Replay

Replay

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Chapter Eighteen

The Other Foot

Ron Weasley looked around the old graveyard where he'd just Apparated. Harry had repeatedly assured him that it was far enough from the town that no Muggles were likely to see anyone Apparating to the graveyard, especially as there were so many tall monuments to hide behind, but it still made Ron nervous, apart from the fact that graveyards in general made Ron nervous. If Harry had bought his house from a wizard he wouldn't have worried so much, but he'd bought it from a Muggle architect who'd converted the old stone pile into a private residence, which meant that Muggles knew where it was.

Luckily, it wasn't a market day in the town, so the nearby road was virtually deserted. Ron glanced up at the old tawny-coloured Gothic church with its steep pitched roof, tall leaded windows, tile roof, bell tower and spire, wondering again what had led Harry to purchase St Clare's Chapel as his home. They'd barely been out of Hogwarts for a month when he'd done it. Hedwig had flown into the kitchen window at the Burrow with a note for Ron on a sunny summer morning; Harry wanted to meet him at St Clare's Chapel near Barnard Castle, on the way to Teesdale. He included a map; otherwise there was no explanation as to why he'd asked Ron to come to a small country church in Durham.

It was true that Harry had been quite changed by the summer between his fifth and sixth years, but he seemed to perk up again briefly when the new term began and he was permitted to rejoin the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Dumbledore also wanted him to lead the DA as an official school club, which was another thing that cheered Harry considerably. (He spent the rest of the summer mooning around number twelve, Grimmauld Place and Ginny seemed to be the only one who could get him to talk about what had happened; he refused to give Ron and Hermione any details and four years later Ron was still in the dark about that summer.) But after a good start to their sixth year, Harry had gone silent and morose again when the messages started appearing on the castle walls not long before the Christmas holiday, and the members of the DA started to disappear...

Ron knew that he also shouldn't have been the least bit surprised about the experiences of their seventh year producing a change in Harry as well, but even taking that into account Harry had been decidedly strange since he'd got rid of Voldemort once and for all two months before he bought St Clare's. By turns moody and effusive, Ron never knew which Harry he was going to encounter on any given day. The invitation to meet him seemed to have come on one of Harry's "up" days, but Ron knew that it could turn into a "down" day with absolutely no notice and he tended to tread very lightly around his best friend since they'd left school. Two years later Harry was just as unpredictable.

The first time he'd Apparated to the graveyard Harry had asked Ron whether he thought she'd like it. Ron was taken aback, since he didn't think Harry had even asked her to marry him yet, plus she still had a year of school to go. Harry had laughed, saying that he wasn't there because he was planning a wedding--he'd bought the old chapel. It was going to be his home. But he admitted that it would be good for a wedding, eventually, as well.

Ron shook the memory from his brain as he picked his way through the headstones and other grander monuments. He didn't fancy the idea of living in the middle of a graveyard, but Harry had said that he thought it would make a nice place for children to play. "It should give them a good healthy attitude toward death. I could have used that when I was a kid. Now that I've been through the Veil and back--"

"Yeah, well I went through the Veil and back with you, and I still think it's morbid to live in a graveyard," Ron had said, shuddering. Harry had merely laughed.

When Ron came to the vestry door he knocked on it loudly; the door swung open after a half minute, but it was Neville Longbottom, not Harry, who admitted him. Neville looked like he'd been gardening and had come to Durham without changing his clothes. He still wore muddy wellies that, Ron could see, were tracking footprints on the stone flags of the entryway.

"Ron! I'm glad you're here! Can you please do something to calm him down?" Neville hissed at him.

"How bad is he?" Ron whispered, trying to peer into the entrance's dark recesses, in case Harry was hovering nearby.

"Worse than his wedding day, and you remember how bad that was..."

"Bloody hell," Ron muttered. "What's he doing, exactly?"

"Well, he's not really coping with the wizarding world at the moment, let's put it that way." Neville spoke with one dirt-encrusted hand to the side of his mouth, as though that would keep Harry from hearing him.

Ron slapped himself on the brow. "Not again. If he hates everything magical so much why didn't he just break his wand and go off to live with Muggles?"

"Well, he's not like this all the time. Just last week he summoned a--"

"I wasn't looking for an answer, Longbottom," Ron said, rolling his eyes and walking past Neville, his thin summer robe billowing out behind him like a cape.

"So sorry, Weasley." Neville sighed wearily. "I never can tell when someone's asking a rhetonical--rhetoral--you know. A question that doesn't need to be answered," Neville mumbled. "But some people find it, erm, endearing..."

Ron smirked. "Like your girlfriend?"

Neville turned bright red. "Well--yes. Anyway, maybe you can get him to--"

"Ron!"

Ron jerked his head up as Harry came striding across the huge drawing room toward him, his hair standing on end as it always had done and his vivid green eyes looking wild. Harry grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him vigorously. He looked like he hadn't shaved in days. "Ron! Thank goodness you're here! I've been going mad trying to convince them that I should be with her! I have to be there, I have to make sure she's going to be all right..."

Ron took Harry's hands off him, gently but firmly, then pointed wordlessly at a chair by the fire; Ron sat in a chair opposite him. "It's going to be okay, Harry. Slow down and tell me who's with her."

Sweat beaded on Harry's brow as he regarded his best friend. "Madam Porter and your mum, and Neville said Hermione's getting here as soon as she can. But I want to be with her! And why do we have to do this here instead of at St Mungo's?"

Ron laughed for a moment, but forced himself to sober when he saw Harry's face. "St Mungo's? Muggles may go to hospital for this, but then their doctors also cut people up and sew them back together and all sorts of other barbaric things. She's not sick, Harry, she's giving birth. And just about any magical means of getting her to St Mungo's would probably be pretty dangerous in her state."

