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Harry had wanted to talk to Ginny while they worked in the kitchen, but there simply wasn't enough privacy. Someone could come in at any moment. Besides, she seemed to be back to pretending he didn't exist. She didn't look at him as they did the slight chore, carefully didn't touch him, and certainly didn't speak to him. He did catch her looking towards the door with an odd, satisfied little smile on her face, rather like a cat who'd just brought down a bit of clever prey. Then, of course, Ron, Fred, and George had come charging into the room, arguing and laughing and creating their normal chaos, and there certainly wasn't any chance.

Ron was delighted to see Harry up and about, and tried to convince him to join him and the twins in their unofficial quidditch practice after lunch, but Molly quickly vetoed that. Harry, she said, wasn't nearly up to aerial acrobatics, and so was to stay off his broom for at least another couple of days. The boys' woebegone expressions didn't sway her, but she did promise that if he was still improving as fast as he had, that she would consider the matter again after two days.

Just having lunch at the same table as the hyperactive Weasley twins made Harry tired, but it was also incredibly cheering. Their energy was almost as infectious as it was draining to watch. He wasn't so tired by the end that he had any desire to seek out his bed, and Molly told him he could stay up, if he wanted, as long as he didn't tire himself too badly.

So he was sitting on the back porch, swinging his legs idly off the side, and watching the distant specks of the other boys swoop and dive over the trees, when Ginny slipped out the back door and headed down the trail towards the river, the bag of books once again over her shoulder.

He followed her, not saying anything. He wasn't sure if she realised he was there, but he doubted it, so he made a point of staying as quiet as he could. She followed the little dirt trail down to the Otter river, then turned south along its bank, away from the Muggle village that could just barely be seen on the other side. The path became less clear, with trees hanging low overhead and briars crossing underfoot. After a couple of minutes, she stopped, cocking her head for just a second, then continued on a bit further and ducked beneath the branches of a willow tree, totally invisible behind the thick fronds.

Harry slipped inside after her. "Hey."

She was obviously waiting for him, her back against the trunk of the tree, arms crossed across her chest. Her honey coloured eyes were unreadable as she looked at him. "Well?" she asked.

"Mind if I sit down?" he asked. "I'm kinda tired."

She shrugged one shoulder. "Have a log, then. It's not like they're my personal property."

"Are you mad at me?" he asked. "You've been avoiding me."

She looked down, a touch of colour in her cheeks. She sighed, but it was a moment before she actually answered. "No," she said quietly. "I'm not... mad."

He sat down, looking up at her. "What, then?" he asked.

She sighed again, irritably this time. "It doesn't really matter, now does it? I'm not mad. That's what you wanted to know."

"Actually, I wanted to know why you've been avoiding me."

She tilted her chin up. "I'm not avoiding you," she said. "We just had lunch together."

Harry gave her a pointed look. "I'm not going to lie to you," he said.

"If I were avoiding you," she said, "I'd think it would be my choice, anyway. And not anyone else's business. I'm not angry, so you have nothing to apologise for or to worry about. Just... enjoy the privacy."

"What if I don't want privacy?" he asked.

Her eyes flashed gold as she glared at him. "Don't. Just because I... acted like a bit of an idiot doesn't give you any right to... to play me along. I don't want to see you right now. I'm still your friend, and I'll still stand by you when you need me to because... well, because you stand up for the right things. But that doesn't mean I'm comfortable talking to you right now."

Harry looked at her, puzzled. "Play you along? Huh?"

"I mean don't tease me!" she snapped. "Don't think that you can manipulate me through my feelings because you can't."

"Okay," he said slowly. "Would you tell me why you think I'm doing that? Because I'm not. At least I don't mean to be."

She sighed, pushing a strand of hair back from her face with an angry swipe. "Look. Just... What do you want, Harry?"

"Well... first of all I want to know what I did to make you not trust me anymore," he said. "You said you did yesterday."

"I never said I didn't trust you," she said. "I just don't want to talk to you right now."

"If you think I'm manipulating you, you don't trust me," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "No. I trust you. I trust you to do the right thing, to not betray me in any way, and in everything important," she said. "But that doesn't mean that you're not human. That doesn't mean that you're going to automatically understand that you're doing something wrong, something that hurts."

"Then tell me what I'm doing," he said. "Because I don't know what it is, and I... I don't want to hurt you, Ginny."

"Then maybe you should just let me stay away from you, Harry," she said softly. "That's... safest."

"Please," he said. "Tell me."

She covered her eyes with her hand, leaning forward until her long red hair practically hid her face. "I already have. It embarrasses me to be around you right now. It hurts to remember acting like... like I did. And I don't want to be reminded of it, or of any mistakes I might have made. I don't want to make any more mistakes like that, either. So until I have more control over my emotions, please just leave me be. I'm fine."

"Oh," he said. "I... um. What if... you know, I think I had the most embarrassing conversation possible with your mother this morning."

She gave him a tense smile. "Yes. She's very good at that. But don't worry, I won't give her any reason to grill you further."

He blinked. "Oh. She didn't know about, um, the kiss."

Ginny looked relieved. "Well. That's good, at least."

"She gave me, um." Harry swallowed, his face red.

"Oh. The Speech." Ginny grinned, her eyes sparkling. "Don't worry, Harry. She does that for all the boys. I got quite a different one, of course."

"You... might be surprised," he said. "You don't know why she gave it to me."

"Probably to really drive home that she considers you family, Harry," she said, thoughtfully.

