Chapter 22

()()()

"I believe I've found it," Luna stated calmly, sitting down at the Gryffindor table for dinner.

"What?" Ron asked absentmindedly as he speared a breast of chicken off a plate in the middle of the table.

"The entrance," she told him, beginning to load up her plate as well.

Harry, Ron and Hermione stopped what they were doing and stared at Luna, dumbstruck and quietly waiting for her to carry on and tell them where this possible entrance was.

Everything at Hogwarts had been very gloomy since the return after the holidays. The absences of those that had been lost at Kings Cross had been felt in every house, even Slytherin had lost someone in their second year.

There were four from Hufflepuff, three from Ravenclaw and four from Gryffindor. Harry hadn't known any of the four his house had lost. There were two brothers, one in first-year one in fourth, a first-year girl and a seventh-year boy. It had really struck him when he heard their names being called out at dinner on the night of everyone's return that the only way he knew them was from the photo's that had been posted in the Daily Prophet. He really hadn't taken much time to get to know anyone outside his close friends.

There had been several people in the DA last year, and he knew them all by name, but he didn't know anything about them besides that.

Hermione and Ron had even had a few interactions with those they had lost a few times because of their role's as Prefects. The two of them had had quite a bit of work to do with trying to make sure everyone from those years affected knew that they could talk to whomever they needed to for counselling and such. Ron was taking that role very seriously given his experience with grief.

"I was just speaking with Myrtle," Luna continued once she'd loaded up her plate.

"Myrtle?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, the ghost from the second floor girls bathroom," Luna told her.

"You mean," Hermione started loudly, then checked herself and leaned forward, lowering her voice, "are you talking about Moaning Myrtle?" she asked. "She knows something about it?"

Harry and Ron exchanged a look then. Hermione had been so swept up in her Prefect duties since they'd got back that they hadn't had a chance to mention it to her all that had been discussed over the holidays, mostly just about Malfoy. It was a discussion that had come up between they and Luna though when she'd asked them about Ginny, or Matilda as she continued to call her, while she walked them down to their Quidditch practice one evening.

"Let's get through dinner," Ron decided, giving a sheepish look at his girlfriend. "We'll go and check it out after and Luna, you can tell us what you found out."

Hermione didn't seem at all interested in her food anymore, she looked like she'd been betrayed by them.

"We weren't intentionally keeping something from you," Harry assured her. "You've been busy since we got back."

"It's just," her face was turning red as she tried to regulate her voice. "First it was Matilda, and now-"

"It's not the same," Harry defended. "You know that it isn't the same. Luna didn't know about her either."

"And Neville still doesn't," Luna pointed out offhandedly as she cut up her food.

"Neville? Neville Longbottom?" Ron asked in confusion. "Why would we tell him?"

Harry's fork slipped out of his hand at that comment. He had completely forgotten about that. What happened with Ginny was the reason Neville didn't come back to school. They had been friends and yet... why hadn't Ginny asked about him?

"They were good friends," Luna told Ron and Hermione. "I am sure he would be delighted to know that she's okay."

"But, she hasn't asked about him," Ron was incredulous.

"Did she ask about me?" Luna tilted her head at him thoughtfully.

"Um. No."

"I imagine it can be rather depressing to think of your friends moving on with their lives. I'm sure she didn't want to hear what we had been getting up to when she couldn't join in," she offered. "She never asked me about Neville last summer or in our letters either."

"I knew they were friends too," Harry said mournfully. "I should have told her." It hadn't occurred to him to let her know Neville had left Hogwarts. She would want to know. She'd also probably feel bad about her being the reason he decided not to stay. Harry had been sending letters back and forth with him, trying to maintain some kind of regularity between them, Neville had still been providing him with the Micactus Altruna leaf to ward off any Love Potions he might be slipped, teasing him a bit more with every letter.

