Chapter 52: Sod It, We're All Gonna Die
Ginny Weasley was fuming.
Her mother had just told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to set foot outside the walls of the Room of Requirement. Here she was, a battle-hardened veteran of the DA, nearly of age, confined here against her will like a child locked in her room. The sentence ran counter to all her rebellious sensibilities, and was in direct conflict with the responsibilities she had taken onto her shoulders over particularly the past year. She had led the underground resistance at Hogwarts when Death Eaters themselves had infiltrated the castle, picking up where Neville had left off opposing a meddlesome spy from the Ministry, Dolores Umbridge. It was an escalation in aggression that had been dangerous, and, if not for her efforts, could have at any point this term turned deadly. Even at her best, the opposition had been violent, with many students abused, tortured and traumatized. For many of the students, especially the younger ones, she had been the one to teach them how to fight back, and yet here she was, disallowed from putting her own dueling skills to good use when the war was finally here at their doorstep. The battle for the wizarding world was upon them, and she couldn't act as a role model to her own soldiers.
It didn't help matters much that Professor McGonagall had ordered any student under the age of 17 to evacuate. Though she didn't want to see any of her underage friends placed in danger, Ginny didn't want to be a hypocrite by rationalizing that she, herself an underage witch, had to stay and fight, but nobody else underage could. So she softly hoped that there would be DA fighters younger than 17 who would sneak back into the castle to join the counterassault.
So far, there was still much bustling activity in the Room of Requirement, with some students who were more medically inclined setting up a makeshift triage center, ready to receive the wounded in advance. Most of her sprawling family was still in here, checking up on each other, creating a buddy system. The twins would stay together (obviously) as would Bill and Fleur (again, obviously). Even Percy, accepted back into the fold, was being of good help in arming other fighters and going from family member to family member, speaking now the words of remorse he hadn't had the nerve to admit for nearly two years, or forever hold his peace, in case the worst should happen.
All poor Ginny could do was hover by her rucksack, taking in how people were jostling and pushing and shoving and rushing about in an arms race which would, in a matter of hours, produce deadly consequences. It chilled her that she might not ever see some of these people again, because if Voldemort had his way, people were going to perish. Her deep blue eyes kept checking back on her family, Mum in particular, but the Weasley matriarch was always in her line of sight, so it would be rather pointless to sneak out of the Room or even try and make a run for it. Mum would just drag her back herself, Ginny kicking and screaming, before she let that happen and have something befall her only daughter.
The scattering crowd was like a roiling, living thing, creating a tide of humanity rushing about the rock that was Ginny, frustratingly standing still. Until suddenly, that same tide now expectorated from its depths Harry Potter, her good mate and DA deputy.
Ginny eyed the short, meek boy leerily. He had been indispensible this year, as one of her seconds-in-command, along with Luna Lovegood of Ravenclaw. Yet it had also been painfully obvious for some time now that the bespectacled wizard held feelings for her that went deeper than friendship, and constantly being in life-or-death situations, running from the Carrows, this term hadn't helped matters. If anything, Harry's need to read into some romantic subtext between them had been heightened by the strain of guarding the school from invaders. It made Ginny, a young woman wary of most men unless they were comfortably related to her, nervous.
Of course, she liked Harry well enough – as a friend. A sexually apathetic girl such as herself could even concede that he was decently handsome enough to look at, in spite of and perhaps also because of his glasses. She was grudgingly impressed with how the bloke had come into his own this term, growing bolder and thus growing from boy to man. No longer was he the mousy boy she had once known when they met as children.
Except, of course, in moments like this, when Harry couldn't fail to hide a bashfulness that at this point only ever seemed to result from just being in her presence.
"Ginevra…"
Ginny fought to tamp down the glower. Harry was one of the few people to call her by her full name outside of her own family and all while bereft of the scolding context with which her mother most commonly employed it. Even though Harry did it occasionally, it still irritated her, though she had trained herself to let it go.
"What?"
