Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown.

--John Wesley Powell

A/N: Remember... This is a fic with lots of furry plot bunnies hopping through it, and mysteries abound. If something isn't clear now, don't worry, it WILL be. More than any other chapter, this one contains foreshadowing hints for later. That's one reason why I try to update so often. I might do a running character list pretty soon.
Well, guess what? This thing is going to be a long journey, every bit as long as, say, GoF. There's a lot of dark delicious fic to come... so fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride. I will probably be starting a Yahoo group pretty soon for the fics of a.) me and b.) VioletJersey, maybe more authors to come. Let me know in your review if you think it's a good idea!

Pansy Parkinson stepped through the door of the hospital room, pulling back the hood of her cloak to reveal her shiny black hair, so much darker than her sister's.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice," Madam Pomfrey said dreamily. "St. Mungo's will be the most appropriate placement for her... Miss Weasley will be able to get the care she needs..."

"Pansy?" Ginny asked in disbelief.

"Why, no. My name is Nurse Turpin. But confusion is a common side effect of Disinhibio," said the other girl. Then she smirked at Ginny.

"It is you! What are you doing here?" Ginny began backing away, then saw the pair behind Pansy. "Crabbe and Goyle," she said dumbly.

They poked each other in the side and snickered, nodding. "She's worse than we were led to believe," said Pansy in a regretful tone of voice. Apparently, she had been placed in charge of all verbal communication. Goyle stepped forward and reached for Ginny's arm with a meaty hand.

"No!" Ginny put her arms behind her back as fast as he could. But both boys only chuckled.

"Fight all you want," said Goyle. "She won't notice." He jerked a thumb at Madam Pomfrey, who was looking out the window now, a vague expression on her face.

"Why don't we go to the office and sign the discharge book," Pansy said soothingly to the mediwitch, steering her out of the room. Their footsteps retreated down the hall. Goyle turned to look at Ginny in a way that made her skin crawl.

"Personally, I sort of like it better that way. When they fight," he leered. He grasped Ginny upper arm, and she struggled against the iron grip of his massive fingers. She opened her mouth to scream. He clapped his other hand over her face, and a black curtain descended.

"L-leggo of her, she can't breathe," Ginny heard Crabbe saying from a great distance."And we're not s-s-supposed to touch her, you m-m-moron."

"Don't call me a moron. You and your fuckin' stuttering." That other hand was closing over one of her breasts, and Ginny bucked her body violently with all the fading strength that was left in her.

"I do n-not stutter."

"Yes you d-d-do," said Goyle in a mocking tone of voice. "Shut up. Lemme do the thinking.Why can't I have a little fun? Who would know anyway?"

"Malfoy'll know. He k-knows everything," said Crabbe.

There was a pause. The hand over her mouth and nose shifted a little, and Ginny took great gasps of air. "Pissing your pants over what Malfoy would think-- he can just go and fuck himself for all I care." Goyle's voice was filled with uneasy bravado.

"Why don't you s-s-say that to his face, Goyle. Or maybe I'll tell him."

"You threatening me, Crabbe?" The other boy's voice turned belligerent, and he relaxed his grip on Ginny.

The two started pushing each other, moving across the room, towards the window, growling low in their throats. For the moment, she was forgotten.

"Y-you're really going to bugger this thing up, aren't you, G-goyle? All b-b-because you think you have to get your oats off with Weasley--"

"I always thought you were queer, Crabbe," the other boy growled, grappling with his opponent. They shoved each other all the way to the window, knocking over the chess set where Ron and Hermione had been playing earlier. The door stood ajar. The pair was actually so dumb that they hadn't kept themselves between her and the exit! Ginny darted towards it. But Pansy, coming back from the hall, was quicker. She swung the pierced metal disc on its chain right under Ginny's nose, pressing a handkerchief to her own face with her other hand.

"Put your mind at rest, lay your thoughts to sleep. Uyumak, uyamak, yatacak yer saglamak," she droned. Tendrils of the thick, oily smoke crept up to Ginny's face. A black blankness spread through her mind.

