Just Plain Harry

Chapter 13 A Vision in White

All in all, it had been a disquieting visit with Sirius and Remus and, as day after day passed with no news; Harry found it more and more difficult to concentrate on his studies. Everyone in the school, except, of course, Malfoy and his Slytherin cronies, seemed to feel the continued silence from Voldemort oppressive. Time seemed almost tangible - they could feel it creep by, moment by moment, waiting for the time when he would finally strike. Hermione even said that she wished Lockhart was back, to give them all a morale booster, but Harry suspected that she said that more to get a rise out of Ron than anything else. The one good thing about the gloom that had settled over the castle was that hardly any Gryffindors felt in the mood for pranks, so Hermione was having a relatively easy time as prefect. Ron's birthday gift to Harry - the Muggle water gun - remained at the bottom of Harry's trunk, unused even on Malfoy. Even Fred and George were restrained, for them, though they had found out somehow that Fleur Delacour was corresponding with Bill. Luckily, Fleur was quite used to dealing with teasing from boys.

She was still teaching Care of Magical Creatures, since Hagrid was still away. He wrote to Harry pretty frequently, and Harry wrote back, though he certainly hadn't told Hagrid that he enjoyed Fleur's classes more than Hagrid's.

Halloween passed with no incident, and so did Gryffindor's first Quidditch match, against Ravenclaw. Gryffindor won, 300 to 20, and, though Harry was happy for Ron's sake, he felt badly for Cho Chang. She was obviously not at her best, and he really could have caught the Snitch a couple of times before he did, but he wanted to give her a chance. One time, she had looked so out of it that she almost fell off her broom while diving, and Harry was so busy watching her to make sure she didn't, that the Snitch got away again. Angelina told him off after the game, but Harry could tell her heart wasn't really in it. She was worried about Cho, too.

The most frustrating thing for Harry, though - even more than knowing that Sirius and Remus were in so much danger and refusing to adequately protect themselves - was that he and Ginny still hadn't managed to induce a vision. They supposedly had this weapon that could give them Voldemort's plans, and yet they couldn't use it. The two of them reacted very differently. Harry tried a different method of scrying every session - first the crystal ball, then water scrying, then a crystal - while Ginny kept using her crystal ball every time, constantly trying to find the right combination of crystal and light. Her dogged determination got on Harry's nerves occasionally, but she was the only one who would let him talk about his frustration with the whole thing. Ron only wanted to talk chess and Hermione, and Hermione, besides having no real faith in visions, thought that Ginny would be better off spending her time working on Professor Flitwick's Advanced Charms classwork. Harry heard them talking about it one night in the common room when they thought he had fallen asleep on his books.

"Ginny, you shouldn't be wasting your time! You know you have that Protection Charm to work out completely for Professor Flitwick," Hermione said.

Ginny was poring over an ancient Divination book.

"Oh, Hermione, be reasonable," she said, sounding completely exasperated, as though she had had this conversation many times before. "If you would set aside your prejudices for one second, you would see that a useful vision could be just as important as a Protection Charm that won't even work!"

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. It won't work one way, Hermione, how many times do I have to tell you that? It has to be mutual, and you know as well as I do that that will never be! So, if you want to talk about completely pointless -"

She slammed the book shut so hard that Harry jumped. He wished he hadn't - they stopped talking once they realized he was awake, and he hadn't figured out what they meant yet.

He was starting to agree with Hermione, though. Try as they might, no visions came, and they tried everything - all times, all conditions. They even tried three o'clock in the morning, which nearly caused Harry and Ginny to get a detention from Snape for being out of bounds after hours. They had no idea why he was wandering the halls at three in the morning, but of course they couldn't ask him about it. Luckily, just as he was working his way sneerily towards a detention, Miss Stuart came along.

"Harry, Ginny," she said. "Good. I thought you might have forgotten about our appointment and fallen asleep. Oh, hello, Severus," she added, nodding at him slightly.

Snape just curled his lip at her and stalked away, leaving Miss Stuart smiling faintly. The look on her face reminded Harry of Remus Lupin, when he had succeeded in annoying Snape by being in the right place at the right time, doing something completely legitimate.

