He Left Me To Save The World, But A Single Charmed Coin Kept Us Together.

The Room of Requirement felt smaller with Harry gone, though the walls stretched just as wide. Ginny stood at the front, her wand resting against her palm like it belonged there, and watched thirty faces tilt toward her in the candlelight. They were waiting for her to sound certain.

"Protego Maximus," she said, the Latin crisp on her tongue. "Shield charm, but wider. Think of pushing your magic outward, not up. Like you're inflating a tent."

She flicked her wrist. Silver light burst from her wand and curved into a dome that shimmered over their heads. A few younger students gasped. Neville nodded, slow and deliberate, the way he used to nod at Harry. Luna stared through the shield as though it were glass, smiling at something no one else could see.

Ginny let the charm drop. The air settled back against her skin, warm and close. "Pair up. Practice on each other. If your partner's shield wobbles, tell them. Don't coddle."

They moved, shuffling into twos. The scrape of shoes on stone echoed too loud. She heard her own heartbeat underneath it, steady and accusing.

She should have said something inspiring. That was what Harry would have done—some half-awkward joke that somehow made them all believe they could survive tomorrow. Instead she walked the rows, correcting grips, nudging elbows higher, keeping her face neutral. Each correction felt like a small betrayal of her own exhaustion.

"Ginny," Luna whispered, fingers brushing her sleeve. "You keep looking for him. He's not here, but you're still looking."

Ginny's throat tightened. She glanced at the doorway, empty except for shadows. "I'm checking for Carrows," she lied.

Luna's eyes—pale and too knowing—stayed on her a moment longer, then drifted away. Ginny moved on.

Near the back, a third-year Hufflepuff's shield sparked, then collapsed. The girl's bottom lip shook. Ginny crouched, covered the girl's wand hand with her own, and guided it through the motion again. This time the shield held, thin but solid.

"Better," she said. "Again. Without me."

She straightened. The room smelled of sweat and wax, of fear dressed up as determination. Her shoulders ached as if she'd been carrying trunks across the castle. No one else seemed to notice that the space where Harry used to stand—off-center, always surprised to be watched—had become a vacuum that pulled at her peripheral vision.

She clapped once. "Reset. This time I want the shield to cover three people. Choose your triangle."

They scrambled. Neville caught her eye across the room, raised his brows in silent question: You all right? She answered with a tight nod that cost her nothing and everything.

The candles guttered. Somewhere in the corridor a suit of armor clanged, and every head whipped toward the door. Ginny's wand lifted automatically, her body stepping in front of the youngest kids. The movement felt practiced, inherited.

"Keep casting," she ordered, voice steady. "If Death Eaters burst in, I want them to bounce."

Laughter rippled, nervous and grateful. She felt it land on her skin like hot rain, soaking in.

She did not let herself look at the empty space again.

The dungeon benches were slick with condensation, the stone walls weeping winter. Ginny kept her elbows tucked, cauldron centered over a blue flame that hissed like a snake. Around her, quills scratched and brass scales clinked. Amycus Carrow’s boots thudded between the rows, each step a nail hammered into the silence.

She had brewed this draught twice already at the D.A. meetings; she could do it blindfolded. Still she counted measures—three drops of wormwood, clockwise stir—because the numbers gave her something to hold. Neville worked opposite her, shoulders hunched, knuckles white on his wand-stirrer. When Carrow passed, Neville’s hand jerked; the stirrer clanged the copper cauldron rim.

Carrow stopped. His shadow fell across their bench, smelling of old blood and pipe smoke. “Problem, Longbottom?”

“No, sir,” Neville muttered.

Carrow’s fingers—thick, yellow-nailed—snaked out and clamped Neville’s forearm. “Respect costs nothing, boy. Try it again.”

Neville’s lips parted, no sound. Ginny saw the tremor travel up his arm, saw the red beginning where Carrow’s nails bit skin. She lifted her own cauldron by the handle, angled it toward the gutter that ran the table’s edge, and let it tip.

Thick, half-boiled potion slopped over. It hit the flame with a wet slap, erupted in acrid steam and a geyser of violet sparks. Students yelped, benches scraping. Carrow spun, releasing Neville, who clutched his arm to his chest.