Harry shrank back a little bit, intimidated by her, as more than a few in the DA were. Only his eyes did not betray fear, even glinting with a daring that Ginny found still novel and had come to appreciate from him, even like. Harry held up a cup that had once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff, which Neville had apparently stolen from Gringotts Bank. "Nev just handed this off to me, and told me to destroy it. He let me in on a way to do it, too… but we have to trek a bit to get there."
Ginny studied him and the cup in his fist, sorely tempted, though her face fell and she stole a glance to see where her mother was. "I… I can't. I'd love to help, but my mum won't let me leave the Room…"
"Ginny:" there was a hard edge to Harry's voice that shocked her. "Everything we've worked for in the DA has prepared us for this moment! You-Know-Who needs to be stopped and this is how we do it! I'd prefer not to chance the fray alone, and everyone needs a buddy system, so are you gonna help me or not?"
She stared at him, blue orbs wide, amazed at his assertiveness – something he had revealed of himself more and more. It was all the more…. endearing, for lack of a better word, that he was displaying it to her. She dearly wished he acted more assertively when around her instead of being near pathetically transparent that he was in love with her.
Scanning one last time to make sure her mother was distracted, she turned back to Harry and nodded. "Run for it. Now, before my mother catches us leaving!"
In the confusion, she and Harry slipped out the door to the Room of Requirement and pelted down the corridor, for now chillingly quiet and empty, though Ginny knew mournfully it wouldn't be so for long.
She trusted Harry to know where to go, and he led her with clear purpose and direction damn near across to the other side of the castle and down a few floors, until they had emerged just outside the entrance to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Ginny unconsciously froze. She hadn't been back in this place for almost exactly five years, and for very good reason. All the trauma it had left her with…
"Harry…." she cautioned warningly. "Are we going where I think we're going…?"
He turned back to her just outside the door, smiling with compassion and understanding. Gently, he held out his hand to her. "I know I probably should have prefaced that this is where we're heading, but if I had, I'm not sure you would have come."
She tried to brush this aside by rolling her eyes at him, though a reading of her body language could clearly bely her fear. "I'm not afraid."
"I believe you. But it's OK not to pretend with me, Gin. I understand," Harry grinned at her kindly, his hand still outstretched to her. "Come on, I'll be right beside you. Do you trust me?"
Hesitantly, almost gawping at him for his sensitivity, she finally accepted his hand. "Yessss….." she replied slowly, unsure.
The memories of her first year acting as an unwitting agent of Voldemort and the Chamber of Secrets were mostly, especially all these years on, fuzzy and hazy. It was mostly better that way. In reconciling what she had done technically against her free will, Ginny knew she had helped to open the Chamber, but she didn't remember how it had been done. Only that Riddle had influenced her to open it.
"How do we get in?" she asked.
Harry was shaking out his limbs, getting into an almost athletic stance. "I have a plan. Let's just hope it works."
Ginny frowned dryly. "Well, I'm sold."
"Quiet! …. Please," Harry commanded rather forcefully, and even with his polite addendum tacked on, an odd thrill went through her at seeing him so charismatic. The confidence he had built this year had been a thing of beauty, a joy to see. "I need room to think."
Lips pursed in bemusement, Ginny nonetheless granted him his space. Harry was bopping along, warming, pumping himself up. It would have been amusing if they clearly weren't on a deadline. At last, he stilled, taking a deep breath…
… before a truly horrific, grating hiss emanated from him, his lips pulled back to accomplish the sound.
A prolonged pause during which nothing happened. Ginny was about to ask him admonishingly what that was supposed to be when there was a rumbling as several of the bathroom sinks slid into opened crevices in the floor, grates sealing over the top. Flashing back to when she was 11, Ginny remembered the Chamber did open this way; she'd just never remembered what was needed to cause that reaction.
Harry turned to her with a downright swaggering smile that didn't match his personality at all, and it caught her off-guard enough that she sucked in a breath. "Neville talks in his sleep: have you noticed?"
