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SIYE Time:1:31 on 29th March 2024
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Bonds of Blood and Magic
By Duelist

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Category: Post-HBP
Characters:Harry/Ginny, Severus Snape
Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Fluff, Romance
Warnings: Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Violence/Physical Abuse
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 932
Summary: A few days before Bill and Fleur's wedding, Harry vanished. Two weeks later, Ginny disappeared, also alone and without a trace.

Someone has stepped out of the shadows for a moment, moved some pieces on the board, and changed the rules of the game.
Hitcount: Story Total: 406645; Chapter Total: 18892
Awards: View Trophy Room




Author's Notes:
Will Harry actually let Ginny give him a bath? Is she ever going to tell him that they're married? What will Fred and George think?

Some of these questions are answered in Chapter 4.




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“Come on, Harry, let’s get you up and into that tub, and then we can talk about this,” Ginny said as she shyly turned completely around and stepped back in front of him.

Blood rushed from his face as he went completely pale. She was more lovely than he had ever imagined. His eyes widened, then he slammed them shut tightly and he flopped forward to cover his face with his hands.

“Well, you don’t have to have a look if you don’t want to,” she huffed. “I didn’t think I was that ugly. Didn’t think getting naked with me would be this traumatizing for a bloke, honestly.”

“Gin, just, uggh…”

“What was that? I didn’t understand.”

“You’re killing me here, you know that?”

She giggled for a moment. “No, I’m giving you a bath. Come on, let’s get you in there,” she said, tugging at his arm. He resisted for a moment, until she said, exasperated, “Keep your bloody eyes closed if you want, Harry, you still have to get in the bath.”

He sighed, clamped his eyes shut even more tightly, and let her pull his right arm over her shoulders as she helped him to his feet and put her left arm around his waist. He gasped as he felt … something, something soft and warm, almost hot, press against the side of his chest as she pulled him close.

He did not want to guess what that was, but he thought he knew.

Ginny giggled, and held him tightly. “Right, it’s only a few steps, but the tile isn’t smooth here, so let’s be careful, yeah?”

Harry nodded, not trusting his voice.

When they reached the side of the tub, she said, “Alright, you’re going to have to at least look at the tub, Harry. It’s right in front of us. Ready?” He nodded, keeping his face away from her. “Right leg first, then,” she ordered, and helped him balance as he swung first one leg and then the other over the side and into the water. Then she stepped in behind him and guided him down until he was sitting on the towel, and sat behind him, with her legs on either side of his torso. He gasped in pain as he sat, from the hot water getting on all of his wounds. He leaned slightly forward and held the sides of the tub with his hands, while she gripped his shoulders.

It was the first really good look she’d had of his back, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. There were burns, cuts, bruises, and lash marks all over it.

“Can you hold onto the sides like that for a minute? I’m going to pour some water over your back, alright?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, just for a bit, though.” He looked and sounded exhausted.

She scooped the steaming water over his back with her hands several times, until she had rinsed the loose grime and much of the blood from him. He gasped the first time, but was silent after. She grabbed the bar of soap from the side of the tub and wet it in the water before lathering it in her hands and setting it back on the holder, then gently rubbed her soapy wet hands over his back, working more softly over the recent sores. She scooped more water over his back to rinse off the soap. It didn’t look as bad clean, but his back was a complete mess.

“Time to lean back, Harry,” she said as she pulled on his shoulders. He didn’t move. “Come on, you have to lie back so we can wash the rest of you,” she said.

“No.” His arms and upper body were shaking now, and his head was sagging, but he stubbornly resisted her hands.

She stopped pulling. “Why not?”

“I’ll touch … you, your body.”

“Yes, you will.” ‘Merlin, I hope so,’ she thought to herself. “I wouldn’t be naked in the bath with you if that was a problem for me. Now lie back, you won’t hurt me, and we can have a talk.”

Hesitantly, he released his hold on the sides of the tub and leaned his weight back against her hands. She guided him back until his head was against her right shoulder. She gently kissed his forehead as she settled him against her.

“There, now that’s not so bad, is it?”

His breathing and heart rate sped up as soon as he was partially lying against her front, and hadn’t slowed back down yet.

“No, it’s bloody wonderfully brilliant, but, Ginny!” he said, almost in a panic.

“Harry, give me your right hand.” His brow furrowed in confusion. “I’m not going to bite you, just hold it out.” Reluctantly, he extended it. She seized it and turned it over, palm up.

“Look there, Harry, what do you see?”

“A new scar. I’ve probably got a hundred new ones.”

A small gasp was all she could respond to that for a moment. When she composed herself again, she said, “Most of them aren’t really healed up yet, though, right?”

