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Chapter 29

The Weasleys had warned Harry about their mother, to prepare him for if he ever ran into her. Unfortunately, the effect of telling Harry that a woman he met and liked now considered him a dark wizard had done more damage than good. While Harry was still dealing with what he had done, he knew he had a good reason for what he did. It was just a matter of his heart taking the time it needed to catch up with his head. That the woman who had invited him into her home and knitted him some very nice warm jumpers for Christmas, whose daughter he had saved, now believed him to be dark and belong to the same category of people as Voldemort and Malfoy, that had hurt.

Worst of all, Harry expected it was a rather hypocritical stance from the weasy woman. His impression of her was that she was the type who wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it took to defend her family, but in her opinion Harry defending his family was something he should be condemned for. Harry wished he could just say 'fuck her' and move on, but it was eating at him. He was sure that this wasn't specifically Mrs. Weasley's opinion but that she was parroting the position of Dumbledore. And if that was what Dumbledore was telling his so-called Order of the Phoenix, what was he saying to the people in the Wizengamot? Harry had asked Sirius to quietly ask around, but no one had said anything about it to him. Of course, Sirius was now well known to be Harry's godfather, so it was entirely possible that they were avoiding the subject around him.

In an attempt to not have to deal with his anger at the situation, Harry set about building the final full-sized version of his drying doorway. He was even using Wit Sharpening potions and a new mundane drink called Red Bull that was full of caffeine to keep himself awake and work on it. He and Hermione had found out about the drinks from the Grangers over the Easter holiday as they debated how bad they would be for people's teeth. Emma was of the opinion that there was so much sugar in them that they would practically rot a person's teeth right out of their head, while Dan thought that because it was a drink then the sugar would spend so little time on the teeth that things like gummy sweets were worse.

Considering that their O.W.L.s were right around the corner, Harry and Hermione had decided to give the drinks a try. Hermione was a little reluctant at first, but her desire for perfect O's on her O.W.L.s beat out her worrying about her teeth. If they improved concentration and focus like the advertising claimed, then it was worth a shot. It had taken a little creativity to get them without Dan and Emma knowing and having the opportunity to forbid them. Harry had sent Dobby to Gringotts with his vault key, had him withdraw fifteen galleons and have them converted into British pounds, and then he and Hermione had joined Emma on a grocery shopping trip for a chance to get out of the house. Once there, the teenage couple had separated from Emma to do their own shopping. While they grabbed a bunch of stuff to take to school that the Grangers wouldn't object to, they also bought the drinks. A quick discreet call to Dobby later, and the drinks were packed away in their trunks before the dentists had any opportunity to see them.

That Harry was now using them to push himself until he was exhausted, however, was a problem. When Hermione talked to Harry in an attempt to kick him out of one of his broody moods, he told her that when he had nothing to do his mind had a tendency to start thinking about what he had done, and to get angry at the people who were condemning him for it. She could see where Harry was coming from, and as his solution was to hyper focus on his Runes project whenever he had time that wasn't focused on something else, she couldn't exactly condemn him for it either.

So Hermione proceeded to try and distract him. Not just as his girlfriend, though there were definitely more than a few fun hours spent alone in the Room of Requirement, but she also asked Ginny to help Harry practise his flying in his falcon form. She asked Tracy to help Harry build his doorway. She asked pretty much all their friends to either help Harry or to ask him to do something with them, once he was done with his homework and revision for the day, of course. Her idea was that if Harry needed a distraction to stop him thinking about how Mrs. Weasley was reacting, then that is exactly what he would get, but he was going to do it without isolating himself and would be surrounded by as many people as possible who thought the very idea he was going dark was a joke.

That was how Harry ended up flying around the school towers in his falcon form with Ginny following him, egging him on to try ever more difficult twist turns and stunts, while she watched with her wand ready to catch him if something went wrong. Harry was pushing himself physically. He and Hermione had finished all their studies together for the day earlier, and he was hoping that if he was tired enough he could fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow that night. He was currently trying to spiral up one of the towers, a move that required a lot of work from his wings to lift him up with each wing beat. If Harry was human at the moment he was sure he would be drenched in sweat. Instead, his wings ached and he was panting.

Once Harry reached the roof of the tower he pulled the spiral in tighter and tighter, staying as close to the cone-shaped roof as he could. He almost lost it at the top when the turn got too tight but was able to keep his momentum going. With that done, Harry felt his wings needed a break. He flew around and landed on the front of Ginny's broom. A broom handle was a surprisingly comfortable place for him to perch, he just had to be careful he didn't scratch up the handle with his claws.

