For Your Love

A/N: Hey everyone. I'm putting this chapter up early because I'll be away on vacation for the next week. Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

Chapter 16- - A Dream of You

In the seventh year boys' room, past the beds where his roommates lay snoring and fidgeting in their sleep, Harry opened his eyes with a start.

"Ginny?" he mumbled. He squinted blearily, unsure of what had woken him.

It soon passed and his eyes dropped closed again. Ghostly shadows flitted in and out of his subconscious. He saw a flash of red, but when he turned, it faded from view; the swish of a cloak, but when he faced it head on, it turned to mist. Murmured conversations beckoned him closer, but then disintegrated into a jumble of nonsense words.

Harry shifted uneasily in his bed, willing his mind to shut down, though some part of his consciousness insisted that he was already asleep.

"Harry." There is was again. He turned his mind's eye to the source of the sound and saw Ginny, sitting at the edge of the cliffs, her hair whipping around her. The sky overhead glowed red like a summer sunset, fading to purple as it stretched out over the lake. She leaned forward, teetering on the edge.

"Ginny, no!" he called as she vanished over the side. His heart beat wildly and he started toward to the edge, his limbs slowed by the thick air between them. Reaching the precipice, he fell to his knees, calling her name again. He gripped the crumbling rock and peered down the face of the cliff, searching frantically for her body on the shore below.

But there was no body. He looked to his left, and there was Ginny, calmly descending a staircase carved out of the rock. It was firm beneath her feet and she showed neither fear nor any sign that she had heard his cries. Harry scrambled to his feet and followed her, but the stairs cracked and shifted beneath him as he picked his way gingerly down the cliff.

At the bottom was a small boat rocking back and forth in the dark waves. A hooded figure waited, holding out his hand to help Ginny into the boat. She paused and contemplated him for a moment before refusing his hand and climbing in, seating herself at the helm. The dark figure climbed in behind her and soon they were bound across the lake, into the darkness.

Harry stood at the edge of the lake, the water lapping at his shoes. His breathing was shallow; he looked to his left and right, seeing nothing that would help him to follow them. Far ahead, Ginny turned around in the boat. Their eyes met and he could see her expression clearly, distance being no factor in his awareness of her. She looked worried that he was not following and opened her mouth to call to him, but hesitated as if afraid to alert her companion to his presence.

Harry looked around again, but now saw that he was far out in the lake, surrounded by water. His feet moved over the surface as he pursued the boat, and he wondered at this newfound ability, though it did not seem as impossible as it should have.

The liquid swirled beneath him, reflecting the darkening sky. He heard the sound of something slapping on the water behind him and turned to see another boat floating toward him, carrying a second, happier Ginny and... himself. They were drifting lazily, and she was singing Scarborough Fair; his eyes were closed, a tranquil look on his face.

When they passed him, a smiling Ginny exclaimed, "Oh, look! There he is! He'll be able to help us for sure." She rowed the boat closer to Harry and called out, "Excuse me, but could you tell us how we got here? We're not quite sure where to go, and the way ahead seems a bit dark."

Harry stared at her blankly, distracted by their sudden appearance.

The Harry in the boat opened his eyes and surveyed his other self. "I don't think he knows, Gin. Who is he, anyway? Do you know him?"

Ginny frowned in thought. "No, I guess I don't after all." She steered the boat away, resuming her singing, and soon they were lost in the mist.

Harry squinted after them until the sound of voices on the far shore caught his attention again. He saw that the boat he had been following was now empty, and Ginny was standing on the shore, the hooded figure behind her, grasping her shoulders and bending close to her ear, even as he kept his gaze fixed on Harry coming toward them.

"He's missed it, hasn't he?" Harry heard the figure sneer. "Missed his chance. But I haven't. I have been patient, and now I have been rewarded. Haven't I, Ginevra? Haven't I?"

Harry was close enough now that he could see Ginny's ashen face and the look of abject terror in her eyes.

