Harry woke far earlier than he would have chosen to after the long night he’d had, but the single window in the attic was an eastern facing one, so when the sun rose, he did too.

In the light of day, Harry was able to properly examine his new surroundings. The room was larger than most of other single rooms in the house, but smaller than the entire floor would be. The ceiling sloped awkwardly because it followed the line of the roof. The space was clearly devoid of furniture or other fillers. The walls were bare drywall that were painted a differentially faded grey— the wall facing the window was much more faded than the other walls were.

The only item of interest in the room was what appeared to be a fireplace. Harry got to his feet, folding the tarp after he got up, then walked over to examine the fireplace. He was disappointed to see that the fireplace had been blocked off at some point, and had clearly not been cleaned out afterward, because there was a small pile of charcoal amid all the dust, dirt, and soot.

Harry released a heavy sigh of relief. The charcoal would be a lifesaver, because if he had been forced to pass the time with absolutely nothing to distract him from his thoughts, he didn’t think the results would have been very good. He only had the one night of good memories to think about, amid a sea of bad ones, after all.

And he knew, in a vague sort of way, that eventually Vernon would eventually come up to the attic. After the night before, Harry could be reasonably sure that Vernon would deliver what would probably be the worst beating he had ever received. He wasn’t sure if that would be the end of it, but at least he could reasonably sure that Petunia wouldn’t let Vernon kill him.

However, he kept those kinds of thoughts as vague as he could manage. It didn’t do him any good to worry about things he couldn’t change.

He shook his head briefly to clear his head of these thoughts and climbed to his feet. He determinedly ignored his growing thirst and bent down to sort through the charcoal. He grabbed a likely looking piece and considered what to use as his canvas.

He only had two options: the walls and floor or the tarp. Using either had near equal potential to bring the Dursley’s wrath down on him, but if he avoided using the tarp, he would avoid getting charcoal on him when he wrapped himself in the tarp at night to sleep.

This decided, Harry stood in one corner and began to sketch the castle. It would be much like the small drawings he had in his cupboard, except this time he would be drawing from his own memories, rather than his imaginings.

As the day wore on, Harry grew hungrier, thirstier, and weaker.

He had needed to relieve himself at some point in the day, so he had designated the former fireplace, after he cleared it of any salvageable charcoal, to be the spot where he relieved himself.

The attic smelled terribly now. Harry had discovered, after he relieved himself, that the single window was glued shut. But he managed to get so caught up in his drawing, that he hardly noticed the smell. Or his thirst, or his hunger.

He had moved on to drawing Ginny once he was satisfied with his rendition of the castle.

As the sun was setting, he heard a key turn in the lock to the attic. He was so weak from thirst at this point, however, that he couldn’t even bring himself to be frightened. He simply put the piece of charcoal down and waited for whoever it was to come to him. He was surprised to realize that, as soon as whoever it was got the door open, they had locked it again.

Once he was sure whoever it had been was gone, Harry cautiously made his way down the stairs, mindful of his deteriorating condition and need to remain silent. Were he not so dehydrated, he might have cried in relief at the sight of the jug of water and single slice of burnt toast sitting on a chipped platter, just inside the doorway.

He sat down, right there by the door, and nibbled at the toast, occasionally taking small sips of water. He knew from long experience that he would only end up hurting himself and wasting limited resources if he tried to consume either the food or the water too quickly.

When he was about halfway through the piece of toast, he was forced to ask himself if it was worth rationing it out. As he stared at the half of a slice of bread that he held in his hand, he came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t worth it, so he slowly finished consuming the bread.

Once he was done eating, he had a small amount of water left. Using both hands, he ever so carefully brought the pitcher of water up the stairs. Even the short amount of time he’d spent near the door had been enough to make him nervous about disturbing Vernon.

Then Harry returned to working on his drawing of Ginny. He quickly discovered, to his dismay, that another consequence of the east-facing window was that it got dark in the attic before the sun had truly set. He kept at his drawing for as long as he could, hoping to exhaust himself as much as possibly as he could before going to sleep.

Far too soon, he ran out of daylight. He sighed in disappointment and carefully set his charcoal down on the ground. Then he made his way over to the side of the attic farthest from the fireplace and wrapped himself in his tarp, hoping to lose himself in his memories of the Ball— and Ginny— once again.

The next morning, Harry woke with the sun again. Since he was up anyways, he decided to take advantage of the eastward facing window to watch the sunrise. He sleepily— and weakly—made his way over to the window and sat down on the broad ledge it formed in the wall.

Watching the colors of the sunset spread across the sky made Harry wish, more than ever, that he had a colored medium to work with. As grateful as he was that he had anything at all to work with, it would have been nice to work with colors too.

