THE ROOM OF FORGOTTEN THINGS

It was an unspoken thing between them that when Ginny was up on the ledge under the largest window, she wanted privacy. Harry knew after years in this large, mysterious room that she was worse off than he was. Maybe it was all the years spent living in the cupboard under the stairs, but Harry didn't miss the sun as much as Ginny did. He suspected she went to sit in the weak light and think about how much she was missing.

Generally, Harry respected this. He could always whistle for her if he needed her, and Merlin knew there was precious little here that made either of them happy. Ginny deserved all the private moments she wanted, and Harry didn't want to disturb that.

So when he was flying in tight, corkscrew shaped patterns on a rickety old broom (the only type the room provided), and he realized she was up there, he felt a brief moment of guilt. It would have lasted longer, had this feeling not been quickly smothered by surprise and fascination.

She was sleeping, naked, on her stomach in the weak light of the sun. Her long red hair covered her back like a blanket, and brushed the top of her bum. Her head was pillowed in her arms.

Harry swallowed.

When they first got here, they'd been properly modest, but after a few months, with the revenants and everything, it had been less of a big deal to see each other naked. They didn't go running around nude, or anything, but there'd been more than few times Harry'd seen this same bottom. Not in years; once Harry's body started to change, he'd been more careful, especially since a couple quick glances at Ginny told him she wasn't going through the same thing. So he never walked naked to the bathroom, was no longer casual about nudity, and she followed his lead. It was one of those things they just didn't mention.

This was why he was so fascinated by what he saw now. It was the same bottom, but it wasn't. Still small, but curved. Two perfectly curved cheeks, and a shadowy crescent between them. It was creamy in the sunlight shining through the unbreakable window.

Harry's hands tightened around the broom handle. It was a splinter shoving into his thumb that woke him up. He gave his head a shake, and forced his broom around. It was no longer comfortable to be on the broom, and Harry landed. Ginny's bum was still in his mind's eye.

It lodged itself into his brain more effectively than any splinter. Harry tapped his finger with his wand, muttered a spell, and the little chunk of wood yanked itself out. It was followed by a bright drop of crimson. Harry was quick to wipe it up, then set fire to the towel he'd used, not wanting to awaken anything.

Ginny came down an hour later, fully clothed, and more cheerful than she'd been this morning. "Hey, Harry," she said. She came and sat across from him.

"Hey, Ginny," Harry said, smiling. He shoved the image of her bum out of his head. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah," she nodded.

"That dream again?" Harry pressed.

Her hand lifted, and she rocked it back and forth. "Sort of..." she said. "It was different this time." Harry watched the flicker of expressions on her face, relieved when they remained mostly peaceful.

She stretched out her legs. "I would tell you if — if it started happening again."

"Okay," he said. Then he sighed. "Okay."

Ginny nudged his knee with her bare foot. "I promise I would tell you," she said. Her voice was very serious.

A distant roar had them both on their feet, wands drawn, backs together. Harry's breath quickened, and adrenaline surged.

"Did you bleed?" Ginny asked tightly.

"Yeah, but I destroyed it immediately," Harry answered. He couldn't see her, but he knew she nodded. She trusted him, and he'd never lie to her about that.

For long minutes they stood there, quivering with some combination of nerves, adrenaline, and anticipation. "I think it was the wyrm," Harry said, stowing his wand. It did roar in its twilight sleep, and sunlight still filtered through the windows. It was safe. It was only when night fell that it was truly dangerous.

Day and night were different here. Harry remembered that from before. Outside, the cycle of sunrise and sunset governed when people — Muggles and wizards alike — worked or slept. Here, Harry and Ginny could sleep long enough to feel well-rested, but wake up to find it still day, stay up until they were tired again, and sleep, while the light that came in from the windows never changed. And same with night.

Harry sighed, and squinted again at the windows.

Ginny moved forward, and began to renew the wards on their odd little home. The first place they'd built together, cobbled out of stacked furniture, had served them well enough for quite a while. They had no real way of knowing how long they'd been here, of course, but Harry figured it had taken a year, or maybe even two, before they had the magical know-how to build something like it. Harry was still proud of what they'd done.

