The Very Long Night Of Harry Potter

Chapter 9 - 12:00 Midnight

Ginny slumped like a puppet with its strings cut and toppled towards the floor. Only Healer Smethwyck's quick reaction kept her from landing on top of the shards of broken crystal from the potion vial. Recovering from their shock at Ginny's actions, Healers Andrews and Alexander ran to assist, helping Smethwyck with her dead weight, holding her in a fireman's carry between the three of them.

As they were struggling with the limp Weasley, Ron and Hermione heard Healer Pomfrey mutter under her breath, "Foolish girl," and then in a more normal tone, "Quickly, now. We haven't much time."

As they carried her to the ward's medical bed, placing her next to Harry, Mrs. Weasley said in an angry tone that barely hid her terror, "What are you doing!? You can't join her with Harry!"

She was deflected from her building momentum by the Senior Healer as the trio of Healers set to work on Ginny, racing to prepare her before their time ran out.

"No, Mrs. Weasley, we have to. Your daughter was right; we don't have a choice but to use her. That potion is designed to put people into a coma. If we don't connect your daughter to him right now, within our limited window of opportunity, she will descend into a true coma, and there will be no way of knowing when, or even if, she will come out of that. Please, let us do our jobs," she said, holding Harry's wand in her left hand, Ginny's in her right, having just retrieved it from the pile of crystal shards. Then she added to the fourth Healer in the ward, "Smethwyck, please go and get four doses of the Draught of Peace from the potions repository. I believe they are needed here."

"But... but..." Mrs. Weasley sputtered as Smethwyck left. Mr. Weasley, who looked to be on the verge of tears himself, pulled his wife into an embrace. She began to sob into his shoulder, feeling completely useless and totally helpless.

Ron and Hermione, still clutching each other, stared with horror and shock at Harry's and Ginny's bodies now laying side by side, shoulders touching, a nightmare version of many a dream shared by both of the people now lying motionless in the small ward.

Hermione tore her gaze away from them and buried her face into Ron's strong shoulder as Healer Alexander transfigured Ginny's robe into a hospital gown and magically bound her red hair into a plait, the magical medical monitor spell already cast and floating above the youngest Weasley.

Pomfrey looked over to her patients and subordinates. "Are we ready?" she asked in the voice of an experienced medical professional.

"Almost," came the curt and focused reply from Andrews, who seemed to be rubbing down Ginny's left temple with his wand, almost like a Muggle nurse wiping down an area in preparation for an injection. "Alright, we're good."

"Time," Pomfrey said flatly.

"We have... approximately one minute to begin the connection," Alexander stated.

"Alright then, let's get started."

Pomfrey moved to the head of the double bed and stood between Harry's and Ginny's heads. Holding each of the wands above the head of its owner, she looked up, an intense and focused expression on her face. "On three, then," she said, as Alexander and Andrews held their wands at the ready.

"One..." Hermione pulled her face away from the comforting, and now quite damp, surface of Ron's shoulder and turned towards her two comatose friends.

"Two..." Mrs. Weasley's face was currently a mixture of fear for her daughter and intense anger, the former promising hugs, kisses and coddling, the latter indicating that it might be safer for Ginny to stay in the coma with Voldemort until her mother passed out from exhaustion.

"Three!"

The Head Healer simultaneously tapped Harry's and Ginny's temples with their respective wands, withdrawing the tips with silvery strands of thought clinging to them. She looked up at her subordinates, both of whom were ready and waiting for her signal. "Three... two... one..." She brought the wand tips together, as the two younger Healers simultaneously cast spells on the smoky strands.

When the light from the spells faded, Ron looked at the space between the heads of his sister and best mate and stifled a gasp. Pomfrey had withdrawn the wands and now there was one continuous filament of wispy thought linking their temples, their bodies, their minds... their souls?

Ron was shaken out of his horrified reverie by Pomfrey's voice.

"Alright, looks like a good, clean connection. Concur?"

"Concur," chorused Andrews and Alexander.

Hermione looked at the monitor spells floating above Ginny's and Harry's heads. There, on Harry's, on the enlarged brain wave section, along with the bright graph lines labeled Potter and Riddle - and that being a compromise between her and Ron and the Healers, 'We can't bloody well put 'You-Know-Who' down on that thing, now can we?' he'd said- was a new, dim green line. Oh, Ginny, why...she thought, but then, she already knew why.

"Alright, then. Alexander, how much time do we have to complete the other six?"

"Approximately five minutes," was the almost toneless reply.

"Let's get cracking then," Pomfrey said as she placed the wands next to their owners' temples. "One... Two... Three..."

~*~*~*~*~

Ginny fell.

She fell for an instant.

She fell for an eternity.

Time had no meaning in the bottomless, cold, and dark pit she plummeted down.

There was only one thought in her mind as she plunged into the black abyss.

Hang on, Harry... I'm coming...

Then the connection was made and she hit bottom.

~*~*~*~*~

"...inny, Ginny, please wake up. Please, please, please wake up. Tell me what happened, please. Ginny, please..."

