Chance Encounters of the Close Kind

Ade woke the next day feeling very chipper and only mildly put out that he couldn\'t share his cot with Gin. Even waking up to John\'s slack jawed snoring couldn\'t put him out of his good mood.







He slid out of bed, showered and dressed in time for breakfast duty. Before this job he\'d only cooked when he was at his Tante\'s house so his first efforts were rusty and crude at best. But as time went on and he took refresher courses from his Tante, he became a damned good cook if he did say so himself. His ingredients were limited to what they could bring on the mission (which even still were fresh as opposed to canned like he\'d heard Muggles had to deal with on camping trips) but he made sure he kept it interesting for his teammates. Today was just an old fashioned fry up with eggs, tinned beans, fried tomatoes, bacon, toast, and coffee.







Slowly everyone stirred and woke to the smell of cooking food and eventually the camp was alive with chatter and laughter, the anticipation of a new challenge charging the air.







"Morning," he murmured to Gin when she finally emerged from her tent and sat next to him at the fire. She looked a little peaky which was most likely the morning sickness. He gave her temple a soft kiss and rubbed her back gently. "You ok? I made you some toast and there\'s some bacon if you can stomach it."





Ginny looked over to where Bill was watching them, then nodded. "Go ahead and make me a regular plate. I have some special tea that will fix this once I brew it. Fortunately, none of us Weasleys are morning people, so this won\'t look too unusual," she said with a shrug, ducking back in her tent for the ginger tea the medi-witch had recommended when she explained the problem.



When she came back out, she noticed the glares she was receiving from Tabby, and frowned, wanting to confront her, but not in front of the others. Heating her mug of water with a tap of her wand, she plopped in a tea bag (she\'d bought premeasured ones for the trip), and accepted a plate from Ade, drinking about half her tea before she took her first bite, but managing not to gag when she did so. Even if the runny egg was threatening to make her do just that.







Ade rolled his eyes at Gin\'s valiant attempt at not throwing up when she put the egg in her mouth and leaned over next to her. "Don\'t eat it if it grosses you out," he whispered.







Glancing over at Tabby, he noticed that her usual melancholy and moodiness had turned into outright hostility. It wasn\'t quite directed at him, but it was focused on Gin and that worried him. He was going to have to confront this, he realized, and clear the air between them. If Tabby was going to be angry, it should be at him and not Gin. "I\'ll be right back. I\'m going to talk to Tabby. I don\'t like that look in her eye," he whispered to Gin before standing and making his way over to the other girl.







"Can we talk?" he asked softly in such a way that the only answer could be yes.



Tabby looked up at him, the man she\'d wanted for more than a year now, the man she would have given anything to talk to before this, with a hint of trepidation. But his tone left no room for refusal. She didn\'t trust her voice, so instead she just nodded, looking away from his face as fast as she could. She wanted him to look at her with a burning glance, yes, but... not this kind of burning.





He glanced over at Gin, giving her a comforting smile as he and Tabby moved off a bit of a ways from the camp to talk in relative privacy. Crossing his large arms over his broad chest, he looked impassively down at Tabby. He\'d considered her a good friend, but her crush on him that had been a mild inconvenience easily ignored before was now an annoyance he couldn\'t ignore. "Is there something you\'d like to tell me?" he asked softly, giving her the opportunity to explain without outright confronting her.



Tabby looked up at Ade and felt herself go a bit on the defensive. When she\'d talked to Gin, she\'d recognized that... well.. she had no claim on him or his affections. If the other girl hadn\'t had something with him, then maybe. Which is why she\'d bowed out. But... it was so hard watching him shower tenderness on the newcomer, affection she\'d wanted for herself for so long she ached for it, that she was having a harder time than she\'d thought moving on.



"You\'re the one who dragged me away, although I\'m surprised you could bear to leave your girlfriend\'s side long enough to even know the rest of us were still here on the team," she said snottily. "What do you want, Pucey."