He shook his head, his gaze locked on a knot on a log. "She gave it to me because... um...." His head jerked up, as a horrifying thought suddenly occurred to him. "I don't expect you to!" he said, desperately. "I didn't assume that just because you kissed me you'd... you know, I swear!"

She sighed, sliding down the tree trunk until she was sitting, her knees bent in front of her. "Of course you didn't, Harry," she said quietly. "There'd no reason for you to. Not when I know you don't want it."

Harry swallowed, summoning up all his courage.

Gryffindors go forward, after all.

"Says who?" he managed.

"Said you!" She glared at him. "Lots of times, really. Not in words, maybe, but I'm not stupid. I don't need words. I know very well you only asked me to that stupid dance because you couldn't have the girl you actually wanted." She sighed disgustedly and looked away. "Not that I probably wouldn't still have gone, if I hadn't already told Neville I'd go with him. But I would have known it was a stupid thing to do, anyway. And it's not a big deal. I'm over it," she said, firmly. "I had a bit of a relapse when I thought you'd changed your mind and it just happened to coincide with one of my... little moments. But that doesn't make me blind."

"Maybe you do need words," he said, knowing that he only had one chance to get this right. "So I'll try to give them to you. I'm not very good, but I'll do my best. I'm sorry I never really noticed you. I'm sorry I didn't see what was under my nose. And I'm... I'm really sorry you're over it. I was hoping you weren't."

"I saw your face, Harry," she said softly. "You were horrified. And you made it quite plain that what you wanted to talk about was something very different from what I was thinking."

"Of course I was," he said. "Can you imagine if your brothers had come in?" He shuddered. "Or your mother?"

"Now I can," she said. "Then I couldn't. That you could just proves my point."

"Not really," he said. "There was more to it than that, but I promise, I... I liked it. A lot." He hesitated. "There's some stuff you don't know yet, that I need to tell you about, but that's not all I wanted to talk about. I wanted to ask if... if maybe you'd want to... um... well, I don't know if there's anywhere to go around here, I mean we can't really go to Hogsmeade, but--" He stopped himself. "I'm babbling."

She was watching him, her head cocked to the side, interested but still skeptical. "Why?" she asked. "I can think of a lot of really bad reasons for you to have changed your mind."

"Yeah," he said. "But none of them are why. I'm not sure I can explain it. Part of it is... you're the only one who can understand. Everybody else... they think they know, but they don't. You've seen him. You understand."

She shuddered, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees. "Yeah. I understand. But I've understood for a long time now, Harry. It's not anything new."

"No," Harry said. "What's new is that I understand." He studied his hands for a moment. "But there's more to it than that. We're different, you and I. We were marked by... fate, destiny, call it what you will, it doesn't matter. There's more to what happened to you in the Chamber than the loss of control, isn't there?" he said. "You're more powerful than you were before."

"Maybe," she said, looking away. "I can... things feel different now. I notice things that I didn't before."

"Yeah," he said. "And once I understood, once I understood everything... well, it wasn't so much that I changed my mind as... I didn't reject you, Ginny. I rejected the little girl I thought you were. And I wish I hadn't, because if I hadn't, I'd have gotten to know the real you earlier."

"I... wasn't me, earlier," she said, hesitantly. "Or maybe I'm not me now. I'm... something's different. It's not just the experience, not just 'growing up suddenly' like they said. There are parts of me that aren't... aren't normal. Like maybe I've been... corrupted or something." The way she avoided his eyes, staring fixedly at the willow branches dipping into the river, and her stiff, tense posture told him better than any words could that these changes were something that she'd been frightened of for quite some time now.

Harry sighed. "You haven't been," he said. "But to believe that, you have to reject a lot of the things Albus Dumbledore teaches."

She lay her forehead on her knees and mumbled something that sounded like, "No problem there."

"What if I told you that Dark didn't mean evil?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said, without raising her head. "I guess I'd have to ask what exactly you were referring to when you said Dark."

Harry held out his hand. "Touch me."

Her head came up and she scrunched up against the tree. "That's probably not the best idea in the world right now."

"Why not?" he asked. "Can't you feel it?"

"That's why not! Harry, please..."

"Where is your limit?" he asked. "I won't let you cross it."

She licked her lips, staring at him. "I... don't know. You really, really don't understand. Part of me doesn't have one. And then I think that I should, but then I think, why should I? And then I argue with myself, but every time I argue about these things, the reasons that normal part of me has seem less and less important. I don't know if they matter at all, anymore."

"Where would you like it to be?" he asked.

"Not a good measure," she said, shaking her head. "Like, want, need... any kind of desire is... overwhelming to me right now. I'm trying so hard to keep the thinking part of me in charge, but there's this huge, delicious temptation to just... indulge. And it's definitely what I want. But it's not what I should do. I should keep you at arms length. I should stay completely away from you, in fact." She shot him an accusing look. "I was doing so, actually. Quite well. This time isn't my fault. It isn't."

"No," he said. "It's Dumbledore's."

She blinked. "Um. What?"

Harry sighed. "I... I really don't know how to tell you this. I've been thinking about it ever since I found out. Um. Tom Riddle isn't the Dark Lord. He wants to be, and he thinks he is, but he never finished the power transfer, and it drove him insane."

"Transfer from who? I mean, I know he's insane. He was in my head, Harry. Hell yes he was insane. But I don't understand what you mean."

"Well...." Harry took a deep breath. "There hasn't been a true Dark Lord in almost a thousand years, ever since Dumbledore killed Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets."

She didn't tell him he was crazy. She didn't point out that Dumbledore wasn't that old. She just frowned a bit, and said, "I think that maybe you should start at the beginning."