Yesterday's Tomorrow

Yesterday's Tomorrow
Potter47 ~ Part One ~
The Shadow of Death "In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?"
~ William Blake ~ Chapter One ~
Blood Relative

"Don't you see it, Ginny? Don't you feel it?"

Whispers, whispers were all that could be heard, breaking the silence, cutting with each syllable into her mind, deeper, deeper, deeper still.

"It is...beginning."

What is beginning? What could be beginning? What in hell did he mean?

Ginny did not know--so she then asked:

"What is? What are you--what do you--what does it--what is it--" She could not speak, could not finish her questions, for there were far too many questions, yes, too many questions. There were always too many questions, and never were there enough answers, no, never, not once. Ginny didn't like that--why couldn't, just once, someone give answers before revealing the next mystery, the next enigma, the next riddle?

He smiled, but did not speak, and then he was gone--he did not fade, he did not slowly vanish before her eyes--he was gone, just gone, with no intermediate stage of disappearance.

But the other, the other was there still, the girl. She turned towards Ginny, or did Ginny turn towards her? She--Ginny, that is--could not tell.

"Don't mind him," the girl said with a slight smile. "You know how he is--always speaking in riddles. Probably doesn't mean a thing."

"You're...right," said Ginny finally. The girl's smile widened.

"Or am I?" she said, and then she was gone as well, leaving Ginny alone.

Ginny realised then that her breath was coming only in short gasps, pants, and now she thought to breathe, in and out and in and out. It was loud, her breathing, or at least it was to herself--the loudest (and only) sound in the Chamber.

Ginny laid back now, her eyes closing, her head on the hard cold stone. All was completely silent once more, until a whisper, odd and songlike came from beside her head. And then...and then a...a bang! followed the whisper, jolting Ginny awake.

"Bang! Bang! Maxwell's silver hammer came down, upon her head--do do do do do! Bang! Bang! Maxwell's silver hammer made sure that she was dead..."

Ginny groaned, and her eyes opened now. Six fifty-eight, on the nose. And with wakefulness came what had recently eclipsed 'Eleanor Rigby' as her least favourite song in the world.

Staring at the ceiling, now dimly lit with shadows, Ginny reached out blindly and groped for the 'off' button on the damn wireless. She only succeeded, however, in knocking the thing to the floor, and she was going to make herself pick it up, but she realised the music had stopped.

Ginny smiled to herself sleepily. Well, that's one way to do it, she reasoned.

The smile faded as she recalled her dream. She wished it would stop -- every day since ... since the first time, since it actually happened -- every day she had had that nightmare, the Chamber, with her selves. And what she hated about it the most was that she wasn't sure anymore, what they had actually said, and what came from her subconscious.

Ginny shook herself and closed her eyes again. She felt sleepiness return now, and she reckoned that perhaps it would be a good dream for once, but --

A scream? Had she heard a scream? And a -- Ginny opened her eyes, and cocked her head to listen better -- a crash? Yes, she was sure of it -- it was soft, yes, but there was no mistaking the sound. A cry for help, coming from the front yard.

Ginny sat up in bed quickly, and with the sound of another cry, she practically ran from her room, to the stairs, not taking any care not to make noise -- she didn't think of the fact that most of her family was surely still asleep. And (though she didn't know it) even her mother had slept late -- though seven o'clock could hardly be considered 'late' -- today.

Ginny sort of slipped on one of the stairs and tripped down a couple steps, falling into the wall with a loud crash.

They're all awake now,

she thought.

Jumping the last stairs, Ginny made her way to the front door, and (foolishly, really) flung it open, to see what was the matter. The sight that met her eyes was one that she would never forget.

A woman--crying, sobbing, bleeding, screaming--was on the doorstep. She had been battering her arms against the front door, and now that it was open, she went through and knocked Ginny to the floor, falling in atop her.

"They're gone!" cried the woman, voice hoarse, grabbing Ginny by the shoulders of her pyjamas, shaking her. "They're all gone!"

And Ginny knew this woman, recognised her somehow as she tried to stop the shaking. Unable to speak, Ginny pushed the woman by the arms, trying to get her off, but her efforts were futile.

In a moment, however, another set of arms was pulling the woman off of Ginny, who was by now so dizzy that she could hardly think straight. Once she could focus, Ginny saw Harry above her, staring at the woman open-mouthed. He spoke in a dazed voice:

"Aunt Petunia?"

