Restarting the Heart
Chapter 5:
Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling.
Harry and Ginny walked in silence out of the Great Hall and down to the lake where they had spent many happy afternoons. When they reached the spot where they used to sit Harry began to speak.
"Ginny," he said cautiously. "I'm so sorry; it's all my fault –"
"Don't," warned Ginny. She could almost feel the anger burning inside her at these words. "Harry James Potter, how could you do that to me? Do you have any idea of what that did to me? After we haven't seen each other in months, you finally come back you let me think you're dead? You left without even a goodbye! What the bloody hell were you thinking?"
Harry stared into her eyes for a moment with a pained look on his face. When he opened his mouth to speak Ginny cut him off once more.
"No Harry," she sighed. "If all you're going to do is stand there, apologise and blame yourself for everything, I'm not going to listen to it. I need the proper story." At this she folded her arms and looked expectantly at Harry. Seeing the confused look on Harry's face, she added, "I want you to explain what happened since you left and why you had to. I want all the details, without the protecting me crap."
"Eh, ok," said Harry, slightly surprised at how calm Ginny was acting now, compared to five minutes ago. He had expected more yelling and possibly hexing, but Ginny suddenly had a tired look on her face.
"Right," continued Harry. "Well, I suppose it starts with the lessons Dumbledore gave me last year. He showed me memories of Voldemort's past, of when he was a child and when he was at Hogwarts.
Voldemort's real name was Tom Marvolo Riddle. His mother was Merope Gaunt, one of Slytherin's last descendants. She fell in love with a rich muggle called Tom Riddle, but he didn't love her back. She used magic, most likely a love potion, to make him want to run away with her.
When Voldemort's mother found out she was pregnant, she must have stopped using the love potion, as Tom Riddle Senior returned to the village where he had lived, saying he had been tricked. Merope Gaunt was left alone in London, and died soon after Tom Riddle Jnr was born. He was forced to live in a muggle orphanage, not knowing about magic until he was eleven."
"Wait a second Voldemort was a half-blood who grew up with muggles?" asked Ginny suddenly. For one, Voldemort, leader of the the pureblood supremacy league, was a half-blood! Secondly, Voldemort's childhood sounded similar to Harry's, both half-bloods, brought up by muggles... She was brought out of the thoughts when Harry nodded and continued.
"Anyways, when he was a child, Riddle found out he could use his powers to hurt people he didn't like. He stole stuff from the other children, and bullied them. He always thought there was something special about him, and when he found out he was a wizard he wasn't even surprised."
"When he got to Hogwarts, all the teachers thought he was a model student, except Dumbledore. Dumbledore knew that Riddle was a bully, and he was right to suspect him. He got involved in the dark arts and, well, you know what happened with the Chamber of Secrets. That's a big part of the story. The diary was a Horcrux. A Horcrux is something that someone has hidden a part of their soul in."
"You mean that was a part of Voldemort's soul?" she whispered. She had been turning gradually paler as her continued and when Harry nodded she turned a sickly white.
"Riddle made seven of them, ripping his soul into eight pieces. That's what we've been doing," he explained, seeing the half-disgusted, half-confused look on her face. "The first one was the diary, which I destroyed in the Chamber. The second was a ring, which Dumbledore found and destroyed. It was hidden in the Gaunt family house. The third, you've seen before. Do you remember in Grimauld Place, when your mum had us all tidying up?"
She nodded, going through in her head what the Horcrux might be. It could definitely have been one of the Black family heirlooms, as they were big supporters of Voldemort, and half of them were Death Eaters.
"You know there was that big locket that no one could open?" Realisation dawned on her face as she remembered the locket. "It was Slytherin's. Ron destroyed that one," she said quickly, seeing the look on her face.
"Mundungus stole it from Grimauld place, but when he was trying to sell it, Unbridge caught him. She took the locket and let him off. We used Polyjuice Potion to sneak into the ministry and steal it back."
"The fourth one was Hufflepuff's cup. We found that one in the Lestrange's vault in Gringotts. That's why we had to break in, because if we didn't destroy the Horcruxes, we couldn't beat Voldemort. Hermione destroyed that one at the start of the battle.
The fifth one was Ravenclaw's diadem. All the founders had heirlooms, and three of them were horcruxes. That one was destroyed by some FendyFire in the Room of Requirement during the battle. Riddle hid it there because he thought that only he could have found the room, because he had some sort of extra power.
The sixth one was the snake, Nagini, and you saw how Neville killed it. The last one, was me," he said quietly, assessing Ginny's reaction. Her eyes widened in shock and she glanced up at Harry in an unspoken plea for information.
"To create a Horcrux, you have to commit murder. When Voldemort tried to kill me when I was a baby, a piece of his soul broke off and attached it to mine. That's why I get all the weird visions and pains in my scar, because that's where the part of his soul was."
Ginny could not help but to notice that Harry was speaking in past tense, and wondered out loud how the piece of Voldemort's soul could have been destroyed.
"I found out about the piece of Voldemort's soul half way through the battle, and I knew what I had to do. I left," he said, unsure of how Ginny would react to this revelation. "I went into the forest to find him. I had to let him kill me."
Tears welled up in Ginny's eyes at the thought of Harry walking to his death. "Oh, God Harry," she whispered. "That must have been terrible."
"It was," he agreed, thinking of what had been going through his mind at the time. "But, I didn't really die. The part of Voldemort that was inside me died, and I came back.
Then there's that final battle. Do you know the story of the three brothers?" She nodded and he continued. "They're real, and Voldemort wanted the Elder Wand. He spent the year looking for it, when it was actually here.
"There's a really long story that goes behind the wand. It passed from owner to owner, and the trail is pretty gory. Dumbledore won the wand from Grindlewald in their duel. He was the master of the Elder Wand.
"That night, on the Astronomy Tower, Draco Malfoy disarmed Dumbledore. He took the wand from him with force, and even though he didn't kill Dumbledore or know the wand was his to keep, he was the next master. Voldemort went to Dumbledore's tomb and stole the wand, but it didn't work properly for him.
"While we were gone, we got caught by a group of Snatchers, who had capture Dean and a goblin. It took them a while, but they recognised us. They took us to Malfoy Manor to get Voldemort. They threw me and Ron in the dungeons, where we met Luna and Olivander, and they tortured Hermione. Dobby the house elf came to save us and he took the others to Bill and Fleur's house, while me and Ron went to rescue Hermione. I disarmed Malfoy, and I won his wand and the Elder Wand.
"When it came to the final battle, the wand wouldn't work properly for Voldemort, so when I disarmed him, it recognised it's true master and came to me. That's basically it, skipping over the little details, but I promise I'll explain it in more detail later."
Harry knew that it was only a hazy outline of what they had done over the past year, but he also knew that if he went into a day-to-day narrative that Ginny would have probably gotten bored, lost her temper and not let him explain.
"You must have gone through hell," she said sadly.
"It was terrible," he agreed, "but it's over now." Seeing the pained look on his face, Ginny took his hand in hers and squeezed it. The pained look in his eyes quickly turned into confusion.
"But, I left!" he spluttered, staring at their intertwined hands.
"And I waited," whispered Ginny passionately, and she leant up and caught him in a loving kiss.
"I love you so much Ginny," he whispered, twice as passionately as Ginny had. "You have no idea how much you mean to me."
"I think I do," she said quietly, "because I feel the exact same about you. I love you too." She close the gap between them and kissed him again.