AUTHOR’S NOTE!

This chapter deals with issues of a sexual nature and while not explicit in detail, may not be suitable for younger children — unless of course you don’t mind answering difficult questions as a parent.

~*~

CHAPTER TEN:  BEING HARRY

29 August 1994

It is just too weird living with Harry in such close quarters.  This morning was the worst.  I couldn’t look Harry in the eye.  I just couldn’t!  Not after last night!

“Damn!”

Ginny laid down her quill and put her hands to her face.  Hot.  Her cheeks must be flaming, just like they had been when she’d run into Harry on the landing.

He, of course, had only thought that Ginny was blushing because she still had a crush on him and was embarrassed at having run into him.  There was no way on earth he could have known that she had been in his head last night . . .

Ginny gulped.  He’d been thinking about Cho, how pretty she’d looked when she’d waved to him outside of her tent, and then after Ron had dropped off to sleep, he’d begun touching himself, still thinking about Cho and she, Ginny, had watched.

Ginny glanced now into her mirror and let out a sound halfway between a sob and a groan.

“God, look at me, I really am a scarlet woman!”

Uncertain as to whether she felt more like laughing or crying, Ginny picked up her quill, and began once more to write.

It was a distinctly odd experience being inside a boy’s head when he masturbates.

She stared for a full minute at the last word she had written.  God that was an ugly word!  It looked so, so clinical and detached.  Yes, that was it, detached, as if the person who had coined it had been someone who was watching someone else toss off and didn’t have a clue as to what sort of feelings were going through their head.  Not that she would have known the difference before last night. It hadn’t felt clinical.  Not from Harry’s point of view.

“Not from mine either,” she muttered to herself, and immediately felt the beat beginning to creep up her cheeks.

That was the worst of it really.  She hadn’t just laid there in her own bed and watched Harry, oh no, she’d started touching herself too.  She’d never done that before and, as she’d explored, as her own heart rate had increased and her breathing had become more ragged, somewhere in the back of her head it had registered that Harry (who was also nearing his climax) was no longer thinking about Cho.   He wasn’t, in fact, thinking about much of anything but there, behind his closed eyelids, he was getting glimpses of what she was doing to herself, glimpses that turned him on and finally, with a great shuddering gasp, drove him over the edge.

The moment before he had released she’d called to him. “Come to me, Harry!” And he’d done just that, filling her mind with his need.  She’d had to bite her lip to keep from screaming out as her own release joined the whit hot power that had poured into her.

“I had no idea it could be like that!” had been the thought in both of their heads as they both lay spent and on the edge of sleep.  That thought was the last coherent thing Ginny remembered before drifting off to sleep.

Even odder to be turned on by it, but I was!  How else can you explain why I felt driven to make myself feel good at the same time.  You know, I could almost imagine that it was him, Harry, touching me.  I could almost remember what it felt like for him to touch me like that.  Is that possible?  To remembersomething that hasn’t happened yet?  Or has it? 

It was exactly like I felt when I was reading that letter from the future Harry in the common room and I caught his eye and felt — everything.  Last night I swear that I could feel him, see him even.

God, it makes me tingle just to think about it!

1 September 1994

So, they’ve reinstated the Tri-Wizard tournament?  There are some awesome stories told about some of the Tri-Wizard tournaments.  There was one where a manticore the champions were supposed to be capturing went on a rampage and killed a bunch of people, hurt a whole lot more.

Then there was the year (I think it was in the 1500’s) when all three champions died when a wild Chimaera took all three of them by surprise at the awards ceremony.

And then there was another time that the tournament was interrupted by a Goblin Rebellion.  Wicked high body count that year.  Half of the students at Durmstrang (that was where the tournament was being held that particular year) were killed before they could get the rebellion under control.

Fred and George are seriously ticked off.  They have their hearts set on entering.  They’d stand a good chance too, at least I think they would.  Bloody brilliant, those two.  They really are clever.  I know that mum was upset that they only got three O.W.L.’s each because she wants them to go to work for the Ministry like Dad and Percy, but they’ve got their hearts set on opening a joke shop.  They’d be really good at it, too, they always know just what to do to make people laugh.