When the sun was well clear of the horizon, Harry climbed down from the window and picked up the charcoal again. When he’d had to quit last night, he had been working on Ginny’s eyes. He was hoping that, with a fresh mind, he’d finally be able to capture the glint in her eye.

Time seemed to pass in a syrupy haze as Harry flitted around refining his masterpiece. When there was nothing left to work on, he worked on adding Daphne and Hermione to join Ginny.

Sometimes, he would glance out the window after what felt like ages only to see that the sun had not moved at all, and sometimes, he would glance out the window after what felt like mere seconds and see that the sun had rocketed across the sky.

With no chores to complete in a timely manner and nobody to yell at him, Harry was adrift in a sea of now meaningless time.

As he was starting on a crude sketch of his Dogfather, he was shocked to hear the— very muffled— sound of a carriage and several horses making their way up the driveway towards the Dursley’s house. Checking the sky for the sun, Harry saw that it had slipped behind the house and out of his view. Since his grasp on the passage of time was loose at best, it could be practically any time after noon but before sunset.

He felt a wave of curiosity at who could possibly be calling on the Dursley’s— they didn’t have any friends that dropped by unexpectedly, let alone any friends at all. He decided to indulge his curiosity, so set down his charcoal and laboriously pull himself into the window. From here, he had a view of the driveway and therefore a view of the visitors.

And he nearly fell right back off the ledge when he saw that a carriage and full patrol of the Royal Guard were making their way towards the house. The Royal Guard’s presence must mean that at least one member of the royal family was present.

Harry’s mind went into overdrive trying to reason out what any of the royal family would be doing calling on the Dursley’s. A small, stupidly hopeful, voice insisted that Ginny had come for him. He immediately squashed the thought and considered more realistic possibilities.

The presence of a full patrol suggested that they expected some trouble from whatever business they had here. That meant that they were likely here to prosecute one of the residents for a high offense. Harry thought through the various laws that would be significant enough that a member of the royal family would accompany the guard. The most probable thing he could think of was the possibility that one of the Dursley’s offended the royal family badly enough that they would come to personally see them arrested.

Harry had certainly left early enough for him to have missed something significant, like one of the Dursley’s insulting the royal family, though why they wouldn’t have simply been arrested on the spot eluded Harry.

Then there was the possibility that Dudley’s long list of misdemeanors had finally caught up with him, or that Vernon’s business wasn’t as compliant with the law as he liked to say it was. Maybe Petunia’s gossiping had finally crossed the line into overt stalking or coercion.

He entertained himself for the duration of the time it took the royal party to travel up the driveway with the thought of all three of the Dursley’s finally getting their comeuppance for being genuinely bad people. He knew the world didn’t work that way, but it was nice to imagine that it did.

As the carriage came to a halt, Harry realized that, as far up as he was, there was no way that he’d be able to hear anything that was said, unless he figured out a way to get the window at least partially open. He started running his hands over the frame of the window, searching for a weak spot in its sealing.

When he could find no weak spots, he desperately started pushing at the edges of the window, not really expecting to succeed. He was shocked when the round window creaked open, as if rotating like a globe, by a degree or two. Harry tried to wedge it open further than the inch or two that he had managed, and quickly had to give it up as hopeless. He was simply too weak to manage it.

He was still shocked that the window had opened at all, but he wasn’t one to question it the few times things had gone right for him. Harry settled in to listen and hoped most of the business would be conducted outside where he could hear it.

Positioning his ear close to the window, Harry caught the tail end of the sound of a herald knocking on the front door and summoning all three Dursley’s outside, along with him, Harry.

He looked regretfully, and a tinge anxiously, at the locked door behind him. If given the choice, he would have complied with the guard. Thankfully, he was reasonably sure Ginny wasn’t the type to send the Royal Guard after him for being disrespectful, so he was fairly certain that they had not come to prosecute Harry for anything. But Harry worried that that would change when he failed to comply with the summons.

After the initial summons, things started happening in quick succession.

Petunia and Vernon came through the front door together. Vernon said, with his usual bluster, “The wife and I are here now, what do you want.”

“We want the rest of the people we summoned to join us before we conduct our business,” the herald replied primly.

“My boy is busy and the fr— Potter boy isn’t here, so whatever you need to say, can be said to us,” Vernon said. “If Potter’s gone and gotten himself into trouble, you can rest assured that he will be punished,” Vernon added, with a hopeful lilt to his dull voice.

Harry grimaced at the reminder that Vernon was going to punish him. And he was seemingly not the only one upset by this, because then there was a commotion as Ginny charged out of the crowd of Royal Guards.

She must have ridden a horse here, because she was wearing a riding helmet, padded breeches, and tall riding boots. Just now, however, she was practically flying on foot towards Vernon, one hand still wrapped around her riding crop.

