Chapter 4
He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand, three times.
They were neither ghost, nor truly flesh. They resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, memory made nearly solid. On each face there was the same loving smile.
Harry looked around at them. Inexplicably, Snape was there, and his eyes were on Harry, not Lily. He looked wary, and weary, and sad.
“I’m sorry,” he offered. Harry, who didn’t think he’d heard that word pass Snape’s lips in life, frowned.
“You were on my side the whole time,” he said. “But you had to keep up appearances. I get it now. Thank you.”
Snape shook his head and opened his mouth, but lapsed into silence at a look from Regulus.
Regulus had Sirius’s easy grace, though he didn’t look nearly as casual as his older brother. Harry stared at him, and lifted his chin in recognition of what Regulus had done in stealing the locket. The apparition nodded silently back.
Lily looked only at her son. “You’ve been so brave,” she said.
“We are… so proud of you.” James looked like he wanted to clap Harry on the shoulder. So did Sirius, who smiled more sadly than Harry had ever seen him do when he was alive.
“I didn’t want you to die,” Harry said. “Any of you. I’m sorry - right after you’d had your son… Remus, I’m sorry -”
“I am sorry too,” said Lupin. “Sorry I will never know him… but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.”
Harry sighed. He had lived with the same burden; he felt a sudden kinship with the turquoise-haired tot he had seen a picture of only hours ago. He wished he could be the godfather to Teddy that Sirius should have been to him, in a fairer world.
Their presence was his courage. The dead who walked beside him through the Forest were much more real to him now than the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled towards the end of his life.
Hermione escorted them down to breakfast, bringing with her the news that Ginny had argued with Dean. The drowsing creature in Harry’s chest suddenly raised its head, sniffing the air hopefully.
Harry looked around; there was Ginny running towards him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her.
The golden sunrise leaked through the windows of the common room and lit Ginny’s fiery hair, giving her a blazing halo. Her skin, Harry reflected, was indeed perfect, just as he had said; soft, smooth, freckled. He ran his fingers across her cheek again, and again, and again, until she laughed and took his hand in her own. “Enough,” she told him, lips pulled wide, eyes creased with mirth. She leaned towards him, and her halo vanished as she blocked the sun - blocked the whole window - from view and his vision was filled with her, just her. She kissed him languidly, slowly, like they had all the time in the world together.
“Ginny, listen…” he said very quietly, as the buzz of conversation grew louder around them and people began to get to their feet. “We can’t be together.”
“It’s for some stupid, noble reason, isn’t it? I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”
And it was, Harry realised. His few shining weeks with Ginny were golden in his memory, weeks he would cherish forever. But she liked him for his fate; the things that came with his name. She liked him too, that much was clear, but she liked her idea of him.
It didn’t matter. He was going to die. Ginny was the most incredible memory he could hold onto while he made the last part of his journey; not a love as legendary as Snape’s should have been for Lily, if only the world knew of it, but a comfort nonetheless. Something to cherish.