AN at the end of the chapter.
Book II
Small Gods
Chapter 3
Why Do We Shake In The Cold
"III"
March 24, 2008
It's coffee that gets her out of bed in the morning. Well, really it's the idea of coffee. The soft cocooning of the sheets is almost enough to keep her there. But soon the warm smell of fresh coffee is filling up the flat and then she's cuddled on the plush couch, enjoying the warmth of the mug seeping through her hands. The sun is rising over the buildings, and that warm morning glow she loves about her highland home filters in through the gauzy curtains, painting the white walls a mellow orange. She feels a true sense of peace in her quiet morning routine. She imagines the warmth of the sun, and the warmth of the coffee filling her up until she is brimming — absolutely full of a gentle calm.
Later, after she has finished her coffee and placed the empty mug in the sink, a loud thump from the secure room reminds her of her task on hand. She checks the time, impressed by the length the transfiguration stayed, even for her. She snickers as the muffled yelling starts. Setting the spell to wash up the only dish in the sink, she heads back to her bedroom to get ready, she can't get started until she is dressed the part.
"III"
It's the owl scratching at the window that gets him out of bed in the morning. Well, really it's the fact that he can't reach his wand to cast a silencing spell. The soft cocooning of the sheets was just enough to keep him ignoring the scratching for as long as possible, but enough is enough. He grabs for his wand where it rolled off of the nightstand and the window bangs open a bit aggressively at his spell, the tawny owl hooting indignantly.
"Yeah yeah," he mutters under his breath, "I know." He snatches the letter and the owl haughtily stares him down before winging off, with what Harry can only think of as righteous indignation. He scoffs.
Then he stares at the letter. It's from Ginny.
Hey, I need some help on a project and didn't know who else to ask… Come by as soon as you can. Owl's can't get past the ward so just show up if you're going to come.
- G
P.S. Use that spell you used in the cavern on the back of this parchment.
Harry stares at the letter some more, unsure of what he's thinking at the moment, if anything. In a haze, he turns the letter over and tries to remember the spells he cast in the cavern. The first one he cast was the Stello Lumos charm, so he tries that. Nothing happens. He flips the parchment back and forth to see if the words changed, but nothing. He thinks again. He cast Tractum on the stones next, and with that, Ginny's neat scrawl etches itself across the back of the parchment:
The Burya Flat is at 7 Caroline Pl, London.
Damn.
"III"
20 minutes later, he's walking down a small charming street. It's a small deadend road lined with quaint row houses with small garden walls, the doors outlined with trellises covered in climbing vines, the small gardens laid out neatly, ready for the spring flowers to begin pushing through. It is quiet, separate from the hustle and bustle he associates with the city. As he gets closer to number 7, the door squeezes its way out from between the neighboring homes, pushing aside the trellises and bricks like it's wiggling its way through a crack. A small sign above the door proclaims Burya Flat.
He glances around, and then knocks on the door. It opens of its own accord, a steep staircase rising immediately behind it. He glances around again, and walks inside.
He wasn't sure what he was expecting from the inside of the home, trying to mix together the image the picturesque street had given him with his impression (albeit brief) of Ginny over the two days he's seen her in just as many months. However, he couldn't quite get the images to match up in his head. But after climbing stairs for what felt like too many floors, the landing opens up into a wide open space. It looks like a loft, huge windows framed by long flowing curtains, wide oak flooring running across the space, one side of the open space looks like it's been sectioned off as a living room, a large cream sectional filling up the space around a dark carved coffee table. Sunlight is streaming in through the wide industrial windows, soft music is filling the space, the kettle starts whistling and Ginny comes bounding out of one of the rooms.
"Ah, Harry! I heard you were here! Tea?" she asks in a rush.
He's a bit taken aback. She's wearing all black: a black turtleneck tucked into black cargo pants tucked into black combat boots, with a strappy leather holster across her chest, her red hair standing out starkly in comparison. It's only been a few days since he's seen her at the Lounge but she looks like a completely different person, not the same, not... not like a woman who sits in the posh bar drinking martinis and wearing Louboutins.
"Harry?" She questions, looking at him curiously, the kettle still in her hand hovering over a mug.
