FIC: The Guardian Brotherhood :: Chapter Eight :: No Matter Where
Coucou! Looks like the end of the semester makes one plunge headlong into fic. I mean, finally, right? I left you guys last time pretty much going "ack!" so enjoy this one. Oh, and PS: smutty scene therein. That explains the friendslock :)
It's 7 years after the fall of the Dark Lord. Hermione has been trying to get on with her life and forget the night Ron Weasley died. But the night a long-ago symbol appears outside her window, she gets more mystery and excitement than she wished for.
CHAPTER EIGHT: NO MATTER WHERE
“No. No no no no no!”
What kind of sick game were the Fates playing with me? Didn’t they know it was Ron they had doomed when they’d sent me back? Didn’t they know I couldn’t do a damned thing for him from here even if I tried? Just the thought…
Cold sweat hit me. Bile lurched into the back of my throat. My vision became one tiny black hole. Breaths weren’t better. Shakily I gained my feet, recognising the delayed symptoms for what they were and cursing them to hell and back. What good was I when I couldn’t even do a single thing?
Toilet. Toilet, I needed the toilet.
How helpful. The clever woman vomits her brains out and sobs? Useless.
You are nothing.
She was too right.
#
Glimpses of brightness. Shocking disks of the coldest blue. Cold. So cold. No, hot. Then cold. Heart? Erratic and slow. Moisture gone pasty on skin. Eyes burning, like skin, but no tears. No tears. He saw happiness, far, far away, untouchable, blurry. Memories. He clung to them. Knew only the beautiful vision could keep him sane through - Pain!
Heard her voice, hers, the memory’s. Guardian angel. The playful gratitude in depthless pools of brown. Heard his own reply. I’m no angel. But he wanted to be, only for her. Saw her sick, shaking in his arms. His fault. Dangerous -
More pain. Slashing, blood screaming, teeth clenching, aching. A cry, torn from the seat of his soul, smothered and never released. His body slumped in too-tight adamant restraints, stripped of all power but failing strength.
“Worthless. You are worthless without us, Honos.” The Mistress flicked her fingers outward.
Slipped in and out of consciouness. Head fell forward. Saw his ugly nakedness. Couldn’t feel a thing but heard it all as though from afar.
“Can the girl teach you your potential? Does she know Honos?”
She did. She didn’t. She didn’t care. He scared her, hurt her. She wanted him, just him. He would be the death of her. She of him? No!
No superfluous emotional attachments, he knew.
His potential… he had so much, he did not even understand himself. Could he risk Hermione’s life anymore than he already had? In retrospect it hadn’t seemed so dangerous to hide her under the Brotherhood’s very own nose, but she’d been discovered and… where was she?
Worthless without us. Guardian be damned. He was helpless, his magic bound within him for the time being. Hoping to escape was futile. Wasn’t it always?
“You are needed here, Honos. Your purpose is with us. You are nothing without us.”
With every word a smooth caress, his body felt all the more scarred, criss-crossed, over and back, and knotted. When would it end?
I know. I think you do, too.
#
“I didn’t want you hurt.” Under his breath Harry added, “Still don’t.”
Not again. “Harry, I’m-”
“I know! You’re a grown woman and you’re damned good and I can’t do a thing to stop you,” he muttered.
“Spoken like a good man,” Ginny couldn’t help but quip. Harry’s arms and legs closed around her thighs and neck as if to say But there are other ways to stop you… Indeed, there wasn’t much one could do in her position except to slowly work one’s way out-speed didn’t help an inch with grappling-but her body strongly pleaded tiredness and so she remained soft in his hold until he let go a fraction.
It was a wonderful hold until just before dawn.
#
“Harry? … Harry!”
God dammit. Darkness, Death Eaters, hexes and curses flying all over the place with Voldemort who knew where… and now Ginny. How could he hope to find her in this bloody clusterfuck of bodies and death looming over life and especially him? No. Mind over body, Potter. Get your arse in gear. Clusterfuck could translate to doom in one instant of inattention.
“Harr… no, you’re-”
Shut her out. Right now he had unfinished hands-on business with a wandless Death Eater who gave no quarters. As well as Voldemort to look out for. Where was-
Ginny’s hoarse scream rattled him to the bones. “Let me go!” Block. Block. Block. “You’re cho…king me you… bastard.”
Harry glanced down at the masked Death Eater under him. His sweaty palms made a squelching sound on the darkened skin of his victim as he released… Ginny.
No. She can’t be-No. Ginny!
The wide eyes stared up at the brilliant canopy of stars even as he was rudely pulled back off her lifeless body and onto his back. He just didn’t have any strength left in him to fight back. “Gin…”
She coughed without moving her lips and then spoke. The ragged word was spoken with Voldemort’s whispery, deadly voice. “What?”
On impulse Harry reached for his wand, but found nothing but bedding. He blinked hard, and Gin’s face suddenly loomed over him. Life in her. His jaw went slack for a long moment.
She smiled at him shakily, rubbing her red-ringed neck. “Welcome back, Mr Potter.”
#
I’d cried as much as I could, emptied my body like it needed purification, and afterward lay loose-boned on my bed for the longest time, unable to sleep for fear of forgetting anything.
Idle bodies aren’t necessarily idle minds. The effort is just not recognised because it’s not physically seen. I may have looked dead and depleted to the world, but the truth was, I wasn’t thinking black thoughts anymore. My brain needed food to nibble on, so I began thinking proactively about a safer subject. Yes, Mr Clarke was closely linked with Ron, but he was my job first and foremost. Tomorrow I’d go see him, I decided, and would see Auror Randall about the case or lack thereof. It just couldn’t drag on anymore; either they had something or they didn’t.
I wondered fleetingly whether the prophecy was safe with Buchanan, but sleep claimed me soon enough.
I slept in fits and starts. The mind is amazing, though. It rejects traumatic thoughts as easily as if one threw a blanket over it. That was how trauma victims dealt with their shock.
Thankfully, I wasn’t bothered until dawn. Regretfully, I repeat: I slept in fits and starts.
#
“Welcome back, Mr Potter.”
Harry gaped at her like a fish, blinking, before frantically searching through the space beside him. A huge breath left him, and then he pressed Ginny to his chest. His hands were frigid even through her shirt.
“Are you all right?” Ginny whispered against his neck, unsure what to do. It was obvious Harry had had a nightmare of sorts-she bore the marks quire visibly.
“’m fine,” he croaked out, squeezing tight. “What about you?” He pushed her back and threw his hand to the bedside table, things clanking.
Glasses. Right. “Here,” Ginny said, reaching over him and handing them to him. he put them on with difficulty, his hands shaking so badly it took three tries to find his nose. Taking pity on him, she started taking his hands when he was done, only to be pushed away roughly.
“Let me-”
The bed dipped as he left the bed, and then she was being pulled along behind him.
“What-Harry-let me-”
The tiny lights around her mirror blinded her momentarily as he turned them on, and then Harry’s hands lingered featherlight on her neck where he’d choked her mere moments before.
“It’ll fade away,” she said.
“I did this.” Harry’s voice sounded dead.
She batted his hands away, planting a glare on him. Hadn’t they been on this road before? Oh no you don’t, Harry James Potter. “I’m sure there was a very good reason. Go on, tell me.”
Harry flushed, starting to turn away until she kept him right where he was and pegged him with a hard look. He wouldn’t be going anywhere. Slowly he faced her. “I dreamt of the Battle, except I… killed you.” The last he’d murmured, barely loud enough for her to hear.
As he looked off, Ginny bit her lips. She knew more than most that guilt plagued Harry at all times. Forget the boy-to-man hero, Harry’d borne a world of responsibility on his shoulders and his sole wish had been to make the world a better place for all. Dreams have a way of telling its dreamer exactly what they want, whether they want it subliminally or not. Which made her job very difficult at the moment.
“Hey.” Absently, Harry turned his stubbled cheek into her palm, then his eyes found hers. Such sorrow. The injustice of it all. Life supposedly made you tougher from its harsh mishaps, but the intelligent souls who’d thought the clever phrase had left out how marked you were on the other end. Even healed fractures leave bumps. The bon is stronger, but aches visit from time to time during humid weather.
“I’m right here, Harry,” Ginny continued in his neck. Through her nightshirt she felt his hands warm on her and slowly she relaxed into him. “You didn’t mean it. I know that.”
“You don’t understand,” he countered, still in that scary dead voice. “I could have hurt you.”
Ginny shook her head. “The best part is you didn’t,” she replied. Then, on impulse, she kissed him and pulled away with a little grin. “Thank you for that.”
