Compilation of Hinny Works

by LegendDairy

I've got too many Hinny one-shots, and there are more coming. So they are all going to be posted here instead of individual stories. And Harry/Ginny pairings only, no others. Will be updated sporadically.

88. Closed Ward

Iwik- As an obscurial, Harry knows he can't let his emotions get the best of him. But when blood supremacist enter his ward and threaten his Healer Weasley, he really can't help himself.

AN- Again, changed it a bit.

()()()

Closed Ward

()()()

The material that the blankets were made with were scratchy. Considering the Ward they were being used in, that would not be a good thing. The patients in here needed to be completely comfortable with their surroundings so they had less agitation. It would be to the benefit of all the Healers and Nurses if they came into the room and didn't see that the person they were needing to perform a series of tests on twitching and wanting to scratch themselves all over.

The color of the walls wasn't very pleasing either, and couldn't there be some kind of art up on the walls? Maybe they could find something that would change to the personality of the patient. Also, in the Ministry of Magic they had enchanted windows depicting the world outside, they should change these windows to those; no one wanted to look out of the window of their cell, which is essentially what this was, and see dreary old London with the overcast skies and the wet brick of the building one over that took up the majority of the view.

Harry looked over at the tray of food that had been provided and made a face. It was all mushy and part of the drink, whatever it was, had spilled over onto the tray.

The clock on the wall read 9:30 a.m., the Resident Healers were supposed to have been in to see him at 9:15am. That was another thing that needed to be brought to their attention. The people working in his ward needed to keep to a strict schedule if they wanted to remain in this rotation.

Finally, there was a light knock at the door, but before Harry could say so much as 'come in', it was opened by an older gentleman that was currently the Lead Healer for three wards, Constantine Brown. He'd been with St. Mungo's for forty-three years and had gotten very comfortable in the position.

This was both a good thing and a bad thing; he'd seen it all, heard it all, and thought that he had fixed it all. He had been in these halls, rooms and offices for so long that he had grown accustomed to the color of the walls, the state of the food, the odd brown stain in the corner of his office that one couldn't tell what had caused it. He still talked to the Nurses and other female staff as though it was the 60's and they'd all still been taught from a young age that they were in charge of catering to him.

He had too much responsibility on his plate that needed to be divided up.

Mercifully, one of the new Directors on the St. Mungo's board had recognized this and requested they bring in another Lead Healer so that some of the methods around here could be improved, the workload shared.

"Good morning Mister…. Tucker," Healer Brown greeted him, looking down at his chart to find the name. "In you all come," he called back to the Residents that were doing rounds with him. There were six people that followed behind him into the room and they all crowded around Harry's bed, most of them were looking down at their clipboards and glancing up at him every few seconds to make notes. "Mister Tucker, I see you were admitted last night. Your family felt you might be a danger to yourselves or others?" He didn't wait for 'Mister Tucker' to respond, instead he looked over to the nearest male Resident, "Healer Beggs, what can you tell me from his chart?"

"All test results are coming back normal, from the data I'm seeing it looks like he might have a case of mental exhaustion."

Healer Beggs continued on prattling off information and completely ignoring the patient, but Harry's attention was grabbed by the sensation of someone touching his toe at the end of the bed. His eyes shot over to her; a woman in her mid-twenties with long red hair, a purple band in it that was keeping it away from her face. She was holding her clipboard to her side with her elbow as she held on to the rail at the bottom of the bed with one hand and had her other on his foot. She was looking directly at him, a small, friendly smile on her face, like she was glad for his response.

He hadn't expected that and gave her a curious look. Then she pinched his toe lightly again and raised an eyebrow at him, then he couldn't resist the small smile of amusement.

"Healer Weasley," Healer Brown chirped at the woman touching his foot. "Do you agree with that assessment?"

"No," she responded, not taking her eyes off of Harry's. "There was nothing in the chart showing that any brain scans were done, nothing about a reflexology check for responses. Actually, the chart reads like it was faked. So, either the intake wasn't thorough, or no one has actually been in to assess him yet. Is that right?" she asked Harry directly. "Has anyone been in to talk to you yet? Or at least ask you about your family history when you came in?"

A direct question. Finally!

He opened his mouth to respond, but Healer Brown cut him off before he could get a word out. "It shows on his report that he didn't say anything!"

"He was about to," Healer Weasley told him, then turned back to Harry. "Has anyone talked to you yet?"

"Just you," Harry told her. "Everyone else has been talking at, or around, me."

"If he's a harm to himself or others, how can we take anything he has to say as fact? He would just say whatever he has to in order to get out of here," Healer Brown told her curtly. "This is something you will see with a lot of patients; on this ward they don't know their own mind, fight or flight instinct, that's what it is. It is your job to tell which is dominant in the patient before we can even begin to properly diagnose them." He then turned to talk directly to Harry, "there will be a proper Healer coming in to assess you later."

Harry stared at him with dead eyes. Men like him were the reason he never felt safe seeking out his full potential. They made him angry. Anger was not a safe emotion for him to feel.

It had taken Harry a long time to discover what he was, as a child, he had only known that when he was angry he could make things happen, bad things. He'd been kicked out of his aunt and uncles home when he was seven because he'd made all of his cousins toys, and the new microwave appliance, blow up because that anger had finally broken through a strong and layered bubble of sadness that had been there for as far back as he could remember.

Seven years old and out on the street.

How he'd gone from that to being a Wizarding Healer, it had been a long and confusing journey, but he'd figured out how to keep his emotions, anger mainly, in check and channel his energy into using the small amount of magic that was needed to be a Healer.

Healer Brown waved a hand to his Residents, letting them all know it was time to move on to the next patient. They all started following him out of the room, except for Healer Weasley, she came over to stand beside his bed.

"Is it alright if I take your hand and check your forehead? Do a simple Muggle method of checking on you? It will only take a moment."

A Muggle method? He didn't think any Healers ever bothered.

Harry gave her a nod and she took his hand, it felt like she was giving his hand a squeeze of reassurance, but he could feel that her thumb was over his pulse point. Her other hand came to his forehead and his eyes automatically shut as the sensation of her cool fingers on his forehead.

"Can you tell me your full name?" she asked softly.

"Ha-Harvey Tucker." In his surprise he almost told her his real name. He wasn't used to having people touching him. It felt nice.

"And how old are you Harvey?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Still a young man." He opened his eyes again and saw her smiling down at him. "And is there anyone that might be coming to visit you here?"

"I… no."

"Then I'll make sure to come and check on you again, see how you're doing." She removed her hands and grabbed her clipboard. "Do you know how to play chess?"

"Yeah."

"Great." She then indicated to the food. "I know it doesn't look the best, but it does have the right mix of your necessary nutrients. You should try and get some of it down."

With that, she left.

Harry stared at the door after it had closed.

She monitored his heart-beat, she checked his temperature and looked directly into his eyes to check if they were glassy or clear.

She was perfect for working this ward; friendly, observant, had patience and didn't let a clip board with information taken by someone else stop her from running her own tests, as small and seemingly insignificant as they might have seemed.

Around two that afternoon he had been growing restless and tired of the charade he was playing. He wanted a full day in a room on this ward so he would know what the staff was like for himself. Amelia Bones, the woman on the Board of Directors that had sourced him out from where he had been practicing in America, came in around noon to check in on him and get his first impressions. He had her put up a privacy spell so he could let her know all the issues he'd already come across. The nod she'd given him after his tirade indicated to him that she had some of the issues already.

After she'd left he had been brought his mid-day meal, which was also disgusting, and then sat there in silence until now, when there was another knock at the door.

"Mister Tucker, are you decent? It's Healer Weasley," came the voice from the other side of the door.

"Come in," he called out.

She walked in through the door and gave him a once over. "Have you not done anything today?" she teased. "Still exactly how I left you this morning. If you stay in the bed all day then you're going to get some bum sores, you won't want to deal with that."

"It isn't like I can go anywhere," he pointed out.

"Did anyone say that, or did you just assume?"

That was a very valid point.

Her smile grew wider. "I think I'll make a point of letting the new Lead Healer know that there should be an orderly or someone giving our new guests a tour. There is a communal space where you can sit in a comfortable chair and read or have a chat with some of the other guests. Although, some of them might not be as responsive as you are. And have you gotten out of bed to use the loo or done some stretches today? It's good for you." She looked back over at his tray table. "Again with the not eating?"

She allowed him a moment to say anything, but he didn't. Then she pulled a chair over to beside his bed and sat down, putting her feet up on the bed like they were just two friends about to have a chat. "Is eating an issue for you, or is it just this food in particular that you have an aversion to?"

"This food in particular," he confirmed. He noticed how she didn't ask him what had brought him into the hospital. He knew what his chart said, he'd written it himself, stating that he was unstable and, like Healer Beggs had mentioned, a potential risk to himself and others.

"My favorite meal is roast beef with all the trimmings," she offered. "Yorkshire pudding with gravy, oh, and boiled carrots with maple syrup. Mmm, so good."

His stomach rumbled at that, and the room was small enough that she heard it. She gave him a cheeky smile. "At least I have confirmation that you are hungry." She pulled over the tray table and cast a warming and refreshing charm on it, then used the knife and fork to move the food around so that it looked much more presentable. There was a dollop of mashed potatoes on the plate with a few peas and carrots and some discolored chicken. She took the butter packet and put half in the mashed potatoes and stirred it up enough that they looked whipped, and cut into the chicken and put more butter on that, and on the outside of it, before putting the rest on the vegetables, then sprinkled it all with the small pepper packet it came with. "There," she pushed it back to him. "How does it look now?"

"Edible," he admitted and sat up properly so he could start eating it. "I see you didn't leave any butter for the bread roll."

"The bread roll isn't for eating on its own, it's for mopping up what's left on the plate!" she scoffed and gave a chuckle.

It did look infinitely better, and half the appeal of food was presentation and smell. He couldn't smell it, but the presentation was much better.

"Are you supposed to be running a few more tests on me?" he asked her between bites.

"You mean no one has been in between now and when I was first in here to give you a looking over?" she asked with indignation.

He shook his head no, continuing to eat the mashed potatoes that she'd made taste so good.

The room was silent as he continued to eat, nearly clearing his plate before he took the cup of water and had a drink of it, while he did he looked back over at her and saw she had her wand out and was looking just above his head. He glanced up and saw she was doing a brain scan on him. She was focusing on the Parietal Lobe and the portions known to relate to somatosensory and body awareness. Area's where, on his brain, the trained eye could tell there was a bit of an overload going on.

Shit, he thought to himself.

"You've a lot of untapped magic," she commented, almost in awe.

He knew that. She wasn't supposed to know that. From the confusion and the glint of vocational curiosity he saw in her eye, he could tell that she'd been able to draw some conclusions from what she was seeing.

She then blinked rapidly a few times and her friendly demeanor was back in place. "I… you're twenty-seven, you said?"

"Twenty-eight," he corrected.

"Good. Just testing you," she winked.

"How old are you?"

"I'll be twenty-seven in a few days."

She did look a bit older than the, by comparison, kids, she had been doing her rounds with earlier.

"I know, I know," she held up her hand. "I started into my Healer training when I was twenty-two. Never too late to start though, right?"

Normally once a witch or wizard finishes school they start into the Healer program and spend four years doing schooling and placements before becoming a Resident Healer, which meant she would have started her schooling as all others her age were becoming Residents.

