To Cross the Bridge of Death

To Cross the Bridge of Death
Chapter 2: Dursleys and Dragons

Ginny recovered from the shock of spotting the huge tattoos on her back slowly. She had been fairly certain that something in all of this mess was going to really shock her, but she wasn't sure what. 'I'm kind of surprised it took that long,' she mused to herself as she looked at gigantic serpentine creatures on her skin. 'Where did I get those great big things? Mum is so going to kill me!'

Even as she wondered about it, another one of her other-self's disorganized memories floated to the surface. Other-her'd spent a year getting the tattoos from a master in Japan. She'd had to trade quite a lot of gold and knowledge to him for the privilege, though it was said that he was a master of the art without equal which made his work truly priceless. The process had been painful and the inks hard to obtain. The greens held a touch of specially prepared basilisk blood, the red came from the tail feathers of a phoenix, and the yellows from a type of mushroom that could only be found in certain goblin caves.

She'd had to provide the inks, as well, and she could remember parts of each quest. The gathering of ingredients had taken over half of the year, but the tattoos themselves had taken several months to complete as there were many potent spells involved in their creation. There were times in the long, painful process where she'd been forced to take time away to heal from the physical and spiritual damage getting the markings. During the forced down time, she'd learned a bit of the craft, but only enough to make the phoenix mark, which was useful for certain things that defied recollection. The dragons, however, were far beyond her limited skills with the art. How they'd followed her other-self her, she didn't know, but she suspected they were just as permanently bound to her as the bond with Harry that already had caused so much trouble.

As she thought about the fact that she could make the tattoos, she realized that she was remembering skills that she, by all rights, shouldn't have. She felt like she just needed to pick up the right tools and she could give someone a sleeping phoenix tattoo, though she couldn't find the memory of what the tattoo did or the reason she'd gotten it, no matter how much she thought about it. 'Oh, well,' she decided as she gave up on chasing down the errant information. 'I guess I'm just going to have to deal with having holes like this. If only I didn't get the feeling that what I can't remember is so important... Not just the tattoo, either. There's something big there, too...'

Of course, she couldn't remember what she couldn't remember. Otherwise, she would have remembered it and made the whole question moot.

Her search through other-her's memories didn't produce anything on the phoenix, but it did let her in on the purpose dragon tattoos. The tattoos, themselves, weren't the squat, bulky things that Europeans called dragons. Other-her'd seen several European dragons thanks to Charlie, and they had been pretty enough in their own way. However, none of them had been as serpentine and sinuous as the things coiled across her back and down her legs. No, the tattoos she had were of a different creature entirely. They were guardian figures, of a sort, but they also embodied great physical power. As such, they enhanced the inherent physical properties of their owner, making her stronger, faster, and more resilient.

Experimentally, Ginny decided to throw a punch and see what happened. She wasn't disappointed by the experiment. Subconsciously, she fell into something that she recalled as a fighting stance and her hand whipped out, as quickly as any serpent. As she did so, one of the two dragons shot along her arm, flowing under her skin like it was the most natural thing in the world and coiling around her arm, its head aligning with the underside of her wrist. Its movement felt like hot breath against her skin, but it wasn't unpleasant. She couldn't tell for sure, but the punch felt like it had been a really hard one.

The movement itself hadn't been caused by the dragon, though she felt certain that it had helped her with speed and accuracy. Other memories came to mind of fighting with Muggles and wizards in a number of different places. Most of the fights had been learning, but she could tell that a few had been much more serious than that. Just like the tattooing, she felt like she had retained some benefits from the other version of her.

"Wicked," she mumbled to herself, unconsciously using her brother's favorite exultation. She watched the dragon slowly returning back up her arm and couldn't shake the feeling that its eyes were watching her as it did so. Wondering what else she could do, she spun around launching herself into the air and giving three quick kicks before landing. By then, dragon had gone completely from her arm and she had a feeling that there was substantially more tattoo on her legs than there had been a few moments before.