Just as she’d anticipated, a corner of his mouth lifted at her silliness though some of the gauntness didn’t leave his features. Slowly he gathered her in to him for a proper kiss, breaking it only to burrow his nose in her hair. In a husky voice he murmured, “Thanks.”
There. That was as much an acknowledgment of his out-of-control sense of nobility as anyone would get.
“Let’s go back.” And proof that he was back in total control of himself.
“Mmhm.” As if to underline what ungodly time it was, Ginny yawned hugely as Harry turned the light of her bathroom mirror off and led her back to bed.
She let him tuck her in and gather her into the now-warm cocoon of his body. She let him protect her once more.
#
Ron drifted in and out of consciousness, aware on some level of his state. His body ran cold, a combined result of a chilly draft that seeped steadily into the room and of his own physical state: his wounds wouldn’t heal. Later, he’d have to deal with that… later…
He came to again, shivering in great trembling breaths. He remembered his nakedness and tried to curl in on himself. His wrists sang and he gasped, lost again.
The next time he felt something brush closeby. His eyes opened, but all he saw was a blob of yellow and a large black one on top nearby. Someone. Short. Robin, he thought, knowing Aine was taller.
The two blobs approached until he blinked, unseeing. “You could have avoided this, you know.”
Ron couldn’t reply. His throat was parched, his tongue swollen and raw.
“She only wants the best for us.”
His head split open with a nascent headache, promising to carry on idefinitely should he stay hanging thus from his magical bonds. He decided to close his eyes on his own, and suddenly his body took over. Oblivion came.
The last time he emerged, he was alone. The room sounded hollow. Chin resting on his chest, Ron saw red. Blood. His own.
He is ready.
He was.
His power hadn’t been a willful choice-he’d gained it through honourable courage of heart. Had he lost that quality afterward? Had something changed in him? He hoped not, else he’d die a truly honourable death battling against everything that stood between him and deliverance: adamant bonds, wards, wounds.
Steeling his precious few reserves of strength for one final pulsion, Ron cried out as his molecules exploded.
#
Ginny slowly came awake, stretching back luxuriously into another warm body. A moment, and then she smiled privately into the covers bunched at her chin.
“You awake?” Harry’s voice came from her shoulder.
“Mmno…” Staying burrowed into her covers with Harry cloaking her, she thought, I could get used to this. Unfortunately, real life had a nasty habit of getting in the way of things, though it didn’t need to know that right that moment. How about allowing her just a few more peaceful minutes?
There had been no other hitches during the night after Harry’s nightmare, only a deep-seated quiet that had bled out of her every pore. She’d been dead to the world, hadn’t dreamt much, but her body had known Harry had been there with her somehow.
“You are awake.” There was a grin in his voice as he plucked a hunk of hair off her face.
“I’m in that state between conscious and subconscious,” Ginny grunted into her pillow. “Ask me anything and I can’t be held accountable for what I say or do.”
A dubious snort. “I’d love to be so talkative in my sleep.”
“Half sleep,” Ginny corrected groggily. “And it’s a talent.”
“Even so…” He paused, for effect she thought. It was a struggle to keep her eyes closed and not give in to the temptation of twisting around and seeing his expression. “What do you think of me?”
Ginny didn’t hesitate. “You’re the worst sort of asshole I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet,” she declared with gusto.
“Mm, I was afraid of that, but you did sleep with the asshole in question last night even after he choked you half to death.”
There was a thankful note in how he said it, and Ginny, despite promising a bit longer of a snooze, turned her head to meet his grateful eyes. “Maybe because the girl who did that is a bitch herself.”
“No way,” was Harry’s vehement reply.
Ginny cocked a brow but didn’t argue further. Hey, she’d take compliments when they came.
An intense silence followed where Harry didn’t just look at her, but touched her without even moving a single muscle. “I owe you something, Gin hon,” he said at length.
Her nickname was back and, for some reason, it didn’t incense her anymore. “What?” she breathed.
Harry’s eyes twinkled. It had been a while since she’d seen him so relaxed. Usually work dominated his thoughts and actions. At the moment he… lived for the moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him so carefree with her own two eyes. for a moment she was almost jealous of Hermione. Maybe she’d seen Harry carefree in the last seven or so years?
“I dunno. I was hoping you could tell me.”
And there it was. A request for her to choose. “What do you want, Harry?”
His eyes darkened as they latched onto her lips, and yet… “I want to find Hermione so bad.”
Which shouldn’t have made sense. She should have been furious that he’d been thinking of another woman while he was with her, but it just proved one thing: he did want her. Badly. But he wouldn’t take what she offered. Yet. Which made the anticipation that much more mind-heart-pounding for both of them.
“Way to sweet-talk a woman, Harry,” she teased lightly, stretching like a cat as Harry’s eyes raked her exposed skin.
No, they positively smoldered. “You know what I mean.”
Ginny nodded, grinning. “Yeah, I do.” With that out of the way, she peeled the covers off her, elbowed Harry aside, and walk-shimmied her way to the bathroom. There was something to say of a woman’s wiles. Victory may come later, but the game was all about scoring goals before the snitch was caught… and maybe cheating without the referee calling foul mid-play.
Oh, what a subtle game…
Ginny stepped under the warm spray of the shower, letting it energise her.
#
“Wake up.”
My eyes stang as I opened them to behold my intruder. Then I jerked completely awake.
He fell upon me.
#
Twisting my palms over and again, I stared until it seemed I’d imprinted the sight forever in my brain. An echo would always remain.
There was blood on my hands.
That I had no reaction wasn’t the problem. I had seen blood in all tableaux before. Pints, stains, cuts, extracted teeth, gushing veins, gurgling throats… I’d seen rivers of the stuff, from brilliant red to dark burgundy, nearly black. I’d helped heal people back to relative health, only to have them return hours later in worse conditions-in the end, it all falls back to the wounded and whether they’ll fight death itself alone.
I’d killed, too, but then those had been bloodless deaths. It seemed strange that shock would grip me now, after all that.
“Thanks,” Ron’s rasp jarred me as he touched my knee with shaking fingers.
I lowered my hands, wiping them on my trousers, and checked the soaked bandage on his chest wordlessly. My brain had shut down and currently worked on autopilot. There was no way I could let myself think beyond these two facts: Ron was alive, and his strength was completely shot from his multi-Apparating from ward to ward and from his loss of blood. There was only one way to forget this entire episode, and it was to do everything I could possibly do to care for Ron.
Except I just kept seeing that woman and wondering what had become of her.
“Aine…” I began tentatively, slowly towelling away a crust of blood from his brow.
Ron shook his head wordlessly. A long silence ensued where things were left to my imagination, which I didn’t dare touch.
After a while, though, I had to ask. It was torture not to know. I whispered close to his ear, “ Are we safe here?”
A surprisingly steady hand grabbed mine. “Never, but I’m here, ‘Mione.”
The truth was no cake, but it did ease me. Funny thing is, although I knew the exact extent of his current physical limitations, I didn’t doubt him for a second. A leader, Ron was always a leader.
And I’d be damned if I wasn’t his second-in-command.
#
Ginny would have shut the shower tap when a hand joined hers on the knob. A male hand, bigger, more powerful. She backed away instinctively against the cool wall, more speechless than shocked, as Harry stepped in. He didn’t even once look at her.
“Just so we get out of here quicker. There’s a lot of work to do,” he said quietly, his words reverberating against the tile.
“Really,” Ginny murmured skeptically, unmoving. If Harry in boxers and a tee-shirt riding up his torso bothered her, now… his bare cheeks truly did.
“Yeah.” He threw a glance her way, then promptly went back to doing his thing.
“I was… I was done,” Ginny said lamely after a few seconds of vainly trying to slow her speeding heart. The whole situation made her want to flail around stupidly. What was Harry up to? Hadn’t they just agreed that they’d wait for things to progress in any direction? And what could she do without… cheating?
Because she’d honour his damn honour, dammit.
Harry faced her, letting the water sluice through his midnight hair. Ginny told herself she’d lock her eyes on that sight and throw away the key if she didn’t want to look south and… oh, there you go. Snapping her eyes back to his face, she knew hers was on fire and immediately glanced away, feeling like the biggest lecher in the world. And for some reason, all her thought processes packed up their bags.
Heck, they’d experimented before. No big deal, right? Except it was. Harry was… well, he was different. There was no reason to play favourites, but she definitely liked her men built like he was now.
“Why so quiet?” Harry called, washing his armpits.
You, she thought as she watched his back arch sensuously, the muscles moving under his glistening skin. Then shook her head, trying to clear it.
Ginny, who prided herself on her smart mouth, couldn’t think up a single remark to cover her unusual behaviour. Hi, you have a very nice arse, but an even greater front. Lecher, you say? Yes, I believe I am, thank you for noticing.
