Mea Culpa, Confiteor

The Hogwarts train sped through the darkness of a late December afternoon. The clouds massed in the sky, gray and sullen, a lid slowly lowering over the bare winter bones of hill and dell and barren black tree. Ginny watched the speeding landscape flicker past the faces of her friend and her brother. She could hear their lips moving, could catch the words they said. But they were, to her eyes and ears, like Punch and Judy puppets in a tired shadow-show. Whether comic or tragic, they were only masks.

"After Christmas," said Ron, "I think I'll go to St. Paul's and pay to have a mass of thanksgiving said. I reckon I've got enough Muggle money... d'you think you could loan me some, Hermione?"

Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Since when are you a Christian?"

"Since never. But I've got to do something; how about if you take the sacrifices to Asmodeus, and maybe Ginny can do Zeus and the rest of the Greek gods, I'm not picky."

"Ron..." Hermione rolled her eyes and jabbed a thumb toward Harry, who sat morosely, knees hunched up nearly to his chin, silently staring out the train window.

"I just want to go dancing down the aisles, 'Mione, or doing cartwheels--could I skip, at least?"

"Ron--"

"To think that it's over, really over at last, don't try to tell me you haven't been praying to every god there is. Every time I've seen Malfoy's sneering face for the past four months I've wanted to smash his teeth in and now I can finally do it, I'm just so--"

"Ron!" Hermione leaned across the compartment to smack Ron's knee. Harry turned his head away and sighed. Voices drifted through the partially opened door.

"The boar's head in hand bear I, bedecked with bays and rosemary. And I pray you my masters merry be, quot estes in convivio. Caprut apri defero, reddens laudes--"

"Shh!" Hermione stuck her head into the aisle with a frown on her face, touching her finger to her closed lips. "Can't you be a little more quiet!"

"Sorry!" said Colin Creevey.

"'S Ginny in there?" blurted Neville Longbottom, sticking his head through the door. Their faces, one stacked above the other, were red-cheeked and cheery. Ginny shrank back behind Harry, hoping that she wasn't visible from Neville's position. Ron raised his eyebrows questioningly at her. Ginny shook her head vehemently.

"Sorry," said Ron, "next car, I think. Apparently we're having a funeral of dashed hopes in here, so you'd better go." The pair hurried off, their soft singing drifting back to Ginny's ears in an oddly piercing way.

"The steward hath provided this, in honor of the king of bliss, who on this day to be served is..."

Hermione turned furiously on him. "Can't you have a little respect for Harry's feelings?"

"Frankly, no, I can't," shrugged Ron.

"At least you could try not to gloat quite so loudly."

"Sorry. Can't do that either. After everything he put us through--"

"Do you think I liked having to be polite to Malfoy?" Hermione made a dismissive motion with her hand.

Ron propped his hand on his chin. "I'll never have to watch him running his hand through Harry's hair again," he said dreamily, "never have to watch them kissing again, never have to think about whatever disgusting things they might be getting up to in Harry's bed in Gryffindor tower again--"

Hermione nudged him in the ribs and cut her eyes at Ginny. "Shhh," she hissed.

"Innocent ears," Ron agreed. The two put their heads together and began whispering.

"Excuse me?" asked Ginny, hearing the edge of anger in her own voice. Emotion... oh, no... mustn't feel any of it, mustn't...

"Is there an echo in here?" asked Ron.

"Just how stupid do you think I am? "

"Oh, I really don't think you want me to answer that question, sis."

"I'm not a child. If you have anything you want to talk about behind my back you can do it in front of my face."

"Come on now, Ginny," began Hermione in that firm, coaxing voice Ginny despised most of all. The one used not only to children, but to lunatics. She leaped to her feet before her muscles had time to feel the impulses that had driven them.

"Get out!" she screamed. "Get out of here!" Hedwig flapped her wings nervously, shifting on her perch near the window. Hermione took Ron's hand and pulled him away from his sister, the smile still fixed on her face. They exchanged indulgent looks.

"But of course we'll go, Ginny," said Hermione, "if we're--er--upsetting you in any way. You've been doing so well and we don't want you to have a--"

Ginny threw the first thing that came to hand. The half-eaten chocolate frog hit the glass window of the door just as it slammed behind them. It slowly oozed down the pane, leaving a sticky trail.

Ginny sat, deflated. Light flakes were beginning to fall outside. They thickened into whirling shafts of snow as she watched. The light from the window became an odd shade of gun-metal gray. Harry still hadn't moved, and neither had she. All she could see was his dark head framed against the snowfall. Inches apart, they sat immured in their own private circles of hell.