Ginny listened to Harry pleading with her with the disengaged interest of a student in a double History of Magic class. Then, suddenly, the realization of what had just happened, what she had just done, hit her in a rush and she started, her mind suddenly active and abuzz, her body... not so much. Ginny couldn't move.

Remembering what the Healers had told Hermione, Ginny realized that it would take several minutes for the connection to reach full potency. Well, at least she could hear what was going on, as she fought down the panic that comes part-and-parcel with being in a body that doesn't work. This was only temporary, she knew, thankful that she had drunk in the Healers' words before, and she settled in to wait.

"Hermione, what did Tom do to her?"

Ginny suddenly felt her sense of touch kick in, the sensation similar to blood flowing back into a numb area, but all over her body, but thankfully absent the pain and pins-and-needles feeling. She was in a sitting position, leaning against something solid, but soft, and warm. She had just come to the realization that she was being cradled in Harry's arms, with her head against his chest, when she became conscious of another voice.

Inside her head.

It sounded like Harry, but, strangely, like herself as well. The voice was loving and caring, soft and beautiful, and... panicking and cursing?

Oh my God, Gin, what have you done? Bloody Hell! What have you done?! How could you... why did you...

The voice, and its attendant panicking, nearly made her miss Hermione's sharp intake of breath and soft, "Oh. My. God."

"What? What is it, Hermione? Is it something to do with Ginny?" she heard Harry ask, clearly, at least to her, barely restraining panic.

You bloody stole that potion from Hermione... you shouldn't have... You idiot, I love you... why did you do this for me...

Ginny suddenly realized that she could see. The connection must be strengthening, she reasoned, and tried to remember what the Healers had said would be coming next. She found she couldn't move her eyes, much to her dismay, but even the narrow field of view that wasn't obscured by Harry's chest showed her that she was in the Gryffindor common room by the portrait hole.

She suddenly saw Hermione move into her field of view. Ginny watched as the image of her best friend bent down and looked her in the eye. Then she spoke.

"Harry, that's Ginny."

"I know that, Hermione!" came Harry's worried, and irritated, reply.

"No, you don't understand, Harry. That's Ginny Weasley, as in the actual Ginevra Molly Weasley, the first female Weasley in six generations, the girl you love, the one who you made stay behind for her own protection, inside your head."

Ginny realized that she must be sharing the avatar of one of Harry's fragments for him to be reacting this way. That must be that voice I'm hearing, she reasoned. A few moments after she thought this, the connection must have strengthened further, as, suddenly, she had access to some of the memories of the fragment... and of Harry.

Caught up in the fragment's memory of holding Harry an hour before much as he was now holding her, Ginny nearly missed feeling his posture stir. Within moments of Hermione's statement, she felt his body shift beneath her, feeling his muscles in his chest move, and guessed that Harry was looking down at her. She could easily picture the incredulous look that was surely on his face, brow furrowed, his green eyes alight with puzzlement. She sighed. She loved that look.

Suddenly, she realized that the little corner of her mind where the voice had been coming from- if something as ethereal as a mind can be said to have corners- had gone silent. Instead of the voice, she could feel Harry, feel his concern, his confusion, his love for her, rolling and roiling down the connection. There were also the other fragments, feeling more distant but distinctly there, as if she was feeling them through Harry, as if he was some sort of central hub.

"But how...?" he asked Hermione, as Ginny suddenly became conscious of the fact that she had actually sighed! She could talk!

"mmm... muuh... muuuuuhhh..." she mumbled.

What the...! Bloody Hell, I thought I could finally talk!

Harry and Hermione, meanwhile, had taken notice of her mumblings, and were now looking anxiously at her. Harry turned her around in his lap, holding her upright by her shoulders, his face mere inches from her own.

"Ginny...?" he asked, somewhat hesitantly.

Ginny suddenly realized that she could move slightly and, being related to Fred and George Weasley, pranksters and jokesters extraordinaire, acted somewhat impulsively.

"mmmmmm..."

Harry's lips were just as soft as she remembered.

~*~*~*~*~

"Well, that's all seven of them," Pomfrey said, placing the two wands on the nightstand on Ginny's side of the width-expanded bed. "All seven strands. Now what, Lyta?"

Alexander was staring attentively at the shimmering, flowing, and twisting rope of thought strung between Harry's and Ginny's temples, a rope that writhed like something living.

"Well," she replied thoughtfully, "the connection will continue to strengthen on its own over the next several minutes. There are several spells I'll be using during that time to assist the process and ensure a strong and stable link."

She turned her attention to the graphs hovering in mid-air, as the three Weasleys and Hermione were being given the Draught of Peace by Healer Smethwyck. Tapping the floating displays with her wand, she labeled the new, and now significantly brighter, brain wave line Weasley, and studied the frenetic activity of the glowing green lines pensively.

After a moment, she said, "Well, first off, even though the connection is only at half strength right now, it's so intense that it easily rivals others that I've done when they were at maximum potency; Mr. Potter and Ms. Weasley must have been very close for this strong a connection to have formed so quickly."

As the rest of the room seemed to absorb this statement, Alexander dropped another one.

"Well, the procedure seems to have worked, as Ms. Weasley is certainly conscious and moving within the dream environment."

