We Shine Like Stars. (Fic, GW/LL, SS/HP, NC17 -- 2/7)
Title: We Shine Like Stars 2.a
Author: Cluegirl
Type: Fiction
Length: Novella -- words.
Main character or Pairing: Ginny/Luna, with a side of Harry/Snape.
Rating: NC17
Canon compliancy: Shooting for canon compliance. If you squint.
Disclaimer: All HP characters are the sole intellectual property of JKRowling, whom I am not. Therefore, I make no profit from this use.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of childbirth, but aside from that, it's pretty vanilla.
Summary: Harry is not the only one who must struggle for a sense of self against the expectations of others; Ginny's dreams are heavily mortgaged too. It takes a brush with tragedy to alert her to the very real possibility of losing all, if she does not take matters into her own hands.
Cards Drawn: The Empress, the Ace of Swords reversed, and Strength.
Card Interpretation: The Empress -- satisfaction, a competent woman spinning the future from the present.
The Ace of Swords, reversed -- Words, or the threat of them, used to destroy. A silence that is destructive. A refusal, or inability to speak up when words are needed
Strength -- Power, energy, a calm and soothing conviction. Fearlessness.
Author Notes: Thanks to the League of Extraordinary Betae: Jenna_Thorn, emessann, amanuensis1, and kaiz. And also, my plot doctor, the ever-patient aquila_dominus. The title of the song, and the verses used at the chapter heads come from the song Bullet, by Covenant.
Part 1
~* Gravity Plays Tricks *~
Time is like a liquid in my hands: I swim for dry land just like you
“I am the Evil Lady of Darkness,” Luna said, deadly serious and armed with a spoon. “No, you’re not to laugh, I’m terribly spooky and dangerous, and I’ve come to make you eat your brekkie, so let’s have no more silliness, and-”
A bang and squeal of laughter followed, then a clatter, and Luna flinched back from an eerily well-aimed wodge of food. Lurking halfway up the stairs, Ginny bit her lip to stifle a giggle of her own.
“What was that, now?” Luna protested, sweeping in with the spoon and ignoring the pinkish stuff crumbling down the side of her face. “Is that any way to treat perfectly good custard, young Mr. Potter?”
Ginny blinked. Custard?
She came down the last few steps. Jamie squealed a cheerful welcome, waving his jam and cake and buttercream-streaked arms in the air and strewing crumbs far and wide. His high chair squeaked on the floorboards with every excited kick. Luna met Ginny’s open-mouthed stare with her usual aplomb. “Oh, good morning. We didn’t mean to wake you. Do you want tea first, or would you like some breakfast too?”
“It’s trifle!” Ginny managed.
Luna eyed the wreckage doubtfully. “Not so much, anymore. Raspberry-cakey-custardish-mush-with-jam, more like. But it’s still pretty tasty.”
“But it’s trifle! Trifle is for pudding, not breakfast!”
Luna set aside the baby spoon and fetched her wand from behind her ear to get the kettle going. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be,” she observed, kicking a chair back from the table for Ginny. “After all, it’s got milk, and eggs, and flour in-“
“And sugar, and loads of butter, and about a gallon of cream, and more sugar, and jam-"
"Jam has fruit in, you know."
"And you can’t expect a six month old baby, who only has four teeth anyhow, to eat such things for breakfast, Luna!” Ginny accepted the chair, but reached across to remove the bowl of pudding carnage from Jamie’s reach.
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it eating, really,” Luna grinned as the kettle began to whistle. “More like performance art, with a bit of sculpture thrown in.” She peeled a handful of cake out of her hair with a grimace. “Emphasis on ‘thrown’.” Another swish of her wand had the tea things hopping down from their cupboards and heading for the table in a conga line.
“What’s wrong with his usual oat toasties then?” Ginny asked, summoning a flannel from the sink and charming it wet. Jamie babbled a challenge at the approaching cloth, his grubby brow furrowing in worry.
“They were judged unfit,” Luna shrugged. Ginny’s slippers crunched as she leaned in to scrub at the baby’s face, and a glance showed half a box of cereal strewn under the table. With a sigh, Ginny let that go, and prepared to do battle with her son’s coating of food.
By the time that skirmish was done, she was more than ready for the tea Luna had fixed her. Jamie, red-faced and still bellowing his protests through a muffling spell, suffered himself to be rescued from his high chair and cuddled close in Luna’s lap. The ungrateful little beast seemed to glare at Ginny in reproach as he snuffled against the elegant curve of Luna’s collarbone.
“Where’s Harry got to this morning?” Ginny asked with a sigh. “He never has trouble getting Jamie to eat his breakfast.”
“He looked so awfully tired when we looked in his room; we didn’t want to wake him,” Luna’s lips brushed the baby’s ruddy gold fluff as she spoke. “He doesn’t seem to be sleeping very well lately.”
Ginny sent the rag back to the sink and sighed. “Thanks to Little Bit here, nobody in this house IS sleeping well.” Ginny looked up in surprise as Luna’s cool fingers wrapped over her own. The blue eyes were wide and quite serious.
“I think it’s more than that,” she said. “I could hear him pacing up there on the third floor most of the night. Just going back and forth, and forth and back.”
“I didn’t hear anything…” Luna’s thumb stroked over her knuckles, and a shadow of the smile reappeared, an indulgent lip curl that made Ginny blush to remember just what had made her sleep so well. “Anyway, Harry’s probably just a bit stressed. He said that work has been-“
“Have you noticed how he hides behind the baby?” Luna asked, and her thumb made another swipe.
“Now that’s ridiculous!” Ginny tugged her hand away. “Harry loves his son, Luna, and he’s a terrific father! Anyway, you’re happy enough to let him take Jamie when we go out, or when you’re off to the paper, and I’ve got an article to write, or a game to go to…” The way Luna was nodding along to each of her points was rather making Ginny suspect that she wasn’t exactly carrying the argument.
“He always takes the baby. Always.” Luna took a sip of her own tea, gracefully evading a grabbing hand. “When was the last time he went anywhere that wasn’t work, or an errand, do you remember?”
“Well, Monday he went to Diagon Al-“
Luna shook her head. “Jamie was out of nappy rash potion,” she said. “He just got hung up there by the Shopping Mommies, is all.”
“Well, he…”
"No, that night he had to bail George out of gaol doesn't count, because he came straight back afterward."
As if Ginny could forget how Ron had sulked over that! She thought harder, and tried again. “There was the seventh, when…”
"That was the baby’s check up at St. Mungo’s," Luna countered.
Vexed, Ginny shook her head. “Oh! I remember! Quidditch Trivia Saturday, Mum took Jamie, and we all met up at the Three Broomsticks; Harry came along with us!”
But Luna was shaking her head. “Harry left early, remember?”
Ginny did remember. A headache, Harry’d said, but he’d refused the potion Hermione had offered, and had cried off halfway through the first round -- well before the game was done. “All right, he’s been distracted lately by the baby. We all have.“
Luna’s glance turned reproachful. “You still find time to see your family and friends, though.”
Ginny smiled. “Well, aside from the best friends I see every day, I do.” She reached across the table and freed Luna’s hair from Jamie’s grasp, nibbling his chubby knuckles before returning to her point. “But Luna, I can write my articles anywhere, so it isn’t hard to meet up with you, or Mum, or Hermione or Hannah and Neville. It’s not as if Harry can do his work from a café, or from home. He’s stuck over at the Ministry offices all day, and-”
“And when he isn’t there?” It wasn’t exactly a challenge - for what, from Luna, ever really was? - but Ginny had to resist the urge to bristle at it.
“Harry has his own life, and what he does with it is his affair,” she replied. “That’s one of the reasons why I said I wouldn’t-"
Luna cut her off again, and this time her eyes were stern. “Do you remember that weekend when you were covering the Ireland - Calais game in Cork?” Ginny nodded, and Luna went on. “Your mum and dad took Jamie to the Burrow, and Father and I had a double issue posting that Monday.”
“And your press broke down halfway through the run, and you had to dig an old one out of the basement and scavenge it for parts,” Ginny replied. “I remember.”
“I don’t think Harry got out of bed that whole weekend.”
Ginny blinked. Luna turned her teacup around and around in its saucer. “Only, I came round looking for Doxycide, and he was wearing the same pajamas as he had on Friday morning, when you left, you see? He hadn’t shaved, or washed, and all the hair on one side of his head was rumpled straight up.”
“Harry does have some pretty spectacular pillow-head,” Ginny chuckled, but Luna’s steady, significant look quelled it.
“I came by at six that Sunday evening,” she amended. “And from the state Kreacher was in when I arrived, I don’t think Harry had eaten anything either.”
And to that, Ginny couldn’t help but nod. The old House Elf had been in a fouler-than-usual mood after that trip, and had insisted on cooking five courses for every meal for another fortnight thereafter. He’d also taken to banging Harry’s plate down on the table whenever he served the young Master of Grimmauld Place.
Ginny’s tea was going cold, as was her belly. They’d laughed at Kreacher’s attitudes, then, Harry along with them. He hadn’t said a thing… but he’d taken care to have Jamie there to make a mess of his own plate after that, hadn’t he? How much was he actually eating under cover of letting the baby play with his food?
She chewed a fingernail, remembering the lecture Molly had given her about mending charms after Percy had mentioned that Harry was looking threadbare, mismatched, and scruffy at the office lately. “I’d thought it was just baby-shock,” she murmured at last.
Luna nuzzled Jamie’s hair again, and now that he was giggling instead of howling, lifted the muffling spell. “I think that made a good cover story,” she said, cutting a glance at the cellar door, and the long-disused basement brewery behind it, “for the fact that his heart’s been broken-”
But whatever else she had meant to say was cut off in the descending thunder of Harry’s feet on the stairs.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger it all, I’m going to be late!” he cried, pausing long enough at the kitchen door to cast a reproachful glare over them both. “Why didn’t somebody wake me?”
Ginny opened her mouth to defend herself, but wound up utterly distracted by the bitter chromatic struggle going on between Harry’s olive trousers, teal socks, and pine green robe.
“You didn’t look very well,” Luna put in calmly. “We thought you ought to skive off today and get rested up.”