In the seconds before one of the guards snagged an arm around her waist, Ginny swung the crop back and slashed it down across Vernon’s face with a sharp crack. The guard held her back from crossing to the doorway where Vernon stood, and she halted after a moment’s struggle. Then, in a single fluid motion before anyone could stop her, Ginny pulled her wand out of a boot holster, and cast a hex at Vernon.

Harry thought it might be the bat bogey hex he had heard it was her specialty, but it didn’t last long enough for him to tell for sure, because one of the guards quickly cancelled it. Harry wished he was close enough to see facial expressions because he had a feeling that Ginny’s was something else at the moment.

Harry watched the doors on the carriage open as he listened to Ginny loudly berate the guard for cancelling her hex. She was still going at full strength when the king and queen stepped onto the driveway.

“Ginny dear,” King Arthur said, interrupting her tirade, “You know you can’t go around striking and hexing the people who make you angry. That’s what the courts are for,” he chided gently.

Ginny subsided with a grimace, and Harry couldn’t help but be disappointed. He had enjoyed watching her fight against the guard’s grip on her while yelling expletives at the guard who had cancelled her spell, all while shooting Vernon constant death glares.

Dudley chose that moment to finally show up, still holding the lute that he must have been playing when the summons had been issued.

“What do you want?” He demanded angrily. “I was playing my lute!”

Harry snorted quietly at Dudley’s ability to sound like a petulant child, even now, when he was technically an adulthood, just as Harry was.

The herald from earlier perked up, seeming pleased at something. Harry wondered if the herald had been waiting for this to happen.

“You, Vernon, and Petunia Dursley along with Mr. Harry Potter have been summoned to appear here before your King and Queen,” The herald declared pompously. “If Mr. Potter would come out, we could get on with things,” he finished significantly.

Harry muttered quietly, “I would if I could.”

At the same time, Vernon blustered, “Listen here, I told you that the boy disappeared! If you’re not going to say what you came here to say, then go. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

Ginny and the king and queen seemed to hold a whispered conference. Harry’s heart plummeted because, surely, they were going to leave now at his seeming refusal to show up. Although… Maybe that was a good thing. He still didn’t know what they wanted with him.

His urge to comply with the royal order warred with his anxiety at the unknown. He started to push at the side of the window again to try and get it to budge open but remained silent.

Before either side of his internal battle managed to gain any further ground, Ginny announced, “My spell says Harry is somewhere in the vicinity. I’m going to go search for him while my parents deal with you lot.”

Harry’s heart began to pound and before he processed what he was doing, he was standing in the middle of the attic. He froze as he debated between going back to the window and listening in the hopes that someone would mention what, precisely, Ginny meant by ‘deal with’, and his urge to run to the door to wait for Ginny, so he could be ready to alert her of his presence.

After several, long, indecision filled moments, he realized what his gaze had been fixed on. It was the drawing he’d made of Ginny, and truly seeing it brought his memories of the Ball flooding back into his mind.

This finally allowed the side that was urging him to go wait for Ginny by the door to win, and win by a landslide, at that.

He clambered down the stairs, heedless of any noise he might make, or the risk of falling down the stairs. He eagerly pressed his ear to the door in anticipation of when she came down the hallway, though his more logical side reminded him that she still had the rest of the house to search.

Time still felt sticky like syrup, so he couldn’t quite say how long it was before he heard the glorious sound of Ginny coming through the house. He started to bang on the door, pushing the exhaustion and weakness he could feel lurking heavy in his mind to the fringes of his consciousness. He was pretty sure that, once he’d attracted her attention, he’d be able to rest soon. And he needed to be loud because the door was so inconspicuous, that if he wasn’t, she’d miss the door entirely.

He heard, in the space between his knocking, her gait change from a purposeful walk to a pounding run, and before he knew it, the door was torn off its hinges, and he was being pulled into Ginny’s arms.

She held him carefully as if he were something fragile and precious, and it was this gentleness that caused the dams within Harry’s soul to burst open. He realized he was crying and tried to pull away from Ginny so that he could turn away and hide his weakness from her, but she only tightened her grip.

Weak from dehydration and hunger, Harry was quickly forced to abandon his struggle to pull away and helplessly pressed his face into her neck.

“It’s okay now, Harry,” Ginny murmured soothingly, “Just let it all out.”

Harry took her advice as best as he could, but he stopped crying long before he felt emotionally wrung out. He must be too dehydrated to continue losing water through his tears.

He pulled away from Ginny again, and this time she let him get a bit further away, before she tightened her grip.

“How long has it been since you ate or drank?” Ginny asked. After a moment, she added, “Or had a bath?”