Not many people were laughing when Moody showed up though.  He’s scary looing, that’s for certain, what with his mismatched legs, that spooky magical eye and his face all criss-crossed by scars, but there’s mor to it than that, there’s more to him — underneath.

It’s almost as if he’s a different person than his skin.  I know that sounds bizarre, but that’s the best I can do.  I don’t know why Dumbledore would hire him of all people, to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts.  I mean, he’s a legend at the Ministry.  Dad stands rather in awe of him, but when I look at his face, when he makes eye contact, I have to wonder just how good he really is, to have gotten injured so very many times and, if he’s as good as everyone says he is, how much better were the wizards who gave him those scars?

3 September 1994

All I can say is thank Merlin Hagrid isn’t starting us third years off with those Skrewts!  They have got to be some sort of crossbreed.  I’ve never heard of anything remotely like them.  We just got Crups.

We had our first lesson with Professor Moody this afternoon.  In spite of the fact that the man puts my teeth on edge (and I’m not just talking about his disfugurements, there’s something rotten about him on the inside) I was expecting something impressive.  I mean, after yesterday’s spectacle in the entrance hall where he turned Malfoy into a ferret, I thought that at least he’d turn Mandy into a chipmunk or something.  But he had us practicing basic shield charms.  His point being that the best line of defense is to get away from the center of action and to maintain (and he shouts this bit) CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

I’d find the man rather amusing if it weren’t for the nasty feeling I get whenever I’m around him.

5 September 1994

It is so unfair!  Why should the fourth years get to see the unforgivable curses and we’re not allowed?  Oh yeah, that’s right, we’re just kids and what, one whole year makes the fourth years so much more mature than us?  I guess Moody hasn’t seen Ron when he’s in a temper then, hey? 

Well, at least I got to see them through Harry.  It was really tough on Harry, seeing the Avada Kedavra Curse.  When the spider keeled over dead he went all cold inside, all cold and still.  Was this how his parents had died?  That thought kept running through his head.  He couldn’t shake it.  He kept picturing them lit up with that green light, then falling over, their eyes wide and staring, their mouths open slightly in surprise.

I don’t know how accurate a picture he was painting, but I can imagine how I’d feel if my parents had died and I was suddenly shown the exact method in which they had died.

There is one question I would like answered, if the Avada Kedavra Curse is unblockable, then how the hell did Harry survive it?

22 September 1994

It was good to go back to the stone circle.  The detail work of the carvings never ceases to amaze me, and calling the elements never ceases to thrill me.   Maybe I really am power hungry.

I told Mira about Moody and the Unforgivable Curses.  She got very quiet.  When I asked her what was wrong she wouldn’t explain, but merely shrugged and said that ‘time would tell’ which is uncharacteristically cryptic, even for Mira, and makes me wonder if perhaps my first impression was indeed correct and that there is more to Moody than meets the eye.

I stumbled across Mandy making out with Jack Sloper in a corner of the common room when I got back after midnight.  He had his hands all over her and she didn’t seem to mind.  If she really liked him, I might see her letting him touch her like that, but from what she’s said in the dorm, he’s just another ‘conquest’ (to use her own term).

I didn’t bother to announce my presence, but used my elementals to shield myself from their sight.  I could have embarrassed Mandy royally, seeing as that she had said just yesterday that while she might let Jack think that she liked him, she’d never let him touch her.  But as Fred said this past summer, you never learn anything interesting when you announce your presence.

I did find her jar of bath oil beads with stink pellets though.  (George showed me how to charm the pellets to be shiny and all different colors).  Serve the twit right.  And just think, Jack’s object of choice will now be defused in an essence that perfectly reflects his taste in women.

18 October 1994

The clearing seemed odd tonight.  Not sinister as such, merely tingly, as if someone had been there just moments before I entered and perhaps, just perhaps, they were still there, watching from just out of sight in the trees.

Perhaps I should be worried, but I truly believe that in the clearing at least, I can’t be harmed.  There is a feeling of security, of safety, a sort of protective power that emanates from those standing stones.

