Chasing Clouds Part 2
Part One
*
Eight
Harry ducks a spell, registering only briefly that the light is green, before he is moving forwards again, skirting around a body - he can’t look who, he can’t - and nearly twisting his ankle on a loose stone that has broken from the base of the wall. It is like last year all over again. Death Eaters are at Hogwarts and Harry, like last year, is running through the school, seeing his friends fighting at the edges of his vision and feeling horrified - in the way that little old ladies are horrified - at the aberration that is Death Eaters flitting like dark shadows in the hallways of his school.
Of his home. His world.
He can feel the castle gathering around him, trying to repel and expel the Death Eaters like a body rejecting a splinter. Except for this time it is the whole wizarding world that could be splintering itself. It seems foolish that something as supposedly solid as a world can be brought down by these fleeting moments of shouts and flashing spells. Some part of Harry can’t quite accept that this is it, that this is his last and best chance. He knows but does not feel that sometime in the next few minutes he will end it or it will all end.
But Harry does not have time to think, is not even aware that he is thinking. All he can do is fight and run and cast and duck and hope as each bolt of light whistles past him that it will not find its target.
Some of them invariably do: Harry sees Filch, wielding a sharpened broom handle, caught by a curse that sends him to the ground. The crack of his head against the stone floor causes a pool of blood to start to form. Harry nearly slips in it as he fends off Amycus and Alecto. Eventually he sends one reeling into the other and he keeps running. A group of Hufflepuffs are cowering behind Professor Sprout, who is bleeding feely but fighting on, and Harry knows that he ought to stop and help and knows that he must keep going. He is saved from the decision by Ernie Macmillan and Hannah Abbott who come to stand on either side of their housemistress. Harry turns away even as Professor Sprout finally falls.
He feels a flash of relief and fear every time he sees Weasley red hair. He’d lost Ron and Hermione and Ginny shortly after sprinting to the castle from Hagrid’s hut and he hopes they’re still safe and together.
He sees Remus duelling Greyback - Greyback’s teeth are bared and bloody - and then there is a screech and Fleur Weasley launches herself upon Greyback, her wand whipping through the air in one hand and the other hand clenched in curved talons raised to Greyback’s face and Harry runs on, chest tight and breath rasping. He throws himself into a passageway behind a tapestry, hoping that he does not meet Snape or Malfoy on the way because if he does he will not be able to stop himself from attacking. He does see Bellatrix Lestrange. She has Neville backed into a corner and her face is twisted into the mocking expression that makes Harry’s blood froth with hate. He aims for her and she spins to shield herself. It gives Neville all he needs to come forwards, wand steady, eyes fierce and start to duel her once more. Harry expects Neville to shout “You can do better than that!” as he blocks her curses and Bellatrix screams in rage, but if he does Harry doesn’t hear because he is running onwards.
He does not know why he must get to Dumbledore’s office - it has been McGonagall’s for a year and yet Harry can think of it in no other terms - but it is the heart of the school and if he is to face Tom Riddle tonight then it will be there. He skids to a halt at the stone gargoyle which appears sooner than he expected it to. As soon as he stops he feels his legs shaking and the pain in his lungs and the weakness in his arms and he stumbles, bracing himself against the statue. His steadying hand leaves a bloody print on the stone and, as though that is all the password that is needed, the gargoyle leaps aside.
Knowing what he will find, Harry climbs the spiral staircase.
*
Two
It had been a beautiful wedding. Indecently beautiful, Harry remembered thinking, as the bright sun beamed down upon the crooked roof of The Burrow. As though reacting to the certain darkness that lay ahead, the day was a shining one of golden light. The grass smelt better than grass had ever smelt; the sky was bluer than before; the indolent breeze drifted like the lazy touch of cool fingers. Harry never expected anything this summer to be perfect, but it felt as though the day was trying its hardest. For Bill and Fleur’s sakes, he was glad.
Of course, the day was not perfect. Harry knew what the evening would bring and he felt the guilt and weight of it clinging to him, shroud-like on his shoulders, rock-like in his stomach. It was easier to ignore, or to hide. The morning had been so frantic that Harry had been able to look away from Ginny’s forthright glance over breakfast. He knew that she knew that they would go. Mrs Weasley had been prone to tears all day, and so Harry could pretend not to notice her grief-stricken face whenever she looked at him or Ron or Hermione. Harry could not quite disregard the way in which Ron walked through the house and grounds of his childhood with wide eyes, as though he wanted to see everything for what could be the last time. Hermione spent the day clutching people’s hands: his, Ron’s, Ginny’s; running her fingers over the kitchen table and the banisters and the mantelpiece when she thought that no one was looking. Harry could tell she wanted to soak up the reassurance of what was to Hermione a second home.
Harry understood. He had said goodbye to Privet Drive and the Dursleys with little regret bar a forlorn sort of sorrow of what his childhood could have been and an overriding anger at what it was. Both feelings had been easy to push away. But The Burrow was a place where he had been loved and accepted and, what is more, it was full of the people he hated most to leave. It was full of the people he wanted most to save. He wished, too, that Ron and Hermione would be staying with them - so that he wouldn’t have to witness with averted eyes their silent goodbyes, so he wouldn’t have to feel that he was wrenching them away as well as himself - but he was undeniably glad that he would have their company when he left. He tried not to think about how much he would miss Ginny’s company, already so familiar to him, but concentrated instead on the thought that at least she would be safe. She, at least, wouldn’t be endangered because of him.
Like the weather, the wedding guests seemed to be making an extra effort to be cheerful. Fred and George were frenzied in their high spirits, which Harry was extremely thankful for, for the thought of a subdued Fred and George was incomprehensible. Charlie was back from Romania and was given the task of keeping the twins in hand.
“He’s the only one in the family who can manage them,” Ron said, pointing to wear Charlie was holding both Fred and George several inches off the ground by the scruff of their dress robes.
“That’s not true,” Ginny said, coming up behind them and startling Harry. “They’d do anything for Mum when she’s really upset.”
Harry looked at Ginny, who was wearing her buttery-gold bridesmaid’s dress. She had obviously escaped whilst having her hair done. It was coiled up on her head and half of it was intertwined with tiny yellow flowers. He gulped, and words pressed themselves against the back of his throat. Ginny turned to him as if she knew there were things that he was trying not to say, but then there was a roar from Charlie as Fred and George both breathed plumes of fire at him and Charlie burst into bright orange flames. Hermione gave a little scream, but when the smoke cleared they saw that Fred, George and Charlie were all laughing.
Ginny grinned, winked at Harry (he gulped again), and marched over to her brothers with her hands on her hips. “Mum is going to kill you for ruining your dress robes,” she said. “And you,” she turned on Charlie, “you’re meant to be the best man. Do you really think Fleur will let you stand anywhere near her if your robes stink of smoke?”
Ron sniggered loudly. Charlie, Fred and George, all much bigger than Ginny, managed to look suitably chastised for a few seconds before Fred made his wand belch smoke into Charlie’s face. Ginny started to laugh and Charlie performed a spell that got rid of the smell and all the sooty marks on their robes.
“You’re good,” he told the twins, “but you’re nothing compared to dragons. We’ve got a French Firebrand who can blast the length of five Quidditch pitches.
“Talking of French Firebrands, isn’t Fleur going to be wondering where you are?” George asked Ginny.
Ginny sighed. “I don’t like that hair dresser. She’s a friend of Fleur’s from school.” She put on a heavy French accent. “Ah, I do not know when I ‘ave ‘ad such a challenge. All zis ‘air. And it is so … red.”
Ginny’s hair had seemed even redder as she walked down the aisle with Fleur and Gabrielle, and her face was slightly pink with the heat. Fleur was ice white, illuminated by the sunshine into some blazing, shining creature. Next to Harry, Ron made a strained sound, and Hermione caught Harry’s eye and smiled.
It had been a beautiful wedding, and Harry couldn’t believe that it had only happened that day. He was sitting at the mouth of the tent he, Ron and Hermione were to share. They had set up camp in the plot of land where Harry’s parents’ house had stood. Harry had not expected to see so little evidence of them there. He had expected to feel closer to his mother and father - to feel a connection to them here. This was the place where he had been happy. Here, he had been wholly loved. His parents had died for him here. Harry tried to picture Voldemort’s tread across this land, perhaps with Peter Pettigrew shuffling in his wake.
Hatred, betrayal, grief, determination, love … sentiments that were well-worn and fresh at the same time. This place was where it had all started for Harry. His first loves and griefs had been here.
Harry peered over his shoulder into the gloomy tent and made out the sleeping forms of Ron and Hermione. He pictured The Burrow, with the wedding guests dancing in the garden, Mrs Weasley beaming and wiping her eyes and Mr Weasley filling everyone’s glasses to the brim. He saw Bill and Fleur standing together, Fleur’s face softened and Bill smiling so widely that the scars were almost obliterated. He thought of his parents’ wedding. That too had taken place in the dark times of a war and he wondered if it had been as full of determined joy as the one he had been to today. (He thought of Remus dancing slowly with Tonks and he knew why he hadn’t asked him.) And he remembered Ginny’s face, suddenly pale, and knew that home was not this place he had come to, but the place that he had left.
He hoped it still would be if he came back to it again.