Harry nodded. "Right. Floo? No good. The spinning. The Knight Bus? A bloody disaster. You'd think wizards could have worked out some comfortable means of travel by now. She couldn't exactly get there on a broom, either...."

"This is a perfectly natural thing, Harry," Neville chimed in. "Madam Porter is the best midwife around, and I brought her some herbs she asked for from my greenhouse, to make a nice tea that helps with labour. Witches have been using the same herbs to help women in childbirth for thousands of years. Don't you remember your history of magic? Before the Secrecy, Muggles always used to go to witches for help. They knew what to do--"

"Sometimes," Harry said, his voice shaking. "And then sometimes when things happened that witches couldn't deal with they ended up being hounded out of town. What if something goes wrong? Her water broke before she had any contractions. I was reading about that; it's dangerous to have a dry birth..."

He was up and pacing again; Ron grimaced at Neville. "Good one, Neville. Very helpful," he said dryly. "Did Hermione tell you to say all of that?"

Neville made a face at Ron that gave him the appearance of being eleven again. Ron stood and put his hand on Harry's shoulder, trying to still his frenzied pacing. "Harry. Mate. It'll be all right. I know you've got no experience with how wizards handle this--"

"And you do? She's only going on nineteen, I'm going on twenty--" He wrung his hands.

"Well, weren't your mum and dad about nineteen or twenty when you were born, Harry?" Neville asked.

"Yes, but that--well, it just seems different. I feel like I'm still a kid! Like I just got my Hogwarts letter--"

Ron raised his eyebrows. "And yet you got married. Eleven year olds aren't known for that, you know. Not sure when I'll feel ready myself..."

Neville cleared his throat. "Erm, right. There's a surprise. That wouldn't have anything to do with having the emotional range of a teaspoon, now would it--?"

Ron bristled. "If you've got something to say to me, Longbottom, then say it, instead of just spewing up things you've heard Hermione say!"

Neville looked defiantly at him. "If I do, then I shall," he answered stoutly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Listen, if the pair of you are trying to distract me--"

But just at that moment another distraction appeared. Molly Weasley was running down one of the twin staircases that led up to the bedrooms from the drawing room, which had once been the sanctuary. Harry remembered his wedding day, eight months earlier, when he had watched her descending those stairs on her father's arm....

"Harry! The first one's here! It's a girl!" Mrs Weasley exclaimed, tears in her eyes.

"A girl!" Harry exclaimed; he moved his lips after that, but he seemed to have lost his voice, although he looked happy. Neville and Ron thumped him on the back, laughing, and Harry finally managed to speak again. "What--what's she look like?"

"Bright red and screaming like a banshee," Molly said, beaming at him. "And the blackest hair I've ever seen on a baby."

"Eyes?"

"Two of them, mostly closed still. And two hands, feet, ears, all the other parts in good order. Now I'd best get back upstairs to help with the other one..."

"What other one?" Harry asked blankly.

"Why, the other baby! It's twins! I thought you knew..." she trailed off, looking helplessly at him. Harry gawped at her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry couldn't believe his ears. "When--when you said the first one I thought you meant--Oh, bloody hell. Twins." He sat down hard on the nearest chair. Mrs Weasley made a clucking noise as she went back up the stairs.

"You'll get used to the idea soon enough--"

But all Harry could do was stare into space. Twins. He was going to be the father of twins.... "Wait!" he cried, springing to his feet and sprinting up the stairs after Mrs Weasley. "I'm coming up! I should have been with her from the start...."

"Now, Harry, I thought you understood, this is women's business...."

"No! She is my wife! She has just given birth to my daughter, she's going to give birth again and I don't give a damn what wizards do--this is what I am doing!"

They were on the same step now; he glared down at Mrs Weasley, hoping that he looked intimidating. She couldn't keep eye contact with him and looked away, shaking her head.

"Harry, it's just not done. That's so--so--"

"Muggle?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Erm, well--" she sputtered. Harry strode up the stairs and went to the bedroom door.

"While you're thinking about that, my wife is giving birth to another baby, and I don't intend to miss it this time!" He entered the bedroom. He knew one thing for certain: now that he knew they were having twins, he intended to find out why she hadn't told him. He felt certain that she'd known, and she knew how he felt about important information being kept from him...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After Harry returned to London from Tilda's house he and Ginny never did have the opportunity to meet up with Luna and Dean at the twins' joke shop in Diagon Alley. That August had been filled with yet more housecleaning at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, while Harry tried to worm more information out of Remus Lupin about what had happened on the night of his sixteenth birthday. Dumbledore never seemed to have the time to talk to him and the one person Harry was not interested in speaking to was Snape. He assumed that that would have been fruitless anyway, as Snape never did like Harry knowing too much, it seemed.

But Remus told him exactly what Dumbledore had. Finally, Harry decided that it wasn't wrong for him to write to Mrs Figg to ask after Tilda; Dumbledore had said that he shouldn't contact Tilda, not that he shouldn't ask anyone else about her. It took a long time for her to answer, and when she did it sounded like Dumbledore had written her letter for her. Harry tore it up in disgust, trying to figure out how he could possibly find out whether Tilda was really all right.

He finally decided to take a chance on writing to his Aunt Petunia; he took up most of the space in the letter asking about how she liked the repairs to the house and apologising profusely for the repairs being necessary, hoping that she would then tell him what he wanted to know. Almost as a postscript to the letter he asked casually about how his old grammar school teacher, Miss Harrison, was doing.

Harry had not forgotten how much his aunt liked to gossip. She wrote back promptly, saying that Miss Harrison's house was to let, that she hadn't been seen since the beginning of August, and some people said she'd disappeared before that, as they'd seldom seen her out of doors. Others were saying that she'd contracted some horrid fatal disease and had had to go off to live in a sanitorium somewhere--if she was in fact still alive, for there was no forwarding address on file at the post office and her brother had come to empty out the Little Whinging house.