Harry turned back to Hermione, back to the task at hand. "You have been really having to step up your duties as Prefect since we got back. That was the only reason that we hadn't had a chance to tell you about what we told Luna. I swear."

She still looked like she'd been left out. After she'd discovered about Ginny being alive they had only had a week together before school let out, and she'd just been asking question after question. Her letters to him over the summer she'd mentioned a few times about wishing they could have told her, or trusted her, but she'd also carried on in the letters about understanding why they would have found reason not to let more people in on the secret. Harry wasn't great at reading tone from writing though. He supposed she might have been a little broken up that they had hidden it from her for so long. But this wasn't the same thing. She'd been there when they called Ginny on the two-way mirror last term, she must know that they hadn't been intentionally keeping it from her.

The three Gryffindor's hurried through the rest of their meal, but Luna didn't seem in a hurry. In fact, once she'd cleared her plate she took her time mulling over what she wanted for dessert.

"Just grab a bloody éclair and lets go," Ron told her in exasperation.

"Oh! Alright," she said in surprise at his tone and picked up the pastry.

Once they were out of the Great Hall Harry turned to her, "where are we headed?"

"Second floor," she told him with a soft smile.

"Luna," a voice called out from the doorway to the Great Hall.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," Ron groaned.

Blaise Zabini was who had called Luna's attention.

"Hello Blaise," Luna smiled brightly as he crossed the Entrance Hall to her. "Did you have a nice holiday in Italy?"

"It was lovely," he told her.

Harry still couldn't quite wrap his head around this relationship that was growing between Luna and Blaise. He hadn't really paid Blaise much attention before, but since the Slug Club Holiday party he'd noticed how the Slytherin bloke was just sort of 'there' in the classrooms. He didn't interact with many people in their shared classes, the teachers liked him well enough. Hermione had told Harry that Blaise was near the top of their year in marks as well.

He just still wasn't quite sure. It might be bias against Slytherin's in general, but in his defense, he hadn't met any nice one's that stood out.

Ron was tapping his foot and rolling his eyes as Luna and Blaise exchanged pleasantries.

Hermione began losing her patience after a few minutes as well. "I'm sorry to interrupt," she stepped towards them, sounding sincere. "Hello Blaise, glad to hear you had a nice holiday, but I hope you don't mind. We were just about to discuss something private with Luna and we're a little short on time. Is it alright if you two catch up tomorrow?" she asked. "I promise you we won't monopolize her then."

Hermione definitely went about that nicer than he or Ron would have managed.

Blaise regarded Luna a moment, as though asking what she would have preferred.

"They have been rather patient with me thus far," Luna told him. "I suppose Ron will be fit to burst if I make them wait much longer."

"Well, we wouldn't want that," Blaise gave her a conspiratorial smile. "We can catch up tomorrow then. Perhaps I could meet you in the library after dinner?"

"I'd love that," she agreed.

"Gah, all the pomp and circumstance," Ron muttered beside him. "Why do they have to be so proper about it?"

"He's moving faster with her than you did with Hermione," Harry smirked at his friend.

Ron went red at that. "I wasn't that pretentious about it though," he tried defending.

"Maybe you should have tried it then. Seems to be working," Harry pointed out how Blaise was kissing the back of Luna's hand in farewell and she was giggling at it.

"Oh, what do you know? Had a girlfriend for two minutes and now you think you're a fountain of information?" Ron tended to get a little glib when he was impatient.

Harry supposed Ron had more license to be impatient that he did, considering Harry had been down in the Chamber before, and Ron hadn't.

Finally they were on the move again and Luna was leading them in the direction of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

"Now you said something about Myrtle?" Hermione asked when they were out of anyone's ear shot.

"Myrtle Warren," Harry told her. "According to the diaries, she was an accidental victim of the Basilisk when He was at school."

"I can't believe this is Moaning Myrtle we're talking about, after all that time we spent in the second-floor girls bathroom with her while the attacks were going on?" Hermione said astounded.