"What were you doing before starting Healer training?"

"I was on the other end of it, where you are now."

"In a closed ward?" That was genuinely a surprising answer.

She grinned at him. "Not quite. I was a Quidditch Player though and had a shit load of injuries. Then after my last brush with death I figured it was time to give my mums heart a bit of relief and become a Healer myself." She gave a shrug, "it looked easy enough, potions do a lot of the work anyhow."

"Not in this particular ward," he pointed out.

"No, but I like puzzles, and challenges. Looks like you'll be a fun one for me to figure out."

Her break was over not much later and she told him she'd be back tomorrow before she left.

He wouldn't be there tomorrow though. Not in this room.

()()()

Ginny sat down at the table in the small conference room where all the Residents were waiting for the Lead Healer to come in and go over the plan for the day.

On the one hand, she was glad she hadn't gone to school to be a Healer straight out of school. Out of the class of forty that she'd started with, only ten of them made it to their final year and were hired on to start at St. Mungo's. It had been difficult work and one needed the determination and drive to get through it all. A lot had bowed out and moved on to gain their apprenticeship in different fields, some were still working at the hospital, but in an administrative capacity.

The work she'd done so far hadn't been much, she wasn't trained enough to give a diagnosis and treatment, but she had enough experience being a patient to know that what sucked the most about being in the hospital was the waiting; waiting for visitors, waiting for test results, waiting for the Healer to learn to pronounce your name right. She'd been a professional Quidditch player when she was a patient, the fact that the ponces treating her couldn't pronounce her name was downright insulting.

Once she'd had that final injury, getting knocked off her broom by a Bludger and effectively shattering twenty bones on her left side from the impact with the ground as well as the broken ribs from the Bludger, that had been it for her.

She loved Quidditch, but not enough to let it kill her, and she was heavily targeted by Beaters because of her high scoring stats.

Being a Healer had seemed like a worthy path for her to take next. She knew it would be a challenge, but she liked challenges. And she really hoped to make some changes to the way patients were treated at the hospital.

And there were changes that were starting to get made; Healer Brown was not going to be solely responsible for the Janus Thickey Ward anymore. The ward that comprised of the long-term recovery, permanent spell damage, and closed ward, which was meant for the potentially threatening patients. Ginny was glad of that, she just hoped that whomever he was going to be sharing the responsibility with would be open to change as well, and maybe not so much of a misogynist.

She had arrived early and read through the charts for the patients that they would be visiting today. There were no new charts that needed to be reviewed, so hopefully they would be going into further detail over the occupants in the long-term recovery and closed ward today.

"Morning," her fellow former classmate Ravi greeted her.

"Good morning, Healer Patil," Ginny grinned at him. It still gave her a bit of a thrill when someone called her 'Healer' Weasley, and it was the same for Ravi. He told her his parents had been over the moon about him being top of their class, and Ginny was thrilled that she had come in as third in the class.

The Residents started trickling in, then a few second-year Residents, then third. Ginny exchanged a look with Ravi. "Think they're going to be introducing the new co-Lead today?" Ravi asked her.

"I don't know. Maybe they have department wide meetings every Wednesday or something."

"Yeah, maybe. I'm hoping it's the new co-Lead though."

Slowly the room had filled up so that there were a few Healers standing around the perimeter of the room because all the seats were taken up, then Healer Brown came in with a few people in business suits, one of which was Griselda Marchbanks, whom Ginny recognized from her OWL and NEWT examinations, she had been a member of the Wizengamut, then retired and now she was a governor on a few boards, obviously including St. Mungo's.

"Okay, now they have to be announcing the co-Lead," she told Ravi, nodding her head at Mrs. Marchbanks.

The very last person to enter the room and shut the door had Ginny's jaw dropping.

The sneaky bastard!

It was the man from the closed ward that she'd spent some time with the previous day! He must have been testing them all!

"It can't be," Ravi wondered aloud.

"He's so young," Ginny agreed, the two of them now staring in awe at the messy, dark-haired man with the incredibly green eyes.

He'd been so convincing! And she'd done a brain scan on him! There was something there.

"Thank you all for being here on time," Healer Brown started.

Ginny and Ravi exchanged a look, the old Healer looked and sounded like his feathers had been thoroughly ruffled by the announcement he was being forced to make.

"Today we are introducing the new co-Lead Healer for the Janus Thickey Ward, Healer Harry Potter. He comes highly recommended by several on our Board of Governors. Some of you may recognize him from your rounds yesterday." There was some definite teeth clenching going on with Healer Browns molars as he forced a smile. "He did his training and residency in America and had been instrumental in his efforts with the war over there a few years back."

"Wait, did he just say…" Ginny started quietly. She recognized the name Harry Potter. It had been reported in their papers in the UK as well, the persons instrumental in bringing about the end to the war across the ocean in the States, Harry Potter had been one of them, and he'd only been seventeen at the time.

That explained some of what she'd seen on his brain scan.

"Thank you, Healer Brown," another woman on the Board of Governors stepped in to take the podium at the front. Ginny recognized her from the papers; Amelia Bones. "Yes, I am sure several of you have heard his name before. Healer Potter has been very successful in his field and was made one of the youngest lead Healers in America, and we are lucky to have him here. You will each get a chance to speak with him, and I'm sure his fresh eyes will be able to make a few improvements around this ward that have been a long time coming."

"Oh, subtle," Ravi whispered.

Ginny pursed her lips to keep in a laugh.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bones," Healer Potter stepped forward. "I don't care much for making long speeches, so I'll just let you know that Healer Brown and I will be splitting the wards in half, he will be the primary Healer for the Long-term care ward and I will be in charge of the Permanent ward and the Closed ward."

"That's splitting?" Ravi wondered.

"It is if you look at the case load," Ginny told him quickly. She didn't want to miss anything that he was saying.

"All of you will be getting a memo later today about who will be your direct supervisor and those of you under my supervision will be given a time to show at my office for a one on one. I've looked over all of your academic and performance reviews, as well as our… interactions yesterday, and Healer Brown and I will come to an agreement on whom we would like on our teams. For right now, Healer Carrigan?" Healer Carrigan put up her hand. "Please take the First-Year Residents on rounds."

"That was it?" Ravi pouted.

"What more did you expect?" Ginny asked him as she collected her clipboard and stood up. "He could hardly start prattling off all the changes he wanted to make and stir shit up on his first official day."

"Wouldn't it have been cool to watch Healer Brown's face go from red to purple though?"

Ginny turned to look at Healer Brown then. He did look like he was holding his breath from anger, and Ginny bit in amusement. "Oh Merlin, I hope I'm not stuck with him. The man has terrible bedside manners."

She glanced at Healer Potter then and saw he was looking directly at her.

He was an attractive man. And there was something… dangerous about him. Maybe it was stemming from some sort of arrogance over being so good in his field, maybe it was just the way he was staring at her so intensely, either way… she liked it.

She'd thought he was attractive yesterday, though she'd been nothing but professional with him and treated him like she had every other patient she had popped in on during her breaks; all the ones that showed they wouldn't be having any visitors.

He gave her a nod, a very subtle one, then his attention was pulled away by one of the Governors.

It was two-thirty by the time a memo came for her letting her know that she was expected at Healer Potter's office right away for her one on one. She knocked gently on the door and heard him respond before she went in and took a seat across from him.

"Healer Weasley," he greeted. He sounded tired of doing nothing but meeting the Residents all day.

"Mister Tucker," she replied.

He paused and stared at her for a moment.

She grinned instinctively. "Am I the twentieth person to greet you that way today?"

"No. You're the first. You're also the only person from yesterday that treated me like a person instead of a prop in a bed."

That sounded both good and bad, good for her, because that might put her on his team, bad for everyone else because it sounded like there would be a few training sessions ahead on how to treat patients, while treating patients.

"I've looked over your medical chart," he continued.

"Excuse me?!" Ginny was genuinely surprised. "My medical charts? To what end?"

"To gauge the amount of experience you have being on the other end of Healing. There were quite a few Weasley folders next to each other. You must have a lot of cousins."

"No, I have a lot of brothers," she corrected him, feeling indignant.

"Six?" he asked skeptically.

"Yes six. I told you yesterday I'd been injured a lot." She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. "Did you check everyone's medical files? Is that even allowed without my consent?"

He stared at her again.

His face looked like it was normally set in an expression that was lacking of emotion, yet she could read some of the emotion flashing across his eyes. It didn't seem like he had been anticipating anyone questioning his methods. "Yes," he answered. "And yes. I checked everyone's medical files and it is something that you would have consented to when you signed on to be a Resident. It was one of the many forms you filled out when you started working here."

"Oh," she blushed. "Right then. Erm… carry on."

"It looks like you are no novice when it comes to broken bones and spells gone awry."

"My twin brothers own a joke shop. They used to pay me to test out some of their new inventions."

He flipped through a few pages on his desk. "So, that would by why you were admitted to the spell damage ward when you were thirteen and spent two days as a large Canary before you started molting?"

She couldn't help chuckling now. It hadn't been funny at the time, particularly for the twins who had their hides handed to them by their mum. "They've figured that one out. They're called Canary Creams and the molting starts after a minute. I got two Sickles for that one. It was supposed to be five Knuts."

There was a crack in his demeanor then, he was clearly fighting back a laugh. "Sufficed to say then, you know what it is like to be a patient, and after your treatment of me yesterday, I'd say you belong on my team. Healer Brown has consented."

She beamed at him then. "Really? So… when do I start learning under you? Can I know what sort of changes you'd like to make? I'm assuming it's more than just the food." There were several more questions she had, but he held up his hand to stop her.

"I have at least two more days before I will be going on rounds, and I will be starting with the Healers out of Residency first and working my way down to the First Years when giving my guidance and expectations."

"Oh," she slumped back again.

"However, I do believe that some of the other Healers can learn from you."

"Learn from… me?"

He nodded. "Being confined to a closed ward can make a person incredibly anxious; the window showed nothing but a brick wall, the blankets are scratchy, the room entirely depressing, the food almost inedible. However, you made every attempt to put me at ease. I've talked to a few of the patients on that ward and several of them mentioned you doing the same with them. I want to see that behavior continue."

"You can't teach compassion," Ginny told him flat out. "There are plenty that work here that are brilliant Healers, that isn't going to make them want to spend more time than necessary with our patients. A lot of the one's I sit with on my break don't even realize I'm there."

"For the few minutes you are there though, do you see any change in their temperament?"

The obvious answer was 'yes', but again, "you can't teach compassion."

"Has anyone tried?" he challenged.

()()()

Over the next few weeks there were several changes made at Harry's request. Well, okay, demand. He had to say everything with a finality to it to stop any of the older Healers from second guessing him. He was given a budget by the Board of Directors and he was staying within it, that was all they cared about. The amount they budgeted too would have been enough to cover the salary for a new Healer for two years. They didn't need any new Healers though, they just needed to change the routine of the Healers they had.

He had enjoyed making the changes too and seeing that the Healers were appreciative of those changes as well. His interactions with Healer Brown were minimal, that was good because the man still did not like that someone Harry's age was his vocational equal. Harry could understand where he was coming from, but if someone like NEWT Scamander came along to an aging Magizoologist, clearly they would recognize that it was for the betterment of the field.