"Time for a nice, long rest at St. Mungo's,"a crooning female voice was saying, and Ginny nodded in stupefied agreement. Of course. That made sense. They were medical aides; what had she been thinking when she said that she wouldn't go with them? The young woman with the dark smooth hair, who of course wasn't Pansy Parkinson, was reaching for her arm, leading her out of the room; the two male aides, who of course Ginny had never seen before, were flanking her. But as Ginny moved across the floor, her bare foot stepped on the upright black queen.

"Ow!" The pain splintered through her leg and she stumbled against the dark-haired girl, who dropped the incense burner. For a single moment, Ginny's mind was clear. But that moment was enough. She screamed and ran in the other direction.

No escape there. The Fenestra charm protecting the window took the place of glass; it barred anything from entering or exiting while allowing fresh air in. But Ginny might have jumped through a window, even if she would cut herself to shreds on the glass while doing it. A Fenestra charm could only be de-activated in case of fire. Pansy realized it too. A malicious grin spread over her face. She reached for the other girl. Without thinking, Ginny stumbled backwards, against the window frame. She tumbled through it.

For a wild instant, grabbing at nothing, all she could think was that this should not be happening; she should not have been able to get through. Then her feet found a ledge beneath the first floor window. She huddled on it, hands splayed against the wall. The ground looked terrifyingly far away. But she'd have to jump. No! She couldn't jump; she could just barely see Pansy and Goyle running out towards the lawn below! Now they were stopping to argue... oh, they must not have seen her yet, but they would soon... She'd have to climb. Ginny squeezed her eyes nearly shut, focussing only on the next handhold above her. She must not look down.

Her fingers found a crevice above her. She pulled herself up, the muscles of her arms screaming in protest. Now her other arm. Now her left leg. Now her right. She scrabbled at the stone wall and found a toehold. Inch by inch, she forced herself up the side of the castle. Once, her right foot came down on a cornice that crumbled away at her touch, and for a heartstopping moment she was swinging through space. But then her toes caught on a loose brick and she regained her footing. My balance is better than it was. she forced herself to think. Maybe I'll try out for the Quidditch team next year. At last, she reached the second floor window, just outside the empty corridor. She could dimly see the corner of a large stone gargoyle. That was the entrance to Professor Dumbledore's office; she'd never been there, but had heard Harry and Ron talking about it several times. Maybe, by some miracle, he'd still be here. She pushed up on the windowsill. It was locked.

Ginny did not allow herself to sob and scream in frustration. If she started, she'd never stop, and she'd use up the last of her strength. She desperately needed every bit of it to get to the third floor. She forced her whimpering muscles the rest of the way up. Her fingers seized at a window and pushed, and it opened with a creak.

Ginny wriggled through and onto a stone floor, where she simply sat for a moment, gasping for breath. She was in the long, narrow armor gallery. It was absolutely still and very dark; the only light was cast by the full moon shining through the windows that broke the row of silent metal figures at intervals. She tiptoed past them as quietly as she could. The only hope now was to try to sneak up to the seventh floor, back to the Fat Lady's portrait hall, and into the Gryffindor dormitory. There, she'd pack a suitcase... and then what? Ginny refused to allow her mind to go past that point.

There was a sudden, incredibly loud metallic sound. Ginny stuffed her fist into her mouth to stifle a scream. Her eyes darted toward the source of the noise. A suit of armor had turned and was pointing towards the door. She turned to look, but a hand clapped over her mouth and dragged her into the corridor.

At first, she thought it must be Crabbe or Goyle, but after the first instant of fear she knew it wasn't. Whoever was holding her was much smaller, shorter and lighter. She wrenched her head around and saw a round face, strands of straight brown hair, and an ingratiating smile.

It was Colin Creevey.

"Oh no," she moaned. She started to struggle, her elbows flailing, and nearly squirmed out of his grasp. "Let go of me this minute! I'll hit you again! I'll--"

Then she felt the wand pressed into her ribs. "Sorry," Colin said with a note of genuine apology in his voice. "I really hope that you're not going to make me use this."

A wand. Colin's wand. About ten inches, she thought detachedly, and very hard, ebony maybe, or mahogany. She didn't seem to have hers. It must be back in the hospital wing.

