Heavenly Creatures

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July 1997

It was a scaldingly hot day in summer. Ginny walked slowly through the solid heat, her shoes kicking up waves of dust from the parched earth of the path that led past the back of Gryffindor Tower. She had waited a very long time for this opportunity. But now that her chance was at hand, she felt strangely afraid to take it. An actual physical force seemed to be pushing her away from the circular plot of land at the edge of the Hogwarts grounds, near the Forbidden Forest. There was no logical reason for this, so far as she knew. Many spells protected this area, but none of them were designed to keep out visitors. She forced herself to step onto the neatly raked path of white marble chips.

In truth, the very oldest sort of magic survived at Hogwarts only in remnants, such as the ancient etymology of a word in an arcane spell, the memory of sacred megalithic sites, like Stonehenge, or the unimaginably primitive shapes of earth and sky sorcery. Or, indeed, like the spiral path that circled the grey slabs of stone in the Hogwarts graveyard. Ginny walked the dusty earth with a slow and measured tread. She had been trained in all the magical arts for five and a half years, and she felt the power rising from this ground, these stones.

Some of the slabs were so old that they had worn away to misshapen lumps, and only the enchantment on the inscriptions preserved their legibility. Her gaze slid across the words like oil over water. Ginny knew what she was looking for. She tried as hard as she could to block out anything else. A few of the carved stones caught her eye unavoidably as she moved towards the newer arm of the large spiral.

Horatio Binns. 1882-1945. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep/But I have promises to keep/ And several more eons' worth of History of Magic classes to teach before I sleep.

Lady Jane Grey. 1537-1553. There is a time to be born and a time to die; and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. The Grey Lady of Ravenclaw, who had once, for nine days, been queen of England.

Oh... the ghosts... I didn't think of their being here. But it makes sense, I suppose. She wondered if it was a requirement for becoming a Hogwarts ghost in the first place, that one needed to be buried here. No. She didn't see anyone who could possibly have been the Bloody Baron, or the Hufflepuff Friar. But...

Robin of Peeves, 1547-1564. Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas/Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.

And then, as she moved further into the spiral, many of them were new, and she could not help looking at them, even as they tore at her heart, savagely.

Parvati Patil. Beloved sister, wait for me/ In hope of shared eternity.

Jack Sloper. He is not dead, he only sleeps.

Cho Chang. Her spirit endures.

Although the names and inscriptions were different, and the dates of birth varied, the dates of death were all, all the same.

January 6, 1997.

She found the one she was looking for at last, and her legs seemed to give out under her. Ginny collapsed onto a bench in front of it. Several months older than the others, its grey marble had begun to weather just a bit. But the carved words had been enchanted so that they would never fade.

Sirius Black. 1960-1996. Beloved godfather, cousin, and friend. In our hearts, we will always remember.

It was very quiet out there, at the edges of the Hogwarts property; Ginny could barely hear the slightest breath of wind, or the faintest bird call. The forest stretched darkly behind the graveyard, the trees pressing together as if standing watch. A little to the right lay the Hogwarts clock tower, isolated and brooding. It shimmered in the heat, and Ginny rubbed her eyes as a wave of exhaustion swept over her. Her sleep had been so troubled and broken lately. Feels so terribly alone out here... I might be the only person left alive... but that's silly... Uneasily, she wondered if she really was safe. Ron would have conniption fits if he knew I was out here by myself! But he certainly doesn't care if Harry goes, and he practically lives in the graveyard these days. Well, I just couldn't bear to have anyone else with me. Not to look at-- No, not even Luna, or Millicent, although she really is a decent sort for a Slytherin. And that's that.

All of the students and teachers were still at Hogwarts even though the spring term had ended; it simply wasn't safe for anybody to leave. Several members of the Order had Apparated into Hogsmeade and gotten into the school by underground tunnels, which they then blocked with Imploding spells. Most of them were fully trained Aurors like Moody and Tonks, but Mundungus Fletcher had shown up, and Ginny had been inexpressibly glad to see Remus Lupin. He'd winked at her and she'd waved at him, but the opportunity for private speech had not yet come. She hoped it would, and soon. Meanwhile, the Order patrolled the corridors, gimlet-eyed, wands out.

Rumours of war had swirled through the wizarding world all spring long. By some mysterious process they percolated down to the students--those who had not died, that is, or been taken by their parents to the side of darkness. The Death Eaters are on the move. They've developed a new secret weapon. They're only waiting for the right moment to strike. If you're an enemy of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, it's too late to run anyway, there's a Killing Curse with your name on it. The worst part of it all was that even the most frightening of the rumours might be less than the truth. There was a tight undercurrent of terror running through the school. Students stayed together instinctively, even before they were told to do so; they clustered in little whispering groups at meals, then inched down the corridors past the Aurors and up to their rooms, taking care never to stray very far from each other. Since the term was over, there were no classes. Ginny thought that it might have been easier if there were. They might have distracted everyone from the stifling fears and crazy theories and horrible things whispered around the flickering fire in the Gryffindor common room at night.

Would it have been better to go with the Death Eaters? Safer?

A snort. I didn't see any of them rolling out the red carpet for you!

But if they did, if they'd asked. Would you have gone? If you'd known that you were going to be safe that way?

A pause. No. Of course not. The last sentence was not said in a very convincing tone of voice.

The night after that had been even worse. Ginny had been unable to sleep, as was so frequently the case that spring. She'd sneaked down to the common room at three in the morning to see if there were any chocolate biscuits left from a plate Ron had been passing around earlier. The harsh whispers coming from the other side of the high-backed sofa had stopped her in her tracks.

If they could give you what you wanted more than anything else in the world, the Death Eaters, would you take it?

A pause. No.

But what if you couldn't get it any other way?

A longer pause. I don't--I don't know. Don't ask me anything more.

The worst part was that those two voices had not been the same as the ones Ginny had heard the night before. She had gasped, and the noise echoed through the quiet room. They had turned then, the pair on the couch, and one of them had pointed a wand at her and said something. She ran up to her room as noiselessly as she could once they had finished and told her to go, pulling the maroon covers over her head until everything seemed awash in a sea of blood. Although Ginny had not forgotten the incident, it existed in a separate kernel of memory, apart from every other event. It simply never occurred to her to tell anyone about it. Whenever the thought crossed her mind, however dimly, she was suddenly reminded of a piece of homework she ought to do, or something she had wanted to say to Luna, or the exact melody to a song she had been trying to remember. After that night, however, she developed a habit of hurrying through the common room to her bed without stopping to even try to distinguish individual voices from the sea of frightened whispers, although she did not know why.

Ginny sincerely hoped that none of the speakers on either of the two nights had been Gryffindors. And after all, they might not have come from her house, even though they'd been in the Gryffindor common room. The Ravenclaws had been so decimated by the deaths on the train--and not a few Death Eater defections--that their dormitory was nearly empty. All of those who were left had moved to the Gryffindor wing. The Hufflepuffs kept mostly to themselves, but some of them had come as well. And there were so few Slytherins left that they had to be taken care of somehow. Everyone agreed that they couldn't stay where they were, in their dungeon. Nobody came out and said that they couldn't be trusted with so little supervision and were sure to form evil plots when left to themselves, but the point was undoubtedly on everyone's mind. The Hufflepuffs took a few, grudgingly. Ron asked Ginny to take in Millicent Bulstrode, and she did so, knowing how little right she had to accuse anyone else of being a traitor. Ginny never exactly asked Luna to stay in the other empty bed, but the Ravenclaw girl had simply shown up one night with a large trunk covered in squirmy bright pink floral patterns. And Ginny had been glad to see her. The sound of Luna and Millicent's breathing was soothing, late in the night. Their solid presence was comforting during the day, as, Ginny supposed, hers likely was to them. Ron approved of the arrangement, since it meant that his sister was virtually never alone. Hermione did not. Ron seemed to spend every second around Hermione these days, or at least every second that he wasn't watching Ginny, although none of them were particularly tender moments so far. Most of their arguments swirled around the subject of Millicent Bulstrode.

"I don't trust her half as far as I could throw her," Hermione generally said, or words to that effect.

"Snape's the one that I don't trust," Ron tended to reply.

"Are you on about that again?"

"Yes, I'm on about that again. He's a greasy-haired traitorous git. And I don't see why you wouldn't trust her. She could have gone with the Death Eaters on the Hogwarts train, and she didn't. Milla's all right."

"Humph," Hermione always sniffed. "Milla."

Sometimes, Ron then added words along the lines of "Why do you hate her so much, anyway?"

"Because you're spending all your time around her, and she's probably pumping you for information!" Hermione invariably replied to that.

"Well, obviously that can't be what I'm doing with all my time, now can it?" Ron would retort. "Since I seem to be sitting here and arguing with you at the moment!"

The worst part of all was that nobody was allowed outside after dark, so during the endless nights in the common room, they were all treated to the spectacle of Ron and Hermione's neverending argument. Strangely, however, nobody ever pursued the obvious course of going upstairs to their dormitory rooms, or at least not until it was very late indeed. It was as if they were all afraid to be alone. Ginny certainly knew that she was.

But then, too, Ron sometimes yelled at Luna. The last time had been when she insisted that the Death Eaters had commandeered all the heliopaths once controlled by Fudge and were planning to use them in an invasion of Hogwarts. Ron had jumped up from the sofa next to the fire and bellowed, "Shut it for once, you nutter! You're driving me mad!" Luna had only looked at him from her great, calm, lamplike eyes. He was rather sheepish afterwards. And Hermione avoided Millicent most of the time, but she did once accuse her of stealing her Potions homework, her voice trembling further and further on the edge of hysteria as she shook her finger in the face of the Slytherin girl. One night, after almost everybody else had gone to bed at last, Ginny had overheard Hermione and Colin Creevey arguing in low, intense voices. "I can't do it, Colin," Hermione had said. "Especially not now. Don't ask me again." But Ginny never found out anything more about the subject of their disagreement, and on balance she decided that it was probably better not to know.

Ginny, Luna, and Millicent spent nearly all their time together these days; they trailed her like two fearful ghosts. She wondered if Ron had instructed them to never leave her side. Luna was very silent these days, and Millicent chattered nervously. Ginny could scarcely ever slip away from both them and and her brother, which was part of the reason why it had been so very hard to snatch a few moments for herself to see the memorial stone they had put up for Sirius. Of course, it wasn't the only reason, not even the main one. Harry was there every chance he got, sitting on the marble bench, his head always bent so that she could not see his face when she crept as close to the circle as she dared. She could not intrude on his private grief. So she had watched, and waited, and finally stolen her chance that evening, skipping dinner in the Great Hall after she saw Harry go down. Ron and Hermione had disappeared into his room in the midst of a particularly violent argument about Millicent, and the door had slammed behind them. They'd never come out, and Ginny knew it was the chance she had been waiting for. She crept down the corridor and to the back staircase as quietly as she could.

"Ron and Hermione sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," Peeves the poltergeist sang, popping up directly in front of her face. She shrieked and stumbled backwards, barely keeping herself from tumbling down the steep stone stairs. He snickered and zoomed up to the ceiling, then hung upside down so that his spectral head bobbed next to hers.

"Like to hear the naughty version? There once was a Weasley from Nantucket--"

"I'm not in the mood, Peeves," said Ginny through clenched teeth.

"Nobody's in the mood these days," the ghost said sadly. "Haven't had an audience for dirty limericks since Christmas."

She rolled her eyes. "Sorry to disappoint you, Peeves, but the rest of us are too worried that we're not going to make it until next Christmas."

"I know, I know. War, famine, destruction, death," sang the poltergeist, swimming through the air to keep up with Ginny as she marched down the stairs.

"So ghosts don't worry about that sort of thing at all?" asked Ginny, glaring at him.

"A smile is just a frown turned upside down," chortled Peeves, making a complete revolution in the air. "I'm crying on the inside! Besides, I'm already dead, and anyway I've seen it all before."

She stopped on the stairs. "What do you mean?"

Peeves rolled over onto his back and rested his insubstantial head on his crossed arms. "D'you think what you see is the only reality? D'you think you're living in the only universe? There's lots of others, oh yes. And there's one in particular..." He smiled, a mocking, secretive smile. "It lies close, close." He drew two of his ghostly fingers together. "Touching this one, you see. But still not the same, not the same at all. Like one part of the castle touches another... or like the hand of a Seeker clasps a Snitch... or like your brother's touching Hermione Granger's bum right now--"

Ginny clapped her hands over her ears. "You're disgusting, Peeves! I'm not going to listen to one more word."

The ghost only cackled. "And ghosts see them all," he said. "We see, but we can't touch. We see, but we can't change."

Slowly, Ginny let her hands fall. "I don't understand."

"Get the wax out of your ears, then! Need some help?" Peeves reached out icy, dripping fingers to Ginny's head. She flinched back. He couldn't possibly know anything, not really; he was only teasing her with the promise of knowledge he didn't have. That was how he always behaved. But still...

"So... you somehow know what's going to happen?" she asked carefully. "Is that what you're saying, Peeves?"

The ghost's expression turned sly. "I know something I won't tell, I won't tell, I won't tell," he sang, bouncing down the hall. Ginny ran after him.

"What do you mean, you won't tell? You have to! Or--well, I mean--" She faltered. It wasn't as if anybody had ever been able to make Peeves do anything. "Please," she said hopelessly, looking up at the ghost. He looked down at her again without saying another word for a long time.

"Can't," said Peeves at last. Then he reached down with one insubstantial hand and tipped up her chin, gently. She shivered at the feel of the cold ectoplasm. "Would if I could," he said. His face was utterly serious. Without its usual mocking expression, she clearly saw his features for the first time. She was astonished at how young he looked, a boy scarcely older than herself, and for the first time she wondered how old he had been when he died, whenever that was. "Yes, I would if I could," the poltergeist repeated. "For you were my bosom companion once, yes, my old shipmate, long long ago... Do you remember the salt smell of the air, and the early morning watch, and the feel of the east wind rippling in your hair as you climbed the riggings of the mainmast, Ginny Weasley? Do you recall the Golden Horn, and the seven hills of the queen city Istanbul, rising so fair above the sea at dawn?"

"Wh--what?" stammered Ginny, feeling as if she had been dropped into some sort of alternate universe.

"Of course you don't." Peeves dropped her chin. "Guard yourself as best you can, and hold fast to what you believe, in the days of darkness to come."

"I don't understand at all," she managed to say. "Why are you being so--"

"Pretend this never happened, Ginny Weasley," he interrupted. "Because I've already said more than I should." Then he smiled at her, but it was a sad and mocking grimace. "Mayhap you fell into sleep on your way to the stairs of Gryffindor Tower, and only dreamed that Robin of Peeves was ever more than what you thought him to be." He passed a hand over her face, and she closed her eyes. It felt like a wash of cold mist. "If we shadows have offended," he said, "say but this, and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here, while we shadows did appear."