Harry shook his head and swiped his glasses off his face. Smearing the lenses with his robe sleeve, he strode for the front parlour floo. “Can’t. I’ve got a nine o'clock with the Minister and the Import Control Inspector. Shrunken heads coming in with the sugar shipments from the Caribbean, and half of them are cursed with fever hexes, and the other half are stuffed full of…”
Tuning his fading grumble out, Ginny fired off a spell at Harry’s retreating back, turning the olive green trousers to a neutral grey. She aimed another after his socks, but couldn’t tell if the charm struck its mark before he disappeared through the floo.
It would have to do for now, she supposed.
“Fancy a trip to Hogwarts today?” Luna distracted her from the descending gloom and gathered up her hand for a kiss. “Madam Pomfrey wanted to collect a lock of Jamie’s hair for the archives, and I thought we might as well visit the library while we were there.”
“The library?” Eyes narrowing, Ginny felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “You have an idea, don’t you?”
Luna shrugged and nibbled at a bit of cake that had missed the devastation of Jamie. “I might do…”
~* Hallows, Haunts, and Moments of Perspective~
Ginny was lost.
Utterly, and completely turned around in the depths of the Forbidden Forest, stumbling, fumbling, and picking her way through tripping roots and snagging branches and shadows so thick no lumos could pierce them. Completely, arse-to-front, turned around, befuddled, lost-the-track-and-ran-out-of-breadcrumbs lost. So lost, that but for her wand and a ‘point me’ spell, she doubted she’d make it back to Hogwarts in a solid year of wandering. She was also happier than she had been in months.
“It’s somewhere over here,” Luna’s whisper -- near, and low, and beautifully alive, -- summoned Ginny, and as she rounded a vast bole, a gleam of golden hair drew her onward like a will-o-the-wisp. But there was no drowning bog there, no treacherous fall waiting a few steps on, where wandlight couldn’t pierce the creeping ground mist. All that waited there was Luna -- real, and whole, unbroken by her captors, and fantastically ridiculous in her owlish goggles and plimpy earrings.
Despite all the night of fire and death had stolen from Ginny, the undreamt-of gift of this friend's return was enough to make her aching heart swell with warmth every time she looked at Luna, and found her still really there. Wholly, beautifully there.
I thought I had lost you too! she did not say as she drew near Luna’s side, and, Never, ever frighten me like that again!
Instead, she snickered, and reached to entwine their fingers. “You look like an owl,” she said. There were calluses she didn't remember on Luna's hand, scabs and scratches around the knuckles, snags on the low-bitten fingernails. Later. She would ask later. “I can’t believe you can see anything at all through those silly things, dark as it is,” she said. “You said before that they didn’t work.”
“They did work, actually,” Luna replied, thumb rubbing over Ginny's, “I just wasn’t clear on what they precisely did, is all.”
“And now, after fighting the battle of the century, you’re in the mood to experiment? You do realize this forest is probably still crawling with giants, werewolves, Dementors, great, hairy spiders, centaurs, and probably Death Eaters, don’t you?” But Ginny couldn’t find any real sarcasm in the words. Luna could have had her hunting Nargles, stealing Quintaped eggs, or braving the depths of Azkaban itself that night, with no more than one dreamy smile and a beckoning hand.
The only things waiting for Ginny at Hogwarts were her family, gripped tight and worn to sleep in their grieving; an infirmary full of the injured and dead who needed help and comfort she didn’t have the skills or heart to give; a man she hadn’t seen in a year, and who didn’t seem much at all like the boy she’d loved before he left; and a bed that had been lonely, comfortless and grim all year long. When, trudging up the stairs to that bed, she had glimpsed Luna, slipping like a wraith across the meadow in the dark of the morning, Ginny had followed without a second thought. Luna held more for her in the pre-dawn chill than anything she could imagine in the castle’s half-shattered embrace.
“Thank you for keeping the perspectacles safe for me,” Luna said by way of an answer as she led Ginny out from under the looming trees and into a wide clearing. “I was very glad to have them tonight with all the fighting going on.”
I was very glad to have you tonight with all the fighting going on, Ginny thought, but hadn’t quite the nerve to say aloud. Because if she started saying a thing like that, there would follow a thousand things behind it, all crowded so close and urgent Ginny hardly knew where they would begin, or end. Some scrap of self-knowledge warned against opening that particular door. So soon on the heels of so many deaths, so much fear, confusion and elation; if she should begin to speak, to cry, to put words to the storm behind her ribs, she might shatter entirely -- run mad, and never stop.
So instead, she held her wand aloft, looking around the clearing to which Luna's silly goggles had led them.
The long weeds were trampled, the sod gouged and churned muddy in places. Huge gashes marred the trees on the far side, and some were snapped in two, their shattered stumps up-thrust, pale and shocked in the darkness. A great firepit lay in the center, its smoke a scent-memory as embers cooled to ashes in the pre-dawn damp.
The tingle of fell magic crept up Ginny’s spine as Luna drew her nearer to the ashen pit, and she couldn’t repress a shudder at the horridly familiar feeling. “He was here, wasn’t he?” she whispered, releasing Luna’s hand, the better to be on her guard against whatever of the Dark Lord might still lurk nearby. “This must have been where he tried to kill-“
“There it is!” Luna cried, dropping to her knees and digging with both hands in the trampled grass.
“What?” Ginny whispered, dread winding tight in her breast. Oh, they shouldn’t be out here… what on earth had made her think this was a good idea?
“Oh, I’ve found it! Father will be so pleased!” Luna’s awed whisper drew Ginny close, but all she could see in the pale palm were a few blades of grass, and a black pebble, cracked across the middle. Behind her goggles though, Luna’s eyes were shining with delight.
“Point me Hogwarts…” Ginny ordered her wand, and sighed in relief when it did so. Then she shook her head. “He’ll be pleased with a rock?” Ginny caught Luna’s wrist, and drew her upright so they could leave. “We didn’t have to come all the way out here for a rock when there’s hundreds of them out by the lake…”
Luna tsked, but let Ginny lead her out of the eerie glade, and into the shelter of the trees. “It’s not just any old rock, silly,” she said as she pulled the goggles off, “It’s one of the Hallows.”
“Hallows?” Ginny glanced back again and shook her head. “You don’t mean like the ones from that kids' story, do you?”
“All the best stories have their feet in truth,” Luna insisted, pushing the goggles into Ginny’s hand. “Like Merlin and the Dragons, you see, or the Wizard Kings and the Magic Child. Just have a look.”
Relieved to be putting distance between them and the clearing, Ginny did take the goggles, did slip them on, and did have a look.
Then she stopped walking, and stared.
No wonder Luna hadn’t had trouble finding their way! The forest trees were limned in a delicate glow, as though dusted by starlight - dim and faint, but clearer than what wandlight had revealed. Each slope and bulge of the forest floor was similarly sketched-in, game tracks revealed, brambles and blockages and low-snaring branches likewise. Turning, Ginny caught her breath; Luna herself seemed to gently glow against the surrounding gloom, as if she were somehow bathed in a sunbeam that did not touch the forest around her. The stone in her fist glowed more brilliantly still -- beaming streaks of light between Luna's fingers, fierce and white as a captive star.
“I could see it twinkling in the forest from Ravenclaw tower,” Luna explained, opening her palm to poke at the stone cradled there. Ginny's eyes watered at the glare, and she turned to the trees’ gentle glow while she waited for the spots to fade. “But as we got closer," Luna mused, "it began flickering in and out, fading, sometimes I couldn’t see it at all. I suppose all that dark magic back in the clearing was working against its-“
“Shh! What’s over there?” Ginny gasped, pointing through the trees, where another light moved, fluid and silvery, but somehow more solid than a ghost.
“I can’t see anything,” Luna murmured, stepping close and squinting along Ginny’s arm.
“Ouch, I can’t either, now,” Ginny grumbled, pushing back Luna’s glowing hand. “Could you put that in your pocket please? I’m sure I saw something moving over there…” But the distant, misty shape swirled and teased, and refused to come clearly into view, however hard Ginny stared. “Come on,” she said, and caught Luna’s hand again, strangely compelled to follow where the glimmer led.
Thankfully, Luna didn’t ask for her goggles back -- Ginny wasn’t sure she could have made herself stop staring after that beckoning light long enough to hand them over. Instead, the Ravenclaw followed behind, casting detection charms as Ginny drew her along through the trees. “Not a faerie… not a unicorn… not a glaistig, the moon's already set... not a ghost either, or I’d see it as well…Oh!” Luna stopped abruptly. “Maybe it’s Harry!”
“Harry?” Jolted out of her pursuit, Ginny stopped as well. “He’s asleep, I’m sure. He went up to Gryffindor tower, ages ago. And anyhow, why on earth would Harry look like that stone of yours does?”
“Because he has one of the Hallows, of course,” Luna replied, giving an excited bounce. “The Elder Wand. Didn’t you hear him and Voldemort talking about it when they were fighting?”
“I was a bit distracted watching Bellatrix-bloody-Lestrange trying to kill my mother right about then,” Ginny grumbled, but started them off after the glow again all the same, because it did look vaguely Harry-sized, and it did move about as fast as a weary but restless hero might do in the bleak, dark hour before dawn. “But if it is Harry, where could he be going?” she wondered as the trees began to give way to forest-edge scrub. "What's out here, except the forest?"
“Maybe something in Hogsmeade,” Luna replied, scenting the air. “I think we’re nearby. Hogsmeade always smells a bit like coal smoke. And mud. And caramel, sometimes, when Honeydukes opens early, don't you think?"
“The Shrieking Shack!” Ginny blinked with sudden realization as she added up years of Ronnie’s ‘me and Harry’ stories and a scrap of half-noted memory from the earlier battle. “Harry was going on about Snape, wasn’t he?” she asked, hurrying after the evasive glow.
“He said Professor Snape was Dumbledore’s man all along,” Luna answered. “That even when he seemed to be following Voldemort’s orders, he never really had been. Not even when he killed the Headmaster. But Hermione said they saw Snape killed-“
“In the Shrieking Shack. I know,” Ginny said, pushing the goggles up to her forehead and turning to catch Luna’s arm around hers. “That’s where Harry’s going, I just know it! Come on, let’s Apparate!”
“Wait!” Luna jerked back, but only to switch their arms around and curl hers about Ginny’s waist. She was warm as she leaned close, and her hair smelled of dust, sweat, and the ghost of lavender soap. Ginny's breath caught guiltily in her throat, even as her heart gave a lurch, and heat coiled between her thighs. Then Luna smiled up at her and said, “Let me do it. So he won’t see us.“
Ginny could only nod.
