Heavenly Creatures

A/N: Well, guess who screwed up. (Could it be... ME???) This is supposed to be TWO days before Harry returns to Twelve Grimmauld Place, not ONE day. So let's all pretend that it's been that way all along, shall we? Good. (Anise waves magic Story-Fixer-Upper wand over fic.)

August 4, 1995

(which, in the alternate dimension where Anise messed up the timelines, was listed as August 5)

(but it's really August 4!)

Ahem. Anyway...

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Gwenhyfar... return to me, Gwenhyfar....

She was doing something. With someone. But she can no longer remember what, or who. If she ever knew. She's not even entirely sure where she is, but that voice has grabbed her by the back of the neck and yanked her back to herself. The mists are clearing away.

Gwenhyfar...

She tries to leave, to follow the voice. But someone's arms are wound around her. He looks into her face. His own pale, narrow face is puzzled and hurt when she struggles to get away from him. His silver-grey eyes search hers, and his mouth falls open a little, as if he is about to say something. It is a mouth almost too pretty for a boy, with a full, pink lower lip, moist from her kisses. Yes. They had been kissing. But she can't think about that now.

Return...

She slips away from him like mist at sunrise. "Oh, I'm coming!" she calls, eagerly. "Wait for me!"

She does not give the boy a backward glance.

She walks through the frame of the painting, strongly and surely, almost joyfully. Knowledge floods back to her. She is Ginny Weasley. She made a bargain with the Lady Morgause, and found her brother, Bill, when Hermione and Ron could not. And now she is going home. Not to her real home; and oh, how she longs for her own sunny third-story bedroom in the Burrow at that moment... but back to her brothers and father and mother and friends. Back to her own body. She begins to run down the long dark corridor within, and does not even look back at Morgause, who watches her silently, her white hands folded in her lap, her apricot hair curling around her shoulders.

When she sees herself curled up on the huge four-poster bed in the dark little room at Twelve Grimmauld Place, she feels a pang of pity for that little body huddled in upon itself. Ginny had no idea that she looked so small and soft and vulnerable. I'll protect you better, from now on. I swear I will, she thinks, without any clear idea of what she means by that vow, only a steely determination to keep it. The edge of the other painting looms up to meet her. Without the slightest hesitation, she jumps and lands back in her body with a tremendous jolt. Later, she will wonder how she dared. She ought to have had much more trouble returning to her physical form after being separated from it for such a long time. But perhaps, she will think, her very boldness protected her from harm.

She settles back into her own flesh, bone by bone, muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve, feeling the blood course through her veins and her heart beat like a steady drum. After a long time, she opens her eyes and turns her head, feeling the blood rush to her temples. She sees an uneven knobbly white surface, dimly lit, and recognizes it at once. It is the stucco ceiling of her room at Twelve Grimmauld Place, and she is lying on the four-poster bed. The uneven spot in the mattress is digging into her left shoulder, as it always does when she lies on her side.

"I did it," she whispers. "I did it."

Slowly, she sits up. I really should wait longer before trying this, I suppose. I'm sure I was gone longer than I was supposed to be. But she feels strong. A bit shaky and very thirsty, and her head pounds almost painfully. But strong and calm. She glances around the room. It is quite dark, since there is only one black candelabra sputtering fitfully in a corner, casting long shadows across the floor. She usually keeps a number of witchlights on. Otherwise, the room looks as gloomy as it does right now. She listens carefully, head cocked to one side. Silence. Yet it doesn't really feel all that late; maybe ten o'clock. The magical lock on the door was timed, and it has now run out; Ginny steals into the hall, craning her ears. Still nothing. At this hour, she ought to hear whispering from Hermione's room; her friend's urgent hissing, her brother's low murmurs. She should hear scuffling from the twins' room upstairs, and sounds from the basement kitchen. But the entire house is as quiet as a tomb.

Ginny barks her shins on something she can't see and claps her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. She wishes she could use her wand, if only to cast a simple Lumos charm. But her mother still has it. Ginny peeps into Hermione's room, squinting into the near-darkness. It is empty, the bed neatly made.

Ginny walks down the corridor slowly back towards her room, tapping her finger on her chin, thinking. The first thing she has to do is to find Hermione. That much is obvious, and she's willing to bet that when she does, she'll find Ron as well, and perhaps Fred and George. She has to tell her brothers about Bill, since she is the only one besides the adults who now knows where he is and what has happened to him. And... should she tell them about meeting Draco Malfoy? Although she still has no clear idea of how she got there, she clearly had been somewhere in Malfoy Manor. And that means that there must be some sort of link between it and Twelve Grimmauld Place.

Ginny picks up an orange witchlight from her bedside table, her mind working through all the ideas and events that have filled it. Overlaying everything is a sense of wonder that all the strange and terrible things she saw during her journey have not left her shivering and crying, curled up in a ball in a corner of her room, utterly drained and exhausted and useless. For such is not the case. A tremendous sense of calm seems to have descended over her, like some great spell. Maybe it really is a spell, she thinks, some sort of aftermath of the magic that transported her spirit out of this house.

The orange rays of the witchlight flicker unevenly over the floor. They skip across something lying motionless just to the right of the door, out in the hall. Ginny stops and peers closer. For a moment, she cannot make any sense out of what she sees. It looks like an uneven ball of custard-coloured fluff with a tongue attached. Then--

"A puffskein," Ginny whispers aloud, before clapping a hand over her mouth again and frowning. I know better than that! But I was so surprised to see one lying about on the floor... What could it have been doing here? They're friendly; Ron had a pet one until Fred used it for bludger practice, but they do like to hide... I remember when we had to clean a nest out beneath a sofa in the drawing room last week...