Ade\'s eyes narrowed dangerously but he kept his temper in check. He didn\'t feel like beating about the bush anyway. "I want to know if my relationship with Gin is going to be an issue with you, with our friendship and with the team. Because my relationship with Gin isn\'t going to change, so something\'s going to have to give. Is there anything I can do to smooth out any ill will? Without dumping Gin."



The fact that he thought of her as a friend and wanted to be friends still hurt even worse. It said to her that she wasn\'t, and probably had never been, in the running. It was a knife to the insides. He didn\'t even warn her to stay away and stop tempting him. She wasn\'t even a woman, as far as he was concerned. Just a friend.



She was surprised how much it hurt. Somehow, even after she\'d told Gin to pursue him, she\'d thought she could still... have a chance.



He\'d just made it clear that she didn\'t. And never would.



It felt like a slap, but she still had her pride. She wouldn\'t make any more of a fool of herself.



Taking a deep breath, she took a step back. "Of course not, Pucey. After all, the team comes first, right," she spat, giving him the line he\'d thrown at her the one time her advances looked to be gaining ground and he\'d made it clear that, while he was interested, he wouldn\'t jeopardise team dynamics for a relationship.







The tension around Ade\'s mouth was the only outward sign of his slipping patience. "It does. You should know that. If the team didn\'t come first and it was every individual for themselves, we\'d all be dead. If Gin and I tone down our outward displays of affection and kept our demeanor professional, would that help press to you that this is a work setting and not a social one? We aren\'t doing this to hurt you."







She looked up at him, wanting to tell him to fuck himself, but he was being so god-damned reasonable. "Sure, Pucey. That will help a lot," she finally said, wanting the interview over.







He didn\'t believe her for a second but there was little else he could say or do. He wasn\'t about to break up with Gin just because Tabby was in a snit. "Good." Turning he headed back to the camp not caring if she was behind him or not.







"If you kill the Weasley girl, you\'ll get Pucey all to yourself," a soft voice murmured from behind Tabby. She whirled around, her wand instantly in her hand. Her readiness didn\'t last long. A lethargy swept over her leaving her feeling boneless and not quite in control of herself.







There was a soft movement to her right and she could feel a presence approach her. "If you kill the Weasley girl, you\'ll get Pucey all to yourself," the voice murmured again. The more he said it, the more it seemed like a good idea. It wouldn\'t be hard to kill her on a training mission, just a little slip, perhaps a misread rune....







"And I\'d get Ade all to myself," Tabby murmured, her eyes lighting with an unholy and unnatural light as the strength returned to her limbs and she set off back to the camp.







The presence slipped back into the woods to continue watching.





****





Ginny watched as Ade stalked back into the camp, his body language indicating that his chat, or whatever, with Tabby had not gone as he\'d like. Sighing at the trouble their relationship seemed to be causing, she was torn between going to him and seeing if she could help, or giving him some space.



She was a bit concerned when Tabby didn\'t follow him, but by the time she and Bill had finished cleaning up breakfast, Tabby had returned looking put upon and thoughtful at the same time.



Ginny was feeling a bit nervous herself. They\'d gone on a mission last week that was an attempt to train her, but it had been more a field exercise than a real mission. This... this was the real thing. Granted, she wasn\'t supposed to do much. Set wards and run tests when she was told to and being watched over by a senior member, probably Bill or Ade.



Once they\'d packed up for the day, they all stood around while she warded the camp, Jasper and Bill checking her work and Ade watching with an approving smile... from the other side of the group.



It didn\'t take her long. Wards came fairly easy to her after all her time practicing with the DA and warding the Gryffindor Locker Room to keep the Slytherins out.



Once she was finished and Bill and Jasper approved of her work, the team started the trek into the mountain valley to the mouth of the cave. It was about a mile from where they\'d made camp, not wanting to be too close to the disturbance, and by the time they\'d walked there, Justin beginning a cadence that had them all laughing as they marched along to his beat, they were already sweating in the midsummer heat.



