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Queen of the Cardboard Jungle (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} beccafran) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} smutty_claus,@ 2008-12-25 12:34:00 |
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| Entry tags: | harry/ginny, sirius/ginny |
FIC: This is the Night (Harry/Ginny, Sirius/Ginny)
To: pocketfullof
From: Your Secret Santa
Title: This is the Night
Author: lyras
Pairing(s): Harry/Ginny, some Sirius/Ginny
Summary: Harry is dead and Sirius Black has reappeared. But Ginny is haunted by dreams hinting that all is not what it seems.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Potentially disturbing content.
Author's notes: Dear
Prologue
Ginny woke to find Harry wrapped around her, one hand on her thigh, another cupping her right breast, and a suspicious pressure between her legs.
"What time d'you call this?" she murmured and leant back languorously. Not that she hadn't enjoyed having time to herself while Harry had been away with work, but sharing a bed again offered definite advantages.
"Late enough with your gorgeous arse pressing up against me," he answered, his lips on her neck.
"Mmm, really?" She adjusted her position to allow him better access and reached a hand around to caress him. When his fingers pressed inside her, she sighed more loudly and rocked against him, revelling in the waves of pleasure and the feel of his body against hers. A few moments later, before her self-control disappeared entirely, she twisted around and on top of him, lowering herself over his cock gently at first, and then faster until they were moaning in unison. Their reunion the previous night had been frantic and fast; this morning was slower but no less delightful. Ginny came first, crying out as she floated through her orgasm and then again shortly afterward, when Harry groaned and thrust them both quickly to another climax.
Waking to an empty bed, she cried aloud for a different reason and spent a few minutes trying to recapture the dream. Thwarted, she rolled off the bed and grabbed her dressing gown. Godric's Hollow and Sirius awaited.
Winter Solstice
Inside the little church, a congregation sang 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' with all the gusto that a rural parish could muster. In the old part of the graveyard behind the church, a woman and a man stood before a makeshift memorial.
The wind pressed coldly against Ginny's throat and she pulled up her cloak as she reread the inscription.
1980-2003
Beloved son of James and Lily (deceased)
and much-missed fiancé of Ginevra.
Honoured as a true hero by those who knew him.
She reached out to trace the words etched into the limestone. The real memorial would take months or years of planning and she would probably have little say in it, however kind Kingsley tried to be. In the meantime, she rather liked this one, which was small but heartfelt. The Snitch she'd laid at its foot was still present, untouched by rain, wind or frost. There was evidence of other visitors, too: flowers, cards and the occasional piece of jewellery, all held in place by charms and protective spells.
Ginny stared at the mud slopping onto her boots. There were bodies in this graveyard - including those of Harry's parents, just to her right - but not Harry's. His was...wherever bodies went on the other side of the Veil. Nowhere in the world, that was certain, because the authorities had spent weeks looking everywhere for him, from London to the Bermuda Triangle.
He grinned at her suddenly behind her eyes, and she groped for him as always. "Ginny," he called, "it's lovely here. Why won't you come and see me?"
And he was gone, leaving her reeling. She steadied herself on the stone and turned to face the man at her side. Sirius's expression was closed and grim, but it softened as he looked at her.
"Had enough?"
Ginny nodded, swallowing a lump of self-pity in her throat. The carol changed to 'In the Bleak Midwinter' as they trudged back to the little lane where they could Apparate, not quite touching and not quite apart.
When a figure appeared beside the kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard, Ginny turned her scowl up to full force. Rita Skeeter hurried up, quill already scrambling across a sheet of parchment in defiance of the buffeting wind.
"Miss Weasley, how are you, dearie?" Her voice was layered with sympathy and malice. "Would you tell my readers how you feel about Harry's tragic death, especially with the festive season approaching?"
"No," said Ginny. "And you're not supposed to Apparate into public places."
"My dear, the things I do for a story," said Skeeter. "In this inclement weather, too. You must be freezing. Why don't you let me buy you a cup of tea in that quaint little cafe on the main road?"
"So she can tell you how she feels?" Sirius snarled. "How do you think she feels, you vicious old hag?"
Skeeter blinked. "Really, there's no need to make personal remarks, Mr Black. It's all business, you know. Well, Ginny, perhaps we can talk about your life today instead of the past. My readers would love to know if it's true that you're romantically involved with your charming gentleman protector."
Holding Sirius firmly by the arm, Ginny waved her away and Disapparated.
All Hallows' Eve
Harry was still panting when he leaned in for one last kiss and extricated his legs from Ginny's. "Mmm. That never gets old."
"I hope not," she retorted. "We're not turning into one of those couples who never have sex after they have kids. Actually, we should put something in the marriage vows." She sat up and placed a hand over her bare, reddened breasts. "I, Ginevra Molly Weasley, do promise to...what is it? To love and to cherish, to have and to hold, to ravish at least once a day, in sickness and in health, 'til death us do part. How's that sound?"
Harry grinned from the doorway. "I, Harry James Potter, promise to do the same, with pleasure. But now, I've got to get ready for work." He turned, and Ginny leaned on an elbow to appreciate his rear view until it disappeared into the bathroom.
Still smiling, she pulled on her dressing gown. She might as well put the kettle on while waiting for the shower. Training wasn't until eleven, so she had plenty of time, unlike Harry. Only a year after qualifying, he and Ron were already two of the most sought-after Aurors in Britain, and that meant long hours and curtailed holidays.
"Got anything exciting lined up for today?" she asked, directing the tea bags into the bin with her wand as Harry scurried in and dumped muesli into a bowl. "Apart from the Hallowe'en Ball, of course." She smirked.
He rolled his eyes and reached for the milk. "Yeah, can't wait. My favourite kind of social engagement, Ministry affairs. Um, not sure about today. Lindholm mentioned we'd be checking something out up north." He shovelled heaped spoonfuls of food into his mouth, and Summoned his winter cloak.
"Go' 'o go." He made several valiant swallows before bending to kiss her. "I'll let you know if I have to go straight to the party. See you later."
It was a perfectly normal morning; a perfectly normal breakfast. The damp, gusty weather was perfectly normal for the end of October. Quidditch training proceeded as usual, with the regular drills, the usual talking-to and the expected exhortations about the upcoming match.
