Chapter 44

Night before Battle

Dawn

Harry didn't need to ask who she meant. He had actually been surprised she hadn't asked this question earlier when Hermione and Ron had mentioned Ginny and her "breakdown." The conversation had been detailed enough that Cassie would have been stupid not to have figured out that he and Ginny had some sort of relationship. Cassie was definitely not stupid, so Harry was positive that she was curious to know exactly what sort of relationship the two of them had. Harry wished he had an easy answer for her but like all of the things they had talked about tonight, it was a more complicated situation than she might expect. He tried to think of the best way to start talking about it but nothing sprang to mind. After a few minutes, he heard a tentative, "Harry?"

"She's . . . a powerful witch. She's a really good Quidditch player." He would have continued on in the same vein, but Cassie interrupted.

"That's not what I mean and you know it. Tell me about her - as a person."

"She's got red hair and she's a little shorter than you are . . ."

"Harry Ev-, uh, Potter. You know that is not what I mean!" Cassie was laughing, but Harry knew her well enough to know that her patience would not last for much longer.

"Oh, all right. I'll try. But I may not do the greatest job of this." She nodded and Harry decided to just start at the beginning. "Well, she saw me the first time on my very first day of school - when Ron and I were getting on the train."

"Wait, wait! You take a train to a magic school?"

"Well, yeah. But we kind of have to because the kids can't apparate yet and having everyone floo over or use a portkey isn't really practical for all of those students. Especially since a lot of them don't know any magic at all at that point." Harry didn't mention that you couldn't appararte inside of Hogwarts. That just would make the entire story even more complicated.

"So this train . . ."

"The Hogwarts Express. Leaves from King's Cross Station."

"Oh, you must be kidding now!"

"Nope."

"But that's just - Hey! Are you trying to distract me?"

"Um, well . . . Is it working?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I want to hear about Ginny."

"The train is pretty interesting. It's a bright red train with no one really . . ."

"No, Harry. Ginny."

"Well, you are the one that interrupted me the first time."

"That's true. I won't interrupt again unless it's absolutely necessary."

"Did I mention that it's a magical platform? Muggles can't pass through . . ."

"Harry!"

"As I was saying . . . She saw me the first time the first time I was heading to school. Of course, she didn't go to Hogwarts that year. She was too young. But she . . . Well, she got a bit of a crush on me. She knew my name, of course, everyone knew who I was, plus I guess she thought I was cute."



"I bet you were, too."

"I bet I wasn't. I was . . . awkward and out of place and my clothes were just, uh, horrendous. Plus my glasses were broken and had tape around them -- you know, like I was the biggest geek in the entire world."

"Why were your clothes horrendous? And why were your glasses broken?"

"Oh, I don't know if I want to get into that whole story."

'Tell me fast, then."

"Okay. My aunt used to force me to wear clothes that were way too big for me. I think she did it to humiliate me. And someone had punched me in the face and broken my glasses. And she avoided spending money on me whenever possible."

"That's horrible, but I already knew she was mean to you. I'm sure there's more to that story but I'll ask another time. I want to hear more about Ginny."

"Anyway, I saw her that next summer at Ron's house and she wouldn't speak to me at all, just turned beet red and squeaked whenever she saw me. Everyone kept telling me she had talked about me the whole summer but I saw no evidence that she could even string two words together."

"And you couldn't tell that she had a crush on you?"

"Well, I was a socially retarded 12-year-old boy. I had no idea how girls acted when they liked you! I hardly even knew her name. But that year, of course, she started school with us and she was in Gryffindor, also, along with the three of us and her other brothers who were already at the school." Harry had missed the sorting that year, of course, but figured that Ginny was probably just as relieved to get into Gryffindor as Ron had been. Everyone in their family had been in Gryffindor and for Ron the year before it had been his greatest fear that he would let the family down and be sorted into one of the other houses.

"I'm sure that she wanted to impress me that year, convince me to like her. I didn't pay that much attention to her. But I wish I had. She got into -" Just how did Harry start to explain to Cassie about the whole Chamber of Secrets fiasco. Would she even believe the story about a memory taking over a live human body and forcing her to do things? What about the whole basillisk? The Phoenix, Gilderoy 'I'm an idiot' Lockhart, Tom Riddle, the giant spiders out in the Forbidden Forest, Hagrid . . .It was all just too much to -

"Harry? Are you still there?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. Like I was saying. She got into trouble that year. Big trouble. Maybe if I'd been paying more attention to her. . . Maybe if any of us had paid more attention to her . . . Anyway. She almost died."

"What!"