"Double wicked," she said, slightly louder. Apparently, there were more bits of her future self left over than she'd thought. 'Not that Muggle fighting is going to help me much in a real fight,' she reminded herself, even though a few of those fights in her memories had seemed real enough.

Feeling a little better about the tattoos, she continued to get dressed in a pair of ratty old jeans and a baggy orange t-shirt with "Cannons" across the chest. The clothes had been Ron's when he was eight, but they fit her well at eleven.

'If I've got all sorts of other skills coming out of these memories, maybe other-me left some spells and junk in there, too?' she wondered to herself. She tried to bring up a memory of a spell she didn't know, but that didn't get her anywhere. She was finding it quite tricky to come up with memories from her other self. They were mostly there, she felt, but finding out how to trigger them was tough. 'Well... maybe...' she considered her dilemma for a moment before hitting on an answer. 'Do I know a spell to change a shirt to something other than Chudley Cruddy Cannon orange?'

As she thought about it, she quickly discovered that she did now a spell to do that. In fact, she knew half a dozen that would do the trick, each with varying degrees of difficulty and effectiveness. She picked the most effective one which also happened to be the most difficult and pulled out her wand. She took the shirt off and gave it three quick flicks of her wrist, just as she'd seen in the memory, and said the word. She felt the magic work and then the shirt... burst into flames.

"Eep!" she said as she looked for a fire extinguishing charm in her memories and this time went for the simplest one of the four that came to mind. This time, the spell worked, putting out the small fire before it could spread far.

She experimented for a few moments more and found that she did know spells. She knew a lot of spells. However, the ones with tricky movements, i.e. all of the really good ones, were beyond her ability to cast. She grumbled a little at this realization, but managed to mend the shirt and turn it a much paler shade of orange before putting it back on and gathering the remainder of her things.

She had a bad feeling that the martial arts thing she'd done before was going to suffer from a similar problem as her magic. She remembered how to do things, and in the case of the fighting stuff, she seemed to have reflexes for it, but she just wasn't quite practiced enough to pull it off. Of course, not many first year wizards had a lexicon of magic in their heads, so she couldn't really complain.

She looked down at her secondhand wand and realized that it could be as much the problem as her lack of true experience with the spells. The wand her other self had learned the spells with had been specific to her, hazel and unicorn hair, 10 inches. 'I'll have to ask Mum...' she started to think, but caught herself. Her mother didn't have the money to go replacing Ginny's wand just because it wasn't perfect.

'Well, technically, Harry's money is my money now so I could just...' she thought but then stopped herself with a verbal admonishment of "No!"

'I don't want him thinking I'm just trying to use him for his money. That'd make me a horrible person. Besides, he's only just agreed to be my b... b...' she let the thought trail off, a blush again creeping across her face.

However, she refused to give up that easily and made herself think the words. 'I'm a married woman for Merlin's sake! I can admit to being my h-h-husband's g-g-girlfriend. There. Was that so hard?' she asked herself, ignoring the tiny voice in her head that had whispered "yes" to her.

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Traveling to the Privet Drive was accomplished by the simple expedient of taking the Floo to Diagon Alley and then catching the Knight Bus to Little Whinging. Harry was surprised but happy to learn that there was a form of transportation that would take wizarding money as he didn't really fancy changing his galleons to pounds. He didn't want the Dursleys finding about his money, after all, as it'd been left there by his parents. He told Ginny that he didn't think Uncle Vernon's distaste for wizards extended to the money those wizards might have.

The Knight Bus was imperfect for reaching Muggle addresses, however, and dropped them off several blocks from Privet Drive. Harry gave her a smile and suggested that it was for the best, as the garishly colored bus appearing in front of his uncle's house would have created quite a reaction. They offloaded their trunks and began the long walk in the afternoon sun.

"So, Harry..." Ginny started. Harry put down the end of his trunk and wiped the sweat off of his brow as he paused to look at her. "I just want you to know that I'm still really sorry about all of this."

