A/N: sorry guys im sick
Just as dawn was breaking, Ginny Weasley was woken by the morning chirping of a titmouse outside her window.
"Hermione?" she mumbled to her best friend, but got no response.
Ginny forced her eyes open and glanced at the bed beside hers — it was empty. Then she remembered: Hermione was in France.
She sighed, disappointed, and then realized she was thirsty. So she got up and decided to go down to the kitchen for some water.
The door creaked open.
The old Black mansion was still asleep, undisturbed by the sound.
The whole house was utterly silent.
The creak of the long-neglected staircase rang out unusually clearly in the stillness.
Barefoot, the girl drifted down the carpeted stairs like a small white ghost.
Don't wake the portraits of the Black ancestors on the wall, she reminded herself groggily — they were vicious and foul-mouthed enough when undisturbed. She slowed her pace and squinted, trying to make out the steps ahead.
Just then, a ginger-orange shadow streaked past her and vanished into the second-floor living room.
In the gloom, she recognized it as Crookshanks.
With the Grangers off on a Muggle holiday and no one left to look after him, Hermione had entrusted Crookshanks to the Black family's old house for the time being.
Sirius Black opened his arms to welcome the cat.
For some reason, Ginny had noticed that Sirius and Crookshanks got along remarkably well.
The cat seemed to have settled in without any trouble. Not only did he never bare his teeth at Sirius — which was more than could be said for how he treated most people — he would even, with a put-upon expression, condescend to accept food from Sirius's hand.
Not that Crookshanks didn't have a permanently grumpy face to begin with — Ginny felt she had to clarify that, for anyone keeping track — he simply looked sour at the best of times.
But if you looked past that, it was plain that Crookshanks treated Sirius with unusual courtesy. More than once, passing the second-floor living room, Ginny had spotted him curled imperiously on the little round table beside Sirius, listening with apparent interest while a half-drunk Sirius murmured to him; only once Sirius grew drowsy and fell quiet would the cat saunter off with his nose in the air.
His other "friendships" around Grimmauld Place were not so fortunate. Within a few days, Crookshanks had swaggered through the neighbourhood and installed himself at the top of the local feline hierarchy. Ginny had seen him strut past the other cats more than once, every inch the tyrant, while the poor Muggle strays didn't dare so much as meow too loudly.
And then there was Kreacher.
The house-elf seemed to have deeply mixed feelings about Crookshanks. Every day, dutifully following Sirius's instructions, he prepared the cat's food — all the while muttering bitterly to himself: "Mudblood's cat... Master insults Kreacher so... Kreacher has fallen so low... what would poor Master Regulus say, to see Kreacher brought to this..."
Crookshanks, entirely unbothered, would watch Kreacher pour out the food with a stern, narrow-eyed stare — for all the world like a professor inspecting a student's homework — making sure the old elf didn't shortchange him so much as a single bite.
In any case, fetching the grumpy cat along to the kitchen seemed like a good idea. Ginny yawned again and ran a hand through her hair.
If any of the more excitable Black ancestors in the hall tried to startle her or hiss something dreadful, she could simply hurl Crookshanks — claws, teeth, and all — straight at the portraits to scratch some manners into them.
"That settles it," Ginny decided, and whispered, "Crookshanks—"
She crept into the living room after him, meaning to catch him off guard and carry him along as her ward against evil spirits.
The room was dim, the heavy velvet curtains shutting out the early light and leaving the whole space steeped in gloom. Crookshanks lay sprawled across the sofa, his bright yellow eyes glowing in the shadows like a pair of tiny lighthouses.
Ginny picked her way carefully through the dark and settled herself onto the sofa. She caught Crookshanks easily and ran a hand over him, finding the top of his head faintly damp, as though dusted with morning dew.
"You naughty cat," she said drowsily. "You've gotten wilder every day since Hermione left. I bet you snuck out again and were off gallivanting all night before sneaking back in, weren't you?"
"I think so too," said a voice from the other side of Crookshanks, and Ginny nearly leapt off the sofa.
"Who's there?"
"Me." In the shadows, she made out a pair of emerald-green eyes.
"Harry?" Ginny was stunned.
She pinched her own cheek, half-convinced she was still asleep — or dreaming.
"What are you doing here?"
"Couldn't sleep." The boy's voice carried a faint edge of bitterness. "Bad luck. Bad dream."
