Fic: "The Soul Who Sins is the One Who Will Die" by chanond
Author: chanond
Title: The Soul Who Sins is the One Who Will Die
Challenge: At Hogwarts, Lust and Wrath
Summary: “I still can't tell you anything. It's too dangerous, we're close and..." his voice was rising now, and she watched as he steeled himself to calm down just like he used to do whenever he was upset.
Rating: R
Genre: Angst
Word Count (optional): 3,200
Notes/Warnings: Beta-read and Brit-picked by the fabulous eriathwen_bob and is a better story because of it. Thank you very much, ♥. Title taken from Ezekiel 18:1-4
Ginny was careful not to meet Andrew Kirke’s eyes as she sat next to Demelza at the Gryffindor table. He’d not gone off her yet - if the letter he’d passed her in Divination was anything to go by - and she was not keen to encourage him, which even an exchange of glares seemed to do these days.
He was her best Beater after all, and a shouting match in the middle of the Great Hall would get sticky. They had a match the next day and as Captain, she needed her team on form if they were to beat Ravenclaw for the Quidditch Cup.
So she didn’t acknowledge him, instead dropped onto the bench beside Demelza and had just begun tucking into a slice of steak and kidney pie when Demelza jabbed her with an elbow.
“Watch it,” said Demelza in a low tone. “Here he comes.”
Ginny sighed and lowered her fork, which was so heaped with food that Ron would have been envious of it.
“Can’t I at least get dinner in first?” she said under her breath before turning around to glare at the ‘he’ to whom Demelza was referring. Andrew stood behind her; shifting guiltily on his feet and gnawing a hangnail that had been chewed sickly-white.
His nervous habits still disgusted her slightly.
“Hi, Andrew,” she said, her tone cool.
“Hi,” he said around his finger, seemingly unwilling to remove it from his mouth.
Ginny’s stomach turned at the thought of those fingers or that mouth anywhere close to her body.
He said nothing more to follow the greeting and she glared at him long enough to make him flush. Intimidating stupid boys had become a bit of a skill at which she was quite accomplished.
“Well?” she said, longing to return to her dinner, whose flavour was done no favours by sitting idle on her plate in the cool Hall.
“Did you read my letter?” he asked briskly, completely without the almost-cowering demeanour from a few seconds ago.
“Yes,” she said, simply.
“And what do you think?”
She took a deep breath and chanced a look at Demelza.
Her friend shared a sympathetic look and shrugged. When they had read Andrew’s letter together earlier, Demelza had advised Ginny to be as blunt as possible with the boy. Nothing that Ginny had told him thus far had managed to put him off his advances; on the contrary, he now seemed to be under the mistaken impression that she was playing ‘hard to get’.
Displeased by that insult more than anything else he had said, she was determined to set him right, once and for all.
As if she had to play any games at all to get someone to pay attention to her.
She turned her eyes to Andrew and pushed back from the table, bending low to collect her bag from the floor before she stood and walked toward the doors that led into the Entrance Hall, gesturing for him to follow; she wouldn’t embarrass him in front of their House mates.
When they reached the Entrance Hall, she stopped and spun on her heel to face him.
“Look,” she started, hitching her bag up her shoulder. “It’s flattering that you like me so much, and if I could return your feelings, I would,” she said, disingenuously. She wished nothing of the sort and felt bad about lying to him, but she needed for things to remain amicable between them if for no other reason than for the sake of the Quidditch team. “But I don’t and I’m certain I’m never going to. I'm sorry if I've led you to believe otherwise.”
There, that should do it, she thought.
He snorted and looked around though he had no audience to play to.
"'Led me to believe otherwise?' You fucked me, didn’t you? Or was that someone else riding my dick as though it were a broomstick in the changing room? Of course I can see that you don't return my feelings, Ginny,” he said, mockingly. “I see now how stupid I’ve been.”
Annoyed, the hand that had been clutching her shoulder strap turned white at the knuckles as she clenched it into a fist.
