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Chapter Twenty-Two—Had Lifted Up

Harry opens up the door and steps inside, shaking the blast of cold rain off his cloak. Luna's letter was short and terse, so unlike her that he wonders if she's sick. But she said to come at once, so if she is sick, it's not the kind of disease that would prevent her from seeing anyone.

"Luna?" he calls when no one immediately shows up.

There's some sharp scuffling from the kitchen. Before he can catch up with his own instincts, Harry has dropped into a crouch and lifted a shield in front of himself. Then he snaps out a detection charm that will tell him how many people are in front of him and whether they're preparing to cast deadly magic.

Two, the spell bounces back to him like a bat's sonar. Lifting wands only.

Harry doesn't think he'll need to fight, but on the other hand, this might be someone who's holding Luna hostage because they've figured out that she's working with Harry. He slides forwards step by silent step at a time, his charm still hovering around him and ready to alert him in seconds if a spell starts to rise.

It doesn't. Harry makes it all the way into a corner of Luna's entrance where he can see at an angle into the kitchen, and then he leaps to his feet and strides forwards.

Ginny is standing there with her wand drawn and her face as brilliant a red as the tomatoes in Molly's gardens. Rolf is standing across from her with his own wand slowly lowering and a broken cup of tea on the kitchen floor in front of him.

Harry turns to face Ginny. His shield moves along with him, spreading out like wings, although he banishes the detection charm. "Well?" he asks quietly.

"Now you're treating me like an enemy, Harry?"

"What were you here talking to Rolf about?"

"Tea. Lunch. I mean, how to make them. How to cook."

Harry ignores Rolf's babbling, keeping his eyes on Ginny. She's never been a good liar; he thinks that she got away with keeping Tom Riddle's diary secret in second year so long only because no one ever directly asked her about such a thing, and had no reason to, when they couldn't know it existed. And she gets angry when someone asks her directly about something she doesn't want to talk about.

She'll snap.

"I mean, it was just a harmless discussion. I didn't know that you needed to be invited to those, Lord Potter."

Again, Harry ignores Rolf, and lets his shield turn a little, so that light will flash from the edge and remind Ginny that it's there, and he doesn't trust her.

And Ginny snaps.

"He was telling me all the horrible things that you plan to do to our world," she snarls, and her face lights up with a rush of battle-fury. "You're going to damn innocents along with everyone else, Harry! Did you think that I wasn't going to find out about that and fight you?"

And she casts a silent hex at him, but unluckily for her, Harry is an Auror with his full training, while all Ginny has ever had was the D.A.

His shield whirls out and catches it, then sweeps it back at her in a half-circle. Ginny barely manages to jump out of the way. The hex cuts a gash in the table that nearly severs it in half.

Ginny yelps and leaps and twists away. Harry spends the necessary minute casting more shields so that no other pieces of Luna's furniture will be damaged. Then he twists himself to deal with his newest nuisance.

Ginny is a fast and powerful fighter, with some nasty magic that she picked up from George. But spells alone aren't enough. She lacks technique and strategy, and from the way she spends most of her time dodging instead of casting as Harry confronts her, what's she mastered is "get out of the way."

Harry accepts a few stings and burns from the hexes that fly at him, and concentrates on cornering Ginny between the wall and his stalking shield. It doesn't take long. In perhaps a minute and a half, Ginny is bound in cords made of the shield spell itself, thinned out and expertly-shaped. Her hands clench behind her back, still holding her wand but so closely imprisoned that she can't move it—and Harry knows well enough that she never mastered wandless magic, either. Her eyes are bright with defiance.

"You're going to destroy innocents," she repeats. Her breath is huffing out of her, her lungs shivering with hatred. Harry knows what it looks like now, after seeing it on the faces of the Lords and Ladies of the Sun Chamber.

Harry steps towards her. "And you decided to go behind my back and con the answers out of Rolf instead of asking me?"

"He's the one who told me the details. I know you would never do that! You're afraid I'd stop you!"

"And what about the innocents that are being destroyed every day by the Ministry, Ginny? The Muggleborns who can't find any jobs because their 'dirty blood' holds them back? The centaurs who are confined to preserves and prevented from holding wands? The goblins who are bound by magic to guard wizarding money when that's not even something they did until they were forced to? The house-elves who are abused and mistreated? Do they not matter, because they're not pure-bloods?"

Ginny stops struggling, eyes narrowing as if his words have finally started making sense to her. "You haven't made it clear why your way is so much better."

"Because you don't really want to be convinced. You just want to fight me."

Ginny blinks at him. Then she says, "Try to convince me now."

