Chapter Fourteen

So, without too much further ado, here's how Ginny and I broke up; otherwise known as 'I know more secret passages around the castle than she ever will.'

You would think that it would be hard to avoid someone who shared the same common room, dinner table, and hallways as you, but apparently it isn't. Ginny managed it quite well. When she wasn't avoiding me, she surrounded herself with her girlfriends so that I didn't dare approach her for fear of the 'friend shield'. By Wednesday I had had quite enough though, and the roiling around in my stomach was turning to anger. As I have said, it was obvious she didn't want to be with me anymore, but I was not prepared to just leave it at that. I needed an answer from her, and civility be damned, I was going to get it.

Of course it had to wait until after my meeting with the Slytherin and Hufflepuffs in the Astronomy classroom. True to her word, Professor Sinistra met us after dinner, walking over with us from the Great Hall, and drawing no end of stares from the other two tables. I imagine they thought that I was going to be cheating by using help from a Professor; well, being in a less than generous mood for the reasons described above, I really didn't care. If they wanted to question the integrity of a Professor, they could damn well just bring it up with Minerva. They'd get the truth from me; even if it wasn't what they wanted to hear.

We sat around the desks and talked for a while. Well mostly I let everyone else do the talking and then I just tried to get their ideas formed together. It was actually surprising how well the groups worked together; and not just because the Slytherin students were very self assured either. Many of the Hufflepuffs had proven to be more devious than I could have imagined back then. But determined to be the bigger man, I had to reign in some of the ideas about making Ron's team work in an impenetrable magical darkness or fog, and adding magically enhanced rodents to the course to trip people up. Though I didn't rule out using either idea on a smaller scale, I was trying to be fair.

At the end of two hours we mostly knew who was doing what; my and Draco's job being to effectively hide the Astrolabe. We parted with some students heading to the library to look up the correct spells to accomplish their tasks, and with others heading back to their dorms. Draco hung back, as he was doing more and more of lately, to talk for a few minutes; mostly about his idea for the room layout and where we should hide the astrolabe. Professor Sinistra found us pouring over a model of the Great Hall that Draco had conjured on her desk. She was amused by it. As we walked down the steps Draco surprised me.

"It's been really nice working with you Harry." I hadn't expected that, but I agreed.

"Yeah Draco, we make a good team."

"It's too bad you weren't sorted into Slytherin all those years ago. Things could have turned out so differently."

I didn't want to tell him that the sorting hat had considered it for me way back then. Some days I wondered if I had made the right choice. Not many days, but days when I was angry. Maybe it didn't make a lot of sense, I don't know.

"Yeah, things sure would have been different Draco."

"You want to get a coffee?"

"I would Draco, but I have something I have to take care of first. I'll catch up with you in the morning."

I went back to the dorms first, on the off chance that Ginny would be there. She wasn't. But it gave me the opportunity to dig out my invisibility cloak and my Marauders Map. I saw no point in traipsing all over the castle looking for her when I could simply ask to find her on the map, and then head straight there. I pointed my wand at it, in the privacy of my curtained bed and spoke.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." The images on it sprang to life and I told it that I wanted to find Ginny Weasley. Instantly a little black dot popped up, walking one of the lower hallways, Ginny's name floating on top of it. I watched it for a bit, wondering where she was going, until she headed into the girls washroom, Myrtle's washroom. When the dot disappeared I knew exactly where she had gone, though I was surprised that the passageway was even still accessible to students.

The Chamber of Secrets didn't exist on my map, it wasn't plottable, but I had faced the Basilisk in there, ironically enough saving Ginny's life, and nearly losing my own as well. I couldn't believe she would go back there, the memories of that place had to be as horrible for her as they were for me, didn't they? But then again, perhaps she didn't put much stock in places; the Ministry scene hadn't bothered her either.

I had an hour till curfew, and so did she, and I was going after her. I wrapped the Invisibility cloak into a ball under my school robes. I tucked the map into my pocket and I headed out. No one even asked where I was going. They were too busy 'shhing' each other as I walked by. The end of the day Friday was going to be a very happy time for me, when I could hopefully go back to being a part of my house again.

I was so well practiced in the secret passages of the school I hardly needed the cloak to make my way around. I knew another, easier way to gain entrance to the Chamber, besides the sink in the girls bathroom, but it involved going past the Staff room, and through normally locked doors. Simple enough charms to counter when you had broken into so many well guarded places in your lifetime. I entered the passageway, which hadn't been blocked off either and I was making my way towards the chamber. I thought on my walk over of how I should approach things when I got there. Part of me thought: being the type of person who gets caught up in memories, that Ginny might have been bewitched again, as she had been with Tom's bloody diary, the object that had led her to that Chamber before. But in my heart I didn't think that was the cause really. I mostly thought she was meeting someone else there, though I hadn't had the nerve to ask the map if there was anyone with her. And therein lay my dilemma. I could sneak up and surprise her with whomever she was with, or I could be the bigger man, and though I was following her, I could make a great deal of noise so that she would be alerted to someone coming.

I chose the more noble approach, taking off the invisibility cloak, stamping a hard footfall on the descending stone staircase, and even whistling as I got close to the great Oak door that was the Chamber's original entrance. Stopping in front of it I took a breath making certain that confronting her was what I wanted to do, and deciding I had to, for the sake of my own health, I pounded on the door.

There was scrabbling, and I pounded again; it was a heavy door after all, I say pound, but really, it wasn't out of anger that's just what it sounded like. I called out her name, and then I pushed the door open. She hadn't known it was there or she would have warded it I imagine.

