Title: Chasing Clouds
Word Count: 13,818
Characters/Pairings: Harry, Ginny
Rating: PG
Summary: He knows that it will hurt to come back
Notes: This story was written as a gift for katieay, who is a wonderful source of laughter, support and friendship to all who are lucky enough to know her. She requested a story inspired by the Snow Patrol song Chasing Cars. I seem to be making a habit of writing song-related H/G stories, but unlike ‘A Hundred Years’ it’s very much a story that is inspired by rather than based on the song.


Chasing Clouds

By Antonia East

So much pain and the far off screams and the high-pitched laughter in his ears. He knows that it will hurt to come back. If he takes a breath and opens his eyes then the blood and death and dying will become real. If he keeps his eyes closed he can drift away in the calm, down the lulling river where lies safe harbour and the loved of long-ago. Eyes: twinkling blue, stormy grey, bright hazel, sad green. He lies still and hopes for heavy rest and warm arms, and little by little the cold seeps in.

*
One
Harry, Ron and Hermione stood shoulder to shoulder. They stood, Ginny realised, in height order. Ron was still taller than Harry – when would her stupid brother ever stop growing? – and Harry in turn was quite a bit taller than Hermione. Ginny, who was a good few inches shorter than Hermione, knew that it was useless to think that if she went to stand next to Hermione then she would fit into place beside them.

They hadn’t elected to stand in height order, of course. Harry was in the centre and Ron and Hermione were flanking him, because that was how it always had been. The three of them were leaving. Bill and Fleur’s wedding had been earlier that day, and Ginny’s hair was still wreathed with the little yellow flowers that matched her bridesmaid’s dress.

Ron and Hermione had already said goodbye to her before they’d gone to stand by Harry. Hermione had squeezed her so tightly that Ginny felt like she was drowning, and she’d taken in a shuddering breath and ended up with Hermione’s hair in her mouth. Ron had hugged her briefly, awkwardly, but then had swiftly stooped and pressed a kiss against her cheekbone. She’d felt the heat of his face against hers, had known without looking that his ears would be red, and when he’d straightened up he hadn’t met her eyes. Ginny, too, had looked away because she loved her big brother so much and she would not let him see her cry.

Harry had not touched her or bade her farewell. He looked apologetic as Ron and Hermione moved away from Ginny and came to stand beside him. Only Harry could wear that expression of guilt and determination and make Ginny’s heart twist in her chest. He looked wistful and wary, and Ginny wondered if he wanted to feel her body pressed close to his and feel her heart pounding against his chest as much as she wanted to feel his. Her nerves were screaming at her to send Harry away with at least one tumbling, rushed embrace that would never be enough but that would at least be something.

She knew that she could not.

Now that the three of them stood before her, their faces lifted to the spindly levels of The Burrow, Ginny felt that there was an uncrossable barrier distancing her from them. She caught Harry’s eyes. From either side of the invisible divide they looked at each other and said nothing. She saw the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

There was suddenly an awful lot to say. There were so many things that he had to hear, like ‘you’d bloody well better come back,’ and ‘I really do like you very much, you know’, and ‘you’ll do it. I know you will’. But these things were left unsaid – she just had to hope that he felt them – and he gave her a short, sharp nod, as though it cracked his neck, and then they were gone.

For a long moment Ginny stood in the twilight of the summer evening, listening to but not hearing the voices and music coming from the wedding party taking place on the other side of The Burrow. Then she looked away.

*
Ten
They told him that his name was Harry. He believed them. He didn’t see any reason not to, but it was strange to hear. Somehow the name that was familiar on their lips became outlandish by the time it reached his ears.

He wondered who had told them that his name was Harry in the first place. He supposed it must have been him. That’s what people did after all – they introduced themselves by saying their names. He wasn’t a real person: he had no self to introduce, and the name with which he was meant to do it didn’t feel like his. They held out their hands and cried and told him their names with hope and helpless disbelief that the names meant nothing to him.