"I thought you weren't going to interrupt me."

"I said I'd only interrupt if it was necessary!" Harry just smiled.

"She almost died and I had to . . . Well, this is hard to explain. Voldemort almost killed her and I had to . . . I sort of . . . . I rescued her. I saved her life. . . . I almost died, too." Harry was silent again. He had been 12 then and had not thought that much at the time about how close he had come to dying down there in the Chamber with her. Since then, though, he had often thought of that long fight down in the Chamber and been afraid for himself. And he knew how it ended. This time, Cassie didn't interrupt his long silence.

"I think after that, her crush was a serious case of hero worship. I was even more embarrassed to see her. I didn't like the thought that she felt somehow . . . obligated to me. So I basically avoided her as much as I could. I mean, a lot of times I saw her because she was still Ron's little sister and she was in my house and everything. But, I tried never to be alone with her or anything, or find any reason to really speak to her. I had a lot of things going on in my own life over the next couple years anyway. As usual."

"Voldemort was still chasing you, of course." This wasn't a question. Just a statement.

"Yeah. That was a big part of it. But then in my fifth year, her fourth, things changed between us. She started talking to me more, normally. No more squeaking or blushing bright red every time she saw me. She, um, started dating other boys and she told Hermione that she didn't like me that way anymore. That she just wanted to be friends. And that was a really interesting year." His tone was injected with sarcasm. "We wound up forming this group, kind of a club, where we practiced defensive stuff. I taught it and there were lots of people in it. Ginny was one of them and she was really good. It was the first time that I really saw how powerful she was. By the end of the year, I had come to look at her in a completely different way. In the fight at the ministry at the end of the year, where Sirius was . . . killed, she was unbelievable. She had a broken ankle and was really beaten up. But it didn't matter. She kept fighting. She was so tough." Harry sat there for a minute or so remembering the fight, the pain, the terror and Ginny, hurt but still hanging in there, beat up but not beaten. It was then things changed. It was then, even though he did not realize it at the time. Harry expected Cassie to interrupt and ask about the club and about the fight, but she didn't. He continued. "I couldn't play Quidditch that year. And Ginny took my place. She was good as a Seeker. Really good. I was pretty impressed with her there, too. But she kept dating these other people so I decided that she and I were not meant to be together, or if we were, I had blown it. And I could live with that." Harry stopped talking and took a deep breath. Cassie still didn't say anything and Harry wondered if she had fallen asleep. He shifted slightly and she turned her face to meet him and he could tell that her eyes were wide open. "Do you want me to keep going?"

"Yes, of course." Harry felt really uncomfortable talking about this with her. And the more he talked, the more uncomfortable he became. He liked Cassie - a lot. Things were still unsettled with Ginny but talking to one girl he liked about another girl he liked was very strange. But, all right.

"Anyway, that summer, I was home and didn't see her until it was almost time to go back to school. When I saw her and she looked at me without that, I don't know, blushing shyness, I suddenly missed it. I missed it terribly. I suddenly realized that I didn't have anyone anymore. Anyone who really . . .loved me. Sirius was gone . . .and there was no one else. No one." Harry gasped, remembering the raw pain of that moment all over again. He had felt so suddenly abandoned. He had run out of the Burrow and walked for hours, trying to come to terms with things before returning to the Weasleys who all offered various comforting homilies. They all assumed he had been upset over Sirius and he hadn't corrected their assumptions. His heart had ached the whole time he had been at the Burrow and he had been so glad when it was time to go back to school. The crazy schedule of Quidditch practice, classes, homework, and the war had kept him busy. But he had tried often to seek Ginny out and speak to her and when he did, she was always friendly but she was usually holding hands with someone else.

He continued with his story. "I guess I didn't realize how much I counted on her loving me until she didn't anymore. But, I thought as the school year went on that maybe she really did still like me, at least a little."

"Why?"



"Well, even though she was supposedly dating all these boys, I never saw her getting really, intimate with them. I mean, you know, kissing and hugging and stuff."

"Would you have normally seen that? I mean, that's kind of private."

"Yeah. I would have. Going to a school like that, there aren't a lot of secrets. You wind up doing things a lot more openly than maybe you'd imagine - things like kissing. Besides, even if I didn't personally see it, I would have heard about it. You just get used to having very little privacy at boarding school."

Cassie seemed taken aback at the notion of everyone knowing just about everything about everyone else. "I don't know if I'd like that much."

