Disclaimer: They're not mine; they're Ms. Rowling's. They just jumped into my head one day and started thrashing around. I had to let them out somehow! I can't lay claim to the idea either. I have no clue where it came from or where it's heading. I just hope it doesn't leave anytime soon.
Any similarity between this and other fics is entirely coincidental. If you see something you recognize, please let me know. I don't want to step on anyone's toes!
Warning: If you haven't read OotP yet, please, go find another fic. I'd love for you to keep reading mine, but I don't want to spoil anything for you. Don't worry, I'll be waiting right here when you finish!
Preliminary A/N: I will be correcting a few minor things in the first few chapters. It's nothing major, mostly just stuff to keep this story in line with the events of OotP. You don't have to go back and check it; it really has no bearing on the plot (such as it is). Also, I'm trying to keep this story "in character" as much as possible, but don't expect much of Angry!Harry. I really, really suck at the angst.
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Harry turned from the doors to face Neville again. "I forgot my watch! Do you know what time it is?" he exclaimed.
Neville jumped slightly then glanced up at the head table. "Professor Snape just poured his coffee, so we must have nearly an hour until Potions."
"You know Snape's morning routine?" Harry goggled at Neville, who shrugged and turned back to his breakfast.
"I like to see what mood he's in before we go down to the dungeons," said Neville.
Harry shook his head, "You're a strange one, Neville. He's in the same mood every day: hateful."
"No, he's not!" Neville protested. "Sometimes, when I haven't blown anything up recently, he's quite civil. The worst days are the ones when he doesn't speak to any of the other teachers at table. If he does talk to one of them, I know he's having a good day." He chewed his toast for a moment, looking thoughtful, and then continued, "Really, he's been almost decent, since last year."
Harry blinked at Neville but didn't reply. He certainly hadn't noticed any major changes in Snape's behaviour for the better. If anything, Snape seemed grouchier and more caustic than ever. He rarely spoke to Harry in class and during the Occlumency sessions – which they had continued only at Dumbledore's insistence – he merely growled instructions and criticisms and even those only when absolutely necessary. The few times they had seen each other outside Snape's rooms, the Potions Master had completely ignored Harry's presence. In fact, aside from the eye contact needed for the lessons, Harry couldn't remember the last time he had seen Snape even look at him.
Glancing up at the head table, Harry saw Snape lean close to McGonagall, an enquiring look on his face. As Harry watched, McGonagall reached out and laid her hand on Snape's arm. She was leaning towards him and speaking rapidly. Snape looked down at the hand resting on his sleeve, his lank hair falling in his face and obscuring it from view. He seemed to be shaking his head, if the movement of his hair were any indication. McGonagall paused and looked around the hall. When she saw Harry, her face tightened briefly then smoothed out as she quirked a brow at him.
Not understanding the message in her face, Harry dropped his gaze. He didn't want to think about Snape. He had nursed a healthy anger towards him all summer and had nearly succeeded in pushing the memory of Snape as a student to the back of his mind. Since his return to Hogwarts, and being forced to train with him at least once a week, the memory had surfaced again and again.
Unbidden, the image of Snape as a pale, skinny outcast crept into his mind at all hours of the day and night. It interrupted his classes and took over his dreams. Walking along the edge of the lake, his attention focussed on a sheet of paper…. Dangling in mid-air with his robes hanging over his head, revealing his knobbly knees…. Cruel laughter echoing across the lawn as James and Sirius played to the crowd….
Abruptly, Harry stood and ruthlessly forced the memory back into the depths of his mind. He picked up his stack of books from the bench and told Neville he was headed for the library. Even if Ron arrived in the next minute or two, they wouldn't have time to properly investigate. Breakfast was only one of several important meals of the day for Ron; he never rushed through, preferring to savour every last morsel.
Harry fought back a rush of annoyance that Ron was still abed. He knew that Ron's schedule was much tighter than his own. Between Quidditch practice, prefect duties and extra revision time with Hermione in addition to their classes, many were the nights that Ron came limping into the dorm long after everyone else was asleep.
Bidding farewell to Neville, Harry turned to leave. He could see Ginny leaning against the Ravenclaw table, taking something from Luna Lovegood's outstretched hand and tucking it into her pocket. He sped up, hoping to pass by unnoticed.
Throughout the long, sleepless night, Harry had had plenty of time to think about what he had said to Colin. He had yet to come to any conclusions about his feelings for Ginny – none that he would admit to anyway – and hoped to avoid the blistering set-down he dreaded. He could only imagine the embarrassing things she could prise out of him while giving a lecture on minding one's own business.
As Harry drew abreast of Ginny, she straightened and waved him over. He reluctantly walked to her and waited for her to speak.
"Talk to you, Harry?" she asked in a pleasant voice.