He gave her a small, genuine smile. "If you think you're sorry now, just wait till you've spent a few nights with the Dursleys. They're positively beastly. I'll be the one apologizing by that point."

Ginny giggled and grabbed his hand in both of hers, a bold action which made her whole body feel even warmer than it already did. "I'm the one who grew up to be the idiot who started all of this. So I'm the one doing the apologizing. At least for now. If you need to apologize at some point in the future, I like chocolate cauldrons and lemon drops."

Harry looked down at their hands, and Ginny immediately became self-conscious about it, dropping her grip. They stood in awkward silence for a few seconds, neither of them quite looking at the other until Hedwig hooted from her cage, calling them back to reality.

"So... umm... let's just get on with this," Harry said, his voice sounding a little strange. "If we can somehow survive the first few minutes, then it should be fine. Uncle Vernon is likely to have gone spare about having to put up with another 'abnormal child', but I suspect Professor Dumbledore has worked things out, somehow. I think my Uncle is quite afraid of him, though he'd die before he'd admit it."

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Uncle Vernon did, indeed, have a quite large problem with the additional houseguest and wasted no time in yelling at the both of them about it. "This is a normal house, Girl," he roared as the veins stood out from his neck. He seemed to have chosen to call her Girl just as he had not-so-affectionately renamed Harry as Boy. "You will keep your school and any abnormalities you may possess to yourself."

Ginny cowered from him, but she wasn't really afraid. While Uncle Vernon might have been scary to a Muggle, he didn't hold a candle to her Mum in full tear. She had just seen Harry cower and felt it was the right thing to do. "And you, Boy," his uncle continued, rounding on Harry. "Whatever you do under this roof had better be normal and decent. I don't want to know what has possessed you to bring your... pet home with you, but make sure she behaves."

Ginny could tell that Harry bristled a little at the comment, and some secret part of her smiled. Inside, of course, as smiling on the outside at that moment would have been quite bad. "Let her help you with your chores if you want. A little good hard work might take some of the wrongness out of her."

Both of them acted suitably cowed and dragged their heavy trunks up to Harry's small bedroom when they were dismissed. The bedroom barely held the bed, both trunks, and two people. The bed was definitely not large enough for two, even if the mere thought of sharing it hadn't given the both of them a blushing fit, so the trunks became the second, even less comfortable bed. It would be marginally more comfortable than the floor, at least, which was the only other option.

This meant that there was very little room aside from at the foot of the bed, which meant that being in the room meant being lying down, or at least sitting on one of the beds. Ginny took one look at the sleeping arrangements and felt her face flush again. She was certainly going to be seeing a lot of Harry over the next four weeks. Far more than she'd even imagined in her wildest dreams. Not that she was still having those fanciful dreams. 'No, now my dreams get a wealth of details and facts to work from,' she thought and blushed even more.

"So... I'll take the trunks," Harry said, his own face quite pink. "You can have the mattress. It's not much, but it's probably better than the other one."

"You don't have to... I can take the trunks. I'm used to getting the worst sleeping spot anytime we go away for holiday," she said, not wanting to put Harry out in his own room.

He gave her a lopsided grin. "No, you're taking the bed. You're my g-g-g... we're going out and all, so I insist on showing you at least some chivalry."

Ginny laughed, but she kept her voice down enough so that no one came running to yell at them. Harry had warned her about that, though she had a feeling it was going to be hard to control herself so much. "Alright, you win. For now. Can we turn in now or do we have some horrid Dursley thing we have to do first?"

Harry leaned out the door and looked both ways before leaning back in and answering in a loud whisper, "Only thing we have to do is avoid being under foot. We'll have to be up early in the morning, though. Aunt Petunia expects the kitchen to be spotless and breakfast to be on the table before Uncle Vernon goes to work. First day back from school is always a lot of extra cleaning because they don't pick up after themselves when I'm away. At least, it was last year, anyway."