"I honestly think," Colin continued, "that if we could just talk this out, without those dumb goons around, you'd see things the right way. I don't know why they sent them."

"Them?" she asked carefully.

"Crabbe and Goyle, of course. Pansy too," said Colin.

"You-- knew," Ginny said slowly. "You knew they're here."

"Of course I knew. It's so unnecessary," said Colin. "You're a reasonable person. They don't need to send kidnappers and all that sort of thing. This isn't an American police movie, after all."

"Who sent them?"

Colin began walking her down the hall. The tip of the wand pressed into her side at every breath, like a poisoned dart. "I always thought you should have been told about the plan at the beginning," he said in a conversational way. "It'd be easier now if you had been." He stopped at a large painting hung on the wall next to the trophy room. "Isn't that beautiful?" he asked.

Ginny looked at it. The painting showed Hogwarts, castle and grounds, yet not quite as she knew them. The castle was smaller; there were no rose gardens, and no clock tower, and it was surrounded by a low, broken wall with battlements like giants' teeth on top. The Forbidden Forest seemed larger, much larger, darker, more menacing. As she stared, the trees waved like figures in a giants' dance, their limbs lashing over the Quidditch pitch. "Yes," she said. "It's lovely. What is it, Colin?"

"Hogwarts as it once was." He pointed to a small brass plaque at the bottom that read A Darker Shade of Hogwarts, 1566. Its edge was outlined in tiny rubies. There was a signature scrawled into the canvas above that, but Ginny couldn't read it. "And as it will be, for some of us. I have to stay here, though, hardly seems fair, does it?"

"No, I'm sure it's not." Ginny fought to keep her breathing even. Colin had obviously gone quite mad. Or had he? His words seemed to make no sense at all. But what if there was a meaning in them that she couldn't yet grasp?

"I really think that if I go back with you, I can talk to them and they'll see reason. They'll let me come as well. Horrible to be left out of things, isn't it?" He moved closer, and when he spoke, his lips brushed her skin. She fought not to recoil. "They thought you shouldn't be told a thing because of Ron being your brother, and Harry and Hermione being your friends. But that lot wasn't ever really your friends, were they? You were just Ron's little sister, unimportant, a tag-along. I know how Harry is especially. I fooled all of you, didn't I? You must've thought I still admired him so much, worshipped him really. But now I know him for what he is-- a stuck-up prat who thinks he's too good for everybody else." His face flushed an alarming shade of red, and an ugly expression was spreading across it.

"You're so clever, Colin, of course you knew," Ginny said as soothingly as she could.

He grinned, seemingly in a good humor once again. "I am, aren't I? Clever... cunning... The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, you know, back in first year. Nobody knows that-- anyway, I told them and told them about how resentful you must feel. I stuck up for you, Ginny; I always said that you'd turn to the right side, given half a chance."

Ginny bit her lip and forced herself to look admiringly at Colin, her eyelashes fluttering slightly. "I'm sure you did," she said in a breathless voice. "But who, Colin? Who did you tell?"

"I wasn't supposed to say," he said, but his voice had a slight bragging tone to it.

He said that Peter had always liked having big friends... powerful friends, who'd take care of him... She'd overheard Harry saying that to Ron once in the Gryffindor common room; it was very late at night and they hadn't realized she was there. Whoever Peter might be, the statement certainly summed up Colin Creevey. A hideous answer to her question was starting to shape up in Ginny's mind. But she had to know for sure.

"But it's safe now," said Ginny. "You can tell me." She gave him a little smile.

"The inner circle," he said proudly.

"Of--?"

"Death Eaters. Avery, Notte, McNair, Lestrange, Pettigrew, Crabbe and Goyle's fathers... and, of course, Lucius Malfoy." Colin's scrawny chest actually puffed out slightly at his last words.

"Ohhhh," said Ginny, her eyes going wide. She desperately hoped that the leap of terror in her voice could be passed off as awe at Colin's connections. She was right, oh God, she was right! "Draco Malfoy too?"

"Well, naturally," Colin shrugged. "But you don't have to be afraid. I'll protect you. I know he's the one who came at you on the balcony last night, and Disinhibio can cause all sorts of strange reactions-- dreadfully sorry that was one of them, but I knew you just needed that extra little push to see what was really in your heart about things--"

"You're so right, Colin," said Ginny. "You didn't have to tell Ron that silly story this morning, you know." She pouted.

