Ginny Weasley Potter (gunpwdr_treason) wrote in whatprice, @ 2009-07-21 20:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | dean thomas, ginny weasley, viktor krum |
Rescue At Sea
Who: Ginny Weasley, Teddy Lupin, Viktor Krum, and Dean Thomas
What: Escape from the boat
When: Saturday, 10 July, 2009 [BACKDATED]
Where: Bill's boat and the surrounding sea
Warnings: PG for violence
Status: Complete
Her mind and body reeling from the fight with Harry, Ginny stumbled downstairs, looking for Teddy. Through the smoke and chaos, she could see an open door -- the door to the room where Fleur and the children had been hiding. "Bear!" she called in a harsh whisper, and threw an Homenum revelio at the room.
It was empty.
Ginny let out a scream of anguish and lunged toward the room, hoping to find clues to where her child had gone: was there a struggle? Had he been taken? Was he---
A small voice from farther down the hall interrupted her thoughts. "Aunt Ginny?" Through the smoke, Teddy appeared from whatever tiny space he'd wedged himself into to hide. He clutched his wand in one shaking hand.
"BEAR!" Ginny rushed down the hall and caught him up in a fierce one-armed embrace that also shielded him from whatever might come at them down the nearest stair. "What happened?"
His response came out in a jumbled rush: "There were only two brooms, Uncle Bill and Michael... Mr. Corner... Fleur had to go help someone else, and Dean went to look for you--- and I had a wand so I said I'd wait while they took Margaux and Marcel, I was going to help look for you but they told me to hide, and... and you're bleeding!"
"I'll be fine," Ginny replied, reflexively--- but she was interrupted by the staccato sound of gunfire from the far staircase, the one she'd just descended.
"Confringo!" Ginny shouted, and the staircase exploded in a shower of splinters. At least whoever-it-was would have a hard time following them that way. She sent a second, more carefully-aimed blasting curse up over the debris and onto the deck above, to wreak havoc with anyone still trying to give chase. Meanwhile, the wheels of her mind were spinning fast: She didn't trust herself to Apparate safely, not when she was this injured and had a child along--- and who knew what those muggle machines, the ones Charlie had warned her about, might do. There were brooms on board, though, and she could probably accio one -- but were they all in use? Would she be pulling it right out from under Fleur, or Cho? If Michael was here, and Dean, that meant someone had got word to the Order -- but as long as they were on the ship, they'd have their hands full with the flying machine, and those black-clad soldiers....
"We're going to swim," she decided. Her tone brooked no argument; she looked at Teddy to make sure he understood. His eyes were wide, but he nodded. "Just like we did before," she added. "Just like at home. We'll go in the water, and get as far away from the ship as we can without coming up. We can call for someone with a broom to come get us out of the water." As she spoke, she flicked her wand and left her shoes and jeans in a little pile in the floor of the corridor; they'd only weigh her down in the water. Teddy still had on his swim-trunks, and a t-shirt -- but he stepped out of his shoes, too, when he saw what Ginny was doing.
"Ready?" she asked. "Straight up the stairs and over the railing. And stay close. Go!"
Ginny barreled down the corridor and up the remaining stairway, blasting anything and anyone that got in her way, trying to keep herself between Teddy and the worst of the gunfire. She was only dimly aware of the details of the chaos around them: she thought she caught a flash of red hair far above them; she was aware of clusters of black-clad fighters, and gunfire, and the occasional spark of a spell going off; and then they were at the railing and flinging themselves over into the water far below.
Ginny's shoulder screamed in pain at the sting of salt-water entering her wound and the burn of exertion as she forced herself to swim with all her might away from the ship. Instinctively, she reached toward where she knew Teddy had landed: his fingers found hers, and they kicked together, hard and fast, keeping themselves as far under the surface as they could manage. Bullets streaked into the water behind them -- where they still would've been if one of them weren't a metamorph who now had flippers for feet.
The green sea muted the sounds of chaos and destruction behind them, blurring it into a low, slow, dreamlike rumble. Confident that the worst of the danger was behind them, spatially and temporally, Ginny chanced a look at the boy swimming beside her. Teddy stared straight ahead in concentration, his cheeks a bit puffed out from the effort of holding in a huge breath, his left arm bent close to his body with his wand still clutched in the fist tucked against his chest. He looked so serious, and so brave even through his fear, that Ginny felt a surge of maternal pride. She smiled.
At that moment, a new sound joined the cacophony of battle: a low thrum that Ginny felt more than heard. It made her teeth itch.
Abruptly, Teddy's fingers clamped hard against her wrist, and he convulsed in the water beside her. Ginny caught the unmistakable roiling bubbles of air being expelled rapidly from his lungs. She threw her arms around him and dragged him as hard and as fast as she could toward the surface of the water.
"Bear! All right, Bear?" she hissed as their heads broke the surface.
Teddy, gasping for breath, could only whimper, "Hurts...." As Ginny tried to help him float while he caught his breath, his feet bobbed above the surface of the water. They were no longer flippers; and even in the fading light, they looked black and blue with bruises. Merlin and Circe, Ginny thought, as rage welled up inside her; she could only imagine what that bloody machine had done to his insides. To his lungs.
