Chapter nine

Harry and Ginny used the floo from their home to Grimmauld place. Kingsley was sitting in the drawing room waiting for them.

'Minister, not bad Kingsley.'

Kingsley laughed before he got up and hugged Harry and Ginny, which made them both laugh. He even kissed them both on their cheeks when he congratulated them on their marriage but also finishing off Voldemort.

'Now, I happen to agree with both of you that no information will be released. We all worked out he did something to stop himself dying properly back before that Halloween night. There are a few dark ways, but most of those books were banned or destroyed a long time ago.'

'The books we had belonged to Dumbledore and he removed them from Hogwarts back when he first began at Hogwarts. He never found out how Voldemort got the information.'

'I won't be telling anyone, but can you tell me what he did?'

Harry and Ginny glanced at each other, both nodded, 'Horcrux.'

'Oh damn, that's the worst. Did he make one or a spare?'

'He made six, he wasn't going to take the chance that some could be accidentally destroyed.'

'Six, damn, no wonder he was so…inhuman. He basically only had a small section of his soul left. The first time he did it would have split his soul in half, which is what others did when they used it. So the second time, he went from a half a soul to a quarter and so forth. Do you know why Albus told you and not some of the order?'

'He never said but Ginny actually had an idea about that,' Harry looked at his wife.

'After what happened to Harry's parent's, he would have been wary of spies. None of them picked up that Peter Pettigrew was the spy and death eater. He knew Mad-eye the longest, yet he never trusted him with this. He knew Harry wanted to finish Voldemort, but only for his parent's, not for the order, Hogwarts or the ministry. He also knew Harry did not trust anyone unless the person had proved they could be trusted.'

'Arthur showed me the letter you wrote, then the twins explained why you didn't trust Ron or Hermione. I get why you didn't trust any of us, but none of us were told you were mistreated by those muggles. Albus actually lied and said you just didn't like staying there because you couldn't use magic. I got suspicious of Albus when he sent you to the muggles after Voldemort's return, but I couldn't really find any proof that you would not be safe there. We know now you weren't, yet it was the ministry, not Voldemort who sent the dementors. None of us picked up that she was a death eater.'

'Harry did, but no one apart from me believed him, it's the same with Draco Malfoy.'

'I told Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione that he was marked, they wouldn't listen to me.'

'No wonder you didn't trust anyone. I was surprised about Sirius though.'

'I never got any time with Sirius.'

'Hermione believed Sirius would be a bad influence on Harry so she used to make some excuse to be in the same room they were in. Mum felt the same but she knew Sirius was Harry's godfather, so she left them alone, even if she didn't like it. Ron, well, he's thick, it never occurred to him that Harry wanted some alone time with Sirius.'

Harry and Ginny told Kingsley a lot and even explained more about his life at the Dursley's. But they still keep the information about Harry being a horcrux a secret. No one will know about that, but they were both pleased to know Kingsley was going to keep the information about horcruxes from being released. He will make sure the world knew that it took Harry and Ginny to finish Voldemort and it was to do with the magic of love. Even though Harry and Ginny didn't like Albus Dumbledore, they wanted people to think it was Dumbledore's research about the magic of love that would help Harry defeat Voldemort.

After another hug and a congratulations, Kingsley left to return to the ministry. Harry and Ginny used the floo to go to the Burrow.

Molly looked up when she heard the fireplace. Ginny stepped out first, by the time Harry stepped out, Molly was hugging Ginny. Arthur hurried over and hugged Harry.

'Congratulations,' Arthur grinned.

'Thanks Mr Weasley. But just think, I'm actually part of the Weasley family now. So like when Bill married Fleur, I married Ginny, so the Weasley family is expanding.'

'It definitely is and it will keep expanding.'

Before Harry could say anymore, Molly grabbed him in one of her rib cracking hugs, which gave Arthur a chance to hug his daughter.

'It's our turn,' the twins yelled.

Harry and Ginny got hugged by the twins, then Bill and Fleur, last was Charlie. Even though they knew Hermione and Ron were at the Burrow, they didn't come downstairs. Harry and Ginny had been expecting them to act like this, so it wasn't a surprise.

'So let's have lunch, then we'll discuss the party,' Molly said happily which made everyone smile.

'We want everyone invited and Harry's paying.'

'Yep, I said I want to really celebrate, so I'm going to use some of the money Sirius left me so we can all have a great night together. Dobby wants to help you as well Mrs Weasley, he loves to cook but he said he would be happy if he could just help you since he knows we love your cooking.'

'Oh, very well, Dobby can help.'

'So do we get any type of explanation on why you married now?' Bill asked.

