Chapter 25:
Just a Dream
"Life, what is it but a dream?"
It was still early morning when a stream of smoke rose from the heart of the Forbidden Forest and dispersed against the bright spring sky. The survivors of the battle, who were still roaming the castle like lost ghosts, watched the smoke in silence, searching for something to distract them from the memories of the night they had gone through.
The smoke lingered, turning blacker and thicker, then dwindled and finally disappeared, leaving no trace but a sharp, bitter smell that was carried by the wind. Shortly after Harry came out of the forest and entered the castle without a word. Everyone noticed that Voldemort's inhuman body had disappeared, but no one commented on it.
Ginny tried to find solace in Neville and Luna, who were sitting at the end of the Gryffindor table, too exhausted even to sleep. Neville studied his reflection on the blade Gryffindor's sword, which was resting on the table between them, turning it over and over uneasily. But she couldn't stand their shocked silence for long – she had to find something to distract her from the hole that had opened within her, and was only widening by the hour. So she got up and left without a word, releasing Luna's hand.
She turned quickly toward the Gryffindor Tower, trying not to look around at the debris and ruin, for fear of painful memories. She hadn't been sure what she expected to find at the top of her beloved and familiar tower, but she found it.
The common room was just as it had been, not at all damaged by the battle. It was comforting. A student she didn't know was sleeping on one of the couches, and a hard-working house- elf was lighting the fireplace for him without his knowledge. Ginny walked quietly past them and climbed to the boys' dorms, where she had spent many nights in the past year. The sound of running water from the seventh year's dorm made it clear that she wasn't the only one who thought to go there.
Ron and Hermione were asleep, side by side, washed and bandaged. Hermione's damp hair was scattered across Ron's chest, and his face was turned towards her, as if he had been watching her intently before he fell asleep. The water were running in the bathroom, it's door half open. Through the mirror Ginny got glimpse of Harry, who was washing his head under the faucet.
She stepped in quietly and stood at the sink beside him, waiting for him to address her. For a split second she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirror, and immediately looked down. She dreaded the moment she would have to face her bruised reflection. She wanted to keep floating peacefully in space, without a personality, without feelings or thoughts. She didn't t want to look in the mirror and remember that she was Ginny Weasley.
Harry took his time. He pulled his dripping hair from the running water and dried it with a towel, hiding his face from her. A trickle of water darted down his neck and bare back. Ginny took another towel and dried it gently. Harry thanked her hoarsely.
It didn't look like he was about to say anything else, so she took his place at the sink. She washed her bruised arms to the elbows, and then rinsed her face and hair, cleaning herself of dirt, sweat, and blood. It felt good, soothing. But no matter how much she tried, she couldn't wash the feeling of tears from her skin.
"I'm sorry," she heard him say as a towel was covering her face. "About Fred."
She could see that he was embarrassed by her proximity after everything that had happened, but she didn't expect him to degenerate to plain manners, as if they were stranger. He wasn't sorry; Her brother's death made him feel things much worse than grief.
"He wasn't the only one." She didn't know why she said it, as her wet hair hid her face. For a moment she might have intended to tell him about Dean, about his fate, but the intention slipped away quickly, along with an impulsive urge to tell him how a few months earlier she had been willing to replace him with a boy who was now laying in the shape of a burnt skeleton a few floors below.
When she pushed her hair from her face Harry handed her a potion.
"For healing," he explained at her questioning gaze.
"You take it," she said. His upper body was a scattering of old scars and new bruises.
"You need it more than I do," he determined.
"We'll share it," she compromised, knowing that the argument could last for hours.
He gave her a look that said that he was thinking the same thing. He handed her the veil after he had drunk half the potion, and she drank the other half. Drinking half of the potion was probably not enough to induce any change in their injuries, however, it seemed to hasten the recovery of some internal wound; As she place the empty viel in the sink, she felt that the tension between them had diminished.