The cave mouth loomed before them, a large triangle in the rock wall, and Ginny noticed a small stream that gurgled over rocks right outside of it. Assessing it with a practiced eye from the few times she and Seamus had managed to get away from the school to tend their latest round of Snape or Carrows inflicted wounds in the Forbidden Forest, she had to admit that it would make an ideal home for primitive people. It had water, seemed sizable, and the opening was large enough that smoke from a fire wouldn\'t build up inside, assuming that there weren\'t natural fissures inside to let it out.



From this distance, there didn\'t seem to be any magical signatures in the area, but a cave that large, especially one with galleries, could hide wards placed further back, too.



Turning to Bill, she saw him grinning as the team moved out to enter the digsite.



****



"All right, trainee, let\'s see you do some tests for wards," Bill said standing at her shoulder in the mouth of the cave.



Nodding mostly to herself, Ginny nodded agreement, beginning the complicated series of spells she\'d been learning that should uncover any wards in the area. There were a few, but mostly they seemed... recent. Not the work of prehistoric people at all. Seems that theory about the statues was more and more likely. Frowning, she turned to Bill to share her findings.



A confused look on his face, he turned to the team.



"We\'d talked about this, although I don\'t know we really expected it. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?" he asked the assembled group.



"Set up wards around the entrance to the alcove where the statues are and then set up wards around the statues themselves, but not ON the statues," Jasper spoke up with a thoughtful expression.







"There is an anti-nausea potion we can take for the affects of whatever\'s emanating from the statues," Ade chimed in. "At least until we can get the wards in place. I would recommend we work in ten minute shifts with half hour breaks each. Those energies are enough to kill small animals, I don\'t want them to build up in our system." He glanced over at Gin and prayed that they either wouldn\'t need her skills or the energies wouldn\'t be enough to hurt the child inside her.







Bill nodded. "We should be safe until we get closer, then we can gauge how far the energies are emanating and ward them appropriately. Pass out the phials now so we can start work immediately. Jasper, John, you\'re on the first shift. Gin, you\'re with me on the second, Tabby, Ade and Marco you\'ll be on the third if we need it. Hopefully we\'ll be finished by then. Once we\'re finished with the wards, we\'ll take a good long look at the statues and go from there. Any questions? Alright, let\'s go."







They made their way slowly through the caves, carefully checking the levels of the mysterious energy every minute or so. They turned down a dimly lit narrow side corridor at the coordinates given to them by the team lead of the archaeologists digging in the area. Once they began to feel continuously nauseous, they popped the phials that Ade had distributed and continued further until they had made it half way down the side corridor. The narrow space widened unexpectedly into an alcove of sorts where the remnants of their dig were still evident, holes here and there, dropped instruments, torches lining the wall charmed to remain perpetually lit, and the general clutter associated with a small excavation. The corridor narrowed again, also lined with torches, angling to the left before it ended in another roughly cut alcove about the size of a small house. The area was completely clear except for the stone statues in the corner sitting atop the holes they\'d been dug from and the torches lining the curved walls. The three statues themselves were carved out of rock and were vaguely humanoid in that they had a head and shoulders and what looked like a body but they were featureless and looked crudely and hastily constructed. To Ade they looked more like coffins than statues.







"These look hand made," Marco murmured, running his hand over the gouges in the wall. "You can see the grooves where they cut it with a sharp stone."







"Hmm..." Bill murmured.







The energy was much stronger here, repelling them almost physically like a thick humidity in the air. "Jasper, John, get to work. Ten minutes," Bill said softly, leading the group back down the corridor, past the first alcove and back into the main cavern. "Thoughts anyone?"







"Whatever\'s down there they didn\'t want anyone to find it," Ade murmured looking back to the entrance. "How\'d they find this place anyway?"