*
Nine
While the battle had been raging, Ginny had not noticed how much blood there was. She had not even noticed her own for a while, and it had been Ron who cried out and pushed her to the ground, and Hermione who had peeled back Ginny’s robes and gasped. Only then had Ginny looked down at the wound that puckered her side and raised her hands only to see them gleaming with blood that must have been hers and which she had not felt.
She had got Hermione to patch her up as best she could and then a shriek had distracted them and they’d watched Hagrid and Grawp ploughing through the thronging corridor. The next time Ginny looked at her hands the blood had dried to brown and crusted under her fingernails.
Some of the blood, though, was still wet. The floors were sticky and slippery with it. Ginny navigated carefully, levitating bodies before her as she joined the group of people - the survivors - who were getting the injured to the hospital wing. It seemed to Ginny faintly unbelievable that Madam Pomfrey was there as always, bustling over the beds - more beds than Ginny had ever seen in the infirmary. Hermione stayed to help and to flutter by Ron’s bedside. There were Healers coming into the room in streams, and Portkeys taking the most seriously injured to St Mungo’s.
The dead were taken to the Great Hall. As she walked the corridors Ginny saw the two tides of levitated bodies. Upwards for life and downwards for death. After the first few familiar bodies on their way to the Great Hall Ginny had to shut down her emotions, cut off her tears, watch with dispassion as she saw Colin Creevey’s arm dangle in a mockery of a farewell wave when someone she did not know passed her with his body. She felt, for the moment, soulless. It was a feeling she recognised from the Chamber. She’d watched her own hands painting the words of her death on the walls. She’d heard her own mouth form hissing words, opening up the cold, damp place that would be her tomb. She’d finally realised what she’d done, what was she was doing, and had screamed and cried and tried to stop. She’d tried to fight Tom, but he was too strong and had come out of the diary and laughed at her and she had thought that she would die of fear alone. She’d known that she was going to die, with Tom’s flickering image before her eyes, getting stronger and darker. Then the pain, the fear, the everything had gone and for a fleeting weightless second Ginny had been aware of her surroundings but had given in to them. There had not been enough of her left to feel, but she had been just conscious enough to know that it was her death and to be glad that it was over when her eyes rolled up into her head and her knees crumbled beneath her and she fell. She did not remember hitting the floor.
Ginny shook her head. It wasn’t the time to be thinking of the Chamber. If what she could understand from the chaos of her surroundings was true, then Voldemort - and Tom Riddle, her conqueror, along with him - had been destroyed. Certainly the Death Eaters had all begun to scream and clutch their arms. It had made some of them fight more fiercely, it had made others stop fighting altogether, but it had meant that something had happened. It meant that Harry had done it.
Fear welled up in Ginny and she wanted to sit on the ground and bawl. She had seen so many bodies and she knew some of her friends were dead and knew that some of them were injured and didn’t know where all her family were - she had seen Fred but not George, knew her mother was at the school somewhere, but hadn’t seen her since the start of the battle, knew Ron was in the hospital wing, hadn’t seen Charlie or Bill, didn’t know if Percy had fought, knew Hermione was all right but had no idea where Harry was, knew that Colin Creevey was dead.
“Ginny?”
Luna’s robes were badly torn, but her wand was held limply by her side and apart from a scratch on her cheek she looked unhurt. Ginny flung her arms around her and found that Luna was shaking.
“Oh, Luna. I don’t know where everyone is. I don’t want to look.”
Luna patted her back. “We have to,” she said, no trace of the dream in her voice. “If no one looks then no one will know.”
Ginny squeezed her eyes closed and then nodded. “I know.” Then the idea came to her and it was so obvious she could have screamed. The map. Harry’s map and Harry’s mirror. She pulled the mirror from her pocket. It was badly cracked and as she called into it she didn’t expect an answer. She didn’t get one. Pulling Luna after her she sped to the Gryffindor tower. The Fat Lady had been blasted from the wall. Ginny scrambled through, her wand out because not all areas of the school had been secured. There was blood on the walls and Neville bleeding in a chair. She thrust him into Luna’s arms.
“Get him to the hospital wing,” she said, and was gone, up the stairs and into the dormitory. She unearthed the map with fumbling fingers, tapped it, and watched the parchment blossom into life. She scanned it feverishly, wanting to find so many names that she couldn’t find any of them. Slowing her breaths, hating herself for choosing, she just looked for Harry.
She met Lupin and Hermione on her way to McGonagall’s office, Hermione talking very quickly about Ron being stable and not wanting to leave him but Harry, and Lupin saying nothing at all. The staircase was open. Ginny raced up it, slowing at the top, waiting for the other two, wary of what would be in the room. But then she ran again, was the first to run inside, the first to see the crumpled remains on the floor by the desk. Harry lay motionless nearby. Before she thought of moving she was on her knees next to him, Hermione on his other side.
“Harry.”
Like a miracle, his eyes flickered open. But Ginny’s breath caught and Hermione let out a whimper as Harry’s face showed, not fear, pain, relief, joy, wonder, despair, horror, grief, but absolutely no recognition at all.
*
Four
“Ron!”
Harry watched Ron being half-smothered by Mrs Weasley and grinned. Smiling was good. It cut through the tiredness that had settled as an ache throughout his body.
“Mum, are they here?” Ginny, Fred and George burst into the room. Ginny stopped short and just stared at him, laughing breathlessly, but Harry nearly stumbled as Fred and George whacked him on the back at the same time, so exuberantly that their greeting had almost the same force as Hagrid’s, and then it was Harry’s turn to be pulled into Mrs Weasley’s arms. He let himself relax into the hug, feeling warm and happy and something rather like a lump in his throat.
“There now,” Mrs Weasley said, releasing Harry and sniffing slightly. “You two must be starving. “We’re eating once we’re all together this evening, but I can do you a round of bacon and eggs if you’re hungry now.”
Ron and Harry were hungry now. They made short work of the bacon and eggs and the bread and butter Mrs Weasley gave them to go with it, even with the questions that the others were asking. Afterwards Mrs Weasley told them to go upstairs and have a nap, and Fred and George told them not to be so daft, they’d taken the afternoon off -“Christmas Eve, too,” - to be here when they arrived and they were bloody well coming to do some flying with them.
Now he’d started to smile, Harry found he couldn’t stop. He was at The Burrow. It was Christmas Eve and he was going to spend the whole of the next day with the Weasleys, Tonks and Lupin. There were still worries. Hermione had insisted on seeing her parents, and wouldn’t be joining them until that evening. She and Ron had argued over whether it was safe or not and Ron had tried to get Hermione to let him and Harry stay with her in case of an attack. Harry, feeling that Hermione might like some time alone with her parents, did not like leaving her, but had had to satisfy himself and Ron by putting up as many wards as they could think of around the house. Hermione’s parents had already been well-protected by magic, they’d seen to that last summer. Hermione was probably safer at her parents’ house than she would be at The Burrow (although if the wards were breached then Hermione would be fighting alone) but after the four months of searching Harry, Ron and Hermione had been through together, it seemed unthinkable that she was not here with them.
Harry was also thinking about the task ahead that lay shielded by the promise of rest and Christmas, but which would come all too soon the day after next. They had finally succeeded in locating and destroying Hufflepuff’s cup, but Slytherin’s locket was next. Then there was the feeling that he was not going fast enough. It had taken so long to find the cup and to work out how to obliterate the Horcrux within, and during that time there had been attacks, disappearances, deaths. Voldemort’s hold on the wizarding world was growing ever tighter and Harry didn’t feel he was doing enough to loosen it.
“Hey, Harry, that Firebolt’s for flying on, you know.”
“Get on up here, we’re losing the light.”
Harry stared up at Fred and George who were circling his head. Ron was pulling on his Keeper gloves, his long legs dangling from his broom. Ginny had the Quaffle tucked under her arm.
“How about Harry and me versus you three?” she said. “We try to score, you try to stop us.”
“Yes, Harry. No scoring with our little sister.”
“Not while we’re on the pitch.”
Fred and George tapped their Beater’s bats together.
Harry felt his face flush. He glanced at Ron, who wore a pained expression, and then at Ginny, who appeared utterly calm.
“You two,” she said to the twins, “are such idiots.” Then she shot into the air and swooped past Fred and George, her chin set and the Quaffle held firmly against her side.
Harry leapt onto his broom and after her, even as Fred and George span to follow, the four of them pelting as fast as they could towards where Ron was guarding the hoops.
For the next sixty airborne minutes, the Bludger and the Quaffle, Ron’s solid goalkeeping, the twins’ gibes and Ginny’s whipping hair and fierce smile were the sum total of Harry’s worries.
*
Eleven
Ginny sat straight up in bed, forcing mouthfuls of tepid air into her lungs. Her skin prickled; she felt cold even though it was a warm night, and realised it was because she was covered with a sheen of cold sweat. She shuddered.