"I've…. never shared a dormitory with him, so, no," Ginny spluttered, amazed and secretly impressed at his ingenuity.
Harry suddenly made a deliberate move towards her, and she shied back like a skittish foal. "What… what are you doing?"
"It's a long slide down; I'd thought I'd carry you. Gentlemanly chivalry, you know."
With anyone else, she might have told them off for their misogyny, even if well-intentioned when disguised as gallantry; for once, Ginny held her tongue. She was more nervous than anything. "Oh…. Oh, dear, must you?"
"Well, unless you'd rather ride piggy-back," Harry quipped.
An awkward silence before Ginny turned away, regaining her poised composure. "I think I'll just slide down, if it's all the same to you, thanks." She daintily dropped her feet into the hole, scooting smartly to the edge of the yawning abyss. She had to have descended into the Chamber like this before, her first year, but that memory was fuzzy enough as well that it now seemed as though she was doing this for the first time. She felt Harry crouch down at her side before he suddenly half-leapt from the edge and started his plummet into the darkness. Heart in her mouth, Ginny followed.
The chute spat her out nearly right into a still-standing Harry, so that she collided with him and they tumbled in a tangle of limbs to the bony floor of this catacomb. Lifting her head to find her body on top of his, practically straddling him, Ginny gulped as her face bloomed aflame and she quickly scrambled off. "Sorry," she felt the need to mumble. Harry got to his feet, his cheeks also pink.
The cavern suddenly shook and some small rocks were dislodged from the ceiling above; Harry instinctively tugged Ginny tight into him in an attempt to shield her. She gasped, feeling her pulse race under where he now clutched at her wrist.
"The battle's starting. We have to hurry!" And they hustled down the passage, Harry insistent on steering her.
"I really can run without you holding my hand!" Ginny growled, peeved, slapping his palm away, despite a pang of regret at sounding rude and ungrateful.
They passed the flaky, dusty remains of the basilisk's skin, then had to clamber over a low blockage of boulders; this was less impeding than Ginny remembered, from when she had come this way in the other direction with Neville after being rescued.
The pair now found themselves in front of another door, with a threatening snake insignia lining the perimeter. Unfazed, Harry again tried the horrible rendition of whatever animal language he was trying to replicate. Again to Ginny's surprise, the door actually yielded to him, unlocking and swinging open.
She smiled and in her excitement threw her arms around him. "You're a genius!"
"I'm gonna remember you said that!" he chortled.
She drew back from him, flustered and confused with herself. They climbed up into the tunnel, which brought them out into the Chamber of Secrets itself.
Ginny exhaled deep, even breaths in an attempt to calm herself as she and Harry descended the ladder to the damp, dark floor, crossing the expanse to where the decomposed basilisk skeleton had just about crumbled into dust, all except for the skull, anyway. Harry determinedly knelt and plucked one of the basilisk's fangs from the bony crown. Despite not knowing what he intended to happen, Ginny readied the Cup anyhow. She likely knew as little as Harry did about these…. Horcruxes, as Neville had called them, these things the Chosen One needed to seek and destroy.
So she was surprised when Harry handed off the fang, pressing it into her free palm. "You do it."
"I…. I can't," she faltered, uncharacteristically vulnerable.
"Yes, you can," he encouraged, confident in her. Believing in her. He laid the cup down on the floor and Ginny knelt before it, eyeing it like a bomb that might explode.
"Neville said don't think. Just stab."
"And that's it?" she blinked. "That will destroy it?"
"Ginny, hurry!" he prodded.
So she did. She stabbed without second-guessing. Instantly, the action seemed to cause a kind of explosion and there was a blinding flash of green light, followed by an inhuman roar.
The Chamber was suddenly flooding with water, a tidal wave cresting and driving them back.
"Run….. RUN!" Harry cried, but too late. He only just managed to find her hand and hold fast before the wave took them for itself and carried them with it, sweeping them out to the back of the Chamber and away.