"Ginny, get away from him!" he called out to her. "Come here, come to me!" He held out his arms, but she looked at the water's edge and shrank back from it, further into the arms of her captor. She raised her eyes again and shook her head.

"You're too late. Why didn't you come? I showed you the way, but you never came!" she cried out.

A smile crept across the hooded figure's face, and Harry could hear his laugh. It began softly but grew in volume until the figure threw back his head and crowed in triumph. It was then that Harry saw who her captor was.

"Tom, stop it!" Ginny screamed as he clamped his hands around her and began to drag her up the hillside. "You're hurting me!"

"No!" Harry yelled. He reached the water's edge and plunged through the trees after them, pushing aside branches with one hand and pulling out his wand with the other. He pointed it at their retreating figures and cried, "Lumos!" The hillside burst into flames, illuminating everything around them. And finally, for the first time, Harry could see clearly.

"Riddle!" he called. "Leave her! It's me you want!"

"Ah, yes." Tom's eyes sparkled with evil. "But what is it that you want, Harry? Is it possible that you don't even know? Do I have to do everything for you?" He grasped Ginny's face and clenched her cheeks painfully in his fingers. She opened her mouth to scream when suddenly everything fell silent.

A dark rustling swept overhead, causing all of them to look up in fear and wonder. It circled above them, dousing the light that Harry had conjured, until it settled over them like a shroud. Harry lurched forward, but the darkness pressed against his chest, and his head felt as though it would split in two.

"Ginny!" he screamed.

Harry sat up in bed, his hair damp with sweat against his forehead. He regretted it immediately and lay back down again, holding his hand against his scar and rolling onto his side. Moaning, he waited for his breathing to return to normal and the pain to subside. He wondered at the prickling sensation as he ran his hand over his forehead again. The image of Tom Riddle had never produced pain in him before, not even when he had confronted him face to face in the Chamber of Secrets. He wondered briefly if it could have been Voldemort in his dream. But no, Ginny had called him Tom. And Voldemort didn't even know about Ginny and Tom's connection through the diary. Did he? A shudder ran through Harry as he realized that he didn't know what Voldemort might or might not have been told about Ginny's episode with Tom's diary. He couldn't imagine that Lucius Malfoy would have been keen to admit his failure to Voldemort, but there were other ways in which the story might have reached him.

Ginny. It was no wonder he had dreamed about something so awful as Tom Riddle holding her captive again when she had been so distant lately, so withdrawn. He worried about her, wanted to protect her, wanted her to confide in him. If only she weren't so stubborn! The clenching in his gut uncoiled slowly as he became more aware of his surroundings. It was only a dream, after all. Ginny was in no danger from Riddle; Harry had seen to that when he'd destroyed the diary nearly five years before.

It was useless to try falling back asleep now, he told himself. He parted his bed hangings quietly, reached for his glasses, and crept over to the water jug stand, pouring himself a cup and splashing some on his face before drinking the rest. He reached for his bathrobe, pulling it on against the chill of the room, and headed out the door toward the common room where he thought he might sit in front of the fire for awhile until he felt sleepy again.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was surprised to see the fire was already lit. Surely no one else could still be up at this hour. He made his way toward the couch, not noticing the figure hunched on the floor in front of it until he was nearly on top of her. She was hugging her knees and bent low over them so that he could only see the top of her head. It was the same way she had looked when he'd found her with Ron in that empty classroom.

"Ginny?" he asked, coming around to the front of the couch. "What are you doing?"

She looked up, startled by the sound of his voice. He could see that her face was pale even in the firelight, and she stared at him for a moment before asking, "Did I wake you?"

"N-No, I just... couldn't sleep." He sank down onto the velvety cushions and stared into the fire, his eyes heavy.

Neither said anything more as the flames crackled and hissed, but a peace washed over Ginny as she sat there. Just his presence, just the nearness of his leg behind her shoulder was enough to make her heart feel a little more whole again.

