What Ginny really wanted to do right now was rip her hair out. Maybe bang her head on something until life made a bit more sense. But she knew that nothing good would come of that. She knew in her head that Harry had every right to be infuriatingly confusing right now.

But emotions rarely listen to what our heads know with certainty.

If you had asked her a week ago, she would have been elated to tell you she was done with this confusion. After the day that Harry had kissed her in grand fashion in front of their entire House, she could finally rest easy each night knowing that he truly felt about her the same way she felt about him.

Tonight, however, the rest would not come easy.

Ginny flopped onto the couch in front of the fire and stared at the ceiling, unseeing. Ever since Dumbledore's death two nights ago, Harry had been . . . well, it was hard to describe how he was, exactly. She knew that he had been close to their Headmaster. Closer than any other student, to be honest. And so she understood that he was grieving, just like he had when Sirius died. She was doing everything she could to comfort him and be there for him. But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about his reaction. There was grief and pain, but there was something else in his demeanor that she just couldn't place.

Most of all, she couldn't believe she was about to spend yet another night in the common room, pacing around and debating if Harry Potter saw her as more than a friend.

The day after Professor Dumbledore died, Harry had clung to her almost literally. He had kissed her as though he was trying to run away from something that was chasing him. But today, he had avoided her. At lunch, he had sat elsewhere, as though nothing had ever happened between them. And when she caught him looking at her, it was with a pained, wistful look. When he came into the common room and headed to his dormitory, she had tried to catch up with him and kiss him goodnight as she had every night. But after a quick hug, he had scuttled away from her like a startled crab and darted upstairs.

Was it possible she had imagined the last few weeks? It would have been the best dream of her life, if that was the case. Not that any dream she had ever heard of involved weeks of memories.

With a sigh, she turned over and watched the fire die out into embers. Of course, she knew in her head that Harry was just reacting to the events of the other night. Most likely it had nothing to do with how he felt about her. That didn't mean it didn't sting to see him look at her as though the sight pained him. In the end, she was really just concerned about him. She loved him enough to wish that she could help him through this and heal whatever gaping wound was aching in him. And it hurt to know that he wouldn't let her do that.

She wasn't aware of how long she lay there staring at the fire. But as her mind ran through different scenarios of things she could say to him or ways she could ease him through this, she rested her eyes "just for a minute" and eventually her imagination drifted into dreams. In the middle of one of those plays running through the theater of her mind, a voice interrupted by calling her name.

"Ginny?" Startled, she jerked her eyes open and saw the common room just as she left it. But as she sat up and looked around, she saw that everyone else had gone to bed.

"Ginny," the woman said again, stepping in front of the fire. Ginny didn't recognize her, but something about the woman did seem familiar. She looked barely out of Hogwarts, with long, dark red hair falling over her shoulders. "I am so excited to meet you, Ginny."

"I'm sorry?" Ginny said, shaking her head and blinking out the last of her sleep. "I . . . I'm not sure who you are."

The woman sat down next to her and smiled gently. "I'm sorry, of course you don't. My name is Lily Potter."

Ginny took a moment to stare, slack-jawed, at the woman beside her. "I must have misheard you there. Did you say Lily Potter? Harry's mum?"

"Yes, that's me."

"But you're . . ."

"Dead?" Lily finished. "Yes, of course. And you're dreaming."

"Am I still?" Ginny said, looking around the room. It looked just like the room she had fallen asleep in. But her senses did seem different somehow, after all. Turning back to face Lily again, she studied the face that smiled back at her calmly. His mother's eyes. Everyone had always said that about Harry, but there they were, staring back at her. And then she said the first thing that came to her mind at the moment, because she knew that this woman would understand.

"I'm really worried about Harry," Ginny blurted out.

Lily's expression faltered a bit, and she gulped as she nodded. “Me too.”

