To Cross the Bridge of Death

To Cross the Bridge of Death
Chapter 1: Truth and Consequences

"Harry!" she screamed as she ran down the steep slope, slipping and sliding on the scree near the base. It was the type of hill for which the phrase "climb down" would be much more appropriate than "run down", but by some miracle, she kept her footing and ran on. Ahead, the sonorous rumble that had accompanied the collapse of the ancient castle was still echoing and many of the mossy stones still rolled as gravity forced them to settle into new homes.

She could tell that she was running and that there was more going on, but it felt like time somehow moved ahead, and there were suddenly other people around her. She recognized her brother and Hermione, but many of the others she did not know. Each face, however, was contorted in grief and she looked down to realize that she was cradling the bloody and lifeless body of Harry Potter in her lap, though he looked strangely different from the Harry she had come to know.

"No... NO!" she screamed and sat up forcefully, ripping away the shroud of sleep. Her small hands gripped fistfuls of the bedding, and she found crisp but heavy linens beneath her fingers. The dream receded and took with it the darkness in her mind. She realized that her breathing was deep and labored, as though she had just run a long distance. She blinked her eyes several times before she cleared the haziness away and she could make out the dim shapes of nighttime in the Hospital Wing of Hogwarts.

"Wha..." she managed as one of her hands went to her head instinctively. The last thing she remembered was fighting against the diary, against Tom Riddle, and then she'd been pushed down deep inside herself. She shuddered weakly at the thought of it and how dirty it had made her feel when he did that to her. But the last thing she remembered was also chanting an impossibly long spell in a small dark room. Even stranger, the last thing she remembered was rushing to the side of the crumbling castle in her dream, though now it didn't seem quite as dreamlike as it had moments before.

Somehow, she knew that she and Harry had been married in that dream, and even as she did so she remembered their wedding. Even as weakened as she was, she blushed in the darkness at the thought of the Boy-Who-Lived actually doing something like that with her. He only thought of her as his friend's kid sister, after all, and doubt seized her again. She wished she could tell Tom about it, but no, she couldn't talk to Tom. Tom was really a bad man. She didn't know what had happened to him, but she really hoped that Harry hadn't found out about what he'd been making her do or any of the horribly embarrassing things that she had written to him. Apparently, the ordeal with the diary had left her with all sorts of crazy dreams that seemed a little too real.

She relaxed back on the bed, feeling much the worse for wear as she slowly settled in again. For some reason, the name Ginerva Molly Potter floated across her mind before she drifted off and she fell asleep blushing as the memory of the wedding came floating back to her.

OoOoOoO

Ginny dreamed again, though this time it was a much stranger dream. Harry was the right age again, and he was holding the diary, though something had made an icky black hole right through the center of it. Then she started speaking in the dream about all sorts of crazy things before they touched and she was overcome by pain.

She woke up feeling quite drained, though she felt certain that it was at least a little better than it had been in the middle of the night. Whatever had happened, she'd survived, and that's all that really mattered. For a while, she lay there, simply thinking of nothing as someone on the edge of exhaustion is prone to do.

Eventually, Madam Pomfrey bustled in and gave her a few reassuring words as she checked Ginny over, though she didn't answer any of the questions Ginny had about what had happened. Instead, she simply supplied, "The Headmaster will be down to explain things to you in a little while. I'll let him know that you're awake."

As she lay on the hospital bed, feeling the crisp linens with just a hint of starch that rustled at her every movement, odd things started to float through her head. She kept thinking about things which couldn't have happened. She remembered giving Harry a horrid singing get well card as he was resting up after having been attacked by dementors, but that didn't seem right. Ginny had never seen a dementor in her life, or had she? She certainly had enough memories of the vile things, though they all seemed slightly odd.

It was as though she were remembering vivid representations of stories that someone had told her. If Mr. Weasley had managed to get a telly working in the Burrow, she might have compared them to shows that she had watched years ago. She knew the outline of events clearly, but only parts of it really seemed real to her. Other parts were just hazing and indistinct.

She considered these strange images for a while, but could come up with no real answer. It might have been caused by Tom, or she might have gone really barmy on her own.

