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Don't Give Up On Me | ||||||
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Category: Alternate Universe Characters:All Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Romance Warnings: Death, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Violence Rating: PG-13 Reviews: 173 Summary: Harry Potter has a destiny to defeat Voldemort and save the Wizarding World, but it’s hard to do when he’s the only one who knows that the Dark Lord has returned. Hitcount: Story Total: 50387; Chapter Total: 1476 Awards: View Trophy Room |
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Hermione officially moved into Grimmauld Place and Ginny surrendered her bedroom, choosing to move into Harry’s. There were plenty of rooms and Hermione tried to protest, but Ginny rolled her eyes, levitated her trunk across the hall, and told Hermione to mind her own business. Harry’d watched this with a bit of trepidation, but enough sense to keep his mouth shut. The two girls usually got along well, but the first few days things were tense as they adjusted to living in the same house and being cooped up for most of the day doing research. “My eyes are going to fall out of my head if I have to read another book,” Ginny grumbled. They’d been researching Gringotts and ways past their security, but the situation was looking bleak. Harry had no idea how they were going to get into the Lestrange vault to get the horcrux cup. “We could go for a fly,” Harry said. He peeked up at the window to see it spotted with rain. “Or...not.” “You can’t just go off and have fun whenever you want,” Hermione snapped. “No wonder this is taking so long.” “Not moving fast enough for you, am I?” Harry asked. Hermione paled and guilt settled on her face. “That’s not what I meant--” “But that’s exactly what you said, Hermione!” snapped Ginny. “It’s not like we’ve been dragging our feet. This information isn’t easy to come by, and with nobody able to help, it’s not like Harry and I can waltz into Gringotts and demand they give us the bit of Voldemort’s soul that they’re keeping safe. Or, perhaps you can guide us to what item of Salazar Slytherin’s Voldemort’s tucked a bit of his soul into? You seem to know so much.” The venom in Ginny’s tone took Harry by surprise, but he understood it. The three friends stared at each other for long minutes. Hermione chewed on the corner of her lip. Finally, Harry closed the book he’d been looking through and pushed it to the center of the table. “We’ll need more food soon,” he said. “I’ll go get some.” He half expected Hermione to protest and Ginny to demand to come with him, but both girls were still locked in some sort of silent communication. “Be safe,” Ginny said finally as Harry tucked his wand into his trousers. It was nice to be outside, despite the drizzle of rain. Harry walked several blocks to the grocers and filled a buggy with what he thought they might need. He used the last of his money to pay and made a mental note to make a trip to Gringotts to get more soon. In truth, he thought it might be a good idea to go anyway and scope out any weaknesses he could see. After leaving the store, Harry shrunk down the bags and tucked them into the pockets of his jacket. As he walked home, glad to be out of the house, he wondered if the girls would still be staring at each other when he got home. He wasn’t sure what was going on between them, but there was some definite friction. From the moment she’d moved in, Hermione had tried to take over several things in the house. No doubt she was trying to help, but Hermione was a forceful personality. But she was no match for Ginny Weasley in stubbornness and passion. Ginny’d pushed back hard on Hermione’s attempts and was standing her ground. In truth, Harry thought Ginny was being a bit over possessive, while Hermione was trying to be bossy. They needed to find middle ground if everyone was going to get along. And Merlin only knew how long they were going to be living together. Harry hoped he wouldn’t be stuck in the middle when things came to blows. Xxxxx He returned to find the house in chaos, but not in the way he expected. Ginny and Hermione seemed to be attacking the house itself, together. They were in work clothes with their hair pulled back, wands out, removing parts and pieces of the old Black family home. Mrs. Black’s portrait had been left alone--still draped in the heavy cloth that Harry’d found in the attic not long after he moved in--but the elf heads were torn from the wall and piled in the hallway, and several other ghastly decorations were added to the heap. “Er...hello,” Harry said as he stood and watched the girls work together. “Hi, Harry,” Ginny said. “You’re more than welcome to join us once you get those groceries put away.” “Sure.” Harry was, in truth, rather reluctant to join them. There was a determination that shown in both Ginny and Hermione’s eyes that made him wary. Whatever was said between them once Harry’d left was a mystery, but it had bonded them in a war against the house. Not that Harry minded, but he wasn’t sure what they’d make him do if he did join them. After he’d gotten everything put away and had changed his clothing, Harry grudgingly came downstairs to find them standing in front of the open Drawing Room doors, both staring inside. “I hate this room,” he grumbled. “Doxies.” The memory of the attack by the little creatures made him shudder all over. “That’s why we have this,” Hermione said as she held up a large bottle of doxicide. “Mrs. Weasley sent a new batch over.” “Why are we doing this?” Harry asked. “We could leave it closed, you know.” Hermione