“I’m sorry,” Ginny said, backtracking. “That doesn’t seem like the first thing I should have said to you. I’m . . . honored to meet you, I–“

“No, it’s quite all right, it is why I am here, after all,” Lily said, waving her off. “Though I must tell you first, I am glad my son finally got his head on straight and kissed you. I’ve been rooting for you for some time. I thought for sure things would get going when he saved your life, but I suppose boys aren’t known for seeing what is right in front of them.”

“Really?” Ginny said, nearly blushing with the compliment. “You were hoping he would date me?”

“Really,” Lily said, smiling. “James and I think you are a lovely match for him.”

“You’ve been watching all this time?”

Lily paused for a moment to consider this. “It is rather hard to explain how things work over here. But we’ve been keeping track of our little boy the best we can.”

“So . . . you know what is going on with Harry then? I mean, I know he is grieving over Professor Dumbledore, we all are, but . . . I know there is more to it somehow.”

Lily smiled. “You know, that was the biggest reason I kept hoping Harry would start seeing you. He needs someone that can read him this well- especially since most days I don’t think that poor boy knows how to read himself.”

For a moment, Ginny forgot all about how concerned she was about Harry and just embraced the compliment. When she had started seeing Harry, she knew that her parents would be absolutely thrilled. They had always seen Harry as one of their own, after all. But a part of her felt so sad that she would never know what Harry’s family thought of her- and that Harry would never know what they thought of him either, really. But they had been watching this whole time. And through all of the flaws they must have witnessed in her, Lily Potter thought she was a good “match” for her son.

“Do you remember the private lessons that Harry was taking from Dumbledore?”

It took a second for Ginny to come out of her reverie and return to the conversation, but she nodded. She had known that Harry was taking regular trips to the Headmaster’s office, though he never told her anything about those meetings.

“Dumbledore has been working for years on a very important task. Lately, however, it has been more than he could do by himself. Harry was helping him on this task — that is where they went the night Hogwarts was invaded. There were a few times that night we didn’t think either of them was going to survive. Thankfully they both made it back to the castle, though you know what happened from there.”

Ginny took a minute to ponder this. It was hard for her to imagine a task so large that Dumbledore would need help with it. From her perspective, it had always seemed as though Dumbledore could do anything with a mere flick of his wrist. If he was having difficulty with something, it must be a ferocious task indeed.

“The thing is, Ginny, they didn’t finish the other night. In fact, they aren’t even halfway done with the job. So, with Dumbledore gone now . . .” Lily trailed off into a tight grimace, and suddenly Ginny understood with a rush of clarity. Once she had a name for it, all of Harry’s actions made more sense.

Harry was burdened.

He had always taken large tasks upon himself that should have been reserved for fully trained wizards, whether that entailed rescuing her from the Chamber or flying to London on Thestrals to save Sirius. But if Dumbledore had worked on this with Harry and then left him alone, Harry would naturally decide that he had to do the rest of it by himself, and push away anyone else that tried to help. Now that she understood, she recognized the firm set in his jaw over the last couple of days.

“Can I help him? Is that why you are here?”

Lily nodded. “Your role is vital in all of this, Ginny. But I’m afraid you won’t like this very much- it is something that will be very difficult for you.”

“I don’t care,” Ginny said forcefully. “I would do anything to help him. Anything.”

Lily closed her eyes and smiled. “I know. That is why I came to you.”

“Are you going to see Harry too? I mean, if you can come to me . . .”

“No, I can’t. Not now. There is a . . . force preventing me from coming. But Dumbledore has told me that James and I can help him through his last task.”

“So how can I help him now?”

“First, I have some things to show you,” Lily said, pulling out a large book and setting it in front of Ginny. “This book is just to demonstrate how they work. It is a book of memories from Harry’s mind.”

“You can just take memories from him?”

Lily shrugged playfully. “He’s sleeping. He won’t miss them.”

Ginny did not laugh with Lily, but leaned forward to read the title of the book. Hermione Granger. Opening the book, she saw that it was rather like a photo album, only charmed to have sound on the ones you were looking at. She could see Hermione stopping in to Ron and Harry’s compartment on the train ride to school. Flipping through some pages, she saw Hermione answering every question in class; helping Harry and Ron through the challenges guarding the Philosopher’s Stone; reciting the reasons they needed to join S.P.E.W; and dancing at the Yule Ball. After a minute or two of perusing the book, she looked back up at her guide.