One of the most disconcerting things about Harry's Animagus form was just how big people appeared to him. For example, Ginny was a little shorter than Harry normally, but now if they stood on the same level Harry was sure he'd have to stretch to headbut her knee. He had to keep himself from flinching when he looked over at her giant form, big enough to crush him, only inches away.

"You done for the day?" The redhead asked.

Harry nodded. Falcons were built for soaring and riding thermals for height, rather than the way Harry had just done it. Harry and Hermione had also come up with a basic way to communicate with their friends while in their Animagus forms. Nodding and shaking their head meant yes and no like normal, while tilting their head meant 'maybe' and a tilt with a meow or a small screech meant 'I don't know'. It wasn't much, but it was surprising just how much that little bit of communication could do. It was particularly useful in situations like this where you couldn't just morph back to your human form.

Ginny started to leisurely circle around the castle as she aimed for one of the battlement walkways so that they could walk down to the common room. "Harry… I… I just wanted to say that if you ever want to talk about it… what you had to do…well you were there for me after I- after what happened to my dad. So if you ever need to, I'd be more than willing to help."

Harry was glad he was in his falcon form right now because he had no idea what to say, especially as it sounded like Ginny had almost admitted something. He was sure if he said anything right now it would probably be the wrong thing, but not being able to talk let him take a pass without coming across as uncaring or rude. Once Ginny landed, Harry repositioned himself so he was standing on her shoulder, as he was tired and he felt like being a little lazy. The redhead walked them to the Gryffindor common room, and when she saw Hermione working on some homework at her regular table Ginny walked over and, indicating the bird still on her shoulder, grinned and said, "Hey Hermione, special delivery of one boyfriend who is too lazy to walk through the castle."

Hermione laughed and called him a genius, and then joked with Ginny that Harry would have to start carrying her around the castle when she was in her cat form. Harry was dumped in a chair, and Ginny made her excuses, saying she needed a shower and to change. He was lucky that birds didn't sweat, so while he couldn't exactly be called fresh he didn't smell bad either. Once Ginny was gone Hermione gave Harry a questioning look, and he shifted back to his human self.

As he transformed, Hermione asked. "So how was it? You happy with your flying yet?"

"Yeah it's coming along fine. Falcons are built for soaring around and a short burst of speed and manoeuvrability when hunting or evading something. I need to be able to use it to get away from a Death Eater's attack, and flying up while evading spells isn't something that fits in with a falcon's instincts," Harry explained.

Hermione nodded. "It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. So why did you really make Gin carry you back to the common room? You didn't hurt your foot or something did you?"

"Nothing like that." Harry looked around to make sure no one was listening. "Ginny said something and I didn't know what to say; saying the wrong thing could have gone really bad, and saying nothing would have been rude unless, you know, I couldn't say anything. Plus, I really am tired."

Hermione gave Harry a look, then just shook her head. "What did she say, Harry?"

"At first it was just her offering to listen if I needed to talk. But the way she said something, I think she slipped and revealed that she blames herself for what happened to Mr. Weasley. I think she was going to say she understood what it was like to kill someone," Harry told Hermione his suspicion.

"That's not uncommon, Harry," Hermione said. "You know what survivor's guilt is like. I suspect Ginny feels that if it wasn't for her needing gold for school, clothes, and food, Mr. Weasley wouldn't have needed to work so late and would have been home long before someone let a snake loose in the Ministry."

Harry agreed with Hermione. "Yeah but what do I say without risking putting Ginny right back into the grief we have all just managed to pull her out of? Last thing I want to do is stick my foot in my mouth and hurt her like that. The poor girl doesn't deserve that." Ginny may not be the closest of friends but Harry would have trouble doing that to most people.

"Maybe you should try talking to her. Not about her stuff, but yours. Help her see how it's different." Hermione suggested.

Harry wasn't keen on that idea. "I talk plenty with you and Fleur. I trust the two of you with that stuff, I even talk a little with Daph and Trace. I don't think I can be that open with Ginny though."

"I understand Harry, trust is important for something like that. Just promise me you'll consider it please." Hermione pushed him a little.

Harry agreed to consider it. After all, he had an almost ingrained need to help people. After that, he joined Hermione looking over some homework for an hour before he climbed up to bed and fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

-ϟϟϟ-

Harry found himself in the nursery of Potter cottage again with his mother and the representation of the magic Voldemort's killing curse left behind again. Harry couldn't keep the smile off his face as he walked over and embraced his mother. "Hey mum."

"Hello pumpkin. So what tales of your adventures do you have for me tonight?" She asked, as a wave of her hand put up a silencing ward around what his mother had dubbed Babymort.