“Gin? Hon?” He glanced over his shoulder, caught her red-faced, and opened his mouth to speak.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Ginny blurted out angrily before he could place a word in. Then she pushed away from the wall, meaning to get out of the condensation because dammit, she was losing her head and things were getting too damn hot.
Except two wet somethings grabbed her waist from behind and turned her back around forcefully. Hands. Harry’s lips planted onto hers, and the fog intensified in her head even as it swirled around them and the spray hit their bodies full on. In some dim part of her mind, Ginny was aware of Harry maneuvering her around against the wall again. There she broke away, hissing at the cold contact. Eyes unfocused, Harry wrapped his arms around her to replace the cold.
Which pushed his erection into her stomach.
“Oh!” Harry almost pulled away but Ginny, emboldened, snatched him right back into a kiss while her other hand met hot skin. Harry’s sharp growl into her mouth as she gripped him sent her heart into a deep boil. He unlatched from her lips, pumping slowly into her fist. His hot breath tickled her face with each pant.
“Oh God, Gin, yes…” Reaching between them, he first ghosted over her arm as though testing the velvet of her skin, then transferred it lower to cup her. Idly, tortuously, he began rubbing a finger against her slit.
Ginny moaned. Dimly she felt her leg being lifted, baring all of herself to him. Their lips met in messy openmouthed kisses, hot breaths and moans mingling as they touched each other intimately.
“Why?” Ginny panted into his mouth a moment later, licking his full bottom lip.
Harry was silent as, brows furrowed, face flushed and mouth slightly parted, he rode the last-
Ginny pulled her hand off him.
Gaze snapping to hers, Harry’s eyes widened in alarm. “You…”
“Why?” Ginny demanded again, half insane with need even as she needed to know.
He tried to nuzzle her, unsuccessfully. “Guess,” he rasped.
“What about… her?” Would he… Could she…?
“She’s not who I want, Gin hon.” He stared at her a moment, reading the question in her eyes as though it were crystal clear. “I… can’t, but let me…” His finger slipped between her moist folds, swirling, swirling… Ginny whimpered, gripping his chest to steady herself lest she falter. She would, she knew it. She was that close, and could just imagine Harry’s own desperation as he waited for her. “I want you. Please. I’m close, Gin.”
So was she, and she needed release like she needed air to breathe. So she wrapped her hand around him again, feeling every inch of power that came from controlling his pleasure. As she went slow, Harry followed her rhythm and thrust deep and long. Soon she had him back where he’d been moments before. She felt it in the tension of his bunched shoulders as he bowed his head into her neck.
Abruptly he barked her name as he came, arching and pistoning. Ginny drank in every sound, reveling in his invasion of her private space. Finally he slid to his knees, spent…
Oh!
“Do that again,” Ginny demanded in a breath.
Harry wasn’t done taking his pleasure, only this time he’d turned the tables on her and she threatened to falter for real. Every nerve ending in her was alive, but her clit… it was a maelstrom of pleasepleaseplease and ohyeahrightthere’s, an eager slave to its master.
“Just… just…” She gasped as two fingers entered her deeply even as he suckled. Her breath left her on a whoosh - “there!” - and she couldn’t stand anymore, just crumpled to the floor and convulsed and whimpered until she was nothing more than liquefied bones and flesh.
Only then did he lift his head, eyes bright. “You okay?”
“Dead for a bit,” Ginny whispered, out of muscles to talk.
A satisfied smile tugged at his lips. “Why don’t we get out?”
Ginny groaned at the idea of moving so soon. “I was considering becoming a shower mat.” Despite her sluggishness, however, she complied and let him wrap her up in a terrycloth towel.
When Harry had secured another one at his hips, he looked up and smiled a boyish one. Merlin, Ginny thought helplessly. I have fallen… hard.
#
While Ginny had been brushing and drying her tangled hair, Harry had headed off to her kitchen and apparently busied himself with breakfast. Walking in, she inhaled deep. Ooh, sugar… He’d made French toast with a smidgen of sweet maple syrup.
“Can I keep you?” she teased as she glanced over his shoulder.
“Ah, but then that’s slavery, m’dear.” He patted her arms looped loosely around his middle and accepted her embrace. “You’re a great cook yourself anyway.”
Ginny made a moue. “Like I said the other day, my cakes are always on the dry side,” she admitted in mock horror. “Imagine that.”
Harry shrugged goodnaturedly, flipping the toasts in the pan. “Hey, you cook meals, I take over for dessert. How’s that arrangement?” he shot back lightly.
Smiling, Ginny decided she loved the silly moments with Harry. They were a bright spot in an often dreary day. Dramatically, she swooned back into her chair. “Harry,” she gushed, “we were made for each other!”
Turning with spatula in hand, Harry cocked his eyebrow at her, chuckling merrily. “If you say so,” he whispered before tapping her nose with the sticky utensil.
Predictably, Ginny screeched bloody murder as Harry grinned from ear to ear.
“Oops!” He ducked back to the stove, checking the bread as if nothing had happened.
“Harry James Potter,” Ginny exploded, dissolving into laughter, “you will so get it.” With that, she walked over, smacking a loud one - and her nose - on his cheek, effectively spreading the thick syrup.
Harry yelped, weapon poised for combat even though he also shook with laughter.
Ginny cocked a brow, daring him silently. “Actually,” she mused aloud, inching closer, “you need one on your other cheek so it doesn’t get jealous.”
A ring went off, effectively freezing them both in their tracks.
“Saved by the bell,” Ginny whispered, backing off as Harry fished in his trouser pocket for his mobile. He lodged it in the crook of his neck as he busied his spatula in the pan.
Ginny rummaged in her fridge for the syrup. He’d left it exactly where she usually kept it. He’s a keeper, that one, she thought with a covert glance his way. Still he talked, presumably by the way Harry had to keep reminding him that Miranda was after all his charge and no, there was no way he’d swap. She took the full plate from him without a word.
Harry snorted into the phone at something Hopkins said. “Maybe you ought to feel a bit more jealous of Miranda, how about that.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand when he saw Ginny. “Thanks, Gin hon.”
Was Ginny beginning to feel like a little lovesick fool? Yes, she was. It might be foolish and completely inappropriate in their line of work, but she did feel like the human embodiment of featherlight. “No problem,” she murmured back as he set back to work filling his plate after hers. Even when he sat across from her, she tuned out his conversation.
Although she should have been thinking about work and the next rational step in their investigation… she just couldn’t place a logical thought in. She’d had… a form of sex in her shower, mind-blowing, extra-super-fantastic and all, with Harry Potter… only the man she’d been trying to convince herself she didn’t want for the longest time.
“No, actually,” Harry cut into her thoughts, eyeing her distractedly, “we have to go up north today. Mallaig. Scotland, yeah. I figure we can make it back before my watch tonight. Oh really…” He rolled his eyes amiably. “You’re a big boy, mate.” He listened a moment, then sighed. “Let me ask her.” Covering the mouthpiece, he leaned toward Ginny. “D’you mind if Hopkins and Miranda tag along today? He says he’s ‘tried everything but she just won’t learn.’”
Tom made it so easy to hate him. “Chauvinistic dog,” Ginny muttered under her breath. Harry shrugged, displacing himself from any blame. “Oh, why the hell not. I’ll give her a break from the arseheaded ponce.”
With a chuckle and a headshake, Harry confirmed to said ponce, clicked off, and shook his head again at her. “He’s not that-”
“Don’t defend him, Harry,” Ginny replied amiably enough, licking syrup off her lips.
Harry knew not to push his luck. “Okay, okay,” he relented. “But he’s a great friend.”
She smiled crookedly. “Don’t you just love that your friend uses you to get rid of his charge?”
They finished eating in silence.
#
When Ron woke next, the whole bed shook. Instantly I was taken back to the first night he’d taken me to the Coven, after his battle with Buchanan. Ron’s teeth clacked together as he rolled into a fœtal position. Shivers racked his body in great waves, sweat rolling down his temples.
Last time I’d been there to hold him through it. This time he refused to let me touch him. “No, stay away,” he pleaded with brilliant fever-filled eyes. “I mean it.”
And I could feel why he pushed me away. Flattening myself against the farthest wall, I tried to ignore the roiling in my head and gut as energy blurred him out in front of my very eyes. “Are you okay?” The question was vaguely ironic, considering that Ron was going through something I couldn’t even begin to understand. But I knew it was bad. Really bad.
Silence - if you could call the deafening buzz of energy silence - and then Ron’s gritted rasp. “Yeah.”
It was a start. “How are you…” I swallowed hard, sliding down the wall. Good thing was, I was holding most of the bile down. My reactions were improving. “How are you doing?”