"Yeah, I fucked you, Andrew. In the singular. Caught on that I haven't repeated the mistake yet?"
"I know you're not saying that I was awful at it. Got off, didn't you?"
"Only because I was thinking about someone else the whole time," she shot back quickly. It was true, she’d been shagging Jack Sloper since term started before she left him to Demelza and approached Kirke herself. Jack, at least, had been sexually adventurous enough to warrant a mental replay of their activities though she’d never admit that to Demelza.
Kirke, for all his self-righteous indignation about it, had been the deadest fuck she’d ever had, which is why it had only happened the once.
“Shut your mouth, you stupid cow," he said, and he raised a hand as though he would strike her with it. "Couldn't have been him, could it? Are you saving yourself for him? Is that why you don't go out with anyone?”
"Don't be stupid," she said. "I go out with loads of people."
"You shag loads of people, that's evident," he said nastily, his face white with wrathful fury, and he tightened the grip he had on her forearm.
“I haven't seen you go out with any of them; Merlin, you’re a fucking slag. Wake up, Weasley. In case you haven’t noticed, Harry Potter isn’t here anymore. He’s moved on, hasn’t he? He’s not coming back for you.”
There was an ugly sneer on his face and Ginny rolled her eyes at him.
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” she said, coolly. “Leave me alone, Kirke, or I’ll have to bring this matter to McGonagall. Threatening me? You’ll get kicked off the team for certain and I know you don’t want that, especially with recruiters for the league turning up at every match.”
She moved to walk past him, but he stopped her, wrapping his fingers tightly around her forearm.
"I don't think I will, thanks," he said, his voice menacing, and jerked her arm as if to pull her with him. "I've tried, Ginny. I've tried being nice to you, doing what you ask, letting you do whatever you want. You haven't repaid the favour, and I'm tired of waiting."
He smirked at her as he tried to step back, his body shaking with vindictive rage and his fingers still tight on her arm. The doors to the Great Hall were closed and it was just the pair of them in the Entrance Hall; no one could see them and he seemed pleased to have her at his mercy.
"Let's go back to the Common Room, yeah? Or better yet, the changing room. That's where this all started, isn't it?"
His voice had turned deep, thick with uncharacteristic lust and she thought to herself that if only he'd been this passionate on their first encounter, there might have been a second.
He was clearly planning the re-enactment of the one and only time they'd shagged by dragging her to the changing room and forcing her to…. Kirke really was pathetic, she thought.
She allowed him to lead her out the Hall but as soon as he took his eyes off her face, Ginny dropped her school bag and plunged her free hand into the pocket. Realising too late what she had done, he flinched when she trained her wand on his face, a nasty hex seconds from falling off her lips.
Ginny shook the arm he was still holding and his fingers reluctantly loosened their grip.
"You stupid idiot," she hissed through clenched teeth.
"Do you really think I've grown up with six brothers and not learned how to look after myself? You're useless. Now," she squatted to collect her bag, thankful that nothing had spilled out of it when she'd flung it to the floor, "come near me again and I'll show you just what sorts of things I've learned from my brothers, yeah? And as for Harry Potter," she lowered her wand from his face, jabbing him in the neck with it. "Bring him up in my presence again and you'll regret it, Andrew, I promise you that."
::
Later, in front of the fire, Demelza looked appropriately concerned when Ginny related what had happened with Andrew.
"Are you going to tell McGonagall anyway?" Demelza asked with a frown.
"I don't think he’ll bother me again, the fool," she replied and they both turned a covert glance around the Common Room to ensure that Andrew wasn't there listening. She did still have the team to consider, after all.
"He wouldn’t show his face before the Room cleared out, would he? Beaten by a girl, honestly!" said Demelza with a laugh.
Ginny yawned and stretched her calves, drawing small circles in the air with her toes as she did so.