Harry’s face burned in shame at the reminder that he must smell and look pretty terrible. He looked away and shrugged because he couldn’t be entirely sure. The toast had been gone since yesterday, and the water had run out sometime early this morning, and as far as a bath, he couldn’t begin to guess when that was.

“Hey, none of that,” Ginny said when he didn’t immediately respond. She put her fingers under his chin and directed his gaze towards hers, “None of this was your fault, okay? I don’t care what they told you, nobody deserves to be treated like this. I just need to know about the food and water so I can tell how dire the situation is. I’m absolute shite at diagnostic charms so I have to ask you.”

He had to shift his gaze away from her burning one before he could answer, “I had a piece of toast yesterday and I drank a jug of water that ran out this morning.”

Ginny’s grip on his forearms tightened ever so slightly when he said that, but she was still holding him so carefully that her grip didn’t even come close to being uncomfortable.

Then she released one of his arms, pulled out her wand, and conjured a glass full of water. She handed the glass to him and said, “Drink it carefully, you could strain your body if you’re not careful.”

Harry just barely stopped himself from saying, ‘I know’, now sure that it would upset her if he did. Instead, he agreeably sipped at the water under Ginny’s watchful gaze.

Once he finished the first glass, she banished it and said, “I’m going to cast a general health booster on you now, only, I’m not the best at them, so it probably won’t last very long.”

“Oh, thank you,” Harry said gratefully.

She kept one of her hands on one of his shoulders and used the other to wave her wand in a fairly complicated pattern. Her face was frozen in a frown of concentration until she finished the spell.

Immediately after the spell was cast, the headache Harry didn’t even know he had eased, his muscles unclenched, and the scrapes and bruises Vernon’s manhandling had given him closed over or faded.

“That was incredible,” Harry said gratefully. He held his arm up to his face and poked at the spot a particularly deep bruise had been. It didn’t hurt at all.

She blushed and said, “It’s not all that.”

“No, it is!” Harry insisted. He frowned slightly and stared at her blush for a moment. He needed her to know that what she did was special. “You just— waved your wand and made things happen! And you didn’t even have to. You have to know that you’re talented and smart and—” He cut himself off before he could get carried away or freak her out.

Ginny cocked her head to the side, a light blush still tinting her face pink.

Harry knew that, for people of the same class, maintaining eye contact was a sign of honesty. And he remembered her saying that classes didn’t matter as much at the castle…

He steeled himself for a potentially bad reaction and firmly met her eyes, doing his best to convey his earnestness nonverbally.

She blinked and stared into his eyes for a long moment. Harry distantly thought that her eyes really were quite pretty— they were warm and brown, and the longer Harry got to stare, the clearer he could see that there were golden flecks of color amidst the brown.

“You really mean it, don’t you?” Ginny asked, finally breaking the silence.

Harry found himself frowning again. “Why would I say it if­— those dignitaries you were telling me about, at the Ball, they say nice things, and don’t mean it, don’t they?” It was hard to fathom that someone would be able to say a compliment they didn’t mean, but it was the only thing he could think of that would make sense.

“Everyone says things they don’t mean to me, to everyone in my family, really. If they think saying something will make us more likely to help them out or do things for them, they’ll say it regardless of if they mean it,” Ginny said.

She cleared her throat, then continued, “So, I learned pretty young that the only people I could trust to mean a compliment were my family, and some of the family’s closest servants. But here you are, barely knowing me, and already meaning what you say.”

Harry gently reached up and grabbed her hand from where it still rested lightly on his shoulder, then squeezed it reassuringly. He wasn’t entirely sure why she was sharing so much, but he could tell that she wasn’t sharing these things lightly. “I don’t know much about people saying nice things that they don’t mean to me,” Harry said, mentally amending that to ‘nice things at all’ before he realized that, since Ginny seemed to be completely honest with him, he ought to return the favor.

“Or nice things at all, really,” he verbally amended. “But I do know something about people around me lying to me, and I know that it’s terrible and makes you doubt the world around you. And I promise that I’ll honest with you,” Harry said, though he wondered how often he’d even get the chance to speak to her. She was the princess, after all, and probably very busy.

And he still didn’t know what was going on.

Ginny returned the squeeze to his hand and said, “I promise to be honest with you as well. No matter what.”

“No matter what,” Harry echoed.

It felt as though something truly significant had just passed between them. They held still in the moment. Harry barely dared to breathe, in case he ruined it.

Eventually though, the moment passed.

Ginny slapped herself on the forehead and said, “Oh right! I almost forgot.” Then she released his hand and started patting herself down until she seemed to find what she was looking for.