Harry chuckled. But it was true. Everyone always knew what everyone else was doing and with whom they were doing it. And with Ginny, he knew her dating was pretty platonic - even considering that she was only 15. He had even heard one of her dates complaining that she wouldn't do more than hold hands and had felt a thrill of possessiveness at that. "Anyway, I became convinced, rightly or wrongly, that she still really loved me but was just trying to move beyond it or maybe just trying to make me jealous or something. I guess that's pretty egocentric of me, but that's what I thought. Maybe I needed to believe it . . ." To keep his sanity, Harry thought. He had needed to think that. It filled some of the emptiness.

"Well, it sounds like there may have been something there. Did you try to find out? Did you talk to her?"

"Yes, I did." Harry frowned at the memory of the fight he and Ginny had. He had asked her to go to Hogsmeade with him. What had frustrated him the most was how her eyes seemed to say yes and her mouth said no. "I had asked her out a couple of times but she always refused. She always had prior commitments or something like that. Finally, I took her aside and told her exactly how I felt about her. I couldn't believe it; she actually laughed at me. She told me I had been blind for almost five years and asked why should she come running to me when I finally had woken up." Harry closed his eyes at the pain her comments had caused him. He remembered the anger he had felt and how he had reacted. "So, I lashed out at her. I made her cry." Harry felt horrible about the entire incident. He didn't want to remember it now, either. It had just been a disaster. "Then I did something really stupid. I told her she ought to be happy I was asking her out because she could stop pretending to like all the other guys she had been going out with. She told me I was arrogant and well, she inferred that my parents weren't married when I was born. Then she told me I could go get stuffed."

Cassie laughed quietly. "She actually called you a . . . ?"

"Yeah, but I deserved it. Of course, I didn't admit that at the time. Instead I had to act . . . well, like an idiot. I told her where she could go and what she could do when she got there. Then I stormed away and . . . we didn't really see each other again after that. It was a terrible time in school for her and she just kept studying and managed to ignore me pretty thoroughly. We would see each other in the hall or at meals and would stare right past each other like the other wasn't even there. Then, of course, there was the battle and then . . . . well, then I've been here."

"So, if I understood what Hermione said earlier, she really did still like you, she just didn't want to admit it to you, or herself."

"I guess."

"So when you go back to school . . . . what do you think is going to happen, between the two of you, I mean?"



"I don't know. I . . . . Maybe by now she's forgotten about me."

Cassie laughed. "I doubt that. I mean if she's liked you for six years I doubt that one fight and three weeks is going to change anything."

"Three weeks when she thinks I'm dead!" Harry felt very strange about having this conversation with Cassie. He really liked her, in a romantic way. He thought the couch incident from earlier proved that, pretty thoroughly. And that entire time, he hadn't thought about Ginny - not even once. He decided maybe it was time to make it clear to Cassie how he felt about her. "But, then, I came here and then I met you and now . . . .I don't know what I want." Well, so much for clarity.

"Yeah." They both sat quietly for a few minutes. Harry had hoped that Cassie would say something a little more forceful, something about how much she liked him or that she didn't want him to see Ginny at all ever again, that way he could admit how much he really liked her. Maybe she had some idea, though. Or maybe he could show her, if he couldn't find the right words. He shifted her again in his arms so that it was easier to kiss her and bent his head to find her mouth again like he had a while ago. She kissed him gently and then turned her head away. "I told you, Harry. This isn't . . . right."

"What do you mean? Why don't you want to kiss me, now? You didn't complain earlier." Okay, he could admit it. He sounded like he was pouting and he didn't want to, but he couldn't help it.

"It's just too . . .much. I'm afraid we may do something that we don't want to because . . .it's dark and you're scared and I'm scared and . . ."

"I'm not scared and I want to kiss you."

But Cassie just shook her head. "No. Not right now." She was quite adamant. "You said you were scared earlier." She sounded slightly affronted, like somehow her admitting she was scared when he wasn't was just not tolerable.

"No. I said I was scared for you. I want you to get home safely. You're not used to this whole situation."

"And you are?"

"Pretty much." He really hated the sulky way he sounded. He needed to get a grip. If she didn't want to kiss him, she didn't want to kiss him. He'd survive.

"That's a stupid thing to say. All of you were acting pretty nervous and distressed earlier." She was right, of course. But now Harry didn't want to admit it, not if she was going to say he was being stupid.

"He's been chasing me my whole life. He doesn't scare me!" That second sentence was an outright lie but Cassie latched onto the first part of his statement.

"That's true. Why has he been chasing you your whole life?"

"I already told you why."

"No, you didn't. You said that he came to your house when you were one year old to kill you. Why would he do that?"

