They spent the rest of that day and all of the next trying to figure out how Ginny had left the Burrow. She couldn’t, as far as anyone knew, Apparate, and the Knight Bus driver swore that he didn’t pick anyone up from that location. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Charlie walked down to the village to question everyone, but no one had seen her.
Eventually they made their way up to Luna’s house, but she claimed not to have seen Ginny. Her father, a very nice and normal looking man with wispy blond hair, assured them that he would run an article in their next paper, letting the public know to keep a lookout for her.
No one had seen her, and no one could account for how she’d left. Mr. Weasley filed a missing person’s report with the Hit Wizards at the Ministry, but as he pointed out later that evening, it wasn’t likely they would search for one runaway when so many others were being hurt by You-Know-Who.
“We have to confront Tonks!” Harry muttered darkly, pacing Ron’s room while his best friends watched him from Ron’s bed.
“We can’t, Harry,” Hermione reminded him gently. “If Tonks said to leave it alone then that is what we need to do! I trust Tonks, and you need to as well. She’ll make sure that Ginny is safe.”
“Yes, but what is she up to?” Harry asked as he finally settled down on the floor across from them, propping his arms on knees. “I just don’t understand why she left when she was safe here… well, safe enough anyway.”
Ron snorted and shook his head. “For someone who dated her, you’re still really clueless about who she is, aren’t you?”
Harry glared at him, not liking where this was going. “I do know her!”
Hermione nodded in agreement. “From what you told us of their conversation, I think we can conclude that Ginny’s trying to help out, and she let Tonks in on it.” She pushed a stray hair off her face and sighed. “I don’t know what exactly she’s up to, but she must think that she’s doing what’s best for everyone.”
Harry didn’t agree and his insides writhed at the thought of her being in danger. Hadn’t he just broken up with her to keep her safe? Hadn’t she concurred that it was safer for her to not be with him? Why was she doing this? “This is madness.”
“That’s Ginny for you,” Hermione reminded him gently. “She’s not going to sit on the sidelines and watch the game if she can get in to play. What I really want to know is how Crookshanks is going to help her.”
That too was a question. Ginny’s note to the family was so bizarre that none of them wanted to take it seriously. She’d stolen Hermione’s cat and used words that didn’t seem to fit Ginny at all. Mrs. Weasley, crying into her husband’s shoulder, had said it was almost like she was under the Imperius Curse, but they couldn’t prove it.
Her behavior in the week leading up to the wedding had been outrageous and rebellious, like many normal teenagers would exhibit. For Ginny, however, it was out of character, which was something that the family noticed right away. He’d tried to ignore it, tried to explain it away, but there was no logical excuse for any of it. To make matters worse, Ginny had alienated her entire family in pursuit of whatever she was trying to do. Harry hated watching Mrs. Weasley cry and resented knowing that he could make things easier if he could tell them what he’d heard.
But Ginny had asked for his help and his trust. That is what stuck with him most, even as the anger and frustration began to overwhelm him.
“Harry?” Ron’s voice broke into his reverie. “When are we leaving?”
Good question… He didn’t want to leave before they knew where Ginny was, but now that he was seventeen and both he and Ron had passed their Apparation tests, there was no reason to delay their search any longer. “Tomorrow, I suppose. Fred dropped off the magical tent for us, right?”
“Yeah, I hid it in the broom shed when I told Mum I was looking to see if Ginny’s broom was still here,” Ron said before standing to stretch. “Well, we’d best get packing.” He bent down and clapped a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Cheer up, mate. Ginny might have run off, but she’s smart and capable, except when it comes to boys… except you, of course. Anyway, I think she’ll be fine.”
“I suppose,” Harry murmured and rose to pack. He still felt full and sluggish from his birthday feast, which Mrs. Weasley had prepared for dinner. It felt good to be seventeen now and able to use magic legally, but a small part of him wished that Ginny had been here to celebrate it with him.
~*~
They left the next morning with threats upon their heads and a bulging sack of food for their meals. Mrs. Weasley was, to say the least, extremely put out that they were going, especially since they wouldn’t explain why.
“We can’t tell you, Mum,” Ron had told her sternly, trying not to squirm under her murderous gaze. “This is just something that we have to do.”
“We’ll be okay,” Harry told her, trying not to let the lie show in his eyes. He didn’t know conclusively that they would be ‘okay,’ but he didn’t want his surrogate mother worrying needlessly. “I just want to see my parent’s graves and then we have some things to do. We’ll pop in to visit as often as we can.”
“But… but what about school! You haven’t finished yet and-”
“Molly…” Mr. Weasley interrupted her. “They are seventeen now. We have no say in what they do.” He pulled his wife into a comforting embrace. “All we can do is support them and hope for the best.” The look Mr. Weasley sent him told Harry that he had a shrewd idea of who had started their quest, but he wasn’t going to comment.
After several more admonitions from Mrs. Weasley to be careful and her loading up enough food for a week, they were off. Harry, carrying the tent, Ron with the food, and Hermione with her books, they tramped out into the yard and faced each other. “See you there, then,” Ron said lightly and turned, before vanishing with a pop.