"Oh," Ginny said, blank for a moment.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Harry came into clearer focus. He wore a blue-and-white striped dressing gown and sat curled up at the other end of the sofa, knees drawn to his chest, leaning back against the cushions. His emerald eyes blinked slowly in the thin sliver of light leaking through the curtains.
The sight of those eyes chased away the last of her drowsiness.
This wasn't a dream. It was Harry, in the flesh — and so, apparently, was his cat.
A wave of unease swept through her. She was alone with Harry. They were actually talking, just the two of them.
No — this was nothing like any version of "talking to Harry" she had ever imagined. At the very least, she shouldn't be looking like this: freshly woken, face unwashed, dressed in nothing but her nightgown.
In an instant, a thousand imaginary groundhogs sprang up inside her chest and began to shriek, lining up in rows, then in chevrons, swarming over hills and valleys, their squealing growing louder by the second.
But the boy sitting silently in the dark couldn't hear any of the noise in her head.
He let out a soft, weary sigh.
That quiet sigh landed like a pause button, and all at once, the shrieking in Ginny's chest went still.
Harry's worried about something, she thought, suddenly anxious. Oh — right, he'd said he had a terrible dream.
What had Hermione told her again? Show him you care. Ask him questions. If you can't think what to say, just ask, and let him do the talking.
Ginny took a steadying breath and asked, in a voice she tried to keep soft but clear — her first truly serious question to Harry Potter:
"Will you tell me about the bad dream you had?"
The room fell silent except for the ticking of the clock in the corner.
Harry was quiet for so long that Ginny began to think he wouldn't answer at all. Just as the silence was starting to feel unbearable, his voice broke through.
"I don't know if it really counts as a dream," he said softly. "Maybe it's more of a memory."
"A memory of what?"
She kept stroking Crookshanks' tangled fur, her own thoughts in just as much of a tangle.
Harry hesitated, as though unsure whether to say it at all.
"I... dreamed about my mother and my father. It's the only memory I have of them."
"Oh." Ginny hadn't expected that answer.
She studied his dim outline, and a dark thought occurred to her. She thought she could guess what the dream was about. "They were... protecting you. Weren't they?"
Her brother Ron had once let slip something about Harry's memories of his parents — and it hadn't sounded like a happy one. No well-mannered girl, Ginny thought, ought to go digging up a memory like that for a boy. But Harry didn't seem to mind.
Seeing that she wasn't reacting with shock or pity, he kept talking, almost to himself.
"Yeah. My dad told my mum to run, to get out while he held Voldemort off so she'd have time to escape... My mum said, 'Not Harry, please not Harry' — she was begging him..."
He couldn't finish the sentence.
He buried his face against his knees and went quiet. Ginny thought she heard him wiping his face on the leg of his pyjamas, his breath catching.
After a moment he lifted his head again, his face dry now, and stared blankly at the wizard chess set sitting abandoned on the coffee table.
Ginny stayed frozen on the sofa, doing her best impression of a mushroom — calm on the outside, while inside, every fold of her was crawling with regret.
Should she hex the memory out of his head, she wondered wildly, and steer the conversation somewhere safer?
— Never mind. She'd left her wand upstairs.
"I'm so sorry," she said at last, uneasy, trying to make out his expression in the dark. "Harry — I shouldn't have asked."
It had been a terrible question to ask. It might have made him cry. This was nothing like the "right way to start a conversation with a boy" she'd pictured.
After a pause, he said quietly, "It's all right. I'm used to it. I hear those words every time a Dementor gets close."
"It's strange," he added, his voice drifting like something half-remembered. "They're horrible memories. But they're also the only chance I ever get to hear my parents' voices."
Ginny went still. It was the saddest thing she had ever heard. The thought that this was simply Harry's reality settled over her like a weight.
She glanced sideways at him — at the way he sat, at his stunned profile — and realized she had never seen him like this before. Without quite meaning to, she drew her own knees up too, curling into the opposite corner of the sofa, trying to understand what he must be feeling.
She noticed she was hugging herself.
It was a posture that spoke of loneliness. Of feeling unsafe.
Was Harry lonely? In her mind, he had always been the boy at the centre of everything, the one everyone wanted near them. She remembered the crowd that had swarmed him after the Final Task of the Triwizard Tournament.
How could someone so admired possibly be lonely?
He faced every challenge head-on. He'd been the youngest champion ever to compete in the Tournament — and he'd won it. He was the youngest Seeker Gryffindor had had in a century.
He was generous, too. He'd once given her a whole set of Lockhart's new books — the first time in her life Ginny, who had only ever owned hand-me-downs, had been given something brand new.
