Reaching In

Harry watched the lounge door creak shut. He sat rigid, listening to Remus struggling to push Sirius out of the front door and persuade him to spend the whole evening at the pub, and that Harry was going to deal with this the same way whatever Sirius might say to him. Harry shut his eyes, and slowly exhaled. He knew that Sirius was just trying to have Harry avoid an explosive argument – but perhaps an explosive argument was what Harry wanted. He didn’t really know what he wanted anymore.

There was a soft pop! just behind him and he was immediately overwhelmed by the soft, floral smell that usually filled him with hope and happiness. He convulsively clenched the magazine in his hands and the faces of the two figures depicted there became crumpled and squashed, but still continued kissing, unperturbed.

“Interesting reading?”

Harry’s shoulders squared as Ginny dropped her bag on the floor and slowly walked round the sofa to look at him. He glanced down at his lap to avoid catching her eye, but founding himself staring at the issue of Charmed Life instead, which made his stomach lurch. It was immediately snatched out of his hands and thrown into the fire, which spat aggressively and swallowed the paper with flames that crackled green and blue over the ink. Ginny watched the image of herself burn for a few seconds, then turned around, arms crossed and face stony.

“I’d have thought you of all people would have learned not to believe everything you read – or see – in the press, Harry,” she said. Her voice was quiet, deliberately careful, but Harry could detect that the quavering film of calm was struggling to contain a much more violent emotion within her.

“It’s a little harder to deduce the truth when it’s not you in the story,” he growled, still not looking at her.

She was still for a moment. Harry could see her blurred figure out of the corner of his eye – her stance was unyielding, defensive.

“You are unbelievable,” she seethed, enunciating each syllable quietly but perfectly, so he caught every word. “You and I were in a picture just like that! How you can even – you’re so – ugh!”

The kissing figures on the magazine were gone, now just smouldering grey ashes in the grate. Harry wished he could as easily burn the image from his mind, but it was still flashing up in front of his eyes like some masochistic slide show. He shuddered.

“Harry, it’s Malfoy we’re talking about,” Ginny continued, still evidently trying to keep her cool. “Malfoy, who calls my best friends and family horrible names, who’s been taunting you and picking on you for seven years out of jealousy and spite – Malfoy, whose family did those awful things to Ron, who fought on the Dark Side, Harry! He’s a spoiled brat, a coward and a bully and I would never leave you for him, of all people – I’d never leave you for anybody. You know that…”

Deep down, somewhere very deep down, Harry did know that. But he didn’t want to admit it. It was so very difficult to form words in his head – his thoughts were a jumbled mass of adrenaline, anger and confusion – but he had to get it all out. It was now or never.

“Fine,” he spat at the floor. “Fine. The kiss… the kiss never happened. But you still met Malfoy at the pub after work. You still – still worked on him. Tried to heal him –”

“We’ve had this conversation,” she snapped. “I explained to you then that the only reason I’m trying to sort out his messed up aura is because I can’t work with it so close, distracting me. You said you were okay with it.”

“Well I – I –” he spluttered, still staring at the floor. Even though he knew Ginny had never kissed Malfoy, it was still the image that the Dementors forced to mind whenever he was close to them at work. “Do I distract you like he does?”

“I – what?” she gasped, taken aback at the sudden twist in topic. “Harry, what the…"

“When you’re near me, do my emotions throw you off? When I come home tired and feeling like crap, having relived the worst parts of my life for hours on end every day, am I the same as Malfoy, when you let me in?”

“That’s completely different,” she said softly.

“Is it?”

“Yes! Harry – I can block you out, I can feel what you’re feeling without using any Healing senses, I –”

“That’s not what I meant,” he interrupted. “Blocking us out or not, you’re still sensing us. Open to us. You’re still drawn to us because you feel this - this need to Heal –”

“I’m Healing Malfoy because I can’t Heal the dragons properly if I don’t,” she said firmly. “I don’t need to Heal anyone, so don’t tell me how I do or don’t work. I want to try and help you, Harry, I want you to be happy and whole. But Malfoy – God, he’s foul, and pathetic, and I wouldn’t touch him with the end of a broomstick if I could help it. I feel sorry for him, yes, but it’s because he’s an unlovable excuse for a troll, lashing out at everyone because he’s lost his father and incapable of –”

