He Needed a Sanctuary From the War, So I Gave Him My Body in the Room of Requirement

The only sound was the soft scuff of his worn trainers against ancient stone. Moonlight, cold and white, sliced through the tall, arched windows of the third-floor corridor, painting long, distorted shadows on the flagstones. The portraits were silent, their subjects snoring softly in their painted worlds, oblivious. For them, it was just another night. For Harry, the silence was a physical presence, pressing in on him, amplifying the cacophony in his own head.

Horcruxes.

The word echoed in his mind, a venomous hiss that had become the backing track to his life. The locket, hanging cold and dead against his chest beneath his shirt, was a constant, hateful reminder. The diary was gone, the ring destroyed, but there were others. The cup. The diadem. The snake. And something else, something Dumbledore had been maddeningly vague about. The Headmaster's final words were a tangled mess of riddles and half-truths that Harry was supposed to unravel while simultaneously dodging a genocidal maniac.

He paused, leaning his forehead against the cool glass of a window, looking out over the dark grounds. The Forbidden Forest was a black, jagged line against the paler sky. Out there, somewhere, Voldemort was waiting. Planning. Growing stronger. The thought sent a familiar, sickly throb through the scar on his forehead. It wasn't pain, not exactly, but a low, simmering ache—a connection he loathed but couldn't sever.

He felt impossibly alone. Ron and Hermione were with him, of course. They were sleeping now, safe in the Gryffindor Tower, and he was grateful for it. But they couldn't truly understand. The prophecy hadn't named them. Dumbledore hadn't laid this impossible burden at their feet. It was his. His to carry, his to see through to the bitter end. He was the Chosen One, a title that felt less like an honour and more like a death sentence.

A profound weariness settled deep in his bones, a fatigue that had nothing to do with the late hour. It was the weight of it all, the constant fear, the gnawing uncertainty. He was seventeen, and he felt ancient. He pushed himself off the window, his own reflection a pale, haunted stranger with tired green eyes. The corridor stretched on before him, empty and endless, a perfect mirror of the path he felt he was walking. Alone.

"Figured I'd find you up here, being all moody and dramatic."

The voice, soft but laced with familiar sarcasm, cut through the silence. Harry spun around, his wand half-drawn from his pocket before he saw her. Ginny was leaning against the opposite wall, bathed in the same stark moonlight that had been illuminating his despair. Her red hair was a shock of dark fire in the gloom, and she held a small, napkin-wrapped bundle in her hands.

A corner of his mouth twitched, the first hint of a genuine smile he’d felt in hours. "Patrolling, Ginny. It's called patrolling."

"Right," she said, pushing off the wall and closing the distance between them. The scent of cinnamon and something uniquely her—wildflowers and clean air—followed in her wake. "And I'm just out for a midnight stroll." She held out the bundle. "Peace offering. Stole them from the kitchens. Dobby was surprisingly complicit."

He took it, the warmth of the pastry seeping through the thin napkin into his cold fingers. Treacle tart. His favourite. Of course she knew. He sank onto a wide stone window ledge, and she sat beside him, their shoulders not quite touching. He took a bite. The sweet, sticky warmth was a sudden, sharp comfort, a taste of home and simple happiness in the oppressive darkness of the castle.

They ate in a comfortable quiet for a moment, the only sounds their soft chewing and the distant sigh of the wind outside. It was easy. With her, it was always so easy.

"It's not just the patrolling, is it?" she said, her voice losing its teasing edge. She wasn't looking at him, but at the grounds below, the same dark expanse he'd been staring at moments before. "You get that look. Like you're a million miles away, fighting a war no one else can see."

Harry swallowed the last of his tart. He didn't answer, just stared at the floor. He didn't want to lie to her, but the truth was a dangerous, heavy thing.

"Ron and Hermione think they have to be brave for you," she continued, her voice low and serious. "They follow you and they fight with you. But they don't always see how much it costs you." She finally turned her head, and her brown eyes were fiercely intelligent in the pale light. They pinned him in place. "They see the hero, Harry. The Chosen One. But I see you. I see the boy who's terrified he's going to fail everyone he loves."

Her words sliced right through the armour he wore every day, the carefully constructed facade of the Boy Who Lived. He felt a raw, painful lump form in his throat. He couldn't look at her, couldn't let her see how close to the truth she was. He just stared at his own hands, calloused from Quidditch and gripping his wand too tightly.

"Sometimes I think I'm just… following a ghost's instructions," he admitted, the words feeling like stones being pulled from his gut. "Dumbledore left me with riddles and a suicide mission. I lie awake at night, going over the same conversations, trying to find a clue I missed. But there’s nothing. Just me, and this… thing around my neck." His hand instinctively went to the locket beneath his shirt. "What if I can't find them all, Ginny? What if I'm not enough? What if he wins because I missed something simple?"

The confession hung in the cold air, stark and ugly. He braced himself for platitudes, for a 'Don't be silly, Harry,' but it never came. Instead, he felt a sudden, searing warmth on his forearm.

Ginny had reached out, her fingers wrapping around his arm over the thin fabric of his sleeve. It was meant as a gesture of support, a simple squeeze of reassurance. But the moment her skin made contact, a violent jolt shot through him, a current of pure heat that bypassed his skin and went straight into his blood. It wasn't magic, not like a spell. It was something else, something primal and shocking. His breath caught in his lungs, and every nerve ending in his body screamed to life.

His head snapped up, his green eyes locking with hers. Her own eyes were wide, her pupils blown huge in the dark, her lips parted in a silent gasp. He could see the pulse fluttering in the delicate skin of her throat. She felt it too. He knew she did. The heat wasn't just in his arm; it was radiating from her, a furnace of shared sensation.

As one, they yanked their hands back as if they’d both touched a hot coal. The sudden absence of her touch left his skin feeling cold and hypersensitive. They scrambled apart on the stone ledge, putting a foot of charged space between them. The comfortable silence of moments before was gone, shattered. In its place was a thick, humming tension that vibrated in the air.

He stared at her, really looked at her. He wasn't seeing Ron's kid sister anymore. He was seeing the curve of her hip, the line of her collarbone in the moonlight, the way her chest rose and fell with quick, shallow breaths. He was acutely aware of the scent of her skin, the fiery glint in her hair, the sheer, undeniable fact of her body next to his. The air in the corridor seemed to thin, making it hard to breathe. The world had tilted on its axis. Everything was different now. And as they stared at each other across the impossible new distance between them, Harry knew, with a terrifying certainty, that nothing would ever be the same.