Hermione looked up from her half-finished vial of Draught and said, "How do you know that?"

"Easily," came the answer from the petite Healer, indicating Harry's and Ginny's graphs with her hand. "They're interacting. See how the graph lines affect each other, influencing the other? (Hermione nodded) How they're interacting, I can't say, but they are definitely affecting each other, and strongly."

~*~*~*~*~

Wrapping her newly mobile arms around him, Ginny pulled him into the kiss, as he strangely didn't resist her; actually, she realized, he was going along with her, leaning into the kiss, his distant surprise coming down the connection melting into love.

Wow...It was one thing to hear someone tell you that they loved you; it was quite another to actually feel it, to feel their love for you, Ginny thought through her haze of happiness and delight, knowing full well that this moment was temporary, that they would have to end it soon, but determined to enjoy it as much as possible and for him to do the same.

As they lay there on the threadbare carpet, wrapped up in each other, Ginny felt his love for her coursing down the connection, and sought to return the favor in the only way open to her as she increased the passion of the kiss, dimly thankful that, technically, they didn't need to breathe in this coma, so they could keep on going and going...

Even so, after a few moments or possibly several sunlit days, they broke apart.

"Hello," she said in a low and bemused tone.

"Hello, Gin," he said in a similar, but more serious voice. "What... How did you get in here?" he asked.

She smiled languidly at him and stretched like a cat, her body, or avatar as Healer Alexander had called it, feeling very sore from the initial connection. As she stretched out her neck to work out some of the kinks, she looked around the common room and nearly laughed. They were sitting on the same spot where they had fist kissed all those months ago, and now, as then, there were a crowd of people standing around with the two of them as the center of attention.

"Well, Harry," she said, stretching out her arms, "you're in St. Mungo's at the moment; Ron and Hermione brought you there after you destroyed the cup-Horcrux and you collapsed..."

Harry sat there quietly on the floor, with Ginny in his lap stretching out various joints as she brought him up-to-date on the past five-odd hours in St. Mungo's, with some minor editing on her part.

"...me, Mum and Dad got to the hospital around ten-thirty, a Healer had come and gotten us from the Burrow..."

"...you had looked like you had been given the Kiss, lying there on the bed like that..."

"...Scrimgeour came and tried to have you taken 'into custody'..."

"...Hermione ended up hexing Umbridge..."

"...so I volunteered to take the potion..."

After she was done, he looked down at the image of the... no, at the woman he loved, resting in his embrace, recovering from the stresses of the initial connection.

"Why do I get the feeling that you're not telling me something about that potion you took?" he said to her and was rewarded by her looking somewhat furtive for a moment.

"Now why would you feel that?" she said lightly, suddenly praying that the connection with him didn't go both ways.

He looked at her intently. She could feel his gaze burning into her as if he could see right through her and she carefully kept her features schooled in what she hoped was an innocent expression.

After a few moments, he sighed and closed his eyes.

Yes! she thought triumphantly, and highly prematurely, as, a few moments later, she heard Hermione's voice.

"Ginny, are you completely certain that there's nothing else you want to tell Harry?"

Oh, shite, she thought, as she felt the Hermione/intelligence-aspect's knowledge of what she had done through the link and realized that there was no way she was going to get away with lying to Harry about stealing the potion from the real Hermione back in the ward.

She tried anyway.

"No, not really, no," she said, her voice rather meek and highly unconvincing.

"What is it, Gin?" Harry asked, his voice like steel covered in velvet.

"Well, it's just that I, um, that I, uh..." Blast it, she thought. She hadn't anticipated this! When she had decided that she was going to be the one to help Harry, no matter what her mother had said to the contrary, it had been simple: take the potion, join Harry in this damnable coma, and kick Tom's sorry arse, along with the rest of him, straight to hell.

"What she's trying to say, Harry, is that Hermione was supposed to be the one to take that potion and that she took it from her as she was kissing Ron goodbye before taking it herself; and that if the fragment of your mind that she's sharing dies, or if you get killed, she dies too," Hermione said.

Harry's hardened gaze returned to her and she wilted. If it was one thing to share and actually feel someone else's love, to feel his love for her, it was quite another to feel the burning torch of his anger, the bonfire of his frustration, and she shied back for fear of getting burned, scorched, charred, seared by his raging inferno.

"So," he demanded, "is it true?"

Not daring to meet his eyes, feeling his love for her, along with his anger, determination and frustration, through the link, she nodded.

Harry stood up, leaving her sitting on the floor, and strode over to the portrait hole where the other fragments were mutely waiting.

"Coming?" he asked, clearly upset with her for putting herself into harm's way for his sake. She nodded and stood, knowing from the memories that the connection gave her that they were going to the library.

As they were walking down the hall to the secret passage, Harry turned to her.

"By the way..." she stiffened, dreading what he would say next, "...thank you."

Somehow she managed to get out through her surprise a squeaky, "For what?"

He smiled grimly and stopped walking.

"For coming in after me, even when you didn't have to and shouldn't have."

"Oh."

He started walking again towards the tapestry, but not before finishing, almost undetectably, "...and for giving me another reason to kill that bastard."