"Well, we couldn't have him going off half-cocked and heading for Malfoy Manor to kill Draco, now could we?" Colin's hand stroked her hair, and she dug her nails into her palms to keep from scratching them down his arm. "Couldn't let the real aides come from St. Mungo's for you, either. It was so easy; Malfoy just intercepted the owls, that's all we had to do... They're hopelessly disorganized over there; it'll take them days to sort out that you didn't show up. But I never liked Crabbe and Goyle being sent."

"I'm so glad you found me," she whispered. They were out in the main corridor and nearly to the large marble staircase now. She manuevered him towards it. She felt his wand relax slightly against her side.

"I think I like you better this way," he said. "You're not so shy as you were, Ginny."

She giggled. "I suppose I'm not." She glanced around the hallway. "Surely we have a few minutes, Colin?" Ginny could hardly believe the words that were coming out of her mouth, but she prayed that she'd be able to keep things up in this vein just a bit longer. It's like playacting in front of the mirror at home, she told herself firmly. I'm playing a part, that's all; it's like ... Cherry Delight. Arthur Weasley had rigged up Muggle electricity at their home in Ottery St. Catchpole once, years ago; and he'd gotten hold of a television from somewhere. They'd watched a crazed assortment of programmes for a week before her mother had made him disconnect it. Ginny had sat eight hours a day hunched on the little sofa in the garage, hypnotized by the flickering screen, devouring everything from Masterpiece Theatre to imports of The A-Team. She vividly remembered her favorite series, Santa Monica Boulevard--After Hours!, and a seductive character who went by the improbable name of Cherry Delight. That's who I am, I'm Cherry Delight. What would she do?

"I don't know..." said Colin uneasily.

"Oh, just one little minute?" Ginny hooked her hands in the pockets of Colin's robe. "Just one... little bitty... minute..."

He fell against her with a groan. His wand arm moved down to grasp her body from behind. But he was still trapping Ginny against the wall, and to her dismay she felt the tip of the wand pressing against her still, now wedged behind her. Oh God, what do I do now? I've only made things worse than they were before! She tried to shrink back, away from him, but it did no good; he was plastering wet kisses all over her neck and his other hand was grabbing her chest so roughly that she could already feel the bruises rising. She struggled in revulsion, but he only pressed his knee between her thighs and fumbled at the waist of her robes; she could hear a whimpering deep in her throat, and she thought dumbly, Colin Creevey's going to rape me right here in this hallway, please don't let this happen, oh, please, no, no--

"What the bloody hell is going on?" a shrill voice demanded. Ginny looked up to see the furious face of Ivy Parkinson, her coppery hair gleaming in a shaft of moonlight from a window. Colin looked up at the other girl, mouth gaping, and Ginny took her opportunity to wrench herself away from him.

"Stop her, you stupid git!" shrieked Ivy, and Colin drew his wand. But he'd been distracted, and that gave Ginny the crucial extra moment she needed. She ran up the next flight of stairs as fast as she could. Even as she ran, she could feel it shifting, leaving Colin and Ivy teetering on the edge below.

Ginny darted up the next flight as quickly as she dared. Then the next. There was something positively malicious about the way they kept moving to different positions. She jumped onto the bottom step to the sixth floor, stumbling over her own feet with a shriek. An entire section next to a row of marble statues had suddenly swung out into empty space. The high, frantic sound of her own voice echoed throughout the vast darkness. The suits of armor in the halls were moving slightly, and in the dim light, she couldn't see where they were going. On the far wall, a painting of a ship at sea broke into a storm, the prow swooping through the waves, the sails billowing, the mast cracking under a bolt of lightning.The landscape paintings were no longer peaceful and pastoral; they were moving, too. She brushed her hair from her face with a trembling hand so that she could see. Before her eyes, one of them changed to Edvard Munch's The Scream. The man with both hands thrown up to the sides of his face was screaming; the river was rolling and flooding; the sky was billowing in dark waves, and tendrils of it crept out towards her as she watched.