And when she opened her eyes again, he was gone. She had stood at the foot of the stairs for a moment, blinking. Then she had hurried down the corridor to the little back exit as fast as she could go.

It ought to be a cold grey day with rain slashing down through a thundering sky. The sort of day that used to frighten me so when I was a child. The rich warm sinking sun of an early summer evening shone heartlessly down on the plain grey marker. I suppose it isn't a grave, really, she thinks. There was never a body. She remembered the body of Sirius Black as she knew it, only a very little, and only once--warm, living, breathing, pulsing. She remembered a night two years before in her bedroom on the second floor of the sinister house at Twelve Grimmauld Place, a night when she had clung to him in fear as the thunder rolled and the lightning crashed. She remembered a final kiss in the basement kitchen, the day before they all left for Hogwarts--the last time she ever saw Sirius Black. Almost.

The web of past and present came together, and for an instant she could scarcely believe that he wasn't standing behind her, that he wouldn't tap her on the shoulder so that she turned to see his dark and haunted face transformed by a smile. Oh, he had such a beautiful smile, Sirius did... She had known him during one shining brief summer, that last carefree summer at Grimmauld Place, before everything in their world crumbled and fell to pieces. And she knew, now, that Sirius Black had been the linchpin. When he went, everything went. It was the beginning of the end, although none of them could see it at the time.

She had tried to forget the events of that summer. Tried never to think of them again, even as he had said that they must forget that final kiss, those few caresses, the ones shared in both sin and innocence. But when she gazed at the stone marker that bears his name, Ginny knew that she has not forgotten. Nor should I. For she knew, too, what no-one else did. The last chance to change the doom to come had not been when Hermione tried to keep Harry from going to the Department of Mysteries, which was what everyone else thought. It had been that summer, the summer before her fourth year at the ancestral Black house in Twelve Grimmauld Place.

So perhaps--perhaps it had not been her fault then, either. Maybe if she had spoken coldly to Draco Malfoy when he first showed up during her practices on the Quidditch pitch during that bitterly cold January of her fourth year, it would have made no difference. If she had not kissed him in the broom shed that last golden spring, nearly a year ago, things would have turned out the same. And if she had not let him put his hands on her in the luggage compartment of the Hogwarts train six months before, or taken her portrait from him, or given it back to him and caused him to stay in the luggage compartment with her on the way back from the Christmas hols, while madness and death raged around them...

No. No. It's not that simple, Ginny's conscience jeered at her.

She shrugged tiredly, sitting down cross-legged to stare at the marker. It was exactly where she'd so often seen Harry sit. It really wasn't a question of blame, after all. Everything that happened and was yet to happen had been foreordained since the dawn of time, maybe. That's certainly what Professor Trelawney would've said. Of course, she's an old fraud, and Divination is a complete crock. But still. Even if the past two years had been nothing more than a greased slide to inevitability, the fact remained that Ginny knew where the top of the hill had been, the place from which the pebble had fallen that rumbled into an avalanche threatening to destroy them all. That summer had divided possibility from dead certainty. After it had passed, it had always been too late.

Ginny closed her eyes, and felt the hot dry summer wind blow over her face. Her head drooped slowly to her chest. The sound of the wind grew fainter and fainter. And she was never sure when memory passed into dream.

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July 1, 1995

Hermione said Sirius was becoming reckless cooped up in Grimmauld Place...

--OotP, pg. 383, American edition.

The trees lining this dusty, narrow street droop dispiritedly, their leaves turning brown from lack of water as the summer builds up to its full heat. All the lawns are parched and yellowing. The neighbors surrounding the house can't see Ginny Weasley trudging towards the back door, just as they can never see her climbing the little flight of steps up to the massive front door. But she's watched the men stomping out into their yards and glaring at the high walls separating them, and the women peeking from behind lace curtains at high noon, eyes sharp for the slightest illegal use of the hosepipes that have been banned due to drought. She peeps through crumbling bricks, catching glimpses of the Muggles they have been forbidden to talk to. There hasn't been much else for her to do. Occasionally, Errol taps at her window with a cheery letter from Michael Corner. The owl nips at her fingers half-heartedly, feathers askew. She scribbles a few lines in return, trying her best to be cheerful. It isn't easy.

Not even the slightest breath of wind stirs the parched air as she opens the door of the shed, broom trailing in her hand, feet dragging. She was absolutely mad to practice her flying on a day like today, and she knows it. But it seemed safe enough; the bit of back yard and garden are as invisible to Muggles as the rest of the structure that houses the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Fred and George have disappeared somewhere, as they generally do during the daylight hours. She couldn't resist the golden opportunity to borrow one of their broomsticks. Ginny has learned from listening in on whispered conversations that the twins are scouting locations for their joke shop, meeting with suppliers, and gathering ingredients to test out new items. They've been able to keep all of it a secret from Molly Weasley so far. And she certainly isn't going to be the one to tell.

Not that I'll ever get any credit for it.

Ginny pulls the back door shut, hearing its terribly lonely sound echo through the empty house. Her father is at the Ministry, almost everyone else in the Order has gone on a secret mission and won't be back for nearly two weeks, and her mother has gone shopping, which generally means she won't return until late afternoon. Hermione has dragged Ron to the British Museum in her ongoing and remarkably unsuccessful attempt to stuff some culture into his coppery head. Ginny watched the older girl leave this morning, a map in hand, talking determinedly about mummy exhibits and the alignment of the Sphinx. She had opened her mouth to ask if she could go. But Ron was loudly saying, "All right, I'm coming, you needn't pull my ear off entirely, you know," and Molly Weasley had been fussing over them, clutching at Ron's sleeve, and her father had said in his quiet voice, "You can't wrap them in cotton wool, Molly." Ginny doubts that she would have been heard in any case. Then they had gone, leaving her staring at the closed door, listening to their echoing footsteps. So now, she is alone in the house. Except for Kreacher; he can't leave. And Sirius Black. He must be about somewhere.

The basement kitchen is shockingly cool and dark after the fierce bright heat of outdoors. A wave of queasiness goes through Ginny, and her head swims. She leans against a rough stone wall. Her throat is utterly dry and no matter how hard she swallows she cannot get the sides of it to come together. Kreacher makes her horribly uncomfortable and she often has the feeling that he's watching her out of the corners of his bloodshot eyes, but dear Merlin, she'd be glad to see the house-elf now. Of course, who's to say if he'd bring me a drink even if he did see me? He never obeys anybody but Sirius Black, and that very resentfully and with much muttering. Ginny has spent a great deal of time lying facedown on the landing and peeping over the banister in an attempt to learn more about what goes in the house, and once she saw Kreacher holding a long whispered conference with the portrait of Mrs. Black in the front hall, nodding as if instructions had been received and understood. She shudders at the memory. She'd rather die of thirst than take anything from him.

She walks to the large double sink, clutching onto the long wooden table on the way. But when she turns the tap, nothing comes out. All the water taps are turned off, she remembers with a sinking feeling; Muggles workmen have been at the mains on the street all day, and because of its location the house, unfortunately, is tapped into the Muggle water supply. Black spots dance before her eyes.

Desperately, Ginny glances around the room. I can't faint in the middle of the kitchen floor. I absolutely cannot. Mum will probably start locking the door whenever they all leave to keep me from going in the yard, if I do. Or maybe she'll be shut away in her little bedroom upstairs. Eventually, the window will be covered so she can't get upset over anything she might see in the outside world--so much calmer for you that way, Ginny dear, she can almost hear her mother's soothing voice saying as she carefully places a Fogging charm on the glass. They'd be kind to her, of course. Her father would probably leave her with cheerful books to read, and a radio tuned to the easy-listening channel of the Wizarding Wireless Network. She'd hear faint footsteps hurrying up and down stairs, and faint voices speaking outside her door. She's doing so much better now, the poor thing, she was really quite ill. The twins would ask about her, but then one of Fred's experiments would explode, and George would dive in to rescue him, and they'd forget about her again. Ron was too distracted by Hermione these days to pay her much mind. And then Ginny would simply go mad one day and start screaming her head off, and they'd call St. Mungo's again, and she'd be taken away again, just as she had been the summer she was twelve years old.

Ginny knows in some corner of her mind that these thoughts don't make any sense, that her family would never permit such things to be done to her. No, these ideas come from the distant past that she has tried so hard to erase from her memory. She'd almost believed that she'd succeeded, too, until this summer. This house. Yes, there is something about the house at Twelve Grimmauld Place that seems to drain all defences from her. It is more than the relentlessly dark and gloomy atmosphere, more than the curtains full of Doxies and the squealing Puffskeins she is forever finding under her bed, more than the screeching portrait of Hesta Black in the front hall or the sinister serpents worked into the candelabra hanging from the shadowy ceilings. Even after weeks of living here, she still cannot figure out quite what it is.

Ginny is still turning her head around the basement kitchen, searching hopelessly for water, when something silver flashes across the edge of her field of vision. An embossed silver cup sits on the table, carelessly, as if left there half-full. Ginny grabs it with trembling fingers, and her heart leaps at the sloshing noise it makes. She tips it to her mouth and drains it in a few quick gulps. Nothing has ever felt so good as that cool wetness going down her throat. Of course, it does taste a bit odd, but surely that can't matter.

She collapses into a chair, her legs still feeling quite wobbly. Now that she's found something to drink and is reasonably sure she isn't going to pass out, she feels a perfect idiot. I should've known better than to do that, to go outside and tear around on a broom that way--but I've been going half mad here, all month. They've been leaving me out of everything; I'm the only one who never gets to go anywhere. They treat me like a baby even though I'm nearly fifteen years old! Oh, fourteen and a half anyway. Well, all right, fourteen and a third.

But still--Ginny traces the raised silver designs on the cup with a fingernail--she has been through things that nobody else in the house could even imagine. No, not even after all the Aurors return, from Tonks with her impish smile to Moody with his glowering magical eye. None of them have known what she has known. None of them has been possessed.

That is the simple truth, even though nobody ever speaks about it. She had thought for several years that silence would be enough to make her forget, too. But if I'm imagining that my family's going to lock me up in a bedroom until the Paramagics from St. Mungo's come to get me, I suppose I haven't done. She sighs, unconsciously tracing the long jagged scar on her right leg. It is faint and silvery now. Nobody has ever talked about it, either.

But every member of her family saw the letter that came from the psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's the summer she was twelve years old, the one that explained, in carefully couched language, just how the scar had got there.

"I can't get him off me," she had sobbed when the Mediwitches caught her scraping at her flesh with a broken piece of aluminium, blood running down her thigh in rivulets. Over and over, she had torn at the spot that the shade of Tom Riddle had touched, in the Chamber of Secrets. Her mother and father and brothers all averted their eyes when she wore shorts the next summer that showed the scar, and she had quickly learned not to do it, even though the old wound was fully healed now. The scars in her mind still throbbed red. Perhaps that was the never-discussed reason why her mother clung to her so- the scars, or her mother's guilt over them. Something. Ginny's thoughts break free of the past then, and settle into a well-worn, resentful, and very teenaged track. They allow Fred and George and Ron to leave the house every single day. They wave off Hermione without a second thought. But she is forced to stay there. Just like Sirius Black...

She rolls the cup absently between her palms, smelling the strong tangy odour of the liquid that had been in it. It is his cup, the one he's always drinking from. She recognizes it now. Something inside her warms, just a little, knowing that. There are many nights when Ginny has not been able to sleep, when the close hot still air of her room has driven her out of bed. She has discovered a little section of the landing from which she can see into the basement kitchen, if the door isn't closed, and if she lies flat on her stomach, peering through the railings. He sits at the long wooden table, staring into the dead fireplace, hour after hour. She likes to watch him, sometimes. She wonders what he is thinking about when he sits and stares. There has always been something oddly familiar about him, some vague resemblance that has the illusory realness one sees in a dream, but she can never place it. Harry told her once that Sirius could transform into a dog. Ginny thinks that she'd like to see that, too. Is the change sudden, in the blink of an eye, man to beast? Or is it gradual, dark fur rippling across his corded arms like long grasses waving in the wind? But she already knows she could never ask him to do it for her; the very thought brings a blush of embarrassment to her face. She'd like to come down the stairs in the small hours of the night, sit down at the kitchen table with him, and ask him questions, so that she can figure out what niggles at her so; who or what does he remind her of? But she knows she'd never do anything so bold as that. Ginny was bold, once, in her carefree rambunctious childhood. After the Chamber of Secrets, she was bold no more.

There is a creaking sound from upstairs. Someone is walking down the steps with a light, impatient tread, and she knows that it must be Sirius, the only other person in the house. He is probably coming down from feeding Buckbeak. Ginny is suddenly afraid of being found here; she's sitting in his chair and drinking from his cup, he'll probably think it awful cheek. She leaps to her feet and manages to get nearly to the door before the room whirls round like a violently shaken snow globe. The wooden floor snatches itself out from under her. Dimly, she hears her cheek strike the unyielding surface.

The footsteps come closer and closer. Then they stop. "Ginny? Are you all right?" She cannot answer. The kitchen is growing dimmer and dimmer. Sirius Black bends down to her, his lean, handsome, life-scarred face creased with worry. "Whatever are you doing on the floor, Ginny?" Then she hears the distinct sound of his breath catching, and he says something else, more quickly, in a voice much more agitated. But she can't distinguish it. The last sensation she feels is his hands, lifting her. Then the world winks out.

"Look, it could have been only the heat."

"Only the heat! What the bloody hell did you just tell me? You don't think it was only the heat!"

"I'm sure I'm wrong."

"Oh, you are, are you?" A snort. "So now you're saying you didn't leave the experimental potion lying about where anyone might drink it?"

"Well, it wasn't exactly lying about."

"I thought you just said it was!"

"Well..." A pause. "It didn't have a large sign on it that read 'Drink Me,' now did it?"

The voices become louder and clearer, as if she is tuning into a program on the WWN, although they are still low and raspy whispers.

"Look! I think she's starting to come round." George! But I thought the twins were supposed to be gone all afternoon.

The door creaks open. Footsteps approach the bed. There is a sigh of relief from above her, higher than the other two voices. "Ginny, can you hear me? Nod if you can."

Ginny's head lolls uncontrollably on her shoulders.

"See?" said the closer voice to her right. "She nodded. She's fine. So surely we don't need to spend any more time worrying about unimportant little details like whose fault--" And that's Fred.

"Shut up, Fred," says George.

Something bitter and pungent is lifted to her lips. "Come on now, Ginny. Drink a bit more. Yes, I know it's nasty, but that can't be helped, can it?" That is Sirius, and the voice that had asked if she could hear him was his. She opens her mouth and gulps the potion. The room clears, and Ginny opens her eyes to see the irregularly plastered ceiling she has stared at night after sleepless night. She is lying on her four-poster bed in her darkened bedroom, all the shades drawn.

"What--what happened?" she asks.

George's face pushes closer to hers, white and frightened. "You mean you don't remember?"

Ginny shakes her head.

