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Bonds of Blood and Magic | ||||||
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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: 407059; Chapter Total: 15271 Awards: View Trophy Room Author's Notes: Trying to move things along a bit. Harry and Ginny spend some more time together, all alone, but they have to come out of the cocoon sometime. |
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Once Snape apparated away, Ginny stood up and started clearing away the remains of breakfast, while Harry finished his tea. Ginny came back out on to the porch, to find Harry cupping his DA galleon in both hands, staring at it. “What are you doing?” she asked as she curled herself around him. “Talking to Hermione.” She straightened slightly. “Is she okay?” “Yeah, she’s safe, her parents too. She was worried about who had my galleon.” He turned to look at her. “Why did you have it, anyway?” he asked with a small smile. She colored up slightly. “Well, I missed you, and I wondered if you had your galleon with you. If you had, it meant that you could send us messages. I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe, just maybe, you left on purpose, so I went up to your room to see if it was in your trunk. I actually wondered if you might have taken your cloak and some other things, and left by yourself to do your mission for Dumbledore, but everything was still there in the trunk. I took your galleon and your cloak, so that if I needed to run away, or go help you, I wouldn’t have to find them. “I didn’t grab your cloak before I went to go get you the other night, though,” she sighed. “It’s probably still under my pillow.” “What was it doing under your pillow?” he asked curiously. “Um, I was sleeping with it,” she said in a small voice. His smile broadened, and he bent over and kissed her. “Missed me much, did you?” She nodded, and cuddled up closer to him on the porch swing. After a few minutes, the draw of the beautiful day before them got to be too much for Harry, and he decided to try out his crutches. Ginny had to laugh when Harry’s first attempt to stand with the crutches nearly sent him spinning off the porch. But before she could get over and help him get them straight, he had already forced himself upright and leaned on the crutches, holding his heavy right leg up in the air. She walked next to him as he hobbled his way off the porch and around the house. He wanted to see all of the outside of the house, and what was around it in every direction. He discovered that it was a beautiful countryside cottage made of cut stone, surrounded by overgrown, uncultivated fields and forest. By the time they got back to the porch, Harry was breathing quite heavily, and sweating a bit. Getting up the steps was another chore, but then he was only a few steps from the couch inside the front door. He started to fall asleep almost as soon as his head hit the throw pillow next to him. He was slumped over, not really laying down, but looked reasonably comfortable, so Ginny left him there for the moment and stepped back outside to finish clearing away the remains of their late breakfast. Ginny puttered around in the kitchen for a while, getting things cleaned up and set for meals later in the day. She heated up the oven, and then mixed up a birthday cake and set it to bake. There was a clock on the stove top with just one dial and numbers from zero to sixty on it, but she didn’t know exactly what it was or how to make it work, so she set her wand to give her an alarm when the cake would be done. She also got out a pain relieving potion because she thought that Harry might just be a bit sore from all the unaccustomed activity. She woke him from his nap on the couch and led him back to the bedroom, where they continued his nap in more comfortable surroundings. During the afternoon, Harry hobbled into the other bedroom. He looked at the clothes in the wardrobe, imagining who wore them, whether it was his parents or his grandparents. He’d always wondered the most about his Potter grandparents, because they were the most likely to have an effect on his life as a wizard, but now he found himself wondering about the Evans family, and wishing that there was someone to tell him stories about them as well, to introduce him to them vicariously. He’d never even seen a picture of them, in spite of Petunia’s preoccupation with showing photographs of her family throughout Privet Drive, and there didn’t seem to be any photos in the cottage, either. It was hardly surprising. The cottage seemed to be a summertime and weekend retreat, not the primary residence of the family. It was when he was going through some left-behind things in one of the nightstands in the bedroom they weren’t using that he discovered a Muggle snapshot. It was faded, black and white, and rather small, but it showed a young Petunia, and two older people he supposed to be his grandparents. Petunia looked to be about 15 years old or so, but Lily wasn’t anywhere in the picture. If it had been a wizard picture, Harry would have suspected that she’d walked out of the frame, but as that wasn’t possible, he guessed it had been taken while she was at school. Harry sat on the bed, looking at the scattered contents of the drawer he’d emptied. The photograph was in the center of the mess. There were a couple of corroded old batteries, which made Harry think of Arthur and laugh a bit, a bobbin of thread, a tired old pocket knife with a broken blade, and a worn deck of playing cards. Just the things that might be left behind in a house that wasn’t going to be used for a time. The owner of each item might not want to lose them permanently, but wouldn’t care much if it turned out to be several weeks or months before they saw them again. Harry sighed. The drawer junk on the bed before him might be all the evidence he ever