money from it, so please Mrs. Rowling if you read this
don’t sue me. A comment or two would be welcome
though.
Please, if you read, take two minutes to review.
Chapter 6: Happy Birthday
Harry woke up on his birthday to find Ginny watching him again. She smiled brightly at him when he opened his eyes.”
“Hello, Husband.” The thought came into his head.
“How long have you been waiting for me to wake up?”
“About an hour,” Ginny replied. She smiled at him expectantly. Harry felt himself blushing.
“What?” Ginny asked.
“I have something for you. It’s a dream though, and it is kind of embarrassing,” Harry replied.
“What?” Ginny asked again. Harry leaned over and whispered into her ear. Then lay back down in front of her.
“Show me,” Ginny whispered in his mind.
Harry let the memory come to the surface of his mind. Ginny latched onto it and a short while later she brought a memory of her own dream to the surface of her mind and they let them intermingle with each other. A while later, both breathing heavily with flushed faces, they retreated from each other’s minds.
“Wow,” Ginny said quietly, as she pushed him onto his back and lay with her chin propped on her fist on his chest. She giggled a moment later when his eyes met hers.
“I’m not sure, but is it possible to still be…you know, after that?” she asked. Harry’s face burned red as she smiled up at him
“You have very interesting dreams, Mrs. Potter,” he said grinning impishly at her.
“Me? What about you? You, prat,” Ginny snapped playfully at him. Harry laughed and pulled her so she was completely on top of him.
“I don’t know about you, but it is my birthday, and I’m going to have a lie in,” he said as she settled into him.
Harry started awake a few hours later.
“Bridgette?” he whispered.
“Help me, Harry,” Bridgette called to him in his mind. Ginny woke up a second later.
“Harry, what’s wrong?” she asked seeing the look on his face.
“It’s Bridgette, Gin. Her voice is in my head, she says she needs help.” Ginny jumped out of bed and pulled open a dresser drawer.
“How can she be in your mind?” Ginny frantically searched through her drawer.
“I don’t know, Gin.”
“What about Tom, do you feel anything from him?” Ginny asked as she pulled a chocolate frog card of Dumbledore out of the drawer.
Harry closed his eyes and focused his mind on Voldemort. He felt him, but without putting in a great deal of effort he could tell he was not going to get in. Voldemort had indeed learned from their last encounter. He had been training to be able to keep Harry out just like Harry had been training to get in.
“Reveal!” Ginny demanded, waving her wand over the card. “Go! Find Bridgette!” she ordered the photo of herself that was affixed to the back of the card. She then quickly started to get dressed.
“What are you doing, Gin?” Harry asked.
“What does it look like? Get up, go get Ron and Hermione,” Ginny snapped at him. Harry jumped out of bed throwing on clothes as quickly as he could.
“Ginny!” Harry heard the picture scream at her.
“What?”
“She is with Neville, at his grandmother’s house. Cho and Luna are there too, they are fighting a bunch of Death Eaters right now,” the photo yelled at her frantically.
“Harry, take this card, get Ron and Hermione and go to the Headmaster,” Ginny said, shoving it at him.
“What are you going to do?” Harry asked, scrambling to finish dressing.
“I’m going to help her,” Ginny said quickly and before Harry could say anything she kissed him, transformed into her animagus and was gone in a flash of light.
Harry burst through the door to Ron and Hermione’s room. Hermione screamed at the surprise.
“Bloody….”
“Shut up, Ron,” Harry yelled at him. “Both of you get dressed, and get to Dumbledore’s office as quick as you can.” He then turned and ran out of the room.
“Fawkes, take this portkey to Ginny, she is at Neville’s grandmother’s house,” Professor Dumbledore said, tossing the small broken globe to the phoenix, who disappeared a second later. He then raised his wand and shot a silvery substance out of it, which raced to the hospital wing.
“This day just got much worse,” he remarked quietly to himself as he sent another silvery jet racing in the direction of St. Mungo’s. Dumbledore then headed for the hospital wing himself.
Ginny apparated into the middle of a war zone. She stayed in her phoenix form assessing the situation. Neville was down, along with his grandmother. Luna and Cho were caught in a binding spell. Cho was screaming in agony, obviously under the effects of the Cruciatus curse. Luna was slumped over next to her. Bridgette, her head held up by a Death Eater, was being forced to watch. There were five Death Eaters in their long black hooded cloaks and white masks still standing, and what looked like four or five who were down and possibly dead.