She mumbled, "Yeah," around her yawn and closed her copy of Advanced Potion-Making. "I'm not making much headway on this antidote essay for Slughorn so I think I'll go to b-"
"Ginny?" came a deep, distinctly male voice from the fireplace.
She turned to look, dropped her book on the floor, and fell to her knees in front of the fire.
It was Harry's voice; his head was in the fire.
"Harry!" she said, louder than she'd intended, and he hissed "Sh!" while attempting to peer around her, checking whether anyone had heard her or noticed his head in the fire.
"Sorry!" she whispered, scooting as close to the fire as she dared without singing herself. "What are you doing here? Is everything okay? Ron and Hermione - nothing's wrong, is there?"
"No, no, everyone is fine, don’t worry," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose with his index finger. His face looked pale and drawn though that could have been the effect of the green flames dancing around his shoulders, casting an eerie pallor on his skin. "I just mis-... oh, hi, Demelza," he said, noticing Ginny's companion for the first time.
"Hi, Harry," said Demelza quietly, clearly taken aback at the sight of Harry Potter - someone who no one she knew had heard from in almost two years - in the Common Room fire. "How are you?"
"All right, been a bit busy, you know. I-, sorry, er, I don't mean to be rude, but could I have a few minutes alone to talk with Ginny?"
"Oh! Of course! No, sorry..." she said, closing her textbook with a snap.
Ginny had not torn her eyes from Harry’s, but she turned to look at her friend when she heard Demelza gathering up her things. They exchanged a significant look and Demelza grinned knowingly at her.
"I'll see you upstairs," Ginny said, waving and turning back around swiftly to gaze at Harry.
When Demelza's footsteps trailed away, he smiled at her for the first time in two years and her stomach did a backflip.
"How have you been?" he asked, his tone sounding clipped despite his obvious pleasure in seeing her again.
Merlin, how she missed him.
"I've been all right," she replied, trying to sound casual and adjusting her position so she could sit with her legs crossed instead of tucked up underneath her. "Just school, you know how it is."
"Yeah," he said, somewhat distracted.
He hadn't glanced away from her face; it made her feel as though he was trying to memorise exactly how she looked.
"Harry, what's going on?"
"Nothing. Well, not nothing obviously, but I, er... I just wanted to see you. To talk to you before..." his voice trailed away feebly and he frowned.
"Ginny, it’s going to happen soon and I didn't want, well, I didn't want to not see you one last time. Just in case, you know..."
"In case of what?" she said, her voice slightly hysterical. "What’s going to happen soon? Tell me what's going on."
"Sh! I can't, you know that. I just... fuck, I’m sorry. Everything's fine, all right?” He covered his face with his hand as though ashamed of something. He uttered a long sigh and said, “It's fine.”
It sounded to Ginny as though he were trying to convince himself of that, too.
“I still can't tell you anything. It's too dangerous, we're close and..." his voice was rising now, and she watched as he steeled himself to calm down just like he used to do whenever he was upset.
She ached to touch him, to comfort him.
"I understand," she said, rising to her knees again. "Are you certain everyone is all right?"
He nodded and his face went slack.
"Yeah. Everyone's fine, Gin. Ron and Hermione, too. We're all fine."
He smiled again and Ginny’s temper let loose.
"Damn it, Harry! This isn't fair to do this to me; I want to see you properly."
"Me too," he said, ruefully, before turning his head to the side with a nod at an unknown something or someone. He looked back at her.
"I'm sorry, Ron’s here and he wants to talk to you, too, so I've- I’ve got to go. We only had a few minutes before, er, Well. I'll write to you soon, all right? It's going to be okay, I promise. I’ll see you soon."
"Okay," she said, still angry, but torn between confusion and anxiety over the whole exchange.
Harry had not been in contact with her since she saw him last at Dumbledore's funeral. She’d not had a hint of his whereabouts from anyone in her family, not in two years, though she knew her Mum and Dad had been in contact with all of them in that time. Hermione had written to her but the letters were empty of anything Ginny may have wanted to know, mainly what they were all doing and whether or not Harry thought about her at all. There had been a stony silence between the two of them, she didn’t write to him and he didn’t write to her.
