Firstly, I want to know what everyone thinks of the Veela situation – keep it or scrap it? I've had a couple of different views, so I'm interested to see what everyone else says.

Secondly, I'm writing a new part-time fic portraying all of the characters who died deaths. I've already written James, Lily, and the time when they first thought Peter was dead. Should I write more? Please let me know!

~flutegirl98

Harry Potter fact of the week: Wizards and witches have a much longer life expectancy than muggles. Dumbledore is 150 years old and McGonagall is sprightly 70-years old.

Disclaimer: anything (characters, places etc) you recognise belongs to J.K. Rowling / Bloomsbury / Scholastic / Warner Bros.

Ginny PoV

I got his meaning almost instantly.

"Bad timing?!" I cried, "Don't tell me you were doing something that involves travelling in time?"

He locked eyes with me, completely serious, all traces of sheepishness gone now. "You can't tell anyone." He told me. He reached out to clasp my hand in his. "Anyone." His emerald eyes burned into mine, and I nodded reluctantly.

I waved my wand and sat down in the small chair that I had conjured up. It wasn't very comfortable – again, I needed to work on that.

"If I'm not allowed to tell anyone, then give me something I'm not allowed to tell." I told him. I wasn't about to take no for an answer. He sighed resignedly. He could tell that that was coming.

He gestured to one of the wizards in the corner who was fiddling with what seemed to be a small necklace. He put it into his pocket as he approached us. The man looked to be in his early thirties, though it was hard to tell. He was dressed in a midnight dark robe, and he seemed to blend into the background whenever he stood still for too long.

"Disillusionment cloaks," Harry whispered into my ear. "Makes them hard to look at, doesn't it?" I nodded in agreement.

The wizard seemingly slunk out of the shadows to come and stand in front of the both of us. He didn't look so intimidating close up. He looked like an ordinary wizard, if you didn't look at the eye-straining robes.

He was of an average height, and his short hair was a striking dark brown. The square gasses he wore slipped down his nose, and he often had to push them up. His dark brown eyes were piercing behind them. I could see his shoes from the angle where I was sitting, and they were a worn leather type.

He was fairly well-built, but his skin was slightly pale from working in this bright, sparse room. I looked up at his face, and saw that his thin lips were pursed as he looked Harry up and down, examining him. Overall, he looked like a kind but intelligent man. He looked as if you couldn't get anything past him – just like McGonagall.

I shifted slightly at his side and his gazed slipped over to me. His eyes flicked back to Harry, and then to me again.

"Ah. So is this the famous Ginny Weasley?" he asked me, peering closer to see if it was me, as if he could not already tell by my flaming red hair. I nodded once, but didn't take my eyes off Harry.

He was still clearly bleeding heavily, as was shown by the red still seeping through his cloak. He had numerous scratches and deep cuts across his face and arms, and I could already see bruises blossoming on his face.

"Right. Nice to meet you." he shook my hand briefly and then turned to examine Harry. He frowned as he truly took him in underneath the brightened lights.

"Hm. Well, you seemed to have managed to get yourself hurt quite badly." he tutted as he waved his wand over Harry, using the usual spells to check his health. Holding his wand up to the light, he looked at it once before placing it in a small bucket full of an opaque pink liquid.

"Won't that make your wand sticky?" I asked curiously. He turned to talk to me as he stirred his wand around the small bucket.

"Actually, no. The fuyslid prevents that in this particular potion." I leant forwards interestedly.

"What is the potion for?"

"It's to diagnose his injuries." he jerked his head towards Harry. As I watched, he slowly pulled his wand out and tapped it three times on a nearby sheet of plain parchment.

"Diagnostium ovita." he murmured. Enthralled, I watched as letters seemed to flow out of the tip of his wand. They spread around the page, filling it and forming complicated patterns and sentences that I couldn't comprehend. I thanked Merlin that I wasn't trying to be a Healer – I'd never know how to make sense of all that information.

He glanced up at Harry, and then down at his paper again. He repeated this movement many more times – so much that I wanted to rip the paper out of his hands and try to heal Harry myself.

"Can't you just take him to St Mungos or something?" I asked desperately, after several frustrating minutes. The man looked at me gravelly, and I realised that he hadn't told me his name.

"I'm afraid it's going to have to be 'or something', Miss Weasley." he told me. With this, he brought his wand up and touched it once on Harry's forehead. Harry flinched slightly, as if he knew what was about to happen.

Harry's eyes drooped closed, and he slumped forwards in his chair. He seemed to have gone unconscious. I quickly leaped forwards and, with my Quidditch reflexes, I managed to catch him before he fell out of his chair.

"What have you done to him?" I exclaimed at him, holding Harry up in my arms. He was very heavy compared to the Quaffles I was used to dealing with.

"Look, I had to do it to heal him," he explained as he took Harry from me and flung him over his shoulder. I protested weakly, but I could see in his eyes that he wouldn't hurt Harry.