“Are you ready for this, Harry?” Hermione asked him quietly, her eyes full of concern.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he answered and took a deep breath before he too spun on the spot and vanished.
~*~
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find at his parent’s old house but the wreckage that still lay there, covered in moss and ivy, was not it. It had obviously not been touched in the sixteen years since the attack. He walked up the lane to the house slowly, his best friends at his side.
Hermione came up along side him and put her arm around his waist, leaning against him. “You sure you’re up to this?”
He nodded and hooked his arm over her shoulder. “I talked to Remus about it at my party last night. He warned me that nothing had been touched and that the building would just be overgrown.”
“What?” Ron turned his head to stare blankly at him. “Harry… there’s nothing there, mate.”
Harry gaped at him as Hermione gasped. “Oh! I’d almost forgotten that the house is under the Fidelius Charm!”
Harry looked between them. “You really can’t see the rubble?”
“No, sorry,” Hermione answered. “Can you lead us to it?”
Harry nodded and took her hand before putting a guiding hand on Ron’s back. He marched them forward until they were at the edge of a pile of lumber. “Right. You might need to step up.”
“This is weird,” Ron said in a low tone. “It looks like I’m going to step on grass.” Still, he and Hermione raised a foot and moved forward, lowering their feet until, to his amazement, their foot went straight through the board.
“What happened?” Hermione questioned, taking another tentative step forward, again walking through what looked like solid material to Harry.
“I dunno, but you should be standing on it,” Harry said with a shrug before he stepped up onto the planks. A chill washed over him like a cold mist.
Instantly, his friends gasped in panic. “Harry! You disappeared!”
“Did I?” Harry asked them, looking straight at Hermione as he spoke, but she did not seem to hear him. Slowly, he retraced his steps until he was back outsides of the wreckage, feeling the warmth returning to his limbs.
“Oh, there you are!” Hermione exclaimed as she walked out of the house, Ron on her heels. “I guess that because you knew the location of the house that you disappear with it.”
“Right,” Harry agreed somewhat lamely. He didn’t know how to respond, and his emotions were in complete disarray from being back here. “Well… I suppose I’ll have a look around in the debris if you don’t mind.”
“No, go on,” Ron told him before bending over to pick up the tent. “We’ll get set for tonight while you’re in there.”
He nodded and turned slowly, not really wanting to face this alone but knowing that he had to.
“We’ll be right out here if you need us,” Hermione reminded him.
He didn’t respond but instead squared his shoulders and marched back up to the rubble, stepping up on the first plank and pausing to take stock of what was there while trying to ignore the cold that seeped into him again. It was true that the building was in ruins, but signs of life sprouted up everywhere among the rotten wood. Bushes grew through the cracks of the foundation, and Harry noted that much of the ivy was growing around the northwestern corner of the structure.
Feeling uneasy, he wended his way to what looked like it had once been stairs when suddenly a flash of memory caught him hard in the gut. He gasped and fell to his knees.
Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!
Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now…
Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead--- Not Harry! Please… have mercy… have mercy…
Avada Kedavra!
His vision clouded over in green smoke but the recollection was not over as a putrid smell assaulted his nose, causing his baby self to sneeze as he listened to the noises in his room.
A crunching of a boot; the whisper of a cloak; the creak of a floorboard; then, “Perhaps you can do something for me…”
Harry fell onto his side, clutching at his stomach. He felt bile rise up the back of his throat as he fought valiantly to keep it down. It had been vague, almost hazy, as if the child who had heard the commotion could not take in anymore. Struggling slowly to his feet, he wove dizzily about for a moment before falling once again. This time Harry did not attempt to rise. He lay motionless on the mossy ground, waiting for the nausea to abate.
He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision. Glittering starbursts danced around him when he tried to move, but he ignored them. Planting his hands down to support himself, he tried to rise but his hands slipped through the moss down to what felt like it might have been carpet at one point. Attempting to grope for a hold, his right hand landed on something hard that stuck him in the palm. Cursing quietly, he rolled onto his back while pulling the object up for inspection.
It was a necklace… although extremely dirty. Harry rubbed at the surface, feeling pointed edges dig into his finger. Squinting against the noonday sun, which shone brightly through the trees, he could make out a large white flower with a long stem. Not stopping to think about what he was doing, he got up on his knees and crawled out from the house, falling down out side of the house when he finally reached the edge.
“Harry!” Hermione yelped. He heard her feet pounding on the gravel as she ran to him, kneeling down at his side. She rolled him over to his back, while running a hand over his face. “What happened?! Ron!” she called back over her shoulder.
Harry pushed his glasses up, rubbing at his eyes while trying to regain his hold on reality. “Dunno what happened,” he told them weakly before Hermione batted his hands away from his face.
“They’re filthy,” she informed him before wiping at his face with her clean hands. “Are you all right?”
“Here,” Ron got under his shoulder and helped him sit up.
“Thanks,” Harry muttered as he swayed a bit. He didn’t topple over though; Ron had kept a firm hand on him. “I… I think I relived a… a memory, I guess. I fell down though.”
