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SIYE Time:23:25 on 28th March 2024
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God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs
By MissK

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Category: Post-HBP
Characters:Harry/Ginny
Genres: Drama, General, Romance
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 9
Summary: Ginny smiled sadly. 'That's half the problem, Harry,' she said. 'You're always sorry.' It's Christmas, and Harry returns to the Burrow after months searching for Horcruxes. In all the time spent preparing to face Voldemort, he hasn't been able to prepare for his encounter with the person he left behind.
Hitcount: Story Total: 5250



Disclaimer: Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions in this story are my own and in no way represent the owners of this site. This story subject to copyright law under transformative use. No compensation is made for this work.



Author's Notes:
Thanks to James for being an amazing beta, for encouraging me to keep going with this fic no matter how impossible that seemed, and, most importantly, for introducing me to the greatness of Harry/Ginny in the first place.




ChapterPrinter


“God rest ye merry Hippogriffs, let nothing you dismay...”


Harry blinked as the world around him slowly came into focus. He had never been a person to sleep in - years of early morning Quidditch practice had made sure of that — but judging by the light that was shining onto his bed, this morning was an exception. His brain was still crying for sleep, but he was grateful for the interruption. He had been in the middle of another nightmare, full of dark corridors, green light and flashes of red hair that were just out of reach. Although nothing terrifying ever happened in these dreams, they always left his stomach twisting in fear, and Harry almost wanted to fall asleep again to find out, once and for all, what would happen when he got to the end of the tunnel.


Almost, except...


“...remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas Day...”


Where was that singing coming from?


He forced himself to sit up, his tired muscles protesting fiercely. The hazy winter sun shone into his eyes, but the voice continued to ring out, filling the otherwise silent house with words that were slightly out of tune.


“...to save us all from Merlin’s power when we had gone astray...”


It was definitely coming from downstairs, Harry decided, as he pulled on his dressing gown and headed out of Ron’s bedroom door. The sound was trailing carefully up the stairs with an almost hypnotic quality, and Harry’s feet banged on each step as he followed it downwards, sounding painfully loud in the empty house. He finally reached the bottom step and turned the corner that would lead him into the kitchen, but he stopped on the threshold, his mind caught for a moment by the scene in front of him.


When he had gone to bed the night before, the kitchen of the Burrow had looked exactly the same as always — warm, comforting, but not particularly festive. Now, however, it was awash in a sea of red and green. Ribbons were tied to different parts of the furniture, and red and gold tinsel, slightly worn but still as Christmassy as ever, was draped artistically over many of the surfaces. There was no tree, but bits of greenery had been arranged into bundles about the room, and several stockings were hanging from the fireplace, each one with the name of a different Weasley embroidered onto the front. The delicious smell of baking drifted across the room, and this mingled in with the fresh scent of evergreen to give Harry an almost overpowering sense of Christmas.


Standing in the midst of this, a frilly apron tied firmly around her waist, and her hair fastened into a scruffy bun on the top of her head, was Ginny. She was standing with her back to Harry, balancing on a footstool as she attempted to hang a wreath above the fireplace.


Harry watched her for a moment longer as she leaned forward on tiptoe, straining to reach the hook on the wall, and then turned away in an attempt to sneak back upstairs. As much as he would have liked to stay and watch forever, the idea of meeting with Ginny in an empty house was about as sane as meeting with Voldemort for dinner, although for entirely different reasons.


Unfortunately, the staircase conspired against him. In his effort to proceed up the creaky stairs as quietly as possible, he managed to completely forget about the two broomsticks propped up against the wall. His arm caught one, which in turn knocked the other, and they both fell to the floor with a crash.


From behind him came a faint scream, followed by another crash and a flump. Harry spun around in time to see Ginny lying on the floor, her hair tangled in front of her face, and the stool she had been standing on seconds before now tipped on its side and a good five feet away. She scrambled to her feet, muttering and mumbling, and then dragged the hair away from her face to see her would-be attacker.


As her eyes fell on Harry, her cheeks turned scarlet. ‘Oh!’ she said. Her mouth slightly open, she considered him for a moment. ‘I didn’t see you there, Harry.’


‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’ He still lingered in the doorway, as though he was standing at the edge of a lion’s den. A very pretty, very appealing lion, but a lion none-the-less.