"Come on." he said as he led me out of that white room and into another whiter, if possible, room with a bed in the centre. I raised an eyebrow.

"Do you often have casualties?" I asked as he slung Harry onto the bed. Harry didn't even stir – apparently the man's non-verbal stunning spell was quite strong. He didn't answer. I looked briefly around the room.

In one corner was a little window, and right next to the metal plated door was a short table, laden with cloths and other medical equipment. I shuddered with the realisation of what some of the tools did. A couple of chairs were tactfully placed next to the bed, for visitors, though I doubt that they had many here in Mysteries.

The man stood over Harry and flicked his wand once. Harry's cloak and outer robes vanished at once, leaving him in only his jeans and a t-shirt. The man – I'll call him Guy– looked over at me for permission, his wand poised over Harry.

"May I?" he asked, nodding his head towards him. I shrugged, with a nod. He flicked his wand one more time, and Harry was left just in his snitch patterned boxers. I tried not to blush the Weasley colours.

Guy got to work on Harry, waving his wand so fast that it blurred. Wounds closed up, and bruises faded to yellow. A particularly large gash on his chest shrunk and healed rapidly, until it looked like a small puckered line of pink skin that was weeks rather than hours old.

The metal door we had entered the door through swung open, and several other people flooded into the room. I was pushed to the back of the room as they surrounded Harry. Some of them got about to healing him, but other conjured up pieces of tape that they stuck all over his body. I didn't have any idea of what these were. I wanted to help, but I knew that I would just get in the way.

Guy came to stand beside me. He grabbed a small flannel from the table at the side of the room and mopped at his sweaty brow. He pulled off his glasses and polished them with a piece of cloth taken from the depths of his robes. He replaced his glasses before turning to me.

"I've done most of it. He's in a stable condition now, and the others will get him back to normal. Look." he said, and we both turned our heads to where Harry was now peacefully sleeping. I jumped slightly; all of the other people had disappeared.

"Where have they all gone?" I asked as I sat down in one of the chairs. Guy sat down in the other.

"Into no-being, as we say here in Mysteries." he answered mysteriously. Stroking Harry's messy hair I waited a few seconds before voicing the question I had been dying to ask.

"What happened?" he took a deep breath before waving his wand once before us and conjuring up a large picture covering the opposite wall. It showed a small hourglass encased in a spinning glass ball.

"A time-turner?" I asked incredulously. "They are extremely dangerous! Even Hermione won't go near the things anymore."

"I know. If you just listen to me I'll tell you everything." I closed my mouth, suitably abashed. I settled back in my chair to listen to his explanation.

"It started when we realised that all of the time-turners were smashed in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, so we needed some new ones. Of course, they hadn't been made for years, and the room had swallowed up the secrets to making them. This meant that we had to start from scratch." he shifted in his seat slightly, and the picture on the screen flickered and changed to one of the broken time-turners. Guy smiled.

"Of course, you were there. You would know they were broken." I nodded.

"And the Bell Jars too." he waved his hand in dismissal.

"They were easy to replicate. They were recent developments. Anyway, we had to try many different combinations and spells, and we've finally made it safe enough to test it on humans." I flinched slightly at the word 'safe', but other than that, I didn't react or say anything.

"We sent out a discrete request for volunteers, with a small obliviating charm that would make them forget about it if they declined. That's why only Harry knows about it – nobody but him thought that it was safe enough."

I nodded and moved closer to Harry again.

Guy continued. "He wasn't allowed to tell anyone. We set him off from a safe destination and turned it back three hours. We'd assumed that it would be easy for him because he's already used one." he turned to Harry and frowned. "Now we just need to figure out what went wrong. Was it the time-turner or the time he went to?" he mused.

I watched Harry while Guy thought this over. Harry looked so peaceful in sleep. Most of his nightmares had vanished, but often people could still see the torment in his eyes due to the aftermath of the War. In sleep, he looked truly innocent and harmless. He looked like he had a normal childhood. All of that from the War seemed to disappear.

"I'll need to talk to him when he wakes up, of course." Guy announced as he stood up. "I'm going to run a few more tests, but I'll know when he awakes." he smiled at me – a first -before leaving through the metal door and shutting it behind him. Now it was just an eerie silence.

I reached out to hold Harry's warm hand with one of my hands and stroked his hair with my other.

"Oh Harry," I softly murmured at his unconscious figure. "What have you gotten yourself into this time?" I smiled weakly.

I don't know long I sat there, just looking at him, but it must have been a few hours. I got up and pulled back the curtain by the window - it as just beginning to turn darker.

I resumed my stoking of his hair, speaking softly to him as I did so. Harry stirred, and I felt my hand freeze. Slowly, his eyelids began to flutter, and then they opened fully, staring at me. A beam spread across my face; he was alright. He struggled to sit up, but I held him down.

"You need your rest." I warned. The door on my right opened and Guy came in. He checked Harry's temperature and pulse, and declared that he would be free to go if he didn't overexert himself. I snorted – did he know who he was talking to?