Brushing off the piece of fabric she’d pulled out of her pocket, she said, “I almost forgot to give this back to you!” She placed, what Harry finally recognized as a crumpled hat, onto his head. And not just any crumpled hat, it was the one that he had worn to the Ball. He wondered why it hadn’t disappeared along with the other things his Dogfather had conjured.

Harry gently patted the hat on his head and said, “I’d forgotten that I’d even worn a hat that night. And I can’t believe you bothered to bring it back to me.” The corner of his lip quirked upwards in a crooked half smile.

“It’s to do with you, so of course it was worth it,” Ginny replied threading her arm back around his.

At this, Harry had to stare at her. They had just promised not to lie to each other, so he knew that she meant it, but it was such a small thing. It was hard to believe that someone as incredible as Ginny would think that Harry was important enough to go out of her way to return his hat, of all things.

“Thank you,” Harry said simply, feeling a bit like a parrot, with the number of times he’d already said the words.

“You’re welcome,” Ginny returned with a warm smile. “Besides,” she added, “you look rather dashing like that.”

All Harry could do with that was smile back at her.

They stood there in the hallway outside the door to the attic for a moment, and Harry took the time to enjoy being in her presence. Afterwards, Ginny tugged his hand and set off down the hallway to one of the rooms on this floor. Harry recognized it as Vernon and Petunia’s favorite, private, parlor. A small part of his mind protested that he was not supposed to be in here, without express permission, but he quieted it with the reminder that Ginny outranked Vernon and Petunia.

Ginny sat them down on a small couch and conjured another glass and filled it with her wand.

As Harry sipped the second glass of water, he gradually became uncomfortably aware of how grungy and just plain dirty he was. He never got to bathe after all the dancing at the Ball, and then he’d been locked in the attic for the next two days. His clothes certainly didn’t help the situation since they were the rags that he chose to sleep in and were certainly not fit for company of any kind.

He tried to turn his attention to something else and as soon as he pulled it from his discomfort with his hygiene and appearance, his attention glued itself to his leg, side, arm, and hand— all places were his body was pressed against Ginny’s.

The couch was really quite small, so his leg and side were pressed against hers. He could feel the pleasant warmth of her body through both their layers of clothes and he helplessly flushed. She was also still holding his hand, and the part of his mind that had been sure that Ginny had come for him started making noise about how she liked him.

This time, he was not nearly so fast to quash the thought, though he did reluctantly after a brief moment of basking in the near-impossible possibility.

Clutching the glass of water more tightly in his hand, Harry mustered up the nerve to ask, “What made you find me? And how did you even find me?”

“That’s quite the story,” Ginny said with a hint of pride in her voice. “While I tell you, though, you have to keep drinking that water.”

Harry nodded and took a sip of the water. Since he was being bold, he turned himself slightly so he could make eye contact with her as she told the story. She didn’t seem to mind and smiled at him before she started into the story.

“So, after you ran off, I tried to follow you again. But one of the castle guards stopped me from making it outside, since it was after midnight, and not ‘not safe for me,’ or whatever. A part of me wanted to start searching for you right away, but I knew I’d be able to more effectively search in the morning when people would be awake and sober enough to help me, so I dodged everyone who wanted to talk to me and went to sleep, hoping that a good night’s sleep would help me search too. I didn’t sleep all that well, but I did at least try.

“Anyways,” she said, with a small shake of her head, “the next morning, I got up and as soon as I was ready, I went back to the storage rooms, both of them, to see if you’d left anything behind that I could use to track you. I did find your hat in the room we went to after we danced in the ballroom, but that was pretty useless in terms of tracking you down. I held onto it, though, so I could give it back to you.

“Then, because I knew I was going to have to involve my parents eventually, I went and found them, and told them all about you.

“How you caught my attention, though I glossed over the exact details of our meeting, and how you were so sweet and such a good dancer. I could’ve kept going, but time was of the essence, so I did my best to keep it short.” She smiled at him, and Harry was hard-pressed not to do something stupid like start crying. He wasn’t sure why, precisely, this brought him so close to the verge of tears.

But he didn’t have time to truly spiral, because then Ginny continued.

“And I told them what you told me about your relatives. I’m really sorry I had to do that since I’m pretty sure you’d prefer no one know, but I had to, Harry, in order to get them to approve the level of search I wanted. If I hadn’t, it might’ve taken weeks to find you,” She paused here and gave him a pleading look.

“I can understand why you told them,” Harry said slowly, trying hard not to dwell on that. He did believe that she would only have told her parents if she absolutely had to. Then, more resolutely, “So, what happened next?”

“Well, I got the manhunt that I wanted. The next step was finding Daphne and getting her to tell me your full name. Some people were assigned to searching the census for relevant information. Unfortunately, Daphne had no idea where you live, so we wasted a bit of time finding Hermione and asking her, who could only point us in a general direction.