For once, Ginny didn't mind how he was keeping him close to her, as she now flailed, starting to panic. "I can't swim…. Harry, I can't swim!" A frothy jetsam sprang up nearly in her face, and she swallowed a bit of water.
"YOU WON'T HAVE TO! I'LL BREATHE FOR THE BOTH OF US!" Harry bellowed, in control. "Get ready! Now: deep breath, and…..!"
The wave crested over them, pulling them both under. Ginny used Harry's grip on her hand as a sort of anchor, her eyes tracking frantically until she caught sight of him, next to her underwater. It didn't take long for her to feel short of breath, as this sea howled above them, and she began to float upward, craving air. She was confused when Harry dragged her down, drawing her to him, and she began to thrash, panicking, especially when Harry suddenly took her skull in his hands, yanked her forward….
… and kissed her breathless, full on the lips.
Ginny squeaked, gargling, her blue eyes going wide as saucers. Harry's mouth was unyielding against hers, working her lips apart in a hot, imperative rhythm until he had forced his tongue into her mouth. She felt him exhale deliberately into her throat, transferring fresh air into her lungs, and she breathed.
Understanding his strategy, her affronted rage ebbed, though slightly. Her rigid body, trapped flush against his, began to relax just a bit. As Harry continued to snog her for the purposes of giving her a Kiss of Life, she felt herself hum almost curiously, the rumbled sound deadened underwater. Her eyelids began to droop.
She almost felt herself start to…. kiss him back, she supposed, before they both finally broke the surface of the water and the raging tide eased back, depositing them back on dry land…. er, floor.
Harry didn't break the kiss immediately, and Ginny finally twisted firmly away, remembering herself. "Ugggh! ….. No!"
Harry blinked water droplets out of his eyes, staring at her in bewilderment in the moment that the Chamber quaked as another explosion – more serious this time - rocked the castle above. Even at these depths, they both could hear the screams of the fighting and fallen.
"Bollocks! You're driving me barking mad, Ginny!" Harry suddenly grunted out, sounding frustrated.
Ginny only stared at him helplessly and hopelessly for a moment as their surroundings rattled dangerously again. She huffed out a beleaguered sigh, deciding. "Sod it; we're all gonna die!"
And curling a hand around the back of his neck, Ginny drew Harry's face back down to hers, pushed her lips fiercely against his and kissed him deeply. He returned it with an enthusiasm that shouldn't have shocked her, yet nevertheless did, as she – the woman of his dreams – audaciously moved to sit astride his lap. Tilting Harry's head back in her palms, Ginny continued to kiss him until it escalated into a full-blown snog. Closing her eyes fully this time and relaxing into the hurried embrace, Ginny felt herself moan in spite of herself. "Hmmmmm… Mmmmmmhmmmmmm….." The pecks turned lighter, desperate, more frenetic, and she shivered when Harry shifted targets to lavish her curved neck with kisses. With her soaked clothes now plastered to her skin, Ginny was appalled with herself to feel her nipples hardening under her white shirt, straining against the fabric with unexpected and inexplicable arousal.
Harry groaned and gyrated a little against her. She felt his clothed length brush against the apex of her thighs and she unconsciously whimpered.
"What do you want, Ginny?"
Her hardened breasts were now heaving like a bellows for every breath. "Op… Open my blouse."
He did as she bid, hands shaking with surely dazed delight as he unclasped the buttons and Ginny's white blouse parted from around her shapely boobs like curtains. Harry now whimpered something that might have been an oath before his lips found hers again and this time, she welcomed his kiss eagerly.
"What else?" he murmured along the seam of her lips.
"Your…. your mouth. Put your mouth on my tits!" she ordered, her voice hoarse.
Harry immediately suctioned his mouth to her one nipple, the cloth from her blouse partially getting in the way, yet still even somewhat through her clothes he sucked the purple bud hard. Arching her spine, Ginny threw her head back and actually let out a scream.