They thought that because the names – those strange combinations of sounds that fragmented into nonsense the more they were repeated – meant nothing to him, that they meant nothing to him. He didn’t know who he was, didn’t know who they were, but somehow this was not true.

They cared about him. The tears running down their cheeks were enough to tell him that, but he felt it also in the brushes of hands, the smoothing of his pillows, the fact that no matter when he woke up there was always a figure, familiar and unknown at once, next to the bed, or standing by the window, or sitting in the corner chair, and that when they saw he was awake whoever it was – red-haired young men, a red-haired girl or a dark-haired one, a kind-faced balding man, a woman with lumpy knitting who always called an ache to his throat, a tired man with grey hair and bright eyes, a young rainbow-coloured woman – would turn to him and smile.

“Harry,” said the dark-haired girl. His name sounded like a prayer on her lips.

“Harry,” said the red-haired boy. He always said his name in a cracked voice, but with something steadfast in his eyes.

“Harry,” said the red-haired girl. She said his name as firmly as if it were the world.

Sometimes he woke up and lay very still and watched them stand in the little room with him. It made him feel oddly sad, that they were trapped in this space as much as he was, but he was glad they were there all the same. He could pretend that there was nothing outside this room, this bed, these people. When they didn’t know he was awake then names and memories didn’t matter. When he looked at the red-haired girl as she curled herself into the nearest chair, or when he saw through heavy lids the red-haired boy and dark-haired girl stand together, framed by the window and with the sunlight shining upon them, he thought that it was almost enough. Nothing that was outside his room could be better than what was within.

Then he’d see the sorrow on their faces and feel guilty again. Maybe the harbour of this room was a trap. Perhaps they could be happy in the outside world. If they left him alone. He should sit up and tell them to go.

He did not move. They did not leave.

*
Three
In the end Ginny had not needed to go to battle. Battle had come to her. Or rather it had come to Hogwarts. Hogwarts had been, for Ginny, the scene of spells in the classrooms and the corridor, of battles on the Quidditch Pitch. Of terror alone in its halls, clutching ink and a diary; of release – twice – in the Chamber of Secrets. It had been the scene of a magical ball where one sweet young man and one handsome one – neither Harry – had asked her to dance. It had been the scene of kisses in the common room and of the kiss in the common room. It was the world of her family, of her brothers and parents. It was the world of a clammy dark fear and a dark-haired boy whose eyes were not green, and touches of him were hidden in the castle, lurking ready to grab at her soul even now she was in her sixth year.

But there were other glimpses ready to be discovered and re-remembered within the castle’s walls. The surprising places that brought to mind Percy’s prim concern (and of course the classroom where she’d seen him kissing his girlfriend), areas - including but not limited to the swamp corridor – that made her see the twins, grinning and full of purpose. The library, of course, made her think of Hermione most, but also of a sweet desperate time with Harry when he had needed help so much and had accepted hers. The Quidditch pitch was a mine of memories – nearly all of them good – where a certain point between the far goal posts would make her beam with triumph and make her want to turn round again to see Harry’s eyes watching her score the goal. She saw Ron hovering nervously before his hoops, remembered his awful playing and his brilliance when it really mattered. She glimpsed flashes of the Snitches that she had caught for Harry and for Gryffindor. If she closed her eyes she felt Harry fly past her.

Ginny was the last of them at Hogwarts, but she was not alone. The others were everywhere. Hogwarts this year was a ghost of a school and it was haunted with the footsteps of those no longer treading its halls.

“Professor McGonagall asked me to commentate for the next Quidditch match,” Luna said suddenly. They had been walking in silence down the Charms corridor. It was funny, Ginny thought, how she had come to rely on Luna and Neville’s company this year. She’d always liked them, but she’d never spent huge amounts of time with them before. Now they were the only people with whom she felt at ease. She didn’t have to think very hard to see why, though. Luna and Neville were the only people left at school who had fought with her and Ron and Hermione and Harry. They were the only ones who had some comprehension, however small, of what it was like. She knew that they were prepared to fight without knowing exactly why. They had the same trust in Harry that she did.

