Loyalty binds me - H/G - PG
Title: Loyalty binds me
Author: shocfix
Challenge: 56. Post-Hogwarts - Westminster Abbey.
Summary: Ginny helps Harry see why he has to fight.
Rating: PG
Word Count : 2400
Notes/Warnings: Um, yes, well.

Harry never paid attention in History of Magic, did he?

Look, I like it, but there will be notes at the end, because I am being utterly biased and insane all through the fic.

If you are just here for the Harry Potter, then stop reading when Harry and Ginny leave the Burrow, because it turns into a bit of a rant, after that point!

Many thanks for the historical beta from junediamanti!


Loyalty binds me
****
Ginny had been counting on Harry letting her back in, once she was of age.

She’d only seen him twice since he left – they’d made a fleeting visit to the Burrow for Christmas, and her ears were still ringing from the scream her mum had let out when she saw the fresh gash on Ron’s cheek.

“Don’t fuss, Mum,” he’d said.

She’d tried so hard not to, and had been completely wrong-footed by how happily he let Hermione fuss over him.

Harry had been in one piece, physically, but even when grey with exhaustion, he had held Ginny at arm’s length.

The next time she saw him, he’d flooed in on one night the following summer, in search of Bill, a locket clasped in a heavily bandaged hand.

He’s assured her mum that Ron and Hermione were fine and dragged Bill out into the garden; there had been an explosion and a sooty Bill had come back in, alone, Harry having left without another word.

So, Ginny had had enough.

The three of them were now staying at the Burrow, having arrived the day before Ginny’s birthday.

They weren’t staying long, just until they had another lead, but her mum was cooking and cleaning and darning like a whirlwind.

Ginny went up to Ron’s room, where Ron and Hermione were sitting on the narrow beds, reading.

Harry was pacing around what floor was available.

“So,” she said, sitting beside Hermione. “What is the plan?”

Harry glared at her, Ron snorted and Hermione smiled down at her book.

“You’re not coming with us, Gin,” Harry said sternly.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m not a liability anymore. I can Apparate, there is no reason to leave me at school, and every reason to keep me with you.”

“You’d be safer at school than with us,” Harry said flatly, gesturing at Ron’s face.

Ron automatically reached up to finger his scar, even though it was hidden in a rough beard.

“Maybe a little safer,” Ginny conceded. “But you’re not going without me, not again.”

Harry sagged onto Ron’s bed. “I can’t keep you safe,” he said. “I can’t keep any of you safe and you’d all be better off without me.”

“Stop it,” Ron said.

“I’m beginning to think everyone’d be better off without me,” Harry said bleakly. “Who’d even care if Voldemort won?”

“What?” Ginny snapped.

“Ignore him,” Hermione said. “He’s feeling sorry for himself.”

Harry glared at her. “A year,” he said. “A year to find two Horcruxes, while the rest of the Wizarding World shoots itself in the foot. The incompetents at the Ministry cannot be any worse than Death Eaters – let’s just let Lucius Malfoy out of Azkaban and make him Minster. I’ll give myself up – you can all just live quietly at the Burrow…”

“Yes, because they wouldn’t come after us!” Hermione interrupted.

“Not if they had me,” Harry said grimly.

“Because the last time Dark Wizards took over the country, they didn’t hunt down every last member of the family they supplanted.”

“What Dark Wizards?” Harry asked.

“Don’t you ever listen in History of Magic?” Hermione demanded.

“You mean the Ministry,” Harry frowned. “Dark Wizards took over the Ministry.”

“I mean the country,” Hermione said sternly. “A Dark Wizard as King of England.”

Harry blinked at her.

Hermione rolled her eyes, ostentatiously. “Ginny?” she said. “You passed your History of Magic O.W.L., why don’t you take Harry out for the day and show him the monument our Dark King built to glorify his reign?”

“Hermione, I don’t need a trip…”

“Yes, you do. You need to see what happens to the winners and losers in a war.”

“Blimey, Hermione,” Ron said. “Leave the bloke alone.”

“And if Ginny takes him out, we can spend the day together, here.”

“It’ll do you good to get out mate,” Ron grinned, changing gears smoothly.

Hermione dug some Muggle money out of her bag and handed it to Harry, who snorted, put his hand in Ginny’s, and let her Side-Along-Apparate him away.

They appeared in a deserted, but ornate archway.

“Dean’s Yard?” Harry read. “Where are we?”

“Westminster,” Ginny replied. “We’re going to see some of the Royal Tombs in the Abbey.”

After a few minutes of confusion amongst the resentful tourists who had just discovered they now had to pay to enter the Abbey, they entered the darkened space.

“C’mon,” Ginny said, taking him by the hand, turning left, leading him confidently past the early Plantagenets and bypassing the later Tudors, until they reached the Lady Chapel.