Mira came of course, and believe it or not she’s finally comfortable with my ability to call the elements both in general and by type, so we spent the rest of our time discussing what sorts of powers each of them have individually, what sorts of situations would be best to use those particular elements in and things of that nature.

Mira says that the hardest part of Natural Elemental magic is learning to recognize a situation in which the elements can be used without violating their inability to harm other’s of their kind, and then selecting the correct elements for the job.  She says that eventually using them will come as second nature, but that it takes lots of hard work and practice.

Sometimes it seems as if that is all my life is made up of anymore, hard work and practice.  I’m either practicing my dance routines or working hard to study for my lessons or practicing my Elemental magic or working hard to help Colin get the newspaper out on time every month.  All my time is spoken for.

I don’t even know what I’m complaining about, it’s not like I have a demanding social life or anything.  I have friends, well, more friends than I did my first year at least.  I guess I’m a little jealous, in my own way, of those who have the time on their hands for boyfriends and talking about nothing and goofing off.  All of my time is spoken for.

23 October 1994

I’m enjoying my new classes.  Ancient Runes is perhaps my favorite.  I have a reason to learn them after all — I plan on being able to translate the entire sequence eventually.  Believe it or not, after just a couple months of study some of the etchings are actually starting to make sense!  From what I can gather, it’s a history, a history of the first people.  It will be a definite accomplishment when I am able to decipher the entire circle!

Muggle studies is also very interesting.  We’ve been studying electricity, touching on the various appliances and machines Muggles use to take the place of magic and I must say that I can definitely see why Dad is so fascinated.

Care of Magical Creatures has potential, but Hagrid seems to get stuck on creatures that bite or sting, he seems fascinated by them.  Of course Tom was fascinated by the Basilisk.  Do you know that he’d even given the damn thing a name?  Basil!  As if it were a god damned herb or something.

And then there’s Divination.  I’ve been sitting there, in Trelawney’s class, listening to her spout off about ‘cosmic vibrations’ and ‘the veil of mystery’ and it dawned on me that she really doesn’t have a clue!  She talks about the ‘Elemental Forces’ but makes them sound like Potions ingredients.  How did someone so obviously stupid about mystic experience s get appointed as a Divination teacher?

I wonder what the students coming from the other schools study?  Do you think they have the same classes we do?  Rumor has it that Durmstrang students actually learn the Dark Arts, not simply Defense Against the Dark Arts.  I guess we’ll be finding out soon, there supposed to arrive on the 30th and then the tournament will begin.  It’s going to be exciting to say the least!

30 October 1994

Great entrance!  I had to laugh at the looks on everyone’s faces when the Durmstrang ship came up from inside the lake!  Talk about show offs!  By comparison the Beauxbatons students and their flying horses was comparatively tame.  I love their robes though, Beauxbatons.  They’re made of a beautiful sky-blue silk that shimmers when they walk. 

The Durmstrang students wear blood-red robes that look really warm.  Probably made out of some sort of extra warm wool or something.  And their cloaks, their cloaks are made of skins; very thick, very warm-looking skins.  The Beauxbatons students don’t have cloaks and they seemed quite chilled by out late fall weather. 

Anyway, everyone warmed up during the welcoming feast.  There was so much food I thought I was going to pop and when that Vela girl asked if she could have the Bouillabaise (that sort of French seafood dish) I though Ron’s eyes were going to pop out of his head.  At first I thought it was just Ron, but then I noticed that a good number of the boys at the Gryffindor table had looked up when she’d come over, and more than one girl was bristling. 

She’s part Vela, she has to be, the effect she has on everyone is too distinct for her to be anything but.  I know she can’t be full-blooded Vela.  A pure Vela is entirely unpredictable and according to all accounts can’t be trusted.  A few have been kept by very rich and/or eccentric men as sort of erotic pets (and I suppose that’s were the part-Vela’s, like this girl come from) but they’re very rarely allowed out by themselves in public without handlers.

Regardless, she definitely holds an attraction for Ron.  His eyes went all misty and his voice got all breathless.  Harry found it amusing as hell, but in spite of the fact that he was distinctly ruffled by the Velas at the Quidditch World Cup this past summer, this particular girl didn’t seem to affect him in the least.   It was almost like now that he knew what she was, now that he knows what kind of power she (however inadvertently) immune. 