Somehow that helped. It helped to bridge the gap.

“That’s great, Luna,” Ginny said. “I loved your commentary last time.” She thought of Ron’s laughter at it and even Harry’s, and the rage and fear that had whelmed up within her when McLaggen had hit Harry – and all she’d been able to say at his bedside was that he’d nearly missed the match – and her furious argument with Dean when he’d snickered about Harry being knocked out.

“I was dreadful,” Luna said in a calm voice.

“You were brilliantly dreadful,” Ginny said, slipping an arm around Luna’s waist.

Luna looked down at her and smiled.

“Quidditch needs you, Luna,” said Neville, walking on Ginny’s other side. He flushed a little. Neville often blushed when he spoke of his own accord, but he was getting better about it, and sometimes he knew exactly the right thing to say. “After all, the matches have been boring enough this term.”

“That’s true,” Ginny said with a groan. “I don’t know why McGonagall didn’t cancel it. Half the decent players are gone.”

“It would feel even worse if there wasn’t any Quidditch,” Neville said. “It would be like giving in. Do you remember back when the Chamber of Secrets was opened and the Quidditch was cancelled?”

Ginny forced herself to take one step after another, was aware that her arm was slung around Luna in a casual gesture. Luna’s robes moved under Ginny’s hand as they walked. Ginny had never told any of her friends the exact details of the Chamber of Secrets, and most of them had forgotten the incident completely. All they knew was that she had been taken into the monster’s lair and had come out relatively unscathed. Usually Ginny liked it that way.

Neville’s cheeks turned bright red. He stopped walking. “Oh, Ginny, I’m sorry.”

Ginny kept walking, pulling Luna along with her. “Don’t be,” she said, trying to sound dismissive. “It was a long time ago.” Neville’s mortification would only make it worse.

Neville hurried to catch up, and Ginny hooked her other arm through his. “I forgot,” he said, unnecessarily. Ginny gave him a gentle shove in the side, hoping he’d take it as forgiveness.

He gave her a quick, shy glance. “You make it easy to forget,” he said.

The three of them carried on, walking towards the heart of the castle, chatting lightly and determinedly in a state of engineered forgetfulness.

Ginny passed an alcove where Harry had pulled her to him on their way outside one fine day last spring. She saw his face - wearing a look that was just for her – and wondered for the thousandth time where he and the others were and how they were and felt once more the war lapping with warning waves against her temporarily sheltered world.

*
Twelve
Breathe in. Breathe out. Rise and fall. A strand of red hair over her face moved up and down on her breath.

He’d woken to voices, and it had been instinct that kept him silent and still, curled under the blankets, waiting to see who it was and how to react. He wondered if this was something he’d learned to do in the past, even though he couldn’t remember why. He was looking for any advantage he might have even before he was fully awake.

“We can’t stay here.”

“I know. I just …”

“Mum would kill us.”

“Mum’s not going to find out, is she, Ron?”

A sigh. “No. Hermione’d kill us, and it’s even worse hiding things from her.”

Somehow he knew that Ginny would have a smirk on her face.

“I appreciate that you’re risking life and limb, Ron.”

He lay very still, focused on nothing but the voices in his room. He’d heard, although he had pretended not to, the argument that had happened about going home and getting a good night’s sleep. Nobody had sat with him for the last few nights, but he knew that before then there had been someone with him constantly. The Healers gave him potions to help him sleep but he had impressions of stirring in his slumber and being aware of the memory of a hand touching his hair. There was still someone there when he fell asleep at night and someone there when he awoke in the morning and he was still battling the fear and guilt and rush of wonder and pleasure that came of being loved like that by these people he could not remember.

“Thanks for bringing me.” Ginny would not be smirking now.

“That’s all right. I do, I mean, I understand. But you can see he’s okay and everything, Ginny. He’s just sleeping. We should leave him be.”

“I’m not going to disturb him.”

