The New Zealand Chronicles: Part II, Chapter Nine
After being convinced for the past week that I had forgotten how to write, I am happy to finally post the next chapter of The New Zealand Chronicles. Fortunately, I was just exhausted and hadn't forgotten how to write. ;) A huge thank you to jkashavah for helping me with the Latin!
A/N: I established in the last chapter that in my universe you cannot Apparate on to anything that is moving. I just wanted to point that out again since it's been a while since my last update and I don't want you annoyed with Ginny for not Apparating.
Part II, Chapter Eight:http://stmargarets.livejournal.com/18831.html#cutid1
Part I,Chapter Seven: http://stmargarets.livejournal.com/17518.html#cutid1
Chapter Nine: There Are Always Dragons
Those white triangles cutting through the calm, gray water were sharks. There was no doubt about it.
Sharks.
In order to calm the pounding in her chest, Ginny tried to focus on the facts. She and the Muggle woman named Carol were in a bright yellow inflatable raft with blood smeared on the side. Harry had taken Carol’s injured husband to the ship, but would be returning with help soon. They only had to stay afloat for a few minutes longer.
The problem was that Ginny didn’t know if they had a few minutes based on the sharks’ behavior. They were circling the raft, coming closer with each pass. Ginny wasted precious seconds staring at the whirlpool they were making and the efficient way they swam. She could see the long outline of their bodies as they pressed in closer and closer circles.
There are always dragons, Ginny.
Charlie’s words came back to her as she watched these mysterious creatures menace them in their fragile boat. They’re just animals, she realized, they weren’t Dark or even magical. She had taken Care of Magical Creatures - she should be able to understand them and their behavior.
Why were these creatures circling them in the first place?
“My blood,” Carol said from behind her. “They smell the blood from my cut.”
Hunger. Of course. They wouldn’t waste their energy unless they thought this raft was a threat or food.
“Your cut is bound up now,” Ginny soothed as she did a quick Cleansing Charm behind her back. With her bare foot, she pretended to rub at the stains. “And we’ll just clean up a bit.”
Carol gasped. “The blood is gone!”
“The sea must have washed it away,” Ginny lied.
Carol didn’t question this since she was again watching the sharks. “They’re not leaving,” she said tremulously. “What are we going to do?”
The sharks weren’t leaving. The absence of blood hadn’t affected them at all. Something else must have attracted them to this raft - perhaps the raft itself. If she could transfigure the raft into something - something hard and indestructible . . .
Her heart sank. She had no idea if a transfigured raft would be sea worthy. If it sank she and Carol would be plunged into the warm water and then the sharks would discover that they were indeed food
A little splash startled Ginny. One of the sharks had rolled on to its side. For a moment, Ginny could see its eye.
The eyes. They were a dragon’s weakest point. But the sharks were swimming too fast for her to aim accurately and there were too many of them for her to start hexing their eyes.
“Oh God,” Carol shrieked.
They were close enough that Ginny could have reached over the side and touched their fins.
Carol’s scream hadn’t spooked them. Something else was telling them that this bright yellow raft might be tasty.
The color! Tropical fish were brightly colored. The raft probably looked like a soft, slow fish to the sharks. Ginny almost wept in relief - a quick Color Charm was all she needed. She tapped the bottom of the raft and muttered the incantation; immediately, the raft turned a dull gray.
We’re a rock. We’re a rock. We’re a rock. Ginny squeezed her eyes shut and willed those sharks away.
“Ahhh!” Carol shrieked.
Ginny opened her eyes. One of the sharks was nudging the raft with its head, as if testing to see how hard or soft this rock was.
Her stomach flipped sickeningly. Warm from the sun, the smooth soft walls of the raft, must be an enticement for an animal that only had to chomp down with one bite of its razor sharp teeth to subdue an enemy . .
“He’s coming back? Your partner? He’s coming back, right?” Carol had scooted to the middle of the raft and was seated with her arms wrapped around her.
“He is,” Ginny said soothingly. “It won’t take him long and he’ll bring more help from the ship.” But how was Harry going to spot a gray raft in a gray sea?
“Can’t you radio him or something?”
Ginny had no idea what she meant by ‘radio,’ but she did know that mayday fish would lead Harry to them. She stuck her wand in the water. “Mayday!” she shouted. “Mayday.”
A school of silver fish shot up out of the water and flew through the air in the direction of the ship. Hurry, she urged them in her mind, hurry.
“Our boat already sank,” Carol said wryly. “We didn’t have a chance to call mayday.”
She obviously hadn’t noticed the flying fish, Ginny realized with relief. That was one less thing to explain.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Carol whimpered as she rocked back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees. “It’s like they’re playing with us.”
It did seem that way. Other sharks had followed the lead of the first and had butted the raft with their heads, but not one had attempted to bite it. Maybe the color change had confused them.
What would she do if they started to attack? Ginny thought. Should she fight back with hexes, and then try to outrun them in this raft? Or should she charm the raft to levitate so they were out of reach of the sharks? Could she even do that level of magic?
There was one shark, she noticed, that was more agitated than the others. He would attack first, she decided. But what could she do? She didn’t think she could kill one outright and a wounded animal was always dangerous. They had to get away. Or -
She had to push them away.
A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to choke her as she held it in. She would repel them like they de-gnomed the garden at the Burrow. De-shark the waters, she told herself.