Harry chuckled. It was a broken, mirthless sound. "At least you're not talking," he said.

Ginny nodded slightly.

"Funny how somebody not saying a word makes you want to talk. Ever noticed that?"

Ginny shrugged.

"I could never talk about it to them. God, the enjoyment they're getting out of it, it makes me absolutely sick."

"Well," said Ginny tentatively, "do you wonder that they're happy the two of you aren't together anymore?"

"I suppose not." Harry pulled his knees up all the way to his chin, resting his heels on the edge of the seat. "But who the hell cares what they thought? Who gives a rat's ass whether they liked him or not? What did they know?"

There was no answer, so she didn't answer.

"Dunno, wish I could quit thinking about it, I guess...but I can't..." His shoulders moved under his robes. She heard the broken, convulsive sounds in his throat, and then Harry was moving forward, falling into her arms. She patted his back awkwardly, holding herself as stiff and straight as she could. Comfort was all he wanted from her, and how vast was the distance that separated her from him. But he didn't know that, and she did. Knowledge was a very lonely thing, sometimes. Images came to her unbidden, memories of the long gray mornings that last month when she'd wake up early and slip on her shoes, steal out of her room in the hospital wing, walk down the corridors and stare out the windows into the sheets of fog that lay across the lawns and the lake and the Quidditch field. Imprisoned within herself, as she was now.

The violence of his sobs lessened, and they began to sound less as if they were wrenched from someplace too deep for any other human to touch. She could feel that he was beginning to straighten up, to return to his own seat, when it happened.

There was a sudden tremendous smash. They were both thrown violently into the air, rolling over and over on the floor; she was grabbing at Harry's hand and he was yelling something at her; she was trying to cover her head with her arms, to protect it, but the floor kept tilting and bucking away from her. The train car yawed back and forth like a ship at sea. She skidded all the way to one side of the floor and landed head over heels; Harry's full weight fell on top of her, and then, at last, everything calmed.

"Are you all right?"

"I--I think so." Her own heartbeat was thudding in her ears so loudly that he must be able to hear it too; it filled the air completely. Ginny tried to sit up. Harry was still on top of her. She could feel the long strong muscles of his legs pressed against hers and the sinews in his arms, his hands were clasped around her back, oh God, they had almost died, what was wrong with her? Lust, she told herself furiously, animal rut, that's all this is. What a fool I am. What a fool.

"What happened?" she asked stupidly.

"I don't know--come on--" He helped her up. The train car was tilted; Ginny could barely stay on her feet as they staggered down the aisle. An eerie howling filled her ears. She squinted through the growing darkness. A snowstorm had begun, and nothing could be seen through the windows except driving snow. Harry tried the doors at both ends of the car. They could not be opened. He rubbed his face.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Ginny, I don't want you to get scared."

"Are you like everyone else? Do you think I can't handle an unpleasant fact?"

"No, I don't think that but--" He took her hands in his, lightly. "Our car was disconnected in the accident. It's the only explanation. We're stuck. And we can't get out."

They were both silent, and the storm raged round them.

Something moved at the very edge of her vision, like a shadow. Not snow. What was it? She turned her head, trying to see, and Harry's face hardened. He grabbed her wrist. "We're getting back in that room and I'm putting a Locking charm on the door, a good strong one." She tripped as he yanked her back down the aisle.

"Why?"

"Because we're not alone," he said grimly.

"I bet that was just Hedwig."

"No, it wasn't Hedwig. She's not here, she must have gotten out some hole too small for us to find." He pulled out his wand from a pocket of his robes. His horrified eyes stared at the two dangling halves. It had snapped in two. "She's better off than we are," he said dully.

"Harry, no--"

"It must've happened when I fell on it." He turned the wand pieces round and round in his hands in a hopeless way.

"Why do we need the door locked anyway?"

"Oh, there are good reasons. But Ginny, this isn't the worst of it. This leaves us without any way of making heat. A fire or a Calorium charm or--well, anything."

She looked at him, dismayed. As if his words had been a Summoning spell, she felt the tendrils of cold creeping up her feet, moving to her legs.

He pulled her down to one corner of the compartment. "It'll probably stay a little warmer here, it's insulated by a snow bank. At least I think it is and it's going to snow even more, should collect in the same place--" Ginny closed her eyes. His words washed over her dimly; she felt his hands putting his winter cloak over both of them, felt Harry pull her closer to him until their bodies were touching at every point, felt him lift something cold to her lips.

"Here. Maybe this'll help." She gulped at the bottle Harry held, then coughed as the burning liquid hit her stomach like a hot stone.