Ron knocked Harry lightly with the back of his hand, "see. We say 'Myrtle' once to her and she knows exactly who we're talking about. They should have given her the diaries. You-Know-Who would be long gone by now if they'd done that."

Hermione gave Ron a very pleased expression and clasped her hand in his. Her sign of forgiving him for not telling her sooner.

"I've been talking to her," Luna told them. "She died in the bathroom and only remembered a pair of yellow eyes. There's one sink that doesn't work in there and there is a small etching of a snake on the faucet."

"That'd definitely be an 'inconvenient location'," Ron pointed out.

They had made it to the second-floor girls toilet now.

"This was also where the first attack was in our second year," Harry pointed out. "Remember? Mrs. Norris was hung right there," he pointed to the sconce.

"We're just going to pop in and make sure there isn't anyone else here," Hermione and Luna went into the bathroom.

A moment later they waved the boys in.

"Is Myrtle in here?" Harry asked warily. He really wasn't keen on another run in with her. It had been ages since he'd had to see her.

"No, you're safe," Hermione told him in amusement and went over to inspect the sinks. "I agree with Luna, this could be it," she ran her finger over the side of the faucet.

Harry looked at it. There didn't seem to be little etchings on any of the other faucets. "Well. Only one way to know for sure," he took a breath and stood in front of the sink properly, closing his eyes and imagining that he was talking to a snake. He hadn't been practicing it or anything, but after teaching Bill several times how to say the same two words it was rather simple for him to say them himself. "Open," he hissed.

He gave a small jolt as the vibration from the sink lowering into the ground rumbled against his feet. The three of them behind him gave gasps as well. Behind the sink was a large hole in the ground that gave way to a vast emptiness.

"Do we just… jump?" Ron asked.

"We used our brooms when we went in the other way. But… Ginny wouldn't have had a broom with her when she did this when she was possessed, otherwise she would have had one on her when she came to," he thought aloud. "Maybe," he wondered a moment more, examining the sides of the hole and thinking about a potentially easier way of getting down there, then he tried something. "Stairs," he hissed.

The four of them watched in awe as some of the stonework around the pipe began to jut out a foot in a circular descent down.

"Shit," was all Harry could manage. Ginny only knew one word in Parseltongue, only 'open'. Harry began to feel a little light-headed at the thought of how she would react when he told her. Possibly like she had when he'd given her her wand back, that hadn't been too bad, and she was more emotionally stable now. There was a weight that was settling in his stomach at the thought of having to be the one to tell her.

This time last year she probably would have hummed through an entire album worth of songs and closed herself off. Now Harry thought she might simply go down into the basement at Grimmauld and begin blowing things up.

Perhaps he should warn Sirius first so that someone would be prepared to deal with the wreckage Ginny might create.

"A-are we going down?" Ron asked. "Right now?"

Harry wasn't sure, but they were all looking at him like it was his decision.

"We have a few hours until curfew," Hermione reasoned softly.

He didn't see how he could say 'no'. He'd opened the entrance, called the steps that led down into existence. He couldn't just tell them that was it and head back to the Common Room. Neither of his best friends would have stopped asking him about it all night. Best to just do it. "We'll have to be quiet," Harry told them. "And let me go first, just in case I need to call for more stairs or something."

Hermione cast her wand at the door back out to the corridor and locked it shut. A good call in case someone was trying to actually use the facilities and came across a hole in the ground.

Harry started down the stairs, carefully holding his hand against the side of the wall as he stepped down, lighting his wand to see the next step before him. He heard the others begin to follow him down. In fact their steps were the only thing he heard as he wound his way around the side of the pipe down further and further into the ground. He had to blink hard a few times the deeper down they went. Going around in circles like this with only his wand out in front of him, and the shadows caused by the three behind him, was causing him to get a little dizzy.

Snape's chamber was only two floors below the entrance they'd come in, so Harry knew roughly how far down it was going to take them, but it felt like it was much further considering he couldn't just slide down this pipe.