Harry thinks about it, then shrugs. He'll probably have to Obliviate her of what she learned from Rolf anyway. He'll just do the same with this information if his arguments don't work. "The Ministry is corrupt, and so is the world that surrounds it. The Wizengamot is. They judge pure-bloods leniently for crimes that include literal murder. They do what the Sun Chamber tells them to. No one knew about the Sun Chamber until I broke the news on them. That means there was no way to appeal any verdict or ask them for help, even if they made a request or decision that directly affected someone. Can you understand how terrible that is? To have a secret government body deciding things?"

"But blowing it up will make things better?"

"It'll get rid of a cancer that we don't stand a chance of getting rid of otherwise," Harry told her frankly.

"Legislation! Campaigning! I know Hermione—"

"Hermione didn't achieve a single success in the last ten years, Ginny."

"She did too! I remember when she got that legislation passed that said werewolves didn't have to register with the Ministry—"

"It was overturned the next month, in a quiet little vote that the Wizengamot didn't announce and the Prophet put on the ninth page after an article about the robes that the Holyhead Harpies were wearing that season."

Ginny only stares some more. Harry looks at her, waits, and, when she says nothing, delivers another blow. "Hermione has found evidence that people have repeatedly blocked her promotion within the Ministry. The evidence doesn't always lead back to someone who's pure-blooded themselves, but they're always in the employ of pure-bloods. Including some of the families that make up the Sun Chamber."

"But Hermione has gone so far…"

"And she wanted to go further. She wanted to do good for this world. But she's been blocked, Ginny. Are you still going to say that this is a world that has time and a place for people who aren't part of those old families?"

"It doesn't mean that you have a right to destroy it."

"Neither do they have a right to control it and keep it exactly the way it's been for centuries because that's what's more comfortable for them." Harry realizes he's spitting the words, and tries to ease back a little so that Ginny won't feel overwhelmed. "Listen to me. I've done what I can. I've put in motion what I can. And I struggled for years before that, by Ron's side and Hermione's, to create change. It didn't do a damn bit of good. This will."

"But what happens when you destroy the Ministry? All that will happen is the pure-blood families will decide you're an unstable half-blood or something, and take over again."

Harry smiles. Good. Rolf didn't get far enough to tell her all the details of their plans—maybe because this is one that he doesn't actually believe can happen. "They'll be gone."

"You're going to murder all of them?" Ginny's voice rises, and her hands writhe in her shield bonds almost strongly enough to get loose and reach her wand.

Harry laughs. "No need to. I am simply going to change their minds."

Ginny frowns warily at him. Then she shakes her head and says, "However you plan to do that, it wouldn't be a true changing. They would only come after you again in the future. You ought to try and accomplish this through legal, legitimate means, Harry. Don't give in and use their underhanded methods."

Harry rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes, it's such a bitter necessity. But I am going to change their minds, Ginny. That's the way it is." He moved his wand, and the shield that holds her in place dissipates. "Now, are you going to go about and spread the story, or fight by my side, or oppose me in another way?"

"I'm going straight to the Minister. I can't believe you!"

Harry shakes his head. "That's what I was afraid of. Obliviate."

For a second, Ginny blinks and looks as though she doesn't know why she's standing in Luna's house. Harry steps forwards and pats her on the shoulder. "I know that you don't like me much right now, but I hope we can cooperate while Luna is sick."

Ginny's eyes sharpen again. "Of course. I'll bring her some pain-killers and Pepper-Up tomorrow, since you're pants with potions." She hands Harry a condescending smile and departs the kitchen with a flip of her long red hair.

Harry turns to confront Rolf. The man is so pale that he looks as if he's going to sick up any second. He meets Harry's gaze and then turns his head away, trembling. "She deserves to know what's going on."

"Why? When she would be part of the means of ensuring that Muggleborns and magical creatures continue to endure oppression?"

"That's just—just the way it is—"

Harry's magic stirs, and the kitchen table finishes cracking in two. Rolf presses his back against the counter, paler than ever. Harry steps forwards and lays his hands on the table, fixing it with a silent Reparo, not glancing away from Rolf.

"Yes, things should stay the same they always have been, shouldn't they? Never mind that pure-bloods are supported by all the underpaid labor of Muggleborns in the Ministry and Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and elsewhere, doing jobs that the pure-bloods would disdain. Never mind that they don't have to bother learning basic household charms because the house-elves do that work for them. Never mind that they can kill and bait Muggles to get their jollies off and the worst they'll get is a small fine from the Wizengamot. Everything should stay exactly the same."

"I don't—I mean, of course I support better pay for Muggleborns and better treatment of house-elves! But you can't force people to give that to them."

"No?"

"No, because it'll never work!" Rolf seems to be getting his feet back underneath him now, his hands pressing more firmly against the counter. "They would pretend to agree and in the end the changes wouldn't be passed through. I oppose you because it's not going to work, not because I think you're wrong!"