Harry couldn't believe it. They'd lied to him. Tilda wasn't all right; she had died that night and they didn't want to tell him. Or she'd been so badly injured she'd needed to be hospitalised permanently, so Jack had taken care of the contents of her house....

He'd received the letter from his aunt, who had evidently not minded using owl post if it gave her the opportunity to spread particularly gloomy gossip, just before the first Quidditch match of the season, against Hufflepuff. Harry had gone up on his broom with the others, having been reinstated as the Gryffindor Seeker (Ginny was now playing Chaser), but his heart wasn't in the game.

Tilda was gone and it was all his fault.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"She'll only kick you out!" Molly called after Harry, starting to follow him back to the bedroom. "I know I would have, if Arthur had tried such a stunt," she continued, an edge to her voice.

Suddenly she stopped short; a milky white figure loomed up abruptly through the stairs and then floated a few inches above the staircase, scrutinising Molly Weasley closely. She backed down a few steps in surprise, her hand fluttering to her chest.

"He just wants to see his wife bringing forth his bairn, Molly," the ghost rasped at her, his silvery magic eye rotating so that he was looking through the back of his head . As far as she knew it was all for show, but she didn't know for certain whether he could still see out of the back of his (ghostly) head, or through other solid objects. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the apparition.

"This is none of your business, Alastor. Let me pass."

The ghost of Mad-Eye Moody shrugged eloquently. "I'm not keeping you from passing, Molly. You are free to go up," he said mildly, pointing at the door where Harry had disappeared. Ron remembered that when Harry had told Ron that Moody had followed him to St Clare's from Hogwarts he'd had mixed feelings about it, due to his lingering, nagging guilt. Ron could see that there were other downsides now.

"You know I don't like walking through you," she said in annoyance, as he was still blocking her way. "You're cold."

"You won't try to remove Potter?" he asked her slowly, raising one ghostly eyebrow so that it disappeared into his white-grey bird's nest of insubstantial hair.

She huffed in defeat. "I promise. Now may I--?"

But Moody had already soared away from her and was now sitting upon one of the trusses high above the floor, supporting the steeply pitched roof. "Of course, Molly. I wouldn't dream of stopping you."

She stomped up the stairs, grumbling under her breath, and when she entered the bedroom again Harry was sitting by the bed, holding his wife's hand and speaking softly to her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry had watched the others zip around the pitch after the Quaffle at that first Quidditch match; he watched Ron block most of the Hufflepuff attempts to score and watched Ginny, Katie Bell and Parvati (the other new Chaser) score on the Hufflepuff Keeper with no feeling of elation, no gladness, now that he knew the truth about Tilda, thanks to his aunt. The world seemed flat and uninteresting to him and he wondered whether anyone would even notice if he just flew off and let the Hufflepuff Seeker catch the Snitch....

But then he caught sight of a quite outlandish thing in the seats: a very large lion's head, roaring loudly when Ron caught the Quaffle once more. It was Luna Lovegood, wearing her Gryffindor hat again, and suddenly Harry's stomach gave a lurch and he felt like he'd woken from a deep sleep. He thought of the things Tilda had said about Luna, and about finding a girl near his own age to be with. He thought about what he could do to honour Tilda's memory....

When Luna didn't come to the Gryffindor common room for the victory party, however, he felt himself slip into gloom again, thinking once more of Cedric, Sirius, Moody, the unknown Muggle and especially Tilda, all dead because of him. Ginny caught him moping in the corner and tried to draw him out with the promise of entertainment (Ron didn't know that he was about to pop a Chick N'Chocolate into his mouth). Harry stayed where he was and told her quietly about the letter from his aunt.

She'd gone silent, staring at the carpet, letting him speak, and he was grateful. Unfortunately, Ron had to make too much of it, later going on as though they'd been snogging in front of everyone instead of just sitting quietly and talking. Ginny told Ron she liked him better as a rooster and stormed off to her dormitory while Harry went to bed, thinking about Tilda and Luna and repeatedly getting mixed up in his head about who was who....

Harry knew what he had to do. He finally worked up the nerve to ask Luna to go to Hogsmeade with him, but it didn't work out as he planned at all. She looked blankly at him after he'd managed to stutter out the invitation. Harry wondered for a moment whether she was Petrified before she finally spoke, explaining patiently to him, as though he were an feeble-minded, that she didn't fancy him.

Even as she spoke a voice in his head was demanding of him, How on earth could you think she was anything like Tilda? Is this how you're going to remember her? He looked back at Luna, speechless, wishing he'd never spoken.

Unfortunately, Draco Malfoy stumbled into the Entrance Hall when Luna was turning Harry down and soon the entire school was singing an insulting limerick about Harry fancying Loony Lovegood, who, despite her looniness at least had the good taste to stay away from Scarhead Potter. It served to distract him from thinking about Tilda (and Sirius and Moody and the others) only a little, and certainly didn't cheer him up at all, although the newly-arrived ghost of Mad-Eye Moody following Malfoy through the corridors, taunting him about his dad was a slight bright spot.

On the day of the Hogsmeade trip he'd wandered aimlessly around the village on his own, trying to ignore Mundungus Fletcher (dressed as a woman again) following him. He didn't want to intrude on Ron and Hermione's day out together. He started to approach Ginny in the Three Broomsticks at one point, but when Luna returned to their table with two butterbeers Harry turned on his heel and walked in the other direction; the last thing he needed was for everyone to think he was still pursuing Luna.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Molly Weasley couldn't help but smile at Harry when she entered the bedroom; while a part of her recoiled at this departure from wizarding tradition, another part of her was softened by the romantic gesture of her daughter's young husband. That it was Harry also helped soften her. Of course, as far as she was concerned they were both babies, and far too young to be married or have babies themselves. But after he'd proposed and Ginny had accepted Molly couldn't help but be swept away with the general enthusiasm for the match. She never dreamed that so quickly after the wedding she'd become a grandmother for the first time--and through her youngest child! Well, she thought, being a parent was far different from being a child. Ginny--and Harry--would quickly learn that. The shoe was on the other foot.

