FIC "Atropos" by Luna Plath
To: alita258
Title: Atropos
Author/Artist: luna_plath
Pairing: Harry/Ginny, background Ron/Hermione
Rating: NC-17
Genres: thriller, romance, angst
Word Count: just under 8,000 words
Summary: She desperately wanted to lay down next to him and take his hand, to beg him to please wake up, to please be okay, to stop pretending, but the problem didn’t work like that. Harry is brought in to St. Mungo’s after an auror mission gone wrong, and it’s up to Ginny, a potions expert at the Ministry, to save her boyfriend’s life.
Author Notes: A big thank you to sherylyn for being such a helpful extra set of eyes on this project and to flyingcarpet for being such a great mod. I tried to incorporate all of alita258's prompts (sexy, dark, potions, Harry being a tease, dialogue) and I hope you're satisfied with the outcome.
PART ONE: NYX
Evening in Ashworth Square was always a little darker than the rest of London. Most of the witches and wizards that lived in the slightly dodgy magical neighborhood guarded their residences with Notice Me Not spells, making the whole of the community a rather muted place to look at. The streets and sidewalks were not well kept; there were bits of litter, garbage, and broken glass in most of the alleyways, and along Ash Street proper Ginny caught the sound of several nearby dogs barking threateningly and a couple having a row in a nearby townhouse.
She walked past the grey stoop that preceded the brick street front of her own flat, removing the key she’d clutched the whole way home in her left hand. Tottering old Mrs. Blanchford, the owner of Number 7 Ash Street, had left the gas lamps burning in the hallway, mindful of the time that Ginny usually got off of work. A deep brown cat peered at her from the stairs, loping towards her when she kneeled down to stroke underneath its chin.
“Hello Lanolin,” Ginny cooed. Mrs. Blanchford proudly owned three or four cats that wandered around the apartment house, and she had taken a liking to the sveltely Havana Brown.
Harry had been probing her for months now about how she would feel if they got a dog, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d wanted a cat ever since she’d been a little girl at The Burrow. Her mother had warned that having a pet cat in the same house as Fred and George would be unfairly traumatizing (to the animal, not her brothers), so they had never got one, despite her frequent begging.
Lanolin blinked her large, yellow eyes at Ginny and purred.
“Well, come on then,” she said, climbing the stairs while the cat prowled beside her. The flat that she shared with Harry was on the third floor, with a soft bed and a hot cup of tea within its capabilities. Although they lived together he was often called out on long assignments, leaving Ginny to look after things by herself, which she didn’t mind. Living with six brothers had taught her how to keep house well enough, and the upkeep for the two of them was usually minimal.
The brown cat slipped through the door after her as she toed out of her black winter boots and closed the door. Ginny tapped her wand against the hall lamp, causing it to glow cheerfully. The mirror next to the coat rack gave a low whistle.
“My, you’re looking knackered this evening,” it wheezed.
She ran her fingers tiredly over her impossibly long red hair. “Thanks.”
“I’m sure it’s been a long day,” the mirror dryly assuaged.
In truth, her day had been quite long and tedious. Ginny worked for the Illegal and Illicit Potions Maintenance Team, a sublevel organization of the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. She enjoyed her job as a brew analyzer and poison expert; the potions she got to work with were usually interesting and challenging, but sometimes there were slow days in the office where she didn’t get to actually work with brews. Today had been one of them. She’d spent the majority of her time in the office getting caught up on writing reports and finalizing paperwork for one of her recent projects, and after staring at rolls of parchment inked in Gaspar’s dreadful handwriting her head was starting to hurt.
Lanolin happily curled up in a wingback armchair while Ginny put the kettle on for tea, shaking her waist-length hair out of the loose plait she’d pulled it into while she’d been at work. She sat at the kitchen table in her black dress and nylon stockings, sorting through the post that had been delivered while she was away. A letter from her Aunt Muriel that she was putting off reading, the latest issue of Quidditch International, and the newest catalogue of merchandise from Weasley Wizard Wheezes, courtesy of her brother George.
Just as the kettle began to issue the tell tale jet of steam from its spout, a roaring that she associated with Floo travel sounded from the sitting room. Ginny swished her wand, sending the kettle to a hot mat she’d placed on the counter, and walked into the living room, only to find Gaspar’s head sticking out of the emerald-flamed fire.
“Weasley!” he sputtered. “You better come quick-to St. Mungo’s. It’s Potter, he’s in a bad way, had a nasty poison encounter-“
“Harry?” she asked, already dashing for her shoes and coat. “What happened?”
“Neurotoxic snake venom.”
“I’ll meet you there,” she said determinedly, her hand clutched around her wand.
----------
Ginny Apparated into the waiting room of St. Mungo’s with a sharp pop, dashing to the staircase where Gaspar was waiting.
“He’s on the second floor,” the middle-aged wizard explained, rushing Ginny to the same ward where her father had been bedridden many Christmases before. “Very dark magic, apparently. Only the worst kind of magic requires poisonous snake venom,” he said conspiratorially.
“Inferious transformations, your normal magical snakes,” she said, her mind flying through any spell, potion, or transformation that required venom. “Have they brought in anyone from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?”
“It wasn’t a live snake,” Gaspar explained. “Some kind of location-specific guarding spell ...”
Her chest aching from the exertion, she let Gaspar steer her into a functional medical room without any other patients. Three healers, Head Auror Rodger Drummond, her brother Ron, two trainee aurors, and Ron and Harry’s coworker Ross Tatton were crowded around Harry’s recumbent form. His eyes were barely open, and a thin sheen of sweat covered his entire body.
“Harry!” she said, breathless from running but still wide-eyed. “Is he all right? When did this happen?”
Drummand cocked his head in Ron’s direction while leaning on his blackthorn walking stick. “Weasley-you were there. Explain the magic around the oubliette.”
Ron swallowed and took a breath, clenching and unclenching his fists. “We’d gone to check out this abandoned ruin that some of the locals had called in, a place to do with the Ethelind murders, and when we were searching around the basement area we found the trap door and it was just full of magic-Ross did an identification spell and it showed something sort of . . . slithering, you know, like a snake, but we didn’t realize it was a spell. I, well, Harry and I both thought that it would be a good idea for him to check it out, him being a parstlemouth and all, so he did a few spells to detect any obvious dark magic . . . nothing came up!” He ran his hands through his hair, his face completely white. “None of us realized it was being protected with bloody venom wards!”
Drummond was keeping himself together much more effectively than Ron, who seemed to be feeling guiltier by the minute. “But how was Potter actually cursed, Weasley? How were the wards activated? Did he actually speak in parstletongue?”
Ginny began to work her hair into a tight French pla, pulling it away from her face while her heart pounded out a steady thump, thump, thump in her tight chest. Ron opened his mouth and waited a second before speaking.
“He...he spoke to it. I don’t know what he said, it comes out like hissing, but he said that it seemed alright. The trap door opened-with magic, mind you, none of us touched it-and we did a lumos to see down in it, and there is definitely something down in that oubliette, even if we didn’t get to it, but as soon as his hand came in contact with the wood around the mouth of the opening... “
No one spoke for a moment. The semi-circle of Harry’s watchers and coworkers were formed around him like sentinels.
“Well,” Drummond barked, looking to the three healers who had been listening to Ron’s account, “have you got any idea of what to do? This is the savior of the Wizarding world, not some ruddy underling-"
One of the Healers stepped forward, a clipboard clutched in her tense hands. “We’ve taken a blood sample, but the toxins in Mr. Potter’s system don’t match any of the antidotes we have on stock-Ms. Weasley-"
“Will be needing that blood sample, a cauldron, some glass test plates, and your strongest gloves,” Ginny finished, moving toward Harry, who now had his eyes closed. His breathing was much shallower than when she had first arrived, which frightened her more than she would ever admit. “And if you have any literature on snake venom please pull it,” she added.
The other two Healers nearly jumped at her request, hurrying to fetch the required materials.
As if her voice were being spoken by a separate entity-and she, Ginny, were sitting to the side and listening-she heard rather than felt herself explain the usual course of action for contact with neurotoxic venom. “His breathing will continue to decrease unless we find an antidote, and quickly, he’s already been exposed for far too much time, but there’s still a lot we can do. Set up a monitoring spell for his respiratory system and perform an obligatory Breathing Charm if necessary.”
She stood the closest to Harry, her shoulders tensely hunched while she thought as hard as she possibly could, trying to remember any scrap of useful information she had ever heard during the two years she’d been in training for her job after Hogwarts, or any of the outside material she’d read on venom since that time.
Freezing her movements, Ginny said, “Harry was exposed to Basalisk venom when he was twelve. Have you written that down?” she asked, making eye contact with the younger female Healer who, coincidentally, had pale green eyes. She nodded, surprised at being addressed directly, her blonde ponytail swinging.
“He was cured with phoenix tears,” Ginny continued, “but he may have some immunity to whatever venom was used in that curse, or it could make him more vulnerable, there’s no way to tell just yet.”
One of the younger Healers handed her the blood sample and she strode purposefully to the worktable that had been set up, already casting spells to analyze the venom configuration while the same Healer, a man that looked to be around her age, set up the cauldron for her.
Ginny pulled on the gloves that had been laid out on the table and cracked the seal of the sample vial with a satisfying pop.
