A/N: Okay, how long has it been? I don't know what's going on, but this is the first decent thing I've written in months, so I thought I'd better post it sharpish. Anyway, let me know if the messed up time sequence is confusing, or if it works...
Thanks, guys.
Seven Had Always Been the Magic Number
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It had been a while, to say the least. He brought his hands to his face, his palms sweating so that he left grey streaks of moisture when he dropped his fingers again. The mirror in front of him cackled in delight, taking no time to point out the mark it had left on his cheek. He sighed.
Harry Potter couldn't have looked much worse, really.
Actually, he probably could have, but it was irrelevant at this point. The once white shirt wrapped tightly around his torso was smeared with mud and ripped in several places, leaving great gaping holes that left parts of his chest uncovered. His jeans were dirty and tatty, huge slashes forming wide slits where his knees protruded slightly. And, as always, his hair was ruffled and completely unmanageable, though he didn't linger on that particular feature for too long. It was part of the legacy of being a Potter.
She, Ginny, was waiting for him in the next room. For an explanation, or perhaps an exclamation of love. He wasn't sure what he was going to say. He'd thought his major stresses in life had been over two hours before. Defeating the greatest dark wizard of all time had seemed such a challenge that morning. But now, this? This had to be the hardest thing he'd ever done. Or, rather, tried to do.
He cleared his throat, nervously adjusting the hem of his shirt in front of the mirror.
"Don't wear yourself out, dear." The mirror wheezed. Harry's eyes narrowed, and he immediately stopped fiddling with his clothes.
"Shut it."
"Oooh, aren't we witty today?" It taunted. Harry turned away, ignoring it.
Get a grip, Potter, he thought. Save the world – hey, why not? – but can't bloody talk to the girl you sodding-well love. Can't bloody tell her you love her and want to frigging hold her for the rest of her goddamn life.
"When I think about being with you, I get dizzy," he tried. "When I think about you, I realise how stupid the whole thing was…" he shook his head, "God, no. Okay… when I look into your eyes, it's like the whole world stops and there's just me and you, and you have to believe me when I say that nothing could ever change that. I love you so much, and the only thing that was keeping me going while I was fighting, the only thing stopping me from just giving up, was the chance that I'd come back and you'd be waiting for me."
"Oh, very good," the mirror told him smugly from behind him. "Not at all melodramatic, uncreative or rehearsed."
"My God, would you shut the h—" Harry spun on his heels back towards the mirror, fully intent on throwing something at the nosy bugger, but as he turned, he was distinctly aware of a body near the doorway, and as his vision steadied again, he saw-
"Ginny."
Nothing else came out.
He felt like he was seeing the sky for the first time. She was beautiful, beautiful in every way possibly imaginable. Her eyelids fluttered, and a tear fell heavily from her eyes.
"What made you think I'd wait, Harry?" Ginny asked him. He opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He couldn't believe that he could actually need to be near another human being, to crave their touches like breath. There was a long silence before Harry replied.
"So you heard that, then, huh," Harry said, and when she didn't smile he turned solemn. "I didn't take it for granted that you'd be waiting." He said, and bowed his head to look at the floor. "I just hoped you would be."
"But I never said that," Ginny whispered, so quietly that Harry could not have been sure he'd heard her correctly. She looked terrified, creases forming next to her eyes. Suddenly he realised how tired she looked.
"I know you didn't. I just… I hoped."
"Sometimes," Ginny said after a long silence, "It's best not to."
"What do you mean?" Harry stared at her blankly. Dread was rising in waves from his stomach, but he didn't want to let himself properly interpret what she'd said incase he was wrong. He had to be wrong. This couldn't be happening.
"I didn't think you'd be coming back," Tears were falling freely now. Harry resisted the urge to step forward and envelop her in his arms. "I didn't want to hope and then have you not come back at all. And then Ron…" But she trailed off, turning white. Harry swallowed. He didn't come back here to be reminded of this. He didn't come back to grieve.
But then again, he thought stupidly, how could he return to the Weasleys and expect to not have to deal with this at all?
"Ron fought well. It took fifteen Death Eaters to…" And he found he couldn't finish his sentence either.
"And how many Death Eaters did it take you kill you, Harry?" Ginny asked, suddenly defiant. Harry stared back at her, nonplussed.