The bed creaks as Sirius sits next to her. "Well, you had us worried, Ginny," he says gently. "I found you on the kitchen floor an hour ago and brought you upstairs. I wasn't able to rouse you, but luckily Fred and George got back a bit early."

"We gave you an antidote," says George.

"And it was a good job we did get back in time," Fred says with the virtuous air of a rescuer, "since we needed both our wands to make it."

The older man's lips tighten. Ginny wonders if it is because of the reminder that he still hasn't been able to sneak into Diagon Alley to choose a new wand at Ollivander's. Arthur Weasley has been hoping to whisk him in and out next week, before all the students descend upon the shops there for school supplies. It's too risky now. "Yes, well," says Sirius, "we were also trying to figure out why you collapsed in the first place. Ginny, you were outside, weren't you?"

She nods.

"Did you eat some unfamiliar food? Or drink anything?"

The silver cup. "I drank something," says Ginny, guiltily.

"AHA!" exclaims George. Sirius turns to her brother.

"What's this all about?" he asks.

George's face closes, suddenly and smoothly, and becomes a perfect mirror of Fred's. The two identical boys glance at each other. Ginny has seen this before. It is their twin-face, the one her brothers assume when they want to create the illusion that they are one personality in two bodies. But it is itself only an illusion and far from the truth, although nobody outside the family ever realizes it.

"Nothing," says George.

"That's right." Fred agrees eagerly. "Absolutely nothing."

Sirius's eyes narrow. "What do the pair of you know about what Ginny drank?"

"Not even the slightest detail," Fred assures him.

George's face darkens slightly. "Wait, wait. Hold on a moment, Fred." He pulls his twin to the other side of the bed and begins whispering in his ear. Ginny can hear every word they say, and she's fairly sure that Sirius can, too. George must really be upset. I've never seen him quite like this before. I wonder why...

"Which potion did you leave where Ginny could have found it?" George asks through gritted teeth.

"George!" Fred says out of the corner of this mouth, jerking a thumb towards Sirius with what he undoubtedly thinks is great subtlety. Ginny rolls her eyes. "Ot-nay ow-nay," he says.

"If you use Pig Latin on me now I'll curse you with a tail, just like we did to Harry's fat cousin--"

"That was a right laugh, wasn't it?" chuckles Fred.

"Don't try to change the subject! What potion was it? If you don't tell me, I'll transfigure you into a bowl of cat food and set Crookshanks on you!"

"I suppose you really didn't appreciate it when I tried that on you last week," sighs Fred. "All in the spirit of scientific inquiry, you know. Fine, I'll tell you. It was, er..." He hesitates. "All right, all right. A new Befuddlement potion."

"What?" George explodes, turning to Sirius. "Did you hear that?"

"Two for one, and one for two, remember?" Fred says, jabbing George in the ribs. "United front?"

"I'll unite your front," George growls. "How could you do this to Ginny?"

"I didn't do anything!" protests Fred. "D'you really think I'd be thick enough to leave experimental potions lying about? It's in our room on the top shelf of the closet!"

Sirius turns to Ginny. "Did you go up to the twins' room, Ginny?"

"No," she croaks.

Fred smiles with satisfaction. "There, you see? It wasn't our fault at all."

"Well, whose fault was it then?" demands George.

Sirius leans down to the bed. His eyes are kind and he smells of cloves, and she knows that she won't be afraid to talk to him. "Can you talk a bit more now, Ginny?" he asks. She nods. "You said that you drank something. What did you drink from?"

"A cup," says Ginny.

"See!" crows Fred. "Our potion was in a beaker, not a-"

"Shut up, Fred," says George.

"Where was it, Ginny?" asks Sirius.

"On the kitchen table. A--a silver cup, with raised designs, and embossing all around the edge."

"Oh." An awkward silence falls. Sirius clears his throat. "Well. That was mine, actually."

"What was in it?" asks George.

"Er, Firewhisky and water."

Fred snickers. "Remind me to nominate you for Child-Minder of the Year award, would you?"

Sirius flushes. "I didn't know she'd drink it! Ginny, why didn't you ask Kreacher for some pumpkin juice?"

She sits up, pushing back the coverlet. It is dreadfully hot in the room. "I don't like talking to that elf."

"He gives me the creeps as well, that house-elf does. Absolutely mental," agrees Fred. He seems quite cheerful now that there is no possibility of blame being assigned to him.

"And you didn't drink any of our potion?" asks George.

"No," says Ginny.

Sirius rises. "Where did you say it was?"

"Well, er, I don't think it's necessary to examine it," Fred says.

"Not necessary at all," George agrees.

"I imagine it would be best if we all forgot this conversation--"

"Ever occurred."

They have returned to the stage of finishing one another's sentences again, Ginny sees. The twins can never remain in disagreement for very long about any subject.

"I'm not going to tell your mother," says Sirius.

The twins share another glance.

"Top shelf in the closet," they chorus.

Sirius returns in a few moments with a beaker and a grim face. He turns it upside down. Not a drop spills out.

"Oh. That's odd," says Fred.

"Are you sure you didn't drink any of the potion?" asks Sirius.

"I'm quite sure," says Ginny.

"Must've spilled," says George.

"Chalk it all up to the Firewhisky, I suppose," Fred adds, shrugging.

Ginny closes her eyes, leaning against the headboard, carved with twisting serpents. She is very tired. Her brothers leave the room a few minutes later. Fred is already musing on a rather dubious-sounding product called Ebola Eggnog. "Think of it, George! It's brilliant. One sip, and you start spouting blood from your mouth and nose at a frightful rate. The money we could make selling it to students who don't want to attend class--"

"Frankly, I think it needs a bit of fine-tuning, Fred."

The door closes. Sirius Black is still sitting on her bed, Ginny realizes. There are alternating little shivers of hot and cold running up and down her spine. She is not at all sure why.

"Are you all right now, Ginny?" he asks softly. She nods vigorously and tries to get up. He pushes her back with one hand.

"Have you ever had Firewhisky before?"

She blushes, and wishes she could say yes. Maybe then she wouldn't seem like such a baby to him, which she is sure she does. "No," she admits.

"How old are you?"

She drops her eyes to the coverlet. "Fourteen. And a half."

"Then you'll likely want to stay in bed for awhile, even after the antidote. Sleep it off." He begins to get up. She clutches at his hand.

"Please," she says. "Don't tell Mum." He looks down at her in surprise.

"Whyever not? You don't think this was your fault, do you, Ginny? If anything, I feel responsible--shouldn't have left it sitting about on the table. And the funny thing is that I could have sworn I didn't--"

"I'll get blamed anyway. Please, please, don't tell her."

He nods, his eyes fixed on hers. They are very dark brown, almost black. "Are you blamed for a lot of things?"

Ginny sets her teeth. "Yes," she says. "All the time." She does not try to keep the sullen resentment out of her voice. The statement is true, or at least, it feels true to her. It's not that Molly Weasley blames her for specific incidents, but that lately every kindly word and well-meaning look from her mother feels like an arrow pointed to attack her. It will be so much easier when there are more people in the house, but now there seems to be nobody except her mother, with the others only occasional presences. Ginny had dreamed that Ron would talk to her for hours, that Fred and George would play pickup games of Quidditch with her, that she and Hermione would whisper secrets to each other through the long nights, and giggle, and braid each other's hair. None of it has come to pass. But she is surprised to see the same sort of look crossing Sirius Black's face that surely must be on her own. That, she had not expected.

"I know what that's like," he says, bitterly. Then he seems to catch himself. "Well. I'll let you sleep. The others likely won't be back for hours, and Merlin only knows if your brothers can hear anything locked in their room, so... call me if you need anything, will you, Ginny?"

Eagerly, she nods. She will not call him, of course. But she cherishes the knowledge that she could, if she chose. How odd, she thinks as she drifts into sleep. I had a perfectly normal conversation with Sirius Black, like he was just anyone, like he didn't scare me at all... And I didn't feel shy for a second.

She naps for two hours and jumps out of bed like a coiled steel spring when she hears the front door open downstairs. Her father has brought Kingsley Shacklebolt home, and after dinner her mother closes the basement door with a bang. Ginny is surprised to find that the exclusion no longer matters to her very much. Fred and George are testing their new Extendable Ears, and she does not pester them to use her as a test subject, as she normally would. Fred is happily oblivious as always, but she catches George sneaking her worried looks from time to time.

"I'm not going to tell Mum anything," she says to him.

"I didn't think you would." He tries to conceal his sigh of relief. "You've never been a tattletale, Ginny."

She grins mischievously. "Oh, telling would ruin it. I'd rather have it to hold over your heads for the rest of our lives."

Ron and Hermione are playing chess in the corner of the room. Ron's knight smashes one of Hermione's pawns and claims the white square. Hermione shudders. "The thing I don't like about wizarding chess," she says thoughtfully, "is that it's always so violent."

Ron chortles. "You haven't seen anything yet."

Ginny looks over at him, covertly. She has kept her collapse of the afternoon a secret from him. If he got his teeth into it, he'd never let go, he'd be worse than her mother. But Ron's not good at multitasking. Ginny read that word in a Muggle newspaper that Tonks brought to the house last week, before most of the Aurors left on the secret mission, and has decided that she likes it. Her youngest brother is fully consumed by Hermione right now, although he himself does not yet realize that it is happening. He has no energy to spare on obsessing over Ginny, which is, she decides, a very good thing.

The chess game ends, and Ron and Hermione go upstairs, pulling the board between them as part of an argument over whose room it should be kept in. Fred and George roll up the ears and disappear into their bedroom, talking in low voices. Ginny lingers on the landing. The door to the basement kitchen opens, and her mother comes out, talking to Kingsley Shacklebolt. Then her father. She waits. At last, she sees Sirius. She is never sure what causes him to look up at her where she peeps over the edge of the landing, but he does. His face breaks into a smile, and he hurries up the stairs.

"Ginny! Are you all right?"

"Never better," she says, rolling over to look at him. "I just needed a rest."

"A beauty sleep, was it?" he laughs. "You look perfectly well now."

"I am." She nods vigorously, sitting up and trying to brush the dust and grime off her trousers. Then she thinks of something else. "Oh! You didn't--well, you didn't tell--"

He steps closer. "Your mum? No.Your secret's safe with me. Like the grave. Mind you, I don't want you telling her, either."

"I wouldn't! I never would."

"Of course not." He reaches down to ruffle her hair, affectionately. "Good night, Ginny."

She looks after him as he disappears down the hall. She thinks that she may never wash her hair again.

Ginny relives the conversation over and over in her bed that night, casting herself differently each time so that she is older, more sophisticated, more worldly-wise, and does not have freckles spattering her nose. Oh, to be a Metamorphmagi! Like Tonks. I wonder if it's a skill that might just show up later in life... suppose not, though... With each succeeding rendition, she adds a bit more of what she would have liked to say if she could have thought of the perfect words at the time. But she'll say them next time, because there will be a next time. She is not quite sure where her earlier shyness around Sirius has gone; it seems to have simply faded away, like mist at dawn. Or perhaps it is the fact that he rescued her, and she cannot be shy with someone she owes so much to. Because he did rescue me, she thinks dreamily, hearing Ron's snores even through the thick walls of the old house. I suppose I would have lain about on the kitchen floor forever if he hadn't picked me up. People probably would have stepped over me on their way to the cupboards; that's about how much attention they all pay to me around here. She dreams of knights on white horses that night, bearing away red-haired maidens in long cream-colored dresses on the backs of their saddles.

**********************************************************************

"I'll show ye the rainbow."

"No."

"I'll give ye the pot of gold."

"No."

"I'll share me frosted lucky charms." The reedy voice is very enticing. "They're magically delicious, so they are!"

"No." Ginny tightens her hold on the leprechaun in the third-story spare room, holding its gaze. It looked up at her pleadingly. "Now!" she hisses. Sirius throws a bag over its head. It splutters and thrashes, but is firmly caught.

"Good job, Ginny." He smiles at her. What a beautiful smile he has, she thinks.

"Only trying to help," she says.

He ties up the bag in a Gordian knot, from which no magical creature can escape. "Here's another one to send back to Ireland, the gods only know how it got here in the first place. Good job we caught it before everyone got back; these can be nasty."

"Really?" asks Ginny curiously.

"Oh, yes. They're malicious and sly... I don't imagine you've been exposed to too many dangerous magical creatures as of yet, they normally leave them until fifth year." He hefts the bag to his shoulder with ease. It is stiflingly hot in this little room, and they have both shed outer robes, revealing T-shirts and shorts. She watches the muscles move in his upper arms. When he speaks again, she starts in surprise.

"And don't sell yourself short, Ginny. None of your brothers could have done this, you know."

The corners of her mouth turn up in a grin, and she does not look away. "Really?" she repeats.

"Yes, really. A leprechaun responds to a woman's touch."

Her heart leaps. A woman! He called me a woman!

Sirius offers her his hand, helping her up. "Dealing with leprechauns tires you out a bit, doesn't it?"

"I suppose it does."

"Come downstairs. I'll get you some butterbeer. I think there's at least one bottle left from Moody's last trip to Hogsmeade."

"Thank you." She is not at all tired, but she pretends that she is, so that she has an excuse to lean on him a little. He opens a butterbeer for her and pours it into a glass, and she sips at it, making the sweet spicy taste last as long as she can. They sit together at the kitchen table, just as she has dreamed of doing all month long. Ginny would like to ask about the mission so many of the Aurors have mysteriously disappeared on; nobody has even told her where it is. But she does not quite dare. So instead, she asks him questions about how Hogsmeade used to be, what has changed, what is still the same, and listens to his answers with rapt attention. She has never felt so grown-up.

***********************************************************************

Ginny balances on the end of George's broomstick to grab the rubber ball they have enchanted to fly. "And Weasley's got the Snitch!" she announces. "But not the annoying Weasley who steals his sister's pudding at dinner. The cute one! And the crowd--" she swoops beneath the trees, bowing to invisible applause "--goes wild."

"Except that she forgot a vital rule," points out Fred, guarding one of the makeshift goalposts made from weaving branches together. "Between--let's see--" He checks his watch. "Eight-thirty and eight forty-five p.m., it's no longer a Snitch. It's a Bludger! Sorry, sis."

She ducks with a shriek and dives for the ground as the rubber ball fights its way free of her hand and comes after her head. "Wait! Wait! It's ten of nine! It's a Quaffle now." She gives the ball a smack with one of the sticks they are using as bats, and it sails towards Fred's goalpost. In a Quidditch game with only three people playing, the Bludger, Quaffle, and Snitch are one and the same, which does get a bit confusing, as Sirius observed. Fred makes a complete revolution in the air, throws one hand out, and blocks the rubber ball. "Ha! Save! Redheads get fifty points per save, you know."

"Well, redheads get one hundred extra points for dodging a Bludger," says Ginny. "But only if they're named Ginny and have a big butterfly-shaped freckle on their nose."

