Ginny stared in confusion. “I don’t understand,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?” Hermione asked.
“What petrified Hedwig?”
Harry linked his fingers together as he stretched his arms above his head. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Ginny explained, “what is it that petrified her? When was she petrified? How did she get into the house after she’d been petrified?”
“Oh, I see,” Hermione murmured.
“I don’t,” said Harry. “She got in through the window, obviously. As for when, does that matter?”
“When it may have happened matters a great deal,” Hermione said firmly.
“Why?”
“The house must still be protected by the Fidelius Charm. That means that if she was attacked outside of the house, someone has been watching you and has noticed that you vanish somewhere along Grimmauld Place.” Hermione leaned forward. She spoke carefully, in the manner of one giving bad news. “If she was attacked inside of the house, Harry, then that means that someone we know attacked her.”
“Attacked me,” Harry corrected.
“Yes. You’re in trouble here, Harry. Someone is after you, and we need to figure out whom and why.”
“She was attacked inside the house,” Ginny said positively.
“How do you know that?”
“The window, Hermione. Harry had to climb into it earlier today because he forgot his keys. That’s when he found her lying on the hallway floor. To get into that window she would have had to fly up and in, not just glide in. Wouldn’t that mean that she had to have been attacked when she was already inside the window?”
“Well, momentum would have carried her if she was very close and already on the right trajectory when she was struck with a spell. But, yes,” Hermione agreed. “I see what you mean. It is likely she was attacked inside the house.”
“Someone I know broke into my house and cursed my owl?” Harry asked, incredulous. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, as though relishing the pressure. Maybe it allowed him to focus his concentration.
“Don’t do that,” Ginny said gently, reaching for his hands and pulling them away from his face. “It can’t be good. You’ll crack your contact lenses or something.”
“They’re soft lenses,” he said with a smile. “They’ll be fine.”
“But, still.” She smiled, giving his hand a squeeze as she wrapped it within her own and held it in her lap. “Don’t do that.”
“Uh… yes,” Hermione interrupted, seeming delighted at how close Harry and Ginny were. “Where were we? Ah, yes. Somebody must have broken in, Harry. The window was open?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding in agreement.
“That was very clever of you. Leave a window open and be surprised when somebody breaks in. Well, that’s how they got in, then.”
“Who would do this?” Ginny asked, unable to tear her eyes away from their entwined hands. “And how did they do it?”
“It looked like she was cursed as soon as she flew in the window,” Harry said. “But why would somebody wait for me in the first floor hallway?”
“Perhaps Hedwig interrupted an intruder who just shot a curse at her?” Hermione suggested, shrugging her shoulders.
“Perhaps,” Harry agreed.
“Give me a moment.” Hermione excused herself from the room, clicking the door closed behind her.
Ginny looked up and caught Harry’s eye. She grinned at him before bursting into laughter.
“Straight to the library,” he said, laughing with her. She lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a gentle kiss against his knuckles before he let go and went to stand by the window.
“The wind isn’t raging so much now,” he said, gazing out over the school grounds.
“Come back here, Harry.”
“Hmm?” he asked, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “And the clouds are disappearing. I’m starting to see some stars at last.”
“I said, come here, Harry.”
Harry turned his back to the window and smiled at her, looking somewhat nervous. He sat next to her on the couch.
Ginny angled herself so that she was leaning towards him, and took his hand in hers. “Why are you afraid of me?”
“I’m not afraid of you, Gin.”
“I know that we haven’t spent any real time together over the past few years. You’ve had your life going on, and I’ve had mine too. Today has been an exceptional day, and I can’t help it. I feel really close to you.”
“Me too,” he admitted.
She took a deep breath. “And it seems, though, every time I get a little closer to you, you pull yourself a bit further away. I don’t understand why.”
“Today has been an exceptional day,” he agreed. “I’m worried that this isn’t really what we want. Maybe we’re both just acting under all of the tension and pressure of today.”
“Maybe we are. Does it matter?”
“It matters.” Harry’s smile was gentle. “It matters because I don’t want you like this. If I have you at all, I want it to be properly, in a relationship. Not a quick roll around due to lust and tension and a long bloody day!”
“A roll around?” Ginny said, bemused. She reached for his hands and looked into his eyes earnestly. “Harry, I’ve wanted you for years! Our lives just moved in different directions.”
“Yeah, well,” he said defensively.
“You’re the one who dumped me, remember,” Ginny reminded him. “Life could have been so very different for us if you hadn’t.”