“Yeah …” he said slowly.

“But that one is healed completely, and I bet you don’t remember getting it. Plus, it’s a clean, even cut, not … not like these others.” She shuddered. She couldn’t help it. The thought of what he’d been through just made her sick.

“Okay, so I’ve got a nifty new scar that I can’t really hide unless I never open my hand again. So what?” He was getting a little testy, so his tone was sharper than he really meant. “I’m a lot more worried about what your mum is going to say when she finds out we were naked in the tub together than cataloging my new scars, Ginny.”

Hesitantly, she showed him her right palm. The scars were identical, for age, size, clarity, everything. He turned his face toward hers. “What IS that?” he demanded.

“Snape. His idea, his version, um… Harry, promise you won’t yell at me?”

“I’ll never yell at you, especially not for something Snape did to us. Okay?”

“Right.” She took a deep breath, and soldiered on with it. “Snape cut us. He did some blood rituals on us last night, then healed the cuts. It combined our magic, shields us, and makes us immune to all known methods of magical tracking or detection.”

“So, the underage magic trackers, and the traces on our wands?”

“Exactly. They’re gone. They can’t detect us anymore. Nobody can scry us, or anything.”

“Wow.” He leaned against her more fully, stunned. “What’d he do that for?”

“To protect us, mostly you, from Vol …” She tried, but she couldn’t say it. “From Tom.”

“Wow.” He turned toward her face again and stared at her for several minutes. She started to squirm under his gaze. “Okay, so …”

“So?”

“So, I’m waiting to hear the ‘but’, the exception, the other shoe.”

“We’re married,” she blurted out, then covered her mouth with her hand.

Again, he silently stared at her, but this time his mouth hung open. “What did you just say?” he whispered. She couldn’t have said, there’s no way that he was going to let her be, his wife ? Not with the things he had to do, not with his life expectancy being so short.

She started to cry. She was wrong. He didn’t still fancy her, he didn’t want to be married to her, and now they were tied forever and he’d always resent her and hate her, and they couldn’t even be apart to give each other space.

He touched her face with his hand. “All right, let’s try that again,” he said after a few minutes. Her sniffles against his shoulder had slowed considerably, so he thought that he might be able to get her to clarify what she’d just said.

She rubbed her nose with her hand, and said through a sniffle, “It’s part of the blood ritual. To get the protection and the magical sharing, it’s the only way …” she looked at her scar, and showed it to him. “It’s Snape’s version of a wedding ring, Harry, what he got from the Prince family’s traditions. We’re married.”

“But, why would he do that?” he said.

“You don’t want to be married to me, do you.” Her throat was choked off at the end. It was a statement, not a question. She knew. He didn’t want her.

“No,” he whispered.

Tears flowed silently down her face.

Finally, she started to whisper. “You don’t want me. You meant it when you said we can’t be together. You lied. You don’t love me.” It was a bit difficult to understand all of her words, but that was what he heard through her tears, gasps, and tight-sounding throat.

“Gin, wait. I did mean it, you’re right, but I didn’t break up with you because I don’t love you. I do love you, I do want you. That’s why I broke up with you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense , Harry!” Her frustration was clear.

“It does, though, Gin,” he whispered. “If Voldemort ever got hold of you, I’d lose. Everyone would lose. The fight would be over. He’d win, because I’d do anything he asked to save you. I’d do anything, anything at all, to get you back, to keep you safe.” He choked on his words for a moment. “I’d even let him kill me. I can’t, I just can’t be with you. Merlin, Ginny, it’s the only thing in my life I really want, and I can’t have it. We can’t have it, we can’t be together, Ginny. I’m sorry. We just can’t, it’s not safe. You won’t be safe. We can’t be married.”

She pulled back a bit, so she could look him in the face. “You want me? You really want to be with me?” She didn’t look like she believed it, just that she wanted to.

“Yes, Merlin, yes! I love you, Ginny, with all my heart.”

“Good, then.” She curled her arms around him, pulled him tightly against her, and laid the side of her head against his.

“Ginny! We can’t!” His traitorous body reacted to her touch, belying his protests.

“It’s too late for reservations and hang-ups, Harry. We’re married. It’s done.”

“Well, we’ll just have to undo it, whatever he did,” he said, trying to convince himself to pull away from her. It felt so good to be held like that, though, to be held in her arms in the most intimate embrace he could remember experiencing in his life, he didn’t even try to move.

“Can’t. It’s permanent. You’re all mine, forever. No one else gets to have you, and I’m yours, too. We’re an ‘us’ now.” She smiled. “I’ve wanted to marry you since I was four, Harry. You are my dream come true.” She kissed his neck.