But what incantation would work?
Carol was muttering to herself and didn’t notice when the conjured umbrella over her head disappeared with a 'pop.'
One of the sharks hit the side of the raft with such sudden force that Ginny almost toppled over. They were getting more aggressive; she would have to do something.
Suddenly, the water started churning. Ginny clutched her wand and tried to look everywhere at once. Were the sharks acting in concert?
In a soundless blur of wet gray, a powerful shark lunged out of the water toward the raft. Ginny reflexively cast the strongest Shield Charm she knew. It caught the shark on its nose and it reared back in pain or anger - Ginny didn’t know which. That didn’t matter because she had succeeded in doing what she had been trying to avoid. She had agitated the shark and it would be more aggressive than ever.
Her wand was slippery from her sweat as she crouched in the middle of the raft next to Carol.
“Was that some sort of force field?” Carol asked dully, as if she thought Ginny was toying with her as well as the sharks.
“No,” Ginny snapped. She was tired of this fiction. She just wanted to shout at Carol that she was a witch and that magic had limits. That she had limits. Carol was staring at her with hopeless eyes. Ginny sighed. “It was a shield - experimental.”
“It’s not strong enough,” Carol said matter-of-factly.
“No, it’s not.” And the Shield Charm had made matters worse, Ginny thought with rising panic. Another shark bumped the raft.
“That was Latin you spoke,” Carol observed.
“Erm. With voice command weapons we wanted a language the enemy wouldn’t guess.” Ginny decided that if she survived this, she was going to write fiction along with her sister-in-law.
“Gary is a Classics Professor. You know, Latin and Greek.” Carol waved her hand vaguely. “Says it makes him feel young to read all that ancient stuff.” Her sentence ended in a sob. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“No,” Ginny said shortly. She straightened her shoulders; she was going to de-shark the waters. Even though she had been warned throughout her seven years of Hogwarts, not to experiment with Charms, it was all she could think to do. “Do you know Latin?”
“A little. I used to type Gary’s papers when he was in graduate school.”
“What’s more forceful? Repellere or extundere?”
“Um.” Carol rubbed her forehead. “Extundere.”
“What’s 'shark' in Latin?”
“Um. I don’t know,” Carol faltered. “Piscis?”
“That’s fish.”
“Balaena?”
“That’s whale.” Ginny gripped her wand and got on her knees to watch the circling sharks. Whales were so nice compared to sharks. But they were heavy and this spell she was inventing was about flinging them away, not hurting them.
There was a small change in their movements. The attack came at the front of the raft and Ginny was ready.
“Extundere Balaenam!” she shouted as a wide beam of blue light shot out of her wand and enveloped the shark in mid-lunge. The shark wriggled and Ginny could feel the animal’s strength through the connection of the spell. Her arm and side ached with the strain of trying to push the shark away. After an intense moment of concentration, the shark abruptly went limp and Ginny was able to toss it away.
Worryingly, the splash where the shark landed didn’t seem that far off, although distance was hard to tell in the vastness of the ocean. Extundere was the right command, but Balaena was wrong. The focus of the hex was too wide.
“Extundere Piscem Monstrousum!” she called, pointing at one of the circling sharks.
The width of her hex was still too wide and that shark landed in the same place. Her wand motion was off, too. She jabbed instead of flung.
“Try formidilosus,” Carol whispered staring at the sharks.
“Extundere Piscem Formidilosum!”
That was it - the terrifying fish. The shark was blasted out of the water and landed at the line of the horizon.
But the other two were streaking back to the raft. Shaking, Ginny shouted the new hex, but she missed. She shouted again, just as the jaws of the first shark rose out of the water.
“Extundere!” The shark rose through the air, angrily snapping at nothing.
Carol was tugging at Ginny’s arm, her mouth open, but with no sound coming out. Clearly she was terrified of the shark sinking its teeth into the other side of the raft. Ginny blasted that shark, too, but not before it ripped a huge hole in the curved edge of the raft.
“Reparo!” she cried as she pointed her wand at the gash, now causing that end of the raft to sag into the water. Nothing happened. And nothing could happen she realized. Reparo was for broken things - this raft was ripped. Did Mending Charms work on rubber?
“They’re back!” Carol screamed.
Ginny tore her eyes away from the water pouring over the side of the raft and tried to aim as carefully as her shaking hand would let her. “Extundere Piscem Formidilosum!” Her throat was raw from shouting. Her arm and side and abdomen hurt from the strain of hurtling those huge fighting animals and now . . .
“Extundere Piscem Formidilosum!”
And now the raft was sinking.
“Oh, God,” Carol whimpered.
Ginny didn’t know what else to do. Rowboat. She would conjure a rowboat. And hopefully it wouldn’t sink like a stone.
Warm water was up to her ankles now. Maybe she could levitate Carol out of harm’s way. “Extundere!” She didn’t have enough time to say the entire incantation. Panicked now that the sinking raft was again surrounded by sharks, she pivoted on her knees, screeching, “Extundere! Extundere! Extundere!” The walls of the raft were cupping around them as they slowly sank.
“Ginny!”
“Extundere!” That almost sounded like Harry.
“Ginny! Grab my hand.”
She looked up in shock. Harry, still in his bathing costume and without glasses, was hovering on his broom, right above her. She didn’t take his outstretched hand. “Carol first.”