"I'm not dead."
"Really? For the past two years, you might as well have been."
Harry stopped in shock. "I was-"
"Yeah, I know," Ginny replied, building steam. "Saving all Mankind. Showcasing morality." She laughed, but it was a mirthless laugh, full of irony and regret. "Did you ever consider, Harry, that it's entirely possible to distinguish between the moral thing to do, and the right thing to do? Doing what's moral is not always the same as doing what's right."
"Ginny, you know full well that I couldn't contact you. Think for a second! How stupid would it have been for me to send you an owl? Do you think that they wouldn't come after you if I had?"
"See, that's the twisted logic that got you here in the first place, Harry. I was always involved, even if you thought in your own little world that you could stop it from happening. Of course you couldn't. It was always a risk. But you felt the need to play the bloody hero, again and again."
"I was trying to protect you."
"You were trying to make yourself look good!"
"You're completely off the mark, and out of line. I just saved the entire sodding wizarding world. Give me a goddamnn break, would you?"
"No!" Ginny told him, a fresh wave of tears coming to her eyes. "I'm not everyone else, Harry. You think I give a damn that you're the Chosen One? You're not a bloody brand, you're not a label. Harry Potter is the Chosen One – but I don't know him. I know you."
"And who am I, exactly?"
Ginny took a moment, and sighed.
"The kid who I met in my First Year, who saved me from Tom Riddle."
"That was Voldemort, so I had to-" But Ginny paid no attention.
"The kid who fought Dementors in my Second Year. The boy who won the Triwizard Tournament. The man," Ginny whispered, "who kissed me in front of my brother and lived to tell the tale."
"That was all Harry Potter, Gin. Saving you, fighting the Dementors, winning the Triwizard – it was all me."
"You weren't the same as Harry Potter, Harry, The Boy Who Lived isn't who you are. The boy that I remember from Hogwarts, the one who did all those things… he wasn't a hero, he was heroic. There's a difference," Ginny sighed, crossing her arms and turning away so that Harry wouldn't be able to see her cry harder. "But I just don't know where he's gone."
---
Seven Months Earlier
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"We're good." Harry said cavalierly. "We're very very good."
Hermione grinned back at him. "Yes, Harry, we're very very good. Better than Ron, in any case."
"Excellent. Should I be doing some sort of evil laugh here? Bwahaha, that type of thing?"
"I think you can leave the evil laugh alone, Harry." Hermione replied, shaking her head. Harry pursed his lips and nodded.
"Maybe it's a good idea for all our sakes."
"Hmm."
They were seated next to willow trees, leaning against the trunks for support. Ron was still inside the house, looking for signs of a disturbance, but Harry and Hermione had finished their areas a good half hour ago, and so had brought their lunches outside for some peace. The pair sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, until Ron came tumbling out of the front door, looking flushed and exhausted.
"I can't believe you got yours done so quickly! Harry, your parent's house is a bloody maze."
"Yeah," Harry laughed. "Good on 'em. Kept you busy for a good long while - what more could we ask for?"
Ron punched Harry lightly on the arm and finished his sandwich in two bites.
"Ron, I think we'd better go and grab those textbooks we found, don't you?" Hermione said, shooting Ron a meaningful look. Ron raised one eyebrow in disbelief.
"What? I just finished doing my area, you've had about half an hour to rest—" But the look on Hermione's face got more forceful, and Ron's expression suddenly cleared as he came to a moment of realisation. "Yeah, right, well… we'll go do that, Harry. Bye."
Harry shook his head as he watched Hermione and Ron make their way back inside the house.
"If you wanted to go away to snog," Harry yelled playfully, "you could have just said so!"
There was a pause before Ron's indignant voice floated back to him.
"Shut up!"
Harry shook his head again, allowing his thoughts to wander. He was pleased for the two of them, finally getting it together, but, invariably, seeing them together made him think of Ginny. Crying, even in a very manly way, wasn't something he could afford to do right now. But still. God, he missed her so much. It was taking all his will power not to pick up a quill and write to her, even if under the pretence of wanting to know how the rest of the family is as well.
He knew he couldn't send her an owl. It could be so easily traced, it could be intercepted, it could even be an animagus Death Eater. No amount of selfish wanting would be worth the ramifications that those events could have. It was unfortunate, but he knew that was just the way the story goes.