sighed and gave him the look that Harry hated. He always felt like a naughty toddler when she quirked her eyebrow at him in that way and tilted her head. It was a good impersonation of Professor McGonagall, Harry thought. “I reckon we’re going to end up being a refuge for more people, Harry,” Ginny said. “Better to have a place to put them than have to scramble to prepare something when they do show up. Plus, if Mum ever comes over, she’ll never let me hear the end of it for leaving these rooms filthy.” “Is this about the respectability thing?” Harry asked. He peered at her sideways and watched as her cheeks turned pink. “I guess so,” she said. “Okay.” Harry nodded and took a deep breath. If it made Ginny feel better about them living together then he would do whatever he needed to do. “Hermione,” Ginny said. “You’re on curtains. Harry, make sure there are no more Boggarts. I’ll start with the furniture and then we’ll move on to those shelves that are packed with nasty things.” “Right.” Hermione gave him a look that Harry wasn’t able to interpret as Ginny marched into the room, determined to do whatever it was that was in her mind. Harry shrugged and followed his girlfriend. It was quiet as they worked: Ginny hadn’t brought the wireless into the room and Harry wasn’t sure if he was glad about that or not. The squeaky handle of the bottle Hermione was using and her soft calls of “immobulus” when a doxy came out were the only sounds. As he looked around the gloomy room, Harry got a sort of shiver, as if someone were watching him, but there were no portraits in the room. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he swore he felt another presence there. “No Boggarts,” he proclaimed after an examination of all the places one could hide. “Good,” Ginny said. “The furniture is clean, only the rugs left, but I’ll do those last. Let’s tackle the shelves.” A doxie darted by them, wings beating furiously as it escaped Hermione’s notice. Harry had to duck as Hermione spun and pointed her wand his way. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she immobilized the creature and summoned it back to the little cage she had for them. “What do you want done with the doxy eggs, Ginny? There are loads of them.” “Fred and George will pay a fair price for them,” Ginny said. She looked at the creatures and a shudder ran through her. Harry wondered if she was remembering the last time they’d experienced the bites. “What do they want with…?” Hermione’s words trailed off and she shook her head. “Nevermind. I don’t think I want to know.” Harry joined Ginny in front of the glass doors on the shelves and they looked at each other with a sort of dread. “We need some dragonhide gloves for this job,” Ginny said. When Harry offered to summon his old ones from his trunk, Ginny shrugged it away and opened the latch on the doors. “Let’s just get it done.” There were a few old ugly portraits in gaudy frames that Harry looked at before discarding into a rubbish bin that Ginny’d drug into the room. Sirius had already told them both to throw away anything they didn’t want; he had no attachment to anything in the house. Harry rolled his shoulders, feeling an ache in them. He hadn’t slept well last night--nothing unusual there--but for some reason he felt bone tired and irritated that they had to do this right now. “I hate this,” he grumbled as he picked up a snuffbox that seemed to be leaking a strange sort of golden colored powder. “What is this, even?!” “It’s wartcap powder,” Hermione said over his shoulder. “Mind you don’t get any on you. Your skin will form a…” But Harry’d already brushed his finger along the substance and a nasty, thick crust began to spread along the surface of the skin. He growled and tossed the box into the bin, despite Ginny’s warning that the twins would buy it from them, too. “Why me?!” He asked. “Why does this always happen to me?” Ginny rounded on him, grasping something silver in her hand and waving it around. “Maybe because you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing half the time! You’re so distracted and whining about getting it done that you don’t think about what you’re doing until it’s too late.” The venom in her voice angered Harry and he stood up straight, glaring at her. “Maybe you ought to tell me about things like wartcap powder before I grab it, then. We didn’t all have the luxury of growing up in this world, Ginny. Some of us have to learn these things the hard way when people won’t inform us.” Her eyes flashed and she moved closer. “If you’d paid attention in school rather than setting off dungbombs to blame the Slytherins, or spending your days flying around the Quidditch Pitch, or--” “Oh ho! You like Quidditch just as much as I do, Ginny. You’d have been better at it if you’d have focused on it, rather than on whatever was going on inside your head!” “You prat! You know very well what was going on inside my head--” “--then those scouts that were supposed to be at Hogwarts this year would have been interested--” Hermione set off a loud boom with her wand and both Harry and Ginny startled, looking over to see her staring at them wide-eyed. “What is going on between the two of you?” Harry looked down to see that he and Ginny were chest to chest, the anger crackling between them. He felt...strange, as if he were outside himself, watching some sort of uncontrollable animal take over inside him. He wasn’t angry at Ginny. He’d been annoyed at the wartcap powder and the fact that his hand was now covered in a nasty yellow scale that was beginning to itch, but...the anger felt out of place. Hermione clucked her tongue. “What is that in your hand, Ginny?” Ginny