Ginny nodded and the two of them snuck to the bathroom and took turns changing. By some miracle, they were back in Harry's room without being accosted. Ginny found that she felt quite self-conscious about the long nightdress she was wearing. It was comfortable, but it really left her all but naked underneath the loose fitting fabrics. If there'd been a way, she'd have gone for pajamas in an instant, but her mum had always made her do girly things to keep her from becoming too much like her brothers. Ginny had always suspected it had to do with hoping to find her daughter a husband, but she'd never asked and by the time she realized it, her mother had been killed in the war. It was but one of her many regrets.

Harry must have seen her far away look, because he asked, "Ginny... everything okay?"

"Yeah," she replied with a nod but frowned. "I just caught myself thinking with other-me's memories. Some of the not-so-nice ones."

"I'm sorry. I have some of those kinds of memories and they sometimes get into my dreams," he said.

"I know," Ginny said but frowned again. "I mean, other-me knew. Are they bad yet? Other-me remembers you having lots of problems keeping You-Know-Who from getting into your head."

Harry shook his head, though he shuddered. "Getting into my head? You mean, like really?"

Ginny nodded, "It was pretty nasty there toward the end. You had to learn Occlumency to keep him out." Memories came flooding back and she suddenly realized that Occlumency is what she'd used that morning to keep Dumbledore out of her mind. Somehow, she'd reflexively been doing it, just as her future self would have been.

"Occlumency?" Harry asked, and Ginny realized that, with four weeks to play with, they might have a productive time after all.

"Yeah, it's... it's a way to keep a Legilimens out of your mind," she paused as another memory trickled in. "A Legilimens is a mind reader... it's supposed to be illegal, but since it's pretty hard to catch one and even harder to prove it, there are an alarming number of them running around. I don't actually know any Legilimency, but I think other-me knows a fair bit of Occlumency. Would you like for me to teach you? I mean, I can't give you real practice against a Legilimens, but I can show you the basics of it. Professor Dumbledore can help you with the practical, I think."

Harry considered this for a moment. "But won't we get in trouble? There's the whole Underage Magic thing to worry about."

Ginny shook her head. "No, this is one of the few things we can get away with. It's not really magic, anyway, it's just the art of keeping your mind empty of emotion. Legilimency relies on using your thoughts and emotions to bring out your memories. I think a really good Occlumens can show wrong thoughts and memories to a Legilimens, but other-me never bothered to learn how."

"Well, sounds like it will keep us busy. When do you want to start?" Harry said.

"Now's as good a time as any," Ginny declared and within a few minutes, they were both sitting cross-legged on the bed. "Okay, you just empty your mind and think about nothing. Don't worry if it doesn't happen immediately, it can take a while to get that part right."

Harry did as directed, though he fidgeted a lot for the first few minutes. Ginny joined him, but found that emptying her mind was as easy as filling it. It was clearly another one of the skills that she'd inherited from herself. Realizing that there was little point in meditating, she instead spent time watching Harry as he sat, eyes closed, thinking of nothing or, more likely, everything. 'I like his lips,' she mused to herself and was rewarded with a mental image of a passionate kiss between the two of them. For a moment, she thought she was remembering something else, but realized that this image was absolutely her own fantasy. For some reason, this made her even more flustered and she went back to meditating to keep herself from dying of the embarrassment.

An hour later, they decided to turn in and Harry put a blanket over the trunks to take some of the edge off of them before lying down. "G'night Gin," he mumbled as he drifted off to sleep. Her memories swam with other "goodnights" and she smiled broadly as she mumbled something that might have been a response before she also drifted off.

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After the first two days at the Dursleys, which had been dominated by cleaning away nine months of Dursley dirt, they had fallen into a routine. They got up early, cleaned the kitchen, made breakfast, tolerated the Dursleys, cleaned the bathrooms, cleaned the hallways, made lunch, tolerated the Dursleys, worked in the yard, cleaned up the kitchen again, made dinner, tolerated the Dursleys, and then were free to pursue their own interests. At some point during each day, Uncle Vernon also regaled them with a lecture on proper behavior.

