What Ginny Wants - Chapter 24 (A Harry Potter Fanfiction) (Patreon)

Chapter 24: The Sea Cave

They left after dark, from the edge of the grounds where the wards thinned enough for Apparition. The castle sat behind them with its windows lit and its towers black against the sky. Wind came off the lake and cut through Harry's cloak. Ginny stood at his shoulder with her wand already in her hand and her hair tied back so it would not blind her. She had not asked to be left behind. Dumbledore had not asked her to stay.

The headmaster looked smaller out here than he did in the office. The empty right sleeve was pinned neat against his side. His left hand held his wand. The skin of that hand was whole, pale, unmarked. No black crawl under the nails. No smell of rot. The curse was gone. What remained was an old man who had already told them he was running out of time for a different reason, and who was still going.

"Stay close," Dumbledore said. "I will take you both. Do not let go until your feet are on stone."

Harry took his left arm. Ginny took Harry's other hand and set her free hand on Dumbledore's cloak, high on the shoulder, where she would not drag the pinned sleeve. The compression hit. Harry's lungs forgot how to work for a second. Then salt air slammed into his face and the ground under his boots was rock, wet and uneven, with the sea breaking far below.

They stood on a cliff. The night was clear enough to see the white line of surf and not much else. Wind shoved at them. Ginny's fingers stayed locked in Harry's.

"This is it," Harry said.

"This is the place," Dumbledore said. "Tom came here as a boy, with two children from the orphanage who could not fight him. He frightened them in the dark and left them there until someone came looking. Years later he came back alone, and he built a door that would only open for someone willing to hurt." He looked at the drop. "The entrance is not at the top. We climb."

The path down was not a path. It was a crack in the cliff, narrow, slick with spray. Dumbledore went first, wandlight held low so it would not throw them off the rock. Harry followed with one hand on the stone and one ready if the old man slipped. Ginny came last, sure-footed, swearing under her breath every time her boot skidded. Halfway down, a ledge gave under Dumbledore's foot. Harry caught his cloak and hauled him in against the wall. The empty sleeve flapped once and went still.

"Thank you," Dumbledore said. He did not sound embarrassed. He sounded like a man counting what his body would still do.

They reached a wider shelf just above the worst of the spray. The cliff face looked solid. Dumbledore walked it with his left hand out, fingers brushing wet stone, until he stopped at a place that looked no different from the rest.

"Here," he said. "He hid the cut in the rock. Blood opens it. Not a great deal. Enough to prove you will pay."

Harry stepped forward. "I'll do it."

"No." Dumbledore's voice stayed quiet and did not leave room. "This price is mine. You will need your hands for what comes after, and I will not have you bleed for a door I already know."

He drew his wand across the palm of his remaining hand. The cut was clean. Blood welled, dark in the wandlight, and he pressed it to the stone. For a moment nothing happened. Then the rock shivered. A seam opened where there had been none, tall enough to stoop through, breathing cold air that did not smell like the sea. It smelled like still water and old iron.

Ginny stared at the cut on his palm. "That needs closing before we go in."

"In a moment." Dumbledore healed it with a short murmur. The skin knit. He flexed the fingers once, checked them, and nodded at the gap. "Wands out. Do not touch the water when we reach it. Not with a hand, not with a spell that breaks the surface, not with anything you drop. What sleeps under it is meant to wake if you do."

"Inferi," Harry said.

"Yes."

They went in. The passage sloped down and widened until the walls fell away and the dark became a lake. Harry could not see the far side. The water was black and flat, no wind on it, no ripple except where drips from the ceiling struck and vanished. Their wandlight reached a few yards and died. Ginny lifted hers higher. The beam shook once, then steadied.

"I'll keep the light up," she said. "If you two watch the edge, I can hold it steady."

A chain ran from an iron peg in the rock down into the water and out of sight. Dumbledore caught it with his left hand and pulled. Something answered from the dark, a low drag, and a small boat nosed into the light. It was barely big enough for two. The wood was pale and dry, wrong for a cave that sweated salt.

Dumbledore set his wand against the prow. The charm on it pushed back. Harry felt it, a tight refusal, the same kind of magic that decided who was allowed through a door.

"It was made for one wizard at full strength," Dumbledore said. "Or for one, and a child it did not count. We are three, and none of you are children." He worked in silence for a minute, mouth thin, the boat's refusal bending by inches. Sweat stood on his forehead that had nothing to do with the climb. "There. It will bear us. Do not test it by standing. Sit, and keep your weight low."

Harry got in first and braced so the boat would not yaw. Ginny followed, knees drawn up, wand still lit, her shoulder against his. Dumbledore came last. The boat sank lower than it liked and held. He took the chain and drew them out onto the lake.

