If the Fates Allow

Chapter 11

Tension

Ut tensio sic vis

(Robert Hooke)

"Now where to?" asked Draco, fiddling with his fork in a bored sort of way.

"I'm trying to find out, okay?" snapped Phaedra, focusing her attention on the little golden gadget in her hands. "He was here yesterday, in this very restaurant, that's for sure."

"But where can they be now?" he pressed. "I'm starting to lose my patience with this wild-goose chase."

"Then go home to England, no one's making you stay," she replied coolly.

He muttered something like 'I didn't mean it like that'.

"You'd better not," Phaedra grunted and placed the Tracker on the white-blue checked tablecloth. "This is pretty useless this way, though."

"Good that you admit it," Draco remarked.

She gave him a 'one more snide comment and you'll have to change your name from Draco to Draca' stare. "There's one thing left: we have to ask people whether they've seen them."

The restaurant owner Nikias approached them with two gyroses.

"Nik, tell me, have you seen my husband lately?" Phaedra asked.

"'Course, dear, he was here yesterday evening with his cousin."

"Cousin? Dudley D...?" Draco started, but Phaedra waved to shut him up. He had obviously not realised that Nikias was talking about Ginny as Harry's 'cousin', not Dudley Dursley. Also, it was pretty new and unusual for him to understand the Greek language - Phaedra had cast the all-language charm on him before they even left Great Britain.

"Yes, he has a very pretty cousin, I expect you know her, Mrs Creevey," replied Nikias. Now Draco understood that he must have referred to Ginny, because Dudley Dursley (whom he'd seen once on King's Cross) couldn't be defined as pretty at all. But... what had the landlord just called Phaedra? - he frowned. He already opened his mouth to comment on the 'Creevey'- part when Phaedra kicked him on the shin under the table with such force that he bit into his tongue, totally preventing himself from speaking.

"Of course I know my husband's cousin," smiled the young witch sweetly at Nikias while Draco sat opposite her, cross-eyed with pain. "But you know, Nik, there's a little problem with the girl."

"Problem?" the restaurateur's eyes widened. "What sort?"

"Oh," Phaedra sighed with a woebegone expression. "The girl's a bit... dangerous. She was being held in the closed ward of a British wizarding hospital, but she escaped... actually my husband helped her escape," she sighed again so dramatically that it made Draco wonder whether he should trust this woman at all. She was beautiful, but apparently devious and definitely not to be crossed.

"Colin helped her escape from a lunatic ward?" Nikias furrowed his brow. "That's not like him, the boy seems to have his heart at the right place, I wouldn't think that he'd..."

"Oh, yes, Colin's heart is definitely at the right place, perhaps too much so... he can be such a softie sometimes, my dear hubby, he obviously couldn't resist his favourite cousin's pleas to get her out of the closed ward... and I fear that he's in danger in her company, her mind could get clouded any moment, and... and..." one single tear ran down Phaedra's cheek. She had some talent for acting, Draco had to give it to her. "That's why I'm so desperate to find them, Nik, should you know anything that might help me with the search, I'd be eternally grateful if you shared it with me."

"Well," Nikias scratched his jaw, "I don't really know where they could've gone, but perhaps the Greek Magical Law Enforcement knows something..."

"The Magical Law Enforcement?"

"Yeah, they came here yesterday - well, actually today at dawn - and wanted to arrest your husband. They said he'd killed someone, but of course I don't believe them, Colin's not the type, is he?" replied the restaurant owner. "The only thing I didn't understand was that they were after a bloke called Dursley, I bet they confused the names and wanted to arrest the wrong person..."

"Right, thank you, Nikias, you've helped a lot," said Phaedra with a grateful smile, but Draco saw that she was very pale.

"I'm happy to have been of service," grinned the owner, then glanced at Draco with a questioning stare, surely expecting Phaedra to introduce him to her companion.

Phaedra understood his questioning stare at once. "Oh, this is... Seamus, my husband's cousin, by the way. His other cousin. He's helping me to save Colin."

