Harry Potter and all characters, etc. belong to J.K. Rowling, not me.

If You Can Help Her – Chapter 3 – A Sleepless Night

Harry couldn't see anything, but felt that something was terribly wrong. He was sweating and feeling a tremendous urge to scream. There was an intruder in the house, and there was nothing he could do about it. He heard a woman screaming desperately, and then the shrieks stopped suddenly. A few seconds later, a wand was pointed at his forehead, and then he saw a green flash.

Harry opened his eyes and sat up immediately and looked around. He was in his four-poster bed at Hogwarts. Judging by how dark it was outside, it was the middle of the night. He had just been having a nightmare. His breathing began to relax as he recalled the events of the previous day.

He had woken up in the Leaky Cauldron, ate with the Weasleys, and ridden a Ministry car to Kings Cross Station. He hadn't gotten to spend much time at all with Ginny; in fact, he didn't even ride in the same car as she did. The train ride wasn't all that pleasant either. Professor Lupin was sleeping in the only available compartment they could find. Not that he was complaining about the Professor, but his presence in the compartment was not conducive to snogging his girlfriend.

Not to mention that he had just finished telling her and his two best friends that there was a killer after him. Add to that the Dementor attack on the train, and he wished that he had taken the flying Ford Anglia to school again. He'd take the Whomping Willow over a Dementor any day. 'The Dementor,' he thought to himself. 'That's where I heard those screams before! Great, not only did that creature make me pass out in front of my girlfriend, but it's giving me nightmares, too!'

He decided that he needed to take a stroll, so he quietly got dressed and snuck down the stairs carrying his invisibility cloak.

He walked up to the portrait door, wrapped his cloak around him, and heard a familiar voice call out his name. He looked around for the source of that voice, and saw a cute red-headed girl sitting in front of the fire. He took off his cloak and asked, "Ginny?"

"Yes, Harry, it's me," she answered quietly while getting up out of her chair and slowly walking toward him. "What are you doing? Is that an invisibility cloak?"

"Yeah, Gin, it's an invisibility cloak. It used to belong to my dad. I was just going for a little walk. Would you care to join me?"

"It's against school rules," she commented before grinning mischievously. "Are you sure we can both fit under it?"

"Sure. I've had Ron and Hermione under it with me plenty of times. Come on, Ginny. I missed you so much this summer and I hardly had any time alone with you yesterday."

She walked up to him, put her arms around him, and said, "Okay."

Harry wrapped the invisibility cloak around them and kissed her deeply. When they went up for air he smiled and commented, "I've always wanted to kiss someone under that cloak. Come on." To the outside observer, the door appeared to open of its own accord, and then shut.

"Wow, Harry!" Ginny whispered as they walked through the castle, "This is great! We have free reign of the castle now! We can go wherever we like!"

"Shh!" whispered Harry. "We can still be heard! We've got to make sure nobody catches us until we get to a place more secluded. Like the Charms classroom. The door to it never locks."

Not long after, the door to the Charms classroom appeared to open and shut of its own accord.

Ginny and Harry, still under the cloak, walked to the farthest corner of the room. "Should we take off the cloak, Harry?" asked Ginny as they sat down on one of the pillows facing each other.

"I don't think so," replied Harry, a wicked smile on his face, "for two reasons. One is just in case someone looks in here, the other is that I enjoy being under the cloak with you." He kissed her lightly, and she deepened the kiss.

A few minutes later, Harry broke off the kiss and proclaimed, "I can't believe I survived all summer without that."

Ginny put on a very serious looking expression and explained, "I believe that the stress caused by your lack of snogging manifested itself in your blowing up your Aunt Marge. If your Uncle Vernon would have allowed you to visit me and snog your tension away, it would never have happened."

Harry chuckled and asked, "How can you say that with a straight face?"

Still holding her serious expression, Ginny stated, "If you want to maintain the reputation of being a perfect angel, your mother's precious, innocent baby, you have to learn to lie with a straight face while implicating your brothers for every misdeed you perform."

Harry laughed out loud this time and stated, "I wish I could have gone with you to Egypt! I missed you so much!"

