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Author: Kathryn Story: Lost Rating: Teens Setting: Pre-DH Status: Completed Reviews: 25 Words: 61,881
Disclaimer: All the characters you recognise belong to JK Rowling and I’m just borrowing them. The others and the plot are mine for my sins. Author’s Note: This is a Ginny focused chapter and picks up from her perspective of the events of the end of chapter seven, for easier reader, I suggest that you go back and read the end of that chapter. Ginny’s whole body shook as the Portkey landed her just outside the gates to The Burrow garden. She knew that this was where she should be and Coughlan was right. At this time she could do no more for the camp, not until she had sorted everything out. The only place she could do that was here. Right now, she needed her family more than ever. Yet despite all that, there was the huge problem of what to do and say, which was making her more than a little apprehensive about entering the place that should make her feel safe and loved. What should she say to everyone? How could she admit what a failure that she had become? What would they do when they found out that she had played a large part in someone else death? That some people with just cause would even deem her solely responsible for Neve’s death. How did she admit to people that she had deserted Harry at the time he had needed her the most? She was the one person who never should have left his side; the one person who had promised never to leave him; the one person who had sworn that she loved him with every bone in her body. Yet she had destroyed all that now. She may have left that camp less than ten minutes ago but she already knew that she had made the biggest mistake of her life. The problem was that she did not know how to put it right. Letting out a few deep breaths she held onto the gate to The Burrow garden for support; support that she was not sure she would get after they found out everything she had done. This was so overwhelming. How could her life have changed so quickly? In the space of two hours she had helped be responsible for her friend’s death and run away from the person she loved. She shook her head. No, this had started a long time ago. She had made mistake after mistake since she had turned down Harry’s proposal, four hundred and forty seven days ago. Gulping, she hitched her rucksack further up her shoulder. Tears flowing freely, she turned her back on her home. She wasn’t worthy of any of them after everything she’d done. She was far from the heroine the newspapers had initially described and as some of the rest of the world deemed her to be. She wasn’t even sure right now she deserved to be a member of the Weasley family. She would be far better off on her own; then she would stop hurting people. Ginny glanced once again at The Burrow and turned her back on her childhood home. She turned to walk away from everything she had ever known. She would always go to the river as an escape from home, just like she would always go to the lake at Hogwarts. Once she got to that river today she would have calmed down, and then she could Apparate without splinching herself and, she thought hopefully, just disappear. She swore under her breath as she heard a small popping noise. She slowly turned around to see a red haired man appear in front of her. If she was going to get lost to the fabric of society, then the last thing she needed was one of her brothers to turn up. “Ginny,” Ron’s voice called over to her, “what are you doing here?” he waited for a minute for is response but his words were met with silence. “Where are you going?” Many people had said her brother did not understand emotions but those people failed to understand the real Ronald Weasley or to look deeply into his eyes. His eyes told everything and right now she could see he was worried for her; scared about her actions and maybe even her sanity. “Don’t know,” she replied with a small shrug, she had every intention of saying as few words as possible and getting out of there as quickly as possible. She had always had a very close and fiery relationship with Ron even before you added the fact Ron was Harry’s best friend. There was no way that she could explain all this to Ron and make him be okay with her actions--not that he should be okay with what she had done. Ron stared at her, his blue eyes meeting her brown ones. He was not going to let her shrug off the topic so easily. She wouldn’t have expected him to but that hardly helped the situation. What could she possibly say to Ron? How could she explain everything that had happened? How could she tell him about Neve? How could she tell her brother that after all this time his best friend was alive? How could she explain that she had left him alone? Her natural ability to lie seemed to have disappeared into thin air along with many other things she had been good at. She used to be able to twist the truth so easily at any whim. It had got her out or so many problems, yet now when she needed her slippery gift the most, it had deserted her, just as she had done to Harry. She could lie that the sky was bright yellow and get away with it as long as she had the right motivation. Yet today, that was just not going to work. She was utterly useless at everything! “Well, let’s