"Ah, I see. Pleasure, meeting you," said the owner, then headed back into the kitchen.

"Potter - wanted - for - murder?" Draco whispered delightedly. "That's too good to be true!"

"Shut up Malfoy or I'll shut you up," hissed the witch, her eyes blazing with fury.

"Oye, I'm scared now," grimaced Draco, but with his grimace he only tried to hide the fact that he was indeed scared of Phaedra. He had never met a woman so beautiful, determined and ready to beat the crap out of anyone who crossed her. To him she seemed some mixture of old McGonagall, that Mudblood Granger and Xena, Warrior Princess (Draco would never admit it to anyone but he was an enthusiastic Xena fan).

"So, where are we going now, Mrs Creevey?" he asked in a sarcastic tone, already seeing his archenemy in jail in his mind's eye.

"To the Greek Magical Law Enforcement office, certainly," she replied. "And just to make it clear, Malfoy: Harry had every right to kill that bastard who had tortured our daughter to death."

For a second Draco thought he'd seen a shadow of weakness in her eyes, a trace of pain, but even if it had been there, it was gone before he could properly observe it. "Ah... right. I would have killed the murderer of my kid, too... but it's not bloody likely that I'll ever have a kid."

"Why not? You'll have your wife back soon, I guarantee you that."

He waved impatiently. "She's barren."

"What caused her to be...?"

"At first I had no idea why she wouldn't get pregnant when I did everything in my power to knock her up," he murmured. "After a while I started to suspect that she might be using contraceptive charms behind my back, but she denied it. So, we went to a mediwizard for a check up and he established that she had had an ovary inflammation in her childhood, probably spent hours in a darn cold lake or something, and it made her infertile."

"Sorry," replied Phaedra. "C'mon, Draco, let's question the Aurors, shall we?"

* * * * *

For a second Ginny didn't know what was happening, but as Harry Apparated out of the room they were sharing in the Hotel Atlantis after remarking that those stupid Death Eaters should have waited a bit before starting this mayhem, Ginny came to the conclusion that she ought to go and see what had happened instead of sitting here and waiting for him to return and carry on where they had left off (i.e. making love to her at last). Also, what if he got into such trouble that he no longer could come back and carry on where they'd left off? No, Ginny definitely couldn't let that happen!

So, with her wand drawn, she stormed down the stairs, into the entrance hall and saw at once what had caused that loud bang: the glorious chandelier made of shells had crashed down, a huge hole visible on the ceiling where it had hung.

Harry was already in the middle of a furious duel with four cloaked figures whose hoods had been pushed back very likely by Harry, since Ginny couldn't imagine that Death Eaters would be stupid enough to reveal their faces voluntarily. Strangely Ginny didn't find any of them familiar, none of them could have been present in the Department of Mysteries seven years earlier, because then she would have recognised them. Probably these were new Death Eaters, Voldemort must have needed to recruit new supporters after most of his old ones had ended up in Azkaban and only a couple of them ever managed to break free. Either way, it was lucky that Harry had magicked his scar to become invisible after the fiasco in the Circle of Hermes headquarters, because undoubtedly any Death Eater would have recognised him if he had had the scar.

One of the Death Eaters sent a purple coloured curse at Harry who jumped behind the Receptionist's desk, which exploded into smithereens, no longer giving him shelter. Two other Death Eaters aimed Full-Body-Bind jinxes at him, but he shouted Expelliarmus! at the same moment, ridding one of them of his wand, ducking the jinx. The fourth Death Eater had somehow managed to get behind Harry's back without him noticing (which was remarkable with Harry's special, 360 degree vision) and was just about to Stun him when Ginny decided to use her old, but always successful Bat-Bogey-Hex on him.

"Thanks, Gin," Harry flashed her with a quick grin before jumping out of the way of a Reductor Curse.

The fourth Death Eater stumbled across the room, bat ear-like things flapping on his face.