"Er... yes! Yes sure. Sure tea sounds great."
She smirks at him. "Sure thing Potter, one tea coming right up."
He rocks back on his feet. "So, nice place you got here."
"Thank you! I've worked a lot on it."
She passes him a mug of tea, and he takes it, feeling out of sorts. It is startling, to say the least, to see her so solid and alive. She is practically glowing in the space. For so long, Ginny Weasley had been someone they'd mourned. A long collection of moments watching Molly crumple a little bit inside, Arthur's eyes tightening, Fred and George turning away from conversations, Ron getting growly and angry. But here she is now, alive and solid in her own home she's created, away from the Weasleys, away from them all. A bolt of anger churns unhelpfully through his gut.
"Mm," he grunts back, noncommittally. His chest feels hot and tight and he's worried he'll say the wrong thing. He doesn't like saying the wrong thing.
She looks at him and he turns away from her probing gaze, looking around the loft as an excuse. He sips his tea.
The uncomfortable silence lengthens.
Until Ginny clears her throat. "So, erm, can you perform legilimency?"
"What!?" He spins around, startled at the question.
"Well I can't, and I need to get some answers from this guy and I don't have any veritaserum left, and I know you can, Dumbledore told me he was training you, and I didn't know who else to call. If you can't or I mean if you don't want to I totally get it's fine, I just—" She cuts off, rubbing the back of her neck self-consciously. "Sorry… I know I was rambling. Just— say something, okay?"
He's staring at her.
"What— why do you need me to? I know Dumbledore was training you too. If you don't want to do it, why do you think I'll want—"
She cuts him off. "I didn't say I don't want to, I said I can't," she states, emphatically.
His face must show his confusion because she rolls her eyes and waves her hand over herself, black lines fading into sight on her hands, and arms, peeking out beneath her rolled up sleeves.
She turns and points to a tattoo on the back on her neck, "I can't," she stresses again. "It is physically impossible for me to stretch my mind beyond my own barriers. The most I can do is extend my presence a bit, but I can't enter anyone else's mind."
He reaches out slightly as if to trace the tattoo before stopping himself, shaking his head. "What does it mean?" he asks.
She turns back to face him, "it's called zel, it uses my own magic as a protection against legilimency. It's practically unbeatable."
"Practically?"
"Well, if my magic were to fail, then the array would as well. But at that point, I'd most likely be dead, so fat lot of good that would do to my attacker."
He looks at her strangely.
"When did you do this?"
She looks away, "er… my fifth year. Right before—" she breaks off.
"Right before you left," he finishes for her.
She nods, still looking away.
"Look, can you do it or not?" she snaps, "if not it's fine. I'll just try to find some veritaserum somehow. It'll just take me a while…" she trails off at the end.
He frowns. In the past month, of the little bit he's gotten to see of her, she's been fiery, aggressive, sure of herself. Now, she looks flustered, her irritable tone covering her uncertainty. And he's mad at himself for causing her to feel that way... But legilimency... on an unwilling participant, he knows how... immoral that is. Your mind is your own, and it shall not fall. He's no stranger to bending the rules, but breaking into someone's mind is past just a bit of rule breaking, it's a major violation of someone's sacrosanct rights; to their own privacy of mind.
"I don't know Ginny… I've done some questionable things in the past… but this, this feels…" he pauses, not knowing how to put it into words.
"Look," she sighs, "you don't have to do anything violating, just tell me if he's lying or not when I question him, how's that?" She looks up at him hopefully. "If someone is actively keeping something from me, my legilimency is completely useless. Yeah?"
"Okay. Okay, that's fine. I'm glad to help... You just startled me, that's all…
"Well — let's go do it, let's go break the law!" he says — immediately cringing at himself.
She snorts. "Sure Potter, let's go break the law. I try to think of them more as moral guidelines anyways."
He laughs at that. "Moral guidelines. You would."
"III"
He's decided to stop being surprised by her. This whole day has been one long surreal journey, a bizarre peek into Ginny Weasley's life.
Who really is she? He looks at her out of the corner of his eye as they walk down the halway, but doesn't say anything.