He wasn’t immune to Cho though.  She seemed to hold more attraction for Harry than an entire roomful of Velas would.  He couldn’t keep his eyes off the way her hair shimmered in the candlelight.  I, of course, had to fight my first instinct, which was to tear her hair out.  I found myself instead repeating my mantra, ‘sixth year he’s mine’ under my breath and holding onto my talisman necklace with white knuckles.

I’m scared you see.  Scared that perhaps Mira and Dumbledore are both wrong and that Harry and I won’t really end up together.  I’m scared that something will happen to screw everything up.  I’m scared that I’m going to have to watch him fall in love and that there will be nothing I can do about it.

I’ll tell you what else was scary, was when Dumbledore opened up that crate (he called it a casket) and pulled out the Goblet of Fire.  Dumbledore had dimmed the lights and the goblet was full of blue-white flames.  The very nature of those flames seemed to stir something inside of me.  My Elemental powers nearly broke through in response to the flames in the goblet.  Those are elemental powers, perhaps an elemental who has been captured and confined for eternity to that goblet and my own wanted so very badly to set it free, it was all I could do to control them.

This is the impartial judge.  This elemental spirit is who will choose the three champions, it will choose, and then it will hold them to their choice, a binding, magical contract from which there is no turning back.

31 October 1994 

Now that was completely unexpected!  Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire tonight, making him the fourth Tri-Wizard champion.

It took everyone by surprise.  You should have heard the silence when Dumbledore called out his name.  For that matter, you should have seen Dumbledore’s face when he read Harry’s name on the slip of parchment.  He blanched.  For a moment I thought he was going to pass out altogether.

Of course everyone (at least those students in Gryffindor) think that Harry is really clever for having gotten over that age line, assuming of course that he put his own name into the cup (which he didn’t).  Nobody believed him when he told them that he hadn’t put his name into the cup, not the teachers, nor most of the students, nor my stupid great prat of a brother who is seriously convinced that Harry just did it to get more attention and is pissed that Harry didn’t include him in his escapade.

But I know that he didn’t.  He was taken totally by surprise.  The total, numbing shock that flooded his brain when Dumbledore called out his name was convincing enough for me!  If only there was a way to share what I know with the rest of the student body.  No way I can do that without a whole lot of awkward questions though and this is neither the time nor the place.

But Ron, Ron wouldn’t hear it.  I tried to talk to him, but he just told me to shut up, that I didn’t know what I was talking about, and stalked off upstairs then, when Harry finally made it back to the common room and escaped the crowd waiting up to congratulate him, Ron went all cold and sarcastic, stupid git.

12 November 1994

I am going to kill Colin!  He overheard me telling Lisa that I thought the Durmstrang boys were rather good looking (albeit in a dark, brooding sort of way) and he went and told one of them!  Talk about juvenile!

I vented tonight when we started work on the December issue of the Hower, but Colin just shrugged it off and said that I deserved to have a boyfriend if I wanted one.  Too bad I can’t have the boyfriend I really want, eh?  But no, he’s too busy mooning over Cho.  Ah well.  Two years.  Sometimes it seems like an eternity, but I’ll live.

Well, I had my first official Hogsmeade Weekend.  It went better than I could possibly have expected!  Lisa and I went together, but we aquired Neville en route.  He was slouching along behind Hermione who, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be alone.  I knew better though.  Harry was with her, but he was wearing the invisibility cloak.

My guess was that Neville was trying to get up the nerve to go walk with her, poor Neville.  He does write some beautiful poetry!  I think we cheered him up though.  Lisa and I asked him to show us around the village and he was an excellent guide.

He took us to Honeydukes, and the Owl Post Office and the joke shop and Scivenshaft’s (they had a display of some garishly colored quills in the shop window; hot pink and lime green and lemon yellow, so bright they almost hurt your eyes and the price tags!  Prohibitive!)