“Michael has her.” Harry angled the broom so the twig end was within Ginny’s reach . Her bare toes kicked at the bunched up deflated rubber as she scrambled onto the broom and away from the thrashing sharks.
“Are you on?” Harry yelled. She was draped over the twigs on her stomach, but she was on.
“Yes! But I’m not sitting.”
“I’m going to get your feet away from the water.”
The broom rose in the air. From her vantage point she could see a shark rise out of the water, its jaws clamping on that last bit of gray rubber where she had been kneeling.
She shuddered and started the slow process of finding her seat on the broom. Harry kept the broom level while she lurched around. Finally she was seated, facing Harry’s back. She leaned heavily against him, her cheek against the warm skin on his shoulder. He felt so wonderfully solid.
“Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.
“No.” She wasn’t hurt but she ached all over from the strain of hurtling sharks. Her arms, her shoulders, her stomach, even her wound from her Quidditch injury ached. But the worst part was the gnawing feeling that she had done everything wrong. If Harry and Michael hadn’t come, she and Carol would have been killed. And it would have been her fault. There was probably a simple way to repel sharks, but she had wasted so much time trying to think of new hex.
Ginny looked over her shoulder. Now there was nothing where the raft had been. The sharks had disappeared after finding the rubber fish inedible. All of that energy - theirs and hers - had been futile.
She pressed the side of her face into Harry’s back, trying to hold back her tears. She hadn’t felt this guilty and useless since her first year. Harry must have felt that one tear trickle down his back, because he reached down and cupped her bare foot in his hand and then squeezed reassuringly.
Any other time she would have taken that as an invitation to wrap both her legs around his waist, but today she was too sad and tired, so she pressed her lips on his back and held on tight.
*
The ship had continued sailing throughout this whole ordeal and was further away than Ginny realized. By the time they landed on deck, Michael had already taken Carol to the ship’s Healer and was in the middle of a lively conversation with Melinda Bobbin. Ginny overheard part of it as she heavily dismounted from the broom.
“I have a boyfriend,” Melinda declared, her arms crossed in front of her.
“Right. Does this lucky bloke have a name?”
“Yes.” Melinda’s face was red and it wasn’t just from the heat. “His name is Barry Anderson. His father has an important administrative job at St. Mungo’s, and Barry is his assistant.”
“Barry Anderson. What kind of name is that? Is he as effeminate as he sounds?”
“Effeminate?” Melinda sputtered. “Just because he doesn’t eat Vegemite for breakfast and scratch freely no matter what the occasion - “
“That’s because he doesn’t have any thing to scratch. If a bloke has berries instead of nuts -“
“Oh, you!”
“Come on,” Harry said in a low voice. “It’s hot out here and you look pale.”
For a moment, listening to Michael and Melinda, Ginny almost forgot about the sharks. But now her ordeal with the sharks came back to her with sickening clarity. She should have transfigured the raft. She should have conjured another boat. She should have charmed the raft to sail away.
“Drink some water,” Harry said, once they were in their cabin. She did automatically, her mind still on the horrible mistakes she had made in trying to rescue Carol.
“That Muggle bloke, Gary. Is he all right?” Ginny asked from her uneasy perch on the side of the bed.
“He’s fine. They’re both fine,” Harry soothed, sitting next to her. Then he frowned. “Are you?”
“I don’t know.” She stared at him helplessly.
“I reckon you’re tired,” he said, locating his glasses on the shelf above the bed. “That was some amazing wandwork you were doing.”
“It was all wrong,” Ginny whispered. “I didn’t know what to do.” Then she told him everything she had tried and everything she had thought of trying.
Surprisingly, he was still looking at her with admiration in his eyes. “I forget sometimes how smart you are.”
“That wasn’t smart!” Ginny stared at him. “I made it as complicated as I possibly could. I made up a hex when there are probably ten that would have worked, except I couldn’t think of anything.”
“I’ve never made up a hex,” Harry said quietly. “But I have done whatever I could when I couldn’t think of anything else.”
Her gaze clung to his. All those horrible things Harry had been through. She sighed. Harry did understand; he always understood.
“That’s why we’re taking this course,” he reminded her. “Search and rescue is a skill like anything else. That’s what they teach. I think marine rescue is month number three.”
“Oh.” Her eyes swam with tears. If only she had known that today.
“Why don’t you have a shower?” he suggested. “Do you want to eat dinner in our room or at the captain’s table?”
Ginny couldn’t believe it was that late already. Their afternoon swim had stretched into the evening hours. “I’ll eat at the captain’s table.” Really she didn’t have anything to feel ashamed of - Harry had made her see that.
Once in the shower Ginny discovered another reason why she was so emotional. It was that time of month. Harry would be amused to hear it, since he had attributed her tears to fatigue and not hormones. Ginny sighed. No, Harry wouldn’t be amused since this would put a crimp in their honeymoon.
While Harry looked a little disappointed when she told him, he just smiled ruefully, hugged her and said she’d finally have a chance to read that guidebook of hers.
*
Michael DuSult was full of praise for Harry and Ginny at dinner. “That Muggle woman didn’t guess you were a witch, either. She seemed to think you were part of the British navy. Maybe the authorities won’t have to Obliviate her.”
“What!” Ginny gasped. “They won’t Obliviate her because of me, would they?” She looked wildly around the table.