looked down, blinking at the chain she had clutched in her fist. She’d been swinging it around when she gestured toward Harry during their argument and her fingers were white as she clutched it now. “I don’t...I don’t know. It’s some old necklace that was on the shelf.” Hermione sighed and came closer, her wand still clutched in her hand. “The two of you never argue like that.” Harry ran his hand through his hair and took a step back. “We do sometimes,” he grumbled. “Mostly when we’ve been cooped up for too long, or...or when we have to clean.” Ginny gave him a hesitant smile, a small quirk of her lips and seemed to shake herself as she handed the chain over to Hermione. “I can look at your hand in a bit, Harry,” she mumbled. “S’okay,” he said, glancing down at the mess of it. “It doesn’t hurt.” “This is...wow. This might be…” Hermione held up the chain, an ugly silver locket dangling from the end of it. “Ginny, did you even look at this?” “No. I reached for it when Harry grabbed that wartcap powder. I didn’t even…” She trailed off as the locket turned their direction and they could see the carving of an intricate S on the front of it. “Is that…” Ginny paled and Harry peered at the necklace, trying to decide why it would elicit such a reaction. “Harry, that looks just like Slytherin’s locket. It’s the one thing we thought might have been used for the…” The bottom of his stomach dropped, and Harry felt his heart thump against his chest. He stared at the locket dangling at the end of Hermione’s grasp. Could it be Slytherin’s locket? Right here in the house all this time? “It looks like the sketches I’ve seen in books,” Hermione said. “But we can’t be sure. And we don’t know if it’s a horcr--” “It’s a horcrux,” Harry said. He wasn’t sure how he knew, exactly, but it just felt right. He reached forward with a shaking hand and let the locket rest in his palm. It was cold to the touch and he had to stop himself from recoiling. Ginny let out a little sound that Harry had a hard time interpreting before she stepped forward. “No wonder I hate this room.” Their eyes met and a silent apology for all the arguments and tension passed between them; Harry didn’t need to hear the words from her. “We need to figure out how to destroy it,” said Harry after a sigh. “Dumbledore was a little vague on the concept.” “He didn’t say anything about it,” grumbled Ginny. She rubbed at her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt and dust there. Hermione stared at the necklace in Harry’s palm, a strange sort of horrified fascination in her expression. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever read anything about them, to be honest.” “Yeah, well, it’s not exactly the type of book one would have lying about, is it?” Harry asked. “We could ask Bill,” said Ginny. “Maybe.” Harry couldn’t say why he was so reluctant to mention horcruxes to anyone other than Ron and Hermione. Moody knew about them, too, but he had never asked Harry a single thing about the ones they were still looking for. He slipped the chain over his head and tucked the locket under his jumper. It made him shiver when it pressed against the skin of his chest, but Harry forced away the feeling. “Harry--” “Just until we can figure out how to destroy it, Hermione,” Harry said. Her eyebrows pressed together with worry, but Harry looked away. “Come on. Let’s finish this.” He tried to ignore the feel of the locket against his skin as he pulled more items off the shelves, not even looking at them before he tossed them into the bin. If Sirius had wanted any of this, he would have gotten it already. Xxxxx Harry found himself lying in bed a few hours later, the locket propped on the small bedside table where he could stare at it. The girls were still cleaning and had moved on to the two other bedrooms on the same floor. Whatever argument there was between them had dissipated as they worked together, but Harry still felt the tension between them. He wasn’t sure how to help, other than to stay out of it. The idea that there had been a horcrux here in Grimmauld Place all this time and they hadn’t known about it made him ill. He had no idea how it had come to be here, or what they were supposed to do about it. Staring at it made him feel strange inside, like a heavy weight had been added to his chest and with it came a whole lot of doubt and fear. Could he destroy it, even if he ever figured out how? Would Voldemort know if Harry did destroy it? The more he stared at it, the more his eyes began to water, and he felt drowsy, lethargic. He slipped into sleep, dreaming of strange things. A snake slithered along a dark hallway, lit only by low torches on either side. Its tongue flicked out now and again, tasting the air, sensing where its master was. Further and further on it moved, turning this way and that, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of hallways until it arrived at a doorway that was cracked open. Inside, lay the truth. Harry’s own curiosity seemed to propel the snake forward, urging it to enter. As it did, Harry felt as if he became the snake in the dream. He moved forward, trying to see. “--our plans moving forward--” “--surely, they’ll find us out soon--” “Does that worry you?” Harry moved forward still, winding through the feet of the people standing in the room, disturbing their robes. He could feel some of them recoil at the brush of his scaly skin and saw dark eyes watching him. But he could taste his master in the air, feel him there. “Ah, Nagini,” a high, disturbing voice greeted Harry, “you have returned.” A figure stooped lower, a pale, skeletal hand reaching down toward Harry, lowering and brushing