“We’ll let you work, Ms. Weasley,” Drummond said, rising with the aid of his blackthorn stick and roughly steering a frightened-looking Ron out of the room. “Come on you lot, get out of her dammed way,” he called to the rest of the aurors, jolting them to attention.
Ross Tatton and the trainees followed suit, casting a few last worried looks towards Harry’s form on the hospital bed.
Before the door closed, just as Ginny’s sample was glowing a highly acidic green, she could hear Drumond assuring one of the trainees that, “Potter will be just fine with his girl here to put him right.”
PART TWO: HYPNOS
Three years ago, when Ginny had been just a trainee at the Potion Brewer’s Academy, one of her professors had explained that poisons, as a group, usually weren’t deadly unless taken in large doses.
Until now, she’d agreed.
With the three other Healers working around her and her ears straining to hear Harry’s labored breathing, she felt the ache of her head intensify under the pressure. Ginny spread the sample venom on the glass test plate with a silver knife and added her reagent, breathing away from the scent of fruit and poison that hung in the air.
Definitely not an alkaline, she decided after running a simple carbon-based test, and not related to any North American species...
She had samples from all the major venomous snake families in the world lined up on the worktable. By determining the chemical composition of each venom family she would eventually be able to find one similar to the composition of Harry’s curse venom, which would lead to either an established antidote or one that she could brew more easily than constructing one completely on her own. Creating a new antidote would require time as well as trial and error-three things for which her current situation did not allow.
“It’s an Elapid,” she said to the blonde female healer who was scribbling down all of Ginny’s results. “Merlin, that family includes 325 different species-have you heard from the venom bank yet?”
The senior healer answered Ginny’s question in a controlled voice. “They confirmed our earlier message but their samples haven’t arrived yet.”
“I’ll need them as soon as they get here, as many from the Elapid family as they have.”
“Elapids?” the younger male healer asked, his curly brown hair frazzled-looking. “Aren’t cobras part of that family?”
“Yes,” she answered, testing more venom samples on circular plates of glass. Each test required three drops of a pomegranate and aconite mixture before it would turn an identifying shade of green. “As are the Big Four, the most common venomous snakes in India.”
“How would a wizard in England get a hold of Indian snake venom?” the brunet Healer asked.
“There’s a huge European market for illegal potions ingredients,” Ginny generalized, distracted.
Whether the healer was satisfied with her explanation or not, she didn’t care. During the thirty seconds it took for her test plate to change color she gave Harry another concerned glance, wishing she could hold his hand or touch his cheek-anything besides frantically testing one sample after another and coming up with types of venom that were not the source of his poisoning.
Preparing another slide, Ginny tried not to think about the fact that the man on the hospital bed only three feet away from her was the same man who had undressed her the night before and kissed the soft inside of her thigh, the same man who had rescued her from the Chamber of Secrets when she was a little girl and fucked her in her childhood bedroom when she was seventeen. A sharp, stinging harshness began at the back of her eyes and it took several shallow breaths to quell it while she worked. The odd separation began to occur again and it was a different being who doused the slide with pomegranate and aconite while she curled up to the side, like the soul of her eleven-year-old self, folding up quiet and small beside the presence of Tom Riddle while he dragged her through the hallways of the school.
She blinked against the blurry outline of tears and willed herself not to cry. Harry needed her, and she wouldn’t do him any good falling all to pieces even while the words widow and failure flashed through her mind. She thought of Blaisé Zabini and his rich, lonely mother. Would people say the same things about her if she failed to brew an antidote? That Weasley girl was always popular with boys, a nasty voice in her head taunted, and she couldn’t just have any, could she? No-she went after Harry Potter, of all people. The nerve. And you saw how long he lasted with her.
Before she could reach for another slide one of the previous tests glowed a startling acid green.
“Bungarus,” she said, halting her movements. She had the family and genus, which narrowed things considerably. All that was left for her to identify was the species, but after that she would more than likely have to brew his cure and there wasn’t much time left before the effects of the neurotoxin became fatal. “Write that down. I really need those samples from the venom bank-“
While the green-eyed Healer scribbled on her growing scroll of parchment the young man who had asked about the Elapids ran in with a large wooden crate that was marked: St. Mungo’s Venom Bank.
“Samples,” he panted, hefting the parcel onto a nearby bench.
Ginny didn’t wait for him to open the box; she sternly swished her wand and the samples of venom that had been collected from the Burgarus genus landed in front of her.
“Help me with these,” she snapped at the male Healer, opening bottles and preparing twelve glass test plates.
“Yes, sorry,” he apologized, hurrying over and starting more tests alongside her, his movements jumpy.
While she spread B. andamanensis venom over the glass with her silver knife, she asked the senior Healer, “How much time do we have left?”
The longer Harry went without antivenom the closer he got to complete neurotoxicity-death, essentially-and the longer it took for her to determine the structure of the chemical in the venom, the longer it would take him to wake up once he’d been administered an antidote.
“An hour-and-a-half,” she answered in a voice that Ginny supposed was intended to sound gentle. She took a few more shallow breaths and lowered three drops of reagent onto B. caeruleus venom while the frazzled male healer--Whitley, judging by his nametag--did the same to a sample he was working with.
The answer struck Ginny like a blow to the head. In an hour-and-a-half, Harry would be dead, unless she was clever enough to find a solution. If she couldn’t brew an antidote then the love of her life would be dead due to her own incompetence. Determination surged through her in spite of her fear and Ginny firmly set her jaw, sheer will keeping her from crying.
The blood pounded in her head and she closed her eyes, massaging her temples while she listened to the sizzling of the reaction over Harry’s increasingly labored breathing. She desperately wanted to lie down next to him and take his hand, to beg him to please wake up, to please be okay, to stop pretending, but the problem didn’t work like that. Ginny looked down through her bleary eyes and nearly screamed when she saw the test venom for B. caeruleus settle at a bright acidic green.
“It’s B. caeruleus-the common Indian Krait-do you have an antivenom for that? Do I need to start brewing? How much time is left?”
Her barrage of questions seemed to have startled the three Healers, who were now quickly searching for her answers. The blonde witch with eyes like Harry’s flipped through a couple of scrolls on the work bench and emerged with a list of the antivenom that they had in stock, her round face pinched in anxiety.
“There’s no antivenom but there’s brewing instructions for all the species and subspecies of the Krait family,” Ginny said, thinking aloud. “I need a toad spleen, three unicorn hairs, spring water, and four leaves from the ephedra plant.”
The two younger Healers stared at her, wide-eyed.
“And I need them NOW!” she finished, clearing a space on the work table while Whitley and the young woman popped in across the hall to the store cupboard.
“Fifty minutes,” the senior Healer said, wiping Harry’s face with a warm flannel and covering him with another blanket.
“Is he okay?” Ginny asked thickly, her shoulders tense while she filled the cauldron at her worktable with spring water and started a low fire underneath it.
“He’ll be fine, Mrs. Weasley, just as soon as that antidote is ready,” she said kindly.
When the spring water reached the appropriate temperature she began to add the unicorn hairs one by one. She wanted to thank the senior Healer for her kindness and her patience, but Ginny didn’t think, despite her gratitude, that now was the most appropriate time. The golden strands slowly dissolved in the hot spring water, the innocent bubbling feeling somehow like a subtle mockery.
The room was tense and quiet while she brewed Harry’s antidote, stirring the mixture for exact intervals. Years of training at the academy and experience at the department had given her confidence, but Ginny took extra care to execute the brewing exactly as the instructions specified. If she didn’t brew the antidote correctly then the consequences would be life altering. A lackluster potion might keep him alive, but he could be paralyzed, or permanently insane, or unresponsive for the rest of his life. Her hands slippery with sweat, she gave the potion a last clockwise stir. Slowly, the mixture darkened from a soft white to a deep, shinning navy that was rich enough to mimic the night sky at dusk.
She stepped back from the cauldron and lowered the heat of the flames to an intermediate temperature, removing her borrowed gloves as she did so, her neck and forehead slick with anxious sweat. It pooled in the dip between her breasts, the lean curve of her spine.
“It’ll have to be injected intravenously,” she said, crossing her arms over her stomach and sinking down into the straight-backed chair next to Harry’s bed. She reached for the end of her plait and began to pull at the tie that held it in place. “He’s been exposed to the poison for too long for any other route of administration to be effective.”
The senior Healer calmly set down her clipboard and selected a syringe from a tray, filling it with rich, navy antidote from the cauldron and approaching Harry’s bedside with the sharp end pointing upward like a wand.
“Mr. Potter will be recovered in half a day’s time,” she soothed, turning his head to the side and aiming the long needle for a soft spot in his neck. “You did wonderfully, dear.”
Ginny covered her face with her hands while her shoulders silently began to shake, the muscles in her face tense while hot, wet tear began to stream down her cheeks. She could feel the eyes of the two younger Healers watching her cautiously.
“T-thank you for t-taking such good care of him,” she said, wiping her runny mascara off her eyes with the back of her hand. “I a-appreciate it more t-than I c-can even say.”
PART THREE: THANATOS
“You can visit him in a moment, sir. Mrs. Weasley is quite distressed.”
Distressed. That word bounced off the impossibly clean halls of the hospital, flying back at Ron like a curse. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as his heart shamefully continued to beat while Drummond rose from his seat with the assistance of his blackthorn stick.