And then they were turning in place and pressing breathlessly through nothing. One everlasting moment, while eyes ached, lungs begged, and blood drummed in her ears, and then Ginny gasped in relief as the darkness spat them out.
She landed hands and knees deep in the mildewed remains of a bed. Luna’s weight, a second behind hers, punched even more fluff and dust into the air, and it was only disgust that stopped Ginny collapsing entirely into the shredded mattress as a coughing fit overcame her.
“Oh dear,” Luna said, catching her arm to pull her out of the tangle, “I forgot the Macrocroskies got to that. Here…” she sketched a spell, and the clinging feathers disappeared from their clothes and skin. Another spell cleared the billowing clouds from the air, so they both could breathe.
Stepping around the collapsed bed, Ginny examined the room with a dark-adapted eye. It was small and stark; plaster crumbled from the walls, paper in long, moldy shreds from the ceiling. Its only window was broken and boarded over, the glass long-since vanished. It was a hopeless little room, and if not for the bed in it, Ginny would not have believed anyone had ever set foot there before that night.
“We’re inside, aren’t we?” she asked, watching Luna dig her goggles out of the welter of shredded bedding. “We’re inside the Shack. How did you-“
“Father and I came here one summer,” she answered. “He’d been trying to research the place to write a story about it, but he couldn’t find any records of what happened here, or who owned the place, or even the names of anyone who had lived here.” She banished the dust from the goggles and looped the strap around her wrist. “So we were going to interview the spectre, you see? Get the story from the source, and all that, but we couldn’t ever find it.”
“Oh…” Ginny said, reminded abruptly that the Shack’s true history was still a secret to some. It seemed rather pointless to keep up the pretense, what with Professor Lupin lying among the fallen in the Great Hall, but it still somehow didn’t seem her secret to tell, really.
“I didn’t ever mention we came, because it was meant to be a secret until the story came out,” Luna explained, her eyes dark and anxious in the gloom. “Father wanted the scoop so badly, and he was so disappointed that the spectre didn’t appear. I promised I’d come back and look for it again when I could. There’s a chestnut tree just outside this window, the boards are easy to pull out of the way, and it’s not a very difficult climb-“
“But easier to Apparate, now you’re licensed,” Ginny replied, bumping her shoulder as she passed. “Is it safe to walk down from here,” she asked, heading for the stairs, “or should we Apparate in…stead?”
Severus Snape lay like a great, dark stain at the bottom of the stairs. Only his face and the hand beside it shone white against the welter of sprawling robes, fanning black hair, and…. Ginny caught a scent, hanging raw, thick and horrible in the still air, and she grimaced as she realized the surface on which Snape lay was probably not some oddly shaped, shiny sort of carpet.
“Oh,” Luna said softly as she came abreast and looked over the banister. “He looks so small.”
Ginny nodded, glad she hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. All the times she’d wished Horrid Old Snape gone, all the just rewards she’d contemplated from the darkest, most hurt places in her heart, she had never… Dementor kissed, the clean end of Avada Kedavra. even a ragged, hard-fought duel to the bitter end seemed more fitting than what she saw here.
Sometimes, when she’d slip away from Ottery St. Catchpole and wander down near the Muggle houses, Ginny would see animals, killed on the blacktop. Hares, foxes, crows sometimes, and once a hedgehog - all, though, had the same look of blind surprise she could just make out on Snape’s craggy features. Wizards didn’t die like that. Not as though something huge and merciless had crushed him uncaring - had hardly noticed as it sped on its way.
A wizard like Snape didn’t die like that.
Luna’s hand touched her elbow, startling her out of her stunned reverie. “Shh,” Luna breathed as Ginny turned to speak, “I think I hear something.”
Ginny listened, caught the distant scratching noise, and shivered. “Rats?” she wondered and hoped not. Then she remembered the tunnel and grabbed for her wand, casting wordless Silencio and Obfuscatus charms on them both. “It’s Harry,” she answered the curious look Luna shot her, then aimed a stabilizing spell on the rickety staircase, and tugged her a few steps down to crouch where they could better see the room.
“What’s wrong?” Luna asked, confused, as she settled a step above. “If it’s just Harry, why are we hiding?”
She didn’t know, really, only that there was a certainty in her belly that Harry wouldn’t be as relieved to see them as she would be to see him. He wouldn’t want her spying on him either, but she hadn’t thought of that until it was too late to get away unnoticed. So all she could do was shake her head and tap the goggles questioningly with her wand. Behind the wall downstairs, the sounds were clearer - crawling shuffle giving way to a scraping creak, as though something very heavy was shoving across the floorboards.
Luna passed the goggles over, and Ginny struggled into them, poking herself in the ear before she remembered to put up her wand. The shack looked much like the Forest had, only its outlines and topography were less distinct, less alive than the trees and shrubs had been. Aside from Luna and herself, and the anchor points of her concealment spells, the brightest thing to be seen was the body on the floor, and the pool of blood. Both were limned in ghost-bright silver, as though some measure of power or magic still clung to the lifeless flesh and the blood that it had shed. The glow was fitful though, coruscating over the form like stormlight instead of radiating steadily the way living things seemed to do.
Another wooden screech, and a crate against the far wall was shoved aside to admit a dazzling, misty silver blur. Ginny squinted, resisting the urge to put up her hands and block the glare as it oozed in through a deep crack in the wall. Luna shifted nervously, her knee a warm prod against Ginny’s shoulder as she fetched her wand out.
Pulling off the goggles, Ginny slid up next to her, and pulled the girl close, leaning their heads together at the temples so that each could peer through the goggles with one eye. It took a bit of shifting, and the warm, soft press of Luna against her side was hard to ignore in favour of that indistinct shape coiling and swirling across the floor below.
Then there was a rustle and Harry appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Ginny stared at him, the goggles forgotten as she took in his lean, pale face, the lines of bone and muscle plain through his shabby clothes, the long, tangled hair that curled about his collar and jaw. The past year haunted him -- had remade him in ways that Ginny knew she would never fully understand, and for a moment, she was grateful for his having broken her heart before he left that summer. How much more terrible to have to mourn that scarred, sweet boy now, along with all the other noble, beloved dead?
She draped her arm around Luna's shoulder as the girl shivered. Harry's wand hand was clenched at his side, just as dazzling through the goggles as Luna's silly stone had been. When Ginny squinted with only her own eyes, she could make out that he seemed to be holding two wands, one light, and one dark. But he did nothing with them -- he just stood there and stared at the dead man on the floor, wreathed in such a terrible gravity that Ginny had to struggle for breath.
The scrap of sky she could make out between the boarded-over windows had gone pewter. The wind began to rustle in the chestnut tree, and birds awakened to greet the coming day. It might as well have been another world.
Then Harry broke the tableau, giving his head a bracing shake. He took a deep and ragged breath, nudged his glasses aside, and scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he knelt down at Snape's side, the bloody mess around his knees unnoticed or unheeded as he conjured a bowl, flannel, and water. He dug an arm under Snape's shoulder and heaved the stiffened body over into his lap, to wash the blood off that ice-pale skin. He smoothed the damp cloth like a caress over Snape's face, gently closing the staring eyes, working down the buttons at his throat and over his chest, to reach the stained flesh beneath.
How much of his blood had Snape's great, heavy robes wicked up? Ginny shuddered, and Luna, still squinting through the goggles, snuggled closer.
"That's the Elder Wand, I'm sure of it," she whispered. Then she flinched and gasped as Harry murmured a spell.
Ginny hurried to look but saw nothing but that the blood had gone. "What?"
"It went back in," Luna replied. "It didn't just fade away, it went back into him! I wonder if he meant to do that?" Then Harry cast another spell, and this time Ginny did see the magic at work. Something clear, and viscous slithered out of the gaping wound at Snape's throat, something that coiled and thrashed in the air, as if it were alive and furious. Then with a twitch of his wands, Harry sent it splashing into the fireplace, and set it alight.
The startling firelight filled the room with colour and shadow; warming Harry's skin to amber and rose, even as it glinted bright and gold in the tear-streaks over his cheeks. Ginny bit her lip, watching Harry's slow, reverent devotions, and wondered if he even realized he was crying. She never had seen it of him before, and though the sight now wrung her heart, there was still an unconscious beauty to the tableau -- Harry's rag wiped, rinsed, wiped again, gently, gracefully mapping Snape's torn throat and still chest, his crooked fingers, his knotted hair, the bony ridges of his face.
"I'll bet you always expected to die here, didn't you?" Harry's voice was low, but clear as he set the rag and pretence aside, and just traced his fingers along Snape's forehead. "This is just the kind of stupid, stupid, unfair thing you always used to smirk at me about, that you should have survived one monster here, only to..." He clenched a fist, and scrubbed fiercely at his face. "Damn it!" Ginny flinched as anger and sorrow seemed to explode from Harry. He shook Snape's shoulder, as if to force him to listen, to answer. "Why couldn't you have told me earlier? At Dean, or... or at Shell Cottage, or... Damn it, you could have sent her to me! After the sword, I would have listened! I would have believed you, and then maybe you wouldn't have had to..."
He paused, sniffed wetly, and laughed. And just like that, the flare of temper was gone, settled into an ironic edge in his voice as he wiped his own hands on the rag and tossed it into the bowl. "I know it was all crap now," he said, his voice contrivedly light. "All that stuff you used to say about me being just like my dad. If it was true... I could have saved you too, like he did. But I wasn't that good, I guess." He shook his head, and his hand came to rest over the blue hollow of Snape's breastbone, almost as if he were hoping to feel a shiver inside. "That's no surprise to either of us, I guess; I never was good enough for you."
Ginny bit her lip, and blinked hard to stop her eyes welling up. It wasn't right, those words from him. When Harry had done so much, fought so long, and sacrificed so much of himself to ransom them all back from-
Luna clutched suddenly at her knee, and shoved the goggles before Ginny's eyes before she could even ask why. "Look!" she whispered, winding her fingers over Ginny's where she held the goggles, and directing her head downward, to where Snape lay in Harry's lap and tenderly stroked the boy's hand.
Wait.
Ginny's breath locked in her throat as she peered over the goggles to be sure the body had not, in fact, moved at all, and then looked through again. Snape was sitting up, turning to face Harry, to trace his silvery, translucent hands over Harry's face, his hair, his bowed shoulders, and corded throat -- never quite touching, but reverently, almost longingly sketching Harry's shape in the air.