along his neck and back. Harry, as the snake, wound around the hand and up the arm, moving his head until he could see the being. He got his first look at Voldemort and recoiled as their eyes met. Red, soulless eyes in a white face that was most snake-like itself. Voldemort’s eyes widened and his grip on Harry’s scaly skin tightened as something flashed in recognition. Harry gasped and pulled back, waking from the dream as Ginny pulled back from him. She’d been the one to wake him and it was her arms wrapped around his arm, not Voldemort. “Harry?” “Sorry,” Harry gasped out. “Bad dream.” He pressed his eyes closed and dug his thumbs into them, trying to block out the images he’d seen. His head was aching, and he felt a shiver fill him from toes all the way through his body. Ginny lit the candle on the table next to the bed and peered at him. The room was dark, and Harry wondered how long he’d been asleep before the dream came. He glanced at the locket, still perched on the table, and then at Ginny. “Must have been a bad one,” she mumbled. She was in her pyjamas and her side of the bed was rumpled. She lowered once more and patted the spot where Harry should lay. He stared at it for a long moment before sliding down. His skin nearly itched with the memory of being the snake. He felt...unclean, tainted, and he almost wanted to ask Ginny not to touch him. “I was a snake,” Harry said. He didn’t go further, unable to put into words what he’d seen, or suspected he’d seen, at any rate. Had it been just a dream? “Come here,” Ginny pulled him toward her, winding her arms around his chest and clinging to him. The embrace actually helped, because Ginny was warm and soft, not cold like the monster he’d seen in his vision. The room went black as Ginny extinguished the light. Her lips found his and they kissed, clutching at each other, a desperation pulling Harry down. It felt a bit like drowning to him, but it was also one of the best feelings he could remember. They hadn’t kissed like this for ages. Harry wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, rubbing against each other, letting out quiet sighs and soft moans, but eventually they broke apart, needing air and space. Everything seemed to be going too fast, and not fast enough. “I’m sorry,” Ginny said. She sat back against the wall, her back pressed to it and her knees brought up to her chest. “I lost myself a bit there.” “S’okay,” Harry mumbled. His body was still raging with desire and he closed his eyes, trying to control it, but it wasn’t easy. He didn’t remember why they were waiting anymore, other than Ginny never seemed ready. It was frustrating, but at the same time Harry knew he would never push her. They were quiet a long time until Harry felt he was in control of both body and emotion enough to pull her to him, again. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead. “I feel like I’m losing you,” she whispered. “What?” She slipped her fingers into the collar of his T-shirt, resting them on his collarbone, tracing the line of it back and forth. “You don’t talk to me anymore.” Harry huffed out a breath. “We talk all the time.” “Not really,” she said. “We talk about everyday things, but never about how we’re feeling.” “I’m feeling...tired,” said Harry. And he was; it was a tiredness that seemed to seep from his bones. Every part of him was exhausted. “Don’t go to sleep, Harry!” Ginny warned as she pressed her finger into his chest. He couldn’t deny that the tantalizing tendrils of sleep were reaching out toward him. “I’m not,” he said, “I’m just…” “Just randy,” Ginny said with a sigh. Harry’s lips quirked a bit. “Yeah,” he admitted. “A little.” His body was still humming with lust. He kissed her forehead again. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be,” she said. “Thank you for being patient with me while I work through this in my head. I...I want to be with you, Harry. I’m making too big a deal out of it--” “Not at all. It is a big deal.” “I want…” She trailed off and Harry buried his fingers into her hair, rubbing against the back of her neck. “You’re not losing me, Ginny.” “You’ve been staring at that locket for hours, Harry. And when you’re not staring at it, you’re touching it through your shirt. You’ve barely spoken since we found that damned thing.” Harry opened his mouth to argue, but he realized that she was right. He’d been trying to figure out how they were going to destroy the horcrux, but those thoughts had given way to deeper misgivings about how Harry was destined to either kill or be killed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I…” Ginny tugged on his shirt, making him look at her. “I know, Harry. You don’t have to hide with me.” Harry nodded as a lump welled up in his throat and he pulled her tighter to him, burying his face into her hair. “I was the snake in my dream,” he whispered. “His snake. The one Dumbledore said was another…” Ginny made a choking sound and her fingers dug into his shoulders. “I...I saw him, Ginny. And I think...he might have known I was there.” “It had to be a dream.” Her words were more desperate and pleading than Harry wanted to hear. “I wanted it to be, but...I don’t think it was.” “We should tell--” “I’m not telling anyone right now,” Harry said. Ginny pushed up to rest on her elbow, looking down at him in the dark. “Harry--” “Not...not right now. It’s enough that I’ve got this damned prophecy floating above my head, and the horcruxes. Now this...whatever it is. It’s too much. I need...I need time.” “Harry, I…” “Please, Ginny.” She sagged against him, but he felt her nod. “Okay. For now.” |
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