CHAPTER TWENTY NINE YOU FOR ME....
AN: This chapter contains some scenes of fslash sexual content and implied minor character death.
Draco slammed hard into the dampened grass. He had never attempted side along apparition with a body and he felt himself over, relieved he was all there. He looked just past where Hermione knelt, comforting a shivering Ginny to the massive ruins that still resembled a once comforting sight. The once magnificent building no longer looked like it would stand up to anything stronger than a good breeze.
"You know, Granger, we'd be much safer at Malfoy Manor." Draco said as he shifted Harry's weight.
"Until the remaining Death Eaters and your lovely parents find us." Hermione scolded, easing Ginny to her feet. "I'll risk the building coming down on my head before handing myself to them." Draco opened his mouth to correct her fears but found it to be no ones business to know what remained of the Malfoy line. "Besides," she looked over her shoulder at Harrys remains , "he belongs here. " Ginny started sobbing uncontrollably and Hermione had to coax her back off the ground.
"If you think I'm giving a eulogy for him..." Draco began before being silenced by Ginny's daggers and her wand. He fell over with the force of her Stunning spell.
"Finish that sentence," Ginny said, tearless for the first time in over an hour. "Finish that sentence," she demanded as she shook with fury. "He did not die for you, you ungrateful...selfish..."
"Besides, I need supplies." Hermione placed a calming hand on Ginny's shoulder. "And I only need one thing from you and then you can go slink off with your 'family'." She looked at Draco as if realizing for the first time what he was doing. "That is, if you're still willing to help me."
"I...uh..." for a split second Draco's face dropped and future Hermione caught the despair she had not seen before. His cool demeanor had returned. "I don't have anything else going on for the moment. Besides, you ladies look like you need help." He lifted Harry off the ground before realizing he was lighter than before. Hermione glared as she levitated the lifeless form off Draco's back.
"I need you to do something I cannot do for myself. I need you to go find Professor Snape."
"Even though I'm sure he'd be thrilled to dig Potters grave," Draco looked defiantly at Ginny as her wand rose again, "it's not something we can't handle..."
"I didn't come here to bury him." Hermione said as she marched the body through what remained of the front doors. "Get Professor Snape and meet me in his study. I do not intend this to be his end."
^___^
An hour later Draco sat in the corner of his godfather's study, already bored with the lecture Granger was receiving.
"But the curse isn't what killed him, it was a fluke, an accident!" Hermione stuttered as she rarely contradicted a professor.
"Cause of death is irrelevant, Ms. Granger. You know as well as anyone it is not only forbidden, but impossible."
"And you know as well as I do that's a lie!" Hermione startled herself. "It's not impossible," she said much quieter.
"Harry Potter no longer exists." The words reverberated through the stone room. "He's moved on. He's with James and Lily and probably happy for the first time in his short life. He has been welcomed by all those who passed before him. If he wanted to be here he would have chosen to remain a spirit, and I for one do not see him. He has moved on, and so should you." Snape directed this last at Ginny as she silently cried in the corner.
Snape's cloak had barley graced the door when Hermione took off up the stairs behind the dungeon portrait leading to the library. "Must still be something...never impossible..." Draco heard her voice echo until the portrait shut behind her. He watched uncomfortably as Ginny caressed Harry's head, running her fingers through his hair and whispered lovingly into his ear. Was it the need to absorb such love that kept him routed to his seat? Those fingers had once touched him that way, but if he just had let her would he have felt that kind of love? She had always been Harry's, even when she didn't know it, but she had felt something for him at one time and something inside him would suddenly do anything to stop her from hurting.
By the time Hermione had returned, exasperated and empty handed from the library, Draco had already Apparated out and back from the unprotected castle.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." Hermione said as she sat heavily on the vacant chair behind the desk and began rummaging through the drawers.
"In Hogwarts? Not surprising." Draco held up the fruits of his travels. "From the Malfoy private library." He handed Hermione a leathery book that made her gag when she read the name on the cover.
"This...the real...oh my God!" Hermione dropped the book in disgust.
"Necronomicon Exmortus." Draco said as he sat back down in his corner. "bound in flesh and written in blood. 'The devil's spell book', 'The book of the dead,' Did you really think you'd find what you wanted in the standard book of spells?"
"I can't...we can't..."
"What's this 'we' shit? What you want is on page 74. I'm just here to make sure you don't damn your immortal soul in the process." Ginny raised her eyebrows at the demon book as if it might explode at any second.
"You grew up with that thing in your house?"
"Chewed on the corners when I was teething. My father saw it as a taste for the Dark Arts. Moved it into my bedroom hoping to inspire me."