"He must be here for Harry," Luna murmured, trembling with excitement. "Otherwise he would have appeared to us when we arrived! Oh, I've never seen a soul-bond haunting before!"
"What?" Ginny almost forgot to keep her voice down.
"Well, you don't think it was Harry that killed him, do you?" Luna answered, distractedly peering through her half of the goggles, and leaning into Ginny. "But his ghost didn't materialize until Harry started to touch him. What else could it be?"
Ginny wasn't sure she wanted to know. But she couldn't stop herself looking back through the goggles; someone had to keep an eye on the slippery bastard if he wasn't even going to die properly!
Harry was turning a small glass bottle in his hand, over and over, so the fire's glow caught like sparks in the chilly silver glow contained within. Snape's ghost glanced once at the bottle, traced a pale hand over it -- or possibly the hand that held it, then seemed to forget all but Harry's face. "Anyway. I brought you these back," Harry said. "Much as I'd like to... well, to use them to try and get to know her a little better, they're your memories, and it... it just doesn't seem right to keep them. Not when they obviously kept you going on all these years since she died." Harry thumbed the cork out of the bottle, and tipping the bright wand in, lifted out a sinuous, glimmering thread. " They're yours. You should have them back"
At that, the ghost finally seemed to waken. The room crackled with a sudden cold, the fire dove low, and Harry yelped as Snape lunged across his own body to catch and Harry's wrist and hold it and the memory thread away from the corpse.
"No, you fool, you'll waste them!"
Harry shocked still, eyes wide, wands gripped in his bloodless fist. Ginny didn't dare breathe in the aching silence that followed. Unheeded, the memory thread slithered back into the bottle with its fellows, then Harry's surprise bloomed into suspicion. "I don't believe it's you," he said, shaking loose. "You wouldn't stay. Why would you stay, once you were free?"
The ghost bared its teeth in a sneer. "To be certain you did not bungle the job, of course!" And it was Snape's voice, though distant, and thin, the wakening wind outside easier to hear. Ginny didn't know why, but her heart was thundering in her chest as Snape's ghost poked Harry in the chest with a translucent finger. "And if you attempt to pour my confidences into an inert pile of rotting meat, I shall be forced to conclude that you truly are the idiot I always accused you of being, despite your decent accounting of yourself last night!"
"You... for me?" Harry stammered, rubbing his chest. He was shaking; Ginny could tell from where she sat. "You watched me?"
"For seven years, now." Harry blushed fiercely, and clenched his eyes tight, making Ginny think incongruously of a little boy, refusing to admit he saw monsters in the dark shadows. "Look at me," Snape urged. This time he caught Harry's wrist gently, as though it were a bird he feared to crush. Had he ever been so gentle with a living thing though? Ginny couldn't imagine it, but couldn't deny what now she saw, either. Snape gave Harry's arm a tug. "Potter. Harry... Look at me."
Slowly, as though compelled to it, Harry did. But once he had, he did not seem able to look away again.
Luna stirred beside her, set the goggles down in her lap, and leaned her head on Ginny's shoulder. "He doesn't seem as unhappy now," she murmured. "Professor Snape was always so frightened before he died. I'm glad he can smile now."
Unable to speak, Ginny only nodded, remembering Snape's careful, taut fury during the past year, and that flash of unfathomable emotion that lit his eyes when he had caught her, Luna, and Neville breaking into his office to try and steal the sword. Death had changed him. But then again, how could it not do?
Harry curled his left hand over Snape's, on his wrist. "You're not a..." his voice shook with emotion. "You’re not cold. I can feel you." He took a deep, shuddering breath, and Ginny saw his knuckles pale with a frantic grip. "God! You’re not cold!"
"Never cold. Not toward you, no matter how I tried." Snape smirked. "That was most inconvenient at times, in fact."
"Or maybe he's not angry now because he doesn't have the glands for it anymore..." Luna mused. Ginny shushed her with a poke.
"I don’t…" Harry shook his head, and the motion carried through him like a sudden, fierce storm. "This shouldn’t be all," he said, releasing his grip to gesture at the empty shell that was slipping from his lap. "For you. An end like this… I mean, a hero, sure, but that’s hardly fair."
Snape only nodded, and released Harry with a wry smile. "Life is not fair. I see no reason why death ought to be."
"That’s no excuse!" Harry cried, "What’s the point of all this if not to try and balance the scales? This whole war was meant to be about making things better. Righting the wrongs! Making things fair!" He scraped both hands into his hair, hardly noticing as the wands caught up in a snarl that made Ginny wince to see. "I want to make it fair for you too," Harry said at last, and looked beseechingly into the ghost's silvery face. "Don’t you want that too?"
Snape rose -- not particularly standing, for his feet faded into the twilight shadows of the floor, but when he replied, it was from the height he had always commanded. "Perhaps I feel things ended fairly already."
Ginny frowned; even she could tell that was a bollocks answer!
Harry was no more fooled "You’re lying," he said. "If you felt that, you’d have got on the train at King's Cross and left for the next great adventure instead of sitting here, talking to someone you’ve hated for-"
"Feared," Snape said.
"What?"
"Not hated," he said again, his silvery hair drifting weightlessly around his head as he shook it. "Feared. Feared the power your eyes could have had over me, feared you learning of it, using that power against me. In revenge, in cruelty..." his laugh was mirthless, and sent icy shivers down Ginny's back to hear. "Oh, I had a thousand nightmares in your name, Harry Potter, but they were never about hatred."
"Then what are you afraid of now?" Harry's face was intense with challenge, and Ginny knew, just knew she was missing something. Snape didn't answer, merely turned his face into the growing daylight that was creeping like a dream through the ruined shack. The focus of that gaze might have been eternity, but Ginny suspected it was actually Hogwarts.
"I called you a coward once," Harry said, and reached into the corpse's sleeve, to retrieve Snape's wand, which he added to the two already in his right hand. "I was wrong to do that - because I didn’t know what courage meant when I said it. I’ve learned since then." Harry twitched the wands at the body, and levitated it back across his lap, catching the weight gently, steadily, never looking away from the spirit standing outside it.
"Courage isn’t not being afraid," he said, "it’s going on in spite of that fear. And you’ve never been a coward. Sir. Won’t you let me do this for you?"
Ginny nearly yelped as Luna lurched suddenly to the side, dropping the goggles, and digging frantically in her robe pocket. "What?" she hissed, steadying her friend as the banister shivered under her weight. "Luna, what is it?"
"The stone!" Luna gasped, as she finally wrestled it free. "It's hot!" Her palm was red as she uncurled her fingers, and a second, violent flinch dislodged it entirely. The little black stone dropped to the step, and bounced. One, two, each step seemed to add momentum to its fall. Ginny held her breath and her wand tight, and waited for discovery.
But neither Harry, nor the ghost of Severus Snape seemed to notice the movement, or the sharp toc of stone on old wood, so intent was their regard of each other. The pebble's last bounce landed it in a fold of the corpse's robes, where it might just as well have disappeared. Ginny closed her eyes and prayed it wouldn't set anything on fire.
Then she gathered Luna close and tight, pressed her lips to that sore, reddened palm, as though to block up the enormous, baffling emotion that was welling up inside her. Luna's lips moved, soundless against her brow, and she smoothed her hair again and again, as though Ginny were the one in pain.
"Do what you will," Snape was saying. "I cannot keep you from it now."
Harry tsked, and rolled his eyes. "Look, would you just-" then he stopped himself with a laugh. "You know what? It’s okay. You don’t have to say it. I want you - I need for you to be alive, and since you aren’t calling me every insulting name in the book, I’m going to assume you don’t mind the idea of another chance at life all that much." He took a deep breath, and, just like that, said, "So I’m going to bring you back."
Luna's hand halted, pressing against Ginny's skull as if startled.
The ghost broke the tension with a laugh that, oddly, was at once clearer and more genuine than any Ginny had ever imagined Snape giving. "Think you’re that good, do you?"
"I think I’ve still got the Elder Wand," Harry replied, and for a moment, he was again the brilliant, cheeky, cocky boy who had kissed her behind the Quidditch stands. "And I also think that with a wand oriented to you, and another one that's got a phoenix feather core, I could probably cast Ennervate on your body with your spirit energy standing right there. I don't know exactly what will happen, but I rather think the odds favour you waking up with your heart beating." Then that rakish smile faded into a nervous glance through his fringe. "But I'd still like your blessing before I do it."
"Idiot boy. With all that at your command, you hardly require my blessing for-"
Harry shrugged. "I still want it. And I want to try again, you and me. Without all... this," his vague arm-wave took in the shack around them, then he jerked a thumb at the tunnel through which he'd come. "-and all that standing in the way and messing things up. I want to try again. But not if you don't."
There was a long moment of silence, in which nothing in the world seemed to breathe. Then the ghost of Severus Snape drew himself up, proud and erect. "I am not a coward," he said, "But I will not allow you to return me to life."
Luna trembled under Ginny's ear, and Ginny herself had to smother a sob against Luna's fingers. In the room below, Harry looked up, stricken. "You won't?" Then he flushed and looked down again. "Of course. You've earned your rest, I guess. Who am I to try and-"
"And still you do not listen," the ghost sneered, sinking to Harry's level, and catching his chin. "You may not return my spirit to that body without first casting suturus on it -- not unless you wish to watch me die by exsanguination again!"
Harry's answering laugh was a ragged, shrill thing, with nervy, half-terrified elation lurking beneath it -- Ginny knew, because she would have made just exactly that sound, had Luna not caught her shoulders and tugged her up to look in her eyes. "It's going to be all right," Luna whispered, her eyes aglow in the swelling dawnlight. "It really, really is..."
And then they were kissing, neither of them having moved that Ginny could tell. But the press of lips was a desperate comfort, the clutch of hands settling their curves together like a puzzle, knee between thighs, breasts between breasts, lungs swelling and easing in syncopation, yielding the space between their hearts in perfect balance as their tongues slid and soothed each to each.
There was a sound, something like a groan, something like a wordless plea. There was a glass-sharp crack, and a blast of force roared like a cyclone up the stairs. The whole shack rocked on its foundations. Ginny did not let go, not even when the second crack rang out, and the roaring magic reversed its direction. A dragging force batted them down the stairs, a rolling bundle of elbows, knees, and desperation as the spell-storm blasted into Snape's body, drawing all light, all air, and the whole of the world along with it.
The last thing Ginny knew for certain as the darkness closed over her head, was that Luna hadn't let go -- and neither would she.
part 2a (because the posting window is too wee.)