"A Muggle construction company was doing some blasting about a quarter of a mile away and one of the aftershocks from their explosives cracked the boulder that was in front of the entrance here," Bill explained. "When maintenance came in to remove the boulder before it could crack any worse and possibly injure someone, they found the entrance. The archaeologists came in and set up camp, then the energies began when they unearthed the statues and that\'s when we were called in."



In no more than eight minutes according to Ginny\'s watch, Jasper and John came reeling down the corridor, bouncing off the walls like they were bumper cars, a greenish tinge to their skin.





Ginny bit her lip, wondering if she should just tell Bill she was pregnant and didn\'t think it was a good idea for her to go down there, but one look at the gleam in Tabby\'s eyes, as though she were waiting for Ginny to fail, made her fight down the urge.



"Let\'s do this," she breathed at Bill, waiting for his nod of agreement before the two of them made their way down the corridor to the dig room.



"What do you want me to do?" she asked him as they broached the rope marking the boundary.



"Mostly, watch. Jump in if you see something you can do to help," he said, already settling at the base of one of the statues and getting to work, his wand flicking on complex movements that Ginny watched with more than a hint of awe. She\'d always known Bill was good, but seeing him in his element, she thought he might be one of the best.



After six minutes, Ginny was feeling ready to vomit, and she wondered if it was because of the pregnancy, or if it was because she was smaller and so was feeling it more powerfully.



Twice she joined him, running some small test, but Bill was the one doing all the work.



At seven minutes, Bill lurched to his feet and grabbed her shoulder, turning to retch on the floor.



"Come on," she said, pulling on his hand to get them out of the chamber and back to the group.



By the time they joined the others, they, too, were panting and sweating and fighting back the sick.



Ade looked at Gin with worry at the dangerously green tinge to her skin. He wanted to ask if she were all right, but Bill was attending to her and the last group had to go in to finish the job. Giving her one last worried look she probably didn\'t even see, his group dove into the corridor and the alcove beyond.



The statues stood there looking completely innocent, but the wave of uneasiness and nausea hit them fast and hard. Fighting back the urge to vomit, they approached the statues cautiously and got right to work. While Marco and Ade worked quickly on the wards, Tabby worked to decifer the runes etched at their bases hoping to glean something from this that would help them set the wards.



Warning, it read. Open at your own peril. Death awaits all who look upon Me.



If you kill the Weasley girl, you\'ll get Pucey all to yourself, a soft voice whispered in her mind.



Glancing over her shoulder to where Ade and Marco were turning greener by the second but still working hard on the wards, Tabby pricked her finger and fighting back the nausea, she smeared her blood on two of the statues. Immediately they rumbled to life, arms and legs breaking off where they hadn\'t been before. The first one stood and knocked Tabby back into the wall with enough force to break her neck on contact.



Ade and Marco stumbled back with wide eyes, the wards forgotten. One of the stone figures made a swipe at Ade and even though it was a barely glancing pass, it caught him in the back and threw him into the wall, knocking him out. The statues rumbled on. "RUN!" Marco screamed down the corridor.



Ginny heard the screams over the rumbles and had a momentary thought of how very very bad this was likely to be, then shoved it aside as Marco came pelting down the corridor.



Alone.



The rest of the team was making a scrambling run for the cave entrance, but Ginny stopped, frozen.



Ade.



Where was Ade.



She saw Bill stop, too, unwilling or unable in his Gryffindorness to leave a man behind.



For a moment, this wasn\'t a mission for the bank, this was war.



Funny, the adrenalin seems to have fixed the nausea. That, or when they came to life, they stopped emitting whatever was making us sick....



Ginny may not be the expert the team was on warding and languages, but fighting... that she had more than enough experience with.



Bill cast first, a disabling charm that the statue absorbed, making it faster instead of stopping it.



Then they were both casting, moving up the gamut of spells in their repertoire from simple to more complex as the things continued to lumber down the path towards them.



