A Stolen Past by nuw255
Chapter Notes: After 17 out of 18 chapters, we’ve finally come to the real beginning of shippiness in this story! If you’re like me, you’re cheering after reading that. If not, I apologize, but you were warned. :) What will Harry do when he sees Hermione? Is she the girl he’s been dreaming about?
Harry Potter paced the living room of the Burrow. His friends would be returning from school at any time. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had left for King’s Cross Station at least two hours ago, after making him swear he wouldn’t leave the house. As he paced, his anxiety grew. He was finally going to meet Ron and Hermione in person! Although that probably should have been the most exciting thing about the afternoon, he somehow felt even more anxious to find out if his theory about his ‘dream girl’ (as Tyler had always called her) was correct. It seemed like so long ago when he had finally concluded that the girl’s face that occupied most of his dreams must belong to Hermione. In reality, it had only been a few weeks, but the time seemed to drag by with no lessons to fill up the days. Suddenly, he was jerked from his musings by the sound of a vehicle coming up the drive. After a quick glance out the window to make sure it was the two taxicabs that were supposed to be bringing the Weasleys, Harry dashed outside to meet them.
Before he knew what hit him, he heard a shriek of, “Harry!” and was immediately choked by a rather large amount of bushy brown hair as Hermione enveloped him in an extremely tight embrace. Somewhat awkwardly, he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her in return. As his brain finally caught up with him and he realized exactly who he was hugging, he pulled her closer, enjoying the closeness he felt. A moment later, she pulled away and looked into his face, her hands still gripping his shoulders. Harry’s heart sank. The girl in front of him looked familiar, but she was definitely not the same girl whose face had given him an endless supply of hope during the dreary months at St. Brutus’s.
“Harry, what’s wrong?” Hermione asked in a concerned voice.
Harry shook himself. “Oh, er, nothing. I’m fine. It’s, um, really great to see you.”
“Move over, Hermione, let the rest of us tell him hello.” A tall, lanky boy with flaming red hair - Ron - gave her a playful shove. “How you doing, mate?” he asked Harry. “Mum and Dad didn’t really tell us much - they said it’d be better if we heard everything straight from you, so I hope you’re ready to spill your guts.” He patted Harry on the shoulder in the way that teenage boys do when they want to hug a friend but feel self-conscious about actually doing it. “We’ll talk inside, okay?”
“Sure,” Harry said. He watched as Ron lifted his trunk, leaned over to give Hermione a kiss on the cheek, and then picked up her trunk as well, carrying both of them toward the house. Harry was suddenly very glad that Hermione had not turned out to be the girl he kept dreaming about - if it had been her, things would have been very awkward indeed.
“So, Hermione whispered as soon as Ron was out of earshot, “have you figured out who the mystery girl is?” Her eyes shone with excitement as she waited for his answer.
Harry shook his head as he distractedly watched Mr. Weasley pull a trunk from the luggage compartment of the second taxi and then move forward to pay the driver. His daughter, Ginny, came around from the other side of the car and began dragging the trunk toward Harry and Hermione. When she looked up, her eyes met Harry’s, and he suddenly stopped breathing. He was staring into those brown eyes that he could lose himself in forever; every feature of that perfect face he had dreamed about for so long was suddenly right there in front of him, framed by a long mane of flaming red hair.
“Harry?” Hermione whispered. “Harry, what’s wrong?”
“It’s... her,” he whispered, still in a daze.
“It’s-” Hermione’s widened in comprehension. “You mean it was Ginny?”
Harry nodded dumbly. Ginny stopped several feet away, apparently not wanting to interrupt his whispered conversation with Hermione.
“Well, what are you going to do?” Hermione asked.
“Do?” Harry shook himself and tore his eyes away from Ginny to look back at Hermione. “What do you mean, what am I going to do? There’s nothing to do.”
Hermione smirked at him. “Don’t give me that; I saw the way you were looking at her just now. You’re smitten, Harry.”
“Shhh! Keep your voice down.”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Take it from somebody who knows, Harry,” she whispered. “It’ll only get worse if you put it off. Just ask her out now and get the hard part over with.”
“What?” Harry asked, mortified. “It’s not that easy. I don’t even know her.”