Ginny was nearly as smart as Hermione, she spent almost as much time in the library, and she spent even more time sneaking into the restricted section. She was easily as creative, and was much more powerful. If she lived through the war, she would easily become the most powerful witch to have ever lived, and might even rival Merlin himself. These junior Death Eaters. Even now, still a few days shy of her sixteenth birthday; they were nothing to her.
Ginny changed forms and attacked, hitting the Death Eater who was cursing Cho with a stunning spell that had the power of a bolt of lightning; it threw him fifty yards across the open field. The other death eaters turned on her.
They were the first to actually pay the price of the full fury of the third friend named in the second prophecy. Dumbledore had only gotten a taste, a few more blasts from Ginny and he would have been forced to actually fight back.
Ginny cast a phoenix spell that split and raced to protect each of the five people she was here to fight for, leaving one to defend her. Stunning bolts, each growing in power, flew from her wand hitting the Death Eaters who were already lying on the ground, ensuring that none of them would get up during the battle with the remaining four. Wands flew to her from their motionless forms, disintegrating into powder as the crushing spell hit them.
With the first spell cast at her, she conjured a shield like the one Voldemort had used to deflect the blast from Dumbledore in the Ministry last year. But Ginny had modified the shield. The spell hit with the same ringing gong, but instead of deflecting off in a random direction, it reflected back at the Death Eater who had cast it. He fell to the ground in a heap.
Ginny did not know it but he was dying, and no Healer, or Muggle doctor could have saved him. The spell he cast, the same one used on Hermione in the Ministry fight. A horrid dark curse Eviscerate, that when it struck Hermione had been weakened because the man could not speak the incantation to the curse.
Hermione had been lucky, the curse only slightly damaging her internal organs. This Death Eater was not; the full force of the curse hit him and shredded his internal organs as if they had been put through a meat grinder. Blood was burbling out of his mouth before he hit the ground.
The other three Death Eaters, already forgetting that Bridgette’s phoenix stopped the death curse, tried to use it on Ginny. Their spells were immediately devoured by her phoenix, which split into three to take the incoming bolts.
Ginny dissaparated as the death curses raced to her and reappeared directly behind the Death Eater who had been holding Bridgette’s head up. Her phoenix flashed to be near her.
Ginny’s stunning bolt hit the Death Eater from less than a foot away. She was thrown forward slamming her head into a tree, crushing her skull and breaking her neck. Ginny spun on the other two death eaters, wrapping them in an anti-apparation spell. Their wands were ripped from their hands and disintegrated in the air halfway to her, their mouths sealed shut; they could not even cry out for their master to save them.
Ginny turned around in a circle releasing Cho and Luna from the binding spells, catching them with a levitation spell before they fell to the ground. She surveyed the area. Nothing was moving except her.
Suddenly she heard the sound of a phoenix singing. Fawkes flew into view and dropped the portkey into her hand. The bird floated in front of her. Ginny’s eyes met those of the phoenix and Dumbledore’s voice thundered directly into her mind.
“YOU RISK THE WORLD WITH YOUR RASHNESS. GATHER ANY YOU CAN, HIT THE PORTKEY WITH YOUR WAND AND LEAVE THIS INSTANT.”
Ginny was astounded, fuming mad, but moved anyways. She quickly summoned all four of her friends, and Neville’s grandmother to her, made sure they were all touching the portkey and tapped it with her wand. Fawkes watched her tap the portkey and dissaparated again.
Ginny had left Harry in their bedroom less than five minutes ago.
Moments after Ginny and Fawkes left the field, a tall skeletal figure appeared in a whirling of its cloak.
“Where did she go!?” he roared. Peter Petigrew scurried forward to his master. He had hidden throughout the fight, watching the battle for the Dark Lord, looking to see if one of the four he sought would come to the aid of any that were attacked this morning.
“Master,” Peter sniveled, cowering on the ground in front of him after changing to his human form, “I did as you asked. Please do not punish me,” he begged the Dark Lord.
“Answer me servant,” Voldemort hissed at him.
“Master, I do not know. She summoned the bodies of the five that we attacked and they all disappeared seconds before you arrived.”
“Look at me, Wormtail,” Voldemort said in his icy voice.
“Master, please.”
“You did as I asked, Wormtail, you have nothing to fear unless you lie, now look at me.” Peter slowly raised his eyes to the Dark Lord, and the memory of that morning’s battle was ripped from his mind.
“How did she get here, Wormtail?” The calmness of the question belied the danger that Wormtail was in right now. Voldemort lived in a state beyond anger and hatred and now, pure evil oozed from his body. She had obviously used a portkey to escape, but how she had arrived, Peter had not seen unless he was lying or hiding something from him.
