but your heart is gonna see you through

[ashotofgin]

The odds were stacked against them. This was not a fight that they seemed meant to win, at least not on paper. The Boy Who Lived was dead. Fred was dead and countless others. Hogwarts was in ruins. It should be over

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[polly_okeefe]

I'd thrown my energy into the Children's Office and the IPD, and when I could work no longer, I was taking long walks. I had to admit to myself that I was a bundle of nerves now that Zell had gone down. But admitting this to myself was one thing. Doing something about pacing across this Island was another.

This was why I found myself on the Quidditch pitch that moment when I heard someone call. The words told me immediately that the person didn't know where she was or why she was there. And on this Island, that meant only one thing.

I turned, and saw a young woman sitting up. I approached cautiously. "I'm here. It's all right. I'm not going to hurt you. Are you all right?"

[ashotofgin]

Dead or not, Ginny was still fairly tightly wound. She felt like she was strung tighter than the dragon heart string that was in the wand currently clutched in her hand. As the moments passed she couldn't help but feel that the afterlife should be cooler. That it should have gently rolling hills rather the strange mountains she saw in the near distance.

This felt a little off.

Taking another step back, steeling herself for another fight she stared at the figure that approached her. It wasn't Bellatrix but who it was she hadn't the faintest idea.

"Oh right. Cause I'd just love to lower my guard and make it easy for you."

Not bloody likely.

[polly_okeefe]

The young woman was clearly wary, and I had to wonder what things had been like at the moment of her departure. Not good, I think. She had her guard up, and I needed to back off.

Which I did. I took two steps back and held up my hands. "I'm serious," I said. "I'm not going to hurt you. Whatever happened to you a moment ago, you're safe now." Well, safe-ish. "We're the only ones here."

[ashotofgin]

Her grip was so tight that her knuckles had gone slightly white. Her head was pounding and she was shaking slightly as adrenaline surged through her body with no place to go. This was dangerous, still so dangerous despite the strange calm.

Ginny's ears were still ringing from the screams that had been raging around her moments before.

Licking her lips, she shook her head slightly. Her body was tense as she looked at the girl who was coming close. "And where is here?"

How far had she travelled? How quiet was death supposed to be?

[everyone_takes]

Lionel had been Marshall's best friends, not hers, but somehow that didn't stop Kate from thinking about the newspaper clipping that Marshall had found on the boardwalk. It was one of those things that wasn't supposed to happen -- not to any teenager and certainly not someone she knew -- but it had happened anyway and now she was thinking about it. Her thoughts were selfish, mostly, revolving around her own mortality and Marshall's, and she was so caught up in it that she almost didn't notice Wichita approaching.

Except, as she glanced up, she was suddenly sure the girl wasn't Wichita.

"Change your hair?" she asked, just in case.

[ashotofgin]

It was a lot to take in to put it mildly. More than that, it was utterly mad. These sorts of places shouldn't exist. Not being dead was one thing but for there to be no magic? That seemed just insane.

Having fled that poor excuse for a Quidditch pitch and the girl who had explained this all to her Ginny was now to figure out a plan. There had to be some way to get off this place. Some way to tell her mum that she accidentally and improbably landed on a portkey. One thing was for certain: answers were down this path in front of her.

Still a bit lost in her own thoughts it took her a moment to realise that she was the one being talked to. Staring at the blonde girl woth a mix of confusion and surprise she shook her head. "What? No, no. It's always been like this."

More or less anyways.

[everyone_takes]

"Okay, so you're not Wichita, then," Kate said, glad that they had that out of the way at least. The whole look-alike think was a little creepy and made it sort of hard to know whether or not you were talking to your friend sometimes, but at least the hair was different enough that she'd been able to notice. It was a little thing, but something that made Kate feel a little bit better about the island right now.

"Are you okay?" she asked a moment later. Whether or not the girl was Wichita, she looked a little lost in thought. A little bit like she was new. It seemed like all new people had that same look.

[ashotofgin]

"Wichita?" That was just a strange name and Ginny had known several people whose names were just plain awful. She made a mental note to tell Tonks about there being some girl named Wichita running about. Except no, she couldn't tell Tonks. She would never see Tonks again.

Her stomach lurched, the troubled feelings that had been threatening to overcome her that was inching just a bit closer. Shaking her head slightly she pushed a sweaty strand of hair off of her face. "No. I'm not." She paused, realising that she had been responding to two very different thoughts at once. "Wichita that is. Or all right, for that matter. It has been something of a long day."

[seek_to_end]

Harry was thinking about brooms. It was the easiest thing to think about these days. Thinking about Kate or Rapture got his heart rate up, both for very different reasons, and everything else at this stage in the game was boring. He didn't want to think about home and death and what he was missing anymore; he didn't want to think about the island and what trick was waiting for them next. He wanted to act as if life were normal for a little bit

[ashotofgin]

Maybe it was exhaustion or confusion or any of a number of similar things, but the sight of a black haired boy approaching her made tears spring to Ginny's eyes. It had been an impossibly long day. Hellish and brutal it had come on the heels of the longest year of her life.

