***IMPORTANT A/N: So I posted 14 and 15 today... so don't get lost... ***IMPORTANT***

Chapter 15

Her cold eyes bore into his. Her yew wand pointed directly in between his eyes as she hissed at him. She was angry. Livid. She was going to kill him. But she still took his breath away. Gazing into her soft eyes, he watched them flash red before the green light flooded his vision.

Harry jerked awake. The dream fled his mind like water through a sieve. Soon, he could barely recall the details at all. But they were all the same. Him lying on his back, the feeling of hard stone digging into his freezing flesh. The fear, shock and confusion paralyzing him from moving. And then for the visage of Emily Potter to kill him without remorse.

Of course, Harry knew that this was not his wife. What he clearly was seeing was not a woman in love with him. This was her horcrux, Voldemort. Killing him, with his wife no where near to help him. It was an unsettling nightmare, made worse by its reoccurring nature. He'd not had another vision of the past since his vision of Nagini and Grindlewald, but that didn't mean his sleep was peaceful. Now, the only thing he saw when his eyes closed, was his death. Rubbing his eyes, Harry got up and went into the kitchen.

"You look terrible. What else did your friend do to you yesterday that made you look like you've been kissing a dementor and not me?"

Harry grunted noncommittally at his wife. He did feel like garbage. Last night, Hermione had placed the blood curse on him, only to tell him that the curse wasn't complete. When he had questioned her on it, she simply told him that he wouldn't understand the magic, but it would activate when he needed it. This answer was not good enough for him, so he pushed her for an explanation.

"Harry, blood curses mature into their effects. More so when the curse is inherited, sometimes the magic doesn't fully bloom until long after a witch or wizard reaches adulthood. Don't expect the curse to just snap into place. Even if it did, you wouldn't feel it. Like I told you, the connection is as thin as can be. The curse will take effect, worst case scenario, the moment before you die. These curses aren't cast on people to be avoided by something as simple as death, after all." Hermione patiently explained.

"You know, for someone who said the arithmancy on blood and soul magic was simple, you don't exactly have the details hammered out."

"Why else would it be so simple, Harry? The less specific a spell, the less work that needs to be put forth to create it."

Harry had accepted the explanation after that. Hermione, of course, told him to never speak of the curse to anyone, not even his wife. He hadn't planned to, but if it hadn't been a secret from Emily to begin with, he'd have broken that promise fairly quickly. After all, he'd told his wife about his and Hermione's illegal time travel to save his godfather, so it was fair to say he told her everything.

As for magic, Emily's number one lesson to him had been that magic was all about intent. Will power. This aspect of magic he was certain that he owned in spades, something his wife repeatedly told him to be true. Emily had once told him that he was the only person who could easily throw off her imperius curse, which was the easiest way to test for that sort of thing. Harry could tunnel vision and focus in on something with a higher degree than most people, which possibly also helped him be such an exceptional seeker in quidditch.

That night he'd come home was where things began to fall apart. Harry was proud to say that he had a fairly smooth marriage. He and Emily rarely argued, and even when they did, they tended to be over quick and apologies flowed soon after. But when he had the curse put on him, Emily lost her temper with him, all because he forgot just how sensitive she was to magic.

"What the bloody hell have you been doing with that woman, Harry?!"

Harry jerked his head to the side after Emily fired off a hex at his face. He didn't know which one it was, but the sickly yellow color of it made his stomach churn.

"Its nothing, Emily. Just a little experiment. Relax."

Emily stilled, her eyes widening and flashing with a brighter crimson. Harry watched as her body immediately relaxed and he knew that he'd fucked up. Emily never flipped gears like this, unless she was being exceptionally unstable. His throat dried up as she started to sway her hips as she approached him in what would have been a seductive way in any other situation. But the only thing Harry could imagine was her grabbing his jewels and crushing them.

Harry tried to relax his rigid stance, when she struck he wanted to be able to dodge, after all, but his body wouldn't listen. He felt like a deer caught in an auto's headlights. When Emily draped her arms over his shoulder, and hoisted herself on the balls of her feet to begin kissing the corner of his left eye he found himself burying his head into her shoulder, breathing in her sent. Suddenly, she was whispering to him and he was no longer frozen.