But even the eerie hour of three in the morning hadn't been enough to draw visions. Miss Stuart's next idea was to try hunger, so one day at dinnertime, Harry sat in one of the big, comfortable armchairs in her classroom, staring into a scrying crystal and trying to ignore the growls coming from his stomach.

This is so stupid, he thought. Every time I've had a vision was when I was asleep - maybe I should just go to sleep, like Ginny. He glanced over to where she sat, still in the same position as always, gazing into the crystal ball, but definitely asleep. Her hair looks so warm in the firelight, warmer than the firelight...wait a minute - Ginny's asleep?

Harry sat bolt upright in his chair. He must have been almost asleep himself not to have noticed before. Ginny never slept in Miss Stuart's lessons, she took them much too seriously. If she's asleep now, that must mean she's having a vision.

Harry was halfway out of his chair before he noticed Miss Stuart signaling to him to stay where he was. She put one finger on her lips and shook her head at him, but she was smiling. Well, Harry was, too. Finally! After all this time, one of them finally had a vision. His happy mood didn't last long, though, because soon Ginny began to shift uncomfortably in her seat and moan a little.

Suddenly, she yelled out, "No!" and sat straight up, her eyes wide open. Harry was at her side in a moment, followed closely by Miss Stuart.

"Ginny, you're all right, everything's all right, it's just a vision," Harry said. He wanted to take her hand to comfort her, but somehow he didn't feel comfortable doing that. His words seemed to reach her, though, because she let out an indignant sound.

"Just a vision - if that's what you think, Harry, you're in the wrong place. And everything is definitely not all right." She glared up at him, her brown eyes hard. "You're not supposed to be talking to me just now, remember? Why don't you go sit down?"
Harry just kept looking down at her, hurt beyond belief. When he had woken up from the reliving of his vision, she had been there, and, as jumpy as that made him, it had also comforted him. He wanted to do the same for her, but it seemed she didn't want him to. He knew he wasn't supposed to be talking to her; Miss Stuart had drilled them in that over and over. When the Seer awoke from her trance, she should tell what she saw with as little outside intervention as possible. But this was Ginny, and he just couldn't help himself. He looked over at Miss Stuart guiltily. She had returned to her desk, ready to take notes on what Ginny said, but when she looked up at him, all he saw in her eyes was understanding. Somehow, that was worse than all the rest. He returned to his chair as Ginny started talking.

"I saw a house with the Dark Mark over it," she began. "It was a Muggle house - not Hermione's, and not the Longs'. I didn't recognize it. It was small, but well kept. There was snow on the ground, and more snow coming down. It was so cold." She rubbed her arms quickly. "Then the scene flickered, and it was another house, and another, and another - all with the Dark Mark. But it kept coming back to the first one." Her voice had been soft, but decisive until then, and she stopped abruptly.

"Did you get any sense of time?" Miss Stuart asked.

"Time?"
"Did it feel like the past, the present, or the future?"

"Oh...the future, but not far into the future. But...I don't know how far. Oh, this is silly!" Ginny exploded suddenly, standing up, turning around, and sitting back down again. "We wait all this time for a vision, and now it tells us nothing we didn't already know. Voldemort's going to attack a Muggle - well, there's a news flash! And then, he's going to attack more people. I never would have guessed that!" She pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged her legs.

Harry wanted to go to her, but she had made it quite clear that she didn't want him. Miss Stuart didn't seem to notice how Ginny was acting. She asked many more questions, trying to pry every last shred of information from the vision, but even Ginny's opinion that the Muggle house would be the first attacked lacked conviction. At first, she was sure, but then she wasn't. The only other thing that came out was that whenever Ginny saw the Muggle house, she thought of white. Harry suggested that was because of the snow, but Ginny waved away that idea.

"Another white, a different white," she said. It was the most animated she became after her outburst. But she couldn't be more specific.

After what seemed like a long time to Harry, Miss Stuart finally said that she thought they had gotten everything out of the vision that they could. She stood up, stretched, and looked down at Ginny, her eyes softening.

"I would recommend that the two of you go for a walk outside, to clear your heads, and then get some dinner. I'd tell you the way to the kitchens, though of course I shouldn't, but I suspect that you know how to get there already."