The first of the stone golems hit Bill, and he reeled back, his shield absorbing the impact. The thing flailed it\'s arms clumsily, but dangerously, one stone fist striking the wall and breaking off with the impact.



Seeing it crumble made something click for Ginny, a memory she\'d long tried to suppress of her experiences during her fourth year in the Department of Mysteries and the exploding racks she\'d caused with-



"Reducto!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, pouring her heart and soul and all her power into it.



The first of the monsters exploded into fragments, the stone chips shrapnel as they flew through the air.



Something slimy and and foul smelling slid to the floor amidst the dust and Bill and John converged on it as Ginny turned her wand on the second golem, turning it into a pile of rubble and slime.



Unfortunately, this one had managed to get closer in the time between her casts, and as the stone flew, it showered her and and John with the debris, one large piece hitting her in the shoulder and sending her reeling to the floor, another the size of a pumpkin landing on her chest, crushing her ribs, and sending her into a blissful place of darkness and no pain.



"GIN!" Bill screamed. Taking his wand off the ooze slinking toward them, he knocked the small boulder off Gin\'s stomach and returned to the fight. They seemed immune to everything. "Inferno!"



The ooze lit on fire and screamed. Good old fire, Bill thought wryly as he and the rest of the team set the oozes on fire. They shrieked and writhed, shriveling up and turning into dust. Satisfied that neither he nor his team were in any more danger, Bill ran over to Gin to assess her injuries. She was breathing, though shallowly and unconscious. "Find Tabby and Ade," he ordered, conjuring a stretcher for Gin.



The team returned a few moments later with Ade on a stretcher and Tabby in Jasper\'s arms. "Her neck\'s broken," he whispered, laying her down next to Gin. "Ade\'s out cold, but he might have a concussion and neck and back injuries."



Bill\'s mouth tightened into a white line. "Let\'s get them to Paris," he said grimly.



Jasper and John nodded and Marco Apparated to their base camp to gather the emergency supplies, returning and handing out portkeys to those still conscious. He then knelt at Ade\'s feet and activated the key while Bill did the same with Ginny. John picked up Tabby\'s body and he and Jasper went together. The whole team arrived in the waiting room on Sainte-Cristophe in Paris, the bustle seeming even louder to the shell-shocked team for being in a foreign language.



As they stood there, sweaty and dirty and clearly going into shock, a pair of medi-witches converged on them beginning the long process of sorting them out.



***



Ade woke feeling as though an oliphaunt had just run over him along with a herd of hippogriffs followed by a crowd of ravenous fan girls. Groaning, he woke and turned his head away from the light slanting into his room. "Where am I?" he asked in a scratchy voice.



"Sainte-Cristophe in Paris," a familiar voice said from his bedside. Ade turned his head and blinked over at the blurry figure next to him. Jasper\'s worried face swam into view. "What do you remember?"



"The alcove," Ade replied, wetting his lips with a dry tongue. "And then... the statues, they came to life. Tabby... Tabby did something to them. She woke them. I don\'t remember anything after that."



Jasper nodded and seemed to slump in his chair. "The golems came out of the anti-chamber and came after us. Gin started reductoing them and one of them... one of them blew up and a fragment almost crushed her. Before you go running off -" Jasper said, reaching forward to restrain Ade from where he was beginning to get out of his bed, "she\'s fine. Some broken ribs and a punctured lower intestine, but she was here minutes after it happened so they were able to fix her up fast."



"The baby. Is the baby ok?" Ade asked, his skin a sudden chalky white with fear and pain.



"Baby?" Jasper asked, at first confused then his eyes went wide with realization. "Oh. Oh mate... I don\'t know. She was hit... she was hit right in the abdomen.... I\'m sorry, I\'m really sorry."



Ade\'s eyes slid closed and he lay back in his bed. "Is she ok?"