“I lost my father!” Harry roared. Something burst open inside of him and he jumped to his feet, glaring at Ginny. Her eyes widened, anger slackening slightly on her face. “My mother, too! You’re drawn to us because we’ve suffered the same –”

“Harry, for God’s sake!” she spat, unfolding her arms and glaring wildly at him. “Yes, you’ve both suffered losses, but look at the kind of people you are! Malfoy’s been damaged by the Dark Arts since the day he was born – he’s vile and cruel, and I despise him! But you – how can you liken yourself to him? You’ve been touched by so much more tragedy than him and you’re still so passionate, and loving, and good, Harry – you’re completely missing my point –”

“No, you’re missing my point,” he breathed, heart thumping uncomfortably in his throat. He ran a shaking hand backwards through his hair, and seeing his reflection in the mirror behind Ginny, he knew he was pale, sickly – and with his hair standing up on end and the fury in his eyes he looked utterly mad. “You feel things when you’re around both of us that you feel because we’re – we’re damaged, as you put it. You can’t help that, but it’s true, and I don’t…” He couldn’t bring himself to say I don’t like it. He knew she would take it as I don’t like you.

“If you have something to say to me, please, just say it!” she yelled, turning pink. Strands of hair were coming loose from the bun at the nape of her neck. “I’m sick of you not telling me things – I know you, and you know I can sense every part of you when I want to, but I don’t do it because it wouldn’t be right! I can’t just pick the words right out of your head, even if I tried! So please, enlighten me for once!”

Harry took a deep breath, tried to level his voice, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he knew he would fail. “I – ever since I found out about this Healer business, ever since I read that book… when it said… I just can’t stop myself wondering if – if you only care about me because of that magic, or because I’m me.”

For the first time that day, Ginny looked as if she was about to crumple. Her cheeks lost the flush they had gained from arguing, her shoulders slumped and her chest quaked as she stared at him. Harry immediately wished he hadn’t said it just so she didn’t look so lost, so hurt, and so young.

“You – you’re doubting – I…” she stammered, taking a step away from him. “Harry, after everything I’ve done for you, after the seven years we’ve known each other… after Expecto Sacrificum – I was prepared to die for you, Harry! Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

“It’s not about that,” he replied shakily, feeling himself go warm in the face. He turned away, unable to stand the sight of her looking so unstable. But the second he did so, something smashed above his head and he swore, loudly.

“I can’t believe you’d put all that down to – down to magic!” she cried, slashing her wand through the air and sending another vase hurtling at Harry. “Maybe you don’t feel quite the same about me as I do about you, but to attribute all the sacrifices I made for you down to something out of my control -” She hurled a thick, leather-bound book at him this time and it only narrowly missed his head. “I could have walked away from you at any time, could have said no to saving your life like you saved mine – I tried to move on with my life, saw other people, but it didn’t work because I loved you, and I couldn’t let you go!”

“You – you can’t know that it wasn’t down to your Healing powers!” he protested, whipping out his own wand to shield himself from more flying objects. Red sparks shot out of the end of it as he huffed and kicked the book out of his way. “You just said yourself – you couldn’t let go, you came back to me when I was going through the hardest part of my life –”

“Because I wanted to help you!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face. “I wanted to protect you because I was still in love with you! We didn’t get together during the war, when you were suffering – we came together afterwards –”

“When the effects were still wearing hard,” Harry finished for her. He turned away again, feeling his own eyes prickle. He didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He would have quite liked to smash up everything around him, but he knew it wasn’t his mess to make. “We got together because you were trying to fix me up from the losses we’d all suffered, and I – I was falling in love with you. Or at least, I thought it was you.”

There was a horrible, chilling silence. All Harry could hear was the sound of Ginny trying to regulate her breathing through her crying, and it was the loudest, most painful sound he thought he’d ever heard. After what seemed like an eternity, she walked towards him, grabbed his arms and turned him to face her.

“Look at me.”

Harry looked – he looked harder and deeper at her than he’d ever looked at anyone. He could see the pain and the hurt in her eyes as clearly as if it were carved into her skin, and he knew he had put it there. She was wearing an expression as though he had slapped her across the face. Her eyes were bloodshot, tears flowing openly over her face and down her neck, and she was still resiliently angry and pained.