"Is that so!" exclaims Fred. "Well, then I say that you lose a hundred and fifty points if you don't sing the Hogwarts school song on the way back towards your goalpost, which you certainly didn't do."

"You can't make up rules in the middle of the game," says Ginny indignantly, with an utter disregard for consistency. "Can you, Sirius?"

Sirius Black hovers on Ron's broomstick over them, laughing. He has been made referee in order to derail a murderous argument over which side needed his help more in play. "Depends on what sort of rulebook you're using, I suppose."

"The regular Quidditch rulebook, of course," Fred says piously.

"No, no. I don't like that one just now," says Ginny.

"An objection has been lodged by your sister, and duly noted. So under the laws of the Wizengamot," says Sirius, "your only recourse is wizarding common law without relevance to Quidditch, I'm afraid."

Ginny looks smugly at Fred. "Then there's no relevant case."

"Is there?" asks Fred.

"I hate to disappoint a lady. But I'm afraid there is," Sirius says sadly. "At the Battle of Bosworth in 1483, Henry VII defeated Richard Plantagenet to become the first Tudor king. Do you know what his first act as ruler was?"

Fred has a rather unfocussed look in his eyes by now, but Ginny shakes her head, listening eagerly. She loves hearing the sound of Sirius Black's voice, even when it is proving her wrong.

"He attempted to prosecute the wizards who had fought for the Plantagenet side. But they banded together against him, and there was such an uproar that he was forced to retreat from his decision. And that, Ginny," he says, "is what underlies the principle that acts cannot be retroactively made illegal--that is, rules cannot be changed in the middle of the game."

Slowly, she nods. "It wouldn't be fair."

She is vaguely aware of Fred moving impatiently somewhere behind her, but he does not seem to matter anymore, not now. The world has narrowed to the two of them. Somewhere, far in the distance, crickets have begun to chirp, a high-pitched, hypnotic sound. Night is falling.

"Fairness is the most important thing in the world," says Sirius thoughtfully. "Or at least that's what Remus used to say, anyway..."

"When?" asks Ginny.

"Oh, long ago. Millions and millions of years ago. Funny how it comes back to me now."

He is interrupted by the rubber ball bouncing off his head. "Anyone who rabbits on for more than five minutes will be hit by the Rubber Bludger of Doom, and whoever he's talking to automatically loses the game," explains Fred.

"Sirius just finished explaining that you can't--"

"It's a rule of very long standing," Fred adds hurriedly. "It was brought from Atlantis by the mermaids."

"Really?" asks Sirius, steering his broomstick to the ground. Ginny follows his lead. "Never knew that there were mermaids in Atlantis."

"Oh, yes. Who d'you think did the job of moving the island to an Unplottable patch of the South Pacific? Singing mermaids, that's who, with strands of pearls in their long red hair." Fred runs a hand through Ginny's own hair, and she remembers what she has forgotten for so long. When she was seven years old, there was a time when she insisted on a bedtime story every night before she would go to sleep. Percy was at Hogwarts by then, and Charlie already in Romania on a dragonkeeper's apprenticeship; Bill was always out with some girl or other, and George could never think of any interesting stories to tell. But Fred had woven spellbinding tales of mermaids in the lost city of Atlantis whose seductive smiles enticed unwary sailors to jump overboard, where they drowned if they didn't dash their brains out on the rocks first, leaving their bones to drift to the bottom of the ocean, where monstrous fish with sharp teeth swam through their grinning skulls. Molly Weasley had vetoed any further stories at that point. But Ron had listened to the stories as well. He crept up to her bedside for a long time and continued the whispered tales, his mouth almost to her ear in the long, quiet nights. Funny that I should remember that now.

A crash comes from inside the house, interrupting her thoughts. It is followed by raspy, incoherent muttering, strangely audible through the closed screen door. Sirius's face darkens. "How much do you want to bet that's Kreacher?"

"What would he be up to?" Fred asks carelessly, rubbing down the handle of his broom with a cloth.

"Probably trying to burn the house down--I'm surprised he hasn't tried that already, on instructions from dear old Mum. I'd better get back inside."

Ginny puts away the borrowed broom, checking the twigs carefully first. The twins are very proprietary about the use of their brooms, and she is sure that she never would have been allowed to use one of them if it hadn't been for the events a few days before, and the knowledge that she now holds over the their heads. Of course, she's been stealing into the broom shed at home and using her brothers' brooms in turn since the age of six, but she considers that one of those pieces of information that none of them really needs to know.

"You're a fair player," says Fred, with the air of one condescending to deliver a great compliment. "Don't know how you got to be so good, actually."

"Yes. Considering that you never let me play. But that's going to change now, isn't it?" Ginny asks sweetly.

Fred gulps. "Does anybody ever have to know why?"

"Not unless I see the need," Ginny reassures him with a bright smile.

"It's a sad day when one's own innocent little sister descends to blackmail," Fred says gloomily.

"Not as sad as it'll be if you don't start showing me some Quidditch moves." Her smile becomes sunnier.

"Yes. Well, anyway. You know, Hermione once told me," says Fred, polishing the broomstick with unnecessary vigour, "that whenever we played pick-up games like this, with so few people, that it reminded her of some Muggle game or other. 'Calvinball.' Never would explain what she meant. It's dead interesting though, don't you think? Say, and uh, you won't tell George I let you use his broom, will you? "

Ginny rolls her eyes. Fred can be dreadfully predictable. "Don't worry, I won't." She hesitates. "Why isn't he here, anyway? Are the two of you--er--all right? After the other day, I mean?"

"What?" Fred seems surprised. "Right as rain, as we always are. The goblins have a superstition, that's all."

"The goblins?"

Fred covers his mouth, too late. "You won't tell Mum, will you?"

"You sent George off to the goblins? Alone?"

"Had to. They don't much like dealing with twins, you see. They think it's unlucky. House-elves do as well--can't tell you the number of times Kreacher's mumbled 'unnatural little beast' at one or the other of us. Anyway, the first time the goblins saw us together, well, some words were exchanged, some unpleasant curses were hurled, and when all was said and done, there were some very hard feelings on my part. I didn't care in the least for the location where my nose ended up. Let's just say that we wouldn't deal with the goblins if there were any other way of obtaining Level 4 viruses. And those... humpbacked midget spawn who probably spend all their spare time counting the oozing pustules on their bums... well, they're the touchiest things. Take offence at the slightest comment."

"I can't imagine why," Ginny said dryly.

"Anyway, George always has been the diplomatic one. That's not my line at all." He sighs, carefully putting up his broom. "Wish he'd hurry back."

Untwinned, Fred seems diminished to her, a creature of reflected light. The idea strikes Ginny as odd, because she has always thought that George is the moon to his expansive sun. But she suddenly wonders if the more sober twin is the one who keeps his brother in steady orbit. On his own, Fred might fly off on perilous tangents.

He goes back inside the house, but Ginny refuses, saying that she wants to sit outside a bit longer. The long summer dusk descends.The dry sun-baked grass gives off a pleasant scent. The screen door creaks open, and then falls shut. The smell of cloves and allspice drifts in the air. Without opening her eyes, she knows who is walking out towards her, and who is sitting beside her on the back step.

"It's a lovely night," says Ginny.

"Yes, it is," Sirius replies.

The sky is like brownish velvet as the very last traces of sunset vanish. "I wish we could see the stars," says Ginny. "But in the middle of London, I suppose there's no way to do that."

"Oh, there's a way." Sirius pulls something from his light summer robes. She looks at it curiously. The object seems to be a forked piece of light brown wood.

"Whatever is that? Is it a proper wand?"

"It isn't." His mouth twists a little. "Not the way we would think of one, anyway. I got it from a granny midwife in the hills of Eastern Tennessee. What they call a wise-woman. She made it for me from a hackberry tree that had been struck by lightning. It's very powerful... but not with the sort of magic that we would understand, so I can't use it for all that much. But I can cast a decent Obscura charm with it. That's the sort of thing it does best. Earth magic, and sky magic." Sirius murmurs a few words, and the strange wand quivers in his hands. A rich blackness washes over the surface of the sky, and the stars blaze brilliantly. He points out constellations to her.

"See, there's Andromeda... Pegasus... Lacerta..."

She leans back so far that she nearly falls. His hand curves to support her. She wonders if he even realizes it. The very names of the stars sound magical, radiant, glowing.

"Cassiopeia. Pegasus. Draco is particularly bright tonight..." Sirius gives an odd little laugh.

They lean very close to each other. Her head follows his pointing finger. He is silent for a moment, and she can hear the sound of his breathing. Her own breath catches.

The door opens very suddenly. Ginny jumps a little at the sound, looking up.

Molly Weasley is standing in the back doorway, looking down at them.

"Ginny," she says quietly, after a long pause. "Go to bed."

"But, Mum!" She gets up hastily. "It can't be past nine yet."

Her mother's nostrils flare just the slightest bit. "Bed," she repeats.

Molly Weasley comes upstairs after Ginny has changed into her nightgown. "Sirius Black has important work to do for the Order," she says.

"Yes, Mum." Ginny gets into bed, pulling the covers up around her.

"I don't want you monopolizing his time. He'd be too kind to say so, but he doesn't want children bothering him." She leans down towards her daughter. Ginny pulls away.

"I'm not a child, Mum."

"No," says Molly Weasley grimly, pulling back as well. "You're not."

Ginny turns over and does not say another word. After an endless time of silent sitting, her mother gets up and leaves the room.

Thank the gods, Ginny thinks.

************************************************************************

The next day, the laundry gets hopelessly mixed up.

"What do you expect, Mum, when you let Kreacher do it?" says Ginny. She fully expects to hear something in return about her smart mouth and no backtalk from you, young lady, but her mother only shakes her head.

"Well, I can't help that," says Molly Weasley. "I've got more important things to think about now."

"Like what? Like where almost all the Aurors are?" Ginny asks.

"Never you mind about that."

"Why won't you tell me? I'll bet Fred and George and Ron know! Why won't you ever tell me anything? Why do you treat me like a stupid baby?" She almost hopes that her mother will snap back at her, and justify her own rebellion. But Molly only sighs.

"Ginny, I'm too tired for this. And-- I'm worried about Bill."

"Bill?" Ginny asks in a very small voice. "I don't understand, Mum. He's working at a desk job at Gringotts', and--"

"No, he's not. " Molly's voice sounds very dead.

"You mean--he's out on a mission? A secret mission, for the Order? That's it, isn't it?"

Ginny's mother turns away, silently, and begins folding items from a large pile of scattered clothes.

This would be a good time to try to get some details out of Mum. She's so upset, I can tell, and she might reveal a lot of information before she realizes that she shouldn't. But Ginny feels sick at the thought, as if biting on something rotten.

"Take your laundry up to your room," says Molly.

Ginny carries up the folded bundle of clothes, her heart beating fast with worry, resentment, fear, love, hate. She no longer knows which is which. At the top of the stairs, she bumps into Kreacher. The laundry goes everywhere. She bends to gather it.

"Miss," says Kreacher, staring at her with his protuberant, buglike eyes. He begins folding the laundry.

"Oh! I've got it--you don't have to--honestly, it's all right--" Ginny says in a rather panicky way, snatching at her clothing. She does not want his gnarled hands on her knickers.

He stops touching the laundry but continues to stand over it, speaking in a voice lowered by perhaps one decibel. "And there's the youngest Weasley, the only girl, yes, yes. Too pretty for her own good, no good ever comes of such pretty girls. Good for one thing only and that's the truth, as my poor mistress always said. The enticement of men. Yes, the enticement of foolish men..." Something about that last phrase seems to strike the house-elf's fancy, and he laughs his queer cackling laugh.

Ginny drops all the laundry again. "What did you say?"

"Nothing, oh aye, Kreacher never says nothing," the house-elf mumbles, sidling past her, then continuing to speak without a pause, as is his normal habit. "There was another pretty girl once, aye, one of the Blacks, she had such lovely long golden hair. Master loved to comb that hair of hers, long long ago. But she's gone now, aye, she went to Wiltshire years and years ago, and she'll never come back here no more..."

"Who's gone now?" Ginny demanded. "Whose hair did Sirius comb?" She shakes the house-elf by its scrawny shoulders. "Answer me!" Then she remembers that he doesn't have to tell her anything, that, in fact, she has no right to lay hands on him at all. She is not one of the Black family. And she feels ashamed of herself, as well. He hunches in on himself like a starved frog far from its pond, and begins to whine. She would apologize to him, except that one doesn't apologize to house-elves. So she only pushes past him with her pile of clean clothes.

When she unfolds one of her blouses, a black sock falls from it. She picks it up, stroking its softness. Ginny buries her face in the fabric and sniffs it, finding a trace of the spicy clove scent that Sirius always seems to have about him. It's his. She is sure of it. Carefully, she puts it away at the back of one of the drawers in the old walnut armoire. That night, when she cannot sleep, she puts it under her pillow. She is aware that her behaviour is starting to become odd. But the realization is very dim.

The weather becomes hotter than ever. Molly directs all of the teenagers in the casting of Cooling charms all over the house, but they seem to do no good. The very air is tight and hot and suffocating. It grows no cooler at night, when Ginny lies awake, staring at the ceiling. The pipes have finally been fixed, and Hermione transfigured several gallons of water into an enormous block of ice for each of their rooms, enchanting a fan to blow across it. She should feel cooler than she does. But hot restlessness is running through her veins, and at last she pushes the covers aside and pads downstairs as silently as she can.

None of the gas jets are lit, and there is only one little witchlight in the centre of the long wooden table. It casts flickering orange fingers across the room, the darker shadows receding beyond. Sirius sits there, his cloak hung carelessly across the back of the carved chair, staring into the dead fireplace. The orange lights dance across his face, casting first one part of it into shadow, then another. Ginny clears her throat. He turns.

"Oh. It's you." He does not seem surprised to see her. But then, she is not surprised to see him, either.

"I couldn't sleep," she says, coming a little closer, still standing in the middle of the floor. "You're down here a lot, aren't you? By yourself, I mean."

"I suppose I am. There's Kreacher, but he's considerably worse than nothing."

"Does it ever get lonely?"

"Not really." He continues to stare in the other direction from Ginny, broodingly. "Or maybe it does, after all. I don't know. I thought I had grown used to solitude, that it was my dwelling place. In the past year there were times when I couldn't stand being around people again. And yet--" He turns and smiles at her, that sudden, shockingly sweet smile that lights up his dark face. "I'm glad you're here, Ginny. Come and sit down."

She pulls a chair up next to his. A weird excitement runs through her, like a faint hum of magical power. Everyone else in the house is asleep except for them, and it is the darkest part of the night. Only the two of them are awake, alone together in the basement kitchen with its patchy flickers of warm light. She smiles at him, and she knows even without seeing her face that it is the sort of smile that invites the confidence of secrets.

"I wish Harry could come to stay with us here," he says. "I'm trying to work on the others, to get them to agree that he should, at least for a little while. But--no luck so far."