Finally, he reached the bottom and let out a sigh of appreciation for the solid ground. It was an odd experience taking those steps.

"Whoa, thank Merlin," Ron exclaimed.

"Shh," Luna held her finger up to her lips.

"Do you hear something?" Hermione asked. She was the last down the steps.

"No," Luna told them plainly.

"Then why'd you shush me?" Ron asked.

"Harry said we had to be quiet. I very much doubt that was a rule for only the stairway down here," Luna whispered.

Harry bit his lip to stop the bubble of laughter coming up. She wasn't wrong. He doubted there would be anyone down there, but they couldn't be too careful until they knew for sure. He inclined his head in a gesture for them to follow him towards the main chamber. He'd looked over the map that Ginny had drawn, and he'd know which pipe it was they came down from once they got closer to the garden area.

Harry led them to the garden Ginny had built. The plants were all dead now since the mirrors had been diverted and they weren't getting watered. He went down towards the room she had slept in and away from the Chamber first.

"This is where she found all the books and such," he whispered.

He didn't want to speak at a proper volume while they were down there. It was only the one other entrance through Snape's personal quarters that anyone knew about, but who knew if Snape snuck down there from time to time or what punishment he would come up with if he caught them down there.

Harry stood back and let Ron and Hermione lead the way into the room, the torches lighting up upon their entry. The light in the space only showed how empty it was now. All but the furniture had been removed and brought back to Grimmauld before being stashed down in Bill's Gringotts Vault.

Luna peeked into the room but continued past it and went to the far end of the passageway and to the spot where the sun was shining down. Harry watched as she looked upwards with a deep frown on her face. He knew that that had been Ginny's 'sun spot', where she went to cool down and try and get her head right after her disappointment's down here.

"Come on," he told them, "I'll show you to the main Chamber." He was uncomfortable being down here again, and he was growing anxious about having to tell Ginny about finding the way down here when he spoke to her later. He wished he had his mirror with him right then. Then he could have called her and just gotten it over with instead of beginning to obsess about what her reaction was going to be.

He also felt like he was trespassing. The others were peering around curiously, Ron with a deep frown on his face, no doubt picturing what it had been like for Ginny to be alone down here, just as Harry had when he'd first seen the place a year ago.

The chickens and their enclosure had been cleared out of the main chamber. The whole place had been cleaned up actually. Harry frowned as he looked around at it. The floors didn't have a spec of dirt on them, and the off-shoot pipes, a few of which had been full of rock dust, now were also clean. Snape must have come down and done that, he didn't remember Bill or anyone else mentioning cleaning the place up.

"Whoa," Ron exclaimed quietly as he took in the massive room before them, and the enormous statue at the other end.

Harry turned to look at their faces as they took in the room, the girls were staring up at the statue, both with wide eyes, but Ron was checking out the water and the pipes leading out on either side.

"So, there's the other room through there?" Hermione asked, pointing up at the mouth of the statue.

"Yes, but we didn't bring any brooms with us, so it's probably not a good idea to go in there," Harry said, hanging back against the entrance while they carried on to explore to the edges of the stone floor where it fell away to the pool of water.

Harry heard their footsteps wandering back and forth as they looked around, but he thought he could hear another noise coming from the passages behind him. He turned his head to listen carefully and sure enough, he heard some shuffling from the passage.

His chest constricted with a shock of panic and he waved hurriedly to get their attention before gesturing for them to go towards the pipe closest to him. Hopefully whomever or whatever it was he was hearing might not notice all of them if they were back far enough.

They seemed to understand what he was trying to tell them as they all quickly went to the same pipe as silently as possible. Harry didn't have his invisibility cloak on him and didn't think Hermione knew the disillusionment spell to cast on them all. She didn't have to though; the pipe they'd all huddled in turned out to be one of the one's Ginny had attempted to escape from and Luna took the lead as she began to climb it using the footholds that had been carved out.