Harry grinned at her, but Ginny just stood and walked slowly to the door. She looked drained. He was tempted just to take her down to the kitchens directly, but he figured Miss Stuart knew what to do after visions, so he followed her outside.

Once outside, Ginny started walking so fast that Harry could barely keep up. She headed for the lake, and the bench that stood near a little stand of trees, commanding a wonderful view across the lake. Before they got there, though, Harry got tired of running after her.

"Ginny, what are you doing?" he asked, between puffing breaths.

"Clearing my head - isn't that what Miss Stuart told me to do?" she said, whirling around to face him. "When I close my eyes, all I can see is the Dark Mark, hanging over house after house. If taking a walk outside will get rid of that, I'll walk until midnight." She took off again. Harry followed her; he didn't know what else to do.

When she got to the bench, though, someone else was already there.

Chapter 14 Five Months Afterwards

It was Cho Chang. She was crying.

She still looked pretty, of course. She wasn't making any noise; tears were just pouring down her face. Harry just stood there with no idea what to do, but Ginny dropped down onto the bench beside Cho. Harry thought that Ginny wanted to hug the older girl, but didn't feel quite comfortable doing that, so she settled for looking supportive.

"Can we help you, Cho?" she asked.

Cho removed her gaze from the other side of the lake and looked at Ginny. "Help me? Cedric died five months ago, do you realize that? And a year ago today, he was fighting a dragon right over there." She pointed across the lake to the area near the Forbidden Forest where the dragon enclosure had been last year for the first task. "You probably forgot all about it being today," she said, looking up at Harry, who had. "But I haven't. I haven't forgotten Cedric, like everyone else has. I'll remember him forever..." She started crying again.

Ginny put a hand on her arm. "We haven't forgotten Cedric, Cho, no one has -"

"Yes, they have," Cho broke in, shaking off Ginny's hand. "You have," she added, glaring up at Harry. "You go about your everyday life, never thinking about the people who died to give that life to you. How do you do it? How do you live with the blood on your hands?"

"Cho, that is not fair!" Ginny said, putting her hand back onto the older girl's arm firmly. "Harry -" She broke off for a moment, giving him a questioning look, but as he had no idea what she wanted from him, he just looked back down at her. She shook her head slightly, then continued, "Harry thinks about those things a lot - probably more than is good for him. He does have to live with that knowledge every day of his life - can you imagine what that's like? You've lost Cedric, and that's a horrible thing, but Harry's lost his mother and his father, and will probably -" She broke off again, giving Harry an apologetic look.

Harry couldn't believe what he was hearing. He was glad that Ginny had answered Cho's accusations, because he never could have, but how did she know so much about him? It was as though she could read his mind. And she was so passionate about it! He knew what she had been about to say, too - that he would probably lose more people he cared about, which Cho most likely wouldn't, but he was glad Ginny hadn't finished the thought. The fewer times that was said out loud the better.

Cho's reaction to Ginny's speech surprised him even more than the speech itself. She started crying harder, and turned to bury her head in Ginny's shoulder.

"Oh, I know!" she wailed. "I'm so sorry, Harry, I know you think about these things, anyone can see...I just...I get so frustrated when everyone else is having fun, and all I can think about is that Cedric's dead...and I have to lash out at somebody...but it wasn't fair to take it out on you..." She said all this between fresh bouts of tears, and a lot of it was muffled in Ginny's shoulder.

Harry couldn't help but think how strange this whole situation was - here was the girl whom he'd had a crush on crying on the girl who had had a crush on him. Ginny obviously wasn't thinking about any of that, though; she just patted Cho's back and made soothing noises, letting the other girl quiet down. Just as she did, though, Harry's stomach gave a huge growl. Ginny gave him a scandalized look, but then she burst into giggles. Even Cho gave him a watery smile, so he supposed it was a good thing he had an embarrassing stomach.

"Have you had dinner, Cho?" Ginny asked. "We haven't - obviously - we had a class. We're going down to the kitchens to get some food from the house elves - would you like to come?"

Cho sighed, and looked out across the lake again. "Well, I'm not particularly hungry, but I suppose I should eat," she said. She didn't get up from the bench, though.