"She was still unconscious last I heard," Jasper whispered. "But the medi-witches said she\'d be fine. Bill just left to go see her."



Ade nodded, unable to open his eyes to look at his teammate, and sank into sadness and guilt for feeling even the littlest amount of relief he felt.



***



Ginny woke later the same day, feeling like every fiber of her being was on fire. With a groan, she opened her eyes, blinking back the tears of pain that filled them when the light struck her too sensitive eyes.



"Owww..." she moaned softly, hearing a rustle of fabric as someone moved in the room with her and gently took her hand.



She tired to turn her head to look and see who it was, but even that movement was too much, sending her spiraling once more down into the pain-free darkness.



***



Bill moved between Ade\'s room and Gin\'s room and even petitioned to have the two put together if anything to save him the walk, but that was denied as the hospital did not allow co-ed rooms even if the two were dating.



Gin had been pregnant. Bill looked at the prone form of his sister. She had woken a day earlier but had passed out again shortly thereafter. Gin had been pregnant.



He scrubbed his hand over his old scars and sighed. There was little doubt it was Ade\'s (at least he fervently hoped it was), but what were they going to do about it? Did Gin even know she was pregnant for that matter? Did Ade? It was all such a big mess, one that couldn\'t be answered until Gin woke. Ade had been sleeping a lot since his injury which was normal, but wasn\'t exactly up to a conversation like the one Bill wanted to have.



A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and Bill turned his head toward Gin\'s stirring figure. "Gin?" he murmured, leaning very gently forward to take her hand.



Sighing softly, Ginny\'s head turned of its own accord to the sound of her brother\'s voice. "Bill," she whispered, giving his hand a faint squeeze. Slowly, she opened her eyes, wincing as the light hit them. "What happened?" she asked in a voice harsh from her long sleep.



"You hit one of the golems with a reducto and some of the debris hit you. In the abdomen," he said softly. "You had a punctured lower intestine and a couple of cracked ribs and... and you miscarried."



It took a moment for his news to penetrate the potion induced fog padding her brain. When it did, she sat very still a moment, feeling herself go numb with shock and... pain.



"Oh," she said softly, at a loss for words as her brain tried to process what she\'d been told so soon after finally accepting that she was actually having a baby. "Does Ade know?" she finally asked. "Did he survive?"



"Ade\'s fine. He was slammed pretty hard into the wall and his back was broken but he\'s fixed up just very sore," Bill replied quietly, his heart aching for the pain in Gin\'s eyes. In fact it looked a lot like the pain in Ade\'s so perhaps he did know she was pregnant. "I don\'t know if he knows though. He\'s been out of sorts and not very responsive... hard to talk to. Did Ade know you were pregnant? I\'m guessing you did since you don\'t seem at all surprised by the news you were pregnant."



"Yeah. I told him as soon as I found out. Which was when we decided to make a go of things. We just decided last night... or whenever..." she faltered, having no idea what day it was, "that we\'d get married. We were gonna tell people when we got home."



She went quiet now, wondering how much he\'d still want her, want that, now. He was young, and he had been a bit hesitant on more than one occasion. Maybe he\'d want his freedom back now. Maybe this was the respite he\'d need.



She wanted to cry even thinking about him leaving her. That hurt worse than the loss of the baby. The baby had been an idea only. Ade... he\'d been real. Trying to picture her life without him in it... it wasn\'t a life she wanted to picture at all.



"Has he... has he asked about me?" she finally asked in a tentative voice.



"Every time I see him. Or any of our teammates. It\'s the only thing that gets him out of the funk he\'s in," Bill said softly, squeezing Gin\'s hand gently. "Someone must\'ve told him about your miscarriage or told him the nature of your injuries and he put two and two together. He\'s been a bit depressed. But Gin... I\'m sorry about the baby. Had I known, I wouldn\'t have let you anywhere near that cave. It was killing small animals, it couldn\'t have been good for the baby."