“Come on, Ginny. You know Harry. He was always wanting to be left alone.”

A sharp hiss. “He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t remember anything. Can’t you see he’s scared? We’re not leaving him alone.”

“Of course we’re not. But can’t you leave the poor bloke to sleep?”

“When he’s asleep you can almost imagine that … that nothing’s wrong.”

“I know.” A long pause. “Ginny, you know, something is wrong, an-and he might not get better.”

“Shut up, Ron.”

“You can’t just put everything on the hope that he’ll remember again.”

“Don’t you bloody dare, Ron Weasley. Are you telling me that you’ll stop being his best friend if he never gets his memories back?”

“No! We’ll stay friends even if I have to force him to get to know me and Hermione again. No way we’re leaving him.”

“Then why should I?”

“Ginny, can’t you see it’s different?”

“It’s exactly the same, Ron.”

“It’s not. You can’t force him to, well, love you.”

Her voice trembled, though he couldn’t tell if it shook with rage or tears. “If we didn’t have to be quiet I’d curse you right now,” she said. Then, so quietly that he had to strain his ears to hear, “and I never could.”

There were more whispers and the faint creak of the door opening and closing again. He heard light footsteps and felt the warmth of fingers a touch away from his skin. It was an hour or maybe more before he opened his eyes and saw Ginny at the foot of the bed, her head pillowed on her arms.

He watched her sleep, watched the steady signs of breathing. Outside he could hear the faint stirrings of the hospital – it was never truly quiet, even in the dead of night – and he knew without looking through the drawn curtains that the sky would still be dark and cold. At that moment nothing in his room-world felt real.

It might have been ten minutes later, it might have been an hour, when the door opened and Ron padded into the room. He couldn’t see much of Ron’s face in the perpetual half-light of the hospital room, but got the impression of freckles looking unnatural against his skin. It was a familiar sight and he felt another jab of guilt because it was summer and Ron ought to have a tan. Instead he looked as though he’d been in a hospital for a whole month, which was very nearly true.

Ginny didn’t stir as Ron bent over her and lifted her carefully into his arms. Then Ron looked up and saw him watching. Their eyes met, and Ron looked warning and resigned and rather sad.

He understood, and he did not move, nor did he look away, as Ron carried his sleeping sister out the room in silence.

He thought about calling a whispered, “good night,” after the pair of them, but his voice was choked by an upsurge of emotion that he could not name or place.

*
Five
Hermione had taken some persuading, but not as much as Ginny had anticipated. She supposed that her friend could be feeling sorry for her, or could be feeling sorry for Harry. It might even be that Hermione wanted some time alone with Ron. Hermione and Ron seemed to have got over the tension and misunderstandings that had characterised their friendship over the past few years and had come to examine the love and pride upon which their relationship was based. She didn’t think that Ron and Hermione were officially together; the tentative titles that were so important at school paled against the war that they were fighting. Now was the time for a solid backdrop of love – for family, for friends, - rather than the worry of whether you could technically be called someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend.

Hermione, uncharacteristically, had not said much, but Ginny assumed that this was how Hermione and Ron felt. She hoped that it was how Harry felt.

And, girding her Gryffindor courage and remembering that anything was possible if you had enough nerve, she crept to the room where Ron and Harry slept, determined to find out. Harry had gone to bed early, leaving the warm and cheerful room as though he wanted to take all the good feelings of Christmas and save them within himself before the fire started to die down and the pleasantly-sleepy atmosphere in the living room turned to fatigue. Ginny entered the room and closed the door quietly behind her. Harry was sitting on his bed but he was still wearing the new green jumper that Ginny’s mother had given him that day and was picking at the sleeves, pushing his fingernails through the thick weave of the wool.

“Don’t let Mum catch you doing that,” Ginny said, making Harry jerk his head up sharply. “She’s always going on at us for making our sleeves tatty.”

He smiled briefly. “It’s a good job she hasn’t seen what’s become of the ones she’s given me over the years.”