“How do you feel as you look through the book?” Lily asked.

Ginny paused for a moment. “I . . . guess I was just thinking about Hermione. I mean, I have always admired how smart she is, and how . . . wait; I was just going to say she was almost like a sister to me, but I don’t usually feel that way. I have only known her through Ron and Harry mostly.”

“What you are feeling right now is what Harry feels as he thinks about these memories.”

Looking back at the page she had flipped to, Ginny focused more on her emotions as she watched the memory unfold. She could sense how grateful Harry was when Hermione stood by her all these years, and how much he depended on her through all that he was trying to do.

“Now that you can see how it works, you are ready for the one I want to talk about.” Lily took the first book and replaced it with another one. Ginny Weasley. Ginny’s heart did a small flip, but she gathered her courage and opened the cover.

The first image was of the first time she had seen Harry, sending her brothers off at King’s Cross. It was so odd to see things from his perspective. Every time she looked back at this moment, she felt embarrassed at the silly crush she carried. But that wasn’t the emotion that washed over her as the little girl chased after the train.

“He thought I was . . . cute?”

“Perhaps not at that moment. Remember, this is how he views the memories now. So when he looks back on that day currently, he recalls you as being a cute little girl chasing after her brothers. But I can tell you that his view of that hasn’t changed as much as you might think.”

The next page was of the mortifying days Harry spent at the Burrow the next summer. But Harry hadn’t felt mortified, like Ginny did now looking back. She could sense him remembering how awkward he felt. He had never had any attention like that before, and part of him wanted to talk to her, but wasn’t sure if that would only make it worse or not. Ginny was touched by how concerned he had been for her, and relieved that he wasn’t just annoyed by her silly reactions to him.

She took a bit more time in this book than she had in Hermione’s book. She flipped through how scared he had been when she was nearly dead in the Chamber of Secrets, and couldn’t believe how impressed he was with her courage as they broke into the Ministry of Magic. Going through the days of Quidditch at the Burrow the next summer, she could see how he slowly began to notice her more and more as a girl, and not just as Ron’s little sister. Seeing his reaction to her snog with Dean behind the tapestry made her laugh. He remembered lying awake for some time that night trying to figure out why he wanted to rip Dean limb from limb. At that point, Ginny skipped forward to her favorite moment — their kiss after the Quidditch Cup. This was where her emotions at the memory truly matched Harry’s. Pure joy. The feeling that everything in the universe had finally clicked into place and nothing could ever go wrong again. But it was the next page that she turned to that stopped her in her tracks.

It was a simple day, really. The memory on this page was just of the two of them sitting by the lake and talking, pretending to revise their schoolwork but spending most of their time snogging instead. But the feeling that overwhelmed her was much more intense than she was prepared for — especially considering how standoffish he had been today.

“He . . . loves me,” Ginny said, gasping in awe as the feeling surrounded her. She let the emotion crash over her in waves, and ended up closing her eyes to savor every moment of it. He loved her strength; her fiery personality that kept him on his toes. He saw a kindred spirit in her, whether it was playing Quidditch together or the way that their lives had both been disturbed by Voldemort. He thought she was beautiful, and smart, and funny, and whole list of things that Ginny never saw in herself.

“Yes, if he had been raised to understand love, he would recognize that he loves you,” Lily said with a hint of sadness.

Ginny flipped to another page, where they were goofing off on the Quidditch pitch one afternoon, and stopped again to cherish the feeling. She knew that Harry was not the romantic sort of boy that could put his feelings into words. If she had wanted that type of chivalrous boyfriend, she would have stuck with Dean, after all. But to know that he felt this way about her, underneath all that he never said out loud, was the best gift she ever could have been given.

