Chapter Sixteen: Family and Friends
A crashing noise pulled Harry out of the midst of a very pleasant dream, his eyes snapping open behind the glasses he still wore. Arching his neck, he looked around the room and spotted a house elf pulling itself upright from the floor.
"Winky is so very sorry, Master Harry Potter, she did not mean to interrupt you and Miss Hermione. Winky was just surprised by you here, and fell over." Winky grabbed one of the nearby books off the floor and looked like she was about to begin bashing her head in with it when Harry, viper quickly, flicked his hand at her. She froze in mid-motion.
Summoning the book with another twist of his hand, he set it down on the bedside table before looking down at Hermione. Her head had migrated down onto his chest from his shoulder, and one slender denim clad leg was tossed over his own. No wonder Winky thought she had interrupted something. He unfroze Winky, looking away from the sleeping Hermione. "Shhh. She's asleep. What is it?"
Winky bowed low, her pencil like nose scraping the floor. "The Weasleys. They Floo'd this morning. They wish to come for breakfast, Master Harry Potter."
Harry blinked slowly, processing the information. After a moment, he asked quietly, "Winky, what time is it?"
"Seven-thirty," the tiny house elf replied.
Harry blinked again. That was well past the alarm Hermione had set, and he had never heard it go off, and neither had Hermione, apparently. Yawning silently, he looked the elf in the eyes. "Allow the Weasleys to come in through the wards. And you can drop the protections keeping Hermione from leaving."
Winky nodded. "You and Miss Hermione will be down soon?"
"In a bit, Winky. You or Dobby come get us if we're not down there in half an hour." Harry crushed back another yawn with effort as the house elf vanished with a soft pop. Gingerly, he lifted his hand and ran it through Hermione's hair, watching her sleep, his emerald eyes gleaming softly as the sunlight crept through the curtained window. Despite his tiredness, he felt more rested than he had for days. He watched the sun glinting off the silky strands as they ran through his fingers again. "Time to wake up, 'Mione," he whispered, moving his hand away reluctantly.
Her only response was to press tighter against him at the sound of her name, and the feeling of her warm, small body snuggling against his own made Harry groan softly as it had the predictable result. "Hermione," he called again, louder this time. "Wake up."
That got a muttered, unintelligible reply. "No," he continued. "We have to get up, the alarm didn't wake us, and we have visitors."
"Visitors?" came the mumbled response.
"Yes," Harry continued patiently. Hermione was very rarely this difficult to wake up, in his experience. "The Weasleys are coming for breakfast."
"No." Hermione buried her head in Harry's chest and he stared at her curly brown hair atop her head.
"What do you mean, no, Hermione?" Harry asked softly. "They're our friends, and we haven't seen them since the funeral."
"You didn't even see them then," Hermione shot back without moving from snuggling against him, and Harry's eyes narrowed.
"No, I didn't. I was a coward, I suppose. I couldn't take their grief on top of my own. They're like my family, and I…"
This got Hermione to sit up and look Harry straight in the eyes. "No, it's not your fault. You didn't pull the trigger," the incongruity of the Muggle expression made a smile twitch at both their lips involuntarily, "you didn't make Tom Riddle be evil. You didn't do anything to cause this. It's not your fault, Harry."
"It is. But you can't understand why. You never will."
"I certainly won't if you don't explain it. You're the only one who was awake through the entire battle."
Harry's head dropped. "I made choices that I don't want to talk about, Hermione, nor do I want to talk about the reasons for them. It's just enough to say that it is my fault Ron and Ginny are dead."
Hermione reached up and brushed Harry's hair back off his forehead, revealing the scar there. "I know Ginny was a traitor, Harry, and we'll probably never know why, but it isn't your fault she's dead. The Death Eaters probably killed her in the heat of the battle once she had served her purpose."
Harry looked away. He knew exactly why Ginny had betrayed them all, and it was his fault. His fault for not being able to return her infatuation with a hero he did not believe himself to be. "The Death Eaters didn't kill her, Hermione." As he looked up at her, he could see her mind working, despite just waking up, as she eliminated all the possibilities that left. He looked down again, pushing away from her as he saw the dawning of comprehension in her eyes, moving towards the door. "Breakfast will be soon. We should change and go down." He left the room, leaving the woman he loved without her knowing, the woman who loved him without him knowing, with an unpalatable conclusion about someone she had thought she had known better than anyone else.
* * * * *
When Harry arrived downstairs, walking through the door in comfortable trainers and jeans, he was immediately swept into a hug by the Weasley matriarch. "It's so good to see you, Harry. We were worried about you." Looking over her should he saw the remainder of the once nine strong Weasley family. Charlie, Ron, Ginny, Arthur, gone forever to graves in the terrible war. Percy, permanently estranged from the remainder for his conduct to them and Harry throughout the war. It left the twins and the eldest Weasley child, Bill, along with their mother.
She smiled tenderly at him as he pulled away, and Harry realized with a shock how frail she seemed. Molly Weasley had always been so strong, so motherly. She was pale now, her hair was not quite right, her whole being was indefinably off. Harry was not the only one permanently changed by the Department of Mysteries. Of course, he had not even known she could fight until she had shown up that night there with the rest of the Order.