“Master, you have seen my mind, I did not see her arrival. I only knew she was here when the first stunning bolt hit Flint.” A small smile played across Voldemort’s mouth.
“You are right, Wormtail, your worthless mind could not hope to hide anything from me.” Voldemort summoned his servants to him.
“Are any of them alive, Wormtail?”
“Master, only the two she bound in the anti-apperation spell,” Peter answered cowering before him after checking on the others. Voldemort looked at the two young Death Eaters before him.
“You have failed me, do not speak,” he hissed at them dangerously as he released the spell sealing their mouths shut. “You are lucky I want to hear you scream for mercy instead of allowing you to starve to death.” Wormtail began to relax slightly now that Voldemort’s attention was directed elsewhere. The two Death Eaters, however, began to shake violently at his words.
“Come Wormtail we must leave. The Aurors are on their way, Voldemort dissapparated taking Wormtail and the two surviving Death Eaters with him.
The Aurors appeared moments later, finding the fight over, they began to gather the bodies of the dead, trampling the strange silvery worms into the ground beneath their feet as the searched the area, eight in all were found.
Harry ran like he had never run before. He reached the stone Gargoyles shouting the password at them. They turned to him, but the stairs did not rotate.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!?” Harry thundered at them
“He is in the hospital wing,” the gargoyle on the left answered.
“Wh….What?” Harry stammered, and then when the words registered in his mind he turned and ran back the other way, slamming into Ron as he rounded the corner. They crashed to the floor together, Harry scrambled back to his feet, and without stopping to help Ron up he was gone again, only just registering Hermione as he went by her.
“Harry!” she screamed at him.
“Hospital wing, Ginny,” Harry yelled back at her as he rounded another corner. Hermione skidded to a stop and turned to follow him.
“What did he say?” Ron demanded, as he caught up to Hermione grabbing her hand and pulling her along with him.
“Something about the hospital wing and Ginny,” Hermione replied frantically. She suddenly found herself moving even faster.
Harry burst through the doors of the hospital wing looking around desperately for Dumbledore.
“Sir, I need a portkey!” Harry yelled as he raced up to him. Though he was anything but calm, Dumbledore mastered himself.
“Calm yourself, Harry. Your wife will be here shortly,” he replied as he stroked Fawkes’s tail feathers.
“What?” Harry stopped.
“Sir I have to go….”
“Harry, what in the bloody hell is going on!?” Ron yelled bursting through the doors.
“Where is Ginny?” Hermione demanded. Harry spun around to face them, just as Ginny arrived with her five casualties, crashing into Ron and Hermione and sending everyone tumbling to the floor.
“Ginny!” Harry yelled running to her and pulling her from the floor.
“I’m ok,” Ginny quickly said to him before he could go any further over the edge than he was. Ron and Hermione managed to extract themselves from the mess of tangled bodies and get to their feet.
“Ronald, Hermione, quickly get them on the beds. There is not much time.” Dumbledore said forcefully to them. He did not even try to get through to Harry or Ginny. It took Ron half a second to figure out that the people around his feet were severely injured. He and Hermione quickly began to levitate them onto the hospital beds. A few moments later several other people arrived by portkey in the hospital wing. Harry was vaguely aware of Professor McGonagall rushing past him into the hospital; closing the doors behind her as one of the other new arrivals dragged him, Ron, Hermione and Ginny into the waiting area just outside. He rounded on them all a second later.
“Ginevra Potter, if what the headmaster has told me is true, that was quite possibly one of the bravest acts I have ever heard of…. It is also quite possibly the stupidest.” Harry blinked in surprise. He had only seen Remus Lupin this angry once in the four years he had known him. That was the time he rescued Harry from Professor Snape during his third year, he had confiscated the marauders map from Harry then and given him a tongue lashing he had thoroughly deserved.
“Now you four are all free to go anywhere you want, no one can stop you. I cannot order you to do this, so I am begging you, all of you, to not leave the castle for any reason other than Voldemort appearing in the hallway. Do I make myself clear?” The four of them stared at him in stunned silence
“Is that too much to ask of you?” he demanded.
“No, Professor,” Hermione replied quietly.
“Good! Now you may either wait here, or in your flat. I will be with you whatever your choice. My instructions are to not let any of you out of my sight,” he finished, glaring at Ginny, who having recovered from her shock at his outburst, returned his look with equal anger.
