Chapter 4: Help From a Little Friend
Harry Potter had been the object of several prank like schemes by a few of the students of Hogwarts, many of them his family, the Weasleys. For the first few days of the new term, Harry Potter seemed to have disappeared. He did not sleep in his dorm room, he did not show up in the Great Hall for breakfast, lunch or dinner, nor was he ever seen in the boys bathrooms. For all intents and purposes, Harry Potter and all his possessions seemed to have vanished.
Ron had hoped that they might get a clue as to his whereabouts by using the Marauder's Map, but his search of their dorm revealed no trace of Harry or the map anywhere, with this exception: Harry seemed to appear in and participate in his classes. When the classes were over though, Harry Potter disappeared once more. He made no polite discourse with anyone, especially his closest friends, and he seemed to be totally focused on his studies.
It could also be said that since he could not be seen, he did not seem to be engaged in the pursuit of Ginny Weasley, as the he was so obviously doing the last term.
What no one could have fathomed was that Harry had not stopped carrying his torch for Ginny. He simply remained cloaked when he watched her, or called Kreacher to help him disappear at any time. He occasionally observed her from afar as she went about her daily routine..
At some point though, he realized that it was not in either of their best interests, so he began to try setting his mind to push thoughts of her out of it as he tried to just follow through with his studies.
The moral inner voice that pushed him away from her was winning the war with his deep desires, that craving he had to be with her, until he began to wish that he had just chosen not to come back from King's Cross Station. Ginny Weasley was the angel that could fulfill all of his heartfelt yearnings, but he felt that he was a tarnished soul that did not deserve to be with her.
Harry remembered reading a book that Sirius had at Grimmauld Place written by a man called Nietzsche. On the one hand Nietzsche said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, which seemed to be the case with Harry. On the other hand Nietzsche said that you should not look too deeply into the abyss or the abyss would become a part of you and perhaps make you just as bad as the dark thing you were fighting.
Harry remembered Professor Dumbledore once remarking the similarities between Harry and Tom Riddle. Only the choices they had made were the thin line that defined what their lives were and made them so different. Yet Harry despaired that he had in the last few years come closer to being like Tom. He had let his anger fuel his passion to fight back at Tom. He had been arrogant at times and he had to some extent become so focused on destroying Tom that his carelessness had caused people to be hurt, even killed.
"I have blood on my hands," Harry moaned one night in his hideaway. Where he might have earlier in his life hesitated to fight or even consider hurting someone, his training and experience, his instinct to survive could cause someone pain or grievous injury. Then of course, he had an uncanny penchant for drawing trouble to himself, and where he was sure he would survive, he was afraid others might not be so lucky.
"Would it not being better Master Harry, for both your own sake and that of the Weasley girl, if you is getting together and is at least discussing the problems which brought about the errr...I is believe you called them shenanigans, that is occurring in the last school term." Kreacher asked Harry one evening when he noticed that his master was staring too fixedly at the flames in his fireplace.
"There isn't anything to discuss, Kreacher. My friends, more than likely because of Hermione's need to try to 'help' Harry Potter live his life the way she thinks that he should, came up with several grand schemes to push me and poor Ginny together. Ginny gave up on me a long time ago. I gave up on me, in that respect a long time ago, as well." Harry closed his eyes and hung his head, sighing lightly.
"Kreacher still considers that Master Harry is caring for his friends and is needing to have them be part of his life, as they always was before." the old elf began calmly. "Before Master Regulus died he is pulling himself away from everything that mattered to him, too His family, his friends, even his Death Eater comrades. Only Kreacher is being with him till near the end."
Harry's eyes opened and he raised and turned his head to look at his small servant. "It didn't help him, in the end, though, did it?" Harry's sad eyes looked into Kreacher's old concerned, over sized orbs.
"Kreacher is not being sure at the time how best to helps his master and that uncertainty and indecision is likely have contributed to his death." Harry turned away from Kreacher as the elf stepped closer.
"It is maybe beyond the duties of a house elf, Master Harry, but this servant is-not-wishing to lose another master with his inability to be dealing with problems you is having with this situation." Kreacher continued firmly yet in a controlled voice.