"Oh." Her smile falters. Certainly, she wishes Harry was here, as well. No, I don't. Yes, I do, of course I do! Anyway, that isn't the sort of thing she expected Sirius to say. On the other hand, what had she expected him to say?

"Well, you'd be glad if he did, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, of course." It is almost the truth. "I'm sure it'd make you awfully happy to see him." Ginny does that mean that sincerely. She understands what the relationship between godfather and godson means, in the wizarding world.

"It would. Of course it would." Sirius traces a pattern in the wooden whorls of the table with one finger. "But it's odd," he adds after some time has passed. "I never really seem to know quite what to say to him--how to begin, as it were. Maybe if I'd known Harry all his life, had the chance to see him grow up, it would be different. But I didn't. I didn't."

A shadow crosses his face and remains there. Ginny watches the change with some alarm. She is strangely sure that she knows exactly what he is thinking, or perhaps it is not so strange. Certainly, it doesn't require any great ability in Divination to guess that he remembers the death of Lily and James Potter, and his imprisonment only a little later for the other murders he did not commit. The expression stays and stays. His face is like the impassive surface of an ocean whose floor is being destroyed by an earthquake. Ginny wishes that she could say or do something, anything, to interrupt the process.

"I didn't know what to say to anybody in my family for the longest time after what happened to me," she blurts. It is all she can think of to say. He looks up, starting slightly.

"That's right. I heard all about that--the Chamber of Secrets, I mean," Sirius says.

"Did Harry tell you?" Ginny mumbles.

He shakes his head. "No, no. Harry doesn't tell me anything, really. I wonder if he would do if I'd been able to take him to live with me, as I wanted to do. But again, I simply don't know. Albus Dumbledore told me."

"Oh." Somehow, she does not resent that.

"So..." For the first time, he looks directly at her. "You have suffered too, Ginny, haven't you?"

"Yes." Her voice is barely above a whisper. But if I talk about this, it might help him. Oh, how I want to help him. "And the worst part was that I didn't think anybody would understand, after it happened. So I never talked about it, not ever, not to anyone."

Sirius shifts position in his chair, turns towards her, and seems to relax just the tiniest bit. "Yes, that's how I felt as well. I told Albus more than anyone else. He has a way of understanding these things...and then I explained a bit to Remus. That's about all."

"You--" Ginny hesitates. She can hardly believe what she is about to say. She speaks quickly, so that the words have no chance to die unsaid in her mouth. "You can tell me things, if you like. I mean, if you want to. I do understand lots of things. But you don't have to, if you don't want to. Maybe I should go back to--" She makes as if to get up, and is startled by her hand on her wrist. Uncertainly, she sits back in her chair.

"But I do want to." His eyes are very dark, and his speech becomes urgent. "I shouldn't really. Merlin knows, it's not fair to you. Are you listening to me? The best thing for you to do, Ginny, would be to return to your little girl's bed, and not talk to me anymore... to return to your stuffed toys, and your dolls, and your innocence."

"It's nearly three years too late for that," says Ginny. She feels as if she is inching out onto a perilously swaying limb over a dark and rushing river. But she cannot stop. Doesn't want to stop.

"I suppose it is." He laughs, short and sharp, and she suddenly wonders exactly how much he has already drunk that night. "There's never any going back to innocence, is there?"

"No," she says, knowing exactly what he means. "There's not." She raises her gaze to his, dark eyes locking onto golden ones, and Ginny suddenly sees the possibility of the truest friendship she has ever known, a companionship of the mind based on deep understanding. One that is possible despite the difference in their ages, and the vast gulf of experience between them. She holds her breath, and wonders if such a thing could really exist between the two of them. But before she can even begin to make her mind on the subject, he begins to talk. Eagerly, she listens. His first stories centre on Azkaban, although she suspects that he is trying to spare both of them the details of that place, and that he can endure their retelling even less than she.

"There's little to tell, anyway," Sirius says. "All the time I spent there was the same really ... the neverending monotonous march of hours and days and weeks and months and years. I made a clock-watch to keep track of time. Even after the Dementors had taken away all the magic I'd ever learnt, they couldn't take that... Then, too, I was a dog more often than not."

"Didn't they notice?" asks Ginny, shivering at the memory of those dark, foul creatures she had met at the start of her third year on the Hogwarts Express.

"Dementors don't really distinguish between human and animal forms. They're blind, you see, but they have... other senses." He shudders as well. "Being a dog made it a bit easier to withstand them. And dogs don't feel the terrible weight of the passage of time the way that humans do, so that was easier, too. But it was dangerous to stay in dog-form all the time; I learned that before the end of the first year."

Once again, Ginny wonders what sort of dog he is, in his Animagus form. But this hardly seems like the time to ask him, or to interrupt his narrative. "Why?" is all she asks.

"Because a dog locked in a cage first paces, and then whines, and then scrabbles at the door before remembering that he shouldn't, and then sleeps... and then dreams."

"Do all dogs dream? Or only Animagus dogs?"

"I don't know," says Sirius. "But I used to have a recurring dream that I was lead in a team of huskies and Labradors and St. Bernards sledding through the frozen North. It was never very coherent, but then the dog-dreams never were. There was only the fierce joy of running through forests and along trails, of smelling the cold, clear air, of freedom. And when I woke to imprisonment, it was beyond endurance."

She wonders what Azkaban was like when he was in human form, but doesn't see how she could possibly ask. But he responds as if she has.

"Not that it was any easier when I wasn't a dog. I was never quite sure which form was worse... There were many, many times when I wished with all my heart that Azkaban was run in the way I've heard American prisons are, where the wizard inmates are intermingled with the regular population." He laughed again. The laugh is very bitter this time. "Of course, I'd been imprisoned for supposedly murdering twelve people, including women and children. And from what I've heard about Muggle jails, that sort of crime wouldn't allow me to rank very high in the prison structure. I'd probably have gotten a shiv in the back before the first month was out. But then I don't really see how being cornered in the shower by serial rapists could have been any worse than twelve years of solitary confinement in Azkaban..."

Ginny gulps, audibly.

"I'm sorry." Sirius looks very contrite. "There are things I shouldn't tell you--well, probably everything I've told you so far fits into that category. But it's so easy to forget that you're not yet fifteen years old." He sighs. "Too easy, all too easy."

He skips over his search for Harry and the shining, brief moments of freedom when they'd believed his name could be cleared, sketching only the barest details. When he speaks about leaving Harry behind in his desperate flight from Hogwarts on Buckbeak's back, however, his voice catches in his throat. Ginny places her hand over his on the table, a gesture so instinctive that she does not even remember to be self-conscious.

"You love him, don't you?" she asks.

"Yes."

Ginny thinks of when she, too, believed she loved Harry. The thought is embarrassing now.

"Yet I don't know him at all, not really. Isn't that strange?"

"You've hardly been able to spend any time at all with him," Ginny points out.

"True, but I think it's more than that." Sirius rubs his chin, thoughtfully. "I don't understand him. I don't think anybody understands him, and maybe no-one can. I couldn't talk to him the way I'm talking to you. There are things I will never be able to say to Harry, perhaps especially not to Harry. But yes, I love him, in the way I would love a son, true and pure and real. The truest love I have ever known." He smiles at Ginny, slowly, a smile more of the eyes than the lips. It suddenly dawns on her that her hand is still over his. She can feel her cheeks getting red. Maybe it's too dark for him to tell. I hope so, I really do.

"You--you said you got your replacement wand in Tennessee. That's a state in the American South, isn't it? Only we all thought you'd gone someplace a bit more tropical, because of the birds that brought Harry your letters," she says, in an attempt to change the subject.

Sirius nods. "That was on Albus's advice. It was to throw everyone off the scent; we couldn't put Harry in such a position of vulnerability, of being able to guess at where I was, even roughly."

"So where did you go?"

A faraway look came into his eyes.

"Somewhere safe," he says. "Or at least as safe as anyplace could be, for me. There are so many magical communities in America that have almost no contact with the outside world. They live apart from non-magical folk, and most of them are based on indigenous peoples, like the Navajo Nation, or the Iroquois League. The most isolated ones are in the South, though. I started out in Louisiana, hiding out with Ton Ton Macoute. I remember being rowed across bayous in a pirogue to the Marie Laveau academy... one of their wizarding schools... I stayed with some Santeria wizards, and saw the vodun spirits Papa Legba and Baba Ayule, and loads of zombies. We don't have zombies here, you know... Then I went up through the cave networks of Kentucky and Tennessee, and to Appalachia. Stayed for a good long time in those hills. That's where the wand came from. Through Florida, I remember...the Zora Neale Hurston school in Eatonville... Then the Gullah Gullah of the outer banks of the Carolinas... there's a myth that hundreds of slaves escaped and massacred themselves on the island rather than live in captivity. That wizarding community has taken great care to spread the story around so that they're left alone, too. So many places, so many people. They all took me in because of Albus, of course. They all knew who he was. I'm sure they wouldn't have done it for anyone else. They live so apart from the world that surrounds them, I was always able to stay at least one step ahead of anybody who might be chasing me."

He weaves a portrait of midnight flights in boats and wagons and the back of pickup trucks, swamps and smoky mountains, steamy heat and shockingly lush fruits and flowers, unimaginable rituals with datura and chickens' blood and voices calling out in languages she has never heard to powers and principalities she does not know. She listens raptly, almost bursting with happiness to hear what he says to her. Instinctively, Ginny knows that he has told no-one else these things.

"I could have lived there for the rest of my days, safely," Sirius finally says. "But I didn't want safety as much as all that. And I didn't want to live on the run."

"You were able to come back, though," says Ginny.

"Yes, I came back. I never thought I'd end up back here, that's all. I was never happy here... well, almost never." His eyes are hazy with memory.

"You grew up in this house, didn't you?" asks Ginny.

Sirius does not answer her directly. "There are times you remind me of someone, just a bit. You're such a lovely girl, Ginny," he says musingly, still not quite looking at her. "So much like she was at your age, except her colouring was quite different. Blonde hair, and blue eyes... But certain things about you that seem to be like her--well, they may not always be good." Lovely, he called me lovely, she thinks, and her heart leaps. But Sirius looks troubled. "You need to have spirit, Ginny, you need to seize life with both hands or it runs away from you. Don't let anyone else make your decisions for you. That's what she did. All too often." She wonders who it is he remembers.

The clock in the front hall strikes three, making a sound like a trunk of dishes being thrown downstairs. Sirius seems to collect himself. "I didn't realize it was so late. You really ought to go to bed, Ginny. I think I will."

Ginny goes up to her little room and undresses. Her nightgown is laid out on the bed, but contrary to her usual custom she doesn't put it on right away. There is an elaborately carved, serpent-shaped lock on the door, and she turns its latch. Then she stands naked before the full-length mirror. They have taken the enchantments off most of the mirrors in the house, so they do not speak, and Ginny is very glad. Slowly, she runs a hand down her body, cupping her full breasts, skating across her waist and hips.

She wonders if it is the sort of body that boys would want to see naked, as she now sees herself. She thinks so. It is slender in some places, and strong in others from all the flying she does. And--well-- she has only been embarrassed up to now by the fact that her mother is forever having to let out her robes at the chest. But maybe that is not altogether bad, after all. Boys--men--like that sort of figure, she knows. She remembers the number of conversations that third-year boys held with her breasts that spring, as if their eyes had become glued well below her neck and could not quite seem to move above it. She has overheard the long, whispered, giggling conversations between Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil in the Gryffindor common room, late at night. If she is to be honest with herself, she has spied on them more than once. They're all the same, all men, all boys. All so dependent on the one thing a girl can give them. They're fools when it comes to that. You can get them to do anything if you let them get a bit of pleasure out of you...

Only she never wants to think of it that way, so coldly, so calculatedly. When she gives her body, Ginny decides, it will be a gift given freely. She imagines the giving of herself, and her nipples harden when her fingers brush across them. She imagines a man touching her as she is touching herself now. Her eyes close. The man is faceless, but she knows his voice. She knows his eyes, and she imagines them raking across her nude body, smoldering at what they see. Her hand strays between her legs and she strokes herself there, reliving every word Sirius said to her that night, until she has to stuff a fist in her mouth to keep from crying out in pleasure.

Chapter Two.

Heavenly Creatures.

A/N: I bought a map of London and looked at the British Museum online, but I might as well admit the awful truth--the description of the inside is the Minneapolis Institute of Art, because I'm very familiar with it.

The next morning, Ginny is sweeping the front hall with a broom. Her hair is tied up with a cloth, and she resentfully swishes the broom back and forth. Molly Weasley has instructed everyone to avoid using magic to clean whenever possible, as it has a tendency to stir up any loose Dark spells that may be floating around the house. Back and forth, back and forth, swish, swish. I ought to hire myself out as a house-elf replacement. The door begins to open creakily, and a blast of hot air hits her. She looks up, startled, blinking at the bright sunlight. Remus Lupin is standing before her.

"We didn't expect any of you back until next week," she whispers. He looks incredibly tired and worn, and the lines in his young-old face seem more prominent than ever.

"I didn't expect to be back," he says, not keeping his voice down.

"Shh! Shh," she says, glancing back at the covered portrait behind them. But it is too late. The curtains pop open, and they both wince as the screeching begins.

"Mutants, freaks, befouling the house of my fathers--"

Sirius charges out of the door to the basement kitchen. "Shut up, you horrible old hag! Shut up!"

"Stains of dishonor, children of filth--"

He struggles to close the curtain around the painting.

"But you need not think that I am entirely without weapons, even now! Oh, the sins of the children shall be wiped out, and the noble House of Black made clean once again by the faithful servant. Blood traitor, shame of my flesh, abomination--"

"You look like you could use a bit of help," Remus observes with a tired smile, forcing the curtains closed from the other side.

The screeching stops as suddenly as if it has been cut off with a knife. Sirius looks startled and uncertain, and then his face breaks into a grin.

"Remus!" He embraces the other man. "I'm glad to see you but--what are doing back here? I thought you lot weren't supposed to return until next week." His voice drops a notch. "Has anything happened? Or have they made some moves at last, down in Wiltshire, the M--"

Remus jerks his head in Ginny's direction.

"Oh, Ginny's all right," Sirius says carelessly. "She won't repeat anything she hears. Will you, Ginny?"

"That's not the point," Remus says in an undertone. "You know Molly doesn't like us talking about Order business around the children."

"As you wish." Sirius opens the door to the basement kitchen, and his last words drift up to her as the two men clatter down the narrow stone stairs. "It's just that I don't think of Ginny as a child anymore, really. She's been such wonderful company these past few weeks..."

