Ginny was dreaming.
She lay in darkness, hungry, wet and cold, bound to a cot, but not yet gagged. She stared into the room around her, listening for footsteps on its slimy floors. She heard what she was dreading: raspy, harsh breathing and slow footfalls. She squeezed her eyes shut, begging her tired brain for strength, and trying not breathe in a sudden putrid scent.
Fenrir Greyback entered the room.
He was walking towards her, a manic smile on his filthy face, looking at her lack of clothing with glee. It had been his idea to embarrass her this way, after all. Ginny was just waiting for the next horrific thing he would think of to humiliate her.
He knelt down next to her cot, so close, Ginny could feel his hot breath on her face. She felt like she might throw up.
“Your dear Harry Potter’s dead, you know. Gone this morning. We’re keeping you, though. We want you to see his body. Then you can be bait for your darling brothers to fall in our clutches. You’re never going to see Harry alive again…”
Greyback’s whisper was delighted, and Ginny felt her heart plummet to her toes. She bit her lip so hard it bled, but she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of this monster. Instead, she called saliva into her mouth, and spat defiantly into his face. He gave a bark of laughter and wiped Ginny’s bloody spit from his cheek.
“Crucio!” he yelled.
Ginny writhed under the filthy ropes, feeling them dig into her skin. But rope burn was nothing next to the fiery pain that filled her very bones. Greyback stuffed a rag in her mouth, gagging her. She shook harder, hearing a horrible voice in her head saying:
“You’re never going to see Harry alive again…never…NEVER! NEVER!”
Ginny gasped, and the pain vanished. She could feel a cool cloth and warm, rough fingers touching her face. She suddenly thought of Greyback, and stiffened. The touch vanished, but she realized that the hands were too clean and small, and they didn’t have Greyback’s grimy nails.
She slowly forced her eyelids apart, and was immediately greeted by pale dawn sunlight and a watery blue sky. She turned her head slowly to look around. She seemed to be lying on a bed of moss in the middle of a leafy clearing in the woods. A rough canvas backpack lay open a few feet away, and a tiny fire burned a safe distance from the trees. A boy sat poking the fire with a wand that was covered in Spellotape. He was skinny, with untidy black hair.
Harry Potter.
Ginny gasped again, and Harry turned around. She felt simultaneously relieved and shocked. She began shaking, unable to speak. Harry looked at her with concern.
“Ginny? Are you okay?” he said kindly.
Ginny choked, and began to cry. It wasn’t a sad sort of crying- it was a violent screaming, sobbing sort of crying. After all the heartache and pain, after torture and anger and embarrassment, Harry was sitting mere feet away from her.
She had thought he was dead. He had left her alone, and the Death Eaters had captured her. Now they were sitting in the middle of somewhere she had never seen before and Harry was asking her if she was OKAY?
“Ginny, what is it?”
Ginny took a deep breath and brought her crying under control. She needed to figure out what was going on before she could try to sift through her churning emotions.
“Where are we?” she said shakily.
“I have no idea. I made an Apparition mistake- but that’s not the point, what’s wrong with you?”
Ginny ignored him. “What happened? How did you…?”
“I can see you’re not going to be distracted. Fine. Voldemort is destroyed. His Death Eaters are gone. Ron and Hermione are back at the Burrow, but Ron’s badly injured. I tried to Apparate you there too, but I was so tired, I messed up. So we have to wait here until someone finds us, or until I can Apparate again. My wand is broken, so I can send sparks and levitate stuff, but anything else would be dangerous. I’ve got enough food and water that we won’t starve.”
Harry paused and continued quietly, “Now will you tell me why you fell to pieces like that?”
Ginny spent a moment digesting that truckload of information, and her own confusing feelings. Her thoughts flew in every direction.
She thought of Harry and all that he had meant to her and what had happened because of that. She thought of everything she had been through because of him, and everything he had been through because of her. She thought of how it had felt to miss him, and how it had felt to have him close to her. She thought of all the hurt she had felt, and all of the things that could still cause pain. Then she spoke.
“I’m scared, Harry,” she whispered.
He made a funny movement in his face, like a convulsive twitch, and moved closer to where she lay.
“What are you scared of?”
Ginny paused, then said, “You really want to know, do you?”
“Yeah, I really do,” he answered. The sincerity in his voice was so intense, she might have been asking him to dive to the bottom of the ocean with her.
Ginny paused again, then started speaking in a rush. She was afraid that if she didn’t get the words out now, she never would dredge up enough nerve again.
“God, Harry! I’m scared of you! I fell in love with you, I swear I did. I cried every night you were there at the wedding, but I couldn’t let you hear because I knew you didn’t try to hurt me, you had to! And then the Death Eaters came after me and captured me and tied me up stark naked so I’d cringe with embarrassment every time anyone entered that room, and they whipped me and tortured me and starved me, but all the while I just kept thinking of you and how much worse you had it than I did.”
The intensity of her own words was starting to scare Ginny. Emotions she didn’t even know she could feel were flying past, and half the things she had said felt foreign to her, as much as she knew they were true.
“I was hoping you didn’t miss me half as much as I missed you, cause then you’d be in even more pain! And I just kept hurting and hurting because I missed being happy so much. So I’m afraid. I’m afraid of other things that could hurt me and you. I’m afraid of feeling those emotions again, because they tore me apart. Harry, they told me you died!”
Ginny finished on a desperate sob. She had no idea why she was being so dramatic. She reminded herself of a girl on a daytime TV show Hermione had told her about.
She suddenly felt Harry’s hand on her cheek, and she knew immediately that his was the hand that had woken her from her nightmare. But as quickly as his hand had been there, he took it away.
Harry looked at her momentarily, his eyes simultaneously grief-stricken and fearful, but the emotion vanished a second later.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I wish it didn’t have to be that way.”
They looked at each other. Ginny said nothing. She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to happen now. They stayed like that for a few minutes. The silence in the clearing felt almost oppressive.
All of the sudden, Ginny felt slightly dizzy. Her head felt too light to stay on her shoulders. Harry must have known something was wrong, because he immediately looked concerned.
“Ginny, you’re sick. You need to sleep,” he said quickly.
Ginny tried to respond, but Harry had already pressed a tiny bottle to her lips. She felt as if she were drowning in violets, and then the potion for dreamless sleep took effect, so she slipped into slumber.
Little did Ginny know that the black haired boy had lain down beside her, one hand resting gently on her shoulder.
What Are You Scared Of? by smiley10792
Chapter Notes: Thank you so much for all the positive reviews! They completly made my day.
JKR owns the chracters- not me!