And it was; she looked up at him with a rather dazed look, and just stared for a moment, breathing. Ginny noticed that Petunia's fingers were bleeding, and...Ginny felt a sort of shiver down her spine when she saw that the fingernails were missing. She had been clawing at the door.

"Harry?" Petunia asked eventually. "What--what are you doing here?"

This seemed, to Ginny, one of the oddest questions that she could have possible asked.

"Me?" said Harry. "What about you? What are you doing here?"

This seemed to remind Petunia of what she was doing here, and she suddenly screamed again, inarticulate, and fell down unconscious on the floor.

Harry and Ginny looked from her form, to each other, and then back, both wondering what exactly had happened, and neither bothering to ask the other, for of course they did not know either.

Ginny heard a very loud stomping coming from the stairs, and when she spun round she saw Fred, George, Ron, and her father, all behind her mother, who had gotten to the bottom first, eyes wide.

"What happened? Who is--" she began, coming over to the three and taking a look at Petunia. "Oh, sweet Merlin." She put a hand over her mouth, looking at the unconscious woman. "What's happened?"

"I dunno--" said Harry. "She just...she was attacking Ginny. Can't imagine...why..."

All of the Weasley males present simply watched in silence, mouths wide, some in shock, some in yawn.

"She was banging at the door, screaming about somebody being gone--dead-gone, I think, seemed like, not missing-gone," said Ginny, gesticulating wildly for no reason that she could fathom. "She just...sort of grabbed me, because I opened the door when she was banging on it, and she fell, and--"

"That's enough, Ginny," said her mother, nodding. "We'll have to put her in a bed someplace. I'll...no, Arthur?" She turned round, addressing her husband. "You Floo Dumbledore, explain what's happened, and ask about what to do."

Ginny's father swallowed visibly, eyes widening even farther. "Me? What--what do I say? I don't know how to explain this--"

"Just do it, Arthur," said his wife. She pointed at Petunia. "Harry, you and Ron move her up into one of the twins' beds, and--"

"What?" said one of the twins' beds' owner. "Why does she have to be in our room--"

"Because you're going to be at work all day--"

"So's Dad!"

"Oh, just be quiet, George, please--"

"Fred!"

"Whatever! Just...everybody do as you're told!"

Silence followed this statement, as everyone looked about at each other. Ginny, hands in her pyjama pockets so that she wouldn't imagine them without fingernails, furrowed her brow. "You heard her!" she said. "Go!"

--|--

"How's she been?" Harry asked, leaning against the doorway of the twins' room with a forlorn look on his face. He'd only been gone for a few moments, to the loo, but it seemed longer. Ginny looked up at him from her seat by the bed.

"The same," she said. "If she wasn't breathing, I'd swear she was dead."

Harry smirked grimly. "Well, yeah," he said, taking the seat he'd left, next to Ginny, "that's a pretty good time to swear someone's dead, when they're not breathing."

"That's not very funny," said Ginny, but Harry had known as soon as the words left his mouth.

Harry gazed down at his aunt with a very troubled look on his face. She did look dead, but as Harry knew, that was how she always looked when she was asleep. She was always facing straight up, never to the side, and her arms were on her chest. Even when she'd fainted, she still found a way to end up like that.

Harry felt decidedly odd, watching her sleep, but if he left, he only wanted to come back. He didn't know why.

"What's wrong?" Ginny asked, putting her hand on his. He clasped it without looking at her.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all."

"You think I'm daft?" Ginny said. "Of course there's something wrong. I can always tell, I thought we'd been over this."

He smiled slightly, and shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "It's just...what do you think happened? To her? And...who's dead? She said someone was dead, right?"

Harry put an arm round Ginny's shoulders, and then he wasn't even sure if he'd done it on purpose.

"I don't know what I think happened," said Ginny, settling into the embrace. "I think...probably something to do with--"

"Voldemort, yeah," said Harry, nodding. "I just wish, for once, that it wouldn't be him."

Ginny looked up at him shrewdly. "You mean you want two homicidal maniacs going after you and your family?"

"I've already got all the Death Eaters, I reckon that's more than two."

"I suppose."

Silence. Harry could somehow feel Ginny's breathing through her shoulders--or perhaps it was his own.

