Mourning Dawn (A Prelude to The Wand of Elder)

Ginny and Harry stared at each other in silence. It was dark, but Harry felt as if a bright light shone on the young woman before him. His eyes drank her.

Ginny's gaze drifted to the broom clasped in Harry's hands.

"Are you leaving?" she asked with a slight sardonic grin.

Harry started at the sound of her voice, glancing quickly at the broom.

"Oh! Yeah," said Harry, holding up the broom. "I was...well, never mind."

Harry was a little flustered and realized he might sound foolish.

"Yeah, I was leaving," said Harry as inspiration struck him. She disarmed him, but he did not feel awkward or uncomfortable. He swung his leg over the broom and held his hand out to her. "Would you like to come?"

Ginny just stood there for several long moments, inscrutable.

"Ginny..." said Harry, disconcerted by her silence and surprised by the needful tone of his voice.

"Wait here," she ordered abruptly, and ran into the Burrow. After a minute that seemed like an hour, she came out of the lopsided house, throwing a cloak around her shoulders and stuffing a wrapped bundle into her pocket.

Before Harry could blink, Ginny had swung herself onto the broom behind him. She snaked her arms around his waist, and clutched him so tightly that Harry felt lightheaded. Perhaps it was the touch and smell of her that affected him so, but Harry could not tell nor did he care. Ginny was holding him, her cheek pressed against his back. For the moment, this was all that mattered.

They kicked off from the ground and rose lazily into the air. Harry felt no need to rush, and he turned the broom in a slow sweeping arc towards the hills that separated the Burrow from the Lovegoods' home. Higher and higher they flew, until the air changed from the cool moistness of an early summer dawn to the dry chilly air that can only be found at altitude.

"You alright?" asked Harry when he felt Ginny shiver slightly.

"Fine," she said, and she hugged him tighter.

They soared much higher than the surrounding hills, and Harry glided directly above the ridgelines, looking for a particular familiar spot. The sky continued to lighten from a deep indigo to a light blue as they flew leisurely through the morning air. The high thin clouds overhead slowly became rosy fingers stretching across the sky.

Harry finally found the hilltop that he was seeking. It was a place to which he, Ron and Hermione had apparated while looking for the Lovegoods' during the previous winter. It was a good place to land and provided an impressive view of the surrounding countryside. As they touched down lightly, the sun peaked above the horizon, bathing them in its molten glow.

As they alighted from the broom, Ginny looked around the little clear patch of ground around them, and then at Harry with a quizzical expression on her face.

"What?" asked Harry. "Is something wrong?"

"When you said you were leaving, you just meant coming up here?" asked Ginny.

"Yeah. It's nice enough, isn't it? Why? What did you think I meant?"

"Oh something like that," she said too quickly.

"You didn't think I meant for good!" said Harry incredulously.

"Well you didn't exactly explain yourself," said Ginny sharply, casting around as if she was looking for a spot to sit down.

"Well, aren't we the Romantic?" laughed Harry teasingly.

"Oh, shut it," snapped Ginny, blushing furiously. She removed the wrapped bundle from the pocket of her cloak, and then shrugged her cloak off. She spread the garment on the ground like a picnic blanket.

"And you came anyway," said Harry, grabbing her hand.

Ginny gave him that blazing look he adored. "Well...yeah. I did."

They looked into each other's eyes for a long moment and then Ginny cocked her head to the side as if studying him.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

At the mention of food, his stomach rumbled. In the quiet of the mountaintop, it sounded like the growl of a large dog. They giggled.

"I grabbed some breakfast from the kitchen." She looked around their perch briefly. "But I didn't bring anything to set it on. I hope my cloak will do. It's a bit dusty up here."

Harry cursed himself for not bringing his Invisibility Cloak. It was amazing how, in less than two weeks, he had grown so used to not needing it. He resolved to form a habit of always carrying the thing with him. What with Auror training beginning in a few months, and the looming problems with the Goblins, Harry knew that he might need to be constantly vigilant.

"Blimey!" he mumbled to himself. "I'm starting to think like Mad-Eye."

"Sorry?" asked Ginny, settling herself on the cloak.

"Nothing," shrugged Harry.

They settled themselves side by side on the cloak, facing into the sunrise. They conjured a goblet and water to wash down their meal. In silence, they ate the croissant, sweet breads and bacon that Ginny had brought. They shared the goblet of water between them.

