The pile moved and resolved itself in her mind as a person. A person of skin and bones, of greasy hair and shaggy beard.
She edged forward to get a better look.
A person with an enflamed lightning bolt scar on his forehead.
"Harry?" she whispered.
Nothing.
The cell door was flung open and two guards marched in, grabbed Harry, and half dragged him down the corridor.
The scene changed again.
She watched Harry being dumped through an eerie looking archway while You-Know-Who screamed in terror.
The scene changed yet again.
This time, the room felt warm, it felt comfortable, like an Anglo-Saxon chieftain's roundhouse in times of old.
Harry was talking to a man and woman. They felt beyond powerful. The man held a scythe. The woman held a book.
Ginny's eyes widened as the meaning of their conversation sunk in.
Sentences crashed through her head like tidal waves, drowning out all other thought.
"Dumbledore declared him The-Boy-Who-Lived when he was a baby and the child made no effort to disavow others of that impression, even when it became apparent to him that it was you the prophecy referred to."
Shock.
"It was never his plan for you to stay in Azkaban for as long as you did, but when he died before John Potter did, he was no longer able to manipulate events, and your brother said nothing to anyone who might have been able to intervene."
Anger.
"He knew Ginny was going to die and let it happen anyway?! I thought those two loved each other."
Betrayal.
"You must save Ginny Weasley."
…Hope.
The scene faded in and out, words flowing into other words, as though parts were being skipped.
Before long, Harry was flung back through the archway, and the scene, once more, faded to black.
This time, when the world faded into being, she was standing on a rock, looking out over the bluest sea she'd ever seen.
Harry—a Harry who looked the same age as John—stood to one side, looking out across the water.
She picked her way across the rocks to stand next to him — so that she might get a better view of whatever he was looking at.
"Hello Ginny."
She started. Her head turned so fast her hair whipped her face. Harry was looking at her, right at her, straight into her eyes. Her heart pounded.
"I won't let it happen, you know. I'm going to stop it."
"I…I…"
"…?"
"I can't believe they did all that too you," she said.
Harry laughed a mirthless laugh. "Sucks doesn't it?"
Ginny nodded.
Harry looked out to sea again, as though lost in thought.
"…"
"How?" Ginny asked.
"Mmmm?"
"How did I die?"
"You weren't listening during your eulogy?" Harry asked.
"I was… a bit distracted."
"It doesn't matter anyway. I told you, I'm not going to let it happen again."
"I'd still like to know, and you were happy for me to hear it before."
Harry sighed. "Your soul was sucked out by one of You-Know-Who's toys. It forced you to open the chamber of secrets, and spent half your first Hogwarts year possessing you, attacking students with a one-thousand-year-old, sixty-foot-long basilisk."
She stared at him, appalled.
"Slowly losing your mind to Lord Voldemort isn't fun, and John could've easily stopped it at any time by taking the object from you and destroying it, like he should have, but because of his obsession with 'preserving the timeline', he condemned you to another year of torture."
The stood in silence again.
Eventually, Ginny asked, "So, what are we going to do now?"
Harry raised an eyebrow. "We?"
Despite everything she'd just been through, Ginny felt fine. In fact, she felt free. She finally knew what had been going on for the past few months — that she wasn't losing her mind — that the dreams she'd been having were for a reason, and that Harry, whose living conditions she'd been getting panicky about, also seemed fine.
She grinned impishly at him. "Yes, we. I assume you didn't spend months showing me stuff just so you could declare yourself my hero?"
Harry returned her grin. "You're damn right about that. I want to train you."
"Train me?"
"For better or worse, our fates are intertwined, decreed by the powers that be themselves, and if you, and a few others, are going to walk the path with me, then you'll need to be ready for it."
She thought back to what she'd just seen. The death, the horror, the suffering. If that's what the world had in store, then she damn well did need to be ready for it. She nodded. "Okay."
"Great. Meet me in the orchard one week from tonight at mid-night."
"But the wards—"
Her world faded to black.
Ginny paced. The half-moon illuminated the orchard.
Despite the cheerful, jokey attitude she'd displayed to Harry, the truth was she'd mostly been running off adrenaline at the time. After waking up from her dream that night, it had taken all her willpower not to have a breakdown. The full enormity of what she'd seen kept crashing in on her.
It was only the thought of meeting Harry for real, The-True-Boy-Who-Lived, that got her through the week. Harry felt more like the hero the Boy-Who-Lived was supposed to be. The hero from the adventure books.
But how was he going to meet her? Ginny was sure Harry had never been keyed in to the wards.
"Hi Ginny."
.
.
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