She leaned back on the counter and he mirrored her, patiently waiting for her to speak.
"Now you could tell me?"
Harry might not have known that, but that question had been bothering her for years. She constantly felt that there were things he wasn't telling her – a secret plan he was making with Ron and Hermione, some impending menace of Voldemort's design, or just a pent-up feeling that was weighing on him and he wouldn't share with anyone.
"Can we talk about it another day?" He answered, as if they had all the time in the world to talk about what had happened. In fact, Ginny realized with a strange feeling of hope, they really had all the time in the world...
"I'm going to visit Andromeda Tonks," he said suddenly. He spoke with uncertainty, almost shyly, as if he hadn't defeated the most evil wizard of that century a few hours ago. "Want to come with?"
She replied by embracing him, making it clear that she was no longer angry with him for leaving – that there was no room for it beside the terrible sadness and guilt that filled her. All she ever wanted to feel for him was love.
He wrapped his arms around her instantly, as if he wanted nothing more in the whole world. He held her with a strange, careful gentleness, as if he were afraid that she was just a lifeless echo that would evaporate if he grabbed it too hard.
She allowed her cheek to sink into the warmth of his bare skin as she followed the familiar lines of his back with her hand. The feeling was familiar and comforting. Why hadn't she done it before? It would have saved her so much pain. And why hadn't he done it before, if he longed for it so much? Perhaps he was ashamed to need her comfort, or afraid she would reject him. Strange what fears haunt the heart of the greatest hero.
After a while he pulled his face away from her hair. With the disengagement, the heat of his body and the rhythm of his breathing left her. She wandered if this was the moment of death felt like, as the breath and the heat left the body. She pushed it out of her head angrily.
They finished cleaning up in silence and left Ron and Hermione to sleep peacefully, as long as they could. Ginny was wearing clothes she had found in one of the girls' rooms, which belonged to a girl who might have been dead. The survivors were still roaming the castle, resting by the walls or eating restlessly around the tables in the Great Hall. They gazed at the two as they passed. Ginny struggled to act like Harry and ignore them. At the moment everyone were still in the throes of battle, but Ginny knew that one day people would run up to shake Harry's hand and greet him as he passed them by chance.
Ginny's father was sitting with his two eldest sons on the main steps like vagabonds with no purpose. They squinted in the sun as Harry and Ginny walked past them, as if they were strange creatures like which they had ever encountered before. Ginny told them where they were going.
"Take care," her father told her, out of habit or because he still hadn't realized it was all over. He looked as if he had aged by many years overnight; The tears plucked deep wrinkles over his cheeks and around his eyes, which were lacking the joy Ginny had known. She couldn't bear to look at them.
Every trace of the battle had vanished from the grounds, as if everything had been a bad dream that escaped at dawn. It was just a perfect spring day in early May, and it gave Ginny another reason to want to cry.
They Apperated to the English countryside, which was sunny and blooming. Andromeda Tonks' house should have been the same as on night Teddy Lupin had been born, just a few weeks before – so why did it look haunted and threatening now?
Ginny and Harry stood outside the well-tended fence that surrounded the garden, both afraid to take the first step, as though they thought that if they would step inside the house they would defile it with the stench of battle they carried with them.
A phantom face watched them through the lace curtain in the kitchen window. After a few moments the door opened and Andromeda Tonks stood in the doorway. She was a tall, graceful, impressive woman, but at that moment she looked small and broken. By the white, blank mask she wore, it was clear that she had already received the news. They met midway between the gate and the door. No empty words of comfort were exchanged, only two long hugs from a mother who had lost her daughter.
"Tonks was like a sister to me," Ginny felt the need to share that piece of information with Tonks' mother, while the three of them sat in the living room around three untouched cups of tea.
"She used to talk about you much," Andromeda confirmed, her face cracked into a sad smile. "She never liked being called Nymphadora... she always insisted on Tonks, ever since she was just nine..."