After what felt like an eternity, the aged Headmaster did, in fact, come down to see her. Looking upon his flowing beard and wizened face, she was briefly reminded of a white tomb sitting beside a lake and a song of unbearable sadness. How or why those things would come to her mind, she didn't know, but there was a feeling of infinite loss associated with them. Then, she remembered seeing a giant comforting a crying Hagrid, which made even less sense.

Dumbledore looked her firmly in the eye when she met his gaze and she felt something light brushing through her mind, though she hadn't realized that there was such a thing as "through" when it came to minds until that moment. It wasn't unpleasant, though it reminded her somewhat of a fingertip skimming over the top of a pool of water. It almost tickled.

"You look well enough, Mrs. Potter. I'm amazed that you have recovered so quickly, after all that you have been through," he said, his voice not unkind but also with a stiff backbone to it. "Still, I'm sure you would have had a good reason to meddle with those types of forces."

Ginny had been afraid that something like this were going to come up. She knew that Tom had been making her do... things. She'd strangled the school roosters and she'd written those things on the walls. She knew that, though she couldn't remember actually doing it. It didn't take a genius to figure them out, however, given all of the evidence. However, she feared that Tom had made her do something far, far worse when he'd taken her over at the last. The crushing weight of her guilt was such that she didn't even realize what name he had addressed her by. "I didn't mean to, Professor Dumbledore. I just... I was lonely and afraid and he... Tom Riddle got into my head through that stupid book and made me do those things. I'm really, really sorry."

Dumbledore seemed to relax ever so slightly as this explanation spilled out. He continued, though some of the edge had faded from his voice. "No, child, not those things. While your role in this whole Chamber of Secrets affair is not to be ignored, Tom Riddle has tricked many wise and powerful wizards. I would not blame you for that."

His face softened a little more as he spoke. "No, there is something else. We found you and young Mr. Potter on the floor of the so-called Chamber of Secrets with a dead basilisk some three weeks ago. You were both in an indescribable amount of pain and had we not found you when we did, you might not have survived it. When we got you safely out of that foul place, we found that there was a badly distorted piece of magic connecting the two of you. We did what we could to remove the distortion, but I fear that doing so was not without its consequences."

Ginny barely followed what the man was saying. "I... I had a dream about that... I think..." Even as she said it, it came back to her as more than just a dream. It was another of the half-there memories that seemed to fill her head. "I've been remembering a lot of things like that... but it's like a memory, but only half of one of something..."

The Professor, however, ignored her confusion to ask a question. "Ginny, how old are you?"

"How old am I? I'm eleven. Twelve this coming August," she replied, confused by why he would ask that question. Then, something else clicked and she recalled something he had said. "Wait, did you call me Mrs. Potter before?"

Dumbledore sighed softly and appeared to deflate a little. "Yes, Ginny, I did. Tell me how old you were when the two of you were married?"

Ginny blinked in surprise and was about to protest that they were no such thing when the answer came spilling out of her mouth, "I was twenty-three and he was twenty-four. Ron gave me away at the wedding, though it was really just half a dozen people so there weren't many choices." Her hand went to her gaping mouth in surprise. "When did I... what..." Her mind raced at the implications, even though she'd had the hazy recollection in the middle of the night before. 'Me and Harry? We actually got married! I thought he'd never notice me!'

"I think we need to start from the beginning if you are to understand what is going on," Dumbledore suggested softly. Ginny waited as he conjured up a chair for himself and settled down on it. He fumbled for his pipe, but thought better of it and just started talking. "This is going to trifle hard to believe, and I fear that much of it is supposition and conjecture, but please hold your questions for a few moments.

"Have you heard of time travel, Ginny?" he waited patiently for her to give a hesitant nod before going on. "Well, time travel is something quite tricky and nearly impossible. There are ways to reverse a small amount of time, but they are dangerous and often do not work in a way that would be beneficial for actually changing the past. Actually going back in time more than a few hours is thought to be impossible by most sane wizards. All previous attempts have simply resulted in the death of the wizard or witch casting the spell and it's thought by many that if these spells did succeed, it could well destroy the fabric of causality, which is a very important part of reality.

