Fic: "Steel" by mute90
To: scarysnapey
Title: Steel
Author/Artist: mute90
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: R (dark, language, violence)
Word Count: 2764
Summary: They say he's strong. In truth, he's just...repressed.
Author/Artist's Notes: The prompt was a dark/adventure/romance fic where 'Harry finds out that he isn't the only person trying to get Ginny to marry him'. Also, with curses, hexes, and complex potions. I think I got most of that in there. Hope you enjoy. Much thanks to KC for the last minute read-through and flyingcarpet for modding this exchange.
After the death of Voldemort, Harry Potter had endured many interviews from determined reporters with quills ready to jot down when and if he sneezed, twitched, or shuddered. There were all looking to him for guidance. If he broke down and beat the floor until his hands were bloody, the wizarding world would follow.
So, he couldn’t do that. He had to exhibit ‘healthy coping skills’. The healthiest coping skill he had was silence, stillness. His voice never rose or dropped as he spoke. His feet stayed firmly glued to the floor, his back stood straight, and if his eyes darkened or glazed over, the reporters had enough decency not to mention it.
They all described him as strong, ‘hardened by the perils of war’, ‘The-Boy-of-Steel’.
“The Boy of Steel?” Hermione scoffed. “You’re emotionally repressed.”
“Thank you, Hermione.”
“I’m being serious, Harry. This isn’t healthy.”
The truth was that he was full of emotions: anger…fear…love… He just had very little knowledge of how to express them.
He really could fall down and beat at the floor. He could do it at the Burrow, he thought, in the kitchen where the Weasley’s could find him before he broke all the bones in his hands. However, he walked over the hard kitchen floor over and over without falling and, after a while, the thought left his mind.
Harry found other ways to express himself.
Ron and Hermione got in a fight and he placed a consoling hand on Ron’s shoulder and let Hermione leave tears and snot on his brand new robe. He came early for Sunday breakfast at the Weasleys, set the table for Mrs. Weasley, and dropped off random muggle gadgets for Mr. Weasley.
He met Ginny at his front door when she came home from Quidditch training, slowly and carefully removed her clothes, and kissed away the stiffness by working his lips down her spine.
The words ‘I missed you’ never left his lips.
The words ‘I love you’ got lost in the path from his brain to his mouth and came out a garbled mess muffled by the skin of her neck.
‘I need you’ was in the form of a ring, tiny with a diamond in the middle.
It was supposed to be the beginning for them. Not the end.
XXX
“Good game?” he asked.
“For me.”
“Right,” said Harry, his lips twitching. “It was a bad day for the player you flew circles around.”
“You got there in time.”
“Invisibility cloak. I nicked candy from Gwenog’s family.”
Ginny laughed. “I’ll tell her that.”
“Please don’t. She already hates me.”
“She thinks you’re a scarlet…wizard,” Ginny said, slyly, “Taking advantage of me in the pub bathroom during a team celebration.” Harry looked down at the table and tried to stop the blush appearing on his cheeks. The-Boy-of-Steel wasn’t supposed to blush but Ginny always did know what buttons to push.
Harry looked back up, attempting to put on his own sly smirk but ending up with some cross between amused and exasperated. “That was your idea.”
She leaned in close. “Prove it.”
Her face was a few inches from his. Her jaw was out and her eyes were shining with a challenge. Harry scooted even further up until there was an inch of chair left for him to use before he would fall to the floor - on one knee if he did it correctly.
“That was a clue to kiss me, you know?”
Harry moved forward that last inch. He slipped out of the seat, falling farther than he thought possible in just that space between the seat and the floor. Ginny’s eyes widened, Harry’s one knee touched the carpet, and the vase of flowers on their table exploded, spraying them with glass and releasing a blue smoke that made Harry’s breath get caught in his throat. He watched Ginny bring a hand up to her chest as she desperately tried to draw breath.
XXX
If Harry had learned any lesson in life, it was things weren’t always the way they were supposed to be. Instead they went like...
