CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Beyond Repair
Seconds after Harry's departure, Ginny found herself running to the classroom door and flinging it open. She frantically searched for any sign of him in either direction, but he had disappeared out of sight. She wondered briefly why she was so desperate to find him. After that display in the classroom, the last thing she wanted was to be anywhere near him. Marks were already starting to form on her arms that had nothing to do with the nightmare purging spell.
Without question, she knew she had very likely screwed up any chance she had with Harry. Really, was it even worth it to go after him? Was there anything she could say to repair the damage she had caused? The more she thought about it the more she realized how slim her chances were of finding him if he did not want to be found. Harry was very good at disappearing when he wanted to.
Preoccupied with the bombardment of thoughts swarming through her mind, she didn't see the person turning the corner in front of her and stumbled right into them.
"I'm sorry," she apologized, recovering her balance. "I wasn't watching where I was going."
"That's all right. I think I'm still in one piece."
She blinked when she recognized it was Sirius. "I thought you had left."
"I did, but I had some business with Dumbledore and I thought I'd check in with Harry before I left again. Have you seen him around?"
"I don't know where he is," she answered truthfully.
Sirius gave her a look that seemed to say there was something she wasn't telling him, but he didn't question her further. "I'm sure I'll see him around," he said, seemingly unconcerned. "Would you like to take a walk with me?"
She found it strange that he wanted to walk with her but she nodded nonetheless. She had never spent any time with Sirius Black alone before, but she had a feeling his offer had something to do with Harry.
Once outside, Ginny wished she had not been so quick to agree to a walk with Harry's godfather. It was a cool November evening and without her winter cloak on, the wind was making her teeth chatter.
"Harry means a lot to you," Sirius said as they walked.
She wasn't sure how she was supposed to answer that. "I've known him a long time."
That wasn't entirely accurate. She had known Harry since before her first day at Hogwarts but she hadn't really gotten to know him as a person until last year.
"I think a lot about what he would be like if he had grown up with a real family. I know he has yours," said Sirius, looking at her, "but it's not the same. I think Harry knows that too."
She wanted to know what point he was trying to make, but she didn't know a way to word it without sounding completely rude. She decided to say instead, "maybe you should be having this conversation with someone else."
To her surprise, Sirius actually chuckled. "I would, but I'm sure you've noticed Harry's not exactly one to express how he's feeling."
She gave a short nod. She knew that better than anyone – perhaps even better then Ron and Hermione.
"He may not have said it directly but I know that Harry cares about you a great deal. And he's let his feelings for you cloud his better judgment."
Ah, now she understood what he was getting at. "I agreed to go to Hogsmeade with Harry, so don't blame it all on him, Sirius."
"I'm not just talking about Hogsmeade, Ginny. I had this same conversation with Harry and he didn't understand that I was only trying to look out for him. He seemed to think I was interfering in something that was none of my business."
"Are you?" She asked, startled by her own boldness.
"Harry is going to go through a lot before this year is over," he said, choosing not to answer her question. "He's already been through more than anyone should in a lifetime. I don't want to see him get himself killed."
"He won't. Professor Lupin's the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Hogwarts has ever had." She wasn't just saying that because Lupin and Sirius were good friends either.
"I know Harry can take care of himself – that's not what I'm worried about."
He was staring at her so intently she was reminded of Harry. She wished he would stop because it was making her uncomfortable.
"Voldemort will have spies whose sole job is to watch Harry. I bet there's at least several in the school at this very moment. What do you think is going to happen when they report back to their master that Harry Potter has a girlfriend?"
"When he was dating Cho Chang you never made a big deal about it."
"Things weren't as bad last year as they are now. And Harry and Cho were much more discreet then you two are," he added pointedly. "Ginny, don't you see? You're Harry's greatest weakness and don't think for a second Voldemort would pass up the chance to use that to his advantage."
"You want me to break up with him," she said, full comprehension coming to her.
"I want you to do what's right for you and Harry. If you feel for him as deeply as I think you do, I know you'll do the right thing."
The full impact of what Sirius wanted her to do had not sunk in until she crawled into her bed that night. The last thing she wanted was to become a pawn for Voldemort and used against Harry, but she had known the risks when she had started up a relationship with Harry – and so had he, though they had never spoken them out loud. She appreciated that Sirius was looking out for his godson's best interests, but how dare he ask her what he had. She closed her eyes and refused to dwell on it any longer.
Exactly three days had passed and Draco Malfoy seemed to be paying more attention to Ginny then Harry, who refused to look her way or have any sort of a conversation with her. It didn't appear to be bothering him at all pretending that she didn't exist. At first, she thought she could handle the silence between them. As good as her intentions might have been, she had deceived him and he had every right to be angry. She had thought though that after a few days he would have cooled down enough to start sitting with her at mealtimes again, and maybe talk things over. When that never happened she started to concede the fact that it really was over.