had that his mother’s parents ever lived. It was a depressing thought to the young wizard, but he’d not grown up the way he did without dealing with a depressing thought or two. “Oh, there you are!” Ginny exclaimed as she came into the room. “What are you doing, Harry?” “Oh, just looking at some stuff. I think this is a picture of my grandparents, my Evans grandparents. That’s Aunt Petunia, anyway.” “Oh, that’s nice. Are there any others? What about your mum?” “Haven’t found any.” “Hmmm.” She looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, and then started clearing off all the things he’d taken from the drawer and putting them back inside it. “What are you doing?” “Well, dinner is going to be ready in about thirty minutes. I was going to wake you up and help you get ready, but since you’re already up, it just occurred to me that the only reason we’ve been using the other bedroom is that it was closer when I put you to bed the other night. I was just thinking that it might be nice to see if we like this one better, is all,” she said with a suggestively raised eyebrow. She didn’t like it when he was moody, and she was going to do something about it, now that she could. Harry swallowed thickly. This was certainly not what he’d been expecting from her, especially after their ‘nap’ earlier. Ginny leaned over him, pressing him down onto the comforter, and kissed his cheek, working her way over his eyes and then the other cheek. They both sighed. Marriage was such a wonderful thing. *** The next morning as Ginny woke up in their bed, she smiled as she rolled over, thinking to herself that both of the beds belonged to them, so who cared which one they used? She expected to see her husband next to her, but she was alone. She got up and wandered into the bathroom, where Harry was sitting on the side of the tub looking at his cast. “Oh, hey, good morning. Did I wake you?” he asked. “I think it was the water turning off.” “Oh. Do you think I can get this thing wet?” he asked, gesturing toward the cast. “Harry, I don’t even know what that is,” she giggled. “You don’t?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowed. “No! We heal broken bones, we don’t put shells around them.” “Oh. Well, it’s called a cast. Works better than a splint, usually, but the big drawback is you’re not supposed to get them wet. But if we’re going to Grimmauld Place tomorrow …” “But we’re only leaving tomorrow, we might not actually get there for a day or two. If you’re not supposed to have it be wet, then you probably just shouldn’t get it wet.” She picked up his wand, which was next to the tub, and flicked it at the cast while whispering, impervious over the cast. “Oh, brilliant, Gin. Um, hang on, did that get the inside, or just the cast?” She considered it for a moment, and then said, “Well, I’ll just hold it up out of the water for you, and the charm will protect it in case we splash water on it.” “Okay.” And with that, she stripped out of her nightclothes, put a towel over her shoulder, and sat down in the foot of the tub. Harry lifted his cast up over the edge, she took it and held it up while he climbed in, and then rested it on the towel over her shoulder. After the bath, Ginny brought Harry some of the remains of his birthday cake for breakfast. “Cake?” he asked. “Only birthday cake. You have to eat real food, otherwise.” She laughed, and smashed some cake into his mouth. “There. Now, we can say that we properly followed tradition.” “What tradition?” “Wedding cake tradition. Smashing cake into each others’ faces. Since this is our first cake since the wedding, we’ll call it our wedding cake.” “I thought it was my birthday cake.” “Well, it was, but that was yesterday. Today, it’s our wedding cake.” “Alright. Come over here,” he said. When she bent over to him, he smashed a bite of cake into her mouth, getting most of it on her nose and chin. “There, now it’s proper.” She spluttered and spat some of the cake onto him, trying to clear her nose. Both laughed. When Ginny got out some other trousers for Harry to wear, he panicked and called out, “Wait, Ginny! Don’t vanish the leg, please,” he said as she raised her wand to do just that. She looked at him questioningly. “These clothes, this house, they were my parents’. Or my grandparents. At least, they should be their clothes. I … just don’t cut up the clothes, okay?” Understanding she nodded as her eyes teared up slightly. Harry had gone from having nearly nothing that belonged to his parents, to having a treasure trove of their things. Certainly, while the house hadn’t been their primary residence and therefore couldn’t be expected to contain their most prized possessions, the things that they had left here would of course be valuable to Harry. She simply split the seam all the way up his leg, helped him into the trousers, and then restitched the thigh, rolling the rest up above his knee. As she finished, they were surprised by a knock at the door. They grabbed their wands, and Ginny carefully stepped over to peer through the gap in the curtains without being seen from the porch. She turned and mouthed to Harry, “Snape,” as she walked to the door. Harry, still shadowed in the hallway, aimed his wand at the door while she opened it. “Very foolish, Mrs. Potter, you should have questioned my identity before …” he began lecturing from the porch and then attempted to step inside, but was stopped by an invisible force at the door. He attempted to step back, but found himself transfixed, unable to move. “What in the …” “Security ward Dumbledore invented. He taught me last year. Pretty useful, even if he did stoop to calling it the ‘flypaper ward’,” said Harry, unseen in his shadowed hiding place. Snape rolled his eyes and snorted. “I presume that he also taught you how to release it?” “Of course. Now, what was that you were saying about checking your identity? Hmmm. Ginny, what