"You is needing to discuss these issues with the Weasley girl. You is both perhaps benefiting by confronting the problems, whatever they is, better than lettings them sit and fester."
Harry looked back into the flames of the fireplace. "I appreciate your trying to help, Kreacher, really I do." Harry let a sad half chuckle escape. "My mind is made up on this issue, though, my friend."
Harry half smiled at calling Kreacher friend. He had very easily become as close to Harry as Dobby had and it just seemed right to call him friend as to some degree he was the only one he could trust to be a friend.
Harry reached out beside him to grab one of his textbooks and bring it round to his lap. "I have some studying to do now Kreacher., that is the reason your Master is at Hogwarts to begin with. Chasing after pretty young girls like Ginny Weasley won't get my class work done or help me become a better Auror."
"No man is being an island, entire of itself, Master Harry. You is needing the company of your friends, of the Weasley girl." Kreacher turned away from his master, a frown on his face.
"There are still people who despise me and might try to kill me out there, my friend. Ginny deserves a happy life, not one of uncertain possibilities or tragedy with me. I could never live with myself if anything happened to Ginny because of me." He said very resolutely to the little elf. Kreacher shook his head sadly, walked a few paces away, then with a crack, disappeared.
*******
Ginny Weasley sat in a back corner of the library, right next to a large window that overlooked the school yard. Her books were scattered around her as she studied and tried to write essays for her classes. She was having trouble concentrating on her work. Her mind was too often consumed with thoughts of the recent incident involving her friends and Harry Potter.
Ginny played it through her mind again and again. She let images about how they had stunned Harry and took him to a special room play out. Harry was read the riot act and told to admit his feelings for her. In his usual manner, he managed a miraculous escape. Ginny and her fellow conspirators would become the prisoners instead. Then came the scene where Professor McGonagall had released them all, lectured the group and her, and finally confronted and comforted her about Harry. She thought of how she had made a show to all of pulling herself together, putting on a brave smile, squaring her shoulders and walking out the door of the room that was to have brought her together with Harry Potter.
All for naught, she sighed. She thought about how much she had pinned her hopes on her friend and brothers to catch the man she loved and make him confess once and for all, his love for her. A sad nervous laugh escaped her mouth.
Her dreams of being with Harry had crumbled and washed away like a sand castle on a beach as the tide rolled in. She could almost hear the shade of Tom Riddle laughing at her like he had in the Chamber of Secrets, telling her that she was a silly little nothing of a girl, a lovesick fool.
Even with Tom Riddle dead, she supposed that the memories of that time would never really go away. They were too much a part of who she was. It seemed that whenever she was depressed or on edge about something, it was likely that old Tom might pay her an unsolicited visit. Her past seemed determined to haunt her. If she had just been able to get together with Harry, she was sure they could have had a happy life and together they could push away any demons that still haunted them.
"Ginny!" a voice called to her. She looked up from her parchment slowly to see her bushy haired friend Hermione heading in her direction. She pushed thoughts of Harry and Tom Riddle out of her conscious mind for the moment and gave her friend a none too convincing smile.
"Hey, Hermione." Ginny said half heartedly. Somehow it wasn't particularly comforting to see her friend. It reminded her all too readily of everything that they had done to Harry in the last term, especially since Hermione and her and the twins, of course, had done most of the scheming against Harry.
Hermione quickly and confidently navigated through the students at other tables till she arrived at the table Ginny was at. It was the table Hermione could usually be found at when she was studying. Ginny sighed and shook her head. The general gag around Hogwarts was that Hermione was the queen of the library and this little alcove was her throne room.
As Hermione was a Heroine of the last battle, the head girl and of course, one of Harry Potter's best friends, most students tended to take the gag seriously and leave the area for her. Only her closest friends could be found sitting at the royal table.
A suddenly pang of overtaxed angst gnawed at her, as she thought about how she would rather be close to Harry at the moment in a broom closet, where they could be snogging each other's brains out or even more intimately engaged. It was just her luck to be one of the chosen few who were among the closest friends of the brightest which of their age.
