Ties in the Soul

A/N: I currently expect this story to be six chapters long and updated weekly. The story revolves around submission, so if that causes offence, I suggest you do not read on.

My thanks for any comments.

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Ties in the Soul

Chapter One


At the heart of the problem, she felt, was time. It wasn’t working properly. She was trapped – a still, silent spectator – in the endless circle of moments that had been the battle of Hogwarts for Ginny Weasley.

Right now, in the semi-real murk of day-to-day life, Ginny had stalked from the house, through the wood at the back and picked a tree. It was the single toughest to climb she could find, with handholds and grips a body’s length apart.

The sear in her muscles had pleased her.

Now she was at its highest point, the view of the valley stretching out in front, and, half a mile off, a waving plume of smoke emerging out of the Burrow’s wonky chimney. Yet even that sight was not enough to distract her treacherous mind.

Six weeks since Fred’s death, since the end of the war… should that be enough? Should she be moving on?

Whether or not she should have been, she wasn’t.

Her thoughts reset without choice, dragging her back into the din of battle.


***


The sight was soul-wrenching in its absurdity: Colin Creevey, tiny and brave, facing off against Dolohov.

But Ginny had only an instant to register it and no time to do anything about it. For around her, the lawns of Hogwarts writhed under the weight of screams and spell-fire.

Another curse spat past her face. Some Slytherin idiot that she recognised vaguely from her first two years at Hogwarts took another step closer, his wand arm swinging right and left in great clumsy strokes. His barrage of spells was crude, but effective…

Ginny spun, blocking where she could, trying to find a half-second’s space for an attack of her own. She had to help Colin. How long could he last? Why was she failing against some dim-witted brute instead of helping her friend?

‘Crucio!’ bellowed her Slytherin opponent.

Ginny dodged backward; her heels collided with a body.

She fell.

The attacker’s hair was blonde, his face not unattractive. He stood over her. ‘Another whore of Hogwarts down.’

Ginny swung her right foot with all the fury she could muster. It crunched into the man’s kneecap. She heard ligaments snap and an instant later, a high-pitched scream rent through the furore of battle.

‘Stupefy,’ muttered Ginny. It was a shame she couldn’t leave him conscious to enjoy his well-earned agony.

She threw herself back into the battle, trying to reach Colin. He had managed to hurl himself out of the way of Dolohov’s first attack, while still trying to send schoolboy spells at the Death Eater.

‘Rictumsempra!’ Colin shouted, the curse flying wide.

‘Annyalum!’ cried Dolohov.

A black streak of light hammered into the ground and Ginny was thrown from her footing. Gasping for breath, she pulled her eyes back up. Colin was crawling away from the advancing Dolohov, deep wounds running up his legs.

‘Did you think this fight could end any other way, Gryffindor?’ asked the Death Eater, wand levelled.

‘Stop!’ shouted Ginny, wobbling to her feet.

Dolohov ignored her: ‘Avada Kedavra!’

Colin’s body stopped moving.

Fiery anger shot through Ginny’s veins, setting red mist across her vision. ‘Crucio!’ she screamed. ‘Cleveria!’

Her opponent moved in a blur, dodging the unforgiveable and deflecting the cutting curse back at Ginny. It sliced across her left arm. Blood streaked down her pale skin. Ginny barely noticed.

‘Oh, a girl?’ said Dolohov, his narrow eyes gleaming. ‘We’ll have fun with your kind, later.’

He attacked: a torrent of silent spells shot from his wand. Ginny had no chance. The third of six struck her full on and she found herself suspended upside down by her ankle.

The Death Eater stepped closer.

Ginny met his eyes, glaring back with cold rage. ‘You fucking coward. Get your kicks killing fifteen-year-old boys do you?’

‘You are just the way I like my women. Feisty, heroic and utterly h–’

A red streak hit Dolohov and threw him backwards.

The shape of a man raced out of the darkness, his wand flicking for only an instant in Ginny’s direction.

‘Finite Incantatum.’

The ground rushed out to her and Ginny hit it face first. She groaned, but rolled quickly, just in time to see Remus Lupin and Dolohov battling wand to wand, fifteen feet away.

And there, to her right, was Colin’s body.

Bitter tears scoured her face, but she pulled herself up, forced herself back into battle, back into the fight –


***


Ginny screamed against the memories, a great grieving cry that echoed from her perch on the tree into the valley around her.

The moments hit her faster and faster.

Remus’ death facing the man Ginny could not. The sight of Fred’s body, battered and broken under Hogwarts’ own walls, when she forced Percy to show it to her. And finally watching Hagrid carry Harry’s limp body, while a gloating Tom announced his triumph.

A Tom who didn’t know her. A Tom who had no idea who she was.

It shouldn’t matter.

Yet it did.