"Hey, that's gross," came a voice from the left. Ginny squinted in that direction, keeping an eye on Harry's battle at the same time, and saw that several curious people's heads were poking out of the restaurant part of the hotel. The remark must have come from one of the sirens who were standing in the doorway, seemingly enjoying the show.

Ginny didn't have time to ask why they weren't helping Harry against the Death Eaters, because one of the cloaked figures swept across the hall like a rocket, almost colliding with her. She crouched down in the last instant before the 'rocket Death Eater' flew headlong into a huge pot-plant that immediately wound its long leaves around his body, its red buds opening like mouths as it started madly snogging all possible body-parts of the unfortunate Death Eater.

"Well done!" yelled one of the sirens at Harry who had obviously turned the Death Eater into the human rocket.

However Harry had more important things to pay attention to: one of the two remaining Death Eaters sent another Reductor Curse at him, he ducked, but this time, with the Receptionist's desk destroyed, there wasn't any object left in the curse's way, nothing from which it could have rebound or what it could have smashed, so it swooped directly at the huge wall-length window beyond which there was nothing but the sea...

With an alarming crash the window-glass exploded, allowing the water flood into the hall like some tidal wave.

Ginny heard screams from all over the hall - screams of the people watching the scene from the restaurant and of people standing on the stairs - probably even the Death Eaters had screamed, she couldn't tell.

All she knew was that suddenly a Tempus Glacietur! issued from Harry's mouth a second after the window broke and the tide stopped in the middle of the hall, frozen in time. Everyone who looked at the 'petrified' waves could spot several sardines, plaice, eels and medusas in it.

The water wasn't frozen in the physical sense of the word, nor were the fish in it literally frozen, they were just stopped in time, not moving in any direction.

Up till now Ginny had thought that one could only freeze time for people, but now it seemed so that you could freeze practically anything in time, even the forces of nature...

Everyone who had been screaming just a second earlier, now gasped with awe.

"That's it, Big Boy!" cheered one of the brunette sirens, making Ginny want to wind her long brown hair around her neck and throttle her with it.

The two Death Eaters who were still able to fight used this moment of panic and awe to fetch their disabled buddies and Harry was a nanosecond late with his Petrificus Totalus, because they must have grabbed a Portkey that transported them out of Atlantis.

"Bugger," Harry growled, then looked around to see everyone gaping at the water that was still hanging in midair, wanting to flow further into the hall, but unable to do so. "Oh, yeah," he flicked his wand and the broken windows got restored to their original state, separating the sea outside from those few waves that had managed to break into the building. A second flick with his wand and the 'frozen' waves evaporated as though they had never been there. The fish in it dropped to the floor. This made a bloke, peering out of the restaurant wearing a cook's hat, beam and rub his hands greedily together.

At that second cheering erupted all over the hall, the onlookers applauded and whistled admiringly. The receptionist, who had witnessed the events from behind a Corinth column, now came forward to shake Harry's hand so frantically that Harry thought he'd rip it off.

"You were wonderful," said one of the sirens in a sugar-sweet voice as she stepped to Harry.

"Exactly as wonderful as in other things," added another siren.

"Yes," nodded the third one, slipping an arm around Harry's waist. "And we'd gladly do it again with you..."

This was the last straw for Ginny who burst out like a volcano, "Why not say directly to his face that you want to shag him senseless???"

"Pardon me?" One of the sirens frowned at Ginny. "What do you mean by that?"

"Why, wasn't that what you did to him last time?" snapped Ginny, not even glancing at Harry whose face was turning redder by the second, aware that every single 'spectator' of this battle with the Death Eaters was now listening curiously to their conversation.

"What?", blinked the tallest of the three sirens. "All we did with him was sing."

"Sing, eh?" Ginny scowled at them. "You seduced him with your song, I presume."

"Oh, well... we tried," admitted the youngest-looking of the three, "but he refused. Honestly, he's been the first person to turn us down since Odysseus... all we managed to do was enchant him, but not even in his enchanted state was he willing to..."

"...and that's why we just sang with him," explained the tallest one.

"Sang with me, not to me?" Harry gaped.