Well, no time to deal with it now. Ginny walks on, more cautiously this time. She sucks her breath in sharply when she sees a row of doxies lying stiffly near the stairs, their black hair bristling, their mouths open as if in an arrested snarl. Their teeth gleam in the faint, eerie light. Something is terribly wrong.

And then she hears the whispers drifting up to her from the second-story landing. The one that overlooks the entrance to the basement kitchen. They are so faint that she cannot tell what is being said or who might be speaking. But it is the first sound she has heard since she re-entered the house, and her heart leaps. Now she can almost catch a word or two...

"try again..."

"well, I dunno, maybe..."

"I've told you and told you that it's not going to work!" One of the voices raised itself, slightly.

That's Hermione. I'm sure it is!

"Well, then, do you have any better suggestions?"

Ron!

Listening intently to the voices, coming down the stairs much too fast, Ginny does not look where she is going. Her foot catches on something soft and yielding. She stumbles backwards, swings her witchlight wildly, and lands on the floor with a thump, the wind knocked out of her. Oof. Then she gasps, and muffles the sound too late. She is eye to eye with a drifting mass of gold and silver sparks eddying around a gracefully curved, fur-covered shape. And another, and another... Heliosprites! But they are not moving in the eerily graceful dancing patterns that Ginny remembers from a few days before. They are utterly still.

"What's that?" Hermione hisses from the landing. "Who's there?"

Ginny gulps.

They are furious with her, of course. They all need to be quiet; that's the first thing they tell her, but still Hermione keeps hissing at her, and Ron splutters.

"I thought you'd be there all night!" she whispers as they cluster close together on the landing, Ginny in the middle. "I had no idea you could even get out, Ginny! And the Sleeping Beauty charm should have put you into a temporary trance anyway. I don't see why it didn't--"

"I wasn't here," Ginny whispers back. "But what are the pair of you doing? And where are Fred and George?"

"That's none of your business," Ron says roughly. "Go back to your room this minute, Ginny."

Ginny looks up at the two white faces looming over her. They both look furious. They both look afraid. She looks back into their faces without a trace of shyness, and her voice is very low, but clear.

"I know something really important. I found it out today, when I was gone."

"Gone!" exclaims Ron. "You've been locked in your room all day!"

"That's what you think," Ginny retorts. "I went somewhere else, somewhere in London."

"You're trying to tell us that you left the house without anyone knowing?" Ron again. "How on earth--Don't be silly; you can't have done!"

Hermione glares at him. "Shh! Do you want everyone to hear--"

"Be quiet, both of you! I learned--some very important things. You couldn't find out about them, but I did! But--" she raises a hand at Hermione's gasp, and Ron's compressed lips--"if you try to make me leave, you'll never know."

Silence. Ron and Hermione exchange glances.

"Ron, we really should tell her," Hermione finally says. "She deserves to know."

"Make it quick," says Ron. "Fred said they'd be back soon."

"Where are--" begins Ginny.

"Fred and George are downstairs, trying to find a way of spying on the basement kitchen without using magic," interrupts Hermione, speaking quickly. "I don't think there is one, but it doesn't hurt to look, I suppose. Anyway after I--left your room this morning, Ginny, I was trying to find out what was going on in this house today. I knew that something was wrong. I've felt it all day." She glances at Ron, as if expecting him to take up the narrative. He only glares at Ginny.

"We talked to the twins about it, and combined some ideas I had with a potion they were working on," Hermione continues, after a brief pause. "And I figured out how to track every spell and charm that would be used in the house today." She shudders. "There are so many of them. And most of them are very dark, and much too advanced for any of us to even identify correctly. I don't know where those are coming from; I don't think that anyone in the Order would be casting them. Maybe they're part of the house itself. But that's how we found out that the Sleeping Beauty spell was going to be cast tonight at nine-thirty. It would put everyone in the house to sleep, unless they'd taken the antidote beforehand, which is what we did."

"And that's what it should have done to you," Ron says, grimly, to Ginny.

"Well, it didn't," says Ginny. "Are you going to tell me the rest or not?"

Ron looks at Hermione, clearly hoping for some support and finding none. "All right then," he snaps. "All right. You haven't heard the strangest part."

"What?" whispers Ginny.

"We found out where the spell was coming from, as well."

"Where?" asks Ginny, thinking that getting any information from Ron is like pulling teeth. But if he had his way, she would be dumped over his shoulder and unceremoniously hauled back to her room. As much as Hermione is irritating her, she's glad that the older girl is here.

"The tower room," says Ron.

"So it couldn't have been just a bit of leftover dark magic carried on by the house," puts in Hermione.

"Oh?" asks Ginny, trying to sound innocent. She knows why the spell was cast. They do not. She wonders if she ought to tell them. No. Sirius had asked her not to.

"No indeed," says Hermione. "And we figured out a way to learn who cast the spell. You'll never guess who it was, Ginny."

Ginny tries to look curious. She is already sure that it has to be Sirius.

"Lupin," says Hermione.

The look of shock on Ginny's face is real, now. "He's been in the tower all this time," she says slowly.

"Right," says Hermione.

"That's got to be the reason why, doesn't it?" says Ginny. "That's what he must have been doing, casting this spell. And I'll bet it was the reason he was brought back early--or part of it, at least."