“We will be waiting here,” she snarled at him.
“I thought so,” Lupin answered his tone softening as he sat down. “Ginny, in a little while, you will, I hope, understand my anger. In the meantime please sit down I’m sure you are tired.”
Harry pulled Ginny to one of the couches that lined the hallway outside the hospital wing. Ron and Hermione moved to join them and had only been sitting for a few moments when the doors to the hospital wing opened causing all five of them to jump back up.
“Bridgette is requesting to see the four of you. Remus, you may join them if you would like,” Professor Dumbledore said to them. All of them noticed that there were tears on his cheeks.
“Sir?” Harry asked.
“She does not have much time. I am sorry, Harry.” Harry felt his knees buckle. Remus caught him, Harry couldn’t think, his head was spinning, and he felt his heart being ripped from his chest again. Just like the time Sirius fell through the veil. Ginny, Hermione and Ron were no better.
She can’t die on us, the voices cried out in agony in Harry’s mind.
“Harry, you must go see her,” Remus said, breaking through the haze. “All of you, you must honor her request.” Harry felt himself moving forward. He realized that Ginny was crushing his hand in hers as they moved through the doors to the hospital.
Ron and Hermione were in an utter state of confusion. No one had had time to explain to them what had happened yet. They only knew that Ginny had arrived by portkey in the hospital wing unharmed, but that she had brought five people with her.
One of them was Bridgette, a girl who had dated Harry, served as both Hermione and Ginny’s attendant at their weddings less than two months ago. She was their closest friend after Harry and Ginny, and now they were being told she was dying.
Ginny followed along behind Professor Dumbledore as he led them to Bridgette’s bed. Not registering that only two of the four other beds that had curtains up around them had healers working on the people in them.
Ginny moved into Bridgette’s view. Bridgette’s eyes were glazed but open, and when she saw Ginny they cleared slightly. She smiled weakly and raised her hand to her. Ginny gathered her strength and walked to her, taking her hand and moving to run her other hand through Bridgette’s hair.
“Hi, Bridge,” Ginny whispered to her.
“Gin, you would have been proud of me. I fought them,” Bridgette said her voice barely a whisper.
“I know you did, Bridgette.” Ginny replied smiling at her with tears flowing down her face. Bridgette almost laughed, but it turned into a choking cough.
“Bridgette, you can still fight,” Harry said placing his hand on Bridgette’s and Ginny’s. Ron and Hermione had moved to the other side of the bed and taken her other hand.
“Don’t give up yet, Bridgette. You can live through this,” Hermione pleaded with her. Bridgette smiled at them.
“Look at the four of you, my big strong protectors, needing strength from me,” Bridgette teased them. “You would have been proud of all of us. They attacked us but we fought. They tried to use the killing curse on me but I made my first Phoenix charm. Neville’s Grandmother killed that one. I killed one of them. I think Luna got two of them and Cho killed one….By then they had taken Neville out. Luna and Cho got hit with the binding curse….” Bridgette started to cough again. She managed to stop and tried to continue.
“Shush, Bridgette. It’s ok. We’re proud of you,” Harry stopped her.
“Harry?” Bridgette focused on him again.
“I’m here, Bridgette,” Harry replied refusing to let his voice crack.
“Never forget me, Harry. The only place I can fight anymore is in your heart.”
“Bridgette, please,” Harry begged her.
“Hermione, you were beautiful in your dress.” Bridgette said ignoring Harry. “Ronald, it will be your laugh that I miss the most….Ginny thank you for showing me a path and giving my life a purpose. The bastards never got a word out of me,” she snarled forcefully.
“I love you, Bridgette,” Ginny whispered, leaning down to lay on her chest. Bridgette pulled her hand away from Ron and Hermione to lay it on Ginny’s head.
“I don’t know how you got there Gin, but thank you for coming. I know the rest of you would have come if you could. I will be waiting for you when it’s your time to come through the veil. Never forget me all of you.”
“Never Bridgette,” they all replied together. Bridgette smiled at them again.
“Harry?”
“I’m still here, Bridgette.”
“Happy Birthday Harry.” Bridgette whispered and then she closed her eyes for the last time.
Ginny felt her chest rise and fall a few more times, and then Bridgette stopped breathing. She tried to will Bridgette's chest to rise again, she had done it with Harry, but it would not. A few moments later Ginny heard Bridgette’s heart stop beating. She then finally broke down completely along with Harry, Ron and Hermione.
Author's note:
War is hell, people die.
Please take a second to remember all the men and women who have died so you could live free.