He was tremendously powerful — he'd faced down Voldemort more than once and lived, and he'd even rescued her from the Chamber of Secrets...
Harry had always seemed so strong. Unafraid of anything. Always somehow turning disaster into victory, no matter what stood in his way.
And yet here he was now, curled into the corner of a sofa, looking thoroughly unguarded and unsure.
Ginny suddenly remembered something Hermione had once told her: "You need to really know him — all of him, the good and the bad — not just worship some idea of him."
She'd never really understood what Hermione meant. How could Harry possibly have a "bad side"?
Now, finally, she understood. Hermione hadn't meant something wrong with Harry. She'd meant the hard things he carried — the pain, the pressure, the loneliness.
The bad luck that always seemed to find him.
The bad dreams.
Like the one he was living through right now.
It struck her all at once: Harry Potter — the boy she'd admired from a distance — could also curl up in the dark, cry, and be vulnerable where no one could see. He missed his parents, the same as any child anywhere who longed for the parents they'd lost. The only time he ever heard their voices was in the memory of their final, desperate moments.
Her chest tightened.
How had she only ever seen the glow other people projected onto him? How had she managed not to notice the weight he carried underneath it?
While she'd been wrapped up in her own silly fantasies and her own self-conscious shyness, she had probably missed countless moments like this one — moments of loneliness, of quiet despair, that no one else had ever seen either.
How could she possibly comfort him?
"Harry, listen — don't be sad. I'm sure your mum and dad loved you so much they'd have given their lives for you. They did." Ginny looked straight at him, gathering her courage and abandoning her usual shyness all at once.
She lifted her chin and said, almost defiantly, "And I bet Voldemort never had parents who loved him like that. That's why he'll always lose to you in the end."
Harry looked at the ginger-haired girl in surprise.
In the slowly brightening light, her eyes shone a warm, determined brown. He rarely heard her speak with that kind of edge. Ginny was usually so shy — soft-spoken, careful never to meet his eyes for long. But here, in the dawn light, she had suddenly become someone else entirely: fearless, even bold enough to say Voldemort's name outright.
She was brave.
"Thanks for saying that," Harry said. "I think you're right — they must have loved me. That's the one thing that really helps."
"It's not the only thing," Ginny said firmly, a little colour rising in her cheeks. "Plenty of people love you. Me — Ron — and Sirius, the best godfather anyone could ask for."
She pressed on. "Who else would give their godson a Firebolt? Everyone at school was green with envy. He must adore you."
"Yeah," Harry said, something lighter creeping into his voice. "I love him too."
"He'd probably be thrilled to hear you say that," he added. "He's found someone else who isn't afraid to say 'Voldemort' out loud — not many people manage that."
"Well, once Voldemort's spent most of a school year living inside your head, manipulating you, using you, and finally trying to kill you, you'll probably be just as angry as I am. After that, you stop being scared of him and start thinking about how to blast him to bits."
Harry didn't much mind the idea of seeing that happen. He smiled faintly.
"And you've got loads of friends too, haven't you?" Ginny went on. "You're my brother's best mate."
"Of course Ron's my best mate," Harry said, his tone easing further.
"We all know how much he means to you. He even beat out your Yule Ball date to become your hostage for the Second Task." Ginny stood and crossed to the window, pulling back the thick curtain a little, biting back a laugh. "Fred and George teased him about being your 'treasure' for months."
"Yeah," Harry said, smiling at the memory of Ron's indignant scowl every time it came up.
"I suppose he's come around to it by now."
"More or less. Half his brain's on chess and Exploding Snap these days, and the other half's on his owl," Harry said.
"I bet your actual date isn't too thrilled about being passed over." Ginny yanked the second curtain open. "Has she been cross with you long?"
Bright morning light flooded the room, and Harry winced, shielding his eyes.
"Honestly, I never paid that much attention to it," he said, waving it off.
Ginny felt an odd little spark of satisfaction. She came back and sat down again, her tone brightening. "And you've got the best owl in the world. Hedwig must be devoted to you — she's gorgeous, and half the students in the Great Hall stop to watch whenever she flies in with your post."
"Yeah, Hagrid gave her to me for my birthday. Best owl there is," Harry said, his voice lighter still. He opened his eyes properly and looked around the room — the darkness had vanished completely.
"And Hagrid loves you too — I bet you're his favourite student," Ginny said, trying not to think too hard about Hagrid's more questionable lesson plans.