Ginny stuffed her fist in her mouth, afraid that she would start screaming, too, and would never be able to stop. This was Hogwarts, only Hogwarts, her dear, familiar school for the past four and a half years. She was nearly sixteen. Not a baby. She wasn't a superstitious Muggle scuttling through a haunted house. She was a witch, she was powerful, she was confident, she was--

A chuckle of laughter came from behind her.

Ginny whirled, nearly falling, and saw that the portraits and sculptures lining the corridor had begun to move. They were more terrifying than all the rest put together, and she was going to have to pass every one of them. There was the Greek pantheon--Zeus, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, and some others she didn't recognize-- draped in togas in a marble frieze, hung on the wall. The surface of the blue-veined marble writhed when the deities turned towards her, watching her keenly. Next to them was a bronze sculpture of the Teutonic gods. Donar and Wotan glared at her, Freya turned her face away, and Loki laughed, throwing his head back, fixed into place yet eternally falling through fire, red flames licking at his hair. That was the laughter she had heard. "Gwenhyfar, Gwenhyfar!" he said in a voice filled with mirth.

"I don't see anything funny," said Ginny.

Loki suddenly sobered. "The time draws near, and you know it not."

"What time? What's going to happen?"

The bronze figure spoke very low, and Ginny moved closer, unwilling yet fascinated, in order to hear him. "Free me, Ginny," Loki said. "Only you can free me."

"You're a statue," she replied. "I can't free you."

"You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?" The look he gave her from his slanted eyes was sardonic. "Mortals are fools."

"What do you mean?"

But the Norse trickster god only laughed the more, and Ginny did not look to either side of her after that. The flat painted eyes of the portraits slid towards her where she stood, trembling uncontrollably, and their lips began to speak in mumbled whispers. She shuffled her feet ahead of her, one at a time, inch by inch, her muscles nearly paralyzed by fear. She kept her own eyes fixed frozenly on the dim marble staircase in the distance.

"Going somewhere?" Ginny's head turned without her volition, and she saw that the slight, graceful figure of Lady Death had spoken to her from a large oil portrait of the seven Immortals.

"No," Ginny whimpered. She dimly wished that she had the pride to feel ashamed of her own whining voice, but she didn't. "Go away, leave me alone."

"I'm only a painting," said Lady Death. "I can't go anywhere."

Ginny's feet seemed to have slowed to the point where they were moving only in millimetres. "Am I going to get out of this?" she asked. "Am I going to get downstairs? Am I going to get home?"

"You're going to get a lifetime," said the Lady. "That's all anybody gets." Then she turned away from Ginny towards her black-clad brother Dream, who was standing motionless in the clearing of a great rolling forest with the wind whipping his spiky dark hair, and she spoke no more.

Ginny passed a portrait of the Four Founders without daring to glance at it. She thought she saw Salazar Slytherin sneer something at her from the corner of her eye. But at that moment she wouldn't even have trusted the painted image of Godric Gryffindor. Almost to the end of the corridor, almost there.

"Hurry!" a chorus of shrill voices shrieked. Ginny forced her legs to move forward, and saw the last portrait on the wall, one of three girls in sweeping dark green dress robes. They all stared up at her from a wild green landscape, red, gold, and coal-black hair tumbling about their shoulders. Their faces had a vague likeness to each other, and something about them nagged at Ginny, although she could not have said what it was. Two of them wore gold and silver lockets about their necks, flashing as all three leaped to their feet. "Gwenhyfar, you must hurry!" said the red-haired one. "They are leaving, your brother and your friends."

"How do you know--" gasped Ginny.

"Run! Run!" The girls pointed down the hall, but Ginny had already started running up the stairs. "Not that way..." It was too late.

Ginny skidded to a halt in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Password, password," she muttered in despair. "I can't remember the password!"

"Seeing as it's you, dear," the subject of the painting yawned in an irritated way, "I'll just let you through. Goodness, I thought everyone was gone by now. I was looking forward to a nice, long, uninterrupted sleep, but such, alas, is apparently not to be--"

"Now! Please!"

