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The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20632 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two—Like a Handful of Sand
            “I brought the Pensieve,” Ginny said softly, startling Harry out of a light doze.
            Harry blinked and sat up. “I thought Kingsley was supposed to come this morning.” It was almost noon now, and he’d waited without any visitors other than Hermione and a few different Healers.
            “He got delayed,” said Ginny, and shook her head, making her hair curl softly around her shoulders. “That bastard Nate Jersey in the Wizengamot again—”
            “Who?” Harry asked.
            Ginny looked blank for the briefest second, and then blushed. “Sorry, Harry. I forgot. Jersey is a pure-blood who keeps campaigning for people who aren’t pure-bloods not to hold office. He says over and over again that if his ancestors had to wait to be elected, so should everyone else, until enough generations have passed that they’re considered pure-bloods, too.”
            Harry made a disgusted sound. “They let him get away with that, after the war?” He could imagine all the people who had fought together in the war, pure-bloods and Muggleborns and lots of people like him who were neither, and he didn’t understand what had happened.
            Ginny closed her eyes for a second. “Ten years have gone by since the war, though. Things that were important at the time are—no longer seen as important.”
            Harry fell silent. There was a grieving bitterness in her voice that he didn’t understand, and he thought he ought to let her explain if she wanted to.
            Grief had woken him up in the middle of the night, first when he had suddenly remembered that Remus and Tonks were dead and he would never get to see them again, and then when he had remembered that their son Teddy would be ten years old now. No one had said anything about Teddy visiting him yet. Harry was thankful for that.
            “And besides,” Ginny continued, putting the Pensieve down with a thunk in the middle of the table by the bed, “there are all these people who say that they don’t believe the same things as Jersey, but they can see where he’s coming from. So they sit back and say that we shouldn’t move too fast and make people who are angry at Muggleborns angrier, and maybe things will work out and the pure-bloods will give up their power of their own free will.”
            Harry let out a bitter laugh. He might not remember the last ten years and all the political debates he’d probably heard and fought in and ignored, but he had heard things like that from the Dursleys all the time. “Except why would the pure-bloods ever want to give up power?”
            Ginny stared at him, and Harry was just about to ask what was wrong when she began to grin. It was a wicked grin, and Harry could feel a little squirm of pleasure in his stomach at the thought that he’d been the one to cause it. “Why, Harry Potter. That sounds like something you could have said a week ago.”
            Harry gave her a smile he knew was shaky. “Maybe my memories are coming back, then?”
            Ginny shook her head, immediately and decisively. “Hermione said that that wouldn’t ever happen. She’s working on it, but I don’t think she—really believes she can do anything.”
            “Well, sometimes Hermione is wrong about things,” said Harry. “Like my broom having a hex on it.”
            Ginny’s smile was blank for a second, and then she sighed. “Your third year,” she said. “Right. The Firebolt.”
            Harry said nothing. It felt so sharp to him. Not as sharp as the memories of the battle did, because those had been two days ago and the Firebolt was four years ago, but he didn’t think that something like that could have faded out of your brain.
            Not unless you’re twenty-seven instead of twelve.
            Harry swallowed again, and stared at his hands until Ginny tapped him gently on the nose and got him to look up. “Do you want to see what’s in the Pensieve or not?”
            Harry nodded. He had left it up to Ginny to choose the memories that she wanted to put in the Pensieve, because he didn’t know what was private or not. He had only said that he wanted memories that would show him why they had fallen in love.
            Ginny reached out for him, and Harry crowded down with her and put his head in the Pensieve at the same time as she did. There was the usual swirling sensation, and the sensation of falling, and then they were standing a pub so noisy that Harry jumped. He saw a second later that it was the Leaky Cauldron. There were banners hanging everywhere, and so many people laughing and slamming their drinks on the tables that Harry couldn’t make out the song they were also singing.
            He turned his head, and there he was.
            He. Himself. Harry Potter. A taller and handsomer Harry than Harry had thought he would ever be. Of course, only a few days ago, as far as he was concerned, he had walked into the Forbidden Forest thinking he was going to die.
            The stranger—Harry didn’t feel it was him no matter how long he stared—finally held up his mug of Firewhisky and started to say something. That prompted everyone to start loudly shushing everyone else around them, which meant that the other Harry still couldn’t get his speech heard for about five minutes. And then by the time they were quiet, he was laughing too hard to stand up. Ron had to gently push him up and whisper, “It was about the battle, right, mate?”
            Harry blinked and took another look at the banners. Yes, they did say FIVE YEARS OF FREEDOM! So this was just over five years ago, five years after the Battle of Hogwarts. 2003.
            Years I haven’t seen yet, Harry thought, aching no matter how much he tried to suppress it, and turned around to look at the stranger as he raised his mug high and began his toast.