Not that Ginny’s mother would scold Harry – they both knew that. He was still too special to be scolded over the state of his jumpers. But Ginny smiled anyway.

“George set fire to Fred’s once.”

His smile was a little wider. “Was Fred wearing it at the time?”

“He was.”

They both chuckled softly. Ginny knew that if she launched into the exact details, and did impersonations of the twins and her mother in the drama of the jumpers, Harry would listen vaguely and laugh a bit, desperate to hear more conversation that was easy and normal and distracting. She didn’t, and after a few seconds he looked back down at his sleeves.

“I’m all right,” he said. “You should go back to the others. I just felt like an early night.” He sighed. “Ron’ll be up in a bit.”

Ginny wondered if he just wanted time to himself. From all accounts, Harry, Ron and Hermione had been living in each other’s pockets for the last few months and Harry might just want to be alone for a while. But she knew Harry well, and knew that when he wanted to be on his own it was normally because he wanted not to feel alone.

“Ron’s having my bed for the night,” she said. “He and Hermione want to talk or something.” Well, she reasoned, it was not a lie.

Harry went a little red. “Or something,” he muttered and caught her eye, and she giggled. “Where are you going to sleep?” He glanced at Ron’s bed, apparently without meaning to.

“I can go and get Charlie to put up another bed in his room for the night,” Ginny said, “or I could I stay here, if you fancy the company.”

He didn’t look unwilling, but he ran a hand through his hair. “Ginny,” he said, suddenly speaking quickly, “what I said at Dumbledore’s, er, funeral, it wasn’t – I mean -.”

She cut him off. “I know.” Or at least she hoped she did. “I know that you have to find Voldemort and destroy him, and even then …” It was what he was doing at the moment, while she was safe at school, but even now it felt so far off. She knew it was something that she could not help with, not unless the war lasted for years longer, but she didn’t want to be cut off from it completely. Cut off from him completely.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

She didn’t think he was going to reply, but then he pulled her down to sit next to him on the bed. “I’ve missed you too,” he said, his mouth close to her ear.

She thought back to the brief time they’d been a couple at school. It had surprised and delighted her, how relaxed he was about touching her. They hadn’t been together long and certainly hadn’t done anything more intimate than unexpected jolts of skin on skin and kissing, but he had been unafraid to kiss her goodbye, kiss her hello, let her rest against his knees. It was the little things that she thought back on most sweetly. Those and the fact that she was the only one who had touched him in that free and easy manner and that she was the only one he had been comfortable touching back.

Her hand lay on top of his on the bed, and she curled her fingers so the fingertips brushed his palm.

He breathed deeply. “So, how’s Hogwarts?”

She tucked her head under his, resting her cheek against the scratchy wool of his jumper, feeling the movement of his chest as he breathed, soaking in the warmth and rhythm and smell of Harry, and talked of unimportant things.

*
Fourteen
Fred and George will never let Harry forget that they were the first ones he remembered. It was his birthday and he’d been given permission to spend it at The Burrow, which was where the Weasleys lived. He travelled by Portkey, accompanied by his least favourite of the Healers (who sometimes called him ‘ducky’) and who insisted upon straightening his robes when they arrived.

“You’ll want to make a nice impression for your nice friends, ducky,” she said.

He looked around, at the lopsided sign, the jumble of Wellington boots at the door. He saw a bird fly down and perch on one of the five chimneys which stuck at odd angles to the rickety roof.

He wished with all his might that he could feel some sense of déjà-vu that he had been here before, that this place meant something to him.

He couldn’t. But he liked the friendly, cheerful feel of the place, liked the way Mrs Weasley was standing at the doorway and beckoning him in. The kitchen was warm and small and full of the people he had come to recognise. They all grinned at him, and there was birthday cake and a stack of presents in front of the seat he was ushered into. Mrs Weasley fussed at his hair and said that she couldn’t believe he was eighteen and all grown up. One of her sons, the one with the scarred face, shook his head at his mother and said, “I can’t believe Harry’s only eighteen. Who’s done all that by the age of eighteen?”