"Mmmm, so, little Harry like to experiment with other women. And he doesn't even bother telling his wife." He felt her hands move quickly down his body and Harry jerked backwards away from her. He found his body snapping in place as her hand quickly latched onto the waistband of his trousers.

"Did she touch you here, Harry?" She didn't still her other hand as she worked her hand to carress his member.

"Emily, you know Hermione'd sooner touch Snape than touch me, come on." Harry felt as though his body and brain were at war. On one hand, more specifically hers, Emily was doing amazing things to him. But on the other, also hers, she gave him no room for escape should she choose to escelate what was currently a pleasurable sensation into an... unpleasant one.

"Don't lie to me, Harry. Severus couldn't get a poor blind harlot to touch him for ten galleons, much less Ms. Granger."

The incredibly tense situation was broken when Harry snorted into her shoulder with laughter at her comment. "You're so hateful to that man, Emily."

"And you're far too forgiving to him."

Harry smiled at her as she released him, "I think you value my ability to forgive extremely, so I don't want to hear that."

Emily shrugged at him, "Be that as it may, I don't share your nature. So while I'll respect your secret experiments up until now with your friend, I expect them to come to an end, immediately. Are we clear?"

Harry gave her a single nod. "We're all done, Emily. No worries, and no extreme side effects. I am just fine."

Emily pouted, "I'd be more at ease if you'd simply tell me what you're up to. Your getting increasingly more erratic with your actions. You started this all with that elf and now you come home with dark magic oozing from your every pore. Its as though you've been doing some old archaic rituals... which generally involve sex by the way. Hence my distrust of this whole situation."

She continued, "I don't know what you're searching for, Harry. I do, however, want you to stop. Promise me that these little surprises and escapades will be no more."

Harry didn't speak for a moment. It hadn't occurred to him just how uncomfortable his behavior was making Emily lately. She'd hidden it well from him, and it was only now, when she was openly sharing her worries that he truly understood what he'd been doing.

He nodded to her. "Sorry. I've-" He sighed, unsure of how to continue. "I've been scared. I've been chasing away my fears instead of confiding in you. Truth is, I've been seeing... something. In the future, you know. Its not something I want to happen. But Grindlewald told me that I'd have the power to change it. Thing is, he also said that I couldn't change my own future, but I could change yours. But with our futures being so tied together, I've struggled figuring out how to alter yours without completely being the cause of it."

Emily gently sat down on the floor of their bedroom, tugging at his hand to have him join her. She then situated the two of them so that he was sat between her legs and she could lay her chest and head onto his back. Weaving her arms around his sides, she pulled one of his hand onto her wrist. "Can you feel that, Harry? My pulse?"

He had to pause and block out the other sensations, but once he felt it, he nodded. "I do."

"And you know, that I don't need it, correct? That my body, despite being a perfect replica, doesn't require things like oxygen and sleep."

He knew all of this and nodded again.

"There are so many things that you require to live Harry, things that I could care less for. But I need something to live that you and everyone else doesn't. I need you, Harry. You think that you change my fate, my destiny with that silly power you got from that old moron, but you're missing the point. You change my fate every day. Every day you promise me an even brighter tomorrow, and you always deliver."

Harry felt her other hand make its way from his side to his face and press him to turn and face her. She met his lips with her own and kissed him for a brief moment. "I don't need you to worry about those silly visions, Harry. If you really think me to be so powerless that I can't force my own fate in the future, then how can anyone else claim to try?"

The rest of the night passed by in a blur of passion and heat and when Harry woke up the next morning he felt a sense of contentment he hadn't felt in a while. Emily had been right. Harry knew that Emily was the one with the power in their relationship. He, at best, was just a supporting character. While the two were equals in their personal lives, well, as much as Emily would allow someone to be her equal, he was aware of the differences between them outside of that.

After grabbing breakfast, Harry looked through the house to see if his wife was home. After failing to find her, he decided to pay a visit to his godfather's place. Strolling into Grimauld Place was never a pleasant experience should Sirius was absent, but he felt a need to speak with a certain ex-auror. Fortune was on his side as he found the grizzled man sitting with his godfather in the home's sitting room.

"I see your godson's here, so I'll give you two some privacy." Before the man could even make a move to raise out of his seat, Harry stopped him.