Her time away from him hadn’t been wasted, though, nor had it been spent shagging her way through the Houses as Andrew Kirke seemed to believe. She’d enjoyed herself when and with whom she chose and while she had missed Harry, undeniably, she knew that what they’d had felt before hadn’t been real. Not really. Harry had been right, it had felt like something out of someone else’s life, completely false, and away from him, Ginny didn’t know whether what she missed was really Harry himself or… something else.
Regardless of how she’d raged at him for leaving her, and she had though he hadn’t been there to bear it, she knew now that he’d not done it to hurt her, but because he’d had to. It was what he was made for, maybe his destiny even - she didn’t know. She did know that nothing she could have done or said would have stopped him. That even if he had loved her, he still would have gone because that was who he was then, who he is now, and in the space between his leaving her on the shore of the Black Lake, staring at a white tomb, and now, she’d fallen head over heels in love with him because of it.
She wished she’d told him in a letter or something, now was hardly the time, so she said, simply, “I miss you, Harry. Take care of yourself, all right?” and hoped that he understood all that she did not say.
He nodded and with a last longing look at her face, pulled his head out from the fire. Feeling her heart sink a bit when his face was replaced by Ron’s she assured her brother that all was well in the castle. She shared what information she had catalogued with regard to her fellow students. Ginny had politicked her way through the Houses, making alliances when and where she could and had learned that categorically, not all Slytherins were bound for the Death Eaters, and there were more than a handful of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who were not sympathetic to the Order’s side of the war.
Harry’s wish to protect Ginny by distancing himself from her seemed to have worked but the happiness she should have had at his concern was somewhat dulled because it meant she was to be separated from him indefinitely. The intervening time from when she’d last seen him and now had been spent at Hogwarts - no one went home for holidays any more, not with a full scale war going on. Parents felt their children were safer at Hogwarts and they weren’t wrong. The Daily Prophet continued to report disappearances and deaths every other issue and both students and teachers were grateful for the safety and security of Hogwarts Castle.
She sighed, wondering if Harry was watching her while she and Ron spoke, his messy haired head lurking just out of sight. She grinned at Ron, wanting to ensure that she appeared happy when Harry saw her this last time - just in case - and the conversation with Ron ended a bit more cheerful than she knew either of them felt.
What had Harry meant, ‘it’s going to happen soon’?
She picked herself off the floor and gathered her belongings from where they’d scattered, her mind scanning the cryptically vague letters Hermione had sent her over the last two years, perhaps for some sort of message she may have missed. None of them had been terribly lengthy or containing any useful information at all. Ginny had the impression that Hermione believed Ginny to know more about what the three of them were doing than she really did.
Harry hadn’t told her anything about where he was going once he left Hogwarts.
No, indeed, their last days together had barely been spent in conversation at all. The thought of their last meeting had buoyed Ginny through some dark days in the beginning, but she hadn’t thought about that for a long time.
Dropping back into the squashy armchair, she curled her legs underneath her. Her chin resting on her hand, she closed her eyes and let the memories wash over her.
Salty tears trickled down her cheek; she could almost feel his arms around her, his lips kissing hers. She shifted in the chair, comfortably reminded how his body had felt on hers, how he'd groan as he slid into her.
‘It’s going to happen soon,’ he had said, the tone of his voice anxious. ‘I didn’t want to not see you one last time.’
“Oh, Harry,” she whispered to the empty Common Room. “Harry…”
When she finally opened her eyes, it was to see the previously smouldering coals of the fire just gutter out and die. A glance toward the Common Room’s windows showed her that dawn was breaking over the Black Lake.
‘It’s going to happen soon.’
‘I’ll write to you soon, all right?’
‘It’s going to be okay, I promise.’
‘I’ll see you soon.’
