginny stuck her head around the door. "Professor McGonagall sent me with a message," she said. "She wants to know if Graham can stay here with you for a while, and Maya too. Do you think they can?"
Harry laughed aloud, standing up. "It’s not like there isn’t room. But what about Maya’s classes? Are we going to tell her how to get in and out of here so she can come and go when she needs to? It’s not that I don’t trust her, but the fewer people who know the password here, the better—it’s not like guessing the others is hard, once you know one, you know them all..."
"That’s why I was thinking of asking the twins for a reusable voice spell set on a watch or a pin or something," Ginny said, shutting the door behind Harry. "One that’s inaudible to people. That way, she could trigger the spell any time she needed to get in or out, and the door would open for her, but she’d never know the password herself. Just knowing where the door is doesn’t do you any good if you can’t open it."
"But what if Umbridge got a hold of her and made her use the spell to open the door anyway?" Harry objected. "I’m still dead if she finds a way in here. Unless I run out the Quidditch pitch door as Wolf and go hide in the Forest..."
"That can be the backup plan. But there has to be a way to make sure no one can take that spell from Maya. Table and chairs, please," Ginny said to the ceiling of the main room.
Harry sat down on nothing, a cushioned chair bursting out of the floor to catch him. "What about an automatic ending spell on the voice spell if whatever it’s in leaves Maya?" he suggested. "Maybe if it gets cold, because that’d mean it was away from her body. But that still leaves someone forcing her to use it while she still has it..."
"Have two triggers for it," said Ginny promptly. "One for normal use, and one for forced use. The forced one will destroy the spell instead of making it work."
"That would do it." Harry pulled out the parchment and quills he knew would be waiting on a shelf under the small table. "So let me write this down—a voice spell in something like a watch, with a destruction spell if it gets colder than body temperature, and two separate triggers for it... you think Fred and George can handle that?"
"In their sleep," Ginny said, chuckling. "You know how Mum was so angry with them for only getting a few O.W.L.s each? They could have gotten as many as they’d had classes if they’d wanted to. It just suits them to have people think they’re stupid or lazy."
"When really, they work very hard," Harry finished. "Just not on school projects."
They both laughed.
"Sometimes I envy them," Ginny said, leaning forward and resting her chin in her hands. "They’ve always known what they wanted, from the time they were young. And they’ve never been alone, because they always have each other."
"It looks like that," Harry said, thinking of one of Letha’s favorite sayings. "But you can only see their outsides, the faces they put on. Maybe they don’t know what they want as much as you think they do. Maybe they still get lonely, even with each other around." He shook his head. "Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, and you’re right, which is a lot more likely."
"No, you could be right. You are right about one thing—I can’t see inside them. So I don’t know for sure. But I do see them a lot, and it’d be hard for them to be pretending all the time." Ginny shrugged. "Who knows?"
"Only them," Harry said with an answering shrug of his own, "and they aren’t telling."
"So," said Ginny after a moment’s silence, "were you talking to Alex?"
Harry nodded. "Apparently he’s got a lady-friend—Graham saw her in the portrait this morning."
"Ooh." Ginny’s eyes danced. "Should we try and catch them..."
"Playing guitar?" Harry suggested when she seemed to be fumbling for a phrase. "Long story," he said at the puzzled look in her eyes. "It’s from before we met you, when we were in America—we met some wizarding kids in a place called Phoenix, and that was what they called it when a guy and a girl went off together, was ‘playing guitar’."
"So I could say that Neville and Meghan play guitar together and be right both ways, then." Ginny laughed. "I like that."
The laughter, light and sweet and musical, drew Harry’s thoughts back to the moment Alex had implied that redheads were especially attractive. Since Harry only knew one redheaded girl—
Well, two, but I’ve barely talked to Amanda Smythe at DA meetings. She hangs around Draco more than me.
He amended his thought. However many redheaded girls he might know, Ginny was the only one he knew well, and certainly the only one for whom he had, or might have, or was starting to have, feelings in that direction.
Part of me feels like it’s wrong, like she’s my friend, like I’m betraying something by liking her, but another part of me feels like it’s the best thing I could be doing—
Harry would have smacked himself on the forehead if Ginny hadn’t been sitting right there. Idiot. What are Padfoot and Moony always telling you? Always, every time this comes up? "Don’t date someone who isn’t a friend first. Don’t get involved with someone you can’t talk to. If you don’t have things in common, you won’t last. The best person to marry—"
Um, I think I’ll stop right there for now. That’s going a little far at the moment.