Harry looked up and saw her beaming at him, only a flicker of doubt behind her eyes. She took the first squalling baby from Madam Porter and proceeded to wash her while Harry murmured encouragement to Ginny and let her clutch painfully at his hand.

The moment he'd entered the room and seen her face he knew he'd done the right thing. Sweaty ginger tendrils clung to her forehead and her eyes were dark with pain as she rode the wave of each contraction and came closer and closer to delivering their second child. Four years earlier, facing Voldemort on the lawn of Mrs Figg's house, he never would have dreamed that this would be possible--he hadn't even expected to be alive, let alone married and a father--but during the intervening time he'd experienced many surprises, good and bad. As he held her hand firmly he tried to smile reassuringly at her, the nicest surprise he'd ever had by far....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Since the DA was to be an official school club this meant that anyone who applied had to be admitted, and that included Slytherins. Harry wasn't running it alone but in tandem with the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Carpenter. Harry still derived a great deal of satisfaction from being able to tell Draco Malfoy what to do at the meetings. Moody's ghost tended to show up quite a lot and tell people what to do as well, which Harry only minded sometimes, when he remembered that it was his fault that Moody was dead.

That was before the members of the DA began to disappear and the messages, written in blood, appeared again on the walls of the school:

The Heir shall rise again and take back what is His.

Ginny denied doing it, but Harry knew that everyone suspected her. He wasn't even certain how anyone had found out what had happened four years earlier, but everyone seemed to know. She told him and Ron and Hermione that she wasn't missing any time, she wasn't writing in any diaries, she knew exactly where she was and what she was doing at all times. She told Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore the same thing. But everyone started avoiding her anyway.

And still the disappearances continued.

Every time there was another disappearance Harry felt Voldemort's glee pass through him and he knew that whoever was doing it was working for him. But Harry's behaviour when this occurred--his hysterical laughter even disrupted History of Magic once and made everyone cross because he'd woken them from a sound slumber--also led to many people beginning to avoid him, as well. He began to have dreams, dreams that he was walking through an empty world, that everyone else had disappeared, that Ron and Hermione were gone, plus Ginny and Neville and Dean and Seamus, and the rest of the Weasleys, and all of the Hogwarts teachers.... He was alone, utterly alone....

The DA stopped meeting. At any rate, the only people attending were Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville, since the other four were just about the only people left in the school who were willing to be in the same room with Harry or Ginny. The Slytherins stopped attending as soon as a Daily Prophet article linked the DA with the disappearances, implying that someone in the club was using meetings as a way to prey upon fellow students. The article hinted strongly that it was Ginny or Harry (the article also revealed that he laughed hysterically whenever a disappearance occurred) and again Harry wondered how anyone had found out about what had really happened during her first year. He had certainly never told anyone. He didn't bother wondering who was telling the Prophet about his Voldemort-induced laughter; it could be anyone in the school, student or teacher, as it had even occurred when he was having meals in the Great Hall.

Somehow, being the school's two outcasts meant that they had been thrown together far more than they ever had been before. Harry wasn't sorry; Ginny was his friend now and a good listener. He didn't dream, at the time, that they would ever be more than friends...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ginny grunted and squeezed Harry's hand. When the pain had subsided, he asked her, "Ginny, why didn't you tell me it was twins? How could you not have known?"

Ginny bit her lip, her eyes filling with tears. "I'm sorry, Harry. You--you were already so worried about the baby and being a good father...I thought you'd be fretting even more if I told you we were having two babies. I'm sorry..."

Harry kissed her brow. "I love you, you know that. You don't have to keep things from me because you think I'll be upset. It would have been nice to know. You always used to tell me everything...."

Ginny looked rueful. "Well, not everything. I didn't tell you the reason for Dean not fancying me."

"No, you let Dean do that, which was only right. I don't mean that you need to tell me other people's secrets. But this--this shouldn't have been a secret between us..."

He couldn't bring himself to chide her for this anymore, however, as she cried out again and the wave of the contraction went on and on.... It seemed to Harry that the time when she'd be out of her agony was further and further away, not closer, and he wished he could still cheer her up by playing a simple game of Quidditch with her, or just flying about on their brooms....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He found her sitting in the library during the Easter holiday, looking as though she'd been crying; she greeted him brightly when she noticed him but it struck a false note, somehow. When Harry asked her what was wrong Ginny admitted that it was Dean. She hadn't talked to him much about Dean since the summer, but he had assumed everything was all right. They didn't behave as other couples but seemed friendly enough when they were together. However, he discovered that they never had been a couple, technically. Ginny laughed ruefully, telling him how stupid she'd been, how presumptuous. She'd hung about with him for months, assuming that he fancied her, and he'd finally realised that she thought this and set her straight, mortified that he had given her the wrong impression.

"So, you don't think it was because--" Harry began tentatively.

"--because he thinks I'm a homicidal maniac? No, I don't think so. Probably not," she added, sounding less sure. "I still feel quite stupid, assuming that he--" She closed her mouth tightly, looking out the window at the bright spring day, and he thought she was perhaps embarrassed and afraid she might cry again. He put his hand over hers and squeezed.

"Well, I think he's a right idiot," he said stoutly.