“Life could be so very over for you, you mean. Do you think Voldemort would have left you alone if he’d have learned I had a girlfriend?” Harry shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous! He would have gone straight for you, and he would have killed you. Merlin, he tried going after the bloody Dursleys, and I never gave a hoot about them.”
“I know,” she soothed. “I understood why we broke up at the time. I understand now. I was just saying that we grew apart. You must have expected it. Wasn’t that the whole point?”
“It was.” Harry sighed.
“I understand,” Ginny said, squeezing his hand gently. “You’re scared, I know you are. Not of me, perhaps, but you’re scared. Things are changing… for us both. You’ve just started a new career and there’s all of this Hedwig business to worry about.
“For me, I’ve just got a promotion at work, I’m recently single, and you’ve come back into my life. And I’m pleased about that. I know that I’m coming on strong here, Harry, but this is important to me. I don’t want to say goodbye to you again.”
“Recently single?” he asked.
“I should have known you would latch on to that,” she said with a sigh. “Now isn’t the time to talk about it, but yes, I’m recently single.”
“I heard the rest of it too, Ginny. I don’t want to say goodbye to you either.”
Releasing his hand, Ginny leaned forward and pressed her lips gently against his. Harry closed his eyes and lifted his hands to either side of her face. His thumbs gently stroked along her jaw as he kissed her back, softly pushing his lips against her own.
“One step at a time, then?” she asked him as he freed her from his grip.
“Two at a time is quicker,” he laughed, kissing her again.
“Oh! Excuse us!” laughed Hermione, a grin plastered to her face. Stepping out of the doorway to allow her companion entry to her office, Hermione closed the door behind him. Long black robes billowed around the legs of a tall blonde man as he strode into the room and stood by the fireplace.
“Harry,” he said with a genial nod. “Ginny.”
“May I re-introduce you to Hogwarts’ new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher,” Hermione offered, her arm extended towards the blonde man.
“It’s good to see you again, Ernie,” Harry said, standing up to shake his hand. “I should have known you could never get enough of this place. First Prefect, then Head Boy and now you’re Professor Macmillan!”
“Would be Head of House too,” Ernie said jovially. “If Sprout would retire.”
“I guess Dumbledore’s Army really paid off for you!” Harry laughed as he sat down again. “Defence Against the Dark Arts? Good job it’s not cursed anymore!”
“Well, nothing’s happened to me for the past three years anyway,” Ernie said politely. “I’m sorry I don’t have a lot of time, I have some students in detention and I shouldn’t leave them alone for long. Goodness knows what they’ll be getting up to. What was it you needed me for?”
When Hermione had explained the situation surrounding Hedwig’s attack, without mentioning the fact that Harry’s house was protected by a Fidelius Charm, Ernie put his hands on his hips and rocked back and forth on his toes as he thought.
“It could have been anyone,” he said. “Anyone could have broken in and cursed your owl.”
“Would there have been a way to do it without being there?” Hermione asked. “I’m sure that I’ve read something about Delayed Curses or Contact Curses or something like that. I just can’t remember where I read it. It’s really frustrating.”
“Contact Curses?” Ernie said, raising his eyebrows. “Yes. They exist, but I don’t think they’re used as often as they could be.”
“How do they work?” Ginny asked him.
“A curse can be left in a specific place or on a specific object without harming those that go past it, until somebody touches it. It would have been quite possible for your house to have been cursed at any time over the past three weeks, if you haven’t been there, in the hope that you would be the first to enter it yourself and would be petrified. Your owl beat you to the punch, if that’s the case.”
“So when Hedwig flew into the window, the curse activated and she was petrified?”
“That would make sense if a Contact Curse was used in this case. I don’t think that it’s likely, Harry,” Ernie explained. “They’re rather rare and more difficult to cast than they look. Like I said, anyone could have entered your house and cursed her in person. They needn’t have been at a distance.”
“I see,” Hermione murmured, standing to see him out. “Well, thank you, Ernie. You’ve cleared up a little mystery for us.”
“Anytime,” he said, making his way towards the door again. “Good to see you again, Harry. And you, Ginny.”
Closing the door behind him, Hermione slipped off her shoes again and pulled her robes over her feet as she sat down.
“Is it cold in here?” she asked rhetorically, pointing her wand towards the fireplace. “Incendio.”
A small fire began to roar in the fireplace grate, flickering and lightening the room considerably.
“It looks to me,” Hermione said, looking deep in thought, “as though someone has broken into Grimmauld Place and set a Contact Curse. This has to have been someone in the Order, doesn’t it? Who else could get into the house?”
“What about someone like Narcissa Malfoy?” Ginny suggested. “As Sirius’ cousin, wouldn’t she be able to get into the house? She must have known where it was before the Fidelius Charm even existed?”