A potion had been put in their flower vase instead of water. When interacting with an incompatible substance - in this case, the flowers - the potion would bubble up before having an explosive reaction, releasing poisonous fumes. An antidote was needed quickly. A simple bubblehead charm could protect anyone but was only useful if they had prior warning. It they didn’t have prior warning, they would drop, which was what happened to seventy-five percent of the restaurant customers. Approximately twenty-five percent ran for the exits and made it to safety. A team of mediwizards arrived only minutes later and were able to save most of the restaurant patrons except two children who weren’t strong enough to survive.
It was all in the file.
“Potter.”
Then, of course, there was the end. Harry woke up to find out that Ginny hadn’t been in the restaurant when the mediwizards arrived and she hadn’t made it outside.
“Potter.”
She’d been taken. Hopefully, she was also given the antidote by the culprit but there was a possibility she wasn’t.
“Potter.”
“I can hear you,” Harry said, levelly. He reached forward and took the list from Head Auror Jackson. He slid his finger down until he reached the name he wanted. Then, he tapped it twice. “James Howard.”
Auror Jackson took the list back, glancing down at the name himself before nodding to his assistant. The assistant rifled through his files, probably tracking down the papers for that waiter-turned-suspect. “How do you know?”
“I talked to Gwenog Jones.”
XXX
“A secret admirer?” Harry asked. The question came out raspy. They’d stopped the spread of death but the damage to his lungs would take a while to heal completely. “Since when?”
Gwenog’s raised an eyebrow. “Since she became a well-known quidditch player for anyone who has a passing interest in the sport.”
“She never told me that.”
“Hmmm.”
Harry hated the woman. He hadn’t before. He’d just found her mildly annoying, used to duck his head and disappear in another direction when she came around. Now, he hated her. “You’re not helping,” he said. “You said you could help.”
“I am helping,” Gwenog said and she sat on her desk chair, leisurely, like Ginny wasn’t missing and they didn’t have to move quickly.
The glass sitting in front of her exploded and she jumped in her chair. It was just regular water this time and it wasn’t some unknown assailant either. Harry shrugged. “Sorry. That’s been happening a lot lately.” He stared at the water and pieces of glass on her desk.
Gwenog spoke quickly. “I pay attention to the problems of my girls. Most of it was typical: gifts and suggestive letters. Occasionally, fans would try to accost them when they got off the field. A quidditch player has to know how to deal with it. However, Ginny had another one. He was a young man and he cursed two of our security guards before putting on one of their jackets and calmly escorting Ginny to the apparition point. He asked for an autograph and then wouldn’t let go of her hand. She hexed him and apparated to safety.”
She never told me that, Harry wanted to repeat but even those words weren’t coming out now. If this continued, he’d go mute.
“He never returned,” Gwenog continued. “But I have my suspicions about some of the letters and gifts she’s received since. They’re less wishful than normal. More forceful. The last one… It was an extremely expensive wedding ring.”
Harry swallowed. There was a small box burning a hole in his pocket. “Were you able to figure out who it was?”
XXX
“I took the pictures to the guards. They recognized James Howard.”
Jackson took the folder from his assistant and looked it over. “Then, it looks like we need to track him down.”
“I’ve already done the legwork.” Harry interrupted. “I've got a good idea where he is.”
“You can’t go, of course,” Jackson said, not even looking up from the file.
“Sir?”
Jackson sighed and put the file down. “You’re too involved, Potter. This is your girlfriend we’re talking about.”
“I haven’t let my emotions get in the way of the investigation, sir.”
There were shifts and mutters from the other aurors in the room. He thought he heard ‘Boy-of-Steel’ somewhere in there. Jackson’s assistant glanced at Harry before quickly looking back down at his stack of files. “Do you even care?” he had asked, incredulously, only hours before. Harry had brushed past him without blinking and felt the man shudder.
‘I care’: he hadn’t been able to say those words either. They’d gotten lost in the burn of his throat, taken away from him as quickly as Ginny had been.
“It’s policy, Potter. You shouldn’t even have been involved in this much.”
