Title: More than Mrs. Potter
Author: JoyA/N: Okay guys this is what you have been waiting for...the complete and total reconciliation. Harry and Ginny will have minor miscommunications in the future but that is it. You survived the last huge drop on this rollercoaster.
9.Facing the truth
When Hermione and Ron became completely freaked by Harry's disappearance. They felt certain Harry's vanishing act was a direct result of whatever was making Malfoy so gleeful or the same person that hexed Ginny in some way form or fashion. Gin could not convince them otherwise, so she went on her search to get her boyfriend back to the eye-line of his best friends before either had a coronary.
Ginny found Harry in one of the many unused portions of the castle. In the past months her link to Harry had strengthened somehow. She could feel him. She could find him…always. This was no different. Things had been strained at moments but Ginny was now convinced that she and Harry would never part ways. If she had known what Harry had been thinking at those moments, she wouldn't have been so confident.
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Gin saw him tucked away in a corner by himself hiding from the world. She brought him a warm fleece blanket to snuggle into and a thermos of hot chocolate. She could tell he really didn't want company so she just leaned him forward a bit and wrapped him in the soft material. As Ginny went to set the thermos down, Harry caught her wrist. "Don't leave me," he whispered.
She regarded him for a moment. "If you want to have a sit, I can be quiet as a mouse."
Harry shook his head, "That's not what I meant." He looked up at her with reflective green eyes and said, "Please don't leave me."
Now Ginny was confused. There was so much confusion and sorrow in his eyes that she couldn't understand. "What's this all about Harry? Why would I leave you?" He looked away. Her chest hurt with a sharp pain she couldn't identify. It wasn't her pain.
Something in his eyes gave away the betrayal he felt.
"Do…do you think I'm seeing someone else?" she asked carefully.
Harry clinched his eyes shut, "I know I should be mad, angry, reject you because that is what you are supposed to do when you're cheated on but…I just want you to stay so badly I don't care…I just…How could you do that to me Ginny? How?"
"Harry what are you talking about?" Ginny asked getting upset. "I would never hurt you like that…especially after this summer and the letters. I have been so careful with myself. I never wanted you to doubt me again...How can I make you understand? I don't want anybody else… I…I love you."
Anger suddenly flared from Harry directly into Ginny. "I saw you with him, not more than two hours ago. I saw you kissing, groping…I heard you too, okay? I heard you get him off. That bloody Malfoy."
Ginny stared unbelieving at her boyfriend. "Harry do you know how ridiculous that sounds? Malfoy…Draco Malfoy. I haven't spoken to him at all since he stopped coming to our sessions. I know he and I were friends and that makes you uncomfortable but nothing romantic could ever be with us. I have loved you since I was a child. No one could ever take your place in my heart... Whatever you saw and heard…whoever you saw and heard I swear it wasn't me."
"You don't think I could recognize you when I was looking right at you? You don't think I heard you when he told you he wouldn't share your soft little hands with me? You don't think I know the truth?" His eyes seemed to get darker, "Why would you do this to me? I have only ever loved you since we have been together. I gave you an out on the train Ginny. If you wanted to be with him so bad why did you torture me like this?" he yelled at her in pain.
Ginny could feel Harry's agony spread throughout his person and she couldn't bare it. "Harry, listen to me...Two hours ago I was with Ron and Hermione in the hospital wing. Ask them…Ask Madame Pomfry. I swear to you I was not with Draco," she pled.
"Hospital wing?" Harry asked quickly.
Ginny felt concern wash over Harry in a great wave of emotion. "I guess I know why it happened now."
Harry grit his teeth, "What happened now?"
Gin sighed, "I didn't want to make you paranoid but now I can see you would have had good reason… A few hours ago a girl I didn't really recognize gave me some spiked pumpkin juice. Poppy said it was a messed up sleeping potion. I was very ill from it. If Hermione and Ron hadn't found me I probably would have passed out... and not from the way intended."
Harry thought things through. He recognized the girls who had been talking about Ginny in the corridor but he didn't really know them. Malfoy liked nothing better than to hurt him…it may have all been a set up. But that would mean the Gryffindor girls had probably been in on it…or like Ginny had been replaced by a doppelganger.
"Please say you believe me," Ginny whispered obviously very frightened that he honestly believed she would cheat on him.
"Kiss me," he said quietly.