Harry watched her sitting motionless. It was a good sign, he thought, that she hadn't run away from him the minute he'd opened his mouth. He wondered how many other nights she had spent down here, sitting alone in front of the fire.

"I had a dream," he said quietly. "It was awful and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I came down here."

She turned her head just a fraction to show she had heard him, but said nothing. Encouraged, he continued.

"You were in it. You were at the lake and I called out to you, but you couldn't hear me. So I followed you and there was this other man there. I couldn't see who he was, but he took you across the lake in this boat. I went after you, and then he grabbed you and he was hurting you and I couldn't..." His voice faltered. "And then you started screaming and I saw that it was Tom Riddle. He was the one who had you and he was dragging you away and I..."

A lump formed in his throat as the emotions of the dream came at him again.

"I watched him hurt you and it just about killed me, but I couldn't get to you. This darkness was pressing in on me and I couldn't..."

She hadn't moved. The whole time he was speaking, she hadn't moved a muscle. He couldn't see her heart racing, or her mind trying desperately to make sense of what he was saying, or the fear seeping slowly through her. All he could see was indifference and distance and walls. He didn't know what else he could do to reach out to her. So he stopped.

"But I guess you can take care of yourself." He stooped forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I guess that's what you've been trying to tell me all along. Well, I get it," he said bitterly. "I won't bother you anymore."

He stood up, brushing his leg against her as he rounded the couch, causing her to look up. She watched him retreat into the darkness, and her heart cried out for him much more loudly than the strained whisper that left her mouth.

"Harry, don't go."

He stopped and turned, trying valiantly to reel in his emotions. "Why shouldn't I?"

She stood and their eyes met. She was dressed in warm flannel pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved t-shirt, but she looked cold and naked as she hugged her arms around herself. "Because I saw it too, and I need you, and I'm scared to death."

He blinked. "You what?"

"I had the same dream."

Harry moved slowly toward her, his eyes never leaving hers, until they were standing face to face. He looked down at her intently, searching.

"What did you see?"

"Everything. I saw you following us and I could feel Tom's hands around me and that awful, awful laughing. You cast Lumos and then the darkness came. It was in me and through me and I..."

She was shaking, but her eyes were steady, as if breaking their connection would be disastrous to them both.

"How?" Harry breathed. "How could we have had the same dream?"

"I don't know, but if we did, maybe it wasn't just a dream. Maybe it was... real."

"It can't have been real," Harry reasoned. "Tom Riddle doesn't exist anymore."

Ginny swallowed hard and bit her lip. It was a rare gesture, but Harry had seen it before and knew that she only did it when she was hiding something.

"What?" he asked, apprehension creeping into his voice. "What is it that you're not telling me?"

A look of regret passed over her face, and she shifted on her feet uneasily. "Remember when I told you about the clearing by the lake at the Burrow, how I used to go there after my first year?" He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Well, I didn't tell you everything."

Her eyes did drop away from his then, and he saw her withdrawing into herself. He grasped her shoulders. "Ginny, look at me. Tell me."

She brought her eyes back to his, then took a deep breath and exhaled, sinking onto the couch, her head in her hands. He sat down next to her and waited. She fidgeted with her hands, ran them through her hair, and clasped them in front of her. Then, very slowly, she began to talk.

"When I woke up... in the Chamber... I looked for him. After all he'd done to me, after all the pain I'd caused because of him... I still felt lost without him. I knew something had changed. I saw you, covered in blood, and you were holding my diary... his diary, I mean... and it was destroyed. All of my words, all of my soul that I had poured out to him... gone. It was at that moment that I realized the magnitude of what I'd done, and what you'd gone through to save me, and I was so disgusted and ashamed and scared out of my mind."

"Gin..." Harry whispered, laying a comforting hand on her back, but she shook her head and continued.

