To See Truly

To See Truly

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cold. She was so cold.

Pain throbbed through her, again and again and again.

Ginny Weasley lay on the ground and watched the sun rise over the horizon. Grass, damp and trampled, prickled her face. There was blood in it. She wondered idly if it was hers.

It didn't really matter.

After a short while, during which warm sunlight spread across her frozen face, she remembered what had woken her. A sound, accompanied by a brilliant flash of light. She shuddered slightly. The sound had been very loud; loud enough to have startled her awake from the depths of unconsciousness.

It had been a scream. No, two screams, two people screaming and screaming. Cries of agony were not unfamiliar to her, as she had heard many in the past few months. But the pain in those sounds had ripped through her like a knife.

Ginny struggled to get a grip on her blurry thoughts. There had been something else that disturbed her about the screams, something that she had recognized...

Recognized. That was it. The screams had been familiar, too familiar. She could not have forgotten them.

She had to move. She had to find him somehow. Now.

She rolled over onto her stomach slowly, painstakingly. Hot splinters of pain shot up what was left of her legs, and she fought back both nausea and dizziness. There was no time for that. She had to find him. Ginny wished fiercely for her wand, lost for two days now. Her long hair had fallen loose of its braid, and tumbled around her shoulders and in her face. She pushed it back with one bloodied hand, and began to crawl.

Ginny dragged herself along the ground, using the long grass as handholds, cursing the useless, mangled stumps that had once been her legs. She barely noticed the clumps of bodies dotting the field. What had once been people, strong, powerful, living people, was now just ruined meat. Food for flies, and for the ravens that were already pecking at the exposed flesh.

Most of the bodies were garbed in black, but there were other colors as well. These bright vivid splashes of material, mixed as they were among shades of black, half-dead grass and dried blood, seemed strangely obscene.

Ginny crawled past them without looking. Almost all of them were dead, anyway, and the ones that weren't probably soon would be.

One man reached out and grabbed her cloak as she passed. She turned and stared into his ravaged face. Empty, bleeding sockets stared back at her. His eyes were gone. She did not move for a moment, examining the wounds with a kind of morbid fascination. He gibbered and wailed, tugging on her cloak. He had no words left. She pulled her ragged cloak from his desperate hands, and moved on. He was a stranger, and she told herself there was nothing she could do for him anyway.

As she crossed the field, the pain grew worse. She stopped several times, lowering her head to the filthy ground, taking deep breaths. The air stank. It was during one of these times that she saw someone walking along the edge of the field, in the forest to her left. He stepped carefully around the corpses, clinging to the safety of the trees. He seemed to be looking for someone. He had no mask, but he wore a black cloak, so she did not move, only followed him with her eyes. After a few minutes he appeared to give up. Turning his back on the carnage, he strode into the forest. Ginny watched him go. She moved again only after he had vanished completely.

She was nearing her destination. She could feel it.

It occurred to her that it was a beautiful morning. Her mouth twisted into a smile. Ginny wondered dreamily if the man in black had not been a man at all, but actually Death, stalking through the bodies of the dead, gathering souls. It was an interesting idea. She was a little wistful that he had not noticed her.

And suddenly, she found what she had been looking for. Or rather, whom she had been looking for.

In front of her, at this edge of the field, was a clearing. There were a few piles of bodies in it, but they were not important.

Near its center was a perfect circle of dead grass. Two people lay inside it. One was clearly dead. So very clearly dead, in fact, that he no longer looked much like a person. He had become a shriveled gray husk, already crumbling to dust in the breeze. Ginny recognized him anyway. She spat at the disgusting thing as she dragged herself past it.

Goodbye, Tom.

She prayed with all her might that there was a Hell.

Than she turned her attention to the person in front of her. Him. The one she had been looking for. The only person in the clearing, other than herself, who was still breathing.

Harry Potter.

He was still a boy, really, she reflected as she stared at him. Only nineteen years old. Nothing but a boy.

He was covered in blood.

She pulled herself closer, until she lay on the dead grass next to him. She looked down at the Boy Who Lived, the savior of the wizarding world, the hero who had defeated Voldemort time and time again, who had now finally destroyed him for good.

Nothing but a boy.

A boy who was dying.

She could tell just by looking at him. A puddle of blood had formed on his stomach and chest, and more was pooling out from under him. There was blood matted in his hair, blood trickling from his mouth and nose and ears. There was even blood leaking from the corners of his eyes, leaving tracks down his face like a mockery of tears. Ginny was amazed that he was still alive.

But he was. He continued to draw in each rasping breath, struggling for air. Still struggling, fighting, even now.

Ginny moved, so that she lay behind his head. Using a convenient rough-barked tree, she managed to prop herself up into a sitting position. She grabbed Harry's shoulders and body, and pulled him up into her lap as gently as possible, wrapping her arms around his chest. Her body shrieked in protest, and her arms and lap became instantly soaked with blood. Ginny didn't mind. She held him closely, and used her cloak to wipe some of the blood off his face. For the first time, she noticed that his glasses were gone.

Harry opened his eyes.

Opened eyes the green of summer leaves, once clear, now clouded with pain and confusion.

He squinted up at her face. She reached out, touched his cheek. The confusion in his eyes faded slightly, although the pain remained. Ginny watched as he moved one hand, slowly, so slowly, and stroked a lock of her coppery hair. As he touched it, it became slick and sticky with blood.

"Ginny."

His voice was nothing but a whisper, a rasp of pain, dead leaves rustling together. He coughed, and more blood gouted from his mouth. A moan escaped him.