Harry nodded. “Yes, sir.” When they asked for the information he had, he easily sent them in the wrong direction. He couldn’t leave her life in their hands because, ironically, they didn’t care as much as he did.
They disappeared with shield cloaks on and wands at the ready.
Harry disappeared and reappeared in front of an abandoned house in the country side. The door creaked loudly as he pushed it open.
XXX
The security guards were helpful. They were able to identify the blond quickly and they were just so eager to help along the famous Harry Potter and the quidditch star Ginny Weasley. “Fucker got us good,” the one on the left growled.
“Me too,” said Harry.
Gwenog stood in front of her desk with her arms crossed. “Are you done?”
“It seems like I am.”
“Good.” She unfolded her arms and used her full height, which was at least inches taller than Harry. “Now leave.”
The security guards gaped.
Harry just took all of the photographs back from the speechless men and placed them in the folder. “You never did like me,” he said.
“You’re The-Boy-of-Steel. I doubt it hurt your feelings.”
“The-Boy-of-Steel… Is that why you don’t like me?”
XXX
“Harry?” Ginny screamed from somewhere in the house before a glass vial came sailing toward him. He threw himself to the ground and the glass sailed over his head. He rolled to his feet and glanced back at the wall. The potion was eating away at the plaster alarmingly quickly.
Another vial flew toward him from the hallway and Harry flicked his wand and sent it flying back, information running through his head.
James Howard was fantastic at potions. He was rather lousy at dueling but he made it up for it with whatever potion was on hand and a talent for muggle fighting.
Harry ran toward the hallway with a rapid string of hexes and curses. He heard a cry of pain as two cutting hexes hit their mark. Then the breath was knocked out of him as James Howard abandoned his long-distance potion throwing for his other specialty. Harry’s back hit the wall and he brought his knee up into Howard’s stomach.
He’d fought with Dudley when he was five sizes smaller than the older boy and that was only for the joy of keeping his meager lunch.
For Ginny, he could do more. He could push Howard back while the man was still catching his breath and keep pushing until they smashed into a door that busted open under their combined weight. They rolled down a flight of stairs and onto a stone floor.
Harry shook his head as the roof above him seemed to spin. The spinning slowed to a slight wave.
“Harry!”
Harry rolled over and looked up to find Ginny tied to a chair. There was tape hanging off one cheek and he could see scrapes on the other cheek where she’d rubbed her face against the wall to peel it off. She was no longer in the sleek blue dress she’d worn for dinner two days before but in a white wedding dress with dirt along the edges. “Harry!” she shouted again, pulling at the ropes connecting her wrists to the arms of the chair. The arms wobbled. Unless Howard was stupid enough to give her a broken chair, she had been working to free herself for a while. “Watch out!”
Howard’s head was obviously thicker than Harry’s because he recovered from the fall quicker, getting to his feet before Harry’s body could catch up with his brain.
Howard pulled back a foot and kicked Harry in the stomach. Harry fell back onto his back. He brought his arms up to cover his head as Howard aimed for his face. Howard’s boot bruised his forearms. “Bastard!!!” Ginny screamed and Harry could hear her chair creaking as she continued to yank on the ropes.
At the next kick, Harry caught the man’s ankle in both hands but Howard just let his foot fall forward into Harry’s chest.
Harry couldn’t help the cry of pain that escaped him as the man’s weight came down on his ribs. Howard raised the foot up, prepared to bring it down again but was interrupted by another scream, this one of pure desperation and fury.
It was Ginny.
She had pulled one arm free and launched herself forward, chair and all, with the broken arm of the chair swinging like a beaters bat. The ropes still around her legs hindered her and she tripped but she was close enough for the impromptu weapon to catch Howard in the chest and send him stumbling backward.
Harry struggled to his feet as Ginny hit the floor and Howard moved toward them. He picked up the arm of the chair from where it lay in front of Ginny as she pushed a foot down to slide it free.
He pulled back the broken arm and swung.
He would’ve made a good beater, he thought, as Howard’s head twisted with the blow. He pulled back his arm and swung again. The second hit brought Howard to the floor. Harry dropped the chair arm and fell down on top of Howard’s prone body. He brought his fist back and swung.