"Cho, I didn't know Cedric as well as you did, obviously," Harry said. "But...would he have wanted you to be so sad? I think he would have wanted you to..." He trailed off. He probably shouldn't say this.
"Get on with my life?" Cho asked, saying it for him. "Yes, of course he would. But he's not here, is he? And I can wallow in misery if I want to." But she said the last sentence with a slight smile, and she did stand up.

Ginny did, too, giving Harry one of the light-turned-on-inside-her smiles that he liked so much. She linked her arm with Cho's and led the way to the kitchens.

When they got there, Harry and Ginny were each hit by a flying cannon ball.

"Harry Potter, sir! Harry Potter, sir!" said one.

"Miss Ginny! Miss Ginny!" said the other.

"Dobby is wearing his new socks, Harry Potter, sir!" said the first. He lifted up first one leg and then the other to show them the mismatching socks Harry had bought in Hogsmeade.

"Winky is wearing her new blouse, too, Miss Ginny!" said the second. She puffed out her chest a little, showing off the snowy white, perfectly clean blouse. Harry had to stare. The last time he had seen her, she had still worn the stained and wrinkled blouse Mr. Crouch had given her when he set her free. She had been nowhere near this animated, either.

Ginny laughed softly, but she got down on her knees to hug Winky. "I'm glad you like it," she said. "How are you doing?"

"Winky is doing much better, Miss Ginny," Winky said. She looked like she was going to say more, but then she looked at Cho and didn't. Harry wondered what that was about, and why Dobby was staring at him with even more intensity than usual, but then he noticed that they weren't alone in the kitchen. George Weasley sat at one of the long tables, with an enormous feast set out in front of him, and Brenna O'Keefe beside him. Brenna's face looked unusually flushed as she nodded to Cho. George didn't look happy.

"I'd forgotten that you knew how to get into the kitchens, too," he said. "Are you here for dinner?"

"No, we just thought we'd like a midnight snack at seven in the evening," Ginny said, grinning, as her eyes went back and forth between Brenna and her brother. "Harry and I were working with Miss Stuart over dinner, and Cho hadn't had any, either, so we made her come along."

Brenna looked sharply at Cho, who blushed and sat down. She reached out to take one of the bowls in front of George, but he batted her hand away.

"Hey! That's all for me." He stuffed a large bite of roast beef in his mouth, but then grinned at her shocked expression. Somehow, he managed to swallow. "Just kidding. Besides, there's always more where that came from."

Sure enough, the house elves were rapidly assembling even more food for the three newcomers. Winky and Dobby didn't help; they hovered over Ginny and Harry, instead.

"So," Ginny said, as she dished herself out some Yorkshire pudding, "what made you two miss dinner?"

George and Brenna exchanged glances. He seemed to be asking her something, and, after a moment, she nodded.

"You know I've been working on a Communication Charm, Ginny," she said. "I thought I had made a breakthrough this afternoon, so I asked George if he would let me try it out with him. It was supposed to make it so that we could project thoughts into each other's minds."

"Wow!" Harry said. "I didn't know you could do that."

"Well, you can't," George said. "At least that's what we've always been taught. But Brenna thought she could design a charm to do it."
"If anyone could do that, it's you, Brenna," Ginny said, smiling at the older girl. Brenna gave her a slightly tremulous smile in return.

"It didn't work, though. Instead of projecting just one, specific thought into George's mind, he got everything...all my thoughts, all my feelings..." She trailed off, staring at her plate.

"The only way to describe it is psychedelic," George said. His grin almost looked normal. "All of a sudden, I couldn't see or hear anything; everything was just...weird. Then I passed out."

"I couldn't wake him up," Brenna said, still staring at her plate, her cheeks getting redder and redder. "And I didn't want to go get a teacher, because I knew that I shouldn't have tried that without Professor Flitwick there, so I just waited for George to wake up on his own. And when he did -" She leapt up and practically ran out of the room.

George muttered something Harry couldn't hear and followed her. Harry, Ginny, and Cho just stared at each other.

"I didn't know you knew Brenna, Ginny," Cho said after a moment. She wasn't eating much, just pushing the food around on her plate.

"Oh," Ginny said. She looked at Harry pleadingly. He smiled at her.