After the second day of getting the silent treatment from him, Ron had asked her what was going on. She had simply told him they had a fight. She didn't ask what Harry's answer had been.
She was sure that if Sirius had been around to see the state their relationship was in he would have been quite happy.
She tried not to think about what he had said, but it was hard not to knowing that she had made herself a liability to Harry – a liability that he no longer seemed to care about.
She was on her way to her Charms class when she saw him up ahead with Oliver Wood. Instead of walking straight passed him like she had the two previous days, she approached him.
Harry saw her coming and quickly ended his conversation with Oliver, but by that time she was already standing right in front of him. She tried blocking his path, but he went around her.
"Harry, please," she said, grabbing his arm.
He shrugged her off and kept walking.
"So that's why he's been in such a foul mood these days," Oliver remarked.
"And it's all thanks to me," she muttered under her breath.
"He has a lot on his mind, but he'll come around eventually," Wood said, in an attempt to cheer her up.
It was a sign of how bad things had gotten when Oliver Wood, whom she had never had any conversations with outside the Quidditch pitch, was attempting to comfort her.
"I better get to class," she said. She didn't need detention on top of everything else that was going on.
"Listen, Gryffindor plays Slytherin this afternoon. Maybe you can talk to Harry before the match starts," Oliver said before walking off.
Though she didn't think Harry was any more likely to talk to her then, she decided she had nothing left to lose by trying.
This close to game time, the stands were filled with the respective Gryffindor and Slytherin supporters. Ginny had planned on waiting until after the match to speak with Harry, but on her way passed the locker room she saw him standing outside the doors – but to her great disappointment he was not alone. Cho was with him and they looked to be having a deep conversation until the older girl spotted Ginny watching them. She patted Harry's arm and said one last thing, which Ginny assumed to be good luck, before heading for the stands.
Harry stayed standing where he was and Ginny thought maybe he was finally ready to talk to her. She should have known better then to expect any miracles. Before she could approach him he turned and walked in to the locker room.
She wasn't sure what came over her, but she was so sick of Harry acting the way he was that she marched into the change room after him.
"I know you're angry at me, but at least stop being such a child about it and talk to me."
If he was surprised that she followed him into the change room, he kept it well hidden. "I don't have anything to say to you, so why would I want to talk?"
His coldness stung her but she fought not to let it show. "Of course you don't want to talk. You would rather just keep it all locked up inside."
"This isn't a good time to do this," he mumbled, grabbing his Firebolt off one of the benches.
"It's never a good time is it, Harry?"
"What do you want from me, Ginny?"
"To know that what's going on with us is killing you as much as it is me. I think the day you grabbed me in the classroom was the most responsive you've ever been. Or maybe if I talked to Cho she would tell me something different."
Harry shrugged, saying, "do whatever you want, Ginny. But there's nothing between Cho and me. If you want to think otherwise, go right ahead."
Bringing up Cho had been a cheap shot to hurt him, especially when she knew better. He and Cho were long since history, but even that hadn't stop her from feeling a pang of jealousy when she had seen them together earlier.
Turning his head to the side, so he wouldn't have to look at her, he said, "I can't do this with you right now. They're waiting for me."
"And it's always everyone else before me, right?"
"Ginny, I've got a match to play. I mean, what else is there to say?"
"Nothing. I guess there's nothing left to say. Too bad I didn't realize that days ago. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble."
She had barely gone two steps when she felt Harry's weight pinning her against the lockers, his mouth capturing hers in a bruising kiss. At first, she kissed him in return, but quickly discovered that his reasons for kissing her had little to do with making amends. He was using it as a way to channel his anger into her – and Ginny wanted no part in that. When she tried pulling away, he wouldn't let her.
"Harry, stop," she begged, pressing her hands against his chest in an attempt to push him away. But Harry didn't seem to hear her, his hands too busy trying to unfasten her cloak.
"Harry, what's taking so long? If you don't hurry up the match is going to start without you – "
The sound of the intruder's voice seemed to knock Harry out the state he'd been in. He relaxed his grip on Ginny and pushed himself away from her.
Ron was standing there watching them, his mind quickly absorbing what he had walked in on. Humiliated enough already, Ginny pushed passed Harry and all but ran out of the locker room, not caring that how ashamed or sorry he looked. Harry, though, wasn't able to get off quite so easily.
Ron's face was livid. "Do you want to tell me what was going on in here?"
"Not really," Harry replied shakily. He had heard her telling him to stop, but he had ignored her pleas. What was wrong with him? No matter how upset he was how could he have let himself behave that way?