When Hermione came in a moment later, followed by Lupin and Tonks, who had apparently spent the night again, arriving some time after Harry had gone to speak with Hermione, they got down to chatting nearly amiably, though Hermione never once spoke to Harry, considering what he had revealed, as if she were still pondering it in her mind. When he would meet her eyes, he could see that she was indeed still going over things in her head. It was not that Harry could blame her, really.
Remus and Tonks excused themselves when the meal was done, sensing from the quiet, which emerged when they feel silent, that the two youngest magical persons had many issues to resolve with the Weasleys. Finally, when the house elves had cleared the dishes away, and the six people sat around the table, silently looking at each other, Bill broke the silence. "You left before the wake, Harry. We've not had a chance to talk with you. How are you doing?"
Harry sighed. "Alright, I suppose, for losing my best friend, like a brother to me." He met Bill's eyes, that seemed more understanding, more compassionate. "Especially when it was my fault."
Every head snapped around, eyes focusing on him. "What do you mean, Harry?" Mrs. Weasley asked softly.
"I might have well as killed him myself, like Ginny," Harry replied dully, his voice oddly flat as the horror of seeing his two best friends suspended like playthings before the Dark Lord came back to him, his worst nightmare made real. He seemed oblivious to the deathly pall that had settled in the room as he spoke, as, for the first time, these people who were directly involved in the battle hoped to learn some of what had occurred they had not seen, to observe the last moments of life, even though another's eyes, of the people they had loved.
Even still, Harry put it delicately. "Ron died to save Hermione, and if he had wanted to die at all, I'm sure that heroic death is the kind he would've wanted." It hadn't been heroic at all, it had been murder, while Ron was unconscious. But the complete truth would scar too deeply, bring up other truths Harry could not, would not reveal.
Harry's words caused tears to form up in Molly's eyes, and she looked at Hermione and smiled. "He really did love you, Hermione. Though he was over his crush on you."
Fred spoke up now. In the last few months of the war, he and George had stopped dressing alike and even had cut their hair differently, apparently having decided the time for sure childish behavior was past. "Yeah, he told me that he stopped fancying you last summer after the two of you had decided to hold off while the war was on."
Harry looked up sharply at Fred's last words. How in hell did they keep that secret from me? Hermione's face appeared oddly relieved to Harry.
Bill was oddly quiet as this exchange was made, and glanced at George, who was also looking oddly pensive. George nodded to him, and Bill spoke, bringing the attention once more to Harry. "What happened to Ginny in the end? The way you spoke, you made it sound like you killed her."
Harry swallowed, and looked down at his lap at the question he had feared the instant the Weasleys had arrived. Finally, after a long moment of silence, he looked back up, and met Hermione's eyes. Even now, with the truth about to come out, he lacked the courage to look them in the eyes and tell them he had killed Molly's daughter, their sister. Finally, he tried to justify it. "The reason Ginny died is sitting at this table, as is the person who killed her. When Ginny had me under the Imperious Curse, she… ordered me to kill Hermione." Hermione's eyes grew wide, and Harry's vision tunneled on their brown depths across the table, focusing out the four redheads around the edges of the table. "I couldn't follow that order, and broke the curse." He took a deep breath. "But Ginny was standing next to Hermione's body, and I barely had time to shift my wand. I killed her with the Killing Curse."
The silence was utterly deafening, and Harry looked down in shame. The silence reigned for a very long time, until finally a sniffle from Misses Weasley broke it. "I had always hoped, Harry, that one day you would return Ginny's feelings for you, so that I could have welcomed you into our family in every sense of the word, instead of just treating you as my son." Her voice was cold and cut Harry, his face beginning to fall even more. Misses Weasley looked at Hermione, her gaze hardening. "I think I understand why you could not."
Harry's eyes hardened. That was closer to the truth than he had wanted it to be. "Hermione has nothing to do with this. Leave her out of it." He could sense the confusion of the three Weasley sons, who, while upset, did not hate him for what he did, as their mother obviously did. "The reasons I could not love Ginny were my own. She did not love me, she never did. She loved an idea, me as the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One. I cannot have someone love me for that reason. I need to be loved for me, and Ginny never outgrew her crush, her fantasy from when she was eleven." A brief thought entered his mind to strike back with everything he knew, but still he loved Misses Weasley, despite her anger, too much. "Until she had worked past that, we would have never made a couple. I'm sorry she had to die, but not particularly sorry that I was the one who did it, if it had to be done."
Misses Weasley did not appear to believe him, if her face was any indication. Worse, the last sentence had not apparently helped him out with either Bill or George, though Fred's face still did not contain an expression of helpless rage. Harry sighed. "It was not intentional, and had I had any more time, she would not be dead, but I had no choice." Breathing out slowly, he made an offer that cost him considerable effort. "Hermione and I were going up to Hogwarts today. If you would like to come with us, I'll ask Headmaster Dumbledore if we can borrow his Pensive and I'll show you what happened."
"And to Ron?" Fred asked, but Harry was unsurprised, and shook his head.
"No, that one hurts too much." The scene flashed behind Harry's eyes, and he shut them trying to block the memory. "I can't deal with that failure too."
The silence was oppressive, but this time, Harry did not allow it to continue. "Hermione, when you're ready to Apparate, we'll go to Hogsmeade from the backyard. I'll go get Remus. If any of you want to come, meet me there." He pushed away from the table.