go in then.” Ron said as he placed his strong hand on her shoulder and directed her movements, just like Coughlan had done hours before. “Mum’s desperate to see you, especially since your owls home aren’t exactly regular or full of details. Plus Hermione is coming over later, and I’m sure she’ll have millions of questions for you.” “Okay then,” she said with a small shrug. She watched as Ron slowly turned towards the house, before mirroring his actions but instead of turning towards The Burrow, she faced the mud track leading to their family home. She couldn’t help but let a small guilty smile emerge on her face as her ability to trick her brother came into force again. With a small shrug of her shoulders, Ron’s hand fell and she seized her chance. The smile, however, faded as quickly as it had come. Ron’s reactions were quick as his own instincts took over, as if he had anticipated her movements. The small glimmer of hope of escaping faded as her movements took an eternity. It was as if someone had slowed down her every action. Ron grasped at the air for a less than a millisecond, before he caught her wrist. Using all the strength she could muster, she pulled away, trying to break into a run. Yet Ron held firm, unmoving, leaving the only consequence of her actions a marked and throbbing wrist. Spinning back round to face her brother, she could feel tears welling in her eyes and her other hand shot to her jean pocket. Before she could clasp her wand, Ron was holding both her wrists in his strong hands. “Get off me,” she spat, her voice carrying a level of desperation that she had never heard before and hated from the second those words escaped her mouth. Ron stood still for a second as she threw her captured hands against his chest. As her hands hit his torso, Ron shook his head, and pulled her closer to him. Keeping a strong hold of his little sister, he whispered softly, “You’re not going anywhere.” He kept a tight hold of her as she let her frustrations out by kicking and hitting his body. They stood on the very spot, her energy draining with each second, until Ron was confident that she was in no fit state to run. As her movements slowed, he finally loosened his grip and directed her through the garden and towards the door to The Burrow’s kitchen. “Mum,” Ron called as he let go of her for the briefest second and flung open the door to the kitchen. Without giving her a second to think and making sure he was blocking her escape route, Ron pushed her into the house making her stumble across the threshold, “You’ll never guess who I’ve found.” “GINNY!” Molly Weasley dropped the mug she was holding and let china and hot liquid splatter across the floor as she rushed over to her, “Oh, Ginny.” She let her mother pull her into a large hug and although she just stopped there, not returning any of the affection, Molly used this as the cue to continue to keep a tight hold of her little girl. Releasing her grip after what was only minutes, but seemed like hours to Ginny, Molly held onto her daughter’s arms as she studied her worn face and exhausted body. “You’re all skin and bones,” she commented, to which Ginny offered a small shrug. She knew this once her mother was not exaggerating. “Have you been eating?” Molly continued as Ginny offered her a meek nod. “And sleeping?” was met with another shrug, “I knew that camp was not a good idea, but at least you’re home now.” “I guess,” she said softly. “How long are you back for?” Molly asked as she got ready to fire her next round of questions at her youngest child. Now she had her daughter, the child she was most worried about, she was not going to let go of her. At least not until she was confident that she was going to be okay, and that was still a long way off as both of them knew only too well. Ginny could feel a long period of mollycoddling ahead of her unless she could think of a way to change it. “A while,” she replied. She couldn’t stand any of this. She didn’t deserve any of this love and support. “I’m going to go and have bath before dinner, if that’s okay,” she said using the first excuse to get out of there that she could think of. “I feel covered in muck.” “Of course it's okay, but don’t be too long, there’s so much we need to talk about.” Molly said but she had already taken her cue to leave, and she let her mother’s voice follow her up the stairs before locking herself in the bathroom on the first floor. She let her beaten body soak into the warm water, that provided a sanctuary from everything that had happened. Here she was free and alone to let her emotions flow into the bath waters. She lowered her body further in so that every part of her was engulfed in the water, preventing her from hearing her mother’s calls from downstairs. She wished she could stay there, safe from everything else forever. She held her breath, more than a little tempted not to lift her head out of the water but in the end leaving it until the last possible second to emerge. When she lifted her head out the water she could feel a mixture of tears and bath water over her face. For the next week, apart from enforced meals, that she could not avoid despite how hard she tried, she had stayed in her room, not sleeping, or under the old oak tree by The Burrow, staring into thin air. She did not want to