She knew that that had been a different Tom, a lifetime away from the boy she’d adored and then despised. But Tom had haunted every nightmare of her life since that long night in the Salazar’s chamber. He had, in the end, taken everything she had: every ounce of will, every last bit of fight.

He had owned her body. He had subdued her soul: tearing little Ginny Weasley into pieces.

At the least, he should have remembered.

The fact that he didn’t, that he couldn’t, underlined how pathetically unimportant Ginny was in all this.

She felt she had the right for it to be personal.

But it wasn’t.

Ginny was helpless. Her only role was as Harry Potter’s reward… and she loved him – oh how she loved him – but she wanted more, needed it with every facet of her soul.

She wanted to fight.

And she would find a fight – something personal, something to throw herself at – before the need of it drove her mad.


***


The problem with bliss, Harry knew, was that you always paid for it later.

And the more he thought about things with Ginny, the more he knew it. Those first few weeks after Voldemort’s death had been wrong. They’d been –

Arousal and love mingling in her auburn eyes, tits jiggling back and forth as she rode him, her cunt stretching to take in every inch of his aching, straining cock…

He blinked against the memory, forcing his eyes to focus on the bustling shoppers of Diagon Alley.

Those weeks had been a mistake. She’d lost her brother only days before and all Harry could think about was –

Her beautiful, talented lips locked around his length, as a gag turned into a giggle…

Harry slammed his fist onto the table. He was wearing prescription sunglasses and sitting in the far corner of Fortescue’s, but the last thing he needed was to be spotted – the boy who triumphed – while a hard-on made a tent of his jeans.

He had objectified the woman he loved, treated her like one of those brainless tarts who offered him sex at every single one of the parties he’d been forced into attending.

Although, hell, he’d had at least as many come-ons at the funerals.

A sigh pressed itself out of Harry’s lips. End of the day, he needed Ginny, and something was badly wrong with her. They weren’t talking. Harry had put a stop to the sex, hoping that would help, but –

A tall, brown-haired girl swept into the seat opposite, a warm smile flashing across her face. ‘Harry!’

‘Hermione! Glad you could spare a minute or two.’

‘I’ll spare as much as I can, but we’re both due in Hewitt’s conference hall by ten o’clock.’

‘I know.’

Hermione leant in. ‘So what was it that couldn’t wait till then?’

‘Ginny.’

Her eyes narrowed slightly and her head cocked just a miniscule degree to the left. Harry couldn’t help but smile. He knew that his friend had just opened a mental notebook in her head.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘She’s gone quiet. She’s not talking to me anymore.’

‘What do you think is wrong?’

‘Well, look, Hermione, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable but there’s really no one else I can talk to about… stuff…’

Hermione looked ever so slightly amused. ‘Is this about sex?’

‘Yeah.’ Hot blood rushed to Harry’s face.

‘You’ve had sex with her or want to?’ asked Hermione, in the exact same tone she’d use to ask whether he wanted to eat sandwiches or sausage rolls.

‘Had it. Uhm… a lot.’

This time, she snorted out loud. ‘There’s no need to brag, Harry.’

‘I’m not! Look, I’m embarrassed about this, alright? I’m not proud of it!’

Hermione stared at him for a good twenty seconds. ‘You’re feeling ashamed?’

‘No. I just think it was too soon.’

‘I see. And you’re blaming yourself for that?’

He sensed where this was going. ‘A little, but why shouldn’t I?’

‘Because it takes two to tango, Harry. I assume you didn’t jump her.’ Once more, Hermione’s half-disguised smile was peaking through. ‘In fact, if I know the two of you it will have been quite the inverse.’

‘She was grieving. She’d been through hell.’

‘Haven’t we all.’

‘I suppose,’ said Harry, glaring over Hermione’s shoulder.

‘Look, we have to go. Hewitt’s meeting won’t start if you’re not there – and if I’m not there it will never finish.’

A small smile bullied its way past Harry’s introspection. ‘True enough.’

‘But listen to me, it doesn’t sound like the main problem’s with Ginny. It’s you and your nobility complex.’

‘My nobility complex?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘The things I was doing with Ginny weren’t very noble.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Harry, nobody is noble in the bedroom – it’s always going to be about lust and satisfaction and being a bit primitive, even if there’s love beneath it.’

Harry’s eyes widened. The thought of Hermione being lustful and primitive was threatening to explode his brain.

‘And that’s the point,’ Hermione continued, oblivious to Harry’s predicament, ‘in a relationship, you have to be prepared to open up, be a bit selfish and take what you want from time to time.’

She got to her feet. ‘Now, look, we’re going to have to Apparate, but when we get there, I need you to back me up on the reconstruction addendum, alright?’

‘Uh, of course.’

Seconds later, wands drawn, the two friends vanished into thin air.


***


The meeting was long, dull, but in Hermione’s opinion at least, productive.

She and Harry didn’t have any official position within the hastily formed provisional government, but in many ways, they were the most important part of it. Harry Potter lent legitimacy to a self-appointed council of mid-level bureaucrats, legitimacy it desperately needed.