The next page she turned to was a day she remembered all too well. They had gone to the Room of Requirement to “get away from the loud common room”, but things had drifted from revising to talking about their day to heavy snogging rather quickly. And then Ginny could feel Harry’s nervousness as she watched the memory of him slowly sliding his hand underneath the hem of her shirt. They had reached this point before: in fact, she had been to that point with Dean before. Ginny watched as the Harry in the image pulled back from the kiss slightly to watch his girlfriend’s face as he grazed his fingers at the edge of their usual barrier, looking for reassurance that she wouldn’t mind if they went a bit further. Ginny remembered how nervous she was that day as Harry had slowly brought his hand over her bra to cup her gently. She was scared that he would think she was too small, or think less of her somehow, or a host of other things.

But as the Harry in the image closed his eyes and savored the feeling, Ginny could tell that all of her fears were unfounded. She drew in a breath as she tilted her head back to draw in all of the emotions that radiated from the memory in the picture. She could sense how tentative Harry was, nervous that she would be angry he wanted to do something like that with her. But she could also feel the emotion that drove him to crave that closeness, and that was the part that surprised her.

When she had started seeing Dean, the other girls in her dorm had warned her that older boys “only wanted one thing”, and that randy boys didn’t care about the girl’s feelings at all. But Harry wanted to be closer to her because he felt so drawn to her emotionally. Sure, there were certainly hormones that drove him to the actual act, but she could sense the affection that led him there. He knew he was rubbish at expressing his feelings, and hoped that she would know how he felt from how he held her and cherished her. He was thinking about how amazing she was, and how lucky he felt to be with her. And as he returned to kissing her forcefully and began kneading her in his hand, he certainly wasn’t thinking that she was too small. In fact, Ginny was completely unprepared for the level of arousal that he felt as his thumb accidentally grazed her bare skin. The image in front of her flickered back and forth between what was happening, and what he was imagining happening. But he wasn’t just randy. He was so in love with her that he wanted to be closer to her, wanted to remove everything between them until they could actually–

“Ahem,” Lily coughed beside Ginny.

Jumping in her seat in alarm, Ginny’s face immediately flushed as she turned the page back to the previous one quickly. She had gotten so caught up in the memory that she had clearly forgotten that his mother was sitting next to her.

“I’m so sorry, I — we probably shouldn’t be doing that, I know, I —“

“It’s quite alright, dear,” Lily said, though Ginny noticed that she wasn’t quite ready to look her in the eye yet. “I can assure you, Harry did not leap from nowhere. I do understand. And only you know what you are ready for and when. It’s not a decision to take lightly. But you know that.”

“Thank you,” Ginny said quietly.

“Of course, while we are on the subject, I will just state that now is certainly not a safe time for me to become a Grandmother, if you catch my drift.”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, of course not, we would never —“

“I know. But as a mother, I figure it was probably something that should be said, all the same. Besides, this is my only chance to say much of anything to you. Perhaps I should mention how much I look forward to grandchildren much further down the road.”

“Grandchildren? Just how many children is that?”

Lily was about to respond when the feeling and the scene in front of them changed abruptly. The warm and secure feeling from the page was gone, to be replaced with a slow and crawling fear that inched its way through Ginny’s veins.

The Ginny in the image was no longer flying around the Quidditch pitch, but tied up to a tree and held at wand point by a circle of Death Eaters.

“I said WHERE IS HE?” one of them bellowed.

The Ginny in the image stood her ground, merely glaring at the hooded figure in return.

“Still don’t want to talk, eh? CRUCIO!” Ginny made a small shriek as she watched her picture self flail and resist screaming as long as she could under the extreme pain. When the spell was lifted, however, it was obvious that it had taken a lot of her strength away.

“Now, maybe you will be more ready to tell us what we need to hear. We know you’re Potter’s little Witch. We know you know where he is. It is a very simple process, really. If you tell us where he is, we can let you go home to your mummy and daddy. If you don’t, then we can send them home your dead body in a nice little package for them. What’ll it be, sweetie?”

“Never!” Ginny cried. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Oh, come now,” another Death Eater said. “It seems like such a waste to kill such a pretty little pureblood.” The second figure came forward and stroked her hair as he spoke, but the Ginny in the picture spat in his face.

