The world was spinning as the young woman sat up, every bone in her body aching, the thoughts in her mind swirling like meaningless jargon in her pounding skull. As she placed one of her trembling, grimy, and pale hands on her cheek, she winced in pain. She brought it away from her face and grimaced. It was sticky, and she knew what that meant.

Thoughts came rushing back to her as she closed her eyes—not that it made a difference, for it was too dark to see in the musty prison cell anyhow. She recalled how she had shocked, scared then infuriated when Harry had been reported kidnapped by Voldemort. Like a motion picture (not that she even knew what those were), she practically saw each of the movements she had performed in the past forty-eight hours: how she had locked herself in her room for twenty-four hours, refusing to come out when she had heard that he was missing. How, mind made up, she had, in the dead of the night, swiped Charlie's old Cleansweep, and flown to Voldemort's fortress and (using a great deal of stealth on her part) gotten into the castle. Everything had gone fine until forty Deatheaters had appeared out of nowhere, surrounding her, and she had been taken to the dark lord himself for questioning. She blinked stupidly—obviously that was how she had gotten into the state she was in…from Deatheater "persuasion".

She tried to stand up and immediately fell over, her bones burning as if they were on fire. Blinded by pain, she groped aimlessly for her wand that had previously been in her back pocket and found nothing. Not quite surprising, considering the fact that she had been tortured for the past few hours by Deatheaters who would want her anything but armed. If her head wouldn't of been throbbing so, she probably would have thought of that.

If only it weren't so dark! Oh why had she followed Harry? For a good three hours she tried to convince herself that Harry wasn't worth it—he would escape by himself, she was only his friend, and Ron and Hermione hadn't seemed too eager to do this, he would rather her be safe—but no matter what she did she just couldn't persuade herself that dying for Harry wasn't worth it.

The fact was, she loved him.

She tried to run her fingers through her waist-long hair, now matted with sweat and blood from her torture session. She missed the way it shimmered like fire in the sun and the way it used to smell of strawberries. Before she had always thought it too bright, such an ugly color, made her look too much like her entire family, but now, with her not able to see it, she realized how much it actually meant to her. In fact, maybe things would be better if she could just see the crimson glint on her once-silky locks.

Determined to try again, she hauled herself off of the filthy stone floor, and strained her eyes to see anything in the pitch-black cell. The air smelled of rot, decay, and death, and, as one of her fingers felt a wall, she felt slime.

She stared intently at her surroundings and finally glimpsed the tiniest sliver of hope—a two-inch by two-inch square in the steel door from which she had come, the air in that area about three shades darker from that of the cell, obviously leading into the hallway and back into the evil palace.

Hope swelling in her chest like a balloon, she stumbled on aching legs across the room, her goal the slot in the fortified door.

Suddenly, she was falling. Her hurting mind took several seconds to process the fact that she had just tripped over something lying on the ground, and she barely caught herself without gaining a concussion in her already-damaged head.

Now on her knees, she timidly crawled to the object which she had tripped over and felt it with wary hands, almost afraid to find out what it was…a rotting corpse? A sleeping monster?

No…it seemed to have clothes on…and it was…breathing…

She hardly contained a scream as a rough hand shot out and grabbed her own. Her head swam and she knew her face got so pale that it resembled a vampire's.

But then…she remembered those warm, rough hands. Not that she had ever held them in a romantic way (he would never think of her that way), but in friendly ways yes. She lived for the touch of those hands, and spent minutes just staring at him when he wasn't looking at her.

"Harry?" she questioned in a voice hardly above a whisper, hardly daring to hope.

The person sat up, and she could practically see his perfect face, raven hair, sparkling green eyes, jagged scar…

"Ginny?" he whispered hoarsely.

Ginny suddenly found those warm, protecting arms about her. She hugged him back with all her strength, and obviously so did he, for she felt her ribs cracking. Not that she cared. It was obvious they were both holding each other for reassurance—for the other, and for themselves.

Suddenly she realized that the back of Harry's cloak was sticky as her face was. Panicking, she felt his chest and found sticky patches and gaping holes in the fabric. Finally she gingerly touched his brow, where the scar that caused him so much pain was, and felt a gaping wound across it. As she touched it, she felt him wince and pull away a bit.

After several seconds, when she could trust her voice, Ginny whispered, "Harry…what have they done to you?"

She heard a forced, mirthless chuckle and he replied, voice bitter, "When I refused to tell them anything, they decided the Cruciatus Curse wasn't good enough, and they decided to try something else."

"Oh…Harry…" Hands trembling, she traced his jaw line, trying to comfort him.

He stiffened—dang! she thought, I forgot he hates pity in any form—and pushed her hand away. "It's nothing…really…besides, all that matters is that I didn't tell them anything."

She tried to force a smile that she didn't feel, "Well…neither did I…"

She rapidly realized her mistake as she felt him leap to his feet and snarl, "They hurt you??? Why, those bastards!"

She felt for one of his hands that was curled into a fist and gently pulled him back into a sitting position next to her.

Although he sat, he still didn't relax, and suddenly demanded harshly, "Why are you here anyway? You're in danger! You could be killed!!!"

Ginny's eyes widened and timidly, she answered, "Well…I had…to come…I had to help you…"

Harry didn't seem to notice her fearfulness, and yelled out, "WHAT???? How could you put yourself in danger like that? This is my problem, which I have to defeat!" she flinched and looked away, and hardly heard as he whispered, voice full of raw emotion, "…and I couldn't live without you…"

Her stomach fluttered at his words, and she whispered, "Oh Harry…that's why I came…I would have rather died to try and find you than lived for the rest of my life without you because I wasn't brave enough to find you…I'd die without you, Harry…"

But her words were cut off as she felt his warm mouth on hers. All of her sensible thoughts were immediately sucked from her head, and she could only feel his lips and love him and his touch…

After a few seconds they broke apart and were subject to a heavy silence. When ten seconds of silence had gone by, they both blurted out at the same time, "I love you."

And then the kissing started again until neither of the couple was able to continue from fatigue.

As Ginny closed her eyes and snuggled up against Harry and slowly drifted to sleep, her last thoughts were that, no matter if she was tortured to death on the morrow or put under the Imperius Curse and forced to kill her entire family, she had made the right decision when she came to find Harry.

Okay then…hope that was acceptable and didn't have too much fluff—thanks!

--Fanta