She turned and no longer looked like she might cry; instead she looked afraid of something. Of him? He couldn't be sure, but she gently pulled her hand out from under his and held both of her hands together in her lap, thanking him quietly. "He still wants to be friends and all that," she said hurriedly. "He said he's really sorry if he misled me. I told him it was my fault, that I was just incredibly thick..."

"I still think he's the idiot," Harry said, swallowing, feeling strange, both like he wanted to run away and never leave this spot at the same time. When Ginny stood and said she wanted to go flying he went with her, although he had a nagging feeling that she had wanted to do this alone. But after flying around the pitch for a while, then fetching a Quaffle so that Harry could help her practice for the Quidditch final, they were laughing and windblown, and he thought that just maybe she'd forgotten about her heartbreak over Dean, for a little while.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Come on, Ginny, you can do it!" Harry encouraged her.

"You're nearly there!" Madam Porter told her. "You already did it once...."

Her face was screwed up in pain and concentration; when she stopped and panted for breath the midwife informed her again that she was nearly there.

"Nearly?" Ginny snapped at her. "What do you mean by nearly? Am I going to get this bloody baby out of me once and for all or not?"

"Now, now, dear," Molly said, clucking her tongue and mopping Ginny's brow with a soft flannel. "You don't want to speak that way to Madam Porter. She helped me deliver you, she did, and all of your brothers. And if you want her to help you the next time--"

"Next time?" Ginny howled, pushing her mother's hand away. "You think there's going to be a next time? There's no way I'm ever doing this again!" she said adamantly.

Harry felt a slight pang at her words, but he saw the pain in her eyes and kissed the hand that he held. "That's just fine with me, Ginny. We don't need to have more babies..."

"That's fine with you? Fine? If it weren't, did you think you could force me to do this again?" she said, her voice rising on a screech. Harry swallowed.

"Erm, no, of course not..." he said quickly, hoping with all his might that the second baby would be born very soon. "It'll all be over soon, Ginny," he said, trying to sound confident. "You faced him twice, we both did, and you can do this twice too. And then after that, never again..."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When Harry and Ginny returned to the Gryffindor common room together just after dark Harry fully expected Ron to tease them about being together again, and Harry decided that he'd show Ron for once and pretend that they had been off together, doing something other than playing Quidditch. But just as he entered the room he felt his scar send a searing pain through his head again and the hysterical laughter threatening to rise to the surface once more. It was worse than ever and Harry thought his head would explode from the pain. After it finally subsided he wasn't a bit surprised that Ron passed up the opportunity for some prime matchmaking-teasing; his face was gloomier than Harry had seen it in a long time as he gave them the news:

The Quidditch final was cancelled.

Harry had already guessed, from how overjoyed Voldemort was, that more students had disappeared. Katie Bell and Parvati Patil had gone missing, and half the Ravenclaw team as well. More messages about the Heir appeared on the walls of the castle. And then, in his dreams, he saw Nott, the thin, quiet Slytherin boy, looking blankly at him before falling backward and appearing to be comatose. The tips of the fingers on his left hand were black. And in the background was a voice, a familiar voice, taunting Harry....

The next morning Nott wasn't in the Great Hall for breakfast and when Harry grudgingly went to Snape to ask where Nott was, Snape told him snidely not to worry; he was in the hospital wing, he hadn't disappeared like the others. Only then did Harry realise that Slytherin house alone had been exempt from the disappearances. He went to the hospital wing to see Nott, finding him looking exactly as he had in his dreams, down to the black-tipped fingers of his left hand. He was white as a sheet otherwise, barely breathing. His suspicions were confirmed. Harry had seen someone look like this before.

He knew what had happened.

However, by then the board of governors had stepped in and decided to close the school. Neville, Luna and numerous other students were removed by their families. Dumbledore went to meet with the governors in an attempt to change their minds. And then Ron and Hermione disappeared and the Ministry sent Aurors to get Ginny. Harry knew she had nothing to do with what had been happening and was torn between rescuing her, to keep her safe, and rescuing the others, for he now thought he knew where they were (assuming that they were alive).

He told Professor Carpenter what he thought had happened and Carpenter recommended that they combine these missions; they went together with Ginny to the girls' bathroom and entered the Chamber of Secrets, where, sure enough, they found the missing students, some nearly starved. They summoned brooms to get them out of the chamber, but when Harry and Ginny re-emerged from the Chamber with Carpenter, they found the Aurors waiting for them. They'd been looking for Ginny and someone had led them right to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

Draco Malfoy.

McGonagall was there too, and Harry quickly explained to her what had happened, that it was all Malfoy's doing. To his surprise, Professor Carpenter stopped him.

"We have no proof, Potter, that Malfoy has done anything." He turned to Draco Malfoy, his tawny-grey locks whirling as he did so. "I assume that you brought the Aurors here, Mr Malfoy, because you suspected that Miss Weasley had returned to the entrance to the Chamber--?"

"Yes!" Draco Malfoy proclaimed, looking quite pleased that a professor was backing him up. "Thanks to me everyone knew that Weasley had opened the Chamber last time. I knew that she'd probably done it again!" Carpenter nodded sagely, his hand on Malfoy's shoulder. Harry was horrified.

"Ginny can't open the Chamber! You need to be a Parselmouth to open the Chamber--"

Malfoy smirked. "Oho. I think we know who helped her then, don't we Parselmouth Potter?"

"You only knew about Ginny and the Chamber because of your dad!" Harry cried, furious. "He's the one who made it happen, not Ginny and not me! Your Death Eater dad!"