Ginny does not realize her broom has slipped from her hand. Her cheeks glow with happiness. He doesn't think I'm a child. And he's called me a woman. He sees me as a woman, surely he must. Everything is... But she falters, unsure of how to finish the thought. No matter what Sirius has said, she knows what will happen that night. There will be a tense, secret conference held at the long wooden table among the adults, he and Remus and her mother and father, whatever other aurors are still in London--Kingsley Shacklebolt, Elphias Doge, perhaps Emmeline Vance. And she, as one of the children, will be excluded. Despite the heat of the front hall, she feels suddenly cold.

***************************************************************

Ginny sits on the edge of Hermione's bed, her legs swinging over the edge. Ron gnaws at his nails, his face tense and distracted.

"Aren't they done yet?" he asks, for approximately the tenth time in as many minutes.

"They said they'd come back in the instant they were," says Hermione.

Ron gets up, abruptly, and starts pacing back and forth.

"Sit down, Ron," says Hermione. "You're making me nervous."

"Then it obviously doesn't take much, does it?" Ron retorts. "Maybe you shouldn't be in on this meeting at all."

"Oh, that's rich," says Hermione indignantly. "When I'm the one who's been--"

"Shh." Ron pauses to clamp a hand over her arm.

Is it only her imagination, wonders Ginny, or do her brother and her friend exchange a faintly furtive glance then, and is it ever so slightly angled in her direction?

The door slowly opens, and Fred and George tiptoe in, rolling up two long strands of flesh-coloured material.

"Well?" asks Hermione, clearly finding it impossible to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

"All hail the Extendable Ears," says Fred with a broad grin.

"Lovely pieces of work, they are," adds George, replacing the bundles carefully on a top shelf of the closet.

"Did you hear the entire secret meeting?" Ron asks eagerly.

"Well..." hedges Fred. "Maybe not every last little word. Astounding as our latest inventions may be--"

"And are," says George, walking back towards the bed and flopping into a chair.

"They're not precisely perfect. But, then--"

"In this imperfect world, what is?"

Hermione rolls her eyes. "Did you hear any of it at all?"

"Your implication of failure cuts me to the quick," says Fred, placing a hand over his heart in a very injured fashion.

"We took this very seriously, you know," says George.

"The time we carved out of our busy schedules. And we didn't even take the golden opportunity to Apparate up the stairs, just in case our reappearance might cause the slightest bit of noise. I'm afraid it still does, sometimes. We've got a few bugs to work out. Like the time we arrived in Diagon Alley last week missing alternate toenails from each foot. I'm suppose we were lucky really that it wasn't anything a bit more vital--"

"Fred," says George warningly, "focus."

"Right, right," Fred says carelessly. "Well, the first thing we learned is that all the aurors aren't coming back just yet, only Lupin. Which raises the question of exactly where they are, of course."

"The question of the hour," agrees George.

"Hold on," Ron says suddenly, glancing at his sister. "Maybe Ginny shouldn't be here."

Ginny's eyes narrow. "Ronald Connor Weasley, if you dare to try to keep me in the dark about this, I'll make everyone sorry." She glares pointedly around the room. The twins look remarkably uncomfortable, which was precisely the effect she had hoped to cause. But the strange thing is that both Ron and Hermione gulp, look at each other, and then look away quickly.

"She deserves to know what's going on, just as much as the rest of us," Hermione says hurriedly.

"Fine," says Ron tersely, biting his lip. "She can stay."

George picks up the story. "Well, we had to piece all this together. But from what we can gather, there was something about the place where all the aurors were--wherever this secret mission is, in other words--that was a bit sinister. Had more effect on Lupin than on the rest. They were afraid he was becoming ill, and sent him back. So it must be some sort of magical site." He falls silent. Ginny looks at him expectantly, aware that Ron and Hermione are doing the same.

"Well?" Ron asks. "What else?"

"Oh. Er--" George looks at his twin, awkwardly.

"Actually, there isn't anything else," admits Fred.

Ginny's all right. She won't repeat anything she hears. Sirius Black's words come back to her now. He trusts her. Or at least that's what she believed he meant at the time. But he is downstairs at this moment, embroiled in a secret conference to which she could not possibly be invited, because she is only a fourteen-year-old child. "I think I know where they are," she says.

"What!" Ron stares at her in rather unflattering disbelief. "How could you possibly know?"

Ginny grits her teeth. "I was sweeping the front hall today," she says, "when Remus first came in. And Sirius asked him if anything had happened in Wiltshire. That would rather tend to imply that Wiltshire is where Remus was and where all those other aurors still are, now wouldn't it?"

"Elementary, my dear Ronald," chortles Fred.

"Good one, Ginny," says George. "So what's in Wiltshire?"

"Oh!" exclaims Hermione. "Of course. I see it all now. I can't believe I didn't think of it right away. Stupid of me, really."

"Are you going to keep your bit of brilliance to yourself," says Ron, "or share it with the rest of us ordinary mortals?"

I'm glad they don't invite me along with them to the British Museum, Ginny thinks. Their bickering would drive me mad. She tries to convince herself that she really is glad, but the attempt does not get very far.

"Stonehenge," says Hermione.

"What? What's Stonehenge got to do with anything?"

"Honestly, Ron! Didn't you pay the slightest bit of attention when we went over Magical Geography in last year's History of Magic class? Stonehenge is in Wiltshire!"

"Well, nobody in the past hundred and fifty years has ever managed to stay awake in that class except you," mutters Ron, the tips of his ears going red.

"You're brilliant, Hermione!" exclaims Fred, snapping his fingers. "Stonehenge, the most powerful megalithic structure in Britain. Naturally the aurors are there."

"Except it still doesn't make sense," points out George.

"Don't tell me it's wet-blanket time again."

"He's right," says Hermione. "Just because it's a powerful magical site doesn't prove anything. What's going on there? What could its connection possibly be to the Death Eaters? What are the aurors trying to accomplish? Why so many of them? The only ones left in London are the ones who positively can't be gone for any length of time without exciting suspicion, and they're running out of excuses for the rest. I happen to know that Tonks is out with an excuse of magical flu, and that people at the Ministry are starting to get suspicious. And that's also why they have Arabella Figg and Mundungus Fletcher and that lot guarding Harry. Lovely people I'm sure, but really fairly useless in--"

"However did you learn all that?" asks Ginny.

"Never mind," Hermione says quickly. "And what I'd really like to know is, why did Remus Lupin get sent back, but nobody else? What do they think's going to happen to him?"

"Don't know," shrugs Fred. "We'll have to keep our ears out--Extendable and otherwise."

"You know what we ought to be thinking about," George says. "What else is in Wiltshire, besides Stonehenge? Who lives there, for instance?"

Hermione pulls an atlas from the desk and begins flipping through it. The pages move and change in writhing colours as she does so. "Some wizarding families," she says. "This encyclopedia isn't very good. It doesn't give names; it just shows that there's magical activity. "

"Seems like I've heard that there's at least one great ostentatious manor there," says Ron. "Belongs to some stinking rich family or other."

"I do think I've heard of a wizard who lives in Wiltshire," George says, his brow creasing. "Just can't remember the name, or where I heard it. It had an unpleasant association, though--I do remember that."

"Well," says Fred, shrugging, "don't worry your pretty little head about it, bro. Come on." He gets up. " I want to get a bit more work done on the Bubonic Butterscotch."

"Attention span of a mayfly," Hermione whispers to Ron. Ginny agrees, but she doesn't want to hear Hermione saying it. Coming from the other girl's lips, it sounds disloyal. For a fleeting moment, she does not like Hermione at all.

"I wish you'd share this room with me. There's a perfectly good extra bed, now that we've gotten the poltergeist out of it," Hermione tells Ginny after the twins and Ron have left. Ginny shrugs. At the beginning of the summer, the wish would have made her very happy. But now, she is sure that the other girl only offers so that she and Ron and the rest can spy on her every movement even more efficiently than they are already doing.

"There's enough space in this house so that we don't have to," Ginny says.

"Well, yes, I know, but isn't it a bit creepy to sleep in one of those bedrooms all by yourself?"

"There aren't any puffskeins left under the bed. Fred and George got them all."

"I don't mean that." Hermione sighs. "It's just--well, the atmosphere of this entire house feels so terribly uncomfortable all the time. So wrong."

"Must be nice to be able to escape from it every day, then. Or at least that would be my guess," says Ginny pointedly.

Hermione sits on the bed, staring into space, her thick dark brows knitted into the familiar frown. Ginny would very much like to leave, but she knows that at the moment it would look churlish and rude. Reluctantly, she leans against the doorframe, hoping that the other girl will get to whatever point she wants to make quickly.

"Sometimes I wonder if they think it's more dangerous for you to leave the house than it is for anybody else," Hermione says after a long pause.

Ginny nearly jumps in surprise. "Why? Because I'm younger than all the rest of you?" she asks guardedly.

"Yes--and no." Hermione seems to come to some sort of decision. "Ginny, I don't think that's entirely it. But I don't know what the whole of it is, and if I did, I'd tell you, believe me."

Ginny snorts. She can't help it.

"I would," Hermione insists. "I've --we've--been thinking that maybe it has something to do with the mysterious mission almost all of the Aurors are on. But I can't figure out any more than that, not yet."

Against her will, Ginny feels herself melting, just a little. This is exactly the way in which she has hoped Hermione would talk to her all summer long, and at last it is happening. "What have you and Ron found out?" she asks, unable to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

"Nothing, really," says Hermione carefully. "Only what I said."

"And how? Have you overheard things I haven't? Are there some extra Extendable Ears that Mum didn't find, maybe? Or--"

Hermione hesitates. Thinking it over later, Ginny is never sure if her friend intended to speak further at that moment or not. But there is a shuffling sound, and both girls raise their heads. Ron appears in the doorway.

"Go to bed, Ginny," he says, his voice terse.

Ginny opens her mouth to argue, and then has a better idea. She rises and leaves without protest, feeling Hermione's eyes on her back the entire way out. She tromps down the hall with an unnecessary amount of noise. Then she doubles back, silently, and crouches at the keyhole of the closed door. There are primitive yet effective spying methods that do not involve Extendable Ears.

"I don't know how many more times we can do this before your mother starts to get really suspicious," says Hermione in a low voice.

"But it's still on for tomorrow, right?" asks Ron.

"Yes."

"Good. It's important."

There is a rustling sound, as if someone is approaching the door. Ginny does not dare to push her luck any further, and she steals down the hall to her room. Then she lies on the bed, heart pounding, mind full of what she has just heard.

"Where are Ron and Hermione?" Molly Weasley asks, pulling on her gloves in the front hall. She tugs at one so hard it rips, glancing down with a faint frown. Ginny sees that her mother has been trying to put it on inside-out.

"At the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mum," she says. "That's what they said. I told you already." But is that the truth? she wonders. Is it really?

Molly absently yanks at the glove until Ginny can bear watching the activity no more. She takes it from her mother's hand and tries to put it to rights. "I wish I'd caught them before they went out. I don't want them leaving the house so much, not now," says Molly, putting on her hat.

"Look," says Fred, stepping up to his mother and brother, "if you don't take me with you, how can you be sure you'll be able to find--"

"Maybe there's a way we could--" begins George.

"We've been through all of this before," says Molly. "You know it can be only one of you."

The three of them pull aside, a little further down the hall, and her eyes begin to snap. She says something quietly to the twin boys, whose identical faces resemble hers more than ever when they are alight with anger, as they are now. Ginny strains to hear, but they all glance at her and press their heads together closer than ever. The furious hissing sounds of the three voices are like the slither of snakes. Finally, they all straighten up, and Molly and George start towards the door.

"Where are you going, Mum?" Ginny doesn't really expect an answer, but then her mother just might be distracted enough to provide her with one.

"Never mind," says Molly, snatching the mangled glove from Ginny's hand. "You just stay in the house until we get back, the both of you."

The door closes. Fred swears viciously under his breath and kicks at it. The vast slab of dark wood does not move in the slightest. He clutches his toe and hops down the hall. She hears him stomping up the stairs, then slamming the door to the twins' room.

Ginny is left staring at the closed front door. Something thick and hot and rebellious bubbles up inside her chest. She pulls at the handle. It does not open. The dim walls covered with fading moss-green paper seem to be closing in on her, suddenly; the ceiling rushes down towards her, and for an awful instant she is sure that some scrap of leftover Dark magic has been re-animated, and the house has become horribly aware of her existence in it. "Oh, I have to get out of here," she whimpers, aware that nobody will hear her desperate plea, and that she is trapped.

"Ginny!" exclaims a voice. "Are you all right?" She turns to see Sirius coming up behind her, looking concerned. His hair is pulled back with a leather thong and he is dressed all in white linen. They are all wearing white these days, in an attempt to stay cooler.

She swallows hard, trying to school her voice to evenness. It wobbles. "I can't get out."

He draws his wand and points it at the door. It quivers in his hand, pulling downwards to the floor. "I imagine you can't," he says grimly. "There's a Locking spell on the door, and it's Keyed to you."

"But why?"

He hesitates. "I imagine because your mother doesn't want you getting out. She feels it isn't safe. And I suppose, really, that she's right."

Ginny turns away from him, struggling not to cry. Shut in. She is shut in here, just as he is. "Where did Mum and George go?" she mutters. She really does not expect an answer. But she gets one.

"They're trying to find out where your oldest brother is. And why he hasn't returned from his mission yet, or sent any word."

"Bill?" she whispers. "He really is on a secret mission of his own?" Sirius nods.

"And Mum doesn't want me to know."

Sirius compresses his lips into a thin line. "Your mother didn't want anybody who wasn't in the Order told anything."

"But she told the twins."

He sighs. "She was forced to tell them a bit."

"But not me." Ginny whirls on him. "Why did you tell me?"

Several moments go by before he answers her. "Because I believe... I believe, Ginny, that you do deserve to at least know something."

"So where did they go? Why did Mum say it could only be one of them? Why didn't Fred--"

"I can't tell you any more. Don't ask me."

Iron fingers clutch at her throat, allowing only the slightest of whimpers to escape. She has not been allowed to leave the house since the clandestine Quidditch match, not even to step outside the door. "It's far too dangerous right now," her mother had said after the night she'd caught Ginny sitting out on the back step. "But Fred, and George, and Ron--" Ginny began. "No. Not you." And Molly Weasley would explain no more. Something has been building up and festering in Ginny like a vast lake of vile dark water trapped behind a dam. She begins to kick at the door, knowing even as she does so that it is a pointless activity. It is heavier than iron and wound about with dark enchantments, and she only succeeds in bruising her feet. Sirius grabs her around the waist.

"Stop it, Ginny! You'll hurt yourself. Shh. Shh." She struggles against him, crying, and he smooths her hair and speaks low in her ear.

"Poor girl, poor little girl. I know what it's been like. You're a wild bird, Ginny, a blithe spirit... You ought to be allowed to fly free, and instead you've been caged up here in this horrible house, your wings clipped... shh, now, shh..."

"I have to get out of here or I'll go mad," she says desperately.

His face grows very stern. "You can't go looking for information about Bill."