"That's awful, Harry, what is it? Ogden's Old Firewhisky?"

"No." His teeth flashed white at her in the gloom when he grinned. "Smirnoff's. You wouldn't believe how much of this I've been going through, Ginny. God, I've hardly drawn a sober breath in the past two weeks. Can't believe nobody's noticed it."

"Really? Is that what Muggles call drowning their sorrows?" Ginny examined the light, casual note in her voice. It sounded convincing.

"Yeah, I suppose it is." He drank deeply from the bottle and handed it back to her. "It does help. You won't feel the cold as much... or anything as much, come to that..."

Ginny grabbed it from his hands and sloshed the numb biting taste of vodka past her teeth. To negate all feeling seemed far too much to hope for. It was. But she kept chasing the hope all the way to the bottom of the bottle.

"You shouldn't drink so much." Harry's voice was filled with concern. "You're not used to it."

"Maybe I should get used to it," retorted Ginny.

"Do you have your sorrows to drown too, Ginny?" he asked, his voice beginning to slur.

"Sure. Loads of them." Ginny moved the bottle back and forth in front of her face. The faint light flashed from the glass to her eyes. There hadn't been enough for insensibility, not nearly enough. This could be dangerous. Her feelings had only been dragged closer to the surface, as if the vodka had been a grappling hook. "If we freeze to death in a snow bank, I suppose our problems are over."

"That's one way of looking at it." He took the bottle from her, downing the last few mouthfuls. "They think I shouldn't tell you anything about it, don't they, Ginny? I'm sure they're right. But you're my friend too, aren't you? You'll listen to what I have to say?"

"Of course," she said.

"D'you remember that Medieval Muggle Superstitions class? You had it in the fall, I think... we had it last year... there was a picture in the book I never forgot. Confession at Coventry Cathedral. Pilgrims used to go there, you know, to see saint's relics and pray for miracles or some such rubbish. Not real magic of course. I always thought that part of it was stupid. Remember?"

"Yes."

"But they did something else, too; that's what the picture showed. They'd tell their sins to priests, and they'd receive penance and forgiveness. Never understood quite how that part was supposed to work. Once you've sinned, you've sinned, and kneeling on an uncomfortable piece of wood and mumbling a few words isn't going to take it away. But still I never forgot it... a kind of envy goes all through me when I remember it... ah, to confess, Ginny, to confess, and do penance, and receive absolution..." He was holding her hands so hard now that she could feel the small bones moving under his fingers; she winced and tried to pull away.

"No, listen to me, listen, I've got to tell someone. Won't you?" His eyes were a desperate, glazed, feverish green, and as she looked into them she knew she could deny him nothing. Not even this thing he asked. It sliced at her like a sword, but he didn't know, couldn't know. So, she nodded. And he told.

More than once, she lifted a hand, involuntarily, to stop him. Then she forced it back down to her side. More than once, her fingers crept up to her ears to block out what she was hearing. She sat on them and felt them twitching under her. His voice was hoarse and tortured. Sometimes it broke and he was quiet for a few moments; then the words would continue in a rush, tripping over each other. There's no penance I could ever give him, she thought with dismay. All his penance already lay in the telling. And hers in the hearing.

She stared out the window when she could not bear to look at his face anymore. And for the first time, Ginny thought she saw something besides snow. The faint outline of a vast building, perhaps. A great mass of gray stone, fitfully visible through the driving storm. No. Then it was gone again.

Finally, Harry ran out of words, fell silent, and settled against her, pulling her arms around him. Her chin rested on the top of his head. She felt his deep sigh. "So do I get absolution?" he asked.

She fingered a strand of his hair. "I'm not exactly a priest, Harry." Talk about the blind leading the blind! "Maybe you should talk to someone... better than I am. Dumbledore or someone."

"Right, I'm going to tell Dumbledore what I told you. You understand, don't you, Ginny?"

"I think so." Yes, Harry, I do. Because we're two broken people, shattered in different ways. Wholeness will never be ours.

He turned to her, still on his knees, searching her face. "You don't judge."

"No," she whispered, clasping him to her like a child. Yet, not like a child. A wave of savage feeling slammed into her as she held his head to her breast. He didn't want it, ah, she knew he didn't want this, not what she wanted. She repeated the words to herself over and over until they'd lost all meaning. Then, when she least expected it, he leaned up and kissed her.

The floodgates were opened. Her lips parted and she kissed him back hungrily, desperately, seeking a moment that was already receding. Washing out like the tide from a shore. Gone. He was pulling back from her.

"God, Ginny, I'm sorry. I had no right to do that."