"Maybe. Though I might not take Care of Magical Creatures next year," Harry admitted. Once his O.W.L.s were done, he didn't plan to continue the subject — and neither, it seemed, did Ron or Hermione.
"Lucky you," Ginny sighed, theatrically mournful. "I've still got ages to go. I really hope he's not planning to breed a new batch of Blast-Ended Skrewts next term."
Harry glanced at her, amused by the genuine despair on her face.
"I'll pray for you," he said, and felt something warm settle in his chest.
"We'll see what Hagrid gets up to. I'm not optimistic," Ginny said, shaking her head. Her cheeks coloured again under his gaze, but she pushed past it, determined to keep going, listing off everyone and everything that might cheer him up.
"Oh, and my brothers all adore you, and so do Mum and Dad. I doubt Mum would ever say no to giving you a hug."
"I really like your family too. I always felt happy at the Burrow — it felt like home," Harry said, grinning. "I miss your mum and dad. I hope they're back soon."
"Well, I don't mind sharing them with you," Ginny said, grinning back, still stroking Crookshanks' fur. "Mum's always going on about 'poor Harry this, poor Harry that' — forever trying to feed you up."
Harry remembered, with sudden warmth, the happy stretches of summer he'd spent at the Burrow, eating three helpings at every meal under Mrs. Weasley's relentless hospitality until he could barely move.
"Your mum's cooking really is something else," Harry said, looking over at the cat curled in Ginny's lap.
Crookshanks gave a lazy mrrow, his round yellow eyes fixed on Harry.
"And we can't forget Hermione, obviously — she's such a good friend," Ginny said. "She worries about you constantly. Remember that spell list she made you? It went on forever."
"She's helped me more than I can say. She's never once let me down," Harry said. "And Draco too — he was there for me the whole way through the Tournament. They both believed me from the start, that I hadn't put my own name in the Goblet."
"So did I," Ginny said, almost offhand. "I never thought it was you. I spent ages trying to convince Ron of that."
"Really?" Harry looked at her, surprised. "I never knew that."
Ginny met his eyes steadily. "You never asked."
Harry blinked, caught off guard.
"Oh—" Something about that made him smile. "Ginny. Thank you for believing in me. A bit of a late thank-you, I know."
"It's fine." Her cheeks went pink, but she didn't look away. "I'll take it."
"And while I'm at it — I never properly thanked you for running around with Ron during the Final Task, and for petitioning to suspend it." He looked at her. "You two never gave up trying to help, did you?"
"Of course not." Ginny straightened, a little proud. "You're welcome."
"I had no idea, while I was stuck in that maze, that you two were out there working so hard to save us," Harry said. "Ron told me you went straight to Krum's parents — the parents of an international Quidditch star — and even he was a bit intimidated by that. Weren't you nervous, doing that?"
"It wasn't really a big deal. I didn't think about it too much at the time," she said, tossing her hair back with studied nonchalance. "Someone had to try, didn't they?"
Harry nodded, watching her hair catch the light for a moment before he realized — belatedly — that what was draped over her shoulders was a nightgown.
It hit him, all at once, that staring like that wasn't really appropriate.
She was a girl. He was a boy. He ought to be more careful.
Looking at her like that doesn't seem very respectful, he told himself, and made himself look away.
Ginny, for her part, had already grown self-conscious under his gaze and had stopped looking at him entirely. She'd given up fussing with her hair, too, and was now focused entirely on stroking Crookshanks, as though he were the most precious thing in the world.
Harry lowered his eyes to the cat in her lap instead, feeling his thoughts churn as restlessly as Crookshanks' fur.
"Are you and Krum close?" he asked suddenly.
"Not really close friends, no," Ginny said. "We've asked for his autograph a few times, met him here and there. That's about it."
"Ah." Harry remembered, unbidden, the way Krum had watched her across the table. "I noticed you didn't go to Bulgaria this summer, even though the invitation sounded like a good one."
"No, I didn't go," she said evenly, sneaking a glance at him.
Something in Harry's chest unknotted, the same way Ginny's fingers smoothed the tangles from Crookshanks' fur.
"There's something else I should thank you for," he added. "You stood up for me in front of your mother, last time."
"When was that?" She sounded genuinely surprised.
"At the table, before the Final Task," he said, a little puzzled. "Your mum seemed pretty against Hermione and Draco, and you spoke up."
"Oh — right, that." Ginny shrugged it off. "She does that. Always has."