“I’m so sorry, ‘Mione. Wish I could…” Gasp and grunt.
Now I felt the sweats hitting me. “Don’t give up, Ronnie. You’re stronger, you can do it.”
I heard his frantic pants, felt his rank panic in droves. Dear Circe, it was overtaking him. helplessness just drove me mental.
“Listen to me, you fool!” I cried, standing suddenly and wobbling like a drunken dolt. “I love you and don’t you dare do this to me.” As I fell onto him and touched his skin, it was like being coursed with electricity so potent it hit me hard, a sock filled with a brick that was being swung repeatedly at me.
This was nothing like the last time. It was attacking him. His own magical makeup was destroying him in order to reconcile with the fact that he’d been tortured nearly to death and not been able to do a single thing about it. What was there to do except to pray that someone up there would get a plan rolling?
“Stay with me,” I choked out. Dimly I felt my heart pounding its way out of my chest, my hands gone cold as I touched Ron’s boiling skin under the haze of fierce magic. The tip of my hand poked into my backside, but I didn’t-
Wait. Wand. That last registered. Professor Flitwick’s lecture in First Year came back to me clear as day, making my heard pump for a whole other reason than abject fear. Wands are the vessel from which the sparse magical energy is concentrated and then funneled outward. Ron’s energy wasn’t sparse, it was hyper-concentrated, and at the moment it was looking for a bigger vessel to even itself out.
Wasting no time, I molded myself to Ron’s body, hoping against all hope that I was doing the right thing because my brain certainly didn’t like the contact.
“’Mione,” he gasped, attempting to scramble away, “what are you - oh Merlin…”
“Take my hand,” I whimpered through the pounding and the swirling. “Take my hand, Ronnie, please.”
He took it and it all went away.
#
“Hey sugar.”
Ginny sent Harry a covert glare over her scrumptuously syrup-laden French toast as Tom Hopkins sat next to her. She ignored him categorically.
“Awh, what’s with her? Did you rub her the wrong way?” he queried Harry when he reappeared in the kitchen, Miranda at his heel.
Harry shrugged, crossing his arms.
“So how’s your hands-on research going since the last time? You have a lead on your friend?” All traces of the jerkitude were replaced with what Ginny guessed was his regular on-the-job approach. Laugh lines were gone, and so was the mischievous twinkle in his eyes. He looked to Harry with serious purpose. So that was why Harry stuck to the bastard’s friendship…
“We’ve got a lead in Scotland. Little town of Mallaig near the Hebrides. We were thinking about going today.”
Tom slapped Harry’s back, a half-serious grin in place. “Well what are we waiting for?”
Ginny finished her glass of orange juice and looked over at the other woman to assess her disposition to the idea. “You mind?”
Caught in surprise, Miranda glanced covertly at Hopkins. “No, ‘course not,” she stuttered.
The bastard rolled his eyes. “See? Let’s go.”
Indeed, after a few cleaning spells, they were ready to head out. As the men pored over maps to triangulate their Apparition trail, Ginny pulled Miranda apart. “You sure?”
The other woman nodded, a tremulous smile stretching her lips for an instant. “Yeah. He’s quite a handful, isn’t he?”
“He doesn’t…” Ginny trailed off meaningfully. “Does he?”
Miranda’s eyes went wide as saucers as she caught the meaning. “What? No! He’s all bark and no bite. Really.”
Still, Ginny’s bullshit metre buzzed. She narrowed her eyes, studying her friend intently. “Absolutely sure?”
The other woman’s eyes trailed slowly back to the men. “Yeah. It’s fine.”
As Ginny watched Miranda’s eyes drop sadly to the ground, she suddenly understood. “Oh… no… Honey, you-”
“It’s fine,” she repeated with harsh finality, eyes gone hard.
Except it wasn’t. Ginny knew firsthand how it felt to be rejected, could only sympathise with her friend over what seemed impossible to mend. You and Harry did finally somewhat fix what went wrong years ago. She eyed Tom sadly, thinking that if he was any other man… But he wasn’t and likely wouldn’t change anytime soon. Nor open his eyes.
Harry snapped her back to reality as he called her over to go over the details.
#
“Is it over?” I asked breathlessly after a moment.
Ron took a deep, cautious breath, lifting with him as his chest expanded to take his first full breath. “Looks like it,” he replied cautiously, just as surprised.
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. How did you know?”
I shrugged lazily. “Science. When energy is excited, it fights for a way out until either the container explodes or you find a way to siphon whatever’s in out. In this case, you were the container. I siphoned.”
We both turned our heads as one toward the wall, examining the… results of my decision.
“Never thought I’d be able to do that spell without a wand,” I mused aloud, remembering the power slamming through me as though it were happening all over again. “It’s quite a rush, don’t you think? Is it always like that?”
He made a sound of assent, tearing his eyes away from the Triquetra symbol temporarily burned into the wall. From experience we knew it would disappear within the next few hours, but it was still an odd sight in my bedroom. “Well, now we know we were here,” he commented drily before struggling to sit up. I obliged by sitting back on his legs.
“How’d you feel?” I asked, quickly inspecting his body for possible further injury.
“Like something plowed through me twice over. Which it did.” He grimaced as he tried to get into a comfortable position.
His reaction reminded me of the bandage. I’d quickly rolled gauze around his torso, the worst area from the Elder’s torture. “Let me check your wounds,” I offered, rolling off him with purpose.
At first Ron batted my hands away, grumbling like a recalcitrant child. “That’s not necessary,” he groaned.
“Be reasonable,” I sighed in frustration. “If these get infected you’ll be doing much worse that you’re doing now. Don’t you remember?”
My visual reminder of the war did its job. Ron had always been hardheaded, but I don’t think he’ll ever want a repeat of the months of pain, medication, healing and fevers while battling Death Eaters just to serve his ever-elevated male pride.
He helped me peel the wrappings off his chest. When we got to the flesh beneath, I touched and prodded, measuring his deliberately detached expression for signs of pain. Whereas the wounds had properly closed after I’d disinfected them, the skin was still an angry Jackson Pollock of colours, although Ron gave no feedback at all as I healed bruises. My skill wasn’t in Healing, though, but we hadn’t the time to pop into St. Mungo’s.
“I need to wrap you up again,” I announced in the silence after my brisk examination, fetching the roll of gauze in the bathroom.
Although he pursed his lips, no doubt wanting to refuse altogether, Ron said nothing more than, “Make it thin.”
I set to work, fingers light and quick over Ron’s warm skin as though they’d been specially calibrated for this particular job. The truth was, they’d done this job nightly for months; it was just like taking up biking after years off the wheels. The real shocker was, however, that I’d never been able to learn proper Healing even after all that time. Guess there was something even brainy know-it-alls couldn’t get.
“Planning to get vertical, Ron?” I asked to fill the silence as I finished rolling the clean fabric.
His chest expanded, testing the tightness of his wrappings, then he looked up. “We have to meet with Buchanan. Today.”
“Do we have to?” I asked hopefully. Nothing wrong with wishing Ron wouldn’t put himself in harm’s way again so soon. But then this was a man we were talking about. A hardheaded specimen, even.
Ron snorted darkly, all male agression and revenge. “Oh yeah.” Lifting a hand, he tugged my head down until my lips were mere inches from his. “You were right. It’s wrong, Hermione. It’s all wrong. Now I know it.”
A sigh rolled through my body. This wasn’t happiness, this was the purest form of it. “I’m glad you finally see it my way,” I murmured through a tremulous smile.
His eyes glowed as he murmured back teasingly, “You’re always right, didn’t you know?” before pressing his lips to mine.
To which I chuckled and poked him lightly even as I tugged him closer.
A moment later Ron struggled to his feet by himself. I didn’t dare help, wanting him to get a feel for how ready he was to get back on track. His feet planted, his arms bulged with effort, he gritted his teeth, and finally he was standing stiffly without wobbling the slightest. A triumphant smile split his lips. See? it seemed to communicate. I can do it.
Rolling my eyes playfully, I grabbed one of Harry’s shirts and began dressing Ron. There would be no Guardian robe this time - it was beyond mending anyway. When I was done, I stepped back to admire Ron 2.0 in everyday garb. “Well now, seems we’re ready. How will he know to come?”
“Homing Charm. Just like I did to keep tabs on you. He’ll feel us moving if he’s paying attention. Come on.” He offered me his hand.
I ignored it, going instead to stroke his shoulder in soothing circles. “We could always-” I started offering, thinking of the car Harry and I seldom, if ever, used.
“I’m fine,” he sighed-grated. “Now will you-”
“You don’t always have to be the hero, you know.”
“And I’m not breakable,” he countered hotly.