socialise with anyone until she could think of a way to escape, but her mother had kept humming around her, staying annoying close to her at all times. Her mornings had descended into her old ritual. She would wait sitting on the stairs that joined the first floor to the kitchen. She would stay there until most of the noise had disappeared before heading down to pick up some food before heading outside and dwelling on the wreck she had let her life sink to. It seemed like she had spent a lifetime sitting on these stairs in the last week. When she was younger, she had used to sit on the top stair and listen to whatever conversation she had been deemed too young to take part in. Instead of being shut in her room as she should have been, the stairs had provided a tunnel of noise that had made her aware of everything that was taking place. For the last twenty-one months, these stairs had proved to be her best clue on whether it was safe to escape her family’s clutches without the Spanish Inquisition. If she could hear a pin drop, she knew it was safe to descend from the upper floors of The Burrow but if she could hear echoes of conversations in the kitchen wafting up the stairs, she knew that there would be enough people around to fire questions at her, so she held her position on the stair or drifted back into her room. Today the conversation between her parents seemed much more heated than normal. She felt their tense voices drawing her down the stairs to explain everything, but she forced back all her natural instincts and hung back where she was to listen undetected. “Molly, dear,” Arthur said softly. “Yes,” her mother’s normally caring voice snapped, a marked testament to the frustrations in the Weasley family home. She paused briefly before she added quickly, “I’m sorry.” “There’s been another Rita Skeeter article,” his voice sounded like it was on the verge of breaking, “in the Daily Prophet this morning.” A shudder ran down Ginny’s spine. In the week that she had been home she had spoken very little to her family, especially her parents. Not knowing what to say, she had just answered questions that she couldn’t avoid and gave away very little information about what had happened in the last three months. This had left her parents increasingly worried as they had been left with only small fragments of what had taken place. They just knew the simple facts, the ones that everyone in the Wizarding word knew: that there had been a murder of a Red Cross Volunteer just outside the camp and that after this she had chosen to take a break from her work or had been asked to. Yet despite the lack of information that she had offered, her parents seemed to have worked out a lot for themselves, helped by the articles that occupied the front pages of the Daily Prophet. “What is it saying this time?” Molly asked in a tense voice that was clearly resigned to accepting the worst. “That Ginny was responsible for the death.” She could hear his voice shaking with anger and disgust. “That she was breaking the camp rules left, right and centre and by doing this she was putting everyone at risk.” “I know she has little respect for rules that she doesn’t see the point of but she’s not stupid, Arthur, and she is far from naïve.” She spoke in a would-be confident voice. “She knows the value of life and she is not going to risk her own and other people’s lives.” “Are you sure about that anymore?” her father questioned, doubt ringing throughout his words. “I very much doubt that she would do something that would deliberately endanger someone, but I do believe that she is not putting too much thought into her actions and their consequences. As much as it pains me, I think that it is very believable that she would walk out of that camp to go to Little Hangleton and it hardly stretches the imagination to say that that Corr girl followed her.” He let out a large sigh. “I think for once the Prophet may have got things right, even if they twist things to meet their views, especially with that interview with the unnamed volunteer claiming that she has gone insane.” “When is this all going to stop?” She could hear the tears in her mother’s exasperated voice. There was a slight pause that followed the question as her dad seemed to hush her mum’s tears before she continued. “When am I going to get my little girl back? When can I tell her that all the pain is going to go away and that all this will be over soon? How can she live her life if they continue to dwell on all this on a daily basis? How can we offer her anything that will help her shattered state?” “I don’t know, Molly, dear.” He admitted in a resigned tone. “Things were so much easier when she was younger. If she fell over you could kiss her knee and make it better, but this is going to take so much more. Now that they have got their teeth into her, I’m not sure that they will ever stop. As much as we hate it, this type of coverage sells papers and you know what the press are like, especially since Harry’s death. Ginny is the only one who can keep Harry on the front page now and they will do that, no matter how much it’s destroying an innocent and fragile teenage girl.” This was too much. She could feel her body physically shaking on the stairs, this all felt so wrong. She was so far removed from the