What had she been dreaming of? She was no stranger to nightmares: Tom’s face in the Chamber, the slow sucking of her soul. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad...I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!; black figures blocking the way out, wands pointed at their hearts, Bellatrix Lestrange’s voice, the keen, hungry look in the woman’s mad eyes: “take the smallest one. Let him watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it."; the sneer of pleasure on the Death Eater’s face as she dodged his curses. "Crucio - Crucio - you can't dance forever, pretty-". And those were just her experiences. She dreamed of things she had not seen. She dreamed, sometimes, of Harry’s mother dying and the wand being lowered to Harry’s face. She dreamed of the basilisk sinking its teeth into someone’s flesh and heard her own mad laughter. She dreamed of the graveyard where Voldemort had risen. After the article Harry had put in the Quibbler about it she tortured herself at night by picturing Voldemort’s distorted face as he rose from the cauldron. She dreamed of the Department of Mysteries - of running and being chased and flaring pain and Harry’s screams. She dreamed of last year, of Greyback lunging at Bill, of the whistling curses. She even dreamed of the floating figure of Dumbledore falling from the tower.
This year, of course, had given her new dreams. The blood at Hogwarts. The procession of the dead. Her own blood. Luna shaking and Neville bleeding. The glimpse she’d had of Voldemort’s body. Harry’s blank expression. “Who am I?”
In the Chamber, at the Department of Mysteries, even while she was fighting at Hogwarts, Harry had been there. He had saved her life in the Chamber, he had protected her at the Department of Mysteries. He had taken down the Death Eater who had been trying to hit her with the Cruciatus curse. Ginny was not a little girl who needed protection, although she had once been. Harry had saved her as a child. She had followed him into danger. She had accepted that he was going to keep going into danger and she had let him try to keep her safe. She had let herself be unimportant.
Harry’s task was done, now, and he couldn’t remember doing it, how he’d come to do it, or those who had loved him on the way. She supposed that this was his chance to be unimportant. The Wizarding world might lose interest in a hero who couldn’t remember his heroic deeds. Now that the world didn’t need Harry Potter any more, they might let him go.
But his friends would not. Ginny thought of Harry alone at the hospital. He was recovering well physically, and would probably be being released soon had he kept his memories. The Healers didn’t know why he couldn’t remember. They murmured placatingly about ‘extreme pressure’ and ‘stress’, as though fighting a war was like taking NEWTs. They spoke to him in that soothingly cheerful tone the Healer had used to speak to Gilderoy Lockhart and it made Ginny want to hex something. Harry was still Harry. He had lost his memories, but that didn’t make him mad. He shouldn’t be cooped up in a hospital. She felt worse because no one was sitting with him at nights now that he was getting better. She knew he didn’t need anyone there - might even be relieved at the space; she had not missed the panic in his face when he was introduced to friends whom he did not remember.
Yet she hated the thought of him being alone. Because he couldn’t remember them, couldn’t remember himself, he didn’t know why they loved him. And so, she reasoned, he might think that they would stop.
She wouldn’t. She didn’t know, exactly, what they had been when they were a couple. It had not been for long enough to tell, and she had known that it would end. But it had been comfortable and exhilarating and happy. She wanted more, but even if she never got it she would still love Harry, her friend, part of her family.
Ginny got out of bed and pulled on a jumper and jeans. Padding to the door, she wondered which of the inhabitants of The Burrow would be easiest to persuade. Hermione would scold in a soothing tone. So would Mum, and she couldn’t get Dad without waking her mother. Of her brothers, Fred and George were best for a spot of rule-breaking, but they were at their Diagon Alley flat. She wouldn’t need Fred and George, though, because this was Harry. She knew who would take her to him - after a little pleading. Closing the door quietly behind her, Ginny went to wake Ron.
*
Six
Harry, Ron and Hermione crept into Grimmauld Place, where the air was stagnant and thick with dust. The house had an air of death about it; and if it had been used since Sirius’s death then it certainly hadn’t been used since Dumbledore’s, as Snape knew its location.
Harry tried hard not to shiver. The house was cold, too. It was January, freezing outside and possibly even colder within the walls of number twelve. Harry could feel the warm puffs of Ron and Hermione’s breath behind him, and watched foggy clouds form in the darkened hallway as he himself breathed in and out.
“Harry,” Hermione whispered. “This could be a trap.”
“It doesn’t look as though anyone’s been here for months,” Harry heard Ron say, but Ron didn’t sound sure.
There could well be traps - even Snape - lying in wait for them here. Harry knew that this was a dangerous place to be, but he’d remembered half an hour ago that the ‘R’ and the ‘B’ of R.A.B. could be Regulus Black. It was the only lead they had, they’d been searching fruitlessly for a week, and Harry was at the point where a trap and the possibility of fighting Snape would be a satisfying way to break the monotony of the Horcrux hunt.
His heart was beating rapidly as he took a cautious step forward in the hall. He knew it was dangerous and he was well aware that he had come out worse of the last encounter he’d had with Snape, and wasn’t sure if he’d be able to best him if he fought him again. But he had to do something in order to feel that he was doing anything. He was willing to take the risks if it meant that the next Horcrux came a little closer. Of course, he wished that Ron and Hermione had waited for him outside; there was no point endangering the lot of them, but it was hardly worth the argument these days. In fact, Ron had even suggested that he go alone as he, Ron, was expendable and Harry was not.
“We’ll just check the tapestry and get out,” Harry muttered, his voice low. He didn’t want to wake anything in this slumbering house. The three of them crept into the sitting room and over to the wall where the Black tapestry hung in the shadows. Harry, wary of using magic, lit a stub of candle with a match. He, Ron and Hermione bent low over the tapestry, but almost at once Harry knew that they’d made a mistake.
The fine gold thread glittered in the candlelight, mocking him. Draco Malfoy, the nearest name said. Narcissa Black. To the left the gold thread spelled Regulus Black. Disappointment crashed in Harry’s chest and Ron swore under his breath.
There were no middle names.
“Do you think the members of the Black family weren’t given middle names, or do you think they just weren’t put on the tapestry?” asked Hermione.
“Dunno,” Ron said. “There probably wasn’t room on the tapestry. I bet bloody Malfoy’s got hundreds of middle names.”
Harry felt a surge of excitement. “I know who we can ask.”
Ron looked puzzled, but Hermione gasped and said, “Harry, don’t!” Harry ignored her, striding out of the living room and into the hallway. He wrenched back the curtains on Mrs Black’s portrait with a detached pleasure.
At once, the house rang with screams. Mrs Black leaped forwards in her canvas, close enough for Harry to see the spittle flying from her mouth.
“Filth! Scum! Vile product of a Mudblood’s womb who thinks he can claim the house of the Blacks.”
Harry grinned. “Hullo, Mrs Black,” he said. “What was your son’s name?”
Mrs Black hissed. “I do not speak his name, the shamed one, the bane of my flesh; he betrayed his fathers and his name. Muggle-loving blood-traitor! I have no son.”
Last year Harry would have shouted back at hearing Sirius spoken about like that. The anger was inside him somewhere but he was numbed to it now.
“No,” he said calmly. “I didn’t mean Sirius. I meant your other son. What was Regulus’s middle name?”
For the first time, Mrs Black spoke quietly. “My pride. The pride of the Blacks. Regulus, my child. How dare you speak his name?”
Harry snorted. “The pride of the Blacks was a Death Eater who got himself killed by his own side. What was his name?”
“He knew his duty. He was proud of his heritage. He brought no shame, no shame.”
“He was killed by another Death Eater when he was too scared to follow orders. It might even have been Bellatrix who did it. Yeah, I bet it was. What was his name?”
“Noo! He was a fine boy, my flesh, my soul. He was the future of the family, snuffed out, destroyed by treachery of blood.”
“What was his name?”
“Get out of my house, you traitors, you filth, you vile sickness, spreading disease, you murdered my house, you …”
There was a flash through a nearby landscape and then a figure landed in Mrs Black’s portrait. Harry stared. It was the figure of a young man, barely older than Harry himself.
“Mother, be quiet.” Mrs Black froze.
He was dressed in high-collared formal robes in black and silver. He had slicked back dark hair and when he turned to face them, Harry saw that he had Sirius’s pale grey eyes.
“My name,” he said in a voice that was not quite steady, “was Regulus Arcturus Black.”
“My child,” Mrs Black crooned. “My son.”
Regulus Black spared his mother a flickering glance and then turned away.
“You’re R.A.B.” Hermione whispered.
The portrait looked confused. “Those were my initials. Why do you want them?”
“You found something,” Harry said. “Something of Voldemort’s.”
Regulus flinched. “The Dark Lord’s?” Slowly, his painted eyes on Harry, he rolled up his sleeve to reveal the Dark Mark. “He was my master,” he said, his tone doubtful.
“He fought for our heritage,” whispered Mrs Black. “My valiant son, my …”
“Shut up,” snapped Harry and Regulus as one.
“Harry,” Hermione said, “it’s no good. He won’t remember anything from after his portrait was painted.”
Harry ignored her. “You wanted to stop being a Death Eater,” he said. “You discovered something that would help kill Voldemort if it were destroyed. You stole it and left a note. But I don’t know if you destroyed it.”
Regulus bowed his head. “Your friend is right. I can’t help you,” he said.
“Don’t you have any idea what you’d have done with it?” asked Ron. “If you didn’t have much time and needed something to be safe, where would you take it?”
“I would have brought it here,” Regulus said. He looked at his mother, who was sobbing quietly in her chair. “It is the only home I have ever known.”
Hermione’s hand flew to her mouth. Harry span round to look at her. Her eyes seemed impossibly wide. She lowered her hand. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “It was here. There was a locket. I remember now. None of us could open it, so we threw it away.”
“Kreacher,” Harry breathed, just as Ron said, “Mundungus.”
