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SIYE Time:12:02 on 29th March 2024
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We Had to Start Somewhere
By Rant

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Category: Post-OotP
Characters:Draco Malfoy, Harry/Ginny, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Fluff, General, Humor
Warnings: Death
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 314
Summary: Some believe in love at first sight, but for Harry and Ginny first sight happened years ago and they're far from enamored. It seems they will have to settle for the gradual kind, the kind that drives us all mad but makes sense - in the end.
Hitcount: Story Total: 84153; Chapter Total: 5180





Author's Notes:
For siriusrocks and all who have encouraged the completion of this story.




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Things That Matter



His heart stopped.

Not a stroke of blood, not a beat in his chest, Harry was convinced that it had stilled for years or more upon hearing a thud on what could only be a dirt-packed floor.

But though his heart had stopped, his legs were already running. Out his dorm, down the stairs and past questioning Gryffindors. The edges of the mirror indented into his palm and the burn of muscle in the back of his mind, that was all that got through as he raced out of the tower and to the statue that would open the portal that would get him to Ginny.

He was almost there when he realized he had company. Neville, who he only now dimly remembered had been standing in the dorm when he’d torn apart his trunk, Seamus and Dean.

“Yeah, he found her,” Neville panted an answer to a question Harry hadn’t heard. Dean looked to be the one who had asked; he didn’t look as tired as before, and the look on his face stopped Harry from resisting his assistance before he could even process it.

Stopping at the statue now, Harry only spoke to them after he’d opened it. Upon seeing Neville lean forward, hands on his knees, he said, “Neville, tell them where we’ve gone, this comes out at Honeyduke’s. I don’t think it‘s just Colin and Ginny, and they can’t wait.”

Neville nodded rapidly.

“Seamus, Dean,” Harry said as Neville raced off, “I-”

“Get off it, Potter, let’s go.” Dean shoved him through the opening and they all picked up their pace again. All three lit their wands and called out warnings when they saw outcroppings of rocks or dips in the path.

Every couple of minutes, when he could spare his hand , Harry tried to listen at the mirror, his heart sinking each time he found nothing but silence.

“It’s a shame, innit?” Seamus suddenly said, as if he felt it necessary to pass the time with chatter. “You said this goes to Honeyduke’s? They’ll probably close it up once Neville lets them know where we’ve gone.”

His rueful smile slipped off when Harry and Dean each gave him a fierce glare. “Just making an observation. It’s a bit of a run.”

“Then why did you even come?” Harry bit out, a little glad to give a vent to his frustration and fear at Ginny’s continued silence.

“Well, she may have broken my best mate’s heart, but she’s still a friend, isn’t she?” Seamus said back, mildly cheerful despite the circumstances.

“Shut up and keep running,” Dean muttered.

Harry spared a glance at the taller boy, but Dean’s face had gone blank. What’s more, right then he heard a scraping and clapping of feet that wasn’t their own. Bringing the mirror to his ear, he heard something that made hope finally bloom in his chest. Too afraid to risk Ginny’s life in case she wasn’t alone, he said in a hushed voice, “I think she might -”

He stopped speaking when he saw a miniscule dot of light ahead of them, growing steadily bigger as the three of them ran closer, and whoever held it ran to meet them. At their combined speed, it didn’t take long before Harry saw a bit of red hair catch in the light and, somehow drawing on reserves he hadn’t known he had, found himself outpacing Dean and Seamus and unwittingly yelling out, “Ginny!”

“Har -” She didn’t finish, because aside from the quick glare of light in his eyes from her wand, Ginny was suddenly there, whole and real, slamming into him, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, face in his neck and he did the same in return to her

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” he kept muttering it incomprehensibly, his hands moving quickly over her back and then her hair and her face. It was caught in shadows, but he could feel her ears, her jaw, her bottom lip against his thumb. “I thought, oh gods, Ginny, I thought…”

“We have to go back,” she said hurriedly. “Colin, he’s still up there, and I heard some others. We have to go back.”

No more time to check her, revel in her, Harry grabbed her hand as their group of four made their way to where she’d just come. Speed made it so Harry had to let go of Ginny’s hand, though reluctantly, and soon they were all climbing up the stairs. Near the top, they found a Death Eater still in his robes, though moving feebly. Seamus quickly stunned him and kicked him a bit out of the way after Dean conjured some ropes to hold him.

Harry and Ginny listened at the door, the very edges giving them their only light aside from their wands. One side of the four was obscured; Harry tested his shoulder against it and found an unfamiliar weight. “Right, we’ll have to break it. Everyone stand back.”

