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SIYE Time:16:09 on 28th March 2024
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The Ever-Fixed Mark
By goingbacktosquareone

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Category: Post-DH/AB
Characters:None
Genres: Angst, Drama, Romance
Warnings: Extreme Language
Story is Complete
Rating: R
Reviews: 17
Summary: Three different perspectives meld to ponder loyalty, trust, friendship and love. In the moments before and after death, what will you think of?
Hitcount: Story Total: 4310



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:
This story bit me in the jugular as a result of listening to John Lennon... I really need to listen to more John Lennon. My muse loves him. Enjoy!




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When the night has come
and the land is dark,
and the moon is the only light we’ll see.
No, I won’t be afraid;
oh, I won’t be afraid,
just as long as you stand by me.

Ben E. King


No one noticed the doors of the Great Hall when they opened slightly then closed again. The crowds of people there were too engulfed in the drama unfolding around them; the entrance of something as common as a house elf wouldn’t have been unusual. What was unusual; however, was the identity of the elf and his purpose for being there.

He made his way along the tables of witches and wizards, his pillowcase tunic clean and freshly-pressed, the hair of his bat-like ears neatly combed and the golden locket around his neck glowing brightly, as if he had just polished it. Which he had, painstakingly, in fact. The elf cherished the treasure he wore above all things in his possession; the events of this day had further served to make it ever more meaningful to him. He would wear it proudly as a testament to the bravery of both his beloved masters.

One, of which, he was very concerned. So much so he had taken the initiative, without his good master’s orders, to make amends for his abhorrent behavior in the past, hoping the family he was seeking out would forgive him for his master’s sake; because his master needed them, one much more so than the others.

The small elf stopped briefly to speak with a red-haired man and a woman nestled tightly under his arm, both of whom appeared to be exhausted and somewhat overcome, although a spark of hope glistened over the couple like the first rays of the sun warming a new morning. The man nodded sadly as he spoke and the woman reached out to lovingly pat the elf on the shoulder, causing the creature to drop to his knees in veneration. He had never felt so respected or loved, another reason he was positive his intentions were sincere. His master loved this family; now he would love them, too.

Once the woman coaxed the elf back to his feet, she sent him along his way to join the rest of the red-haired family, who were obviously grieving the loss of one of their own. The elf hung his head in silence, suddenly unsure if his selfish intent outweighed the importance of the moment. He was saddened for the family; they were very close. This death would be a great loss. The elf understood loss, his grief and anguish had cost his master unfathomable pain.

“Kreacher!” exclaimed Molly Weasley, startled by a rustling near her elbow. “Thank you for your help today… the elves…”

“Yes, Missus,” said Kreacher, “it was our duty. And mine to serve my master.”

“Harry?”

“Yes, Missus.”

“I’m sure he appreciates your contribution…”

The elf sunk to his knees and lowered his head to the floor, wailing as he pounded his skull against the cold stone. “Missus Weasley, Kreacher has been wrong! Kreacher must ask for the Weasleys’ forgiveness! My master Harry and his friends are the most noble of wizards and witches! I have been vexed for them since they left the Noble House of Black! You must let Kreacher atone for his misdeeds!”

“Kreacher! Get up this instant!” gasped Molly Weasley, stunned. “Please calm yourself and stop your punishments! What do you mean by ‘left’?”

“Master Harry and his honorable friends sought refuge within Grimmauld Place, Missus. Kreacher cared for them there. Yes, Kreacher took very good care of them while they planned the downfall of Voldemort! Kreacher fed them good, healthy meals! He straightened their rooms and kept their things tidy! He was a good house elf! He did just what he thought Missus Weasley would do for her own children! He knew she would be missing them!”

A gasp went around the table.

“How long were they there, Kreacher?” asked Mr Weasley thinly.

“They have not been to Grimmauld Place for many months, sir,” said Kreacher lowering his head again. “They left for the Ministry and never returned. Kreacher made Master Ron’s favorite meal for dinner and they did not come home to eat it. Kreacher was very worried, very worried indeed.”

“Why didn’t you find us and tell us where they were?” asked another voice accusingly, probably another Weasley brother.

“Master Harry ordered me not to. But Kreacher knew when Master Harry went searching for vile objects like the locket he should have interceded! He should have known after what happened to Master Regulus! Master Harry should have had the help of his family!”

“Oh, Kreacher… please don’t,” said Mrs Weasley quietly, rubbing her forehead. “What’s done is done now, the danger has passed. Let’s start afresh?”

“Truly?”

“Truly,” said the matron weakly with a very sad smile. “Speaking of my children, where is Harry, Kreacher?”

“He is upstairs, Missus. Kreacher brought him fresh robes and helped him to rest after his shower. I made him tea and a sandwich. He is sleeping.” Kreacher frowned and cast his eyes away. He did not deserve to stand in front of these people.