Soon... soon... Soon never came as swiftly as it should, she thought.
The End
Title: The Soul Who Sins is the One Who Will Die
Challenge: At Hogwarts, Lust and Wrath
Summary: “I still can't tell you anything. It's too dangerous, we're close and..." his voice was rising now, and she watched as he steeled himself to calm down just like he used to do whenever he was upset.
Rating: R
Genre: Angst
Word Count (optional): 3,200
Notes/Warnings: Beta-read and Brit-picked by the fabulous eriathwen_bob and is a better story because of it. Thank you very much, ♥. Title taken from Ezekiel 18:1-4
Ginny was careful not to meet Andrew Kirke’s eyes as she sat next to Demelza at the Gryffindor table. He’d not gone off her yet - if the letter he’d passed her in Divination was anything to go by - and she was not keen to encourage him, which even an exchange of glares seemed to do these days.
He was her best Beater after all, and a shouting match in the middle of the Great Hall would get sticky. They had a match the next day and as Captain, she needed her team on form if they were to beat Ravenclaw for the Quidditch Cup.
So she didn’t acknowledge him, instead dropped onto the bench beside Demelza and had just begun tucking into a slice of steak and kidney pie when Demelza jabbed her with an elbow.
“Watch it,” said Demelza in a low tone. “Here he comes.”
Ginny sighed and lowered her fork, which was so heaped with food that Ron would have been envious of it.
“Can’t I at least get dinner in first?” she said under her breath before turning around to glare at the ‘he’ to whom Demelza was referring. Andrew stood behind her; shifting guiltily on his feet and gnawing a hangnail that had been chewed sickly-white.
His nervous habits still disgusted her slightly.
“Hi, Andrew,” she said, her tone cool.
“Hi,” he said around his finger, seemingly unwilling to remove it from his mouth.
Ginny’s stomach turned at the thought of those fingers or that mouth anywhere close to her body.
He said nothing more to follow the greeting and she glared at him long enough to make him flush. Intimidating stupid boys had become a bit of a skill at which she was quite accomplished.
“Well?” she said, longing to return to her dinner, whose flavour was done no favours by sitting idle on her plate in the cool Hall.
“Did you read my letter?” he asked briskly, completely without the almost-cowering demeanour from a few seconds ago.
“Yes,” she said, simply.
“And what do you think?”
She took a deep breath and chanced a look at Demelza.
Her friend shared a sympathetic look and shrugged. When they had read Andrew’s letter together earlier, Demelza had advised Ginny to be as blunt as possible with the boy. Nothing that Ginny had told him thus far had managed to put him off his advances; on the contrary, he now seemed to be under the mistaken impression that she was playing ‘hard to get’.
Displeased by that insult more than anything else he had said, she was determined to set him right, once and for all.
As if she had to play any games at all to get someone to pay attention to her.
She turned her eyes to Andrew and pushed back from the table, bending low to collect her bag from the floor before she stood and walked toward the doors that led into the Entrance Hall, gesturing for him to follow; she wouldn’t embarrass him in front of their House mates.
When they reached the Entrance Hall, she stopped and spun on her heel to face him.
“Look,” she started, hitching her bag up her shoulder. “It’s flattering that you like me so much, and if I could return your feelings, I would,” she said, disingenuously. She wished nothing of the sort and felt bad about lying to him, but she needed for things to remain amicable between them if for no other reason than for the sake of the Quidditch team. “But I don’t and I’m certain I’m never going to. I'm sorry if I've led you to believe otherwise.”
There, that should do it, she thought.
He snorted and looked around though he had no audience to play to.
"'Led me to believe otherwise?' You fucked me, didn’t you? Or was that someone else riding my dick as though it were a broomstick in the changing room? Of course I can see that you don't return my feelings, Ginny,” he said, mockingly. “I see now how stupid I’ve been.”
Annoyed, the hand that had been clutching her shoulder strap turned white at the knuckles as she clenched it into a fist.