The Fat Lady rearranged a fold of her pink lace dress. "A truly refreshing sleep, unbroken by students sneaking in from the Astronomy Tower at one in the morning... I can scarcely imagine what that would be like anymore..."

Ginny began clawing at the painted surface with her hands.

"Goodness!" The portrait swung open, revealing a large, round hole, which Ginny scrambled through. "There's really no need for that sort of thing, dear," the Fat Lady called after her. "I was just going to tell you that--" She glanced over her shoulder. "There seems to be someone coming up the stairs." But Ginny was much too far down the hall to hear her.

Ginny threw a suitcase on the bed and started tossing clothing into it, her toothbrush, soap, shampoo, moisturizer. Gilderoy Lockhart's fatuous face winked up at her from a bottle of hair depilatory lotion. "Not even an eentsy-weentsy trace of stubble for two whole weeks!" he said in a smarmy voice.

"Shut it," Ginny said rudely, slamming the suitcase's top down on his toothy grin. Now to get to the back staircase, the one that wound down all the way to the kitchens. That was something she'd discovered herself, during her night wanderings this autumn when she'd had so much trouble sleeping, and she was very proud of it. Even Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn't know about it. She'd go to the train station, walking if she had to; she still had fifty or sixty sickles, enough for a ticket, she thought. But no; it must be after ten by now, she realized. The last train had already left. Well, she'd get down to the first floor and then worry about it. There must be some way.

Ginny had taken a number of camping trips in the past few years; her father had become violently enamored of sleeping in a tent after he'd borrowed one for the Quidditch World Cup the summer she was thirteen. Time and again, he'd dragged her and Ron on some dreary weekend tramp through the woods (after realizing that Arthur Weasley was using a Muggle tent for greater authenticity, the rest of the family found terribly important prior commitments rather soon.) They'd cooked over campfires and slept in sleeping bags spread directly over tree roots or on a flood plain, been bitten by nasty bugs and caught poison ivy in extremely inconvenient places, and gotten themselves chased once by what her father always insisted was a bear, but was more likely an ill-tempered badger. The entire thing had renewed Ginny's love for civilization. But she could sleep in the woods and walk all the way to Ottery-St. Catchpole, if she had to.

But what then? If she went home, they'd only send her to St. Mungo's. She couldn't, wouldn't, go back there. No. No. She was seized by a sort of confused memory of slack-faced patients waiting for their daily potions at the nurse's office, dull hopeless faces staring endlessly out of windows, chain-smoking, waiting for something that never came, waiting as life passed them by, and Ginny herself sitting there too, feeling all her strength and health and youth fester and turn in upon her with the savagery of a trapped animal. She'd die first. Ginny hesitated, and in that moment, she heard the footsteps running towards her door.

"No!" hissed Ginny, jumping up frantically. She hit her head on the frame of the tester bed. Moaning, she rubbed her temples with one hand while grabbing her suitcase with the other. She turned and ran through the other door, that one that led to the girls' bathroom, and then down the halls as fast as she could. They were eerily dark, lit only by the faint glow at the end of her wand. She paused to catch her breath, slipping behind a suit of armor. A large shape was moving towards her from one end of the hall. Goyle. Another one, barely seen out of the corner of her eye, was advancing from the other end of the hall. Crabbe. And then the door several metres in front of her opened, and Pansy stepped through it.

Well, this was it. Ginny closed her eyes, determined not to scream.

Why weren't they advancing on her? Why didn't she feel Crabbe and Goyle's meaty hands grabbing her arms? Why wasn't Pansy's voice taunting her? Ginny dared to open her eyes a crack.

The scene before her resembled a frozen tableau, like one of those odd Muggle photographs that didn't move. Crabbe and Goyle had both stopped in mid-step. Pansy's mouth was open in a word she never finished speaking. The very light at the end of Ginny's wand seemed to have paused, to have stopped flickering as it normally did.

Then something tapped her on the shoulder, and she did scream. "Oh God," she choked, without turning around. "Who-- who is it?"

There was no answer, but she felt a tremendous chill, as if all the warmth in the air had simply been drained away. Slowly, she forced her numb body to turn. Behind her was the Bloody Baron.