“Find it,” Regulus said. Harry looked back to him. His forearm was still exposed and the Dark Mark, black and undulating, was still visible. “Find it and destroy it, if I did not. And kill the Dark Lord, if there is a way.”
“There is a way,” Harry said, and looking at Regulus it almost felt as though he was talking to Sirius one last time. “And I’ll try.”
*
Thirteen
The remembrance garden was off the path between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. There had been some discussion as to where to put it. Some argued that it should be on the Hogwarts grounds, where the final battle had taken place and where the generations of students to come would be taught to respect the sacrifices of the past and to uphold what they had fought for. This was hardly fair, though, to those who had lost loved ones and who could not access the school grounds in order to visit their memorials. Remembrance was for everyone: there should be no restrictions as to who could visit and who could not.
So the memorial garden was built outside of the Hogwarts gates, where students on their way to Hogsmeade would be able to see as they passed by, and where anyone could come to stop and sit and remember.
Ginny’s mother had been horrified to hear that Ginny, Ron and Hermione wanted to take Harry to the garden (“you can’t take him to the remembrance garden when he’s lost his memories!”), but Remus Lupin had backed them up. Harry was well enough to make short excursions away from the hospital, it would do him good to get some fresh air and, when asked, Harry had said that he wanted to go.
Although it had been Ginny’s idea, she worried that it had been a bad one when she, Ron and Hermione arrived with Harry on a sunny afternoon in late July.
“We don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” Hermione said at once, as Harry looked around at the garden and the flowers with a shocked expression on his face.
“No, it’s fine. Could you give me a minute, please?”
There was a circular bench in the centre of the plot of land, encompassing a small sapling of yew. Ginny sat down on it next to Ron and Hermione and tried not to watch as he wandered about the garden. It was full of nooks and crannies, bursting with colours and blossoms and foliage. The families and friends of lost ones had claimed little corners in which to remember them, and planted flowers and ferns and shrubs in their honour. Small marble stones were dotted about the place, half-hidden under petals and greenery, but plentiful.
The garden was beautiful and awful in this way. Its surprising hidden places meant that each time you came back there would be another memory, another name engraved on marble, which had been overlooked before. Ginny’s eyes followed Harry. He was looking lost in the Bones section, which was a riot of yellow honeysuckle. The scent was sweet and the flowers small and lovely, but Ginny saw Harry reading the stones and knew that he was startled, as she had been, at how many members of the same family the flowers had been planted for.
The Diggory patch was next, and Ginny wondered whether it wasn’t better that Harry was encountering the memorials without remembering the horrible circumstances in which they had died. Perhaps that would help him, if he ever got his memories back, to process the grief as the garden was meant to do: to turn loss and horror and sadness into something wholesome and bright and lasting. The pain would never leave - it was never meant to - and the marble stones would weather but not disintegrate as the flowers in the garden wilted and faded and sprung up anew each year.
She got up and went to Harry, who was standing in front of a pair of straight-stemmed sunflowers. She swallowed. The plaque beneath them was in memory of Gideon and Fabian Prewett.
“Mum’s brothers,” she said to him. He turned to her, obviously unsure of what to say.
“They died last time,” she told him. “This garden’s for anyone who died because of Voldemort.”
He nodded. “I knew that,” he said. “I was wondering - my parents?” Harry knew his history - he’d spent a day talking to Remus last week and now he was re-mourning the family that he had not known. Was it better to lose what you had lost all memory of? Harry could have been told that she had died, or that Ron and Hermione had, and he would not have grieved for them but would perhaps have mourned that he could not grieve.
She grabbed his hand, and she remembered its shape and the feel of his skin. His fingers curled around hers.
“We thought that should be up to you,” she said. He nodded once, and they moved on. Hermione looked up from where she was sitting close to Ron, but Ginny met her eyes and Hermione gave the tiniest of smiles and made no move towards them.
Harry’s hand was warm against hers, and a small, vain, part of herself hoped that her palm wasn’t sweaty. She smiled. Suddenly life seemed to be the most important thing, and it was this garden, a garden full of the names and the flowers of the dead, which was scented and glorious on a fine summer’s day, which made her thrum with the beauty of life and of living.
“Ginny,” Harry said, his voice painfully earnest. “What were we? Before I forgot everything.”
She looked up at the sky, staring at a cloud until it became a shape - someone riding a broomstick and throwing a Quaffle.
“We were friends,” she said, without looking down. She didn’t want to see his face. Didn’t want to see if he looked pleased or disappointed or embarrassed.
“Oh. Good friends?”
How easy it would be, she thought, as another cloud formed itself into a second Chaser (and if she squinted it looked as though it was pulling off a Porskoff Ploy) to tell him that they were close, that she was the key to his memories, that she could tell him everything he needed to know about himself.
“Quite good,” she said. “Not like you and Ron and Hermione, but we got on well. We went out for a bit. Not long.”
It sounded so childish when she said it like that. So easily dismissed. But how could she tell him how much he was to her - what he’d been to her for years and what she hoped she’d become for him? There were things that she’d waited a year to say to him, and now she couldn’t say them because he could not remember.
He looked up at the sky as well. Ginny was tempted to ask him if the clouds were forming shapes for him too, wanting to relieve the tension that was building up between them.
“I heard you and Ron talking,” he said, and Ginny felt something cold on either side of her ribcage. “The night you came into the room and fell asleep.”
She stayed silent. Up in the sky a Beater hit a Bludger at her Chasers and they scattered, dropping the Quaffle and an opposing Chaser appeared, swooping down upon the Quaffle and bearing it off, trailing little puffs of cloud in its wake.
He stopped walking and waited for her to look at him. She kept her self-control tight within her, and met his look. His expression was pure Harry and she felt her lips curling into a smile despite it all.
He was also blushing. “Look, were you in love with me?” It came out in a rush, like a burst dam, like a plea. ‘Was I in love with you?’ she felt but did not hear him ask.
“No. I don’t know. I wasn’t - I’m not, but …” but she could feel herself falling, and it was like a landslide or falling from a broom and not hitting the ground but knowing that someday she would because it was inevitable. She was still holding his hand, and to drop it now would seem rude, but she was terribly conscious of his fingers brushing against hers, and the press of his palm, warm and - now - slightly damp. “You’re a friend, and you’re part of the family, and you’re, well, you’re Harry.”
A cloud had broken into three and stretched up into three tall goal hoops, and a Keeper drifted to and fro before them.
“I don’t really feel much like Harry,” he said with a deprecating laugh.
She once would have kissed that lost look from his face, or rested her head against his shoulder. This was too fragile though, so she swung their clasped hands slightly and gave him a grin.
“You are. You haven’t changed a bit.”
They had made their way back to the bench and Ron and Hermione, and she let go of Harry’s hand to let him sit with them and talk. She lay down on her back on the grass and watched her cloud Quidditch team. She supposed that whoever had Charmed the clouds to be manipulated had envisioned grieving relatives looking up at loved ones in the sky. Perhaps she ought to feel disrespectful for being so trivial in such a serious place, but she didn’t. Instead she listened to the murmur of voices behind her and kept her focus firmly on her Quidditch game, amusing herself by using all the fouls she could remember, allowing the beating warmth of the sun to soak into her limbs, and thinking words like ‘rest’ and ‘peace’.
“Are you asleep, Ginny?” Ron asked at last.
She raised her head - her neck was stiff. “No. I’m watching the clouds play Quidditch.”
“Cumulus Control. Oh, I’ve heard about this,” Hermione said softly. Ginny twisted to see Ron and Hermione looking up into the sky.
“It’s Hogwarts,” Ron said. “Look.” The castle of thick white cloud looked like an ethereal faerie palace. It had none of the stony reassurance of the school. Faint wisps of turret moved in the breeze and, impressive though the replica was, somehow it was too similar to Hogwarts and yet too insubstantial for Ginny to like it.
A body settled beside hers. “I can see your Quidditch game,” Harry said, staring straight above him. One of the Chasers did a showy loop the loop, scoring whilst upside down. “Oh, that’s brilliant.”
Ginny concentrated on using the best Quidditch moves she could think of, many of which she’d been taught by Harry when he was Quidditch captain. Harry’s face lost the pained, worried look he’d worn in the hospital. He grinned as he watched the players, looking calm and happy. He looked like he did when he flew, and Ginny too felt the excitement of dodging Bludgers and sinking the Quaffle through the hoops, and the deep thrill of being airborne.
It was perfect.
They were lying side by side, and when his hand brushed against hers she thought it was an accident. Then he turned his head, his face still loose from laughter but with the old look seeping back behind his eyes.
“I’m sorry for forgetting,” he said.
Ginny didn’t think she could speak - not without saying far too much - so instead she took his wrist and pointed to the sky where her flimsy cloud Seeker pulled out of a spinning dive with a tiny Snitch of cloud and dreams beating in its hand.
*
His head’s still swimming and the room pounds with noise: laughter, tears, the sounds of joy. It’s his joy; joy for him, his family, his home. He crouches in front of her on the floor and she looks at him, half laughing, then she buries her face in his neck. He feels her mouthing words against his skin, and knows what she means rather than what she is saying. That unknowable emotion has been replaced by a fierce rush of feeling and he pulls her tight against him, looks over her shoulder at the others, and takes in steady, warm breaths. He’s here.
