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The World Turned Right Side Up | ||||||
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Category: Post-DH/AB Characters:All Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, General, Romance, Tragedy Warnings: Sexual Situations, Violence Rating: PG-13 Reviews: 259 Summary: With Voldemort gone and a world no longer in fear Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione begin to move on with their lives, only to find that happily ever after is just beyond the horizon. Hitcount: Story Total: 165530; Chapter Total: 9346 Author's Notes: This was probably the easiest chapter to initally write, but then the one that has undergone the most revisions. Ultimately, I think some of the conversations and insights Harry gains in this chapter will be the most important in helping develop the plot as we advance into later chapters. By the way, I appreciate the feedback. As stated before, new to this, so all the feedback you can provide, either good or bad, will be greatfully appreciated. |
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Arthur Weasley had not said a word since he ran into the room. He stood near the window and stared out at the setting sun. He glanced over toward Mrs. Weasley as she closed the door to the room. She sat down on Harry’s bed beside his legs, laying her hand gently on his knee. Arthur walked over and stood behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. Harry saw them both looking down at him. The red rays of sunlight that signaled sunset streaking into the room made their hair almost glow red. Harry could only bring himself to look into their eyes glancingly. He still felt as though all of their pain; all of their suffering was his fault. Fred was dead. His smiling, joking face was now frozen forever and Harry knew that he would never be there again to make a Puking Pustule or any other magical joke. Fred had died fighting, whereas he had lived joking and resisting through humor. Harry thought Fred would have never been there that night had Harry not decided to come after the Horcrux. Now, Fred’s mother and father were standing before Harry. He had brought so much pain and suffering on this family. He had taken Ron away for a year, with them never knowing what he was doing or if he was alive or dead. He lay in the bed, looking down at Mrs. Weasley’s hand on his knee. He was waiting for her to start. He wanted her to yell and scream. He wanted her to rage at him for the pain he had caused her and her family — for the death of her Fred, for taking Ron away from her, for breaking Ginny’s heart at Dumbledore’s funeral — but she stayed silent. Finally the silence overwhelmed Harry. He shifted in the bed uncomfortably, the weight of the moment bearing down on him. He felt as though he couldn’t breathe, once more the weight of the world bore down upon him and he wanted to be sick. He could stand it no longer. He looked in both their eyes. He forced himself to keep his eyes fixed upon them, and once more the tears began to fall. Mrs. Weasley took his hand in hers and began to lean closer. She was crying once more as well. “I’m sorry… it… it should have been me!” Harry whispered through his tears. “I-I… F-F-Fred… I should be the one laying there,” he said more forcefully as his sorrow began to overwhelm him. Harry now realized that he was once again “The Boy Who Lived” and it sickened him. He was prepared to die to kill Voldemort. Had all of his pain and all of his suffering not been so that he would be resolute in his determination to kill the abomination that was Voldemort? Finally, Mrs. Weasley controlled her tears as she began to speak. “Harry…” she whispered, leaning so close to him that Harry didn’t even know if Arthur Weasley could hear her. “Harry, YOU DID NOT KILL FRED.” The strength and resolve in her voice surprised Harry. “Voldemort killed Fred. He and his followers killed him. And if you didn’t stop him, Harry, then we all would have died.” She turned and looked at Arthur. His eyes told Harry that he felt the same way. He nodded in affirmation toward Harry as he began to speak and then stopped. He pursed his lips and let out a great sigh. “Harry, you are like a son to us,” he said as though it took every ounce of strength he had to keep from crying. “We love you like a son, Harry,” added Mrs. Weasley, squeezing his hand tightly. Harry looked at both the Weasleys. His tears continued but he was a little more composed. He knew they loved him. The Weasley family was some of the few people that loved Harry because of who he was, and among the very few that didn’t look at his scar before they looked him in the eyes. Harry loved Mrs. Weasley like the mother he had never known. He thought back to when he was very young and he lived with the Dursleys at Privet Drive. He could remember laying awake at night under the stairs sometimes and thinking about his Aunt Petunia. She was his mother’s sister, she had taken him in, but she didn’t love him. Instead she and her husband treated him like an old stray that was to be hidden and loathed simply for existing. He remembered sometimes asking himself why they didn’t love him and what it would be like to have a family who did. Looking into Mrs. Weasley’s eyes, realizing she didn’t hold him responsible for Fred’s death, realizing that she and Arthur loved him like the parents he had so long ago lost, Harry felt himself relax a bit. His tears were now mixed, both with sorrow, but also with tears of joy. He had found a family that cared for him. He had found those who loved him for him, not his scar and not the fact that he had made Voldemort disappear all those years ago. Harry