The owl that awaited Ginny in the changing room might have been carrying a message for anyone in the squad. It might have been her mother suggesting they meet for coffee, or Luna from Norway, or Harry with plans for the ball. But as soon as she recognised the Ministry of Magic seal, she knew that something was wrong.
Winter Solstice
"Ginny!" Harry's voice was warm with delight. "I'm so glad you found me. Look, isn't it great here?"
She stared past him at the dull, oddly blurred circle of stones and noticed shadowy figures in the background. They were more or less human in shape and size, but she couldn't discern any features and their outlines were fuzzy.
"Why's it great?" she asked cautiously.
"Well, everyone's here - like my mum and dad! And Sirius, Lupin and Tonks. Dumbledore...loads of other people, too."
She hesitated. "Is - is Fred there?"
"He's around somewhere, yeah. Come and talk to my parents." Grabbing her hand, he tugged her towards the nearest group of shadows.
"Harry, I'm really not sure..." Her voice faltered as she felt the gazes of the shadowy creatures. Someone laid a cold hand on her arm and she yelled in fright.
"Ginny?" Sirius had yelled, too, and tightened his grip on her arm. He removed his hand carefully and coughed. "Bad dream?"
Rubbing her eyes, she uncurled from the sofa in the sitting room of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. "I'm going bloody mental." She related the dream, adding reluctantly, "He said you were there, too. With everyone else who's supposed to be dead."
Sirius grinned unpleasantly. "So, somewhere the universe is working properly. Didn't you read your fairytales when you were little? I'm not supposed to be here."
Face pale and atrophied by sorrow, he made a gaunt, eerie figure in the heavily curtained room. Ginny shivered, still half in thrall to her nightmare. Ghosts and ghouls she was accustomed to, but Sirius was right: according to the stories, he shouldn't be here. You couldn't bring anyone back from the dead, even if, as in this case, someone else could be said to have gone in his stead.
Sirius Black, ravaged by grief and bitterness and torn apart by guilt over Harry's death, was an anomaly.
"I'm not sure that hiding in this depressing old house and refusing to see pretty much everyone really counts as being alive," she said to cover her fear. "Why on earth don't you at least open the curtains?"
"I like it this way. Suits my mood." He offered her a cigarette, and she shook her head.
"Nobody smokes these days except teenagers."
"You're not much more than a teenager yourself," he retorted, settling himself beside her on the sofa.
"Dunno what I'm doing with a washed-up old hippie like you, then."
He met her stare for stare. "Yeah, and wouldn't that be funny...if it weren't true."
She shrugged. "You understand."
"Yeah." He breathed deeply, leant back and blew smoke straight towards the yellowed ceiling. It drifted down into Ginny's face and she waved a hand irritably.
"That stuff'll kill you."
"What, again?" He wafted the smoke away from her. "So. That dream."
"It was so bloody weird." She shivered again. "He kept saying all these people were there, but I couldn't see anyone, just shadows. The only one I could see was him, and I couldn't even see properly where he was."
"Maybe that's because everyone else was dead and he wasn't."
She looked up into his face at that. "You sound like you think it was real."
"So do you," he countered. "Anyway, like I said, somewhere the world's working properly. I'm dead. Harry's alive. The way it should be." The bitter note crept into his voice again. Ginny sometimes thought that he was far angrier about being alive when Harry wasn't than about anything else that had happened to him - and he had plenty of reasons to be angry.
"Well, that doesn't do us much good." She hauled herself off the sofa. "Thanks for the tea. I've got to go and meet Luna now, and then I'm going round to Ron's for dinner. You want to come?"
"No," he said as expected, and she nodded.
"All right. I'll pop round tomorrow, maybe. See you."
She saw herself out, past the portrait of Sirius's mother, and tried not to think of Sirius-who-should-be-dead, alone with his ghosts all day and all night in that mausoleum of a house.
All Hallows' Eve
"What do you mean, you've lost him?" Ginny demanded.
She liked Kingsley - had even had a mild crush on him many years ago - but now she yearned to shake him out of his equilibrium. How dared he sit there behind that huge desk and tell her impassively that he didn't know where Harry was? How dared he tell her to keep calm when the muted but frantic bustle of Floo calls, meetings and even a telephone ringing betrayed his own panic?
"We're doing everything we can," Kingsley repeated.
"Which is?"
He waved a hand behind him. "I have several teams of Aurors looking for him, including your brother and their supervisor, plus Unspeakables, and I've put the Muggle Prime Minister on alert in case he turns up outside my jurisdiction." He twisted his elegant hands together, which was as far as he ever went towards expressing frustration. "He can't just disappear into thin air."
"He's a wizard," Ginny said. "Wizards disappear into thin air all the time. Sometimes just so they can take a short-cut to the shops."
Kingsley winced. "Don't think I don't know that. Ginny, I'm sorry to ask this, but if word gets out to the media they're going to want to know, so you might as well hear it from me first. Is there any reason why Harry might want to disappear? Depression? He's been through a lot. Er, problems in his relationships with friends or relatives?"
Ginny suppressed her initial impulse, which was to snap out a blanket denial, and forced herself to think clearly. Kingsley was right - it was better that she was prepared for questions like these. "Apart from this stupid party tonight, which he can't be bothered with, I can't think of anything. Harry's about as balanced as it's possible to be for someone who's led the life he has. You know that. As for your second question...our relationship is just fine, thank you, and he's not mentioned arguing with anyone else."
"I know, my dear," he said quickly. "As I said, I had to ask. I'll do my utmost to keep this quiet, but if word gets out..."
"Anyway," she interrupted, "if he was planning some big disappearing act, I'd have known. Plus, you know Harry. At the very least, he'd leave a note full of apologies. So."
"So?"
Ginny might have enjoyed discomfiting Kingsley if the circumstances had been different. "So what can I do?"
He paused. "You won't like what I'm about to say."
"Go home and wait for news?"
"That would be the best course of action," he agreed. "Harry might be found at any moment - he could simply turn up of his own accord."
"You must be joking!" Ginny fought down memories of the awful year during which the country had fallen under Voldemort's jurisdiction and Harry had been the most wanted fugitive in Britain, while she had sat at her Aunt Muriel's and waited for events to unfold without her. "D'you think I'm just going to sit and wait while Harry's life is at risk?"