The senior Healer wore a kind expression for the assembled Aurors and associates who waited outside of Harry’s room in the closed ward. Ron gave a half-step forward, his concern etched on his freckled face. “But he’s going to be all right? Ginny was able to find an antidote?”
“Yes, Mr. Weasley. He will be just fine, but your sister will probably need a moment. Mr. Potter is not conscious in any regard, although I’m sure he’ll wake within the hour.”
“You can sit down, Weasley. He’s not going anywhere,” Drummond said from his reclaimed seat against the wall, his walking stick upright underneath his hands. He looked to the senior Healer through sharp, yellow-ish eyes. “Will he make a full recovery?’
“Yes, he’ll recover, thanks to Mrs. Weasley’s efforts. But he will need to rest for a few days.”
“Good, good,” Drummond replied. “We’ll visit in a few minutes. Give it a wait.”
The other Aurors and trainees sat down with the shaky sense that they would be jolted again, adrenaline high despite staying up until two in the morning after a mission. Normally, Ron would have been yawning and stretching to stay awake, the kind of tired-crazy that he and Harry had become painfully familiar with over the past few years with the Aurors. But now his hands were clasped in front of him, his long forearms tensely resting on his knees while his brain whirled with attentiveness. The bright hospital lights were disorienting and full of shapes that he was probably imagining in his anxiety to see his friend, his brain fuzzy around the details of how and why he was here, confident only in the fact that his best mate was laid up in a hospital bed at his suggestion.
Guiltily, the word idiot looped in his head, repeating itself against a backdrop of all the times Harry had saved his life, his father’s, Ginny’s. Idiot idiot idiot.
“I’m going to check on Ginny,” Ron said, forcing himself to move at a normal pace. Drummond granted him an approving grunt and told Ross and the trainees to hold off.
He softly knocked on the door before letting himself in, closing the door behind him.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ginny had a crumpled handkerchief clutched in her hand, one of the thoughtful gifts her mother had made for her last Christmas. A luxury. She had always wondered what good an embroidered handkerchief would do, what use she could find for one. Thanks Mum, she thought, just the thing for when I nearly kill my boyfriend. Glad you thought of such a useful present. Her initials were stitched in the corner, G. M. W. standing out bright and red against the mascara-stained fabric.
“Hi,” she said wetly, her dark red hair tucked behind her ears. “He’s going to be alright.”
“Ginny-don’t go feeling guilty,” Ron started, swallowing. “You were brilliant. You saved his bloody life-“
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re not making me feel any better. I was this close,” she held up her thumb and index finger, “to not getting it. I nearly failed. Some brewer I am. I can barely come up with a simple antidote.”
The last part came out muffled and soft, her face crumpling. Ron cautiously approached her, taking his younger sister in his long arms. “But the important thing is that you did it. He’s going to be fine.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke and she dabbed at her eye with the thoroughly stained handkerchief. Ron took out his wand and did a quick scourgify for her, a small act of kindness between brother and sister. Ginny gave a thick chuckle and hugged him a little more tightly.
In the silence of the still room Harry’s easy, regular breathing seemed to reverberate like a clear bell. A mild sense of peace filled her at having her older brother there to help sort everything out. Ronnie. Her favorite of all her siblings.
“Thank you,” she said, smoothing her hair back. “I just can’t help but feel like I failed him. Harry’s done so many things for me, and for our family...I just wanted to make sure that he was alright. I was so terrified that I wouldn’t get it in time and that it’d be all my fault.”
“It was my fault,” Ron said, stone-faced. He matched Ginny’s wide eyes with his own. “I was the one who told him to try talking with the gate. I was the one who thought it’d be okay to just go in-like nothing would happen,” he said bitterly, directing his gaze to the floor. “I kept pushing Harry to keep going because I was so damn sure that we’d found something-"
“Will you two stop blaming yourselves?” Harry said, his eyes half-open. “I think we can just chalk it up to a collective fuck up.”
Ginny rushed over but hesitated to take his hand, a question in her eyes.
“Come here, you,” he said, a small smile twisting his lips.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, holding his hand and carefully sinking down next to him on the mattress.
“I’ve had worse,” he said, his thumb stroking the top of her knuckles. “I think I owe both of you a 'thanks'.”
“'A thanks'? Are you sure you’ll all right?” Ron asked skeptically.
“I’m fine. You took me straight to St. Mungo’s even when I kept saying I was fine, and you brewed the potion that saved my life, so yes, I want to thank the both of you,” Harry said, looking from Ron to Ginny.
“Alright. But, mate, never let me talk you into doing anything ever again,” Ron warned, eliciting a chuckle from Harry.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ginny decided to stay the night with Harry instead of returning to the flat on Ash Street by herself, despite urgings from Ron that she was welcome to stay with him and Hermione and pressure from Harry that he would be just fine on his own until morning, and that she should go home and get a good night’s sleep. By the time Drummond, Ross, and the trainees had left it was nearly three, and Ron didn’t make it home to his flat until half-past, leaving Harry and Ginny to sleep during the early hours of the morning.
She curled up beside him in bed, much like she would have done if they had been at home as opposed to a hospital room. He slipped his arm around her waist and reached up to cup her cheek in his hands. She had always liked that his hands were a good deal larger than her own and quite masculine, course from years of Quidditch and full of sinewy strength.
“You saved me,” he said, his pale skin oddly visible in the lightless room. “I don’t know if anyone else could have done it. I’m thankful, and proud.”
Ginny felt like she should tell him that she didn’t deserve his praise, that she had nearly failed him and that she would’ve never forgiven herself if that had been the case, but she held back. Years before, Ginny had learned that she wasn’t doing herself any favors by being so forthcoming with boys, and Harry was not an exception. A trace of discomfort flew down her spine at the thought of Tom Riddle and her young, truthful heart. She shifted against him and bit her tongue, pressing her full breasts against his chest in lieu of honesty.
“What is it?” Harry asked, keenly observing her.
Ginny had begun noticing the looks that he gave her sometimes, probing, inquisitive looks that oddly reminded her of the desire to completely bear her soul to the diary, or the feeling she got when being carefully surveyed by Professor Dumbledore.
“Nothing,” she lied, pulling his arms around her. He was as warm and sturdy as always, the same rough, hot skin that had pinned her wrists against her pillow and teasingly pinched her nipples the night before.
Her body had got used to their pattern of sex in the evenings and she was weak in the face of desire. When he began to kiss the soft skin of her cheek, her neck, she began to feel a coil of excitement tense in the secret space between her legs in spite of the knowledge that Harry was far too ill to satisfy it. Her eyes fluttered closed, and for a moment Ginny was able to pretend that they were back in the privacy of their high-ceilinged flat with the whole evening before them.
Harry kissed her, his quick fingers brushing her hair away from her face. One of the things she’d learned about him when they had first started going out was that he had a thing for her long hair. She purposefully took it down for him every night, tugging it out of the neat plait she kept it in for work and letting it fall down her pale back, a red scarf fluttering in the breeze. The full softness of his mouth against hers reminded her of all the times he’d kissed her like that-firmly, searchingly-instead of the teasing he put her through every night.
The scratchy tug of his unshaved jaw against her cheek made her tense longingly, and Ginny could practically hear him smirking in the darkness. He took the lobe of her ear in his teeth and gently pulled.
“I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, promise,” he whispered, his hands reaching into her partially unbuttoned black dress.
“You’ll do no such thing,” she said, pointlessly fighting the knowing way that he held her breasts in his hands. “You’re supposed to rest.”
He shrugged and pinched her nipples, sucking on her lower lip as he slid his leg between hers. “Not stopping us now, is it? Besides, I’d like to see you go that long without it.”
“I can stand two days, thank you. It’s not impossible.”
“Alright then,” he said cheekily, covering her up and pulling away slightly. “I suppose I’ll hold you to it. Goodnight Ginny.”
She sighed and turned over, muttering something like “tosser” as she did so.
“I love you too,” he deadpanned, a protective arm encircling her waist.
PART FOUR: EROS
The packet of clear, unused syringes innocently sat on the coffee table next to Harry’s vial of antidote, glinting artfully off the shallow sunlight that peered in through the sitting room windows. Still slightly achy, he flipped through the pages of Quidditch International without much interest, bored but still tired, breezing past adds for the new Dragonfly and an upbeat photo spread of the Brazilian team. Ginny entered the sitting room with two cups of tea in her hands, joining him on the sofa and propping her feet up on the cluttered hardwood table.
“Anything good?” she asked, sipping at the lemon-scented tea.
Harry shrugged. “Not really. There’s a bit about Gwenog Jones signing on as part of the coaching team for England, but that’s not a surprise.”
Hollyhead was Ginny’s favorite team, much to Ron’s disapproval, and it was no secret that she followed their players in the papers. Harry had taken her to one of their games last fall and they’d both yelled themselves hoarse by the end of it-Harry cheering for Puddlemere and Oliver Wood and Ginny for Gwenog and the Harpies.
“Let's see then,” she said, taking the magazine and turning to the back section with the smaller articles.
He watched her face change as she read, memorizing the small worry lines that formed around her mouth and eyes while she concentrated, the way her lips pursed into a little bud when she was deep in thought. Harry sipped his tea and stretched his mildly sore legs, thinking about the time of his last injection. He had nearly thirty minutes before he would need another, and after that any residual pain or discomfort he was feeling would be alleviated for a good five-to-six hours.