“You can’t know – you can’t test whether or not I’m drawn to you because of my nature or not,” she began, gripping his arms tightly. “But just think about this. I’ve met people in this life, at Hogwarts and elsewhere, that have lost just as much as you have. Been in pain like you have, felt pressure as you have. Neville Longbottom might just have well lost his parents to death rather than insanity, and he fought long and hard in the war against Voldemort, just as you did. There were people in my year at Hogwarts that I spent a lot more time with than I did you – in lessons, dorms – people that have lost their families too, and dealt with it awfully. There are people like Draco fucking Malfoy, who are so bitter and broken and moulded into this vile personality that could have been salvaged… But did I ever attach myself to them half as much as I have done to you? I felt for them, Harry – well, not Malfoy – but I didn’t love them for it! It’s not their losses that define them, just like it’s not your losses that define you – but they are part of you because they’ve shaped who you are. I love the person under all that pain – I love you because those terrible things have made you into the warm, giving person you are, capable of happiness and freedom and love, and everything else that fits into that. Nobody else compares with you on that front. I want to help people who are hurt, but it doesn’t make me care about them like I care for you. So you look at me, Harry Potter, and tell me now that I don’t know why I love you.”

Harry suddenly became aware that he was crying. His glasses were fogging up and he was trying to blink his blindness away, wanting to open his mouth and apologise for his utter stupidity. She was giving him a blazing look that dared him to contradict her, even though she couldn’t expect it of him now. She let go of his arms and he flung them around her, loving her and breathing her and wondering how on earth he was lucky enough to have found someone like Ginny.

“I – I just… the Dementors, they… I don’t know what I think, half the time…” he mumbled against her, clutching her hair and shaking with suppressed sobs. “I can’t help doubting everything these days… I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have –”

“Shh… I know, Harry,” she breathed, collapsing against him. “You don’t have to tell me you’re a prat; I already know.”

He laughed, kissing the top of her head. She tilted her face to look up at him and he instantly caught her lips in a feverish, salty kiss, trying to tell her what he couldn’t put into words. All the tension from the fight was still coiled in his bones and he pulled her closer, trying to rid himself of it as he ran his fingers over her shoulders, her back. She grasped his hair and whimpered into him, kissing him back with such vigour, such passion, and he thought she was employing the same tactic to turn her negative energy positive.

It was if she was a particularly sweet potion that Harry had been drinking for a while, and now someone had added a new ingredient to make it twice as delicious. Her speech, the words that had come straight from her heart, filled him up with a light and an energy he hadn’t felt in a long while, not with her. He pulled her backwards, down onto the sofa, and she sat astride his legs, fitting perfectly into the crook of his body. The last time this happened, he reflected, she stopped and wanted to talk. He hoped to Merlin she didn’t this time – what more talking could they possibly do?

She pulled away, as if reading his thoughts – was she reaching into his aura right now? – and brushed a thumb over his cheek to wipe away the tears. He could count the freckles on her nose, the teardrops in her eyelashes… every one of them, beautiful. She placed a soft kiss on his head, then moved down over his temple, his cheekbone, his jaw line. As though it was the most natural thing in the world, his lips ghosted over her neck; he could detect faint whispers of her perfume, mingled with sweat and her natural scent, and it spurred him on, unthinking, just feeling. With one hand resting on her hip, he trailed the other up her side, gently lifting the delicate cotton of her shirt ever so slightly as he did so. Her breath hitched but she did not stop him, the material was still between his flesh and hers – and as she clutched at the front of his chest, as she had done the last time, again he mirrored her touch. Her forehead came to rest against his, their noses touching, and she placed her other hand over his.

“I love you,” he whispered, realising he hadn’t said it back after the multiple times she’d told him in the last fifteen minutes.

“I know,” she replied breathlessly. “I know you do.”