Hermione nods. "There are two loci of magic, the kitchen and the tower, and this spell--whatever it is-- is being cast from one to the other. That's the last thing we found out before it was too late."

"Too late?" echoes Ginny, glancing down at the closed kitchen door below the landing. Something is stirring at the very edge of her mind, some memory that she cannot quite bring into focus. Something about the basement kitchen. It came from the night she had slipped from her room and come down there to sit at the table and talk to Sirius. Something she had seen, out of the corner of her eye...

"We can't use any sort of magic now," explains Hermione. "Not even Extendable Ears, and you should have seen how angry Fred was about that. The use of magic of any kind is impossible whilst the Sleeping Beauty spell is cast, except for the one piece of magic that the spell is designed to protect."

"Like the protective ward around Sleeping Beauty's castle," Ginny says.

"Right," says Hermione.

"So if anything happens, we can't protect you," says Ron suddenly, glaring down at his sister. These are the first words he has said in at least ten minutes. "You need to go back to your room before it's too late! Why are we even standing here discussing--" His voice begins to rise. Ginny taps a finger to her lips, her eyes flashing.

"I thought we needed to be quiet," she whispers pointedly. Ron glances around the landing and eventually subsides back into silence.

"House-elves' magic would still work, though, wouldn't it?" Ginny asks Hermione tentatively. "They use a different sort. Maybe we ought to try-- "

"We!" hisses Ron. "First of all, we are not going to do anything. And how happy Kreacher would be to help us, I'm sure. You want me to go and ask him?"

Hermione rolls her eyes. "Maybe if you'd been kinder to him, he actually would be willing to help us now. Pity you and Fred and George didn't think of that a bit earlier."

Yet even Hermione's snarky comments about house-elves seemed to have softened, thinks Ginny. The way that Ron and Hermione behave towards each other has changed, somehow. The difference is subtle but there. He stands next to her, their hands almost touching, and she is almost leaning back against him. She is not exactly supporting his desire to lock Ginny back in her room, but she is not exactly contradicting him, either. Ginny remembers what she saw earlier, caught in the frenzy of Lughnasa, watching the two of them kiss in the corridor. Sometimes she is not sure if everything she sees and hears on this day is even real, but that-- that was real. She is sure of it now. They kissed, Ron and Hermione, and they held each other tightly where they stood in the corridor. And the palpable magic between them had stirred something in her, violently.

"So now you know what we're doing here," says Hermione. "Whatever's happening tonight is desperately important, but this is the closest we can get to it. They'd hear us in a second if we tried to get all the way down to the kitchen door; Fred and George wouldn't let us come with them when they went. And we can't cast a Silencing spell."

"Maybe Fred and George will come up with something," says Ginny.

"I suppose it's possible, although I doubt it." Hermione looks at Ginny very seriously. "All right, we've told you. Now you need to tell us where you were today, Ginny, and what you think you saw." Ginny takes a deep breath. Something about the way Hermione phrased that last sentence makes her nervous.

"I was at St. Mungo's," she says, very quietly.

Hermione gasps sharply, and it is Ron, this time, who gives her a warning look, his face intent on his sister. Some unspoken message has passed between the two of them; Ginny is sure of it. Perhaps they have nodded to each other, very slightly, or their eyes flickered in confirmation of some pre-determined point? Well, no time to worry about that now.

"I saw Bill," Ginny says. "And he's... well..." Ginny wonders if she should tell them how badly off Bill actually seemed to be. It would only worry them, and it wouldn't do any good. It wasn't as if anyone else could get into St. Mungo's. "He's in a bad way, I think, but he recognized me. I don't know much more than that. But the mediwitch said she thought it would break in the next day or so, or else... or else..." Her throat closes, and she cannot go on.

The spill of light from the gas jets set into the high ceiling flickers harshly across the faces of Ron and Hermione. They are cast into sudden, sharp relief. Ginny does not like the looks on those faces.

It is Hermione who breaks the silence. "Ginny... but... how did you get there without anyone seeing you leave the room? How did you get to St. Mungo's? How could you have gotten in to see Bill when there are locking spells all about the room that none of us have been able to break? And how on earth did you get back?" Her words sound very measured, as if doled out from a teaspoon. Ginny has the sudden, strange thought that they--or ones just like them-- were already fully formed in her friend's mind before she herself said anything about Bill, or St. Mungo's, or leaving the house. But that's impossible.

"There's a portrait on the wall of the lady Morgause, King Arthur's sister," says Ginny. "She founded the House of Black you know; she's on the family tapestry. She spoke to me. She showed me the way through."

"But, Ginny," Hermione says carefully, "when the Order decided that there couldn't be much magic used in the house in order to not stir up all the dark spells, your father and Remus went through all the rooms and de-activated almost all the portraits. Only two of them can speak now, Heartha Black and Phineas Nigellus. And anyway we never found one of Morgause of Lothian. Remember?"

"Of course I remember," snaps Ginny. Hermione's voice is beginning to get under her skin like an irritating stray grain of sand. "That was only a few weeks ago! But--"

"--you don't have your wand. And the door and window were locked. And there's no other way in or out of this house except for the internal Portkey, which certainly isn't in your room," says Hermione, as if finishing Ginny's own sentence in the only logical way possible.

"What are you trying to say?" Ginny asks. Her voice is beginning to tremble, despite all her efforts to keep it still.

"I don't think you went anywhere, Ginny," Ron says. "I don't think you saw Bill at all."

"What?" she exclaims, forgetting to keep her voice down.