Harry sat on a rocking chair he conjured to match the one from the room that his mother was currently sitting in and started telling her almost everything that had happened since he last saw her. In the real world, Harry couldn't pull off such a feat of magic like this conjuration, but this was a dream inside his head so he made the rules here. Unfortunately, as soon as he woke up any changes he made to the house were reversed, so his attempts at making the dream house more comfortable for the shade of his mother had come to nothing.

Harry told her about how the hearing had gone, about the last of his Easter holiday, studying for O.W.L.s, and how he was being treated around school and in the press. His mother was proud of him for everything he had done. "I'm glad you are focusing on your O.W.L.s son. After all the unpleasantness is dealt with, those scores will help you for the rest of your life. Even if you and your ladies decide to learn from the mistake your dad and I made and run from Britain, those scores will help you wherever you end up."

"Mum, I don't think we are likely to leave Britain. Fleur is due to start at Gringotts in a matter of months, all of Hermione's and mine friends are here, and more importantly Voldemort will follow me wherever I go. At least here there are other people fighting him, he can't just walk down the street and AK me in the back here. No one in any other country is looking for him, and that's if another country would even let us in. It would be practically inviting Voldemort to their county to attack their people. It may suck for me, but I certainly could understand being turned away by them. Their responsibility is to their own people first."

"The French couldn't refuse you entirely, not once you're married to Fleur. And you can sign those contracts as soon as you're sixteen." His mother pointed out as she clutched at straws.

"Like I said, at least here there is more backup available. In France no one is looking for Voldemort. Plus Hermione and Fleur have ideas about their wedding, I don't think a few hastily signed forms are going to cut it."

That caught his mother's attention, and she wanted to know everything that Hermione and Fleur had said about the wedding. The problem was Harry couldn't answer practically any of it. Sure he had a few ideas, but nothing concrete and his mother was asking for everything from flowers to dresses. He did realise, though, that there was going to be a lot of wedding planning in his future.

Once Harry was able to convince his mother that he wasn't ignoring wedding preparations and that the weddings were still over two years away, plus they hadn't made any firm decisions yet, the conversation came back around to how Harry was coping with what he had needed to do.

"It's a pity the magical world doesn't have therapists. They only have mind healers, and they specialise in reversing physical damage and spells, not coping with trauma," Lily said.

Harry laughed. "Like any normal Brit goes to see a shrink unless they are forced to. That's what pubs are for."

"You're too young to go to the pub Harry," His mother sounded exasperated.

"True, but I'm sure Tonks would get me a crate of cider if I asked. Or I could get a few bottles of wine from the vineyard." Harry was only half-joking about the cider, Tonks properly would do it as a one-off, especially given what Harry had been through recently, but he doubted she would do it more than once. However, he was aware of what could happen if he started to rely on alcohol as a crutch. Sharing a bottle of wine with Fleur and Hermione was one thing, getting drunk to run away from his problems was something else. As much as he liked the man, Harry was not going to become like Hagrid.

After sleeping on it and talking with Hermione and Fleur, Harry decided he would approach the rest of the Weasleys at Hogwarts about how he suspected Ginny was blaming herself for Mr Weasley's death.

"Well that's just fucking stupid. She wasn't anywhere near the Ministry. Why would she think she was at fault?" Ron said, sounding exponentially confused.

Harry sighed. "Hermione and I think she probably feels like your dad was working late to get enough gold to pay for the burden of putting four children at a time through Hogwarts. But that's just a guess on our part."

"Well she is wrong if she does think that," the twin whom Harry thought was Fred said.

"Yeah our dad wasn't at the Ministry putting in overtime." George took over.

"He was there because Dumbledore ordered him to be." Fred sounded bitter as he said that.

"He was doing something for the Order." George nodded, agreeing with his brother.

"But does Ginny know that? Maybe it's worth telling her?" Harry suggested.

The three brothers conceded that Harry might be right, and after chatting for a few more minutes out of politeness the three of them went looking for their baby sister.

-ϟϟϟ-

Over the next week, public opinion finally caught up with Minister Fudge. Regardless of his position that Voldemort was dead and Harry had been fooled, the public saw random attacks on muggleborn families, Death Eaters attacking the Boy-Who-Lived on Easter Sunday, and a minister who put more effort into denying reality than helping. Add to that his senior undersecretary being very publicly outed as a criminal and a blood bigot had more than a few people wondering if fudge was secretly for Voldemort.