But, God.
Harry stood up, stretched, and made his way over to the entrance to the house that his parents had lived in, the house that he was supposed to have been raised in, determined to catch Hermione and Ron red handed. He didn't look around, he didn't scan the front garden with the willow trees, but even if he had, he still mightn't have noticed the shadow of the girl standing, watching him, her flaming red hair disguised by a cap and her brilliant green eyes hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
---
Five Months Earlier---
"I've lost more than any of you."
There were faces staring up at him from all angles: faces of solemnity, of grief, of weariness. Faces whose expressions he didn't want to be looking at, because they were an exact mirror of how he was feeling, giving him the distinct impression that it would be okay if he lost face a little bit, if he let his walls down and allowed the confusion and fatigue – God, he was so tired – to just show, even a little bit. But he knew he couldn't. Leaders had to be strong; they had to be fearless.
"I know this is hard," Harry continued, shaking his head angrily. "I know that you're tired, that you want to go home, you just want it to be over. But you don't know pain like I do. I'm not even talking about physical pain – you just can't even comprehend-" And he fell silent.
From somewhere near his left, Hermione spoke up. "It's been a long journey, and we've got so much more to achieve, yes. But think how much we've already achieved. How much we've already done. We have all but one Horcrux—"
"But the question at hand is, is this plan going to get us the last one?" Ron interrupted Hermione, looking angrily over at Harry.
"I've already gone through this, Ron, we just have to keep—"
"Keep what? Dying?" There was a gasp from around the room, though Harry knew that Ron had just said what everyone else had been longing to voice. "We're losing too much, Harry, and not gaining enough from it."
"This is, without a doubt, the location of the last Horcrux. Without a doubt." Harry told the group at large, after a pause.
There was a long pause in the crowd, the silence occasionally punctured by disbelieving whispers.
"Without a doubt?" Ron said, standing. Harry nodded firmly.
"Without a doubt. I've seen it myself."
Ron sighed, looking down, and then suddenly looked back up at Harry again after a moment.
"In that case," Ron said quietly, "when do we leave?"
Harry almost grinned at him in relief. "You're coming with?"
"I'm coming with."
---
"That's the way our story goes," Hermione would say, later, her cracking voice the only indication of her air of forced calm, to a sea of black robes and swollen eyes and sobbing figures. "He didn't come back."
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Six Months Earlier
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She wandered the halls of Grimmauld place aimlessly, not having anywhere to go or anything to do. The others were off finding another Horcrux – the second last – but it didn't particularly make much difference that no one was with her. She had been forbidden to participate in the war apart from doing the occasional bit of meaningless research (which she suspected she was just given to keep her out of the way), and so people generally ignored her anyway. It was strange at first, as though she was a stranger to her own family, but she soon came to realise that she just wasn't nearly as important as anything else that was going on. She could live with that. She didn't really have much choice.
And then, as they usually did when she found herself alone, her thoughts turned to Harry Potter.
He was doing something, somewhere. She wasn't really sure what. Truthfully, she wasn't sure she really cared. God, he was just being so selfish. He had been forced to choose – the people that didn't know him and merely saw him as some sort of indelible messiah that had come to save them, or the one person who just didn't care what he was – her. No one out there knew who he really was, nor did any of them care that he was a person, but she did; and yet, it was the people who didn't really care about him who got his full attention. She had been there, steadfastly staying put for him, but—
"Oh. I didn't realise anyone else was here," she said suddenly, seeing a shadow moving around in the corner of the kitchen. The figure emerged from the darkness.
"Hey, Gin." Bill Weasley looked down at her from his remarkable height. Ginny hadn't seen him for months, not since his and Fleur's wedding.
"What're you doing here?" she asked him politely, expecting him to either dodge the question or just not answer her at all. So, needless to say, she was a little surprised when he answered,
"Been sent home. Some of the guys got injured."
"Oh. What happened?" Ginny asked, sure that she was pushing her luck.
"Ambush, Gin. Sodding Death Eaters ambushed us." He paused, and sighed deeply. "We're not going to win, Ginny."