Author: Cluegirl
Type: Fiction
Length: Novella -- words.
Main character or Pairing: Ginny/Luna, with a side of Harry/Snape.
Rating: NC17
Canon compliancy: Shooting for canon compliance. If you squint.
Disclaimer: All HP characters are the sole intellectual property of JKRowling, whom I am not. Therefore, I make no profit from this use.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of childbirth, but aside from that, it's pretty vanilla.
Summary: Harry is not the only one who must struggle for a sense of self against the expectations of others; Ginny's dreams are heavily mortgaged too. It takes a brush with tragedy to alert her to the very real possibility of losing all, if she does not take matters into her own hands.
Cards Drawn: The Empress, the Ace of Swords reversed, and Strength.
Card Interpretation: The Empress -- satisfaction, a competent woman spinning the future from the present.
The Ace of Swords, reversed -- Words, or the threat of them, used to destroy. A silence that is destructive. A refusal, or inability to speak up when words are needed
Strength -- Power, energy, a calm and soothing conviction. Fearlessness.
Author Notes: Thanks to the League of Extraordinary Betae: Jenna_Thorn, emessann, amanuensis1, and kaiz. And also, my plot doctor, the ever-patient aquila_dominus. The title of the song, and the verses used at the chapter heads come from the song Bullet, by Covenant.
Part 1
~* Gravity Plays Tricks *~
Time is like a liquid in my hands: I swim for dry land just like you
“I am the Evil Lady of Darkness,” Luna said, deadly serious and armed with a spoon. “No, you’re not to laugh, I’m terribly spooky and dangerous, and I’ve come to make you eat your brekkie, so let’s have no more silliness, and-”
A bang and squeal of laughter followed, then a clatter, and Luna flinched back from an eerily well-aimed wodge of food. Lurking halfway up the stairs, Ginny bit her lip to stifle a giggle of her own.
“What was that, now?” Luna protested, sweeping in with the spoon and ignoring the pinkish stuff crumbling down the side of her face. “Is that any way to treat perfectly good custard, young Mr. Potter?”
Ginny blinked. Custard?
She came down the last few steps. Jamie squealed a cheerful welcome, waving his jam and cake and buttercream-streaked arms in the air and strewing crumbs far and wide. His high chair squeaked on the floorboards with every excited kick. Luna met Ginny’s open-mouthed stare with her usual aplomb. “Oh, good morning. We didn’t mean to wake you. Do you want tea first, or would you like some breakfast too?”
“It’s trifle!” Ginny managed.
Luna eyed the wreckage doubtfully. “Not so much, anymore. Raspberry-cakey-custardish-mush-with-jam, more like. But it’s still pretty tasty.”
“But it’s trifle! Trifle is for pudding, not breakfast!”
Luna set aside the baby spoon and fetched her wand from behind her ear to get the kettle going. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be,” she observed, kicking a chair back from the table for Ginny. “After all, it’s got milk, and eggs, and flour in-“
“And sugar, and loads of butter, and about a gallon of cream, and more sugar, and jam-"
"Jam has fruit in, you know."
"And you can’t expect a six month old baby, who only has four teeth anyhow, to eat such things for breakfast, Luna!” Ginny accepted the chair, but reached across to remove the bowl of pudding carnage from Jamie’s reach.
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it eating, really,” Luna grinned as the kettle began to whistle. “More like performance art, with a bit of sculpture thrown in.” She peeled a handful of cake out of her hair with a grimace. “Emphasis on ‘thrown’.” Another swish of her wand had the tea things hopping down from their cupboards and heading for the table in a conga line.
“What’s wrong with his usual oat toasties then?” Ginny asked, summoning a flannel from the sink and charming it wet. Jamie babbled a challenge at the approaching cloth, his grubby brow furrowing in worry.
“They were judged unfit,” Luna shrugged. Ginny’s slippers crunched as she leaned in to scrub at the baby’s face, and a glance showed half a box of cereal strewn under the table. With a sigh, Ginny let that go, and prepared to do battle with her son’s coating of food.
By the time that skirmish was done, she was more than ready for the tea Luna had fixed her. Jamie, red-faced and still bellowing his protests through a muffling spell, suffered himself to be rescued from his high chair and cuddled close in Luna’s lap. The ungrateful little beast seemed to glare at Ginny in reproach as he snuffled against the elegant curve of Luna’s collarbone.
“Where’s Harry got to this morning?” Ginny asked with a sigh. “He never has trouble getting Jamie to eat his breakfast.”
“He looked so awfully tired when we looked in his room; we didn’t want to wake him,” Luna’s lips brushed the baby’s ruddy gold fluff as she spoke. “He doesn’t seem to be sleeping very well lately.”
Ginny sent the rag back to the sink and sighed. “Thanks to Little Bit here, nobody in this house IS sleeping well.” Ginny looked up in surprise as Luna’s cool fingers wrapped over her own. The blue eyes were wide and quite serious.
“I think it’s more than that,” she said. “I could hear him pacing up there on the third floor most of the night. Just going back and forth, and forth and back.”
“I didn’t hear anything…” Luna’s thumb stroked over her knuckles, and a shadow of the smile reappeared, an indulgent lip curl that made Ginny blush to remember just what had made her sleep so well. “Anyway, Harry’s probably just a bit stressed. He said that work has been-“
“Have you noticed how he hides behind the baby?” Luna asked, and her thumb made another swipe.
“Now that’s ridiculous!” Ginny tugged her hand away. “Harry loves his son, Luna, and he’s a terrific father! Anyway, you’re happy enough to let him take Jamie when we go out, or when you’re off to the paper, and I’ve got an article to write, or a game to go to…” The way Luna was nodding along to each of her points was rather making Ginny suspect that she wasn’t exactly carrying the argument.
“He always takes the baby. Always.” Luna took a sip of her own tea, gracefully evading a grabbing hand. “When was the last time he went anywhere that wasn’t work, or an errand, do you remember?”
“Well, Monday he went to Diagon Al-“
Luna shook her head. “Jamie was out of nappy rash potion,” she said. “He just got hung up there by the Shopping Mommies, is all.”
“Well, he…”
"No, that night he had to bail George out of gaol doesn't count, because he came straight back afterward."
As if Ginny could forget how Ron had sulked over that! She thought harder, and tried again. “There was the seventh, when…”
"That was the baby’s check up at St. Mungo’s," Luna countered.
Vexed, Ginny shook her head. “Oh! I remember! Quidditch Trivia Saturday, Mum took Jamie, and we all met up at the Three Broomsticks; Harry came along with us!”
But Luna was shaking her head. “Harry left early, remember?”
Ginny did remember. A headache, Harry’d said, but he’d refused the potion Hermione had offered, and had cried off halfway through the first round -- well before the game was done. “All right, he’s been distracted lately by the baby. We all have.“
Luna’s glance turned reproachful. “You still find time to see your family and friends, though.”
Ginny smiled. “Well, aside from the best friends I see every day, I do.” She reached across the table and freed Luna’s hair from Jamie’s grasp, nibbling his chubby knuckles before returning to her point. “But Luna, I can write my articles anywhere, so it isn’t hard to meet up with you, or Mum, or Hermione or Hannah and Neville. It’s not as if Harry can do his work from a café, or from home. He’s stuck over at the Ministry offices all day, and-”
“And when he isn’t there?” It wasn’t exactly a challenge - for what, from Luna, ever really was? - but Ginny had to resist the urge to bristle at it.
“Harry has his own life, and what he does with it is his affair,” she replied. “That’s one of the reasons why I said I wouldn’t-"
Luna cut her off again, and this time her eyes were stern. “Do you remember that weekend when you were covering the Ireland - Calais game in Cork?” Ginny nodded, and Luna went on. “Your mum and dad took Jamie to the Burrow, and Father and I had a double issue posting that Monday.”
“And your press broke down halfway through the run, and you had to dig an old one out of the basement and scavenge it for parts,” Ginny replied. “I remember.”
“I don’t think Harry got out of bed that whole weekend.”
Ginny blinked. Luna turned her teacup around and around in its saucer. “Only, I came round looking for Doxycide, and he was wearing the same pajamas as he had on Friday morning, when you left, you see? He hadn’t shaved, or washed, and all the hair on one side of his head was rumpled straight up.”
“Harry does have some pretty spectacular pillow-head,” Ginny chuckled, but Luna’s steady, significant look quelled it.
“I came by at six that Sunday evening,” she amended. “And from the state Kreacher was in when I arrived, I don’t think Harry had eaten anything either.”
And to that, Ginny couldn’t help but nod. The old House Elf had been in a fouler-than-usual mood after that trip, and had insisted on cooking five courses for every meal for another fortnight thereafter. He’d also taken to banging Harry’s plate down on the table whenever he served the young Master of Grimmauld Place.
Ginny’s tea was going cold, as was her belly. They’d laughed at Kreacher’s attitudes, then, Harry along with them. He hadn’t said a thing… but he’d taken care to have Jamie there to make a mess of his own plate after that, hadn’t he? How much was he actually eating under cover of letting the baby play with his food?
She chewed a fingernail, remembering the lecture Molly had given her about mending charms after Percy had mentioned that Harry was looking threadbare, mismatched, and scruffy at the office lately. “I’d thought it was just baby-shock,” she murmured at last.
Luna nuzzled Jamie’s hair again, and now that he was giggling instead of howling, lifted the muffling spell. “I think that made a good cover story,” she said, cutting a glance at the cellar door, and the long-disused basement brewery behind it, “for the fact that his heart’s been broken-”
But whatever else she had meant to say was cut off in the descending thunder of Harry’s feet on the stairs.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger it all, I’m going to be late!” he cried, pausing long enough at the kitchen door to cast a reproachful glare over them both. “Why didn’t somebody wake me?”
Ginny opened her mouth to defend herself, but wound up utterly distracted by the bitter chromatic struggle going on between Harry’s olive trousers, teal socks, and pine green robe.
“You didn’t look very well,” Luna put in calmly. “We thought you ought to skive off today and get rested up.”
Harry shook his head and swiped his glasses off his face. Smearing the lenses with his robe sleeve, he strode for the front parlour floo. “Can’t. I’ve got a nine o'clock with the Minister and the Import Control Inspector. Shrunken heads coming in with the sugar shipments from the Caribbean, and half of them are cursed with fever hexes, and the other half are stuffed full of…”
Tuning his fading grumble out, Ginny fired off a spell at Harry’s retreating back, turning the olive green trousers to a neutral grey. She aimed another after his socks, but couldn’t tell if the charm struck its mark before he disappeared through the floo.