"Shhh!" hisses Hermione.

"But what do you mean, you don't think I--"

Hermione and Ron exchange glances yet again. "Ginny, I've simply got to say it," says Hermione, in a rush. "Ron could have phrased it a bit better, but I think he's right. I don't see how you could have possibly gone anywhere."

"Do you think I'm going mad?"

"Don't be ridiculous," says Hermione. "Of course I--we don't think any such thing. I'm sure you thought you went to St. Mungo's and saw Bill, but--"

"But listen--you've got to listen to me! I'll tell you exactly what happened if you'll just--" Ginny has the awful feeling that nothing she says is going to make the slightest bit of difference, because Hermione is shaking her head sadly, and Ron is moving towards her, his lips set in a thin line.

"It's that nothing could get through the locking spells that were on every exit of your room, don't you see?" Hermione asks almost pleadingly. "That's what really makes it impossible. I wish I could believe you, Ginny, but you can't change the laws of magiphysics. Whatever you thought you did and wherever you thought you went, it was only a dream. I was in the corridor outside your room later on, after you saw me, and I heard you talking to someone who wasn't there. When I looked in, you were asleep on the bed, still talking. And Ron told me that on every Lughnasa, you do have--"

"Well, yes, I was dreaming earlier," says Ginny, cutting her off. "And I wasn't entirely sure what really happened and what didn't with that; I admit it, but this is different, it's--" Ginny's voice falters. She remembers her earlier visions of Malfoy, the ones that threaten to turn her face red with shame, especially when she realizes that Hermione must have actually seen her during one of them. For an awful moment, her confidence frays. How can she be so sure that any of it did happen? Those hours with Malfoy in the secret room certainly hadn't been real, although they'd seemed that way at the time. Ginny knows that she hadn't really left her room then. She'd thought that what happened later with him was real, when she saw him in the long dark corridor. But then she had--oh, dear Merlin, no!--she had kissed him. It was as if she hadn't realized who he was at first, or remembered who she was. And the two visions of him had bookended her trip to St. Mungo's, when she'd seen Bill. Her lip begins to tremble. As if sensing their advantage, Ron and Hermione move forward.

"Ginny," Hermione says earnestly, "it's not your fault, and you haven't done anything wrong. Don't think that. But it doesn't seem as if you're--well--entirely right on this day, on Lughnasa."

"If you won't protect yourself, I've got to do it for you, even if I have to bind and gag you and dump you in a closet," Ron says bluntly.

"Ron, you could be a bit more diplomatic--well, no, perhaps you couldn't," sighs Hermione. "But this is all for your own good, Ginny, really." They advance further. Ginny realizes that Ron has grown very tall. She is not exactly sure when his growth spurt happened; she remembers him as being shorter than this at the end of spring term, but he certainly towers over her by at least a foot now. She shrinks back, towards the stairs.

"It's just that we don't know what's going on today," says Hermione. "It could be quite dangerous."

"I won't let you get hurt," says Ron. "I won't." He is reaching his hands out towards her, the strongly muscled hands of an athlete. "I'll keep you safe, Ginny... no matter what I have to do..."

Ginny will wonder later why she didn't think of simply screaming. But she doesn't. She turns and runs. A solidly built male body looms up in front of her, and she smacks into it at full speed.

"Oof," says Fred. "Oy, Ginny, look where you're going. You're no elf anymore, you know. What are you doing down here anyway? Thought you were up in your room."

"We're trying to get--" begins Ron.

"It's no good," George says sadly as he climbs the stairs behind his twin. "There's that little door into the pantry that leads out to the hall, but I think that was meant for Kneazles to use. Neither of us could get our head and shoulders in it."

"That's it!" Ginny says, scrambling to her feet. "That's what I was trying to remember before! I saw that little door in the back of the pantry once before, when I was down in the kitchen, but I didn't know it led to the hall. I'll bet I could--"

"You could go back to your room and stay in it, that's what you could do," says Ron in something that is very close to a snarl.

"But I could help, can't you see?" Ginny whispers urgently. "None of you could fit through that door and get into the pantry. But I could do it."

"Is there any rope?" Ron asks. "We're going to have to tie her to her bed to keep her out of the--"

Fred holds up a hand. "Have you all gone round the bend at last?" he asks in a perplexed voice, as if he genuinely wants to know.

"She got down here, Merlin knows how, and you've got to help us get her back," says Ron heatedly.

"She's not entirely herself; she's imagining things, if we could only give her a Draught of Peace, but I don't think even a potion would work under the Sleeping Beauty spell," says Hermione.

"I'm not imagining anything!" says Ginny. "I tell you I did leave the house today, I don't really quite understand myself exactly how it happened, but it did, and I saw Bill--"

"That's enough," growls Ron, and he strides forward and picks Ginny up around the waist as if she weighs nothing at all. She struggles and kicks, her eyes filling with tears. Fred is chewing on his lower lip, and his eyes dart from his sister to Ron to Hermione and back again. For once, he seems speechless. Then Ginny feels another pair of strong hands easing her down to the floor, and setting her on her feet.

"I think you'd better let her go, little bro," says George.

Ron turns an alarming shade of red. "We don't have any time to waste,"
he says, "and she's acting like a nutter, and all I'm trying to do is--"

"We haven't heard her side of the story, though," says George in his calm way. "What is it, Ginny? What happened today?"

"Well," says Hermione, "it is true that if we wait much longer we may lose our chance to find out what's happening at all."