innocent party in all of this. Yet there was a much more important issue that her parents’ words had raised than her state of mind. She couldn’t let them sit there any longer and mourn their honorary seventh son when he was alive. She could not let people keep thinking that Harry Potter was dead. After what had happened at the camp, there was no way that this was all going to stay quiet for much longer, and surely her parents deserved to hear this bit of news from her and not read a distorted version of it in the Daily Prophet. Ginny got to her feet to head down the stairs, only to pause as her father’s new words greeted her and made her feel worse than the lowest dregs in society. “At least we’ll know more what we are dealing with when Ron gets back from camp.” Guilt swam through every inch of her body. “And then we will do whatever it takes, just like we’ve always done.” Ginny held onto the rail as these words sung in, in order to stop herself from falling down the stairs. Tightening her grip on the banister so that the colour of her hand paled to white, she took several quick shallow breaths as she attempted to regain her composure. She had let things get to such a state that Ron had been forced to take one of his very limited days off work to go to camp instead of spending it with Hermione. Despite the fact that the two had got engaged last month, they seemed to have very little time to spend together and now her brother had chosen to devote that time to her. Any fears of what Ron might see and hear were far outweighed by guilt; just because her relationship had collapsed did not mean that Ron’s should as he ignored Hermione’s needs for hers. Hastily she made her way down the stairs. She was not sure how she was going to do this, but it was about time she faced everything that had happened head on and that meant telling them everything. It meant telling them that Harry had proposed and explaining that her last major act in the war had been rejecting him. It meant coming clean to her parents about the fact that she had considered ending the pain of her life fourteen times in the last year and had come very close to calling things a day on a sunny day by the Hogwarts Lake in June. It meant saying that she had caused the death of a friend and most importantly that she knew that Harry was alive. She had seen him, spoken to him and then run away from him. “Mum, Dad,” she said as she stumbled into the room. “Ginny!” both of them replied instantly. “I need to talk to you,” her voice was shaking with nerves and this was being reflected throughout her entire body. “And when I say that,” she gulped, attempting to swallow her fears, “I mean talk. And you’ve got to let me do that, otherwise, I don’t think I’ll have the courage to do this again.” “Sit down,” her mother encouraged with a small smile, “I’ll put the kettle on.” Once again she felt like she had been magically pulled over to one of the wooden chairs, just as she had done three months ago in this very kitchen. As she took her place around the old kitchen table, her mother started fussing around with the kettle and three mugs. Ginny stopped and watched her for a couple of minutes, feeling reassured that despite everything that had happened, some things would never change and her mum would do all she could to make her feel loved and supported. Yet it was her father’s gaze that brought her back to the reality of the situation. Arthur Weasley sat very still as he intently looked into her eyes and held her gaze, refusing to let it shift. Many people outside the Weasley family believed Molly Weasley to be the strong and dominant voice in the household, but in these situations, it was her father that always showed his strength as he took control. “Is this about the Prophet?” “Kind of,” Ginny replied softly, dropping her gaze before she forced herself to return to looking back into her father’s brown eyes, “but like you’ve always said, that’s just tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping.” She felt her dad give her hand a small squeeze as she did her best to give him a small smile. “This all really goes much deeper than that.” Her dad waited for his wife to sit down next to him and cupped her hand in his, before he spoke to his youngest child. “I suspected as much.” He spoke in a soft but powerful voice. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Ginny took a deep breath, she had been in this situation before and that night had been very hard. She had sat with her parents when she was the tender age of eleven and explained everything that had happened in her first year at school. It was a night that had drawn on all their emotions and it wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that she had headed to bed, drained and exhausted but feeling loved and supported as she made the first step to putting those hellish memories behind her. The kitchen was deathly quiet for the next two hours as her parents kept to their word and let her explain everything. She started with her escape from Hogwarts in her sixth year and not missed a detail, feeling or emotion until she reached her arrival back at The Burrow. It had been far from the easiest moment of her life; she had felt as emotionally drained by it as the talk she had had at eleven. Yet she had found a certain