It would have to do for now, she supposed.
“Fancy a trip to Hogwarts today?” Luna distracted her from the descending gloom and gathered up her hand for a kiss. “Madam Pomfrey wanted to collect a lock of Jamie’s hair for the archives, and I thought we might as well visit the library while we were there.”
“The library?” Eyes narrowing, Ginny felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “You have an idea, don’t you?”
Luna shrugged and nibbled at a bit of cake that had missed the devastation of Jamie. “I might do…”
~* Hallows, Haunts, and Moments of Perspective~
Ginny was lost.
Utterly, and completely turned around in the depths of the Forbidden Forest, stumbling, fumbling, and picking her way through tripping roots and snagging branches and shadows so thick no lumos could pierce them. Completely, arse-to-front, turned around, befuddled, lost-the-track-and-ran-out-of-breadcrumbs lost. So lost, that but for her wand and a ‘point me’ spell, she doubted she’d make it back to Hogwarts in a solid year of wandering. She was also happier than she had been in months.
“It’s somewhere over here,” Luna’s whisper -- near, and low, and beautifully alive, -- summoned Ginny, and as she rounded a vast bole, a gleam of golden hair drew her onward like a will-o-the-wisp. But there was no drowning bog there, no treacherous fall waiting a few steps on, where wandlight couldn’t pierce the creeping ground mist. All that waited there was Luna -- real, and whole, unbroken by her captors, and fantastically ridiculous in her owlish goggles and plimpy earrings.
Despite all the night of fire and death had stolen from Ginny, the undreamt-of gift of this friend's return was enough to make her aching heart swell with warmth every time she looked at Luna, and found her still really there. Wholly, beautifully there.
I thought I had lost you too! she did not say as she drew near Luna’s side, and, Never, ever frighten me like that again!
Instead, she snickered, and reached to entwine their fingers. “You look like an owl,” she said. There were calluses she didn't remember on Luna's hand, scabs and scratches around the knuckles, snags on the low-bitten fingernails. Later. She would ask later. “I can’t believe you can see anything at all through those silly things, dark as it is,” she said. “You said before that they didn’t work.”
“They did work, actually,” Luna replied, thumb rubbing over Ginny's, “I just wasn’t clear on what they precisely did, is all.”
“And now, after fighting the battle of the century, you’re in the mood to experiment? You do realize this forest is probably still crawling with giants, werewolves, Dementors, great, hairy spiders, centaurs, and probably Death Eaters, don’t you?” But Ginny couldn’t find any real sarcasm in the words. Luna could have had her hunting Nargles, stealing Quintaped eggs, or braving the depths of Azkaban itself that night, with no more than one dreamy smile and a beckoning hand.
The only things waiting for Ginny at Hogwarts were her family, gripped tight and worn to sleep in their grieving; an infirmary full of the injured and dead who needed help and comfort she didn’t have the skills or heart to give; a man she hadn’t seen in a year, and who didn’t seem much at all like the boy she’d loved before he left; and a bed that had been lonely, comfortless and grim all year long. When, trudging up the stairs to that bed, she had glimpsed Luna, slipping like a wraith across the meadow in the dark of the morning, Ginny had followed without a second thought. Luna held more for her in the pre-dawn chill than anything she could imagine in the castle’s half-shattered embrace.
“Thank you for keeping the perspectacles safe for me,” Luna said by way of an answer as she led Ginny out from under the looming trees and into a wide clearing. “I was very glad to have them tonight with all the fighting going on.”
I was very glad to have you tonight with all the fighting going on, Ginny thought, but hadn’t quite the nerve to say aloud. Because if she started saying a thing like that, there would follow a thousand things behind it, all crowded so close and urgent Ginny hardly knew where they would begin, or end. Some scrap of self-knowledge warned against opening that particular door. So soon on the heels of so many deaths, so much fear, confusion and elation; if she should begin to speak, to cry, to put words to the storm behind her ribs, she might shatter entirely -- run mad, and never stop.
So instead, she held her wand aloft, looking around the clearing to which Luna's silly goggles had led them.
The long weeds were trampled, the sod gouged and churned muddy in places. Huge gashes marred the trees on the far side, and some were snapped in two, their shattered stumps up-thrust, pale and shocked in the darkness. A great firepit lay in the center, its smoke a scent-memory as embers cooled to ashes in the pre-dawn damp.
The tingle of fell magic crept up Ginny’s spine as Luna drew her nearer to the ashen pit, and she couldn’t repress a shudder at the horridly familiar feeling. “He was here, wasn’t he?” she whispered, releasing Luna’s hand, the better to be on her guard against whatever of the Dark Lord might still lurk nearby. “This must have been where he tried to kill-“
“There it is!” Luna cried, dropping to her knees and digging with both hands in the trampled grass.
“What?” Ginny whispered, dread winding tight in her breast. Oh, they shouldn’t be out here… what on earth had made her think this was a good idea?
“Oh, I’ve found it! Father will be so pleased!” Luna’s awed whisper drew Ginny close, but all she could see in the pale palm were a few blades of grass, and a black pebble, cracked across the middle. Behind her goggles though, Luna’s eyes were shining with delight.
“Point me Hogwarts…” Ginny ordered her wand, and sighed in relief when it did so. Then she shook her head. “He’ll be pleased with a rock?” Ginny caught Luna’s wrist, and drew her upright so they could leave. “We didn’t have to come all the way out here for a rock when there’s hundreds of them out by the lake…”
Luna tsked, but let Ginny lead her out of the eerie glade, and into the shelter of the trees. “It’s not just any old rock, silly,” she said as she pulled the goggles off, “It’s one of the Hallows.”
“Hallows?” Ginny glanced back again and shook her head. “You don’t mean like the ones from that kids' story, do you?”
“All the best stories have their feet in truth,” Luna insisted, pushing the goggles into Ginny’s hand. “Like Merlin and the Dragons, you see, or the Wizard Kings and the Magic Child. Just have a look.”
Relieved to be putting distance between them and the clearing, Ginny did take the goggles, did slip them on, and did have a look.
Then she stopped walking, and stared.
No wonder Luna hadn’t had trouble finding their way! The forest trees were limned in a delicate glow, as though dusted by starlight - dim and faint, but clearer than what wandlight had revealed. Each slope and bulge of the forest floor was similarly sketched-in, game tracks revealed, brambles and blockages and low-snaring branches likewise. Turning, Ginny caught her breath; Luna herself seemed to gently glow against the surrounding gloom, as if she were somehow bathed in a sunbeam that did not touch the forest around her. The stone in her fist glowed more brilliantly still -- beaming streaks of light between Luna's fingers, fierce and white as a captive star.
“I could see it twinkling in the forest from Ravenclaw tower,” Luna explained, opening her palm to poke at the stone cradled there. Ginny's eyes watered at the glare, and she turned to the trees’ gentle glow while she waited for the spots to fade. “But as we got closer," Luna mused, "it began flickering in and out, fading, sometimes I couldn’t see it at all. I suppose all that dark magic back in the clearing was working against its-“
“Shh! What’s over there?” Ginny gasped, pointing through the trees, where another light moved, fluid and silvery, but somehow more solid than a ghost.
“I can’t see anything,” Luna murmured, stepping close and squinting along Ginny’s arm.
“Ouch, I can’t either, now,” Ginny grumbled, pushing back Luna’s glowing hand. “Could you put that in your pocket please? I’m sure I saw something moving over there…” But the distant, misty shape swirled and teased, and refused to come clearly into view, however hard Ginny stared. “Come on,” she said, and caught Luna’s hand again, strangely compelled to follow where the glimmer led.
Thankfully, Luna didn’t ask for her goggles back -- Ginny wasn’t sure she could have made herself stop staring after that beckoning light long enough to hand them over. Instead, the Ravenclaw followed behind, casting detection charms as Ginny drew her along through the trees. “Not a faerie… not a unicorn… not a glaistig, the moon's already set... not a ghost either, or I’d see it as well…Oh!” Luna stopped abruptly. “Maybe it’s Harry!”
“Harry?” Jolted out of her pursuit, Ginny stopped as well. “He’s asleep, I’m sure. He went up to Gryffindor tower, ages ago. And anyhow, why on earth would Harry look like that stone of yours does?”
“Because he has one of the Hallows, of course,” Luna replied, giving an excited bounce. “The Elder Wand. Didn’t you hear him and Voldemort talking about it when they were fighting?”
“I was a bit distracted watching Bellatrix-bloody-Lestrange trying to kill my mother right about then,” Ginny grumbled, but started them off after the glow again all the same, because it did look vaguely Harry-sized, and it did move about as fast as a weary but restless hero might do in the bleak, dark hour before dawn. “But if it is Harry, where could he be going?” she wondered as the trees began to give way to forest-edge scrub. "What's out here, except the forest?"
“Maybe something in Hogsmeade,” Luna replied, scenting the air. “I think we’re nearby. Hogsmeade always smells a bit like coal smoke. And mud. And caramel, sometimes, when Honeydukes opens early, don't you think?"
“The Shrieking Shack!” Ginny blinked with sudden realization as she added up years of Ronnie’s ‘me and Harry’ stories and a scrap of half-noted memory from the earlier battle. “Harry was going on about Snape, wasn’t he?” she asked, hurrying after the evasive glow.
“He said Professor Snape was Dumbledore’s man all along,” Luna answered. “That even when he seemed to be following Voldemort’s orders, he never really had been. Not even when he killed the Headmaster. But Hermione said they saw Snape killed-“
“In the Shrieking Shack. I know,” Ginny said, pushing the goggles up to her forehead and turning to catch Luna’s arm around hers. “That’s where Harry’s going, I just know it! Come on, let’s Apparate!”
“Wait!” Luna jerked back, but only to switch their arms around and curl hers about Ginny’s waist. She was warm as she leaned close, and her hair smelled of dust, sweat, and the ghost of lavender soap. Ginny's breath caught guiltily in her throat, even as her heart gave a lurch, and heat coiled between her thighs. Then Luna smiled up at her and said, “Let me do it. So he won’t see us.“
Ginny could only nod.
And then they were turning in place and pressing breathlessly through nothing. One everlasting moment, while eyes ached, lungs begged, and blood drummed in her ears, and then Ginny gasped in relief as the darkness spat them out.