"Sorry, Gin. I need to do some work before Potions." Harry tried to keep his voice even. She didn't look angry, or even annoyed, but all the same, a Weasley's temper was a fragile and dangerous thing. Best to do all he could to avoid rousing it.
Ginny looked unsurprised at his answer. She raised a hand to smooth a long strand of coppery hair behind her ear. "All right then. You have a break after, right? Meet me in the Trophy Room?"
"Er," Harry stammered. His mind was racing to come up with a suitable excuse for crying off. Maybe I can throw myself headfirst into Neville's cauldron.
Cuffing him lightly on the arm, Ginny scoffed. "I'm not going to hex you! I just, I need to talk to you about something."
"Oh! Right. Of course, of course." Harry took a deep breath and tried to collect his wits. "The thing is, Ron and I need to do something today. I don't know when I'll be free. Maybe tonight?"
He winced inwardly as his voice rose to an awkward squeak on the last word. What was the matter with him? This was Ginny. There was absolutely nothing to worry about, provided one knew how to block unfriendly spells.
Ginny didn't respond right away. She was looking at Harry's face and tapping one finger against her lips. Harry had to fight the urge to rub his hand over his face to check for any lingering traces of his breakfast. He lowered his eyes, pulled his hands up into his sleeves and hooked his thumbs in the cuffs. He tried not to fidget under her gaze. Just when he was sure he couldn't take it anymore and impatiently shifted on his feet, Ginny spoke.
"Have you done something different?" she said as she waved her hands vaguely in front of her face. "You look … different somehow. I don't know what it is…."
Her voice trailed off and her hands drifted back to her sides. She shrugged and went on. "Tonight would be good, Harry. A few of us have to work on our Divination –" she pulled a face "– but I can meet you in the Common Room. Say, around 8?"
Harry nodded, fearing he would croak like Trevor if he tried to speak. Ginny smiled brightly at him and moved to join Neville for breakfast. Harry quickly made for the doors. His face felt oddly hot and tight and small beads of sweat were forming along his hairline and down his back. He mumbled a greeting to a small knot of Ravenclaws just outside the Hall and practically ran the rest of the way to the Library.
As he passed through the corridors, thoughts of Ginny and fragments of their conversation tumbled through his mind. He nearly groaned aloud as he realized how much of a prat he must have seemed.
He couldn't understand it. He had known Ginny for years, practically as long as he had known Ron. Why this sudden awkwardness around her? He couldn't even blame it on Colin. To be perfectly frank, this behaviour had begun nearly from the moment they had boarded the train at summer's end.
Harry entered the Library and found an empty table. He laid out his parchments and started rereading his Charms essay. It wasn't long before the words blurred together before his eyes and his mind drifted off.
~
He and Ginny were alone on the train, waiting for Ron and Hermione to join them. After spending several weeks together at the Burrow, Harry felt they had exhausted all possible avenues of conversation. In addition to her invaluable help with ferreting out the adult's secrets, he had heard all about her correspondence with several of her roommates, the latest gossip about the other houses and her most recent fight with her mother (over an enchanted mirror, of all things).
In turn, Ginny was up-to-date with the happenings at Dursley Dungeon, as Ron had taken to calling it. She knew his vague plans for the future, such as they were. The two of them had even spent several evenings snickering over the downright pathetic behaviour of Ron and Hermione, who came up with increasingly bizarre methods of trying to get the other's attention, up to and including a suicidal dive into the pond (Ron) and a small fire while trying to make biscuits the Muggle way (also Ron).
For the first hour or so of their journey, Harry and Ginny hardly spoke to each other. Their compartment was practically bursting with classmates they hadn't seen all summer. The narrow corridor was packed with students shouting greetings to one another and making the rounds of all the compartments.
Harry couldn't remember the last time he had seen so many students wandering through the train. Normally everyone waited until they had arrived at school to seek out their friends and compare their holiday adventures. This time, though, it appeared that the news of Voldemort's return had had an effect. Everyone seemed eager to reconnect with friends and make sure nothing had happened to them over the break.
Also, it seemed that word of the confrontation at the Ministry had made the rounds as well. On his way back from the toilets, Harry overheard several whispered conversations that abruptly stopped as he neared and had been on the receiving end of countless assessing, frightened or contemptuous looks. Students he didn't even know gave him hearty slaps on the back or falsely cheerful greetings then resumed whispering as he moved away.
The Creeveys cornered him when he returned to his compartment. Dennis chattered on about their mum and dad's reaction to the news of Voldemort's return. Colin stared at the other side of the small compartment and interrupted his brother with the occasional word.
"Being Muggles, they were worried about everything, of course. But we convinced them that Hogwarts was the safest place for us to be." Dennis said. "After they got the letter –"
"From Dumbledore," Colin interjected.