The biggest adjustment that he'd had to make wasn't the changes in the hospital or the fact that he'd moved to a new country, it was keeping his emotions in check.

And that was due to Healer Weasley.

She made him… feel things.

He'd spent over a decade getting a handle on his feelings, learning how to slowly interject bits of magic into his life without letting it all out.

He'd been found at age nine after being caught by Child Protective Services. Initially, he'd hated that they caught him, he'd gotten life on the streets figured out, now there were all these rules that he was supposed to follow. He didn't want their lumpy mattress, or to sleep in a room with a dozen other kids. He'd been fine moving around on his own from place to place every night and dumpster diving for food.

It did turn out to be a blessing though.

With his parents dead and his only blood relatives rejecting him, he'd been put into the system and found by one of his parents friends who had been looking for him.

Sirius Black and Remus Lupin had got him out of Protective Services and discovered what he was, and immediately got him an Occlumency coach to help shield him from the bulk of his powers. There hadn't been many recorded cases like his over the last century. They had tried to nurture him, to protect him, to teach him. And then, against their wishes, he'd been used like a weapon in the war in America.

Letting all that repressed magic out of him after being essentially dropped into enemy territory, it had nearly killed him.

It hadn't though; what it had done was drained him of a good amount of magic.

That magic had built back up over time and he'd been better able to store it all away this time than he had when he was first learning. Focusing on his Healer studies had helped immensely. That was how he had managed to shine in his Residency; he hadn't had much of a social life, particularly once his magical reserves began replenishing, it was too dangerous for other people, so he'd focused on his studies and writing papers on different cases he'd come across. In record time he'd been head of the Department.

Now he was the co-Head of this department and kept having to interact with the vivacious and amusing Ginevra Weasley. She had the perfect personality for these wards. She was also worming her way under his skin, in a good way.

He'd read her medical chart, and made note of her birthday, and he hadn't been able to resist leaving something for her in her locker to acknowledge the day. He hadn't left a note saying that it was from him, and it wasn't much, just… he'd noticed that she had a take away cup from the same coffee shop on Fridays, so he'd gotten her a gift card from there. He took her suggestions from his fake stay as well, about how it was good for patients to get up and stretch also, and made sure that someone came and walked the new patients through some stretches that they could do in their rooms for exercise, or come together in the communal room to all do a few stretches together.

It was amusing to watch the patients in the Permanent damage ward do them.

Every time he caught her watching those patients dancing about or doing whatever their damaged brains were telling them to do, and enjoying it, she would get this big smile on her face, and he would grow warm knowing he had a part in putting it there. It turned out being months of him sneaking looks at her out of the corner of his eye, commenting only on her performance as a Healer and him looking up information about the time when she was a professional Quidditch player, learning about her large family.

The progress with the patients had still been his primary focus. Their comfort was one thing, but a Healers entire purpose was to try and make them better, find new ways to bring them back to who they were in the Permanent Damage Ward, and try to heal those on the Closed Ward.

Spell Damage Reversal was what most of the Healers focused on in these wards. Ginevra Weasley though, she was all about mapping brain chemistry, and she was making some progress with a few on the Permanent Damage Ward that had been subjected to the Cruciatus Curse and had their brain, for the lack of better term, broken. She'd been working of finding what made them happy, what allowed them to give the strongest response, what section of the brain was the most injured.

For all this, she kept coming to his office to consult with him.

And she always smelled so good.

Now, it was Christmas day. There were a lot of visitors coming to the Permanent Damage Ward to see their loved ones for an hour or so and Harry had let his skeleton crew of staff take care of things and remained holed up in his office going over charts and text books when he heard a familiar light knock at the door.

He looked up at it, confused, because Ginevra wasn't on the schedule for the day. He knew that, because he made the schedule and made sure she would be able to spend the day with her very large family.

"Come in."

It was her though. She was wearing a light green knit sweater with a 'G' on it and had her hair pulled up in a ponytail.

"Hi. I just came to say Happy Christmas, and I brought you some dinner."

He then stared down at the covered plate in her hand. "Why?" It was the only thing he could think to say.

She gave him a quizzical look. "Because it's Christmas, and you're in your office."

He was growing warm again under her gaze.

"Er… thank you," he managed and hastily cleared a spot on the desk for her to set the plate down.

"My mum made most of it. She always cooks to excess when the family gets together. I made the Treacle Tart though, so, you know, no judgement. It isn't as good as hers, but I reckon I'm getting close."

She uncovered the plate and showcased a mountain of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, roasted vegetables and gravy along with the treacle tart and a roll.

"How much do you think I eat?!" he exclaimed. Then, just like when they first met, his stomach gave a rumble.

She smirked at him. "I think you work too much, and you sometimes forget to eat."

"That's a fair assessment," he admitted and conjured a fork. He started with the Treacle Tart. The pastry fell perfectly apart in his mouth and the consistency of the filling was heaven. "Your mum must make an outstanding Treacle Tart if you are saying this one is still substandard to hers."

"I didn't say it wasn't good, just that there is still room for improvement." She then pulled a Butterbeer out of her bag and set it down on the desk for him.

"This is some service you're providing me."

"Well, you did give me today off, I figured it was the least I could do to say thank-you."

"I gave you the day off so you could spend it with your family. Wouldn't you rather be doing that than bringing your boss dinner?"

She responded with a shrug. "I woke up at my parent's house and spent all morning and afternoon with my family, I've spent enough time with them for today. I also brought Christmas cards for some of the patients, so don't go thinking you're my only reason for stopping by."

Merlin, she was so thoughtful.

"I… thank you," he gave her a forced smile.

What he'd wanted to do was to offer to walk with her and visit the patients, just so he could spend more time with her. But she'd brought him this wonderful dish of Christmas dinner and didn't want to have it seem like he was open to the idea of them being… friends.

Or more than friends.

He didn't know how that would work, even on a professional level.

He'd been with women before, but nothing that ever meant anything.

When his magic had been severely depleted after the war he'd been able to behave like the eighteen year-old boy he was and he'd explored that avenue of life a bit. Then bit by bit he started closing off again. And he knew from what he'd discovered of Ginevra's history that she'd been engaged once upon a time but that had fallen through before she'd given up on Quidditch. He didn't know what her dating life was like right now. However, given the hours she put in at the hospital and doing her research he didn't see how she would have time to start a new relationship. That didn't mean she didn't have someone to warm her bed at night though.

He couldn't let her get any closer than she was right now though. It wasn't safe. For her.

Relationships could be very turbulent things and he needed to be in control of himself.

"I'll stop by after I do my rounds and grab the plate from you." She gave him a merry wave before leaving and closing his office door behind her.

Harry slumped back in his chair after she left and stared down at the dinner she'd brought him.

He hadn't had a proper Christmas dinner in years.

He'd lost Sirius before the war ended and the Christmas' between that happening and the war finally ending hadn't been very jolly for he and Remus, so they hadn't celebrated. Then he lost Remus in the war and then it was just him again. He still had a few people that popped in on him from time to time as he had started into his Healer training, but, he'd looked and acted fine, so the visitors started becoming scarce.

He'd been fifteen the last time he'd had a proper holiday meal. And now here was this delicious looking plate of food before him, and he was sitting alone in his office with it.

It really did look and smell delicious, but his stomach was now churning because of the memories that were coming up that he hadn't allowed himself to think about for so long.

The turkey, the gravy, the mashed potatoes, Sirius' laugh, Remus' face covered in mashed from Sirius flinging it at him, the taste of stuffing, the stories about his parents. The more memories that came flooding in, the harder he stared at the plate and felt the suppressed magic starting to seep into his blood.

He saw the way Sirius' face looked the last time they saw each other, how Remus' eyes had been stuck open as he lay on the ground dead, how each and every one of the enemy army had sneered at him when he Apparated amongst them and how he hadn't seen them, not as they truly looked. How they all had this menacing presence and were tainted in dark shadow.

He could see that dark shadow now as it came over the plate of food and tainted it.

There was a sound that echoed around that darkness; a far off, repetitive sound. Then some light made it through that darkness.

There was more sound coming through now. "Er… Ter… On. HARRY!"

His name made him look up from the plate and then immediately down at his hand, which had another one placed over it. A small hand with chipped nail polish.

The room grew brighter again and he followed the arm attached to the hand and up into Ginevra's bright brown eyes. They looked panicked.

"Slow, steady breaths," she coach, showing him how to inhale deeply and then let it out.

He did as she instructed, never taking his eyes off hers for a second.

()()()

Her lap around the wards hadn't taken as much time as she'd anticipated. There were several people that had come to visit the patients today. She had sat with one of them for a few minutes and helped them fold a few pieces of construction paper into a little hat. They all seemed if good spirits and that was nice to see.

Getting back to Healer Potters office she paused outside the door, bracing herself to see that expressionless mask he wore.

Months now they had been working together and she could tell he appreciated her and approved of her research projects. And every now and then, there would be this look that passed over his eyes. She didn't know what it was; loneliness? He didn't go out to any social events that she knew of. Want? If he would give her the smallest inclination, then she would let him know she was open to it. And if the want wasn't for her specifically, then if he'd just tell her, or anyone, what that want was.

She knocked on the door three times and let herself in.

He was still there, sitting at the desk, but he was staring at the plate of food he hadn't touched since she'd left and there was this swirling orb of darkness moving around his head, and in the three seconds she'd been staring at him it seemed to have expanded slightly.

Ginny quickly shut the door and rushed over to his side, crouching down on the floor beside his chair. "Potter, Potter, can you hear me?" she tried to get his attention. "Potter! Come on! Listen to my voice. HARRY!" she yelled and grasped his hand.

The darkness around him began to swirl slower until it evaporated completely and he was staring at her.

He wasn't breathing though and his lips were starting to turn blue.

"Slow and steady breaths," she told him, taking a few herself until he started mimicking her. "That's it, there you go. Keep doing that."

His eyes had been nearly black as well through the ordeal, now they were clearing up and becoming their brilliant green color again.

"Can you hear me alright?"

He blinked at her in response.

And then she couldn't help it, she kept making the exaggerated breathing movements and slipped her wand from her pocket and silently cast her brain scanning charm. His electrodes were still firing off like mad from his Parietal Lobe. It was starting to show containment though, receding back to be locked in that portion of his brain that she'd seen lit up on their first day of meeting.

She'd heard about cases that appeared like this, but normally just in children, and there weren't any recorded cases mentioned in her textbooks about fully functioning members of society that had this high level of untapped magic.

He used magic too. Every day!

She couldn't ask him about it right now though. He was too close to the breaking point.

"Maybe you should lay down." Ginny levitated the guest chair over so it was against the wall and transfigured it into a sofa that was long enough for him. With guidance, he followed her up out of his chair and over towards the sofa where he lay down.

His eyes stayed open the whole time, staring at her. When she got him down on the sofa and let go of him, he made this whimper sound. "I'll be right back," she assured him and brought his chair around the desk, transfiguring it into a recliner of sorts so she could be comfortable and set it up right beside the sofa, reclining on it and taking his hand in her own again.

Ginny leaned forward and placed her hand over his forehead, he was warm, but he wasn't burning up. His pulse wasn't too rapid either. She settled back in her chair and cast a locking charm on the office door so they wouldn't be disturbed and kept her hand clasped in his as she surveyed him.