He hadn’t spoken to her since Bill and Fleur’s wedding, when she had kissed him on the cheek and wished him goodnight, not knowing that, by the next morning, he would be gone. He, Ron and Hermione had returned to the Burrow the previous evening under Mrs Weasley’s insistence that ‘even Voldemort could wait for Christmas’, and Harry had done a pretty good job of avoiding Ginny thus far.


What am I afraid of? he wondered. Ginny being mad at me? Or Ginny not being mad at me? He wasn’t sure which one would be worse.


‘Are you going to come in?’ she asked, shaking herself out of her daze and moving to put the stool back in its proper position.


Despite the fact that his common sense was screaming to the contrary, Harry nodded and climbed down the last step into the room.


‘Where is everybody?’


‘Order meeting,’ she said. On his confused look, she added, ‘They didn’t want to wake you. I guess you could floo in now, but... I’d rather you didn’t.’


‘Why not?’ he asked, before he could stop himself.


If he had thought that she would shy at the question, he was very much mistaken. ‘You’ve been gone five months, Harry,’ she said, her tone sad but her eyes not looking away from his. ‘You could at least stay and talk to me for five minutes before you rush off and do whatever else your mission demands.’


Sighing, she flopped down on the sofa and began arranging the cushions around her. After a few moments of preparation, she patted them as though praising them for their cooperation and then looked up at Harry expectantly.


His limbs acting quite independently from his brain, Harry found himself taking the seat beside her. Ginny smiled, her previous sadness seemingly eradicated by his decision to sit with her, and that flash of teeth and wrinkled eyes was more than enough to remove any of Harry’s doubts about the move.


‘So,’ he said, dragging his hand unconsciously through his hair. ‘What are you doing in here? It looks fantastic!’


‘I’m glad you like it,’ she said, and her smile grew. ‘It was so un-festive in here — well, you saw it — and it just didn’t feel like Christmas without all the decorations, so....’ She shrugged. ‘I just wanted to do something, you know? Everyone else is too busy to fuss over Christmas, and I’m not doing anything.’ She paused, and then shook her head, her eyes slipping away from his to look down at her knees. ‘It probably sounds stupid.’


‘No,’ Harry said firmly. ‘It’s exactly what everyone needs right now.’ The eyes returned to his, as did the smile, and Harry stomach swooped. Then it was suddenly too much for him, and it was his turn to look away, his eyes sweeping across the decorations. ‘Where did you get this stuff, anyway?’ A horrible thought struck him. ‘You didn’t go outside, did you?’


‘No,’ she said quickly, and Harry was surprised to hear a hint of bitterness in her voice. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t break the rules. I just conjured it.’


‘You conjured this?!’


She nodded. ‘Well, the tinsel was in a box in the attic, and we had some ribbons that were falling to pieces, so I just … spruced them up a little. But we needed something green, and I knew I’d get about a thousand lectures if I went looking for the real stuff, so I conjured some. Hence the lack of a tree. I didn’t want to try making something that big and end up blowing up the house or something.’


‘No,’ Harry said. ‘No, that’s — good idea.’


‘I missed you,’ she said suddenly. Her eyes took on that sad quality again, and Harry felt the strongest urge to wrap his arms around her and whisper ‘I missed you too’ into her hair. He quashed the thought the moment it struck him. Once that started, he would be opening up everything that he had repressed over the past months, everything that he had pushed aside for the mission, and he could not, would not, put Ginny at risk. Not for anything.


As if she had sensed his inner quandary, Ginny smiled again, although it was sad and tentative. ‘Don’t worry, Harry,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to say anything. I wasn’t trying to tempt you away from your nobility with my wanton ways. I just wanted you to know that — that I missed you. Take it however you please.’


‘Thank you,’ he said, fully aware of the words’ inadequacy. He watched her as she nodded, realising, not for the first time, what an amazing girl Ginny Weasley really was.


‘That’s what Mum thought I was going to do, you know,’ she said, seemingly oblivious to Harry’s gaze. ‘She ranted for days after you left, about how you were too young, how you were going to get yourselves killed, how you should have allowed the Order to handle things instead, but the minute she found out you were coming back for Christmas, she starting lecturing me!’ She screwed up her face as she imitated her mother’s voice. ‘“Harry’s very busy trying to fight You-Know-Who, Ginny, so make sure you don’t go trying to distract him.” It’s like she thinks I’m going to try and seduce you or something.’ She shot Harry an impish glance as his face burned, his mind suddenly racing with how exactly such a situation would play out. ‘She seems to have forgotten that she’s supposed to be concerned about you seducing me.”