“It is that easy, and you do too know her,” Hermione countered. “You just don’t remember knowing her. I’m going inside now.” Loud enough for everyone to hear, she suggested, “Why don’t you help Ginny with her trunk, Harry?” before shooting him a wink and following Mr. and Mrs. Weasley into the house.
Harry just stood there, unable to move or even think. He seemed incapable of looking away from Ginny’s face, even though he had memorized every last feature months ago.
“Welcome back, Harry,” she said with a small smile. She was looking at him curiously, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. “Nobody told me you’d been found until we were in the taxi, on our way home.” She laughed softly, causing a small shiver to run down Harry’s spine. “I was ready to murder Hermione for holding out on me.”
“Mhmm,” Harry mumbled.
Ginny gave another soft laugh. “Harry, are you okay? You haven’t blinked for the past five minutes.”
Harry blinked rapidly and shook his head in an effort to dispel his stupor. “I’m fine,” he said. “Can I, er, help you with your trunk?”
Ginny nodded, and he lifted her trunk with his right hand. As she turned to lead him toward the Burrow, he impulsively reached out with his other hand and grasped hers. Ginny froze. Slowly, she turned her head just enough so that she could look at him out of the corner of her eye.
Suddenly self-conscious, Harry muttered, “Sorry,” and pulled his hand back. To his surprise, Ginny didn’t let go; instead, she gave his hand a small squeeze and turned to face him with a shy smile that instantly lifted his spirits.
“Can we talk later?” she asked. “Just the two of us?”
“Sure,” Harry replied as she led him toward the front door. She dropped his hand to push the door open, and didn’t reach for it again as she entered the living room and instructed Harry to leave her trunk at the bottom of the stairs.
“Now sit down,” Hermione commanded, gesturing to a worn armchair. Harry did as she instructed, and Ginny took a seat on the sofa next to Hermione and Ron.
“So?” Ron asked impatiently. “Are you going to tell us what happened or not?”
For the next two hours, Harry recounted his story to his friends, beginning with the previous summer holiday for Ginny’s benefit. Once again, he had to be careful to avoid any references to his doing magic without a wand, which changed the story considerably. Nevertheless, the basic idea was conveyed, and Ron, Hermione, and Ginny all seemed to gasp and widen their eyes in disbelief at all the right places.
When Harry got to the part about Umbridge having been the one to erase his memory, Ron leaped to his feet with a shout of, “The old hag!”
Hermione just pulled him back down onto the sofa and asked, “What happened next, Harry?”
“Dumbledore brought me back here,” Harry replied. “He said that he can’t reverse the Memory Charm without the wand that was used to cast it, but Fudge is stonewalling. So who knows how long I’ll be like this? I mean, look at me. I know that I know all of you, and we’re really good friends and everything, but I can’t remember anything about any of you.”
“It’ll be okay, Harry,” Ginny said softly. As his eyes fell on her, he couldn’t help feeling that she was right. Her face had been a symbol of hope to him for so long now that he couldn’t help feeling hopeful whenever he looked at her.
“We’re still here for you, mate,” said Ron. “You might not remember us, but we remember you.”
“And if Dumbledore can’t get his hands on Umbridge’s wand, then we’ll find someone who can,” Hermione added vehemently.
At that moment, Mrs. Weasley called them all into the kitchen for dinner, and the conversation turned to the previous school year at Hogwarts. Harry listened interestedly as Hermione described some of the new spells they had been learning, and he quickly realized that he had so far only scratched the surface of his magical potential. He still had a lot to learn.
Toward the end of dinner, Harry learned that Ron had been captain of the Quidditch team for Gryffindor house - the house that he, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny all belonged to - and that they had managed to tie for first place in the Quidditch Cup.
“We tied with Ravenclaw, so it wasn’t so bad,” said Ron. “At least we creamed Slytherin. You should’ve seen Ginny, Harry; she almost knocked Malfoy off his broom.” Ron was grinning madly and his eyes gleamed with malicious delight as he made this pronouncement. Unfortunately for him, Harry still didn’t know many of his old classmates by name.
“Malfoy?” he asked.