The quiet was worse than the wind had been. Each pull on the chain made a small wet sound and then nothing. Ginny watched the water on both sides. Her light stayed on the surface, not to pierce it, just to see if it moved. Harry watched Dumbledore's hand on the chain and the way his breath had gone short.

"You went back once," Harry said. "You told us you weren't strong enough to finish it."

"I reached the island," Dumbledore said. "I saw the basin. I did not have a second person I trusted to make me finish the cup, and I would not risk the lake alone. I left it. I have regretted that every year since." He pulled again. "I will not leave it tonight."

The island was a flat tongue of rock in the middle of the black. They grounded the boat on it with care. Harry tied the chain to a spur so the boat could not drift. Ginny stayed on her feet at the edge of the light, facing the water, while Dumbledore crossed to the center.

The basin stood on a stone pedestal. It was wide, shallow, and full to the brim with a potion that glowed a sick green, bright enough to throw their faces into the wrong color. No locket. No glint of gold. Just the surface, still as the lake.

Harry looked into it. "It's under that."

"Yes. The potion cannot be vanished, parted, tipped, or scooped aside. I have already tried every clever thing a man tries before he admits the maker wanted a throat." Dumbledore took a crystal goblet from inside his robes. It was the only thing that would bite the surface. He dipped it. The potion filled it, thick, and the level in the basin did not drop. "It will have to be drunk. All of it. Whatever it does to the drinker, it will not stop until the basin is empty."

"Then we share it," Harry said. "You, me, Ginny. Three of us. It goes faster and nobody takes the whole of it."

"No." Ginny turned from the water. "He's not wrong. You've got one hand and a Vow waiting for you at the castle. If this stuff knocks you flat, we still have to get you out. Let me take a cup. I'll take three. I'm not asking to be noble, I'm asking not to watch you do it alone."

Dumbledore looked at her, and the look was not unkind. "Miss Weasley, I am forbidding it. Not because I doubt your nerve. Because the potion is built to unmake the drinker's will, and I will not put that in either of you when I can still put it in myself. Harry, if I refuse the cup, you will make me drink. If I beg you to stop, you will not stop. If I ask you to kill me, you will not. You will empty the basin. That is the task. Can you do it?"

Harry's mouth was dry. "Yes."

"Ginny stays clear of the cup," Dumbledore said. "Light. Water. The boat. If I reach for the lake, you stop me. Both of you. The water is not water we can use."

Ginny's jaw worked. She nodded once. "I won't touch the cup. I'll keep the light, and I'll watch the lake, and if you reach for it I'll get in your way. That's as far as I'll go."

"That is far enough." Dumbledore drank the first goblet. He did not gag. His throat moved, and his eyes closed, and when he opened them they were already somewhere else. He held the goblet out. Harry filled it again from the basin. The level still did not fall.

The second cup went down slower. The third made Dumbledore's left hand shake. By the fifth he was talking, not to them.

"Don't make me," he said, voice thin. "I don't want to see it again. Ariana, put the cup down, I can hear her in the other room." His face had gone grey under the green light. "It was my fault. I have said it. I have said it enough."

"It's not her," Harry said. He had to put a hand on Dumbledore's wrist to keep the next cup at his mouth. "It's the potion. Drink."

Dumbledore drank. Tears ran into his beard. He did not seem to know they were there. Ginny had come in close enough to brace Harry's back with her shoulder, not the cup, not the old man. Her wandlight stayed up. "I'm here," she said, to Harry, low. "I've got your back. You don't have to look at me. Just keep going."

The eighth cup, Dumbledore turned his face away. "Kill me," he whispered. "Please. It hurts, it hurts, and I can see them on the floor, I can see the coffin, kill me and make it stop."

Harry's stomach turned over. His hand did not. He caught Dumbledore's jaw, gentle and immovable, and tipped the goblet. "I won't kill you. Drink. We're almost through."

Dumbledore swallowed because he had no choice. A sound came out of him that was not a word. His left hand clawed at Harry's cloak and then fell. "Severus will do it anyway," he said, suddenly clear, and that was worse than the begging. "You know that. You both know that. Why are you making me stay for it?"

"Because the locket is still in the basin," Harry said. "And because I'm not Snape." He poured another cup. Ginny's hand fisted in the back of his cloak and stayed there, a hold, not a pull. Out on the lake, nothing moved. She checked it between every cup, eyes wet and furious and fixed on the dark.

The twelfth cup was the last that filled. Dumbledore got half of it down and retched dry. Harry waited, wiped his mouth with the edge of the cloak, and made him finish. When the goblet came away, the basin was empty.

