WARNING: There is some (very slight) slash in this chapter – not graphic, more in the nature of an established relationship.  If you do not want to read it, do not do so.

I want to thank everyone who has reviewed : Stymied, Cariel (I love your story!), Ilwinterhofal (thank you for reviewing every chapter – it's so encouraging – and I think you will like this chapter), Lady Lestrange (I agree – snivelling Draco = SO annoying!), Skull Bearer, The Blue Flying Lunch Box, Pseudonym sylphmuse, Gwen, Whitefeather, and Wittchway.

Ginny vomited once more into the toilet bowl, even though by now her stomach was completely empty.  Gentle hands held back her hair, rubbed her back.  She leaned into the caress, sighing heavily.

"More difficult than you expected, Ginny?"

The quiet question sparked some emotion from the exhausted girl, and she stiffened beneath the soothing hands.

"I can do it, Harry!"

Harry smiled sadly.  "I know you can, Gin.  You just shouldn't have to."

Ginny turned to face the young man.  "It's not a matter of HAVING to, Harry.  I know that, even now, I don't actually HAVE to do anything.  But I want to help, and this is the best way I know how.  I need to be useful, just like you are, like Ron, and Hermione, and even Professor Snape."

Harry's face changed, its utter gravity melding into something approximating amusement.

"You can call him Severus now, Ginny.  He likes you, you know."

Ginny shuddered.

"He's still a teacher in my mind, Harry – MY teacher.  I'm sorry if six months out of school isn't enough to erase the terror that was Snape, Potions Master, and all-around . . . scary person!"

"Well worded, Miss Weasley."  A dry voice emerged from the bathroom door, and Ginny turned in horror to see Severus Snape, unusually haggard – even for him – coming into the room.  She immediately grabbed for her toothbrush.  Vomit breath around Harry was one thing, but Snape?  How embarrassing.

Harry leapt to his feet in a second, concern in his eyes and Ginny forgotten on the floor.

"Severus!  Was it bad?  How are you feeling?"

Snape thrust Harry off him with a querulous, although gentle, hand.

"I'm fine, Harry.  No ill-effects in the slightest.  He was preoccupied by Crabbe and Goyle."  A rather vicious smile twisted the Potion Master's face.

Harry rolled his eyes, relieved and rather amused by the enjoyment Severus was obviously deriving from his trick.  The time for niceties in this war was past, and Harry could not spare the time to care about Crabbe and Goyle being their scapegoats.  Any casualties were acceptable, as long as they were not from among HIS allies.

And, after all, a vicious Severus was a normal Severus.  Harry was used to that by now, and had accepted that the man be loved would not change in character just because he was now living with Harry Potter, the icon and leader of the forces against Voldemort.

Especially as the relationship was hardly one anybody could really publicise.  As far as the world was concerned, Severus Snape was still living at Hogwarts year round.

He would be for the foreseeable future.

So, instead of fussing – which would make Harry feel like Mrs Weasley and irritate Snape no end – Harry moved away from his lover, and towards his friend, huddled on the floor still brushing her teeth.

Severus looked toward her as Harry gently helped her to her feet, and his eyes softened.  As much as he had found the vast majority of the Weasleys annoying little buggers when he had been teaching them, he could not help but like this youngest.

She was so fragile, so innocent, and yet so strong.

Severus respected strength.

So, as Ginny stood, supported by Harry, looking limp and weak, he moved to her other side and grasped her arm, and, together, he and Harry helped her to the large couch in the living area.

Severus looked at Harry, and indicated with his head for Harry to leave.

Harry did so.

Snape sank down beside Ginny on the sofa.  She was staring blankly ahead, her eyes empty, completely still.  It was as if, if she tried to move in the slightest bit, she would break into a million pieces.

Just shatter.

Ginny's air of fragility may have been deceptive, but then again, so was her strength.  She was just a normal almost nineteen-year-old girl, and she was doing something so daring few men would risk it, something so courageous, and yet, so unrecognised, that she could only being doing it because her sense of morality was so unyielding that inaction would have seemed like the betrayal of all she held dear.

While he would never tell her, Ginny was Snape's definition of heroism.

She wasn't like all the others: himself, Harry, Draco, even Ron or Hermione, who had all had their parts in the war dictated by circumstance.  Ginny had chosen to participate.