Harry slowly stiffened. “What do you mean, it’s permanent? Marriages end all the time. Divorce, annullment, even death.”

Her brow furrowed, she looked at his confused face for a moment, and then understanding dawned. “ Muggle marriages end all the time, Harry, but we aren’t muggles. Wizarding marriages, you hardly ever hear of one breaking up. It’s part of the contract on most of them, that neither party will seek to end it. Some of them, the families can end it if there is a violation of the contract, but even that is really, really rare. I don’t even know anyone who’s ever done that.

“Some things, once they’re done, can’t be undone. Even death can’t end this. You’re mine, I’m yours.”

“Okay, so marriage between witches and wizards is permanent. So what happens if people make a mistake? What do they do if they can’t stand their husband or wife? What if they get abused, or commit serious crimes and go to prison?”

“I guess they try to make the best of it, or live apart if they can. I don’t really know, I’ve never known about marriage problems. You mostly just don’t hear about them, I guess.

“What you and I have, though, is even more different from Muggle marriages, different from most wizarding marriages, even. I’ve never heard of a marriage performed exactly like this before, but there are lots of ways to contract a magically binding marriage. From what Snape told me while you were dazed, if one of us violates the rules of the bonding, we both die. That includes trying to have the marriage annulled or getting a divorce, so you can just forget that.”

“We … die?”

“Well, I don’t know, but that’s what he said. There are only a few things that will kill us, but if you do any of them, you won’t have to worry about the magic killing you. I’ll take care of that.

“The biggest drawback I see to this is that some of the rules might be hard to remember to follow until we get used to this. Some will be pretty easy. We have to be totally faithful — that’s one of the things that could kill us — but on the other hand, we can hardly be apart without having problems. You can’t leave me behind anymore. You have to take me wherever you go, from now on.”

“You’re not coming.” He had to hunt down Tom Riddle, there was no way she was coming with him.

“Yes, I am. I have to. Harry, Tom sent Snape to kidnap me, so you would do exactly what you said before — tell him the prophecy, and anything else that Dumbledore told you. That was Snape’s whole point to doing this, to protect us from Tom, and keep what you know from him. He thinks that Tom might not even be able to use his connection to you anymore.

“If I’m not with you, we’re BOTH vulnerable. You know he’ll find me, somehow, now that he wants to. You’re not protected from people finding you when I’m not with you, and neither am I. Besides which, we have to be in close physical proximity most of the time, or the bond will make us get to each other, and that would be bad if people were tracking one of us to get to the other. We just have to stick together from now on. If we want to be able to actually do anything besides try to figure out how to be together, we have to just accept it and be together.”

Harry couldn’t say anything in response. He knew what he’d thought they had to do, but now it was impossible to be apart from her. Part of him was secretly glad, but mostly he was scared. He didn’t know how to be a husband, and he knew it, and he didn’t want to hurt Ginny in any way.

“So, you’re my little ginger-haired shadow?”

“Right now? No, I’m your pillow.” She giggled.

He snorted. “Right. So, is there anything else to these rules?”

She colored up a bit.

He sighed. “What else, then? We have to take Snape around with us?”

“No, I don’t think so. But, well, we’re married, Harry.”

“Yeah, you mentioned a very romantic scarification ceremony I can’t remember, got that.”

“Well, um,” she reached over to the soap bar and lathered her hands up again, then gently slipped her arms past his neck, and slid her hands down his shoulders to stroke the skin of his chest with her fingertips. “We have to, um,” her fingertips started trailing lower, onto his stomach. She kissed the side of his head lightly several times, then his cheek, and then took his ear between her lips and started nibbling on it. She giggled, and brought her soapy wet hands to his face. “Not very yummy, Harry,” she said and washed his face and ears. Once she had his face well rinsed, she went back to the ear and said, “Now, where was I?”

His breath hitched, as she took his ear in her mouth and licked it from inside to out, then took his earlobe in her teeth, and then trailed kisses across his cheek as she took hold of his jaw with her hand and turned his face to hers. She kissed him firmly, slipping her tongue across his teeth.

“So, we have to, um?” he asked in a gasp as she released his face and lowered her hands to his stomach again, scrubbing him in earnest.

“Um, yeah,” she breathed into his ear. “Today. It has to be today.”

“Now?” he gasped.

“No. You haven’t finished your bath yet, silly,” she said as she suddenly pulled back from kissing and teasing him, and started scrubbing one of his arms.

Once his bath was finished, she washed herself just a bit, let the water drain, and then dried them both off. They carefully made their way to the bedroom, where she scourgified the sheets before they climbed back into bed. She put potions and lotions on his injuries, while he fell asleep. She curled up against him and fell asleep soon afterwards.
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