saw Mrs. Weasley steel herself again to ask the next question. She took a deep breath, paused for a moment and then asked it as though it was taking every ounce of strength to ask a question she did not want to know the answer to. “Your dreams Harry, this afternoon, when you were calling out for Ginny…” she started faltering. Harry saw in her eyes a sorrow and a fear. She had lost one child and could not stand to lose another. Finally she composed herself enough and finished, “What were you seeing? Was it something that’s yet to happen?” Harry saw her flinch as she finished her question. He knew she did not want to hear the answer if it was bad, but that she had to hear it. “No…” spoke Harry softly, pausing to let her relief set it. “I was seeing Ginny and Bellatrix battle, where the killing curse just narrowly missed her…” now it was Harry faltering. Again he felt the fear arise inside him. “I… I-I was hidden under my cloak,” he continued, having to pause to take deep breaths, thinking of the Ginny he had seen just a few moments ago and gaining strength from knowing that she had wanted to be here during this conversation. “I was hidden and she almost died!” Harry spoke the words very fast, hoping they would not cut into his heart as his nightmares had been doing. “She would have died and never known I was there!” He was again sobbing. Harry thought back to when he had left to meet Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. He had walked past Ginny, hidden by his invisible cloak, yearning to call out to her, but not, knowing that it would weaken his resolve and make him unwilling and unable to sacrifice himself to Voldemort. Through his tears he recounted those events to Mrs. Weasley, how he had seen her turn like she thought someone was there, but that he did not say a word to her, even though every ounce of being in his soul told him to. Mrs. Weasley gave a small sigh and looked at Harry. He could see in her eyes an understanding and a sympathy. “You cared enough to want to end it, to stop Voldemort and keep anyone else from dying,” replied Mrs. Weasley. “I knew that Ginny was battling Bellatrix, and I was going to make damn sure Bellatrix didn’t…” but Harry interrupted before she could finish. “I know you stopped her, but hiding under my cloak watching her almost die was not the same as when I walked past her under my cloak.” Harry noticed Mrs. Weasley look at him with fascination and respect. “When I was going to meet Voldemort, I was going to die and Ginny would live on. She would find someone to love, have a family and grow into a beautiful witch,” he continued as he pushed himself up in the bed. He no longer looked at Mrs. Weasley, but instead began to look at the wall, staring blankly into space, neither at the wall or anything in between, but beyond, peering back into his own mind and his own heart. “When I was watching Ginny fight and almost die, it would have meant that I had lived and that she had died…” Harry paused; he now realized why his dreams had bothered him so much. “She would have died because of me,” Harry spoke softly. He looked once more at Mrs. Weasley. She was smiling at him, shaking her head ever so slightly. He could feel her starting to tremble on the bed. “That’s why I ended it last year, at Dumbledore’s funeral,” he added. “Of all the people that I would never want Voldemort to use against me, to harm or to kill, it would be Ginny. Ron and Hermione already knew my plans and had already committed themselves to help me. They had been with me in battle, as we’ve fought Voldemort over the years, but Ginny…” His voice trembled for a moment. He could not believe he was telling Ginny’s mother these things when he hadn’t even truly told Ginny. “…she was innocent,” he finished so softly that even he could barely hear it. A long pause arose between Harry and the Weasleys, each seeming to struggle for the words. Moments passed, and the sun glared its final beautiful rays of daylight into the room, before it vanished until morning would arise again. Both stared at the other, their eyes saying what their voices could not. Their hearts were touching for fleeting moments and giving one another a comfort that words could not. “She’s my escape from all of this. The time we spent together after the Quidditch match, before the funeral, was the happiest of my life.” Harry stated it so plainly and matter of factly that Mrs. Weasley jumped a bit with the silence being broken. “Those days were where I drew my strength from during the time I was traveling, hiding from the Death Eaters and trying to figure out how to kill Voldemort.” Harry let a tiny smile spread across his face. He had finally stopped crying, and so too had Arthur and Mrs. Weasley. In those moments of silence, Harry had made an important decision — he wanted them to know how he felt about their daughter, about Ginny. “She’s the part of me that is not consumed with Voldemort, and if she had died fighting one of his Death Eaters…” Harry looked at Mrs. Weasley straight in the eyes. For the first time she saw not just a truth to them, but an almost certainty as he began to speak again, “I don’t think I’d have killed him. I’d have lost my self control, and my resolve. I would have probably been so out of my senses I would have gotten myself killed by Bellatrix long before I could have ever faced Voldemort.” Mrs. Weasley sighed softly. She took a moment to compose her thoughts. She looked to Arthur, and then turned back to Harry. “That’s why you were the one to beat Voldemort. That’s why you were able to walk into that forest and not fight, when anyone else I would have known would go down swinging with every spell they could muster. You