It was no surprise to anyone when Friday's headline in the daily Prophet was 'NO CONFIDENCE IN FUDGE'. The Wizengamot had voted and chosen to oust Fudge from the post, also using emergency powers to bypass a public vote and appointing Director Bones as Interim Minister for Magic. Normally an interim minister only lasted a few months until an election, where all the country's of-age Warlocks would have a vote, but the Wizengamot had the power to appoint a minister for one term in a 'suitable emergency'.

Of course, the new Minister Bones had taken that justification and ran with it, placing the Ministry on a war footing, putting a lot of powers at her disposal. She authorised the sale of one hundred thousand galleons' worth of war bonds, which more than anything else told the country how serious she was, especially as she earmarked at least a third of the gold for Auror recruitment. Over the weekend, the stance from the Ministry changed. No longer was it 'There is nothing to worry about', it was now 'We will deal with the problem'. For Harry, it was a source of hope. If he was lucky, the Ministry under Amelia Bones would be able to deal with Voldemort before the next attempt on his life.

The change in minister also had an effect among the students. After Draco had lost his presumptive position as the heir to the House of Black, he had still retained a lot of clout among the students because his father was so close to the Minister of Magic. Minister Bones, however, had no intention of listening to a man she suspected of being one of the people she was trying to lock away. This left the blond Slytherin with a lot of people who used to listen to him completely ignoring him now.

On the other hand, Susan Bones had been striding around the castle since it was announced that her auntie was the new minister. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as Malfoy, but she definitely developed some Malfoy-esque behaviour. In some ways it was refreshing to have someone throwing their weight around the students actually pushing things in a positive direction. However, when she actually said the words "Just you wait until my auntie hears about this" to an older Hufflepuff who was admittedly being an ass and not accepting that she didn't want to go to Hogsmeade with him, the joking and ribbing she got from her friends for 'being possessed by the ghost of Malfoy's attitude' was enough to get her to calm down before she got unbearable.

-ϟϟϟ-

Almost a week later, Harry and Hermione were doing their Prefects' rounds. As usual, they were using the Marauders map to get the job done quickly. It may be hypocritical, but the sooner they got the job done the more time they could spend snogging in an empty classroom. They found the usual dawdlers and broom cupboard liaisons. It was even predictable who it would be. They had caught Seamus two or three times a month all year, and all he did was grin and brag about another witch as he walked back to the common room. His attitude towards the witches in the castle annoyed Harry; maybe it was because he himself had jumped in at the deep end as far as relationships went, but he felt that Seamus was incredibly shallow. The Irish lad had even tried to tell him that he understood "the ladies" better than him. Harry had just laughed in his face at that one.

Once they had dealt with the Irish casanova, Hermione spotted someone on the map. Ginny Weasley was on her own in Moaning Myrtle's out-of-order bathroom. Concerned, the two Prefects started to make their way down to the second floor. Luckily, this evening the castle's stairways seemed to be cooperative and it only took them a few minutes to get there. When they got there, naturally Harry waited outside, as the last thing he wanted to do was to go barging in when Ginny wasn't in a suitable condition to be seen by a guy. Still, the sounds of tears when Hermione opened the door almost had Harry going in anyway.

A few moments later the door opened again and Hermione motioned for him to go in. Harry followed her into the bathroom and found Ginny using one of the lidded toilets as a chair as she hugged her knees to her chest and sobbed. Harry's first thought was to wonder what he needed to do to fix it, whereas Hermione was one step ahead of him and was wrapping the girl who was almost two years her junior in a hug. There not really being any room in the stall for Harry, he reached in and took Ginny's hand and held it to show his support.

"It's all my fault," Ginny was able to get out between sobs. "My fault, and my brothers will work it out soon."

"It's not your fault Ginny," Harry tried to tell her.

Ginny's crying got worse, and between her sobbing she was able to say, "My fault. My fault. I should have said. Should have told. But I'm scared."

"Scared of what Ginny?" Hermione asked, but the little redhead shook her head refusing to say anything more.

Harry was glad that this bathroom was not regularly used; the dampness that soaked into the knees of his robes when he knelt down in front of Ginny was most likely just water. "Ginny, I promise you I will do everything I can to help you, so will Hermione. But for us to help you we need to know what's going on." Ginny seemed to really be considering telling them, and Harry thought she just needed another little push. "I promise you we won't tell anyone unless you give us your permission."

Ginny buried herself into Hermione's hug, almost as though she feared it would be her last as she said, "I'm still being possessed by Tom. He made me kill my father."

A/N

So I have been waiting for this reveal for a long time. From the first chapter of Best Laid Plans where I had Ginny acting differently than her normal self, I had this planned.

as always my fics are powered by energy drinks and comments and if you aren't supplying the energy drinks...