"Ginny-"
"Sorry," she interrupted, "but I'm not underage now. "I'm twenty-two, I'm a career woman and a qualified witch, and I demand to know what's going on."
Silently, Kingsley selected a quill and parchment, wrote for a moment and passed her a note. She looked at the untidy writing, so at odds with his demeanour.
"That's where Harry disappeared," he said.
"Thank you," answered Ginny.
Winter Solstice
"So, are you shagging Sirius Black?" Luna asked over coffee outside Fortescue's, newly renovated by Florean's nephew. The freezing wind was kept at bay by new lamp-shaped heaters of which Benjy Fortescue was extremely proud, especially since George and Ron had modified them to sing Christmas carols.
Ginny spluttered; Luna saying 'shagging' in her dreamy fashion was somehow more incongruous than the oddities she usually came out with. "Er, no. No, I'm not. Why, has that Skeeter cow been onto you?"
"Well, yes, and I told her to go away or I'd set my Dimblewambles on her, but I'd been wondering about it myself. It makes a kind of sense, you see."
"It does?" Ginny stirred cream into her coffee and contemplated Sirius as a potential lover. He was middle-aged, of course, and every second of suffering showed in his craggy features and emaciated frame. He was surly, he drank and smoked too much, and about the only people he spoke to were herself and Ron. The remnants of his beauty and charisma only shone through on nights when they stayed up late, talking about the old times, because the old times were what made Sirius happy. Ron had been Harry's best friend and Ginny had been his girlfriend. They were the only ones, apart from Hermione, who had any conception of what he'd lost - of whom he'd lost. Which gave them a unique bond, of course. But still...
"You've gone silent," Luna remarked. "Are you wondering whether shagging Sirius Black would be a good thing?"
"No!"
"Because I think it would be fascinating. As far as we know, he hasn't had any lovers since coming back from the dead, and before that he only had a limited choice, and before that he was in prison. Imagine." Luna's eyes widened. "All that sexual energy gone to waste."
"Shag him yourself if you think it'd be so great," Ginny snapped.
"Oh, but I don't think he'd have me," said Luna. "He needs someone who loved Harry as much as he did, and of all the people we know, you had the strongest bond with him. Possibly Ron and Hermione, too, but I don't think Ron would be interested and Hermione's in Australia."
"Um," said Ginny, "I really hope you didn't say anything like this to that Skeeter bitch."
Luna's gaze filled with reproach. "Ginny, I wouldn't do that. We're friends."
"Sorry," she muttered. "Seem to be running a bit low on them at the moment."
This was not entirely true. People had come out in force after Harry's death; girls she'd barely spoken to at Hogwarts had Owled her and offered to meet up or come round if she ever needed to talk. The problem was that Ginny had spent all her energy on being normal and unconcerned, and had none to spare for well-meaning people beyond her immediate social circle - and her immediate social circle was not extensive.
Luna patted her arm. "Well, I'm here. I know Hermione's six thousand miles away, but owls travel very fast these days. And Neville keeps in touch, doesn't he? And there's always Pansy, of course."
"Pansy?" Ginny had spent more time with Ron's new girlfriend than the rest of the family, who still hadn't forgiven him for being dumped by Hermione, but she wasn't entirely ready to consider her an actual friend.
"Oh, yes. I had lunch with her the other day; I think she's rather nice, you know. We had a good chat about the drawbacks of the sorting system at school."
"Don't you mean you said it was bad and forced people to perform to stereotypes, and she said that actually Slytherins weren't stereotypical at all and she was proud to be one of them?"
"Actually," mused Luna, "she did say something like that. How did you know?"
Ginny shrugged. "I know Pansy."
"Anyway, after that," Luna continued, "she said she wouldn't do it, because Sirius has lost his looks, rather, but she didn't blame you if you were sleeping with him, and she'd told Ron so - and besides, the Blacks are a very old family."
"You've been discussing my - my putative sex life with Pansy?" asked Ginny blankly.
"Well, yes, it did come up. But only after she'd told me all about her and Ron. Do you know..."
Ginny flung out an arm and their drinks almost hit the cobblestones. "Enough! I do not want to know about my brother's sex life, thank you very much. That exposé on Bill was enough for a lifetime."
"Hmm, I do see." Luna looked undaunted. "Of course, I don't have any brothers to find out about, but my father once had a short relationship with a Hungarian seer, and..." She grimaced. "Yes, it was rather embarrassing."
"Talking of seers..." Ginny hesitated.
"Of course, she turned out to be something of a fraud," Luna continued. "She was trying to get information out of my father about the Deathly Hallows! He was very upset when he realised, poor Daddy. Yes?" She looked at Ginny expectantly.
"I've been having some funny dreams. Or not dreams - almost hallucinations. I remember them perfectly, not like you do with dreams." Ginny hunched over in humiliation at actually saying this. Anyone but Luna would have held it over her for the rest of her life.
"And you think you've Seen something?" asked Luna breathlessly.
"Not exactly. Well, I don't know. I keep seeing - not Seeing! I just mean, um, encountering Harry. Sometimes in this weird place where he's the only person I can see, even though he keeps talking about lots of dead people being there. And sometimes in our flat." She blinked back unexpected tears. "Just like, I don't know, a normal morning before he - went. And there've been other dreams, too," she continued, "like, one where I met Kingsley after Harry disappeared - but it wasn't what actually happened. It was different - Harry had gone missing, but it wasn't the Veil, there was no Sirius. There was something about a stone circle, instead, like Stonehenge. And Harry's in a stone circle, too."
Her friend's expression had changed to one of polite interest. Ginny took refuge in her coffee, which was now unpleasantly cold. "You think I'm mental," she said. "I think I'm mental, so that's fine, you can tell me."
Luna pulled her fingers from the mug and grasped them tightly. "Ginny," she announced, "this is extremely exciting. You sound as if you're experiencing temporospatial confusion."
"What's that when it's at home?"
"It has to do with quantum theory," Luna said happily, "which is a Muggle construct generally used to explain magic: both ordinary magic performed by you and I and those more mystical kinds that even wizardry can't explain."