*
Eight
Harry ducks a spell, registering only briefly that the light is green, before he is moving forwards again, skirting around a body - he can’t look who, he can’t - and nearly twisting his ankle on a loose stone that has broken from the base of the wall. It is like last year all over again. Death Eaters are at Hogwarts and Harry, like last year, is running through the school, seeing his friends fighting at the edges of his vision and feeling horrified - in the way that little old ladies are horrified - at the aberration that is Death Eaters flitting like dark shadows in the hallways of his school.
Of his home. His world.
He can feel the castle gathering around him, trying to repel and expel the Death Eaters like a body rejecting a splinter. Except for this time it is the whole wizarding world that could be splintering itself. It seems foolish that something as supposedly solid as a world can be brought down by these fleeting moments of shouts and flashing spells. Some part of Harry can’t quite accept that this is it, that this is his last and best chance. He knows but does not feel that sometime in the next few minutes he will end it or it will all end.
But Harry does not have time to think, is not even aware that he is thinking. All he can do is fight and run and cast and duck and hope as each bolt of light whistles past him that it will not find its target.
Some of them invariably do: Harry sees Filch, wielding a sharpened broom handle, caught by a curse that sends him to the ground. The crack of his head against the stone floor causes a pool of blood to start to form. Harry nearly slips in it as he fends off Amycus and Alecto. Eventually he sends one reeling into the other and he keeps running. A group of Hufflepuffs are cowering behind Professor Sprout, who is bleeding feely but fighting on, and Harry knows that he ought to stop and help and knows that he must keep going. He is saved from the decision by Ernie Macmillan and Hannah Abbott who come to stand on either side of their housemistress. Harry turns away even as Professor Sprout finally falls.
He feels a flash of relief and fear every time he sees Weasley red hair. He’d lost Ron and Hermione and Ginny shortly after sprinting to the castle from Hagrid’s hut and he hopes they’re still safe and together.
He sees Remus duelling Greyback - Greyback’s teeth are bared and bloody - and then there is a screech and Fleur Weasley launches herself upon Greyback, her wand whipping through the air in one hand and the other hand clenched in curved talons raised to Greyback’s face and Harry runs on, chest tight and breath rasping. He throws himself into a passageway behind a tapestry, hoping that he does not meet Snape or Malfoy on the way because if he does he will not be able to stop himself from attacking. He does see Bellatrix Lestrange. She has Neville backed into a corner and her face is twisted into the mocking expression that makes Harry’s blood froth with hate. He aims for her and she spins to shield herself. It gives Neville all he needs to come forwards, wand steady, eyes fierce and start to duel her once more. Harry expects Neville to shout “You can do better than that!” as he blocks her curses and Bellatrix screams in rage, but if he does Harry doesn’t hear because he is running onwards.
He does not know why he must get to Dumbledore’s office - it has been McGonagall’s for a year and yet Harry can think of it in no other terms - but it is the heart of the school and if he is to face Tom Riddle tonight then it will be there. He skids to a halt at the stone gargoyle which appears sooner than he expected it to. As soon as he stops he feels his legs shaking and the pain in his lungs and the weakness in his arms and he stumbles, bracing himself against the statue. His steadying hand leaves a bloody print on the stone and, as though that is all the password that is needed, the gargoyle leaps aside.
Knowing what he will find, Harry climbs the spiral staircase.
*
Two
It had been a beautiful wedding. Indecently beautiful, Harry remembered thinking, as the bright sun beamed down upon the crooked roof of The Burrow. As though reacting to the certain darkness that lay ahead, the day was a shining one of golden light. The grass smelt better than grass had ever smelt; the sky was bluer than before; the indolent breeze drifted like the lazy touch of cool fingers. Harry never expected anything this summer to be perfect, but it felt as though the day was trying its hardest. For Bill and Fleur’s sakes, he was glad.
Of course, the day was not perfect. Harry knew what the evening would bring and he felt the guilt and weight of it clinging to him, shroud-like on his shoulders, rock-like in his stomach. It was easier to ignore, or to hide. The morning had been so frantic that Harry had been able to look away from Ginny’s forthright glance over breakfast. He knew that she knew that they would go. Mrs Weasley had been prone to tears all day, and so Harry could pretend not to notice her grief-stricken face whenever she looked at him or Ron or Hermione. Harry could not quite disregard the way in which Ron walked through the house and grounds of his childhood with wide eyes, as though he wanted to see everything for what could be the last time. Hermione spent the day clutching people’s hands: his, Ron’s, Ginny’s; running her fingers over the kitchen table and the banisters and the mantelpiece when she thought that no one was looking. Harry could tell she wanted to soak up the reassurance of what was to Hermione a second home.
Harry understood. He had said goodbye to Privet Drive and the Dursleys with little regret bar a forlorn sort of sorrow of what his childhood could have been and an overriding anger at what it was. Both feelings had been easy to push away. But The Burrow was a place where he had been loved and accepted and, what is more, it was full of the people he hated most to leave. It was full of the people he wanted most to save. He wished, too, that Ron and Hermione would be staying with them - so that he wouldn’t have to witness with averted eyes their silent goodbyes, so he wouldn’t have to feel that he was wrenching them away as well as himself - but he was undeniably glad that he would have their company when he left. He tried not to think about how much he would miss Ginny’s company, already so familiar to him, but concentrated instead on the thought that at least she would be safe. She, at least, wouldn’t be endangered because of him.
Like the weather, the wedding guests seemed to be making an extra effort to be cheerful. Fred and George were frenzied in their high spirits, which Harry was extremely thankful for, for the thought of a subdued Fred and George was incomprehensible. Charlie was back from Romania and was given the task of keeping the twins in hand.
“He’s the only one in the family who can manage them,” Ron said, pointing to wear Charlie was holding both Fred and George several inches off the ground by the scruff of their dress robes.
“That’s not true,” Ginny said, coming up behind them and startling Harry. “They’d do anything for Mum when she’s really upset.”
Harry looked at Ginny, who was wearing her buttery-gold bridesmaid’s dress. She had obviously escaped whilst having her hair done. It was coiled up on her head and half of it was intertwined with tiny yellow flowers. He gulped, and words pressed themselves against the back of his throat. Ginny turned to him as if she knew there were things that he was trying not to say, but then there was a roar from Charlie as Fred and George both breathed plumes of fire at him and Charlie burst into bright orange flames. Hermione gave a little scream, but when the smoke cleared they saw that Fred, George and Charlie were all laughing.
Ginny grinned, winked at Harry (he gulped again), and marched over to her brothers with her hands on her hips. “Mum is going to kill you for ruining your dress robes,” she said. “And you,” she turned on Charlie, “you’re meant to be the best man. Do you really think Fleur will let you stand anywhere near her if your robes stink of smoke?”
Ron sniggered loudly. Charlie, Fred and George, all much bigger than Ginny, managed to look suitably chastised for a few seconds before Fred made his wand belch smoke into Charlie’s face. Ginny started to laugh and Charlie performed a spell that got rid of the smell and all the sooty marks on their robes.
“You’re good,” he told the twins, “but you’re nothing compared to dragons. We’ve got a French Firebrand who can blast the length of five Quidditch pitches.
“Talking of French Firebrands, isn’t Fleur going to be wondering where you are?” George asked Ginny.
Ginny sighed. “I don’t like that hair dresser. She’s a friend of Fleur’s from school.” She put on a heavy French accent. “Ah, I do not know when I ‘ave ‘ad such a challenge. All zis ‘air. And it is so … red.”
Ginny’s hair had seemed even redder as she walked down the aisle with Fleur and Gabrielle, and her face was slightly pink with the heat. Fleur was ice white, illuminated by the sunshine into some blazing, shining creature. Next to Harry, Ron made a strained sound, and Hermione caught Harry’s eye and smiled.
It had been a beautiful wedding, and Harry couldn’t believe that it had only happened that day. He was sitting at the mouth of the tent he, Ron and Hermione were to share. They had set up camp in the plot of land where Harry’s parents’ house had stood. Harry had not expected to see so little evidence of them there. He had expected to feel closer to his mother and father - to feel a connection to them here. This was the place where he had been happy. Here, he had been wholly loved. His parents had died for him here. Harry tried to picture Voldemort’s tread across this land, perhaps with Peter Pettigrew shuffling in his wake.
Hatred, betrayal, grief, determination, love … sentiments that were well-worn and fresh at the same time. This place was where it had all started for Harry. His first loves and griefs had been here.
Harry peered over his shoulder into the gloomy tent and made out the sleeping forms of Ron and Hermione. He pictured The Burrow, with the wedding guests dancing in the garden, Mrs Weasley beaming and wiping her eyes and Mr Weasley filling everyone’s glasses to the brim. He saw Bill and Fleur standing together, Fleur’s face softened and Bill smiling so widely that the scars were almost obliterated. He thought of his parents’ wedding. That too had taken place in the dark times of a war and he wondered if it had been as full of determined joy as the one he had been to today. (He thought of Remus dancing slowly with Tonks and he knew why he hadn’t asked him.) And he remembered Ginny’s face, suddenly pale, and knew that home was not this place he had come to, but the place that he had left.
He hoped it still would be if he came back to it again.