Sitting his cup down on a copy of The Stranger that he’d borrowed from Hermione, Harry slumped farther down in his seat, fighting the desire to close his eyes. He settled for resting his head on Ginny’s shoulder instead, and he felt her adjust underneath him, her skin warm against his cool cheek. He felt her glance sideways at him, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. He licked his lips and thought about how nice it would be to kiss her, or to pull her jumper off and make out for the whole lazy, quiet afternoon with her naked skin against his.
“What?” she asked, finishing the article and letting the slick magazine paper fall to her lap. “You’re being way too lovey to be my Harry.”
“Too lovey? I’m just resting my head on your shoulder,” he defended, his warm hand resting on her thigh.
“You never do that,” Ginny said, a playful tone to her voice.
“I’m sick,” he offered. “And tired. And I want your attention.”
“Okay. You’ve got it,” she chuckled, tossing Quidditch International on the floor under the coffee table.
“Good,” Harry said, turning to face her and slowly kissing her. She warmly responded, tugging on the hair at the base of his neck and sliding her tongue across his lower lip. Casually, gently, he eased her downward, pressing her back into the soft cushions on the couch and easing himself on top of her body, his hips resting in the cradle between her legs. Ginny sighed as he kissed her chest, his hands underneath her jumper stroking her sides, his thumb circling the dip of her hip bone.
One of her soft hands crept underneath the lining of his navy auror T-shirt, ghosting over his back and shoulders, her hand knotting a soothing trail across his skeletal muscles. Harry ran his tongue over hers, his hips shamelessly rolling against her center while her palm brushed his lower stomach, fingering the thin trail of dark hair that descended beneath the waistband of his jeans. He felt his cock twitch at this teasing contact and actively bit back a moan while he slid his hands underneath her jumper, pushing past her bra to her round breasts.
Ginny gripped his bum and pressed him against her, and he could feel himself harden, in spite of the extra fabric they were both still wearing while she arched her hips upwards. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to her mouth, her soft, keening cries ringing like thunderclouds in the silent afternoon.
Before he could actually work her top off the sound of the Floo flaring to life startled them apart from each other while Hermione clamored out of the fireplace.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she said, a surprised, hesitant expression on her face.
Ginny blushed a vibrant pink while Harry sniggered. “C’mon Hermione, nothing you haven’t witnessed before,” he said, grabbing his cup of tea to have something to do with his hands, memories of his best friend walking in on him and Ginny last year at George and Angelina’s Christmas party flashing through his mind.
“I can come back later,” Hermione offered, still pointedly looking at the empty space above his shoulder rather than meeting his eyes.
“It’s fine, really,” Ginny said, composing herself. “How about I get you some tea?”
“Oh, thanks,” she replied, taking a seat in the vacant winged-back chair facing the window. “I really am sorry for interrupting.”
He brushed it off, running a hand through his hair while Ginny put the kettle on in the kitchen. “It’s not a big deal. I’m really not supposed to be doing anything like that for a bit anyway,” he explained, offhandedly gesturing to the potion and syringes on the table.
“How long will you be taking your antidote?” Hermione asked.
“Just for the next day or so, then I’ll be fully recovered,” he said.
Ginny returned with a cup of fresh tea for Hermione and sat down next to Harry on the sofa, drawing her legs underneath her like a young colt. “Did you take the day off?” she asked.
“I wasn’t scheduled to be in today,” Hermione said. “And Rodger Drummond wouldn’t let Ron come in to the office, even to just do a bit of paperwork. He said he needed to rest after staying up all night.”
“He’s right,” Ginny agreed. “Ron didn’t leave till after three in the morning. He would have been totally useless at a desk.”
She nodded and sipped her lemon tea, a rouge strand of her hair falling out of the bun she’d wrangled it into. “He’s asleep at the moment. I’m surprised to see that you’re awake, truthfully.”
Harry shrugged, blinking his admittedly tired eyes. “I’m too sore to sleep.”
“Isn’t there something he can take for that?” Hermione probed, looking to one and then the other.
“It’ll be much less noticeable after this next injection,” Ginny said soothingly, taking his hand. “It’s about time for that, actually. Do you want to go ahead and give it a go?”
“Sure,” he relented, reaching for the thick length of rubber he’d been using for a tourniquet. “Want to tie me off?”
She made quick work of his arm, synching the band tight around his left bicep while he rhythmically squeezed his fist, bringing his ropelike veins to the surface.
“You have such prominent veins,” Ginny observed, loading one of the new, clean syringes with antivenom and a nerve restoration draught.
Hermione made a face and excused herself to the kitchen in pursuit of a biscuit, but Harry suspected that she was more than likely just put off by the sight of needles.
“I can do it if you have trouble,” he offered, watching her contemplate the already bruised marks on his arm.
“I’ll be alright,” Ginny said, settling on an untouched region in the inner crook of his elbow. “Ah,” she sounded, seeing the red flare of blood in the glass tube. “There we go.”
The odd stinging was over within seconds, and after a quick clotting spell his arm was tentatively healed. “You can come back in the room, Hermione. Needles are away,” Harry joked.
“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” she said, a few more strands escaping from their pins as she returned to her seat. A smile lit Ginny’s eyes at this admission, and he chose not to tease her too much, the steady rushing of relaxation arching through his neck and spine.
~~~~~~~~~~
Lanolin watched her from the open window, her long brown tail swishing agitatedly from her perch on the sill while Ginny charmed the dishes to wash themselves and straightened up the kitchen. The velvety, lavender sky was smooth outside the kitchen window, and she hesitated to close it, savoring the warm brush of spring air that had just begun to creep into London. She dried her hands on a kitchen towel and tried not to feel disappointed when Lanolin pounced to a ledge below in search of an alley mouse.
“Harry,” she called, shutting the window with a flick from her wand.
“In here,” he said, the sound suggesting that he was in their bedroom. Ginny followed his voice and peered around the doorway, watching while he cleaned up from what looked like his most recent injection.
“Feel any better?” she asked.
“Loads,” he said, yanking off his T-shirt and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“Good.”
He rolled his shoulders, the tension in his body slowly uncoiling. It was impossible not to watch-her heart picked up in her chest and the room felt perceptively hotter, the thrill of being exposed to something adult piercing her like a flaming rod. Subtly, she eased into the room, Harry watching her through the corner of his dark eyes, his jaw outlined in the half-light while her mind raced through all the times they’d danced around each other like this, and all the times they hadn’t.
She sat down next to him, her thigh burning with the hint of contact. Her mind rationalized that they had been through this over and over, done nearly everything two heterosexual humans could do in terms of sex, but her hyper-awareness persisted like she was still an aching teenager, blossoming across her thighs and through her pelvis.
Ginny reached out a small hand, sliding it over the cuff of his shoulder, the taunt plane of his back. “Any pain?”
His hand fisted on the edge of mattress, but she didn’t get the impression that it was due to discomfort. “None.”
Acting counter to his character, Harry didn’t wait for her to make the first move. He kissed her with an open mouth, tongue sliding over her lower lip while his large, pale hands eased her downwards, edging underneath the hem of her jumper and over the curve of her hip. Her eyes were shut but she felt the shift in gravity when her back hit the mattress, his lips on her neck. She wormed her hands between them and made short work of her jeans, unclasping the button and tugging the zipper down.
He pulled away from her and tossed his wand and glasses on the end table before piercing her with an intending look that shuddered through her straight to her core. Ginny leaned back on her forearms while he eased her jeans down her legs; her breath caught when his hand trailed against her inner thigh, his nail digging a sharp, vertical line along her white skin.
Harry unbuckled his belt and worked his trousers off, joining a now topless Ginny on the bed.
She wanted to say I’ve missed you, but they had been together all day, and even if he had taken it to mean I’ve missed this instead, in reality, it hadn’t been that long since the last time they shagged. But the threat of nearly loosing him forever had made her ache with emotion, and her limbs were burning with the desire to release it.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” he said, his hands tracing the hourglass of her waist. “You saved my life after I was the stupidest prat in the world and you still want to be with me.”
“Shut up,” Ginny urged, her freckled wrist disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants, her fingers curling around his erection in a firm, silken grip. His eyes squeezed shut and she urged herself closer to his body, pressing her breasts against his chest.
He unhooked her bra in an easy, deft motion that he’d perfected over the years, pushing the fabric away from her skin and teasing her nipple with his thumb and forefinger.
Harry slipped out of his boxers while she shed the remains of her undergarments, dropping her knickers to the floor and climbing on top of her naked boyfriend. She could feel his cock pressing against her lower stomach, tantalizingly close. His hands streaked a trail between her legs and straight to her clit, rubbing in slow circles until she was useless with tension.
“C’mon,” he said, his fingers in her cunt, arching forward against the wall of her pelvis. She bit her lower lip between her teeth and rolled off him.
“Please,” Ginny breathed, pulling him on top of her. Harry positioned himself between her folds and thrust inwards in a quick rolling motion that made her toes curl.
Oh fuck, she thought, sensations from being filled after what felt like an eternity of emptiness rocketing around in her brain. The deliberate, pounding rush of his breath against her ear and his hair clenched in her fists and the softness of her chest molding into the hardness of his roiled through her over and over again like a drum beat.
“Oh God,” Harry whispered, his lips curving along her neck. The evening swallowed them in cool, soft blackness, the heat of her core a tiny flame in the dark.