I shut up tight, took his hand, and we Disapparated out of my house that Saturday morning without another word from each other.
He was wrong, though. He’d almost proven he was breakable that morning. Everyone is.
It's 7 years after the fall of the Dark Lord. Hermione has been trying to get on with her life and forget the night Ron Weasley died. But the night a long-ago symbol appears outside her window, she gets more mystery and excitement than she wished for.
CHAPTER EIGHT: NO MATTER WHERE
“No. No no no no no!”
What kind of sick game were the Fates playing with me? Didn’t they know it was Ron they had doomed when they’d sent me back? Didn’t they know I couldn’t do a damned thing for him from here even if I tried? Just the thought…
Cold sweat hit me. Bile lurched into the back of my throat. My vision became one tiny black hole. Breaths weren’t better. Shakily I gained my feet, recognising the delayed symptoms for what they were and cursing them to hell and back. What good was I when I couldn’t even do a single thing?
Toilet. Toilet, I needed the toilet.
How helpful. The clever woman vomits her brains out and sobs? Useless.
You are nothing.
She was too right.
#
Glimpses of brightness. Shocking disks of the coldest blue. Cold. So cold. No, hot. Then cold. Heart? Erratic and slow. Moisture gone pasty on skin. Eyes burning, like skin, but no tears. No tears. He saw happiness, far, far away, untouchable, blurry. Memories. He clung to them. Knew only the beautiful vision could keep him sane through - Pain!
Heard her voice, hers, the memory’s. Guardian angel. The playful gratitude in depthless pools of brown. Heard his own reply. I’m no angel. But he wanted to be, only for her. Saw her sick, shaking in his arms. His fault. Dangerous -
More pain. Slashing, blood screaming, teeth clenching, aching. A cry, torn from the seat of his soul, smothered and never released. His body slumped in too-tight adamant restraints, stripped of all power but failing strength.
“Worthless. You are worthless without us, Honos.” The Mistress flicked her fingers outward.
Slipped in and out of consciouness. Head fell forward. Saw his ugly nakedness. Couldn’t feel a thing but heard it all as though from afar.
“Can the girl teach you your potential? Does she know Honos?”
She did. She didn’t. She didn’t care. He scared her, hurt her. She wanted him, just him. He would be the death of her. She of him? No!
No superfluous emotional attachments, he knew.
His potential… he had so much, he did not even understand himself. Could he risk Hermione’s life anymore than he already had? In retrospect it hadn’t seemed so dangerous to hide her under the Brotherhood’s very own nose, but she’d been discovered and… where was she?
Worthless without us. Guardian be damned. He was helpless, his magic bound within him for the time being. Hoping to escape was futile. Wasn’t it always?
“You are needed here, Honos. Your purpose is with us. You are nothing without us.”
With every word a smooth caress, his body felt all the more scarred, criss-crossed, over and back, and knotted. When would it end?
I know. I think you do, too.
#
“I didn’t want you hurt.” Under his breath Harry added, “Still don’t.”
Not again. “Harry, I’m-”
“I know! You’re a grown woman and you’re damned good and I can’t do a thing to stop you,” he muttered.
“Spoken like a good man,” Ginny couldn’t help but quip. Harry’s arms and legs closed around her thighs and neck as if to say But there are other ways to stop you… Indeed, there wasn’t much one could do in her position except to slowly work one’s way out-speed didn’t help an inch with grappling-but her body strongly pleaded tiredness and so she remained soft in his hold until he let go a fraction.
It was a wonderful hold until just before dawn.
#
“Harry? … Harry!”
God dammit. Darkness, Death Eaters, hexes and curses flying all over the place with Voldemort who knew where… and now Ginny. How could he hope to find her in this bloody clusterfuck of bodies and death looming over life and especially him? No. Mind over body, Potter. Get your arse in gear. Clusterfuck could translate to doom in one instant of inattention.
“Harr… no, you’re-”
Shut her out. Right now he had unfinished hands-on business with a wandless Death Eater who gave no quarters. As well as Voldemort to look out for. Where was-
Ginny’s hoarse scream rattled him to the bones. “Let me go!” Block. Block. Block. “You’re cho…king me you… bastard.”
Harry glanced down at the masked Death Eater under him. His sweaty palms made a squelching sound on the darkened skin of his victim as he released… Ginny.
No. She can’t be-No. Ginny!
The wide eyes stared up at the brilliant canopy of stars even as he was rudely pulled back off her lifeless body and onto his back. He just didn’t have any strength left in him to fight back. “Gin…”
She coughed without moving her lips and then spoke. The ragged word was spoken with Voldemort’s whispery, deadly voice. “What?”
On impulse Harry reached for his wand, but found nothing but bedding. He blinked hard, and Gin’s face suddenly loomed over him. Life in her. His jaw went slack for a long moment.
She smiled at him shakily, rubbing her red-ringed neck. “Welcome back, Mr Potter.”
#
I’d cried as much as I could, emptied my body like it needed purification, and afterward lay loose-boned on my bed for the longest time, unable to sleep for fear of forgetting anything.
Idle bodies aren’t necessarily idle minds. The effort is just not recognised because it’s not physically seen. I may have looked dead and depleted to the world, but the truth was, I wasn’t thinking black thoughts anymore. My brain needed food to nibble on, so I began thinking proactively about a safer subject. Yes, Mr Clarke was closely linked with Ron, but he was my job first and foremost. Tomorrow I’d go see him, I decided, and would see Auror Randall about the case or lack thereof. It just couldn’t drag on anymore; either they had something or they didn’t.
I wondered fleetingly whether the prophecy was safe with Buchanan, but sleep claimed me soon enough.
I slept in fits and starts. The mind is amazing, though. It rejects traumatic thoughts as easily as if one threw a blanket over it. That was how trauma victims dealt with their shock.
Thankfully, I wasn’t bothered until dawn. Regretfully, I repeat: I slept in fits and starts.
#
“Welcome back, Mr Potter.”
Harry gaped at her like a fish, blinking, before frantically searching through the space beside him. A huge breath left him, and then he pressed Ginny to his chest. His hands were frigid even through her shirt.
“Are you all right?” Ginny whispered against his neck, unsure what to do. It was obvious Harry had had a nightmare of sorts-she bore the marks quire visibly.
“’m fine,” he croaked out, squeezing tight. “What about you?” He pushed her back and threw his hand to the bedside table, things clanking.
Glasses. Right. “Here,” Ginny said, reaching over him and handing them to him. he put them on with difficulty, his hands shaking so badly it took three tries to find his nose. Taking pity on him, she started taking his hands when he was done, only to be pushed away roughly.
“Let me-”
The bed dipped as he left the bed, and then she was being pulled along behind him.
“What-Harry-let me-”
The tiny lights around her mirror blinded her momentarily as he turned them on, and then Harry’s hands lingered featherlight on her neck where he’d choked her mere moments before.
“It’ll fade away,” she said.
“I did this.” Harry’s voice sounded dead.
She batted his hands away, planting a glare on him. Hadn’t they been on this road before? Oh no you don’t, Harry James Potter. “I’m sure there was a very good reason. Go on, tell me.”
Harry flushed, starting to turn away until she kept him right where he was and pegged him with a hard look. He wouldn’t be going anywhere. Slowly he faced her. “I dreamt of the Battle, except I… killed you.” The last he’d murmured, barely loud enough for her to hear.
As he looked off, Ginny bit her lips. She knew more than most that guilt plagued Harry at all times. Forget the boy-to-man hero, Harry’d borne a world of responsibility on his shoulders and his sole wish had been to make the world a better place for all. Dreams have a way of telling its dreamer exactly what they want, whether they want it subliminally or not. Which made her job very difficult at the moment.
“Hey.” Absently, Harry turned his stubbled cheek into her palm, then his eyes found hers. Such sorrow. The injustice of it all. Life supposedly made you tougher from its harsh mishaps, but the intelligent souls who’d thought the clever phrase had left out how marked you were on the other end. Even healed fractures leave bumps. The bon is stronger, but aches visit from time to time during humid weather.
“I’m right here, Harry,” Ginny continued in his neck. Through her nightshirt she felt his hands warm on her and slowly she relaxed into him. “You didn’t mean it. I know that.”
“You don’t understand,” he countered, still in that scary dead voice. “I could have hurt you.”
Ginny shook her head. “The best part is you didn’t,” she replied. Then, on impulse, she kissed him and pulled away with a little grin. “Thank you for that.”
Just as she’d anticipated, a corner of his mouth lifted at her silliness though some of the gauntness didn’t leave his features. Slowly he gathered her in to him for a proper kiss, breaking it only to burrow his nose in her hair. In a husky voice he murmured, “Thanks.”