His eyes were still open and staring at her. She remained silent and just stared back, keeping a soft smile on her face to try and keep him calm.

Eventually his eyes drifted closed and he fell asleep.

Ginny didn't want to leave him there by himself, so she settled in and let her own eyes drift closed as well.

There was a jerking sensation in her hand that made her wake. It was that feeling you get when you are asleep and are sure that you are about to fall over. Except, normally when that happens you are secure in your bed, this time it was because something, someone, actually, had jerked her hand.

Her eyes shot open and she saw Healer Potter sitting up on the couch, surveying his surroundings and his eyes came to land on her again, then down at their hands, then back up to her eyes.

"I wasn't sure I should leave you alone," she offered and pulled her hand away.

The clock on the wall said it was 5. She was pretty sure that was 5 a.m., not p.m. Her body demanded that she give a stretch and she leaned over to reach her hands out towards her toes and then up over her head.

"For a sleeping arrangement that should have been entirely uncomfortable, I can't believe I slept for so long." She rolled her shoulders and cocked her head from side to side, then came to focus on him again. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," he told her immediately.

"Good, then you won't mind if I do another brain scan on you."

She pulled out her wand to cast the spell but he blocked her hand. "That's not necessary."

Oh really, she challenged him internally. Externally she merely cocked an eyebrow. "Because you already know what happened yesterday."

He searched her face before giving a single nod. Then he got up from his chair and went to the small two-piece bathroom he had in the corner of his office and shut the door.

Ginny rolled her eyes. It wasn't like she expected him to confess his whole life story to her then, but something would have been a nice way to thank her for taking care of him last night. She transfigured the furniture back to its original state and moved them to where they belonged, then cast a freshening charm on her clothes and her mouth.

The plate of food was still sitting on his desk and she banished it to the bin and shrunk the plate down to put in her bag so she could return it to her mother.

He came out of the bathroom and stopped short when he saw she was still there.

"I'm sure you have someone worrying over where you were last night."

"No," she shook her head. "My roommate has been gone on some assignment for the last few weeks and she won't be back for a few more."

"Family?"

She quirked her eyebrow at him. "I told you, I visited with them yesterday and the evening before."

"Boyfriend?"

She gave a sigh before answering that one. "Haven't got one."

"Neighbor?" He was really reaching now.

"I get it, you want me out of your office," she snapped, her irritation shooting through her quicker than it usually did when she was at work. "Merry fucking Christmas to you too." She turned around and unlocked the door, managing to stop herself short of slamming it shut.

He didn't want to talk about it, she understood that, and she wasn't going to tell anyone about it, but that wasn't going to stop her from looking into it. She'd never heard of such a thing as she saw in him. Brain's were her thing. Her dad had been obsessed with Muggles, still was, and she'd always been curious what separated them from witches and wizards. She was sure it was something in the brain, and that was her research pet project that she was hoping to some day find the time for.

Obscurials though… those were so rare. A fully grown Obscurial that was able to tap into a portion of their magic. There was no way she wasn't going to be looking into that.

No one that she knew of studied Obscurials anymore.

And there was a research library here at the hospital. Her shift started in three hours and she was certainly awake and rested.

Ginny went straight for the staff room, got herself a cup of coffee, then went to the locker room for a quick shower and change before going to the library and starting to flip through the few volumes of texts relating to the subject.

He didn't talk to her, not directly anyhow, for the weeks proceeding the incident, and he didn't look at all affected by what had happened either.

From what she'd since learned about the end of the war in America and his role in it, she was convinced now; there was a type of Obscurial that hadn't been documented in any of the texts that she'd read. It had become her new research, her previous one on mapping brain functions to try and stimulate other pathways that would allow persons affected by cursed spells to find a way back to themselves had become secondary.

It was late February that she received a memo calling her to Healer Potter's office.

"You haven't given me an update on your research lately. I wanted to check that you were still working on it. It could turn out to be an important paper."

She shifted a bit in the chair she'd been directed to sit in. "There are other people also doing this kind of research."

"That's no excuse to stop your own though. Maybe a collaborative effort is what's needed. This sort of research shouldn't be simply about discovery, it is about mind healing. The results are the reason to do it."

"I know that."

"Then what? Have you been focusing more on a work/life balance? Because that's fine, it's just that you had seemed like you were pouring your heart into your research."

"No, no. I've just been distracted with another… research project."

"As important as the one you had been working on?"

"The two could potentially be linked."

He stared at her, waiting for her to say more. She didn't want to though. "Then do you have someone else that you are consulting with on it?"

"No," she told him immediately.

"Why not?"

"Erm… it's delicate."

"Delicate," he repeated. "All the work we do is delicate, we're dealing with people's health and well-being."

"I know, it's just, if I were to find someone that could help me with this then I would need to divulge private information about the… subject… and I don't have confirmation that the, er, subject is what… the research is about." She couldn't believe she sounded so stupid. She simply hadn't been expecting to come in here and have to start talking to him about it. He had been so willing to help her with her previous research, but that was before Christmas and he hadn't talked to her about it since.

She chewed her lip and felt like she was eleven again and under the scrutinizing eye of the Potions professor at Hogwarts who had been expecting her to blow everything up, like her three youngest brothers had.

"Let me get this straight; you're doing research on something delicate, and you aren't sure you have the subject of the research properly diagnosed?"

Still chewing her lip, she looked him in the eye and tried to find her nerve.

'Just blurt it out!' she told herself. 'It's only one word. If he is one, this could be the confirmation you need. If he isn't, then he'll either be interested in who the 'subject' is, or incredibly confused.'

"Obscurials," she said quickly.

There was a wave of energy, not a strong on, but she felt it none the less, that passed through the room.

"What?" The question was asked in a low and dangerous voice.

"Ob-scurials," she repeated. Then she let it all spill out of her, all the research that she'd done into what made them, how they might have had their magic suppressed, methods that might be taken to allow for managing them, how to differentiate from Squibs, mapping neurological functions to allow the magic to re-direct or expel when it builds too high. For twenty minutes she spewed out all the information she had found and all the ideas that she had about what she had found. "So, the next problem, well, the next step really, would be to test this potential option of remapping to expel the extra build up of magic. But then, obviously if I consulted with someone they would ask the question, 'where are we going to find an Obscurial?' and clearly I can't give them that information because finding out someone is one would make the people around said person feel in danger, even if that person happened to have been able to live into h-their twenties, which is not something that has ever been documented.

"So, really, it's just a pet project." She took in a deep breath then finally closed her mouth and just stared at him. "It, er, it might have some overlapping applications with our current patients though," she added quietly.

"Wouldn't you also feel in danger?" he asked.

Ginny blinked at him, she hadn't thought about it. They'd been alone in this office plenty of times. She didn't know how many instances like what had happened at Christmas came about for him, but she wasn't scared of him. "Perhaps if I was dealing with a child who didn't have control of their emotions," she reasoned.

He just kept staring at her and she wasn't sure what to do; just get up and walk away with a meek apology? His gaze was just so intense, and she didn't want to look away.

He'd been able to sit there and keep himself composed while she'd prattled on about the work she'd been doing for the last several weeks. He knew it was about him, there was no way he hadn't made that connection. Shouldn't be get getting the slightest bit indignant about it? Question her assumption?

A knock at the door interrupted their staring competition.

The bright fluorescent lights from the hall shone in and made the atmosphere in the office change.

"Healer Potter." It was Ravi. "Oh, hey Ginny. Sorry for interrupting. Did you have a minute?"

()()()

Ginny.

Healer Patil had called Ginevra 'Ginny', he'd never heard anyone call her by a nickname before, it had always been Healer Weasley. Even the Quidditch articles he'd read about her only called her Chaser Weasley.

Ginny sounded too innocent a name for her.

"We were just wrapping up with our meeting, Healer Patil. Healer Weasley, keep working on your research paper and get me what you have so far."

All at once the panicked expression hiding just under the surface of her face went away and she lit up.

Merlin, how he wanted to return that smile to her, let her know that he wasn't angry that she'd turned his situation into an experiment.

He also wanted to let her know that he'd tried everything already. There was nothing she was going to come up with that would help. Part of the reason to do research projects like this was to discover that on one's own as well.

Helping her with this, it would mean they would spend more time together also.

It would be an excuse for them to spend more time together.

That was why, a month later, after she'd managed to formulate a thesis from her research and put it all together in a presentation for him, he found himself in her apartment. They could have talked together at the hospital about it, but she'd said she wanted to be somewhere more comfortable, somewhere they could eat food, drink a beer and discuss it.

She'd asked him three times to do this as well, and he'd finally caved when she growled at him that he wasn't being any fun.

He was her boss! He wasn't supposed to be someone she was having 'fun' with. It didn't stop him from caving though.

"Here," she handed him a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs and sat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table from him while he was on the couch.

"Thank you." He found being there entirely awkward. "And, your roommate is?" he wondered over the location of the other occupant of the apartment.

"Flatmate," she corrected. "I think the note on the cupboard said she'd gone off to the Ivory Coast. I can barely read her writing when it isn't all about a species of animal I've never heard of, let alone when it is. They seem to be getting more and more vowels in their name. Well," she shrugged, "the Ivory Coast is a French speaking country, and they do like their vowels."

He had been attempting to keep some dinner manners while slurping up the spaghetti, but that made him choke and spit a bit of red sauce back into the bowl.

"I knew I'd get you eventually," she grinned.

He took a sip of the beer she'd provided. "I gather right now we can do away with the charade and you know exactly why testing my level of humor isn't a great idea."

"I can't imagine what it must be like having to always be on guard. Do you ever even have a bad dream that makes you wake up and find your room destroyed?"

"It's not a problem, I sleep in a coffin."

It was her turn to choke on her dinner. See, he could make a joke too.

"Alright, seriously though," she started once her throat was clear, "what is it you have to do to keep yourself in check?"

"Occlumency."

"Yeah, I wondered about that," she nodded thoughtfully. "I would imagine that makes the magic build up on the other side of your wall. I'm picturing it like a mental dam that has all the energy growing higher and higher up the wall on one side until it starts pouring over the top."

Harry thought about it. "That is probably a very fair simile. The magic that I use in my day to day would be what is pouring over the top."

"And back at the end of the war in America?"

"The dam broke," he stated, giving no further details about what that had been like.

"I'm not asking about what happened exactly, more wanting to know what happened after."

"After," he repeated.

"Yes. Did you wind up having magical exhaustion?"

"Yes. Which was a good thing because I needed a while to recover before I could put my Occlumency shields back in place."

"And how long did it take for you to notice the… build up, was happening again?"

"I had a few months."

"Could you use magic still during that time? The day to day things?"

"Yes."

"How about you give me longer answers so I can manage at least a mouthful of food?"

That got a half smile out of him and he acquiesced. "I started doing my practical studying for Healer training. I wanted to get that portion completed as soon as possible so that I could prove to everyone I was capable of it and then focus more on the studying and written portions of it. I could feel the magic in me getting stronger and stronger and every day I had to make my shield stronger and stronger, keep adding layers to it."

"So, that means that there are even more walls to break down in order to… offload some of that energy."

"Trying to break down the mental walls I have in place would be a very dangerous thing."

"I'm aware of the body count that there was the last time it happened. But, lets say you are out in the dessert, no one around for miles, and you start bringing down those walls, what do you think would happen?"