"Right, from Dumbledore," Dennis continued with barely a pause. "When they read that, Mum started crying – she's very emotional – and Dad said that the best course of action would be to prepare ourselves for whatever's in store. We told them all about those defence lessons you gave us. Dad was really impressed. Say, are you going to do that again this year?"
"I don't know," Harry said. "Let's wait to see who we have for Defence Against the Dark Arts. We may not need the extra lessons if it's somebody good." Harry half-hoped the new professor would be true to form: incompetent and/or evil (Lupin being the only exception, of course). Harry had enjoyed sharing his knowledge, especially when someone mastered a previously unknown spell or charm. Sometimes he thought that their clandestine meetings had been the only good times out of the whole year.
Dennis and Colin both nodded at him. After several more minutes of chatter, the two brothers drifted away to join the crowd in the corridor. Harry greeted a few people who stopped in to say hello and tried to catch Ginny's attention when a first-year started gabbling at him, but she was engrossed in a giggly conversation with her roommates.
The witch who ran the sandwich trolley eventually tired of fighting her way through the crowd and ordered all non-prefects to their seats. The girls surrounding Ginny squealed one final time and exited in a flurry of laughter and hair-flicking. Harry caught several of them eyeing him as they left and busied himself with arranging Hedwig's cage just so. Ginny collapsed onto her seat and threw her head back, chattering as she filled Harry in on the latest news.
He merely grunted in reply, lost in thought about the coming year. He saw Ginny roll her eyes at him and then bury herself in a book she had borrowed from Hermione. Glad she wouldn't require him to talk, Harry contented himself with watching the countryside fly by. After some time, he found his attention wandering from the blurry hills to his travelling companion.
She was curled up on the opposite bench, completely absorbed by the book. Occasionally, she reached out and flipped through the pages, muttering to herself. Harry grinned as he watched her. She looked like Hermione often did while reading. Unlike Hermione though, Ginny's bright hair was smoothly pulled back from her face in some sort of intricate knot, not floating around her head and getting in her eyes. Ginny scanned rapidly over the pages, lingering here and there as something caught her attention.
As Harry watched, her eyebrows lifted and she started muttering under her breath again. She flipped rapidly to the end of the book and trailed a finger through the index. Finding what she was searching for, she smiled triumphantly and slammed the book shut. Instead of speaking to him, however, Ginny then turned her gaze to the far wall. She stared into space for awhile, apparently contemplating whatever it was she had just read.
Her empty gaze made him uncomfortable. It had been years since Harry had found her lying on the cold floor under the influence of Tom Riddle, but he visited the memory often in his dreams. With a shudder, he remembered her blank face and cold hands as Riddle taunted him. He tried to lose himself in the passing landscape but found himself sneaking looks at her again and again.
She looked much the same as she always had. Her hair was longer and her face a little rounder, but she was still undeniably the girl who followed him around during her first year. Taking advantage of her preoccupation, Harry studied her face. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and various other facial bits, all perfectly normal and in the right places. A dusting of freckles covered the bridge of her nose and her skin, while not exactly tanned, was slightly darker than her usual winter pallor. She was benignly pretty, not the sort to stop traffic or be considered a raving beauty. Looking at her, Harry could see traces of her family in her hair, her eyes, even in the curve of her lips.
So why was he staring?
As he watched, Ginny shook herself slightly, blinked a few times and licked her lips. Harry jumped as though someone had just dug a wand into his side. An uncomfortable wave of heat was building in his belly and he could feel a flush rising on his cheeks. When Ginny turned her attention to him, he tried to act as if he hadn't just spent twenty minutes studying her face but he couldn't tear his eyes away.
"Have you ever heard of…. What? Do I have ink on my face?" Ginny asked as she raised a hand to rub at her nose.
"No, I was just thinking about something. Sorry. I didn't realize I was staring," Harry replied, relieved that his voice hadn't wavered.
Ginny looked at him queerly but let the matter drop. She opened her book again and asked, "What do you know about Pensieves? There's a section here about manipulation of memories but, never having seen one work, I don't really understand what it means."
Harry cleared his throat as he tried to collect his thoughts. He told Ginny all he could remember about his trip into Dumbledore's Pensieve. He described the way the courtroom looked and the conversations he had overheard. Ginny interrupted a few times with questions, mostly ones that Harry could not answer, either because he didn't know or because telling her would raise questions about his other Pensieve trip, the one he hadn't even told Hermione and Ron about. They traded theories about the background memories for a while, but quickly moved on as neither of them actually knew how a Pensieve worked.
At some point, although Harry wasn't exactly sure when it had happened, Ginny moved to sit next to him. The book was spread across both their laps and Ginny was pointing out a complicated looking formula. Harry couldn't make heads or tails of it, so she patiently explained the significance of each variable.