"See!" exclaims Ron. "See, that's what I mean. What Hermione said. Listen to her, if you won't listen to me! She's right. I don't think--"

"Then you shouldn't talk," says George. He hunkers down on the floor, beckoning for Ginny to sit beside him. Fred sits next to them, and Ron and Hermione remains standing. Hermione looks stubborn, and Ron continues to glare down at the other three. George looks into his sister's face, his eyes serious. "Now, Ginny. Where did you go, and what did you learn?"

She takes a deep breath, struggling to collect her thoughts. She can feel that her cheeks are wet. "I really don't know how this is possible," she says, as quietly and evenly as she can. "And it shouldn't be. Ron and Hermione are right about that. But I did leave the house. I went to St. Mungo's. And I saw Bill."

"Oh, you did not!" says Ron.

George does not respond to Ron. Instead, he puts his large, warm hand over hers. The feel of her brother's steadying hand calms Ginny. And she does tell him more, or at least everything she can be sure of. She doesn't quite tell everything about what happened after she thought she took the locket from round Bill's neck, because that part doesn't really make much sense. And she omits any mention of finding herself in Malfoy Manor. The more she tries to prod that memory into a firm shape, the more amorphous it becomes, like smoke floating through her hands as she tries to grasp it. She isn't sure, now, that it happened at all.

"You--you don't actually believe any of this, do you?" asks Hermione, when the prolonged silence makes it clear that Ginny has finished. "Fred--George? You can't. You simply can't. It isn't possible. I've studied the spells that were used to keep Ginny here, and I know."

George purses his lips. "Look, I know I'm not as clever as you when it comes to that sort of thing. None of us are."

"Speak for yourself, why don't you--" begins Fred indignantly.

"Shut it, Fred. And I don't say you're wrong, Hermione. But there's all sorts of queer magic in this house."

Fred still looks doubtful, but he nods in agreement with his twin. "We don't any of us understand the half of it, I suppose," he says grudgingly.

"And if Ginny says she went to St. Mungo's, then she went. I believe her." George's voice is very quiet, but strong and sure.

"But then, if that's true--" Hermione stops, and her eyes widen with horror. "Then Bill would be--well, it can't be true. It just can't."

"No, it can't," snaps Ron. "Have it your own way, George. Just help me get Ginny upstairs to her room, and then we can argue about what a nutter you are." He moves towards Ginny again. Fred still looks uncertain. George does not move. That last fact lends Ginny a bit of courage. She turns, and faces Ron and Hermione defiantly.

"All right, you can think I've gone mad if you like."

"We didn't say--" begins Hermione.

"Shut up," says Ginny. "If you don't want to believe I went to St. Mungo's, then don't. But the other thing I said is true, and you know it. I remember that door in the pantry, and it's tiny. None of us can get through it. Except for me. I'm still small enough. So you've got to let--" She stops herself. "No, you're not going to let me do anything. I am going down there."

Ginny had thought that she had seen Ron angry before, but that was nothing compared to his emotions now. He argues. He splutters. He stabs a finger into Ginny's chest, shakes her by the shoulders, and finally tries to drag her upstairs by force. Hermione watches, and wrings her hands. George cuffs his brother across the back of the head and Ron drops his sister on the floor, where she lands with a thud. The sound is so loud that Ginny is sure it will rouse the Aurors in the kitchen, but the door below remains silently shut.

"You ought to try for the WWE title belt, Ron," snickers Fred. "Might have better luck there." But the rest ignore him. Ginny wonders what he is talking about, but decides not to ask.

Ron sinks to the floor at last, cross-legged, nursing his head. "Didn't have to hit so hard, George," he mumbles.

Now that the moment of crisis is over, George seems a little abashed at his own behavior. He clears his throat, not looking at Ron. "I think Ginny's right," he says. "I don't see how else we're going to find out anything. And I think we have to. She's got to go down there. But not alone; I'll go with her, and keep watch in the corridor. No, Fred--" he shakes his head as his twin seems about to speak "--more than two's a sight too many. I can't believe they haven't heard us so far. The rest of you stay here, and watch, and wait."

George and Ginny begin to tiptoe down the stairs. Ron watches his sister sorrowfully as she retreats from him. I'm sorry, he mouths, but does not say. I was only trying to--

Ginny looks away.

She crouches on the floor by the little door. George presses his head next to hers as he fumbles with the catch. "It's just a bit tricky," he whispers, "but we got it before. Thank Merlin it's not fastened shut by a spell." The door pops open. Ginny scrunches down as small as she can and peers through it into the pantry. Yes, she can just barely make it through, she thinks.

"Thank you," she says to George.

He shakes his head. "Don't thank me yet. I don't know if you should be here at all, Gin. I still don't know if it's the right thing, me taking you down here."

"Then why'd you do it?" Ginny asks impatiently. She cannot see or hear anything in the kitchen yet, since a tiny sort of corridor connects the Kneazle door with the pantry, and it twists to the right a little. But she has a gnawing feeling that there is very little time to waste. "Was it just because you didn't see any other way we could find out what's going on?"

"That was part of it," George says awkwardly. "But the rest--I don't know. You were so determined, Gin, so brave. And they weren't even listening to you. I was brassed off at Ron--he can be such a git-- and Hermione. I like her, you know. But sometimes, she does get a bit--well--"

"More than a bit." Ginny begins to fit her head and shoulders through the door. It is a tight squeeze, but they do fit.

"Ron loves you," George says soberly.

"I know," says Ginny.