"An earthquake?" he gathered. "Last time the energy was expelled I wiped out a building as well as everyone in it."

"Yeah, I know. Good thing you were in a courtyard and the energy expelled outward."

"This is a very dangerous theory you are starting with," he warned her.

"I realize that, but play along with me a bit here; say you go to the middle of nowhere, some rock in the ocean or a sand dune in the Sahara and just let 'er rip, then you come back here and every day you attempt some incredibly draining magic, be it a round of sparring with a dueling dummy or wandlessly building a stone structure just to knock it down again. Don't you think that there could be the chance that it would be manageable and you wouldn't have to worry about smiling without making your paperwork burst into flames?"

"You are taking a very laisse-faire attitude about all this. And how is this method for my treatment supposed to help you with the other patients on the Permanent Damage Ward?"

"It doesn't," she admitted. "But it would be a pretty big breakthrough, wouldn't it? There is no documentation anywhere that I've looked showing that an Obscurial has lived past their teen's, and even that is rare. Having one live into their twenties that is still managing and," she directed her fork in his direction indicating vaguely at his whole being, "thriving. If that's what you want to call it."

"Excuse me?" He wasn't necessarily offended, he just wasn't entirely sure what she meant by that.

"It's just, yes, you are brilliant and healthy, but do you have anything in the way of a social life? You are always at the hospital. It was like pulling teeth to get you to agree to come here. When was the last time you sang a happy song or danced or played Quidditch?"

"I'm at the hospital all the time because it is my job and I enjoy it. And I do leave, I have an apartment of my own. The reason I wasn't jumping at the opportunity to visit your apartment is because if anyone found out then there could be rumors beginning to circulate about us. As for the rest… I haven't."

"Haven't?"

"I don't sing or dance and I've never played Quidditch."

She was doing that staring thing of hers again. Every time she did it he couldn't tell if she was judging him or seeing straight into his soul. The way she was frowning though. "If you're starting to pity me-" he started.

"No!" she assured him. "I think you're incredible. I just wish… I mean, is there anything you can do to feel actual joy? You know, without worrying about consequences?"

The closest he usually got was the relief he felt after rubbing one out, but he wasn't going to tell her that.

"I've tried expelling the magic, but because I need to have the Occlumency walls up there was no access to the extra magic I have stored in me."

Ginny took a drink from her beer and then played with the bottle as she continued to stare at him curiously. The bottle was tilted and the base of it was rolling back and forth along the table as she twirled the neck of it between her fingers, still staring at him.

"What if... what if we tried bringing down those walls slowly and you went somewhere secluded and expelled the excess. Say, over a period of a week. I could run all the diagnostic tests before and after each time you attempted it for seven days straight."

"Where exactly would we be doing this?" He wasn't sure why he was humoring her. How would they be able to get away from the hospital for a week straight? And together? Where would they go to test this theory?

"Well, we wouldn't want anywhere near mountains, because you could cause a landslide or avalanche, and nowhere near water because, tsunami," she started thinking out loud.

"How much power do you think I have?!"

"Shh, I'm thinking. And nowhere near buildings. So, our option then really would be the desert. Oh! And I know of an oasis in the Sahara! Luna had been there. I bet I can get her to tell me where it was and you can Apparate a mile or so away and let it go, then I'd be able to come and collect you if you pass out or something."

"Ginevra," he held his hand up.

"Ginny," she corrected.

"Doesn't suit you," he shook his head.

"My name doesn't suit me?"

"It's a nickname. And no, in my opinion, it doesn't. Maybe Gin, or Nev, but not Ginny."

"Put some thought into it, have you?" she asked with a saucy wink.

He felt some tingles in his arms at that wink and immediately heightened his mental shields. He was already attracted to her. He couldn't let his guard down around her anymore than he already had.

She must have seen him emotionally close himself off because she immediately picked up their empty bowls and brought them to the sink.

"I'm serious about this," she called over her shoulder.

"It isn't going to work," he called out to her over the sound of the tap running.

"Did you try expelling your magic when it started coming back to you after the war? Or did you just close yourself off again and keep building your walls higher and higher?"

"I was putting my all into Healer training."

"Yeah, you mentioned getting the practical over with as soon as possible so you could focus on the written. Did you do anything to expel your magic during that time?"

At least he knew she'd been listening.

He hadn't been sure about her plan, but one month later and they'd both taken a weeks holiday; he'd said he was going back to America for a friend's wedding, Ginevra had her roommate covering for them and said she was going with her to Finland to watch caribou or something.

Luna had given Ginevra a Portkey that was going to take them to the oasis and they'd both packed all sorts of potions to help him heal if he needed it. She'd taken care of all the food and a tent as well.

This was not the way he'd ever imagined he would be going away with a woman for the first time.

They landed in the oasis by a pond with trees all around them. It was hot and a tiny bit humid. He could see sand dunes rising up in the distance every way he looked as well.

"This is beautiful," Ginevra said. "I think I'll get the tent set up over here."

Harry nodded and kept looking around, searching for any sign of life, animal or human.

"There we go," she announced a moment later.

"Er, it's a bit small, isn't it?" It was only about six feet by six feet. Squeezing two of them in there for sleep would be… interesting.

"No, I think we'll get along just fine." She went in and he went in after her so that he could put his bag down.

He hadn't been expecting to step into a magically enhanced room that had a dining area and two bunk beds as well as a kitchen and what looked to be a bathroom off behind a partially closed door. "Oh!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's a bit old. Borrowed it from my dad who got it second hand. The stove and loo still work though. And I'm going to fix up the beds so there will be two large beds instead of the bunks."

"I think it's great. I wasn't expecting it to be so big!"

"Would you mind transfiguring the beds actually? I'd like you to use as much magic as you can while we're here. We are trying to deplete it after all. And, only as much as you feel safe using when we're together."

He could manage that. She went over to the table and started pulling an endless amount of things out of her backpack. She must have expanded that as well. There were provisions for the kitchen, an enormous jug of water and several pads of paper and pens, not quills. Then out came her clothes and he couldn't help noticing that one of those articles of clothing was a bathing suit.

She also took out a map of the area that they were in and stuck it to the side of the tent. "So, we're here," she pointed at the map, "and we've got fifty miles in each direction that are free and clear of people right now. According to Luna there are some nomads in this direction," she pointed west. "The closest town though is 100 miles away."

"When are we going to start then?"

"Right now." She pulled out two chairs and indicated for him to sit down.

He figured she would say that. There wasn't any time to waste. Harry took a seat and let her start to run the scans on him. She pulled over one of her notebooks and flipped open to the first page, noting the time and date, there was already a few drawings of a brain there showing different vantage points and she kept switching pens and coloring parts of the drawings in, looking back and forth between him and the notebook.

Then she put down the pen and scooted closer to him. "How are you feeling?" she asked and took his hands in her own, holding on to his wrists and checking his pulse.

"Unsure," he admitted.

She smirked at him.

Five minutes later and he had Apparated to the spot on the map that she'd shown him and had a good look around. He sat down on the sand and put a hand over his eyes to look up into the sky.

()()()

Ginny was pacing. It had been an hour now. They had agreed that it would be just one hour and then she would go and get him. She'd put all of the supplies away and made sure the beds were nice and made, now she was pacing back and forth in front of the tent and kept looking in the direction he should be in.

The sky hadn't gone dark, there was no sand flying around, nothing to show that someone was causing a magical storm or anything.

She checked her watch again.

"Okay. Hour's up," she said to herself and went into the tent to triple check the map.

When she came back out of the tent, ready to Apparate, Harry was standing there, and he was holding something made of glass and wearing a surprised expression.

"I made lightning," he told her and held it out. "I didn't know that lightning did that to sand."

It looked like the root of a tree. A large tree.

"There are several of them," he continued. "I was just… kind of meditating and trying to bring down a layer of my Occlumency shields and then it started. Just, boom, boom, crack."

The glass was so smooth. She turned it over in her hand. It was kind of beautiful. Like a sculpture.

Looking back up at Harry she saw that his expression was lighter than she'd seen it before.

"How did it feel?"

He shifted his shoulders a bit. "Interesting," was all he admitted.

"Then, let's go in and I can do another scan on you. Then you can start transfiguring the chairs or making them dance or something, keep burning through your magic."

There wasn't a significant difference to the scans she'd done when they first arrived to the one's she did after his first hour long session, but there was a difference, and that was the main thing.

According to him he didn't feel tired, just different. Not bad, not hurt, no emotional differences at all. That was what he claimed anyhow, her brain scan showed that there was a higher level of emotional function that he just wasn't registering.

His temperature and pulse were still fine.

For the next three days they kept to the same routine, except that he would go out for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, and each time he returned he brought her something that he'd made while he was out on his own and letting his magic slowly let go.

They were mostly glass sculptures; they had gone from looking like tree roots to him shaping them into orbs of different shapes and sizes. The amount of heat that he would have needed to generate for that, it was around five hundred degrees Celsius, and he'd claimed that several of them had shattered because they'd cooled down too fast.

And in three days he had started showing much more emotion than she had ever seen from him before.

In fact, last night at dinner he had smiled at her and laughed. Properly laughed!

His brain scans were impressive and his health was staying consistent.

"Just incredible," Ginny shook her head after he'd come back from his seventh trip out. "Your magical reserves are still well higher than any I've seen anyone else have, but they are nearly half what they had been three days ago!"

"And I feel so… light! I mean, I've had my reserves depleted before, but I wasn't in a good place to appreciate what emotions I had. I mean, I'd just lost the last parent figure I'd had and was on my own again. I don't think I've ever felt this good before."

Ginny grinned at him. "I'm glad."

He rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand. "I think you went into the perfect field of study for yourself, you know that? You're just… I don't know, intuitive, empathetic, I guess. That's what most people in the Permanent Damage and Closed Wards need. I mean, how many other Healers would have been thoughtful enough to make Christmas cards for their patients, or to bring me dinner."

"Well now I'm incredibly glad I did bring you dinner." She held up her notebook to show the number of pages she'd already written and scans filled in. "I could already write a book on this and we're only halfway through the week."

He went over to the kitchen area and pulled out some cookies that he'd made yesterday and started munching on some of them.

"You should have levitated them to yourself," she reminded in a sing-song voice.

"Next time. Right now though, I'm going to go outside and see if I can levitate myself."

She looked up at him abruptly and saw he was already halfway out of the tent.

This she had to see.

Harry was standing near the pond and had his eyes closed and Ginny stood a good twenty feet away from him. She wasn't sure what spell he was trying to use, but since they'd gotten there he hadn't needed his wand for any of it. A wand only focused and amplified a wizards magic and Harry didn't need his amplified, he needed it dialed way down.

It was a slow start, but eventually he did get his feet off the ground.

"You're doing it!"

"Takes a lot of concentration," he told her through gritted teeth.

He was about five feet off the ground now and wasn't horizontal anymore. It was a funny sight, like he was standing over a big fan and his arms and legs were all akimbo. Then he started drifting towards the pond in the gentle breeze.

"Might want to try focusing on more than just an upwards trajectory," she called out.

"What?"

That was the last thing he said before letting out a startled yell and dropping back to the ground, falling into the pond.

Ginny started laughing as he stood up sputtering in the three feet of water.

"Oh, shut up," he smiled as he wiped the water out of his eyes.

She couldn't though.