She landed hands and knees deep in the mildewed remains of a bed. Luna’s weight, a second behind hers, punched even more fluff and dust into the air, and it was only disgust that stopped Ginny collapsing entirely into the shredded mattress as a coughing fit overcame her.
“Oh dear,” Luna said, catching her arm to pull her out of the tangle, “I forgot the Macrocroskies got to that. Here…” she sketched a spell, and the clinging feathers disappeared from their clothes and skin. Another spell cleared the billowing clouds from the air, so they both could breathe.
Stepping around the collapsed bed, Ginny examined the room with a dark-adapted eye. It was small and stark; plaster crumbled from the walls, paper in long, moldy shreds from the ceiling. Its only window was broken and boarded over, the glass long-since vanished. It was a hopeless little room, and if not for the bed in it, Ginny would not have believed anyone had ever set foot there before that night.
“We’re inside, aren’t we?” she asked, watching Luna dig her goggles out of the welter of shredded bedding. “We’re inside the Shack. How did you-“
“Father and I came here one summer,” she answered. “He’d been trying to research the place to write a story about it, but he couldn’t find any records of what happened here, or who owned the place, or even the names of anyone who had lived here.” She banished the dust from the goggles and looped the strap around her wrist. “So we were going to interview the spectre, you see? Get the story from the source, and all that, but we couldn’t ever find it.”
“Oh…” Ginny said, reminded abruptly that the Shack’s true history was still a secret to some. It seemed rather pointless to keep up the pretense, what with Professor Lupin lying among the fallen in the Great Hall, but it still somehow didn’t seem her secret to tell, really.
“I didn’t ever mention we came, because it was meant to be a secret until the story came out,” Luna explained, her eyes dark and anxious in the gloom. “Father wanted the scoop so badly, and he was so disappointed that the spectre didn’t appear. I promised I’d come back and look for it again when I could. There’s a chestnut tree just outside this window, the boards are easy to pull out of the way, and it’s not a very difficult climb-“
“But easier to Apparate, now you’re licensed,” Ginny replied, bumping her shoulder as she passed. “Is it safe to walk down from here,” she asked, heading for the stairs, “or should we Apparate in…stead?”
Severus Snape lay like a great, dark stain at the bottom of the stairs. Only his face and the hand beside it shone white against the welter of sprawling robes, fanning black hair, and…. Ginny caught a scent, hanging raw, thick and horrible in the still air, and she grimaced as she realized the surface on which Snape lay was probably not some oddly shaped, shiny sort of carpet.
“Oh,” Luna said softly as she came abreast and looked over the banister. “He looks so small.”
Ginny nodded, glad she hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. All the times she’d wished Horrid Old Snape gone, all the just rewards she’d contemplated from the darkest, most hurt places in her heart, she had never… Dementor kissed, the clean end of Avada Kedavra. even a ragged, hard-fought duel to the bitter end seemed more fitting than what she saw here.
Sometimes, when she’d slip away from Ottery St. Catchpole and wander down near the Muggle houses, Ginny would see animals, killed on the blacktop. Hares, foxes, crows sometimes, and once a hedgehog - all, though, had the same look of blind surprise she could just make out on Snape’s craggy features. Wizards didn’t die like that. Not as though something huge and merciless had crushed him uncaring - had hardly noticed as it sped on its way.
A wizard like Snape didn’t die like that.
Luna’s hand touched her elbow, startling her out of her stunned reverie. “Shh,” Luna breathed as Ginny turned to speak, “I think I hear something.”
Ginny listened, caught the distant scratching noise, and shivered. “Rats?” she wondered and hoped not. Then she remembered the tunnel and grabbed for her wand, casting wordless Silencio and Obfuscatus charms on them both. “It’s Harry,” she answered the curious look Luna shot her, then aimed a stabilizing spell on the rickety staircase, and tugged her a few steps down to crouch where they could better see the room.
“What’s wrong?” Luna asked, confused, as she settled a step above. “If it’s just Harry, why are we hiding?”
She didn’t know, really, only that there was a certainty in her belly that Harry wouldn’t be as relieved to see them as she would be to see him. He wouldn’t want her spying on him either, but she hadn’t thought of that until it was too late to get away unnoticed. So all she could do was shake her head and tap the goggles questioningly with her wand. Behind the wall downstairs, the sounds were clearer - crawling shuffle giving way to a scraping creak, as though something very heavy was shoving across the floorboards.
Luna passed the goggles over, and Ginny struggled into them, poking herself in the ear before she remembered to put up her wand. The shack looked much like the Forest had, only its outlines and topography were less distinct, less alive than the trees and shrubs had been. Aside from Luna and herself, and the anchor points of her concealment spells, the brightest thing to be seen was the body on the floor, and the pool of blood. Both were limned in ghost-bright silver, as though some measure of power or magic still clung to the lifeless flesh and the blood that it had shed. The glow was fitful though, coruscating over the form like stormlight instead of radiating steadily the way living things seemed to do.
Another wooden screech, and a crate against the far wall was shoved aside to admit a dazzling, misty silver blur. Ginny squinted, resisting the urge to put up her hands and block the glare as it oozed in through a deep crack in the wall. Luna shifted nervously, her knee a warm prod against Ginny’s shoulder as she fetched her wand out.
Pulling off the goggles, Ginny slid up next to her, and pulled the girl close, leaning their heads together at the temples so that each could peer through the goggles with one eye. It took a bit of shifting, and the warm, soft press of Luna against her side was hard to ignore in favour of that indistinct shape coiling and swirling across the floor below.
Then there was a rustle and Harry appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Ginny stared at him, the goggles forgotten as she took in his lean, pale face, the lines of bone and muscle plain through his shabby clothes, the long, tangled hair that curled about his collar and jaw. The past year haunted him -- had remade him in ways that Ginny knew she would never fully understand, and for a moment, she was grateful for his having broken her heart before he left that summer. How much more terrible to have to mourn that scarred, sweet boy now, along with all the other noble, beloved dead?
She draped her arm around Luna's shoulder as the girl shivered. Harry's wand hand was clenched at his side, just as dazzling through the goggles as Luna's silly stone had been. When Ginny squinted with only her own eyes, she could make out that he seemed to be holding two wands, one light, and one dark. But he did nothing with them -- he just stood there and stared at the dead man on the floor, wreathed in such a terrible gravity that Ginny had to struggle for breath.
The scrap of sky she could make out between the boarded-over windows had gone pewter. The wind began to rustle in the chestnut tree, and birds awakened to greet the coming day. It might as well have been another world.
Then Harry broke the tableau, giving his head a bracing shake. He took a deep and ragged breath, nudged his glasses aside, and scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he knelt down at Snape's side, the bloody mess around his knees unnoticed or unheeded as he conjured a bowl, flannel, and water. He dug an arm under Snape's shoulder and heaved the stiffened body over into his lap, to wash the blood off that ice-pale skin. He smoothed the damp cloth like a caress over Snape's face, gently closing the staring eyes, working down the buttons at his throat and over his chest, to reach the stained flesh beneath.
How much of his blood had Snape's great, heavy robes wicked up? Ginny shuddered, and Luna, still squinting through the goggles, snuggled closer.
"That's the Elder Wand, I'm sure of it," she whispered. Then she flinched and gasped as Harry murmured a spell.
Ginny hurried to look but saw nothing but that the blood had gone. "What?"
"It went back in," Luna replied. "It didn't just fade away, it went back into him! I wonder if he meant to do that?" Then Harry cast another spell, and this time Ginny did see the magic at work. Something clear, and viscous slithered out of the gaping wound at Snape's throat, something that coiled and thrashed in the air, as if it were alive and furious. Then with a twitch of his wands, Harry sent it splashing into the fireplace, and set it alight.
The startling firelight filled the room with colour and shadow; warming Harry's skin to amber and rose, even as it glinted bright and gold in the tear-streaks over his cheeks. Ginny bit her lip, watching Harry's slow, reverent devotions, and wondered if he even realized he was crying. She never had seen it of him before, and though the sight now wrung her heart, there was still an unconscious beauty to the tableau -- Harry's rag wiped, rinsed, wiped again, gently, gracefully mapping Snape's torn throat and still chest, his crooked fingers, his knotted hair, the bony ridges of his face.
"I'll bet you always expected to die here, didn't you?" Harry's voice was low, but clear as he set the rag and pretence aside, and just traced his fingers along Snape's forehead. "This is just the kind of stupid, stupid, unfair thing you always used to smirk at me about, that you should have survived one monster here, only to..." He clenched a fist, and scrubbed fiercely at his face. "Damn it!" Ginny flinched as anger and sorrow seemed to explode from Harry. He shook Snape's shoulder, as if to force him to listen, to answer. "Why couldn't you have told me earlier? At Dean, or... or at Shell Cottage, or... Damn it, you could have sent her to me! After the sword, I would have listened! I would have believed you, and then maybe you wouldn't have had to..."
He paused, sniffed wetly, and laughed. And just like that, the flare of temper was gone, settled into an ironic edge in his voice as he wiped his own hands on the rag and tossed it into the bowl. "I know it was all crap now," he said, his voice contrivedly light. "All that stuff you used to say about me being just like my dad. If it was true... I could have saved you too, like he did. But I wasn't that good, I guess." He shook his head, and his hand came to rest over the blue hollow of Snape's breastbone, almost as if he were hoping to feel a shiver inside. "That's no surprise to either of us, I guess; I never was good enough for you."
Ginny bit her lip, and blinked hard to stop her eyes welling up. It wasn't right, those words from him. When Harry had done so much, fought so long, and sacrificed so much of himself to ransom them all back from-
Luna clutched suddenly at her knee, and shoved the goggles before Ginny's eyes before she could even ask why. "Look!" she whispered, winding her fingers over Ginny's where she held the goggles, and directing her head downward, to where Snape lay in Harry's lap and tenderly stroked the boy's hand.
Wait.
Ginny's breath locked in her throat as she peered over the goggles to be sure the body had not, in fact, moved at all, and then looked through again. Snape was sitting up, turning to face Harry, to trace his silvery, translucent hands over Harry's face, his hair, his bowed shoulders, and corded throat -- never quite touching, but reverently, almost longingly sketching Harry's shape in the air.
"He must be here for Harry," Luna murmured, trembling with excitement. "Otherwise he would have appeared to us when we arrived! Oh, I've never seen a soul-bond haunting before!"