Biting her lip, she nodded. "Yeah. Me, too. It was a boy. I think... I think Ade was kind of excited. Scared. But excited. Still... I\'m gonna... I\'m gonna focus on the bright side here. I was too young to have a sprog now," she said, trying to put a good face on it while she was still under the influence of the potions and able to be numb. Then, maybe when the potions wore off she could have some of the grief out of her system. "When will they let me see Ade?" she asked finally. "I... I need to see him, Bill," she said, rolling over in the bed as though she were going to get up and go to him.



"And where do you think you\'re going?" a slightly strident voice spoke up from the doorway.



Bill looked up from where he was easily restraining Gin from moving and watched their mother walk into Gin\'s room. "Hullo mum."



"Don\'t you \'hullo\' me," Molly hissed, her dander up. "You were supposed to protect her! You promised!"



"I did no such thing," Bill sighed. "According to what Ade said it was a deliberate act, not an accident on the job."



Molly harrumphed and sat angrily next to Gin\'s bed. "And you! What do you think you were doing getting yourself sprogged up and you\'re not even married! Merlin, Gin, I thought I\'d taught you better than that! How could you be so stupid to let yourself be ruined? You\'ll never find a husband now! No one\'s going to want you after you\'ve been used like that by another man! And not only a man, but a Death Eater, no less! You have no respect for Fred\'s memory at all, to spread your legs like a common whore! What\'s your father going to say? What are the voters going to say?"



Molly, who loved her family, was coming to appreciate the comforts of being the Minister\'s Wife and having her children grown. Still, her words felt like a slap in the face to Ginny, and they no sooner left Molly\'s mouth than she was blinking back tears.



"Mother!" Bill gasped in pure shock at hearing such things coming out of his mum\'s mouth.



"Don\'t you mother me! You know it\'s true! I\'m well aware of the hijinks you got up to before your wedding, but it\'s different for witches. Decent wizard\'s don\'t want another man\'s cast offs! They want to know they\'re the only ones who\'ve plowed that field. Your sister will never find a good man now, and she\'ll suffer for this the rest of her life. Well, missy," she said, rounding on Gin, "I will not have you dragging our family name through the mud with this. You will be coming home as soon as they release you, and we\'ll be keeping a strict eye on you. No sense of decency. I don\'t know where I failed in raising you. I certainly didn\'t raise you to be a slut like this!"



"Oi!" Ade bellowed from the doorway. He\'d heard Molly practically screaming from the hallway and even though his movements were slow and deliberate, he hastened them to get to Gin\'s side. "I don\'t give a bloody fuck who you are, you are NOT allowed to speak to my fiancee that way!" If he\'d felt even a quarter better than he did at that moment, he would\'ve gladly \'escorted\' Mrs. Weasley out of Gin\'s room and out of her life.



Molly went bone white, shock slackening her face before she turned quickly to Gin. "What?" she gasped, her hand fluttering to her throat. "What did he say?"



Ginny was still in shock for having been called a slut by her own mother and didn\'t answer, merely stared at her dumbly, tears of hurt streaming down her face for being reviled when she needed her Mum most.



"He said you can\'t talk to Ginny that way, and I\'ll second that," Bill said, his own temper snapping. "Your daughter almost died! The mother I know and love, the woman who raised me to accept anyone and everyone and welcome them into my life, would never call her daughter those things. Get out, and get out now, Mum. You don\'t deserve a daughter like Ginny, and she certainly doesn\'t deserve a mother like you!"



Molly\'s mouth opened and closed like a gulper fish. She could not believe that she was being attacked by her own children! Well, Pucey did NOT count as her child. "You can\'t throw me out of here, I\'m her mother!"



"Not after what you just said, you aren\'t," Ade replied viciously. "Get. Out."