It was a little house, built on tall, tall stilts. Or so Harry called them, Ginny called them chicken legs. It was three levels of living space, with furniture and everything. The only thing it lacked was a kitchen, but food was provided for them, so they didn't really need that anyway. The building itself was a little crooked, but Ginny'd sighed and said that made it seem more like home, though she didn't know why. Harry entered through their front door, and his eyes wandered over the small touches Ginny made: pillow cushions embroidered with golden snitches, quaffles, and bludgers; a tapestry of a magnificent castle — not Hogwarts — and a dragon flying in restless circles over the turrets; thick blankets and rugs. Harry often thought that he would've just put a few chairs in the room and called it good, but Ginny'd turned it into a place that was not only safe, but relaxing.

Harry threw himself down on the couch as the wards lit up blue, signaling that Ginny's magic had infused them with enough power to keep them safe while they slept. She stood in the doorway as she did it, turned away from him. Harry paused in the act of levitating a stack of old Quidditch Weekly magazines he'd found in a trunk the other day. Her robes were long, and covered her, but shifted and swished when she used her wand. Harry sighed, and turned his attention to Quidditch.

Ginny disappeared for a few minutes, returning with two steaming mugs. Harry already had the issue she'd been reading earlier out on the coffee table, she handed him his tea, and plopped down next to him.

"Look at this, it's Kowalski!" she said. "I know I've heard of him. From before..."

"Who is he?" Harry peered over her shoulder. It was an issue dated 1981, the same year Ginny'd been born.

"He's a Beater," she said. "Played for the Saratoga Ridgebacks in America, look, he'd already done two World Cups in 1981, and I know I remember hearing about him when I was little. I know we talked about it — Quidditch, I mean, a lot."

Her tone was a little desperate.

"I believe you," Harry said quietly. "I know you must've played Quidditch, too, you were at home right away on a broom."

Her shoulders slumped slightly in relief. Then she rolled her eyes a little, and smiled at him. Impossible though it seemed that Harry did not have every feature of her face memorized after years of seeing her and only her day in and day out, he noticed for the first time that her bottom lip was slightly fuller than her top lip.

Of course I noticed that before, Harry told himself.

The rest of the time before they slept was spent reading and chatting about Quidditch. It was one of their traditions — no learning magic, no serious talk before they went to bed. Unless something serious happened, like one of the sepulchral monsters that also made this place their home came too close, they stuck to it.

Ginny stood, stretched, and yawned. "I'm for bed," she said. "Good night, Harry."

"Night, Ginny," said Harry. He watched her leave the room, and clamber up the stairs, then glanced down at the Quidditch magazine he still held in his hands. He wasn't precisely tired yet, but he knew of something he could do that would allow him to relax into sleep.

Right about when Harry's body started to change, he'd gone through a battered old wardrobe and found an equally battered old book called, simply, A Wizard's Guide to Growing Up, by M. Uther Bates. Harry'd known the basics, of course, from his Muggle teachers, and even before hair started growing around his penis, he'd had erections. But they'd started happening all the time, at weird times, and a few times he'd woken to sticky sheets. There had been a time he'd been concerned that being in this strange place had affected his body somehow, had made it go weird. This book explained all the details of what was happening, much to Harry's relief. The moving illustrations had been illuminating, and the brief written sections even more so. He still kept it in a hidden drawer, though he hadn't looked at it in probably years.

Afterward, Harry did not even bother taking down the privacy charms the book had taught him, but fell easily and deeply into sleep. The dream started happily enough; Harry was flying over the castle in the tapestry, beating his wings, and soaring on the updraft. Then he was plummeting; the change was shocking and sudden. Harry was yelling, and then a red-haired man who looked so familiar caught him by the arm, and dragged him up behind him on a broom. "Take that, mate!" and the red-haired man was handing him a wand, but it turned into a rubber chicken when Harry tried to cast a spell...

"Not like that, it's Wingardium Leviooosa, not Leviosa," a bushy-haired witch told him loftily.

Harry tried again, but his wand turned into a club, and a mountain troll advanced on him, screaming at him to "GIVE ME CLUB!"

