His gaze follows the peaks and valleys of the print, of the five fingers tattooed on the window, the small creases of the man's flesh showing up barely at the middle of the handprint, gentle morning light filtering through. If he'd trusted any of them, there'd be a team here right now photographing this, filing it into evidence. But he doesn't.

Well, he trusts Ron. He trusts Ron with his life, but - Harry steals a furtive glance at Ginny, the elegant arcing of her spine showing as the old sheets slip off her shoulder, something light and warm pooling in his stomach.

Yeah, that would be rather complicated.

The ends of the feather tickle at his naked chest as Harry leans lower over the broken desk, wand at his elbow and heels pressed into the floor for support where the wonky chair fails. Glancing at the print again, he draws in a breath and starts scribbling.

"Hermione,

You were right. This isn't the work of a woman."

He'd been blind, pigheaded, obsessively looking at clues that weren't really there, desperate for it to be what he'd always hoped it would. That it would be simple, not far out of what he'd already learned. Still, the world doesn't work that way, does it? There's not just one type of evil in the world, but many - taking different forms, acting through different people.

Some hate women, others hated Muggles. 'It's the thought that flicks the wand,' Hermione once told him; it's the thought that pulls the trigger. Hate breeds hate and the man who only sows wind will later reap the storm.

Mrs Belby talked badly about her daughter-in-law and Mr Tart sneered at his only daughter's name. Susan Danes had a boyfriend who was jealous when he learned she'd move to the US and Agnes did what she always did - she did her best. Four women who had lived their lives fully until they were ended on account of hate. Other people's hate.

Harry can see him blending in the background, listening, absorbing, taking it upon himself to punish them. They always had a reason, murderers, they always thought their sins were justified.

And that man was there when Ron had shouted at him.

There are hollows in the thick layer of dust where his elbows had been when Harry finally finishes, and there's bile in his mouth. The hair, the book, Magdalene...Ginny could have been either one of them.

Harry briefly wonders how many of them there really are, how many he'd punished for the sin of living unapologetic lives. His stomach violently twists.

The old watch on his wrist shows six-oh-five when the owl takes flight, soaring high into the rising sun. He steadies his mind, his breath - she can't know, she'd been through enough as it is.

"Hey," Harry whispers as he slips back into bed, placing his wand at the foot of it. Ginny whimpers slightly next to him. "Didn't mean to wake you. I'll let you sleep."

"No, stay," she says with her face in the pillow, long hair tangled around her. Brown eyes slowly flutter open, two deep wells with stiller, calmer waters.

The thought takes Harry by surprise, and he can make as much sense of it as he can of the previous night. There was nothing rough, nothing rushed about their actions last night, no insatiable hunger in their kisses, no urgency in the way they touched. He held her and kissed her mouth, her hair as she pressed her soft cheek to his and her palm to his chest where his heart beat.

There was nothing new in what they did, and still it was how it felt.

"It's alright, it'll be alright," Harry's fingertips creep under her jaw, bringing her face closer to his, grateful for her presence there with him, "I'm working through this."

"I trust you."

And there they are, the three words that make his heart stop. They silence the buzz inside his mind, stop the blood coursing through his veins before he can recover, and then - then everything flows faster, better: his thoughts, his feelings, his whole life.

Harry rarely had someone who trusted him. Besides Ron and Hermione, who had been with him from the very start, he had often felt that people did not trust him, Harry, the boy, the man, but the legend, the hero they had crafted out of him.

Curiously, he remembers the odd, fleeting feeling he'd had on their first night together, that distinct feeling that she could read his mind. He finds it rather strange that he doesn't feel like fighting it now.

Instead, Harry embraces it.

Her eyes are wide, mouth opening as though to take those life altering words back, but Harry doesn't let her. Fingers still pressed to her jaw, he kisses her, slipping further inside the covers to take her body in his arms, to have her flush against him, warm and beautiful in the early morning.

His mouth tastes hers, hands arranging her legs around him and he tugs them both up, palms against the small of her back as he sits them on the edge of the bed, her body wrapped around his. He points his chin upwards and looks into her eyes, the light casting dancing beams onto her hair. Her forehead touches his, brown eyes closing.

Her palms are on his cheeks, caressing them, and Ginny's looking at him like she'd never done before: gently, tenderly, allowing him to gaze into her heart. And it's warmth he finds inside.

Ginny's soft fingertip raises to the edges of the lightning bolt, tracing lightly over his scar; he holds his breath and lets her, eyes glued to her lips, words unsaid passing between them. He watches as they morph into a smile, sad and small.

"I wish this never happened to you," she says softly, finger still over his scar.

"I wish this never happened to you either, all of this - this case, the Chamber."

"Me too," Ginny sighs and her voice shudders. He cups her face and brings it to his, kisses her as his fingers caress her cheeks, brush over her neck, her back. He wants to tell her that she's not alone, not anymore, but he's afraid to say it.

Don't make promises you're not sure you can keep.

"Why did they transfer you to Ilvermorny, Ginny?"

He asks as gently as he can, knuckles moving in circles over her back and Harry feels her leaning further into him, as though trying to hide. He rubs at the knots in her shoulders and gives her space to think, to find her words, to finally decide if she can let him in.

"Dumbledore thought Riddle would use me again," she draws in a long, shuddering breath, "against you."

Her voice is broken and hollow, her body tense in his arms, her gaze bravely locked with his. It's Harry who feels like pulling away now.

She'd gone through all of this for him.

She'd grown up without her family for him, for his sake, for his own safety. The way his parents had sacrificed themselves for him.

