C H A P T E R  T E N

            Panting, Harry and Ginny found themselves facing the portrait guarding entrance to Gryffindor tower. 

            Which, naturally, was devoid of the Fat Lady.

            Ginny moaned and checked the map.  "What are we going to do?  It looks like McGonagall is coming up here!"   Harry sank down onto the floor beneath the painting.  "All we can do is wait." 

            He could only remember two times other than this in which the Fat Lady had been absent from her frame.  Once in first year, when he, Ron, Hermione, and Neville had come across Fluffy, and again in third year…

            When Sirius had slashed her apart. 

            Noticing how oddly slack Harry's body had gone, Ginny joined him on the floor.  She too thrust her head backward and looked up at the painting, whose background was a lovely star-filled sky on a cloudless night. 

            Right in the center of the sky was a sparkling constellation, looking very familiar: 
            Canis Major.

            Harry closed his eyes, willing the image of the Dog Star, Sirius, to fade away.  Ginny watched him, knowing he was incredibly close to having some sort of breakdown.  

            He did not care Ginny was there, because he knew she would understand.  He opened his mouth to say in a watery voice:

            "Dammit, Sirius, why did you have to die?"     

            And letting go completely, Harry allowed himself to crumple into the broken, beaten heap he was, and cry. Just cry, like the child he wasn't. Just cry, like the man he would become.

            He wept bitterly for the losses of his parents, and Cedric, and his godfather, and all the other faceless people that had died due to him.  He wept because he knew, somehow, these deaths were his fault, and he deserved to ache for them. 

            Ginny sat there, taking in the sight of him curled up beneath the portrait, his scar-disfigured head held fast in his shaking hands, which were also absorbing a storm of wracking sobs that had been pent up since Merlin knows when.

            She reached over tentatively, and, wrapping one arm around his neck and the other across his shoulders, cradled him to her.   

            "It's all right, Harry.  It's okay," Ginny whispered into his hair, trickling it through her fingers.  His sobs began to soften.  "It's my fault…"
           
            "No, it's not.  Sirius died because he loved you.  We all still do, you know."
           
            "You don't understand.  I could have saved more lives by abandoning my own…my own damn skin means more to me than anyone else's.  And I have to save the world with it.  For fifteen years I've lived only to do this… "
           
            "I'm so sorry…so sorry," she murmured, gently rocking him, and reflecting on the horrors he must live through.
           
            "No…I'm sorry, Ginny," he replied, hiccupping slightly.  He couldn't ever remember crying that hard in his life, and so could not look up at her through shameful, blurred eyes. 
           
            "I didn't mean to…fall to pieces like that…" 
            "I know,"  she answered, releasing him, "but Harry, you deserved to."
            "How do you mean?" 
           
            "I've seen you go through so many foul things and build up wall after wall to hide them all.  Yet no matter how strong the walls are, if their foundation shatters, they too will fall." 
           
            He just stared at her.
           
            "What I mean to say is, you can't hide forever.  You may think the safest hiding place of all is you, but it is, in fact, the worst.  If you keep to yourself all the time you'll go mad.  You need to find an escape, an outlet…"  she trailed off thoughtfully.  Amazing.  She did understand after all.
           
            "And I have one.  I mean, dancing…right?" 
           
            "I can't answer that question for you.  But I can help you solve it…starting—" Ginny looked down at her watch, which read 2:37 a.m. "—tomorrow.  Consider it my birthday present to you." 
           
Harry realized with a start that it would indeed be his actual sixteenth birthday the following day.

            "Oh, for Merlin's sake!"  she hissed angrily, suddenly.  "Harry, how have we been getting into Gryffindor tower all this week?" 
           
            "Well, the Fat Lady always opens it for us…" 
           
            "But never asks for a password!  Which means,"  she wrenched the portrait away from the wall, revealing entry, "we sat out here for nothing." 

            Harry gave a shaky laugh and followed Ginny through the portrait hole.  They stared at each other awkwardly.  Ginny yawned. 
           
            "Well, off to bed…I have to go do some paperwork for Snape later…" 
           
            She began to climb the staircase.  Harry felt odd, letting her go like that, without a thanks.
           
            "Ginny!  Wait…I—"
           
            "Don't say it, Harry,"  she said, turning round and looking at him.  "I know."  
           
            It took her an age to reach the top of the stairs, but he didn't mind.  He watched her do it, watched her hips sway below her emerald nightgown.  Watched her hand slide up the banister, her arm arced elegantly.  Watched her fiery tresses bounce in their ponytail with each step her padded slippers took. 

            Harry was beginning to grasp the meaning of a cursed life…and the sheer beauty of simple acts.  There was a chink in his armor now, but what it was, he could not say.  All he knew was that, at that instant, something about Ginny Weasley pierced his heart. 

a/n:  YES!  Harry's beginning to love again!  WOOHOO!  There's hope for him yet…at least, there is if you REVIEW!

            HiPa Loves you!