She worked fast now, impulsively, madly moving to free him from his saturated trousers and she greedily cupped his length in her fist, almost to the point of discomfort as she now pumped him, stroked him madly, readying him for her. Harry choked into her breast as she now pushed the swell of it fully into his face, cooing.
"Mmmmmm….. yes, more, please," she rasped.
Splaying her legs wide so they rested at a scissored angle over his hips, Ginny, filled with purpose, guided Harry inside of her and she sank her warm and wet heat down on him.
The copulating lovers both groaned as one at physically coming together in this way. After squirming a little atop him to get used to the feel of him inside her, Ginny bounced up and down insistently in Harry's lap. It was painfully apparent to her that Harry had no experience in matters of shagging or sexual foreplay, so he let her set the pace, just as she preferred when in and going to bed. Ginny and Harry's mouths battled for dominance now, their tongues grappling inside each other's open jaws, which were rapidly becoming sore from all the kissing.
"Uhhhhh….. Hrrrrrrrr… Huhhhh…. Huh – Ha – Harry…." Ginny moaned. Harry simply grunted and continued to rut almost pathetically against her center. "I…. I think I might cum! I think I'm going to co – ohhhhhh….. Ohhhhhhh… OHHHHHHHH!... OHHHHHHHHHH!"
Ginny's toes curled as, with a plaintive cry, she actually came, too quickly and entirely unexpectedly. Harry merely jerked against her, their damp and now also sweaty bodies slapping together in panicked, lustful heat. Ginny matched his every thrust until finally, she felt him shudder against her and spill all he had inside her fluttering walls. The petals of her sex enclosed around him and trapped him, milking him for all he was worth.
Ginny sagged, nearly collapsed against her partner, the man she now had just…. had, despite her better judgment. Harry and Ginny held each other for several long moments in post-coitus high, waiting for their heart rates to slow. At last, she rose off him, daintily and with what she hoped was her dignity still intact. She tried to convince herself she had snogged and shagged him to work out the stress of nearly dying – nothing more.
A pang coursed through her as she now watched Harry struggle to his feet, gazing at her, in awe of her.
"…. I love you."
He whispered it, but may as well have shouted it, and her entire expression shattered, unsure whether what he wanted was hers to give. If she could give it. "Harry…" she murmured, pained.
"Please," he implored. "I feel more sure of myself with you. Safe with you. I enjoy having you in my life. I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you…" He seemed to get momentarily choked up before he suddenly asked, gallingly:
"If we survive this, will you marry me?"
Ginny stared at him, utterly speechless, shocked into stillness and mesmerized by his chutzpa to actually propose…. marriage….
"…. Will you marry me, Ginevra?"
She appraised him silently, sizing him up. Taking a deep breath, she readied herself to lay down her reply, willing herself to be gentle with his heart.
"…. Yes."
Harry seemed as astounded as she did by her answer. "Wait…. yes? Really? You… you…"
"Yes," she nodded, astonished at herself for how she had answered but becoming more at peace with the decision every moment as she took this leap of faith. Harry had waited forever for her, carried a torch for her. And from the way she had just fucked him, she could want him. She could love him, and a part of her realized she did. The least she could do, for him and for herself, for them both, was to grant him this, what might be a sort of death wish. A pact. They would survive the coming battle together and wed as their reward. "Yes. I….. oh, of bloody course, yes!"
Laughing, whooping, Harry suddenly picked her up and spun her around in his arms and she let out a shriek, clinging to him. When he finally set her down, beaming at her, she smiled weakly, bravely back while not letting her arms leave where they remained looped around his neck.
"I'll marry you," she gave her pledge in a soft whisper. "Now: deep breath, and…" Grinning, she swayed into him and the engaged couple shared a long, soft, relieved kiss. When they broke the kiss at left, they ran, hand in clasped hand, from the Chamber, ready to face the trials of combat together, come what may, now as lovers and eventually, hopefully, the trials of life as husband and wife.