"Accio," he called, and Ginny felt herself hurtling through the air towards him. A moment later she'd smacked right into him and they both fell into the pond.

Ginny managed to get her footing and stood up sputtering. "Not enough control for that one either."

"It got you in the pond, didn't it?"

She wiped the water out of her eyes and gave him a fake glare. She couldn't be mad at him for that. Instead, she splashed the water at him, which he returned and soon they were wrestling like ten-year-old's trying to dunk the other under the water again.

"Okay! Okay!" she called out when he had his arms wrapped around her, holding her from behind, and was about to shove her face in the water again. "You win!"

"Yes!" Harry let her go and pumped his fists in the air. "I am the champion, my friend!" he started singing.

Ginny could do no more than grin at him as he started wading out of the water and back towards the tent. She was seeing a whole new side to him.

That meant this was working.

And he sang!

If he was like this now, then who knew what his personality was going to be like once they got back to London.

()

"Here," she said to him the next morning, placing a faux golden necklace in his hand, by means of waking him up.

"What's this?" he asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and taking the coffee mug she was holding out for him.

"It's a necklace. It's got a Protean Charm on it and a tracker. I have a matching one," she showed him the bracelet that held a charm exactly the same shape as his, a circle with a lightning bolt hitting the ground and refracting outwards across the sand beneath it. "It will alert me if you are in distress, and, vice versa," she added. "I should have thought of it before we came out here, but I didn't. I've been working on it for days while you were out doing your meditating and energy exuding."

He sat up and stared at the charm on his necklace while he drank down his coffee.

Harry was still a very silent person, he was simply more lively after being out by himself and expelling the energy.

When he'd agreed to this and she'd started making up the plans and getting things ready, she'd wondered if it might get awkward with the two of them being shacked up in the tent together. It hadn't been though. There were a few times where she'd caught sight of him with morning wood, and she'd caught him staring at her when she'd been in her swimsuit in the pond, but there hadn't been any awkwardness.

They were friends now.

She'd cared about him before, maybe she had a crush on him too, and that hadn't gone away, but until he gave her some indication that he might return that care and attraction, she wasn't going to do anything to change their dynamic.

She had to keep his emotions in mind.

"You came up with this because you were worried about me, didn't you?" he asked softly.

Ginny sat at the end of his bed and crossed her legs. "Caring like that comes naturally to me. If you ever meet my mother you'll see that it's in my blood to want to protect and nurture."

He undid the clasp and brought it around his neck, then proceeded to struggle with getting it locked again.

"Here, let me." She set down her own mug and took the necklace from him, turning it around so the clasp was in front of his face and got it latched. "There," she twisted it back and let the charm fall to his chest. "You can tuck it under your shirt if you don't like the idea of wearing jewelry."

"You know, when you first started talking about this, I was just humoring you. Coming along on this experiment? I was humoring you when I agreed to this too."

"And now?"

He gave her another one of his rare smiles. "I was so weighted down. From the second year of my Healer training until now, it was like the pressure kept building and building on my shoulders, in my head. Now, I think this method of treatment could really be something. Maybe even something to try with a child Obscurial. They wouldn't be able to control their magic, but taking them somewhere like here where they can safely let it go." He took her hand. "Thank you, Ginevra."

"Ginny," she corrected him automatically. He had brought her close to tears with his sincerity.

"Gin," he compromised.

"Well, you're welcome. Now, instead of making my eyes sweat, go make me some breakfast."

"You really shouldn't get so attached to your patients," he teased.

"Too late. And I thought that was what you liked about me!"

He declined to comment and just got to work on their breakfast, without using his hands or wand.

()()()

Harry felt like a new man.

When he'd been out in the desert bringing down wall after wall after wall of Occlumency shields he'd erected around that portion of his brain, he'd started feeling so much freer. It wasn't that his magic wasn't still building up, but he was simply using more of it. He had started using it to levitate around the Oasis and try to get control of his destinations, it hadn't worked so well, but it used up a lot of magic. He'd been using magic for transfiguring things that met his whimsy, and he used it for cooking; the whole time they were at the Oasis Ginny would keep telling him not to use his hands for anything and kept his wand away from him.

He didn't even miss it.

And being out in the middle of nowhere with all the sand and no one and nothing that could get hurt!

The first time he'd gone out and started trying to lower his shield he'd done it too fast, thus the lightning. But the glass object that it had made in the sand was beautiful. Every time after that he'd brought the shields down slower and gained some control over how the energy was expelled and harnessed.

He felt invincible! Not terrified of what he might accidentally do!

Now, he was down to one wall, one shield.

And he was back at work, at the hospital.

On their last day in the tent, when he'd come back from his last solo session, Ginny had done the brain scan on him and been so elated with the results. She'd actually clapped her hands together and given him a hug, like a five-year-old that had just gotten a new bike or something.

He could feel the power building up again, but he was also making sure to absently transfigure the spare office chair in his office from one thing to the next while he took care of paperwork, and he only held his wand when he absolutely needed to.

On his days off he had taken to going somewhere secluded and start expelling it. He'd taken to starting sculpting boulders into statues, they looked more like cartoon characters, but he wasn't an artist.

There was a hurried knock at the door of his office and he waved his hand for the door to open.

"Healer Potter, we need you quick, in the Closed Ward. There's been a patient brought in and the Ministry wants a Dementor to stand guard."

"WHAT?!" Harry shot to his feet and raced out the door with the Resident quick on his heels. They got to the ward and he saw Gin standing with her feet firmly planted preventing the Ministry officials from moving further into the ward, a Dementor was hovering a few feet away from her.

"I don't give a shit what your boss says, Percy. This is a hospital. We will not have that thing in this ward."

"Ginevra," the man named Percy started, the other four people in Ministry robes were letting him take the lead.

Harry didn't like the way he said her name. Something about it, like he was exasperated by her.

"Don't you 'Ginevra' me. I don't come to your work and start issuing you a bunch of documents to sign and rearrange your filing cabinet, you are not going to come in here with THAT and start making all of the patients here regress. We've all worked too damned hard to give them life to let your soul sucking lapdogs near any of them. So, you can take them and the Dementor out of here."

"You are not the one in charge here," the man named Percy said to her.

"No," Harry interjected. "I am, and you are endangering my patients by having that here," he indicated to the Dementor, already feeling its effect around him. He glanced at Gin for a moment and turned to the Dementor, wand in hand, "Expecto Patronum", he cast, and his corporeal Patronus burst forth from the tip and leapt at the Dementor, causing it to vaporize.

There, it was much nicer in the corridor now.

His Patronus skittered around for a moment and then it too vanished.

The Ministry employees were staring at him gob smacked. Gin had a huge smile on her face and looked a moment from laughing at him, and he knew why.

His Patronus was a Red-Tailed Squirrel.

"T-that Dementor was-" one of the Ministry workers started.

"In my ward," Harry finished his sentence for him. "It was a danger to my patients and I was well within my rights to be rid of it. If any patient you bring here needs to be guarded by a Dementor then take the patient to Azkaban, you have Healers in rotation there as well."

"This patient has not been convicted of a crime," Percy stated.

"Then the Dementor truly had no right to be here, and you had no right to bring it," Harry told him calmly.

"It is the patient's relative that we believe will come to collect him. His son is a dangerous and wanted man. We believe Marcus Flint will come to find his father now that he is not in an undisclosed location."

"Is that not what Aurors are for?" Harry asked him calmly.

"We've brought an Auror."

"Then station the Auror outside of the ward. There is only one way in."

"The Auror must be outside the patient's room!" Percy demanded.

Harry moved forward so he was standing nose to nose with Percy. "No."

At this close proximity to the man Harry recognized the color of his eyes and the hair, his nose too bore a similarity.

"Healer Weasley is correct. We've worked too long and too hard with the patients on this ward to have the Ministry interfering and making a mess of everything, which is all they are known to do. So, how about you let us do our job and you can go and do yours; outside of the Thickey Ward."

"I will be speaking to your superior about this!" Percy vented.

"Tell her I said 'hello'," Harry dismissed him.

Once all the Ministry workers went back out through the door, Gin started clapping slowly.

"That was excellent. I love seeing a strip being torn off him."

"You looked like you were holding your own."

"I'm small, but mighty."

He smirked down at her. He liked looking at that hair, nose and eyes when it was all balled up in the wonderful package that was her better. There was kindness in her eyes; Percy's had only displayed his longing to be the person in charge. It wasn't lost on Harry that he'd needed to look at her before conjuring his Patronus. He hadn't been so obtuse since they'd met to miss all these little feelings of longing he had for her.

He was still her boss though. And if they had another patient, then they had work to do.

"Let's go examine the man that's causing all this fuss then," he gestured for her to lead the way.

She brought him into a room four doors down from where they had been and there were already two nurses in the room trying to get the old man to calm down.

"Filth! Get your vile hands off of me! I do not submit to being here! I know what you're doing! You're trying to make me join league with Grindewald. It will never happen. You're all sycophants, just wanting me for my money. Well, you can forget it!" One of the nurses then managed to get a potion into his mouth and he gurgled and sputtered a bit, then dropped off into dreamland.

"I'm sorry Healer Potter," the nurse told him. "We've been trying to get him calm since he got here, but he's too senile and wouldn't stop!"

"It's fine, Marley. We need to get his scans done. We'll work on building a rapport with him when he wakes up."

The nurses started cleaning him up then and Harry and Ginny stood back examining the older man for any signs of mistreatment. It looked like he hadn't been very well cared for by whomever was doing it before. The man was in diapers, and it looked like he'd been sitting in his own filth for a while. There were a few bruises on him and a malnourished appearance in his cheeks.

Harry looked down at the chart.

"Cassius Flint," Gin told him. "He is the head of a prominent family and is loaded with gold. Marcus Flint, the one the Ministry is worried about, he was cut off after he needed the family influence to deal with a few arrests."

"How bad?"

"Rape, torture, being a complete prick." The nurses gave a chuckle of agreement then. "I went to school with him for a few years, he was Captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team and there were already horror stories going around then about how you wouldn't want to be alone with him. He's been in a lot of the papers," she told him.

"I rarely read the Daily Prophet, it's more tabloid than truth."

The nurses finished up and left the two of them to do their work.

"There is some truth to it, you just need to have a quill handy to scratch out the crap," Gin told him and started in on the brain scans. She frowned, "looks like he's recently had a seizure."

While she was doing that he did a check over of the man's organs and blood pressure.

"Anyhow, Marcus Flint is the last of his line and if his father passes away then there would be a lot of gold passed on to him."

"I thought you said he was cut off from the family."

"I don't know if he was written out of the will, just that he was kicked out of the family home and left to fend for himself without an allowance."

"Oh no, an adult that can't get by without mommy and daddy to provide for them."

"I know," Gin rolled her eyes. "It's the way most purebloods are though, they're well off and raised to think that the family estate will always be there, so they only learn the politics and not the self-sufficiency."

"Hey, my father was a pureblood," he defended.

"Hey, I'm a pureblood," she countered.

"You are?" The whole blood purity thing had never factored into his education from Sirius and Remus, it just wasn't as big a deal in the States.

"Yes, and I'm self-sufficient."

"I know that." He would never question that she could be capable of anything she set her mind to.