There. That was as much an acknowledgment of his out-of-control sense of nobility as anyone would get.
“Let’s go back.” And proof that he was back in total control of himself.
“Mmhm.” As if to underline what ungodly time it was, Ginny yawned hugely as Harry turned the light of her bathroom mirror off and led her back to bed.
She let him tuck her in and gather her into the now-warm cocoon of his body. She let him protect her once more.
#
Ron drifted in and out of consciousness, aware on some level of his state. His body ran cold, a combined result of a chilly draft that seeped steadily into the room and of his own physical state: his wounds wouldn’t heal. Later, he’d have to deal with that… later…
He came to again, shivering in great trembling breaths. He remembered his nakedness and tried to curl in on himself. His wrists sang and he gasped, lost again.
The next time he felt something brush closeby. His eyes opened, but all he saw was a blob of yellow and a large black one on top nearby. Someone. Short. Robin, he thought, knowing Aine was taller.
The two blobs approached until he blinked, unseeing. “You could have avoided this, you know.”
Ron couldn’t reply. His throat was parched, his tongue swollen and raw.
“She only wants the best for us.”
His head split open with a nascent headache, promising to carry on idefinitely should he stay hanging thus from his magical bonds. He decided to close his eyes on his own, and suddenly his body took over. Oblivion came.
The last time he emerged, he was alone. The room sounded hollow. Chin resting on his chest, Ron saw red. Blood. His own.
He is ready.
He was.
His power hadn’t been a willful choice-he’d gained it through honourable courage of heart. Had he lost that quality afterward? Had something changed in him? He hoped not, else he’d die a truly honourable death battling against everything that stood between him and deliverance: adamant bonds, wards, wounds.
Steeling his precious few reserves of strength for one final pulsion, Ron cried out as his molecules exploded.
#
Ginny slowly came awake, stretching back luxuriously into another warm body. A moment, and then she smiled privately into the covers bunched at her chin.
“You awake?” Harry’s voice came from her shoulder.
“Mmno…” Staying burrowed into her covers with Harry cloaking her, she thought, I could get used to this. Unfortunately, real life had a nasty habit of getting in the way of things, though it didn’t need to know that right that moment. How about allowing her just a few more peaceful minutes?
There had been no other hitches during the night after Harry’s nightmare, only a deep-seated quiet that had bled out of her every pore. She’d been dead to the world, hadn’t dreamt much, but her body had known Harry had been there with her somehow.
“You are awake.” There was a grin in his voice as he plucked a hunk of hair off her face.
“I’m in that state between conscious and subconscious,” Ginny grunted into her pillow. “Ask me anything and I can’t be held accountable for what I say or do.”
A dubious snort. “I’d love to be so talkative in my sleep.”
“Half sleep,” Ginny corrected groggily. “And it’s a talent.”
“Even so…” He paused, for effect she thought. It was a struggle to keep her eyes closed and not give in to the temptation of twisting around and seeing his expression. “What do you think of me?”
Ginny didn’t hesitate. “You’re the worst sort of asshole I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet,” she declared with gusto.
“Mm, I was afraid of that, but you did sleep with the asshole in question last night even after he choked you half to death.”
There was a thankful note in how he said it, and Ginny, despite promising a bit longer of a snooze, turned her head to meet his grateful eyes. “Maybe because the girl who did that is a bitch herself.”
“No way,” was Harry’s vehement reply.
Ginny cocked a brow but didn’t argue further. Hey, she’d take compliments when they came.
An intense silence followed where Harry didn’t just look at her, but touched her without even moving a single muscle. “I owe you something, Gin hon,” he said at length.
Her nickname was back and, for some reason, it didn’t incense her anymore. “What?” she breathed.
Harry’s eyes twinkled. It had been a while since she’d seen him so relaxed. Usually work dominated his thoughts and actions. At the moment he… lived for the moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him so carefree with her own two eyes. for a moment she was almost jealous of Hermione. Maybe she’d seen Harry carefree in the last seven or so years?
“I dunno. I was hoping you could tell me.”
And there it was. A request for her to choose. “What do you want, Harry?”
His eyes darkened as they latched onto her lips, and yet… “I want to find Hermione so bad.”
Which shouldn’t have made sense. She should have been furious that he’d been thinking of another woman while he was with her, but it just proved one thing: he did want her. Badly. But he wouldn’t take what she offered. Yet. Which made the anticipation that much more mind-heart-pounding for both of them.
“Way to sweet-talk a woman, Harry,” she teased lightly, stretching like a cat as Harry’s eyes raked her exposed skin.
No, they positively smoldered. “You know what I mean.”
Ginny nodded, grinning. “Yeah, I do.” With that out of the way, she peeled the covers off her, elbowed Harry aside, and walk-shimmied her way to the bathroom. There was something to say of a woman’s wiles. Victory may come later, but the game was all about scoring goals before the snitch was caught… and maybe cheating without the referee calling foul mid-play.
Oh, what a subtle game…
Ginny stepped under the warm spray of the shower, letting it energise her.
#
“Wake up.”
My eyes stang as I opened them to behold my intruder. Then I jerked completely awake.
He fell upon me.
#
Twisting my palms over and again, I stared until it seemed I’d imprinted the sight forever in my brain. An echo would always remain.
There was blood on my hands.
That I had no reaction wasn’t the problem. I had seen blood in all tableaux before. Pints, stains, cuts, extracted teeth, gushing veins, gurgling throats… I’d seen rivers of the stuff, from brilliant red to dark burgundy, nearly black. I’d helped heal people back to relative health, only to have them return hours later in worse conditions-in the end, it all falls back to the wounded and whether they’ll fight death itself alone.
I’d killed, too, but then those had been bloodless deaths. It seemed strange that shock would grip me now, after all that.
“Thanks,” Ron’s rasp jarred me as he touched my knee with shaking fingers.
I lowered my hands, wiping them on my trousers, and checked the soaked bandage on his chest wordlessly. My brain had shut down and currently worked on autopilot. There was no way I could let myself think beyond these two facts: Ron was alive, and his strength was completely shot from his multi-Apparating from ward to ward and from his loss of blood. There was only one way to forget this entire episode, and it was to do everything I could possibly do to care for Ron.
Except I just kept seeing that woman and wondering what had become of her.
“Aine…” I began tentatively, slowly towelling away a crust of blood from his brow.
Ron shook his head wordlessly. A long silence ensued where things were left to my imagination, which I didn’t dare touch.
After a while, though, I had to ask. It was torture not to know. I whispered close to his ear, “ Are we safe here?”
A surprisingly steady hand grabbed mine. “Never, but I’m here, ‘Mione.”
The truth was no cake, but it did ease me. Funny thing is, although I knew the exact extent of his current physical limitations, I didn’t doubt him for a second. A leader, Ron was always a leader.
And I’d be damned if I wasn’t his second-in-command.
#
Ginny would have shut the shower tap when a hand joined hers on the knob. A male hand, bigger, more powerful. She backed away instinctively against the cool wall, more speechless than shocked, as Harry stepped in. He didn’t even once look at her.
“Just so we get out of here quicker. There’s a lot of work to do,” he said quietly, his words reverberating against the tile.
“Really,” Ginny murmured skeptically, unmoving. If Harry in boxers and a tee-shirt riding up his torso bothered her, now… his bare cheeks truly did.
“Yeah.” He threw a glance her way, then promptly went back to doing his thing.
“I was… I was done,” Ginny said lamely after a few seconds of vainly trying to slow her speeding heart. The whole situation made her want to flail around stupidly. What was Harry up to? Hadn’t they just agreed that they’d wait for things to progress in any direction? And what could she do without… cheating?
Because she’d honour his damn honour, dammit.
Harry faced her, letting the water sluice through his midnight hair. Ginny told herself she’d lock her eyes on that sight and throw away the key if she didn’t want to look south and… oh, there you go. Snapping her eyes back to his face, she knew hers was on fire and immediately glanced away, feeling like the biggest lecher in the world. And for some reason, all her thought processes packed up their bags.
Heck, they’d experimented before. No big deal, right? Except it was. Harry was… well, he was different. There was no reason to play favourites, but she definitely liked her men built like he was now.
“Why so quiet?” Harry called, washing his armpits.
You, she thought as she watched his back arch sensuously, the muscles moving under his glistening skin. Then shook her head, trying to clear it.
Ginny, who prided herself on her smart mouth, couldn’t think up a single remark to cover her unusual behaviour. Hi, you have a very nice arse, but an even greater front. Lecher, you say? Yes, I believe I am, thank you for noticing.
“Gin? Hon?” He glanced over his shoulder, caught her red-faced, and opened his mouth to speak.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Ginny blurted out angrily before he could place a word in. Then she pushed away from the wall, meaning to get out of the condensation because dammit, she was losing her head and things were getting too damn hot.