            “To all the people who fought beside us and paid with their lives,” he said, and the room went quiet at once. Harry had to shake his head, a little. He didn’t think he had the ability to make people be quiet like that, no matter what his friends wanted to pretend. “To everyone who did their best to make this future come true. To everyone who fought as hard as they could.” He looked around the room now, and gave a smile that made Harry reach up and feel his own cheeks. “The ones who lived, too.”
            That made people roar with hysterical cheering. Ginny, beside Harry, nodded to a far corner of the room. Harry squinted in that direction, and saw a woman who looked a lot like the one beside him, but less confident, one hand covering her mouth.
            “I think it was the night I fell in love with you,” Ginny whispered.
            “And because this is a night for courage and taking chances,” the stranger was saying when Harry turned back to him, “I’d like to take a chance and hope that the wonderful woman I’ve kept waiting this long will think I was worth the wait.” He turned straight to the past Ginny’s table, and smiled. “Ginny Weasley, will you go out with me?”
            “Not if you’d waited one minute longer,” said the Ginny sitting there.
            That made more people roar in appreciation and bang their mugs, and the real Ginny, as Harry thought of her, gave a long, trembling sigh when the stranger strode up and kissed her past self on the mouth.
            “That’s the kind of person you are,” she whispered, and glanced at Harry. “That’s how we fell in love.”
            Harry said nothing as the mist clouded around him and took him to another memory, but all he felt was confused. All right, he knew what he’d been like with Ginny—a sort of version of Ginny—but he didn’t know what had made him make that decision then. Or why he’d waited. Ginny seemed great, nice and sarcastic and smart and beautiful.
            Why had he waited?
            The next memory was of a bedroom that Harry didn’t recognize. He only knew it wasn’t Ginny’s bedroom in the Burrow. Ginny was kneeling upright in the bed that was covered with a thick blanket of red and white squares, looking down at someone next to her. Harry knew it had to be him—the stranger—but it still made his heart give a rough beat when he saw a head of messy black hair on the pillow.
            His face had firelight on it. The past version of Ginny reached out and covered the stranger’s cheek with one hand.
            “Why did it take you so long to come to me?” she whispered, and her voice was full of hope and longing and fear. “Was it really worth it?”
            Harry blinked and looked at Ginny. “What is she talking about?”
            Ginny had been standing with her hands behind her back, as if it was hard for her not to reach over and touch the stranger, but now she blinked and refocused on him. “What was I talking about,” she corrected him gently. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, Harry, but you’re not eighteen anymore. And I know you’re different, but that’s you and me there, not two strangers.”
            Harry flinched a little. It felt as if she had read his mind.
            But I know what that feels like, and she’s no Snape.
            “Well, I still want to know,” Harry said, and hoped he didn’t sound childish.
            “Oh.” Ginny sighed a little. “You almost avoided me for the five years after the battle. You were friendly to me when you were over at the Burrow or with Ron, but you—it was as if there was this barrier there. You told me once that you had to make up your mind. You were struggling. You’d learned something about yourself and you didn’t like it.”
            Harry blinked, trying to digest that. “Is there anyone who could tell me what that is?” He had probably confided in Hermione. Maybe not Ron, not if it was his sister that Harry was putting off dating.
            Ginny shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. You told me once it had to do with a locked drawer in your desk. But shhh, we’re missing the memory.” And she drew him against her and pointed back to the figures on the bed.
            Harry looked back to see that the past version of himself had woken up and was sleepily smiling at the past version of Ginny. He reached up and laid a hand against her cheek, and the past version of Ginny kissed him and whispered, “Why did it take you so long to come to me?”
            Harry swallowed when he saw the stranger’s eyes focus. He ought to be able to pick out what that version of himself was feeling by watching, he thought. After all, he should know himself better than anyone else.
            But either he didn’t, or he had changed a lot in those years, because the stranger shook his head and whispered, “There were other paths I thought I wanted to take. But none of them led to you.” And he pulled the past Ginny down against him, and began to kiss her slowly. Ginny, the real one, gave a little sigh.
            Harry swallowed, wanting to see them make love and not wanting to see it at the same time. But the wall of silver descended and dissolved him and Ginny again into another memory.
            At first, Harry could hardly believe it was the one she’d meant to show him. Ginny-from-the-past was standing across what looked like a gigantic kitchen from them, her arms folded and her back turned. But from where they were standing, Harry could see her eyes closed in pain and some tears on her cheeks. He squirmed. He had never known what to do when a girl was crying, from Cho on up.
            The stranger must have got more sophisticated in those last years, though. He looked calmly at his own Ginny’s back, and said in a voice that sounded only a little like he was going to shout, “Do you understand now? Why I didn’t want to tell you?”