On the floor, in front of the very stone where I had killed the basilisk was Ginny, looking wide eyed at the door I had just opened; which didn't look like a door from her side, sitting on a blanket beside Dean Thomas. If she looked crimson, he was mortified.

"I wonder if I could speak to Ginny alone for a little while Dean?" I asked in my most controlled voice.

"Ah Harry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean," I cut him off; I didn't want to hear any more lies. He knew fine well what he was doing, no matter what Ginny had told him. We'd never been close friends, but we were at least amicable. I just didn't need to deal with him too.

"If you wouldn't mind Dean." I stood, unmoving, looking down on them both. It was the only position of power I was ever going to have with them both. He fumbled to put himself to rights and took off past me, as if he expected me to hit him or something, which I would never have done. He was up the stairs behind that oak door, not knowing where he was going to find himself, only knowing he didn't want to be near me at that moment.

"What do you want Harry?" Ginny was putting on her defiant little pout, which I had always found charming before. It wasn't so charming just then.

"I think you owe me an explanation Ginny."

"Do you now then?"

"What exactly have I done to you to deserve this?" I cast my arms around the room.

"Well if you don't know."

"Not good enough Ginny. I need some answers from you."

"You obviously don't want to be with me anymore Harry." She tried to begin.

"What?" I was incredulous at her take on things.

"You don't want to spend time with me."

"You mean I don't want to have sex with you in the woods." She tried to keep an angry expression on her face, but my words had hurt her and she stumbled for her own for a moment.

"No, not just that." Okay, so that had been part of it. "You do everything to avoid me."

"What?"

"You spent most of the summer in London at your house."

"I explained that to you, it was dangerous, your parents wouldn't have let you come, and I respect them too much to defy them. Besides, I came back to the Burrow almost every weekend to see you."

"And Ron and Hermione and George."

"I can't help that, they're my friends too."

"I was supposed to be more than your friend, I was your girlfriend." Don't think I missed the semantics in that sentence.

"I needed to get it done myself, I tried to explain it to you. I had to have some kind of closure with that place, make it my own."

"And when we got back to school? What then?"

"We went flying, I wanted to do more together, but you didn't seem interested."

"You seem to have found other things to occupy yourself with. Like teaching DADA classes."

"I did that because Professor McGonagall asked me to. You aren't getting on Ron's case about it."

"He's my brother."

"And I was supposed to be your boyfriend, it was the same opportunity for both of us." She didn't have an answer, and so she changed her tack.

"You send more time with Draco Malfoy than me."

"We're in class together, and we had one morning of studying." I sensed we might be getting to the heart of her anger, finally.

"He's on your team all of a sudden for DADA."

"That was Ron's idea, not mine."

"You didn't object."

"What sense would there have been in that. It's just class work, review, getting caught up before the new professor gets here."

"He is your enemy. His father was a Death Eater, he tried to kill all of us, more than once."

"Lucius did, not Draco."

"He's just like his father."

"How can you make that generalization?"

"It's just the way it is."

"So am I like my father, when he was a student here? A bully, torturing other students like Severus, because he could, because he was stronger?"

"Your father was a hero, he fought against Voldemort!"

"He changed, grew up, made the choice to be with the Order and fight with them. Am I like Sirius, another bully, who treated poor Kreacher like scum?"

"No Harry, you aren't like that."

"Then how can you make the generalization about Draco?"

"He's just evil, and I know it."

"A pretty poor argument Ginny."

"You used to be strong Harry!" And there we had it, what I wanted her to admit finally.

"That's why you set up the Ministry test isn't it?" She looked at me confused. "You wanted to show yourself that I wasn't strong anymore, you wanted to test me to see if I would fall apart seeing that place. That's probably why you chose this place? Because you knew it would rattle me if I ever found you."

"Here, in the Ministry, on the battle field you were strong Harry. You were an amazing wizard with powers to rival Voldemort!"

"And that's why you loved me." It wasn't a question, it was simply resignation. "And when I stopped being 'the boy who lived', the youngest Quidditch seeker, the one who had to kill Voldemort, the hero on the run trying to save wizarding kind, that was when you loved me? And when I gave it up, when I wanted to put it behind me, when I just wanted peace, I wasn't enough for you anymore was I? You needed another rising star."

There were tears welling in her eyes but I couldn't stop because it was all falling into place. "You were raised as the youngest of seven brothers, there was nothing you could do that one of them hadn't already done, and that was killing you. The only way you could distinguish yourself was through me wasn't it? At least the only way you thought you could do it." I dared to reach out and touch her finally, putting my hands on her shoulders. "Ginny, you are a powerful, talented witch. You cast the best hexes I've ever seen; you are a top-notch seeker and an agile broom pilot. You are intelligent, and strong, and can stand up to anyone, even a Death Eater and keep fighting. The only thing you don't have is self-confidence. And I am sorry I couldn't give you that. Between running for my life and trying to destroy Voldemort, I just didn't have the opportunity. I had hoped that we would have this year together, and that I would take you home after this to 12G. But I can see that isn't going to happen now. I'm sorry for whatever pain I caused you through my short sightedness, and I hope you find yourself some happiness." I turned away from her and began to walk back to the passage I had come from.

"I hope you'll think about coming for Christmas still this year, with everyone else, but I'll understand if you don't feel you can. Bring Dean if you like." And I walked away.

I kept my shoulders straight as I hit the stairs, but as soon as I had closed the door behind me I let them slump, and I felt the trembling in my hands, and I fought it long enough to pull out the invisibility cloak and hide myself underneath it, alone on the stone steps.