"Yeah, so what's, what did you say? Temporospatial confusion?"
"It means that there are an infinite number of realities of time and space, any one of which may be the true reality. Daddy wrote an article about it a few years ago; I must dig it out."
Ginny considered that. "So," she said suspiciously, "you mean we might not actually be here? You mean, somewhere, I'm off playing Quidditch and you're looking for Snorkacks, and...Harry isn't dead?"
"Exactly."
"Well, that sounds like a load of codswallop," Ginny said.
All Hallows' Eve
Ron didn't argue when Ginny arrived at Castlerigg stone circle, for which she was profoundly grateful. He was poring over a map with two other men, one of whom was Sven Lindholm, the current head of the Auror division. Lindholm looked taken aback when she approached, but she thrust out her note.
"Kingsley sent me."
He nodded. "All right. That makes it easier - we can search in pairs. Weasley, you take - it's Ginny, isn't it? - and start on that side, moving lengthways up and down the field. We'll take the other, and meet you in the middle. Side by side, a metre apart, and eyes peeled!"
"What's going on?" Ginny demanded of Ron as they trudged towards their starting point. "What the hell happened? Kingsley wouldn't tell me anything."
"Probably because he didn't know anything," Ron mumbled. His cheeks were ruddy with windburn but the rest of his face was very pale. Belatedly, Ginny realised that he must be as shocked as she was, and linked her arm through his.
"We were - there'd been reports of odd activity around the stones," he continued in a strained voice. "Probably just some kids or hippies messing around in the lead-up to Hallowe'en, but one of the local witches had a bee in her bonnet about it. So we were looking into it - just a routine thing. Except, well, Harry walked around one of the stones and never came out the other side." He clutched her arm. "It was really bloody spooky. I thought he was just messing around, obviously, and then finally it dawned on me that he wasn't coming back."
Ginny patted his hand, her mind working frantically. "So there wasn't anyone else around? I suppose you checked the stone - the one he was walking past?"
"What do you think? I walked round and round the bloody thing for about twenty minutes before it even occurred to me to call for back-up." He shook his head in frustration. "I've had Harry disappear on me before, but it's never felt so weird."
They had reached a corner where the low stone wall crested a slight rise in the landscape. Ginny looked down onto roughly-shaped fields, brown dappled with grey slush and bordered by a large lake to the south. There had been snow here recently, although it wasn't even November. The view was bleak, but beautiful enough to set her heart aching; if only Harry was there to share it.
When she turned back towards the stones, it was like looking into a different world. The grass was still churned into mud and slush, and the landscape was still devoid of people, but the atmosphere was completely different. Things had happened here: people had met and talked and laughed - perhaps fought. As she gazed across to the stone circle, she could almost hear men and women calling out; almost see people bustling past on the other side. She breathed, and the landscape flipped into place again, as desolate as the fields around them or the hills looming to south and east. But the voices still carried on the wind.
"Who made the circle?" she asked as Ron stepped precisely a metre away from her and began walking.
He shrugged. "The theories keep changing, same as for Stonehenge. First they thought it was some sort of sacrificial place for the Druids. Some people think it was used for astronomy, which might make sense to anyone who actually paid attention in those lessons. Now I think the official line is that it was a marketplace. It's a meeting point, see? There used to be roads coming down from Scotland - before Hadrian's Wall - and across from Yorkshire and the North-East, and up from the Lake District and even Wales."
"When did you learn all that?"
Ron grimaced. "This morning. Auror training's taught me one thing - Hermione was right about research."
"What did they trade here, then?" It was easy to imagine the stone circle as a marketplace, with each stone representing a stall. But what was that rectangle of stones within the circle, Ginny wondered. Some kind of stage?
Ron brought his palms face up. "Search me. Training didn't have that much of an effect, you know."
She smiled tautly, and the dread that had been nudging her for hours washed through her. There was nothing on this hilltop except the stones. Ron had been searching all afternoon, and it was already getting dark. How on earth were they going to find Harry, when he clearly wasn't here?
"What are we looking for?" She forced her voice into a semblance of its usual nonchalance.
"Anything that looks different," Ron said. "A patch of grass or earth that's the wrong colour, or litter. Anything that's not part of this field or the stones. Not that I'm holding my breath," he added gloomily. "I've been over the entire field at least ten times, picked up I don't know how many cigarette butts, and if he found a Portkey - well, it'll have gone wherever it sent him."
"We'll find him," said Ginny firmly. "He's got a party to attend tonight."
"Oh, damn." A grin ghosted across Ron's face. "I'd forgotten about that. Probably be a kindness to leave the poor bloke until it's too late for the ball."
Winter Solstice
Luna was still enthusing about temporo-whatever-it-was when they reached Ron's flat, where Ginny told her fiercely to shut up. She did not feel like subjecting herself to Pansy's polite skepticism. Perhaps she should have dragged Sirius along, she thought as they hurried upstairs. But Sirius didn't do socialising, although he was hospitable enough when she or Ron called round, and Pansy's assertion that her father's much younger brother Tertius had known Regulus at Hogwarts had not endeared her to him. He had spent the rest of that particular occasion making pointed remarks about Slytherins and about friends who led other friends astray. No, Sirius would not have been a good addition to the company.
"They're not doing anything any more," Ron said later, when they had cleared the dinner things away and settled themselves on the various armchairs and beanbags. "I reckon they'd be happy for him just to fade into a sort of legend. Lindholm told me on the quiet today to stop asking about it - said it was harming my career. As if I cared about that." He stuffed two After Eight mint chocolates into his mouth. "'F 'ey 'uck 'e ou', I'gh gho fu' time a' 'e 'oke sho', 'at's awl."
"You're disgusting, Weasley," remarked Pansy, having swallowed her own After Eight daintily and taken up her drink. "And also spot on. Of course they want P- Harry to fade into a legend. It makes a good story, doesn't it?"
"He who walked among us for a while," Luna put in dreamily.
Pansy arched her hands around her pointed chin and spoke in a tone of deep tragedy. "He was too good for this world. Too good for us."
"He saved us, and then he had to leave," finished Ginny. "You know, I think you're right. It certainly sounds better than 'disappeared on duty for the Ministry, who have failed to find him'."