"However, from a purely theoretical perspective, it might be possible. No, now I know it is possible, because I believe a future version of you found such a spell and used it. What could possess you to do so...I will not venture a guess, but I'm sure it was a good reason to you at the time."

"The prophecy cheated us," Ginny interjected. She'd been trying to stay silent and had, for the most part succeeded. However, the same part of her that had answered the questions about the wedding was answering this one. "'One must die' it said, but both died. Harry killed Voldemort, but that bloody bastard's minions did in Harry. It wasn't fair. I was going to fix it. Make sure that it worked out the right way. Mione made the spell for me, and it was suicide, but I didn't care."

Even as she spoke the words, she knew that what she said was the truth. The castle falling and the dead Harry floated to the front of her mind. She shuddered at the memory of it, but she knew that if there was a reason she might have sought to change the past, that one would certainly qualify.

Seeing grief and confusing bubbling up in the girl, Dumbledore pressed on. "You have the potential to become a very powerful witch, Ginny, and apparently you did. However, there was something you must not have counted on. When you touched Harry Potter in this time, the marriage bond attempted to repair itself. Because the Harry of this time is not the same as the Harry of that future time, I'm afraid that the junction was imperfect and it could well have killed you both"

"Fortunately, young Ronald managed to summon help before the damage was too great. We did what we could to fix the mess, and Mr. Potter has made a full recovery. I'm sorry to say that much of what must have been the future version of you did not survive the ordeal. If it's any consolation, that version of you would have erased the mind of the girl I'm talking to now, so things are not all bad. However, there are a lot of that other you still in there. Ask Madame Pomfrey for a mirror in a while and you will see what I mean."

As there was finally an opening in the conversation, Ginny immediately filled it with a question. "Why did you call be Mrs. Potter?"

"Oh... well, you see..." Dumbledore stumbled, for once at a loss for words. "Marriage bonds are not things to be taken lightly. We were able to untangle the interference in yours, but the bond is still there. You and Mr. Potter are married as truly as any couple can be said to be married."

If such a thing were possible, Ginny's face flushed a red as bright as her hair. "What's... what's going to happen now?"

"Well, you have missed the Express back to London, so other arrangements will have to be made. Are you aware of the method used for protecting Harry during the summer? The rites of shielding amongst blood relatives?"

Surprisingly, Ginny nodded her head. She actually was familiar with them, as it was a topic that she had studied in Africa. 'When did I learn this stuff?' she wondered to herself, but then she knew. She remembered walking across the southern plains as they edged on to the Sahara and learning from the medicine men and the tribal shamans there.

"Well, we have a most interesting exercise to undertake. I fear that the wards will not stand up well to having Mr. Potter being married. If the two of you stay close to each other, however, the wards might not notice that Harry has been wed and will hold. I will have someone stationed nearby to do daily checks on the protections, but it will also fall on the two of you to stay together at all times."

"Wait... what? I'm going to stay with those awful Muggles and Harry?" she asked. Somehow, she knew how awful they were because she remembered Harry telling her about them. "What about Mum?"

"Your mother is most upset about this, Ginny, but I have convinced her that if Mr. Potter is a target, then you have become a part of that same target. You will return to the Burrow on Harry's next birthday, which I am pleased to say is only a month from now."

Ginny's gaping mouth and furious blush made her look like nothing so much as a bright red fish. "I'm going... Mum is going to kill us."

The Headmaster laughed softly, "I'm sure it won't be as bad as all that. Mrs. Weasley is well aware that nature of a marriage bond defies being hidden. She cannot change that, and I expect that by the time you see her next, she will have calmed down considerable."

"Professor, I... I just remembered something. When you came in, I thought about a big white slab by the lake and a really sad song. It was your funeral, Professor. Snape killed you," she added the last in a small voice as she remembered a fragment of the grief her former self had felt on that day. "And that's not all, Harry's going to get attacked by dementors and the Tri-Wizard tournament is going to be a trap and Voldemort is going to come back."

If Dumbledore was surprised by these things, he hid it well. He did not, however, stop her from spilling out all of the most dangerous events that her future self had seen at her four remaining years at Hogwarts. Some of them surprised her and more than one brought tears to her eyes as she recalled a particularly painful incident.