END
Title: Atropos
Author/Artist: luna_plath
Pairing: Harry/Ginny, background Ron/Hermione
Rating: NC-17
Genres: thriller, romance, angst
Word Count: just under 8,000 words
Summary: She desperately wanted to lay down next to him and take his hand, to beg him to please wake up, to please be okay, to stop pretending, but the problem didn’t work like that. Harry is brought in to St. Mungo’s after an auror mission gone wrong, and it’s up to Ginny, a potions expert at the Ministry, to save her boyfriend’s life.
Author Notes: A big thank you to sherylyn for being such a helpful extra set of eyes on this project and to flyingcarpet for being such a great mod. I tried to incorporate all of alita258's prompts (sexy, dark, potions, Harry being a tease, dialogue) and I hope you're satisfied with the outcome.
PART ONE: NYX
Evening in Ashworth Square was always a little darker than the rest of London. Most of the witches and wizards that lived in the slightly dodgy magical neighborhood guarded their residences with Notice Me Not spells, making the whole of the community a rather muted place to look at. The streets and sidewalks were not well kept; there were bits of litter, garbage, and broken glass in most of the alleyways, and along Ash Street proper Ginny caught the sound of several nearby dogs barking threateningly and a couple having a row in a nearby townhouse.
She walked past the grey stoop that preceded the brick street front of her own flat, removing the key she’d clutched the whole way home in her left hand. Tottering old Mrs. Blanchford, the owner of Number 7 Ash Street, had left the gas lamps burning in the hallway, mindful of the time that Ginny usually got off of work. A deep brown cat peered at her from the stairs, loping towards her when she kneeled down to stroke underneath its chin.
“Hello Lanolin,” Ginny cooed. Mrs. Blanchford proudly owned three or four cats that wandered around the apartment house, and she had taken a liking to the sveltely Havana Brown.
Harry had been probing her for months now about how she would feel if they got a dog, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d wanted a cat ever since she’d been a little girl at The Burrow. Her mother had warned that having a pet cat in the same house as Fred and George would be unfairly traumatizing (to the animal, not her brothers), so they had never got one, despite her frequent begging.
Lanolin blinked her large, yellow eyes at Ginny and purred.
“Well, come on then,” she said, climbing the stairs while the cat prowled beside her. The flat that she shared with Harry was on the third floor, with a soft bed and a hot cup of tea within its capabilities. Although they lived together he was often called out on long assignments, leaving Ginny to look after things by herself, which she didn’t mind. Living with six brothers had taught her how to keep house well enough, and the upkeep for the two of them was usually minimal.
The brown cat slipped through the door after her as she toed out of her black winter boots and closed the door. Ginny tapped her wand against the hall lamp, causing it to glow cheerfully. The mirror next to the coat rack gave a low whistle.
“My, you’re looking knackered this evening,” it wheezed.
She ran her fingers tiredly over her impossibly long red hair. “Thanks.”
“I’m sure it’s been a long day,” the mirror dryly assuaged.
In truth, her day had been quite long and tedious. Ginny worked for the Illegal and Illicit Potions Maintenance Team, a sublevel organization of the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. She enjoyed her job as a brew analyzer and poison expert; the potions she got to work with were usually interesting and challenging, but sometimes there were slow days in the office where she didn’t get to actually work with brews. Today had been one of them. She’d spent the majority of her time in the office getting caught up on writing reports and finalizing paperwork for one of her recent projects, and after staring at rolls of parchment inked in Gaspar’s dreadful handwriting her head was starting to hurt.
Lanolin happily curled up in a wingback armchair while Ginny put the kettle on for tea, shaking her waist-length hair out of the loose plait she’d pulled it into while she’d been at work. She sat at the kitchen table in her black dress and nylon stockings, sorting through the post that had been delivered while she was away. A letter from her Aunt Muriel that she was putting off reading, the latest issue of Quidditch International, and the newest catalogue of merchandise from Weasley Wizard Wheezes, courtesy of her brother George.
Just as the kettle began to issue the tell tale jet of steam from its spout, a roaring that she associated with Floo travel sounded from the sitting room. Ginny swished her wand, sending the kettle to a hot mat she’d placed on the counter, and walked into the living room, only to find Gaspar’s head sticking out of the emerald-flamed fire.
“Weasley!” he sputtered. “You better come quick-to St. Mungo’s. It’s Potter, he’s in a bad way, had a nasty poison encounter-“
“Harry?” she asked, already dashing for her shoes and coat. “What happened?”
“Neurotoxic snake venom.”
“I’ll meet you there,” she said determinedly, her hand clutched around her wand.
----------
Ginny Apparated into the waiting room of St. Mungo’s with a sharp pop, dashing to the staircase where Gaspar was waiting.
“He’s on the second floor,” the middle-aged wizard explained, rushing Ginny to the same ward where her father had been bedridden many Christmases before. “Very dark magic, apparently. Only the worst kind of magic requires poisonous snake venom,” he said conspiratorially.
“Inferious transformations, your normal magical snakes,” she said, her mind flying through any spell, potion, or transformation that required venom. “Have they brought in anyone from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?”
“It wasn’t a live snake,” Gaspar explained. “Some kind of location-specific guarding spell ...”
Her chest aching from the exertion, she let Gaspar steer her into a functional medical room without any other patients. Three healers, Head Auror Rodger Drummond, her brother Ron, two trainee aurors, and Ron and Harry’s coworker Ross Tatton were crowded around Harry’s recumbent form. His eyes were barely open, and a thin sheen of sweat covered his entire body.
“Harry!” she said, breathless from running but still wide-eyed. “Is he all right? When did this happen?”
Drummand cocked his head in Ron’s direction while leaning on his blackthorn walking stick. “Weasley-you were there. Explain the magic around the oubliette.”
Ron swallowed and took a breath, clenching and unclenching his fists. “We’d gone to check out this abandoned ruin that some of the locals had called in, a place to do with the Ethelind murders, and when we were searching around the basement area we found the trap door and it was just full of magic-Ross did an identification spell and it showed something sort of . . . slithering, you know, like a snake, but we didn’t realize it was a spell. I, well, Harry and I both thought that it would be a good idea for him to check it out, him being a parstlemouth and all, so he did a few spells to detect any obvious dark magic . . . nothing came up!” He ran his hands through his hair, his face completely white. “None of us realized it was being protected with bloody venom wards!”
Drummond was keeping himself together much more effectively than Ron, who seemed to be feeling guiltier by the minute. “But how was Potter actually cursed, Weasley? How were the wards activated? Did he actually speak in parstletongue?”
Ginny began to work her hair into a tight French pla, pulling it away from her face while her heart pounded out a steady thump, thump, thump in her tight chest. Ron opened his mouth and waited a second before speaking.
“He...he spoke to it. I don’t know what he said, it comes out like hissing, but he said that it seemed alright. The trap door opened-with magic, mind you, none of us touched it-and we did a lumos to see down in it, and there is definitely something down in that oubliette, even if we didn’t get to it, but as soon as his hand came in contact with the wood around the mouth of the opening... “
No one spoke for a moment. The semi-circle of Harry’s watchers and coworkers were formed around him like sentinels.
“Well,” Drummond barked, looking to the three healers who had been listening to Ron’s account, “have you got any idea of what to do? This is the savior of the Wizarding world, not some ruddy underling-"
One of the Healers stepped forward, a clipboard clutched in her tense hands. “We’ve taken a blood sample, but the toxins in Mr. Potter’s system don’t match any of the antidotes we have on stock-Ms. Weasley-"
“Will be needing that blood sample, a cauldron, some glass test plates, and your strongest gloves,” Ginny finished, moving toward Harry, who now had his eyes closed. His breathing was much shallower than when she had first arrived, which frightened her more than she would ever admit. “And if you have any literature on snake venom please pull it,” she added.
The other two Healers nearly jumped at her request, hurrying to fetch the required materials.
As if her voice were being spoken by a separate entity-and she, Ginny, were sitting to the side and listening-she heard rather than felt herself explain the usual course of action for contact with neurotoxic venom. “His breathing will continue to decrease unless we find an antidote, and quickly, he’s already been exposed for far too much time, but there’s still a lot we can do. Set up a monitoring spell for his respiratory system and perform an obligatory Breathing Charm if necessary.”
She stood the closest to Harry, her shoulders tensely hunched while she thought as hard as she possibly could, trying to remember any scrap of useful information she had ever heard during the two years she’d been in training for her job after Hogwarts, or any of the outside material she’d read on venom since that time.
Freezing her movements, Ginny said, “Harry was exposed to Basalisk venom when he was twelve. Have you written that down?” she asked, making eye contact with the younger female Healer who, coincidentally, had pale green eyes. She nodded, surprised at being addressed directly, her blonde ponytail swinging.
“He was cured with phoenix tears,” Ginny continued, “but he may have some immunity to whatever venom was used in that curse, or it could make him more vulnerable, there’s no way to tell just yet.”
One of the younger Healers handed her the blood sample and she strode purposefully to the worktable that had been set up, already casting spells to analyze the venom configuration while the same Healer, a man that looked to be around her age, set up the cauldron for her.
Ginny pulled on the gloves that had been laid out on the table and cracked the seal of the sample vial with a satisfying pop.