“We then reconvened with the people searching the census, and once I informed them that you were living with your aunt and uncle, it was easy to see that your only living aunt and uncle are the Dursley’s. From there, it was a simple matter of pulling the real estate records. But by the time we had definitive names, the records office had closed, and my parents refused to let me go get the office workers from their homes. So, we had to wait till today to pull the records.”

“That’s how you found me,” Harry stated. “But that still doesn’t answer why?”

He had to know what could possibly have driven her to put in so much time and effort to find him.

“I think… that’s a conversation we don’t quite have the time for, right now. I think we ought to save that conversation for after we go catch up with my parents and finish conducting our business here,” Ginny said.

Then she pulled out her wand and cast, “Tempus.” This caused a set of numbers to appear in the air— the time, Harry realized. “We’d actually better get back down quickly to my parents and see how everything’s going with them, because it’s been quite a while since I came into this house.”

As much as Harry itched to learn what had driven Ginny to search so urgently for him, he was readily willing to delay soothing that itch, since it seemed important that they get moving.

After Harry discretely tucked the now empty glass into his cavernous pockets, he remembered something that he wanted to show her. This might be his last chance to show it to her, so he risked saying, “I know we’re running late, but would you mind terribly if we took a moment for me to show you something first?”

“I think we have enough time, if it’s quick,” Ginny replied instantly.

“It’ll just take a moment,” Harry reassured her, with a relieved smile. He guided Ginny back to the stairs to the attic, where she’d ripped the door off the wall. They hurried up the stairs, and Harry began to question the sanity of his decision to show her this.

It was too late for him to change his mind, though, and when he heard the gasp of wonder she gave at the sight of the drawings decorating the walls, he was glad he hadn’t been able to chicken out.

“I know it’s not that great,” Harry began. “But I was thinking of you when I drew most of it, and this is probably the only chance I’ll get to show it to you so…” he trailed off.

Ginny was circling the room, taking in the details of the things he’d drawn on the plain walls of the attic. She drifted over to his portrait of her, and Harry could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks again. He didn’t quite regret his decision to show her, but he was definitely embarrassed.

“I, uh, hope you like it,” he stammered, not looking directly at her.

“Harry, this is absolutely incredible,” Ginny said wonderingly, “You did this with charcoal?”

“Yeah, it was all I had to work with,” Harry replied, unable to help the pang of shame he felt at his lack of resources— and skills, for that matter.

“This is absolutely incredible,” Ginny repeated, “And you did all this, with charcoal, of all things.”

They stood in companionable silence for a moment, but then the distant sound of Vernon’s roaring quickly interrupted the peace.

“We’d better get going out there,” Ginny said, with a last look the drawing of her.

“Yes, right, sorry,” Harry said, slipping his hand into hers to lead the way out of the attic.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ginny cock her head as she said, “What are you sorry for?”

“For taking your valuable time,” Harry said.

“Your art isn’t a waste of time, Harry,” Ginny said, squeezing his hand.

Harry nodded at this. He didn’t want to disagree with her, but he didn’t quite agree, so he decided to say nothing.

They made their way through the house, neither rushing nor going particularly slowly. When they made their way down the light flight of steps to the ground floor, Harry felt as though he ought to make a detour to the cupboard under the stairs.

But then he tried to think of something, anything, that he would miss from the dismal closet, and though he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of anything. Even his childish pictures of the castle were something he’d rather leave in the past, especially since he couldn’t quite quash the hope that he would be seeing a lot more of it in the future.

As they clambered out of the house and onto the driveway, they stumbled into a minor fracas. Vernon was a couple meters away, swinging his massive fists at anyone who came within range— mostly unlucky Royal Guards, but occasionally he’d take a swing at a horse. And a couple meters away from that, the leader of the Royal Guard was organizing her squad to tame him.

Ginny muttered under her breath at the sight of this. Without hesitation, she quickly whipped out her wand and with one fluid motion, stunned him in his tracks. Harry still could not get over how talented she was.

“Ginny!” Queen Molly said sharply, before subsiding when King Arthur placed a calming hand on her shoulder.

“He was hurting our people,” Ginny defended herself before she could be further reprimanded. “It was better to take him out, painlessly, I might add, than it was to let him continue beating on Our Guards.”

The guards secured Vernon’s hands behind his back and loaded him unconsciously into the carriage that Harry could now see was meant more for transporting prisoners than it was for transporting royals.

Petunia was quickly similarly bound and loaded in next to Vernon. Having spotted two of the Dursley’s, Harry instinctively looked around for Dudley.