She was a quick climber. Hermione followed up behind her, and Ron after that. Harry was the last to ascend as the sound of shuffling drew nearer. The shuffling sounded clearly like footsteps as it grew closer.

His feet must have only just been out of sight when the person entered the Chamber. Harry strained his ears as he made out a man muttering.

"Freedom, his house in France. Perhaps clear out his Gringotts vault," it was Snape, and he was talking to himself. "The Diary, the locket, the Diadem, the Cup, the Ring. All that's left is Nagini. How to get Nagini. Kill her obviously, but how? Normal methods wouldn't work. How. How. Fiendfyre is too slow, too catastrophic. Basilisk venom, hmm."

Harry leaned down as far as he could manage in order to try and hear everything he was saying as clearly as possible.

"Come now, you must be able to offer me some kind of idea. You were always brighter than I. Stubborn, but bright. And beautiful."

Harry's brow furrowed. He was sure that it was just Snape that had come down into the Chamber. Who was he talking to? Snape kept repeating himself over and over again, saying all the different vessels that the Horcruxes had been discovered in and how they had been destroyed, and trying to think of a discreet way to kill Nagini, Voldemort's snake. He would sound like he was talking to himself, then every now and then ask a question to an invisible person with this... emotion in his voice. He always sounded so drab and uninspired every other time Harry had heard him talk, but when he spoke to this invisible person there was this life and playfulness that was in his voice.

Harry was growing uncomfortable where he was, and the others above him must have been as well. It was easily ten minutes now he'd been listening to Snape carrying on.

"He had a good idea you know," Snape said to his invisible and silent friend. "I would never tell him such a thing, but it was simple and effective. Draco certainly didn't care about getting rid of the Elf, and the Dark Lord didn't even notice the new Elf was not the same. Now we have more insight into whom has been convinced to turn to His side." Snape let out a scoff, "yes, I complimented him. Not to his face, never to his face. He looks too much like 'him' for me to let that happen."

Snape paused then and in Harry's minds eye he could picture a sneer forming on his face before carrying on again.

"And he and the Weasley girl are an item. History is repeating itself all over again."

Harry's jaw dropped a bit, Snape was talking about him and Ginny?! He could decipher the part about Snape not wanting to compliment him because he looked like his dad, but what was the 'history repeating itself' bit?

"I can't help but think of how much you would like her. She is stubborn and snarky, but bright and determined," he paused a moment, "yes, she's pretty too." He sounded pained about answering that unasked question. "I can only imagine that if they have children, you'd wind up with a granddaughter that is the spitting image of you."

Harry nearly lost his grip at that. Snape was imagining he was talking to Harry's mum! He knew they were childhood friends, but he didn't know that it was a strong enough friendship that Snape would be carrying on make believe conversations with her this long after she'd been gone.

He, he sounded like he was in love with her.

"I know I promised to protect him, I owe it to you for what I've done, and I'll keep that promise. Even now. I will get Draco free of his servitude and hide him away. I'll take the consequences that come with that task." There were a few more moments of silence. "I'm miserable here anyway," he muttered barely loud enough for Harry to hear.

There was the sound of footsteps heading away, not out the exit, but towards the other end of the Chamber. Harry chanced it and lowered himself down to the ground. He looked up at Ron and saw Hermione and Luna looking down at him, waiting for his direction. Harry strode as silently as possible towards the main Chamber, straining his ears to listen for Snape's footsteps coming back his way.

He lowered himself tighter against the ground and hoped that if Snape caught the movement of his head poking out from the pipe that he would merely think it was a trick of the light on the water.

Snape wasn't looking back this way though, he was climbing the statue and about to go down the mouth to the other room.

Harry waited until he was out of sight completely and waved the others down from the pipe. As quietly and quickly as possible they left the Chamber and climbed back up the stairs to the girls bathroom. By the time they all reached the top they were panting from the exercise.