"She and George have been hanging out a lot," he said. "And you know how close all the Weasleys are."
Ginny smothered a grin at that - the last thing either George or Fred wanted was their little brother or sister tagging along with them - but Cho was watching her fork move her food into little piles, and didn't notice.

"Do you know Brenna well?" Harry asked Cho. He didn't like seeing her like this.

"Oh, sure," she said. "We're in the same year, after all. But Brenna's quiet, even for a Ravenclaw, and I'm not, so we're not especially good friends." She sighed. "Although she's been one of the nicer people this year. Most people just tell me to snap out of it. As if I could..." She shook her head and stood up. "Sorry, you two, I'm just not that hungry. Thanks for being here, though." Before either Harry or Ginny could say anything, she left the room.

"I'm worried about her," Ginny said, staring after Cho. "I hope she has someone she can talk to, since she didn't seem to want to talk to us."
Harry didn't really want to talk about Cho, or Cedric, any more. Besides, that reminded him of something he had wanted to ask Ginny for a while.

"Ginny, can I ask you a question about your diary?"

Ginny whipped her eyes back from the door to glare at Harry.

"Are you going to keep bugging me about that, too? Because I've had more than enough from Ron. I'm not a little girl anymore, I learned my lesson, and, besides, Mum got this diary for me -"

"Whoa, whoa," Harry said, trying to stem the tide of impassioned words. "I know all that, Ginny. I just wanted to ask about enchanted diaries in general. I've obviously never had one, and I don't know anything about them."

"Oh," Ginny said. "Sorry, Harry, I guess I'm just too defensive about the whole thing." She sighed. "What do you want to know?"
"Well, what does it mean, exactly, having an enchanted diary? When you're writing in it, and it talks back, who is it doing the talking?"

"Well, any witch or wizard who wants to can put their thoughts and memories into a diary. Usually, they do it at the end of their lives, when they want to share what they've learned in life with younger people."

"Share what they've learned?"

"Yeah," Ginny looked down at her plate. She looked uncertain whether or not to continue, but then she nodded her head and looked back up at Harry. "My diary's name is Joanna. She was a base-born daughter of King John of England, who was married at age fourteen to Llewellyn, a prince in Wales. She made a lot of mistakes in her life, and she wanted to help prevent other girls from making those same mistakes."

Harry wanted to ask what the mistakes were, but he could tell that Ginny wasn't going to tell him. Besides, he could probably look it up in a history book if he really wanted to know.

"So, she really talks to you? Responds to what you say, and gives you advice and stuff?" he asked instead.

Ginny nodded, smiling slightly. "Sometimes I don't like her advice, but yes, she always gives it."

"Wow," Harry said. He thought for a moment that it might be useful to have an enchanted diary to turn to when he needed help, but then he remembered that he had enough people giving him advice right now; he didn't need another one. He had another thought.

"So, Hermione's been getting advice from some old lady in a diary? I wonder what she has to say about Ron," he said.

"I don't know," Ginny said. "A diary is private, Harry." She glared at him, then her eyes became thoughtful. "Have you noticed something funny about Hermione? Doesn't it seem like the teachers all push her really hard?"

"They push all of us, Ginny."

"I know, but they push her more."

"Hermione likes being pushed - she lives for it," Harry said. He wasn't really thinking about what Ginny was saying, he was concentrating on the treacle tart Dobby had just put in front of him.

Ginny let out an exasperated sigh. "It's what she's being pushed to do," she said. "Professor Moody especially - he's always having her try things out first, and most especially the offensive spells. Professor Flitwick too. That's what Hermione's special assignment is for our Advanced Charms class, the offensive spells."

"Hmm," Harry said. "I wouldn't have thought that that would be Hermione's specialty."

"It's not, and that's what's worrying me," Ginny said. "You know Hermione, she'll try to do anything a teacher tells her to do, but she's not enjoying this. Do you think Professor Moody is trying to push her to become an Auror?"

Harry finally brought his thoughts fully into the conversation. "Well, he did tell me once that she had the potential to be one of the best Aurors in a century. But I think he's concentrating more on the problems here and now than on our future careers." He laughed shortly. "He told me something else at the same time; he said to try to live a normal life, because I could. Nothing could feel less normal than today, that's for sure."