Captain Melville looked grim. “It’s standard procedure after an encounter with Muggles.”
“But . . .” Ginny looked to Harry in appeal. He knew how much she still regretted those lost hours when she was possessed by Tom Riddle. And they both still wondered what exactly had happened when he had defeated Voldemort. They could only piece together impressions and what Ron and Hermione had said after they had found them both unconscious in that deep, underground cave.
“Er- isn’t that - er - traumatic for the victim?” Harry asked. “To have big blanks like that?”
“Aye,” the Captain said. “But the Law of the Sea ends once the Muggles are on land.” He reached out and patted Ginny’s hand. “You saved them from a terrible fate. You should be proud.”
“But I didn’t know what to do.” She looked at the kindly weather-beaten face of the captain. “What are you supposed to do during a shark attack?”
“A cage,” Michael DuSult said briskly. “You conjure a stout shark cage. It works if you’re swimming or if you’re in a small vessel like that raft.”
A cage. It made so much sense.
“Or you could transfigure into a shark if you’re good at that sort of thing,” the captain suggested.
Ginny could only transfigure into a bird. She sighed.
“You handled those sharks like an Aussie Crocodile Wrangler,” Michael said with admiration. “Amazing what you Poms can do.”
Ginny was starting to feel better.
“You don’t have to be so condescending,” Melinda told Michael sharply. “This is Harry Potter, you know.”
“I know.” Michael frowned. “We were introduced.”
“The Harry Potter,” Melinda hissed. “Or have you been living under Ayers Rock for the last few years?”
It was almost comical to see the realization dawn on Micheal’s face. “You mean?” He stared at Harry and then looked at Ginny.
“Aye,” the captain said with amusement in his voice. “This is the lad who killed that barnacle on the Wizarding World.”
Harry was shifting uncomfortably.
Michael laughed and shook his head. “Sorry mate, it’s such a bloody common name, you know?”
Harry looked pleased. If Michael hadn’t connected him to Voldemort, then that meant there was hope he would be able to live in relative obscurity in New Zealand. For the first time since she spotted the yellow raft in the water, Ginny felt her spirits lift. “No problem,” Harry assured Michael.
Michael grinned back. “Harry Potter. At least it’s not a name like Barry Anderson.”
And that set Melinda off once more.
*
That night Ginny managed to read one page of the guidebook Hermione had given her. She had just reached the part about the ancient giants paddling to New Zealand from Polynesia and establishing territories by piling up huge mountains and digging the deep trench between the North and South Island, when Harry took the book away from her and doused the night torch.
It was the first night they didn’t make love before sleeping, but Ginny felt just as close to him as he lay on his side with one arm draped over her waist. It helped the cramping in her abdomen to feel his warm hand over her Quidditch scar. She drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes aware of Harry’s soft snores and the ships’ bells announcing the different watches, and sometimes not. The sounds of the night were all very comforting and pleasant, in contrast to the dream images that she fought all night long.
At first she dreamed of warm water that melted her skin. Then she dreamed of savage teeth and menacing blind things that circled and circled and circled. Did they know she was there?
But it was the bright light of spell work - green and red and white - that frightened her. . She didn’t understand why the dazzling white light frightened her so much. It lit the cave where she was standing.
Cave?
She wasn’t standing. To her horror, she was hiding, crouched like a coward in a corner.
Menace.
Heavy breathing. Hers?
No! Overwhelming waves of shock and despair. If only she could cease to be . . .
Then she was lying face down over something broken and dead and she could smell wet earth.
It was her fault.
Reparo! No, that wasn’t right. Reparo couldn’t fix dead things.
Her fault.
Circles.
Why didn’t she know Eygptian?
Reparo?
White
“Ginny, wake up. Ginny, you’re dreaming.” There were tears on her cheeks, Ginny realized as she struggled to open her eyes.
“Ginny?”
She couldn’t find her voice. Her throat felt swollen with unshed tears, hidden sorrow and guilt - so much choking guilt.
Harry’s thumb wiped a tear off of her cheek. “Ginny. It’s dream. It’s okay.”
She fumbled in the dark until she felt his shoulder, and then she found his chest to bury her face against. He stroked her hair as she shuddered and burrowed closer. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to tell him that she remembered more about that last night of Voldemort’s life and that now she was convinced she had done something terribly wrong.
*
Sunlight streamed through the round porthole. For the first time in over a week, Ginny heard the sound of birds. Many birds.
“You had quite the lie-in,” Harry said. He was already dressed and was carrying a small spyglass. “You missed the docking and tying-off.”
“We’re not in New Zealand?” She sat up in horror, thinking she had slept for days instead of hours.
“No.” He laughed. “We just docked at Trindade Island. From the other side of the ship it looks like there isn’t much here except for seagulls, fresh water and the post office.”
Ginny looked out of the porthole and saw the rocky landscape of the desolate island, a few stone buildings, hundreds of white sea gulls and something that made her blood run cold.
“I think you missed something, Harry,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” He placed one knee on the bed so he could look out as well. Then he rested his forehead against the glass in resignation. “Reporters.”
***
A/N: Well, I've had to fish or cut bait here and decide what I think happened when Harry defeated Voldemort. Poor kids can't remember, but different events in their lives will bring back the memories, don't you worry. Sorry for the lack of fluff. That was probably part of my problem. ;)
Uh. Anyone have a good Aussie phrase of praise Michael could give Harry and Ginny?