The stalls of the Knights of the Bath were ranged on either side of them, the fan-vaulted ceiling arched over their heads.

“Well?” Harry asked. “Why are we here?”

“What can you tell me about the Yorkist Kings of England?” Ginny asked him.

Harry shrugged. “Um, Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain; the Princes in the Tower?”

Ginny snorted. “I don’t know why Hermione puts up with you two, I really don’t.”

“What should I know about them?” Harry asked.

“Well, even apart from the Important Historical Facts,” she said. “I would have thought that you, of all people, could have told me that Edward IV played Beater when he was at Hogwarts, and Richard III was Gryffindor Seeker for four years.”

Harry boggled at her. “They were wizards?” he hissed.

“Yes,” Ginny huffed. “The wholeYork family were in Gryffindor.”

“That’s amazing; why didn’t I know that?”

“Because you never listen!” she sniffed.

“Now you really do sound like Hermione,” he laughed. “OK, I am all ears.”

Ginny took a deep breath. “OK, we have to start a bit earlier, because Edward IV was the actually first Wizard King – the Magic came into the Royal Family through his great-grandmother, Katherine, who was the mistress of the Duke of Lancaster. With me so far?”

Harry nodded.

She smiled. “She gave the Duke four children – only the oldest boy and their daughter were magical – he was in Slytherin and she was in Gryffindor, which would have split the family, anyway, even if it wasn’t for the fact that their descendants supported opposite sides in the Wars of the Roses.

“Their half-brother, the Duke of Lancaster, deposed the king and stole the throne away from the senior royal line, and our Slytherin and his sons and grandsons all supported the usurpers – the Lancastrians - Henries fourth through sixth.

“They didn’t do very well, though, and soon the male line had pretty much died out, to a single heiress, and she was married off to the king’s illegitimate half-brother when she was twelve and had one son, Henry Tudor. OK?”

“OK,” Harry said. “Although not happy with all the bad guys being called Henry.”

She rolled her eyes. “Now, Katherine’s Gryffindor daughter married the Muggle Earl of Westmorland, Ralph Neville,” Harry sniggered and she glared at him, “and they had thirteen children.”

“Yikes,” Harry murmured.

“Their youngest daughter married the Duke of York, who was the rightful king, so most of her big family supported the Yorkists, and this eventually led to her eldest son becoming king, Edward IV.”

She paused and looked at him.

“First magical King of England, yeah, OK,” Harry confirmed.

“OK. Now, he was very brave in battle when he was younger, very handsome, a huge ladies’ man.”

“True Gryffindor,” Harry interrupted and received a punch on the arm.

“Yes,” she said. “And that is what got him into trouble. He was already privately betrothed to one woman, while he allowed his cousin to negotiate for a foreign princess to marry, and then he announced he’d secretly married a third!

“By the time he ate and drank himself into an early grave, he’d left a twelve-year-old son to follow him, a country split between supporters of his family and his wife’s – and not to mention the Slytherin Henry Tudor, in exile in France, still trying to push Lancaster’s claims.”

“What claim did he have?” Harry asked, frowning. “I thought you said his father was illegitimate?”

“Yes,” she said. “And his mother was descended from another illegitimate line – but that was all the Lancastrians had left, OK?”

“Yeah, weak, but OK,” Harry allowed.

“So,” she said. “Here’s the bit where you need to get interested.”

He nodded.

“King Edward’s brother, Richard, had been loyal to him, his entire life – following him into exile and into battle - running the whole of Northern England for him, when he moved up there and married Anne, his childhood sweetheart. They were nineteen and sixteen when they married – here, at Westminster.”

Harry squeezed her hand.

“Anyway, Richard came to London to organise things,” Ginny continued, “in his nephew’s name, only to run into problems all around him. The boy’s mother and her family tried to get control of the little king, tried to steal the royal treasury, tried to exclude Richard from running things.

“He was forced to arrest some of them, and the rest fled – some into sanctuary, some to France. He was trying hard to follow his brother’s wishes, but skeletons were coming out of the closet all over the place, like about his brother already being married to someone else, when he married his queen, and all their children being illegitimate.

“In the end, people wanted someone strong to take charge of things for good – not a bickering council jockeying for position behind a child king – they called for a Chosen One and Richard decided to take the throne himself, just to create some sort of stability in the country, and the boy king and his brother were housed in a royal palace while Richard organised his own coronation, instead.”

“The Tower,” Harry said.

“Yes, the Tower – the main royal stronghold in London. Anyway, he was still trying to balance the nobles on his council – one being Henry Tudor’s stepfather, one being a notorious Slytherin bishop called John Morton, who was a creature of Tudor’s - and who managed to send a basket of poisoned strawberries in to the two young princes.”

“He killed them?” Harry asked.

She nodded. “Yes, his master wanted them out of the way, so he could marry their sister and use her claim to the throne to bolster his.”