“What’s wrong, Kreacher?” asked Ginny Weasley hesitantly.

Kreacher looked up forced himself to meet her eyes, willing this girl–the one who he had once goaded and done everything possible to torment and make miserable–to understand his urgent plea. “It’s my master, miss. He is crying in his sleep. He is calling out for you, and Kreacher must always serve his master.”

Ginny Weasley bolted from the table where she was sitting with her family, out through the doors of the Great Hall and onto the second-floor staircase before Mrs Weasley was able to extricate herself from the crowd in the entrance.


* * * * *


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost


“Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips against his–”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter Thirty-Four, The Forest Again


Funny enough, I’ve had so many near-death experiences; I really didn’t expect this one to affect me like it is. I’m scared–yes. Who wouldn’t be, really? I’ve been–what was that Snape said–raised like a lamb for slaughter, so this part of my destiny really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Dumbledore always did communicate in riddles and I’ve never been very keen on solving them anyway. They’re usually nothing but bad news.

it’s nice my parents are here waiting for me


At least the old man had the decency to leave me the Stone… with a puzzle even I would be able to solve, so I wouldn’t have to face down Tom alone. I think he knew. He knew I wouldn’t take anyone with me, just as he didn’t want anyone along when he was on his own hunt for the Horcruxes. Too many people have died. I’m not going to sacrifice anyone else for my sake, no matter what Ron or Hermione say.

Sirius promised me it wouldn’t hurt


What I don’t understand about this moment is the way I feel. It hurts and nothing has happened. It feels like pain… it’s pulling at my lungs and it’s like I can’t breathe. I don’t reckon it’s physical, whatever it is… It started when I turned my back on Ginny.

I thought I would vomit. I still might. I wonder what Voldemort will think when he kills me and I puke? I’ve heard people lose function of their bowels. Serves him right. I hope I puke and shit on the bastard. He deserves it.


There’s something about this feeling that’s different than how I expected the end would be. I thought seeing Mum and Dad and Sirius and Remus would make it better, make it easier to let the bastard kill me. But now that I’m staring down the end of his wand, I don’t want to die. Isn’t there another way?

a flash of green


Suddenly a thousand different montages of a thousand different moments overcome me and time is stopped by what I’m seeing, these images, these pictures, these scenes… these moments of my life. They’re all Ginny.

I wish someone would miss me the way that little girl is going to be missing her brothers… she’s running after the train like she’s never going to see them again. That must be what it’s like to be loved…


She always knew. How could she? How did she know she would love me and not the story in the book? How could she be so sure she would meet me in person? Why was she the lucky one? What made it so simple for her? So easy…

Did we meet in another life? Have we always loved each other? I’ve heard sometimes that’s the way things work when people are meant to be together. I wish it had all been different. I wish this was a different life where I could meet her and be a regular bloke, not one with a death sentence hanging over my head. I would have been able to have what other people have… I could have dreamed, made plans… been happy.

Please, Ginny. Please don’t die. I killed a Basilisk… I killed that diary… Please don’t die. You can’t leave me…us… now. It’s too soon; you have things to do, stuff to learn. You’re going to be brilliant. Don’t let Tom take you from me like this; please don’t let me fail…


But WHY? Why now? I didn’t tell her I loved her. I did it for a reason. She’s supposed to have a better life. She wasn’t supposed to mourn me. I left her to save her. I’m standing here because she’s going to have a better life; things are going to change, be good again.

Why did Ginny get to know? Why not me? How fucking fair is it that I spent so long alone and unsure? Why did I have to wait all this fucking time only to learn that dying would be painful, not because of the curse, but because it would separate us forever? I don’t think I can watch over her and some other bloke, having a life, creating a family… Why didn’t I get the same chance?

The pain. It’s hope. I know what it is now. It was all the fucking hope I never allowed myself to have… happiness I didn’t have, the dreams I couldn’t allow. They happened anyhow. Somewhere inside me they were there all along. And now they’re killing me. It’s not that I’m about to be killed by allowing Voldemort to separate our souls with an Unforgivable. They’re seeping out of me, one by one; as they leave they’re pulling a piece of my heart along with them. I never knew they existed.

this moment is going to last forever, I’m going to have to see all this and then I will die… Sirius promised me it wouldn’t hurt. He was wrong.


Never, ever, can I remember feeling happy enough about something to feel hope. As soon as I knew what this scar really meant, I think I knew what would happen. I would die. I could not allow myself to become close… to love and be loved. I failed with Ron and Hermione. It was too hard not to love them, to trust them, to let them in.

I failed with Ginny.