She scanned the water and the air above them, searching for the most likely location of the device. A boat she hadn't seen before, bristling with guns, seemed to be slowly circling at a safe distance from the thick of the battle, as if waiting to make its move. Something dark and bulky and covered with wires and thin shiny spires of metal sat a little left of center in the bow; it looked as improbable as something her father might've tried to assemble from all the bits of muggle machines he kept in his workshop.
Ginny raised her wand and pointed it at the device. It was a long shot, and it would almost certainly give away her position, but she didn't care.
They hurt her baby. Let them come. She'd take them all down.
But then Teddy whimpered again, and Ginny realised she didn't need another battle. What she needed was to get him out of there, now.
Diffindo, she muttered -- and rather than exploding in fire and sparks, a few of the wires and bits of metal at the top of the device quietly fell away as though a very sharp cleaver had whished through them. The itch in Ginny's teeth stopped abruptly, though Teddy continued to whimper. On the circling boat, black-clad soldiers poked at the device in confusion, trying to figure out why it had suddenly stopped working. "Hang on to me, Bear," Ginny said, and kicked quietly backward, away from the boat and the battle and into the dark open sea.
With another whispered word, she sent a thin stream of silver mist into the air above them. To the untrained eye, the shape into which it coalesced might be easily mistaken for a sea-bird, and the silver glint of its wings for a reflection from the setting sun. It carried her message to the nearest broom-riding wizard: Two in the water. Injured. Need a lift out.
After a tense time of waiting, they saw a sliver of light dancing through the gathering darkness, roving here and there over the waves. The eyes that could inerrantly fix on a tiny Snitch in the dazzling light of day needed no more than the altered reflection off Teddy's hair to locate them, and Viktor hovered beside them a moment later. "How bad you are hurt?" he asked, sending a beacon of wizardlight from his wand to signal the other searchers.
"Teddy may need help hanging on," Ginny replied, her expression grim and pale. She said nothing of her own injury, but to Viktor's practiced eye it was easy enough to see how much she favoured her right arm; the blood that stained her left shoulder was probably her own. She shifted Teddy's weight in her arms, offering him up to Viktor. The boy said nothing; he was curled forward in obvious pain, and devoting all his concentration to staying above water and breathing. "Please, keep him safe. Please, Viktor."
"Of course," he answered, with the same gravity that had calmed jittery team-members for years. "Come, Teddy, up behind me." He turned his broom on its side, holding it there seemingly without effort, and reached down to lift Teddy onto the broom before he righted it.
Ginny fussed over Teddy for just a moment: securing his wand into a pocket of his swim-trunks, smoothing his hair, kissing his forehead. A quick diagnostic spell, now that her hands were free, told her that his injuries were unlikely to be life-threatening -- but he badly needed the attention of a Healer with more than her basic first-aid skills. "I'll be there soon," she promised. "Or go to Uncle Charlie if he gets there before me, or Fleur. Be good, Bear. I love you."
"Love you too," Teddy replied weakly -- but at least he was still talking. He wrapped his arms around Viktor and balled his hands into fists hanging on to the quidditcher's shirt.
"You are okay? Hold on to me good and tight; here, I will charm you so you don't fall. We go fast." He had to catch up with Cho, who might not be equal to the task of flying Hermione to shore -- but before he left, he said the Quidditcher's Cocktail of simple healing charms over Ginny and charmed a coin with a broom-attracting spell for her.
Ginny accepted the charmed coin from Viktor. She laid her hand on his arm and gave it a brief squeeze of deep, heartfelt gratitude.
As he streaked off into the twilight, carrying her baby to safety, she sank back into the cold, dark water.
Panic was starting to settle into Dean's stomach as he circled again and didn't catch any sign of Ginny, which only increased when he saw a familiar young boy being carried off by Viktor. Things couldn't be good if Teddy wasn't with Ginny... He was about to circle around again when he felt his broom drawn downwards towards the water. At first, he looked around, half expecting that it was Harry trying to hex his broom before he realized that he was a bit too far from the boats to really be of notice. Letting the broom be pulled for now, he breathed out a swear when he saw the body lying in the dark water. Diving down faster, he skimmed along the water before coming to a halt and reaching down to gently grab Ginny's arm.
"Ginny, can you hear me?" he asked, wondering if he'd get any help in getting her onto his broom.
Ginny said nothing, but the stricken look she gave Dean as she turned her head and focused on him spoke volumes. She was cold, in pain, and physically and emotionally spent; but she reached for Dean, trying to get enough of a grip to haul herself out of the water and onto his broom without causing too much more damage to her injured shoulder.
Dean murmured soothingly, despite the situation not being the appropriate place for it, as he picked her up out of the water. He couldn't help, but try and comfort and soothe her when she was looking like that. Wrapping one arm around her to hold her steady and also hug her close to his body in hopes in helping to get the chill off her skin, his other hand went to grab the handle of his broom to keep it steady as he looked around to see where everyone else went. "Don't worry. I've got you, Gin," he said, keeping his body as curled around her as possible to try and protect her, even though the vision in his left eye was a bit impaired from the blood coming down from a gash on his forehead and his body ached from God knew what sort of injuries. Spotting where a few other wizards looked to be flying away, he skimmed along the water, hoping not to draw too much attention as he aimed to join the others.
"I know," Ginny replied, and closed her eyes. For all that she'd been furious with him, years ago, for being overprotective, right now it felt like exactly what she needed. It felt like home.