*
Nine
While the battle had been raging, Ginny had not noticed how much blood there was. She had not even noticed her own for a while, and it had been Ron who cried out and pushed her to the ground, and Hermione who had peeled back Ginny’s robes and gasped. Only then had Ginny looked down at the wound that puckered her side and raised her hands only to see them gleaming with blood that must have been hers and which she had not felt.
She had got Hermione to patch her up as best she could and then a shriek had distracted them and they’d watched Hagrid and Grawp ploughing through the thronging corridor. The next time Ginny looked at her hands the blood had dried to brown and crusted under her fingernails.
Some of the blood, though, was still wet. The floors were sticky and slippery with it. Ginny navigated carefully, levitating bodies before her as she joined the group of people - the survivors - who were getting the injured to the hospital wing. It seemed to Ginny faintly unbelievable that Madam Pomfrey was there as always, bustling over the beds - more beds than Ginny had ever seen in the infirmary. Hermione stayed to help and to flutter by Ron’s bedside. There were Healers coming into the room in streams, and Portkeys taking the most seriously injured to St Mungo’s.
The dead were taken to the Great Hall. As she walked the corridors Ginny saw the two tides of levitated bodies. Upwards for life and downwards for death. After the first few familiar bodies on their way to the Great Hall Ginny had to shut down her emotions, cut off her tears, watch with dispassion as she saw Colin Creevey’s arm dangle in a mockery of a farewell wave when someone she did not know passed her with his body. She felt, for the moment, soulless. It was a feeling she recognised from the Chamber. She’d watched her own hands painting the words of her death on the walls. She’d heard her own mouth form hissing words, opening up the cold, damp place that would be her tomb. She’d finally realised what she’d done, what was she was doing, and had screamed and cried and tried to stop. She’d tried to fight Tom, but he was too strong and had come out of the diary and laughed at her and she had thought that she would die of fear alone. She’d known that she was going to die, with Tom’s flickering image before her eyes, getting stronger and darker. Then the pain, the fear, the everything had gone and for a fleeting weightless second Ginny had been aware of her surroundings but had given in to them. There had not been enough of her left to feel, but she had been just conscious enough to know that it was her death and to be glad that it was over when her eyes rolled up into her head and her knees crumbled beneath her and she fell. She did not remember hitting the floor.
Ginny shook her head. It wasn’t the time to be thinking of the Chamber. If what she could understand from the chaos of her surroundings was true, then Voldemort - and Tom Riddle, her conqueror, along with him - had been destroyed. Certainly the Death Eaters had all begun to scream and clutch their arms. It had made some of them fight more fiercely, it had made others stop fighting altogether, but it had meant that something had happened. It meant that Harry had done it.
Fear welled up in Ginny and she wanted to sit on the ground and bawl. She had seen so many bodies and she knew some of her friends were dead and knew that some of them were injured and didn’t know where all her family were - she had seen Fred but not George, knew her mother was at the school somewhere, but hadn’t seen her since the start of the battle, knew Ron was in the hospital wing, hadn’t seen Charlie or Bill, didn’t know if Percy had fought, knew Hermione was all right but had no idea where Harry was, knew that Colin Creevey was dead.
“Ginny?”
Luna’s robes were badly torn, but her wand was held limply by her side and apart from a scratch on her cheek she looked unhurt. Ginny flung her arms around her and found that Luna was shaking.
“Oh, Luna. I don’t know where everyone is. I don’t want to look.”
Luna patted her back. “We have to,” she said, no trace of the dream in her voice. “If no one looks then no one will know.”
Ginny squeezed her eyes closed and then nodded. “I know.” Then the idea came to her and it was so obvious she could have screamed. The map. Harry’s map and Harry’s mirror. She pulled the mirror from her pocket. It was badly cracked and as she called into it she didn’t expect an answer. She didn’t get one. Pulling Luna after her she sped to the Gryffindor tower. The Fat Lady had been blasted from the wall. Ginny scrambled through, her wand out because not all areas of the school had been secured. There was blood on the walls and Neville bleeding in a chair. She thrust him into Luna’s arms.
“Get him to the hospital wing,” she said, and was gone, up the stairs and into the dormitory. She unearthed the map with fumbling fingers, tapped it, and watched the parchment blossom into life. She scanned it feverishly, wanting to find so many names that she couldn’t find any of them. Slowing her breaths, hating herself for choosing, she just looked for Harry.
She met Lupin and Hermione on her way to McGonagall’s office, Hermione talking very quickly about Ron being stable and not wanting to leave him but Harry, and Lupin saying nothing at all. The staircase was open. Ginny raced up it, slowing at the top, waiting for the other two, wary of what would be in the room. But then she ran again, was the first to run inside, the first to see the crumpled remains on the floor by the desk. Harry lay motionless nearby. Before she thought of moving she was on her knees next to him, Hermione on his other side.
“Harry.”
Like a miracle, his eyes flickered open. But Ginny’s breath caught and Hermione let out a whimper as Harry’s face showed, not fear, pain, relief, joy, wonder, despair, horror, grief, but absolutely no recognition at all.
*
Four
“Ron!”
Harry watched Ron being half-smothered by Mrs Weasley and grinned. Smiling was good. It cut through the tiredness that had settled as an ache throughout his body.
“Mum, are they here?” Ginny, Fred and George burst into the room. Ginny stopped short and just stared at him, laughing breathlessly, but Harry nearly stumbled as Fred and George whacked him on the back at the same time, so exuberantly that their greeting had almost the same force as Hagrid’s, and then it was Harry’s turn to be pulled into Mrs Weasley’s arms. He let himself relax into the hug, feeling warm and happy and something rather like a lump in his throat.
“There now,” Mrs Weasley said, releasing Harry and sniffing slightly. “You two must be starving. “We’re eating once we’re all together this evening, but I can do you a round of bacon and eggs if you’re hungry now.”
Ron and Harry were hungry now. They made short work of the bacon and eggs and the bread and butter Mrs Weasley gave them to go with it, even with the questions that the others were asking. Afterwards Mrs Weasley told them to go upstairs and have a nap, and Fred and George told them not to be so daft, they’d taken the afternoon off -“Christmas Eve, too,” - to be here when they arrived and they were bloody well coming to do some flying with them.
Now he’d started to smile, Harry found he couldn’t stop. He was at The Burrow. It was Christmas Eve and he was going to spend the whole of the next day with the Weasleys, Tonks and Lupin. There were still worries. Hermione had insisted on seeing her parents, and wouldn’t be joining them until that evening. She and Ron had argued over whether it was safe or not and Ron had tried to get Hermione to let him and Harry stay with her in case of an attack. Harry, feeling that Hermione might like some time alone with her parents, did not like leaving her, but had had to satisfy himself and Ron by putting up as many wards as they could think of around the house. Hermione’s parents had already been well-protected by magic, they’d seen to that last summer. Hermione was probably safer at her parents’ house than she would be at The Burrow (although if the wards were breached then Hermione would be fighting alone) but after the four months of searching Harry, Ron and Hermione had been through together, it seemed unthinkable that she was not here with them.
Harry was also thinking about the task ahead that lay shielded by the promise of rest and Christmas, but which would come all too soon the day after next. They had finally succeeded in locating and destroying Hufflepuff’s cup, but Slytherin’s locket was next. Then there was the feeling that he was not going fast enough. It had taken so long to find the cup and to work out how to obliterate the Horcrux within, and during that time there had been attacks, disappearances, deaths. Voldemort’s hold on the wizarding world was growing ever tighter and Harry didn’t feel he was doing enough to loosen it.
“Hey, Harry, that Firebolt’s for flying on, you know.”
“Get on up here, we’re losing the light.”
Harry stared up at Fred and George who were circling his head. Ron was pulling on his Keeper gloves, his long legs dangling from his broom. Ginny had the Quaffle tucked under her arm.
“How about Harry and me versus you three?” she said. “We try to score, you try to stop us.”
“Yes, Harry. No scoring with our little sister.”
“Not while we’re on the pitch.”
Fred and George tapped their Beater’s bats together.
Harry felt his face flush. He glanced at Ron, who wore a pained expression, and then at Ginny, who appeared utterly calm.
“You two,” she said to the twins, “are such idiots.” Then she shot into the air and swooped past Fred and George, her chin set and the Quaffle held firmly against her side.
Harry leapt onto his broom and after her, even as Fred and George span to follow, the four of them pelting as fast as they could towards where Ron was guarding the hoops.
For the next sixty airborne minutes, the Bludger and the Quaffle, Ron’s solid goalkeeping, the twins’ gibes and Ginny’s whipping hair and fierce smile were the sum total of Harry’s worries.
*
Eleven
Ginny sat straight up in bed, forcing mouthfuls of tepid air into her lungs. Her skin prickled; she felt cold even though it was a warm night, and realised it was because she was covered with a sheen of cold sweat. She shuddered.