Pansy nodded complacently. "And it also deflects questions about what he was doing when it happened. Why he..." She glanced at Ginny. "Why they were in that room, and why he went through the Veil and Sirius..."
"...got spat out," finished Ron. "The monitors were reporting unusual activity. I must've told people that five thousand times."
"Yes, but why? What caused it? Was it just a Hallowe'en thing, and if so, does it happen every year? We still don't know. All we know is that the Veil took a life for a life." She shrugged. "If you can call Sirius alive."
"He eats, he sleeps, he, um, craps," Ginny said. "At least, I think he does. Therefore he lives." Hearing Pansy echo her own thoughts was uncomfortable.
"Unless you subscribe to the theory that Sirius is caught in a temporospatial glitch," remarked Luna.
Ginny glared at her.
"Which of course is fascinating, but...Pansy, did I tell you the other day that I've Met Somebody?" Luna said.
Having heard the story already, Ginny tuned out while Luna and Pansy explained to Ron the significance of 'Meeting Somebody', as opposed to merely 'meeting somebody'. The closer Christmas came, the more exhausted she was by her pretence at normality. It was all very well wandering from invitation to invitation and haunting Sirius when she had nothing better to do, but Harry was still gone and she didn't know how to face Christmas or their flat without him. Her friends and family were doing their best, and it was rather sweet the way Sirius looked after her, even if she had told him off for treating her like a helpless widow. Nevertheless, pretending that she was all right was hard work. She shifted into a more comfortable position on the beanbag and closed her eyes.
When Harry turned towards her, it took her a moment to work out why he looked different: his glasses were gone. She didn't know why that should disturb her, but it did. Was it her imagination, or was he slightly blurry around the edges, too?
"Hi, Ginny." He didn't seem surprised to see her, nor particularly elated.
"How did you get here?" He was still in the same place, and the stones loomed higher than ever on the grassy hilltop. Beside him was a familiar-looking rectangular structure that she couldn't place.
"Oh." He shrugged. "They called me and I slipped through. It's wonderful to finally spend time with my parents, you know."
"I suppose it must be." Her mind wouldn't work properly; she knew she should be doing something, but she couldn't figure it out. Everything was wrong here. Or perhaps everything was right, and it was she and Harry who were wrong.
"I miss you," she said, because it seemed like the only truth that mattered.
He grinned. "Well, that's easy enough to fix. Just stay here with the rest of us."
"But I can't see the others," she protested, aware that the shadows were gathering around them.
"No, and they can't see you, either." He frowned. "It's very strange. Only Professor Dumbledore believed me when I said you were there, but he won't really talk to me."
"Is-" She started to ask about Voldemort, but decided that she didn't want to know. "Have you seen Fred?"
"Oh, yeah! He said to tell you he's fine, gets to play all the jokes he wants. There was something else, too. What was it?" He glanced behind him. "Something about a cloak. My cloak, and a story. He called it the ultimate jest."
Ginny was silenced briefly by the old grief for her brother and the raw pain she felt at the sight of Harry, so unconcerned and disconnected from reality.
"I wish you'd come back to me." She reached out for him. When she discovered that he was no longer solid, her fear gave way and she screamed.
"Wakey, wakey." Luna was using her soothing tone, the one she had directed upon hapless professors throughout her school career whenever they got in her way.
Ginny clutched her arm. "He's fading," she cried. "He wasn't there as strongly - he's slipping away."
"That's all right," said Luna. "The research says you just need to do the right thing and everything will fix itself."
"Gin?" Ron handed her a glass of water. "What's going on?"
"Just a little space-time confusion," Luna said kindly. "She'll be fine once it sorts itself out."
"But it's not - it's getting worse!" Ginny became aware of Pansy's interested stare and suddenly felt idiotic. "Sorry," she said abruptly. "I'm fine. You were too generous with the vodka in that last tonic, Pansy." She hauled herself off the beanbag. "I'd better go - training tomorrow...match on Boxing Day. Yeah. G'night all."
All Hallows' Eve
By the time they reached the stones, they had to light the ground they were checking with their wands. Ginny focused desperately on Harry, on her fears for him, on scouring the ground for any sign of him, but every time she blinked the voices turned from whispers to a clamour. Across the other side of the circle, Lindholm and his partner were edging forward; alongside her, Ron gave a frustrated groan; but if she looked away it was as if they weren't there at all. Instead, all she heard were voices calling: sometimes to one another; sometimes yelling in unison at some unfortunate in the region of the rectangular cairn; and sometimes they seemed to be calling for her.
A familiar voice nudged at her awareness and she stopped dead. Now that was someone she'd counted on never hearing again.
She looked down at the trampled grass and took a slow, deliberate breath. She was in Cumbria, in a stone circle, and she was looking for Harry. Those were the salient facts. Harry - where was Harry? What had happened to him here?
As they reached the very centre, Ron grabbed her arm. "Hey, are you OK? You look like you need to sit down - come on." He tugged her in the direction of the stile that led over the dry stone wall, but she planted her feet in the mud.
"Can't you hear them?"
"Hear what?" He looked over at Lindholm and then around in confusion. "I can barely hear myself over this gale."
"You really can't?" For a moment, she wondered if perhaps anxiety had deranged her enough to make voices of the wind. Then she closed her eyes again, and she knew.
"This place is like - do you remember that night in the Department of Mysteries? The night Sirius died?"
"To be honest, I don't," Ron admitted. "There was that brain thing..."
She nodded. They'd been worried for Ron's sanity after that night; no wonder his memory of it was patchy. "Yeahyeah. Well, you remember quite early on that night, in one of the rooms, there was the place with the curtain on the little platform, and Harry and Luna talking about voices - you remember?"
He rolled his eyes at her. "Honestly, Gin, I might not remember much about that night, but I do know how Sirius died. Besides, we had a lecture about the Veil in our final year of training. 'Don't let any part of your body touch it, ignore the voices,' etc. etc." His voice died away. "Voices? You mean...?"
"I can hear them here pretty much the same way I did back there," Ginny said. She hesitated. "I heard Tom Riddle."
"Tom Riddle?" Ron asked wearily, and then horror washed over his face. "But he's dead!"