"Yup," grinned the youngest siren. "You behaved like a drunken man under our spell, and what does a drunken man do? He sings."

"You don't mean we were..." Harry began.

"...singing 'What shall we do with a drunken sailor' in a quartet? Yes. That's exactly what we were doing, and you have a very pleasant baritone, if I might add," came the answer.

His mouth agape, Harry glanced at Ginny, who was equally nonplussed. Suddenly Harry's mouth tucked into a wide grin. "I didn't do it! I didn't do it, Gin!" he grabbed the flabbergasted girl and pulled her into an enthusiastic embrace. Ginny grinned into his neck and had to restrain herself from doing a new version of the 'he got off' dance, singing 'he didn't shag them' instead. It was a relief for both of them. Ginny had been annoyed enough by the fact that Harry had had this Linda (who moreover happened to be Voldemort's daughter) and Phaedra, so she felt utterly relieved that at least these three scarlet women hadn't managed to get into Harry's pants.

"It's a shame, though, that they took the other two with them," remarked the youngest siren. "The poor Aphrodite Flower lost its snogging partner."

Some of the onlookers burst into laughter and squinted at the pot-plant that seemed to be downright sulky now.

When Harry and Ginny went to sleep that night it was already three in the morning and neither of them felt like doing anything else but sleep.

"I was wondering why those Death Eaters exploded the chandelier, you know," Ginny said, slipping under the covers in their room.

"They were looking for this." Harry pulled something out of his shirt. "I bet it was hidden in the ceiling, above the chandelier. I snatched it from one of the Death Eaters, he won't notice that it's gone missing until he gets back to England." Harry smirked delightedly. "Imagine Voldemort's face when he finds out!"

"But... what's this?" Ginny's eyes widened, looking at some parchment he was holding. "Could this be the one about...?"

"Must be," he nodded, rolling the parchment out on the bed.

In ancient Greek letters a charm was described on the parchment - a very complex one.

"And one would think you'd have to eat ambrosia to become immortal," Harry murmured.

"Holy Snitch, Harry, had You-Know-Who got this, he'd have gained immortality!" Ginny breathed.

"Yes," he replied sternly. "And we have to see to it that he'll never ever get it."

"Destroy it?" she suggested.

"Exactly," he nodded, levitating the parchment into midair and saying Incendio!

As the parchment dissolved into ashes that gathered into a small heap on the moss-carpet, so dissolved Voldemort's hopes for immortality.

Before Harry extinguished the candles, Ginny spoke up, yawning. "There's still something I don't understand."

"What?" he asked gently, lying down into the huge shell-bed next to her.

"There were so many people around, and they did nothing, just watched you fight. Why?"

"I reckon they were like the average Greek wizards; they hate fighting."

"Hate fighting?"

"Yeah," he slipped an arm around her and nuzzled his face into her hair. "Greek wizards are friendly... usually too friendly to fancy a fight. Of course you can find some who don't say no to a good scrap, but those are the outlaws, the Aurors and the members of the Circle. The rest are too... soft."

"What about those sirens?" she muttered.

"What about them?"

"Couldn't they have helped?"

"Not likely. Sirens don't have magical abilities in the same way as wizards do. They can bewitch you with their song, but that's all they are capable of."

"And yet they didn't manage to bewitch you," she murmured in a satisfied way.

"Perhaps because I didn't want to cheat on my wife..." he replied.

"Aren't you cheating on your wife now - with me?" she asked quietly.

"I think I am... but I don't feel guilty at all... weird, isn't it?"

"No... it isn't weird at all," she replied and fell asleep in his arms.

* * * * *

In the morning they managed to wake up early enough to reach the Hippobus just when it was about to detach its tube from the hotel.

"Wait!" Harry shouted, running towards the tube with Ginny in his wake.

"Almost late again, Neville?" grinned Megara as they stumbled through the tube, into the bus.

"Almost, but not quite. Morning, Meg," Harry panted.

"Heard you were a real hero, saving the hotel in the night," said the conductor with a sweet smile.