"But I still looked for him. I wanted him. Not the boy that had taken me over and forced me to do all those awful things, but the boy who was my friend." She stopped and gave an incredulous laugh. "I can't even believe I'm saying that out loud; it seems so unbelievable now that I could think of him as anything other than a lying, deceiving, evil thing, but that's really how I felt. I didn't have any friends, not really. I was at Hogwarts for the first time..."

"You had us," Harry said with a twinge in his voice.

She turned and gave him a sad smile, then looked back down at her hands. "What, Ron's tag-along little sister who got all tongue-tied and embarrassed at the mere mention of you? No. You were so sweet not to mind, but you weren't my friends. Not yet."

Harry frowned, but knew that she was right, so he said nothing further.

"But then I found this diary. And I wrote in it. And it wrote back. I told him everything, Harry, everything, and he listened to me. All those years when you were at your aunt and uncle's in that dreadful house with no friends, didn't you ever wish you had someone who would listen to you, who you could share secrets with and who would make you feel special? You came to Hogwarts and found Ron and Hermione. I found Tom."

"But he betrayed you; he betrayed all of us. How can you still..."

"I know what he is," she said firmly. "I know it more deeply than you can ever imagine, and I live with it every day. But back then, that little girl in the Chamber... I was so lost and confused, and then my parents swept in and took me home. That summer, I hated being in the house. I felt so closed in; my parents were always watching me. I felt like I would go insane, so I would convince them to let me go outside by myself, just to get some fresh air and sunshine. Mum thought it would do me good, so she was willing to let me go. I would fly on my broom to the field of flowers. I had told Tom about it, told him all about the Burrow, in fact, and he said he wished he could see it someday." She moaned into her hands. "Oh, Harry, I was so stupid, how could I have been so..."

She took a deep breath and gathered herself to go on. "But I felt close to him there. It almost felt like he was still with me. I would go there and lay in the field for hours. Sometimes I would fall asleep; once or twice mum sent Ron to find me. But I would always call out to him, wishing for him to come back to me."

Harry's brow creased with concern. "But he didn't, Gin, he couldn't have. All of that is over now."

She lapsed into silence, staring into the fire. She couldn't go on, couldn't tell him that even though he had risked his life to save her in the Chamber, it had all been for naught. He hadn't destroyed Tom at all. It would be exactly what Tom wanted, for Harry to know that he still existed, still ate away at her, and there was nothing Harry could do about it. But she was damned if she would put Harry's life in jeopardy again.

Harry looked at her profile with its worried frown and wondered what other memories were lurking in her head. It unnerved him to think that there were still so many things about her that he didn't know. He was startled by the admission of how deep her connection was to Tom all those years ago, but something else still nagged at his mind. "But none of this explains why we had the same dream tonight."

Ginny rubbed her forehead and sighed tiredly. "I think I know why." She stood up and began to pace in front of the fire, knowing that he deserved an explanation. Legilicor or not, she had overstepped her bounds and had sought out his emotions with no thought as to how it might affect him. She stopped and faced him, playing with her fingers nervously while he waited for her answer.

"Earlier today when you and Ron found me on the cliffs... well, I wasn't quite myself, and I said some things that I didn't mean."

Harry looked embarrassed. "Yeah, me too," he admitted.

"You and I haven't exactly been... as close as we used to be. But I know a lot of that was my own fault," she added quickly when he opened his mouth to protest. "After our fight today I felt so horrible." Her voice dropped to a whisper and she fought not to let the tears spring to her eyes. "I've missed you so much."

Harry was on his feet in seconds. "Gin, I've..." But she backed away just out of his reach and held up her hand. She needed to get this out.

"I was lying in my bed, wondering if there was any hope of us ever being friends again, and I... I thought if I could just reach out to you, to see if I could tell what you were feeling... just to feel you with me again..." She crossed her arms over her chest, protecting herself from the anger Harry would surely feel had having been invaded in such a way.

But all he said was, "Did you? Feel me?"