A/N: I established in the last chapter that in my universe you cannot Apparate on to anything that is moving. I just wanted to point that out again since it's been a while since my last update and I don't want you annoyed with Ginny for not Apparating.
Part II, Chapter Eight:http://stmargarets.livejournal.com/18831.html#cutid1
Part I,Chapter Seven: http://stmargarets.livejournal.com/17518.html#cutid1
Chapter Nine: There Are Always Dragons
Those white triangles cutting through the calm, gray water were sharks. There was no doubt about it.
Sharks.
In order to calm the pounding in her chest, Ginny tried to focus on the facts. She and the Muggle woman named Carol were in a bright yellow inflatable raft with blood smeared on the side. Harry had taken Carol’s injured husband to the ship, but would be returning with help soon. They only had to stay afloat for a few minutes longer.
The problem was that Ginny didn’t know if they had a few minutes based on the sharks’ behavior. They were circling the raft, coming closer with each pass. Ginny wasted precious seconds staring at the whirlpool they were making and the efficient way they swam. She could see the long outline of their bodies as they pressed in closer and closer circles.
There are always dragons, Ginny.
Charlie’s words came back to her as she watched these mysterious creatures menace them in their fragile boat. They’re just animals, she realized, they weren’t Dark or even magical. She had taken Care of Magical Creatures - she should be able to understand them and their behavior.
Why were these creatures circling them in the first place?
“My blood,” Carol said from behind her. “They smell the blood from my cut.”
Hunger. Of course. They wouldn’t waste their energy unless they thought this raft was a threat or food.
“Your cut is bound up now,” Ginny soothed as she did a quick Cleansing Charm behind her back. With her bare foot, she pretended to rub at the stains. “And we’ll just clean up a bit.”
Carol gasped. “The blood is gone!”
“The sea must have washed it away,” Ginny lied.
Carol didn’t question this since she was again watching the sharks. “They’re not leaving,” she said tremulously. “What are we going to do?”
The sharks weren’t leaving. The absence of blood hadn’t affected them at all. Something else must have attracted them to this raft - perhaps the raft itself. If she could transfigure the raft into something - something hard and indestructible . . .
Her heart sank. She had no idea if a transfigured raft would be sea worthy. If it sank she and Carol would be plunged into the warm water and then the sharks would discover that they were indeed food
A little splash startled Ginny. One of the sharks had rolled on to its side. For a moment, Ginny could see its eye.
The eyes. They were a dragon’s weakest point. But the sharks were swimming too fast for her to aim accurately and there were too many of them for her to start hexing their eyes.
“Oh God,” Carol shrieked.
They were close enough that Ginny could have reached over the side and touched their fins.
Carol’s scream hadn’t spooked them. Something else was telling them that this bright yellow raft might be tasty.
The color! Tropical fish were brightly colored. The raft probably looked like a soft, slow fish to the sharks. Ginny almost wept in relief - a quick Color Charm was all she needed. She tapped the bottom of the raft and muttered the incantation; immediately, the raft turned a dull gray.
We’re a rock. We’re a rock. We’re a rock. Ginny squeezed her eyes shut and willed those sharks away.
“Ahhh!” Carol shrieked.
Ginny opened her eyes. One of the sharks was nudging the raft with its head, as if testing to see how hard or soft this rock was.
Her stomach flipped sickeningly. Warm from the sun, the smooth soft walls of the raft, must be an enticement for an animal that only had to chomp down with one bite of its razor sharp teeth to subdue an enemy . .
“He’s coming back? Your partner? He’s coming back, right?” Carol had scooted to the middle of the raft and was seated with her arms wrapped around her.
“He is,” Ginny said soothingly. “It won’t take him long and he’ll bring more help from the ship.” But how was Harry going to spot a gray raft in a gray sea?
“Can’t you radio him or something?”
Ginny had no idea what she meant by ‘radio,’ but she did know that mayday fish would lead Harry to them. She stuck her wand in the water. “Mayday!” she shouted. “Mayday.”
A school of silver fish shot up out of the water and flew through the air in the direction of the ship. Hurry, she urged them in her mind, hurry.
“Our boat already sank,” Carol said wryly. “We didn’t have a chance to call mayday.”
She obviously hadn’t noticed the flying fish, Ginny realized with relief. That was one less thing to explain.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Carol whimpered as she rocked back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees. “It’s like they’re playing with us.”
It did seem that way. Other sharks had followed the lead of the first and had butted the raft with their heads, but not one had attempted to bite it. Maybe the color change had confused them.
What would she do if they started to attack? Ginny thought. Should she fight back with hexes, and then try to outrun them in this raft? Or should she charm the raft to levitate so they were out of reach of the sharks? Could she even do that level of magic?
There was one shark, she noticed, that was more agitated than the others. He would attack first, she decided. But what could she do? She didn’t think she could kill one outright and a wounded animal was always dangerous. They had to get away. Or -
She had to push them away.
A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to choke her as she held it in. She would repel them like they de-gnomed the garden at the Burrow. De-shark the waters, she told herself.
But what incantation would work?
Carol was muttering to herself and didn’t notice when the conjured umbrella over her head disappeared with a 'pop.'