Taking another step she looked up, her own brown eyes meeting familiar green ones. Her heart lurched in her chest, a painful feeling that masked the actual pains of her battered body.

"Harry?"

If this was him, really him and not some cruel joke then it meant that Polly had been wrong. They were dead because that was the only reason that she would be seeing Harry again. For the first time all day, Ginny felt something almost like warmth rising up within her.

[seek_to_end]

She said his name. She said his name which meant she had to know him. And if she knew him then she had to be...

"Ginny!" He shouted her name this time, his whole body coming alive as he sprinted towards her. They weren't that far from each other to begin with, but he needed to touch her, desperately needed to, to assure himself that she wasn't some kind of dream or trick. His body crashed into hers and his arms wrapped around her tightly, and for a second it felt like the whole world was spinning around him but they were standing still.

It was Ginny. There was no denying it. How many times had he held her in his arms? He ignored her state, the look of her clothes, like she had been in battle. If she had only just arrived, everything would need explaining. But that didn't matter right now. Harry just wanted to hold her.

[ashotofgin]

Her resolve melted. After the day that she'd had, still was having, the sight of him felt like a gasp of fresh air. It was almost as if she had been holding her breath without realising it. Maybe she had. There was too much that had been going on, too much that she had seen to make sense of straight away.

Wrapping her arms around him, Ginny felt hot tears slide down her face blurring her vision. She didn't even notice that his clothes were different or his hair or anything like that. It was Harry, alive and breathing in her arms which meant that they must both be dead or something else very strange was going on.

What was important was that none of that mattered. "Oh Harry. You're here."

[red_ponytail]

There were two girls on the island who looked like her. One even had red hair, but it wasn't that distinctive Weasley red. It wasn't that color they all shared, the color of the hair of the girl Bill spotted on the path.

It had been a bloody long time, but he'd have known his baby sister anywhere.

"Ginny!" Bill called, and if his voice broke a little as he did so, he wasn't too proud to admit it. He broke into a jog, and before saying even another word he'd swept her into a fierce hug that lifted her right off the ground. He held her there, warm and real in his arms, and for a moment he wondered if he'd been wishing so hard, for so long, for them to arrive that he'd finally managed to wish one of his siblings into reality.

[ashotofgin]

Even in her exhausted and confused state, Ginny couldn't mistake Bill for anyone else. Maybe it was because she was in such a confused and exhausted state that she didn't immediately recognise the differences between the Bill that was hugging her and the one that she had seen so recently. All of her worry and frustration seeped out of her and she hugged him brother so tightly that she didn't care that she was being slightly squeezed.

"Bill?" Her confusion was clear in her voice, her feet still off of the ground. "Bill, could you put me down please?"

As nice and as safe as it was to see her brother, she needed to feel the ground beneath her feet to let her know that it was still solid and there.

[red_ponytail]

"Sorry," Bill said, even as he squeezed her tight for just a moment longer before setting her back on the ground. Every moment, it seemed, he was half afraid she was about to blow away, like some kind of apparition, conjured up by the island to torture him.

"It's just been fucking forever since I've seen you, baby sister, and I bloody well missed you," he added, swiping at his wet eyes with the back of one hand.

[ashotofgin]

"'Salright." A relieved smile crept on her face the moment that Ginny's feet had returned to the ground. Here was her big brother, alive and well just when she had been certain that she wasn't going to see any of them again. It was almost enough to make her cry, but she didn't want to get started. Once the tears came she knew it would be hard to stop them.

"Forever? What are you..." she trailed off as she looked up at his face. There was something missing, something that she had only just noticed. There were a few wrinkles and more freckles that replaced something that she had come to appreciate. "Your scars! They're gone."

[not_so_smooth]

"Everyone here is armed. At least- no, yeah, I'm pretty sure everyone here has arms. Actually, it's a common denominator among us all. Arms, each and every one of us," Sam said.

The girl looked like one or two he'd seen around the island, but newcomers were kind of easy to pick out. They didn't quite have signs around their necks but it was a close thing.

[ashotofgin]

No matter how bad or awful or downright strange the course of her day had gone, Ginny was not so out of it to fail to notice a joke when she heard one. She wasn't Percy for Merlin's sake. Her head might be spinning and her back and feet aching, but a joke even a bad one was worth cracking a small smile for.

"Good to know," she commented wryly cocking her head to the side. "How about fingers? Or feet? Everyone got those accounted for?"

[not_so_smooth]

"No," Sam said after a moment's thought, trying to think through whether or not everyone had all their limbs.

"Hiccup is missing a foot. He's got a cool metal prosthetic though, like Ash from Army of Darkness. Only if Ash lost his foot, and he was the most non-threatening Viking you ever saw who had a pet dragon. And had a ridiculous name like Hiccup."

[ashotofgin]

"That is an absolutely absurd name, but oddly enough not the strangest that I've ever heard."

It wasn't. Not by a mile. Her life and indeed the entire Wizarding World was peppered with names of increasing oddness. She was simply lucky that her name was something halfway normal. A frown worried her forehead for a moment before vanishing again. "Well that does happen with dragons. Limb-losing that is."