But it’s not wrong to like a friend that way. It’s right. It’s a lot more right than liking a girl you’ve only seen in the distance, just because she’s cute, without ever knowing anything about her.
But how do I tell her? Or should I tell her at all? Maybe she’ll do something first—maybe I don’t have to—
No, she won’t do that. She’s been talking to that one Ravenclaw, Corner, Michael Corner—I don’t know how serious they are, but she won’t dump him unless she has a reason, and she won’t have a reason unless I give her one—but how can I give her one without looking stupid?
"Knut for your thoughts." Ginny’s voice broke into his ramblings, and suddenly Harry knew exactly what he was going to say, and how.
"Show me the money," he said.
xXxXx
Ginny dug a Knut out of her pocket and slid it across the table. "Money-grubber," she teased.
"It’s for the war effort." Harry picked up the coin but didn’t put it into his own pocket, starting to play with it instead. "Though I should probably give you this back. I’ve been trying for a while to figure out how to ask you this."
Ginny’s heart started to pound, despite her best efforts. Stop that! she told it firmly. This can not be what it sounds like...
"I suppose I could ask Hermione, but I don’t think she’s even noticed boys are different than girls yet, except that boys annoy her more. Meghan knows a little about it, but I feel silly asking her. She’s so young still. And I don’t think Luna’d say anything I could understand. Besides..." Harry spun the coin on the table. "I like talking to you. I like how we always sort of know what the other one means to say."
"So what do you need to ask me?" Ginny said, amazed at the evenness of her voice.
"I need some advice. Er, for a friend." Harry picked up the Knut and spun it again. "He thinks he really likes this girl, but they’re just friends right now, and he doesn’t know how to tell her he wants it to be more than that. He doesn’t want to just say it, because if she doesn’t like him that way he’d feel stupid. Besides, he made a fool of himself with a girl once this year already, and he doesn’t want to do it again. But if he doesn’t say anything, then he won’t ever get anywhere."
Ginny felt her heart hit the floor. "For a friend" would work so much better if you weren’t down here all the time except for DA meetings, Harry. And you never have time to hear something like this from the other boys—not that they’d tell you this anyway. You might know about it if you were up in the Tower with us, but down here? Not a chance.
So the "friend" is you. Has to be. But a girl you’re just friends with... who’s that? You’re friendly with the DA, but I don’t think I’d call an awful lot of them your actual friends. You just haven’t known them long enough.
"Ginny?"
Get a grip, girl. Think later. He needs that advice now. "Right." Ginny took a deep breath, thinking over what she’d like in this position. "Well, if he’s not good at dropping hints—going off with her to talk alone, just the two of them, or always offering to help her with things—he might just have to come out and say it. Do you want me to help you figure out how y—he can make it sound good?"
"Yes, please." Harry either hadn’t heard or was ignoring her slip of the tongue. Ginny would have bet on ‘ignoring’. Not much got past Harry these days.
"All right. Does the girl have a name?"
Harry thought for a second. "Just call her Molly."
Ginny snickered. "That makes things easy. I can just crib from Dad." She pulled herself up and put on her father’s voice. "Molly, I have to tell you this, because it won’t leave my head until I do. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, and I think I really like you. Would you go with me to Hogsmeade on Saturday?" She dropped the voice. "Only you’ll have to slot in something else, since you can’t go to Hogsmeade."
Harry pouted. "I didn’t fool you with my friend?"
Ginny gave him a look.
"All right, it was pretty transparent. Thanks, Ginny, that’s a big help." Harry pushed back his chair and stood up.
"You’re welcome." Ginny closed her mouth firmly after the second word, to avoid making any noises that would tell him how she was really feeling. He was walking away around the table, he must be going into one of the other rooms to practice—
No, he was circling back around to her side of the table—
Wait a minute—
Harry sat down on the corner of the table beside her. "Ginny, I have to tell you this," he said, looking into her eyes with a straight face, "because it won’t leave my head until I do. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, and I think I really like you. Would you help me plan my best prank ever on Professor Umbridge?"
Ginny blinked once. Then again. "No," she said hoarsely.
"No?" Harry stared at her. "You don’t want to help me?"
"No, this can’t be happening! This is crazy! You can’t really mean this! This is a joke or something—Ron put you up to this, didn’t he? Ron or the twins, but they’d have had to go through him...I’ll kill them, you wait and see, I will kill them so dead they’ll wish Voldemort got a hold of them first..."
"That’s part of the reason I do really mean it," Harry said over her rant. "You’re not afraid of his name. You just say it out."