XXX
Gwenog stiffened and Harry repeated, curious, “Is that why you never liked me?”
“I told you: I watch out for my girls,” said Gwenog. “And I will never understand the fascination a young woman has with a dangerous man.”
Harry frowned. “Did Ginny say that? That I was dangerous?”
“She didn’t have to.”
XXX
“Harry!” There was the cracking of an already broken chair and then Ginny arms were wrapped around his chest. “Harry, stop!”
Harry let him pull him backward and off of Howard. He landed hard on his butt, half on top of Ginny. James Howard lay on the floor in front of them, even more still than he was after the chair arm had hit him. His face was a bloody mess of broken flesh and broken bones.
He hadn’t heard him speak, Harry realized. Throughout the whole fight, he hadn’t spoken once.
Maybe he hadn’t been able to get the right words out.
“Look at me,” Ginny said. “Hey, look at me.”
Harry twisted his head to stare at her, his girlfriend in her wedding dress. The ring was still a heavy weight in his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said, maybe for forcing her to physically stop him or maybe for beating a guy to death right in front of her. He couldn’t decide which he should be sorry for.
Ginny nodded slowly, carefully. “Okay,” she said. Dangerous, Gwenog had told him. Harry looked back toward the body but Ginny pulled his face back to hers and pressed their forwards together. She took a deep breath. “Okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I just…”
“I know,” she said. Her wrists were bloody, he noticed, the rope having dug deep into her skin. “Harry, I know.”
Harry wondered if she did, if she really knew and she was still running toward him instead of away from him. Then again, Ginny was kind of dangerous, too.
“I love you,” Harry said suddenly and, for once, the words came out whole and unhindered.
Ginny paused for a moment, the previously unspoken words taking her by surprise. Then, she nodded again. “I know that too.”
He wanted to say ‘I need you’ but it had already been pounded into the skull of James Howard, written in the blood coating his fists.
He should probably learn to just say the words.
“Do you know a spell to get rid of him?” he said instead.
Title: Steel
Author/Artist: mute90
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: R (dark, language, violence)
Word Count: 2764
Summary: They say he's strong. In truth, he's just...repressed.
Author/Artist's Notes: The prompt was a dark/adventure/romance fic where 'Harry finds out that he isn't the only person trying to get Ginny to marry him'. Also, with curses, hexes, and complex potions. I think I got most of that in there. Hope you enjoy. Much thanks to KC for the last minute read-through and flyingcarpet for modding this exchange.
After the death of Voldemort, Harry Potter had endured many interviews from determined reporters with quills ready to jot down when and if he sneezed, twitched, or shuddered. There were all looking to him for guidance. If he broke down and beat the floor until his hands were bloody, the wizarding world would follow.
So, he couldn’t do that. He had to exhibit ‘healthy coping skills’. The healthiest coping skill he had was silence, stillness. His voice never rose or dropped as he spoke. His feet stayed firmly glued to the floor, his back stood straight, and if his eyes darkened or glazed over, the reporters had enough decency not to mention it.
They all described him as strong, ‘hardened by the perils of war’, ‘The-Boy-of-Steel’.
“The Boy of Steel?” Hermione scoffed. “You’re emotionally repressed.”
“Thank you, Hermione.”
“I’m being serious, Harry. This isn’t healthy.”
The truth was that he was full of emotions: anger…fear…love… He just had very little knowledge of how to express them.
He really could fall down and beat at the floor. He could do it at the Burrow, he thought, in the kitchen where the Weasley’s could find him before he broke all the bones in his hands. However, he walked over the hard kitchen floor over and over without falling and, after a while, the thought left his mind.
Harry found other ways to express himself.
Ron and Hermione got in a fight and he placed a consoling hand on Ron’s shoulder and let Hermione leave tears and snot on his brand new robe. He came early for Sunday breakfast at the Weasleys, set the table for Mrs. Weasley, and dropped off random muggle gadgets for Mr. Weasley.