"Had to save it, if they were stupid enough to build the hotel with breakable windows," replied Harry. "Honestly, one would think they have enough sense to use curse-proof glass."

"I've heard that the hotel's owner was had by the builders. They sold him glass that allegedly was unbreakable, but it turned out that it wasn't. Now he's really in trouble, having to have the windows replaced by unbreakable glass. Oh, Neville, had you not been there... you were so brave!" said Megara, batting her thick, black eyelashes so rapidly that they became a blur and Harry started to feel dizzy, looking at them. He cast a sideways glance at Ginny to see whether she got annoyed by Megara's coquettish behaviour, but this time he couldn't see any trace of jealously on her freckly features.

Strangely to Ginny, she didn't feel jealousy of any sort now. Only hours before Harry had told her he still loved her and the conversation they had shared in the shell-seat filled her with a feeling of safety and contentment. As she thought it over, suddenly her jealousy seemed silly and pointless. No matter whom Harry had slept with or flirted with, or sung 'What shall we do with a drunken sailor' with; the only thing that counted was that Harry loved her, and no one else.

Presenting the conductor witch with her most brilliant smile, Ginny went to look for two seats, her soul as light as a feather. True, Harry's daunting tale about Voldemort's trap and blackmail should have dispirited her and the ever-present danger of her father getting killed by Draco should have darkened her mood, despite all the hardships she couldn't help but beam, radiating her happiness at every single passenger.

"You're beautiful today," Harry whispered into her neck after they took their places.

"Am I?" she smiled coyly at him, making him want to kiss her until she couldn't breathe. However, with everyone looking at them, he had to control himself. So he only pulled Ginny into an embrace and kissed the top of her head as she bent it on his shoulder.

With the sulky conductor, their Hippobus sped towards the island of Delos.

* * * * *

Around ten o'clock they arrived at Delos and the only passengers to disembark were Harry and Ginny. The Hippobus continued its way southwards towards the island of Paros.

Delos was a dreary isle with no buildings, nothing whatsoever, but it was a popular meditating place. If someone needed peace, they came to Delos.

"Beautiful," said Ginny, gazing at the sea as the sun's bright morning rays danced on the azure waves, making them glitter like a myriad of sapphires.

"Uh-huh," Harry nodded, shielding his eyes against the sun.

"Come to think of it, I never got my sunglasses, sun hat and suntan lotion you promised me back in England," Ginny remarked with a lopsided grin. "Look at my skin, it got red and sore on the way to Delphi." She held out her bare arm for him to see that it was indeed pinker than usual. He hadn't noticed it underwater, but now, in the bright sunshine it was clearly visible.

"Should I kiss it better?" he wriggled his eyebrows.

"That would mean a lot of kissing, my arms, my neck, my face, my legs... they're all sunburnt," she replied mischievously.

"No problem," he pulled her to himself. "I'll kiss all of them better."

"Before you do so, I'd like to take a bath, I feel filthy. The last time I took a shower was in Budapest. I want to swim a bit in the sea. Turn around, will you?"

"Turn around?" he blinked. "What for?"

"Because I want to undress. Completely," she said. Harry couldn't decide what her red complexion was due to, the sun's rays or embarrassment. He also couldn't understand why she'd feel embarrassed about getting undressed in front of him - she had been prancing around in nothing but a camisole in front of him when they had been in Budapest. Then, if the Death Eaters hadn't interrupted their little make-out, they surely would have gone further and she would have undressed or would have let him undress her. So why did she demur now?

"Why, do you think I haven't peeked through your clothes already?" he said with an innocent expression.

"Harry Potter! You dared...?"

"No, just wanted to see your reaction," he winked at her.

"Veeery funny," she shook her head. "Turn around, please."

"I can turn around if you like... but I can see through the back of my head, you know," Harry reminded her. When she responded with a scowl, he held up his hands in self-defence. "Okay. I'll close my eyes and promise I won't peek."

"Thanks," she smiled and began to undress.