“Oh, right,” Ron said. “Sorry. Malfoy’s in our year, and he’s about the foulest git in the whole school. He plays Seeker, the same as you, but since you weren’t there this year, Ginny played Seeker for us. Malfoy likes to play dirty, obviously, but Ginny got so physical with him that he almost fell off his broom. While he was busy trying to right himself, she caught the Snitch.”
Harry looked in amazement at the beautiful, petite girl who was sitting across the table from him. “Ginny got physical, eh? I think I’d like to see that.”
Ginny just shrugged. “Well, I do have six older brothers. If I couldn’t get physical every now and again, I’d never have survived. I think I enjoyed beating Michael to the Snitch more than beating Malfoy, though. It’s too bad we were losing by so much that all we could do was tie for the Cup. If I’d actually had a decent broom, we might have won.”
“Wait, who’s Michael?” Harry asked, trying to keep up with all the information that was flying his way. “And how come you were losing by that much? What happened to the Keeper?”
“He was in the Hospital Wing,” Ron said with a touch of bitterness in his voice. “I’m the Keeper, Harry. Some idiot slipped a shoddy Strengthening Solution into my pumpkin juice the morning of the match, and I ended up unconscious for two days. We didn’t have a reserve Keeper, so that moron McLaggen ended up playing, although as far as I can tell, we could have done just as well playing one man short.”
“And Michael is Ginny’s ex-boyfriend,” Hermione inserted, trying to steer the conversation away from Ron’s unfortunate hospital stay. “He plays Seeker for Ravenclaw, so it just made beating him that much sweeter.”
Harry felt a pang of guilt at the mention of Ginny’s ex-boyfriend as he suddenly remembered something Hermione had mentioned in her first letter to him. “Er- is he the one you broke up with because of me?” he asked awkwardly.
Ginny gaped at him for a moment before turning to glare at Hermione. “What did you tell him?” she hissed.
“Nothing!” Hermione protested. “Oh, wait- Harry, that was Dean, not Michael. Ginny and Michael broke up a long time ago.”
“I did not break up with Dean because of Harry, Hermione!” Ginny insisted.
“Oh, sure,” Ron said with a snort. “As I recall, Dean thought you were a bit too worried about Harry, and accused you of still fancying him - in front of the whole common room. Then you had a blazing row, which ended when you told Dean that maybe you should start fancying Harry again, hit him with a Bat-Bogey Hex, and stormed out through the portrait hole.” By the time he finished, Harry and Ginny were both intently examining their fingernails and trying unsuccessfully to fight the heat that had risen in their faces.
“May I be excused?” Ginny asked. She didn’t wait for a response before standing and hurrying out of the kitchen and up to her room.
Hermione elbowed Ron hard in the ribs. “What?” he asked, rubbing his side.
“Couldn’t you tell you were making her uncomfortable?”
“Well yeah, but that’s my job, isn’t it? I am her older brother, after all.”
Hermione just rolled her eyes at him and offered to help Mrs. Weasley clear the table.
That night, Harry lay awake in his bed, thinking about Ginny. Despite the fact that she had asked to talk with him in private earlier that day, he hadn’t seen her since she rushed away from the table. He rolled over, trying to get comfortable, as Ron’s soft snores signaled that he was already asleep. Why had Ginny dropped his hand as soon as they were in sight of her family? Why had she been so embarrassed by Ron’s story at dinner that she practically ran from the room? Still unable to get comfortable, he threw the covers aside and padded across the room. He pulled the door open and nearly ran into a pajama-clad Ginny, who was standing just on the other side.
“Ginny,” Harry breathed.
“Hi,” she whispered. “I told you I wanted to talk in private, remember? Around here, that means after everyone else is asleep. I was just coming up to get you.”
Harry grinned at her, and she smiled back before leading him down the long staircase to the ground floor, and out into the garden. They walked in silence along the garden path, the moon lighting the way, until Ginny stopped at the little pet cemetery near the apple orchard, and gazed down at Hassseth’s headstone.
“She must’ve really been something,” Ginny said at last.
“Yeah,” Harry whispered. “She was.”
“What was she like?”
Harry shrugged. “She was loyal and easy to talk to, and she gave great advice. I know it’s sort of hard to believe, since she was a snake, but she was also kind, and she had a great sense of humor. I always liked it when she laughed, although the first time she scared me half to death.”