            “No,” said the other Ginny, and turned around. She looked more like the woman at his side than any of the others had, Harry thought. Her arms were folded and her jaw set in a regal fashion, and her tears might be tears of anger as well as sadness. “I don’t understand why you would hold back from telling me that you’d be gone on an Auror mission during my birthday. The birthday you told me you would be there for.”
            “Gin—”
            Harry caught his breath a little. For some reason, he thought the way the stranger called her “Gin” was even more intimate, in some ways, than watching them in bed together.
            “I don’t care if you have to go on Auror missions.” Ginny-from-the-past caught her own breath and went on. “I know you have a dangerous job. I know. And I chose to stay with you in spite of it.” She came forwards a step. “But I won’t have you lying to me.”
            The stranger blinked and pushed his glasses up. Then and only then, Harry thought, He looks like me. That’s what I’d do.
            “Why did you choose to show me this?” he did whisper to Ginny. “It’s not very romantic.”
            “Because I want to show you that we can get through uncomfortable things, fights, together, and still stay together,” said Ginny, and pulled him against her with one arm. “Just in case you thought that we couldn’t make it through this. We will, Harry, and we’ll make it. We’ll rebuild, stronger than ever.”
            She looked at him, and there was so much love in her eyes. Harry might not know a lot, he might have forgotten even more, but he knew one thing. He had always wanted someone to love him like this.
            But it made his stomach hurt and fill with dread, because what if he wasn’t worth it? What if he messed it up, when Ginny realized that he wasn’t the man she needed and wanted and never would be again?
            Harry licked his lips, tried to ignore his dry throat, and focused on the memory in front of him. Because worrying about how Ginny could continue to love him would ignore the evidence she was trying to show him, that she did love him.
            She loves someone who’s dead. It’s like Cho trying to date you when she was still mourning Cedric. She couldn’t make you into a Cedric substitute, and Ginny can’t make you into your dead self.
            Harry decided to ignore that voice. It sounded like Uncle Vernon.
            In the fight, his past self was saying softly, “Gin, I’m sorry. I really did hope that I would be able to stay for your birthday. Kingsley assigned me this mission at the last minute.”
            “Where are you going?” the past Ginny demanded. The past Harry hesitated, and she snorted. “Oh, yes, promise me that you’ll tell the truth, and then hold back again.”
            “It’s not like that,” said the stranger, and Harry recognized the moment when he decided to throw the rules away and do what he needed to do. That was familiar, at least. “It’s that it’s another mission for the Unspeakables, and Kingsley really didn’t want me to talk about it. But I know you won’t betray me, Gin. The whole world would, before you.”
            Ginny-from-the-past leaned back and looked up at the stranger—me, that’s me, Harry reminded himself—and there was a melting look in her eyes. Harry didn’t think she was surprised to hear this. She had just needed to hear him—the stranger—say it again.
            Before Ron and Hermione, though? I would trust her before anyone else, before everyone else in the world? Harry shook his head a little. He would never have believed that at one point.
            But he tried to tell himself that lots of things must have happened in those ten years. Ron and Hermione had their own lives, too, and they had let him have this time alone with Ginny. Hermione had told him he was on the verge of getting married to Ginny. There must have been a lot going on between them that was gentle and important and special.
            “We’re going to Sicily,” the stranger whispered then, against the lips of Ginny-from-the-past. “There’s some news that an exact replica of Bellatrix Lestrange has been seen there. It can’t be someone using Polyjuice, and it can’t be her, so we have to find out what’s going on.”
            Ginny-from-the-past relaxed with a rush. “That’s all right, then,” she said, and put an arm around his neck. “If it’s her, kill her again for me, all right?”
            The stranger laughed, and they were kissing, and the memory dissolved, and Harry was again sitting on the bed in St. Mungo’s, with Ginny watching him hopefully.
            Harry said the first thing that came to mind. “They were so in love.”
            Ginny lifted her chin with that battle-motion Harry had seen in the past argument. “We were,” she said, and then smiled at him. “I still am.”
            Harry gave her a nervous, unhappy smile back. “Even though I’m not the man you remember? Even though no one is, anymore?”
            “I believe that you’re still you.” Ginny’s gaze was unwavering. “You still have the same beliefs and morals and principles. You’d still make the same choices, if you had them to make over again. You’ll still find your way back to me.” She reached out and took his hand again. “And I’ll be there at the end of the road.”
            Harry thought his smile was stronger this time. “Even if it takes me another five years?”
            “It won’t.”
            So much confidence, so much strength. Harry only wished he had that much.
            For Ginny, he was willing to try.
*
Kain: Thanks. That was, after all, what I was going for. ;)
Harry is already running up against a problem: as well as missing emotions, no one can tell him what he was thinking during those moments. And, of course, any decisions that he made in private are gone forever.
moon: Thank you!
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The Dust of Water