No matter how hard it was for Harry to not peek, he obediently kept his eyes shut, but inside his head he could pretty well see what he very likely would have seen in reality. Sometimes it's nice to have a vivid imagination, he told himself.

After ten or so minutes of waiting, Harry heard some splashing and the sand squelching under two wet feet, indicating that Ginny had returned.

She snatched her wand off the ground and pointed it at her clothes with a "Scourgify!", then put them on.

"May I open my eyes?" he asked.

"Yeah," she replied and flopped down onto the sand next to him.

"Okay," he flicked his wand and in the next instant she was wearing sunglasses, a sun hat and even a beach umbrella had appeared above her.

"What's this all for? Picnic?" she enquired, peering at him over the rim of her sunglasses.

"No, I'm going for a swim too and just wanted to make sure you didn't get a serious sunburn," Harry replied and unbuttoned his shirt. The shirt landed on the sand, followed by socks, and a pair of jeans. As Harry started to pull down his boxers, she spoke up. "Er... should I maybe turn around?"

"If you don't want to, you don't need to," he shrugged and proceeded with ridding himself of his last piece of clothing.

Ginny felt heat creep up her cheeks and was sure that she must look ruby red, even despite the shadow cast on her by the beach umbrella.

"Would you Scourgify my clothes while I'm gone? Women can do it much better than men," he said, apparently not noticing her abashed stare.

"Huh?" she shuddered. "Er... 'course. Uh... why are you taking your wand into the sea?" she called after him as he waded into the water.

"To scare away the medusas," he replied over his shoulder.

"Medusas? You could have warned me, you know, then I would have taken my wand!" Ginny shouted indignantly, but she wasn't sure he still heard her, because he had already dived into the water and disappeared under the surface.

After half a minute she started to get worried, because he still hadn't reappeared. What if he had drowned? A distant memory came to her mind. She had once before waited for him exactly like this, hoping to see him resurface, praying that he'd come out of the water alive.

This time she didn't need to wait for him for over an hour, he came to the surface after a minute, but it had been just as bad to wait. Now that she saw him float on the surface on his back, idly moving his legs to propel himself slowly forward, she thought how stupid she had been to think that he'd drowned. He seemed totally healthy, as water-drops coursed down his tanned chest...

Ginny gulped as she realised that his chest wasn't exactly that particular region of his body that most attracted her attention.

Even under the beach umbrella, she started to feel extremely hot. She had never ever felt anything like this before. Back at Hogwarts when she had become Harry's girlfriend, she had been too young to feel real desire. With Draco all she felt was repulsion at the sight of his naked body. Not that Draco hadn't been attractive. Oh surely he was, just not for her. She felt as though she had suddenly become a woman in these last four days with Harry. She was no longer the innocent young girl who had been going out with him. Not even the 'Let's-get-it-over-with' type of frigid ice queen she had been with her husband. She really felt a woman now. A woman who longed to join him in the water and make love to him until all the medusas fled panic-stricken into more peaceful waters.

Suddenly Harry turned to his stomach and started swimming towards the coast. Ginny immediately diverted her stare and pretended to be staring up at the brightly coloured beach umbrella.

"Haven't you Scourgified my clothes?" he asked when he reached her and his dirty, sweaty, curse-scorched pile of clothes.

"Oh, sorry, forgot," she muttered, gazing determinedly at the umbrella, because she feared that if she shifted her stare to him, she'd lose control and then who knows when they'd find that Row of Gods?

"Forgot?" he shot her an amused glance. "Why, what else has been on your mind?"

"Nothing," Ginny replied in an unconvincing voice, then pointed her wand at his clothes. "Scourgify!"

"Thanks," he said and quickly got dressed, to Ginny's great relief. "Got to be going if we want to find that Row of Gods any time soon, don't you think?"

"Yes, definitely," she nodded and accepted the hand offered her to pull her off the ground. "Where should we start?"

"Well, the island isn't that big, is it? If I were in the Greek gods' place, I'd hide my secret place somewhere among those rocks." He pointed at a rocky hill standing at the centre of the island and they set off towards it.