Harry ate ravenously; feeling as if Kreacher's pastries from earlier had never existed. Ginny abruptly laid her head on his shoulder. He looked down at her and was amazed how her red hair turned to fire in the morning sun. His gaze shifted back to the sunrise, and he enjoyed the sensation of the tiny movements of Ginny's head on his shoulder as she chewed, and the shift in weight when she brought the goblet to her lips. Silently together, they watched the sun grow from a sliver on the horizon, to a giant fiery ball barely hanging above the earth.

"I missed you so much," breathed Ginny suddenly, relief palpable in her voice.

Harry put his arm around her and kissed her soft hair.

"Do you know what this is, Ginny?" said Harry, waiving his hand vaguely at the rising sun.

Ginny looked at him questioningly with those beautiful brown eyes shining with the molten gold glinting sunlight.

"This is only the second time in my life that I have watched the sun rise on a day when Voldemort has not been a threat to everyone that I love," said Harry simply.

He exhaled heavily after he spoke. Not until that moment, when he articulated that thought, did he realize the enormity of the change that it rendered in the life he had lived.

"Oh..." said Ginny softly, and Harry felt her hug his arm with both of hers as she leaned into him more heavily. 'Tell me."

And he told her. He told her everything. Everything he had been forced to keep hidden from everyone but Ron and Hermione for the past year, and everything that he would have to keep secret in the future.

He told her about the private lessons with Dumbledore, and the cave, and Dumbledore's death. He told her of Tom Riddle's early life, and of the Horcruxes, and the need to destroy them. He told her about the Deathly Hallows, Grindelwald, the Peverells and his father's invisibility cloak. He told her about getting the locket at the ministry, and Malfoy Manor, and Gringotts, and the fiendfire in the Room of Requirement.

He told her about his scar and how it had been a gateway to Voldemort's mind, and how it had made him master Occlumency. He told her about his critical decision to trust Dumbledore and complete the horcrux hunt. He told her about Snape and his lifelong love for Harry's mother, and how incredibly brave the Potions Master had been for so many long years. Harry told her of sacrificing himself, of walking towards death accompanied by Lily, James, Sirius and Lupin, who had all been brought to him by the Resurrection Stone. He told her of the unknown and strange double bond with Voldemort that had again protected him from the killing curse, which Dumbledore had explained in that strange ghostly replica of King's Cross Station. He told her about the Elder Wand and burying it with Dumbledore. He told her of the potential war with the Goblins, his pending Auror training, Trimble Didact and Harry's concerns about being drawn into the Ministry's politicking.

And she told him everything, too. She told him of the year as it had been at Hogwarts. She told about their rebellion against Snape, their defiance of the Carrows, and their attempted theft of the false Sword of Gryffindor. She told him how Snape's bark had always been worse than his bite throughout the year. Snape's promises of profound retribution that he had made in public had always become simply mundane chores, snide comments, and relatively easy punishments.

She told him how amazing it had been to watch Neville turn from a shy, but brave, teenage boy into a true leader among the students. She told him how Luna's status had gone from a dingbat outcast, to being the D.A.'s strategist. Ginny told how she had formed an impromptu triumvirate with Luna and Neville that led the D.A. in Harry's absence. She told him of their fear and worry after Luna's disappearance, and Ginny's own frustration when she had been forced into hiding at her Auntie Muriel's house.

Back and forth they went. They traded tales, and shared laughs. They held hands, and rested their heads on each other's shoulders, or in each other's laps. They stroked each other's hair, or placed a sympathetic hand to each other's face.

To Harry, it was wonderful.

As they talked, it seemed as if a year of sympathy, commiseration, astonishment and amusement passed between them. Harry would never again keep secrets from Ginny. They would not ever have to play catch up like this again, because Harry suddenly knew that they would always be by each other's side in all their future trials, triumphs and adventures.

Yet as Harry watched her face and how it was alive with laughter as she told the tale of the D.A.'s first graffiti campaign last October, he also realized that he could now look forward to more days like this one. There would be many more times that they would simply sit and talk. They were young, and they were alive, and they were happy in each other's company. For the first time since their first kiss in the Gryffindor common room, this moment with Ginny was not part of someone else's life. It was his life. This time with her was his. There were no faceless strangers in her future, it was his face that would be nestled next to hers, and that gave him joy.

For the first time since Voldemort was killed, Harry felt truly free.

As the sun blazed into the sky, Ginny eventually had to cast protective charms to prevent them from getting sunburned. They also conjured more water and multiplied and transfigured some of the crumbs left from their breakfast to make a midday meal.