Except two wet somethings grabbed her waist from behind and turned her back around forcefully. Hands. Harry’s lips planted onto hers, and the fog intensified in her head even as it swirled around them and the spray hit their bodies full on. In some dim part of her mind, Ginny was aware of Harry maneuvering her around against the wall again. There she broke away, hissing at the cold contact. Eyes unfocused, Harry wrapped his arms around her to replace the cold.
Which pushed his erection into her stomach.
“Oh!” Harry almost pulled away but Ginny, emboldened, snatched him right back into a kiss while her other hand met hot skin. Harry’s sharp growl into her mouth as she gripped him sent her heart into a deep boil. He unlatched from her lips, pumping slowly into her fist. His hot breath tickled her face with each pant.
“Oh God, Gin, yes…” Reaching between them, he first ghosted over her arm as though testing the velvet of her skin, then transferred it lower to cup her. Idly, tortuously, he began rubbing a finger against her slit.
Ginny moaned. Dimly she felt her leg being lifted, baring all of herself to him. Their lips met in messy openmouthed kisses, hot breaths and moans mingling as they touched each other intimately.
“Why?” Ginny panted into his mouth a moment later, licking his full bottom lip.
Harry was silent as, brows furrowed, face flushed and mouth slightly parted, he rode the last-
Ginny pulled her hand off him.
Gaze snapping to hers, Harry’s eyes widened in alarm. “You…”
“Why?” Ginny demanded again, half insane with need even as she needed to know.
He tried to nuzzle her, unsuccessfully. “Guess,” he rasped.
“What about… her?” Would he… Could she…?
“She’s not who I want, Gin hon.” He stared at her a moment, reading the question in her eyes as though it were crystal clear. “I… can’t, but let me…” His finger slipped between her moist folds, swirling, swirling… Ginny whimpered, gripping his chest to steady herself lest she falter. She would, she knew it. She was that close, and could just imagine Harry’s own desperation as he waited for her. “I want you. Please. I’m close, Gin.”
So was she, and she needed release like she needed air to breathe. So she wrapped her hand around him again, feeling every inch of power that came from controlling his pleasure. As she went slow, Harry followed her rhythm and thrust deep and long. Soon she had him back where he’d been moments before. She felt it in the tension of his bunched shoulders as he bowed his head into her neck.
Abruptly he barked her name as he came, arching and pistoning. Ginny drank in every sound, reveling in his invasion of her private space. Finally he slid to his knees, spent…
Oh!
“Do that again,” Ginny demanded in a breath.
Harry wasn’t done taking his pleasure, only this time he’d turned the tables on her and she threatened to falter for real. Every nerve ending in her was alive, but her clit… it was a maelstrom of pleasepleaseplease and ohyeahrightthere’s, an eager slave to its master.
“Just… just…” She gasped as two fingers entered her deeply even as he suckled. Her breath left her on a whoosh - “there!” - and she couldn’t stand anymore, just crumpled to the floor and convulsed and whimpered until she was nothing more than liquefied bones and flesh.
Only then did he lift his head, eyes bright. “You okay?”
“Dead for a bit,” Ginny whispered, out of muscles to talk.
A satisfied smile tugged at his lips. “Why don’t we get out?”
Ginny groaned at the idea of moving so soon. “I was considering becoming a shower mat.” Despite her sluggishness, however, she complied and let him wrap her up in a terrycloth towel.
When Harry had secured another one at his hips, he looked up and smiled a boyish one. Merlin, Ginny thought helplessly. I have fallen… hard.
#
While Ginny had been brushing and drying her tangled hair, Harry had headed off to her kitchen and apparently busied himself with breakfast. Walking in, she inhaled deep. Ooh, sugar… He’d made French toast with a smidgen of sweet maple syrup.
“Can I keep you?” she teased as she glanced over his shoulder.
“Ah, but then that’s slavery, m’dear.” He patted her arms looped loosely around his middle and accepted her embrace. “You’re a great cook yourself anyway.”
Ginny made a moue. “Like I said the other day, my cakes are always on the dry side,” she admitted in mock horror. “Imagine that.”
Harry shrugged goodnaturedly, flipping the toasts in the pan. “Hey, you cook meals, I take over for dessert. How’s that arrangement?” he shot back lightly.
Smiling, Ginny decided she loved the silly moments with Harry. They were a bright spot in an often dreary day. Dramatically, she swooned back into her chair. “Harry,” she gushed, “we were made for each other!”
Turning with spatula in hand, Harry cocked his eyebrow at her, chuckling merrily. “If you say so,” he whispered before tapping her nose with the sticky utensil.
Predictably, Ginny screeched bloody murder as Harry grinned from ear to ear.
“Oops!” He ducked back to the stove, checking the bread as if nothing had happened.
“Harry James Potter,” Ginny exploded, dissolving into laughter, “you will so get it.” With that, she walked over, smacking a loud one - and her nose - on his cheek, effectively spreading the thick syrup.
Harry yelped, weapon poised for combat even though he also shook with laughter.
Ginny cocked a brow, daring him silently. “Actually,” she mused aloud, inching closer, “you need one on your other cheek so it doesn’t get jealous.”
A ring went off, effectively freezing them both in their tracks.
“Saved by the bell,” Ginny whispered, backing off as Harry fished in his trouser pocket for his mobile. He lodged it in the crook of his neck as he busied his spatula in the pan.
Ginny rummaged in her fridge for the syrup. He’d left it exactly where she usually kept it. He’s a keeper, that one, she thought with a covert glance his way. Still he talked, presumably by the way Harry had to keep reminding him that Miranda was after all his charge and no, there was no way he’d swap. She took the full plate from him without a word.
Harry snorted into the phone at something Hopkins said. “Maybe you ought to feel a bit more jealous of Miranda, how about that.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand when he saw Ginny. “Thanks, Gin hon.”
Was Ginny beginning to feel like a little lovesick fool? Yes, she was. It might be foolish and completely inappropriate in their line of work, but she did feel like the human embodiment of featherlight. “No problem,” she murmured back as he set back to work filling his plate after hers. Even when he sat across from her, she tuned out his conversation.
Although she should have been thinking about work and the next rational step in their investigation… she just couldn’t place a logical thought in. She’d had… a form of sex in her shower, mind-blowing, extra-super-fantastic and all, with Harry Potter… only the man she’d been trying to convince herself she didn’t want for the longest time.
“No, actually,” Harry cut into her thoughts, eyeing her distractedly, “we have to go up north today. Mallaig. Scotland, yeah. I figure we can make it back before my watch tonight. Oh really…” He rolled his eyes amiably. “You’re a big boy, mate.” He listened a moment, then sighed. “Let me ask her.” Covering the mouthpiece, he leaned toward Ginny. “D’you mind if Hopkins and Miranda tag along today? He says he’s ‘tried everything but she just won’t learn.’”
Tom made it so easy to hate him. “Chauvinistic dog,” Ginny muttered under her breath. Harry shrugged, displacing himself from any blame. “Oh, why the hell not. I’ll give her a break from the arseheaded ponce.”
With a chuckle and a headshake, Harry confirmed to said ponce, clicked off, and shook his head again at her. “He’s not that-”
“Don’t defend him, Harry,” Ginny replied amiably enough, licking syrup off her lips.
Harry knew not to push his luck. “Okay, okay,” he relented. “But he’s a great friend.”
She smiled crookedly. “Don’t you just love that your friend uses you to get rid of his charge?”
They finished eating in silence.
#
When Ron woke next, the whole bed shook. Instantly I was taken back to the first night he’d taken me to the Coven, after his battle with Buchanan. Ron’s teeth clacked together as he rolled into a fœtal position. Shivers racked his body in great waves, sweat rolling down his temples.
Last time I’d been there to hold him through it. This time he refused to let me touch him. “No, stay away,” he pleaded with brilliant fever-filled eyes. “I mean it.”
And I could feel why he pushed me away. Flattening myself against the farthest wall, I tried to ignore the roiling in my head and gut as energy blurred him out in front of my very eyes. “Are you okay?” The question was vaguely ironic, considering that Ron was going through something I couldn’t even begin to understand. But I knew it was bad. Really bad.
Silence - if you could call the deafening buzz of energy silence - and then Ron’s gritted rasp. “Yeah.”
It was a start. “How are you…” I swallowed hard, sliding down the wall. Good thing was, I was holding most of the bile down. My reactions were improving. “How are you doing?”
“I’m so sorry, ‘Mione. Wish I could…” Gasp and grunt.
Now I felt the sweats hitting me. “Don’t give up, Ronnie. You’re stronger, you can do it.”