“What’s this?” Hermione asked, tugging gently at the chain of the necklace.
He left his fingers unfold, “I found it in there. It’s a flower.”
“It’s a lily,” Hermione corrected him quietly.
A lily…
“Blimey, Harry… that must have been your mum’s,” Ron said while touching the flower, almost reverently.
His mum’s necklace… Unbidden, the memories of what he’d seen came pouring from his mouth until tears were streaming down Hermione’s cheeks and Ron’s face was set and unreadable. “Do you think she was wearing it that- that night?” Harry asked hesitantly and without looking up at either of them.
“No… at least, I don’t think so. This was probably in a jewelry box and fell out when the house was destroyed,” Hermione explained as she gently placed the necklace back in his hand. “It’s beautiful, Harry, and from the look of it, quite old.”
“How do you know it’s old?” Ron blurted out.
“Well,” she pointed to the floor. “The metalwork, while striking, isn’t nearly as detailed as we have today. Also, the flower is large and opulent. Today, we tend to make things like this smaller.” She turned it over in her palm, examining it closely. “I don’t see a brand for where it was made, nor a craftsman’s name. Hmm… I couldn’t begin to speculate on who cast it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Harry assured her and let Ron help him to his feet. Hermione, thankfully, let it drop.
The three of them walked slowly over to the tent, which had been erected while he had been in the ruins of the house. It closely resembled the one that Mr. Weasley had borrowed for the World Cup, except that the outside looked brand new and unblemished. “What do you think?” Ron asked as he pulled back a tent flap for Hermione to crawl in.
“Nice,” Harry said as he followed Hermione in, marveling at what the actual tent did look like. The main room consisted of a large couch and an armchair. There was a fully stocked kitchen in the back of the tent, and off to the right were two rooms separated by tent flaps. To the left was a door that Harry assumed led to the loo. “I think this will do nicely.”
“It’s great,” Ron commented as he flopped down onto the sofa, spreading his legs along its length. “Our room has a bunk bed and Hermione’s a single. I think Fred and George must have gotten it customized for us.”
“It’s really lovely,” Hermione agreed readily as she walked over to the couch and pushed at Ron’s legs so she could sit down. “I think we’ll be comfortable here when we travel.”
Harry sat down heavily in the armchair, gazing about the tent. He still felt groggy from his experience in the house. “I hope so. It was a good idea to test this thing out before we had to use it,” he told Hermione and smiled when she blushed.
“Well… I didn’t want us to be out and suddenly find that it wasn’t suitable. Right now, we’re still in England and can make any modifications easily.”
Ron sat up and stretched out, surreptitiously putting his arm along the back to the sofa and lightly running his fingers through Hermione’s curly hair. If her face had been red before, it was positively scarlet now. Harry raised an eyebrow as he looked at him but Ron wouldn’t meet his eyes. “So…” Ron said in a falsely calm voice. “Shall we eat?”
~*~
“Here,” Hermione had conjured a bouquet of white roses for him. Handing them to him, she said, “I… well if you want us to come along, we can.”
“No,” he replied quietly, taking the flowers from her. “I think I need to do this by myself.” Harry caught a fragrant whiff of the roses and inhaled deeply. “I think I just need to do this by myself, but thanks for the flowers.”
“You’re welcome,” Hermione said and he could tell she was trying not to cry. Ron wasn’t saying anything at all, just sitting at the kitchen table, and cradling a cup of tea between his two large hands.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he told them and taking care not to crush the flowers, he crawled out of the tent.
Harry walked silently down the lane and out on a dirt road that he knew led to a small church with a graveyard. Remus hadn’t been sure why they were buried here and not with Harry’s grandparents, but he did remember that the services had to be conducted quickly and quietly. He kicked at a stone and felt a heaviness settle in his heart.
He had secretly put the lily necklace around his neck and tucked it under his clothes. He didn’t think that Ron or Hermione would say anything about it, but he was drawn to the small flower and wanted to have it on him at all times. He rounded the corner, kicking absently at a stone before halting at the sight of the small church.
The white building seemed to sag even as he watched it. Trees surrounded the property and their leaves swayed gently with the breeze as a bird chirped above him.
He wanted to go on and see their graves and yet, part of him wanted to turn back… to not face what had always been a part of him.
Shaking his head, he walked forward, resolutely, bypassing the church altogether to walk to the rear. There, before him, were about fifty graves, all with varying sizes of headstones. Recalling Remus’ instructions, he wandered between the graves, making his way to the back, left corner. When he reached it, he found what he’d been searching for. A large double headstone made of granite sat beneath a smaller tree with ivy twisting its way up the trunk.
James Potter and Lily Evans Potter
Loving parents, Loving Friends, Together Forever
Slowly, Harry knelt down on the grass before laying the flowers in front of the grave. He felt like a lump had taken up residence in his throat and he had to swipe at several tears. Tracing his fingers along the letters of his parents’ names, he let his grief and anger at having never known them seep out. He was on this hunt because of his parents. They deserved to be avenged.
Harry sat back on his heels and took in all of the words before saying, “Mum… Dad… uh… hi.”