"Ron and I both suggested it, but we wouldn't have been able to afford staying as long if you were with us. Mum and dad wanted to stay as long as possible."

"I could have paid my way!" replied Harry. "I hope they don't think I'm just some kind of freeloader!"

"A freeloader? No, Harry, my parents think the world of you, especially after you saved my life. They'd be ashamed to ask you to pay your own way! They feel you're part of the family." Then she looked him in the eye, smiled, and mentioned, "Maybe one day, you will be," and winked at him. Harry turned scarlet.

Wanting to change the subject, Harry asked, "What were you doing in the common room, anyway?"

That took the smile off Ginny's face. "I-I'd rather not talk about it."

"Ginny," Harry said, taking her hands in his with a look of concern on his face. "This is me, Harry. You can tell me anything. Did you have another nightmare?"

"No, I just couldn't sleep. I was thinking about what I saw when the Dementor was in our compartment."

Harry frowned and commented, "I certainly proved what a great 'hero' the bloody 'Boy Who Lived' is, didn't I? I'm sorry you had to watch your 'brave hero' collapse like that. I…"

"Stop it, Harry! That's not what I meant! As far as I'm concerned, you're still the basilisk slayer that saved me from Tom, and you always will be! And more importantly, I love you! When you woke up, you said you heard screaming."

"That's right, but Ron said nobody screamed."

"I didn't hear screaming, Harry, but I heard laughter, very familiar laughter! I heard Tom laughing at me, telling me how I was going to die, and he was going to kill you."

"Oh my God," responded Harry. "But, how…"

"I asked Professor Lupin about it today after the feast. He said that Dementors force you to relive the worst experiences of your life. For me, it was the Chamber of Secrets, but for you, it was something else." She looked into his eyes with love and concern, and explained, "Harry, I think that what you heard was…"

"my mother being killed by Voldemort." Harry looked down at the floor and agreed. "Probably. That's why I got up tonight. I had a nightmare about it. I heard him kill her, but I couldn't do anything about it."

"You were one year old, Harry!"

"I know. Then he turned his wand on me. I saw a green flash of light, and woke up. That's when I decided to go downstairs. To try to…shh!"

At that moment, the classroom door opened, and two identical boys with red hair and twin smiles walked into the room, one of which was holding an old parchment and staring at it intently. Harry heard him mutter something that sounded like, "Mischief managed," while the other one walked right up to where he and Ginny were hiding under the cloak. This person held out his hand, feeling around for something, finally grabbing the cloak and pulling it off of them.

This intruder acted shocked and asked, "Genevra Molly Weasley, how could you disgrace our family like this? Sneaking around…"

"That's our job," said the other twin, "You're supposed to be our mother's perfect little angel. And you, Harry. I'd never have believed…" At this moment Harry's face went magenta as he carefully studied the floor tiles.

"Shut up, Fred!" yelled Ginny, looking daggers at her brothers, "You too, George! What are you doing here, besides trying to get hexed?"

Both Fred and George put an expression of mock-concern on their faces and said together, "defending our baby sister's honor!"

"Someone has to," added Fred, with a smile on his face.

"We were on our way to the kitchens for a midnight snack," explained George.

"When we thought we'd see if anyone was snogging in this room."

"You knew we were here," announced Harry, speaking for the first time since the twins had arrived. "You felt around for my cloak! How did you know?"

"Our secrets are our secrets!" said the twins together. "Go snog in the common room."

Harry argued, "We weren't…"

"Sure," said George. "Just remember that if you hurt our sister…"

"We can find you anywhere at Hogwarts, invisibility cloak or not!" finished Fred.

With that said, the twins left the room, and Harry could swear he heard one of them saying something about being "up to no good."

He turned to Ginny and suggested, "Maybe we should leave."

She nodded as Harry wrapped the cloak around them. Ginny smiled and declared, "We really should follow their advice, you know."

"What advice," asked Harry, with a puzzled look on his face.

Ginny put on her serious face again and answered, "They advised us to 'go snog in the common room' and that's exactly what we should do."

They both laughed as they approached the door, determined to follow the twins' advice to the letter.

-IYCHH-

Chapter end