He stared somberly at her out of his pale eyes, the silvery bloodstains on his face and robes more noticeable now, almost fresh-looking. He'd never been so close to her before. The Bloody Baron didn't really even associate with the Slytherins, or any of the other Hogwarts ghosts. He was a solitary being. Except that he sometimes seemed to be talking with Professor Snape in some corner of the dungeons of the other, and, come to think of it, she hadn't seen Snape since the Potions exam that day, which seemed odd, he must've left Hogwarts a bit early... The randomness of her own thoughts was beginning to frighten her, and she forced herself speak again before they spun even further out of control.

"You did this," said Ginny. "Didn't you?"

The ghost kept looking blankly at her. Could it be that he didn't understand what she'd said?

"The-- the way they're not moving, the way nothing's moving," she persisted, sweeping her arm past Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle. "You--" She pointed directly at him. "You did it. I don't understand. I didn't know ghosts could-- are you really a ghost? Who are you?" Her eyes, not only her words, were pleading with him for some sort of explanation.

The ghost nodded. Then she jumped in surprise as she heard him speak. His voice was rusty and grating, as if from long disuse. "Ich heisse Lukas von Drachen," he said.

"A name, that has to be a name," said Ginny. "You're saying that your real name is-- was-- Lukas von Drachen." Even as she said it, she felt faintly stupid; obviously the ghost's name, when he was living, couldn't very well have been the Bloody Baron. "Well-- thanks awfully, I suppose. I couldn't have gotten away from them if you hadn't done that. Can I-- can I go now?

The ghost put a hand on her arm. It was like the touch of seaweed dragged up from the cold depths of the ocean. "Wille das Schicksal der Mannwiederholung selbst? Wieder und doch wieder?"

"I don't understand," said Ginny. "Is that German? I don't speak German."

The Bloody Baron shook his ghostly head, slowly and sadly. Then he drifted out into the hall. "Komm mit mir."

That sounded like "come with." He's moving away from me; I suppose that's what he meant. Ginny hurried to catch up with the ghost. He drifted down the back staircase, and Ginny followed him, guessing that the ghosts, too, must know about its existence. They reached the first floor annex.

"What do I do now?" asked Ginny, unable to keep the slight whine from her voice. Too late, she remembered that he couldn't understand her words. But the Bloody Baron turned towards her, although he seemed to have no comprehension in his spectral face. The silvery bloodstains stood out more than ever. Then he spoke the same words he had said to Draco Malfoy the night before, although she did not know it.

"Geh, junge Ginny. Geh du zum Schicksal für dich ernannt." He turned and vanished through the wall.

Ginny walked out into the great entrance hall next to the massive double doors of oak and stood there, chewing on her lip. Now what? Could Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville actually still be here? She didn't hear anyone coming towards her at the moment, but she wasn't about to fool herself into thinking that her pursuers had all given up and gone back home, or wherever they'd come from. The mindless wave of panic threatened to overtake her again, the one she'd felt when Colin was groping at her in the third floor hall. Strange that when Draco Malfoy had been doing almost the same thing not twenty-four hours before, she'd been consumed by such shameful dark pleasure, but with Colin there was only revulsion and terror and--

"Think, Ginny. Think," she repeated to herself. "What would Hermione do?" Something astoundingly clever, no doubt. Ginny felt about as clever as a bag of wet mice. She looked despairingly at the suits of armour flanking the doors.

One of them turned slightly with a creaking noise. The steel arm raised itself and pointed towards the door on the opposite wall. The one leading to the dungeons. Ginny walked over to it.

Several strands of gold-brown hair, caught on the rough wood, floated from the open door. Ginny stepped closer to examine it. Hermione's hair. Nobody else's in the school was quite that color, or that texture. But why had Hermione gone down into the dungeons, an area of Hogwarts she normally avoided at all costs? Unless-- unless--

Ginny closed her eyes briefly. Something was pulling her towards the dungeons. The closer she went to the entrance, the stronger the compulsion became. It was so quiet down here that she could hear something rustling in her pocket of her robes as she walked forward. She paused to pull it out. It was the torn half of the parchment she'd gotten from Hermione, the one with the strange drawings and scribblings on it. Something was glowing red in its corner, a scattering of tiny rubies embedded in the page, each one no bigger than a pinpoint. They pulsed with bright color. Ginny couldn't believe that she hadn't seen them before. But then if the jewels hadn't been glowing earlier, they had probably looked like a smudge of reddish dirt. Oh, I don't want to go down there, down where they're leading me!