What had she been dreaming of? She was no stranger to nightmares: Tom’s face in the Chamber, the slow sucking of her soul. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad...I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!; black figures blocking the way out, wands pointed at their hearts, Bellatrix Lestrange’s voice, the keen, hungry look in the woman’s mad eyes: “take the smallest one. Let him watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it."; the sneer of pleasure on the Death Eater’s face as she dodged his curses. "Crucio - Crucio - you can't dance forever, pretty-". And those were just her experiences. She dreamed of things she had not seen. She dreamed, sometimes, of Harry’s mother dying and the wand being lowered to Harry’s face. She dreamed of the basilisk sinking its teeth into someone’s flesh and heard her own mad laughter. She dreamed of the graveyard where Voldemort had risen. After the article Harry had put in the Quibbler about it she tortured herself at night by picturing Voldemort’s distorted face as he rose from the cauldron. She dreamed of the Department of Mysteries - of running and being chased and flaring pain and Harry’s screams. She dreamed of last year, of Greyback lunging at Bill, of the whistling curses. She even dreamed of the floating figure of Dumbledore falling from the tower.
This year, of course, had given her new dreams. The blood at Hogwarts. The procession of the dead. Her own blood. Luna shaking and Neville bleeding. The glimpse she’d had of Voldemort’s body. Harry’s blank expression. “Who am I?”
In the Chamber, at the Department of Mysteries, even while she was fighting at Hogwarts, Harry had been there. He had saved her life in the Chamber, he had protected her at the Department of Mysteries. He had taken down the Death Eater who had been trying to hit her with the Cruciatus curse. Ginny was not a little girl who needed protection, although she had once been. Harry had saved her as a child. She had followed him into danger. She had accepted that he was going to keep going into danger and she had let him try to keep her safe. She had let herself be unimportant.
Harry’s task was done, now, and he couldn’t remember doing it, how he’d come to do it, or those who had loved him on the way. She supposed that this was his chance to be unimportant. The Wizarding world might lose interest in a hero who couldn’t remember his heroic deeds. Now that the world didn’t need Harry Potter any more, they might let him go.
But his friends would not. Ginny thought of Harry alone at the hospital. He was recovering well physically, and would probably be being released soon had he kept his memories. The Healers didn’t know why he couldn’t remember. They murmured placatingly about ‘extreme pressure’ and ‘stress’, as though fighting a war was like taking NEWTs. They spoke to him in that soothingly cheerful tone the Healer had used to speak to Gilderoy Lockhart and it made Ginny want to hex something. Harry was still Harry. He had lost his memories, but that didn’t make him mad. He shouldn’t be cooped up in a hospital. She felt worse because no one was sitting with him at nights now that he was getting better. She knew he didn’t need anyone there - might even be relieved at the space; she had not missed the panic in his face when he was introduced to friends whom he did not remember.
Yet she hated the thought of him being alone. Because he couldn’t remember them, couldn’t remember himself, he didn’t know why they loved him. And so, she reasoned, he might think that they would stop.
She wouldn’t. She didn’t know, exactly, what they had been when they were a couple. It had not been for long enough to tell, and she had known that it would end. But it had been comfortable and exhilarating and happy. She wanted more, but even if she never got it she would still love Harry, her friend, part of her family.
Ginny got out of bed and pulled on a jumper and jeans. Padding to the door, she wondered which of the inhabitants of The Burrow would be easiest to persuade. Hermione would scold in a soothing tone. So would Mum, and she couldn’t get Dad without waking her mother. Of her brothers, Fred and George were best for a spot of rule-breaking, but they were at their Diagon Alley flat. She wouldn’t need Fred and George, though, because this was Harry. She knew who would take her to him - after a little pleading. Closing the door quietly behind her, Ginny went to wake Ron.
*
Six
Harry, Ron and Hermione crept into Grimmauld Place, where the air was stagnant and thick with dust. The house had an air of death about it; and if it had been used since Sirius’s death then it certainly hadn’t been used since Dumbledore’s, as Snape knew its location.
Harry tried hard not to shiver. The house was cold, too. It was January, freezing outside and possibly even colder within the walls of number twelve. Harry could feel the warm puffs of Ron and Hermione’s breath behind him, and watched foggy clouds form in the darkened hallway as he himself breathed in and out.
“Harry,” Hermione whispered. “This could be a trap.”
“It doesn’t look as though anyone’s been here for months,” Harry heard Ron say, but Ron didn’t sound sure.
There could well be traps - even Snape - lying in wait for them here. Harry knew that this was a dangerous place to be, but he’d remembered half an hour ago that the ‘R’ and the ‘B’ of R.A.B. could be Regulus Black. It was the only lead they had, they’d been searching fruitlessly for a week, and Harry was at the point where a trap and the possibility of fighting Snape would be a satisfying way to break the monotony of the Horcrux hunt.
His heart was beating rapidly as he took a cautious step forward in the hall. He knew it was dangerous and he was well aware that he had come out worse of the last encounter he’d had with Snape, and wasn’t sure if he’d be able to best him if he fought him again. But he had to do something in order to feel that he was doing anything. He was willing to take the risks if it meant that the next Horcrux came a little closer. Of course, he wished that Ron and Hermione had waited for him outside; there was no point endangering the lot of them, but it was hardly worth the argument these days. In fact, Ron had even suggested that he go alone as he, Ron, was expendable and Harry was not.
“We’ll just check the tapestry and get out,” Harry muttered, his voice low. He didn’t want to wake anything in this slumbering house. The three of them crept into the sitting room and over to the wall where the Black tapestry hung in the shadows. Harry, wary of using magic, lit a stub of candle with a match. He, Ron and Hermione bent low over the tapestry, but almost at once Harry knew that they’d made a mistake.
The fine gold thread glittered in the candlelight, mocking him. Draco Malfoy, the nearest name said. Narcissa Black. To the left the gold thread spelled Regulus Black. Disappointment crashed in Harry’s chest and Ron swore under his breath.
There were no middle names.
“Do you think the members of the Black family weren’t given middle names, or do you think they just weren’t put on the tapestry?” asked Hermione.
“Dunno,” Ron said. “There probably wasn’t room on the tapestry. I bet bloody Malfoy’s got hundreds of middle names.”
Harry felt a surge of excitement. “I know who we can ask.”
Ron looked puzzled, but Hermione gasped and said, “Harry, don’t!” Harry ignored her, striding out of the living room and into the hallway. He wrenched back the curtains on Mrs Black’s portrait with a detached pleasure.
At once, the house rang with screams. Mrs Black leaped forwards in her canvas, close enough for Harry to see the spittle flying from her mouth.
“Filth! Scum! Vile product of a Mudblood’s womb who thinks he can claim the house of the Blacks.”
Harry grinned. “Hullo, Mrs Black,” he said. “What was your son’s name?”
Mrs Black hissed. “I do not speak his name, the shamed one, the bane of my flesh; he betrayed his fathers and his name. Muggle-loving blood-traitor! I have no son.”
Last year Harry would have shouted back at hearing Sirius spoken about like that. The anger was inside him somewhere but he was numbed to it now.
“No,” he said calmly. “I didn’t mean Sirius. I meant your other son. What was Regulus’s middle name?”
For the first time, Mrs Black spoke quietly. “My pride. The pride of the Blacks. Regulus, my child. How dare you speak his name?”
Harry snorted. “The pride of the Blacks was a Death Eater who got himself killed by his own side. What was his name?”
“He knew his duty. He was proud of his heritage. He brought no shame, no shame.”
“He was killed by another Death Eater when he was too scared to follow orders. It might even have been Bellatrix who did it. Yeah, I bet it was. What was his name?”
“Noo! He was a fine boy, my flesh, my soul. He was the future of the family, snuffed out, destroyed by treachery of blood.”
“What was his name?”
“Get out of my house, you traitors, you filth, you vile sickness, spreading disease, you murdered my house, you …”
There was a flash through a nearby landscape and then a figure landed in Mrs Black’s portrait. Harry stared. It was the figure of a young man, barely older than Harry himself.
“Mother, be quiet.” Mrs Black froze.
He was dressed in high-collared formal robes in black and silver. He had slicked back dark hair and when he turned to face them, Harry saw that he had Sirius’s pale grey eyes.
“My name,” he said in a voice that was not quite steady, “was Regulus Arcturus Black.”
“My child,” Mrs Black crooned. “My son.”
Regulus Black spared his mother a flickering glance and then turned away.
“You’re R.A.B.” Hermione whispered.
The portrait looked confused. “Those were my initials. Why do you want them?”
“You found something,” Harry said. “Something of Voldemort’s.”
Regulus flinched. “The Dark Lord’s?” Slowly, his painted eyes on Harry, he rolled up his sleeve to reveal the Dark Mark. “He was my master,” he said, his tone doubtful.
“He fought for our heritage,” whispered Mrs Black. “My valiant son, my …”
“Shut up,” snapped Harry and Regulus as one.
“Harry,” Hermione said, “it’s no good. He won’t remember anything from after his portrait was painted.”
Harry ignored her. “You wanted to stop being a Death Eater,” he said. “You discovered something that would help kill Voldemort if it were destroyed. You stole it and left a note. But I don’t know if you destroyed it.”
Regulus bowed his head. “Your friend is right. I can’t help you,” he said.
“Don’t you have any idea what you’d have done with it?” asked Ron. “If you didn’t have much time and needed something to be safe, where would you take it?”
“I would have brought it here,” Regulus said. He looked at his mother, who was sobbing quietly in her chair. “It is the only home I have ever known.”
Hermione’s hand flew to her mouth. Harry span round to look at her. Her eyes seemed impossibly wide. She lowered her hand. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “It was here. There was a locket. I remember now. None of us could open it, so we threw it away.”
“Kreacher,” Harry breathed, just as Ron said, “Mundungus.”