“We’ll let you work, Ms. Weasley,” Drummond said, rising with the aid of his blackthorn stick and roughly steering a frightened-looking Ron out of the room. “Come on you lot, get out of her dammed way,” he called to the rest of the aurors, jolting them to attention.
Ross Tatton and the trainees followed suit, casting a few last worried looks towards Harry’s form on the hospital bed.
Before the door closed, just as Ginny’s sample was glowing a highly acidic green, she could hear Drumond assuring one of the trainees that, “Potter will be just fine with his girl here to put him right.”
PART TWO: HYPNOS
Three years ago, when Ginny had been just a trainee at the Potion Brewer’s Academy, one of her professors had explained that poisons, as a group, usually weren’t deadly unless taken in large doses.
Until now, she’d agreed.
With the three other Healers working around her and her ears straining to hear Harry’s labored breathing, she felt the ache of her head intensify under the pressure. Ginny spread the sample venom on the glass test plate with a silver knife and added her reagent, breathing away from the scent of fruit and poison that hung in the air.
Definitely not an alkaline, she decided after running a simple carbon-based test, and not related to any North American species...
She had samples from all the major venomous snake families in the world lined up on the worktable. By determining the chemical composition of each venom family she would eventually be able to find one similar to the composition of Harry’s curse venom, which would lead to either an established antidote or one that she could brew more easily than constructing one completely on her own. Creating a new antidote would require time as well as trial and error-three things for which her current situation did not allow.
“It’s an Elapid,” she said to the blonde female healer who was scribbling down all of Ginny’s results. “Merlin, that family includes 325 different species-have you heard from the venom bank yet?”
The senior healer answered Ginny’s question in a controlled voice. “They confirmed our earlier message but their samples haven’t arrived yet.”
“I’ll need them as soon as they get here, as many from the Elapid family as they have.”
“Elapids?” the younger male healer asked, his curly brown hair frazzled-looking. “Aren’t cobras part of that family?”
“Yes,” she answered, testing more venom samples on circular plates of glass. Each test required three drops of a pomegranate and aconite mixture before it would turn an identifying shade of green. “As are the Big Four, the most common venomous snakes in India.”
“How would a wizard in England get a hold of Indian snake venom?” the brunet Healer asked.
“There’s a huge European market for illegal potions ingredients,” Ginny generalized, distracted.
Whether the healer was satisfied with her explanation or not, she didn’t care. During the thirty seconds it took for her test plate to change color she gave Harry another concerned glance, wishing she could hold his hand or touch his cheek-anything besides frantically testing one sample after another and coming up with types of venom that were not the source of his poisoning.
Preparing another slide, Ginny tried not to think about the fact that the man on the hospital bed only three feet away from her was the same man who had undressed her the night before and kissed the soft inside of her thigh, the same man who had rescued her from the Chamber of Secrets when she was a little girl and fucked her in her childhood bedroom when she was seventeen. A sharp, stinging harshness began at the back of her eyes and it took several shallow breaths to quell it while she worked. The odd separation began to occur again and it was a different being who doused the slide with pomegranate and aconite while she curled up to the side, like the soul of her eleven-year-old self, folding up quiet and small beside the presence of Tom Riddle while he dragged her through the hallways of the school.
She blinked against the blurry outline of tears and willed herself not to cry. Harry needed her, and she wouldn’t do him any good falling all to pieces even while the words widow and failure flashed through her mind. She thought of Blaisé Zabini and his rich, lonely mother. Would people say the same things about her if she failed to brew an antidote? That Weasley girl was always popular with boys, a nasty voice in her head taunted, and she couldn’t just have any, could she? No-she went after Harry Potter, of all people. The nerve. And you saw how long he lasted with her.
Before she could reach for another slide one of the previous tests glowed a startling acid green.
“Bungarus,” she said, halting her movements. She had the family and genus, which narrowed things considerably. All that was left for her to identify was the species, but after that she would more than likely have to brew his cure and there wasn’t much time left before the effects of the neurotoxin became fatal. “Write that down. I really need those samples from the venom bank-“
While the green-eyed Healer scribbled on her growing scroll of parchment the young man who had asked about the Elapids ran in with a large wooden crate that was marked: St. Mungo’s Venom Bank.
“Samples,” he panted, hefting the parcel onto a nearby bench.
Ginny didn’t wait for him to open the box; she sternly swished her wand and the samples of venom that had been collected from the Burgarus genus landed in front of her.
“Help me with these,” she snapped at the male Healer, opening bottles and preparing twelve glass test plates.
“Yes, sorry,” he apologized, hurrying over and starting more tests alongside her, his movements jumpy.
While she spread B. andamanensis venom over the glass with her silver knife, she asked the senior Healer, “How much time do we have left?”
The longer Harry went without antivenom the closer he got to complete neurotoxicity-death, essentially-and the longer it took for her to determine the structure of the chemical in the venom, the longer it would take him to wake up once he’d been administered an antidote.
“An hour-and-a-half,” she answered in a voice that Ginny supposed was intended to sound gentle. She took a few more shallow breaths and lowered three drops of reagent onto B. caeruleus venom while the frazzled male healer--Whitley, judging by his nametag--did the same to a sample he was working with.
The answer struck Ginny like a blow to the head. In an hour-and-a-half, Harry would be dead, unless she was clever enough to find a solution. If she couldn’t brew an antidote then the love of her life would be dead due to her own incompetence. Determination surged through her in spite of her fear and Ginny firmly set her jaw, sheer will keeping her from crying.
The blood pounded in her head and she closed her eyes, massaging her temples while she listened to the sizzling of the reaction over Harry’s increasingly labored breathing. She desperately wanted to lie down next to him and take his hand, to beg him to please wake up, to please be okay, to stop pretending, but the problem didn’t work like that. Ginny looked down through her bleary eyes and nearly screamed when she saw the test venom for B. caeruleus settle at a bright acidic green.
“It’s B. caeruleus-the common Indian Krait-do you have an antivenom for that? Do I need to start brewing? How much time is left?”
Her barrage of questions seemed to have startled the three Healers, who were now quickly searching for her answers. The blonde witch with eyes like Harry’s flipped through a couple of scrolls on the work bench and emerged with a list of the antivenom that they had in stock, her round face pinched in anxiety.
“There’s no antivenom but there’s brewing instructions for all the species and subspecies of the Krait family,” Ginny said, thinking aloud. “I need a toad spleen, three unicorn hairs, spring water, and four leaves from the ephedra plant.”
The two younger Healers stared at her, wide-eyed.
“And I need them NOW!” she finished, clearing a space on the work table while Whitley and the young woman popped in across the hall to the store cupboard.
“Fifty minutes,” the senior Healer said, wiping Harry’s face with a warm flannel and covering him with another blanket.
“Is he okay?” Ginny asked thickly, her shoulders tense while she filled the cauldron at her worktable with spring water and started a low fire underneath it.
“He’ll be fine, Mrs. Weasley, just as soon as that antidote is ready,” she said kindly.
When the spring water reached the appropriate temperature she began to add the unicorn hairs one by one. She wanted to thank the senior Healer for her kindness and her patience, but Ginny didn’t think, despite her gratitude, that now was the most appropriate time. The golden strands slowly dissolved in the hot spring water, the innocent bubbling feeling somehow like a subtle mockery.
The room was tense and quiet while she brewed Harry’s antidote, stirring the mixture for exact intervals. Years of training at the academy and experience at the department had given her confidence, but Ginny took extra care to execute the brewing exactly as the instructions specified. If she didn’t brew the antidote correctly then the consequences would be life altering. A lackluster potion might keep him alive, but he could be paralyzed, or permanently insane, or unresponsive for the rest of his life. Her hands slippery with sweat, she gave the potion a last clockwise stir. Slowly, the mixture darkened from a soft white to a deep, shinning navy that was rich enough to mimic the night sky at dusk.
She stepped back from the cauldron and lowered the heat of the flames to an intermediate temperature, removing her borrowed gloves as she did so, her neck and forehead slick with anxious sweat. It pooled in the dip between her breasts, the lean curve of her spine.
“It’ll have to be injected intravenously,” she said, crossing her arms over her stomach and sinking down into the straight-backed chair next to Harry’s bed. She reached for the end of her plait and began to pull at the tie that held it in place. “He’s been exposed to the poison for too long for any other route of administration to be effective.”
The senior Healer calmly set down her clipboard and selected a syringe from a tray, filling it with rich, navy antidote from the cauldron and approaching Harry’s bedside with the sharp end pointing upward like a wand.
“Mr. Potter will be recovered in half a day’s time,” she soothed, turning his head to the side and aiming the long needle for a soft spot in his neck. “You did wonderfully, dear.”
Ginny covered her face with her hands while her shoulders silently began to shake, the muscles in her face tense while hot, wet tear began to stream down her cheeks. She could feel the eyes of the two younger Healers watching her cautiously.
“T-thank you for t-taking such good care of him,” she said, wiping her runny mascara off her eyes with the back of her hand. “I a-appreciate it more t-than I c-can even say.”
PART THREE: THANATOS
“You can visit him in a moment, sir. Mrs. Weasley is quite distressed.”
Distressed. That word bounced off the impossibly clean halls of the hospital, flying back at Ron like a curse. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as his heart shamefully continued to beat while Drummond rose from his seat with the assistance of his blackthorn stick.