She wriggles through the little corridor. For a few grueling seconds, she is sure that she won't make it. Ginny is still small, but she is no longer built like a child. But then her head comes through into the dark pantry, and with some more squirming her shoulders and chest follow. She collapses onto the floor, breathing heavily.

The pantry is dark and silent. The door is slightly ajar. Slowly, she walks up to it and puts her eye to the crack. She can see the entire kitchen perfectly. Sirius stands in the middle of the floor, his head bowed, his arms raised. Several figures line the walls in a sort of rough semi-circle around him. They are as still and as silent as statues. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Elphias Doge. Emmeline Vance, she thinks. And on the far side of the room, her mother and father, their faces so stern and remote that they look like strangers. As Ginny watches, wisps of white smoke begin to fill the room. She cannot say where they are coming from, at first. Then, with a thrill of excitement, she realizes that they are materializing from Sirius's outstretched hands.

The magic is very deep, and its fulfillment draws near. She knows that instantly, as surely as she has ever known anything. After three years of training in all the magical arts, the power of it strikes home to her heart, to the very blood in her veins. It feels like a far more powerful magic than anything she has ever experienced before. Sirius does not have a normal wizard's wand, of course, so he can't be creating it, at least not exactly. He must be the channel for the magic that is coming from the tower. Like a lightning rod, he draws its power to himself, and it streams from his fingertips like water.

"Come," he says softly, his voice no more than a whisper. "Return..." And the figures around the room all lift their own arms, echoing, "Come."

The magical smoke streams wiggle and stretch themselves like living things. And Ginny sees that they are coalescing around something, drawing something into shape and form from the misty air.

At first the figure looks like no more than wisps of smoke, perhaps less transparent than most. But they are forming a head, Ginny sees, a torso, arms, hands, and at last legs that stumble over a chair and fall to the floor. Sirius flinches at the sound, but does not look down. Molly Weasley rushes forward and helps Nymphadora Tonks to her feet. In that act, the younger woman becomes fully solid at last. Her mother leans in and whispers something that Ginny cannot hear. Tonks puts a hand to her head, as if it is too heavy to hold, and nods. She falls into a chair and slumps over the kitchen table.

Others begin to walk through the invisible portal in the centre of the room. The slightly stooped figure of Mad-Eye Moody. A small, dignified woman with glossy black hair like a raven's wing. Hestia Jones, Ginny thinks. Sturgis Podmore. Dedalus Diggle. They all seem dazed and uncertain of where they are, or perhaps even of who they are. Ginny remembers how strange and insubstantial she felt when she passed from St. Mungo's to Malfoy Manor, stumbling from the portrait of Morgause to the floor of the stone passageway. But did that even happen, though? Oh, how I wish I knew for sure...

The witches and wizards who had been standing around the room come forward to help the new arrivals. Molly Weasley, in particular, seems to be everywhere at once, fussing, worrying, helping people into chairs, although Moody waves her off impatiently. Mum's in her element, thinks Ginny, but there is no rancour in the thought. She hears a scuffling sound behind her, and turns quickly to look. But there is nothing. "George?" she whispers out of the corner of her mouth, not daring to take her eyes off the kitchen.

"Do you see anything, Ginny?" His returning whisper sounds very small and tinny through the connecting Kneazle door.

"The Aurors are coming through. But I just heard a sound--was that you?"

"No. Don't talk any more just now. They might hear you."

She is silent, but her brow furrows. What she heard didn't sound like it came from out in the corridor, anyway. It sounded like it was actually in the room. But that's impossible.

She continues to watch. Then there is a long, silent pause, and she is glad that George reminded her to be quiet. Nothing more seems to be happening, but there is a definite feeling of--Ginny gropes for the right word-- incompletion. She has been performing magic herself long enough to know when a spell is not quite finished.

Sirius had been standing motionless for several long minutes after Dedalus Diggle came through, but finally he begins to sway on his feet. "That's all I can do," he mutters. Molly Weasley hurries forward to help him into a chair, where he collapses, his hands falling to the table like white birds with broken wings. But there's someone missing still, Ginny think suddenly. Dumbledore? Well... no... because he didn't go with the rest of the Aurors, wherever they went. So he couldn't very well come back. And surely he'd be in the tower with Remus anyway.

"But, Sirius," her mother is saying urgently, holding a glass of water to his lips, which reminds Ginny of how thirsty she still is. "What about Severus?" Sirius shakes his head mutely.

"Molly, Severus either will come through on the remaining magic or he won't," says Arthur, who has come to stand by his wife's side. He bends over Sirius as well.

"He can't take any more," Arthur says.

"Bloody well hope he doesn't get through," Sirius mumbles.

Molly shakes her head slightly, but she makes no comment.

"Don't trust him," Sirius continues. Ginny is not sure if what he says is meant as a statement, or a warning. Perhaps both.

Ginny's father sighs. "He's been very helpful," he says tiredly.

"But to whom, Arthur? Us, or himself?"

"Without Severus, we could never have found out one-tenth as much as we have about what Lucius Malfoy is doing. And planning."

Sirius rubs his chin, and looks away. "I'm too tired," he mutters. "Too tired for this. Just as you like, Arthur."

The minutes tick by. Tonks runs her fingers through her hair. It is a neat glossy brown pageboy now, Ginny sees. Sirius asks her something, and she nods. The two of them start to carry on a conversation of some kind, in extremely low tones. Hestia Jones begins talking to Molly and Arthur, and they get up from the table to stand against the wall. Once Sirius and Tonks are the only two people left at the table, they begin to talk a bit more loudly. Ginny strains her ears.