I love her. I wanted to spend my life with her. I was supposed to find a way around all this! I thought I would wake up and find this was all just another one of my nightmares…

She was there in the beginning. It all seems so simple now, looking back at this life. She waved me off into this twisted life of magic and she’s now sending me out of it. It’s a sick circle, it is.

Merlin’s balls, she just took out the announcer’s booth! Look at her! I’ve never seen anything so satisfying… Twit.


I didn’t even bloody well tell her goodbye! I’m in love with her and I’m leaving her and I didn’t say anything. I walked past… We could have gone off somewhere. Left. The Department of Mysteries. Someone could’ve figured this out, surely. Prophecies don’t have to be true, Dumbledore told me that himself! I don’t want to be the hero anymore! Just give me my life back… please!

Wow that is hot… even though I want to pull Dean’s bits off. He’s not supposed to be touching her like that. But look at her face, it’s flushed from kissing him… she’s beautiful when she’s breathless. Would she be like that if it was me snogging her like that? Would she let me hold her and touch her the way he was?


What’s going to happen now? When I go on? Is it another life? Is it Hell? Is it nothing? Will it be the same as it is now? Will the pain be the same? Will being there hurt the same way it did here? Will my life be about grief and sadness like it has been here?

Will I be alone again? Will anyone love me?

Will I get to love anyone back?

Fuck you, Ron, you stupid blighter. This was the best moment of my entire life and you just ruined it. She kissed me and her eyes told me she loved me. And for a moment I didn’t think of the Horcruxes or the hunt or what we’re about to go do… I just kissed her and loved her and held her like I wanted to… and you just ruined it. Fuck you, Ron.


She looked happy to see me…

It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing good lasts. She’s gone.

please forgive me, Ginny


And I’m done.


* * * * * *



…Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116


Ginny didn’t think she could run fast enough. After sitting in the Great Hall for so long in one miserable position, she didn’t think her body had the energy it required to carry her to the top of Gryffindor Tower.

She would crawl if she had to.

If he was crying in his sleep for her, she would crawl wherever he needed her. After what she’d seen and heard tonight…

The past months had been hard. She’d been angry. Angrier than she’d ever been with him. Not for leaving her behind, but for not trusting her. He’d left with Ron and Hermione and more quickly than anyone imagined, the quest (that’s how she thought of it) seemed vastly more important than anyone had guessed. She’d heard whisperings late in the night with her Extendable Ears over Christmas hols. She’d heard her mother cry to her father and tell and retell and tell the story Remus had brought forth to the Order.

Funny, Remus hadn’t thought to mention he’d been at Grimmauld Place, she thought grimly. Now both he and Tonks were gone, who could be angry with a dead man?

She thought she’d made herself clear to Harry. She’d done everything within her power to tell him she loved him… she just didn’t say the words. It wasn’t the right time and she wasn’t sure he wanted to hear them. So she told him with her eyes. She told him with her arms and her mouth… she willed him to feel it as she pressed herself against him, knowing that kiss may be the last one she ever gave him.

After the wedding everyone had been so sure they’d send word. Dad had sent the Patronus to let them know the family was safe, but Ginny expected someone–Ron at least–to want to know what had happened after the Death Eaters attacked. Shock had turned to denial then given way to anger when they’d heard nothing. Weeks and weeks went by and still no one had any idea why the three had gone.

Ginny remembered the hopelessness of returning to school, knowing how she would be singled out, even though Harry had been so sure he was saving her from it. She was a Weasley, a blood-traitor, a member of Dumbledore’s Army. Whether or not she was Harry’s girlfriend made no difference to the scum running the school. She had a target on her back from the time she stepped onto the train.

Her letters home had been fake, forced. They betrayed nothing. They spoke of classes and revising, of missing her family. The ones her mum sent back shared even less: they told of cooking and garden gnomes, knitting and cleaning: they never held news of her family; there was never a hint about Harry.

She suffered cruelly the day they broke into the Ministry. As she sat numb and swollen, bleeding and magically bound to the chair, she finally started to comprehend why Harry refused to include her in his plans. If she had known, she would have given him away, compromised whatever he’d been working toward… they would have beaten or tortured it out of her. Only the truth charm had saved her–that and the reluctance of Snape to allow the Carrows to kill her needlessly. She was, after all, a Weasley. She would be missed.

She became deathly afraid for Harry then, even more so than the thought of him being the only one who could finish Tom. What was he doing of such monumental importance he would keep it from her, that the Death Eaters would be willing to torture a student–maybe even to death–to know? What knowledge had Dumbledore trusted him with in all those late-night meetings? Where had they gone the night Dumbledore died? And why had Harry been so despondent over the locket he thought he’d kept hidden from her?

It all made sense now… in a way. She turned into the seventh floor corridor, bent over and panting from sprinting the entire way up the staircase, willing her lungs to function normally. Just down the hall Ginny saw the scorched tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and wondered what had happened here, what part of the tragedy of this battle would the history books say occurred next to the place she once considered home?