"From what I'm seeing, sleep is the only cure he needs right now. In fact, I would recommend putting him into an induced coma and letting his body heal itself. It might help with his paranoid delusions as well to have a brain that is at rest. I'd say he hasn't had a proper nights sleep for a long time."

"Restorative potions will be needed. He's severely dehydrated."

"Muggle method?"

"Muggle method," Harry nodded.

For a week they let Cassius Flint stay in an induced coma, giving him intravenous medicine and a bed pan, and he was looking healthier each day. An Auror remained posted outside the Janus Thickey Ward checking badges that whole time and there were no repercussions on Harry for destroying a Dementor, just has he knew there wouldn't be. He did start doing a quick once over of the Daily Prophet though, to see if there was anything in there about this Marcus Flint person; if Cassius was in danger of his son coming to the hospital then so were all of the people who worked and resided there.

There was one Healer in particular that was providing care for the man, but Harry knew that Gin would be doing a few rotations checking on him as well.

Now that the week was up, it was time for them to pull Cassius out of his coma and see how he was doing.

And his room was where Harry was about to be heading when the door to his office burst open just before he was about to go through it.

"He's here!" Healer Patil shouted in his face, clearly not expecting Harry to be standing in front of him, but be at his desk.

"Who is here?"

"Flint! Bloody…. Fucking Marcus Flint! He got in! Him and three other men. They took care of the Auror and somehow they knew exactly which room his father was in."

Harry felt his adrenaline starting to rise, which wasn't good, for anyone. "Did they get him?! Is anyone else hurt?"

Ginevra was working today. He had to find her and gather all the Healers, then check on all the patients.

He stalked passed Patil and into the hallway, heading straight for the Closed Ward.

"How were no alarms sounded when he came in with his men?" Harry asked angrily, getting more angry that he hadn't yet heard a response on whether anyone besides the Auror was hurt.

"Everyone ducked for cover!" Patil got out. "Someone cast a spell to get all the patient room doors closed and all the staff hid. It isn't like we have military training or anything! I don't even know how Flint got all the way up here without there being a hospital wide alert sounding off.

The door to the Closed Ward had a scorch mark where the lock used to be and Harry pushed his way right through it and headed straight for Cassius Flint's room, which now only held a chair and a night table; his bed and his IV were missing.

"They aren't looking to kill him," he stated in confusion. They wouldn't have taken him from the hospital otherwise, and they wouldn't have brought his IV with them either.

"Okay," Harry rounded on Patil. "First thing is first. We need to get security up here to start doing a sweep of the building, make sure that they have actually left, then we need to check on all the Healers, nurses and patients. Make sure the patients are all okay then we'll have a departmental meeting. I'm going to go and send an owl off to the Ministry right away."

Healer Patil nodded and started heading in one direction while Harry started in the other.

"Wait!" Harry called back to Patil. "What was the name of that ponce? Gi- Healer Weasley's brother, the one that works at the Ministry?"

"Percy."

"Right, thanks."

Harry started knocking on doors and letting himself into the rooms along the way towards the desk at the end of the ward to check on staff and patients and relay the information. He got to the desk and wrote a memo, copying it several times and sending them off to all the departments, then sent his Patronus to the security room on the main floor before heading to the roof with a letter for Percy Weasley.

He'd made it to the roof when he felt his necklace heat up.

It shocked him still, in mid stride. The heat from it had his hand coming to clutch at it and as soon as he did he felt an out of body experience.

He was terrified

No.

He wasn't terrified, Ginevra was terrified.

He hadn't taken the charm off because he liked having it there, it was a reminder to him to do his daily exercises and it brought up the memories of all Gin had done for him. He hadn't noticed that she hadn't removed her bracelet though!

She must have just found out about Marcus Flint.

He made it to the owlery and sent off the letter then rushed back downstairs and was relieved to see that the staff had all gathered around his office.

"Have all the patients been checked?"

"Yes, everyone is calm."

His charm was still heated against his chest, not everyone was calm. Harry looked around at all the faces there as he doled out assignments. He looked from face to face and didn't see Gin anywhere. As he was speaking, he kept double checking.

It wasn't right.

Normally his eyes would go straight to her in a crowd; the cafeteria, the staffroom, one time he'd spotted her five shops down in Diagon Alley and there had been hundreds of people milling around.

She wasn't there.

It felt like something had just gotten lodged in his throat.

Ginevra wasn't there.

She was terrified, possibly injured, and she wasn't there.

He stopped talking immediately when he realized that, turned on his heel and started running for the stairs, taking them two at a time as he went back up to the roof. Once he was back outside he clutched his charm tight in his fist, focused on her and Apparated.

He landed hard on the grounds outside a large house that looked like it had been magnificent, once upon a time.

She was in there. The charm had told him she was terrified and it hadn't occurred to him that they might have taken a Healer prisoner when they took Cassius. That meant that she'd been in there with them for nearly twenty minutes having God knows what done to her because he'd been too stupid to realize that!

Harry marched up to the door and didn't bother with the handle, he held his hand out and pulled the door off its hinges with his magic, flinging it over his head and behind him and marched right through into the entrance way.

"FLINT," he bellowed at the top of his lungs. As he had with the front door, he pried all the doors leading out from the entrance way off their hinges and flung them out into the yard as well.

A red spell came at him from the upstairs landing and he deflected it with a wave of his hand, it crashed into the wall and left a huge burn mark there.

"You aren't going to be able to kill me, so I suggest you hand over Ginevra and MY patient right now!"

He could feel the darkness starting to take over again. It wasn't as strong as it had been before, but it was still clouding his judgement in an unbelievable anger.

()()()

It had all happened so fast.

She'd just been doing her rounds and popped in to check on Cassius to see for herself how his brain scan was looking. There had been a loud 'pop' sound from the corridor and a few gasps, then the sound of doors shutting, including the one to Cassius' room. But then it was pulled open and in marched four men and in an instant they had her at wand point.

One of them asked her a question, but she had been too surprised to be able to hear him properly. He repeated it again, then she realized one of the men was Marcus Flint.

He really had invaded St. Mungo's in order to kill his father.

Or not. It turned out he needed his father alive, and at the sight of his father being hooked up to some medical device he knew nothing about, that meant that they were taking her with them too.

That was it.

In a matter of five minutes she went from calmly assessing her patient's brain scan to being locked in a dusty old office with Marcus Flint and his hired hands pacing back and forth outside the door, and they'd taken her wand.

She was being held hostage.

Her eyes kept darting around the room. There was only one way out and that was through the door they were guarding. There was a window, but it was a stained glass one that was too high up for her to reach and certainly wouldn't be able to be opened.

Apart from taking a pile of books and throwing them at the men if they came into the room, she didn't know what she could do to get out of there.

She had a responsibility too, to Cassius. He'd been left in the care of she and the other Healers; yes, it had been unwillingly, but she'd taken an oath.

Eventually the door to the office burst open finally and Marcus Flint led the rest of his men into the room.

"You're one of them Weasley's, aren't you. What is that thing you have stuck into him?" he asked and pointed to his father and the IV drip.

Ginny stared at him. If she told him it was a Muggle medical device he might rip it out of his father. "It is keeping your father healthy while we have him in a coma."

"Coma? I thought he was on his death bed?"

"Not yet."

He took a step closer to her, then another, and she backed up until the back of her legs hit the desk. "You're saying that once he wakes up from this coma you put him in, he will be able to walk and talk and all that?" He took out his wand and held it up under her chin so she would have to look up at him.

He'd always looked like a cross between a sloth and a Neanderthal to her. Now he looked like a scraggly one. If he were a cartoon there would be squiggly lines showing how bad he smelled.

He didn't actually smell, but he gave the impression that he did.

"He… he might. He was talking before we put him in the coma. We're trying to give his brain time to heal."

"Good."

That surprised her. She didn't think he cared about his father, not after the way he'd treated his family, completely disregarding any of their feelings or expectations for him.

"That means I have time to get him to change his will," Marcus spelled out for her.

"He's going to torture him into doing it," one of the cronies laughed. Then the others joined in.

"W-why take me then?"

"Well, I'll need a Healer on hand for what I have in mind for him."

Another of the men gave a dark laugh, "she'd need to heal herself a bit for what I have in mind for her too."

It felt as though her heart had sunk into her belly at that comment.

They couldn't. They wouldn't.

"I-I'd need my wand to heal him," she stammered.

"He's not awake yet. And there's no one that's going to find us here, so we've got plenty of time."

There was a small tremor that shook the room. It had all of them looking around at the walls in confusion, then, from out in the hall, there was the sound of metal on metal and creaking, then a crash.

"FLINT," yelled a voice that Ginny knew well.

She looked down at her bracelet.

It worked both ways, she realized. She'd kept it on in case Harry ever needed her when he was doing his exercises, she hadn't considered that they'd ever need it because she was the one in trouble.

Harry was here!

And there was no way that these four were any match for him.

"Actually," Ginny said, finding her confidence, "it looks like you are out of time."

There were several more crashes heard in the hall. One of the men in the room rushed out and Marcus and the other two looked to still be trying to figure out what to do next.

Another crash was heard.

Then she heard Harry's voice once more. "You aren't going to be able to kill me, so I suggest you hand over Ginevra and MY patient right now!"

Marcus looked back at her. "Who is that?"

"Harry Potter," she told him evenly. From the expression that took over his face, Marcus had heard of him and was at a loss about what to do next.

"How would he have found us?"

"Tracker on the patients," Ginny lied quickly. "Didn't you think we would put one on them? Most that come to us are insane and keep wandering off."

Another crash in the entrance way and then a scream followed by another crash.

The whole house shook again.

"How is he doing that?!" Marcus turned away from her and yelled at the other two to get out there and take care of it.

They didn't look like they wanted to though.

"Is it really Harry Potter?" one of them asked her.

"He's the Head Healer for the ward!" she told them incredulously. "Do you lot not know how to read?!"

The two hired men gave each other a look and came to a silent agreement before they Apparated away.

"Hey!" Marcus yelled at the empty spot where they had once stood.

Then Harry came bounding into sight. The look of him, his eyes were dark again, almost completely black. It gave her a start.

Marcus grabbed hold of her and yanked her forward, holding his wand to her throat. "Y-You do anything and I'll kill her, I swear I will!"

"He can't hear you!" she screamed at Marcus. Ginny was grabbing at his arm, trying to get him to let her loose so she could get to Cassius and try to Apparate them out of there. Who knew what Harry was going to do next, he wasn't in complete control of himself.

Her instinct kicked in and she leaned down as much as she could and bit him on the arm. He gave a yell and let her loose. She hadn't been out of his arm swinging distance before he smacked her hard across the face.

"DON'T TOUCH HER!" Harry yelled at him.

It was incredible, she could feel all of her hair standing on end and knew exactly what was going to come next and scrambled to the far corner of the room just in time for the lightning to strike. The room became blazing hot and incredibly bright for a moment. Ginny covered her eyes and then heard another loud crash. She opened them again and it looked like the lightning hadn't hit Marcus, but it had sent him flying over the desk, and now there was a hole in the wall of the office and she could see outside.

Ginny focused on the area she had seen outside and rushed to Cassius, grasping his hand and Apparating them out of there. They landed only a few hundred meters away from where they had been and then she heard another several crashes, and stood there watching as that whole side of the house gave way to rubble.

She couldn't move. She just stood there with Cassius unconscious beside her on the lawn and stared.