Harry spotted Dudley standing a meter or two away with a guard hovering at his elbow. Dudley seemed more interested in inspecting his lute, than he was in his parents being arrested, which was just so typically Dudley, that Harry had to laugh.

Harry pointed at Dudley and nudged Ginny, “Do you know what they’re gonna do with him?” he asked quietly, not wanting to disturb any of the conversations occurring nearby.

“Ah, I think that’s what my parents are discussing now,” Ginny said, gesturing over to where the King and Queen were speaking animatedly to each other.

Harry and Ginny continued to stand just outside the doorway. Harry wasn’t sure what he wanted to have happen to Dudley and he certainly didn’t want to interrupt a conversation between the King and the Queen, so he was content to stand in silence with Ginny by his side.

A moment later, he frowned at the carriage that held Vernon and Petunia. He couldn’t quite figure out why Petunia had been arrested. Vernon had probably been arrested for assaulting the guards, but Petunia had been reasonably compliant, from what he’d seen. Before he could continue wondering, however, King Arthur was speaking, and Harry turned his focus to listening.

“We have decided,” King Arthur said, “that since Dudley is still just a minor and has been reasonably compliant this afternoon, he will be sent to a foster home to learn a trade until he is of age. At which point, he will have to begin to earn his own keep, rather than the state paying for his upkeep.”

When nobody moved, King Arthur added, “He’ll ride with his parents back to the castle, but he’s not under arrest.”

At this, the guard that had been standing near Dudley guided him— and consequently, Dudley’s lute— into the carriage, though his hands remained unbound.

“Excuse me, your majesty,” Harry said, unable to suppress his confusion, “But what’s going on? Why did you arrest Vernon and Petunia?”

Just about everybody looked at him in shock, and Harry’s heart stuttered as he instantly dropped to his knees. “Forgive me for forgetting myself, your majesties.” Before he could really get into a mental stride of berating himself for being disrespectful, though, Ginny was pulling him to his feet.

“They weren’t shocked at your disrespect or lack of decorum, or any other trivial thing like that, Harry, they were shocked that you had to ask. They were arrested for abuse of authority. Abuse of their authority over you.” Ginny stated in a no-nonsense tone.

“Oh,” Harry said, leaning heavily on Ginny, and still trying to calm himself down from his fright seconds ago.

Ginny continued, “I forgot to mention that, while I was running all over the place searching for you, my parents were pushing through laws against the abuse of children and servants. Because when I told my parents about what had happened to you, they had decided to stop worrying about upsetting the stodgy old men on the Royal Council and push through the laws that they really should have passed ages ago.”

Since Harry was no longer a child, he must have qualified under those laws as a servant. But he no longer had a family to serve, so he no longer had a place to live. Harry said hesitantly, mostly to himself, “Where am I going to go now?”

Nobody responded to this, and, remembering his ridiculous hopes of living at the castle from earlier, Harry braced himself to ask, “Is, is there any way I could come live at the castle? I swear I’d be useful, I’m good at a variety of chores including cleaning and cooking, and I’d be happy to help anywhere you need it.”

He continued, gaining momentum when no one interrupted him, “I don’t even need much of anything to keep going, just somewhere to sleep for a bit—“

“Stop! Stop,” Ginny cut him off, “We don’t need any more servants at the castle.”

Harry’s heart fell and he pulled his hand out of Ginny’s so he could wrap his arms around his torso, “Where—“

She interrupted him again, beginning to sound a little exasperated. “You are going to be living at the castle, silly, just not as a servant. You’re much too old to start at Hogwarts now, so you’re going to stay with us while I catch you up on all the magic you need to know. With some help from some tutors here and there, I suppose.”

“Hogwarts…? Tutors…? Magic…?” Harry echoed, feeling completely lost. “I’m not magic, you know. I never got a Hogwarts letter.”

“Mhmm, sure,” Ginny said skeptically. “And nothing strange ever happened when you were particularly emotional, did it? Strange, unexplainable things never happened around you, did they? I could try and guess some specific examples, but really all the proof I needed was when you barged into the room I was hi—“ she cut herself off, glancing over at her parents.

Then she continued on, “—staying in, and managed to bring the lights on, without even trying. Non-magicals have to press a light switch, and most magicals have to at least gesture to get them to turn on, but you managed with just your intent,” she concluded smugly.

Harry stood in stunned silence, before his brain kicked into gear piecing together bits and pieces from over the years. Odd moments here and there that he’d brushed off and ignored were apparently his magic showing itself. And for each moment he could distinctly remember, there were three more behind it, demanding his attention.

Then, long before he had fully processed that he was, apparently, magical, the question of why he’d never received his Hogwarts invitation pushed itself to the forefront of his mind.

