A/N: In all honesty, I wrote this because I like saying the word sneeze and because it was three in the morning and I'd just OD-ed on G/H stories. So basically, I have no excuse and it was fun and I'd do it again if I got the chance. Stop accusing me, good lord can't you see I just confessed?!?! Er…I mean…read on!! Oh, and the breaks are at...well, basicaly where ever I felt like putting them. Most of my stuff reads better if you go slow and the little ---'s help me to break it up so it works better. Yeah.
Disclaimer: I own very little, and the stuff I do own I certainly wouldn't post.
If felt strange, she realized, to be standing there looking for a body. She was finally free, finally safe and no longer hunted. But the first thing she did as a free woman was search for a body.
The rubble in front of her smoked; toppled walls and shattered glass strewn aimlessly around smoldering ash. The air was rank and thick with soot and spilt blood. The air at all the other ruins had been the same.
Over years worth of fighting, she'd gone on so many searches for dead loved ones it had become almost commonplace. Percy was gone and so was Bill. Both taken by dementors under the Dark Lord's rule. Her father, Arthur, was in critical condition at Saint Mungo's again.
But there were so many more…Dumbledore, Hagrid, Hermione's mother, Semis, Lavender, Neville…and now Harry.
Side stepping rubble, it felt like any other search. Smoke filled her eyes, blood and grim which she'd not taken the time to wash off encrusted her body, wounds she hadn't healed stung and her mind was blank with the shock of it all. It felt like any other battle.
But it had been the end. It had been the battle that freed the world of Voldemort.
She had dreamt of it for so long that it seemed almost anti-climatic now, standing in the shell of a decimated muggle hospital.
It was, she reflected, not perhaps the brightest move on her part, but she had had no choice.
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Exactly a week ago, she'd been the happiest person in the world. He'd stood there, inches from her under the trees at the park by private drive and spoken to her very seriously.
"I'm probably the most dangerous wizard in the world for you to be acquainted with." He had put a hand to her mouth to stop her from denying it. "It's been eight years of this…this fighting Ginny. It has to end. We've run out of moves." Her throat had constricted with unshed tears, both then and now. "I will have to face him again and I wont come back until I've made an end of it. I know it's not fair of me to ask but…Ginny, I couldn't stand to die and know I hadn't asked you to marry me. I love you."
She hadn't been able to say yes. She hadn't been able to say anything. Her voice had disappeared beneath a wave of emotion, so she threw her arms around his neck and made up for it with a kiss.
When she felt her voice return and the tears begin to fall she wrapped her arms even more tightly around him and whispered in his ear. "You had better come back, Harry Potter, or the wedding's off."
He laughed and promised.
That day she was happy. Too bad it couldn't last.
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While they stood there, still caught up in each other, they'd been attacked. She couldn't say how many there had been, but far more than she and Harry could handle alone. She couldn't keep track of how many times they attacked and defended. She could only vaguely recall being thrown thought the air, wand knocked from her hand.
That had been the end; Harry had run. Somehow he'd gotten them both away. When she awoke they were sprawled, bloody and broken, in a dank ally. He was unconscious and she had no wand, but, hard as it was, she made do with his.
There had been so many fights, so many horrendous injuries; she'd become relatively skilled at healing. But, with a wand she wasn't sure of, she only did the things she absolutely had to.
And then she had ventured into the unknown and took Harry to a muggle hospital. It was discomforting, knowing she had to get someone with at least basic medical training while she went back for her wand but knowing that she could tell them that wand-wielding wizards had attacked them.
In all the hustle and bustle of people yelling completely random things like 'BP' and the seemingly endless calls for something or someone named 'stat', she ducked into the bathroom and Apparated back for her wand.
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He first task, that of mending Harry, was both alarmingly simple and painfully terrifying. The easy part was getting him alone and unsupervised. It only took a small fire at the nurse's station and a simple locking spell.
The next part was far more dangerous. She was exhausted and after using Harry's wand, hers felt too light and slow. She did everything she knew to do, everything she thought could be at all helpful. Everything but wake him up.
She couldn't bear to. He looked so peaceful asleep. With his hair poked up funny and his eyes closed, he looked like a little boy who should be playing wizard chess and sliding down banisters rather than one of the most famous Auror and Quidditch seekers of all time. She didn't have the heart to wake him up and put him back into this war a second sooner than she had to.
So she let him sleep and went outside in the pouring rain to make the third phone call of her life. Hermione had come and fixed it all.
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The hospital was emptied, memories were altered, aurors were posted and Ginny was left in Harry's room to watch him sleep while she nursed the beginnings of a cold.
She'd sneezed. After all the comings and goings around the building, that's all it had taken. She sneezed and had already said 'said thank you' before she realized who had said 'bless you.'
She jumped him, not caring that her hair was still wet or that Ron was right outside the door. She'd never been happier to see those green eyes before in her life, not even when he'd saved her in the chamber. She kissed him soundly.
"Well," he said, breathless with mischief. "If that's what happens when I say 'bless you', you should sneeze more often." But then he ruined it be saying, "You're dripping on me. And why are we in a muggle hospital of all places?"
So she explained. And then they planed, making that small hospital their temporary headquarters.
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Two days ago, the attacks had begun in earnest. And last night…
Last night Harry had faced Voldemort.
It had been a glorious effort on everyone's part, but in the end it had come down to the marked one and his marker.
She'd lain there, half buried by fall masonry and watched. It was morbidly fascinating, watching the life and death struggle and knowing she could do nothing to help. At the end, their had been and explosion. They had both disappeared into the flame.
The man she loved and the creature she hated, both taken by the same fiery blast of rage and wizardry.
It had spelled the end of the building, the final walls toppled in and the remaining roof crushed down on their heads.
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Charlie had pulled her out and dragged her away screaming. She was one of the last survivors to be found, he said. There was no one left who had lived.
They hadn't even found his remains.
So she went back, she was the only one who did. She didn't know where it had been anymore, that blinding light, so she searched everywhere.
He's gone, Ginny. Let it go, Ginny. You won't find him, you can't bring him back, move on Ginny.
She was searching for a body.
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Crying made it harder to see but she couldn't help it. She could feel her face tingling with blotchy redness and her breath rasped over dry sobs. Try as she might, there were no more tears left but she couldn't stop.
She stood there shaking, wishing she never had to look at that vile place again but never wanting to leave. He was there somewhere, dead and mangled, but she wouldn't leave him.
She sneezed.
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"Bless you."
Her heart stopped. Her breath stopped. Her world stopped. As if her body weren't her own, she turned.
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Everything started too fast. She felt her head spin and she knew her knees would never hold her up and she would fall but then…
But then he was holding her up, holding her too tight for it to be a dream or a ghost.
"Harry?" She gasped, squeezing him tighter than she had previously thought possible. "Harry?"
"Hey, I promised, didn't I?"
She'd been wrong about having no tears left.