She looked up at him in surprise and shook her head. "I didn't think so; I couldn't feel anything, so I went to sleep. But now I think that I must have made a connection with you somehow. Maybe subconsciously? And through that connection, you were able to see my dream."

"I heard you call me," he said suddenly, as if just remembering.

Ginny raised her eyebrows. "You did?"

Harry nodded. "I think that's what woke me up. Then I went back to sleep and that's when the dream started." He moved toward her slowly until he was standing very close, his brow still furrowed in thought. "Why would you dream about Tom Riddle after all this time?"

She couldn't quite meet his eyes as she mumbled, "I don't know."

"I hated watching him hurt you like that. It felt like you were just drifting farther and farther away..." Harry's words caught in his throat. He reached out and put his hands on her arms gently, pulling her close enough that he could feel her warm breath. A sudden urge to take her in his arms and never let her go came over him.

"Gin," he began, not sure if it was fair of him to ask, but feeling a need to know. "When you were in the Chamber, when Riddle came out of the diary before I got there... Did he hurt you then?"

She looked into his eyes, so close now that she could see the firelight dancing in them, and felt the strength to continue draining out of her. "Harry, you don't need to..."

"Did he?" he asked again.

"I was so weak when he took form, I was almost dead." She shuddered under his touch.

"Ginny..." he pressed.

"He didn't touch me. Not physically, if that's what you mean. But yes, he hurt me... in other ways," she whispered. She shut her eyes against the memory of the mental torture that Tom had inflicted on her and the image of her body lying cold on the Chamber floor. She felt Harry's arms surround her as she buried her head into his neck, hugging him back with all her might.

"I've missed you, too," he whispered.

They stood in silence for a long moment, healing the rift between them, until finally, Ginny lifted her head.

"I'm so tired, but I'm afraid to go back to sleep," she said.

"Then I'll stay with you," he said without hesitation.

She didn't argue, but allowed him to guide her back to the couch where she lay down and curled her arms beneath her head. Harry sat on the floor in front of her and rested his head on the cushion next to hers, smoothing her hair back from her face.

"Don't leave me, Harry," she murmured.

"I won't."

"Don't leave me ever," she whispered as her eyes slid closed.

"I won't, Gin, I promise."

* * *

The next morning, Harry awoke with a crick in his neck as the pale light filtered into the common room. He looked around only to find Ginny gone and Hermione sitting on the couch regarding him curiously.

"Rough night?" she asked with a trace of a smile.

Disoriented, his eyes darted around the empty room, finally remembering how he had come to be sleeping on the floor. "Oh," he croaked, "I just came down here to sit by the fire for a while. Must have fallen asleep." He sat up and rubbed his eyes. "What time is it?"

"Seven o'clock. I was just heading down for an early breakfast," she said, clutching a stack of books in her arms.

"Aren't you going to wait for Ron?" he asked, scratching his scalp absently in an attempt to wake himself up.

Hermione sighed. "I was hoping to have some time to myself today, a little peace and quiet, you know? And being with Ron lately... well... it hasn't exactly been peaceful or quiet. I don't know, maybe I'll go sit in the library for a while after I eat; it'll be quiet there." She gave him a small smile and stood up. "See you later."

"See you," he said.

"Oh, and Harry?" she called over her shoulder.

"Yes?"

"You'll want to do something about that hair."

He made a face and ran his fingers through his messy mop, which he could feel was sticking out at all angles. As the portrait hole closed behind Hermione, he pushed himself up and made his way to the boys' staircase, pausing at the bottom to look behind him across the room, remembering the night before. A contented smile played on his lips. He cast a quick glance toward the girls' stairs, then turned and climbed to his room.

* * *

A/N: Up next... the answer to the question, "What the heck is going on with Ron and Hermione?"

I also wanted to let all of my reviewers know that I have started replying to some of you right on the review page by editing my comments into your review. I know people don't always check back after they leave reviews, so I just wanted to let you know. I probably won't comment on every one, but if you have asked a specific question of me in your review, I'll try to answer it so check back!