It wasn't even dawn yet when Ginny was awakened by a soft touch on her arm. It took her a few moments to fully transition from her dream of stalking through a dark jungle to the reality of Harry's small bedroom. Harry was crouching beside her, smiling with no more than a foot between their faces. "Go on," he whispered. "Get ready and we'll get done with the chores as quick as we can. Best to keep Uncle Vernon happy."

Ginny groaned softly at his prodding, but got up anyway. She had known the whole experience was going to be rough, but the disruption of her dream seemed particularly unfair to her. She'd really wanted to see where her dream was going as she'd just gotten the scent of the most delicious sambar and was certain that she'd catch it. She shook her head to clear it away. Why she was having jungle dreams, she had no idea, but it was probably either the influence of her future self or Tom Riddle. Considering that she remembered something about Voldemort hiding in Albania, she figured that it was probably from him, but she didn't even want to guess at what it meant.

As she wriggled off the end of the bed, Harry turned back and grinned at her. "Do you always growl in your sleep?"

She shot him a dirty look and stuck out her tongue. "Not normally, no." However, internally, she had a bad feeling that she wasn't remembering something important. She got that feeling quite often.

Half an hour later, she was helping Harry scrub the kitchen from top to bottom. The Dursleys, as it turned out, were not very clean people. This went a long way to explain the amount of work that Harry had to do on a daily basis while in their "care". However, with two of them, the work went quickly and was more tolerable. Harry seemed to not be frowning, at least, which Ginny took as a good sign.

Over that first week, the two of them had really gotten to know each other. They were still nervous about some subjects, but they freely shared everything about themselves that fit squarely into the realm of "being friends". Ginny was freed by the memories of her future self, and it seemed to her that the facts of their situation had made Harry take the time to notice her. 'Of course, it's not like I gave him much chance to notice me before, what with all the running away and hiding and not talking,' Ginny admitted to herself as she thought about it while the two of them drifted off to sleep one night. She knew full and well how her other-self had won Harry's heart, and it had been so simple that she wanted to kick herself for not thinking of it earlier.

Physically, they hadn't progressed at all, but that was probably for the best. Despite all of her extra memories, Ginny was still almost two months shy of her twelfth birthday. Harry was just about to turn thirteen, but neither of them had actually had a relationship with anyone of the opposite sex that rose above the level of friendship. There were a few incidents of awkward handholding, but they were few and far between and mostly dissolved into giggling or awkward silence.

Things were, all in all, going quite well up until one week after their arrival. Ginny and Harry were taking a walk and taking in the early evening streets of Little Whinging. Growing up in the magical world as she had, Ginny found quite a lot interesting about walking among Muggles, and Harry was happy to indulge her. They'd had dinner, such as it was, and were free for a few hours. Some evenings, they would spend that time trying to teach Harry Occlumency, but, since they had no way to gauge his progress, it seemed frustrating to do it every night.

In any case, they had just turned down Magnolia Road and were browsing at a shop window when they realized they'd not been paying sufficient attention to their surroundings. From not too far behind them, they heard someone say, "Ain't that Potter?"

Ginny turned, her hand creeping slowly toward her wand in case the recognition had been of the dangerous sort. She didn't know why her first instinct was to expect attack, but she had a feeling that her future-memories had something to do with it. What she saw wasn't quite what she expected, but it was just as dreadful. A bit down the street, she spotted Dudley and four of his friends.

Harry, who had turned when Ginny did, hissed a warning. "We'd better get out of here. Ickle Diddikins doesn't like me much lately."

In truth, since the two of them had arrived at the Dursleys, Dudley had been quite unhappy with Harry for some reason and had gone so far as to try physically intimidation on him a few times. Ginny's glare had proved enough to head off any real violence, as none of the Dursleys were quite sure what rules she was bound under. Ginny was pretty certain that Dudley was horribly jealous of the fact that Harry was spending time with a girl. Dudley was the sort of land animal which would have had better luck sprouting wings than finding a girlfriend.