Harry nodded, though we both knew that he would do no such thing. Guy settled himself down in the chair opposite me, on the other side of the bed, while Harry sat up.

"What happened?" Guy said, directly to the point. No 'how are you feeling' or anything. He kept eye contact with Harry as he waited for a response.

"Well," Harry begun. I saw that Guy was making notes on this already. "I went back three hours, like you said, but I ran into some trouble. The spot we thought to be safe was actually filled with radical purebloods. They were not happy to see me.

So, naturally, they start hexing and cursing me for crashing their little party. There were about twenty of them there, so I couldn't fight back, even though they weren't trained like I was. There were too many of them." He was speaking in a calm voice, as if he was just recounting what he had eaten for breakfast. I supposed that it came with being an auror and giving so many reports.

"I tried, of course, so I only got the sectumsempra twice. Then they abandoned their wands altogether and just started punching me." He winced at the memory – the only outward sign that it had hurt – but it was only for a split second. "Not a pretty sight, I'll tell you that." He paused to take a breath.

"Anyway, I managed to apparate out of there, but I splinched myself in my wand arm, so I couldn't get anywhere else. Somehow, I'd arrived at the bottom of Diagon Hill – and there was a girl with flaming red hair at the top." He squeezed my hand, smiling at me gratefully. "I don't think I'd have wanted it to be anyone else." I returned the smile.

"Why you, though?" I asked. "You're a little…conspicuous."

He chuckled at my obvious deductions.

"Yeah, but nobody else wanted to do it – they all thought that it was too dangerous." He told me.

"Are all aurors wimps now, then?" I asked jokingly.

"Yep, pretty much." He replied seriously, without so much of a blink of an eye.

"Nothing is too hard for the Chosen One though, is it?" I grinned. He stuck his tongue out at me, and I threw my head back and let out a loud laugh. I poked his chest and looked up at him, my eyes sparkling.

Harry and I locked eyes, unmoving, unblinking. My laugh faded to silence as we closed up in a world with just us two. His emerald eyes stared into my caramel ones, and it was all I could do to not reach out, grab his face, and kiss him. Guy coughed loudly, and we both jumped a little. Evidently, neither of us had realised that he was still there.

"We are engaged," I said nervously, trying to explain the moment. Guy smiled.

"Ah, yes, that little mix up. Everyone knows about that now." My thoughts flew into panic mode at his words. Were they going to split us up? They couldn't do that, could they? Guy chuckled at my worried expression, though his eyes were serious, as always.

"Of course not. You're the dream couple – why would they ruin that?" he said. I smiled and relaxed back in my chair. Phew: I had thought that I would have to marry someone else and not him.

Guy looked between us and quickly excused himself.

"I'll check up on your in half an hour." He called as he made his way out of the room. He shut the door behind him again, leaving Harry and me alone.

Instantly, I was in his arms, all disregard for his present state. Our lips met in a fiery passion that could equal no other.

One of his hands was in my hair, pulling me closer to him, and the other was settled on my hip. I was leaning over the bed, but he pulled me onto it so we were sitting on it together. My hands threaded through the hair at the back of his neck and I pulled him even closer, moulding his lips to my own.

He moaned softly when I pulled away for breath, our faces flushed. His lips were swollen and his hair was thoroughly mussed up. I touched my own lips, then my hair, and found them to be the same. I reached across the small distance between us to straighten his crooked glasses.

His arm wrapped around my waist and I pulled my legs up on the bed as I kicked my shoes off, cuddling into him. I leant my head on his broad shoulder and he in turn rested his on my head. I sighed and wrapped my arms around him.

"I'm just glad you're okay." I whispered into his ear. He squeezed my waist tightly.

"I could never leave you." He replied sincerely. A smile lit up my face as I turned to look up at him in the face.

"And you never will." I confirmed, barely suppressing my excitement. "We're getting married!" I resisted a squeal, content on just hugging Harry as tightly as I could. He pulled back a little, and I looked up at him confusedly.

"Ouch, Gin." He winced. "You are a Quidditch player, you know. Strong and all that?" I realised what he was saying and relaxed my death grip. Imagine that; death by hugging.

His reference to me being a Quidditch player made me smile even more. I hadn't even tried out yet, or even told him about the trails, yet he had the upmost confidence in me that I would make a team.

I made to lean against his shoulder again but his hand on my chin made me stop. I looked up at him in mild surprise. His lime-green eyes penetrated into my skull, and I was overwhelmed by the intensity of his look, even through his glasses. I gulped.

"Ginny," he began earnestly, taking my hand and keeping my gaze with his. "I just want you to know that I was going to propose anyway, not just because of this stupid law." I couldn't seem to make my tongue work – my mouth opened and closed like a goldfish's but no words came out.

"I love you, Ginny, and I always will." He finished, and finally, I was able to form words again. I flung my arms around his neck and pulled him close to me; so close that our noses were almost touching.

"I love you too, Harry Potter." I declare, before kissing him again.