The senior Healer wore a kind expression for the assembled Aurors and associates who waited outside of Harry’s room in the closed ward. Ron gave a half-step forward, his concern etched on his freckled face. “But he’s going to be all right? Ginny was able to find an antidote?”
“Yes, Mr. Weasley. He will be just fine, but your sister will probably need a moment. Mr. Potter is not conscious in any regard, although I’m sure he’ll wake within the hour.”
“You can sit down, Weasley. He’s not going anywhere,” Drummond said from his reclaimed seat against the wall, his walking stick upright underneath his hands. He looked to the senior Healer through sharp, yellow-ish eyes. “Will he make a full recovery?’
“Yes, he’ll recover, thanks to Mrs. Weasley’s efforts. But he will need to rest for a few days.”
“Good, good,” Drummond replied. “We’ll visit in a few minutes. Give it a wait.”
The other Aurors and trainees sat down with the shaky sense that they would be jolted again, adrenaline high despite staying up until two in the morning after a mission. Normally, Ron would have been yawning and stretching to stay awake, the kind of tired-crazy that he and Harry had become painfully familiar with over the past few years with the Aurors. But now his hands were clasped in front of him, his long forearms tensely resting on his knees while his brain whirled with attentiveness. The bright hospital lights were disorienting and full of shapes that he was probably imagining in his anxiety to see his friend, his brain fuzzy around the details of how and why he was here, confident only in the fact that his best mate was laid up in a hospital bed at his suggestion.
Guiltily, the word idiot looped in his head, repeating itself against a backdrop of all the times Harry had saved his life, his father’s, Ginny’s. Idiot idiot idiot.
“I’m going to check on Ginny,” Ron said, forcing himself to move at a normal pace. Drummond granted him an approving grunt and told Ross and the trainees to hold off.
He softly knocked on the door before letting himself in, closing the door behind him.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ginny had a crumpled handkerchief clutched in her hand, one of the thoughtful gifts her mother had made for her last Christmas. A luxury. She had always wondered what good an embroidered handkerchief would do, what use she could find for one. Thanks Mum, she thought, just the thing for when I nearly kill my boyfriend. Glad you thought of such a useful present. Her initials were stitched in the corner, G. M. W. standing out bright and red against the mascara-stained fabric.
“Hi,” she said wetly, her dark red hair tucked behind her ears. “He’s going to be alright.”
“Ginny-don’t go feeling guilty,” Ron started, swallowing. “You were brilliant. You saved his bloody life-“
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re not making me feel any better. I was this close,” she held up her thumb and index finger, “to not getting it. I nearly failed. Some brewer I am. I can barely come up with a simple antidote.”
The last part came out muffled and soft, her face crumpling. Ron cautiously approached her, taking his younger sister in his long arms. “But the important thing is that you did it. He’s going to be fine.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke and she dabbed at her eye with the thoroughly stained handkerchief. Ron took out his wand and did a quick scourgify for her, a small act of kindness between brother and sister. Ginny gave a thick chuckle and hugged him a little more tightly.
In the silence of the still room Harry’s easy, regular breathing seemed to reverberate like a clear bell. A mild sense of peace filled her at having her older brother there to help sort everything out. Ronnie. Her favorite of all her siblings.
“Thank you,” she said, smoothing her hair back. “I just can’t help but feel like I failed him. Harry’s done so many things for me, and for our family...I just wanted to make sure that he was alright. I was so terrified that I wouldn’t get it in time and that it’d be all my fault.”
“It was my fault,” Ron said, stone-faced. He matched Ginny’s wide eyes with his own. “I was the one who told him to try talking with the gate. I was the one who thought it’d be okay to just go in-like nothing would happen,” he said bitterly, directing his gaze to the floor. “I kept pushing Harry to keep going because I was so damn sure that we’d found something-"
“Will you two stop blaming yourselves?” Harry said, his eyes half-open. “I think we can just chalk it up to a collective fuck up.”
Ginny rushed over but hesitated to take his hand, a question in her eyes.
“Come here, you,” he said, a small smile twisting his lips.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, holding his hand and carefully sinking down next to him on the mattress.
“I’ve had worse,” he said, his thumb stroking the top of her knuckles. “I think I owe both of you a 'thanks'.”
“'A thanks'? Are you sure you’ll all right?” Ron asked skeptically.
“I’m fine. You took me straight to St. Mungo’s even when I kept saying I was fine, and you brewed the potion that saved my life, so yes, I want to thank the both of you,” Harry said, looking from Ron to Ginny.
“Alright. But, mate, never let me talk you into doing anything ever again,” Ron warned, eliciting a chuckle from Harry.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ginny decided to stay the night with Harry instead of returning to the flat on Ash Street by herself, despite urgings from Ron that she was welcome to stay with him and Hermione and pressure from Harry that he would be just fine on his own until morning, and that she should go home and get a good night’s sleep. By the time Drummond, Ross, and the trainees had left it was nearly three, and Ron didn’t make it home to his flat until half-past, leaving Harry and Ginny to sleep during the early hours of the morning.
She curled up beside him in bed, much like she would have done if they had been at home as opposed to a hospital room. He slipped his arm around her waist and reached up to cup her cheek in his hands. She had always liked that his hands were a good deal larger than her own and quite masculine, course from years of Quidditch and full of sinewy strength.
“You saved me,” he said, his pale skin oddly visible in the lightless room. “I don’t know if anyone else could have done it. I’m thankful, and proud.”
Ginny felt like she should tell him that she didn’t deserve his praise, that she had nearly failed him and that she would’ve never forgiven herself if that had been the case, but she held back. Years before, Ginny had learned that she wasn’t doing herself any favors by being so forthcoming with boys, and Harry was not an exception. A trace of discomfort flew down her spine at the thought of Tom Riddle and her young, truthful heart. She shifted against him and bit her tongue, pressing her full breasts against his chest in lieu of honesty.
“What is it?” Harry asked, keenly observing her.
Ginny had begun noticing the looks that he gave her sometimes, probing, inquisitive looks that oddly reminded her of the desire to completely bear her soul to the diary, or the feeling she got when being carefully surveyed by Professor Dumbledore.
“Nothing,” she lied, pulling his arms around her. He was as warm and sturdy as always, the same rough, hot skin that had pinned her wrists against her pillow and teasingly pinched her nipples the night before.
Her body had got used to their pattern of sex in the evenings and she was weak in the face of desire. When he began to kiss the soft skin of her cheek, her neck, she began to feel a coil of excitement tense in the secret space between her legs in spite of the knowledge that Harry was far too ill to satisfy it. Her eyes fluttered closed, and for a moment Ginny was able to pretend that they were back in the privacy of their high-ceilinged flat with the whole evening before them.
Harry kissed her, his quick fingers brushing her hair away from her face. One of the things she’d learned about him when they had first started going out was that he had a thing for her long hair. She purposefully took it down for him every night, tugging it out of the neat plait she kept it in for work and letting it fall down her pale back, a red scarf fluttering in the breeze. The full softness of his mouth against hers reminded her of all the times he’d kissed her like that-firmly, searchingly-instead of the teasing he put her through every night.
The scratchy tug of his unshaved jaw against her cheek made her tense longingly, and Ginny could practically hear him smirking in the darkness. He took the lobe of her ear in his teeth and gently pulled.
“I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, promise,” he whispered, his hands reaching into her partially unbuttoned black dress.
“You’ll do no such thing,” she said, pointlessly fighting the knowing way that he held her breasts in his hands. “You’re supposed to rest.”
He shrugged and pinched her nipples, sucking on her lower lip as he slid his leg between hers. “Not stopping us now, is it? Besides, I’d like to see you go that long without it.”
“I can stand two days, thank you. It’s not impossible.”
“Alright then,” he said cheekily, covering her up and pulling away slightly. “I suppose I’ll hold you to it. Goodnight Ginny.”
She sighed and turned over, muttering something like “tosser” as she did so.
“I love you too,” he deadpanned, a protective arm encircling her waist.
PART FOUR: EROS
The packet of clear, unused syringes innocently sat on the coffee table next to Harry’s vial of antidote, glinting artfully off the shallow sunlight that peered in through the sitting room windows. Still slightly achy, he flipped through the pages of Quidditch International without much interest, bored but still tired, breezing past adds for the new Dragonfly and an upbeat photo spread of the Brazilian team. Ginny entered the sitting room with two cups of tea in her hands, joining him on the sofa and propping her feet up on the cluttered hardwood table.
“Anything good?” she asked, sipping at the lemon-scented tea.
Harry shrugged. “Not really. There’s a bit about Gwenog Jones signing on as part of the coaching team for England, but that’s not a surprise.”
Hollyhead was Ginny’s favorite team, much to Ron’s disapproval, and it was no secret that she followed their players in the papers. Harry had taken her to one of their games last fall and they’d both yelled themselves hoarse by the end of it-Harry cheering for Puddlemere and Oliver Wood and Ginny for Gwenog and the Harpies.
“Let's see then,” she said, taking the magazine and turning to the back section with the smaller articles.
He watched her face change as she read, memorizing the small worry lines that formed around her mouth and eyes while she concentrated, the way her lips pursed into a little bud when she was deep in thought. Harry sipped his tea and stretched his mildly sore legs, thinking about the time of his last injection. He had nearly thirty minutes before he would need another, and after that any residual pain or discomfort he was feeling would be alleviated for a good five-to-six hours.