He met Ginny at his front door when she came home from Quidditch training, slowly and carefully removed her clothes, and kissed away the stiffness by working his lips down her spine.
The words ‘I missed you’ never left his lips.
The words ‘I love you’ got lost in the path from his brain to his mouth and came out a garbled mess muffled by the skin of her neck.
‘I need you’ was in the form of a ring, tiny with a diamond in the middle.
It was supposed to be the beginning for them. Not the end.
XXX
“Good game?” he asked.
“For me.”
“Right,” said Harry, his lips twitching. “It was a bad day for the player you flew circles around.”
“You got there in time.”
“Invisibility cloak. I nicked candy from Gwenog’s family.”
Ginny laughed. “I’ll tell her that.”
“Please don’t. She already hates me.”
“She thinks you’re a scarlet…wizard,” Ginny said, slyly, “Taking advantage of me in the pub bathroom during a team celebration.” Harry looked down at the table and tried to stop the blush appearing on his cheeks. The-Boy-of-Steel wasn’t supposed to blush but Ginny always did know what buttons to push.
Harry looked back up, attempting to put on his own sly smirk but ending up with some cross between amused and exasperated. “That was your idea.”
She leaned in close. “Prove it.”
Her face was a few inches from his. Her jaw was out and her eyes were shining with a challenge. Harry scooted even further up until there was an inch of chair left for him to use before he would fall to the floor - on one knee if he did it correctly.
“That was a clue to kiss me, you know?”
Harry moved forward that last inch. He slipped out of the seat, falling farther than he thought possible in just that space between the seat and the floor. Ginny’s eyes widened, Harry’s one knee touched the carpet, and the vase of flowers on their table exploded, spraying them with glass and releasing a blue smoke that made Harry’s breath get caught in his throat. He watched Ginny bring a hand up to her chest as she desperately tried to draw breath.
XXX
If Harry had learned any lesson in life, it was things weren’t always the way they were supposed to be. Instead they went like...
A potion had been put in their flower vase instead of water. When interacting with an incompatible substance - in this case, the flowers - the potion would bubble up before having an explosive reaction, releasing poisonous fumes. An antidote was needed quickly. A simple bubblehead charm could protect anyone but was only useful if they had prior warning. It they didn’t have prior warning, they would drop, which was what happened to seventy-five percent of the restaurant customers. Approximately twenty-five percent ran for the exits and made it to safety. A team of mediwizards arrived only minutes later and were able to save most of the restaurant patrons except two children who weren’t strong enough to survive.
It was all in the file.
“Potter.”
Then, of course, there was the end. Harry woke up to find out that Ginny hadn’t been in the restaurant when the mediwizards arrived and she hadn’t made it outside.
“Potter.”
She’d been taken. Hopefully, she was also given the antidote by the culprit but there was a possibility she wasn’t.
“Potter.”
“I can hear you,” Harry said, levelly. He reached forward and took the list from Head Auror Jackson. He slid his finger down until he reached the name he wanted. Then, he tapped it twice. “James Howard.”
Auror Jackson took the list back, glancing down at the name himself before nodding to his assistant. The assistant rifled through his files, probably tracking down the papers for that waiter-turned-suspect. “How do you know?”
“I talked to Gwenog Jones.”
XXX
“A secret admirer?” Harry asked. The question came out raspy. They’d stopped the spread of death but the damage to his lungs would take a while to heal completely. “Since when?”
Gwenog’s raised an eyebrow. “Since she became a well-known quidditch player for anyone who has a passing interest in the sport.”
“She never told me that.”
“Hmmm.”
Harry hated the woman. He hadn’t before. He’d just found her mildly annoying, used to duck his head and disappear in another direction when she came around. Now, he hated her. “You’re not helping,” he said. “You said you could help.”
“I am helping,” Gwenog said and she sat on her desk chair, leisurely, like Ginny wasn’t missing and they didn’t have to move quickly.
The glass sitting in front of her exploded and she jumped in her chair. It was just regular water this time and it wasn’t some unknown assailant either. Harry shrugged. “Sorry. That’s been happening a lot lately.” He stared at the water and pieces of glass on her desk.