"Yes and your life's been just blessed, hasn't it?" Hermione scoffed. "I'm not touching it. It's cursed."
"Did you think this would be easy? You're talking about damning a soul back to earth and trapping it back in its body. Only one other person succeeded in returning a soul to a body and it wasn't Dumbledore," he paused. "You won't use it?" He shrugged at her timid no. "Fine. I'm sure I have something else. Be back." With a soft pop both book and owner disappeared and the air became suddenly breathable.
"He fucking chewed on it?!" Ginny screamed as both girls made mental notes to rip their tongues out later. "I wouldn't be surprised if his first teething ring was his dads..." Pop. The awkward moment hung thick in the air as Draco reappeared holding a dirty diary and several loose scrolls. Future Draco looked over at Ginny, a slight smirk under his raised eyebrows. She blushed to six shades of maroon before hiding in Harrys' chest, pretending she heard the chuckle he was surely wishing he could give.
"What is this?" Hermione asked without touching the offered works.
"Your only other chance," Draco said before roughly opening to a hurriedly scrawled page. "You'll have to make it up as you go. He wanted a body, and we already have a stiff."
"This belongs to Vo-Voldemort?" Hermione gasped in the same disgust as before.
"Pick the lesser of two evils." Draco said as if this was some sort of game.
"Bone...Blood...Flesh." Hermione read like some morbid shopping list. "But he needed a body." She said to herself.
"I know, I said that." Draco said before being shushed.
Hermione thought for several seconds as if trying to think up an opening line for an essay before searching for a cauldron.
"What makes up a soul?" Hermoine asked the room at large.
"Love." Ginny offered immediately as she stroked Harry's still chest.
"Lust." Draco added, hungrily eyeing Ginnys fingers. Hermione thought for several minutes before nodding in agreement.
"It is one of the basic instincts," she said as if trying to convince herself. "Eating, breathing, drinking and...um...relations." Hermione said blushing slightly.
"Single-celled organisms know that, and although Harry's only slightly above them, I don't think basic instincts make souls. I would say love, lust, sacrifice, and hate. Things you learn to give, not are forced to." Draco raised his eyebrows at the task growing in front of them.
Hermoine lit the cauldron and glared into the popping flames. "We better be right," she whispered as she poured a few noxious potions into the cauldron.
"It's not like you could mess him up worse than he already was." Draco jumped at the explosion that sounded through the room.
"That was supposed to happen." Hermione said as she referenced the scrolls. "Well, I suppose we just need something to represent the four elements we decided on to add to the cauldron."
"No one better than a Malfoy to represent hate," Draco said stepping up to the simmering liquid. He pulled back his sleeves revealing to only the future onlookers and himself the dried blood splattering his arm. "Since day one hatred for Potter has flowed through these veins." Draco picked up the athame sitting on the desk and cut a one inch slit across his upper arm. The new blood joined and removed his fathers as it ran down his arm. Draco watched, the only one knowing the extreme hatred dropping into the potion.
"It wasn't hatred for Harry, was it?" future Hermione whispered, not expecting or receiving an answer.
Draco bled until he felt sure the only blood remaining was his own. The concoction glowed with a fiery fury as he tourniquets his wound. "Your turn." Draco sad to no one in particular, spatting fiercely into the pot.
"OK. Now for lust." Hermione nodded her head defiantly before stepping up to Ginny and grabbing a firm handful of Ginny's hair and pulling it back. She licked her lips hungrily before biting firmly down on Ginny's. When Ginny protested, Hermione yanked her head firmly back. "Trust me," she whispered in Ginny's ear before glancing over to make sure they had an attentive audience. "Make him jealous," she said and felt Ginny had caught on when her breast was fiercely fondled.
"Oh God, Gin. I want you," Hermione whispered seductively and no one could believe what they were seeing. Hermione pulled Ginny back towards the desk, but hesitated momentarily. It was long enough to lose her control. Ginny slammed her hard into the desk and began to undo the button on her jeans. As if with practice, her fingers found their way to Hermione's mound and expertly massaged the throbbing tissue. As Hermione allowed herself to be pleasured she made sure to voice her enjoyment. Hermione reached down as she orgasmed and pushed Ginny deep into her. As she finished, she pulled Ginny out and smiled at her glistening arousal. She beckoned Ginny to add it to the mix as she grinned at Draco.
"Yours too." Hermione buttoned her jeans. "Without yours it's only pleasure." Draco looked at Hermione confused until a strange sensation over came him as Hermione summoned something from inside his pants.