Anyway, after lunch at the Three Broomsticks we explored some of the side streets, then went up to see the Shrieking Shack (my first time seeing it from the outside).  Neville regaled us with some of the more gruesome stories that have cropped up about that sad little house.  I particularly like the one about the four boys who came too close and were turned into were-animals by the restless spirits that are supposed to haunt the place.  Sounds to me like someone caught a glimpse of Remus Lupin and his friends during one of their full moon adventures.  If only they knew, eh?

14 November 1994

It is so bizarre to see Harry, Ron and Hermione still sitting together in classes, standing in their usual corner of the courtyard during break or talking down the halls together as if nothing has happened, but also being well aware of the fact that Ron and Harry haven’t spoken to each other in over two weeks!

And poor Hermione, she’s been trying to act as a liason between them, but she might as well be trying to get two brick walls to soften up and shake hands!  I can imagine that it must be dreadfully frustrating!

I find our visitors fascinating, not that I get much of a chance to observe them, what with them all being upper classmen after all, but there are twelve students each from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang schools, and they will be staying here for the remainder of the school year, attending classes with their Hogwarts counterparts.

The Beauxbatons party is split evenly, six boys and six girls.  Durmstrang brought only two girls, and I get the distinct impression that it was only for appearances that they included any girls at all. 

The students from both schools seem nice enough though, well intentioned, anyway.  I wasn’t joking when I told Lisa that the boys from Durmstrang were a good looking lot; very dark and ruggedly handsome.  I am, of course, rather partial to dark, handsome, brooding sorts of men.

I know there are those who would argue the point of Harry’s being handsome, but I’ve seen the pictures of his dad.  His dad was a dream!  And Harry, Harry looks just like his father, so there you are.  Besides, all you have to do is look into his eyes and it’s plain to see that Harry’s true handsomeness lies inside.  He’s got a good heart.

22 November 1994

Ginny enetered the clearing through the giant oak tree’s trunk and paused — considering.  She was being watched, she could tell by the way the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

Probably an animal.

She had yet to see any animals inside of the clearing, nor any people besides Mira, who only appeared after Ginny had called the elements.

I am not alone.

Well, she wasn’t really.  Hagrid was just outside.  He’d be turning around to head back to his cabin.

I’m not alone here.

Nonsense, Ginny told herself firmly.  No one else knew about the clearing.  And even if someone else were to stumble across it, they wouldn’t be able to hurt her within its confines.

I hope.

Besides, it wasn’t that sort of a feeling.  It wasn’t a ‘you’re in danger!  Run!’ sort of feeling, it was more like walking into a room after someone has just left; you can still smell their scent, feeling their essence on the air currents.

“Do not be afraid.”

The voice was soft, barely louder than a whisper and yet it seemed to come from all around her . . .the air . . .the trees . . .even the ground itself.

“Mira?”  Ginny’s voice sounded oddly wavery to her own ears.  It hadn’t sounded like Mira, but still. . .

“I am not she.”

Ginny swallowed.  She had reached the stone circle now and slowly turned around in a complete circle, her wand out, eyes raking the tree line for a glimpse of the voice’s owner, except there was nothing see.  No, that wasn’t quite right either.

The quality of darkness in the surrounding forest had changed somehow.  Instead of an impenetrable wall of trees surrounding the clearing, she found that she could see into the trees around her.

There, wasn’t that another clearing?  And there, didn’t that look like moonlight glinting off the water?  Except she had her back to the lake, didn’t she?  An owl hooted from quite nearby and Ginny jumped, startled.  She’d never been able to hear sounds in here before.  It had always been completely silent, as if she were locked in a bubble.

The owl hooted again and was answered not by another owl, but by something that sounded remarkably like a phoenix.

“Why are you afraid of the night?” whispered the voice, and Ginny could feel her pulse pounding in her throat.

What was happening?

“I — I’m not afraid of the night I know,” Ginny stammered.  She felt completely stupid talking to an empty clearing, but it was better than the alternative.  “But this — this night you bring, I am not familiar with it.”

“I am acquainted with the night,” said the voice sadly.  “It is all I have left now.”

The last bit had sounded as if it had been a quote, something she had read somewhere not too long ago.