And then Harry began to feel overwhelmed because if he was truly magical, and he was beginning to believe that he was, then he had stayed with the Dursley’s for no reason at all. If he had been magical, if he had gotten his Hogwarts letter, he would have been able to go to Hogwarts.

If he had been able to go to Hogwarts, then he would have had an education and he would’ve had actual prospects for his life. He would’ve been able to leave the Dursley’s to go to Hogwarts and then he would have been able to stay free of them by providing for himself with the education he’d get.

Harry was stunned momentarily by the weight of the life he could have had.

Then his eyes began to drift over to the carriage containing the Dursley’s. And he knew exactly who to blame for the loss of his future. Because they had robbed him of every other opportunity he could have had.

“They hid my Hogwarts letter, didn’t they?” Harry said slowly, feeling the frustration and disappointment and everything else well up within him

Ginny shrugged glumly, “Probably,” she agreed.

Harry buried his fingers in his hair and groaned inarticulately, the sound growing to a crescendo before he cut himself off, well aware of his royal audience.

Then turned away from everyone and hunched over, tugging at his hair. Before he could stop himself, he burst out, “If only my parents hadn’t died in that carriage accident! I could have had a magical childhood and gone to Hogwarts and met other people like me—“ then he forced himself to stop. He doubted that anyone here cared to listen to him indulge in a ridiculous fantasy.

“Carriage accident?” King Arthur asked, with a strange note in his voice. “James and Lily Potter die in a carriage accident? Wherever did you hear that,” he began to ask, before he glanced over at the carriage.

“Never mind,” he said disgustedly, “I can guess where you heard that. Well, I can tell you that that was a blatant lie. James and Lily Potter were war heroes. I personally awarded them Orders of Merlin, Second Class posthumously for their efforts to protect the Royal Nursery. They probably saved all of my kids’ lives that day,” he trailed off, seeming to disappear into the memory.

“Oh, and Harry,” Ginny said once it was clear that King Arthur was lost in his memory, “I’ve already told you that you’re going to be living at the castle and learning magic from me. But I should also tell you that you’re the person I chose from the Ball.”

Harry’s face must have betrayed some of his panic at this, because she rushed to reassure him with, “Obviously, we have to get to know each other before we can get married. Really the Ball was just the beginning of our courting, if you accept my formal request that I’ll have to issue later. But, I really think you might be the one for me, and hopefully I’ll be the one for you.”

Harry couldn’t even begin to process all of this on top of everything else that had happened that day. The Dursley’s were under arrest, he had magic, his parents had died heroes, and Ginny wanted to court him.

He sat down, hard, on the front steps and buried his face in his hands. He allowed himself a moment to regroup, then, from between his fingers, he muttered, “It’s too much. You’ve done too much for me.”

Ginny sat down next to him and started rubbing circles onto his back. As gentle as she was, he couldn’t help flinching when her hand hit a bruise. She immediately pulled her hand away.

Harry felt bad that he’d worried her. It wasn’t even that the bruises hurt that much anymore, he was just unaccustomed to gentle touch, especially unexpected touch. He pulled his hands slightly away from his face, so he could speak without muffling his words, and said, “It’s alright, Ginny, they really don’t hurt that much anymore, I just wasn’t expecting you to touch me.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt or startle you,” Ginny said.

“It’s alright, really. Just— try and warn me?” Harry said, a little nervously. He still couldn’t fully believe that Ginny would want to be near him, let alone want to touch him. And here she was apologizing for doing so.

“Do you mind if I help you up now?” She asked.

It took a moment for Harry to sort through what she was saying. It seemed that the emotion and action of the day was catching up to him, and his brain was beginning to move sluggishly. He blinked slowly then nodded and said, “That’s alright.”

He had meant it to mean that he could get up on his own, but then Ginny gently grasped his elbow and pulled him upright. She kept her gentle grip on his elbow and lead him over to where her horse was hitched. Harry ended up being quite glad that she had guided him, because his exhaustion began to crash over him in waves.

And he was still in shock over everything he had learned that day.

As Ginny helped pull him onto her horse, into the saddle, Harry distantly heard the king and queen offer to find someone that had known his parents personally to tell him about them. Harry found himself nodding automatically.

He felt Ginny’s chest vibrate against his as she said, “You must be tired, Harry, if you want to nap while we ride, I’ll make sure you don’t fall off.”

Harry nodded gratefully, then realized that she couldn’t see it from where she was seated in the saddle in front of him. “Thank you,” he managed to say.

The last thing he remembered from that day was Ginny saying that she was going to help him be comfortable, then reaching behind him and pulling him forward so his head was resting on her shoulder. Then Harry thought he heard her tell him that he still owed her a kiss just before he fell asleep, loosely holding onto her with a sense of peace settling into his limbs for the first time in his memory.