When she stood before the portrait, Violet gave her a sad, watery smile and opened without comment, acknowledging Ginny’s right to be there. Breathing a sigh of relief there would be no altercation with the fat lady over her need to enter the Tower; Ginny climbed through the hole and back into a room that seemed as if the battle had never happened.

Fred could be laughing over by the window and not be lying dead in the Great Hall. This might all be a very bad dream.

Ginny took the spiral staircase to the boys’ dormitories slowly; terrified Kreacher’s plea had been another of his cruel jokes. The elf had always known. Even when Ginny was so adamant to everyone else she was done with Harry, the elf had known and used it against her. He had laughed in her face, shamed her, used Tom as a weapon: she would never be good, clean or untouched. She was not worthy of Harry Potter.

Kreacher was wrong, though. It was Tom that drew them together, Tom who compelled her to speak when Harry was convinced he was possessed. Tom had provided the courage she needed to stand up to Harry, to show him how wrong he was. She had been so angry, so furious that Harry could think he could ever be part of Tom’s evil…

In the end Harry was part of that evil–more than anyone could have ever comprehended. Who would have ever imagined Tom could be so vile, so wicked, that he would split his soul… seven times?

Harry had disappeared. Hermione had been hysterical. She was sure he’d gone to sacrifice himself to Voldemort; Ron had disagreed. He’d insisted Harry must’ve been caught up in something else… Ron argued Harry would have told them what he was doing. Harry would have taken them with him to meet Voldemort.

Ginny knew better. She knew he would go alone. He would want Ron and Hermione to be safe. She had even thought she’d sensed him out on the lawn–a fleeting moment when she was sure he was near–but she’d dismissed it as the same wishful thinking she’d been experiencing for months. Willing him near would not make him appear.

And yet… he must have passed her as she knelt with the dying girl. It was the only way the timing worked out. As much as Ginny felt miserable and angry at him for not stopping, she ached for him having to walk by her alone…she’d seen his face earlier. Everything in him had pleaded with her to please stay safe. With his eyes he’d confirmed what she’d wondered for so long: yes, he loved her. And yet, he’d walked by her knowing he was probably about to die, and he’d been unable to tell her goodbye.

She didn’t believe it was because he didn’t want to; she knew it was because he couldn’t. He wouldn’t have been able to follow through with his task if he’d stopped, it was all just a part of that stupid, noble streak he’d had for years.

Ginny pushed through the door to the seventh year dorm, knowing where he’d be. She gasped when she saw him, curled under the counterpane, tears dripping from under his closed lashes.

She was struck by his vulnerability… and his beauty. She was shaken by how he could be so brave and strong and yet still be so helpless and needy. Her heart constricted with the pain of what she’d nearly lost and she swayed on her feet, unable to move or speak she was so overcome.

Kreacher helped her to a chair he’d placed next to Harry’s bedside. The elf brought her a blanket and a cup of tea. When he was sure Ginny was comfortable beside Harry, he left them there alone: one admitting what should have been said all along, the other feasting in the sight of seeing him alive and safe.

He told her he loved her… he told her he missed her, needed her. He said he couldn’t bear being without her. He told her he’d kissed her lips as he’d died, seen her face in a thousand different scenes of their lives… admitted the thought of dying only hurt because it meant he’d be leaving her behind.

She cried as he slept and purged his soul. She brushed the fringe back from his scar, wiped his eyes, kissed his cheeks. She let go of the anger she felt from seeing him lying dead in Hagrid’s arms, knowing he did what was necessary for them both. She drank in the sight of his body, breathing softly as he settled in her presence; she thanked whatever god she could for bringing him back to her.

Finally, when Ginny could bear it no longer, she crawled into the bed beside him and threaded his arms around her, laid her head on his chest and allowed herself to cry for what they’d lost–and what might lie ahead.

Ginny remained there for an interminable amount of time, she would not leave him. Her mother came and went, nodding her understanding with kind eyes. Kreacher appeared occasionally to check on them, offering his services, unwilling to meet her gaze.

Ginny was grateful to the elf. Summoning her must have taken a great deal of courage on his part.
When she felt Harry finally begin to stir and wake, she allowed him some space only to find him pulling her closer. She pushed back tears of relief, willing herself not to become too emotional, to be strong for them both.

It was all too much, though, when he opened his eyes and used one finger to lightly trace the features of her face: her eyebrows, the shape of her nose, the swell of her lips. When he kissed her he kept his eyes open, like he couldn’t bear the thought of closing them again for fear of missing her, and she fell headlong into the depths of the emotion they conveyed.

Her body responded fiercely as she returned his kisses. They had survived death. They could survive anything… as long as they loved each other.

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