"Yeah, I fucked you, Andrew. In the singular. Caught on that I haven't repeated the mistake yet?"
"I know you're not saying that I was awful at it. Got off, didn't you?"
"Only because I was thinking about someone else the whole time," she shot back quickly. It was true, she’d been shagging Jack Sloper since term started before she left him to Demelza and approached Kirke herself. Jack, at least, had been sexually adventurous enough to warrant a mental replay of their activities though she’d never admit that to Demelza.
Kirke, for all his self-righteous indignation about it, had been the deadest fuck she’d ever had, which is why it had only happened the once.
“Shut your mouth, you stupid cow," he said, and he raised a hand as though he would strike her with it. "Couldn't have been him, could it? Are you saving yourself for him? Is that why you don't go out with anyone?”
"Don't be stupid," she said. "I go out with loads of people."
"You shag loads of people, that's evident," he said nastily, his face white with wrathful fury, and he tightened the grip he had on her forearm.
“I haven't seen you go out with any of them; Merlin, you’re a fucking slag. Wake up, Weasley. In case you haven’t noticed, Harry Potter isn’t here anymore. He’s moved on, hasn’t he? He’s not coming back for you.”
There was an ugly sneer on his face and Ginny rolled her eyes at him.
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” she said, coolly. “Leave me alone, Kirke, or I’ll have to bring this matter to McGonagall. Threatening me? You’ll get kicked off the team for certain and I know you don’t want that, especially with recruiters for the league turning up at every match.”
She moved to walk past him, but he stopped her, wrapping his fingers tightly around her forearm.
"I don't think I will, thanks," he said, his voice menacing, and jerked her arm as if to pull her with him. "I've tried, Ginny. I've tried being nice to you, doing what you ask, letting you do whatever you want. You haven't repaid the favour, and I'm tired of waiting."
He smirked at her as he tried to step back, his body shaking with vindictive rage and his fingers still tight on her arm. The doors to the Great Hall were closed and it was just the pair of them in the Entrance Hall; no one could see them and he seemed pleased to have her at his mercy.
"Let's go back to the Common Room, yeah? Or better yet, the changing room. That's where this all started, isn't it?"
His voice had turned deep, thick with uncharacteristic lust and she thought to herself that if only he'd been this passionate on their first encounter, there might have been a second.
He was clearly planning the re-enactment of the one and only time they'd shagged by dragging her to the changing room and forcing her to…. Kirke really was pathetic, she thought.
She allowed him to lead her out the Hall but as soon as he took his eyes off her face, Ginny dropped her school bag and plunged her free hand into the pocket. Realising too late what she had done, he flinched when she trained her wand on his face, a nasty hex seconds from falling off her lips.
Ginny shook the arm he was still holding and his fingers reluctantly loosened their grip.
"You stupid idiot," she hissed through clenched teeth.
"Do you really think I've grown up with six brothers and not learned how to look after myself? You're useless. Now," she squatted to collect her bag, thankful that nothing had spilled out of it when she'd flung it to the floor, "come near me again and I'll show you just what sorts of things I've learned from my brothers, yeah? And as for Harry Potter," she lowered her wand from his face, jabbing him in the neck with it. "Bring him up in my presence again and you'll regret it, Andrew, I promise you that."
::
Later, in front of the fire, Demelza looked appropriately concerned when Ginny related what had happened with Andrew.
"Are you going to tell McGonagall anyway?" Demelza asked with a frown.
"I don't think he’ll bother me again, the fool," she replied and they both turned a covert glance around the Common Room to ensure that Andrew wasn't there listening. She did still have the team to consider, after all.
"He wouldn’t show his face before the Room cleared out, would he? Beaten by a girl, honestly!" said Demelza with a laugh.
Ginny yawned and stretched her calves, drawing small circles in the air with her toes as she did so.
She mumbled, "Yeah," around her yawn and closed her copy of Advanced Potion-Making. "I'm not making much headway on this antidote essay for Slughorn so I think I'll go to b-"
"Ginny?" came a deep, distinctly male voice from the fireplace.