level of relief as she finally spoke of all her hopes, fears and regrets. Just talking of everything had helped lift the suffocating hold that had overtaken her. The report of her experiences had not been easy to hear for her parents either. They were clearly struggling to comprehend everything that their daughter had been through on her own, as she rejected all support. The upset on her mother’s face had been clear to see. While she was positive at parts of her story she could see tears resting in her father’s eyes. Yet despite this he had not let go of her hand. “I’m so sorry,” Ginny whispered as she finished her explanation of events. Silence filled the kitchen for several long moments which seemed to go on for hours, before her mother slowly got out of her seat. She made her way round the table and sunk to her daughter’s height, as she pulled her into a tight hug; a hug that offered so much support and love, saying much more than a million reassuring words would have done. It was a hug which, unlike a week a go, Ginny returned as she started to deem herself worthy, for the first time in years, of the love that she was offered. Her mother seemed for understand her feelings as she placed a small kiss on the cusp of her head between her forehead and hairline. “You have nothing to be sorry about.” Molly said fiercely. “You have done nothing wrong.” Ginny glanced over her mother’s shoulder, “Dad?” “Your mum’s right ,Ginny. You’ve done nothing that other people in your position wouldn’t have done, which may not mean that you have always made the right choices throughout the last two years, but at the same time means that you are not to blame for anything that has happened and should not be feeling guilty.” He paused briefly as he offered a small nod to Molly, who softly broke their embrace. “There is one very important thing that you need to work out right now, and this could change the rest for you life for ever.” “Which is?” Ginny asked apprehensively. “What you plan to do now.” Ginny’s eyes softly fluttered open, barely hours after they had closed from the night before. Yesterday had been a long day, and today promised to be even longer after they had located the last fragment of Voldemort’s soul and planned to set out and destroy both it and the man today. She turned her head softly to look at Harry. He looked so peaceful and untroubled as he slept. Right now she would give anything to pull the covers over their heads, cast a Fidelius Charm over them and stay in his arms for the rest of her life. She let out a small sigh. As blissful as that may seem at the moment, it wasn’t the right thing to do. Their selfish moments of pleasure would no doubt come back to haunt them as the reports of Voldemort’s deed and the terror that reigned through Britain as they thought purely of themselves. Last night had been amazing in more ways than one. Lying in Harry’s arms all night had made her feel so strong, loved and protected, as if nothing bad could ever happen to her while she was in those arms. And, if they were lucky, this would just be the first of many mornings that they woke lying in the same bed because as long as they both survived this mess, she could not think of one good reason, why she would not be waking up at Harry’s side for the rest of her life. She watched as Harry opened his eyes. He smiled at her as he reached for his glasses that were lying beside the bed. “Morning,” he whispered quietly as he pulled her closer to him. She let her head rest on his chest. She could hear and feel every breath that he took as if it was his last. If this was what post war life promised, she could hardly wait for it. “Morning,” she echoed his words. “Last night was, well, hmm,” she said struggling for words to describe the night’s events, “well, wonderful.” Harry grinned at her, “Yeah,” he agreed, “I hope Ron never learns Legilimency.” She felt her face flush as she let out a small nervous laugh, “I hope so too, but I bet he and Hermione have been up to the same thing last night.” She forced cheeriness into her voice, “I mean, how else would you want to spend what could be your last night, if not with the person you love?” A silence filled the room, that spoke their feelings louder and clearer than any words could have done as she let Harry keep a strong hold on her. Whether they stayed in each others arms for mere minutes or for hours, she would never know. The one thing that she did know, though, was that it was the perfect start to what could be their last day together and something that neither of them were willing to let go. “We best get a move on,” she said reluctantly as she heard a noise from the next room and broke his hold on her. Wrapping the covers around her body, she made her way to stand up. “Listen, Ginny, there’s something I need to tell you before we leave this room.” He took her hand in his and held it tightly, “No matter what happens today, the best moments of my life have been with you at my side and despite all this you have made me the happiest man alive.” He smiled softly. “I love you, Ginny, and nothing is ever going to stop that.” “What do you plan to do?” Arthur repeated his words, drawing his daughter out of her trance. “I plan to go back and fight for Harry.”
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