Most of the time it was a godsend to be Hermione's friend. Lately in just seemed to rankle Ginny and bring forth the need for Harry all the more. Ginny suddenly snorted, as a thought came to her about Hermione.
Once Hermione had been given the information about Tom Riddle and his Horcruxes, old Tom Riddle had been a doomed Dark Lord. Her research and planning had helped Harry and Ron find and destroy the Horcruxes and set up the final confrontation with Tom. It occurred to Ginny that for all his power and arrogance, Tom was all too predictable and that had been his downfall. Somewhere in her brain a little voice was laughing at Tom Riddle for once.
Harry Potter was pretty much a predictable hero as well, yet Hermione had not really been able to come up with a plan that would work on Harry. Maybe Hermione was just too close to Harry to see all of the variables. So, in the end Ginny had to suffer because of the trust she placed in Hermione. Brightest witch or not, she was human and as the old muggle saying said: to err is human.
Hermione slung her book bag and carefully set it on the table, then pulled out a chair opposite Ginny and sat down.
"How are you holding up. Ginny?" she asked in a concerned voice.
Ginny turned to look out the window for a moment, sighed then turned back and caught Hermione's eyes with her own.
"Despite Lavender and Parvati hinting that Trelawney is giving dire predictions of my impending demise, I haven't as yet made plans to jump off of the Astronomy Tower." she gave a quick fake smile, then looked down to her parchment, closing her eyes and shaking her head.
"Oh, Ginny! Don't let them get you down. You'll get your chance with Harry sometime. He's not infallible and I'm sure he's still obsessing about you. He....." she hesitated a moment.
"He had a bloody great scare Hermione." Ginny looked up into Hermione's eyes again. "I imagine he felt as betrayed by us as he did by his real family shutting him away in the cupboard under the stairs all those years." She was fighting back the tears that wanted to come.
"I'm sorry Ginny. I guess we let ourselves get too involved in forcing him to confess that we didn't..."
"Didn't think about all of his feelings eh? Everyone was concerned with Ginny Weasley's feelings and wanting to catch the boy she loved, to even really care about how Harry might feel about being abducted and betrayed by the people he trusted most!" Ginny's voice rose slowly as her speech continued and her hands clenched in fists. Hermione wasn't the only one who noticed her outburst. Even Ginny was slightly shocked at herself and turned to look out into the library, then back to Hermione. Then she hung her head.
"We're still his friends. We still care about him. He'll see that eventually, Ginny." Hermione reached a hand out to clasp one of Ginny's fists to rub in gently.
"I remember reading once somewhere a muggle saying," Ginny's head tilted slightly up and she focused on Hermione's hand on hers. "The best laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft a gley." she snorted.
"At some point when Harry left us tied up, I very much would of liked to be a little mouse and just slink away into a hole to cry." A single tear drifted down her right cheek.
"Ginny, you'll get another chance. Believe me." Hermione was still trying to offer comfort even when a voice in her own heart had some doubt.
"It all comes down to me, Hermione. I've been a fool and a coward all these years, Hermione. If I hadn't let myself be so bloody intimidated by the legend of the Boy Who Lived and seen Harry as the boy who just wanted someone to love him, I wouldn't be in this mess." Ginny blurted out, half in anger and half in self pity.
"Harry cares about you. He loves you, don't ever doubt that!" Hermione said forcefully. Whatever doubts that she had in her heart, they weren't about the love she knew her two friends had for each other.
"It's hard to reconcile the so called facts that everyone keeps throwing in my face with the reality that Harry keeps pushing me away, Hermione." Ginny said in an exasperated voice. "I can see where we've upset him, and he's being leery of everyone because of what we did. I think it might take a miracle for us to get together now." Ginny finally looked up into Hermione's eyes. "Frankly I don't think, even with our magic, that we have the power to pull off that miracle."