All the same, Hermione had told Harry flat-out to reject their plea for him to take a ‘consultative role’. He’d already done enough, she’d argued. Harry had shrugged and said that he wasn’t going to let it all go to waste now.

So, if Harry was dragged in, it was Hermione’s job to stop him being a puppet, to make sure something productive came out of it all. In this meeting, she’d got a substantial commitment to Muggle reconstruction alongside Wizarding. Non-magic people had lost just as much to Voldemort, even if they’d put it down to ‘terrorist’ attacks.

And now she was back at her desk in a cramped little office, with folders and folders of interim reports lined in front of her. She reached for the next one and froze –

She looked up.

Ron Weasley stood in the doorway, smiling down at her. ‘You wanted to see me, Miss Granger,’ he said, his smirk getting wider.

‘Yes, Ron, some of us have to work around here. Did you look through the Order of Merlin list like I asked?’

‘I did actually! Not that there was any use to it. Your choices looked sensible, but how was I to judge. I didn’t see any more of Dumbledore’s army than you did. I added a couple of names, though… a few who snuck back in without McGonagall’s permission and then ran them past Ginny. We put most of them down for Second Class.’

‘Neville was busy?’ Hermione asked, as Ron passed her the new list.

‘Yup, preparations for tomorrow, I think.’

Hermione glanced over the revisions. ‘You’ve put Colin Creevey up for First Class.’

Ron hesitated, his smile falling away. ‘Ginny insisted. She got a bit… funny about it.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, she hates all this as much as we do – as if a piece of paper justifies anything – but she demanded it when we got to Colin. Then she walked out.’

‘Odd.’

‘I think she was there when he died.’ Ron’s face had grown gradually graver as the conversation progressed. ‘You know, Hermione, I’m worried about her. She's not been angry in the right way. She's sort of... steady.’

‘Steady?’ asked Hermione, her eyes fixed on Ron’s.

‘Yeah. She’s been going in one direction, steadily. It’s like she’s sinking, inch by inch.’

He said nothing for a moment. Silence hung over the two of them.

‘And the worst of it is that she’s absolutely flaming furious – utterly livid at something or someone. Or everything. I can read her. I know to watch out for her temper, ready for it break – and with Ginny it always would. But now, it’s like a thing of it’s own, eating at her. It’s like…’ He sighed in exasperation. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t explain it.’

Hermione bit her lower lip. She shouldn’t have made light of Harry’s concern, earlier that day. It seemed like Ginny really was struggling.

‘I’ve neglected her,’ she said. ‘We haven’t spoken properly, at all. And everything’s changing for her, with Harry, too, and she’s been through so much.’

‘You’re seeing her before the ball tomorrow, right?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ll speak to her then.’


***


The dreams were inevitable.

They made no sense, but they tore at her sleeping heart.

She was back in the Chamber, next to a plastic talking snake that tried to force her to sing a song about sharing.

Ginny refused, only for Fred to wander past and scold her. He took her across his knee, pulled down her pyjama bottoms – purple with yellow stars – and spanked her.

She wept at the intimacy of it.

She begged him for more, begged him to come back.

Harry was holding out a spade to her, in the back of the garden, telling her to dig. Joy spread through her heart and she dug with desperate relief. But each stroke of the spade destroyed the garden, taking him further away.

She was back in the Chamber, next to a plastic talking snake.

Tom stood on the snake. He giggled. ‘I have something better than a snake, Ginevra.’

He dragged Harry into sight. Harry was naked. Dirt covered his body. Ginny thought he might be dead. She hurried down to her knees and tried to lick the dirt off. She licked and licked, covering his knees, his scrotum, his limp cock, his eyelids. She wanted to clean it all, to taste it, to be a little kitten lapping at her master’s feet.

But as she licked, she pretended not to know that Tom was kneeling behind, spreading her arse cheeks, probing his fingers into her so that she was ready for the bitter, glorious stab.

Tom drove a crude, hand-made spear into her bowels. It pierced through her gut and down through her heart, till the sharp metal head of it burst out between her breasts.

Ecstasy and blood spattered from her, breaking the dream in a moment of climax and death –

She jolted awake. A gasp scraped through her lungs. Sweat clung to her body, sickly and damp, while her clit throbbed in time with her raging pulse.

Ginny pummelled her pillow, groaning in agonised frustration.

Lust battled with her shame. Every dream had him in it, defiling her body or flat out destroying it. Some part of her longed to bleed for him. To serve him with her cunt, her arse, her death and anything else that bastard desired.

Right here, in her childhood bed, she wanted so much to yank her knickers down, to drive three fingers into herself, to whisper his name as she came.

How could she be so sick, so depraved?

What the hell was wrong with her?

Sobs racked her body as Ginny turned back over, her heart pleading out for a dreamless sleep.


^