At the bottom, in a shallow depression, lay a locket. It was gold, heavy, with a serpentine S set in green stones. Harry knew it. He had seen it at Grimmauld Place in a box of rubbish nobody wanted, and he had not known what he was looking at. His hand hovered.

"Don't drink if it fills again," Dumbledore rasped. "Take it. Now."

Harry took it. The gold was cold, colder than the cave. The basin gave a soft gulp and green potion rose from nowhere, climbing the stone until it stood at the brim again, smooth and evil and full. Ginny jerked the goblet out of reach with her foot, not a spell, just a boot, and sent it skittering toward the boat.

"Nobody drinks that twice," she said. "Harry, it's full again. I'm not touching it, and I don't want either of us near it."

"I see it." He shoved the locket inside his robes, against his chest, and got an arm under Dumbledore. The old man was shaking so hard his teeth clicked. His eyes had cleared a little, which only meant he could feel the pain properly. "We need to go. Can you stand?"

"Water," Dumbledore said. "Please. Anything. My mouth is burning."

"I can conjure it," Harry said. He tried. Aguamenti sputtered at the end of his wand and died. He tried again. Nothing. The cave ate the water before it formed. Dumbledore made a broken sound and lurched toward the lake, left hand outstretched, the pinned sleeve swinging.

Ginny got there first. She put her body between him and the edge, hands up, not striking, just blocking. "No. Not that water. Harry, he wants the lake. I can't hold him if he falls on me."

Harry hauled Dumbledore back. The movement dragged the old man's boot through the thin wash at the rim of the island. A splash. Small. Enough.

The lake moved. Not a wave. A rising. Pale hands broke the surface all around the island, then heads, then shoulders, white and bloated, eyes filmed, mouths open. Inferi. Dozens. Then more than dozens, climbing over each other toward the rock, silent except for the slap of water and the scrape of bone on stone.

"Back to the boat," Harry said. "Ginny, light, keep it on the chain. I'll take him."

She did not argue. She threw a jet of fire at the first hands on the rock. They recoiled, then came on again where the flame died. Harry's Stunning spells knocked two of them down and the ones behind crawled over the fallen. There were too many. The boat was ten yards away and the ten yards were filling.

Dumbledore's head lifted. He saw the circle closing. Something hard came back into his face, under the sweat and the tears.

"Harry," he said. "Your wand. With mine."

Harry did not ask. He set his wand beside Dumbledore's left hand and let the old man close his fingers over both. The spell that came out was not Harry's. Fire roared up in a ring around the island, tall, gold, hot enough to drive the Inferi shrieking back into the lake. They did not burn like wood. They burned like things that remembered fire and hated it. The ring held. A path opened to the boat, a corridor of scorched rock and steam.

"Go," Dumbledore said, and his knees went. Harry carried him. There was no cleaner word for it. Ginny went ahead with the fire at her back and her wand on the chain, kicking a stray hand off the prow, and held the boat steady while Harry lowered Dumbledore into it. The ring of fire thinned the second Dumbledore's wand left the spell. Inferi surged at the gap. Ginny sent another burst, wild and bright, and Harry shoved the boat off the rock with his boot and hauled the chain.

They crossed the lake inside a shrinking lane of light. Hands rose on both sides and did not quite reach. One caught the gunwale. Ginny blasted it off and burned a hole in the wood doing it. The boat shipped a palm of black water. Nobody touched it. Harry pulled until his shoulders screamed, and the far shore came up out of the dark, and he dragged them onto stone.

Behind them the fire on the island died. The lake went flat. The hands sank. The quiet came back, which did not feel like safety.

Dumbledore was conscious and not useful. His left arm hung over Harry's shoulder. The empty sleeve was damp and still pinned. His breath rattled.

"The locket," he said.

"I've got it," Harry said. "It's against my chest. We're not opening it in here."

"Good." A pause. "You did well. Both of you. I am sorry you had to hear me."

"I don't want an apology down here," Ginny said. Her voice shook and she did not try to hide it. "If you need to say it, say it when we're not under a cliff. If you can walk, lean on him. I'll take the rear, and I'll hex anything that follows us up."

They climbed. It took longer than the way down. Dumbledore's feet missed holds. Harry put him against the wall on the narrow bits and climbed around him and pulled. Ginny came last, wand up, checking the crack below them every time they stopped. Nothing followed. At the shelf above the sea, the wind hit them again and Harry almost laughed from the plain relief of weather.

Dumbledore healed nothing. He did not have it in him. He looked at the place where the seam had been. The rock was solid.

"Home," he said. "The gates. Not the office. I will not appear in front of a portrait like this."

