When I collapse, I immediately hear footsteps pounding from all over the house, and then a loud "I got him!" right before she appears in my doorway. As her gaze sweeps over me, I imagine her pity as a living, pulsing thing—it would be flames, just as she is, but it would be a cloying, suffocating purple as opposed to her vivid reds and oranges.
Her hand on my bare shoulder jerks me out of my thoughts, shocking me enough—when is the last time someone touched me of their own will?—that I lose control of my emotions, always bubbling beneath the surface.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!"
It bursts out of me—not against my will exactly, just… stronger than I had intended. As soon as it is out, I scrabble up off the floor, my surge of anger-fueled adrenaline lasting just long enough to get me to the chair in front of the window. Even the ancient fight-or-flight hormone is no match for death, I observe absently. Meanwhile, my main consciousness remains focused on her. I can feel her moving around behind my turned head. Only when I hear her take a deep breath, as if to start talking, do I speak. My voice is short and clipped. I hardly recognize it, let alone the things it is saying, seemingly with no direction from me.
"Don't. We both know it's hopeless. I can't fix me. You can't fix me. Nobody can."
She interrupts me, like I had known she would. Like she always does, when I get to talking like this.
"Harry. Don't say that. You're not—broken, like some sort of toy or… or something. You're just—"
"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT? ARE YOU EVEN LOOKING AT ME? I CAN'T EVEN PUT ON A FUCKING PAIR OF JEANS WITHOUT FUCKING COLLAPSING IN PAIN!" My voice softens of its own accord, but I continue. "My body's broken. My mind's broken. I'm broken, Gin."
This has the effect I desired. She is quiet. Then—unexpectedly—comes her voice. It is halting, as if the words are parting from her mouth without her full acknowledgement, and quiet, but it is sure. And it is that surety, echoed in those words, that resonates with me.
"You know, Harry, that you are still… you. Just because Voldemort has… been inside you, doesn't mean you're—contaminated in some way." I feel myself flinch, and know she saw it, but—how does she always pierce the heart of the matter? "In fact, it seems to me that it should… make you stronger." I don't even try to hide my reaction from her this time, and I know my grimace twists my face into something hideous. "No, Harry. Don't turn away from me. Hear me out. Please." I cannot bring myself to speak or even make a gesture that would tell her to go on, but I hold still and let her take it as acquiescence. "Yes, you're hurt, and yes, you're scarred, but—you made it, Harry. You survived. After all that happened to you, all that you went through, you're fine—"
"I'M NOT FINE, GIN! I'm—filthy, and I can still feel him, where he used to be—and if I let you touch me, let you comfort me, then he'll get you, he'll get you too, and I CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN! Don't you understand? It's one thing for him to take me—that's fine, I deserve it—but I can't—won't let him have you. Not you. You—you're—"
"What am I, Harry? What am I to you? Why am I so important?" Her voice is soft, but her eyes are burning, like fire, like Fawkes…
"You're the phoenix, Gin. 'Out of the ashes of our hopelessness comes the fire of our hope.' If I lose you, then I lose hope. I lose—everything."
And suddenly she is right there, kneeling right in front of me, and moving closer—"Then don't lose me, Harry. Don't fight against me. Fight for me." And then she is kissing me, and it's like being reborn and seeing the world anew, and at the same time being lit on fire, but it's good fire, it's warm and comforting and yet feels like it's going to burn me out and leave me a shell on the scorched carpet, and—NO! I WON'T LET HIM GET HER!
And I'm trying to pull away, but she's not letting me, she's coming after me, tugging me back down towards her and capturing my lips with her own, and it feels so good.
And—finally—I manage to wrench myself from her grasp. She protests immediately, but it is worth it.
"NO, Harry! Come back—"
But suddenly the desire overcomes me to know, exactly—"How do you do it, Gin?"
She pauses, and blinks, and then gives up on trying to follow my thought process. "How do I do what?"
I shrug my shoulders and start a rhythm with my fingers—my new equivalent of pacing, but without the pain it takes to move my legs. "Touch me. Look at me. Be near me. Whatever. How do you do it without being—revolted?"
As I turn my head, I see her expression—and, for the first time, she looks horrified. I draw in a sharp breath, for what if I was wrong? What if I do disgust her, remind her of—
"Oh, Harry, is that really what you think? I don't—none of us—you don't sicken us—" And suddenly she switches tracks, catching me off guard when she grabs my hand. "See this scar, Harry?" she touches my right thumb, running her own thumb along it and it sends a painful shiver down my spine.
"Yeah? What about it?"
"Do you remember how you got it?"
"No, but I don't see—"
"A gnome bit you. This one here," she says, turning my hand over, and pointing to my wrist, "That's from when Hedwig caught you too sharply with her talons. That one's from that cow Umbridge," she says, skimming over my hand where the still evident "I must not tell lies" scars were, looking incredibly angry.
She pokes me in the knee next, gently, with her index finger. "The one on your knee is from when Dudley threw his baseball bat at you when you were seven."
I look at her, shocked, and cannot do anything but wait to see if she will continue.
She does.
"The one on your shoulder blade is from when Ron dropped Crookshanks on your head and he didn't land right," she says. Any other time, she would have laughed at the memory—but not here. Not now. "Let's see—this one is from when Hermione tried to teach you how to brew a potion in the common room—I forget which one. This is from when you blew up your Aunt Marge and her wine glass shattered everywhere." She is pointing this time to my forearm, where a tiny, pearl-white scar is barely visible, and I realize I have forgotten about that one myself. How on earth could Ginny possibly have remembered?
"Do you see what I'm trying to say, Harry?"
"No," I retort shortly. All this—touching—is making me uneasy.
She takes my hands in hers. I make myself focus on her next words, and not the fact that she's caressing the scar on my thumb again. "Just—that your scars make you who you are. You wouldn't be the Harry that we all know today if you hadn't been through those experiences that caused those scars."
"Not all my experiences have resulted in scars," I say, but my voice is less clipped. Now, it's just—quiet.
"No, but these are just the physical scars." She is looking at the one on my arm. "Experiences cause emotional scars too, which is what this one is doing to you," she says, reaching around me to skim my spine. I close my eyes, waiting for the pain, but I realize it has lessened considerably and think Ginny has taken her hand away. I look down, but no, she is still touching me and it's not hurting. "While you may remember some of the stories behind these scars fondly, like Ron's inability to give objects to people instead of dropping them on their head, some of your scars are going to bring back horrible memories, but they still make you who you are and personally, I wouldn't change a thing about you," she says, hanging her head. She doesn't let go of my hands, though, which are back between us now.
"But—I see the looks on their faces. They pity me."
"Not pity, no, just—we're sorry this happened to you, Harry. Sorry that on top of everything else, now you can't even run away from your own thoughts, when you need to."
And then, as I am sitting there, totally immobile with shock, she leans down and again catches my lips in her own—and again the feeling washes over me—the one of light and fire—
And suddenly, I understand. Her fire, the flames of the phoenix, won't burn me out and leave me just a shell—it will burn out the shadows, Voldemort's shadows, and the pain of the scars he left on my body and in my mind. Like the controlled burn of a forest, that kills that dead plants and leaves the live ones more room to grow, she will let me be me.
So I kiss her back.
Her warmth envelops me, and—for the first time since the Last Battle—the pain is gone. All I can feel is—Ginny.
"The phoenix hope
can wing her way through the desert skies
and still defying fortune's spite
revive from ashes—and rise."
[4]