"You have every right," she said in a choked voice. "Or you could. Harry, look at me--you can take whatever rights you want--"

He put a finger over her lips, shaking his head, but she continued, the words spilling out over each other like a draught of poison. "Whatever you want from me, just ask--or don't ask, just take it--"

"Don't. Don't say another word. You'll hate yourself when you're sober again and you'll hate me for hearing these things."

"I'm not drunk, Harry, really I'm not. You know I'm not. Look, we don't know if we're going to get out of this, we don't know if anyone is coming back for us, we don't even know if everybody else is dead or alive, so let's take the one opportunity we have." Her hands were moving under his robes; some small, rational part of her stood aside and watched in horror and self-disgust, but she couldn't seem to stop her fingers from moving over his chest.

Harry sat frozen, looking at her in shock. When her hands started to move lower, he grabbed them. "Stop it. Stop it. Do you hear me, Ginny?"

Tears rolled down her face. She laughed hysterically.

"Stop it!" He shook her by the shoulders. "I'm going to forget this ever happened. You should, too."

"I don't want to forget it." She shook her head, shifted position, pressed against him. "I'm yours if you want me, Harry, say the word and I'll do anything, anything."

"Ginny," he said, patting one of her hands in what was, she supposed, a comforting fashion, "you don't know what you're saying. You're like my sister, the sister I never had. I care about you, yes. But it's in the way a brother would."

"I have enough brothers." Words she had never before said boiled up to her lips; Ginny opened her mouth, and they fell out. "Touch me. Take me. Fuck me. Use me to forget. I know you want to forget, because you told me--"

His muscles stiffened against her as if turned to stone. "If I really thought we were going to die in a snow bank," he said deliberately, "I'd go down the aisle and into Malfoy's compartment. And the two of us would have one last taste, because it wouldn't fucking matter anymore. Not then. I don't want you. I don't swing that way, or didn't you listen to a word I said before? And even if I did, I would never want you. Not that way. Now, let go of me."

She slapped him with all the strength in her arm. Then she stumbled out the door and into the dark aisle of the train car. Harry sat slumped with his head in his hands. "Ginny," he whispered, "oh, Ginny." Then he rose and forced the window open, wriggling out of it and landing in the snow with a puff. Staggering to his feet, he began moving towards the vast stone building that loomed in the distance.

Ginny leaned up against the wall of the car, her head swimming hot. She no longer felt the cold. Shame pulsed through her. She wanted to shrink inside herself to the size of a snitch, or of a dot a quill might leave on a piece of parchment; no, to a charmed quark, the fundamental unit that powered wizards' wands, and then wink out to nothing. Oh God. Oh God. Therefore do I confess.. I am heartily sorry for having offended thee... through my fault, my fault, my most grevious fault... She moved further into the depths of the train car. It was almost utterly dark back here. She could hear Harry calling after her from the compartment she had just fled; his voice was strangely muffled. I'd break that window and jump out of it into the snow before I'd look him in the face again. The powerful desire for self-destruction writhed in her. But then, wasn't that the real reason why she had just done what she did? She pressed her hand against her forehead, feeling the thin layer of sweat.

A door opened, then closed. Footsteps. Ginny retreated into the furthest corner of the car and turned her face towards the intersection of the walls. Stupid. But she couldn't bear to think of Harry's face, judging her, accusing her... or worse yet, filled with gentle pity. She thought that she could stand anything at all more easily than pity.

The feet came closer, then paused just behind her. She could hear the sound of breathing, quick and light. Then, shockingly, lips on the nape of her neck. Gently, gently nuzzling. Nipping. The slight scrape of teeth against her skin. Her own breath came in short, rapid pants. The hunger in her, the savage mad thing that she had tried so hard to ignore or kill, strained at its leash, snapping. The presence behind her moved forward. Still not touching her. She tried to move back against it. A pair of hands came forward, pressing her against the wall. She couldn't touch the body behind her at any point, but she could feel the fingers coming forward, lingering at her breasts, kneading them softly, teasing at the nipples until she was sure they would burst and release the dark fire in her.

"Yes, oh yes," she groaned. "Please, yes, Harry, yes..."

A glint caught her eye. The movement of a head. There was a faint shaft of light from a window further down the aisle. Something was wrong. No, no, don't bother with it, don't think about it, don't ruin this, her body argued. Ginny shook her head, and her eyes followed the light. The head bent over her neck was fair, not dark. The face was too narrow, the eyes sleepy and hooded, and the hands, she now saw, too pale, too slender--

She yanked herself away from him. "Malfoy!" she hissed, pulling her wand from her pocket.