"What the fuck?" Draco started as he hadn't even realized he had shown he had been so excited.
"Lust." Hermione said as she flung it into the potion.
"Well, love ought to be easy enough for me..."Ginny began before Hermione interrupted.
"I don't think you're supposed to give that part, Ginny. Harry sacrificed his life for you. I think you should make a sacrifice for him." Hermione began shaking with her morbid thoughts.
"You mean, I have to die?" Ginny choked out, trying to look brave.
"That wouldn't make much sense, would it?" Hermione said, trying to ignore the look of relief on Ginny's face. "But would you be willing to give him a part of your soul?"
Draco stood in protest at what Hermione was suggesting, but Ginny quickly silenced him. "He's always had it, if not in the physical sense. What do I have to do?"
With help from Draco, Hermione spent the next half hour explaining Horcruxes to a horrified Ginny, using the diary she knew so well as an example.
"So I have to...kill...someone?" Ginny tried not to let tears overcome her again.
"Just go to the battlefield, the first person you come across that's nearly gone," Hermione was taking Ginny to the door as if she was going to change her mind. "Then do exactly as I told you and put it into..." Hermione looked around the room frantically, "this." She grabbed the remnants of Harry's glasses from off the table.
Ginny walked out slowly, clasping Harrys spectacles tightly in her shaking fist. As soon as she was gone, Hermione raced through the papers on the desk, obviously looking for something. Her search was halted by a very angry voice.
"You know that's not how it works, Hermione. You might have sent her to her death. She can't just 'help' someone on."
"It might be enough, especially if she believes it's enough. Do you suggest I have her murder? It will work. Then after it's done...I'll need your help one last time."
Draco tried to hide the smile as the last 'favor' he did, which he decided, would be forever burned into his memory, replayed in his head.
"I want to erase Ginny' memory of tonight. The whole night. She should never know what she's been through." She held up the scroll she had found on memory modification and placed it tenderly on top.
"And you need my help because...? Draco asked.
"I've never done this before." Hermione said as if ashamed she didn't know something.
"And I have?"
"Well I'm sure you've seen it...Oh my God." Hermione lept out of her chair and ran to capture Ginny as she stumbled through the doorway. She said nothing as she sat on the ground and held up the broken glasses. Hermione took them by the earpiece and dropped them completely into the cauldron. A white vapor began to form out of the smoke and changed between many forms, most of which were too unclear to make out.
"Those are your memories and feelings Gin." Hermione exclaimed as if in a lecture. "You're sharing them with Harry." She gave a weak smile as if that thought would wipe away the blood on Ginny' hands.
"Pe...Pe...Per..." Ginny continued to mutter as Hermione softly kissed her forehead.
"Just one last thing and it will be over with." Hermione said, trying to reassure everyone. "Then you'll be OK," she said to Ginny as if trying to reassure herself.
Hermione left Ginny to cry on the floor as she crossed to the cauldron. Future Hermione forced herself to glance over at Ginny as what she had worked so hard to hide flowed over its unwilling victims. Ginny was pale and clung to Harry who grasped her hand with white knuckles. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, but her pleads washed over deaf ears. The couple seemed to have forgotten they could move. Hermione turned back, hoping the worst was over.
"Any ideas?" Draco jeered as he watched Hermione stumble to the cauldron.
"For...?" she said only half listening as she fingered the chain hanging around her neck. They were both suddenly distracted as Ginny began to uncontrollably wail. With a new sense of urgency, eyes beginning to glisten in the lamplight, Hermione lifted the chain off of her neck.
"Harry gave me this," she responded as if Draco had asked about the heart shaped pendant in her hand. "Fifth year. We had never really dated, but he gave it to me as a 'thank-you' after..." Hermione began to blush. "Well we..."she smiled at the memory.
Draco looked as if he might vomit. "You didn't. That's disgusting." Hermione shot a look over her shoulder but it appeared Ginny wasn't listening. She nodded as the tears began to flow.
"He's always been a brother to me, but I've loved him since first year. I still do." She glanced over as Ginny curled into a ball on the floor. "I know this will work." She kissed the pendant before throwing it into the mix. The potion slowly took on a smell somewhere between parchment and broomsticks and glowed a deep pink.
"That should do it, " Hermione walked over and lifted Ginny off the floor and walked her to the cauldron. She showed them all the chant they needed to repeat. As the words reverberated off the walls Hermione noticed Ginny's tears had began flowing into the mist beginning to form over the cauldron. The mist began taking an uncertain human-like form as it moved over to the table where Harry's body lay. As it gathered it began to look more masculine, then more definite right down to the lightening bolt gash on it's forehead. Just as the mist began to look like a solid identical of the man it would become, it lowered itself onto its keeper and merged the two forms. Several seconds crept by as the only sound came from the crawling flames.