"Don't be an idiot." The fear that Ginny had been tamping down ever since she'd faced Kingsley's owl was waxing now, inexorably and potentially far beyond her ability to manage it. "That's the point. This stone circle - I think there's some sort of connection here between life and death, like in that Veil place. It's All Hallows' Eve, remember?"
Hallowe'en. The day when the division between life and death was most tenuous. Damn! She clenched her fists. Why did these things always happen to Harry? Hadn't he had enough to deal with?
"So why haven't the rest of us walked into it?" demanded Ron. "Why just Harry? What's so special about him? And why can you hear voices and the rest of us can't?"
"I don't know," Ginny said frantically. "Oh, shit! Yes, I do. Harry died before. What if he - I don't know, what if the dead sort of recognised him and pulled him through?"
"Interesting idea," Lindholm interjected. Ginny and Ron jumped. "But this isn't the Veil Room; there's no Veil between life and death here. If anywhere in Britain functioned the way you're describing, we'd know about it, Hallowe'en or no Hallowe'en."
There was a short silence. "Sir," put in Ron, and despite her fear Ginny was proud of his firm tone, "I think my sister's got a point. I mean," he waved his arms at the empty field, "where could he have gone? I've checked every centimetre. And if Ginny says she can hear the voices, then she can. She wouldn't make that up." He glanced around. "Now that you mention it, I can almost..."
"Don't act like a spooked child, Weasley, even if it is the appropriate date," snapped Lindholm. "Your observations will be noted in my report. At the moment we have several possible explanations to work with." He eyed Ron disapprovingly. "All of them perfectly logical. Potter may have come upon a Portkey unawares; he may have run off for reasons of his own; he may have been kidnapped. There is no need for this supernatural element to be considered."
"But-"
Lindholm directed his glare at Ginny. "Time we were heading back to find out what the other teams have discovered. Bletchley, take down the Muggle-repelling charms. Or no, on second thoughts, reinforce them, will you? We might want to come back here in the morning, and it'll be useless if Muggles have been traipsing all over the place trying to commune with the Druids."
Ginny cast a final, furious glare at the circle of stones as the four of them climbed over the stile and back onto the road. Even here, the voices whispered to her. But, unlike those that waited beyond the Veil, she had no idea how to reach them. Dashing back now in defiance of Sven Lindholm would get her nowhere, and she'd probably end up learning even less of Harry's situation than she would otherwise have done.
I'll be back, she promised silently, and it was only as she turned to Apparate that she realised she'd spoken more to the voices than to Harry.
Winter Solstice
Ron insisted on escorting Ginny home and right into her bedroom. As soon as he had squeezed her arm tightly and Disapparated, she marched into the kitchen and poured herself another vodka and tonic. She needed to think.
Half an hour later, she was knocking on a door in another part of London, Harry's invisibility cloak tucked under one arm. Sirius leaned on the door jamb for a moment, observing her silently, and then nodded her inside without asking her why she was there.
"Luna thinks we're stuck in a temporospatial glitch," she announced when they were safely in the sitting room.
"What the fuck is that? And do you want a drink?" He tilted a half-full bottle of wine at her.
"I'm already full of vodka, so, sure. Thanks." She curled up in a corner of the sofa. "A temporo thingy is something to do with the wrong place or time. I think. Luna's explanations never make much sense. Anyway." She accepted a wineglass and took a sip. "I think it's a load of rubbish - but it would explain those wretched dreams."
Sirius was silent, and it dawned on Ginny that she'd been rather presumptuous in arriving here so late at night.
"Sorry, I know it's late. Were you being Padfoot again?" She nodded at the rumpled rug beside the fire.
"Mm." He buried his face in his glass. Ginny suspected that he was spending an increasing amount of time in his Animagus form. Hermione had suggested that he might find it easier to process his traumatic past as a dog rather than as a human, but Ginny thought that it was rather that he didn't have to process things as a dog. Dogs could just be sad, without needing to know why or feeling as if they should jolly themselves into cheeriness.
Suddenly, she yearned for something to hold, into which she could pour all her emotions without having to answer for them.
"You - I don't mind if you want to go back to being Padfoot," she suggested.
He looked at her sharply and she stared into wine. It was decent stuff, she realised belatedly. He hadn't gone through the entire cellar yet.
"OK," he said, and then he wasn't there any more. A large, black dog, considerably less scruffy than Sirius in his human form, climbed up beside her on the sofa, placed his muzzle on her knee and whined.
Ginny gathered Padfoot to her and felt no resistance. She buried her nose in his fur, noting a smell that was strong but not unpleasant, and he burrowed closer, until his head was under one arm and almost all his weight rested on her. Leaning back to gaze into mournful eyes, she felt the wave of unhappiness inside her begin to break. Harry was gone, gone, gone, and there was nothing she could do but rebuild her life without him. Her fingers clenched on Padfoot's fur and he whined in protest, but she didn't notice. Her mind was overflowing with the loss of Harry and a grief that she could no longer contain.
And then her arms were clutched around Sirius's bony ribs and he was peeling back the fingers of her right hand. "Sorry," he said hoarsely, "you were hurting. Oh, Ginny..." He pulled her into a hug that was more akin to the grip of a drowning man, and they clung together. She knew that her fingers were digging into his arm, but she didn't feel he could complain, since his own hands were viced around her shoulders. "It hurts," she said through quick breaths, "it hurts, and it's not fucking fair!"
"No, it isn't," he agreed, and they held one another tighter. "It's not fair." He stroked her hair gently, and she acknowledged how nice it felt to be held again. She snuggled into his chest. She liked Sirius a lot, she thought and, almost unconsciously, let her hand drift up and down his back, the movement becoming firmer and firmer until suddenly they were both breathing quickly, audibly, and Sirius's fingers had slipped under her top, making the skin around her ribs feel deliciously new and raw. He kissed her forehead and she trailed kisses up his throat, until with a groan he bent over her and their lips met.
His mouth and hands quickly became urgent; her jeans were open and a hand skimmed over her arse as she arched even closer to him. She felt his erection and scrabbled at the zip of his jeans with the hand that wasn't trapped underneath him. If I can't have Harry, she thought, at least I can have someone who loved him. It would almost be like-
"Ginny," Sirius muttered as he pulled her down on top of him. "Damn, Ginny, are you sure?"