She looked down at him. She watched as he was wracked with coughs, as he thrashed with pain in her arms. When he had quieted, she touched her finger to his lips.

"Shhhhh. Don't talk."

Her own voice cracked painfully. She sounded like an old woman.

Harry stared at her, and there was a beseeching, bewildered quality to his pain that almost broke her. Instead, she was filled to the brim with emptiness, with a numbness that allowed her to continue existing without bursting into tears.

He motioned weakly to her, and she lowered her face to his in order to hear him.

"...scared," he hissed out. "I'm scared."

She felt her heart break.

Ginny leaned down. She kissed Harry Potter on the lips, kissed him and tasted the salt of his blood in her mouth, tasted his death. She kissed him as the ravens circled overhead, and corpses rotted nearby. She kissed him and hoped for some kind of miracle, knowing all the while that none would occur.

It wasn't right, she knew. Ginny knew she shouldn't have been the one there with him now, as he lay dying. Ron should be there, or Hermione, or Sirius Black, or Professor Dumbledore. He should be in the arms of someone he loved.

Someone he loved. In other words, not her. Not the girl he certainly thought of as his best friend's little sister, a skinny freckle-face with an embarrassing crush. When he thought of her at all. No, she knew that she that she should not be there with him.

But there was no one else.

When she lifted her head, her lips were coated with blood. She licked them, thoroughly, watching his expression. Harry looked up at her, blinking rapidly, than managed something that was almost a smile. She smiled back, and tried desperately not to cry. Too quickly, his smile transformed into a grimace of pain. He closed his eyes as his breaths came in gasps. When his breathing had regulated, he mumbled something.

Ginny leaned close to try and hear his pained whisper.

"Please - talk. Say something - I don't care - God Ginny it hurts. Just-," he gagged, choking on his own blood, than continued, "talk to me..."Harry ran out of breath, and seemed to sag in exhaustion.

Ginny hesitated for one second. She wanted to say, I love you Harry, I've always loved you. Loved and watched you even as you barely acknowledged my existence. I thought if I waited long enough, you would see me there, really see me. But you never did. And now you never will. To tell the truth, finally, as he lay dying.

But what good would that do? What comfort would that truth bring him? It was too late for truth, she decided. And so began to speak.

"You shouldn't worry, Harry, because everything's going to be all right. That sounds stupid, I know, but I saw a bunch of our people just a little while ago. They'll be here soon, a search party, and they'll heal us, both of us, and take somewhere safe."

His face relaxed, but his breathing was shallow and constricted. Ginny took a deep breath, and strove to keep her voice steady as she talked.

"We'll wake up in a makeshift hospital somewhere, and the mediwitches will say how lucky we were that we were found in time in time. And everybody will come to visit you, cause they'll all want to see the great hero Harry Potter."

She watched him carefully as she said the last sentence and was rewarded by a slight, twisted smile. She continued, and her voice began to take on a singsong quality as she felt herself slipping away, slipping under...

"All your friends will be there too. Ron and Hermione and Neville and Seamus. You'll laugh together, and Dumbledore will smile. The hospital will be warm and bright, and my parents and your godfather will hug us and tell us how worried they were."

Ginny could no longer keep her eyes open. Harry's breath was coming fast and shallow, but his face remained peaceful. Laying her palm on Harry's cheek, she leaned her head against the tree and allowed her eyes to fall closed. Her voice crackled, barely audible, as she told her story, as she lied for him.

"And you'll be happy, because it'll all be over and you won't have to be scared ever again... "

Ginny's eyes sprang open as Harry began choking, his body jerking with the effort to breathe. She tried to hold him closer, to soothe him, but she could barely move. Her arms lay limp and weak as he thrashed his way towards death.

Death was coming for him, and Ginny felt all her grief rushing to the surface. She managed to wrap her arms around Harry. He shook and spasmed with wracking gasps, and Ginny cried out with the last of her strength.

"There! There, they're coming, Harry! They're coming to save us! Do you see them there? Do you see them?"

Harry's coughs were coming harder, but she saw him squinting and staring, straining to see the hope she promised him. Abruptly, he was still and silent. He gurgled once, a death rattle. Than-

Harry's face, tight with pain, softened and became full of wonder.

He let out a shaky, happy little sigh. "Yes, I see them."

And died.

Ginny smiled, than sobbed. She stared out at the beautiful sunny day and thought, it's not right. It's not right for healthy nineteen-year-old boys to die on days like today. It's not fair.

For a while, there was only the sound of sobbing in the clearing, sobbing and screaming, as a teenage girl wailed her fury and grief to the world.

When she was done, she turned her face towards the sun, staring into its light with tear-blinded eyes.

Pure, white light, piercing through the water.

Ginny Weasley laughed suddenly.

She lay bleeding to death in a field, and clutched a dead boy in her arms.

But she laughed and stared into the light.

And perhaps she saw figures there.

One last whisper, a truth now, among so many lies.

"I see them too, Harry. I see them too."

The search party came two hours later.

One dark-haired man fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands. Another man comforted him while the third pressed his fingers against cool skin, feeling for pulses and finding none.

"Dead. Both of them," he said grimly.

He looked at the man who wept with something that was almost sympathy, and turned his back on his companions, giving them privacy in their grief. Looking at the forms in front of him, Severus Snape shook his head. He stared blankly, numb with shock and sorrow, at the corpses of two children covered in their own blood. At two pairs of lifeless hands, cold fingers still intertwined.