Ron was on him in an instant, grabbing the front of his Quidditch robes and slamming him back into the nearest locker. "You want to know what it looked like to me? It looked like my sister was trying to push you off her, but you wouldn't let her!"
"Ron, I meant to stop. I didn't mean for things to go that far."
Admitting guilt was probably the worst thing Harry could have done – even worse then lying – because he just added more fuel to Ron's seething anger.
"So help me, if I ever see you forcing yourself on Ginny again, I'll give you a reason to stay at St. Mungo's permanently."
Giving Harry one final shove to show the seriousness of the threat, Ron let him go and stormed out onto the pitch.
Even knowing he still had a game to play, Quidditch was the last thing on Harry's mind. He considered going after Ginny. He needed to somehow – as impossible as it seemed – to try and fix the damage he had caused. In the end, the only thing that stopped him from going and finding her was he was too ashamed to admit to himself what he had let happen.
When Ginny first heard the knocking on her door she ignored it. If it was one of her dorm mates, they could have easily entered, and she was not up to talking to anyone else.
The knocking persisted, and she heard a voice say, "as Head Girl I can order you to open this door, Ginny."
At the sound of Hermione's voice, Ginny knew there was no escaping by feigning asleep. Hermione would make it her duty to come inside whether or not she answered.
"Come in, Hermione," she called out.
The older girl wasted no time in entering the room, making sure to close the door behind her. Hermione was looking like she hadn't expected Ginny to give in so easily, and was momentarily thrown for what to say.
"You missed the match."
Sitting on her bed, Ginny hugged her knees up to her chest. "I didn't really feel like watching it."
"You wouldn't have liked what you saw anyways," Hermione remarked.
"That bad?"
Hermione nodded earnestly. "I could tell from the start of the match that something was off with Harry. Any other day he would have run circles around Malfoy."
She was glad that Harry had played horribly. That meant there was a chance that at least some small part of him regretted what had happened in the locker room.
"Did you and Harry have another fight?" Hermione asked gently. "You don't have to tell me about it, but it might help to talk to someone."
Ginny understood what Hermione was doing. She was giving her the option of confiding in her, or she could just shut her out right then and pretend she didn't desperately need to get this off her chest.
"Do you understand Harry?"
Hermione looked slightly taken aback by the question, and Ginny watched her give it some thought before responding.
"Harry may be my best friend, but I don't pretend to know – or for that matter understand why he acts the way he does sometimes. Ginny, you have to understand that Harry's a very complex person. The more he cares about you, the harder he pushes you away. I know that doesn't make much sense, but that's 'Harry logic'."
"You're right, it doesn't make any sense," she agreed.
"I think on some level Harry thinks he doesn't deserve love or affection because of the way he was brought up," said Hermione, coming over to sit on the side of her bed. "He hasn't learned yet that there are a lot of people who love him and would do anything for him regardless of whether or not he was The Boy Who Lived. He reacts the only way he knows how – by pushing people away. It's his way of testing us. If we push back, it lets him know we're not going anywhere."
"I don't think I can push back anymore," Ginny told her. "If I really mattered to him, he would have said something by now, right?"
"I really don't know, Ginny," she answered honestly.
"Maybe I should just end things now."
"Is that really what you want? Did Ron say something – "
"No, Ron hasn't said anything. Surprisingly, he hasn't interfered at all."
"Then why else would you be thinking of breaking things off with Harry?"
Ginny couldn't give her an answer. It was a combination of Harry's recent behaviour and Sirius' not so subtle suggestion that she do the right thing. But Ginny couldn't tell Hermione any of this.
"I know this is a personal question, so you don't have answer – but do you love him?"
"Yes – I mean maybe. I don't know."
"Then don't give up on him yet," said Hermione, her tone hopeful. "Harry may yet surprise you."
Ginny really wanted to believe her, but when she thought about Harry's reaction that day in the classroom when he had confronted her, and then the way he had acted today in the locker room, she wasn't so sure it was possible.
"Listen, I'm going to take a shower now," Hermione began, "but if you want to talk some more later, come up to my room, okay?"
Ginny nodded her thanks and Hermione left shortly after, leaving her even more confused about what to do about Harry then before.
The water from the shower had been pounding against Harry's skin for so long he almost couldn't feel it anymore. He was hoping that if he stayed in there long enough he would either drown or his skin would just eventually fall off. Both options seemed preferable to the hell he was going through at that moment.
He'd blown the match against Slytherin as bad as he had blown things with Ginny. Malfoy's gloating face kept coming back to him – smugly waving the Snitch back and forth in front of his face. The win had all but erased any hopes Gryffindor had of regaining first place. He probably deserved losing.