“That wouldn’t happen,” Hermione confidently declared. “The Fidelius Charm would work on her, too. It would be like having the house address on the tip of her tongue, knowing that she knows it, but not being able to remember.”
“Are you sure?” Harry asked.
“Yes. If Narcissa Malfoy wanted to go into twelve, Grimmauld Place, she wouldn’t be able to find it. She could wander up and down the street for hours knowing that the place felt right but not knowing why it wasn’t there. She would just confuse herself out of wanting to find it.”
“So, you’re right.” Harry sighed. “It has to have been one of the Order. But who would do this to me?”
“I have no idea,” Ginny admitted.
Hermione shook her head too. “Who have you offended lately?”
“No one,” Harry said. He shrugged. “Unless someone has lost money on a bet on one of my Quidditch matches or something, I really don’t have a clue.”
“Well not recently perhaps,” Hermione paused then suggested, “someone in the past?”
“No one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “But I must have. Somebody from the Order of the Phoenix has it in for me, and I want to know who it is.”
“Harry?” Ginny asked, a thought slowly elucidating.
“Yeah?”
“What about Fletcher?”
“Mundungus Fletcher?” Hermione looked thoughtful. “Yes, he got sent to Azkaban for stealing from the house, didn’t he?”
“No,” Harry said. “He was sent to Azkaban for impersonating an Inferius, although he did steal and sell on some of the Black heirlooms. I made a complaint against him though, and that might have been another strike against him. Maybe.”
“Who else could it have been?” Ginny asked. “Fletcher had access to the house, and none of the other Order members would have anything close to a gripe with you, Harry.”
“She’s right,” Hermione said. “Mundungus does have the most motive to go after you, Harry. Who knows what Azkaban has done to him? Maybe you were the only person he could think of to blame.”
“But wasn’t he released over two years ago?” Harry asked.
“Yes, I think so.” Hermione nodded in agreement. “But he vanished, didn’t he? I remember reading in the paper that he had gone into hiding. I’ll have to check some facts and get back to you.”
“Mundungus,” Harry muttered. “I can’t believe it.”
“We could ask Percy if he’s heard anything about him,” Ginny said.
“That’s a good idea,” Hermione agreed. “Can you get hold of him easily?”
“No,” Ginny admitted. “But I can leave him messages in a few places. He’ll answer them when he can.”
“How would Percy have heard anything more than we have?” Harry asked.
Ginny looked at Harry in surprise. She looked at Hermione, who shrugged, and then back to Harry.
“He’s in training to be an Auror too, Harry,” Hermione said. “Haven’t you seen him on your campus?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Third year students don’t spend much time at the Auror Training Institute,” Ginny explained to Hermione. “They tend to shadow qualified Aurors, to learn what it’s like ‘on the job.’”
“Oh.”
“I had no idea he was in training,” Harry said, surprised. “I always thought he was happy behind his desk.”
“He’d been trying to get on the course for years before they took him on,” Ginny laughed. “He was so relieved when he got his acceptance letter!”
“I can imagine,” said Hermione.
“What was I saying? Yes, I can get messages to him.”
“Brilliant,” Harry said, standing up. “You do that, Ginny, and ask him about Fletcher. Hermione, if you could try and find out more about him yourself, we’ll have to meet again and talk it through at some point.”
“I’ll send an owl and we can arrange it. Or I may just pop my head through the Floo,” she said. “It’s getting late. Do you two want to go home through here rather than through Hogsmeade?”
Harry looked at Ginny and raised an eyebrow.
“It is late,” Ginny said. “George will be in the pub himself by now. We’ll have missed him.”
“We’d love to use your fire.” Harry smiled. “Thanks Hermione. It’s bloody cold out there.”
“I’ll keep an eye on Hedwig for you,” she promised, offering the pot full of Floo Powder to each of them. “But I’m sure she’ll be okay.”
“Of course she will,” he said confidently. “She’s in Hagrid’s care.”
“You go through first, Harry,” Ginny suggested. “I want a quick word with Hermione.”
“Okay.” He laughed. “But no talking about me.”
“As if,” she teased.
“I’ll just go on to the house, okay? Take your time.” Harry smiled warmly at her. “London Central Floo Station!” he said, disappearing in a whirl.
“Well, you must be dying to ask me,” Ginny said, taking her place on the sofa again.
Hermione smiled and came to sit beside her. “I am.” She nodded. “Are you and Harry…?”