Harry filled her mind without warning, all rumpled hair and green eyes and full, kissable lips, and she pulled away from Sirius so abruptly that she winded herself on the arm of the sofa.
"No," she said dully, "I'm not. I'm so sorry."
The blackness faded from his eyes and his breathing slowed. Without looking at him, Ginny pulled her clothes back into place. "I'm so sorry," she repeated, "but it wouldn't work. We - I was trying to get to Harry. Sorry."
He nodded, straightened his own apparel and reached gingerly for her hand. "Why don't you tell me why you came round?"
All Hallows' Eve
"How are you getting on, dear?" Professor McGonagall's anxious face appeared above the tome through which Ginny was leafing.
Ginny nodded. "All right, thanks to you, Professor. At least, I'm certainly learning things."
"If only I could have commanded such enthusiasm from you in my classes," remarked the Headmistress of Hogwarts dryly. She held up a hand. "I'm sorry. How tactless of me. This is more important than any lesson."
"There are loads of reports of disappearances," Ginny flipped back to a place that she'd been marking with a finger. "Loads, seriously. I can't believe Lindholm doesn't know about it. They're all explainable, of course - people who've recently lost loved ones and might've just jumped off a cliff into the North Sea, or people who've done some serious communing with the dead."
"The date is significant, I take it."
She nodded angrily. "I can't believe Lindholm would be that thick. Either he's really bloody stupid, or he's just lying because he thinks that's the only way to deal with it."
Professor McGonagall patted her arm. "Lindholm is a creature of the Ministry of Magic, and his first loyalty is to authority. After speaking to Kingsley, he may decide it's best to come out with the truth."
"By which time it'll probably be too late, if it isn't already." Ginny stood up. "Thanks so much for letting me use the library, Professor. You're a dear." She pulled Professor McGonagall into a brief hug and hurried out past the disapproving stare of Madam Pince.
Too weary to Apparate, she headed for the Floo portal at the Leaky Cauldron, where Hallowe'en celebrations were in full swing. She needed to get home and then back to Castlerigg before midnight.
Sometimes, she really hated magic.
Winter Solstice
Sirius's hand tightened on Ginny's as she told him about her latest dream of Harry, and about Fred's message.
"The ultimate jest," he mused. "That would be either death or cheating death, wouldn't it?"
"That's what I thought," said Ginny reluctantly.
"So that's why you brought..." He waved an arm at the cloak, which shimmered against the chair on which she'd dropped it.
"Yeah." She was still very aware of Sirius beside her, of his bony hips and the memory of his skin touching hers. Had she been right to stop? "I s'pose."
"Well." He shifted so that their bodies fitted a little closer together. Now she really wasn't sure. "Are you going to give it a try?"
She laughed unhappily. "It seems such a stupid idea."
"But better than nothing."
"Better than nothing." She pushed past her too-sensitive awareness of Sirius and contemplated her life. Quidditch - she was going to lose her place in the team if she didn't get her act together. A few friends, and her brothers. An excruciating Christmas with her parents, who would be so terribly kind and unintrusive. Sirius.
He lifted her hand and began tracing little patterns in her palm. "Well, then, I'd better do my bit."
"Your bit?" Pleasure rippled through her hand, making it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the conversation.
When he grinned, she glimpsed the young man who had once been one of the biggest hellraisers at Hogwarts. "I'll go back where I came from. I think it's best, don't you?"
"No!" She was in his arms again, with no knowledge of how she'd got there. "You don't have to do that."
"I think perhaps I do," he said. "A life for a life, the way it happened before."
"But...but..." She clutched his arm. "That's not fair. If it doesn't work for me, I'll still have my life, however miserable and shitty it might be. But whether it works or not, you'll be dead. It's not fair!"
He freed himself gently and touched her cheek. "Ginny, listen to me. Over twenty years ago, I failed my best friend, and he died for it. Ten years ago, I swore I wouldn't fail his son, and I still managed to die without being any help at all. If I can help Harry by dying again, I will do it with pleasure." His grey eyes were suddenly clear. "D'you see?"
"What if - what if I asked you not to? What if I said we should accept what'd happened and just get on with life?"
Their faces were very close, and it didn't feel like a big thing when he kissed her. "You're not the accepting type, and neither am I." He leaned in again for a slow, contemplative kiss that awoke all the desire that she'd been trying to ignore. "We both like to be doing things."
Ginny blinked back tears fiercely. She wanted Harry back, and a few weeks ago she would have sacrificed anyone to achieve that. But for Sirius to sacrifice himself suddenly seemed too much. It wasn't fair, after all he'd suffered! If Harry was going to live again, Sirius should be there to greet him.
But she recognised her own determination in the set of his jaw, and nodded. "When are you going?"
Sirius hadn't moved. Red wine and cigarettes suddenly felt to Ginny like the most alluring scents in the world. "I should go soon, I think."
"Yeah." She moistened her lips. "Yeah, that would be a good idea. Quite soon."
His gaze met hers before fixing on her lips. "In just a little while," he added.
"Mm. A little while," she agreed.
All Hallows' Eve
If Castlerigg made a bleak picture by day, it made an even gloomier one at night, with the Pennines and the Lake District rising blackly on two sides and barely anything visible to the north and west except a speckling of lights that must be Keswick. The light from Ginny's wand looked very faint amid the eerie stones, but she held her fear firmly at bay. She was here for Harry; she wasn't going to let a bit of hillside intimidate her, even if it was All Hallows' Eve.
But when she turned to the stones seeking Harry's presence, it was Tom Riddle's voice that assailed her, Tom's soft tone that beguiled her to the very edge of the circle almost before she realised it. She halted just within the stones and took a deep breath. Tom's voice purred in her ears so distinctly that it couldn't be a memory, it just couldn't. Was there was some sort of failing in her that gave her a propensity to fall for Voldemort's tricks?
No, she thought. I was eleven last time. He preyed on my weaknesses. Her face burned with long-remembered humiliation, and she thrust the memories aside. It hadn't been personal; she had simply been a pathway to Harry. Well, this time, she was going to see if Tom Riddle could be her pathway.