would you ask the Professor if you were going to check his identity, to be certain that it is him, and not some other Death Eater who doesn’t like us?” Ginny smirked at him. They had already planned out what to ask Snape when he arrived. “Well, Professor, what was your mother’s maiden name?” Snape sighed. “Prince.” “And what does the scar on my right palm represent?” “The Prince family blood bonding ritual, a marriage bonding,” he replied resignedly. “And who was the kindly old wizard who married Harry and I?” Snape scowled. “I am neither kindly, nor old, Mrs. Potter,” he snarled. “Oh, but you’ve taken such good care of us, Professor,” she said brightly as Harry wordlessly released Snape from the trap at the door. Snape raised an eyebrow. “Very good, Potter, that’s quite an improvement. You can actually cast a spell without speaking. Now that your mind isn’t an open book to anyone who cares to read it, you might actually stand a chance in a real duel.” “Oh, thank you, Professor. That means so much, coming from you,” Harry said with a small, lopsided grin. “I do hope that we won’t be dueling each other any time soon.” “I think that you may count on that, Mr. Potter. However, things have progressed more quickly than I had hoped. You may begin your journey to Grimmauld Place this evening. This will require that you stay the night in Spain, but that should not be too great a burden. Here are your portkeys,” he said as he set down a black bag on the coffee table. “They are labeled with sequence and activation password. There are four. The first takes you from here to an area in Spain that is outside Voldemort’s influence, which should aid in keeping the other portkeys from being traced. There you will take a room at the hotel nearest your arrival point, and then in the morning, you will take the second portkey to Sweden, then the third to Dublin, and finally come to Grimmauld Place with the fourth. Please do not dally in the morning. There is much to do, and the sooner we get started, the sooner it will be completed.” “Professor, that seems rather convoluted, even overly complicated. I’ve been to Grimmauld Place several times. Why can’t I just apparate us there?” Silence. Then, slowly, “Mr. Potter, I was not aware that you were qualified to side-along another person. Indeed, I was not aware that you had passed your testing for apparation at all.” “Well, I haven’t taken the ministry exam, but I did pass the classes.” “All that is fine, but what makes you think you can safely side-along to Grimmauld Place? It is very dangerous for the inexperienced,” Snape said more briskly. “I have side-alonged before, Professor. I know exactly where Grimmauld Place is, even though I don’t know where we are, so I should be able to get us there just fine.” “Who was so foolish as to trust an untested student to take them side-along? Mr. Potter, if you have been practicing such dangerous things with your friends, you must tell me so that I can stop such activities at Hogwarts this year, before someone gets themselves splinched without anyone to put them back together again.” “It was the Headmaster, Professor,” Harry said quietly, but firmly. Snapes eyes widened slightly. “The Headmaster?” he asked faintly. “Yes, he took me side-along several times last year, so I knew exactly how it was done, and then after the classes were over, well, he wasn’t feeling well one time we were out, and he told me to get us back to Hogsmeade.” “I see,” said Snape. “That … will prove to be quite advantageous to us later, Mr. Potter, but I don’t think that you are in any shape to be attempting such a trip today. For now, it would be most prudent for you to use the portkeys, and perhaps after you are fully recovered at Grimmauld Place, it will be safe for you to bring your wife back here directly.” “Alright, Professor, that sounds like the best way to go,” said Ginny as she nudged Harry into the room proper. “How will we pay for the hotel, Professor? I didn’t bring any money, and neither did Ginny.” “There is more than sufficient in the bag to cover your expenses on this trip, Mr. Potter. Now, I must take my leave of you. I will see you at Grimmauld Place.” They left later in the afternoon, after Ginny pushed several potions into Harry, and then packed their other potions, some reading material, and a few other essentials for the trip. The portkey landed them in an alleyway behind a muggle hotel in Barcelona. Fortunately, the concierge spoke English and was quick to provide Harry a wheelchair. Harry explained to the concierge that their luggage was lost during their trip, and asked him if there was a clothing store nearby. He grabbed one of the bellboys who was loitering about in the lobby to push Harry’s chair, gallantly offered Ginny his arm, and escorted them to the hotel gift shop, which proved to have much more than cheap trinkets in it, and was, in fact, a well-appointed, though small, clothing store for travelers. They purchased some new underwear, and a couple of changes of clothing each that weren’t ancient and completely out of style, and still managed to have enough money left over for tips and the next days’ travel. After eating from room service, they watched a bit of TV, enough to realize that watching TV in Spanish was a waste of time for them both, and went directly to bed. *** After breakfasting in the hotel restaurant, they headed back out to the alleyway and disappeared on the next leg of their journey. There were, in fact, written instructions attached to each portkey, as promised by Snape. Each had an amount of time they were to wait between using the portkeys, to minimize the amount of magic used in those areas as they traveled. This meant that they had to eat lunch in Dublin before they portkeyed to Grimmauld Place and finally limped through the door in the mid-afternoon. |
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