One of the sharks hit the side of the raft with such sudden force that Ginny almost toppled over. They were getting more aggressive; she would have to do something.
Suddenly, the water started churning. Ginny clutched her wand and tried to look everywhere at once. Were the sharks acting in concert?
In a soundless blur of wet gray, a powerful shark lunged out of the water toward the raft. Ginny reflexively cast the strongest Shield Charm she knew. It caught the shark on its nose and it reared back in pain or anger - Ginny didn’t know which. That didn’t matter because she had succeeded in doing what she had been trying to avoid. She had agitated the shark and it would be more aggressive than ever.
Her wand was slippery from her sweat as she crouched in the middle of the raft next to Carol.
“Was that some sort of force field?” Carol asked dully, as if she thought Ginny was toying with her as well as the sharks.
“No,” Ginny snapped. She was tired of this fiction. She just wanted to shout at Carol that she was a witch and that magic had limits. That she had limits. Carol was staring at her with hopeless eyes. Ginny sighed. “It was a shield - experimental.”
“It’s not strong enough,” Carol said matter-of-factly.
“No, it’s not.” And the Shield Charm had made matters worse, Ginny thought with rising panic. Another shark bumped the raft.
“That was Latin you spoke,” Carol observed.
“Erm. With voice command weapons we wanted a language the enemy wouldn’t guess.” Ginny decided that if she survived this, she was going to write fiction along with her sister-in-law.
“Gary is a Classics Professor. You know, Latin and Greek.” Carol waved her hand vaguely. “Says it makes him feel young to read all that ancient stuff.” Her sentence ended in a sob. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“No,” Ginny said shortly. She straightened her shoulders; she was going to de-shark the waters. Even though she had been warned throughout her seven years of Hogwarts, not to experiment with Charms, it was all she could think to do. “Do you know Latin?”
“A little. I used to type Gary’s papers when he was in graduate school.”
“What’s more forceful? Repellere or extundere?”
“Um.” Carol rubbed her forehead. “Extundere.”
“What’s 'shark' in Latin?”
“Um. I don’t know,” Carol faltered. “Piscis?”
“That’s fish.”
“Balaena?”
“That’s whale.” Ginny gripped her wand and got on her knees to watch the circling sharks. Whales were so nice compared to sharks. But they were heavy and this spell she was inventing was about flinging them away, not hurting them.
There was a small change in their movements. The attack came at the front of the raft and Ginny was ready.
“Extundere Balaenam!” she shouted as a wide beam of blue light shot out of her wand and enveloped the shark in mid-lunge. The shark wriggled and Ginny could feel the animal’s strength through the connection of the spell. Her arm and side ached with the strain of trying to push the shark away. After an intense moment of concentration, the shark abruptly went limp and Ginny was able to toss it away.
Worryingly, the splash where the shark landed didn’t seem that far off, although distance was hard to tell in the vastness of the ocean. Extundere was the right command, but Balaena was wrong. The focus of the hex was too wide.
“Extundere Piscem Monstrousum!” she called, pointing at one of the circling sharks.
The width of her hex was still too wide and that shark landed in the same place. Her wand motion was off, too. She jabbed instead of flung.
“Try formidilosus,” Carol whispered staring at the sharks.
“Extundere Piscem Formidilosum!”
That was it - the terrifying fish. The shark was blasted out of the water and landed at the line of the horizon.
But the other two were streaking back to the raft. Shaking, Ginny shouted the new hex, but she missed. She shouted again, just as the jaws of the first shark rose out of the water.
“Extundere!” The shark rose through the air, angrily snapping at nothing.
Carol was tugging at Ginny’s arm, her mouth open, but with no sound coming out. Clearly she was terrified of the shark sinking its teeth into the other side of the raft. Ginny blasted that shark, too, but not before it ripped a huge hole in the curved edge of the raft.
“Reparo!” she cried as she pointed her wand at the gash, now causing that end of the raft to sag into the water. Nothing happened. And nothing could happen she realized. Reparo was for broken things - this raft was ripped. Did Mending Charms work on rubber?
“They’re back!” Carol screamed.
Ginny tore her eyes away from the water pouring over the side of the raft and tried to aim as carefully as her shaking hand would let her. “Extundere Piscem Formidilosum!” Her throat was raw from shouting. Her arm and side and abdomen hurt from the strain of hurtling those huge fighting animals and now . . .
“Extundere Piscem Formidilosum!”
And now the raft was sinking.
“Oh, God,” Carol whimpered.
Ginny didn’t know what else to do. Rowboat. She would conjure a rowboat. And hopefully it wouldn’t sink like a stone.
Warm water was up to her ankles now. Maybe she could levitate Carol out of harm’s way. “Extundere!” She didn’t have enough time to say the entire incantation. Panicked now that the sinking raft was again surrounded by sharks, she pivoted on her knees, screeching, “Extundere! Extundere! Extundere!” The walls of the raft were cupping around them as they slowly sank.
“Ginny!”
“Extundere!” That almost sounded like Harry.
“Ginny! Grab my hand.”
She looked up in shock. Harry, still in his bathing costume and without glasses, was hovering on his broom, right above her. She didn’t take his outstretched hand. “Carol first.”
“Michael has her.” Harry angled the broom so the twig end was within Ginny’s reach . Her bare toes kicked at the bunched up deflated rubber as she scrambled onto the broom and away from the thrashing sharks.