Harry leapt up from the sofa as if it had bit him. Ginny looked up at him, her expression the picture of innocence.


‘I should go,’ he said, his mind still too occupied to think of a better excuse for leaving.


Ginny’s hand shot out to grab his wrist before he could take a step. The contact scalded into him like a branding iron, but she didn’t let go. ‘Don’t,’ she said, and there was a tinge of regret in her voice. ‘I was just — I just want to talk to you. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.’ Harry’s eyes stared down at her hand, and then made the mistake of looking into her face. Her red hair was tumbling about her eyes, which were widening with dismay, and her lips were parted into the slightest of pouts.


Lion’s den, indeed, Harry thought.


Cursing himself for having such a pathetic resolve, he nevertheless sat down again. The smile that broke across her face made it more than worth it.


‘So talk to me,’ she said, curling her legs up underneath her as she wriggled into a more comfortable spot. ‘What’s been happening?’ Off his frown, she said, ‘Oh, I know you can’t tell me about your mission, but things must have happened to you that you can tell me. You can’t have been chasing You-Know-Who every second of the day.’


And so Harry told her. He talked about run-ins with one over-enthusiastic reporter in Hogsmeade, who had fallen into a barrel of dragon dung in his eagerness to ask Harry about his plans, and about his many attempts to explain Muggle concepts to Ron as they tried to remain under the magical radar. He talked about Ron and Hermione, and their struggles with the new, rather intimate living conditions, and how he had spent many a night watching Hermione sleep in the cramped tent with her back to Ron in a rather pointed manner as he shot her alternatively exasperated and bewildered looks. Ginny smiled knowingly as Harry described their continuous bickering, the pair becoming more and more snippy with each other until Harry was almost driven to distraction.


‘In the end, I shouted at them to sort it out and stormed off,’ Harry said. ‘Left them to it for a couple of hours, and came back to find them snogging all over the place. Not sure which was worse.’


Ginny laughed, her hair catching the firelight. ‘At least they finally got around to it,’ she said. ‘Those two have been dancing around each other for years.’


They lapsed into silence again, and Harry was struck by how normal this seemed. After months of travelling, months of hunting and hoping and waiting, the idea of sitting on a sofa somewhere and chatting idly with his girlfriend — ex-girlfriend, he reminded himself firmly — was like a foreign and highly exotic treat. He wondered why he had been so reluctant to meet her here. True, it was taking every ounce of his self control not to spin around and kiss her, but at least he could see her, and spend time focusing on something that wasn’t the war.


‘What about you?’ he said, determined to try and prolong the conversation. ‘What have you been doing while we’ve been gone?’


Ginny bit her lip. ‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said, in a voice that was a touch too casual to be believed. ‘I mean, there hasn’t really been anything happening around here. Not to me, anyway.’ Her eyes fell away from his, and she began picking at the sofa cushion. Her sadness seemed to radiate from her in waves, despite her efforts to hide it, and Harry realised with a start that she was the only one who had been purposefully left out of the current meeting. He suddenly had images of her life over the past few months, tucked away inside the Burrow, told to stay hidden and be a good girl. His stomach twisted with guilt.


‘I’m sorry,’ he said, before he had the chance to stop himself. ‘I’m sorry I left you.’


She let out a breath, a sigh that seemed to dance between sadness and resignation. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘We both know that you wouldn’t do it any other way.’


He wanted to deny it, to tell her that he didn’t want her left like this, but she was still staring at him with those deep, brown eyes, and he knew he couldn’t lie to her. ‘I’m still sorry,’ he said instead. ‘I just need you safe.’


Ginny laughed. ‘Safe?’ she said. ‘Nowhere’s safe, Harry.’


Once again, Harry couldn’t argue. Had she always been this good at cutting straight to the truth of the issue? He was certain she had — it was one of the things that he had loved about her in the first place — but it seemed slightly less endearing and far more dangerous when his own thoughts were at the brunt of it. He suddenly felt his frustration rising inside of him, as though her dismissal of his efforts had cracked a dam somewhere and he couldn’t quite work fast enough to repair it.