Kingsley hesitated; other than Tonks, the Aurors did not look moved by Harry's story. McGonagall demanded the right, as deputy headmistress, to question him and Ginny in the headmaster's study before releasing them to the Ministry. Kingsley was in charge of the Aurors present, including Tonks, and he granted this request nervously, noticing how restive the others were. Harry thought something in his face seemed to say that he was on the same page as McGonagall but also worried about his position in the Ministry. Carpenter took Malfoy off to his study to talk to him, nodding his leonine head sagely as Malfoy ranted about Potter having it in for him; only when Harry met Professor Carpenter's amber eyes behind his wire-rimmed spectacles for a moment, before he loped off with Malfoy, did Harry realise what he was really doing.

Once they were in the tower study McGonagall lost no time in summoning their brooms so that they might escape, as she didn't doubt Harry's version of events in the least. The brooms came soaring in the open windows but Harry knew that this alone was not the answer. He and Ginny flew up to the West Tower while McGonagall stalled the Aurors. Once on the tower he summoned something else.... When it came soaring up to them Ginny gasped. It was Riddle's diary, which had been repaired, as Harry had suspected. He opened it and began to write:

This is Harry Potter, Riddle. It was Nott who wrote in the diary, wasn't it? Somehow Malfoy or his mum repaired it and Malfoy gave it to him, didn't he?

"Yes, Harry, he did," came a familiar voice behind him.

Harry turned to see Tom Riddle for the second time in his life. Riddle laughed at him, at how thin Harry still was four years later, the fact that he wasn't a prefect, and at how he'd failed to keep the school from closing, which would mean that Voldemort could take it over and make it his own, using it as a staging ground for conquering the wizarding world. When Riddle made lewd remarks to Ginny about how she had changed Harry felt a murderous rage move through him.

Ginny snatched up the diary, tossing it to Harry and hopping onto her broom, urging him to follow her. They would destroy the diary once and for all and no one could ever use it again. Harry followed her swiftly, but Riddle had acquired a wand--probably from Nott--and he summoned Harry's broom while he was twisting around to look behind him. He lost his grip and started falling, losing the diary as he fell. The ground was rushing up at him, up, up, up--

And then, with a jerk that took his breath away, Ginny grabbed his robes, struggling to keep hold of him. There were tears running down her face as they landed and Harry lay on the ground next to her looking at her in amazement, not quite processing the fact that she'd just saved his life. As they lay on the grass their faces were very close together, which was the only reason he could hear the words she gasped out:

"Just--like--Ron--when--Malfoy--tried--to--" She took great gulping breaths. "I--couldn't--bear--to--let--that--happen--again--could've--died--"

Harry didn't answer her, just looked at her as though he'd memorise her face. His heart was hammering in his head and their faces were still very close together, and growing closer. "Ginny," he gasped; "you--you saved my life--"

She looked frightened again, like that day in the library. "Well," she whispered, "I reckon that--that the shoe's on the other foot. We're even now." It seemed that they were looking at each other for a long time when her eyes suddenly widened. "The diary!" Ginny gasped suddenly, springing up. It was lying on the ground about twenty feet away. Riddle stood next to it, laughing. Harry summoned it again but Riddle continued to laugh.

"When are you going to admit you've lost, Potter? You have no basilisk tooth this time. And when I add my power to my older self, you two and the rest of the wizarding world shall know what true fear--"

"Evanesco!" Harry cried, ignoring him and pointing his wand at the diary, which suddenly and silently vanished. Riddle also disappeared suddenly and silently, in mid-sentence. Harry sat down on the ground, hard, staring at Ginny, hardly daring to believe that the nightmare was over. He was still breathing rather hard from the excitement and as he sat next to Ginny it seemed that their faces were very close again....

But suddenly Professor McGonagall was striding across the lawn with Kingsley and the other Aurors. Harry and Ginny were scrambling to their feet and telling them what had happened. Kingsley's colleagues were disbelieving until they all reached the hospital wing, where Nott had awoken upon the destruction of the diary. He began to tell them everything.

After all of the students who had been trapped in the Chamber were in good health again Dumbledore allowed the Quidditch final to go on, which Gryffindor won. Harry searched for Ginny in the jubilant crowd; he thought he saw her well ahead of him, being carried by a laughing Neville Longbottom, which made him laugh as well. Ron was in his element again and Harry was surprised by still more good news when he returned to the castle.

Peter Pettigrew had been captured by the Ministry. He had confessed to everything and had posthumously cleared Sirius's name. Harry was shocked and wanted to know how.

"It was you, Harry, who gave me the idea," Dumbledore told him in his study. Harry was missing the celebration party, but he hardly minded. "You mentioned months ago that it was too bad that Professor Trelawney's other genuine prophecy had already been fulfilled. I admit that I had forgotten utterly about that. I spoke to a friend in the Department of Ministries and discovered exactly where the record of that prophecy was being kept. Luckily, it had not been damaged during your visit to the Department last year. It was properly labeled as having been given by Sybill to you, Harry, and also that it concerned Pettigrew and Voldemort. All I needed to do at that point was to tell Tom--in my roundabout way--that it existed and that Pettigrew was the one who could touch it.... Of course he sent him to the Ministry to retrieve it, not knowing that it was of extreme unimportance, as prophecies go. Although I must say--Pettigrew was surprisingly calm about being apprehended...."

"He wanted to be caught," Harry whispered, a strange feeling in his stomach.

"Perhaps," Dumbledore said cautiously. "It remains to be seen whether we shall learn anything useful from him...."

But somehow the satisfaction of knowing that his parents' betrayer, the man who'd framed Sirius, was in prison at last did not make Harry as happy as he'd once thought it would. He found himself watching Ginny repeatedly during the few remaining days in the term, wondering where she was when she wasn't in the Gryffindor common room or had already left the Gryffindor table during meals in the Great Hall. However, he wasn't really sure what he would say to her if they were in the same room. He thought about how she'd held her head up when the entire school had turned against her, feeling proud of this for no reason he could name. Suddenly he felt tongue-tied around her and as though he had too many hands and feet. He also felt that he'd never really properly thanked her for saving his life....

He, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny and Luna once more shared a compartment on the train back to London. Harry avoided Ginny's eye on the trip and was grateful that Neville was spending so much time engaging her in conversation. He spoke awkwardly to Luna while she gazed unperturbed at Ron. Hermione gave her the evil eye.

Harry was returning to the Dursleys' for the last time, something he would never again have to endure. He only hoped that Aunt Marge wouldn't be visiting them this year, or at least that she would wait until he'd left the house for the last time. It seemed much longer than only a year since he'd last made this journey, full of grief and guilt over Sirius. He didn't feel like the same person, somehow. He hung back and was one of the last people off the train, evidently more reluctant to leave than anyone else, which did not surprise him.

What did surprise him was that Ginny was the second most-reluctant. She was still on the platform, awkwardly juggling her rucksack, her broom and the handle of the trolley that held her trunk. Harry called to her to wait, pulling his trolley with his trunk and Hedwig's cage after him, nearly making the cage crash onto the tracks. He was still trying to catch his breath when he reached her. At the look on his face she stopped dead, letting go of her trolley.

"What--what is it, Harry?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"I--I never--what I mean is--you saved my life, and--" He stared at her; she looked up at him, very still. She seemed to be waiting for something. He leaned forward suddenly and kissed her on the mouth, very quickly. When he had pulled back she looked at him strangely. "I never--never thanked you properly," he tried to explain quickly. Ginny dropped her rucksack and broom and put her hand in his, stepping closer to him.

"You call that thanking me properly?" she whispered. He didn't hesitate this time; the second time he kissed her his arms wound about her and her hands slid up his arms to twine around his neck; he decided that it was completely unlike kissing Cho, but just at the point that he started to worry about her being bored, or checking her watch, she suddenly sprang back from him and covered her mouth in horror. That was definitely not how he wanted her to respond....

A moment later he jumped in surprise as Neville Longbottom came back through the barrier. "Oh, there you are, Ginny!" he said brightly. "Come on, then! They're waiting to meet you! You're my first girlfriend ever, so all of them have come--Uncle Algie, Aunt Enid, and Gran, of course. Now, I know you met Gran before, but that was really fast, that time at St Mungo's...."

Harry dropped his jaw, staring at the pair of them in shock. Ginny looked even more horrified than she had just after she had pulled away from him. Responding to Harry's look of surprise, Neville laughed and took Ginny's rucksack and broom from her, clasping her other hand as she resumed pulling her trolley. As she followed him to the barrier, she turned and mouthed to Harry, I'm so sorry! I forgot!

He watched them go helplessly, then had to withstand hearing Neville introduce her to his grandmother as his girlfriend while he was getting into the Dursleys' car. Ginny looked back at Harry in distress before nervously turning to shake Mrs Longbottom's hand.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Here she comes!" the midwife cried while Harry held Ginny's hand and their second daughter emerged into the world. It all passed in a blur for Harry. Before he knew it he was holding their younger daughter and Ginny was proudly holding their firstborn while Ron, Neville, Hermione and Luna burst in upon them, exclaiming over the babies and making Mrs Weasley and Madam Porter scold them for being so noisy.

When they were preparing for bed that night it hardly seemed real; Ginny nursed the babies one at a time, sitting in bed next to Harry, who leaned his head on her shoulder and watched the identical little mouths suck, the identical round cheeks moving quickly.

"Aren't you glad now that you told Neville that you realised you didn't fancy him after all?" he whispered as he watched his firstborn fall asleep in his arms. Her long lashes were very black on her pale cheeks.

Ginny laughed wearily. "When did you think I wasn't glad? Luckily, he took it well enough. And it made him realise that he still really fancied Hermione, so it was all for the best."

"Well, I'm not sure he really thought so until Ron had that huge row with Hermione and broke off with her...."

Ginny laughed, then winced as the younger baby gave her breast a tug. "I'm not sure I thought that was all for the good, either, at the time. How many months was it before they spoke to each other again?"

They sat in bed together, talking over old times and the times to come, admiring their daughters and feeling, for the first time, like a real family.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When Ron Apparated to the graveyard at St Clare's again a week later he wasn't alone; Luna, Neville, Hermione and Parvati had already appeared and were walking up the drive toward the entry. He jogged slightly to catch up to them and Harry looked slightly taken aback to find them on his doorstep in a crowd when he opened the door.

Ron shook his head as he scraped his boots on the mat and Neville waited to do the same. The women went ahead into the drawing room, carrying gifts; he heard them exclaiming over the babies. Although she was carrying two small packages Parvati was also offering to do an astrological chart for each child; she had a thriving business as a medium in Diagon Alley, renting the space above the twins' joke shop.

"Rather inconvenient, this Apparating to the graveyard, Harry, don't you think?" he said to his best friend. "And I still say it's bloody gloomy to land in the middle of a bunch of tombstones as well. I don't see why we couldn't Apparate right into the house..."

"Ron," Harry said, accepting a baby gift from Neville, "we don't want people literally popping in. This is more secure. We have anti-Apparation jinxes on the house."

"Well then, put your fire on the bloody Floo network. At least you can do that for talking to people, even if you refuse to do it for transportation," he grumbled, entering the drawing room. Ginny and Harry's fireplace, on the other hand, was unlike any he'd ever seen before. It was a square assembled from large flat stones, about seven feet to a side, sitting dead centre in the room with what looked like a large copper funnel over it; a very long copper flue ran up through the enormous space and out through the roof, high overhead. Squashy sofas and armchairs were arranged around one side of the fire while a long dining table and chairs were on the other. The open kitchen occupied the raised space at the front of the former sanctuary where sermons would once have been given, only a few steps up from the dining area.