And they talked and talked.

"Ron was magnificent when he stabbed that locket, Ginny!" explained Harry, in the middle of yet another tale. "That thing attacked him. It attacked him with images of Hermione and me. It almost got him, I think, but he came through strong. I didn't realize until that moment how his relationship with Hermione was completely different from before. Stupid of me, really, since she had cried for weeks after he left."

"He is such a prat!" said Ginny, still fuming at Ron's desertion. She was pulling out her wand. "Git!"

Harry had a sudden image of Ginny departing immediately to the Burrow and casting a bat-bogey hex at Ron. He wanted to laugh. Instead of a bat-bogey hex, Ginny began to cast a Patronus.

"I should let my parents know that we're okay. We've been gone all day," she explained. The sun had definitely crossed the meridian, and was beginning its long descent towards the coming sunset.

"You can do that talking Patronus thing?" asked Harry. Ginny smiled and nodded, obviously enjoying the impressed tone in Harry's voice. Harry watched admiringly as the shimmering white form erupted from her wand and immediately streaked down the hill towards the Burrow.

Then Harry gasped. Ginny's Patronus was a doe!

"Dad taught me, just in case I got into too much trouble with the Carrows and needed help," said Ginny in explanation. Then she caught the astonished look on his face, and she turned a pink color that had nothing to do with sunburn. "Oh that. It changed after Bill's wedding."

"My mother's was a doe!" exclaimed Harry.

"I know. You just told me." She looked thoughtfully after the creature plunging across the countryside. "Strange, isn't it, how that happens?"

"Why did it change?" asked Harry.

"Please, Harry," said Ginny softly. "You are not that clueless, I think."

"Because of me?"

She gave him a sad little smile. Only then did it strike Harry just how much Ginny had longed for him. He was surprised by the depth of it. He realized that it was just as much as he had needed her.

He did not realize he had even moved, but suddenly Ginny was in his arms. Their lips found each other and they kissed deeply. He squeezed her to him, and she gasped at the strength of his embrace. He felt her arms about his neck, pulling him forcefully to her. After a few seconds, he was lifting her off the ground. No longer kissing, he was nestling his face in that fiery red hair, more beautiful than any sunrise. He inhaled the wonderful scent that was Ginny.

"Ahh, Ginny," Harry whispered into her hair, his voice breaking. "I missed you so much. I love you so much."

"Harry," she breathed, speaking at the same time as he. "I love you, Harry."

It was not enough. He had to tell about so much more than just the events and adventures and magical theory with which he had wasted their last few hours together. She had to know.

"Ginny," he whispered into her ear as he held her. "I took out the Marauder's Map every day and stared at your dot on it. I used to imagine that if I concentrated on it hard enough, you would know I was thinking of you. Ron, Hermione and I came to this very hilltop on our way to the Lovegoods. I sat looking here across the fields and thought how this was the closest I had been to you since the wedding." His voice was thick with a year's repressed emotion, and Ginny sensed his distress.

"It's allright. We're together now, Love," whispered Ginny. "We're together now."

"I thought of you every day. I worried about you every day. I loved you every day," said Harry, feeling incapable of expressing the depth of his feelings.

He felt Ginny shake and realized that she was crying, and she let out a laugh that was half sob. He held her tighter if that was possible, and she clung to him.

"I saw you in the grounds when I was walking down to the forest to confront Voldemort," continued Harry. "I was under the invisibility cloak, and you were comforting an injured girl."

"I remember," whispered Ginny in a choked voice. Her fingers caressed the hair on the back of his neck. "I felt you walk by. I was sure you had walked by."

Harry nestled deeper into her hair, kissing her neck. "When I thought I was about to die, when Voldemort was about to cast the killing curse in that awful clearing, the last thing I thought about was you, Ginny. When he was casting the curse, I couldn't even hear it. I just thought about kissing you, and holding you."

Ginny pulled back from him slightly, cupping his face in her hands. He gazed at her and she smiled lovingly at him. He saw tears streaking the face of this girl who almost never cried; he felt her thumb wipe away one of his own.

"There is nothing...when I thought you were dead, I...I..." She let out a sob and kissed him again.

Then they were kissing passionately. With a mixture of joy and fear, he felt her hands pulling his shirt over his head. His own shaking hands found some of the buttons of her shirt, ripping one from the fabric in his haste. In the clumsiness of their excitement they fell to the ground. Then she was on top of him, pressing and rubbing against him in a way that was both exhilarating and terrifying. She made small needful sounds in her throat that excited him in a way that nothing had ever excited him before.