“I don’t know what Harry and I are.” Ginny sighed. “I feel really connected to him. I haven’t seen the bloke more than ten times in the last ten years, and two of those occasions have been within the last month. He’s been flirting with me all day. It’s been brilliant. Then we came here and he kind of pulled back a little bit. When you left the room earlier, the first thing he did was stand up and move away from me. It was like he’d suddenly realised that I was interested and that made him nervous.”
“Harry’s quite shy underneath the teasing and jokes, you know.”
“I know that, I just didn’t expect him to be reserved with me. I told him that I wanted to be with him, to pursue this, and he agreed with me. Then he kissed me and you bloody walked in…”
“Yeah,” Hermione said as she grinned. “Sorry about that.”
Ginny laughed and shrugged, taking a sip of the tea she still held in her hand.
“And you and Draco?” Hermione asked.
“Over. Done. Gone. Dead. Finished. Past.”
“What happened?” she asked gently. “I know that you… thought a lot of him.”
“I couldn’t be a part of his world, Hermione. He’s a Malfoy, I’m a Weasley. Grey eyes, brown eyes. We weren’t ever supposed to be together. I don’t know what we were thinking.”
“What did you see in him anyway?”
“Aside from a wicked sense of humour and sex appeal? He’s not all bad, you know.”
“I know, but he’s so… Malfoy.”
Ginny smiled secretively and took a deep breath. “He’s a wonderful man if you take him for who he is. Compare him to someone like Harry or Ron even, and I suppose Draco would come out on the bottom. He has his own way of going about things that I don’t agree with, and he lives in a completely different world. That was our problem. I couldn’t forgive him for not being what I wanted him to be. I couldn’t be happy with who he was. So it couldn’t work. It really does just boil down to that.”
“That makes sense,” Hermione sympathised. “What was it that pushed you too far?”
“One too many dinner parties at Malfoy Manor that I wasn’t invited to,” she said with a wry smile. “I know, I know, it’s pathetic. But what kind of excuse did I need? We’d only been together for three and a half months. Despite how right we felt sometimes, we also felt so wrong. When I told him that I’d had enough and wouldn’t be seeing him anymore, his pride was wounded or something and his temper flared. I’m best out of it.”
“So, you’re looking to Harry now?”
“Well, we’ll just have to see how that goes. It could be something or nothing.”
“You and I both know it’s not going to be nothing,” Hermione laughed, standing up and straightening her robes. “You’d better get a move on, Ginny. I have to make some patrols of the corridors and Harry will be sat in that cold kitchen of his, waiting for you.”
“It’s been brilliant to see you,” Ginny said as she hugged her friend.
“You too, Ginny. Be sure to come more often!”
“I will,” she promised, smiling as she threw a handful of Floo Powder into the flames. “London Central Floo Station!”
Hermione sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “It took them long enough,” she said under her breath.
“Dobby?” Harry asked, looking into empty space. The small House-elf materialised in front of him, covered in clothes. Two large woollen hats sat on the top of his bobble head, one a very bright sunny yellow and one maroon, worn at opposing angles so that they could both be seen. A child’s blue t-shirt with a superman logo reached past his knees, beneath which one green and one pink sock showed.
“You liked your Christmas present, then?” Harry asked, knowing that he had not seen the House-elf wearing anything else since he had given him the parcel.
“I loves it, Harry Potter!” Dobby said proudly, stroking his hands down the shiny Superman transfer. “Super-Dobby!”
“Definitely Super-Dobby.” Harry laughed.
“What can Super-Dobby be doing for you, Harry Potter, sir?”
“Could you make up the Guest Bedroom for me when you have a chance?”
“Yes, Harry Potter. Is the Weezy girl staying?”
“Well I don’t know,” Harry said. “She may, she may not. I’m going to offer and see what she says.”
A loud knock filtered down from the floor above. “I is getting it, Harry Potter!” Dobby nodded at Harry and vanished instantly.
“Incendio,” he said, pointing his wand at the fireplace. A small fire glowed brilliantly, sweeping away the gloom that seemed to pervade the kitchen.
“Hey,” he said as Ginny descended the stairs.
“Hi,” she replied, smiling. “I didn’t know that you had Dobby here.”
Harry nodded as he stared at the flames in the grill, fascinated as the wisps of fire changed from burning yellows to reds. “Yeah. He’s happy here. He keeps the place beautifully. Are you hungry?” he asked, reaching into one of the pockets on his cords. “There’s a great take-away place not so far away. I’d have to go out for it since they can hardly deliver, but it’s not far.”
“I’m not hungry, actually.”
“Oh, good,” he said with a laugh, jingling coins from one hand to the other, counting them quickly. “I haven’t got much Muggle money anyway.”