"That was the first thing she told me." Harry hadn't spoken until that moment. His voice was terribly leveled. "And Remus..." He stopped abruptly. He leaned over his knees and dug his knuckles between his eyes, letting his glasses slide down his nose. Maybe it was a method he developed to stop the tears.
There was a shriek from the upper floor. Andromeda rubbed her face tiredly and stood up, but Ginny stopped her and went up instead of her.
Teddy Lupin, who had grown much since the last time she saw him, moved uneasily in his cradle, his hair flashing in a sickly greenish tinge. Ginny picked him up carefully, trying to hold him steadily despite his constant movements, and began to rock his little body in an attempt to calm him down. Nothing worked. Teddy seemed to sense that something was wrong, that his parents who had parted from him lovingly the night before would never come back to watch him grow. He was hungry, but his mother wasn't there to feed him. He was afraid, but his father wasn't there to protect him...
The thought that this little baby would never see his parents again was unbearable. She burst into uncontrollable crying. She tried to bite her lip to stop the weeping, but they was too powerful to hold back, and made the baby's crying more hysterical.
"Don't cry," Ginny said between the tears, "Auntie Ginny is here..."
Fred and George's mobile shone with beautiful lights behind the screen of her tears, making her cry even louder. She would never see them together again, joking and looking for trouble; Already George's face has changed from grief and guilt, becoming different from his brother's. He would never be the same. Nothing would ever be the same.
Harry appeared in the doorway. He noticed that she was crying, but she tried to act as if everything was all right. She asked him to hold the baby so she could find something for him to eat, and used her free hands to wipe her face.
"I don't think it's a good idea," Harry said, trying not to drop Teddy, who was swaying and wailing in agitation.
Ginny sniffed and went over to fix his grip on the little body. "You play Quidditch," told him, placing Teddy's little head in Harry's hand. "Imagine you're holding a Quaffle."
"The Quaffle usually doesn't move so much..."
Teddy opened a pair of golden eyes and stared straight at him, his reassuring, unfamiliar voice arousing his curiosity. He seemed to relax a little, but after a while went back to screaming at the top of his lungs. Harry looked helpless. Ginny saved him with a bottle of baby formula, which Tonks left ic case she would be away for a long time. If only she had known...
"That's it," she said to the suckling baby, wiping a tear from her eye. "You were just hungry..."
Teddy held the bottle with a pair of chubby hands, his little feet kicking happily in the air. He looked at the couple looking over him curiously. Slowly his eyes turned green, and his hair a strong shade of orange, inspired by Ginny's hair. Harry smiled at him naturally, and the sight fascinated Ginny.
"I'm his Godfather," he told her.
"I know," she said, stroking the baby's smooth face. He seemed so calm in the arms of his Godfather, who also had a moment of calm while concentrating on the baby. Desperate to be part of the beautiful picture, she laid her head on Harry's shoulder, surrounding Teddy with protective walls. Harry placed a kiss on her forehead.
"My brother is dead."
The courage to say the words aloud brought her to the point of no return, with a new wave of tears – she could no longer stay in denial. The grief, the guilt, the regret – they all overflowed and flooded her, leaving her no choice but to release everything and let it keep coming.
Harry was silent. Heavy, hot drops hit her scalp, like burning rain. The knowledge that he was also crying as consoling. He cried without making a single sound, his body so steady it was hard to believe he was really crying. She didn't look up at him for a long time, knowing he wouldn't allow her to see him cry, that he couldn't stand the shame. There were times when she thought he couldn't cry even if he wanted to.
She couldn't believe that she could one day gather enough strength to be brave again, as she had been in the past few months – brave for her family, for her friends, for Harry and Teddy... But the thought that now she was the one who would have to save the Chosen One, not from the Dark Lord or his followers, but from himself, reminded her that the valor she had found in herself during those terrible days could never be taken form her, even if she wanted to.