"We don't want people's heads just popping in for a visit either," Ginny said testily as she held one of the babies in her arms.

"Yes, Ron, try joining the twenty-first century and using a telephone. We prefer it, frankly," Harry said, throwing himself onto the couch between Ginny and Hermione, who held the other baby. "We got mobiles for your mum and dad. To save trouble with the Muggle post the bills come to us. We could do that for you as well, but you'd have to reimburse us for the cost..."

"Actually," Hermione piped up, "we're not in the twenty-first century yet. It won't actually start until the beginning of next--" She froze, seeing their faces, then turned red. "Sorry. I'm doing it again...."

But Harry laughed and brushed his lips over the downy head of the baby she was holding. "It's all right, Hermione. But you understand, surely? You have a mobile after all. You call us."

"What about the kids?" Ron cut in, feeling irked that he couldn't even use Floo to call his sister and best friend but needed some Muggle contraption. "I mean--what are their names?"

Ginny and Harry looked at each other. "Well," Harry admitted, "we're still working on that, to tell you the truth." The others were horrified. "We were always going to name a girl after Hagrid--" Harry started to explain.

"Ugh!" Ron said immediately. "You're going to name one of them Hagrid? Are you trying to make my niece a social outcast before she can even walk or talk?"

Ginny sighed and rolled her eyes. "His first name was Rubeus, you git. The oldest one is named Ruby," she said, indicating the baby she was holding.

"Oh, that's lovely," Hermione breathed, rocking the other baby gently in her arms and cooing to her. She beamed up at Neville. "Don't you think this is as good a time as any to tell them--?"

Neville's round face went bright red; sitting on the arm of the couch and putting an arm around Hermione's shoulders as she held the baby, he looked round at the others, as though the baby were their newborn child. "We'd like you all to know that Hermione and I are going to be married."

Harry, Ginny and Parvati hugged and kissed them both and Luna seemed very happy. Ron bashfully hugged Hermione and shook Neville's hand while Neville said sheepishly to him, "No hard feelings, Ron?" as though he weren't quite certain.

Ron had a strange feeling in his stomach as he looked at the two of them and said, "No, of course not. Why should there be?"

Harry heard this and looked at his two best friends; somehow, from the look on Hermione's face, he thought that she seemed to think there should be. She glared at Luna, who looked back at her blankly.

"Congratulations, Hermione," Luna said flatly. She insinuated herself onto the edge of the ottoman on which Ron was sitting and took his arm possessively as she spoke; Ron looked like he had acquired an annoying parasite he wished to be rid of.

"Maybe someday soon we'll be getting the same news from the pair of you," Hermione said pointedly, her eyes meeting Ron's.

"Maybe," Ron said noncommittally.

"Well, you're already working for her dad," Parvati pointed out. "Mr Lovegood must approve of you to have taken you on..."

"And Daddy has never paid anyone for their articles before," Luna pointed out, holding tighter to Ron's arm. Harry thought he saw Ron wince and decided that he should rescue his best friend before this went any further.

"We still need help naming our other daughter!" he reminded them, taking the small bundle from a reluctant Hermione. "We had one girl's name picked out and one boy's, not two for girls."

"Well," Ron began gamely, looking grateful to Harry, "you have a Ruby. That's one Gryffindor colour: red. The other one is gold. There you go! Easy. She'll be Goldie."

Ginny made a face. "She's a little girl, Ron, not a retriever."

"There are people named Goldie," Ron said defensively. "Probably," he added uncertainly.

"Something else," Harry said quickly, seeing the look on Ginny's face.

"Something that means gold might not be a bad idea, though," Hermione said. "There are other options. Amber is a sort of gold colour, and they're both gems, sort of--"

Harry frowned. "Ruby and Amber. I don't really--"

"Aura," Luna said suddenly. "You know, a golden glow is like an aura...."

"No it isn't," Hermione said icily. "It's--"

"Wait!" Parvati said suddenly. "Aurora. It's the goddess of the dawn. She brings the sun's golden light..."

"And it's sort of the feminine of Auror--" Ginny added, clearly enthusiastic about this.

Harry kissed the top of his unnamed daughter's head and said, "If you think you'll talk me into going back to Auror training, Ginny, I won't. I told you. I don't want anything to take me away from you and our girls."

She sighed and said, "I know, Harry. I just wish you had something else to occupy your time. You still haven't found anything else you're half so interested in." There was an embarrassed silence; the others could tell that this was a conversation the married couple had had more than once.

"So," Ron said, breaking the awkward silence. "Aurora. Bit grand if you ask me, for such a little thing. How about Rory for short?"

"That's perfect!" Neville proclaimed. "Ruby and Rory!"

The name stuck and soon Harry could no longer remember what his life was like before Ruby and Rory Potter had come into it. Before he and Ginny knew it the twins were toddling around the tombstones outside St Clare's Chapel, just as Harry had told Ron they would. When they were first old enough for him to explain to them what the stones were it didn't bother them in the least, as he'd hoped.

Several years later he didn't even realise that he was feeling at loose ends when Dumbledore appeared in the graveyard silently, surprising Harry and giving lemon lollies to the girls, who'd been frolicking around a large obelisk while Harry watched them and gave Ginny time to visit her mum. He didn't expect to accept when Dumbledore offered him--and Ginny--the opportunity to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. But he did, and after thinking about it for a few days, Ginny finally did as well.

Harry was excited; he'd enjoyed teaching his fellow students in the DA, when he'd still been in school. Now he had the opportunity to do the same thing as a real teacher. He and Ginny would be a team, which would allow them to each spend time with the twins in their private quarters, although they would also engage a nanny for times when they both needed to be absent from their daughters.

When September came, they closed up St Clare's and the Potters moved to Hogwarts.

---