An odd feeling came over Harry, and he found words coming to his mouth suddenly, hesitantly, words he hadn't thought to speak:

"What am I...Ginny?" he said. "What do you...think of me?"

"What?" said Ginny, looking up at Harry as if he were barmy. "What do I think of you? I love you, Harry, you know that."

Harry grimaced, though he could not fathom why he did so, or if he had actually done it, even.

Ginny blinked, pulling away from him slightly. "What was that?" she asked.

And then it was gone; he was himself again, and not sure of what had happened.

"What?" Harry asked. "What was what?"

"You...it looked like it...pained you, to hear me say I loved you," Ginny said, sounding offended. "What was that?"

"I did?" Harry said, putting a hand to his head. He...felt rather dizzy, rather light-headed.

"Yes," said Ginny, standing and narrowing her eyes. "Yes, you did."

And Harry's world tilted, turned so violently that it knocked him flat unconscious, though he was still in his chair.

--|--

Ginny stared at Harry, who was slumped over for only a moment before he righted himself, so brief a time that Ginny doubted whether it had really been.

What had happened?

"G--Ginny," said Harry now, standing, an odd look in his eye. "I dunno what happened..."

He took a step towards her, and she stepped back, into the nightstand, causing the lamp to rattle and fall over onto the floor, shattered.

"What's wrong?" said Harry. "Are you...what, are you afraid of me?"

"I don't know," said Ginny. "Should I be?"

Ginny took another step, now scraping her foot on a shard of the lamp and falling back onto the other twin's bed, wincing with the sharp pain.

"Ginny, there's no reason to be afraid," said Harry, shaking his head, but Ginny could not believe him, for reasons she couldn't quite figure out, she could not believe him. Something was wrong, though she did not know what, or how. It was just a nagging feeling, very tiny, but she felt it just the same.

Harry took another step towards her, and she backed up, pulling her legs onto the bed with her, scooting backwards into the wall, into the corner. She was trapped--no escape, no, no way to get out...

And Harry just looked at her with an odd look on his face, as if he couldn't figure why she was acting like this. He looked at her, and she looked back in fear. She did not like being afraid, not of Harry--she had never been afraid of Harry, and no, she didn't like it.

"What is wrong, Ginny?" Harry asked again, and she winced again from the pain in her foot--she realised that the shard was actually in her foot, and now that she realised it she could not ignore it, could not forget it.

"Ginny, let me...let me help you. With that," Harry said, pointing at her foot. And Ginny did not know why, could not know why, but she wouldn't let him. She shook her head, just enough, and tears began to well in her eyes because she did not know why she did it.

"Please leave me alone."

And then Harry did something--something that perhaps he had not even tried to do. For just a split second, Harry's mouth quirked up in a triumphant smirk, and then it was gone, replaced with a look of sorrow. She had seen it clearly, perhaps more clearly than she was supposed to have. It had gone in less than a second, Ginny knew, but in her mind that second had lasted for ever, and still she saw it in her mind, even when Harry obediently left the room.

She began to sniffle, and tears poured down her cheeks uncontrollably, from both the pain inside her and out.

She looked down--red was seeping through the bottom of her sock, and (very painfully) she pulled it from her foot.

There was a gash in her foot, inches long, a long slit that hurt like hell now that she felt it. And embedded in it was a very large shard of glass that had gone entirely through her sock. She wished now that she had not knocked the lamp over.

Wiping her eyes of the tears that blurred her vision, Ginny reached down and held her hand over her foot for what seemed like hours before she finally was able to get the nerve to touch it, to pull it out. When she did, she let out a scream that could wake the dead.

In fact, it nearly did so.

--|--

Harry walked out into the hallway slowly, closing the door carefully behind him. He took a step down the hall, reached his hand out and ran it along the wall.

He smiled now, grinned like he had never grinned before, and if anyone were there to see him, they would have seen how unlike Harry the smile looked--it appeared simply wrong on his face, simply and completely wrong. But that did not matter; it was there, it was on his face.

And now he leaned his back against the hallway wall, closed his eyes and laughed, quietly, not loudly enough for Ginny to hear from inside the room. He heard an unearthly scream sound from within the room, and apparently he found this simply hilarious. He laughed even harder and then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed on the hall floor.