The meetings before school begin.
As Ginny slowly recovered from her disease, to the great joy of her family, she kept having strange dreams. In them, she was veiled by a thick fog of mist. Moisture and earthy tones thick on her tongue and her nose. Something seemed to want to pierce through the ashes of her imagination.
Eventually, she dreamed of two persons.
She was back in a forest, summer shone in the life and the sun. She loved this new dream. The novelty of actually having Dreams hadn’t actually faded yet, but it was nice to not have such an oppressive ambiance around.
As she sat down, thinking she would have all the time in the world to explore, she heard two people walking toward her. She turned her head to look to her right.
And there, advancing forward, was a little boy, with the same green eyes as Hades, same midnight black hairs, same sad expression.
Next to him was a tall man, one side of his hairs was white, the other black. His eyes alternated between Orange and Blue. His face was almost chimeric in its beauty. He wore a long black cloak made of… something?
“Hello young lady. I must admit, you’ve been very hard to reach.” said the tall man.
He pushed slightly the younger Hades to sit down.
He didn’t.
Which, fair, since he was smaller than her.
“What do you mean reach?”
The tall man smiled with more amusement.
“Well. You did ask a wish to my master. And this is how it will be answered. Mister Potter here, does not believe you ask anything for him. Therefore, I believe it best you start explaining.”
And then he walked away.
Ginny and Harry looked at each other.
It lasted maybe all of a second before Ginny blushed to death and started stuttering about how she was happy to meet him. Harry began flustered as well and very awkward. Eventually, when it began clear they can’t wake up from awkwardness, they were forced to speak with each other.
Their conversations were quite basic.
“How are you?” a shrug.
“And you?” a shrug as well.
After two weeks of that, they decided to explore, realizing they did not need to stay in the same place.
Five weeks afterwards, they started imagining other things inside of the dream.
Ten weeks after that, Harry had started growing more from the food Ginny had imagined for him. The food, from her mother kitchen, would then apply real nutrient to Harry’s body in the waking world.
They tried to bring items from the outside world, and low and behold, it worked. But the opposite was, unfortunately, impossible.
By that point, Ginny had been able to explain everything she knew about Harry to him. Of how she had met Hades, and how he was supposedly an older model of himself, which made the boy scoff and get awkward, again.
Time passed. Years even.
From Ginny’s eight birthday to her tenth, they had formed… A somewhat amicable and indulgent relationship. Neither believing the other to be real. They thought the dreams were real enough, as shown by Harry actually developing like he should thanks to the food he ate in it.
But neither of them actually believed anything was real beyond that.
A fragment of their imagination.
But when Harry received his first Hogwarts letter, he became doubtful this was the case.
And when he told her as such, only Ginny remained doubtful, knowing that it was common knowledge that he would have gotten his letter recently.
Neither had divulged their homes locations to the others. So there was no way to verify.
(The possibility of simply doing such now, did not even brush their minds.)
But when she arrived on September the First at King’s Cross station, and her mother was met with the picture perfect of Harry Potter from her dream, she just gaped. The boy, looked at her and gaped as well.
This made it very awkward since he’d been about to ask something, looked at her and stopped in utter stupefaction.
The twins looked at them with confusion and mischievousness. Ron was staring dumbfounded. Percy was tapping his foot, but looking perturbed.
Her mother was staring like a hawk at her, then Harry.
“Mom?” she asked finally to get her attention.
Everyone turned toward her with interest, except Harry who had a pleading expression on his visage.
“Have you ever heard of two people seeing each others in their dreams?”
Everyone looked dumbfounded.
Her mother’s eyes however had widened to become exponentially wide. Well, compared to her usual jolly kind face.
“I… You…?” she recovered herself. “It seems to ring a bell. But I don’t think it is what it is. In any case, I’ll ask you’re father to check when he get back.”
Everyone shrugged at that and they walked inside the platform station.
Harry sat immediately as far away from the Weasley as he could.
He ended up in train car with a bushy haired mediterranean girl. Unless she was of mixed heritage? No matter, better not ask. Next to her was a small pudgy boy with strawberry blonde hairs. He wondered if he should go talk with Ginny in person or not.
In the end, he chose to talk with the others in his compartment.
Ginny, however, was very unhappy, because she was forbidden from venturing anywhere less than three centimetres from her mother’s grabbing hand.
She seemed slightly spooked. And she didn’t know why.
When the train started leaving, she felt like crying, the promise of Fred and George about the toilet seat made her laugh as well. But as she caught a last glimpse of the train, she felt certain to have seen green too unearthly to be of this world.
The travel back home with the car was nice, she was so tired by today that she slept through most of it. Which ended up having a surprising effect.
She met with Harry in her Dream.
Except, it wasn’t the Harry she’d known for so long.
It was Hades.
And he was smiling.
“I hope, you’re appearance shall be a great boon to your world.”
She crooked her head to look at him. He had aged significantly. No longer as youthful as he once was. Instead of the young twenty-ish man, she was in front of a man whose age had taken a toll.
Grey hairs had started appearing in his long curtains of silky night strands.
“What do you mean?”
He gestured for her to sit herself.
“I am the Lord of the Underworld. Which means I have a great amount of power. Much more than Death, Dream, or even Fate. But that does not mean I am Omniscient or Omnipotent.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“All knowing and all powerful, respectively.”
She nodded to show she understood.
“The problem, you see, is that each universe happens in a slightly different way. The Underworld is the only of all realms, which is not destroyed during the collapse at the end of time.”
She nodded.
“What few do not remember, is that I used to reign with someone else over it. My dear wife, Persephone.”
Ginny looked at him with interest. His tone had been so full of love and passion. A passionate grief and dolour.
“She died five cycle back. And her soul may never be reformed. And want it or not, you have slated yourself in her place in Harry’s life.”
Her eyes widened and she blushed to her root.
“What?!” she strangled herself.
He smiled sadly.
“You have started the process of becoming the new Queen of the Underworld. The new Persephone in other words. But if you fail at protecting and establishing yourself as an equal to my current incarnation, you may have your soul destroyed the same way my Persephone was.”
She felt shocked enough for now to not understand much.
“In other words. You need to become powerful enough, that when you and Harry shall kiss for the first time, out of true love, you will not die, and forfeit your soul to the void.”
Ginny leaned back as far away.
That… Didn’t sound so great any more.
“Good luck.”
And she woke up again.
What a weird life.