‘Do you think I can fight Voldemort if I have to worry about you?’ he said, his voice harsher than he had intended. ‘It’s bad enough having Ron and Hermione travelling with me, throwing themselves into harm’s way, but you ... I have you know you’re safe.’ The words poured out of him in a rush, and then he paused, his final thought coming out near a whisper. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt.’


Ginny glared at him. ‘What makes you think I feel any differently about you?’ she said. ‘You’re always so concerned with being noble all the time! Maybe it’s time you realised that people might want to take care of you once in a while.’


Her words were sharp, her eyes blazing, but all Harry could do was nod in response. Her bun had almost entirely collapsed now, her hair sweeping past her shoulders in messy waves, and Harry couldn’t help himself. He reached out and stroked her hair, his fingers becoming tangled in one of the curls. She let out a little gasp, almost inaudible, and her expression softened.


‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured again. ‘I didn’t want to leave you.’ Her eyes met his, and in them he found not only hope but the slightest hint of a dare. She licked her lips, and Harry knew that he was lost. ‘Sometimes — sometimes I wish....’ The words caught in his throat. He struggled to push them outwards, but then Ginny was moving slowly towards him, and all thoughts seem to vanish, bar one.


‘Ginny! It’s us. Open the door.’


Harry shot backwards. He felt suddenly guilty, like he’d caught opening his presents before Christmas Day.


Ginny eyed him sadly. ‘Mum,’ she said simply. ‘S’pose I’d better go check and let them in.’ She got to her feet as though her every muscle was screaming in disapproval. When she looked down at him, her expression was a mixture of sadness, guilt and, strangely, relief. Then she turned and headed towards the back door, fighting to impose some order on her rebellious hair as she went, and Harry watched her go, feeling like his stomach had vanished.


****



Harry spent the rest of the day trying to avoid Ginny. This proved to be a bit of a challenge, considering the fact that Mrs Weasley didn’t seem to want to let any of them out of her sight. She came up with countless reasons for them to remain downstairs, asking for help preparing the dinner and suggesting that they all play a nice game of Gobstones in the living room. Now it was evening, and Harry and Ron were playing a game of Wizard’s Chess, Celestina Warbeck warbling in the background as Mrs Weasley hummed along. Hermione was curled up in a nearby chair, Crookshanks snoozing on her lap, and the room was full of the wafting smell of gingerbread men. Ginny had gone into the kitchen with her mother an hour before to prepare them, the final flourish to her Christmas efforts, and Harry had to admit that he was grateful for the break. As strong as his resolve had seemed at a distance, it was quickly crumbling in her presence.


He continued the game without focus, his mind drifting to the many glorious scenarios that could occur if he gave in. He was just imagining a scene where Ginny was steadfastly insisting that she wouldn’t take no for an answer when Ron let out a triumphant laugh.


‘Checkmate,’ he said.


Harry glanced down at the board and was dismayed to see that Ron was right.


‘Lucky you’ve got me, I reckon,’ Ron said with a yawn. ‘You’ve never been much good at strategy.’


‘I let you win,’ Harry said.


Ron snorted. ‘Keep telling yourself that, mate.’ He moved to set up the board again. Then there was the sound of footsteps, and Ginny walked into the room, clutching a tray of mugs.


‘Hot chocolate,’ she said, handing them out with a grin. She went to Ron and Harry last, and as she passed him his mug, Harry noticed that her nose had turned white with flour.


‘You’ve got a little - ’ he said awkwardly, gesturing towards her nose.


Ron looked up too and grinned. ‘I thought the flour was supposed to go in the food, Ginny,’ he said. Ginny stuck out her tongue, before rubbing her nose like a sleepy kitten. She then looked down at Harry again. The flour was still there, spread across to her cheeks.


‘Did I get it?’ she asked.


‘Yeah,’ Harry said, his voice coming out in a rasp. He coughed. ‘Yeah, you did.’


Her back now turned to all her brothers, Ginny shot Harry a very pointed look, before sweeping her eyes away towards the stairs. Then she looked back at him again, her eyebrows slightly raised. Harry just stared at her in confusion, but before he could ask her what that was about, she had broken into a very convincing yawn. Stretching herself out so that her jumper rose to reveal the slightest expanse of pale skin, Ginny turned away.


‘I think I’m going to go to bed,’ she said.


‘So soon?’ Mrs Weasley asked, as she bustled into the room. ‘Celestina isn’t even finished yet.’