Realizing his shirt was still stuck around his wrist, he tried to shake it off his arm but only managed to whip it around in a ridiculous twirl. Ginny looked at it and giggled. Then she gave him that blazing look, which had a new heavy-lidded quality that made his throat tight.

Then he felt her fingers on his chest, moving down his body. All the muscles of his abdomen tensed in a violent but blissful way as her hands, fumbling in her inexperience, caressed his exposed upper body. The soft flesh he could see through her partially undone shirt lit a passion within him that was no longer fearful, but hungry. He knew his hands were everywhere on her, caressing her and groping her, pulling her towards him with the virility of youth and the wonderful awareness that they were, at this moment, completely alive.

From the corner of his eye, Harry saw something shimmering and white bound up next to him. Ginny looked up in alarm.

"Bugger!" she whispered angrily, disappointment dripping from her voice.

Harry looked around to see a silver Jack Russell Terrier. It was staring at him and panting, mere inches from Harry's nose. Harry jerked back with a yelp before realizing that it was a Patronus.

"What the fu..." Harry began, but the ephemeral animal opened its mouth and drowned his epithet.

"You...back...now," it said in a cave man's parody of Ron's voice. "Parents... home ...need...both...you." Then the Patronus dissolved.

Harry was dumbstruck, but he felt profound regret as Ginny rolled off of him. She began fixing her shirt, but there was murder in her eyes.

"I will kill him!" she hissed in fury. "Kill!"

Harry sighed deeply in unparalleled frustration, and lay there breathing hard for several seconds. This was not at all pleasant. He sat up dramatically and cast around for his tee shirt. After a moment's search, he barked a laugh and held up his hand. Ginny giggled when she saw that the shirt was still on his wrist, twisted tight by his effort to dislodge it.

"Come on, Handsome," said Ginny, sighing with frustration that matched Harry's. "Get your shirt on or I may not care what my parents say." Then her face grew hard again and she grumbled under her breath, "He can't even do the spell properly!"

"It's not Ron's fault, I reckon," said Harry, though he also felt like giving Ron a punch in the nose. "If they need us, they need us."

"Hmmm," said Ginny doubtfully, with a malicious look on her face. "Don't make excuses for him, Harry! He knew what he was about, the bloody hypocrite."

Within moments they had put their clothes in order well enough so that none could detect what they had been up to. They had cast vanishing spells on the rubbish from their day together. Ginny hugged him fiercely.

"We do need to go back," she said sadly. "I shouldn't have left Mum for so long. She's better, but she will worry."

"Yeah," said Harry, guilt filling him as his hands rubbed her back absently.

They parted and mounted the broom. Before they kicked off, Ginny said brightly, "Fred probably would have thought this was a laugh, don't you think?"

"Yeah, Fred would have laughed," said Harry with a smile. "Then he would have come up here himself and kicked me in the arse."

"Yeah," said Ginny, her voice bursting with affection for her deceased brother as she thought of him throttling Harry. "Yeah, he probably would have done."

Then they kicked off from the ground and were airborne. While the mention of his dead friend still saddened him, it no longer had the power to deflate him. His parents, Sirius, Dumbledore, Fred, Lupin and Tonks were dead, it was true. But Harry was alive. He felt more alive now than he had ever felt.

He thought of George's eulogy for Fred, and a vision suddenly enveloped Harry's senses. The afterlife was filled with Fred's laughter because of Ron's well-timed interruption. Harry saw Lupin and Tonks, holding hands, giving knowing looks. Sirius shouted bawdy encouragement, as Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. But most importantly, Harry could see his mother and father smiling at the feelings in his heart, and nodding their approval.

Harry knew that these dear people reveled in the joy that he felt, and in his love for the girl whose arms were wrapped about him.

The daydream dissipated as the broom picked up speed and Ginny embraced him more tightly. The leisurely pace of their morning flight was forgotten. Harry could hear Ginny's shouts of excitement and glee while he twisted and turned the broom, flying this way and that, cannoning back to the Burrow. He whooped with exhilaration to the countryside below and felt Ginny shake with laughter at his exuberance.

At that moment, Harry knew that Ginny loved him.

He knew that all of the people that they loved most in this world awaited them back at the Burrow.

At such a time, and with such sentiments in his heart, Harry could not feel anything other than wonderfully young, and gloriously alive.