The outlines of the three stepped a few steps back, readying their wands, and Harry shielded his face with his arm before reducing the wood to splinters. A large mass in black followed and bounced down the steps, limbs limp; all four of them let it pass as they watched the passage door with vigilant eyes.

Nothing came and Harry only listened for a second before pushing himself up into the back room of Honeyduke’s and was quickly followed by the others. The disaster of sweets and boxes was nothing less than he expected, but the room held at least another three Death Eaters, all of them unconscious on the floor. And among them, very still, lay Colin Creevy.

Padding quietly, watching the splintered door to the front room, Ginny drew closer and knelt next to her friend. Whispering his name and then a charm, she covered his mouth before he began to speak. Everyone went absolutely still at the sound of a slight rustle behind the few intact boxes; but the sound revealed a few students, white-faced and relieved. Following gestured directions, they quickly climbed down the passage.

Seamus came near and helped the smaller boy to his feet and then let him rest heavily against his shoulder when Colin’s legs went weak beneath him. “Nice job, Creevy,” Seamus said under his breath.

“They went down like stones,” Colin answered with a quivering smile. “I did too, but still.”

“You did fantastically,” Ginny told him in a hushed tone.

Dean and Harry looked among the Death Eaters, raising hoods and trading looks. It was as if the other boy had read his mind, because Dean shook his head at Harry’s dubious glance. Colin may have been practicing with them in D.A. meetings, but taking at least three Death Eaters alone? And coming out with what appeared to be minor injuries?

Five of their enemy were among them, Harry thought vaguely, and he recognized none of them. Absolutely none.

And his scar still wasn’t burning.

“They were decoys,” Harry muttered. Dean nodded as he considered Harry‘s words. Behind them, Seamus led Colin down the trap door to join the others. “Whatever Voldemort’s doing, he’s not doing it here. He sent this lot to distract us.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Ginny said as she drew down next to them. And in the full light now, he could see the mess of bruises across her face, the long cut along her hairline that oozed blood, the way one of her cheeks seemed mildly distorted, he hoped only from a welt but suspected differently. Gaping, Harry lifted his hand, but Ginny brushed it away. Only now did he see how much it pained her to speak. “Their shots were wide, unpracticed. We were lucky.”

“This is lucky?” Dean asked, horrified.

She looked him straight in the eye. “Yes.”

Harry shook his head to clear it. “We have to check the shop.”

Dean and Ginny rose with him, Seamus drawing up from the passageway again to follow. Minding soft feet, Harry led the way and stood listening at yet another door. Now able to breathe deep, he tasted the acrid burn of smoke in the back of his throat. The door wasn’t hot, but he suspected the fire wasn’t far from Honeyduke’s front windows. He was proven correct upon opening the door and seeing the front windows blown out completely and flames licking at the wooden posts that held up the now empty canopy.

They separated to each side of the shop, checking aisles, Dean and Seamus quickly coming upon a group of third and fourth years hiding in a dark corner. Tear-stained faces rushed past Harry and Ginny, Seamus guiding them out. Dean continued to search behind them and Harry heard him muttering another incarcerating charm and then stop short.

Not pausing to see what Dean had found, Harry drew closer to the broken windows and chanced a look outside, ignoring how the fire made his cheeks burn. He could see nothing through the smoke, but Ginny began waving hurriedly from the other windows and a few students came rushing in from a nearby alleyway.

After they passed, Harry asked, “Anyone else?”

Ginny shook her head. The fire had begun to feed on the remnants of the window, front steps and doorway; the thick, smoky air doubled in what had to be one moment to the next. Harry tried to produce water from his wand, only for it to evaporate against the encroaching fire. Ginny touched her hand to his, stepping back as he did, silently acknowledging his regret from being able to go further. When she whispered, “We tried,” Harry nodded silently in return.

They ducked down to breathe cleaner air and then saw Dean still standing where they’d last left him, his face drawn. Swallowing hard, he pointed his wand down and said, “I think… I know… I know her.”

A wave of dread suddenly hit him; Harry didn’t know how he knew, but there was something in Dean’s face, his sorrowful voice.

It made sense, then, to see a familiar pair of shoes as he turned into the aisle that had been previously blocked from his view. It made sense that Harry recognized the shoes, and the Hogwarts uniform, and the hands that used to be so steady, and the face he saw every time he went to Potions.

But it didn’t make sense that Lisa Turpin lay before him, her body still, her eyes blank and unmoving, gone from them. It didn’t make sense at all.

**********


“She was in the shop then, one of the first to fight. She helped the younger ones hide, they said, when Colin, Ginny and some others were pushed to the back; Ginny never even saw her, it went too quick, I think. I hope,” Harry dropped his head down and ran his hands through his hair. “I hope it was quick.”