"No," Harry says quietly. The table is completely repaired from the cracks he and Ginny made in it. He moves away from it, but doesn't take his attention from Rolf. That would be stupid, given the circumstances. "You were content to allow things to remain as they are, as long as you weren't inconvenienced."

Rolf stares in silence and says nothing. Luna is the one who steps out from her bedroom and says, in the weariest tone Harry has ever heard from her, "Please don't use the Memory Charm on my husband."

Harry nods to her. She looks well, of course. He knows the note was simply a discreet way to get him here. "I don't want to. But we have to have a way to make sure that he doesn't simply go and blab everything to Ginny or someone else. What would you suggest?"

Luna holds up a crystal sculpture so delicate and with so many different bits that Harry doesn't see it whole for a minute. Then he does, and grins. "A muzzle. Excellent."

"Luna? Luna! You can't! I love you! I never did anything to you!"

Harry wonders if Rolf notices the sheen of tears in Luna's eyes as she turns around and faces him. "Not to me," she says softly. "I know you love me. But I told you about all the problems the Snorkacks and the Humdingers were facing, and you didn't care. They're as important to me as I am, Rolf. Don't you understand?"

"No, because I don't see how destroying the Ministry is going to—"

Luna picks up the muzzle and blows on it, moving her head slowly but thoroughly from side to side, to make sure that her breath touches every piece of crystal.

Then she releases it. Rolf watches in what seems to be a kind of horrified trance as the muzzle drifts towards him. Then it wraps around his head and sinks into his skin, vanishing from sight so fast that Harry doesn't get to see it actually shrink.

Rolf reaches up and feels around his neck and mouth, frowning. "What did it do?" he whispers.

"It'll keep you from talking of our plans except to people who already know them," Luna says. Her smile is melancholy. "So the exact same conditions we were already asking you to obey, but a bit more enforced this time."

"I could still write—"

Luna produces a pair of crystal manacles, and breathes on them in the same way, and sends them floating over to Rolf. Rolf only watches with a resigned expression as they disappear into his skin. Strangely, he doesn't seem as upset as Harry was expecting.

"You are skilled, my love," he murmurs.

"I don't always get to use that skill the way I want to," Luna says, and turns to Harry. "Harry, could I have a word with you before you leave?"

Harry nods and walks after her into her bedroom. He thinks she will probably ask him how much longer this needs to go on. Being forced to literally muzzle and chain her husband isn't what she signed up for, and Harry is sorry for it.

"Luna, I'm so—"

But she turns and collapses against him. Harry is so surprised that he barely manages to catch her, and then holds her up and blinks into her face as she gives a single heavy sob.

"Luna, what is it? Is it what Rolf did? It's okay." Harry gingerly hugs her around the shoulders. He really isn't good at this, not after ten years of hacking at the Ministry and making no impression. "I'm sorry you had to chain him up like that, but I Obliviated Ginny. If you want to get out of this, then I can do the same thing for you and Rolf."

Just please don't ask me to stop. You know I can't.

Luna sniffles and steps back from him, wiping at her eyes. "That's not what I'm upset about."

"What is it, then?" Harry lets her go, and then wonders if he should have hugged her again. But he honestly is terrible at this.

Luna takes out a photograph from her pocket. It's a Muggle one, not a wizarding one. Harry still flinches when he looks at it. The beautiful unicorn in the picture isn't any less dead, its legs sprawled out and its tongue dangling from between blood-flecked lips.

"What happened to it?" Harry whispers.

"A relation of the Parkinson family has been hunting unicorns in the Forbidden Forest." Luna's voice is thick with hatred. "I've been documenting it, and I finally had enough proof to turn in to the Ministry. But nothing happened. Today I asked the people in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement why, because I know that they'll make sure killers of unicorns are brought to justice when no one else is. Harry, it's because he's a pure-blood."

She flings herself at him again. This time, Harry catches her the right way and cradles her close against him, watching the photograph of the unicorn rather than Luna. The picture portrays clearly how much the beautiful creature suffered before it died.

"I'm not going to ask you to stop," she finally says, when she's mastered her sobs and pulled back to stare into his face. "Never, until they're all stopped or dead."

Harry gently kisses her forehead. "And what about Rolf?"

"I love him, too. But he can defend himself. He can make the choice not to get involved in politics if he doesn't want to. They have no choice." Luna turns her head to the side as if she's afraid she'll start crying if she sees the photograph again.

Harry kisses her under the chin this time, and folds the photograph gently into his pocket. Luna watches him, but doesn't try to stop him.

"I promise you they're all going to pay," he murmurs to her. "So many times over that in the end, they'll suffer more than the unicorns have."

Luna looks him in the eye long enough to believe him, and nods. Harry slips out of the house, with Rolf watching his back, then turns and Apparates. He has business to take care of.

First will have to be telling Ron about Ginny. That's not the sort of secret Harry keeps from his best friends.