"Look, this symbol here usually stands for a measure of time," she said. "In this equation, it is multiplied by the rune Algiz, which indicates a sanctuary for meditative thought. In simple Arithmantic terms, this part of the equation tells us that the Pensieve allows the viewer to observe a specific memory rather than interact with it. Which we knew already. Where it starts to get confusing is over here –" she pointed to another section "– in this part. I've never seen these symbols used this way before, but I recognize some of them."
Harry turned his head to look at her as she named the runes she recognized. Her brow was furrowed slightly as she concentrated. He fought a sudden urge to reach over and smooth out the wrinkles in her forehead. Without intending to, he lowered his gaze until he was once more staring at her mouth as she spoke. Pressure built in his throat as he watched her lips move. After a moment, Harry realized with a jolt that she had stopped talking and was now facing him. He raised his eyes to hers and felt a flush creeping up his cheeks again.
She was looking at him with a slightly unfocussed gaze. The barest hint of red swept across her face as he watched. She licked her lips quickly, almost nervously. Harry felt himself do the same. He suddenly felt oddly detached from his own body, which was leaning closer and closer to Ginny. He could feel her breath feathering across his mouth and heard the slight hitch in her breathing.
There were only a scant few inches separating them when the door suddenly flew open and Hermione swept in, talking a mile a minute over her shoulder. Harry and Ginny sprang away from each other as she stopped just inside the door, causing Ron to nearly run her over. Harry felt the pressure in his throat increase to the point that he felt he was choking. His face went completely crimson and he could see Ginny out of the corner of his eye, fumbling with the book that was slipping off her lap. She ducked her head and stared at the carpet.
Hermione untangled herself from Ron, who had thrown his arms around her in an effort to keep them both from falling to the floor. She flopped down on the opposite bench and looked from Harry to Ginny with the barest hint of a smirk on her face. "So," she drawled, "what were you two doing in here?"
"Nothing!" Harry nearly shouted.
"Studying!" Ginny blurted at the same time.
Ron looked at them, suspicious, but was easily distracted when Harry mentioned the upcoming Quidditch season. As Ron launched into a lengthy diatribe about practices and Angelina's Wood-like attitude, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He avoided Hermione's questioning gaze and concentrated on keeping a constant conversation with Ron for the rest of the trip. He was acutely aware of Ginny's presence less than a foot away but resolutely forced himself to not let his gaze wander to her again.
As the train slowed to a stop, Harry was feeling rather proud of his self-control. He had only glanced at Ginny once every few minutes, rather than every five seconds as he wanted to. Buoyed by this success, Harry turned to offer to carry her trunk down to the platform. Ginny raised her face to his when he started to speak, but gave him a strange look and walked away when the words died in his throat.
That's why I can't stop looking at her, he thought. She looks like home.
~
Harry became aware of his surroundings slowly. The few students who were in the Library this early were packing their books away and drifting off to their classes. Harry shoved his own school things into his bag and rose from his seat. He hadn't even managed to uncap his inkwell before he'd gotten wrapped up in memories.
Angry with himself for allowing thoughts of Ginny to distract him again, Harry stalked to the exit and made his way down to the dungeons, berating himself the whole way. He met Ron outside the Potions classroom and waved off his profuse apologies for oversleeping.
"S'okay. I couldn't sleep anyway," he said as they walked in together. "We'll just have to check it out later."
Ron started to reply, but Hermione shushed him as Snape swept into the room in his usual melodramatic fashion and started barking instructions. Harry soon forgot about the mysterious room, the crick in his neck and the impending meeting with Ginny as he concentrated on his brewing. He was determined not to draw Snape's attention in any way; he just wanted to get through the day, which was shaping up to be a bad one.
There was a sudden plume of smoke and the sound of coughing from the row behind him. Harry stirred his potion the requisite number of times then turned to watch Snape descend on Neville's workstation and start shouting. Neville merely waved his wand to clear his cauldron and started a fresh batch. Snape watched for a moment, arms folded over his narrow chest, and spoke quietly to Neville (Harry strained to hear the words but Snape was speaking too softly). He nodded at Neville's equally quiet response before gliding away.
When he had gone, Neville looked at Harry and mouthed, See? I told you.
Harry shrugged and turned back to his own potion, which was a murky blue and smelled like rotting leaves. Satisfied with the progress of the mixture, he turned his attention to the steps he had copied into his notebook. He quickly lost himself in the intricate process and failed to notice the eyes marking his every move from the opposite end of the room.
~
A/N: Um, yeah. That part at the end of the flashback? I don't know where that came from. Who knew Harry was so sappy?! But on the plus side, this is my longest chapter to date, so I guess fighting my muse would be sort of counterproductive.
Super big giant hugs, kisses and chocolate bars to my reviewers! It's such a treat to get that 'review alert' email from FF.net. I promise, I will try to respond to everyone who has left a message or written to me personally. I got a little caught up in reality for the past few weeks. It won't happen again, I swear!