She turned to look, dropped her book on the floor, and fell to her knees in front of the fire.
It was Harry's voice; his head was in the fire.
"Harry!" she said, louder than she'd intended, and he hissed "Sh!" while attempting to peer around her, checking whether anyone had heard her or noticed his head in the fire.
"Sorry!" she whispered, scooting as close to the fire as she dared without singing herself. "What are you doing here? Is everything okay? Ron and Hermione - nothing's wrong, is there?"
"No, no, everyone is fine, don’t worry," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose with his index finger. His face looked pale and drawn though that could have been the effect of the green flames dancing around his shoulders, casting an eerie pallor on his skin. "I just mis-... oh, hi, Demelza," he said, noticing Ginny's companion for the first time.
"Hi, Harry," said Demelza quietly, clearly taken aback at the sight of Harry Potter - someone who no one she knew had heard from in almost two years - in the Common Room fire. "How are you?"
"All right, been a bit busy, you know. I-, sorry, er, I don't mean to be rude, but could I have a few minutes alone to talk with Ginny?"
"Oh! Of course! No, sorry..." she said, closing her textbook with a snap.
Ginny had not torn her eyes from Harry’s, but she turned to look at her friend when she heard Demelza gathering up her things. They exchanged a significant look and Demelza grinned knowingly at her.
"I'll see you upstairs," Ginny said, waving and turning back around swiftly to gaze at Harry.
When Demelza's footsteps trailed away, he smiled at her for the first time in two years and her stomach did a backflip.
"How have you been?" he asked, his tone sounding clipped despite his obvious pleasure in seeing her again.
Merlin, how she missed him.
"I've been all right," she replied, trying to sound casual and adjusting her position so she could sit with her legs crossed instead of tucked up underneath her. "Just school, you know how it is."
"Yeah," he said, somewhat distracted.
He hadn't glanced away from her face; it made her feel as though he was trying to memorise exactly how she looked.
"Harry, what's going on?"
"Nothing. Well, not nothing obviously, but I, er... I just wanted to see you. To talk to you before..." his voice trailed away feebly and he frowned.
"Ginny, it’s going to happen soon and I didn't want, well, I didn't want to not see you one last time. Just in case, you know..."
"In case of what?" she said, her voice slightly hysterical. "What’s going to happen soon? Tell me what's going on."
"Sh! I can't, you know that. I just... fuck, I’m sorry. Everything's fine, all right?” He covered his face with his hand as though ashamed of something. He uttered a long sigh and said, “It's fine.”
It sounded to Ginny as though he were trying to convince himself of that, too.
“I still can't tell you anything. It's too dangerous, we're close and..." his voice was rising now, and she watched as he steeled himself to calm down just like he used to do whenever he was upset.
She ached to touch him, to comfort him.
"I understand," she said, rising to her knees again. "Are you certain everyone is all right?"
He nodded and his face went slack.
"Yeah. Everyone's fine, Gin. Ron and Hermione, too. We're all fine."
He smiled again and Ginny’s temper let loose.
"Damn it, Harry! This isn't fair to do this to me; I want to see you properly."
"Me too," he said, ruefully, before turning his head to the side with a nod at an unknown something or someone. He looked back at her.
"I'm sorry, Ron’s here and he wants to talk to you, too, so I've- I’ve got to go. We only had a few minutes before, er, Well. I'll write to you soon, all right? It's going to be okay, I promise. I’ll see you soon."
"Okay," she said, still angry, but torn between confusion and anxiety over the whole exchange.
Harry had not been in contact with her since she saw him last at Dumbledore's funeral. She’d not had a hint of his whereabouts from anyone in her family, not in two years, though she knew her Mum and Dad had been in contact with all of them in that time. Hermione had written to her but the letters were empty of anything Ginny may have wanted to know, mainly what they were all doing and whether or not Harry thought about her at all. There had been a stony silence between the two of them, she didn’t write to him and he didn’t write to her.