"Did it...is he..." Hermione had barely whispered the words before Ginny broke out in tears.
"It didn't even work? Oh my God. I killed...I murdered," her words were cut off by her sobs. She ran across the room and flung herself on top of Harry. "Damn it Potter! Percy, I'm sorry!" She screamed as she slammed a fist down on his chest. As her fist made contact, Hermione heard two large gasps. One was the Ginny who had just learned how her brother passed and the other was the first breaths of the new Harry that stood beside her. She turned and pleaded with her eyes that Draco return them home. There was a lot of things that made much more sense and she hoped she would be forgiven for what she had done.
As the kitchen came back into focus it seemed to have all been a very bad dream.
"I've been thinking," Hermione started through her tears, "we didn't give you enough, Harry. You were such a dynamic person with feelings and memories, years of ones so deep and so horrible we could never understand or recreate. And yet, fool that I was, I thought it would be simple. You still hate because Draco was so furious with his father. Ginny's sacrifice gave you the will to make her happy, a drive to repay her, even if you didn't know why. I, unknowingly, added pleasure to get Draco's lust which," she began to blush, "I'm sure you still feel. And Ginny's tears of despair and pain mixed with her Horcrux and cause you to still feel that. I thought our childish fling would have been enough but I have never seen anyone love you as deeply as Ginny." She smiled, not wanting to stop talking in case this was the last they would want to see of her. "Ginny, I..." no words came that meant enough to fix what she had made her go through. Even after getting Harry back she had suffered for six more years and didn't even know why.
Ginny stood and crossed to sit in front of Hermione, her face set in an unreadable gaze. Hermione instinctively threw her hands in front of her face as Ginny flung herself onto her. "Thank you." Hermione thought she had heard wrong until she realized Ginny was hugging her.
"Thank you for telling me, " Ginny said. "I know how hard it had to be for you," she looked down at her hands. "And thank you for keeping it secret for so long." She looked over at Harry. "At this point, I wanted to know. I was ready to know."
"I'm just sorry it went so wrong..." Hermione began.
"It didn't. I have Harry. But something still doesn't seem right. If I made a...if my soul was shattered, why don't I feel empty?" The wheel seemed to be spinning faster behind Ginny's drying eyes which now nearly matched her hair with the nights events.
"Maybe you didn't really make one? It was your first time." Hermione said as if it was an unfinished task she might want another go at.
"It had to, or, like you said, there wouldn't be sacrifice." Harry spoke for the first time in hours and Ginny looked back at him as if she had never seen him before. She stood and crossed to him, taking his face into her hands and stared him deeply in the eyes.
As if in slow motion, Ginny saw the life leaving Harry's eyes, felt the flames build around her, but knew she was safe inside her home. He can't leave me again. I won't let him. Her mind built with panic even though she knew nothing was happening to him.
"I won't leave you down here, I promise." Ginny heard herself utter the words and it startled her as much as Harry. She suddenly had an idea. A crazy, stab in the dark, wild thought but it still excited her.
"You promised me, down there, you would never leave me and I promised you I would not leave you down there right before..." Even though she knew he lived and breathed in front of her, she couldn't believe he had ever been anything else. "But before that..."
"You kissed me." Harry finished, trying to catch on to her train of thought.
"Harry," Ginny began bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement. "Do you know what this means? I didn't leave you. I kept my promise! Your last breath, as your soul left your body, our lips were together. I took you in and kept you all these years, just like I said I would. I gave you a part of my soul but the part of you I'd taken has kept me together, made me whole." It was too out there to not be true and she began trying to formulate a plot to get him back together.
"So, what I think you're saying, is that all we have to do is find a way to swap you for me and me for you?" Harry seemed to be even more confused then he sounded.
"Well, while you all figure this humdinger out, there's a swap of 'you for me' that I'd like to be making right now." Draco frankly stated as he stood and stretched his arms over his head. He buckled as Hermione slugged him in the stomach, her eyes nearly coming out of thier sockets at his lewd remark.
Ginny looked thoughtfully at Harry as if the answer would just present itself, but as the night dragged on and her thoughts became blurry with exhaustion, she seemed to be asking herself to do the impossible.
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Chapter 30 Teaser
Only teaser that you get....
The wedding...
Will Ginny get him back? Will Draco get Hermione? Find out in the concluding installment.