Ginny placed a soft loving kiss on his lips leaving it quite chaste. Harry however wanted more...his emotions had been so up and down the last several weeks, that at that moment nothing mattered more than showing Ginny how passionately he felt for her. His tongue crept into her mouth and began to caress hers. Harry's hands came up to frame Gin's face before delving into her lovely red locks. Ginny's hands caressed Harry's chest and shoulders as she grabbed onto him for dear life. By the end of the kiss both of their cheeks were wet from tears.
Harry pulled back and stared into Gin's worried face when a thought struck him, "Ginny? Did you just say you loved me?"
Ginny Weasley always stuttered and stammered in Harry Potter's presence as a child. She would turn beat red and say nothing at all. Apparently there was still some of that little girl in the Ginny that had clung to Harry when life was hard and painful. She looked at the ground; her cheeks red and heated saying not a word. Harry leaned into her and cupped her cheek with his palm forcing her to look at him. She had never uttered those words before, mainly out of fear. After everything that they had been through…had meant to each other, Ginny still couldn't quite get past the idea that she was just the Weasley girl or one of Harry's sympathy cases.
"Please...I need to hear it... Did you say that you loved me?" he asked directly.
"Yes," she answered very quietly. "I do...I do love you." Her uncertain eyes met his.
Harry let those few little words wash over him in a great wave. He was loved. She had said it...and he was loved. His mother had been right...Ginny had her own path to walk. He couldn't rush her to say the words...But now that she had said the words he had been so desperate to hear he realized that he had known the truth all along.
He looked at his darling and sighed, "I've been sitting here for two hours having my heartbreak over and over again as I tried to make sense of where we went wrong. What I had done wrong." He placed his finger over her lips when she tried to interrupt. "Let me talk."
"Okay," she whispered.
He continued on, "I hurt so much but I couldn't bear the thought of letting you go." Harry caressed Ginny's cheek with his thumb, "I read this thing from the muggle world once that just kept playing in my head… 'Why is it that we can never see the moment love begins but we always know the moment it ends?'"
"What are you telling me Harry?" Ginny asked softly in so much fear.
He ran his thumb over her lips, "I knew in my heart that I loved you…more than just being in love…more than just wanting to touch your body and have you touch mine. I knew that I loved you…the way my father loved my mother… and it scared me. I was too young to feel this way. It was too much pressure on you…so I didn't tell you. I should have. I know I should have but…I kept thinking things with us would change if you would just say the words back...maybe then I would be ready to tell you how deeply I felt for you. But now that you've said them and as much as I loved hearing them I always knew you loved me. I was just scared that if I completely surrendered my heart to you I wouldn't recover when you got bored or tired of me...like I thought happened today. Now I see that if I had just laid it on the line maybe I wouldn't have been fooled by Malfoy's trick... I should have told you, but I didn't want to lose you by scaring you away with my seriousness. I don't want to lose you at all...ever."
"You aren't going to lose me Harry. Not now...not ever," Ginny said with confidence.
"Promise?" he murmured.
"Promise." she answered before kissing him thoroughly.
When they pulled away Harry looked at her completely terrified and said, "So would it be okay if I write your father."
"About what?" Gin asked not following his train of thought.
"About the future...about our future...together?" he said timidly.
Ginny regarded Harry a moment and took in the sub-text to the conversation. "I think that my father is a fine man to discuss our future with. I am sure he would appreciate the thought...just remember to have the conversation with me eventually. One with nouns and verbs in the appropriate places."
"Oh...absolutely Miss Weasley."
"Now what are we going to do about Malfoy?" Gin asked.
"Leave him to me," Harry said in anger.
"Don't hurt him too much physically, please," Ginny begged.
"After everything he has done?" he questioned.
"After everything he has done," she answered.
"I won't promise that Gin."
"Okay," she murmured with dread in her heart, "then just don't kill him. If I'm right, he is still necessary...we are still going to need him alive."
Harry looked his girlfriend over carefully and knew she was still holding her tongue, "I won't hurt him beyond Poppy's ability to heal him."
"That's all I can ask...Harry?"
"Yeah?"
"Punch him in the face for me once...kay?"
"With pleasure," he murmured before capturing Ginny in his arms and getting them back quickly to his room for proper making up.
TBC...
A/N: See...everything is okay. Everything will be okay. I promise Draco will have a broken nose next chapter. You will also get several answers to questions that have been plaguing you since the beginning of this story.
I will willingly take any suggestions of punishments for Harry to dish out. I may not use them all but I would still love to hear them.
You know what to do...REVIEW. REVIEW.