"Why, though?" Harry asked. "Why does she dislike Draco so much — just because he's in Slytherin?"
"It's not really that simple." Ginny lowered her voice.
She hesitated a long moment before deciding to explain properly.
"You know his father and mine go back a long way, and not in a good sense. There's history there. A lot of pure-blood families look down on ours — call us blood traitors — because we don't buy into all that pure-blood nonsense."
"But Draco isn't like that," Harry pointed out. "He wouldn't be with Hermione if he were."
"Maybe," Ginny said, still unconvinced.
"And then there's his father — a Death Eater. Mum hates Death Eaters more than almost anything." Her voice dropped further. "Two of her brothers — Fabian and Gideon — were in the Order of the Phoenix during the First War. Death Eaters killed them."
"I didn't know that. I'm sorry," Harry said quietly.
"It's all right — none of us knew, either, until one Christmas when she'd had a bit too much and told us everything. She cried. That's when I found out it took five Death Eaters to bring my uncles down."
"They sound like heroes," Harry said, impressed. "I'd have thought, knowing your mum, she'd talk about them more."
Ginny shook her head.
"She doesn't like to bring it up around us. But I think she misses them badly. I'm pretty sure that's why Fred and George ended up with names that start the same — F and G, like the initials."
"Oh — so that's why," Harry murmured.
"Yeah." Ginny considered it. "And even though they drive her up the wall half the time, she always lets it go in the end. I think it's because of her brothers."
"A few times I've caught her looking a bit sad, seeing 'F&G' written on their bedroom door," she added softly.
Harry tried to smile, but it came out strained.
"I think I understand a little of how she feels. Maybe the wound's just too deep — it makes sense she doesn't want to talk about it all the time."
"Exactly. She's not the type to wallow," Ginny said. "Anyway — all of us grew up being taught to despise Death Eaters, and everything connected to them. It runs deep."
"But Draco isn't a Death Eater," Harry said. "He's never done anything wrong. If anything, he's gone out of his way to help me."
"I know — but we still try to steer clear of people like that. No one wants to be the one who upsets Mum," Ginny said. "Fred and George are probably the exception — I've caught them sneaking off to talk with Malfoy more than once. And then Ron went and did the same thing, without even realizing it."
"'Did the same thing'? That sounds a bit dramatic."
"To Mum, being openly friendly with the boy whose father once insulted Dad — that's practically a betrayal," Ginny said, frowning. "And honestly, I didn't want her feeling betrayed either."
"Then why did you speak up for Hermione and Draco, in front of her, knowing that?" Harry asked. "Your mum looked surprised. Hurt, even."
"I don't know. It just sort of happened," Ginny said, a little defensively, though something in her expression said otherwise. "I didn't want her criticizing my best friend like that, in public. She admitted afterward that what she'd said wasn't really fair."
"Mum said later that Hermione hadn't really done anything wrong — that she's just a Muggle-born Gryffindor who happened to fall for a Slytherin boy from an awful family, whose father's a Death Eater obsessed with blood purity. As if that's somehow Hermione's fault."
"I can hear the sarcasm in that," Harry said. "But isn't that its own kind of prejudice? If Draco's father discriminates against Muggle-borns, and you end up judging someone just for being born into a Death Eater's family — even if they've never done anything Death Eaters do — isn't that the same thing, just pointed the other way?"
"I'd never thought of it that way," Ginny said, startled.
She frowned, turning it over, and finally said, "I think you might be right. I suppose I had my own bias against Malfoy from the start..."
Crookshanks, perched on the sofa, squinted against the now-bright morning light. He tilted his head — first toward Harry, whose face had eased into something close to a smile, then toward Ginny, whose expression had turned thoughtful — and concluded that Harry probably wasn't sad anymore.
Whatever credit he deserved for that, Crookshanks intended to keep entirely to himself. He was quite certain this conversation was nowhere near over.
The red-haired witch and the black-haired wizard kept talking, perched at opposite ends of the sofa, working their way through one trivial, faintly ridiculous topic after another — all of which Crookshanks found beneath his notice.
Utterly boring, he thought.
It wasn't as though he hadn't seen this particular routine before. Nothing here was worth losing sleep over. Tail held high, he felt his world settling comfortably back into order.
And so, once again, Crookshanks made his exit. He hopped down from the sofa and sauntered out of the room, intent on slipping off to some dark corner of the Black house before anyone else woke — to go check, in private, on his collection of several dozen balls of yarn.