Dumbledore took it all in and when she was finished, spoke once more. "Mrs. Potter, I thank you for telling me all of these things, but I would caution you not to share this information with anyone you do not trust implicitly. Also, you would do well not to trust the future now to play out the same way as your memories tell you, because your other self has already changed things in a very significant way by coming here."

Just then, there was a faint knock on the door and Ginny felt an internal twinge. 'Harry?' she thought.

"That would be Mr. Potter. He has been awake for a few days now, and is ready to leave. As soon as you are, we will make sure that the two of you get to Privet Drive and get settled in. Now, I must be off to make a few arrangements... I would encourage you and Mr. Potter to talk for a while. I know that this must come as quite a shock to the pair of you."

A few minutes later, Dumbledore had left, replaced by Harry Potter. He pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed, looking sheepish and awkward and she kept pulling up new memories of him. The two of them fighting each other with words and fighting Death Eaters with magic. The two of them laughing and joking. The two of them on their wedding night.

She pulled the sheet up over her face at the sheer embarrassment of it all. "I'm so sorry," she whimpered.

"Ginny... I... It's all right. The... accident kind of left me with a couple of memories that must have come from some other me," Harry said, obviously not sure how to handle this situation. "Dumbledore said it must have been part of the bond. There are only two bits of it, but I remember our wedding and... I remember killing Voldemort and what happened after that. I guess it was the days when the bond was formed and the day when it was broken."

Ginny's mind twisted and roiled. If he remembered the wedding, that was one thing, but she violently hoped that he did not remember the wedding night. She would likely die of embarrassment if he did. "I'm sorry, Harry, I don't think I... the future me... knew that this was going to happen this way. I think she... she just wanted to see you again." The fact that she was talking about herself in third person seemed almost natural now, though she wasn't quite sure what to make of all of this time travel stuff.

"She worked really hard to come back here, Harry, but she didn't know that the wedding oath was going to react like that. I think... I think she was a little mad with grief. I mean, really gone mad. She worked for years to get ready to come back here and 'fix' things and I don't think she questioned some things as much as she should have."

'Why am I so embarrassed', she asked herself. In her mind's eye, her future self's relationship with Harry played out and she got the general shape of it. 'If I can manage to be myself, he'll like me.' However, knowing that didn't help as much as the fact that she knew it would eventually work out that way. After a little bit of internal turmoil, she lowered the sheet and could look at him and talk at the same time. Before, she wouldn't have been able to do that much because of the unbearable weight of her crush.

Even after only a few hours of sorting through her new wealth of jumbled memories had taken that crush and broken it down to its bones. She knew that she would build something else on its smoothed foundation that would be real and lasting, just as her other self had done.

To her surprise, Harry started talking to her. That was something he had never really done before. "Ginny, I have to apologize, too. I don't care what happened, but no one deserves to have to live with the Dursleys. Not even the Dursleys, really, but that's their own faults. I'd say we should just run away to the Burrow, but I'm quite afraid that your Mum will kill me. Unless Ron does it first. I can't think he'd be all that pleased to learn that we've gotten... well... you know."

For the first time in what felt like forever, Ginny giggled. "They're probably going to want to. But Professor Dumbledore's going to work on them. There's no way out of a marriage bond, which is why they're usually so hard to make."

He reached out and touched her hand lightly and she felt a warmth blossom with her breast. Her mum had once described the feeling to her when she was little. When a married couple touched, they could feel, faintly, a general idea of the emotions of the other. When they weren't touching, they might get flashes of very strong emotions on occasion, but when they were touching, it was much more frequent and it worked for softer emotions. It was the same feeling she'd had in her breast all morning, she just hadn't realized what it was until that moment.

"Harry, please don't hate me," she said, her voice becoming strained again. "I didn't mean to trap you or anything. I had a crush on you, and I mean, I kind of dreamed of you liking me back, but I wouldn't have done something like this to you against your will. The me from the future... well, I don't think she would have been upset about this, but I don't think she would have wanted to force it on you, either." As she spoke, tears started rolling from her large brown eyes.