"But if it's so dangerous, then why are Mum and George--"

"I didn't say it was dangerous. All they're doing is trying to get information. But you're not of age to Apparate, you couldn't even get to--to where they have to go."

She looks up at him, her eyes like rain-washed gold flowers. "You could take me out!"

He hesitates. "I--I can't leave this house, you know that."

Ginny does know it, and a stab of guilt goes all through her, instantly. She has been weak and selfish. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I should have known you can't." She realizes that she has been standing in the circle of his arms, and reluctantly she leaves it and starts upstairs, her head drooping.

"Wait," Sirius says.

"What?"

"Put some decent shoes on and we'll go outside."

She looks at him in surprise.

"Your mother and brothers are doing everything that can be done for Bill," Sirius continues, "and I'm sure it'll all come right in the end, Ginny. It will. But I can see that if you don't get out of this house for a bit, you really might go mad. At least you could get a breath of fresh air, if I come with you. "

"But--you can't! It's much too dangerous--you know it is. They all said and said that you have to stay here."

His lips tighten again. "Only to that little park on Grimoire Street. Hardly any distance at all."

"But you'd be leaving the house still! It just isn't safe."

"It'll be perfectly safe." He grins up at her, and it is the flashing grin that shows all his white teeth in his dark face, and that transforms him, wiping away the haunted look he always wears. "Just get those shoes, now."

Ginny laces up her old pink and white trainers, her heart beating fast with excitement. She will have to try harder to talk him out of it, of course. She can't allow him to take such risks for her sake.

When she comes downstairs, the first thing she sees is a large, beautiful black dog, a Labrador, she thinks. Its coat gleams with health, and it looks up at her from shiny dark eyes with what she could swear is a grin. Of course, dogs always look that way; the uncanny human quality is only an illusion. She bends down to stroke its head. "Ooh, you're pretty. How'd you get in?" she asks softly. She looks for a collar or identification tags, but finds none. "Wherever did you come from? And where's--" She stops. "Sirius?" she asks uncertainly, feeling a perfect fool.

The dog nods vigorously, floppy ears wagging.

A smile creeps across her face. "Oh." And when she strokes his fur, feeling warm, living flesh beneath, the door swings wide to her touch.

In the ecstasy of being outside again, Ginny forgets her fears for her brother Bill. Or that's not it, not really; every beat of her heart still remembers that nagging fear, and the burning curiousity about her mother and George. But she pushes the emotions to the back of her mind, just for this one glorious hour. The sun shines on the blue water of the little pond, and ducks waddle out of their way, quacking indignantly. Sirius-the-dog splashes joyfully in the water, scaring the geese badly and managing to get nipped on the nose by one of them. "Poor puppy," coos Ginny, stroking the scratch. He glares at her. Then he picks up a stick in his jaws and nudges at her hand, and she throws it for him. Again and again, he brings it back to her. They run around the pond together on the asphalt path, legs pumping, all giggles and barks and panting tongues. They return to the house very late. Ginny's hair straggles down her back like a Muggle's drawing of a witch, and her white shorts are covered with mud.

"How'd you manage to end up with all these?" asks Ginny, picking cockleburs from his fur. Reluctantly, she pushes at the front door of the house. "I suppose we've got to go back in, don't we?"

But they seem to bring some of the sunlight and breeze and smell of warmed grass in with them, and as if by consensus they both go down to the basement kitchen rather than separating right away. She continues to run her fingers through the silky fur behind his ears, absently. He whines low in his throat, just the tiniest bit.

"What does that mean, Snuffles?" she asks. "Your vocabulary's a bit more limited now, you know."

He noses at her leg, looking appealingly up at her. Then there is a flash of fur and long legs in the air as, without warning, he jumps on Ginny, bowling her over.

"Oh!" she gasps. "Not quite through playing yet, are we?"

They roll across the kitchen floor in a furious bundle of energy, the girl and the dog; laughing, barking, wriggling. Finally Ginny is lying flat on the floor with his forelegs on her shoulders, his tail wagging. "Let go," she giggles. "Snuffles! Get off me!" He leans forward and licks her face, slurp, slurp, across her cheekbones, her nose, her chin. "Oo, stop it! That tickles! Ha ha, aha, ha--" Abruptly, the weight is off her chest.

Ginny looks up, confused. She isn't quite sure how or when it happened, but between one breath and the next, Sirius has transformed, and is now standing up in his human form, glaring gimlet-eyed at someone. Remus Lupin glares back and jerks his thumb towards the door leading to the front hall. Sirius heads up the narrow flight of stairs without a backwards glance. Slowly, Ginny begins to follow him to her own room.

"Wait a moment, would you, Ginny?" Remus says. Despite the pleasant tone of his voice, it is not a request.

Ginny straightens a shelf of glasses. That should be Kreacher's job, but he isn't going to do it anyway. And it gives her an excuse not to look at Remus. She has a strange, uncomfortable feeling in her stomach, almost a guilty one. But she's certainly done nothing wrong. She is being silly.

"We haven't had a real talk in quite a while," he says. "Remember when you used to visit me in my office every afternoon?"

"My second year," replies Ginny, a bit ungraciously. "When you were my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Yes, I remember."

He lays the packages down on the table and squares his thin shoulders. Ginny recognizes it as the same sort of gesture Arthur Weasley always makes when he has resolutely decided to have A Serious Talk with her. Inwardly, she groans.

"You like Sirius, don't you?" Remus asks her.

"Yes, oh yes," Ginny says eagerly, thinking of the romp in the park, the laughter, the fun, the wrestling on the floor. This, at least, seems as if it ought to be safe ground. "And I think he likes me."

"Well, who wouldn't like you?" he says in a kindly way, unwrapping the packages and starting to spread them on the table. But there is a faint frown between his eyes. "Does he, ah--do things with you and your brothers?"

"Yes. But mostly just me. Ron's with Hermione all the time, and Fred and George are always so busy hunting down ingredients, or locking themselves in their room to conduct experiments."

"Oh? What does he do with you?" he asks, his voice just a shade too casual.

"We talk," she says a bit defensively. "He tells me about all sorts of things. We played Quidditch once--just a pickup game, you know. And we went for a run today, in that little park with the pond, the one on Grimoire Street. I suppose we shouldn't have gone outside, really, but he seemed to like it so much. I--" Ginny hesitates; it seems like an enormous piece of cheek to say what she wants to say, but finally she does. "I do feel sorry for him. Cooped up here."

"So do I. Ginny," Remus says abruptly, "Sirius is a very good man."

"I know that."

"But he's a good man who's had--well, a bad life, in lots of ways. Twelve years in Azkaban, then thinking he'd been cleared and learning almost immediately that he hadn't... then having to run for a year, and hiding out in the middle of nowhere, places so awful that he didn't even tell anyone where he went--"

"He was in the American South that year. Appalachia mostly. He told me all about it."

Remus turns in surprise. "He told you?"

"Well, yes."

"He's never told me about that year..." mutters Remus. "All I mean is that certain influences have twisted him, I sometimes think, warped his personality... turned him in upon himself... Well, I suppose I shouldn't be talking to you this way at all, but you are very easy to talk to, he's certainly right about that."

"He talks about me?" exclaims Ginny.

"Yes, he talks about you. He says that you always seem to understand, or at least you give the illusion of it... I wonder if you can understand what I'm trying to say to you now, or if it's fair to expect you to. Likely it isn't."

Ginny holds her temper in check with an effort. Why does everyone in this house seem to think she is about five years old? Everyone except Sirius. The thought makes her smile.

Remus sees that secretive smile, and shakes his head. In his eyes is something like pity.

The famous Weasley temper, pushed beyond its bonds, flares up at last. "Why do you have to talk like my mother?" she snarls through gritted teeth. "Why can't everyone just leave me alone? Sirius and I are friends, and that's all! Doesn't anyone trust me?"

"Ginny, you're not the one I..." Remus stops.

"So you don't trust him? Is that what you're trying to say?"

"I'm not trying to say anything of the sort." Remus gathers up an armful of packages and starts upstairs. "Be careful, Ginny. That's all I mean."

The next day, Molly Weasley stops Ron and Hermione at the front door as they try to leave, waterproofs pulled up over their heads. "But Mrs. Weasley, at ten o'clock there's a lecture on the alignment of the Sphinx to the constellation of--" begins Hermione.

"There's a dreadful heliosprite infestation in the first floor drawing room," Molly Weasley says flatly. Her arms are full of large burlap sacks.

"But, Mum--" Ron begins.

"Heaven only knows how it's got to this point, and there isn't the least bit of sun today, either--so wands out." Molly continues speaking as if she hasn't heard either of them, tying a scarf over Hermione's bushy head. Ron and Hermione look uneasily at each other, then follow Molly up the stairs. On the landing, Ginny puts a hand over her mouth to hide her snort of laughter.

"All right then," says Ron in a resigned tone of voice. "Hermione can take the part of the room by the fireplace, and I'll just--" He makes as if to step over the threshhold.

"You'll do no such thing," Molly Weasley interrupts him. "I'll not have children in the same room as these--creatures. Unnatural, that's what they are. I never heard of such a thing before we came to this house, but considering what sort of wizards the Blacks were--" She catches herself. "You're to stay in the corridor as backup," she says sternly.

When Ginny hears that, she knows not to alert her mother to her presence. She'd only be banished to her bedroom if these things are too dangerous for Ron and Hermione to face There is a large coatstand covered in nundu skin against one wall, and she slips behind its shadow so that she can see but not be seen. Her mother and Sirius are already in the dark drawing room, and Fred and George stand at either side of the doors, wands at the ready.

Ginny catches her breath when she sees the first heliosprite waft out from under the murky shapes of furniture in the long, high-ceilinged drawing room. It looks like a dancing wisp of sun, and she is entranced. She moves forward, slowly, and enters the room. The others are watching the heliosprite as well, their mouths hanging open and their eyes curiously unfocussed and dreamy. She does not realize that a legion of others have joined the first sprite until it is almost too late. They swirl and soar around her, their high keening sound filling the air, and their glowing tendrils reach out for her. Every hair on her arms stands on end. She tries to move back, but they are behind her as well, and the jagged lightning-like edges of the sprites are like teeth, coming closer and closer and closer.

A great flash of light plows through the heliosprites. They all shriek with one agonized voice, and fall limply to the floor in dimmed bundles.

"Ginny!" says Molly Weasley, her voice high with fear. "Don't you have enough sense to stay--"

"It's not her fault, Molly," says Sirius. "It's characteristic of the heliosprites. They single out certain people and entice them."

"Oh," Molly says, uncertainly. "Well--Ginny, go to your room at once!"

"Molly, she can't leave until all the heliosprites are caught," says Sirius firmly. "They've already seen her, and tried to claim her. They'll only follow her if she tries to get away from them now. Just wait a bit and we'll try again." Ginny is still trembling as Sirius grabs her wrist and pulls her towards him.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"Are you all right?" he asks, his eyes concerned.

She nods.

"Good. Be careful. They're far more dangerous than they look."

"What are they?" she asks.

"A very odd sort of magical creature. They're not exactly mortal, and they're certainly not in the same category as the doxies and puffskeins. But if any family would have them, it would be mine, I suppose; I doubt any but a very dark wizard indeed would ever have attempted to collect them. There's a legend about the heliosprites--have you ever learned the story of Lilith?"

Ginny tries to remember. "Yes, I think I have, in History of Magic class... in Muggle myth, she was Adam's first wife. He cast her out because she wouldn't lie beneath him." She blushes slightly. "So she went off to spawn demons. But it's really a Muggle story about where witches and wizards actually came from, at least in their point of view. We're the demons, the children of Lilith."

"Just so. And a bit insulting, if you ask me. There's more to it, though, and it's in the wizarding version of the Kabbala, the Jewish book of mysticism. Did you ever read it?"

"No..." Ginny looks up at him, hoping that he will tell her the story, whatever it is.

"At first, Yahweh--their god, you know-- wished to stem the flood of demons pouring out over the earth," says Sirius. His gaze has become very far away, and he speaks slowly and thoughtfully, as if reciting from memory. "So he sent angelic beings, the children of Adam and his second wife, she who was after Lilith and before Eve, the archangel Lumina. But the things loosed on the new creation were divine, beyond mortal good and mortal evil, and such things cannot co-exist with humanity. So they were smashed by a great power that fell from heaven, and Lumina was sent away, weeping at the destruction of all her children. Then Eve was formed from Adam's rib, and bore human sons and daughters. But since the heavenly creatures were immortals, they could not be destroyed entirely. And the remnants became the heliosprites."

Ginny gives a little shiver. She wonders if any of them should be in the same room or even the same house with creatures of such power, but since such thoughts are hardly worthy of a Gryffindor, she keeps her mouth shut. Sirius nods as if she had spoken.

"They have tremendous magical power, and normally no wizard can possibly think to control them. There are much larger ones, too, called heliopaths-- according to legend, at least. I doubt anybody living has ever seen one. But I can manage the smaller ones, with a bit of help--although you really can't take your eyes off them for a second-- " Sirius turns sharply to blast a small group of sprites attempting to dance out the drawing room door. Ginny shivers again.

"Is any of that story actually true?" she asks in a very small voice.

"Who knows?" Sirius shrugs.

Bright lights cause the heliosprites to freeze and fall to the floor, which makes it easy to stun them and get them into the bags. "Lumos!" yells George, brandishing his wand, and "Lumos!" Fred replies. The creatures spin in circles, knock into each other, and fall onto the floor in a dazed heap. "Lumos!" Ginny says, and the sprite who has been whirling in a hypnotic motion while approaching her falls backwards into the open bag Sirius holds.

"And so endeth the Great Heliosprite Invasion of 1995!" she announces, as if to an audience.

"Accomplished by the astonishing strength and cunning of Miss Gwenhyfar Weasley, of course," says Sirius with a little bow. She blushes a little, and smiles. Ron and Hermione are already moving towards each other in the corridor, and exchanging significant glances. Fred and George are halfway out the door, one twin whispering urgently in the other's ear. They are all leaving to share secrets with each other, and excluding her. George will tell Fred every detail of whatever it was that really happened the day before. Hermione and Ron will commiserate over having missed it. Her mother will try, and fail, to keep everyone from hours of wild speculation. And nobody will tell Ginny anything. But she no longer cares. The despairing rage she has felt in the past feels all swept away. Sirius looks around the room.

"We seem to be alone," he says dryly.

"They've been going off by themselves since we all got here," says Ginny with a shrug. "No reason why it should stop now."

The room seems suddenly very quiet. Now that the heliosprites have gone, a bit of the darkness filling the room has been dispelled, and the sun peeps briefly through the masses of grey clouds in the sky. Dust motes dance in a flickering shaft of light from one of the windows.

"That was fun, what we did yesterday," whispers Ginny. She feels that she should say something, but it seems wrong to talk loudly, somehow.

"Yes," says Sirius. "It was."

"I wish we could do that sort of thing more often."