‘I know, Mum,’ she said. ‘But all that decorating really took it out of me, and I want to be up early tomorrow.’ Before Mrs Weasley could say anything more, her daughter had kissed her on the cheek, waved goodnight to the others and, with a final glance at Harry, disappeared up the stairs.


‘You’ve got flour on your nose, so make sure you wash your face!’ Mrs Weasley called after her. Harry heard her footsteps pause on the stairs, and then a sound that was somewhere between a ‘tuh’ and a giggle, before she continued onwards.


Harry waited nearly fifteen minutes, trying his best to end the game of chess as quickly as possible, and then went up to bed the moment Ron shouted ‘checkmate’. Luckily, no one else seemed to want to leave the comfort of the warm fire yet, so he climbed the staircase alone. When he reached the third floor landing, he saw that Ginny’s door was ajar. As he approached it, a hand shot out and hauled him inside.


Ginny’s room was small, but it appeared even smaller due to the sheer amount of clutter and mess that it held. Books tumbled off a wonky bookshelf, her bedside table was strewn with makeup bottles and Quidditch magazines, and the carpet seemed to be made entirely of abandoned clothes. Ginny stood in the middle of it all, wearing a tattered t-shirt that fell to her knees. She quietly shut the door behind Harry, skipped over Hermione’s campbed, and fell down onto her bed with such force that her pillow and several soft toys bounced into the air. She watched Harry with an amused expression as his eyes flittered about.


‘Never been inside a girl’s room before?’ she asked.


‘No,’ he said, suddenly feeling that sirens would go off any second to alert Mrs Weasley of his presence.


‘Good,’ Ginny said, with a decisive nod, as though anything else would have been a terrible affront to her. ‘I get to be the first then.’


There was a moment’s pause, and then she blushed scarlet. Harry tried to act like he hadn’t noticed, but it was a rather difficult task. After another moment of sitting on her bed, her cheeks red and her mouth agape, she sprang from it again as though it was untrustworthy and began searching through her chest of drawers.


‘What - ’ Harry was finding it hard to phrase his question without sounding rude. “What do you want?” sounded far too abrupt inside his head, but nothing more tactful was forthcoming. ‘Are you OK?’ he finally said.


‘Oh yes,’ Ginny said briskly. ‘I just wanted to give you something without all my family nosing in.’


Harry wondered when exactly he had started to take everything Ginny said as an innuendo. He could feel himself blushing, but Ginny didn’t seem to notice. She continued rifling through the drawers, and then let out a sound of triumph. When she turned back to face him, she was clutching a small parcel in her palm.


It was a Christmas present.


Harry stared at it. ‘I — I didn’t get you anything,’ he said.


‘Didn’t expect you to,’ she said. ‘It’s not like you haven’t been busy. Trust me, this is the result of many bored nights.’ She walked up to him until they were almost touching, and then reached down and raised his hand with her own. He opened his palm automatically, and she gently pressed the gift into it.


‘Merry Christmas, Harry,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. The present was light in his hands, but he barely glanced at it, his eyes fixed on her. After a moment, she said, almost sadly, ‘Open it.’


Still reluctant to take his eyes off her, he ripped open the gold paper and looked down at what lay inside. It was a band, woven from red and gold threads, with a smooth grey stone entwined at the centre. It was carefully made, although Harry could see one or two bumps of imprecision, as though the weaver was a little uncertain about the technique.


‘You made this?’ Harry asked, uncertain what else to say. Although he was more than pleasantly surprised that the girl he had pretty much abandoned for five months had got him a Christmas present, it seemed a peculiar thing to give.


Ginny nodded. ‘I know it seems a little weird, but — well, it isn’t just a band.’ Harry looked up at her to see that she was biting her lip, a clear sign of nerves. She was looking down at the gift, and, after a moment, she picked it up and began to tie the fraying ends about his wrist. Her eyes remained fixed on it, as though concentrating hard, and Harry noted, not unhappily, that her fumbling fingers were taking rather longer than necessary.


‘Ginny?’ he prodded, when he realised that a further explanation was not forthcoming.


She looked up at him with a start. ‘It’s charmed,’ she said. ‘It’s going to sound silly, but ... well, it’s a very selfish gift ...’ Harry didn’t think he’d heard her mince words like this since her crush on him, all those years ago. Her cheeks were flushing, and then she raised her wrist in explanation. Harry looked down to see a similar band, this one in many shades of green, fastened there. ‘I charmed the stone so that it would burn hot if I ever get into danger. That way ... as long as it’s cool ... you’ll know I’m safe.’