"We ought to have left him there," says Sirius.

"You know we can't do that," replies Tonks. "But he might not come through. Shouldn't he be here by now?"

"Oh, he'll come through. Like a bad penny, he always turns up," Sirius says grimly. "Don't you think it's odd that he's taking so long, though?"

Tonks shrugs. "It is, a bit."

Sirius drums his fingers on the tables. "He's in too deep with the Malfoys, Snape is."

"Well, deep cover and all that, you know."

"There's such a thing as being in deep enough to drown. He's known Draco since that child was born, was there at the christening for Merlin's sake, spoils him rotten at school from what I hear, and as for Lucius--"

"So what were we supposed to do? Shove his head down a toilet so he couldn't find his way back?" asks Tonks.

Sirius's eyes are very tired, but they twinkle. "You mean you didn't already?"

Tonks giggles.

Mad-Eye Moody's grizzled head jerks up from the conversation he is having with Dedalus Diggle. He looks keenly at Tonks for a moment. Sirius frowns, and lowers his voice until Ginny can no longer hear a thing.

All of this talk makes Ginny very nervous. She chews on her lower lip, leaning against one of the shelves, and tries once more to sort out in her mind what really happened earlier, and what was only confusion and delirium. Those shameful hours with Draco Malfoy in the secret room... well, she knew very well that they hadn't been real. She'd known it at the time, even. So there was no need to think about them any more. When she'd woken later on, and talked to Morgause in the portrait... that had been real... and when she'd gone to St. Mungo's. Still real. But then there was the horribly confused part when she came back through the mysterious stone passageway, and had thought that she'd seen Malfoy again... no, more than seen him...

Ginny is so preoccupied that there is no telling how long it might have taken her to react to what finally happens in the kitchen, but for the fact that she is still watching Sirius's face. She sees movement out of the corner of her eye, and hears a flurry of excited whispers and indrawn breaths, but her mind is too absorbed in her own problems to really notice what is going on at first. But then Tonks elbows her cousin in the ribs, and he looks up, and his lean, handsome features crease into a sardonic grin.

"Well, well," says Sirius. "Told you he'd make it through, didn't I?"

One last shape is solidifying in the room, closer to the pantry than the others had been. The wisps of smoke take a very long time to come together. The booted feet come first, then the long, sweeping black robes, the arms with their gnarled, strangely graceful hands, the thin, wiry chest. The head comes last, and as the greasy black hair becomes visible, and the worn, austere, white face, Ginny finally recognizes Severus Snape.

But he's scowling. Strange. Not that he ever looks happy; I've never seen him exactly what I'd call cheerful, but that's even worse than the way he looks at Gryffindor first-years in Potions class. I wonder what's--

Then she sees. Snape did not come alone. Another figure is clutching onto his robes. It comes into focus suddenly and all at once, and a pair of grey eyes look up. The sound of his sharply indrawn breath is very loud in the smoke-filled room.

It is Draco Malfoy.

"I told you!" rages Sirius, striding across the floor. "I bloody well told you. He brought that little piece of shite back with him on purpose. I knew it. I knew it!" Tonks has leaped from her chair, and Molly and Arthur start forward. Moody nods grimly. "Stupefy!" cries Dedalus Diggle in a reedy voice, pointing his wand at Draco. But nothing happens. "Oh, drat," he mutters, blinking. "That Sleeping Beauty spell..."

"I assure you," says Snape, "that I had nothing to do with this development! He stumbled upon the central chamber at the precise moment when I was beginning to come through, and he grabbed onto me. That's what took so long. The Revenio spell was never meant to transport more than one person at a time, and I nearly lost him more than once--"

"So you had a golden opportunity to get rid of a Malfoy, and you didn't take it," sneers Sirius. "Why am I not surprised? "

Snape swings to face Sirius. "Some of us," he says in a low, deadly voice, "feel a certain responsibility for those in our charge."

"Oh, I'll bet you feel a responsibility. I'll just bet you do. You should, since you're best mates with his father now!"

"I fill a position of considerable importance in that regard, as you very well know," says Snape, spitting out the words. "and one I highly doubt you'd be able to discharge!"

As the two men argue, Draco crouches on the floor, hiding his face in Snape's robes until only the back of his bright head is visible. The others look unsure, witches and wizards diminished without their magic. The Aurors who have just come through the gateway don't seem up to much of anything, and are mostly still slumped in chairs. Dedalus Diggle is still peering a bit confusedly at his wand. Molly looks at Draco, and Ginny could swear that there is pity on her mother's face, as if the boy's vulnerable gesture has disarmed her completely. Arthur Weasley and Emmeline Vance exchange uncertain glances. Snape moves slightly, and Draco moves, too, fully revealing himself for the first time. Ginny gasps, and involuntarily moves forward herself.

Draco is dressed exactly as he was when she saw him in the catacombs under Malfoy Manor.

I was there. I was really there. I didn't imagine it.

She knocks a box of cinnamon off one of the shelves when she presses her face to a crack in the door. It falls with a clunk. Nobody else seems to hear it. But Draco's head snaps up. He looks directly at her, and Ginny realizes with a stab of terror that he sees her.

"We've wasted more than enough time gaping and arguing," growls Moody, stumping forward across the kitchen floor. "We need to get this boy into a room with a good strong Muggle lock on the door. I'd say clap him in irons until the Sleeping Beauty spell wears off and we can use Patefacio--there're bound to be some down in the dungeons of this house. Then we'll find out what he knows. Bound to be something useful!" But he is too late.