"What?" Ginny almost forgot to keep her voice down.
"Well, you don't think it was Harry that killed him, do you?" Luna answered, distractedly peering through her half of the goggles, and leaning into Ginny. "But his ghost didn't materialize until Harry started to touch him. What else could it be?"
Ginny wasn't sure she wanted to know. But she couldn't stop herself looking back through the goggles; someone had to keep an eye on the slippery bastard if he wasn't even going to die properly!
Harry was turning a small glass bottle in his hand, over and over, so the fire's glow caught like sparks in the chilly silver glow contained within. Snape's ghost glanced once at the bottle, traced a pale hand over it -- or possibly the hand that held it, then seemed to forget all but Harry's face. "Anyway. I brought you these back," Harry said. "Much as I'd like to... well, to use them to try and get to know her a little better, they're your memories, and it... it just doesn't seem right to keep them. Not when they obviously kept you going on all these years since she died." Harry thumbed the cork out of the bottle, and tipping the bright wand in, lifted out a sinuous, glimmering thread. " They're yours. You should have them back"
At that, the ghost finally seemed to waken. The room crackled with a sudden cold, the fire dove low, and Harry yelped as Snape lunged across his own body to catch and Harry's wrist and hold it and the memory thread away from the corpse.
"No, you fool, you'll waste them!"
Harry shocked still, eyes wide, wands gripped in his bloodless fist. Ginny didn't dare breathe in the aching silence that followed. Unheeded, the memory thread slithered back into the bottle with its fellows, then Harry's surprise bloomed into suspicion. "I don't believe it's you," he said, shaking loose. "You wouldn't stay. Why would you stay, once you were free?"
The ghost bared its teeth in a sneer. "To be certain you did not bungle the job, of course!" And it was Snape's voice, though distant, and thin, the wakening wind outside easier to hear. Ginny didn't know why, but her heart was thundering in her chest as Snape's ghost poked Harry in the chest with a translucent finger. "And if you attempt to pour my confidences into an inert pile of rotting meat, I shall be forced to conclude that you truly are the idiot I always accused you of being, despite your decent accounting of yourself last night!"
"You... for me?" Harry stammered, rubbing his chest. He was shaking; Ginny could tell from where she sat. "You watched me?"
"For seven years, now." Harry blushed fiercely, and clenched his eyes tight, making Ginny think incongruously of a little boy, refusing to admit he saw monsters in the dark shadows. "Look at me," Snape urged. This time he caught Harry's wrist gently, as though it were a bird he feared to crush. Had he ever been so gentle with a living thing though? Ginny couldn't imagine it, but couldn't deny what now she saw, either. Snape gave Harry's arm a tug. "Potter. Harry... Look at me."
Slowly, as though compelled to it, Harry did. But once he had, he did not seem able to look away again.
Luna stirred beside her, set the goggles down in her lap, and leaned her head on Ginny's shoulder. "He doesn't seem as unhappy now," she murmured. "Professor Snape was always so frightened before he died. I'm glad he can smile now."
Unable to speak, Ginny only nodded, remembering Snape's careful, taut fury during the past year, and that flash of unfathomable emotion that lit his eyes when he had caught her, Luna, and Neville breaking into his office to try and steal the sword. Death had changed him. But then again, how could it not do?
Harry curled his left hand over Snape's, on his wrist. "You're not a..." his voice shook with emotion. "You’re not cold. I can feel you." He took a deep, shuddering breath, and Ginny saw his knuckles pale with a frantic grip. "God! You’re not cold!"
"Never cold. Not toward you, no matter how I tried." Snape smirked. "That was most inconvenient at times, in fact."
"Or maybe he's not angry now because he doesn't have the glands for it anymore..." Luna mused. Ginny shushed her with a poke.
"I don’t…" Harry shook his head, and the motion carried through him like a sudden, fierce storm. "This shouldn’t be all," he said, releasing his grip to gesture at the empty shell that was slipping from his lap. "For you. An end like this… I mean, a hero, sure, but that’s hardly fair."
Snape only nodded, and released Harry with a wry smile. "Life is not fair. I see no reason why death ought to be."
"That’s no excuse!" Harry cried, "What’s the point of all this if not to try and balance the scales? This whole war was meant to be about making things better. Righting the wrongs! Making things fair!" He scraped both hands into his hair, hardly noticing as the wands caught up in a snarl that made Ginny wince to see. "I want to make it fair for you too," Harry said at last, and looked beseechingly into the ghost's silvery face. "Don’t you want that too?"
Snape rose -- not particularly standing, for his feet faded into the twilight shadows of the floor, but when he replied, it was from the height he had always commanded. "Perhaps I feel things ended fairly already."
Ginny frowned; even she could tell that was a bollocks answer!
Harry was no more fooled "You’re lying," he said. "If you felt that, you’d have got on the train at King's Cross and left for the next great adventure instead of sitting here, talking to someone you’ve hated for-"
"Feared," Snape said.
"What?"
"Not hated," he said again, his silvery hair drifting weightlessly around his head as he shook it. "Feared. Feared the power your eyes could have had over me, feared you learning of it, using that power against me. In revenge, in cruelty..." his laugh was mirthless, and sent icy shivers down Ginny's back to hear. "Oh, I had a thousand nightmares in your name, Harry Potter, but they were never about hatred."
"Then what are you afraid of now?" Harry's face was intense with challenge, and Ginny knew, just knew she was missing something. Snape didn't answer, merely turned his face into the growing daylight that was creeping like a dream through the ruined shack. The focus of that gaze might have been eternity, but Ginny suspected it was actually Hogwarts.
"I called you a coward once," Harry said, and reached into the corpse's sleeve, to retrieve Snape's wand, which he added to the two already in his right hand. "I was wrong to do that - because I didn’t know what courage meant when I said it. I’ve learned since then." Harry twitched the wands at the body, and levitated it back across his lap, catching the weight gently, steadily, never looking away from the spirit standing outside it.
"Courage isn’t not being afraid," he said, "it’s going on in spite of that fear. And you’ve never been a coward. Sir. Won’t you let me do this for you?"
Ginny nearly yelped as Luna lurched suddenly to the side, dropping the goggles, and digging frantically in her robe pocket. "What?" she hissed, steadying her friend as the banister shivered under her weight. "Luna, what is it?"
"The stone!" Luna gasped, as she finally wrestled it free. "It's hot!" Her palm was red as she uncurled her fingers, and a second, violent flinch dislodged it entirely. The little black stone dropped to the step, and bounced. One, two, each step seemed to add momentum to its fall. Ginny held her breath and her wand tight, and waited for discovery.
But neither Harry, nor the ghost of Severus Snape seemed to notice the movement, or the sharp toc of stone on old wood, so intent was their regard of each other. The pebble's last bounce landed it in a fold of the corpse's robes, where it might just as well have disappeared. Ginny closed her eyes and prayed it wouldn't set anything on fire.
Then she gathered Luna close and tight, pressed her lips to that sore, reddened palm, as though to block up the enormous, baffling emotion that was welling up inside her. Luna's lips moved, soundless against her brow, and she smoothed her hair again and again, as though Ginny were the one in pain.
"Do what you will," Snape was saying. "I cannot keep you from it now."
Harry tsked, and rolled his eyes. "Look, would you just-" then he stopped himself with a laugh. "You know what? It’s okay. You don’t have to say it. I want you - I need for you to be alive, and since you aren’t calling me every insulting name in the book, I’m going to assume you don’t mind the idea of another chance at life all that much." He took a deep breath, and, just like that, said, "So I’m going to bring you back."
Luna's hand halted, pressing against Ginny's skull as if startled.
The ghost broke the tension with a laugh that, oddly, was at once clearer and more genuine than any Ginny had ever imagined Snape giving. "Think you’re that good, do you?"
"I think I’ve still got the Elder Wand," Harry replied, and for a moment, he was again the brilliant, cheeky, cocky boy who had kissed her behind the Quidditch stands. "And I also think that with a wand oriented to you, and another one that's got a phoenix feather core, I could probably cast Ennervate on your body with your spirit energy standing right there. I don't know exactly what will happen, but I rather think the odds favour you waking up with your heart beating." Then that rakish smile faded into a nervous glance through his fringe. "But I'd still like your blessing before I do it."
"Idiot boy. With all that at your command, you hardly require my blessing for-"
Harry shrugged. "I still want it. And I want to try again, you and me. Without all... this," his vague arm-wave took in the shack around them, then he jerked a thumb at the tunnel through which he'd come. "-and all that standing in the way and messing things up. I want to try again. But not if you don't."
There was a long moment of silence, in which nothing in the world seemed to breathe. Then the ghost of Severus Snape drew himself up, proud and erect. "I am not a coward," he said, "But I will not allow you to return me to life."
Luna trembled under Ginny's ear, and Ginny herself had to smother a sob against Luna's fingers. In the room below, Harry looked up, stricken. "You won't?" Then he flushed and looked down again. "Of course. You've earned your rest, I guess. Who am I to try and-"
"And still you do not listen," the ghost sneered, sinking to Harry's level, and catching his chin. "You may not return my spirit to that body without first casting suturus on it -- not unless you wish to watch me die by exsanguination again!"
Harry's answering laugh was a ragged, shrill thing, with nervy, half-terrified elation lurking beneath it -- Ginny knew, because she would have made just exactly that sound, had Luna not caught her shoulders and tugged her up to look in her eyes. "It's going to be all right," Luna whispered, her eyes aglow in the swelling dawnlight. "It really, really is..."
And then they were kissing, neither of them having moved that Ginny could tell. But the press of lips was a desperate comfort, the clutch of hands settling their curves together like a puzzle, knee between thighs, breasts between breasts, lungs swelling and easing in syncopation, yielding the space between their hearts in perfect balance as their tongues slid and soothed each to each.
There was a sound, something like a groan, something like a wordless plea. There was a glass-sharp crack, and a blast of force roared like a cyclone up the stairs. The whole shack rocked on its foundations. Ginny did not let go, not even when the second crack rang out, and the roaring magic reversed its direction. A dragging force batted them down the stairs, a rolling bundle of elbows, knees, and desperation as the spell-storm blasted into Snape's body, drawing all light, all air, and the whole of the world along with it.
The last thing Ginny knew for certain as the darkness closed over her head, was that Luna hadn't let go -- and neither would she.
part 2a (because the posting window is too wee.)