Harry’s jaw fell open. That was very advanced magic. ‘How did you - ’ he began.


‘Professor Moody helped,’ she said quickly. ‘And Lupin, when he could. But — well. Like I said before, I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands.’


He was still staring at her, feeling a mixture of gratitude and amazement for this beautiful girl before him. She, however, seemed to take his silence as criticism and rushed onwards with her explanation. ‘I mean, it’s really selfish,’ she said, ‘because mine acts the same way, let’s me know if you’re ok, so that — so that I’ll know when to worry, and when it’s pointless, because — because you’re not doing anything dangerous anyway. I was going to make some for Ron and Hermione too, but these two took so long....’ Her voice faded out, and she shot him another embarrassed glance. ‘Anyway,’ she said after a moment, her voice more composed, as though she was determined to finish her speech with a little more dignity, ‘Moody helped me to charm them so that they act like a tracer. If yours burns hot, you’ll be able to touch it, and - and know where I am.’


Harry gaped at her again, not only in shock at the use of her gift, but also at the nasty gnawing feeling her last statement set in his stomach. Before he managed to voice his concern, however, Ginny was rolling her eyes in a far more characteristic move than her nervous stammering. ‘It only works on mine, Harry,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to use it to come tearing after you when you go and face Voldemort. I just want to know that you get out of it OK.’


Perhaps heartened by reaching the end of her speech, Ginny, although still blushing, had now raised her chin and was staring at him defiantly, as though daring him to refuse the gift.


Harry glanced down at the stone on his wrist and then smiled. ‘You,’ he said softly, ‘are amazing.’


Ginny gave a little start. This was obviously not the response she had been expecting. Then her face broke into a smile. ‘You like it?’ she said.


‘Of course I ... Ginny, this is...’ It was now Harry’s turn to struggle for words. The stone was cool against the inside of his wrist, a weight reassuring him that for once everything was OK. ‘Thank you,’ he finally said. ‘I mean it.’


Ginny nodded. ‘I just couldn’t bear another five months of not knowing if you’re OK,’ she said softly, and Harry noticed that the sadness had returned. He raised his hand to cup her cheek, and she looked up at him through heavy eyelids. She had the distinct expression of someone who wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the words. Harry thought that perhaps he should wait, or encourage her, see what she had to say, but suddenly speaking seemed like such a waste of time after all the talking they had done. The monster in his chest was rearing its ugly head once again, reminding Harry of just how close the two of them were standing, of what had almost happened that morning. How easy it would be to just lean forwards that little bit...


Harry’s thumb was running up and down along the line of her chin, and she was still looking up at him in expectation. Deciding that Voldemort couldn’t possibly care about one little kiss on Christmas Eve, he moved forwards, pausing so that their lips were only a breath apart. He felt Ginny sigh, and was just about to finally, finally, kiss her, when he heard her speak.


‘Maybe you should go now, Harry,’ she said. Harry stopped, momentarily stunned, and she took the opportunity to take a couple of steps backwards. He blinked at her, wanting to ask why, but he couldn’t find his voice.


She was staring at him again, her eyes resolute. ‘You should go,’ she repeated. ‘My mum will probably be coming up soon, and if she finds you in here...’


It was certainly valid reasoning, but Harry could tell that she was making excuses. Her expression was set, though, and so all he could do was nod. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, you’re — you’re right.’ He turned and headed towards the door, but paused with his hand on the doorknob. ‘Well — g’night Ginny,’ he said.


‘G’night, Harry.’ He risked one more glance back at her and saw that she was still watching him, her eyes glinting, her jaw set. His stomach churning, he slipped through the door and was gone.


Harry lay awake long after Ron had come to bed that night, his stomach feeling like it had been replaced with lead. His eyes followed the movements of the Quidditch players on the wall, illuminated by the moonlight, but his mind was lost two floors below. Why had she sent him away like that? It seemed unlikely that the Ginny he knew would really, truly be so afraid of her mother’s wrath that she would refuse even one kiss. Was it possible that she had taken his break-up to heart, had accepted it and moved on? Perhaps she was even already in another relationship, with Dean again, or Michael, or Zacharias Smith.