With Harry maneuvering himself through the school unseen aside from class, Ginny was more than doubtful that she would get her chance to talk with Harry and convince him to ever acknowledge his feelings for her. As a cold winter wind blew against the library window, she felt an equally cold despair begin to take hold of her.
************
Kreacher had been watching the manner in which Harry was behaving since the Weasleys had tried to trick his master. Master Harry did not seem happy at all with himself. He was morose and very withdrawn and was beginning to worry Kreacher very much. The little elf wished to serve his master to the best of his abilities, so he began to watch Harry more closely.
He had not noticed it before, but his master did tend to watch the Weasley girl from time to time still. Kreacher began to lean toward the idea that his master might, as the Weasleys and his friend Miss Granger had said, harbor feelings for the Weasley girl. As much as he hated to interject himself into his master's affairs, he began to suspect that he would have to in order to find some way to help his master to achieve a more cheerful, contented life.
In order to help his master, Kreacher felt he would need a better understanding of what demons were plaguing his master. He thought back to how master Regulus had seemed to become troubled right before his death and how Kreacher had been unable to help his former master. Kreacher did not intend to fail his new master, Harry Potter. He considered the possible ways he might intervene to help Master Harry, but, without a better idea of what the problems were, he was unsure of how exactly to proceed.
So Kreacher decided in his own crafty way that he would have to peruse his master's memories when he was asleep. One night, he made Master Harry a cup of chocolate with a sleeping potion in it, which caused Harry to fall into a deep abiding sleep During his slumbering, Kreacher used his elvish form of Leglimancy to enter Master Harry's mind. Kreacher was quite disturbed at the manner in which people had treated his master over his short lifetime.
The amount of pain and suffering Master Harry had endured made Kreacher wonder that his master was such a decent fellow. The happy memories in his master's mind were few and far between the painful ones, yet one pattern did seem to emerge: the Weasley girl was usually a part of the happy memories.
Master Harry, it seemed, was completely besotted and hopelessly in love with Ginny Weasley. Despite his attempts at pursuing his studies, Master Harry's images would always revert back to Ginny Weasley and the various scenarios Master Harry would enjoy sharing with her. As most of the images were quite detailed and licentious, Kreacher withdrew his probe of his masters thoughts quickly, after he had gotten the gist of their intent.
Kreacher pulled a small crystal from a little pouch he had brought with him. The Firbolgs in the Irish hills called them Croiclochs, or hearstones, and they had many various uses for good or evil.
For his purposes he wished to use it to monitor his master's emotional state. He quietly moved the crystal up to his master's cheek and used his magic to make his masters eyes fill with tears. When several droplets ran down the cheek and washed over the crystal, he watched the crystal absorb the tears and begin to change color until it was a dark violet hue.
Kreacher let out a quiet sigh. The color told Kreacher that his master was very unhappy. He remembered that humans who became too unhappy might entertain thoughts of hurting themselves, even killing themselves and he did not want his master to take that route. He put the crystal back into the pouch and stood back to consider the troubling situation.
As Kreacher analyzed his master's problems he felt that he was missing certain critical information. He wondered if perhaps Ginny Weasley, as Kreacher had begun to think of her, had similar feelings for Master Harry. Kreacher was happy that he had not referred to her as the Blood Traitor trollop, since his master had asked him specifically not to. He knew now that the only way to find out Ginny Weasley's feelings would be to peruse her mind as well. Without further ado he snapped his fingers and was away on his quest.
The girl's dormitory of the Gryffindor tower was deathly still, yet the soft crack that was heard did not rouse any of the young ladies sleeping so soundly inside. Kreacher made sure to carefully examine the motionless young ladies before he moved to his chosen subject, Ginny Weasley.
Kreacher thought of his past and other masters who would have had him set a spell of Deathly Sleep upon the girl until her life simply slipped away, leaving her to be buried and forgotten. But, Harry Potter was his master now, and in his master's thoughts, this small young lady held the only possible key to his master sanity and happiness, and so he must see if the two could be perhaps, brought together.
As Kreacher looked closer at the girl, he found it interesting to see the same sad anguished expression on her face, and the dark circles under her eyes, growing deeper, even in sleep. He leaned closer to her and sent his magic to work to search her mind. It fascinated him, that this small girl should have such disturbed and painful memories on a par with his master.
