Title: Losing Faith
Summary: It's the summer after Ginny's sixth year, and Voldemort is dead. But still, things are not how they should be. How will everyone cope now that the worst threat is over? HG RHr
Genre: Angst/Drama
Rating: T
Disclaimer: It's all JK Rowling's. 'Nuff said.
A/N: A New Year present to you all – the tenth chapter! (sucky as it is grin) I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year – thank you my lovely reviewers, for I have got past the 50 review mark! Also, apologies for the Italian – I'm pretty sure it's wrong as I'm once again relying on online translators.
V I V I V
BITTERSWEET
Though Ginny had suspected she would once again have a sleepless night, with the appearance of her boyfriend and the fact that he was only two rooms away, the strained and emotional day had left her exhausted and she fell into a deep slumber almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. She was rudely and abruptly woken late the next morning by shrill, piercing giggling that reminded her too much of Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown who had been in the year above her in Hogwarts.
The giggling paused for only a few seconds before it was replaced by equally high-pitched, female Italian chatter. Ginny groaned and pushed the covers aside in defeat, realising she wasn't going to get anymore sleep that day. She bathed and dressed as slowly as possible, hoping inwardly that the four neighbours would have gone home by the time she had finished. Descending the narrow staircase, Ginny let out a sigh of relief at the sound of blissful silence from the kitchen that quickly turned to another groan of dismay as the chatter started up once more.
"Che cosa è accaduto a quella ragazza inglese?"
"Ginny? È ancora qui."
Ears perking up at the sound of her name being used in vain, Ginny almost slid into the kitchen, her socked feet slippery on the marble floor. Flushing at seeing all eyes land on her, she gave a small wave and offered a smile, wondering whether she could remember any of the Italian that she had tried to teach herself in the week before she had arrived.
"Er, ciao."
"Ciao!" One of the girls returned brightly, and Ginny frantically searched her brain to remember the right name. "You are, eh, enjoying Italy?"
"Oh… sì." Ginny stumbled. "Sì, it is very beautiful."
She paused, glancing around the kitchen, and saw that Harry was nowhere in sight; Ness and the four Italian girls were sat around the kitchen table, nursing cups of iced tea.
"Tea, Ginny?" Ness asked, pulling out the empty chair next to her and motioning for the redhead to take a seat. Reluctantly, Ginny sat down, shaking her head in the negative.
"No, I'm not really a fan of tea – I could do with a coffee, though."
The house-elf appeared next to her a mere half-second later, holding a large mug of coffee in her long, thin hands, and placed it on the table in front of Ginny before blushing shyly at Ginny's 'thank you' and disappearing once more. She stared into the swirling liquid, breathing in the hot steam, and wishing that the girls didn't have to stare at her quite so much. She searched her brain for something remotely intelligible to say, though her sparse Italian failed her completely.
"Do you – attend a wizarding school, or are you home-schooled?" She asked finally, rather lamely, she thought.
"I start at Hogwarts in September." Carlotta said in her thick Italian accent proudly, holding herself up tall. Ginny started in surprise.
"Hogwarts? But – there are surely more than three magical schools in the world!"
"Of course!" Rosa piped up; looking shocked that Ginny could suggest such a thing. "There are many, many magico schools in the world – why, Gina and I go to Sherminau, that is in Venice but very small and cannot take any more witches, so Carlotta's parents have had to find her somewhere else to go, and we have heard good things about Hogwarts, so she has been enrolled there."
"I go to Hogwarts." Ginny nodded, smiling at the small girl. "I will probably see you there."
Carlotta clapped her hands gleefully. "That would be much pleasant!"
"And I do not attend this – magico school." Anna spoke up in her quiet voice, looking uncomfortable. "I am – how you say – non-magical."
"A Muggle?" Ginny asked, astonished. "But – they are all your cousins? Magic runs in your blood, doesn't it?"
"Gina is my sister." Anna nodded. "And she is magical, and so are my parents, but I have never – shown such an ability."
Ginny wisely kept her mouth shut, silently wondering how she would feel if she, out of all her brothers, were the only one who did not possess any magic. Suppressing a shudder, she drained her coffee, not liking the thought at all.
"Good morning, girls." A male voice said cheerfully, and Ginny almost fell off her chair as Harry sauntered into the room, grinning around at them all. To her utmost surprise, two of the Italian girls did just that, whilst Carlotta jumped to her feet and pointed at him, babbling incoherently in Italian. She noticed that Anna sat quietly, just frowning in confusion at Harry.