Then the image of a rat-faced man flickered over his thoughts, and Harry woke up with a start. He sat up in bed, heart pounding, shirt soaked through. His scar hurt like mad, and Harry pressed his fingers against it, rubbing it hard, trying to ease the sting. His white sheets and green coverlet were twisted around his legs. There was a lurching sensation in the vicinity of his stomach that Harry thought was leftover from his dream, and it took a few disoriented moments to realize the house was lurching forward on its stilts.

It was one of Ginny's brilliant ideas, having their little house move. Harry'd enchanted the stilts so they wouldn't destroy anything they landed on, but the movement had been all her.

Still feeling groggy, Harry dressed for the day, and took the stairs two at a time in his haste to leave the dream fully behind him.

HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP

Ginny lurched down the stairs, nearly tripping down the last two when the chicken legs attached to their house climbed up something particularly tall. She caught herself on the rail, and waited out a few more steps their moving house made. Then, wrapping her dressing gown around her shoulders, she moved forward.

"I smell coffee!" she said in greeting. It was with unfeigned delight that she accepted a mug of the stuff from Harry's hands. Another lurch, and a bit of it sloshed on her hands. "Ouch, damn it!" The sting faded quickly. "Whose idea was it to give the house chicken legs and movement, eh?" she asked with a roll of her eyes.

Harry's green eyes glinted at her. "Yours," he said cheerfully. "And I was just thinking it was one of your more brilliant ideas."

"Not when I'm trying to go down two flights of stairs," Ginny said. She took a seat, and wrapped her hands around the mug.

"It's so much safer not to be stationary," said Harry.

Ginny sighed. She couldn't argue that. Their first months here had been terrifying, especially when the windows revealed a night sky (or worse, a full moon), neither of them had been able to sleep, even when the other stood watch. They'd created a rudimentary home, and covered it with every kind of ward they found in books the place provided, but the stronger revenants could break them eventually. Cold pockets where the revenants spawned formed around where they slept, and they spent most of the daylight hours trying to destroy them. With the house on the move (and in the sky) it felt like a couple more added protections to keep them safe. The revenants did not have one singular spot around which to form, and it seemed to confuse them, and make them sleep longer.

Which was all Ginny could ask for, really. She drank half her coffee. "Have you looked out the window?"

"Yeah, it's still day," said Harry.

Ginny nodded and, feeling suddenly more cheerful, began to pick at the food that had appeared before her the moment she sat down. It was a large, roast beef sandwich, and it was entirely delicious. "Mmmmm," she said. They ate together in mostly silence, enjoying their breakfast. Or, Ginny supposed, considering the food, it was more like lunch. The room, though it provided them food (thankfully, otherwise they would've starved to death long ago), did not give them traditional meals at the traditional times. One time, Ginny'd come down the stairs still bleary-eyed with sleep, only to be greeted by a giant feast of meat pies, potatoes, and seared vegetables. Another time, they'd stumbled home from fighting revenants, and found a dinner of yogurt and fruit, much more suitable as a light breakfast than an after-battle meal.

"Deep thoughts?" Harry said lightly. "I know you don't talk much before your second cup of coffee, but this is quiet even for you."

"Just thinking about food," Ginny chuckled around her last bite.

After breakfast, they studied. Not only did it give them something to do, and something to work toward, but they really needed to know all they could about revenants, what caused them to appear, how they created those cold spots, and was there a way to banish them permanently? They spent a lot of time practicing Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Transfiguration and Charms were also helpful.

After quite some time, Ginny's stomach rumbled, and she wandered into the kitchen to find a dinner of shepherd's pie waiting for her. She ate quickly and neatly.

"I think I'm going to take a break for a bit," said Ginny, once she was back in the living room. "I'll be at my spot. If you need me, you know, whistle."

Harry gave her a look that was a little removed from the looks he normally gave her. He cocked his head, and continued to look at her.

"I'm not doing anything like — like that other time," Ginny said, flushing. She didn't want to come right out and tell him that she liked to go up to her window and lie naked in the sun. It was a little weird of her to do, she knew, but it was the closest thing to being outside that she could get. She wasn't ashamed of it, though. Ginny sighed. "Harry, I—"

"It's okay!" he said quickly. "I know it isn't like — you know."