They were not in the same quantity, yet the caliber of her darkest nightmares were at the very least as painful as his master's. Kreacher smiled. On this level alone they had a certain common thread to link them to each other, and he thought of an old Muggle saying he had once heard: misery loves company.
Moving further into the mind of the young woman he found what he had hoped to find. Ginny Weasley had been in love with Harry Potter since very early in her childhood. She wanted, no desired, needed, Master Harry if she was ever to find her happiness. She had a larger and more detailed catalog of images and desires pertaining to Master Harry than he had about her, but Kreacher accepted that Ginny Weasley had been pining away for Master Harry for a longer time.
Kreacher thought back through his years as a servant to the House of Black. How many times he had been asked to look through the minds of young girls, all pure bloods to be sure, to determine their suitability to become a wife of a scion of the House of Black.
He smiled when he remembered how even Walburga Black, his last mistress, had come under his adept scrutiny. It amused him that he could report to his master Arcturus Black that she was a perfect match for his son Orion in every way. She wouldn't even have to change her name, as they were second cousins. After all the years that had past, Kreacher found it interesting to be pushed to return to his old duties because his master was too noble a gentleman to ask Ginny Weasley to join his family.
Kreacher stood back from her bed a moment as he tried to correlate his information. He closed his eyes and let the images filter through his ancient brain. After a couple of minutes he opened his eyes and returned to the bed. He shook his head, slightly perplexed. By Ozymandias and Asteroth, what fools these mortals be, he thought, recalling a line from a certain play by the Muggle referred to as the Bard. These two people had been desperate to be together for years, yet they had allowed such little things as fear and circumstance to stand in their way.
Kreacher decided that perhaps it was time for him to create a circumstance where they might come together and hopefully overcome their fears and reconcile their differences.
He brought out the little pouch that he had and extracted another Croicloch and repeated the process on Ginny Weasley as he had on Master Harry, with the same results. The crystal turned a dark violet color. Kreacher nodded his head and cracked a sad smile. Ginny Weasley and his master were two peas in a pod, as the muggles would say.
He hesitated a moment, and stepped back from the bed, letting his brain consider the action he was about to undertake. It might be thought of as traitorous to interfere in his master's life without the permission of his master. He brought his master's Croicloch out to join Ginny Weasley's and held them both in his right hand. They is both hurting for the want of each other, he thought. What to do? What to do?
A memory of Dobby's involvement with Master Harry came to mind. Dobby had worked against his masters, the Malfoy's, to help Master Harry because he thought it was right .It suddenly seemed to Kreacher that this situation was just like Dobby's and needed him to do what he could to help, because it was right. He could always punish himself later if it was needed. Kreacher put the Croiclochs in his pouch, nodded his head decisively. Then he stepped back up to Ginny Weasley's bed.
He pulled back the covers to more easily allow him to move her. Then he threw a spell on her to keep her asleep and levitated her to float in the air in front of him, her back facing the floor as though she were still lying on the bed.
Kreacher appraised the clothing that she was wearing, which was a sleeveless cream colored nightgown, that hung down to just above her knees. Kreacher felt that his master would find Ginny Weasley a most agreeable sight, and certainly compelling enough to perhaps take the time to talk to and perhaps give a listen to her affectionate appeals.
Seeing her wand on her nightstand he snatched it up with the hand which held his pouch. Then he gently grasped her left arm and with a silent pop they disappeared from her dorm and reappeared in a room that appeared to be just like the room the conspirators had taken his master to before.
There was a big sofa in front of a fire place and Harry Potter was asleep and lying back into the farthest corner of the sofa. Kreacher guided Ginny Weasley to the other end of the sofa and moved her body to a position where he could lower her down carefully till she was sitting on the sofa directly opposite Master Harry. He put a Muffliato charm around them both, then he stood back to study his master and the object of his desires, and consider just precisely what he would tell Ginny Weasley to help her attempt to bring them together.