"I don't know, Cassie. No one knows." There. Now his voice sounded more normal. "Try to go back to sleep. I don't think it's too much longer before morning."

"You really don't know?"

He didn't answer her. He had been completely honest with her tonight - up until a few seconds before. He didn't want to up the lying. Maybe she would just forget it, especially if he pretended to go back to sleep himself. But he was too upset to even pretend to relax and take the deep even breaths of unconsciousness. And after a few minutes, he gave up the effort. He knew she wasn't asleep either and after a minute he said, "That's not true, Cassie. I know why and Dumbledore knows why and I suppose Voldemort knows why, although he's never said as much."

"Oh."

"I just, um, don't like to bring it up. . . I mean . . . I just found out myself last year and I . . .It's still kind of hard to talk about."

"Oh."

"You're going to think I'm mental, but then I guess you already do, don't you?"

"I don't think you're crazy, Harry." She said this quite forcefully. Somehow it made him feel a little better.

"Do you believe in prophecies?"

"Yes, I guess so. I'd never thought about it too much before."

"I never did before I was 13. Then I heard one and it came true."

"Uh, huh."

"Then last year I heard that one was made about me, before I was even born. And Voldemort heard about it. And that's why he wanted to kill me when I was little and why he still wants to kill me."

"Okay. So this prophecy . . ."

"It basically says that a boy would be born at the end of July who would be able to defeat the Dark Lord. That the Dark Lord would mark him as his equal. And that he would have power that the Dark Lord didn't have." She didn't say anything. Harry swallowed hard. This next part was what always gave him chills. Not like the rest wasn't bad enough. His voice was quiet. "And then it says that one of us has to kill the other one. That . . . . neither of us can live while the other one survives." She took a deep breath after that statement. "Anyway. He figured that it was me and wanted to kill me before I had a chance to grow up and kill him. But it didn't work, obviously. And now . . . well. You understand why I'm always the one that has to go fight him. I'm the only one that can . . . kill him."

"Oh. I see." Her voice was soft.

They were quiet for a few minutes again, both of them thinking their own thoughts about things. Harry wished he knew what time it was. He wasn't too comfortable anymore discussing this with her. She had been nothing but empathetic and understanding, but he wasn't used to baring his soul to other people. He was tempted to get up again, claiming to be thirsty or that his leg was asleep or something but she leaned her head back against him and he thought she had gone to sleep again so he didn't want to wake her.

"Can I ask you one more question?" So she wasn't asleep. Maybe after he answered this, he would get up and spend the rest of the night in the chair.

"I guess so." He really hoped it wasn't about the prophecy. He would prefer not to say anything more about it.

"You said earlier that this last three weeks has been, uh, hell. Has it really been that bad? I mean, it doesn't sound too much fun back where you come from, either." Her question was quiet. He could tell that he had hurt her feelings when he said that, although it had been true to a great degree.

"Well, there have been some good parts." He hugged her briefly. She really had made it tolerable. In fact, better than tolerable. "If I could use magic, I might be tempted to stay here. I like . . .your family and I like . . . you. I do like you, Cassie. You know that, right?"



"Yes." She spoke slowly, like she was waiting for the other part of the statement.

"And we've had some really great times together. I loved teaching you chess, and making cookies, and you're really easy to talk to. And I have to admit kissing you is fantastic, also."

"Yes. That's true. I like kissing you, too." She laughed softly. "Plus, you liked the movies."

"Oh, yeah! That was terrific. I loved the James Bond, especially. In fact, after . . . later, I'm going to try to talk Ron into going to a Muggle movie theater with me and seeing that . . . ." Harry's mind suddenly caught onto an idea. He turned it over in his thoughts. Was it possible? "I've got to get up, Cassie." This time, he wasn't trying to avoid talking to her, he just needed to . . . He walked over to the desk and rifled through the papers on top. The cold light of morning was allowing him to see well enough to find what he needed. He glanced at the chess set, ready to move it to look underneath it when another thought occurred to him. Things seemed to be so obvious, now.

There it was. He grabbed the piece of parchment he was looking for and walked over to the dim lamp by the chair, flipping it on suddenly. Cassie groaned and covered her head with a blanket. Harry waited for his eyes to adjust and grabbed his glasses before reading his own scrawling handwriting. He read the parchment over and over again, thinking carefully about what was written on it. He also thought for a long time about the last message Dumbledore had sent through Sir Lionel. He glanced up at the clock. It was almost 5. It would be light soon and he had a lot to talk to Ron and Hermione about. They had 12 hours before they took the portkey. And he suddenly knew exactly what Voldemort was going to do.