As that one stepped back and the others laughed, one more came forward with a goblet.

“Oh good, I could really use a glass of water just now,” the Ginny tied to the tree said.

“That’s not water,” one of the other Death Eaters said cheerfully. “It’s much more useful than water to us. And much more painful for you.”

Ginny had to hand it to her photo self- she was a pretty brave little Witch. But she could take no more of this torture, and turned the page quickly to avoid watching herself die.

“What on earth was that?” she asked Lily.

Lily wasn’t looking at her, but staring at her hands as she wrung them. “Well, I told you that this book shows how Harry sees these memories today. This is what he sees when he looks at you right now.”

“Why? What changed?”

“Because right now he feels like everyone he has ever loved has died. In front of him. To protect him.”

Ginny took a moment to consider what Dumbledore’s death really meant to Harry, and suddenly saw it as the culmination of a long string of events in Harry’s life. Harry had always wondered if he was a lightning rod of sorts for this type of trouble, and this was only further proof.

“So, he thinks that this is going to happen to me? That was why he was —“

But Ginny didn’t get to finish her thought, because the image on the page had changed again and drawn their attention. This time, it was Harry that was being tortured by the Death Eaters, with Voldemort at their head.

“Time to give up, Potter,” Voldemort said. Ginny cringed as she watched the other Death Eaters, some of whom were practically licking their lips with what they knew was coming.

“You know my answer, Tom,” Harry said with all the strength he could muster. “I’ll never give up.”

“No?” Voldemort teased. “Never, you say?” And with that taunt, he motioned for two more of his followers to emerge from the dark forest that surrounded them. Between them, they carried a flailing and bound Ginny.

“No, Harry!” she cried. “Don’t give in! No matter what he does, it doesn’t matter–“

“It is really very simple,” Voldemort said, cutting her off. “An easy exchange. If you give yourself over to us, I will ensure that she is returned to her family unharmed. But if you refuse to tell me what I want, then you can stay with the rest of us and watch your little girlfriend die.”

The Ginny in the image screamed through the silencing charm and shook her head frantically, but everybody watching the scene knew what he would choose. Harry Potter could never put his own life above someone else’s like that, and would never be able to live with himself if he watched her die. Ginny put her hand over her mouth to choke back her emotion over the image and turned the page so that she didn’t have to watch anymore.

“No wonder her couldn’t bear to look at me today,” she muttered, as the next image morphed even faster. Instead of watching the day she and Harry had teamed up against Ron in chess, suddenly she saw Harry collapsed on the ground in front of a tombstone. The grief and the anguish he felt overwhelmed her, and she could feel her own tears falling as she watched the Harry in the image sobbing uncontrollably. He had lost so much in his life, but losing her — losing the only one that had truly made him feel happy and complete — left him without the will to continue on. He never wanted to face anyone again, except to make the people pay who had taken her from him.

At this, Ginny could take no more. She slammed the book shut with a thud, and placed it on the table in front of them. After wiping her tears, she turned to Lily.

“Please — tell me how to help him,” she pleaded. “What was he working on with Dumbledore?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Lily said. “The less you know, the less they can torture out of you with Versitaserum. And it is imperative that Voldemort does not know what Harry is doing right now.”

After seeing the images in Harry’s mind, those words sounded particularly ominous.

“But how can I help him if I don’t know what he is doing? Are you going to teach me something that he can use, or —“

“No, I’m sorry, that is not your role. Dumbledore instructed Harry to tell Ron and Hermione what they were working on, but no others,” Lily said simply, but Ginny wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“What do you mean, that’s not my role? Those two have always been the ones that can help him. But I helped him at the Ministry last year, and now that we are finally this close, I can’t just walk away from him. If he has a task this large, then I need to fight with him!”

“Ginny, you don’t have a choice,” Lily soothed.

“Yes, I do! If I ask him to tell me, then he can–“

“I don’t know if you recall, but I know a thing or two about being told to sit out of a war,” Lily snapped, finally losing her patience. Ginny closed her mouth respectfully and watched as the older woman stood up to pace.