"Actually, Moody, I am here for you. Mind if we have a chat?"

The man gave a grunt and motioned with his head to the dining room. Harry followed him and the two men sat down. Moody waiting, allowing Harry a moment to work out just what he wanted to say.

"After we take out Voldemort, what exactly do you plan on doing to my wife?" Harry decided that the direct approach would be most necessary.

"Whatever I have to."

Harry grew annoyed with the cryptic answer. "Don't play games with me, Alastor. I am here for the singular reason of removing you as a threat to my wife. And I am also willing to do 'whatever I have to'. So why don't we reach some kind of consensus before I have to go that far."

Moody leaned forward over the table. "So, come to barter with old Mad-Eye, have you? It's been my life's work hunting down scum like your wife, Potter. Hunting them down and putting them in a place they can't hurt people. Now, for your wife, she's currently in such a place. Marriage to you. And perhaps, she may even start paying her debt to society, who knows. But I'm not betting on that. I'm just waiting for the moment where she gets tired of you, and makes another wrong move."

"She's not getting tired of me, Moody. I don't see how you still fail to see the nature of our relationship."

"Oh, I understand it. Soul bound lovers. Such a romantic thing, sure. But I'm not buying the load of codswallop that your wife has changed. She'll start her activities up again, maybe on the sly, but eventually it will happen. And I'll be waiting-"

"To what?" Harry interrupted. "To stop her? To kill her? As if you could accomplish either. You're not half the fighter she is, and you know it."

"I'd tell the public who she really is."

Harry laughed. "Yes, because that is so believable with another Voldemort running amok. One she is actively trying to destroy. Lets not forget her being the wife of Harry Potter, Voldemort primary target. You'd be laughed at, Moody."

The old man shrugged. "Perhaps, but it only takes a few good men to fight tyranny, Potter. Just because it seems hopeless, doesn't mean we should just lay down and submit."

Harry gave the man a flat look. "You don't have to fight. I'm the one manning the front lines here. I just need you to get that through your head. This is no longer your war to fight, its mine. And I don't need you interfering."

"And when she gets rid of you? What then?"

"Then I suppose you'd best roll your dismembered body out of your retirement home and pick up your wand again. Until then, however, I want you to butt out. Are we clear?"

Silence stretched between the two, only to be interrupted by a slight cough from the doorway. Recognizing that the voice was not his godfather's, he looked to see his old professor at the entrance.

"Remus? I didn't know you were here."

The shabbily dressed man gave Harry a single nod and pulled himself a chair. "Yes, well, when Sirius and Moody broke the news to me, I had a bit of a different assignment than they did. I've been out and about seeing if our wayward Voldemort has been making inroads with other species. However, no matter where I turned or who I spoke to everything is quiet on that front."

Harry nodded. It seemed that his godfather's group still half expected Voldemort to truly escape from her original self. It was a reasonable notion, but completely wrong. Voldemort wanted to rejoin her original body. When he explained as much, Moody cut in.

"So, tell me, Potter. Why doesn't your wife want to jump Voldemort's bones as badly as she wants to jump yours? You both hold a piece of her soul, after all. Why doesn't she get all riled up looking at that thing, but she pounces on you as soon as she has a body?"

This question stumped Harry. He honestly had no idea why his wife didn't sexually desire Voldemort. "I... don't really know, honestly. Maybe she does, but she controls it."

"HAH!" Moody guffawed loudly. "With that woman's ego? Nah, she'd definitely do the horizontal tango with herself if she felt the same urge she feels with you. I'm certain that she doesn't, but I want to know why."

"Hmm," Harry started seriously considering it. "I think its because Voldemort is no longer a horcrux, per se. I mean, I have a piece of her inside me that calls to her, but Voldemort doesn't. Rather, the horcrux changed into its own being. I don't think it can ever revert back to being a horcrux now, it can only merge back with her, or be destroyed."

"And if it merges? What happens to your wife?"

Harry frowned. He and Emily had discussed the potentials of that scenario. "Emily isn't too certain, but she thinks that their two personalities would fight for dominance. That's another reason Voldemort wants me dead. If she kills me and merges with a broken Emily, Emily doubts she'll have the fortitude to fight her."

Harry watched as the two men nodded in understanding.