This anger, and the fact that he wasn't likely to be intimidated by a slip of a girl like her in front of all of his burly friends, meant that Ginny was very much not happy to see him. She and Harry hustled away at a fast walk and managed to get ten feet or so before the dreaded cry of "get 'em!" came up and then Harry grabbed her hand and they were both running as fast as they could.

Three streets later, they'd outpaced Dudley and his gang and took a sudden turn down a side street before pausing to catch their breath. Ginny laughed out loud at the exhilaration of it and drew Harry into a hug of shared excitement. He returned it, and they rather lost themselves in the moment until a wheezing breath announced the arrival of Dudley and his boys.

"Oops," Harry said as he let go of her. Ginny just offered him a grin until she realized that the small alley they had chosen to duck into didn't actually go anywhere. The great slabs of meat with attitudes that had chased them were catching their breath, but that wouldn't take them that long. Then things were going to get un-fun in a hurry.

"Umm... Harry. Do you trust me?" she asked.

"I... yeah, I do," he answered, and she felt something nice surge inside her chest.

"Then... I think future-me learned some stuff that might be useful here. Just... stand back and... hold my wand, please," she said as she pressed the short length of wood into his hands. She didn't know how well her remembered fighting skills would actually work, and she definitely didn't want to get her wand broken while she was finding out.

Harry looked from Ginny to the goons and back again. "Umm... okay. I'll trust you, but we might be able to talk them out of a really bad beating. I think Dudley is afraid of you."

"If this works, he's going to be really afraid of me," Ginny said with a grin. She thought hard about what it would take to take on a bunch of guys bigger than her and looked for one of other-her's memories. She'd almost run out of time when she found it and launched herself forward.

She could feel the dragons coiling around her limbs, making her move faster and with more strength than her eleven year old frame should have possessed. She was among the bullies in an instant and the first went down when she rammed her palm into his solar plexus. Her small hand went in deep and his face immediately contorted in pain as Ginny danced on to kick the back of the next one's heel, sending his feet out from under him. Before he'd hit the ground, Ginny danced on and dealt with the next two in much the same way as the other two.

It was over in an instant, and Ginny was within striking distance of Dudley. However, instead of hitting him, an action she felt was sure to bring down the wrath of the Dursleys, she gave him a deep, menacing growl which seemed odd coming from a human throat. Dudley, for his part, stumbled backwards, landing heavily on his prodigious posterior.

Ginny felt Harry's hand grab hers again and they were off, running away from the boys once more, though they were slowed by the laughter that both were fighting to contain. Some time later, they collapsed in the swings at the play park and let it all out. "That was amazing!" Harry declared. "How'd you do that, with the kicking and the punching and all that?"

Ginny regained her composure slowly and started to answer. "Oh, other-me spent loads of time in Asia. She learned all sorts of cool stuff like that, though I didn't think I'd ever find much use for it. I might be able to show you some of it if you want, though I don't think other-me ever actually taught anyone anything. I do have a... bit of an unfair advantage." She blushed, though it was barely any change from her face being flushed by laughter and running. "Promise me you won't think less of me if I show you something weird?"

Harry nodded and promised, and she held out one of her arms. Having never tried it before, she was a little surprised when willing the dragon along her arm actually worked. It coiled and surged around her arm, almost seeming to look at Harry with its baleful red eyes. Harry's eyes went wide, but she was pleased that he just muttered "Wicked" and didn't recoil.

"I have two of these, one for each arm... and leg. They stay on my back, mostly, but they go all the way from my ankles to my wrists if I let them. They're a weird kind of magic and help with physical combat. I've got one of a phoenix, too, but I don't actually know what it does. And no, you can't see that one as I'd have to take my shirt off," she finished. Fortunately, she couldn't blush any redder or she would have.

"Wow..." he said, growing thoughtful. "The other-you must really have wanted to be ready for anything. She did all of this stuff just so she could come back here?"

Ginny nodded. "A lot more than just that, too. I think I know why I'm growling in my sleep," she said. "I think I'm something rather like an animagus."