“When we finished at Hogwarts, James and I started working with the Order full time. We were lucky that James had enough inheritance to support us without wasting time on jobs. And so we spent all of our time on rescue operations, and fighting battles with Death Eaters to protect the Muggleborn families. We faced Voldemort himself a few times. We got married because we never knew when one of those days would be our last day together. And when I found out that Harry was on the way . . . I alternated between excited beyond belief and terrified almost every five minutes.

“But then Dumbledore came and told us that there had been a prophecy. That our child could be the one that could finish this whole war, and that the most important thing we could do for the cause was to go into hiding and guard him. It sounded like a vacation at first. We thought it would be great to just focus on our little family and not have to worry anymore about who wouldn’t make it home the next time.”

Here, Lily paused as her face contorted in the pain of the memory. “Do you have any idea what it is like to be trapped in your own little cottage for a year and a half? It was bad enough not being able to even go out and get the shopping done or visit people other than my husband and son every single day. But to have Sirius and all the others come back and forth, wounded from battle . . . to have them talk about how much they 'could have used us in that last one', or how they lost a family because they didn’t have enough help . . .”

Lily sniffed a moment, and wiped away her tears before starting again. “And then, of course, when it finally mattered, we failed. We spent a year and a half with the sole job of guarding our child, and when Voldemort finally shows up, we weren’t even carrying our wands. I tried to barricade the door with furniture as though I was protecting him from a 10 year old Muggle.”

Ginny stood up and went over to Lily, stroking her arm in comfort. “You saved his life.”

“I abandoned him!” Lily cried. “I abandoned him to an abused childhood — years without anyone to turn to at all . . .”

Ginny might not have met this woman before, but she couldn’t bear to watch her cry. She pulled her in and hugged her tightly, trying to find the words to comfort her.

“You know, I think if Harry heard you say that, he would be rather upset that you consider the day you saved his life to be a failure,” she said.

Lily nodded and stepped back from the hug, wiping away the last of her tears. “I know. I know I should just be grateful that I saved him at all, but . . . it has just been terrible to watch him all of these years without any way to help him.”

They paused for a moment while Lily gathered herself once more.

“Ginny, I am asking you to make the same decision that I made. I am asking you to put Harry’s needs above your will to fight. Harry cannot focus on his task with these images in his mind right now. We all know you are strong, and you will need that strength to fight your own battles while he is gone.”

“So you want me to . . . break up with him?”

“No, not just yet,” Lily said. “He needs you. He needs your comfort more than he wants to admit right now. And in the days ahead of him, he will need all of the hope he can store up. One kiss — one happy memory — might change the entire course of this war, and be the strength he finds to carry on when he can’t bear it any longer. But when he finds the resolve to . . . shut the book, as you did . . . you have to let him, Ginny.”

Ginny paused to consider all of this. She had hoped that Lily was here to show her a way to help Harry, and in some ways she had. Walking away didn't seem very helpful though. Her pride felt wounded at the idea that her task was to stand aside instead conquering the enemy with him.

“Please understand that if I thought there was any way to talk him out of worrying about you, I would encourage you to join his fight. He could really use your help. But as long as you are together and Voldemort is alive, Harry will be distracted by his fear that you will die protecting him just as so many of us have.”

Ginny nodded and gathered herself. “I understand.”

Lily sighed. “Thank you, Ginny. I know this won’t be easy for you. It wasn’t easy for me either.”

“He’s worth it,” Ginny said, smiling.

“He is amazing,” Lily echoed. “I am so proud of him. To be so brave and so giving — I don’t think I could have expected more if I had raised him myself.”

This time it was Lily that stepped forward and hugged the younger girl tightly while they both tried to reign in their tears. As they stepped back from the hug, Lily gripped Ginny on her shoulders and looked into her eyes pleadingly. “Just make sure that, above all else, you guard your own life. If he finds out that you are captured or hurt, he will drop his task to come and rescue you at all costs. If he finds out that you are gone, he will lose the hope he needs to complete the last step of his task. You must fight the battles that are in front of you, but guard yourself at all costs. And when the time comes and he needs you again, make sure that you are ready. When it is time to stand again with him at the very end, you must fight with all the courage you have so that you do not have any regrets as I do.”