"Perhaps I should speak with your wife then." Remus spoke up. "As a werewolf, when I transform, I undergo a drastic shift. The beast takes over. With the wolfsbane potion, my human mind remains in control, of course, but I certainly feel the beast as well. Without the potion, however, I am completely suppressed. Its possible that my experience will help her gain a more in-depth understanding of that battle, should it ever come to pass."

Harry gave the man a small smile, but shook his head. "Emily wouldn't need much help on that front. She's been suppressing the minds of others with magic for decades, especially with the imperius curse. While she certainly might enjoy the topic on a purely academic level, practically speaking, I doubt it would help her much."

Remus nodded politely, before continuing. "Anyway, I couldn't help but hear the two of you conversing, Harry. Would you mind, stepping outside, Alastor? I'd like a moment alone with Harry."

Harry watched as Moody gave Remus a shrewd look but did as the man asked.

"Now, Harry, first I would like to make one thing blatantly clear. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, agrees with what Mad-Eye did to you a year ago. It was reckless and foolish and could have damaged you irreparably."

"It did." These words made Remus fall short. "The block wipe that Moody did to me was the worst thing that could have happened to my brain, at least that's what a healer told me. Of course, I wasn't in perfect form to begin with, what with Emily's memory charms placed on me over and over, but Moody's charm was like releasing a bull in a china shop. What was fragile quickly began to fracture. Anymore modifications to my memory will have permanent and lasting effects."

Remus turned pale at that, but moved past it. "Yes, well... As I said, no one thinks it was a good idea. Even though Moody himself has never apologized for his actions, he has made it clear that he would never do that to you again. He thinks your hold on Emily is far to valuable now."

Harry nodded, "Yeah, he was just explaining that to me. Valuable, but not very trustworthy."

Remus could only shrug. "There is only so much trust that can be placed in your wife, Harry. Mostly, we trust you. If you say you can handle it, then we'll let you handle it. I, for one, am not too distasteful of your wife's visions."

At Harry's shocked expression, Remus quickly explained. "I don't mean to say I agree with anything involving the oppression of muggles and muggleborns, but Vol- er, sorry, your wife has always had a place for people like me, Harry. A place that werewolves can belong. I am much more accepting of the two of your steering the magical world into a better place than Moody and Sirius are. I know you'll keep her under control."

"Well, now all I need to do is convince Moody of that and we'll be good to go." Harry sighed. Getting that paranoid man to let his wife go was surely going to be impossible.

"I want you to go home, Harry. Spend some time with you wife. You leave Alastor to Sirius and I. We'll take care of him and make certain he won't cause trouble with you and Emily. Even if we have to confund him and send him to Africa after this whole Voldemort debacle is taken care of."

Harry laughed. It was a funny thing to imagine. "Okay. I'll leave it to you two. What about Snape?"

Remus sighed and looked away. "Severus... Severus won't be remaining here after we take care of Voldemort. He has a new life set up outside the country and only came here for Dumbledore's final gambit. He's tired, Harry. Too many years of spying, fighting and pain. He wants it to be over. He told me that should anything happen in the future, I was to make certain that he was left out of it."

Harry nodded and stood, shaking Remus' hand as the other man prepared to send him off.

"Tell Sirius I said goodbye. I have another stop to make and I haven't got a clue how long it will take. If I say goodbye to him, he'll want to chat, and before I'll know it, it'll be midnight."

Remus agreed to tell his godfather and Harry disapparated at the doorstep. He appeared in darkness, but with a flick of a wand, he found himself in a dark passage. Moving along the passage, Harry reached the end after several minutes and poked his head out the exit. Noticing that the coast was clear, Harry entered the castle of Hogwarts neatly hidden under his invisibility cloak. Sorely wishing that he still had the Marauder's map, he made his way through the castle. He honestly had no idea where the map was having lost it after Emily had fled Egypt.

After a few minutes of deliberation, Harry decided to make his way to the kitchens. There, he could ask Dobby, or one of the other elves to pass along a message for him. However, as he neared the kitchens, he paused. Wouldn't the elves immediately alert the headmistress that he was here? Harry didn't want his old transfiguration professor to know of his visit today. Honestly, McGonagall still made Harry extremely nervous, being such a stern authoritative figure in his life.