Harry turned to face the pipe and told the stairs to go away in Parseltongue, then closed off the entrance.

"Did you catch what he was saying?" Ron asked Harry. "It was too quiet for me to hear, but he was carrying on quite a bit."

"He was going over the methods they used to destroy the Horcruxes. Just talking it through again and again," Harry told him. He wasn't going to share the bit about his mum with them. That was too private and he doubted Ron would be able to stop himself taking the mickey after he got over the astonishment of it.

Harry didn't think he could deal with that any time soon.

()()()

Ginny couldn't believe how happy this House Elf was. He was just an excitable ball of energy and he was worshiping the ground Sirius walked on for offering to pay him for his services.

Dobby had been at Grimmauld Place for two days, but he'd already made a major dent in cleaning the place up. Kreacher had been more helpful since last September, but he barely cleaned up after himself in the Kitchen. Dobby on the other hand was just go, go, go. She'd never had such a clean room before. Dobby had done hers and Sirius' rooms until they could eat off the floor in the no longer dusty corners.

Dobby was also eager and willing to share every little tidbit of information he had been privy to as well, and he had a fountain of information for them. Sirius had been recording all that the Elf told him on the boards in the meeting room, and restraining him when he tried to hurt himself for what he'd been saying, while Ginny had been doing her lessons with Remus and she'd sneaked in there late at night to try and soak in the information.

Sirius was probably the only person that was properly in the Order that didn't mind her knowing everything that was going on. Her mum and dad didn't want her getting any more involved than she already had been. Ginny had to wonder if that was just them trying to exercise their parental right from the distance that they had to, trying to force her to hold on to her last vestiges of childhood innocence. It had gotten much worse after the Kings Cross incident. Ginny didn't imagine there were going to be more sanctioned outings she'd be allowed on by them now that her parents had been witness to that tragedy.

The house was so much quieter with Harry and Ron back at school. She was better able to focus on the assignments that Remus gave her, but both Sirius and she were in a small funk about being left behind again.

"Ginny," Sirius knocked on her door.

"Yeah, come on in," she told him. She'd just been reading her Charms textbook on her bed.

"Harry's called. Wants to talk to us," he held up the mirror.

That rose her spirits. It would have been nice if there were two separate sets of these mirrors, then she wouldn't have to share with Sirius all the time and could have properly private conversations with Harry whenever they wanted, but it was still better than only having owl correspondence.

She took the offered mirror from him and grinned down at her boyfriend. "Missing me already?" she teased.

"Yeah. Uh, I've got Ron here with me as well," he said hesitantly.

"Okay," Ginny said slowly. "Hey Ron," she said to her brother as he shuffled into the frame. They both looked a little nervous. "What's wrong?"

Harry shifted around a bit, trying to ready himself to give her information. "We, well, that is, Luna found… the entrance."

"The entrance," she repeated dumbly, then realized what he meant the moment the words left her lips. "Oh! Wow, what… where?"

"Girls toilet on the second floor," Ron's voice told her.

Ginny's brow wrinkled at that as she tried to think of when in her first year she might have found herself being in that bathroom, but other than to throw away her Diary one time she couldn't remember being there. "And, did you…" she wondered about whether they went through the entrance.

"We went down," Harry said with difficulty. "There, um," Harry gave a hard swallow. "See. It was kind of a straight drop. But I was, I was able to call stairs out of the stone. Erm, you know," and then he let out a hissing sound that she assumed would have translated to the word 'stairs'.

Ginny felt frozen in shock for a moment.

Stairs.

If she could have known the word 'stairs' instead of 'open' then she could have gotten out of there almost right away.

"Stairs," she said dumbly as she stared into his concerned green eyes. "Stairs." Ginny took another breath. "Right."

She honestly didn't know what more she could say. If she'd found her wand down there or known how to hiss the word stairs then this whole 'Voldemort/Tom Riddle' mess might have been over before it even started. "Thanks for letting me know," she told him and handed the mirror off to Sirius. "I'm going to go and get some air."