Ginny nodded fervently, letting another tear sneak out. “I will.”

Lily smiled in response and stepped back. “Tell him that I love him. But do not use that word for your own emotions just yet- he will not be able to leave you if you do.”

“Okay,” Ginny said, sitting back on the couch as the older woman faded from sight. “Thank you,” she said, realizing too late that Lily was already gone. She leaned back into the couch, closing her eyes to digest all that she had heard.

“Ginny?” she heard, and shook her head before opening her eyes again. It was dark in the common room, but she could make out the green eyes that peered at her closely with worry.

“Lily?” she said, before pulling back and waking up more fully. “Oh, Harry — I’m sorry, I —“

“Lily?” he echoed. “Did you just call me Lily?”

“I . . . had a dream about your mum, and when I saw your eyes, I . . . thought I was still dreaming. Wait, how did you get here?”

“I had a . . . bad dream, and just came down and found you. But you dreamt about my mum?”

“You never told me your mother had red hair,” Ginny chided.

“Hold on, you didn’t know that, but you found that out in a dream?” Harry said incredulously. “Did you really meet my mum?”

Ginny paused. “Yeah, I guess I did, actually.”

“Just stay there for a second,” Harry said. “Let me get a picture of her.” As Harry bounded upstairs to his dormitory, Ginny took that time to consider what she should share with him about her dream, and what had to remain hers for now.

“Is this her?” Harry said, panting a bit from his run and interrupting Ginny’s thoughts. “Is this the woman you saw?”

Ginny looked down, and saw a picture in a photo album of James and Lily Potter waving to the camera on their wedding day. She looked a couple of years younger, but there was no mistaking it.

“Yes, that’s her,” she confirmed. “That’s who I met tonight.”

Harry sat down next to her and held her hand eagerly. “What did she say?”

“She is worried about you,” Ginny began. “She was so sad that she couldn’t be there for you now — that she has never been able to help you like she wanted to. She wanted me to tell you that she loves you.”

Harry leaned back into the couch to digest it all for a moment before looking back at Ginny. “I suppose I could have guessed all of that, but . . . still it means so much to hear that she actually said that to you.”

“She said she was proud of you- of how brave you are. I think the word she used was ‘amazing’.”

“Really?”

Ginny nodded and leaned into Harry.

“Wow,” Harry said, wrapping his arm around her and stroking her shoulder. After a pause, he let out a slight chuckle. “I guess the fact that she came to you means she approves of my choice of girlfriend then?”

Ginny blushed and buried herself in deeper to his side.

“Actually, she said . . . that she had been rooting for me for a long time. She called us a good ‘match’.”

At this, Harry took her hand in his and gripped her shoulder tighter with his other arm. “You know, I think I would have to agree with that.”

Ginny took a deep breath, remembering the emotions that she had felt from the book and savoring the feeling of his embrace while she could. After a moment, Harry pulled back slightly to look her in the eyes.

“Ginny, I’m sorry about today, I’ve just had a bit on my mind, and —“

“Oh, that’s okay, Harry,” Ginny said. “I understand. I know things are tough for you right now. And, I —“ love you, she bit back. Instead, she stroked his cheek absentmindedly and tried to find the right words.

“I want to help you in any way I can, you know? So . . . whatever you need, no matter if that is time to think, or a hug, or whatever, you just let me know, okay?”

Harry smiled in thanks, but quickly changed to a more mischievous look. “And if I need to snog you senseless?”

Ginny smiled. “Then you know right where to find me.” Lily had said that just one kiss might make all the difference, and she intended to make sure she gave that notion every ounce of effort she had.

But as Harry leaned in to kiss her, he paused for another moment. “Did my mum say anything else? In your dream?”

“Not really,” Ginny answered. “The rest was just girl talk.”

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