Her time away from him hadn’t been wasted, though, nor had it been spent shagging her way through the Houses as Andrew Kirke seemed to believe. She’d enjoyed herself when and with whom she chose and while she had missed Harry, undeniably, she knew that what they’d had felt before hadn’t been real. Not really. Harry had been right, it had felt like something out of someone else’s life, completely false, and away from him, Ginny didn’t know whether what she missed was really Harry himself or… something else.
Regardless of how she’d raged at him for leaving her, and she had though he hadn’t been there to bear it, she knew now that he’d not done it to hurt her, but because he’d had to. It was what he was made for, maybe his destiny even - she didn’t know. She did know that nothing she could have done or said would have stopped him. That even if he had loved her, he still would have gone because that was who he was then, who he is now, and in the space between his leaving her on the shore of the Black Lake, staring at a white tomb, and now, she’d fallen head over heels in love with him because of it.
She wished she’d told him in a letter or something, now was hardly the time, so she said, simply, “I miss you, Harry. Take care of yourself, all right?” and hoped that he understood all that she did not say.
He nodded and with a last longing look at her face, pulled his head out from the fire. Feeling her heart sink a bit when his face was replaced by Ron’s she assured her brother that all was well in the castle. She shared what information she had catalogued with regard to her fellow students. Ginny had politicked her way through the Houses, making alliances when and where she could and had learned that categorically, not all Slytherins were bound for the Death Eaters, and there were more than a handful of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who were not sympathetic to the Order’s side of the war.
Harry’s wish to protect Ginny by distancing himself from her seemed to have worked but the happiness she should have had at his concern was somewhat dulled because it meant she was to be separated from him indefinitely. The intervening time from when she’d last seen him and now had been spent at Hogwarts - no one went home for holidays any more, not with a full scale war going on. Parents felt their children were safer at Hogwarts and they weren’t wrong. The Daily Prophet continued to report disappearances and deaths every other issue and both students and teachers were grateful for the safety and security of Hogwarts Castle.
She sighed, wondering if Harry was watching her while she and Ron spoke, his messy haired head lurking just out of sight. She grinned at Ron, wanting to ensure that she appeared happy when Harry saw her this last time - just in case - and the conversation with Ron ended a bit more cheerful than she knew either of them felt.
What had Harry meant, ‘it’s going to happen soon’?
She picked herself off the floor and gathered her belongings from where they’d scattered, her mind scanning the cryptically vague letters Hermione had sent her over the last two years, perhaps for some sort of message she may have missed. None of them had been terribly lengthy or containing any useful information at all. Ginny had the impression that Hermione believed Ginny to know more about what the three of them were doing than she really did.
Harry hadn’t told her anything about where he was going once he left Hogwarts.
No, indeed, their last days together had barely been spent in conversation at all. The thought of their last meeting had buoyed Ginny through some dark days in the beginning, but she hadn’t thought about that for a long time.
Dropping back into the squashy armchair, she curled her legs underneath her. Her chin resting on her hand, she closed her eyes and let the memories wash over her.
Salty tears trickled down her cheek; she could almost feel his arms around her, his lips kissing hers. She shifted in the chair, comfortably reminded how his body had felt on hers, how he'd groan as he slid into her.
‘It’s going to happen soon,’ he had said, the tone of his voice anxious. ‘I didn’t want to not see you one last time.’
“Oh, Harry,” she whispered to the empty Common Room. “Harry…”
When she finally opened her eyes, it was to see the previously smouldering coals of the fire just gutter out and die. A glance toward the Common Room’s windows showed her that dawn was breaking over the Black Lake.
‘It’s going to happen soon.’
‘I’ll write to you soon, all right?’
‘It’s going to be okay, I promise.’
‘I’ll see you soon.’
Soon... soon... Soon never came as swiftly as it should, she thought.
The End