Harry wants to vomit; his hands fall off her, limp.

Suddenly, she grips his chin, wrenching his face up and Ginny crashes her mouth over his, fierce and stubborn. "Don't," she grunts between kisses, slipping her tongue over his, letting her lips glide and her hips move until he feels like he can breathe again. "Don't do this, it's not you, it's them. They were alright with this."

"Ginny -"

"Mum and Dad, they came to get me the day you saved me from the Chamber. We went straight home and Dumbledore came to talk to them a few weeks later," she follows, eyes up to the ceiling, hands gripping his shoulders. "Mum was crying when she told me that I had to go, that I could come back every summer, but I didn't."

Harry's heart breaks with grief and he reaches for her mouth again, but Ginny pulls away, her palms against his chest.

"No, let me say this."

He nods, knuckles returning to the soft flesh on her back, drawing the same pacifying circles as they did before. Her legs wrap tighter round his waist, her long hair tickling his hands.

"For so long I thought they'd given up on me, that they didn't want me after I'd been possessed. Who would've wanted a daughter who'd been controlled by Voldemort? I thought they were ashamed of me."

Harry's chest hurts, but he doesn't interrupt, his eyes now locked with her sad ones. He holds her gaze.

"So I stayed away. I never answered any of their letters and, after some time, my brothers stopped trying. I ran away when Mum and Dad came to see me - it must've cost them a fortune to travel internationally, but I didn't care. I felt abandoned. I thought I hated them and there were days when I even hated myself."

"Did he tell you all those things?"

She's surprised, as though she had not expected him to know. Her eyes wide for a brief moment before she nods, "He did, but, Harry, it was really me - I chose to listen to him, I let him come to me."

Harry frowns. "No, Ginny, that's not true. It's what he wanted you to think."

"How could you know?"

"Because I've been there too, Riddle possessed me too. It's how he works, it's how he made his victims bend, made them vulnerable. It's how he made Ron leave Hermione and I in the last year of the war, it's how he planted doubt and hate in so many hearts. He preys on feelings such as these. So don't pin this on you, alright?"

"It's strange because I know this, I know it makes no sense to think like this or feel like this, but still - it's probably so deeply rooted in my brain, you know? I tried to see them while you were away, I tried to go home."

"You did?"

"Yeah...I Apparated there and Mum was hanging the washing out to dry and - there were gray flecks in her hair that weren't there when I'd last seen her, and I - I simply couldn't. I had to leave before she saw me."

Their foreheads rest against each other, Harry holding her close to him, heart aching. Heartache to heartache.

"I didn't know where else to go so," Ginny whispers softly, "I always ended up coming back to you."

His heart thuds just as hard as it did the moment he saw her in the interrogation room: erratic, wild and fearful, still somehow familiar. Harry had been slow to recognise the thing growing in his chest. But now, in her presence, her body onto his, her thighs bracketing his legs, freckles over the hairs on his skin, her stomach tensing over his - he'd be a fool not to finally see it.

She was once glowing like the setting sun; now the sun is here, in his chest, inside his heart, and it's starting to glow.

He cups her face and brings her mouth to his, falling back onto the old bed, glasses sloppily on the bridge of his nose. He holds her and kisses her, treading lightly through her long, red hair. There's nothing he wants to rush now.

"It will be different when this is over," Harry breathes, lips drawing over her cheek. "I'll take you to them."

"Harry, I can't."

She pulls away, but he follows her, taking her hands and kissing the insides of her wrists. His mouth travels up her arms, nose brushing against her freckles, lingering.

She watches him, quiet.

"I'll be with you the entire time." She still doesn't say anything, the tip of her index finger now tracing softly over his sternum. "You said you trust me."

"I didn't think -"

"Only means you were genuine."

The air quickly shifts between them and Harry dips his chin to grin at her scowling face. The sadness slowly fades away.

She rolls her eyes, body still tightly pressed to his. "What a load of bull."

"First thing they teach us in Auror training: if you want the truth, catch your suspect off guard. Or drunk."

Ginny laughs, her forehead finding its place in the crook of his shoulder, and it's so good to hear her. "That's why the British Auror Department is crap," she says, muffled, "even your training sucks."

"Oi, I take full offense in that!"

"Good," she grins, rolling on her back to look at him, freckles peppered on her cheeks, "I meant it. And the men that interviewed me before they called in your lot? Delicious."

"Ah," Harry pouts a little, glasses skewed and finger on the tip of her impish nose, "then why, might I ask, were you all over me that first night? Clearly the blokes you mentioned had left quite an impression on you."

"Me?" Ginny bats his hand away, faking surprise. "You kissed me first!"

"It was more - erm, like coming together, very well timed on both our parts," he gestures vaguely. "But then of course one thing led to another and, please remind me, who was on top?"

Ginny's head plonks back against the pillow, her hands slid under her head, grin wide as the sheet slips to her waist. "Maybe I was trying to show you what you've been missing."

Harry's breath hitches painfully, his gaze following the clustered constellations climbing their way up from her stomach to her breasts, to that particular one just above her upper lip. "Excellent illustration."

His lips slant against hers, weight supported by his elbows as they sink into the ancient mattress, when there's a sudden rap-rap-raping on the windowpane. Pushing his glasses back up on his nose, Harry rolls out of bed to let the bird in, pushing the window open against the smudges of the handprint. Quickly, he recognises Hermione's neat hand.

He scans the letter anxiously, breath curling inside his lungs until he finishes reading. Then, exhaling long and hard, Harry crumples the letter in his fist.

"By Sunday, we'll have our man."