“We’re complete opposites, Harry,” she said, grinning. “In the Muggle world, I’m loaded! I never really get to spend my wages on anything other than my rent, so it just builds up and up. It’s Wizarding money I’m short of.”
“You have a Muggle job?” Harry asked.
“Yeah. I work in the British Library,” she explained. “It’s a huge Muggle library not too far from here. They have a copy of everything published in the whole of the UK and Ireland, plus millions of others” literally. There are over one hundred and fifty million items in the vaults. I work down in the vaults rather than with the public. I help to catalogue and process everything new we get. That way I can keep an eye out for any books that they shouldn’t have.”
“You mean wizarding books?”
“You’d be surprised how often it happens,” she said, nodding. “Some old biddy comes in with a book she found in her late sister’s loft thinking that it might be a valuable Medieval text, and it’s really a battered copy of Advanced Potion Making or something like that. I ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ a bit, say thank you, take it and send it to Hogwarts for the kids who can’t afford to buy their own books.”
“You could always sell them,” he suggested, “if you’re short a Galleon or two.”
“Well, they don’t come in that often,” she laughed. “And it’s good to send them to Hogwarts. Most people wouldn’t have thought of it, but second-hand books can be a godsend when you don’t have money.”
“You’re right, I suppose,” he agreed. “Maybe you could have your Pounds exchanged for Galleons at Gringott’s?”
“Well I could, but I don’t live in the wizarding world very much any more, Harry. I live with Muggles, I work with Muggles, I wear Muggle clothes and I take the Muggle bus rather than Apparate everywhere.”
“Why?” he asked as he began to fiddle with his wand, surprised. “Life is so much easier as a wizard. I love magic!”
“I loved it too,” she said quietly. “Until I saw how easily it could be corrupted.”
“I see,” he said. “You know… Voldemort was a ‘special case’, if you like. We’ll not see the likes of him again in this life-time. He was a special kind of evil. You needn’t be afraid of him anymore. I killed him myself, with this wand.”
“Why don’t you talk about what happened that day, Harry?”
Harry sat silently for a few moments, idly tracing a finger around the tip of his wand. He raised his eyes to Ginny’s. “Do you really want to know?” he asked. She nodded. “I don’t talk about it because it was horrible. Imagine being scared of lifts, spiders, heights and snakes. That day was like being trapped in a lift with a glass bottom so that you could see precisely how far you had to fall, with snakes slithering around your legs and spiders swarming over your arms and head. Yet you had to brave it all and climb out of the top of the lift, up the wires to what should have been safety, but wasn’t, because then you had to save the rest of the world too.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “You could’ve just said that you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ve been saying that for ten years, but no one wants to listen. I killed him. I used the Avada Kedavra curse. I’ve told the world that. I don’t know why the world needs to know any more.”
“We’re all just… curious. Curious isn’t the right word. It’s like curious, but more.”
“You’re all just nosey and want the best gossip,” he said teasingly, but with a real sigh.
“Something like that,” she said as she smiled, glad to move on.
“Come here,” he said, patting his lap invitingly. Ginny stood up and went to sit with him, perching gently on one of his legs. He wrapped an arm about her waist and pressed his lips to hers. “You can stay here tonight if you want.”
Ginny stiffened a little and pulled away from him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I didn’t quite mean like that,” he laughed gently. “I’m glad to see you like the idea so much, though. I meant that Dobby has freshened up the Guest Bedroom for tonight, if you don’t want to make the journey home.”
“Oh,” she smiled. “Still. I think I had better get home, I have to get to work in the morning.”
“It’s not so far from here, is it?” Harry asked. “I thought the British Library was right by King’s Cross?”
“It is, but all of my things are at home,” she explained. “Thank you for the offer though. That’s very kind of you.”
Ginny kissed his cheek gently and stood up, stretching a little.
“Are you going home now?” he asked, standing up too when she nodded. “I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”
“I had to leave at some point,” she laughed.
“Nah. I could lock you up in the cellar and use you as my sex slave,” he teased. “Now hey, there’s a good idea!”
“Keep dreaming,” she said as she ascended the steps to street-level, knowing that his eyes were on her bottom.
“I will.” Harry wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips against hers, kissing her passionately as he stroked the small of her back through her jacket and shirt. “I’ll owl you. We’ll meet up on my next day off, if you’re free too.”
“I’ll be free,” she promised as Harry opened the front door for her. She kissed him lightly before turning her back and heading home.
A/N: Another large secret is revealed in the next chapter. Ten points to the first to guess. Please review if you enjoy!