"What?" Ginny's eyes widened in shock. She had thought, from the brief snippets of conversation she had managed to catch with Fred and George's Extendable Ears, that the Order was doing well. Getting the job done.
"Harry's doing well. He knows what he has to do, and he's fighting better than most of our Aurors. But three strong fighters combined with hundreds of mediocre fighters can't possibly measure up to a thousand unbelievable fighters. Vol – Vol – Voldemort's army is stronger than ours. We're just not going to win."
Ginny blanched. She had not even considered the possibility of the Order losing.
"But we're the good guys," she said.
"Oh, for God's sake, Ginny! This isn't a bloody fairytale! You think fate or destiny or whatever cares that we're fighting for the right things? It doesn't work that way. Get your goddamnn head out of the clouds, and start realising that that's just the way the story goes!" He paused, breathing heavily, and after a moment looked at Ginny apologetically. "You have to get out of here, Ginny. You have to leave, you have to get away from all this."
"I'm staying right here." She told him passionately, brashly, with the spirit of all the things she'd never thought she'd be.
"Then you're a fool. You'll get killed."
At that point, she didn't care. And she told him so.
---
Three Months Earlier
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Nothing compares to the pain of losing a sibling. This, for the first time in months, had created a likeness between Ginny and Harry. It was as though a light had gone out in the world. Nobody had really realised how important Ron had been to the fight – even Harry, when he was truly honest with himself, could not remember thinking that Ron had been integral. But now that he was suddenly gone, that he'd disappeared from the Earth, it became clear.
He was the glue.
And now, like anything else where the adhesive element has been taken away, the Order was falling apart. Not slowly, and not surely. Harry made a distinction in his mind between the Order that was and the Order that is – the Order that he was a part of now seemed to no longer exist. Where there had once been hope, there was despair. Where there had once been togetherness, there was disarray.
---
"It's not your fault."
Harry shrugged. He'd had similar comments made to him before, of course, and he never really paid all that much attention.
"What happened… it wasn't your fault, Harry. Nobody blames you."
The truth was that everyone blamed him a little, but it was so much easier to say this instead.
"We can still make it, Harry. We can. This is still within our reach."
The trouble was, they were only words. Words can't dull pain, or stem a flow of tears, or warm your body. What were words? When you only have words left, Harry thought, you've got nothing.
---
One Month Earlier
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"This is it. This is the fight." Harry, once again, was standing in front of a crowd. His crowd. The fighters that were on his side. They had been waiting so long for this, focusing their energy on the day that they'd see this final battle happen, but it had come too quickly, too abruptly, too much without warning – and they weren't ready. They looked tired.
"I think we know everything we need to know, Harry," Remus said firmly, coldly. Harry nodded.
"Okay. Okay, let's do this."
So they went. They did it.
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One Week Earlier
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When he had envisioned war, Harry had invariably romanticised it. He made it a glorious battle between good and evil in his mind, the casualties that came from it dying gracefully, patriotically.
There was nothing romantic about it.
There was nothing glorious about it.
There was nothing graceful about it.
There were pools of blood around him, spreading thickly across the floor. There was so much of it. It didn't seem possible that someone could have that much blood in them. He watched on, with horrified wonder, as his colleagues – his friends - fell to the floor, lifeless. So much the opposite of how he had imagined it would be like.
He had soon come to realise, in the midst of all this completely unromantic war, that he knew almost nothing about anything.
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One Day Earlier
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Well, it was over.
Now home to his loving family (which he didn't have) and his beautiful girlfriend (who he hadn't spoken to in months).
He made his way back to London slowly, taking his time to map each step in his mind. He was going back to a place that was no longer home, people who were no longer friends, friends who were no longer living.
He was going back to a place that he kept trying to convince himself had changed while he had been away, but could not, in the end, escape the inevitable fact that it was he who had changed.
And he would arrive, and integrate himself into society, and live a happy and fulfilling life with many children and a beautiful wife, and die in his sleep in old age, peacefully.
But really, this wasn't a fairytale.
And those things didn't happen.
That's just the way the story goes.
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One Hour Later
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"I'm not really all that different to the kid I was before, not really. I've seen things, done things, that maybe I wouldn't have before. But that's just maturity, isn't it? It's growing up."
A pause.
"It's just the way our story went."
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A/N: Please Review