Well, you wanted her to live, Harry thought, his chest clenching. You can’t complain if she does what you asked.


When these particular thoughts entered his head, the lead in his stomach seemed to dissolve into a pit of particularly poisonous snakes.


With such ideas chasing themselves around his head, quickly falling into images of her and Smith deeply involved in the sort of embrace he himself wished to be in, it was hardly surprising that he awoke on Christmas morning feeling like he hadn’t rested at all. However, when Ron awoke him with a loud cry of ‘presents!’, he felt that sleep was a lost cause and moved to the pile at the foot of his own bed.


As well as the usual mince pies and jumper from Mr and Mrs Weasley, Harry received a book of useful jinxes and charms from Hermione, a large box of chocolate frogs from Ron, a small pocket Foe-Glass from ‘The Order’, and a Daydream Charm from Fred and George with a note that read: “for the wizard who isn’t getting any — and you’d better not be getting any — when his best friends are.” This present seemed oddly suitable after the events of the previous night, and his stomach gave a lurch at the thought.


Ginny, on the other hand, seemed entirely unconcerned by what had happened and greeted Harry with her usual cheeriness. In fact, apart from the occasional glance at him out of the corner of her eye when she thought no one was looking, she maintained this oblivious attitude all through Christmas Day and far into Boxing Day. She even joined him in a large game of Exploding Snap, winning quite dramatically and causing Fred to singe his eyebrows in the process.


As Boxing Day drew to a close, Harry began to feel rather sick. He, Ron and Hermione had secretly agreed to set out again early the next morning, and the idea of leaving Ginny for months, possibly forever, without having spoken to her was almost too much to bear. On the other hand, he could hardly confront her, considering he’d been the one to end their relationship in the first place, and so he traipsed up to bed early with Ron, feeling that his stomach was lost somewhere around his knees.


Soon, Ron was snoring, but Harry found himself lying awake once again, full of jittery energy for the day ahead. Despite his rather unsettled feelings about Ginny, he had felt happier during these past few days in the Burrow than he had in months. It was this, more than anything else, that prompted his early departure. He couldn’t allow himself to get comfortable, couldn't let himself become reluctant to leave, not when Voldemort was killing more people with every day.


It was two in the morning when he finally gave up any pretence of sleep. Deciding that a warm drink might at least settle his nerves, he went down into the kitchen to find a small figure already there.


‘Ginny?’ he asked. The figure spun jumped in surprise to reveal the freckled form of Ginny Weasley clutching a mug of hot cocoa.


‘Harry?’ she said. ‘What are you doing?’


‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said with a shrug.


She gave him a shrewd look. ‘Why not?’ she demanded. When he didn’t reply, she frowned and set her mug down on the table. ‘You’re leaving again, aren’t you?’


Feeling that there was little point in denying it, Harry nodded. Ginny let out a mirthless little laugh. ‘When?’ she asked.


Harry glanced needlessly at his watch. ‘Two hours,’ he said.


Ginny opened her mouth to speak, her eyes narrowed, but then shut it again and looked up at the ceiling. ‘We can’t talk here,’ she said quietly. ‘Mum’s not been sleeping well, not since...’ She trailed off. ‘She’ll hear that we’re awake and come down to see what’s going, and I don’t want — I don’t want her interrupting us.’ Casting a furtive glance around the room, her eyes settled on the back door. She grabbed Harry’s hand and had pulled him through it into the garden before he could even consider protesting.


It was icy cold outside, the wind tearing through Harry’s thin pyjamas. It whipped Ginny’s hair into a frenzy as she dragged Harry down the path and into the broomshed where Harry had met Dumbledore, more than a year ago.


The door closed with a snap, and the pair of them were plunged into total darkness. Harry quickly illuminated his wand. Ginny was staring at him, her face pink and her hair vaguely resembling a bird’s nest.


‘Why - ’ he began, but she shushed him.


‘I said, I don’t want to be interrupted.’ Even with the howl of the wind to protect them, her voice came out near a whisper. Harry watched her, waiting for her to continue speaking. She was breathing slowly, her eyes frowning slightly.