Sitting his cup down on a copy of The Stranger that he’d borrowed from Hermione, Harry slumped farther down in his seat, fighting the desire to close his eyes. He settled for resting his head on Ginny’s shoulder instead, and he felt her adjust underneath him, her skin warm against his cool cheek. He felt her glance sideways at him, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. He licked his lips and thought about how nice it would be to kiss her, or to pull her jumper off and make out for the whole lazy, quiet afternoon with her naked skin against his.
“What?” she asked, finishing the article and letting the slick magazine paper fall to her lap. “You’re being way too lovey to be my Harry.”
“Too lovey? I’m just resting my head on your shoulder,” he defended, his warm hand resting on her thigh.
“You never do that,” Ginny said, a playful tone to her voice.
“I’m sick,” he offered. “And tired. And I want your attention.”
“Okay. You’ve got it,” she chuckled, tossing Quidditch International on the floor under the coffee table.
“Good,” Harry said, turning to face her and slowly kissing her. She warmly responded, tugging on the hair at the base of his neck and sliding her tongue across his lower lip. Casually, gently, he eased her downward, pressing her back into the soft cushions on the couch and easing himself on top of her body, his hips resting in the cradle between her legs. Ginny sighed as he kissed her chest, his hands underneath her jumper stroking her sides, his thumb circling the dip of her hip bone.
One of her soft hands crept underneath the lining of his navy auror T-shirt, ghosting over his back and shoulders, her hand knotting a soothing trail across his skeletal muscles. Harry ran his tongue over hers, his hips shamelessly rolling against her center while her palm brushed his lower stomach, fingering the thin trail of dark hair that descended beneath the waistband of his jeans. He felt his cock twitch at this teasing contact and actively bit back a moan while he slid his hands underneath her jumper, pushing past her bra to her round breasts.
Ginny gripped his bum and pressed him against her, and he could feel himself harden, in spite of the extra fabric they were both still wearing while she arched her hips upwards. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to her mouth, her soft, keening cries ringing like thunderclouds in the silent afternoon.
Before he could actually work her top off the sound of the Floo flaring to life startled them apart from each other while Hermione clamored out of the fireplace.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she said, a surprised, hesitant expression on her face.
Ginny blushed a vibrant pink while Harry sniggered. “C’mon Hermione, nothing you haven’t witnessed before,” he said, grabbing his cup of tea to have something to do with his hands, memories of his best friend walking in on him and Ginny last year at George and Angelina’s Christmas party flashing through his mind.
“I can come back later,” Hermione offered, still pointedly looking at the empty space above his shoulder rather than meeting his eyes.
“It’s fine, really,” Ginny said, composing herself. “How about I get you some tea?”
“Oh, thanks,” she replied, taking a seat in the vacant winged-back chair facing the window. “I really am sorry for interrupting.”
He brushed it off, running a hand through his hair while Ginny put the kettle on in the kitchen. “It’s not a big deal. I’m really not supposed to be doing anything like that for a bit anyway,” he explained, offhandedly gesturing to the potion and syringes on the table.
“How long will you be taking your antidote?” Hermione asked.
“Just for the next day or so, then I’ll be fully recovered,” he said.
Ginny returned with a cup of fresh tea for Hermione and sat down next to Harry on the sofa, drawing her legs underneath her like a young colt. “Did you take the day off?” she asked.
“I wasn’t scheduled to be in today,” Hermione said. “And Rodger Drummond wouldn’t let Ron come in to the office, even to just do a bit of paperwork. He said he needed to rest after staying up all night.”
“He’s right,” Ginny agreed. “Ron didn’t leave till after three in the morning. He would have been totally useless at a desk.”
She nodded and sipped her lemon tea, a rouge strand of her hair falling out of the bun she’d wrangled it into. “He’s asleep at the moment. I’m surprised to see that you’re awake, truthfully.”
Harry shrugged, blinking his admittedly tired eyes. “I’m too sore to sleep.”
“Isn’t there something he can take for that?” Hermione probed, looking to one and then the other.
“It’ll be much less noticeable after this next injection,” Ginny said soothingly, taking his hand. “It’s about time for that, actually. Do you want to go ahead and give it a go?”
“Sure,” he relented, reaching for the thick length of rubber he’d been using for a tourniquet. “Want to tie me off?”
She made quick work of his arm, synching the band tight around his left bicep while he rhythmically squeezed his fist, bringing his ropelike veins to the surface.
“You have such prominent veins,” Ginny observed, loading one of the new, clean syringes with antivenom and a nerve restoration draught.
Hermione made a face and excused herself to the kitchen in pursuit of a biscuit, but Harry suspected that she was more than likely just put off by the sight of needles.
“I can do it if you have trouble,” he offered, watching her contemplate the already bruised marks on his arm.
“I’ll be alright,” Ginny said, settling on an untouched region in the inner crook of his elbow. “Ah,” she sounded, seeing the red flare of blood in the glass tube. “There we go.”
The odd stinging was over within seconds, and after a quick clotting spell his arm was tentatively healed. “You can come back in the room, Hermione. Needles are away,” Harry joked.
“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” she said, a few more strands escaping from their pins as she returned to her seat. A smile lit Ginny’s eyes at this admission, and he chose not to tease her too much, the steady rushing of relaxation arching through his neck and spine.
~~~~~~~~~~
Lanolin watched her from the open window, her long brown tail swishing agitatedly from her perch on the sill while Ginny charmed the dishes to wash themselves and straightened up the kitchen. The velvety, lavender sky was smooth outside the kitchen window, and she hesitated to close it, savoring the warm brush of spring air that had just begun to creep into London. She dried her hands on a kitchen towel and tried not to feel disappointed when Lanolin pounced to a ledge below in search of an alley mouse.
“Harry,” she called, shutting the window with a flick from her wand.
“In here,” he said, the sound suggesting that he was in their bedroom. Ginny followed his voice and peered around the doorway, watching while he cleaned up from what looked like his most recent injection.
“Feel any better?” she asked.
“Loads,” he said, yanking off his T-shirt and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“Good.”
He rolled his shoulders, the tension in his body slowly uncoiling. It was impossible not to watch-her heart picked up in her chest and the room felt perceptively hotter, the thrill of being exposed to something adult piercing her like a flaming rod. Subtly, she eased into the room, Harry watching her through the corner of his dark eyes, his jaw outlined in the half-light while her mind raced through all the times they’d danced around each other like this, and all the times they hadn’t.
She sat down next to him, her thigh burning with the hint of contact. Her mind rationalized that they had been through this over and over, done nearly everything two heterosexual humans could do in terms of sex, but her hyper-awareness persisted like she was still an aching teenager, blossoming across her thighs and through her pelvis.
Ginny reached out a small hand, sliding it over the cuff of his shoulder, the taunt plane of his back. “Any pain?”
His hand fisted on the edge of mattress, but she didn’t get the impression that it was due to discomfort. “None.”
Acting counter to his character, Harry didn’t wait for her to make the first move. He kissed her with an open mouth, tongue sliding over her lower lip while his large, pale hands eased her downwards, edging underneath the hem of her jumper and over the curve of her hip. Her eyes were shut but she felt the shift in gravity when her back hit the mattress, his lips on her neck. She wormed her hands between them and made short work of her jeans, unclasping the button and tugging the zipper down.
He pulled away from her and tossed his wand and glasses on the end table before piercing her with an intending look that shuddered through her straight to her core. Ginny leaned back on her forearms while he eased her jeans down her legs; her breath caught when his hand trailed against her inner thigh, his nail digging a sharp, vertical line along her white skin.
Harry unbuckled his belt and worked his trousers off, joining a now topless Ginny on the bed.
She wanted to say I’ve missed you, but they had been together all day, and even if he had taken it to mean I’ve missed this instead, in reality, it hadn’t been that long since the last time they shagged. But the threat of nearly loosing him forever had made her ache with emotion, and her limbs were burning with the desire to release it.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” he said, his hands tracing the hourglass of her waist. “You saved my life after I was the stupidest prat in the world and you still want to be with me.”
“Shut up,” Ginny urged, her freckled wrist disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants, her fingers curling around his erection in a firm, silken grip. His eyes squeezed shut and she urged herself closer to his body, pressing her breasts against his chest.
He unhooked her bra in an easy, deft motion that he’d perfected over the years, pushing the fabric away from her skin and teasing her nipple with his thumb and forefinger.
Harry slipped out of his boxers while she shed the remains of her undergarments, dropping her knickers to the floor and climbing on top of her naked boyfriend. She could feel his cock pressing against her lower stomach, tantalizingly close. His hands streaked a trail between her legs and straight to her clit, rubbing in slow circles until she was useless with tension.
“C’mon,” he said, his fingers in her cunt, arching forward against the wall of her pelvis. She bit her lower lip between her teeth and rolled off him.
“Please,” Ginny breathed, pulling him on top of her. Harry positioned himself between her folds and thrust inwards in a quick rolling motion that made her toes curl.
Oh fuck, she thought, sensations from being filled after what felt like an eternity of emptiness rocketing around in her brain. The deliberate, pounding rush of his breath against her ear and his hair clenched in her fists and the softness of her chest molding into the hardness of his roiled through her over and over again like a drum beat.
“Oh God,” Harry whispered, his lips curving along her neck. The evening swallowed them in cool, soft blackness, the heat of her core a tiny flame in the dark.
END