Harry and Ginny looked at each other and everyone sitting around the large table in the kitchen was watching them.

'It's like us Fred,' George said.

'Yeah, they're communicating with each other without words,' Fred said.

'We do, we just know each other so well. We've been doing it for a while but it's stronger now that we're married,' Ginny grinned.

'So yes, we'll explain some, but some we will keep to ourselves, even Kingsley agreed that some of this information should never be told to anyone,' Harry said.

'You said love was the reason,' Arthur said.

'Dumbledore worked it out that Voldemort had no love, no humanity. But it was when Voldemort possessed me that told him he was right. When he was trying to get Dumbledore to kill him, me, at first I just kept seeing Sirius die. I was angry then just hurt. Then I saw Ginny standing there,' Harry looked at his wife, 'The love I felt for her and how much I did care about Sirius, it hurt Voldemort so much he was forced to leave me. Dumbledore got proof he was right about love playing a major part in his destruction. He wrote pure love in one of his books, but he also wrote joining of two pure souls. It would only work with me though as I was connected to him through the curse that didn't kill me. He would feel our joining, our love, which would kill him.'

'Both of us were pure, virgins and joining meant joining our hearts, souls and bodies in a bonding ceremony, a marriage. Harry felt it, I won't say when but he felt Voldemort dying.'

'I think we can guess when that happened,' Charlie said with a grimace, 'That is not something I want to think about when it comes to my little sister.'

'Then just think of her as my wife, Charlie.' Harry said with a big grin.

'So even though you basically stopped trusting Albus, you went with what he believed?' Arthur asked.

'He knew magic that most of us would never hear about, or know about. He explained that there is a room in the department of mysteries, a room that is all about the magic of love. The unspeakables had been studying it since…well, forever. Even though Dumbledore didn't know exactly what they did, with his contacts he learnt enough to know that love has it's own form of powerful magic. We spoke about what he believed and about that night in the ministry when Sirius died. I felt his anger and I felt how he really believed he would win. As I thought about what happened when I saw Ginny, I remembered the pain he felt. We figured we would try it his way, if it didn't work then we would find another way. No, I didn't trust him, or like him, but I knew he had a lot of experience and a lot of lost knowledge. But Ginny actually did all the research, then we discussed it. Like I wrote in my letter. We would put forth our ideas then talk it over, until we came to a conclusion. There were times I was wrong and times Ginny was wrong. But this, I don't know, I just know that when I thought of how much I love Ginny that day in the ministry, he was in a lot of pain. So we went with it, we had nothing to lose if it didn't work.'

'We went through every details to make sure we had everything ready and thankfully it worked,' Ginny said.

'Did Kingsley say why the death eaters died?' Bill asked.

'Kingsley didn't know, but Dumbledore told me about the connection Voldemort had with his death eaters through the dark mark. He could track them, summon them, make them feel pain, even if they were not in his presence. Snape told him there were times when he felt weak, like something was sucking the energy from him. Dumbledore never got proof but he believed he could use the dark mark to take some of their magic. After what we heard on the WWN, we believed he could take some of their life force to help keep him alive. He was doing the same to Ginny when he took her to the chamber of secrets. He was sucking the life out of her and he was becoming more real, more solid. Anyway, on the wireless, they said it went on for around forty minutes before he died. We believe he was using the dark mark to suck the life out of his death eaters in the hope it would keep him alive. And like I was saying, the diary that possessed Ginny which had a bit of his soul. His essence in the diary was sucking the life out of Ginny, but he was using his possession of Ginny from when she wrote in the diary. He connects the death eaters to him via the dark mark.'

'So as he was dying, he was killing anyone with a dark mark in the hope it would keep him alive. Forty minutes and he died, then the rest just dropped dead,' Bill said.

'Forty minutes?' Fleur raised her eyebrows at Ginny who grinned, but she also nodded, 'Not bad for the first time.'

'Oi, I do not want to hear any of that,' Charlie said making Harry, Bill, Ginny, Arthur and Molly laugh. Even though they did not want to think about Ginny having sex, even if it was with her husband, they couldn't help laughing at the look on Charlie's face. But now the serious talk was over, it was time to discuss the party.

None of them knew, but Hermione had been standing just out of sight. She wanted information but she was still furious with Harry. She had been with him through everything since the troll incident in the first year, then he just dumps her for Ginny. She planned to have it out with Harry, but she could not here at the Burrow when everyone supported him, because now Harry was part of the family, where she was not. She also knew trying to get him alone and away from Ginny will be difficult, but she was determined to find a way. She was going to tell him that he was wrong and she would have been able to help him and he should have trusted her.