Ron watched him with sympathetic eyes, but said nothing from his bed in the hospital wing. Curtains surrounded them, a muffling charm long since placed on them by Ron. He knew, apparently, what a best mate would know. Hours after seeing Lisa and the felled opponent beside her, after Harry and Dean brought her down to the passageway and they all awaited the arrival of their professors, far too exhausted to meet them halfway, after he’d been interrogated by Dumbledore, criticized by Snape and rebuked by McGonagall, Harry needed just to be heard.

It still seemed impossible, all that had happened, and happened so quickly. His mind stuttered on quick flashes of memory: running from the tower, running with Dean and Seamus, Ginny in the passage. Lisa on the floor. He barely remembered that Neville had been there; Colin's presence seemed an abberation. None of it seemed real, but Harry knew all too well that it was. And try as he might, he couldn't stop thinking of it.

Students and professors swarmed all around their curtained in area; their small area of stillness remained undisturbed, but he didn't know for how long. He wasn't even quite sure how he'd gotten there.

Hermione, shaken though unhurt, had taken up her prefect responsibilities and had joined in the evening guard, chaperoning treated patients back to their dormitories. Ginny was among them, after receiving the minimal amount or Skele-Gro to fix her fractured cheekbone and a quick episkey for the long cut on her head. All other cuts and bruises were given the prescription of time, as Snape and some of his top students had joined Madam Pomfrey in making vast amounts of healing potions that were just as rapidly depleted for the more heavily injured.

Lisa should have been among them, Harry thought fiercely. Making potions to help, not waiting for her parents to come and collect her, as three other students were.

He and Ginny hadn't exchanged a word since Honeyduke's. Harry hadn't been able to find the right ones, and those that popped forward seemed so inappropriate in light of what happened. Instead, they'd waited for help in silence; when they'd walked back with their injured and captured, they'd been separated and Harry suspected he might have done it on purpose.

For that little while, he hadn't trusted himself. Just the same as now.

“He wasn’t even there,” Harry said, his voice raw from everything he strived to supress. The words bubbled up now, too strong to be subdued, knowing there was safety here, with Ron. There always was.

He remembered the quick words he’d exchanged with Dumbledore before being dismissed, his suspicions confirmed. “Voldemort was attacking the ministry while his damn misfits were here, getting practice, proving themselves by attacking kids. Getting… lucky to hit a few. And the bastard didn’t even get in over there. It was all for nothing, even for him.”

Clenching his eyes shut, Harry rested his face upon his fists and battled against the burning sensation in his eyes. He stayed that way for a long time, half hoping Ron’s injuries would lull him back to sleep so Harry wouldn’t have to look him or anyone else.

Several minutes passed before he could look up and he found Ron waiting just as steadfastly as before.

Harry rubbed at his eyes and grit his teeth. “She was my friend.”

“I know,” Ron said quietly.

“She knew first, really knew, because I told her,” Harry said hoarsely, rapidly. “She knew what I felt for Ginny, she understood it. Us. I knew how happy Anthony made her. We were happy for each other. She was my friend and I didn’t even know how much until now.”

Pounding his fists against the armrests of his chair and then gripping the ends tightly, Harry shook his head. “I don’t, Ron, I can’t -”

Ron offered his pillow and Harry brought it to his face, doubled it so that the agonized yell he finally let out could be masked, if only a little.

**********


A long time later, Harry used the pillow to rest his head against the foot of Ron’s bed. Madame Pomfrey had come and gone, taken just one look at them, at Harry’s exhausted expression and for once let them be. Ron had napped on and off, the effects of the stunners still wearing away and causing him to drop off suddenly.

The hospital wing had quieted. Harry wondered who remained on the other side of the curtain, how many injuries were still being treated. He wondered on how quickly things could change from one day to the next, how Ron could almost hate him one day and then let Harry vent his rage and tears without saying a word the next. How he could gain another friend without knowing it and lose her just as quickly.

Less than a day before, when Lisa had still been alive with three others, Harry had been composing a letter to Lupin, unsure of what to write. He thought he knew what it would say now.

Remus-

You’re right. I have to take my life into my own hands and I can’t have a life without Ginny. Not a happy one, anyway.

There are a few people who already know, or who have an idea. I’ve got a lot to make up to Ginny, but also to those people. The way things are these days, the way things can change in a moment, I can’t afford to not let them know that they matter. You’re one of them. Thought you should know that while I can still say it, while you can still know it.

Seems being with Ginny has changed me; Ron and Hermione saw it a long time ago, Hermione said I was happier, more open. She was right, too; I can’t imagine realizing, not to mention writing, something like that before last summer happened. I guess I made good choices if I’m surrounded by people who are right all the time. People who are good to me. I hope I can be good to them, too.