Harry was going over his options when a figure appeared down the hallway. Harry was on edge the moment he looked at the person, as they had obscured their face with some sort of charm. Even worse, Harry watched as the person faded from view, obviously having used a disillusionment charm on themselves. Immediately Harry switched his wands and, arming himself with the elder wand as the lights on the walls faded out. He silently began moving from beside the entrance to the kitchen to the middle of the hallway when a bright red light illuminated the dim hallway. Harry jerked out of the way, nervous that it had been so close to him.

Harry silenced his footsteps, hoping that he was now untraceable. It was only one person, and though he couldn't be certain, he was pretty sure that it was a student. Whoever his enemy was, at the very least, they knew he was here.

"Appare Vestigium." The first spell that came to mind was the tracking spell, but Harry was dismayed to see the entire corridor light up with various lights. It was a school, after all, and since Harry wasn't certain who it was he was tracking, it made sense that every trace would reveal itself. Canceling his spell before moving, lest he reveal himself, Harry once again repositioned himself. A moment after he began moving, however, another spell passed by him, closer before than the last.

'They can tell when I move.' Now having an idea of what he was dealing with, Harry began lunging silently in a multitude of directions erratically. Sure enough, spells lit up the corridor, but most of them were just barely off target. 'But they can't tell exactly where I move.'

Before he could do anything else, a pink ball slowly floated from his opponent's location. Not wanting to waste the opportunity Harry fired off a quick series of hexes towards them. Harry could barely make out the figure lurching out of the way before he refocuses his attention on the slow moving pink ball that was still making its way towards him. Stepping to the side and out of its path Harry began to search for the faint outline of his opponent. Before he could, however, the pink ball exploded outwards.

Harry was pushed back, but managed to hold his footing. Unfortunately, everything on his side of the passage was pink, including himself. His cloak wouldn't hide him if it was covered in paint. Harry brought up the hood of his robes, and cast a charm to obscure his face before removing his invisibility cloak entirely. The first thing Harry did was bring back the lights. If he lost his advantage, he certainly wouldn't let his foe keep theirs.

As soon as the lights came back, the figure faded back into sight, though their face was still hidden. Clearly they had no intention of keeping a useless spell active. However, their next spell surprised him. His opponent summoned several snakes which slithered towards him. Clearly this person didn't know they were fighting a parselmouth. However, before Harry could tell the snakes to attack their summoner, his opponent began firing more hexes. With a few quick hisses in parseltongue, Harry redirected the snakes all the while nonverbally blocking his opponents hexes.

The mysterious person apparently decided playtime was over and with a great sweep of their wand, a gale of fire enveloped the hall, incinerating his snakes and approaching him quickly. Harry froze the flames and used the hanging fire to disguise his next spells. As his magic punched through the flames Harry gasped as the person pulled a sword out and swiped one of his spells out of the air, with the other two sailing on by them.

His opponent now armed with two weapons rushed him. They were fast, and as they grew closer he noticed they were short. Still, they had nothing on Harry's speed. Harry too, barreled down the hallway at a break neck pace, using the aegis charm to conjure up a small metal shield. As the two collided, Harry parried the sword swing with the shield, and immediately stomped his foot down on top of theirs.

"FUCK!" The voice was loud, angry and distinctly feminine. The woman shoved her wand in his face and prepared to fire off a spell point blank at him.

"Mucus ad Vesp-" Harry, using the leg that had previously stomped her foot, shot its knee forwards into her crotch, turning her spell into a groan. However, before Harr could incapacitate her, she convulsed one time and Harry found himself being flung back by a wave of magic.

Harry finally put two and two together and narrowed down his opponent. After all, there weren't many Hogwarts students that could put up a fight against him. He could narrow it down further with the fact that she was female and had no qualms with using explicatives. All of this information paled to her last attempted curse, which she had taught Harry herself last year. The bat-bogey hex, a Ginny Weasley special.

"Ginny, why on earth are you attacking me?"

The girl who had only just righted herself, took a deep breath and released it. With a wave of her wand Harry found that not only was her disguise lifted, but so was his. A disguise he had placed with the elder wand. Of course, Harry knew that the wand was not infallible, but her spell still put him on edge.