“Find it,” Regulus said. Harry looked back to him. His forearm was still exposed and the Dark Mark, black and undulating, was still visible. “Find it and destroy it, if I did not. And kill the Dark Lord, if there is a way.”
“There is a way,” Harry said, and looking at Regulus it almost felt as though he was talking to Sirius one last time. “And I’ll try.”
*
Thirteen
The remembrance garden was off the path between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. There had been some discussion as to where to put it. Some argued that it should be on the Hogwarts grounds, where the final battle had taken place and where the generations of students to come would be taught to respect the sacrifices of the past and to uphold what they had fought for. This was hardly fair, though, to those who had lost loved ones and who could not access the school grounds in order to visit their memorials. Remembrance was for everyone: there should be no restrictions as to who could visit and who could not.
So the memorial garden was built outside of the Hogwarts gates, where students on their way to Hogsmeade would be able to see as they passed by, and where anyone could come to stop and sit and remember.
Ginny’s mother had been horrified to hear that Ginny, Ron and Hermione wanted to take Harry to the garden (“you can’t take him to the remembrance garden when he’s lost his memories!”), but Remus Lupin had backed them up. Harry was well enough to make short excursions away from the hospital, it would do him good to get some fresh air and, when asked, Harry had said that he wanted to go.
Although it had been Ginny’s idea, she worried that it had been a bad one when she, Ron and Hermione arrived with Harry on a sunny afternoon in late July.
“We don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” Hermione said at once, as Harry looked around at the garden and the flowers with a shocked expression on his face.
“No, it’s fine. Could you give me a minute, please?”
There was a circular bench in the centre of the plot of land, encompassing a small sapling of yew. Ginny sat down on it next to Ron and Hermione and tried not to watch as he wandered about the garden. It was full of nooks and crannies, bursting with colours and blossoms and foliage. The families and friends of lost ones had claimed little corners in which to remember them, and planted flowers and ferns and shrubs in their honour. Small marble stones were dotted about the place, half-hidden under petals and greenery, but plentiful.
The garden was beautiful and awful in this way. Its surprising hidden places meant that each time you came back there would be another memory, another name engraved on marble, which had been overlooked before. Ginny’s eyes followed Harry. He was looking lost in the Bones section, which was a riot of yellow honeysuckle. The scent was sweet and the flowers small and lovely, but Ginny saw Harry reading the stones and knew that he was startled, as she had been, at how many members of the same family the flowers had been planted for.
The Diggory patch was next, and Ginny wondered whether it wasn’t better that Harry was encountering the memorials without remembering the horrible circumstances in which they had died. Perhaps that would help him, if he ever got his memories back, to process the grief as the garden was meant to do: to turn loss and horror and sadness into something wholesome and bright and lasting. The pain would never leave - it was never meant to - and the marble stones would weather but not disintegrate as the flowers in the garden wilted and faded and sprung up anew each year.
She got up and went to Harry, who was standing in front of a pair of straight-stemmed sunflowers. She swallowed. The plaque beneath them was in memory of Gideon and Fabian Prewett.
“Mum’s brothers,” she said to him. He turned to her, obviously unsure of what to say.
“They died last time,” she told him. “This garden’s for anyone who died because of Voldemort.”
He nodded. “I knew that,” he said. “I was wondering - my parents?” Harry knew his history - he’d spent a day talking to Remus last week and now he was re-mourning the family that he had not known. Was it better to lose what you had lost all memory of? Harry could have been told that she had died, or that Ron and Hermione had, and he would not have grieved for them but would perhaps have mourned that he could not grieve.
She grabbed his hand, and she remembered its shape and the feel of his skin. His fingers curled around hers.
“We thought that should be up to you,” she said. He nodded once, and they moved on. Hermione looked up from where she was sitting close to Ron, but Ginny met her eyes and Hermione gave the tiniest of smiles and made no move towards them.
Harry’s hand was warm against hers, and a small, vain, part of herself hoped that her palm wasn’t sweaty. She smiled. Suddenly life seemed to be the most important thing, and it was this garden, a garden full of the names and the flowers of the dead, which was scented and glorious on a fine summer’s day, which made her thrum with the beauty of life and of living.
“Ginny,” Harry said, his voice painfully earnest. “What were we? Before I forgot everything.”
She looked up at the sky, staring at a cloud until it became a shape - someone riding a broomstick and throwing a Quaffle.
“We were friends,” she said, without looking down. She didn’t want to see his face. Didn’t want to see if he looked pleased or disappointed or embarrassed.
“Oh. Good friends?”
How easy it would be, she thought, as another cloud formed itself into a second Chaser (and if she squinted it looked as though it was pulling off a Porskoff Ploy) to tell him that they were close, that she was the key to his memories, that she could tell him everything he needed to know about himself.
“Quite good,” she said. “Not like you and Ron and Hermione, but we got on well. We went out for a bit. Not long.”
It sounded so childish when she said it like that. So easily dismissed. But how could she tell him how much he was to her - what he’d been to her for years and what she hoped she’d become for him? There were things that she’d waited a year to say to him, and now she couldn’t say them because he could not remember.
He looked up at the sky as well. Ginny was tempted to ask him if the clouds were forming shapes for him too, wanting to relieve the tension that was building up between them.
“I heard you and Ron talking,” he said, and Ginny felt something cold on either side of her ribcage. “The night you came into the room and fell asleep.”
She stayed silent. Up in the sky a Beater hit a Bludger at her Chasers and they scattered, dropping the Quaffle and an opposing Chaser appeared, swooping down upon the Quaffle and bearing it off, trailing little puffs of cloud in its wake.
He stopped walking and waited for her to look at him. She kept her self-control tight within her, and met his look. His expression was pure Harry and she felt her lips curling into a smile despite it all.
He was also blushing. “Look, were you in love with me?” It came out in a rush, like a burst dam, like a plea. ‘Was I in love with you?’ she felt but did not hear him ask.
“No. I don’t know. I wasn’t - I’m not, but …” but she could feel herself falling, and it was like a landslide or falling from a broom and not hitting the ground but knowing that someday she would because it was inevitable. She was still holding his hand, and to drop it now would seem rude, but she was terribly conscious of his fingers brushing against hers, and the press of his palm, warm and - now - slightly damp. “You’re a friend, and you’re part of the family, and you’re, well, you’re Harry.”
A cloud had broken into three and stretched up into three tall goal hoops, and a Keeper drifted to and fro before them.
“I don’t really feel much like Harry,” he said with a deprecating laugh.
She once would have kissed that lost look from his face, or rested her head against his shoulder. This was too fragile though, so she swung their clasped hands slightly and gave him a grin.
“You are. You haven’t changed a bit.”
They had made their way back to the bench and Ron and Hermione, and she let go of Harry’s hand to let him sit with them and talk. She lay down on her back on the grass and watched her cloud Quidditch team. She supposed that whoever had Charmed the clouds to be manipulated had envisioned grieving relatives looking up at loved ones in the sky. Perhaps she ought to feel disrespectful for being so trivial in such a serious place, but she didn’t. Instead she listened to the murmur of voices behind her and kept her focus firmly on her Quidditch game, amusing herself by using all the fouls she could remember, allowing the beating warmth of the sun to soak into her limbs, and thinking words like ‘rest’ and ‘peace’.
“Are you asleep, Ginny?” Ron asked at last.
She raised her head - her neck was stiff. “No. I’m watching the clouds play Quidditch.”
“Cumulus Control. Oh, I’ve heard about this,” Hermione said softly. Ginny twisted to see Ron and Hermione looking up into the sky.
“It’s Hogwarts,” Ron said. “Look.” The castle of thick white cloud looked like an ethereal faerie palace. It had none of the stony reassurance of the school. Faint wisps of turret moved in the breeze and, impressive though the replica was, somehow it was too similar to Hogwarts and yet too insubstantial for Ginny to like it.
A body settled beside hers. “I can see your Quidditch game,” Harry said, staring straight above him. One of the Chasers did a showy loop the loop, scoring whilst upside down. “Oh, that’s brilliant.”
Ginny concentrated on using the best Quidditch moves she could think of, many of which she’d been taught by Harry when he was Quidditch captain. Harry’s face lost the pained, worried look he’d worn in the hospital. He grinned as he watched the players, looking calm and happy. He looked like he did when he flew, and Ginny too felt the excitement of dodging Bludgers and sinking the Quaffle through the hoops, and the deep thrill of being airborne.
It was perfect.
They were lying side by side, and when his hand brushed against hers she thought it was an accident. Then he turned his head, his face still loose from laughter but with the old look seeping back behind his eyes.
“I’m sorry for forgetting,” he said.
Ginny didn’t think she could speak - not without saying far too much - so instead she took his wrist and pointed to the sky where her flimsy cloud Seeker pulled out of a spinning dive with a tiny Snitch of cloud and dreams beating in its hand.
*
His head’s still swimming and the room pounds with noise: laughter, tears, the sounds of joy. It’s his joy; joy for him, his family, his home. He crouches in front of her on the floor and she looks at him, half laughing, then she buries her face in his neck. He feels her mouthing words against his skin, and knows what she means rather than what she is saying. That unknowable emotion has been replaced by a fierce rush of feeling and he pulls her tight against him, looks over her shoulder at the others, and takes in steady, warm breaths. He’s here.