And this was the result.

Ginny was a brilliant actress, but only to others.  She could not lie to herself, and seeing what she had seen, and not being able to do anything about it, was like anathema to her.

Today – that Muggle family – must have been a harsh lesson indeed about what was expected of her.

Snape had not seen her, and Draco had not informed him yet of his new "apprentice" – no doubt the information would be vouchsafed at the meeting they had scheduled for next week.  But Snape, who had been aware of Harry's intention of gaining another source among Voldemort's followers, and privy to Ginny's involvement, had known exactly what was going on, even if he had not vouchsafed that knowledge to Draco by so much as the flicker of an eyelid.

After all, Snape was a true Slytherin, and as immune to the calling of truth and honesty and openness as the rest of the breed.

Draco and Ginny were not to know of each other's loyalties.  Only Snape, Harry, and Dumbledore really knew what was going on, and Snape was not entirely certain that even all of them should know.

Theoretically the lack of knowledge would serve as a safeguard.

If either one of the two of them were found out, they would not be ABLE to tell Voldemort of the existence of the other.  Indeed, they would be fully capable of swearing – under Snape's own Veritaserum, if necessary – that the other was exactly as dark as they purported to be.

Snape's Slytherin mind thought this theory was brilliant – even if it had been thought up by a Gryffindor.  But Harry was, after all, Snape's own mate, and this made up for some of his deficiencies.

He had a decidedly machiavellian turn of mind.

Snape liked that in a man.

He did not, however, like the result of Harry's scheming, as it sat unmoving on the sofa.  Ginny's body was radiating cold, and the only sign of life was the ragged breathing that betrayed her state of mind.

Snape turned, and grasped her chin with firm, not unkind fingers.

Her eyes avoided his.

"Look at me, Ginny."

It was a resurgence of the Potions Master, and Ginny could not quell the involuntary jerk of her head toward the silkily commanding voice.  Snape's gaze bored into her, and Ginny felt naked.

"It was not your fault, Ginny."

He sounded so certain.  Ginny wished she could have his utter belief in what he was saying.

She did not.

It had been her fault.

She could have done something.

She could have stopped it.

She could, at the very least, have been a less able actor.

How could anyone who was not at least a little evil have feigned such glee?

No – Snape had to be wrong.

He did not UNDERSTAND.

His eyes were still on hers, hard, cold, black, assessing.

"Think, Ginny.  What could you have done?"

Ginny began to shudder, and was oblivious to a reassuring, if uncertain hand rubbing at her spine as he had seen his lover do only moments earlier.

He was right.

What could she have done?

She began to cry – aching, broken-hearted sobs that wracked her whole body.  She reached out blindly.

Snape responded, enfolding her in his warm embrace, a little stiff, certainly uncertain, but comforting.

Nobody should be left alone after their first Death Eater meeting.

Not the way he had been.

Harry cautiously began to open the door.  He did not want to interrupt whatever it was Severus was doing for Ginny.  After all, he, better than anyone else, would know how to help somebody in her position.

Emboldened by the lack of protest, Harry ventured to put his head inside the room, and found something he had not expected.

Little, redheaded Ginny Weasley, with decided tear tracks marking her pale face, was asleep, a look of peace on her tired face, wrapped in Severus Snape's arms, and the man was soothingly stroking her back even as she slept.

His expression became masked as he turned to face the intruder.

"She fell asleep."

Harry's lips twitched.

Severus sounded defensive.

"I see."

Miles away, in the tower room of an old, magnificent, yet forbidding castle that for some reason was never sighted by tourists – or even inhabitants of the nearby towns or dwellings – a young man sat, his platinum hair atypically rumpled.

In his hands was a school yearbook, open to a page upon which a small group of girls could be seen giggling behind their hands as their tall, dark, and aquiline featured teacher directed his chalk across the blackboard.

Suddenly, the teacher could be seen tuning and scowling forbiddingly at the group, his mouth open as if to say something cutting  - as only Snape could be cutting.

One of the girls, a small, freckle-faced redhead, smiled.

She was radiant.

The teacher smiled unwillingly back.

The man watching this little scene frowned.

What had happened to Ginny Weasley?

SO – What do you think?

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