"Why is Harry Potter sneaking around Hogwarts?" Ginny smiled slightly at him and walked to the portriat, tickling the pear. As the pear giggled and tranformed into a doorknob, Ginny led the two of them into the kitchens. At once, the elves inside swarmed them, and after setting the two of them up with tea and snacks left them alone at a small table.

"So, what exactly did you want to see me about, Harry?"

Harry was surprised that she knew the purpose of his visit, but he didn't let it show. "How did you know it was me? How were able to know where I was under my cloak?"

Ginny laughed at him. "Well, thats simple enough. I have this." From the fold of her robes she revealed a very familiar old piece of parchment. "I assume the map is familiar enough to you?"

As Harry stared at the Marauder's map, he could only ask, "I assume you got that from Dumbledore?"

Nodding Ginny put the map back inside of her robes as she busied herself with her tea. Harry almost wanted to tell her to give it back to him, but stopped himself. It may have been a creation of the marauder's, but he wasn't a student here anymore. Ginny, being a sixth year, could manage far more mischief with the map than he could here, and Harry knew that was the marauder's vision anyway.

"Dumbledore ended up giving you a lot of things didn't he?"

Once again Ginny nodded as she finished adding sugar to her tea and began to stir. Not bothering to look at him, she spoke. "He gave me many things, yes. The sword of Gryffindor and his phoenix, though to be fair, Fawkes chose to stay with me."

Harry gulped silently. In truth, if there was any other student that had a connection to those two things anywhere close to his own, it was the woman in front of him. The girl who had been lying only feet away from him when he had made use of both the sword and the phoenix's tears to defeat the basilisk.

"Years of training, and invaluable Hogwarts relic, and a powerful familiar. You were certainly set up for great things, Ginny." Harry watched as the woman sipped her tea gracefully, as though he weren't even speaking.

"Yes, I was set up quite well." Ginny looked him dead in the eyes as she put her cup back onto the table gently. "To murder your wife."

Harry smiled. "And these, I assume, were also eventually meant to be passed on to you?" Harry revealed the elder wand, the resurrection stone and his own cloak to Ginny.

"The wand and the stone were, yes. The cloak would have been mine so long as you loved me. As the cloak has always operated to protect the Potter family."

Harry nodded, solemnly. "Why?" He spoke gently. "Its not a secret, really, what you felt for me. Hell, we all knew you had a crush on me. But what could have possibly pushed you so far that you would become a soldier to fight Voldemort." Though Harry had a theory, he wanted to hear it from the woman himself.

"Because that was the only way I could ever deserve you, Harry." Ginny's eyes never left his, and he felt his heart twist painfully in his chest.

"What are you talking about? I assumed you did it to take back control of your life after Voldemort took it away from you."

Ginny shook her head. "As if. I was eleven Harry. Twelve when Dumbledore approached me and offered me the chance to keep you safe. I've always loved you, from the very moment I met you at Platform 9 ¾. Even at the age of ten, I fell into your eyes and I couldn't pull myself away. I ended up bawling my eyes out and all my idiot brothers could tell me was that they'd send me a Hogwarts toilet seat. As if that would cure the heartache of meeting you and then losing you so quickly."

For a moment, Harry was worried that this conversation was going to go into territory he didn't wish to talk about. Fortunately, Ginny didn't go on to chronologically account her feelings for him. "You saved my life from that bitch, Harry. I can't possibly tell you what that meant to me. Even if words existed to describe it, I doubt a person could comprehend them. But I placed you on a pedestal far out of my own reach when you did so. I felt so small in comparison to you. You were a hero, even as a young boy, and I was nothing more than a damsel in distress."

Ginny let out a pained sigh. "You were unapproachable after that, Harry. And when Dumbledore told me that it would be me that could save you, there was no way of saying no. I had to do it. To be worthy of you." Ginny looked to him and gave him a crooked smile. "Such was the mind of a child. Foolish, I know."

"So I spent years training under Dumbledore. Getting stronger, faster, better than anyone else my age. When I was fourteen I was certain that I was the strongest student at Hogwarts. Hell, I thought I could take on half of the professors, too. I was prideful. And then I heard you ran off with Emily Riddle. The woman who hurt us both in ways she hadn't hurt anyone else. I felt abandoned."

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't find the words. Perhaps, like her previously mentioned emotions, no words existed that he could tell her to soothe her pain.