"Harry." Ness muttered. "Your – appearance – has changed somewhat."
Realisation dawned on both Harry and Ginny, who tried in vain to smother her giggles as, in a panic, Harry frantically waved his wand across his face and he merged into the strange features of Glyn.
"Glyn! But – where is that – that strange boy!" Anna blurted out, looking astonished.
"He is the Harry Potter!" Carlotta stammered out. "But for he is Glyn, too!"
"Damn it." Harry muttered, slumping into the chair that Rosa had previously vacated.
"Can someone tell me what is going on, please?" Anna demanded.
Ness took one look at Ginny's amused face and Harry's despondent one, and let off a stream of Italian to the four girls. Their hysteria gradually diminished and, as one, they rose to their feet.
"Ness has told us why – who – what is going on, Glyn." Gina said haltingly. "We must go now, for our lunch is waiting, and we know that you have work to do – but we shall speak soon, yes?"
"Mm-hmm." Harry-Glyn muttered, forcing a smile, and let his head drop to the table as the back door closed behind the last of them. "I forgot."
Ginny chuckled heartily. "I think that was obvious."
"Shut up, Ginny." Harry said into the table wearily.
"It's your own fault for being so careless." Ginny snapped back, feeling the irritation rise again. Harry lifted his head to stare at her, looking torn between confusion and mild betrayal; after all, Ginny realised wryly, she had been laughing somewhat only seconds beforehand.
"I've had a lot on my mind recently; besides, how was I to know that they were going to come around today?"
"Oh, here we go again." Ginny folded her arms and sat back in her chair, scowling. "You're getting as bad as Ron; why can't you just admit that you made a mistake?"
Harry narrowed his eyes. "Are we even talking about the glamour anymore?"
"Yes!" Ginny snarled, and whirled on Ness when the brunette gave a distinct snort. "What was that for?"
"Nothing, nothing." Ness raised her hands hastily in a gesture of defeat. "I just think that we have plenty to work through; and not just magically wise."
"You're not a psychologist." Ginny started, huffing. "If you think that I'm going to be crying all over Harry saying how upset I was and how betrayed I felt and how guilty I felt all the time, then you've… what?" She trailed off upon realising she was being stared at. "What?"
"You felt guilty?" Harry said in a strangled voice.
"Only because I thought that you were moping around feeling sorry for yourself while I was having a good time." Ginny retorted. "But seeing as you've been living alone with a pretty older woman for the past three months, I guess I had no reason to be."
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she immediately regretted them. Ness turned a succinct shade of red that was unnatural against her dark skin tone, while Harry leapt to his feet, equally red.
"How can you – how dare you suggest such a thing?"
"I didn't suggest anything; I was simply stating a fact." Ginny narrowed her eyes. "You obviously have a reason to jump to such a conclusion."
Harry shook his head, throwing his arms up in the air in disgust. "I can't talk to you like this, Ginny." He told her, stepping away from the table. "I know you've got a perfectly good reason to be angry with me, but now you're just being completely unreasonable, and finding any excuse to pick a fight. Leave it alone."
"I don't think that was very wise." Ness said in careful tones minutes after Harry stormed out, her quiet voice breaking the uncomfortable silence.
Ginny scuffed her foot against the kitchen floor. "I don't care." She muttered in return.
"I think you do."
It was Ginny's turn to put her head down on the table, the grained wood cool against her forehead. "I'm sick of it." She told the piece of furniture, biting back the tears with a vengeance, fed up of crying. "I just want to go home and for things to be the way they were before the attack, but I don't because the prophecy was always looming over us and we were always scared that one of us was going to be killed. I just wish that I could skip all this emotional baggage stuff and just… move on."
"Can you do that?" Ness suddenly asked, and Ginny jumped, forgetting that the woman had been in the room. "Do you think that you can just go home, right now, with Harry, and… move on?"
Ginny hesitated for the smallest of seconds. "As long as he tells me exactly what happened to make him leave," she began, swallowing her pride. "Then yes. I just want it over now. I want it done."
V I V I V
Sitting on his bed, Harry kicked his heels against the mattress, scowling at the wall. I don't understand girls at all, he thought viciously. One minute his girlfriend – was she even his girlfriend anymore? – was smiling and laughing, and the next second she had thrown a fit that could rival even Molly Weasley's.