“You clumsy little—” Carrow’s wand was already out, but Ginny stepped forward, chin high, potion dripping from her sleeve.

“My fault, Professor. I misgripped the handle.”

Carrow’s eyes—small, dark—flicked to the ruined potion eating holes in the flagstones, then to her face. A slow grin split his mouth. “Carelessness in my classroom carries a price, Weasley. Detention. My office. After supper.”

He jabbed his wand; a ribbon of orange light cracked across her cheek. It felt like a burning coin pressed to skin, then ice. She didn’t flinch, though her eyes watered. Behind her, someone gasped; quills stilled.

“Back to work, the rest of you,” Carrow barked. He flicked Ginny’s cheek with the back of his hand, a casual slap that snapped her head sideways. “Bring that Gryffindor pride tonight, girl. We’ll see how loud it screams.”

He stalked away. The dungeon noise resumed, shaky and subdued. Ginny righted her cauldron, cheek throbbing in heartbeat rhythm. Neville stared at her, eyes wide.

“You didn’t have to,” he whispered.

“I did,” she answered, voice flat. She touched her face; fingertips came away bloody. The pain sat shallow, hot, manageable. “Stir your potion, Neville. We still need the antidote by end of class.”

He nodded, swallowing hard, and bent over his work. When he thought she wasn’t looking, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Ginny turned back to her own bench, the left side of her face pulsing like a second heart, and began measuring again—wormwood, three drops—because numbers, at least, stayed honest.

The castle after curfew felt hollowed out, every corridor a wind-tunnel of stone. Ginny moved through it barefoot, her shoes slung over her shoulder so the soles wouldn’t clack. The left side of her face had swollen into a single, tender bruise that throbbed with her pulse; she kept touching it, checking the heat, as if the injury might have opinions of its own.

The Owlery stank of mouse bones and droppings. Moonlight slanted through the broken panes, striping the floor silver. She had climbed the spiral stairs telling herself she was only looking for Pig, who sometimes got bullied off the rafters by the larger school owls. Instead she found Errol crumpled on the sill like a discarded tea towel, beak parted, eyes filmed.

She crossed the room in three strides and gathered him to her chest. His heart fluttered against her palm, frantic moth wings. One of her mother’s ribbons—bright, foolishly cheerful—was knotted around his leg along with a tightly rolled Prophet and a separate scrap no bigger than a gum wrapper.

Ginny unfastened the ribbon first, murmuring nonsense to the owl, then spread the Prophet on the floor. The banner headline screamed about disappearances in Diagon Alley; she ignored it. The scrap had been folded four times, pressed so flat the creases were white. When she opened it the paper sprang back, eager.

You okay?

Two words, slanted hard to the right, the k kicking up like a hoof. She had watched that hand write detention lines, birthday cards, once a shopping list that ended “toothpaste and courage.” The ink smelled faintly of broom polish and river mud, the exact scent that clung to his Quidditch robes after practice. She knew, without testing, that the note would burst into flames if anyone else touched it; Hermione’s paranoia had rubbed off on all of them.

Errol gave a feeble hoot, as if reminding her she still owed him a treat. She stroked the brittle feathers at his neck, feeling the tremor that traveled from his body into hers. “You stupid, brilliant bird,” she whispered. “You could have died en route.”

The note lay in her open palm, weightless and impossible. If the Carrows found it she would be expelled at best, Crucioed at worst. If she answered she would have to find a way to smuggle the reply out of the castle, past censors and prowling prefects. Either choice carved a new fault line through the night.

She lifted the scrap to her cheek—the uninjured one—letting the paper rest against her skin. The parchment absorbed a faint sheen of blood from where Carrow’s curse had split the flesh. Two small words, and yet they rearranged the air in her lungs until breathing felt like borrowed time.

Ginny tucked the note inside her cuff, against the thin skin of her wrist where her own pulse could keep it warm. Then she fed Errol the last of the owl treats from her pocket, working the meat strip into his beak piece by piece until he swallowed. When she set him on a low perch he swayed, then locked his talons, already half-asleep.

She stayed another minute, listening to the wind scour the tower, before she started down the stairs. The scrap rode against her pulse like a second heartbeat, secret and reckless, and she understood that she would guard it the way she had guarded Neville—deliberately, at whatever cost.