"Can you believe that, Harry? I felt abandoned by you, and I never even spoke to you really. I just assumed that I had some claim on you. I assumed that I would be the one to save you and you would fall for me just like I did for you." Ginny's eyes didn't stray from his for even a moment.

"But she saved you first." Ginny's voice broke and Harry's stomach fell at the raw pain. But her words were so unexpected that Harry was floored. His expression had to have shown his shock, because Ginny let out a small laugh. "She saved you first. Here I am, preparing myself to become a killer, and all she does is walk up to you and tell you that she loves you. That she'll always love you and that she'll never leave you. And suddenly she's the hero you always needed, and I realize that I never deserved to be that person for you in the first place. Because I could never have done that. I could never have done the one thing you needed."

Harry watched as the girl wiped her eyes and regained her composure. "So I gave up. And then you came back." Ginny laughed, and though it was bright, part of it rang hollow. "And I wasted no time. I stuck to you like glue, but even then, I couldn't confess to you. It wasn't until Hermione told me that you had to go back to Emily that I finally told you I liked you. I only took the chance when I saw my chance fading. Of course, then I had that talk with her."

Harry knew that the two had spoken, even if he didn't recall it. Emily told him often that Ginny Weasley went out of her way to infuriate her.

"Boy, did she piss me off immediately. She's so damn jealous of every woman near you that she just had to attack them in any way she possibly could. We even had a short duel, though clearly she didn't expect my training from Dumbledore. I wiped the smirk off her face, even if I ended up losing. Still, she planted a seed of doubt in my mind that Dumbledore didn't have your best interests at heart. Convinced me enough that you would only be safe with her. Can you believe it, Harry? I was in cahoots with Emily Riddle. All for the sole reason of keeping you safe."

Harry remained speechless. It was a lot to take in. Information, new and old, that needed time to settle in his brain. "Anyway, that's my life story. I assume it answers your question?"

Harry, who was still reeling from her story, nodded. It was a painful story to hear, but he knew that it was something that she needed to share with him. Even more so with his follow up question. "What are your plans for my wife, Ginny?"

She looked at him strangely, and Harry couldn't fault her for it. "Well I'm not going to strangle her in her sleep if that's what you're asking."

This made Harry laugh. It was a morbid joke, but it broke the serious atmosphere. "No, I'm just saying, should I be out of the picture, what are your plans for Emily?"

"You won't ever be out of the picture, Harry. Unless your dead. And should that happen I will most certainly murder your wife for failing to keep you alive."

Harry nodded, he had figured as much. "Yeah, okay. I'm going to need you to not do that. Please."

"If you die Harry, your wife or I will follow you shortly after and there is no force on earth that will prevent that from happening. The only reason I stopped fighting against her was to keep you alive after all."

Harry couldn't help but sigh. Honestly, should he die, and not come back, he was certainly that Emily would wreak havoc on the country. Though through their wedding vows, she'd promised to follow him in death, he doubted she'd do so alone. She'd bring half the continent with her. At least.

"Ginny. I am asking you this as one of your best friends. From one friend to another. Leave my wife alone."

Ginny's expression became unreadable. She broke eye contact with him and looked in just about every direction but his face. Finally, with a sigh, she spoke, "Fine. I may as well be honest with you. I'm leaving the country after Hogwarts anyway. I'm heading to Romania. Working with my brother on the dragon reservations while I try and get on a professional Quidditch team."

Harry nodded, understanding what she was really telling him. She was leaving everything behind her. Though it hurt Harry to realize that she was running from her family as well. However, if this was what it took for Ginny to find herself a fresh new start then he knew that he'd cheer her on from the sidelines.

"I get it. When you go pro, send me some match tickets, I'd love to see you play."

Ginny smirked at him. "Kind of defeats the purpose of leaving the country if I invite the reason I'm leaving to come watch my games." Harry smiled back and nodded. With this, Harry had tied up all of the loose ends on his side that knew the truth about Emily Riddle.

"Take care, Ginny. I really hope you find what you need."

As Harry made to leave, she spoke. "Turns out, I've always had what I needed, Harry. I just didn't get what I wanted."

Harry couldn't help but frown, and in a similar manner to the way he left Dumbledore, Harry bid his final farewell to Ginny Weasley.