"Be careful with what you say to her," Ness had warned him the night before, and he had felt a spark of irritation.
"I do know my own girlfriend, thank you very much," he had almost snarled in response, and then felt immediately guilty, though Ness didn't look particularly hurt.
"You've all changed because of the war-and Ginny's 'condition', so to speak… she's very temperamental because of these flashbacks, Harry, don't bait her."
"She's always been temperamental." He had joked, but it had fallen flat at the serious look on Ness' face. "Look, Ness, she doesn't like to be coddled, and I'm not going to, because that will just make even angrier."
Ness had shrugged, turned away. "You know her best." She had said softly, and then left without another word.
A sharp knock on the door pulled Harry out of his thoughts and a tousled red head appeared. His heart leapt into his throat at the sheepish look on Ginny's face, the shy smile that had made him fall for her in the first place. He berated himself inwardly at the sudden thought that he hadn't even kissed her in months, and forced a smile onto his own face.
"Can you – can you get rid of – erm, the glamour?" Ginny asked carefully, waving vaguely at Harry's face. Startled, he glanced into the mirror to see that he was still sporting 'Glyn's' appearance and hastily waved his wand over himself.
"Finite incantatem."
"Thanks." Ginny perched on the edge of his bed, tracing her fingers across the patterns of the sheets. "Look, I'm – I know I was being irrational then, and to suggest that you and Ness – I'm sorry. I did trust you enough to know that you wouldn't ever…"
"Did?" Harry asked, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"I just… I don't know if I can trust you not to pull one of these stunts again."
"Stunts? This isn't a stunt, Ginny, this is serious, and if you think I did this for my own entertainment, then…"
"Okay, okay, wrong word." She shrugged, and Harry subsided.
"I didn't leave because I wanted to, all right? I had to. There wasn't any other choice. I'll admit it was nice to have a break from all the – from everything, but not from you, never from you. God, it's never been so awful spending so much time away from you, but… I'm ready to go back now. I promise, I promise, I'll never leave you again."
Forcing his eyes up from where they were staring at an invisible spot on the wall, his heart sank even further to see Ginny's brown eyes glittering with tears. Was she going to break up with him?
"That's all I ask for, Harry." She said softly. "I don't want you to think that I'm – I'm incapable of – anything without you. I am independent, I'm just…"
Harry nodded. "I know. I understand. You managed, didn't you? We both managed."
"It was hard, but we did." She agreed.
"So… can we go?" He asked hesitantly. "Or do you have to stay, because of these – flashbacks."
"I don't think they're going to happen anymore." She told him after a complacent pause. "But I'm not ready to go back yet." She gave him a wicked smile that he had missed so much. "After all, we are in Venice. I'm not about to leave without exploring the place properly."
Harry let out a long sigh of relief that was cut off as soon as she hit him solidly on the side of his head. He only just resisted asking what that was for, suspecting she might hit him again for that.
"Don't think you're let off yet, Harry Potter." Ginny warned him. "I'm going to get the full story, don't you worry about that; and you still have my brothers, my parents, Mr. Lupin and Hermione to get through yet."
Harry groaned in horror. "Let's stay as long as you want." He suggested desperately, and was rewarded with a giggle from his girlfriend.
V I V I V
Ness watched her two young charges depart down the path towards the city, hand-in-hand, with a faint smile twisting on her lips. She had noticed that Harry had been ready to return to England for quite a while; it was Ginny's appearance that had made him realise it. Ginny, however, was a different matter. Sighing, Ness closed the front door and retreated to the living room, sprawling across the sofa and flicking through a magazine absently. Despite Ginny's assurances, she knew that simply because the teenager was reunited with her boyfriend didn't mean that the flashbacks would stop.
They hadn't even been related to the boy until she had come to Venice and met up with him again.
Still in her early twenties, Ness had only had two charges previous to Harry, though her gift had meant she had spent many of her days at Hogwarts trying to analyse her friends and fellow students. It had irritated them all to no end; while her closest friends had learned to deal, it wasn't a surprise that Ness hadn't been popular – she hadn't quite learned the boundaries between helping and prying until she went into Healer training.