“Doesn’t — doesn’t daylight ever come to where you are?” asked Ginny hesitantly.  She was having a conversation with a disembodied voice.  It was by far the oddest thing she had ever done (not including being in Harry’s head last spring when he’d been in two places at the same time), but unlike the time she’d been observing two Harry’s thoughts, this didn’t feel unnatural.  It felt perfectly right.  She felt, somehow, that she’d know this voice for a very long time. When it finally answered, the voice sounded rather amused.

“Of course it does.  We have night and day, just as you do.  What I mean is that something is stealing our days.”

“You mean that you have less of them?” said Ginny, thoroughly confused now.  “Less daylight hours maybe?”

“No.  The length of our days remains the same as it ever was.  No.  Something, or perhaps someone is stalling their essence.”

“I — I don’t understand.”

“Imagine a painting,” said the disembodied voice in a gentle, patient sort of tone.  “A painting of a beautiful garden perhaps.  The colors are vivid, the detail work exquisite, and then, then someone comes while the paint is still wet and blurs the edges.  Worse than that, they decide to tone down the vividness, can you imagine such a thing?”

Ginny nodded, then wondered why she was nodding.  A disembodied voice couldn’t see her, could it?  It seemed it could, for as if in response to her nod, the voice continued.

“this is what is happening to our days.”

“But who — who would do such a thing?” said Ginny indignantly.  “Why don’t you stop them?”

“If it were one of us, we would,” said the voice gravely.  “If one of us were to abuse the natural lawas in such a way, they would be must severely punished, but I am afraid that the threat does not come from our own world, but from yours.”

“But who, who are you?” asked Ginny carefully.  “And why do you speak of this to me?  What can I possibly do to help you against someone who has the power neceeary to alter time, or the quality of time in such a way?”

“Not time, breathed the voice.  “Time is an illusion.  I speak of the nature of reality.  And I speak to you, for are you not the half of the whole that will save us?”

“I — what?”

“Your heart-mate, child.  Together you hold the key to undoing the wrongs that have been done, of healing the breech between our kinds, between our worlds.”

Ginny stared, astounded, as the twinkling lights she had been vaguely aware of that had been floating amongst the tree branches, began to coalesce into a humanoid shape.  In seconds a tall, fine-featured man with long, silvery-blonde hair that stood out behind him as if stirred by an invisible breeze and moon-kissed skin was standing before her.  He was wearing a softly flowing tunic over loose-fitting breeches and glove-soft boots that looked as if they had been molded to his feet.

“Who — who are you?” Ginny stammered, finally finding her voice.

“Ther is no need to be afraid,” said the man gently.  “I will not harm you.  Even if it was in my heart to harm you, I could not do so on these grounds.  My name is Aiden and you, you must be Ginevra.”

Ginny nodded again, she didn’t trust herself to speak.

Ginevra.

Something about the way he had said it . . .for the first time that she could remember, Ginny found herself liking the sound of her given name.  It was like when Bill called her Gin.  The tone of his voice all full of love and admiration made it not a diminutive, but something altogether beautiful.

“You wonder why I am here,” said the man gravely.

Ginny tried to speak but all that came out was an indistinct sort of sound in the back of her throat.

“I wanted to see you, my Lady, with my own eyes.”

Confused, Ginny stared at the luminescent man.  He had wanted to see her?  But why?  She was . . .

“Nobody,” Ginny whispered faintly.  “Why me, Aiden?  I am nobody of importance.”

“Ah, but you are important, my Lady.  Have not the elements themselves chosen you as one of their own?  I see they have acknowledged you with their gifting ring.”

“Well yes, but . . .”

“And you understand us, your use of the circle clearly indicates this.  And so we, too, would like to acknoewledge you as the one whom we will follow when the time comes.”

“When what time comes?” said Ginny, finally spurred into speech by the oddness of the entire encounter.

“The time to heal the rifts between our worlds; the time to stand together against the dark power that threatens to destroy our way of life.”

“I — I don’t understand!” whispered Ginny. 

“Oh, but you will,” said the man sadly.  “You will.”

And without a further word, he dissolved into a cloud of sparkling light that quickly disappeared on the gently breeze.