I’ll let you know how it works out. Thanks, Moony.

- Harry


Maybe he would keep a copy for himself. A reminder.

“You all right there, Harry?”

Sitting up and rubbing at his face, Harry said, “Better, I think.”

Ron watched him for several moments before nodding. “Okay.”

“I’m in love with your sister, Ron.”

There was a slight lull. Ron blinked a few times and then nodded again, albeit more slowly.

“She’s not just anything to me, just like you and Hermione, or even Lisa and Dean, are just anything to me.” Harry sighed and leaned back heavily in his chair. “And I don’t know why I always think I’m alone, or I have to be alone, when you’re all around me trying to help.”

“Well, you can be a bit of an idiot sometimes,” Ron said with a half-hearted smile.

“Lisa was a really good person, Ron. Nobody deserves to go out that way, but… she especially.”

“I remember how she'd sometimes helped with my Potions homework when Hermione wouldn't give me the answers,” Ron replied with a slight smile. "I liked her, the little I knew her."

“I think anyone who met her did,” Harry said back. He hadn't seen it before, hadn't though it through. He remembered the night she'd asked him to the dance, how nervous she'd been and how kind she'd remained when he'd been such a prat. “Not a lot of people can say that.”

Ron shrugged. “I suppose not. I can’t.”

“Neither can I.”

They both stopped and considered it. It was darkly, absurdly funny to Harry, though he was nowhere near laughing. Here they were, making a nuisance of themselves to the so-called Dark Lord and still managed to make it out, while, Lisa... the only time... Harry shut his eyes for a moment. He'd known for a long time that no one was safe, but the harsh reality hadn't struck so closely since his fourth year. First Cedric, then Lisa; their innocence didn't protect them, nor would it do so for anyone else. And that's why they had someone like Harry. That's why Harry would keep fighting for them.

In the meanwhile, they all had to keep living.

"Can we... I need to think about something else for a little while," Harry said tiredly.

Sitting up gingerly, Ron gave him a contemplative look before saying, “Are you going to ask my permission?”

Harry snorted lightly. He should have expected that. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

“You really love her?”

“Yeah, Ron, I do.”

“Then I guess you have it anyway.”

**********



“It’s funny, isn’t it? Me acting as your guard,” Hermione said to him, trying to pull smile on her face and failing. Harry knew she’d been up all night, escorting students to and fro the hospital wing. She’d brazenly stopped an Auror from going with Harry and had insisted they’d be fine by themselves; Harry still couldn’t quite believe how she’d done it, or how the new day had come upon them. The windows they passed were starting to show the first rays of dawn; it came so clear and sweet that it seemed an awful joke that their school and Hogsmeade had so recently encountered tragedy.

“I’m sorry about Lisa. I can’t think of how awful -” Hermione cut herself off and looked away. “For her, for all of you to find her like that. Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry.”

Unable to figure out if it would be appropriate to say thank you or say nothing, Harry instead decided on, “I stopped thinking life was fair for me a long time ago. I guess I thought that people like her, people who don’t look for trouble like we do, life would give them a break. But it doesn’t. Not for Cedric, not for Lisa, not for anybody.”

Hermione shook her head sadly. “No, it doesn’t”

“Hermione, I don’t say it enough, but - ”

But she stopped him with a brief touch to his shoulder. “I know, Harry.”

He breathed out slowly. Of course. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You couldn’t stop me if you tried,” Hermione replied with a gentle smile.

They entered the empty Gryffindor common room and Hermione sighed with relief. “Every time I came back, there was always someone trying to stay out. I’m glad they’ve finally all gone to bed. Or to their rooms at least.”

“Ginny?”

“Gone upstairs for most of the night as far as I know. She didn’t… want to stay around, I suppose. I wish we’d gotten to speak more than just in passing.”

Harry gazed at the stairs that led to her dorm; though exhaustion had edged his mind for hours, it slowly began to clear as he kept staring at the steps.

“I was going to go back to sit with Ron,” Hermione said, following his line of sight, “but would like you like…?”

“Yes,” Harry said, his mouth suddenly dry. “Please. Just tell her I’m here.”

Hermione started up the stairs and said, “How long will you be down here?”

Harry sat at the edge of the stairs and rested his tired back against the wall. He thumped his head back and closed his eyes. “Tell her I’ll wait for her as long as she wants.”


******************* ******


A/N: So. Five years later. Heaven knows who has waited this long, but if you have, I hope you accept my sincerest apologies and unending gratitude for still being here. It looks like there’s one, two chapters at most left. Thank you for reading.
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