I'll Remember
A Harry Potter fanfic
Rated PG-13 for character death
Angst/Romance
That day was the worst of my life.
I wasn't actively there when it happened. I wanted so much to be with you then, but you wouldn't let me. You said you wouldn't be able to fight if you had to worry about me. So I did what I was told, like I always do. I stayed behind while you went to face Voldemort.
I couldn't stand to be useless. I wanted more then anything to stand beside you as you fought him, but you said I was too gentle, too kind-hearted to kill even a wizard as evil as Voldemort. I realize now that you were right. I could never kill anyone. I just don't have it in me. That fateful day, I was in the hospital wing, helping Madam Pomfrey with the wounded. I may not have been fighting, but it was better then sitting in my room waiting for you to return to me. At least I was helping with the war.
I wasn't actually there when it happened. But Ron told me about it afterwards. I'll never forget the look on my brother's face when he dragged in Hermonie, unconscious, her bushy brown-gold hair matted with blood that ran down her face and stained the front of her robe the same color as my hair. Ron was so covered in mud you couldn't even tell his hair was the sane flame-red as mine. Under the muck and grime, he was deathly pale, drained from the battle.
I ran to get Madam Pomfrey as Ron dragged Hermione to a bed and laid her gently down. Later, after a tired and hagged Madam Pomfrey had healed Hermione and she lay sleeping, Ron told me everything that had happened.
They had taken Voldemort by surprise, but the causalities for our side were still great. Many good wizards and witches died. Including Colin Creevy and Luna Lovegood, two of my best friends. But that pain was nothing compared to what came next.
Ron told me that you three confronted Voldemort by yourselves, a little ways from the battle. Hermione ducked to avoid a spell aimed at her, but wasn't fast enough to miss the boulder Voldemort levitated and threw at her. It glanced off the side of her head and hit Ron in the arm, pinning him to the ground. They were both out of the fight.
It was now up to you. One on one. Just the way Voldemort wanted it.
What a sight you two must've been! Lord Voldemort, Heir of Slytherin, and Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, wands held before them like swords, brilliant flashes of colored light as spells were cast and blocked and recast. The ultimate battle of Light and Dark magic.
In the end, your wand was knocked from your hand and skidded across the ground, too far out of reach. Voldemort loomed overhead, his wand pointed straight at you. His eyes glinted evilly as he prepared to claim his final victory.
And then you did it.
With a last, desperate burst of speed, you launched yourself at him, knocked his wand from his hand.
And both of you went tumbling over the forgotten cliff, plunging onto the rocks below.
Lord Voldemort was gone.
Even in Death, Harry Potter had won.
The wizarding world both rejoiced and mourned that day. Rejoiced that the Dark Lord was no more. And mourned that Harry Potter had to meet the same fate.
Ron held me as I cried. Cried for you, cried for Colin and Luna, cried for me, cried for the world. Because the War was not over. Voldemort was gone, but the remaining Death Eaters would want revenge.
They would come for us. I knew it, Ron knew it, Hermione knew it.
And come they did.
They came a week later, in the dead of night, their natural element. A party of a half dozen came to the Burrow in the dead of night. We were asleep when they came. I awoke to find the wand of a black-robed Death Eater jabbed in my face. We were all rounded up and marched outside. Father tried to put up a fight and was cut down far too easily. Mother, Ron, the twins, Percy and me were lined up side my side for the firing squad. Mother's eyes were wet with tears, but she held her head high and did let them fall. I absentmindedly wondered where Bill was at this moment, and hoped he was not alone when he heard he was the last surviving member of the Weasley family. I closed my eyes and waited for death.
It never came.
Help came from the most unexpected person possible: Draco Malfoy.
Draco killed the Death Eaters and then told us to take him to Dumbledore. Draco was to become a Death Eater that very night. But after Lucius Malfoy had had his wife killed to prove to Voldemort his loyalty, and to use her blood in a Dark Magic spell, Draco had come to hate him and he refused to follow his father down the path of the Dark Side. Being the son of Voldemort's right hand man, Draco held invaluable information, all of which he gave to Dumbledore. Names of Death Eaters, hideouts, everything.
With Draco's information, the Minstary of Magic hunted down the remaining Death Eaters. The ones who survived were imprisoned in Azkaban, and sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss.
We won.
That was five years ago.
Everything is different now. Better. The Dark Days are over.
Ron and Hermione got married a year after the battle. They have a three-year-old son and another on the way. He has the trademark flaming red Weasley hair. They named him Harry.
Professor McGonagall is now Headmaster of Hogwarts. Dumbledore is officially retired, but you know old Dumbledore, he somehow finds a way to poke his nose into everything at Hogwarts, bless him.
I'm the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. I start next semester. And tomorrow everything changes again. Tomorrow I'll no longer be Ginny Weasley, innocent schoolgirl and girlfriend of the late Harry Potter. Tomorrow, I'll give up my maiden name.
Please try to understand, Harry. I loved you so much. Part of me still does. After all, you were my first.
Ever since you died, I've been so alone, in so much pain. Without you, life just didn't seem worth it. I even tried to kill myself once. But I have to move on, Harry. I have to live my life.
I love him, and I know he loves me too. It's not the same thing you and I had, but I suppose love feels different each time, with different people.
He's what saved me. He pulled me back from the dark pits of depression. I love him, but I'll never forgot you.
Ginny Weasley places a white rose on the grave of Harry Potter, and then turns and walks to the silver-haired man waiting at the other end of the graveyard, not looking back. If she had, she would have seen a translucent hand pick up the rose and the ghost of a raven-haired boy, smiling.