“We’d started a business,” said one of the twins.

“A successful one at that,” said the other. Their brother rolled his eyes.

“All right, you two started a business. But most of us have done precious little by the time we’re eighteen and Harry’s defeated You Know Who.”

“Voldemort,” said Ron. Hermione clutched Ron’s arm and smiled at him.

He wished he could remember Ron and Hermione. He liked them.

The rest of the group were nodding, their faces grave, and he wished they’d stop because it didn’t feel like he had done anything before he was eighteen either. It was hard to imagine that somewhere hidden in the mass of shadows in his mind was something that caused this group of people to look at him like that. It was even more perplexing to realise that there had to be something about him that they loved, and he worried in case he had lost it forever and they’d realise the part of him that was Harry – the part of him that made them care for him - was not coming back.

But he was not allowed to dwell on it for very long, as gifts were opened and food and drink was passed around. He stared at his plate and saw that it was piled high with the things he’d enjoyed eating while at the hospital – sweets that had been brought to him – and wondered whether these were his favourite foods. He hated the fact that he didn’t even know, but was oddly comforted by the fact that these people did. Maybe he would be able to find out who he was through them.

“Biscuit, Harry?” One of the twins asked. He reached out a hand to take a custard cream. Then he let his hand drop and looked at the plate, feeling puzzled. Somehow he didn’t want to take a biscuit. Somehow he knew that accepting any food from either of the twins was a bad idea.

“What’s wrong?” Ginny asked, looking from him to the plate of biscuits, which Fred (he guessed it was Fred from the ‘F’ on his t-shirt) was still holding out.

“Have you,” he began, and then thought that this was going to sound terribly rude, but he had to know. “Have you done anything to them?”

Everyone in the room turned to glare at the twins, making him sure that what he felt had been real. Something from the past.

“No,” one of the twins said slowly. “There’s nothing wrong with them.”

“We wouldn’t do that to Harry while he’s in hospital,” the other said. But no one was listening to him.

“Why did you say that?” Hermione asked.

“It’s never wise to take anything offered by Fred or George,” Harry answered without thinking. Then the enormity of what he had said hit him and he stared at the gobsmacked faces before him.

There was a moment of deep silence, during which Harry tried not to buckle under the onslaught of feelings: of what had happened, who he was, who they were. Then Hermione squealed and clutched her face, Ron pounded him on the back, Mrs Weasley burst into tears, Fred and George shouted and began a sort of dance. Mr Weasley and Bill shook Harry by the hand, Remus squeezed his shoulder, Tonks kissed his cheek and Ginny, quite suddenly and with perfect grace, fell off her chair.

*
Seven
“Ginny!”

It is not Hermione’s voice in the contact mirror, but Harry’s. His face blurs in the glass and then becomes clear and Ginny’s heart begins to pound not from seeing his face but from seeing the expression on his face and she knows that It is about to happen.

“I need you to go to the room of requirement and open it for a place to hide something secret. Like a book you want keeping safe.”

It is not the time to wince, and Ginny fights against the chill that creeps down her spine. She runs up seven flights of staircases and paces before the hidden door, the mirror clasped so tightly in her hands that her skin has gone white and her palms burn.

“I’m here,” she says at last, throwing herself into the room and gazing down at the mirror rather than the huge space and the walls of worthless treasures it contains.

Harry’s voice is rushed. “Look for a stuffed troll.”

Ginny doesn’t question what she would normally term to be one of the more ridiculous sentences in the history of speech. She finds the troll easily enough – it’s enormous – and then Harry tells her to look for a big cupboard which takes her a while to find. She thinks she’s found it at one point, but it’s the vanishing cabinet instead. Her breath quickens again as Harry shuts his eyes briefly – there are dark bags beneath them, when did he last sleep? – and Ginny runs faster, tearing around corners, not knowing what she is looking for but wanting to find it more than anything else because Harry needs it and it is important.