Harry took his arm. Ginny took the other side, careful of the sleeve, and set her hand on Harry's wrist so the three of them were one grip. The Apparition was worse with a weakened man in the middle. They landed on their knees in the grass by the gates, in the shadow of the winged boars, with the castle lights still burning as if they had been gone an hour and not a lifetime.

Harry got one knee under him. Salt stung the cut on his lip he did not remember getting. Ginny was still on the grass, one hand in the dirt, wand in the other. Dumbledore had not tried to stand. His left hand was braced on his knee. The empty sleeve hung pinned and damp. For a second the only sound was their breathing and the wind in the grass.

Then Harry looked up.

The Dark Mark burned over the Astronomy Tower.

Green, and huge. The skull. The snake coming out of the mouth. It lit the top of the castle the way the potion had lit the basin, a sick light with nothing warm in it. Not a charm gone wrong. Not a student dare. The Mark. Death Eaters were inside.

Harry's stomach went cold in a way the cave had not managed.

"Draco," he said.

Dumbledore's head came up. The grey in his face did not leave. His hand still shook. His eyes cleared anyway, all at once, the way they had cleared in the boat when the chain took his weight. He looked at the Mark as a thing he had already counted on and had still hoped to meet on a different night.

"Yes," he said. "He has made his move."

Ginny got to her feet. Her wand was up. She was staring at the tower, not at them. "That's inside. Ron's in there. Hermione. The first-years. Half the school is asleep under that."

"I know." Dumbledore got upright with Harry under his good side. The walk was wrong, too careful, the potion still in his legs. He was thinking through it. "The cave was built to cost whoever came for the locket. Tom would have liked us to still be under the sea when this went up. We are not. That is the only mercy in it."

He did not say Snape's name. He did not have to. Harry felt the Vow sit down beside the cold gold at his chest. Watch Draco. Protect Draco. Finish the task if Draco failed. Dumbledore was looking at the tower as if he could already see which of the three was waiting at the top, and he was going toward it with one hand and no strength and no surprise on his face.

A shout carried from high in the stone. Thin. Cut off. The Mark burned steadier.

Harry pulled the locket out. In the green light it was only gold, heavy, with the serpentine S dull against his palm. It did not pulse. It did not whisper. He had carried a piece of Tom Riddle against his skin for a year when he was twelve, and the diary had felt awake even shut. This felt like a closed mouth. Wrong. Dead.

"It's the one from the basin," he said. "It doesn't feel like the diary. It feels like nothing."

Dumbledore looked at it and did not take it. His left hand stayed on Harry's shoulder, trembling. "Then it stays shut. Keep it close. Do not put it on. Do not pry it open tonight. Not in that tower. Not for anyone who asks. It goes inside your robes and it stays on you."

Harry shoved it back against his chest. The gold sat cold over his heart. He did not look at the castle doors, or the path up to the common room, or anywhere a trunk might be. There was no dormitory in this. There was the Mark, and the old man who could barely stand, and Ginny's fingers locked in his sleeve.

"I'm not putting it down," Harry said. "And I'm not letting you go up there alone."

"Harry." Dumbledore's voice was quiet and did not leave room, the same voice he had used at the cut in the cliff. "I am going to the tower. That is the task in front of me now. You have the locket. Keep it on your person. Get Miss Weasley under cover if she will go, and do not draw that gold in front of them."

Ginny's mouth opened. She shut it. Her eyes went from the tower to the empty sleeve to Harry. "I'm not waiting in a corridor while Death Eaters are in the castle," she said. It was the same fact she had brought to the cave. "If you go up, I'm at your back. I already said that once tonight."

On the rampart, small at this distance, figures moved in the green. One of them was pale-haired. Harry could not swear to it. His stomach swore anyway. Draco had opened the castle. The Mark was the proof, and the proof was still burning, and they were still at the gates.

Dumbledore stepped out from under Harry's arm. He swayed, caught himself on the gatepost with his left hand, and started toward the castle. The pinned sleeve did not swing. He had fixed it even now. He did not look back until he was on the path, and when he did, the dread was plain and unspoken. He knew who would be on that tower if the boy could not finish. He was walking into it.

"Hide nothing from me later," he said. "Hide the locket now. Come if you will not stay."

Harry looked at Ginny. Salt was drying on her cloak. Her face was set. She was already moving, wand low, not ahead of Dumbledore, at his shoulder where she had been on the cliff. Harry put his hand over the locket through his robes, felt the dead weight of it, and followed.

Above them the Dark Mark held. The snake's mouth was open. Somewhere up in the dark the tower door was already open too. Draco had made his move. They had not reached him yet.

Disclaimer: All characters are over 18 years old.