She seized him in another kiss and guided his hand over her skin. Soon, he was lost in a flurry of emotions and feelings, amongst which was something new and exciting. He didn’t have to have Healers’ senses to be able to know that she was placing complete trust in him, that tonight they had emotionally bared all to each other, and there was no turning back. Harry had forgotten that they were straddled on Remus’ sofa where anyone could just apparate in and see them, that he was supposed to be having supper at the Burrow, and that they both had an early start in the morning. None of that mattered, not compared to the heat in his heart and the flush of her flesh. She was here, she was his, and that was all he cared about.

She slid her hands under his t-shirt and he pulled back so she could tug it over his head. Her fingertips were cool against his chest, and he watched her brown eyes dart over him. He flushed a little; he’d always been too skinny for his own liking, with barely any Quidditch (or, lately, dragon-flying) muscle to speak of. Ginny pushed him down onto the pillows, moving her lips over the bruises and burns that came with his work, and his eyes closed lazily at her touch, casting all other thoughts away. He could feel something warm grow and fade in his chest periodically, and put it down to the way she was kissing him, making the hair on his neck stand up on end. He shivered, stroking her hair and clutching her right hand in return, when he felt her rock back against his thighs. He looked up at her – she was pulling the knot out of her hair, so that flames fell over her shoulders, framing her face. He made to sit up and kiss her, breath catching in his chest at the sight of the blazing look in her eyes – when he noticed something. The absence of pain that came when he moved, a particular pain inflicted by stretching a stomach muscle during a dive two days ago.

“Ginny…” he muttered, trying not to sound too chastising. “You’re not supposed to be Healing me.”

“I – I know, but…” she suddenly looked younger again, more vulnerable – as if scared he was going to start shouting once more. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear to reassure her. “I can control how much I open up to people now – to you. I can handle a lot more than I used to be able to, you know that – but I don’t reach into your soul, because I respect you too much. I just thought… if I could just get rid of those surface wounds, ease your muscular pain a bit…”

He smiled. “It’s fine. I just don’t want to make you ill again, or tire you out.”

She shot him a mischievous grin. “You’re not going to tire me out?”

Harry blinked at her, then blushed at her words. She giggled nervously, also embarrassed about what she’d said – they’d never talked, never even joked about taking their relationship to the next level. Harry looked away, dozens of typically-teenage doubts and worries flooding into his head. Was this really happening? What if he disappointed her? What if he hurt her? What if –

She chucked his chin with her finger, before moving her hands to the top button on her shirt. She kept eye contact as she undid one, two, three buttons, before shifting forward against him and placing his hand on her next button, prompting him. At once he felt his anxiety melt away, replaced by thumping excitement and burning curiosity. He leant forwards and kissed her, taking her lead and undoing buttons four, five, six, seven and eight, until actions and feelings and sensations all blended into one and he didn’t know which way was up anymore.

He had felt her, all of her, in so many ways that night. The image of her freckled smile was printed sharply on his retinas even after his glasses were thrown aside and everything else had gone blurry. He was warm, whole, complete from head to toe, and as they lay curled together infront of the dying fire some time afterwards, he thought nothing would ever harm him again.

She moved her head, hair trailing over his chest, and reached over for his glasses. He slid them on and she came back into focus, blanket draped over her back and eyes glistening in the firelight. He took hold of her wrist, gently thumbing the pad of her palm, and took a deep breath.

“I want to let you in,” he whispered against her cheek. “I want you to reach into my mind.”

She stiffened. “Harry, I…”

“Not too far. Just… just enough. You’ll know when to stop – I trust you,” he breathed, pushing the hair back from her forehead and kissing the end of her nose. He leaned back against the pillow, still looking at her, and she nodded, perplexed. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she propped herself up, one hand under his on his chest and the other wavering over his forehead. Her brow creased, she relaxed her shoulder, and then took a staggering breath, as if she were about to burst into tears.

“Don’t ever think I don’t care about you as much as you care about me,” Harry said, feeling the feedback of all his positive energy and emotion from her. “You’re the only thing in my life keeping me sane at the moment. I want you to be sure, I want you to see for yourself – you’re incredible, and I don’t know what I’d be without you.”

Ginny opened her eyes, blinked away a tear, and broke into a wide smile. She leant forwards and placed a soft kiss to the scar on his forehead.

“I never needed to read your aura to know that, Harry,” she said, curling up against him. “I think tonight said it all.”