She opened her mind to the voices again. They were exactly as before: no louder, no softer. When she stared across the circle, it looked no different: darkness, leavened only slightly by the dull moonlight. It was time to move; she couldn't just stand around all night, even if it did mean evading the Ministry of Magic's Hallowe'en Ball.
"Harry?" she yelled. "Are you there?" Her voice dissipated in the wind, but there was no answer: not from the stones, not from the voices and not from Harry.
Hallowe'en, she swore to herself. I bloody hate Hallowe'en. Reaching into her rucksack, she brought out Harry's invisibility cloak. She was fairly certain that she was the only person here on this wild autumn night, but it was better to be on the safe side.
The wind gusted suddenly. As if on cue, the voices rose to a roar, no longer enticing her but instead shrieking with blood lust that brought to mind long-forgotten thoughts of Slytherin's basilisk, as she'd heard them through Tom's mind. Hands to her ears, the cloak half around her shoulders, Ginny stumbled towards the stone cairn, which yawned in the darkness like an open coffin. A church clock began striking the hour down in the valley, and she realised dimly that it was midnight. "Harry," she shouted desperately, "Harry!" The voices roared again, and she collapsed beside the cairn.
Winter Solstice
Swathed in the invisibility cloak, Ginny lay on the sofa and thought of Sirius. Sirius, who was going back to his death because there was nothing for him here, and because it might, it just might help her and Harry. It hurt her to think that was all she'd been able to offer him.
'The cloak', Fred's message had been. In the old story, the cloak hid the wearer from Death, and Harry had been pretty certain that his cloak had been the one in the story. Was this going to work? Was that what Fred had meant, or was it a last, cruel jape from beyond the grave? And would it be enough to bring Harry back, or was it all just wishful thinking? Perhaps she really was going mental, after all.
She pulled the cloak tight and closed her eyes, mentally tracking Sirius's stealthy tread through the Ministry of Magic. It was longer than she expected before his Patronus announced its presence with a soft pressure on her arm. Ginny touched its muzzle gently, swallowed a last sob and focused all her thoughts on Harry.
He was a long time in coming and even fainter than before, but when she opened the cloak he greeted her gladly. "I wish you'd come and meet the others, though." He tugged at her hand and she shook her head.
"No, Harry. They wouldn't want to see me."
"But they're all there! And my mum wants to meet you; she said so."
Ginny suppressed a shiver, eyeing the shadows that flitted between the dark stones. They reminded her of crows circling carrion. "I can't. I don't belong here, and nor do you."
"But I am here, and I like it." Was it the disappearance of his glasses, or did he really look younger? He was certainly sounding like the spoilt child he'd never been.
Ginny took a deep breath. "Harry, if you stay here, we can't ever be together. Ever again."
His brow crinkled. "But everyone else is here! My parents, Sirius, Remus and Tonks...Why can't we be together?"
"It's not our time!" She strove to speak clearly and calmly. "You slipped through the cracks, but we're not meant to be here. Think of all the others who aren't here: Ron and Hermione, Teddy, my parents and brothers." She pictured Fred and blinked back tears. He would understand. "Do you want to leave all of them?"
Harry glanced back at the shadows. Ginny hoped she was imagining the fact that they seemed to be multiplying.
"I'm not-" He shook his head. "Of course I don't want to leave them, but...I never had a chance to get to know my parents. I had over twenty years with Ron and Hermione and everyone. Maybe it's time I came here now."
"No!" Ginny wanted to shake him. "It's not time. You'll know when it's the right time, and then you'll have all the time in the world to get to know your parents. But now - everyone else needs you. I need you." Her voice cracked.
His expression was serious. "And you can't be here with me?"
"No." She wondered whether to mention how tenuous her grip on him was, as if he might dissipate into mist at any moment. Instead, she kissed him violently, biting down on his lips, pressing her body as hard as possible against what was left of him, trying to conjure the last time they'd fucked on that oh, so normal morning a few weeks ago, or a day ago, or however long it really was.
When she pulled away, he stared at her breathlessly.
"Do you remember what that was like?" she demanded and reached in again. This time she pulled the cloak down and pressed her breasts against him, and when she felt his erection she reached for that, too, caressing him through his jeans and wondering whether she could drop to her knees and take him in her mouth.
"Do you want to do without that until the end of time?" she asked raggedly. "Do you? Because that's the only option unless you come back with me now. And it won't be nice. I know, Harry. I've been trying to do without that, without you, and I don't like it. Please!" She kissed him again and tasted blood, and this time his arms settled softly around her shoulders. "Please come with me."
His eyes darted to one side and then the other. "Can I say goodbye?"
"No. You can't, I'm sorry. But you'll see them again. When the time's right."
He nodded slowly, and she watched a familiar film of pain settle over his features. She didn't flinch. It was only what it meant to be alive, that pain.
There was a commotion among the shadows that had been lurking nearby, and Ginny glimpsed a gaunt, dark-haired man whose face was briefly illuminated by a cheeky grin before he lapsed into darkness. At the same moment, Harry became heavier in her arms.
"Sirius!" she called, with no idea as to whether he could hear or understand. "Sirius, thank you! I'll tell him." Kissing Harry a fourth time, she wrapped the cloak around them both and pulled them out of death.
Epilogue
They fell in a heap on the frosty earth, scrabbling to pull the cloak off their faces. Ginny found her wand and they stared at one another in the light that sprang up between them. Harry's glasses were back, she noted with relief.
The church clock was still striking, but the voices howled around them and they were only centimetres from the stone cairn. "Come on!" Ginny croaked, grabbing Harry's hand and stumbling through the wide gap in the stones. She didn't stop until she'd bundled them both over the stile and into the road.
Now the voices were only wind, and she had time to wonder how much of it was down to chance that they'd fallen outside the cairn instead of into it.
"I - I had a dream." Harry's hand was tight on hers, and she felt him shivering.
"So did I." She kissed him briefly but fiercely, tasting his blood again. "I dreamed we were in a warm bed, doing the most delicious things to each other."
"Oh." His lips sought hers. "Mmm. Maybe...we should get onto that."
Ginny smiled in the darkness, counted to three, and Apparated them both home.
Mercutio: And so did I.
Romeo: Well, what was yours?
Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.
William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