“Are you on?” Harry yelled. She was draped over the twigs on her stomach, but she was on.
“Yes! But I’m not sitting.”
“I’m going to get your feet away from the water.”
The broom rose in the air. From her vantage point she could see a shark rise out of the water, its jaws clamping on that last bit of gray rubber where she had been kneeling.
She shuddered and started the slow process of finding her seat on the broom. Harry kept the broom level while she lurched around. Finally she was seated, facing Harry’s back. She leaned heavily against him, her cheek against the warm skin on his shoulder. He felt so wonderfully solid.
“Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.
“No.” She wasn’t hurt but she ached all over from the strain of hurtling sharks. Her arms, her shoulders, her stomach, even her wound from her Quidditch injury ached. But the worst part was the gnawing feeling that she had done everything wrong. If Harry and Michael hadn’t come, she and Carol would have been killed. And it would have been her fault. There was probably a simple way to repel sharks, but she had wasted so much time trying to think of new hex.
Ginny looked over her shoulder. Now there was nothing where the raft had been. The sharks had disappeared after finding the rubber fish inedible. All of that energy - theirs and hers - had been futile.
She pressed the side of her face into Harry’s back, trying to hold back her tears. She hadn’t felt this guilty and useless since her first year. Harry must have felt that one tear trickle down his back, because he reached down and cupped her bare foot in his hand and then squeezed reassuringly.
Any other time she would have taken that as an invitation to wrap both her legs around his waist, but today she was too sad and tired, so she pressed her lips on his back and held on tight.
*
The ship had continued sailing throughout this whole ordeal and was further away than Ginny realized. By the time they landed on deck, Michael had already taken Carol to the ship’s Healer and was in the middle of a lively conversation with Melinda Bobbin. Ginny overheard part of it as she heavily dismounted from the broom.
“I have a boyfriend,” Melinda declared, her arms crossed in front of her.
“Right. Does this lucky bloke have a name?”
“Yes.” Melinda’s face was red and it wasn’t just from the heat. “His name is Barry Anderson. His father has an important administrative job at St. Mungo’s, and Barry is his assistant.”
“Barry Anderson. What kind of name is that? Is he as effeminate as he sounds?”
“Effeminate?” Melinda sputtered. “Just because he doesn’t eat Vegemite for breakfast and scratch freely no matter what the occasion - “
“That’s because he doesn’t have any thing to scratch. If a bloke has berries instead of nuts -“
“Oh, you!”
“Come on,” Harry said in a low voice. “It’s hot out here and you look pale.”
For a moment, listening to Michael and Melinda, Ginny almost forgot about the sharks. But now her ordeal with the sharks came back to her with sickening clarity. She should have transfigured the raft. She should have conjured another boat. She should have charmed the raft to sail away.
“Drink some water,” Harry said, once they were in their cabin. She did automatically, her mind still on the horrible mistakes she had made in trying to rescue Carol.
“That Muggle bloke, Gary. Is he all right?” Ginny asked from her uneasy perch on the side of the bed.
“He’s fine. They’re both fine,” Harry soothed, sitting next to her. Then he frowned. “Are you?”
“I don’t know.” She stared at him helplessly.
“I reckon you’re tired,” he said, locating his glasses on the shelf above the bed. “That was some amazing wandwork you were doing.”
“It was all wrong,” Ginny whispered. “I didn’t know what to do.” Then she told him everything she had tried and everything she had thought of trying.
Surprisingly, he was still looking at her with admiration in his eyes. “I forget sometimes how smart you are.”
“That wasn’t smart!” Ginny stared at him. “I made it as complicated as I possibly could. I made up a hex when there are probably ten that would have worked, except I couldn’t think of anything.”
“I’ve never made up a hex,” Harry said quietly. “But I have done whatever I could when I couldn’t think of anything else.”
Her gaze clung to his. All those horrible things Harry had been through. She sighed. Harry did understand; he always understood.
“That’s why we’re taking this course,” he reminded her. “Search and rescue is a skill like anything else. That’s what they teach. I think marine rescue is month number three.”
“Oh.” Her eyes swam with tears. If only she had known that today.
“Why don’t you have a shower?” he suggested. “Do you want to eat dinner in our room or at the captain’s table?”
Ginny couldn’t believe it was that late already. Their afternoon swim had stretched into the evening hours. “I’ll eat at the captain’s table.” Really she didn’t have anything to feel ashamed of - Harry had made her see that.
Once in the shower Ginny discovered another reason why she was so emotional. It was that time of month. Harry would be amused to hear it, since he had attributed her tears to fatigue and not hormones. Ginny sighed. No, Harry wouldn’t be amused since this would put a crimp in their honeymoon.
While Harry looked a little disappointed when she told him, he just smiled ruefully, hugged her and said she’d finally have a chance to read that guidebook of hers.
*
Michael DuSult was full of praise for Harry and Ginny at dinner. “That Muggle woman didn’t guess you were a witch, either. She seemed to think you were part of the British navy. Maybe the authorities won’t have to Obliviate her.”
“What!” Ginny gasped. “They won’t Obliviate her because of me, would they?” She looked wildly around the table.
Captain Melville looked grim. “It’s standard procedure after an encounter with Muggles.”