"Only because you did it first," Ginny retorted. "I’ve spent my entire life—well, the part of it since I met you—trying to be like you. I think you’re amazing. I had a crush on you for years, and I thought I was over it, but obviously I’m not..." Her cheeks and ears might as well be on fire for all the heat they were generating. "I knew you liked Cho Chang, I thought you were going to start dating her, I thought you and I would just be friends and Pridemates forever, and I’d finally got myself convinced that was all right..."
"You think I’m amazing?" Harry was starting to grin, that little cocky grin Ginny knew irritated Hermione endlessly. "Who stabbed a huge snake with a borrowed dagger? Who figured out what Luna meant in time to send Buckbeak to save Hermione and Draco? Who was the first one to think of getting the Pride together to help me when I was at the graveyard?"
Ginny’s mouth fell open. "How did you know about that?"
"Hermione told me over the summer. And speaking of Hermione, did you notice she’s not doing a lot of alpha female things in the Pride anymore?"
"No," Ginny lied.
Harry lowered his head and looked at her over his glasses. "You know I can smell it when you do that," he said. "The same way you can smell it if I do. But I’m not. And you know that."
Ginny folded her arms across her chest and glowered at him. Just like a boy, bring logic into an argument...
Surreptitiously, she inhaled.
A fresh, clean scent like a beam of morning sun warmed her from the inside out.
He is. He’s telling the truth.
Harry Potter is sitting here, on this table, telling me that he likes me. That he likes me. And I know it’s the truth.
"So you think you really like me," she said quietly, not meeting his eyes. "Would you do something for me, then?"
"Anything," Harry promised. "If I can."
Ginny stuck her arm under his nose. "Pinch me."
Harry obliged.
Ginny blinked several times. Nothing changed.
Well, that rules out the dream theory.
So it’s not a dream, and it’s not a lie...
I guess that only leaves one thing it could be.
I’m going mad.
"May I?" Harry asked, still cradling her arm in his hands (and wasn’t that sending chills all through her spine).
"May you what?"
Harry brought one finger to his mouth, kissed it, and laid it against the spot he’d pinched her. "To make it better," he said solemnly.
All right, that does it. You are going down, Harry Potter.
Ginny yanked her arm back, got her feet under her, and transformed and leapt at the same moment.
The panicked look on Harry’s face was very gratifying for the instant it lasted, but then Lynx had Wolf to deal with, and Wolf wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Not that I’d really want to give him one.
They ended up in a tangled heap by the library door, and Harry retransformed an instant after she did. He sat up, she leaned down, and half by accident, half by design, their lips met—
All right, maybe a little more than half by design. At least on my end.
Ginny’d tried kissing Michael once or twice, but it had always felt awkward and strained. This...didn’t.
No lightning and thunder. No sunbursts and angels singing. But then, we’d want to pay attention to that instead of to this.
I think I like this better.
Her arms were going around him. His were already around her. Neither of them seemed to want to let go, and Ginny had heard about this interesting thing you could do while you were kissing someone...
A door opened somewhere in the room. "Harry? Ginny? You in here?" said Ron’s voice. "I was just—oh my God." A long pause. "Er, I’ll come back later."
The door shut again, very firmly.
Ginny burst into giggles, pulling back from Harry just in time to avoid spitting on him. A second or two later, Harry was laughing too. "I think we broke him," he managed to get out. "You think he’ll ever get over it?"
"He’d better," Ginny said coolly. "I’m not giving you up."
"Well, good. I happen to feel the same way." Harry rearranged their positions slightly. "And we were just getting to the interesting part... should we try again?"
Ginny smiled. "Let’s take it slowly," she said. "We won’t get a second chance at this."
Harry sketched a bow in her direction. "I am at your service, m’lady." He stopped. "My lady," he repeated more slowly. "You know, that sounds really good."
Ginny’s smile grew until she felt like it would stretch right off her face.
Off mine and onto Harry’s... sounds like a plan.
A plan they proceeded to put into action.
If I’m going mad, please don’t ever let Meghan and Neville come after me...
Author Notes:
And there was much rejoicing. "Yaaaaaayyy."
Seriously, folks, I know most of you have been waiting for that for a while. So I figured it was time. Speaking of time, it’ll start speeding up again after this—I really need to get this year moving, or I’m going to end up like JKR with a book so big it won’t even fit on the shelf! But anyway, chapters are coming more smoothly now, and I’m almost to some excitement—and hey, next Saturday I’ll have more canon material to ransack for the writing of seventh year. Stay tuned—the best is yet to come!