“Because three illegitimate claims are better than two?”

“Basically,” she shrugged. “Anyway, Richard was crowned king, and he tried his best to run things fairly – he introduced bail for people accused of a crime, he had laws written in English, not Latin.”

“And then?” Harry asked, far more interested than he had ever been in anything Professor Binns had said.

“And then his only son died, and he and his wife were distraught, and then Anne died and he was alone. And then Henry Tudor invaded, with an army of French criminals and Dark Wizards,” Ginny continued. “Richard was betrayed by half his army but he led his closest friends towards Henry Tudor, meaning to face him in a Magical Duel, and he was cut down and killed, fighting bravely in the thickest press of the battle.”

Harry took a breath.

“What?” she said.

“It sounds like he shouldn’t have led his friends into battle,” he murmured.

“Because they’d have fared better, safely at home?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Look,” she said. “That wouldn’t have helped. Bishop Morton used Dark Magic to help Tudor run the country. Richard’s closest friend, his Second,” Harry flinched, “carried on the fight, but was killed two years later. Many of Richard’s nieces and nephews were imprisoned and executed over the next fifty years – except for his eldest niece – she had to marry Henry Tudor.

“This chapel, where we are standing, this is their burial place.” She led him by the hand, over to the ornate memorial at the far end of the chapel. “This is what he built to try and show that he was a king, this is how he glorified himself.”

“Look, Gin,” Harry said. “All this means is that fighting the Dark Lord didn’t work – they lost, they were all killed – I don’t want everyone I love to be killed.”

“It didn’t work, no,” she said. “It took over a hundred years of executions and burnings to get rid of them. But they did in the end, and a Squib cousin, the King of Scotland, took over. But what Richard tried to do hasn’t been forgotten; he, and those who came after, did the right thing, they fought against the Dark; but even the children left at home were hunted down when the Dark Lord was victorious.”

“But the grand memorial is to Henry and his wife – where are Richard and Anne?” Harry asked. “What does Richard have?”

“Nothing,” she said, flatly. “Henry had his body stripped naked and thrown in a ditch. Even the plain tomb he was finally allowed in a local convent was desecrated fifty years later and his bones were flung in the river ”

Harry frowned.

“But come and look at this,” Ginny said, taking him by the hand again and leading him past the rest of the ancient Royal Tombs, to a new brass plaque on the wall. “This is where he buried his Anne, and now, nearly five hundred years later, people still care enough about them to place a memorial here for her. ‘In person she was seemly, amiable and beauteous...And according to the interpretation of her name Anne full gracious. REQUIESCAT IN PACE’,” she read.

“I don’t want this for you,” he snapped, waving at the plaque. “I don’t want you to rest in peace – I want you to live.”

“Oh, Harry,” she said. “I’m not asking to come with you because You Know Who won’t let us have a decent burial if you die. I want to be with you, because we don’t know how much longer we could have; because you are doing the right thing; because I want to help you.”

He took both of her hands in his. “Even if we lose?” he asked, quietly.

“We’re not going to lose,” she said. “I can’t let you do this without me, Harry. They are calling you the Chosen One. Well, I choose you, too, and I thought you had chosen me.”

“I have,” he interrupted swiftly, pulling her closer in the shadows, where Anne had rested, without her husband, for five hundred years. “I will take you with me, and I will try and take care of you. I don’t want us to be apart anymore, is that awful of me?”

“No,” she said. “Look at Anne; how could she rest in peace without him, for all these years? We will do this together; I… I don’t want us separated, in death, whether we win or lose.”

****
Author’s notes: um, yes, right – ‘Westminster Abbey’ wasn’t my idea, OK? I picked it from your list!

But I am a life-long Ricardian and I go to the Abbey a lot, and I always have a small rant at the Tudors, and shed a tear over my Richard and his Anne.

Richard’s motto was, ‘Loyaulté me lie’ – ‘Loyalty binds me’ – if that doesn’t sum up Ron Harry, too, then I don’t know what!



I have no proof that Richard was a Gryffindor – but he fought bravely in battle from age eighteen, and I think he had the build to make a good Seeker.

Of course, now I am thinking that the slightly raised right shoulder was not from practising with a sword, but from hours of Seeker practice – I’m sure he’d hold on with his left hand and use his right arm to reach for the Snitch, and – although I have NEVER written Harry with Quidditch-toned anything – I am starting to think that Harry has one shoulder more developed than the other, too!

And, wow, I bet Richard was at the World Cup in 1473, when all 700 known fouls occur in the final - Flanders and Transylvania – can’t you just see his sister, Margaret, presenting the trophy to the winners!!!

OK, I know it doesn’t say where the finals took place…..


And, look, basically, this is Henry Tudor – who hid at the back of his troops at Bosworth – have you ever seen such a Slytherin???