I heard his frantic pants, felt his rank panic in droves. Dear Circe, it was overtaking him. helplessness just drove me mental.
“Listen to me, you fool!” I cried, standing suddenly and wobbling like a drunken dolt. “I love you and don’t you dare do this to me.” As I fell onto him and touched his skin, it was like being coursed with electricity so potent it hit me hard, a sock filled with a brick that was being swung repeatedly at me.
This was nothing like the last time. It was attacking him. His own magical makeup was destroying him in order to reconcile with the fact that he’d been tortured nearly to death and not been able to do a single thing about it. What was there to do except to pray that someone up there would get a plan rolling?
“Stay with me,” I choked out. Dimly I felt my heart pounding its way out of my chest, my hands gone cold as I touched Ron’s boiling skin under the haze of fierce magic. The tip of my hand poked into my backside, but I didn’t-
Wait. Wand. That last registered. Professor Flitwick’s lecture in First Year came back to me clear as day, making my heard pump for a whole other reason than abject fear. Wands are the vessel from which the sparse magical energy is concentrated and then funneled outward. Ron’s energy wasn’t sparse, it was hyper-concentrated, and at the moment it was looking for a bigger vessel to even itself out.
Wasting no time, I molded myself to Ron’s body, hoping against all hope that I was doing the right thing because my brain certainly didn’t like the contact.
“’Mione,” he gasped, attempting to scramble away, “what are you - oh Merlin…”
“Take my hand,” I whimpered through the pounding and the swirling. “Take my hand, Ronnie, please.”
He took it and it all went away.
#
“Hey sugar.”
Ginny sent Harry a covert glare over her scrumptuously syrup-laden French toast as Tom Hopkins sat next to her. She ignored him categorically.
“Awh, what’s with her? Did you rub her the wrong way?” he queried Harry when he reappeared in the kitchen, Miranda at his heel.
Harry shrugged, crossing his arms.
“So how’s your hands-on research going since the last time? You have a lead on your friend?” All traces of the jerkitude were replaced with what Ginny guessed was his regular on-the-job approach. Laugh lines were gone, and so was the mischievous twinkle in his eyes. He looked to Harry with serious purpose. So that was why Harry stuck to the bastard’s friendship…
“We’ve got a lead in Scotland. Little town of Mallaig near the Hebrides. We were thinking about going today.”
Tom slapped Harry’s back, a half-serious grin in place. “Well what are we waiting for?”
Ginny finished her glass of orange juice and looked over at the other woman to assess her disposition to the idea. “You mind?”
Caught in surprise, Miranda glanced covertly at Hopkins. “No, ‘course not,” she stuttered.
The bastard rolled his eyes. “See? Let’s go.”
Indeed, after a few cleaning spells, they were ready to head out. As the men pored over maps to triangulate their Apparition trail, Ginny pulled Miranda apart. “You sure?”
The other woman nodded, a tremulous smile stretching her lips for an instant. “Yeah. He’s quite a handful, isn’t he?”
“He doesn’t…” Ginny trailed off meaningfully. “Does he?”
Miranda’s eyes went wide as saucers as she caught the meaning. “What? No! He’s all bark and no bite. Really.”
Still, Ginny’s bullshit metre buzzed. She narrowed her eyes, studying her friend intently. “Absolutely sure?”
The other woman’s eyes trailed slowly back to the men. “Yeah. It’s fine.”
As Ginny watched Miranda’s eyes drop sadly to the ground, she suddenly understood. “Oh… no… Honey, you-”
“It’s fine,” she repeated with harsh finality, eyes gone hard.
Except it wasn’t. Ginny knew firsthand how it felt to be rejected, could only sympathise with her friend over what seemed impossible to mend. You and Harry did finally somewhat fix what went wrong years ago. She eyed Tom sadly, thinking that if he was any other man… But he wasn’t and likely wouldn’t change anytime soon. Nor open his eyes.
Harry snapped her back to reality as he called her over to go over the details.
#
“Is it over?” I asked breathlessly after a moment.
Ron took a deep, cautious breath, lifting with him as his chest expanded to take his first full breath. “Looks like it,” he replied cautiously, just as surprised.
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. How did you know?”
I shrugged lazily. “Science. When energy is excited, it fights for a way out until either the container explodes or you find a way to siphon whatever’s in out. In this case, you were the container. I siphoned.”
We both turned our heads as one toward the wall, examining the… results of my decision.
“Never thought I’d be able to do that spell without a wand,” I mused aloud, remembering the power slamming through me as though it were happening all over again. “It’s quite a rush, don’t you think? Is it always like that?”
He made a sound of assent, tearing his eyes away from the Triquetra symbol temporarily burned into the wall. From experience we knew it would disappear within the next few hours, but it was still an odd sight in my bedroom. “Well, now we know we were here,” he commented drily before struggling to sit up. I obliged by sitting back on his legs.
“How’d you feel?” I asked, quickly inspecting his body for possible further injury.
“Like something plowed through me twice over. Which it did.” He grimaced as he tried to get into a comfortable position.
His reaction reminded me of the bandage. I’d quickly rolled gauze around his torso, the worst area from the Elder’s torture. “Let me check your wounds,” I offered, rolling off him with purpose.
At first Ron batted my hands away, grumbling like a recalcitrant child. “That’s not necessary,” he groaned.
“Be reasonable,” I sighed in frustration. “If these get infected you’ll be doing much worse that you’re doing now. Don’t you remember?”
My visual reminder of the war did its job. Ron had always been hardheaded, but I don’t think he’ll ever want a repeat of the months of pain, medication, healing and fevers while battling Death Eaters just to serve his ever-elevated male pride.
He helped me peel the wrappings off his chest. When we got to the flesh beneath, I touched and prodded, measuring his deliberately detached expression for signs of pain. Whereas the wounds had properly closed after I’d disinfected them, the skin was still an angry Jackson Pollock of colours, although Ron gave no feedback at all as I healed bruises. My skill wasn’t in Healing, though, but we hadn’t the time to pop into St. Mungo’s.
“I need to wrap you up again,” I announced in the silence after my brisk examination, fetching the roll of gauze in the bathroom.
Although he pursed his lips, no doubt wanting to refuse altogether, Ron said nothing more than, “Make it thin.”
I set to work, fingers light and quick over Ron’s warm skin as though they’d been specially calibrated for this particular job. The truth was, they’d done this job nightly for months; it was just like taking up biking after years off the wheels. The real shocker was, however, that I’d never been able to learn proper Healing even after all that time. Guess there was something even brainy know-it-alls couldn’t get.
“Planning to get vertical, Ron?” I asked to fill the silence as I finished rolling the clean fabric.
His chest expanded, testing the tightness of his wrappings, then he looked up. “We have to meet with Buchanan. Today.”
“Do we have to?” I asked hopefully. Nothing wrong with wishing Ron wouldn’t put himself in harm’s way again so soon. But then this was a man we were talking about. A hardheaded specimen, even.
Ron snorted darkly, all male agression and revenge. “Oh yeah.” Lifting a hand, he tugged my head down until my lips were mere inches from his. “You were right. It’s wrong, Hermione. It’s all wrong. Now I know it.”
A sigh rolled through my body. This wasn’t happiness, this was the purest form of it. “I’m glad you finally see it my way,” I murmured through a tremulous smile.
His eyes glowed as he murmured back teasingly, “You’re always right, didn’t you know?” before pressing his lips to mine.
To which I chuckled and poked him lightly even as I tugged him closer.
A moment later Ron struggled to his feet by himself. I didn’t dare help, wanting him to get a feel for how ready he was to get back on track. His feet planted, his arms bulged with effort, he gritted his teeth, and finally he was standing stiffly without wobbling the slightest. A triumphant smile split his lips. See? it seemed to communicate. I can do it.
Rolling my eyes playfully, I grabbed one of Harry’s shirts and began dressing Ron. There would be no Guardian robe this time - it was beyond mending anyway. When I was done, I stepped back to admire Ron 2.0 in everyday garb. “Well now, seems we’re ready. How will he know to come?”
“Homing Charm. Just like I did to keep tabs on you. He’ll feel us moving if he’s paying attention. Come on.” He offered me his hand.
I ignored it, going instead to stroke his shoulder in soothing circles. “We could always-” I started offering, thinking of the car Harry and I seldom, if ever, used.
“I’m fine,” he sighed-grated. “Now will you-”
“You don’t always have to be the hero, you know.”
“And I’m not breakable,” he countered hotly.
I shut up tight, took his hand, and we Disapparated out of my house that Saturday morning without another word from each other.
He was wrong, though. He’d almost proven he was breakable that morning. Everyone is.