Not bothering to say farewell to either of them she just left her room and headed straight up the stairs to the roof, feeling numb.

Sirius found her huddled under a blanket on the roof about twenty minutes later. She had been staring at the people walking through the park across from them, all doing their nightly walk with their dogs or just out for a nighttime winter stroll, not a care in the world.

"You know," Sirius sat down and conjured a blanket for himself, "if I hadn't insisted that James and Lily use Peter for their Secret Keeper, they might still be alive?"

Ginny looked over at him and thought that over. They didn't really talk to each other about the depressing thoughts that plagued them sometimes. They'd become close, particularly after she'd beaten him in the duel to get him to stop drinking, but whenever they hung out they talked about the light and silly stuff, nothing serious. He was essentially her best friend, but also like a really cool uncle.

They had been through similar experiences of imprisonment and neither of them felt the need to discuss those dark times of their lives because they knew what it felt like. They knew that each other had made some poor decisions to lead to those periods of imprisonment that they regretted as well, and simply hadn't talked about them with each other before.

Ginny knew the story of Peter Pettigrew from Ron and Harry. It made sense that Sirius would be plagued down with the 'if only's' about what had happened to James and Lily Potter, but there were other factors.

"Do you think you would have wound up dying?" she wondered. "If Tom or whoever was trying to get to them through you had got you."

"There's no way I would have caved," he stated firmly. "They could have ripped out my fingernails or used the Cruciatus Curse on me a hundred times over. I would rather have died."

"There are much worse tortures than what can be done to you," she said sadly.

"Oh?"

Ginny leaned back in her chair, hugging her blanket tighter around her. "They could have hurt the people you loved right in front of you. If you were stuck watching while they tortured Remus, or some girl you were in love with then, you would have caved."

Sirius gave her a sad look, "at that time, James and Lily were really the only people I loved."

"Sirius, you are a good man. They probably could have tortured anyone in front of you, and you would have done all you could to stop them. You are a Gryffindor, just like the rest of us noble fools," she told him.

She heard his sigh of resignation, yet he said nothing. Ginny knew that he had come up here to listen to her talk, not the other way around.

"You know," she started. "When I got out and started hearing the stories of what everyone had gotten up to while I was trapped, I thought that I would wind up being jealous of everyone. But no one was telling me about some stellar Quidditch matches, or gimmicks that the twins had got up to. Instead I heard stories about torture and terror. My dad was bandaged all over, my mum was crying and going on about how sad she'd been. Ron and the twins weren't quite the same, and then there's Percy."

She rested her head back against the chair to look up at the night sky and Sirius did a quick warming charm over the both of them. Not looking at him would help to just get some of the more depressing thoughts out of her head.

"Were you close with him?" Sirius wondered. "None of the other boys mention him much."

"Percy wasn't really close with any of us, no. He idolized Bill, but he was always the responsible one, and the four of us younger than him were basically hellions." She looked over at the moon that was rising in the horizon. "You know, I have to wonder if I had it easier than a lot of you up here. I know I missed out on a lot, but a lot of what I missed out on was just…" she trailed off.

"If I stayed in Azkaban," Sirius wondered. "Peter might never have gone searching for Him, found Him and brought Him back."

"Someone else would have eventually went searching for him," Ginny said morosely. "Maybe it would have been three hundred years from now that he would make a re-immersion into society, then there wouldn't be anyone still fighting against him that knows what he's capable of."

The two of them sat there for a while in the silence, simply mulling over what could have happened if he'd made a different choice, if she'd never written in the Diary, or remembered one other word in Parseltongue.

"Stairs," she said out loud after nearly ten minutes. "There were stairs to the Chamber in the girls bathroom." She looked over at him. "You are happy to be out of Azkaban now, right? You know you made the right choice to leave and go after him."

Sirius gave her a soft smile. "I'll admit the company is infinitely better."