Gwenog spoke quickly. “I pay attention to the problems of my girls. Most of it was typical: gifts and suggestive letters. Occasionally, fans would try to accost them when they got off the field. A quidditch player has to know how to deal with it. However, Ginny had another one. He was a young man and he cursed two of our security guards before putting on one of their jackets and calmly escorting Ginny to the apparition point. He asked for an autograph and then wouldn’t let go of her hand. She hexed him and apparated to safety.”
She never told me that, Harry wanted to repeat but even those words weren’t coming out now. If this continued, he’d go mute.
“He never returned,” Gwenog continued. “But I have my suspicions about some of the letters and gifts she’s received since. They’re less wishful than normal. More forceful. The last one… It was an extremely expensive wedding ring.”
Harry swallowed. There was a small box burning a hole in his pocket. “Were you able to figure out who it was?”
XXX
“I took the pictures to the guards. They recognized James Howard.”
Jackson took the folder from his assistant and looked it over. “Then, it looks like we need to track him down.”
“I’ve already done the legwork.” Harry interrupted. “I've got a good idea where he is.”
“You can’t go, of course,” Jackson said, not even looking up from the file.
“Sir?”
Jackson sighed and put the file down. “You’re too involved, Potter. This is your girlfriend we’re talking about.”
“I haven’t let my emotions get in the way of the investigation, sir.”
There were shifts and mutters from the other aurors in the room. He thought he heard ‘Boy-of-Steel’ somewhere in there. Jackson’s assistant glanced at Harry before quickly looking back down at his stack of files. “Do you even care?” he had asked, incredulously, only hours before. Harry had brushed past him without blinking and felt the man shudder.
‘I care’: he hadn’t been able to say those words either. They’d gotten lost in the burn of his throat, taken away from him as quickly as Ginny had been.
“It’s policy, Potter. You shouldn’t even have been involved in this much.”
Harry nodded. “Yes, sir.” When they asked for the information he had, he easily sent them in the wrong direction. He couldn’t leave her life in their hands because, ironically, they didn’t care as much as he did.
They disappeared with shield cloaks on and wands at the ready.
Harry disappeared and reappeared in front of an abandoned house in the country side. The door creaked loudly as he pushed it open.
XXX
The security guards were helpful. They were able to identify the blond quickly and they were just so eager to help along the famous Harry Potter and the quidditch star Ginny Weasley. “Fucker got us good,” the one on the left growled.
“Me too,” said Harry.
Gwenog stood in front of her desk with her arms crossed. “Are you done?”
“It seems like I am.”
“Good.” She unfolded her arms and used her full height, which was at least inches taller than Harry. “Now leave.”
The security guards gaped.
Harry just took all of the photographs back from the speechless men and placed them in the folder. “You never did like me,” he said.
“You’re The-Boy-of-Steel. I doubt it hurt your feelings.”
“The-Boy-of-Steel… Is that why you don’t like me?”
XXX
“Harry?” Ginny screamed from somewhere in the house before a glass vial came sailing toward him. He threw himself to the ground and the glass sailed over his head. He rolled to his feet and glanced back at the wall. The potion was eating away at the plaster alarmingly quickly.
Another vial flew toward him from the hallway and Harry flicked his wand and sent it flying back, information running through his head.
James Howard was fantastic at potions. He was rather lousy at dueling but he made it up for it with whatever potion was on hand and a talent for muggle fighting.
Harry ran toward the hallway with a rapid string of hexes and curses. He heard a cry of pain as two cutting hexes hit their mark. Then the breath was knocked out of him as James Howard abandoned his long-distance potion throwing for his other specialty. Harry’s back hit the wall and he brought his knee up into Howard’s stomach.
He’d fought with Dudley when he was five sizes smaller than the older boy and that was only for the joy of keeping his meager lunch.
For Ginny, he could do more. He could push Howard back while the man was still catching his breath and keep pushing until they smashed into a door that busted open under their combined weight. They rolled down a flight of stairs and onto a stone floor.