Looking between her eldest and her youngest, Molly found no sympathy there so she stood, gathering what dignity she could and left. "You\'ll need me sometime soon!" she said on her way out giving Pucey a significant look. "When this one\'s finished with you, you\'ll come crawling back."



"I\'d rather turn whore!" she screamed after her, just as the door slammed shut and Ginny dissolved into sobs, her whole body shaking with rage and shame and... fear... that deep down, her Mum had been right.



Ade made his slow painful way over to her but Bill was faster, sitting on the edge of her bed and taking her hand. "She didn\'t mean any of that," he murmured softly. "She\'s just upset that her baby\'s no longer a baby."



Finally reaching her side, Ade sank down on Gin\'s bed with a soft sigh. Every muscle in his body was still screaming in protest and not even the strongest pain relievers could touch it, but that was what he expected after having his back broken. "She\'ll regret her decision soon enough when she\'s not so welcomed back in our lives," he said softly, surprised at how easily it was to use a plural when it came to their lives.



"That\'s bull shite, Bill, and you know it. She meant all of it. Every word. It may not be true, but she meant it," Ginny said softly, her eyes feeling gummy and scratchy and raw all at once.



When Ade sat next to her, she turned her red face to look at him, licking her lips nervously. "Did... did they tell you?" she asked, fear in her voice and etched into every line of her body.



Bill murmured something about checking on the rest of the team and left quietly and quickly. Ade and Gin hardly noticed.



"They told me about your injuries but they didn\'t tell me about the miscarriage," he said softly, taking her hand and looping their fingers together. "I figured it out myself after Jasper said you\'d been nearly crushed by a small boulder. Gin...." he whispered, his eyes filling with tears he refused to let fall. "I\'m sorry. I should\'ve done... something... stopped Tabby, I don\'t know. I feel like this is partly my fault."



She shook her head, negating his guilt. "No, love. It\'s mine. I\'m the one that smashed the monsters so things flew. None of this was your fault," she said, her arms wrapping around his neck and holding him close to give and receive the comfort they both needed, her shoulders shaking slightly as she cried. "Was she right, Ade? Are you going to be done with me now?" she asked, her thoughts drifting from the drugs and once more returning to what her Mum had said, something that echoed her own innermost terror of being alone....



Ade wrapped his arms around her and held her close, shifting into a more comfortable position with her on the bed. He sought comfort in her arms, trying to assuage the guilt that still assaulted him, fueled by the additional guilt over the relief he felt with the loss of the baby. "No, I\'m not finished with you now. I\'ll never be finished with you. You heard me call you my fiancee didn\'t you? Now why would I do that if I were finished with you?" he whispered softly against her neck. Her tears broke his heart and he silently cursed Molly Weasley for hurting her in one of the cruelest ways she could.



"You don\'t have any reason to marry me now, Ade, so don\'t feel like you have to," she said quietly, not looking at him. "I know you weren\'t overly keen on the idea to start with. Hell, we were only having the relationship because of the baby... although... I think we moved past that a bit. I know... I did. But... you don\'t have to make a commitment to me now." She shrugged away from him, her body hurting almost as much as her soul as she laid back on the bed and looked up at him.



"How did I lose my baby and my mother in one day?" she asked muzzily. "I hope I don\'t lose you too. Or Bill. I don\'t think I can take anyone else leaving me right now," she whispered, the tears starting again as she stared at the ceiling thinking of all the people she\'d lost. Her baby, her mother in some ways, Remus and Tonks, Sirius, Moody. Fred. The list went on and on.



At some point she passed from waking into the land of dreams, but the endless parade of the dead and those she\'d never see again continued, mocking her for her choices, for being alive when they weren\'t until even that passed from her mind and she slid into a true, if fitful, sleep.



Ade held her until she drifted off, waiting to answer her questions and soothe her insecurities for later. For now she needed the sleep and for that matter so did he. Daring the medi-witches to kick him out, he settled next to her on her bed, cradling her close to his body and let himself drift off to sleep with her.