His words reassured her, but he was still watching at her when she left. In fact, he sort of hovered in her peripheral vision the entire time she was up at the window. He wasn't close enough to see her, but just... hovering. Ginny didn't think she'd be too embarrassed if he saw her; he'd seen everything before. Not that they'd turned into barbarians or anything. The first time a battle with the revenants had left them with singed clothes that fell off them, they'd been properly embarrassed. But after months of being the only people the other saw, it was less and less a big deal, and then they became more casual about it. Not that they sat around naked, or anything, but running back and forth from the shower was no big deal; it was even less of a deal when one or both of them lost clothes in battle.

In fact, Ginny'd had an instinct that in the time before this room, she'd seen other boy bits. The first time she'd seen Harry's penis, it hadn't been anything mysterious. She'd thought, oh, yeah, a penis, and gone on her way. She'd thought it was never going to be a big deal, until suddenly Harry was going to tremendous effort not to be naked in front of her. That was a pretty large change, and Ginny didn't want to make him uncomfortable, so she followed his lead.

Ginny sat cross-legged on the wide ledge next to the window, tapped her wand to activate the wards she'd set up around here, her favorite spot, and started pulling off her robes. Sighing with pleasure when she felt the sunlight brushing lovingly against her skin, Ginny closed her eyes. I can feel the wind. I'm in the sky. I can feel the sun and the wind. The trees in the orchard are swaying. Over the years, Ginny'd built a detailed fantasy of a tall, crooked house with different colored smoke coming out of the chimney. She went there to relax.

Ginny was still smiling when she dressed and made her way back down to the house. She landed on the roof, stowed her broom, and opened the trapdoor that led to her room. It was spacious and filled with things she liked: a few years ago, she'd found a trunk full of little cat figurines. They were magical, of course; one of them licked his paw every once in a while, the long-haired ginger cat playfully rolled over and scratched its back on her dresser, and a black and white one audibly purred at her. Ginny picked up the little porcelain body of the feisty one. It gripped her finger in cold paws, and kicked at her with its back feet. Ginny chuckled, and stroked its back until it, too, started purring.

Ginny almost never left her wand behind, but a few minutes later, she went to the shared bathroom without it. "Oh, damn," she said in dismay, when she caught a look at the tiny stain on her knickers. Her yew wand was upstairs, damn it, in her room.

She whistled, long and loud, hoping Harry was in the house. She slumped in relief when his footsteps echoed outside the door.

"Gin? You okay?"

"Harry, I — I left my wand upstairs. It's that time and I need my wand," Ginny said.

"Right!"

He was back within moments, cracking the door open, and sliding the yew wand toward her. Ginny took all the precautions she took whenever her period came. In a place where a spill of blood on the ground could have severe consequences, Ginny had to be a witch, and have a period. "Damn it," she muttered. Every month, she wished there was some magic she could do to make it stop permanently.

"Ginny?"

"I'm almost done, Harry," Ginny said, sighing. In fact she was done, but was sitting on the toilet, head in her hands.

"It's just that... I think the sun is setting."

"Oh, damn. That's just perfect."

"Don't be silly, you don't have to do anything—"

"—I'm not leaving you to deal with them all night!" Ginny said, incensed. He always tried to do this.

"But—"

"No. You know what happens if you go out alone against them."

"I think I'm better now, I swear. Ginny..."

"I'll stay in the air and cover you, like I always do," Ginny said firmly. "We stay together."

He heaved a sigh. "Fine. Together."

Together. Just like the last years.

xxxxxx

Author's Note: I don't even know how to explain why I'm doing this. Six days ago, I was agonizing over finishing a companion piece I started ten years ago, and I was thinking "God, I'm glad I wasn't stupid enough to start a companion piece, Harry-POV version of Room of Lost Things! Haha!"

But then, THE VERY NEXT DAY, I was like, "Ooooo, a companion piece for Room of Lost Things!" because writing a first version of Room of Lost Things, writing Room of Lost Things, and writing an original story that has some ties to Blue Lagoon is just not enough of the same type of story?

Obviously this isn't a companion story. I don't have it in me to write one; It Could Be Nicer Being Red was brutal to write, and let's be real — it's only 7,000 words. This is different. It has a different plot, a different mystery, and also, H/G know more about sex, more about bodies, etc. It couldn't be too much the same, otherwise I'd just get bored, and quit writing for ten years.

Anyway. Please enjoy.