Harry shook his head as the roof above him seemed to spin. The spinning slowed to a slight wave.
“Harry!”
Harry rolled over and looked up to find Ginny tied to a chair. There was tape hanging off one cheek and he could see scrapes on the other cheek where she’d rubbed her face against the wall to peel it off. She was no longer in the sleek blue dress she’d worn for dinner two days before but in a white wedding dress with dirt along the edges. “Harry!” she shouted again, pulling at the ropes connecting her wrists to the arms of the chair. The arms wobbled. Unless Howard was stupid enough to give her a broken chair, she had been working to free herself for a while. “Watch out!”
Howard’s head was obviously thicker than Harry’s because he recovered from the fall quicker, getting to his feet before Harry’s body could catch up with his brain.
Howard pulled back a foot and kicked Harry in the stomach. Harry fell back onto his back. He brought his arms up to cover his head as Howard aimed for his face. Howard’s boot bruised his forearms. “Bastard!!!” Ginny screamed and Harry could hear her chair creaking as she continued to yank on the ropes.
At the next kick, Harry caught the man’s ankle in both hands but Howard just let his foot fall forward into Harry’s chest.
Harry couldn’t help the cry of pain that escaped him as the man’s weight came down on his ribs. Howard raised the foot up, prepared to bring it down again but was interrupted by another scream, this one of pure desperation and fury.
It was Ginny.
She had pulled one arm free and launched herself forward, chair and all, with the broken arm of the chair swinging like a beaters bat. The ropes still around her legs hindered her and she tripped but she was close enough for the impromptu weapon to catch Howard in the chest and send him stumbling backward.
Harry struggled to his feet as Ginny hit the floor and Howard moved toward them. He picked up the arm of the chair from where it lay in front of Ginny as she pushed a foot down to slide it free.
He pulled back the broken arm and swung.
He would’ve made a good beater, he thought, as Howard’s head twisted with the blow. He pulled back his arm and swung again. The second hit brought Howard to the floor. Harry dropped the chair arm and fell down on top of Howard’s prone body. He brought his fist back and swung.
XXX
Gwenog stiffened and Harry repeated, curious, “Is that why you never liked me?”
“I told you: I watch out for my girls,” said Gwenog. “And I will never understand the fascination a young woman has with a dangerous man.”
Harry frowned. “Did Ginny say that? That I was dangerous?”
“She didn’t have to.”
XXX
“Harry!” There was the cracking of an already broken chair and then Ginny arms were wrapped around his chest. “Harry, stop!”
Harry let him pull him backward and off of Howard. He landed hard on his butt, half on top of Ginny. James Howard lay on the floor in front of them, even more still than he was after the chair arm had hit him. His face was a bloody mess of broken flesh and broken bones.
He hadn’t heard him speak, Harry realized. Throughout the whole fight, he hadn’t spoken once.
Maybe he hadn’t been able to get the right words out.
“Look at me,” Ginny said. “Hey, look at me.”
Harry twisted his head to stare at her, his girlfriend in her wedding dress. The ring was still a heavy weight in his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said, maybe for forcing her to physically stop him or maybe for beating a guy to death right in front of her. He couldn’t decide which he should be sorry for.
Ginny nodded slowly, carefully. “Okay,” she said. Dangerous, Gwenog had told him. Harry looked back toward the body but Ginny pulled his face back to hers and pressed their forwards together. She took a deep breath. “Okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I just…”
“I know,” she said. Her wrists were bloody, he noticed, the rope having dug deep into her skin. “Harry, I know.”
Harry wondered if she did, if she really knew and she was still running toward him instead of away from him. Then again, Ginny was kind of dangerous, too.
“I love you,” Harry said suddenly and, for once, the words came out whole and unhindered.
Ginny paused for a moment, the previously unspoken words taking her by surprise. Then, she nodded again. “I know that too.”
He wanted to say ‘I need you’ but it had already been pounded into the skull of James Howard, written in the blood coating his fists.
He should probably learn to just say the words.
“Do you know a spell to get rid of him?” he said instead.