Now honestly, stunning yourself with a wand concealed up the sleeve of your pajamas in order to look like you've fainted from shock is a tricky little bit of magic, but Ginevra Weasley was a tricky little witch.

Harry knelt on the floor of the Griffindor common room and pulled Ginny's limp form into his arms. He saw her red-gold hair in the flickering firelight, it looked like the flames themselves. With each ray of light piercing the palpable silence he depicted a freckle and the image of the girl he loved slowly unfurled in his mind. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wand.

He whispered the word so quietly it was barely audible, "Ennervate." Ginny's eyes flickered open and he recognized the pale-as-ice blue he had looked into on so many nights before, before everything that had happened flooded into her memory and her eyes began to again overflow with worry. That's the one thing that always gives her away, he thought as her eyes flickered to his face and she pulled away from him, sitting up silently, her emotions are just projected from those eyes.

"Harry..." she mumbled, looking confused, "It can't be true. He's dead. You killed him in the Chamber four years ago. The fang went through the diary. I saw it. I saw it!" she struggled to her feet hoping that he was thick enough not to remember that she had been unconcious and actually hadn't seen it. Harry followed in her lead in standing up. She stumbled and he caught her.

And in this moment he knew. He knew the diary had lied. She would never betray him. Not to Tom Riddle. Not to anyone. He looked into her eyes. The same steel-blue eyes that show him everything going on inside her head. The same windows into her intricate brain that betrays her emotions, her thoughts, her very soul to him. The doorway into her mind, into his world. Everything he loved, everything he lived for had once gazed at him through those eyes. She was all he had left to live for, and she for him, he knew it.

She pulled away from him and stood on her own. Her ginger curls fell in a delicate pattern around her heart-shaped face, and as she reached up to tuck away the loose strands she shattered the image of the crown resting so lovingly on the head of a queen.

"Gin, I spoke to the book." his voice was kind and gentle, he didn't want to shatter the fragile china that she was crafted of "I wrote in it. The person...the thing inside it or running it or whatever controls this diary said you spoke to it. It said-"

"You did what?!" her voice exploded and hit him like a tidal wave, drowning him in shock and guilt, "I can't beleive you would do that Harry! After all you've been through in the past with that thing! After all I've been through." this word wrenched at his lungs and nearly tore the heart out of his ribcage, "You would just throw away the idea that something like that could get us killed! All of us! I don't beleive this." she flung herself down on the frayed sofa and Harry watched tenderly as he saw the glistening locks of hair at the back of her head bounce up and down, syncronized with the springs in the sofa beneith her. He wanted to reach out and touch them, to feel the soft glow of her hair resting safely in the palm of his hand. But he was very afraid that if he did such a thing he would be burned.

ยงยงยง

"We'll just have to destroy it then." Harry said, nervously running his left hand through the tangled black brambles that were his hair for maybe the eighty-third time that evening, or morning, should I say? He picked up the green book and flung it into the depths of the fireplace. Ginny watched as the licks of fire caressed the book and gently pulled it deeper and deeper into the comfort and warmth that so resembled Hell. She walked to Harry and stood inches from him, effectively disguising her eyes so that they appeared lonely and lost.

"Don't worry, Gin," he said comfortingly, taking her wrists in his hands and bringing them up to his chest so that their elbows met at their waists, "We'll find them. We'll find them and we'll make them pay. Tomorrow morning we'll tell Hermione and-"

"Harry, don't act so foolish." Ginny interupted him, her gaze again wandered to the fire, "We can't worry her with something like this. You know she'll just fret like mad. We can do it on our own. Together we are an inseperable and outstandingly powerful team." Funny, she thought, that I'm quoting Tom at a time like this.

"She knows the library better than anyone, she can help us fin-"

"Harry do you really think something like this can be found in the library? Do you really think that the minute you tell her she'll reach into her bag and pull out How to Trace the Imposter Who's Been Impersonating Your Girlfriend in Order to Bring Back Dark Lords From History? Now that's be a good read." she finshed, her patience was always terribly low when she resorts to sarcasm.

"Fine. Fine we won't tell her." he rubbed an exausted hand over his eyelids as his mouth caved in to the temptation to yawn.

"Harry go to bed," Ginny said, pulling out of his grip on her wrists to wrap her arms around his middle and pull him close,"We'll talk in the morning."

Harry nodded but didn't move. With the side of her head pressed against his chest, she could hear the beating of his strong heart. She could almost hear the scars attached to it from all of the hardships in his life whisper to her, and their words formed nothing to her, like a small breeze after a hurricane, they didn't move her, they went by, just barely noticed. She sighed as he regrettfully pried himself from her embrace and turned without a backwards glance to go up to his bedroom. She turned towards the opposite staircase and began to walk towards it slowly. As soon as she heard the door to his room shut she turned around and walked back over to the fireplace. She knelt in front of it and looked into the dying fire. There was a faint glow left, such a change from a moment ago when he had stood there at her side. Of course she knew that the fire was enchanted to be extinguished as the last of the students headed to bed, but as she magically extinguished the last of the heat and reached in to pick up the small leather-bound book, she couldn't help but think that with that fire, her soul was slowly ebbing away as it curled around that of Tom.