Ginny showed all the same signs as Harry had when he had first stood on her doorstep, traumatised and terrified. He had given nothing away about his childhood, though Ness suspected that something had happened to make him so wary about trusting her. Ginny's reaction when Ness had probed her on their arrival had been to push the Healer away, and try to give away as little as possible. Harry had steadfastly kept his mouth firmly shut for the first few weeks, insisting that he wanted to know her as a friend before he poured his heart out.
It was a good thing the boy was filthy rich, Ness smirked, remembering that it had been almost a month and a half before Harry had even begun to discuss the events that had led up to the downfall of the Dark Lord.
Perhaps Ginny would be more willing to divulge with Harry around, or maybe it would make it harder; either way, Ness wasn't keen to send the two back to England – or Ginny at least – without having done any work with the girl.
"Vanessa!"
A thickly-accented whisper came from somewhere near the doorway. Startled, Ness twisted around on the sofa, trying to decipher where the voice had come from. Carlotta's tousled head popped up from behind the sofa, almost making the woman cry out in surprise.
"Carlotta, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"
After her initial shock she realised that the eleven-year-old's face was stained with tears and… blood? Her heart rate suddenly speeding up, she scrambled off the sofa and knelt before Carlotta. "What is it? What's happened? Are you bleeding?"
"I-it's all right, I just – I fell over." Carlotta hiccupped. "There are scary men in my house, Vanessa, and they're – they're ruining it, they'll make Mama and Papa so angry, their precious things!"
Ness took the small, sweaty hands in her own. "Where are your cousins, Carlotta?" She asked urgently.
"They – they went down to the shops, they said that I couldn't come." Carlotta replied, her small face twisting into a jealous frown. "Just because I'm littler than them! It's not fair!"
"Carlotta." Ness said again, tightening her grasp. "These men – what do they look like? What are they looking for?"
"They've got these black robes, and – and they're wearing these mask things – I think they're looking for Glyn, Vanessa, or – or Harry Potter, they're looking for someone!"
Swallowing her fear, Ness snatched up her wand, turning carefully in the room. Sensing there were no Death Eaters in her house – yet – she hurried to the front door and peered through the small glass window. The street was virtually empty, and from the outside, Carlotta's house looked untouched.
"Carlotta, listen to me." She bent down to the child's level. "It's not safe here. You must go to the shops, and find your cousins – then go to your aunt and uncle's house, okay, and tell them what has happened."
Eyes wide with fright, the child could only nod mutely.
"Run until you are safely with your cousins." Ness said, and gave the child a shove towards the door. Giving the older woman another, frightened glance, Carlotta disappeared, tearing down the path as fast as her little legs could carry her. Ness held her breath until the Italian girl was safely out of sight, then moved towards the fireplace, praying that Harry and Ginny would take advantage of their time in the city and not return any time soon.
Throwing Floo powder into the fireplace with trembling fingers, Ness stuck her head into the fireplace, saying Healer Gregory's name as loudly as she dared. He knelt down to her level, a delighted smile twisting on his face.
"Vanessa! This is a surprise!"
"There's no time, Gregory." Ness said abruptly, trying to ignore the startled look on his face at her greeting him so shortly. "There are Death Eaters here."
"What? Come through, get out of there, Vanessa! Now!"
"I can't leave Harry and Ginny." Ness said firmly.
"Are they there?"
"No, they're out."
"We'll get Aurors there, they'll get the Death Eaters before the two return." Healer Gregory said impatiently, sounding panicked. "Come on, come through!"
"I'm not leaving, Alan – there are all Harry's files, important stuff – if they find them…"
"Damn it, Vanessa, this is your life we're talking about."
"Please." Ness scoffed. "I've learned enough to know how to deal with a few measly rogue Death Eaters." Her head twisted to the side, looking at something he couldn't see, and when she turned back, her face was etched with worry. "They're starting on searching the other houses, Alan, and not just mine – these are innocent people, they don't know about Harry – they'll not be kind, I can't leave!" Her head turned again.
"Vanessa!"
"I have to go." Ness said in hushed tones. "They're coming."
There was a splutter from the fireplace and her head was gone; snatching up his wand, Healer Gregory threw the Floo powder into the fireplace and leapt in before the sparks had settled. Choking on the smoke, he spun out into the small villa in Venice, stumbling in his hurry to get out.
Looking up, he realised that he and Ness were completely surrounded.
V I V I V
Translations:
Che cosa è accaduto a quella ragazza inglese? What happened to that English girl?
È ancora qui. She's still here.
Magico. Magical