Marcus had been laying in a heap on the ground by that wall and was likely buried in the rubble, but Harry. Where was Harry?

"HARRY!" she called out. Ginny called his name several more times but didn't want to get any closer in case he still wasn't in control of himself.

Then, suddenly, he was there, standing directly in front of her. His eyes still had a swirling darkness going through them, but there was a lot of green in them too.

"Oh! Thank God!" She launched herself at him and hugged him tight. "Are you okay?" She pulled back and looked into his eyes, cupping his cheek and keeping a grasp on his shoulder. "Can you hear me? Harry? Do you have- mmmhm."

All further questions were cut off by him kissing her.

His arms came around her, holding her tight against his chest, his mouth firm against her own.

Ginny had thought about what this moment would be like several times, them sharing their first kiss; she'd pictured it being in his office, in the tent at the oasis, at her flat; not once had the scenario played out that she'd be a damsel in distress and he would be the knight in shining armor come to save her!

All the same, she kissed him right back.

It evolved from a hard and passionate kiss to simply a passionate one. The strength and fury she felt reverberating through his lips to her own faded until it was just his soft lips and touch that were holding her upright.

"I was so scared," he told her after pulling back for a second to catch his breath. He didn't give her a chance to say anything in response though. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he was kissing her again.

She didn't care, as far as she was concerned right then, words were overrated.

Her hands started wandering then, across his back, up into his hair. She'd wanted him for so many months but had been to worried about their situation to say anything. Forget the fact that he was an Obscurial; he was her boss, that alone was a delicate tango to dance. She didn't want to get reassigned to another ward.

It wasn't her concern then though, her biggest concern was how long they could continue snogging before they had to get back to the hospital with their patient.

And what were they going to tell everyone about what happened?

She didn't want to, but she had to pull away from him.

"Harry," she leaned back so she could get his name out. He took that as an invitation to kiss down her neck, and that felt really good so she kept on enjoying the feelings she was getting from his lips on her there. "Oh yes," she sighed. "Wait! No."

He pulled back so he was standing up tall. "No?" he repeated.

His eyes were completely clear of darkness now. It was just his beautiful green iris' looking down at her.

"Not 'no', no," she assured him. "I'd be completely fine with us Apparating out of here so we could destroy a bedroom or two right now. It's just…" she looked down at Cassius, who was no longer connected to an IV or in a bed, he was just unconscious and laying on the grass, "we have to take care of him. And what are we going to tell everyone about how you found us?"

()()()

Harry looked down at Cassius too. "Fucking work," he grumbled.

Gin let out a loud laugh that was music to his ears. He looked back at her smiling face and felt lighter than he had in ages. She'd kissed him back, and it had felt incredible.

"What was that about destroying a few bedrooms?" he asked hopefully.

She patted his chest. "One thing at a time, because I have a few questions for you on that front."

He could only imagine what those questions would involve. Likely she was wondering just how possible it was that he would destroy a room in the process of lovemaking. He didn't think he would though, not after partially destroying a building.

"I think I've expelled enough magic to be good on that front for a while," he commented wryly.

Gin tisked at him. "A well placed Reducto could have done the same thing. Fuck!" she yelled suddenly, "my wand! One of those bastards took it."

"It might still be in there." He closed his eyes and tried to summon it, but nothing came towards them. He looked down at his hands and tried to think about whether he was feeling magically exhausted, but there were too many other things going on. He felt a bit tired, but still okay. "I think you should Side-Along Flint back to the rooftop and I'll Apparate myself there."

"But what are we going to tell everyone about how you found us?"

He looked down at his charmed necklace. "I think the best course of action would be to tell everyone we've been seeing each other for a few months and that we exchanged these at Christmas or Valentine's Day."

"You want to tell them we're a couple?" she asked in surprise.

He just stared at her. He thought that was where this was going.

"Don't just do that staring thing! You've got this set expression that I can't always read," she scolded him. "I need you to use your words."

"Yes," he told her straight. "I want to try being a couple. Figuring out if that is even something I'm capable of."

"Well, I fancied you for long enough before you kissed me, so I'm sure it'll involve some experimentation to get you in the right-" she cut herself off then.

Probably due to the look on his face. The word 'experimentation' had never sounded more appealing than it had when she'd said it just then.

"We don't have time for this," Gin blushed, clearly she'd read the new expression on his face perfectly. "We'll say we started seeing each other at Christmas, exchanged these," she gestured to her bracelet, "on Valentine's Day and admit that the vacation we took was together. That's all anyone needs to know."

"At least that bit is true," he reasoned. Then he closed his eyes and let out a yawn. She might have claimed she could have done what he just had with a well placed Reducto, but he was feeling completely wiped. "Okay. Time to get back to the hospital."

Gin got a good hold of Cassius and Apparated away. Harry looked back at the building and gave it a scowl before he followed her.

"Good, can you levitate him?" Gin asked. The roof of the hospital was covered in gravel and their patient was laying on it directly.

He nodded and followed her to the door. She didn't have the privileges to use the rooftop entrance though, so he opened the door and carefully wound down the stairs, making sure that Cassius didn't hit his head as they got back into the Closed Ward.

The ward was full of Aurors and Ministry officials when they got there. A few of them called out Gin's other nickname and rushed over to her, meanwhile, Harry had Healers rushing over to him with a clean bed for him to put Cassius down on and they took him away to get looked over and hooked up to a new IV.

"What happened!" asked an angry Percy Weasley.

"Marcus Flint happened. I thought that was obvious," Harry told him dryly.

"And where is he?! Why did he take my sister?"

"Percy," Gin smacked him in the chest. "Isn't there someone else we can give this statement to? Like an Auror perhaps?"

Percy got in Harry's face though. "I told you it was going to be dangerous, that we would need a Dementor stationed here. But no, Mr. Star Spangled Banner just wouldn't listen. Now I have a dead Auror."

Harry really didn't like this man. He ignored him and saw an Auror badge on a man nearby. He was a dark-skinned man that held himself with authority, authority that Harry could just tell that he'd earned. So, Harry addressed him instead.

"Marcus Flint is dead. He was crushed under the rubble of the house he had taken his father and Healer Weasley to when part of the wall collapsed. One of his hired hands was killed as well."

"The other two Apparated away though," Gin jumped in. "And it was an old manor house that had been abandoned. I couldn't tell you where it was exactly, just that it is likely in Southern England somewhere and the manor was large and grounds had been maintained."

"And how is it that Healer Potter here was able to find you?" the Auror asked her. "As I understand it, he was still at the hospital when you were taken."

Ginny held up her wrist to show the bracelet, and Harry pulled at the chain on his neck to show the charm there.

The Auror nodded. "I take it these aren't issued to every employee," he smirked at Gin.

Gin blushed, Harry just gave Percy a smirk in his aghast face.

"We might have some Human Resources forms that need filling out," she admitted.

It was four hours later that they were finally done with the interrogations and paperwork that needed filling out and they were both exhausted. Harry didn't even ask for her permission as they left the hospital and he Apparated them to just outside his apartment, taking her by the hand and leading her in.

"Nice place," she commented as they took off their shoes.

"I am so fucking tired," he said as he rubbed his eyes with his palms.

She followed him through the apartment and to his bedroom, where they still said nothing as they stripped down the outer layer of their clothes and climbed under the sheets.

"You're okay with this?" he mumbled, barely able to find the energy to get the words out.

"Shh, I'm sleeping."

Several hours later he woke up. The dawn light was coming into his room and he had a warm body snuggled up to his side.

Her hair was a mess but her face was tilted up towards him and he appreciated the sight of her there. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and kissed the tip of her nose. She gave a sigh and a stretch before rolling onto her back and the sheets moved down her body so he could see her bra.

He could get used to this.

Harry rolled onto his side and started kissing her shoulder, then along her neck, enjoying the little sounds she made as he did. His hand went to her waist and moved up her side to palm at her breast.

"This is a nice way to wake up," Gin whispered.

"No kidding."

He rolled over so he was on top of her, his stomach resting between her legs as he kissed down her chest. His hand snaked under her back and undid the latch on her bra. Gin didn't hesitate in pulling it off and tossing it to the other side of the room. Then he immediately set to work kissing her plump breasts and teasing them until her nipples hardened.

Speaking of hardened.

He moved back up her body and kissed her lips, letting her feel just how glad he was to have her there. They rocked against each other and she gave a moan and arched her back.

"I meant to ask," she panted as he started kissing her neck again. "Anything I should be prepared for while we're… shagging?"

"The hopes is that you would be thoroughly enjoying yourself," he told her and started trying to tug her panties down.

She chuckled and used a combination of her hands and feet to get his boxers off. They both gave appreciative moans as his erection sprang free and slapped against her entrance. Gin reached between them and guided him inside her.

"Oh fuck," she moaned and clutched at his bum, encouraging him to bury himself completely inside her. "I've hoped for this almost since we met," she groaned.

Those words were certainly encouraging. She was so tight and wet. And hot, fuck it was so hot.

"I thought it was wrong for me to find you so… tasty," she kept going as he carried on thrusting into her. This talking during sex thing was new to him, but if she was going to keep going on about how much she wanted him, he wasn't going to stop her, it was just more motivation.

But speaking of tasty. He latched his mouth down on her neck again and her legs hooked around his as she gained the leverage to push back against his thrusts and meet him halfway. Oh, it felt fantastic.

"I was too worried about what would happen if I let myself want you. Couldn't help it though," he told her. "I kept looking for you." He started thrusting a little harder. "Even when I wasn't purposefully looking, I would see you across a crowd and want you closer to me."

"Mmm, I like what you do to me when I'm this close."

He had wanted their first time to be slow and sweet, but it was quickly morphing into fast and furious. He clutched at the pillows beside her head and used his elbows and knees for leverage as he pounded into her, encouraged by her cries of pleasure from every thrust.

Harry hoped she was close because he wasn't going to last much longer. He hadn't known the touch of anything but his hand for so long. "Gin," he panted, begging her to get there soon or at least tell him what he needed to do.

"So close," she promised. "I want more! I want you to spend all day shagging me." Her back was arching off the bed, head tilting back, and she kept whimpering out comments about how she wanted him to take her, saying all the things that any guy would love to hear, just not when he's trying to hold back his finish.

"Gin!" he nearly yelled in warning.

Then he felt her tighten and couldn't hold back anymore. "Yes!" she screamed out as he let out his own cry of finish.

"Oh," he groaned and rolled over trying to catch his breath. "We are definitely doing that again. Several times over."

There was a minute of silence as they both lay there beside each other in a satisfied daze.

That minute was up when he felt Gin sit up and then heard her snickering.

"What?" he cracked his eye open and saw her looking around.

"I think we might have a bit of experimenting to do to figure out how not to have this happen."

Harry sat up and looked around his room. It was a mess! All of the things that had been neatly set down on his dresser and desk were now laying strewn about on the floor and his paintings on the wall were all off center, like everything had been swirling around the room in a mini tornado.

"Huh," was all he had to offer. "Still worth it." He lay back down and brought her with him.

With his head clear now, he was able to give himself a quick assessment and could feel that his Occlumency shield was still in place, but it was so much thinner than before and he could tell that his suppressed magic was still pretty depleted after yesterday. If he kept up with his exercises, then maybe the two of them could properly wake to find a mini tornado had gone off in his room every day.

()()()