They stop at an unobtrusive door that clanks open with a loud hollow boom at Ginny's muttered spell. Behind it, a man lies bound and gagged in what Harry recognizes as incarcerous binds.
The room looks like a dungeon. Like a prison cell. There is no clue that outside the door lies a bright sunlit home. In here, it is cold, dank, and miserable; completely at odds with the soft home they'd just been standing in.
The door slams shut, and all outside noise gets cut off. The quiet feels oppressive, the quiet feels like a weapon.
"Who is he?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes it matters! What has he done?! Why is he here?"
"Alright, alright, don't get your knickers in a twist."
The man stares up at them wide-eyed, his protests muffled behind the gag.
"Look, he has information I need, that's all that should really matter... But he's not a great guy either. He's a muggle trafficker. I need to know who his protection is. I know he has at least one wizard on pay. I don't want to deal with sorting through his lies and arguments, can you please just tap in to him?"
Harry looks at her unhappily. "Just so you know, I'm still not happy with this."
"Yes, yes, I know Harry. You're the good guy," she gestures impatiently, "let's get on with it! I haven't got all day."
"Sorry about this bud." Harry crouches down next to the man, and mutters "Legilimens!"
"III"
March 25, 2008
It had been strange, having Harry in her flat, his presence in her space felt like a thorn on a daisy. Unexpected and slightly cruel. The reminder of her past life pulled along with him like a sulking child. Sticking its tongue out at Ginny, making garish faces.
She shudders and pushes the thoughts aside. Tamping them down like she did to Tom. There is a place in her mind for such thoughts, but they have no place here, in the recognized world. She focuses herself to the task at hand.
Harry has provided her with excellent information. The man in the blue electric shirt is a squib and his name is Ryan. Ryan has three wizards working for him. Using magic for some truly dark purposes. And Ginny now knows their names, addresses, how much they're paid, what they look like, where they like to hang out, along with a whole sort of other useless information.
He had insisted on performing the obliviation himself, saying he couldn't have anyone knowing he was involved with such an act.
But Ginny has no plans of letting anyone know of anything. She expects to feel something more at this part, but only a cold certainty settles comfortably in her chest. She doesn't use the killing curse, it is too easy to trace. Instead, a quick transfiguration, a human to a small branch, a quick break, and he knows no more. Painless, clean and easy to get rid of. She burns the pieces of the stick in her sink, siphoning away the smoke. Perfectly messless.
"III"
Harry tries not to think about it. But he knows what happened to that man — Ryan, he reminds himself, the man's name was Ryan. There were the clear signs of torture as soon as he glanced into Ryan's mind. Harry could feel it, a ragged scrape around the edge of his mind. I don't want to know, he kept on telling himself. This is a bad man.
But now, Harry can't stop thinking about it. About the jagged scraping, about the look Ginny gave him after he said he needed to obliviate Ryan.
She looked at him as if he was being naive. As if he was missing something obvious.
But he just didn't want to think about it.
The right thing sometimes isn't always a good thing. And the necessary thing sometimes is neither. She seems to act from necessity. It must be hard to have been away for so long. Wearing faces other than your own.
He's trying to piece together an image of Ginny Weasley. The quiet but adventurous Ginny he saw over the summers at the Burrow, the smart and snarky Ginny that he saw around school, the intelligent and witty Ginny he saw in Dumbledore's office every now and then. And now there are even more versions of Ginny to add to the picture. The confident and complicated Ginny he came across in the cavern. The mysterious and elegant Ginny he ran into in the lounge, looking completely in her element. She always looks that way, perfectly comfortable in any situation, unruffled, unflappable. He would describe her as cold if he didn't also see her sharp humour and easy wit.
But then there is yesterday's Ginny. Calculating, intent… brutal. He comes to realise that maybe even with as much as he has watched Ginny over the years, he's never really known her.
He thinks he'd like to though.
-AN-
And here we are! Newest update, digging into Harry and Ginny.
Let me know what you think about the new insights, tell me your feelings!
I love hearing from you, it helps encourage me to write! I've been squeezing time in between classes, clients, and trying to enjoy the weather as it gets warmer.
Till next time…
-Upstater-