He swore and punched out at the tiles, doing more damage to his knuckles then to the wall.
He was so sick of everything. Sick of feeling responsible for everyone, and then sick of feeling guilty whenever he let them done. But most of all he was sick of screwing things up with a certain red-haired Weasley.
He lashed out at the tiles again.
He had convinced himself that pursuing a relationship with her had been the right thing to do. He was still very much angry with her for the dream potion thing, but that had only opened his eyes to the mess he had created. He should have listened to Ron and backed off when he had the chance, instead of starting something with Ginny he knew he couldn't finish.
He hit the same spot on the shower wall again and again until blood started leaking out of his knuckles and mixing with the shower water.
You're such a goddamn idiot, Potter.
"Harry?"
The muffled voice from outside the shower startled him back to reality.
"Who's there?"
"It's Hermione."
He swore again, but it was low enough that she couldn't hear him over the noise of the shower. "Give me a minute and I'll be out. And keep your back turned, will you?"
He turned off the water and opened the shower door just wide enough so he could grab a towel and pull it through. Once it was securely wrapped around his waist he noticed his cut hand. There was nothing he could do to cover that up without drawing more attention to it, so he stepped out of the stall, glad to see Hermione still had her back to him.
"What are you doing here anyways?" He asked. "What's wrong with your bathroom?"
He was scrambling for a shirt to throw on. The situation was already awkward enough with Hermione having caught him in the shower. He didn't fancy having a conversation with her with a just a towel wrapped around his waist.
"Something's clogging up the plumbing. If I had known you were in here I wouldn't have come barging in."
She must have seen his Quidditch robes on the floor when she had walked in. Maybe she had heard him hitting the defenseless wall and stayed.
"You can turn around now," he said, throwing an old t-shirt over his head. "The shower's yours." The boy's bathroom was just down the hall. He could finish changing in there.
"Harry, you're hand!" She cried in alarm, her eyes widening at sight of his knuckles, dark red blood seeping out of them. She reached for one of the smaller face towels and began wrapping it around his injured hand. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"
"No, not really," he said, wishing she would stop fussing over him. A few raw looking knuckles were the least of what he deserved.
"Harry, I'm serious, why did you do this to your hand?"
"Does it matter?" He bit off angrily.
She had to bite her tongue to keep from saying he should go to the hospital wing. He would never go for it, and she didn't want to argue with him. He looked distressed enough as it was. She watched him rake both hands through his wet hair, making it stand up on end.
"I really made a mess of things with Ginny," he said, lowering his head. "The way I acted – the things I said – I was so horrible."
Her heart wretched at seeing the agony he was going through. He had never before opened up to her in such an emotional and vulnerable way.
"I was a selfish bastard," he continued. "I started a relationship with her when it was the last thing I should have done. Everything I do seems to end up making things worse. "
"Harry, I know the type of person you are, and I know you wouldn't have started anything with Ginny if you didn't care for her."
"Don't you see, Hermione? I wasn't being fair. I've known for years how she's felt about me and I took advantage of that when I should have stayed away from her. Ginny deserves someone that can be completely open with her – someone who won't keep secrets from her – and I can't do that."
"You have to try," she said to him. "Harry, she's not going to wait forever."
"Did she say something to you?"
"We talked a bit earlier. She wants to know that she means something to you."
Harry stared down at his hands. "Did she also tell you what happened before the match?"
"No, she didn't really say anything about that. Why? What happened?"
"I can't. You'd hate me if I told you. Just trust me when I say things are beyond repair. There's only so many things an apology can fix, and this isn't one of them."
Hermione hesitated before speaking next. It really wasn't her place to say anything, but she thought it was the only way to get through to him. "She loves you, you know – and that's despite everything that's happened."
"Well, she shouldn't. I've done nothing but hurt her," he said, running his hands through his hair again. "She accused me today of being emotionless with her."
"Are you?" It was their years of friendship that allowed her to ask that question.
Nearly a minute passed before Harry responded. "Sometimes," he admitted, shame seeping into his voice. "I don't do it to hurt her. It happens because – because she makes me feel too much, and it scares me to the point that I don't know how to deal with that. I've never felt for anyone what I feel for Ginny but I don't know how to tell her that."
"Tell her what you just told me."
Harry shook his head. "I can't."
"You'll lose her if you don't."
He felt like he already had. With the way he had treated her, Ginny would well be within her rights never to speak to him again.
He felt Hermione place a warm hand on his cheek. "Harry, at least try to work things out with her, or you'll regret it." Then she grabbed her towels and the other belongings she had brought down and left the Prefect's bathroom.
Harry knew what he had to do if he wanted a chance of salvaging their relationship. He just wasn't sure if he would be capable of doing it.