Draco leaps up from the floor and darts across the room. Hestia Jones screeches something; Tonks runs after him and grabs at his arms wildly; Sirius tries to tackle him and falls heavily, and Dedalus Diggle casts yet another Stupefying spell before sighing, "Oh, double drat!" They are all too slow. With the reflexes of a Seeker, Draco reaches the pantry door in a flash and slams it shut. A metal bar falls into place across the doorjamb. The yelling and pounding coming from the kitchen are suddenly very muffled.

Ginny can still only see the back of his head. She is frozen to the spot, and she cannot move until he turns and looks at her.

And then Draco does, very suddenly, and his eyes narrow. "You," he says. "It's you. And it was you. Wasn't it?"

"I--I don't know what you mean, Malfoy." Ginny's throat has gone so dry that she can barely get the words out.

"I think you do." He begins advancing on her. "You were there, Weasley! I don't know how, but you were."

She backs away from him and crashes into some pots hanging on the wall from hooks. She slips, stumbling on a frying pan, and he grabs her arm to keep her from going down. His fingers are like iron bands around her wrist. She can already feel the bruises forming.

"Let go of me," she gasps. "They're going to get through this door in a minute and then you'll be in loads of trouble--"

"The hell I will," he snarls. "You're my hostage, Weasley!"

Ginny squirms and twists, but Draco's grip is very strong. "That won't make anybody do what you want! I'll tell them you hurt me and they'll chain you to a wall and--"

The sound of creaky laughter interrupts her. At first she thinks that it has to be Draco, but she's looking right at him and she can see that he isn't laughing. He looks surprised, too. "What the fuck is that?" he asks, giving Ginny's wrist a shake to punctuate his words. "Better tell me! If it's some kind of trick--"

The laughter goes on and on. It is thin and high and unpleasant, curiously gritty-sounding. And the voice is familiar, Ginny realizes. Except that it comes from someone she has never heard laughing before, nor imagined that she ever would.

As both Ginny and Draco stare, Kreacher totters out from behind a shelf, wiping his eyes. His face is creased into hideous lines of mirth. "Oh, aye!" he cackles, stopping in front of Draco and looking adoringly up at him. "He's come, he's come at last! Yes, just as poor old Kreacher had hoped, he's here now, and between us we'll put all to rights, so we will."

For the first time, Draco looks unsure. "Wh--what?" he stammers. "Who are you--what are you--" He peers closer. "A house-elf," he says, more assuredly. "Sweet Nimue, I've never seen anything so--but it's definitely a house-elf."

"Old Mistress dreamed of this day," Kreacher says piously, "when the true heir would return to the House of Black, and bring back all its former honor, and cleanse it of blood traitors and half-breeds and unnatural twinned creatures and--"

"What are you on about, elf?" Draco asks impatiently. "What's all this about a true heir?"

Kreacher makes a grotesquely low bow, his enormous ears brushing the floor. "Young master," he says. "The true heir to the House of Black. I served your mother, so I did, young Malfoy."

The hammering at the pantry door is becoming frantic. Ginny hears her father's faint, despairing voice. "When's that spell going to wear off?"

"Not for another hour," replies Moody. "We might try burning them out--"

"My daughter's in there!" says Molly Weasley, shrilly. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare even think--"

Kreacher's eyes do not waver from Draco's face. Slowly, Draco smiles.

"I know who you are," he says softly. "Who you must be. You're Kreacher."

"At your service, young master." If possible, the bow deepens.

"Get up," says Draco. "Come here. I need you to tell me something."

"Anything the master desires."

Kreacher looks happy, Ginny realizes. She's never seen him looking happy before. It is a frightening sight.

"Is there any other way out of this pantry, elf?"

Kreacher's grin widens until Ginny is sure the two ends of his mouth will meet at the back of his head. Perhaps it'll topple off, she thinks crazily.

"There is a way," Kreacher says, "a special way, a secret way. Not only out of this pantry, but out of this house. Only Kreacher knows. Only Kreacher could take you there."

"Well, you'd bloody well better do it, then," says Draco impatiently.

"We've got to just break the door down," says Sirius's desperate voice from the kitchen. "If we work together we can manage it. One..."

"And it will take you where you need to go, young master. Where they are expecting you. Kreacher sent the message at last, oh yes, he knows that he would not be permitted to send it unless the young master arrived." Kreacher's voice is fawning, servile, and oily. Ginny shudders. "All the house-elves know, all the house-elves have used this way always. It leads to--"

"Two..."

"Explain it to me later, elf!" Draco aims a kick at Kreacher, a look of distaste on his face. Kreacher whines, wrings his hands, and looks very much as if he would like nothing so much as to start slamming his ears in oven doors. But at another glare from Draco, he grasps one of Ginny's hands.

"Take the other, young master," he says, and Draco does, shifting his fingers from her wrist to her hand. She tries to twist away, first from one, then from the other, but Kreacher's grip is even stronger than Draco's, if possible.

"Three!"

The door implodes. The last thing Ginny sees is her father's strained, desperate face as he bursts through, Sirius and Moody and Molly and Tonks crowded up against him.

"Ginnyyy..." a voice says, and she is not sure if it belongs to her father, or to Sirius.

But it is too late. There is a massive pulling jerk somewhere in her stomach, like a gigantic Portkey, and she feels herself zooming upward and out of the pantry, Kreacher still holding onto one hand, and Draco gripping tight to the other.