Harry, seeming to know what to do but still being a little awkward with it, wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a light hug. Her hands went up and pulled him to her closer and the hug deepened. He patted her long hair and made soothing sounds as she cried. She was crying not only over the thought that she might have committed a horrible betrayal to Harry, but also for every death and for every unhappy moment she'd come across in her mind. There were some terrible things there, including the death of most of the Weasleys and many of her friends.

After what felt like an eternity, Harry spoke again. "Ginny, it's okay. I know you aren't at fault in any of this. That other version of you... the one that went mad... she did this, but she did it out of..." he stammered as he came to grips with the truth, "... she did it out of love. I guess. I mean... Yeah.

"Look, I'm sorry for being a bit of a prat this year. I can see from those two visions I had how much I loved you... I mean, how much the future me loved you. Or will love you. Or... however that works. What I mean is that if I can come to feel that way about you, any me, then you must be the right girl for me. I just haven't realized it yet." He pulled back from her a bit and gave her a reassuring smile, which made her heart melt. He shifted and shortly the two of them were both sitting on the bed, though Ginny was under the sheets and Harry on top of them. "What do you say we start out as friends? I really don't know much about you, aside from what I've heard from Ron and I doubt you want me knowing you on only that basis."

Ginny mustered a grin and a half-hearted giggle. "No, no I don't." Her mind and heart had been wrestling overtime to figure out, exactly, what she felt. They'd come up empty, but she had a flash of inspiration. "I had a horrible crush on you ever since I was little. I think that's pretty much gone now, because I know a lot more about you, though I haven't had time to really process most of it yet. I care about you and I think I fancy you, but I think that's about all I know for sure. It's not like we don't have time... the only way to break the bond... well, there is no way to break the bond between us. So, yes, let's be friends."

A feeling in her chest drove her on to say something that, a year before would have been impossible. "Do you suppose we could, maybe... I don't know... do you suppose we could be boyfriend and girlfriend now instead? I mean... take it really slow, but kind of, you know, make that commitment."

Harry laughed even as he blushed. "I suppose so. Yes, that will be all right. I mean, technically, I could call you my wife and it'd be true."

Ginny let out an "eep" and pulled the sheets back up over her scarlet face as he said it which only caused Harry to laugh harder. "Harry James Potter, you stop teasing me or I'll show you why Fred and George don't pull pranks on me!" Harry stopped talking and grew very quiet and, after a few seconds, Ginny nervously lowered the sheet. "Umm... Harry?"

Harry was looking in her general direction, but not really looking at her. "Oh, sorry," he mumbled with a weak smile. "It's just that I didn't know my middle name was James. It makes sense, though, since it was dad's name."

"Oh, Harry!" It was Ginny's turn to hug Harry and comfort him. "I'm sorry. It was just there in my memories and I didn't realize that you didn't know..." She held him for a little while more and then, slowly at first, she started to tell him other things he'd told her about his parents. She was sure he'd probably known more he'd never shared, but she couldn't help him with those. When he didn't stop her, she went on for a fair while, including the fact that her father had been an unregistered animagus and the form he'd had.

She finished talking and offered Harry a soft smile. She'd just told him a long list of things that had taken the other him years to piece together and he had a warm smile on his face to match her. "Ginny... thank you," he said, and there were tears of happiness in his eyes as he gave her a soft hug. It was broken when Madam Pomfrey came in and ousted Harry so that she could give Ginny one more checkup before releasing her.

Some time later, Ginny was alone in the Ward, changing into something more Muggle-like for the trip to Privet Drive. She'd asked Madam Pomfrey for the mirror as Dumbledore suggested, but hadn't noticed any real differences. Her face was still the same plain eleven year old face she'd seen all her life. It wasn't the beautiful young woman face or the haggard older woman face from her memories.

Everything was normal, that is, until she was half changed and happened to catch a glimpse of her back in the mirror. There were two large tattoos of dragons coiled around her back and, as she looked, their tails wrapped around her legs all the way to the ankles. The style was simple and bright, and as she watched them in the mirror, one of them moved, coiling around the other. Above them both, at the top of her back and almost to her neck was another tattoo of a phoenix with its wings folded inward on itself and its head hidden as though it were sleeping or, more likely, waiting on something.

Ginny took one look at the tattoos and screamed. The only thing she could think was that her mother was definitely going to kill her when she saw those.