"My, what a high bar you've set there," she commented dryly.

"You know," Ginny started again. "Remember when Dumbledore brought Harry back from that cave place where they tried to get the locket?" Sirius' face was set in a snarl at that memory. "I was there nearly the whole time, and I saw Harry's face, and I was holding his hand when you were yelling at Dumbledore for taking Harry. You yelled in Dumbledore's face that Harry was 'yours'."

"I was absolutely furious with him," Sirius said through clenched teeth. "He didn't have a right. He may be the de-facto leader of the Order, but that doesn't mean he can make calls like that with Harry's life."

Ginny smiled warmly because he wasn't getting her point. "I think it meant the world to Harry to hear you say that."

The expression dropped from his face then and he looked at her in awe, catching on. A shimmer of moisture appearing in his eyes as he looked at her. "I didn't realize it at the time, but now that you point it out, I actually have an idea of what Harry might have felt."

"Oh?" she encouraged him.

"Yeah," he sighed. "My parents had basically kicked me out when I was sixteen. Instead of going here after my fifth year, I went to James'." His eyes were growing a little glassy, "I remember Flea picked us up from the station. He didn't ask me any questions or say anything about my going with him and James. He just loaded my trunk in the car alongside James' and when we got back to Potter Manor, Mia, James' mum, she just threw her arms around both of us and gushed about having 'her boys home'."

Ginny's eyes were growing misty as well. She could picture a younger Sirius with a boy that looked a little like Harry, except in her head she just saw her own mum wrapping her arms around this essentially orphaned boy and treating him like one of her own right from the off.

"I want to talk to him," Ginny said, wiping a tear away from her eye.

"He wants to talk to you too," Sirius told her. "He said for you to give him a call back as soon as you were feeling up for it. Mirror's in your room."

"Thanks," she got up and gave him a hug before heading down to her room.

Ginny hadn't realized just how alike Sirius and Harry were with their family relationships. Both rejected by those that were supposed to raise them and love them. She hoped they could grow to have a proper father/son type relationship.

She saw Sirius had left the mirror on her pillow and did a quick check on her reflection to see if her eyes were puffy. They were a little red, but not too bad. Not bad enough that she felt self-conscious about herself.

She laid down on the bed that took up the mirror. "Prongs," she called. The response for the other end was instant.

Harry's face was there and looking entirely concerned. "Are you okay?" he searched her face.

"I'm alright," she assured him. "I just needed a bit of time to process."

"Did. Did you and Sirius already talk through it?" the frown he was wearing made her think that he might be a little jealous that he couldn't be there in person with her and it warmed her to see it.

"We talked a bit, but not so much about that." She bit her lip and simply stared at him. She and Harry spent a good deal of their talks, even last term, simply enjoying looking at each other's eyes. "I'm a bit down about this realization that there was only one more word that I had needed to know, but, I mean. What's done is done," she sighed.

"You're allowed to be upset about this," he told her sincerely.

"I know. And I'll probably be a little harder than usual on the dummy tomorrow, but right now I just want to forget for a minute that I had anything to do with that Chamber, and I want you to tell me about the others discovering the place," she told him honestly.

"Well," he started hesitantly. "There was something that happened down there. We, er, weren't exactly alone."

"What?" she asked with wide eyes.

"Snape came down there and we had to all hide," he told her the whole tale of what he'd overheard, from the repetition of the Horcruxes that had been found and destroyed, bits about Malfoy and the part about who Snape's invisible friend had been, and what he'd told 'her' about Harry's and her relationship.

"Your mum?" Ginny asked astounded. "He was, is, in love with your mum?"

Harry ran a hand over his face, "apparently."

Ginny cringed on his behalf.

"I couldn't bring myself to tell Ron or the others," he told her. "I just don't really want to discuss that with them."

"And Snape thinks I'm going to be the one giving her grandkids," Ginny said dumbly.

They both locked eyes and turned red at that.

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