“But . . .” Ginny looked to Harry in appeal. He knew how much she still regretted those lost hours when she was possessed by Tom Riddle. And they both still wondered what exactly had happened when he had defeated Voldemort. They could only piece together impressions and what Ron and Hermione had said after they had found them both unconscious in that deep, underground cave.
“Er- isn’t that - er - traumatic for the victim?” Harry asked. “To have big blanks like that?”
“Aye,” the Captain said. “But the Law of the Sea ends once the Muggles are on land.” He reached out and patted Ginny’s hand. “You saved them from a terrible fate. You should be proud.”
“But I didn’t know what to do.” She looked at the kindly weather-beaten face of the captain. “What are you supposed to do during a shark attack?”
“A cage,” Michael DuSult said briskly. “You conjure a stout shark cage. It works if you’re swimming or if you’re in a small vessel like that raft.”
A cage. It made so much sense.
“Or you could transfigure into a shark if you’re good at that sort of thing,” the captain suggested.
Ginny could only transfigure into a bird. She sighed.
“You handled those sharks like an Aussie Crocodile Wrangler,” Michael said with admiration. “Amazing what you Poms can do.”
Ginny was starting to feel better.
“You don’t have to be so condescending,” Melinda told Michael sharply. “This is Harry Potter, you know.”
“I know.” Michael frowned. “We were introduced.”
“The Harry Potter,” Melinda hissed. “Or have you been living under Ayers Rock for the last few years?”
It was almost comical to see the realization dawn on Micheal’s face. “You mean?” He stared at Harry and then looked at Ginny.
“Aye,” the captain said with amusement in his voice. “This is the lad who killed that barnacle on the Wizarding World.”
Harry was shifting uncomfortably.
Michael laughed and shook his head. “Sorry mate, it’s such a bloody common name, you know?”
Harry looked pleased. If Michael hadn’t connected him to Voldemort, then that meant there was hope he would be able to live in relative obscurity in New Zealand. For the first time since she spotted the yellow raft in the water, Ginny felt her spirits lift. “No problem,” Harry assured Michael.
Michael grinned back. “Harry Potter. At least it’s not a name like Barry Anderson.”
And that set Melinda off once more.
*
That night Ginny managed to read one page of the guidebook Hermione had given her. She had just reached the part about the ancient giants paddling to New Zealand from Polynesia and establishing territories by piling up huge mountains and digging the deep trench between the North and South Island, when Harry took the book away from her and doused the night torch.
It was the first night they didn’t make love before sleeping, but Ginny felt just as close to him as he lay on his side with one arm draped over her waist. It helped the cramping in her abdomen to feel his warm hand over her Quidditch scar. She drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes aware of Harry’s soft snores and the ships’ bells announcing the different watches, and sometimes not. The sounds of the night were all very comforting and pleasant, in contrast to the dream images that she fought all night long.
At first she dreamed of warm water that melted her skin. Then she dreamed of savage teeth and menacing blind things that circled and circled and circled. Did they know she was there?
But it was the bright light of spell work - green and red and white - that frightened her. . She didn’t understand why the dazzling white light frightened her so much. It lit the cave where she was standing.
Cave?
She wasn’t standing. To her horror, she was hiding, crouched like a coward in a corner.
Menace.
Heavy breathing. Hers?
No! Overwhelming waves of shock and despair. If only she could cease to be . . .
Then she was lying face down over something broken and dead and she could smell wet earth.
It was her fault.
Reparo! No, that wasn’t right. Reparo couldn’t fix dead things.
Her fault.
Circles.
Why didn’t she know Eygptian?
Reparo?
White
“Ginny, wake up. Ginny, you’re dreaming.” There were tears on her cheeks, Ginny realized as she struggled to open her eyes.
“Ginny?”
She couldn’t find her voice. Her throat felt swollen with unshed tears, hidden sorrow and guilt - so much choking guilt.
Harry’s thumb wiped a tear off of her cheek. “Ginny. It’s dream. It’s okay.”
She fumbled in the dark until she felt his shoulder, and then she found his chest to bury her face against. He stroked her hair as she shuddered and burrowed closer. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to tell him that she remembered more about that last night of Voldemort’s life and that now she was convinced she had done something terribly wrong.
*
Sunlight streamed through the round porthole. For the first time in over a week, Ginny heard the sound of birds. Many birds.
“You had quite the lie-in,” Harry said. He was already dressed and was carrying a small spyglass. “You missed the docking and tying-off.”
“We’re not in New Zealand?” She sat up in horror, thinking she had slept for days instead of hours.
“No.” He laughed. “We just docked at Trindade Island. From the other side of the ship it looks like there isn’t much here except for seagulls, fresh water and the post office.”
Ginny looked out of the porthole and saw the rocky landscape of the desolate island, a few stone buildings, hundreds of white sea gulls and something that made her blood run cold.
“I think you missed something, Harry,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” He placed one knee on the bed so he could look out as well. Then he rested his forehead against the glass in resignation. “Reporters.”
***
A/N: Well, I've had to fish or cut bait here and decide what I think happened when Harry defeated Voldemort. Poor kids can't remember, but different events in their lives will bring back the memories, don't you worry. Sorry for the lack of fluff. That was probably part of my problem. ;)
Uh. Anyone have a good Aussie phrase of praise Michael could give Harry and Ginny?