love unconditionally Harry. You take every death upon your own shoulders, and its time you learn that you are not the cause of the death and misery, that is Voldemort. You, Harry, are the reason that we could stop Voldemort. Only someone capable of loving, even after being treated so poorly growing up, would have a power that Voldemort could not overcome.” Her words struck Harry in the heart. It sounded almost as those Albus Dumbledore was standing there speaking to him instead of this puffy eyed red headed mother that had just lost a son. “And the fact that you love our Ginny,” she spoke as she took Arthur’s hand and turned to look at him before turning back to Harry with what he thought was an actual expression of happiness, “only tells me that she will forever be safe and you would die for her, the same way your father died for you and your mother if it was called for.” Her words spread like a warm breeze over Harry. He breathed deeply, letting it fill him. Harry was now completely at peace. Mrs. Weasley truly understood everything he felt. He looked at her astonished. His eyes were asking how she could know that he cared so deeply for her daughter, and when she had known. “Oh, I’ve known for a long time,” Mrs. Weasley started, anticipating the question he was about to ask, “I’ve known since she came home broken hearted from Dumbledore’s funeral. Before that I knew you fancied her. I mean there’s only so much snogging two teenagers can do without some mutual attraction. And no, Ginny didn’t tell me, but Ron certainly wasn’t too warm to the idea of you and his sister at first,” she interjected once more answering another question before Harry could ask it. “But when she told me that you had ended it, that you had pushed her away at a time when I knew you would need her most. Well, that told me one of two things, either you loved my daughter and knew that as long as Voldemort lived, you would be the greatest danger she faced, or that you had never cared for her at all. And let’s just say Harry, that as a mother, I’ve seen how you’ve started to look at Ginny in the past couple of years.” Harry looked at her with a look of utter bewilderment. His mouth hand half open, as though to say something, but there was nothing to say. She had known for so long. From the way she had explained it, she had known even before his feelings for Ginny had shown themselves to him in the form of that beast he felt when he and Ron had caught her snogging Dean Thomas. “Well, that’s all fair and good, but we’ve never even had an official date yet, now have we?” he retorted, almost as much to himself as her. “Who knows if she’ll even have me?” he questioned, frowning slightly. “Oh, I think she’ll take you back,” said Arthur. Mrs. Weasley smiled softly and nodded in affirmation to Harry. “But nonetheless I would still take it slow and give her no reason to hex you, Harry. After all, Ginevra has quite a temper, and I know she’s still pretty hurt from everything that has happened, especially last night when she thought you had died.” Arthur no longer seemed to be giving the conversation his full attention. He had turned his head and seemed to be staring at the door across the room. He looked at Harry and Mrs. Weasley for a moment then walked over to the door. He stood at the door, looking down. He put his finger to his lips to silence both Harry and Mrs. Weasley before they could ask him what it was he saw. Harry saw Arthur chuckle to himself for a moment and stoop over to the floor. When he stood upright, Harry saw a small line running from Arthur’s hand to under the door. It took Harry a moment to realize that Arthur held in his hand an Extendable Ear. Arthur pondered the ear for a moment in silence. He just looked it over, as though he were holding some new curiosity-inspiring Muggle contraption in his hands. Harry thought for a brief instant he saw a tear fall to the ground from Arthur’s eyes. Arthur steadied himself, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. With his other hand, he wiped the tears away from his eyes, all the time, holding the Extendable Ear and making certain not to stretch the line too tightly so that the others on the far side of the door might know someone was bothering with it. Arthur pulled out his wand and tapped the ear with it. Like a fuse that had been lit, Harry saw the Ear disappear and the string attached to it starting to burn and spark toward the other end, toward whoever was listening on the other side of the door. A few seconds later, Harry heard a distinctly feminine yelp, followed by some low grumblings. Arthur pulled the door open to reveal Ron, Hermione and Ginny standing on the other side of the door, with Ginny rubbing her hand where she had held the second end of the Extendable Ear. Mrs. Weasley looked at Harry and smiled. She pulled him close to her in a hug that he thought would suffocate him if she held on too much longer. “We love you, Harry,” she said as she stood up from the bed and joined Arthur at the door. “And assuming Ginny will have you back, call me Molly from now on, and NO exceptions.” She then turned with Arthur to leave the room. Harry saw her point for Ron and Hermione to leave the stairwell as well, but Harry knew that Hermione already had a hold of Ron and was about to drag him down the stairs. In a moment, they were gone and just Harry and Ginny, who had stepped into the room, were left. He smiled softly at her as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He met her halfway across the room. Standing there, looking into her eyes, he said the first thing that came into his mind. “Hi…” |
| Reviews 259 |
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