Perhaps the room feels her desperation, because suddenly it’s there, under her hands, the cupboard made of blistered wood.

“Do you see the tiara?”

She looks wildly about and sees – at any other time it would have been funny – an ugly bust of an elderly warlock sporting a dusty old wig and a battered tiara. She grabs the tiara. It is smooth and heavy, cool to the touch and somewhere in her mind a memory surfaces to greet it.

He has touched it.

She holds the tiara up to the mirror for Harry to see, gripping it hard to keep her hands from trembling

“That’s it,” Harry says, breathing out. “It was Ravenclaw’s. Hermione found a picture and I knew I’d seen it before. That’s the last one, and he’s coming for it.” Then he blinks and turns his face a fraction. “Ginny,” he says, and for the first time he’s speaking to her. “There’s probably an awful curse on this. Don’t do anything to it – no magic – but meet us in Hagrid’s hut as soon as you can. Carry it out of sight.”

Then he’s gone, and she bundles the tiara into the inner pocket of her robes and dashes out of the room. She makes it to Hagrid’s house in ten minutes, her breath ragged and her veins coursing with so much adrenalin she feels light-headed. The door opens and she’s pulled inside.

Ginny Weasley is far more like her mother than she’ll ever admit. Her first thought is that they are all too thin.

They have pale, urgent, desperate faces, and Ron and Hermione each put a hand on Ginny’s arm and look at her as though they’re drinking her in, but Harry looks straight at her face and says, “have you got it?”

She holds it out and he takes it with a shiver. “Wands out,” he says. “You too, Ginny.”

Ron glares at Harry before looking away, and Hermione bites her lip but tells Ginny the spell they are to use.

“It’s not dangerous,” Hermione scrambles to reassure her, as though Ginny cared if it were. “But it takes a lot of magic to sustain, because of the complexity of- ”

“Hermione, there’s no time,” Harry barks. Hermione closes her mouth, looking miserable, and Harry’s mouth twists. He knocks his hand against Hermione’s, and glances at Ron. “We can just about do it with three of us,” he says to Ginny.

“Then it’ll be easier with four,” says Ginny in a firm voice. Her eyes meet Harry’s. He has asked for her help. She clenches her wand tightly in her fist.

The four spells hit the tiara together and green mist rises. Each floating droplet causes tremors down Ginny’s wand hand and she sees the strained faces of the others. Their skin is tinged with green; the mist makes everything it touches appear sickly and malignant. Ginny thinks she sees the form of Tom Riddle as she remembers him. He turns to her and opens his arms, a putrid smile on his handsome face.

Harry shouts something in a hiss that might be Parseltongue and the image of Tom Riddle is snuffed out. The muted colours inside the hut appear much brighter, as though Ginny’s vision has been wiped clean.

Ginny feels like something has been dragged from her chest. When she looks down at the front of her robes she almost expects to see blood dripping from a gaping wound. She sees that Harry, Ron and Hermione look even paler, and Hermione is leaning on Ron’s arm.

“Well at least it’s the last one,” Ron says in a blatant attempt at cheer.

Harry stands up straighter and Ginny can see the force that has gone into it.

“That’s it. There’s nothing left. He’s human now.”

Despite the pain and horror, Ginny feels a sort of lightness between them. It’s hope, she realises, and she’d forgotten how pure it feels. She doesn’t know what she just helped destroy but she knows that its destruction was good – a letting go of something that should have been released long before. If Voldemort can now finally be killed … Harry looks grimly happy and Ginny thinks that for the first time he believes that he might be able to do it. He was always going to try, but now he believes that he has a chance.

And Ginny, for whom Harry’s stupid noble actions are everything and nothing because that is who he is, who always believed that he would succeed because she could not believe anything else, Ginny feels horror at what must come next for Harry and certainty that, once he gets his strength back from this current ordeal, he’ll be able to face Voldemort and win.

And then they hear the screams coming from the castle and there is no more time.

Part Two