“Why?” asked Ginny.
“When she laughed, it sort of sounded like she was choking on something, until I got used to it.” He paused for a long time, just looking at her likeness in the stone. “She sacrificed herself to save my life,” he said at last.
“Thank you,” Ginny whispered to the small headstone, and Harry was surprised to see a single tear rolling down her cheek.
“Was this what you wanted to talk to me about?” Harry asked after a moment.
Ginny looked up quickly. “Oh- no. I didn’t even know about her when I said I wanted to talk in private, remember? I really wanted to ask you why you were holding my hand earlier and staring at me all afternoon.”
Harry laughed self-consciously. “The staring was that obvious, was it?”
Ginny nodded. “I’d be surprised if Ron noticed, but I don’t think anyone else could’ve missed it.”
“Alright then,” Harry began. “While I was at-” he still couldn’t say he had been at St. Brutus’s, “-at school this past year, I kept having this recurring dream. It was just a girl’s face, but somehow that face came to represent hope for me in that depressing place. I went to bed every night hoping to see her again, because I knew that I could just stare into her eyes forever and never get bored.
“I wrote to Ron about her, trying to figure out who she was, but the only description I could give him was, ‘very pretty, with brown eyes,’ since I hadn’t really seen anything other than her face - not even her hair. Ron thought it might be Cho Chang, but as soon as I saw the picture of her that he sent me, I knew it wasn’t her. After that, I convinced myself that it was Hermione, but when I saw her earlier, I knew it wasn’t her, either. Then I saw you, and I knew right away that you were the one I’ve been dreaming about all this time. Hermione told me I should just ask you out right away, but I wasn’t quite ready to do that, so I just grabbed your hand instead.”
Ginny just stood there, eyeing him carefully. “Harry,” she said slowly, “it isn’t that I’m not flattered, because I am, but I think you were right not to ask me out right away. You’ve known me for a long time, and you never noticed me before losing your memory. When you get it back, I’ll just go back to being Ron’s baby sister.” In the bright moonlight, Harry saw tears gleaming in the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. “I think I can handle that, but if we’re together for a while, and then it happens, I won’t do so well. Harry, I’ve wanted you to notice me like this ever since I first met you when I was ten years old, but I just can’t risk getting crushed like that.”
Harry took her shoulders firmly in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. “When I get my memory back, I won’t forget what’s happened over the past year. I won’t forget the way you gave me the hope I needed to keep going while I was at that sorry excuse for a school, even though I didn’t even know who you were at the time. And I won’t forget what I felt when I first saw you today, and every time I’ve looked at you since.”
For several minutes, they stood there, staring into one another’s eyes, hardly even blinking. Then, very slowly, Harry leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on Ginny’s forehead. He didn’t breathe as he backed away, terrified that she would slap him at any moment. To his relief, her mouth slowly curled upward into a slight smile.
“I’ll need some time to get used to this,” she said softly.
“Take all the time you need,” Harry reassured her. He shot her a wry smile. “From what I hear, you deserve it.”
“It’s almost two in the morning,” Ginny said as she checked her watch. “We’d better get back to bed. Tomorrow you’re going to have to convince me that this was all real, you know; I’m sure to think it was just a dream.”
“It’s real,” Harry whispered as he took her by the hand and led her back into the house. After a whispered goodnight outside Ginny’s bedroom door, Harry nearly floated up the rest of the stairs to Ron’s bedroom, where he lay down on his camp bed and fell asleep immediately. As they had been for several months, his dreams were filled with the beautiful face of a brown-eyed girl, only now the face was framed by flaming red hair, and she was laughing and talking with him as he stared into her sparkling eyes.
A/N: I know, I know, you already knew it was Ginny because you saw the story banner or you realized from my other stories that I can’t bear to see Harry and Ginny with anybody but each other. I did try to throw a few hints out there, like having Hermione mention that Harry’s disappearance had led to Ginny and Dean’s breakup, or having Ginny hide her face in the family photo. I’ll honestly be surprised if anybody tells me they really thought it was Hermione, just because Harry insisted that it had to be her way too often for it to be true.
Anyway, please let me know what you think. Only one more chapter to go, and then it’s off to the sequel!