‘Do you think I like being left behind?’ she let out finally. ‘Do you think it’s fun sitting and waiting and not knowing? Thinking that with every passing moment you could all be dead or dying — my brother, my best friend, you?’ She had begun pacing, but on the word “you” she turned to look at him, her hair flying around her. ‘I hate it, all right?’ she said. ‘I hate it. So I’ve been trying to stay close to you all over Christmas, talk to you, appreciate your company while I still can, but it’s like — there’s this distance, because I haven’t seen what you’ve seen, and because you don’t want me to see. And now I find that you’re going to sneak off in the middle of the night with even telling me! Leaving me to wait again!’


‘I can’t take you with me,’ he said, in what he felt was a brave move, considering that she now looked less like a lion and more like a enraged tiger. ‘It’s too dange - ’


‘Oh I know that,’ Ginny snapped. ‘Although why it’s OK for Ron and Hermione but not for me, I’ll never know.’


‘It’s different - ’ he cut in, but she batted his words away with the swat of a hand.


‘Fine, fine, it’s different,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to stay put like I'm supposed to. I just think you could take a minute to consider other people’s feelings once in a while. Tell us you’re leaving before you vanish. Remind us every once again that you’re not dead, or captured, or - ’ She winced, as though it was painful to think along those lines. ‘And wear that stone,’ she said firmly. She moved closer to him as she said it and pressed her fingers against his wrist.


‘I will,’ he said, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. She nodded, and he found himself continuing, ploughing into the words that needed to be said. ‘I meant what I said, you know, that — that first day. I am sorry.’


Ginny smiled sadly. ‘That’s half the problem, Harry. You’re always sorry.’ She brushed a spider out of her hair, and then turned to look at the door. ‘I suppose you want to go in ... get ready to leave ...’


He nodded, but as she made to move, he found words bursting unbidden from his mouth. ‘Why didn’t you want to kiss me on Christmas Eve?’


He regretted the words even before he had finished saying them. He felt his cheeks burning and watched as Ginny frowned. Now he would have to heard all about her love life, he thought, his stomach descending to his toes. But when she spoke, her words were unexpected.


‘Of course I wanted to kiss you,’ she said, in a confused tone. ‘It’s just that — well, I doubt it would have ended with just that one kiss.’ She looked at him, and he gave a little half shrug. She laughed bitterly. ‘Well, maybe you have more self control than me, Harry, but — no. I couldn’t let myself do that.’


‘Do what?’ Harry asked.


‘Kiss you, or — or whatever it was that was going to happen, like everything was normal, like Christmas was some magical time when all our problems didn’t exist. It was bad enough that I almost slipped up when the others were out of the house, but — no. I couldn’t let myself pretend that we were going to get back together, that the past months were just a glitch and we were going to team up to stop Voldemort, because I knew you would never, ever let that happen.’ She continued to speak with fiery determination, but tears were now swimming in her eyes. ‘Most of all,’ she said, and here her voice faltered slightly, ‘most of all, I couldn’t bear for us to have some dramatic, romantic goodbye. I didn’t want to kiss, or — or make love,’ she spat out the words like they were part of a joke someone had played on her once that she had never quite got over, ‘like we would never see each other again. Because we will, Harry.’ She swatted at her watery eyes impatiently while Harry watched her, his heart thudding wildly in his chest.


‘So it can wait,’ Ginny continued, her voice steady again. ‘All of it can wait until you come home, Voldemort gone. It can wait until you’re OK, and until the world is OK...’


‘We can’t know that things will ever be OK,’ Harry said quietly. ‘You know it’s unlikely I’ll - ’


‘You are going to get out of this!’ Ginny said fiercely, her eyes blazing. ‘You are going to be fine. And I’ll be waiting for you when you do come back. If you decide that you don’t want me any more - ’


‘I won’t,’ Harry said quickly.


‘If you decide that,’ she continued, ‘fine, but I’ll be waiting if you still want — I’ll be here. And I’ll be doing everything to help you that I can, so don’t imagine I’ll be sitting around doing nothing, either!’


She stared at him as though daring him to contradict her.


‘You really are amazing, Ginny,’ he said weakly.


She smiled. ‘Hey, now,’ she said. ‘Weren’t you listening? No goodbyes.’ She turned to glance at the door again. ‘You should be going now,’ she said softly. ‘I hear you’re going on a mission to defeat Voldemort, and the sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll get back.’


Suddenly, she was standing very close to him indeed. Smiling, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him sweetly on the lips.


‘See you soon, Harry,’ she said. And then she was gone, leaving Harry suddenly feeling like he could take on the world in her absence.
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