"You do, do you?" There is something odd about his smile, although Ginny is not at all sure what. "Well, so do I. But I don't think we'd better try it again anytime terribly soon."

"Remus talked to you about it, didn't he?" asked Ginny, with a sudden flash of intuition.

He laughs, short and sharp. "Yes. You could say that he gave me a talking-to."

They stand near the far wall of the silent drawing room and look at each other. A very strange feeling creeps into Ginny's chest. The sensation is not unpleasant, not at all, but whatever it was, it makes her quite dizzy. His eyes are dark, but not quite black. There is a little hint of gold in them if one looks very, very deeply... She sways against the olive-green wall, instinctively clutching at it, and her fingers clasp cloth. He steadies her, and guides her to a chair.

"This room's dreadfully hot, isn't it? It's enough to make anyone faint. Sit down a moment." Sirius lifts a glass to her lips, and she drinks thirstily.

"What is that?" she asks, pressing the cool glass to her forehead and pointing at the moth-eaten tapestry covering the entire length of the wall.

"Oh, that. I'm almost managed to forget about that. I can't believe this piece of rubbish is still hanging here," he mutters. "We'll have to get rid of it one of these days, and then Kreacher will go into apoplectic fits."

"I wonder if maybe Hermione's right," Ginny says hesitantly, "and we really should give him clothes. Set him free."

"Suggest to him that he leaves the house, and see how much he likes it. Anyway, he knows too much about the Order."

Hot as the room is, Ginny shivers.

"That means a pixie's walked over your grave," says Sirius. "Or at least that's what my mother always used to say..." He is still staring at the tapestry, and seems lost in far-from-pleasant thought. Ginny regrets ever having brought up the subject at all.

"I didn't mean to remind you of anything that was painful," she says quietly.

He turns sharply. "How did you know?"

"Well, I don't know anything really. It's just that it seems as if you were remembering something just then--something you didn't want to remember."

He does turn from the wall then and looks at her, although his eyes are haunted. "I wonder where you learned to understand so much, Ginny."

"I--I don't know."

"I think you're one of those that's born knowing." He gives a deep, long sigh. "Yes, it's painful to be reminded of this tapestry, but then it's painful to be in this house. It is, and always was, a house of pain. There's been little enough joy in it ever, the gods know that. But you wanted to know what this was, didn't you?" He stands, and taps the top of the tapestry. Ginny reads the words embroidered in gold thread.

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

"Toujours Pur"

"Oh, I see!" exclaims Ginny. "It's a family tree. And it goes back a tremendous long way. She peers at the very top left hand corner. "All the way back to... Morgause of Lothian. King Arthur's sister, wasn't she? And he's here, as well."

Sirius's mouth twists in unwilling amusement. "Well, every pureblooded family tree seems to have King Arthur on it somewhere. Either there's some creative thinking going on, or he was a right old slag, Arthur was. I don't see how he ever could have had time to fight any of those epic battles."

Ginny giggles, and the light, tinkling sound echoes through the dank and gloomy room. She stands besides Sirius, and he leads her through the intricacies of the Black family tree. "The Weasleys ought to be on here," he says, after a whirlwind fifteen minute tour of British history, from the Saxons to the Norman invasion to the Plantagenets, the Elizabethan court, the Stuarts, the Restoration, William and Mary, the Victorian age, King Edward, King George, Queen Elizabeth II... her head begins to spin. "But anyone whose behavior marred the pureblood traditions was burned off with a wand," he adds, "so I'm afraid that scorch mark should have been you."

"So we're related?" asks Ginny.

"Oh, yes. But not closely, not at all. In Appalachia, that sort of relationship was very common, and the people involved were known as 'kissing cousins.'" He looks at her, and warmth rises in her cheeks, both at the look and the words. "I can't believe you're interested in all of this--I would think it would seem so dull to you."

"No," she says eagerly. "It's fascinating."

"I suppose I always thought so as well. Funny, how that comes back to me now," Sirius says musingly, running one hand over the black velvet surface of the tapestry. Ginny wonders suddenly his memories of this house, his parents, his cousins, and his childhood world can all be bad ones. I was never happy here... well, almost never, he had said. And almost is not the same as never.

On one side of the tapestry is the Bavarians. "Our relationship to them is pretty tenuous, to tell you the truth," says Sirius. "But the oldest wizarding families in existence live in Bavaria, the von Drachens especially. Supposedly, they were descended from the families who left the Norse countries well over a thousand years ago, and they have mystical connections with all those old gods, Baldur and Thor and Wotan and Loki. It always sounded rather silly to me, I must say. But they say that those were the first wizards who made contact with the heliosprites..."

Ginny remembers a point that had been bothering her. "There's something I don't understand," she says. "You said earlier that no wizard can control them. But you were able to stop them so easily."

"I'd hardly say it was easy, and I wouldn't have cared to try it without backup."

"But you could do it."

"Yes."

"I don't understand. You said that wizards couldn't do that."

"Most can't." His dark eyes seemed turned inward suddenly, as if they saw something no-one else could see. "They are heavenly creatures, the heliosprites. Well, we wizards are mortal, every bit as surely as Muggles, and we were never meant to deal with such..."

"Is it--is it because the von Drachens are related to you, well, to us, I suppose, and they first dealt with the heliosprites?"

"If that were the case, then virtually all the wizarding world would have the same ability. No. It's because I once had close dealings with an immortal of a different sort, and the heliosprites sense that contact in me still."

"You did?" exclaims Ginny. "When? Where? Which one?"

He seems to come back to himself then, with a shake of his head. "Long, long ago, Ginny. And nothing that needs to be told now. I've said too much already."

On the other side of the tapestry is the French connection, which is a mass of Lestranges and Rosiers and Tessiers so confusing that she rapidly gives up trying to make sense of it, and stops reading halfway through.

"Now that's a bit distant," says Sirius, "but we're all cousins of a sort on the French side. They always claimed to spring from the ancient wizard-king line of France. Rubbish, if you ask me."

But Ginny does not reply to him; she is staring at the bottom of the tapestry. A double line of gold embroidery links Narcissa Black with Lucius Malfoy, and a single vertical gold line from their names leads to the name Draco. His gaze follows hers, and he sees what he sees. His face closes over. She is sure that hers does as well, although she doubts that it is for the same reasons. The silence goes on a little too long to be natural.

"You're related to Draco Malfoy," she says.

"Through Lucius, yes. If you'd made it all the way to the end of the French side, you would've seen the Malfoys there."

"Well, yes, but I meant through Narcissa Malfoy--it says here that she used to be Narcissa Black. So she's your close-cousin."

"Yes," he replies, grimly. "We were close, all right...Do you know her son?"

"A bit," she replies, tersely. "He's one year ahead of me at Hogwarts."

"Really?" Sirius says. Without warning, his voice is mocking. Bitter. Inexpressibly sad. "What's he like?"

"Why would you want to know what Draco Malfoy is like?" Ginny asks dubiously.

"Humor me." His laugh sounds more than ever like a very short bark.

She thinks deeply before replying. What to say, what to say? She could tell Sirius that Draco Malfoy is slight and lean and not very tall, but that he has the reflexes of a Seeker, and the deceptive strength of one as well. Or that his features are pale and pointed, his nose too long, his cheekbones too wide, his grey eyes too large for his face, and that all of these physical imperfections should not add up to beauty, but they do. A hurtful, troubling beauty, like a statue come to cold and uncaring life.

Or maybe she could tell Sirius about the first time she ever saw Draco, coming out of Flourish and Blotts' bookshop, when she was standing and waiting for Harry with her books in her shabby second-hand cauldron. And how the blond boy in the expensive new robes had stopped for an instant and looked at her, simply looked at her, as if the sight of the eleven-year-old Ginny now belonged to him, and in her own mind that memory would always be tied up with the sight of him. Or how he had jeered at her so when she was younger, yet had never insulted her precisely as he had the rest of her family. He had never said a word to her that was not the simple truth. Potter, you've got yourself a girlfriend. I don't think Potter liked your Valentine much. Or how he had stopped doing even that in the past two years, but how she always sensed his presence in the back of her mind when she was at Hogwarts, like a constantly irritating grain of sand. Or how, every once in a great while, she would turn suddenly in the corridors between classes, or while walking around the grounds. And she would see him headed in the opposite direction, but feel the ghost of his eyes on her. No. She definitely can't tell him any of it.

The truth is that she does not want to say anything. Draco Malfoy and Sirius Black belong to entirely separate parts of her life, and never the twain should meet. Still, she has to say something, and she tries to at least make her statement as honest as it can be.

"Draco Malfoy looks exactly like his father. Same blond hair, same grey eyes, same sort of face and manner and gestures. He's shorter, that's all, and of course he doesn't wear his hair long. They wouldn't allow that at school," Ginny says. Sirius is still waiting, however, and she knows that he already knew about the uncanny resemblance between the Malfoys, father and son, and that he really wants to find out about something else. She doesn't understand why in the least, but she tries again.

"He has a way of looking at you, Draco Malfoy does. I've seen him do it with so many people. It's an arrogant look, I suppose you could say, but that doesn't begin to cover it. As if--as if you're nothing. Your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, you, you're just nothing. And he knows his own superiority so very well that he doesn't even have to prove it. And if he ever did bother to actually notice you, which of course he's not going to do, he would brush you off utterly. But--" she swallows "--but it's a bit of a paradox, really. Because if you knew that you actually were superior to everyone else on the planet, you wouldn't have to constantly convince them, would you? It's as if he's trying to convince himself more than anyone else, and he never quite succeeds, so he has to keep trying over and over."

"Ginny," says Sirius softly, "does he ever speak to you?"

"Not really. There's an occasional insult, I suppose, but that's about all."

Sirius hesitates, tapping his fingers against the back of her chair. "Has Malfoy ever tried to get you alone? Ever threatened you, or made you feel afraid? Ever attempted to--I don't know--take you anywhere you didn't want to go, somewhere away from your friends?"

Ginny swallows hard. "No," she says. It is, after all, the truth. She is grateful that Sirius seems to be barking up the wrong tree entirely. If he asked her if Draco Malfoy had ever looked at her too hard and too long, for example, only to raise a bland, impassive face to hers when she lifted her eyes suddenly, or if she had ever turned in the corridors to find him walking a few paces behind her, only to slip into a classroom when she saw him, she doubts she could have got away with a lie.

"Thank you," says Sirius softly. "That's all I wanted to know." His face is utterly unreadable.

Ginny tries a different tack, and immediately wishes that she hadn't. "Did you know your cousin-- his mother-- very well?"

"Yes," he says. "Yes, I did. Once."

"I'm sorry," she says, not knowing what she is apologizing for.

"I'm sorry too," he says, and Ginny knows that he is not referring to anything that she has done, or said.

He moves a step closer to her, until she can feel the warmth of his body in the warm room. Her head is bent in embarrassment. She is thinking about how much she would give to have not brought up Narcissa Malfoy's name. He reaches out and touches her hand with his own.

"It's all right," he says. "Don't worry about it."

Their heads are very close together, the red-gold and the black. He tips her chin up with one finger and looks intently into her face. Her breath catches. There is something in the room that was not there before, some nakedness of the mind or heart that has been revealed, just a little. Ginny can feel his breath stirring her hair. She looks up at him, her eyes wide.

The door opens. They spring apart. Molly Weasley stands in the doorway, a bag of heliosprites in one hand. The creatures have mostly stopped squirming by now, but from time to time one of them gives a weak flop. Whatever words she planned to say seem to have died on her lips. "Ginny," she finally says. "Come downstairs and help me get supper ready."

The meal is a tense affair, and Ginny spends most of it staring into her plate. "'Scuse me," she mumbles after pushing her bread and butter pudding around with a fork for several minutes. Nobody else pays the slightest bit of attention. Fred and George are arguing with Arthur Weasley, who looks very tired. Kingsley Shacklebolt is talking to Molly, who keeps glaring back at the twins every few moments, and Ron and Hermione have already left. Ginny trudges up to her room and flops down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. But it is much too early to go to sleep. If she strains her ears, she's almost sure that she can hear faint murmurs from below, but there is no way to distinguish individual words. She wonders if Fred and George would have lent her the Extendable ears if she'd actually asked. However, they'd made it clear earlier that the option, was, for the moment, closed. Molly Weasley has gone on a confiscation spree, and the twins are very grim about it, going so far as to appeal to their father.

"After all we did for Mum, too," Fred had said at the supper table. "Who else could've gotten any information at all from the gob--" "Shh," George had hissed, jerking a thumb at Ginny. "Little pitchers have big ears, and all that."

Ginny decides that she wouldn't have liked to ask her brothers anyway, because then they'd want to hear what was being said. Just the thought gives her a fluttering, uncomfortable feeling in her stomach.

But after perhaps half an hour, she can bear it no longer. She tiptoes out of her room, lays flat on her stomach over her favorite, secret perch on the railing, and strains to hear the argument between her mother and Sirius Black in the basement kitchen. Unlike the night before, the door is not quite closed. And their voices are raised. A blush of embarrassment rises to Ginny's cheeks when she realizes that they are talking about her.

"She's growing up," Molly Weasley says, "and I can't keep an eye on her every minute. She's like I was at that age, Sirius-- she might easily pass for eighteen already, and she's suddenly rebellious with it, wants to act the age she looks to be instead of the one she is. But Ginny never used to be like that, I suppose it's just the age, really, but-- If she was a Muggle girl running about with boys in the streets and exposed to vellytision and heaven knows what else we'd have our hands full, all right. I do as it is. I want you to help me and not make things worse by--"

"Are you mad, Molly?" Sirius bursts out. "What do you think I'm going to do to your fourteen-year-old daughter while you're downstairs with a bag of stunned heliosprites?"

"Gracious, anyone would think I'm accusing you of something," Molly retorts. "I'm not. I'm sure you don't mean any harm, Sirius. I'm only--concerned about inappropriate behavior that may be giving Ginny the wrong ideas."

A pause. A sigh. "I cannot believe this. To think that you'd think-- Look, I like Ginny. I enjoy talking to her. She's got a fine mind. And everyone else in this house seems to forget that she even exists--well, I can certainly relate to that. But, Great Merlin, that's all she is to me. A charming child."

Ginny cries angry tears in her bed all night, muffling their sound with a pillow, vowing that she'll show him, show them all. She has no idea what that vow might mean, but she makes it with all the anger and sincerity that are in her, and finally she falls asleep.

She dreams again of the white knight who rescues the maiden and bears her away on his horse, but there is something different about the dream this time. She is both the innocent, blushing maiden and the man who seizes her with hard hands, who sweeps her up into a kiss that is both terrifying and thrilling. And when she wakes, she is trembling, waves of heat rolling over and over her. She touches herself in the ways she likes best, and the pleasure calms her a little. But her own hands are no longer enough. She wonders, fearfully, if this means that she is about to become a slut, to allow boys to do anything they like with her, to turn into the sort of girl that other girls sneer about behind their hands.