Even as the pull strengthened, going down into the dungeons increasingly seemed to Ginny like the most dangerous thing she might ever do. But staying here was even more dangerous. And the glow of the rubies was suddenly sinister, like a cold light seeping through blood. Maybe just holding them was dangerous.

Ginny was paralyzed for a moment. But that provided no relief, either. She was being watched; all at once she could feel the eyes on her back with the clarity of hammer-blows, but when she whirled behind her, no-one was there. She pushed tat he door, and it opened further with a squeal of protest. The ruby glow illuminated only a tiny circle near her feet. The rest of the dungeons were in darkness. I'm a Gryffindor. The Sorting Hat put me in Gryffindor for a reason. I'm brave. I'm brave. She took a deep breath and plunged forward.

She tried to fight down the sudden, sure knowledge that invisible footsteps followed her.

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

Draco held the Kitap-an-Dus in his right hand. With his left, he fitted into the open binding the torn half of the page he held, the one with Hermione Granger's drawings of inverted cones and enigmatic equations. At the corner of each page before and after it, the scattering of minute rubies glowed with a pulsing light. There was a gap or two; he wondered if there were more pages missing, and where they might be. Each wave of the light cast a brief red glow over the silent figures gathered in the dungeon. He closed his eyes. The red light illuminated the planes and angles of his face, throwing them into sharp relief between the snatches of darkness. "She's coming closer to the Hogwarts tower," he said at last.

"That's what you think?" asked Lucius Malfoy.

"That's what I know." Draco groped forward with his hand, toward the rubies, and felt the grainlike gems beneath the sensitive tips of his fingers. He could feel Ginny Weasley's presence through them, although he hadn't the slightest idea how. She was walking through a dark dungeon, her face white and strained with fear. He seemed to see the darkness with her eyes and hear the faint, faraway, echoing dripping of water through her ears. "Hermione," she said in a whimper. "Oh God, where are you?"

"Eleven thirty-five," said a low voice behind him, McNair's he thought it was by the Scottish burr. "The operatives will have tae return soon."

"Can you see anything? Hear anything?" asked Lucius.

"She's asking where that mudblood Granger is. I think she's talking to herself, I don't hear anyone else," said Draco.

"What else?"

"Nothing-- I don't think-- wait--" Draco picked up an almost inaudible sound of footsteps. Ginny probably couldn't hear it at all through the sound of her own frightened breathing. "Someone's following her. No--" he forestalled his father's next question "-- I don't think it can be Crabbe and Goyle and Pansy; she'd hear them a kilometre off and so would I."

"Creevey," Lucius said under his breath. "It has to be Creevey. Damn. I told him not to do this-- well, perhaps he can get her, the other Parkinson girl should be with him--"

"Colin Creevey and Ivy Parkinson are our operatives?" Draco asked, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice.

"They have been for months."

"Exactly when was I to be informed of all this?"

"You've known as much as you've wanted to know, Draco."

"And precisely what is that supposed to mean?"

"What have you been doing for the past year and a half?" countered Lucius. "Where have your energies been going?"

Draco winced at his father's old trick of answering a question with a question. In this particular case, however, he couldn't come up with any sort of answer.

"You might have been helping me," Lucius Malfoy continued in a dangerously soft voice. "It took me well over a year to discover the re-animation spell I used. I went further into the study of Necromancy than any living man has ever gone. It drained my powers nearly past repair. But not quite, my son, not quite, and luckily I did have help.."

What sort of help? wondered Draco. And from who?

."Now that our cause is on the rise again, you're happy to return to the fold. But where were you before this?"

Draco could think of no answer to make to that. Should he tell his father that he'd been lying awake in the Slytherin dormitory, night after night after night? Flying his Nimbus 2002 in the cold pre-dawn hours over the Forbidden Forest, swooping and diving and half-hoping he'd damn well crash into a tree and end those endless sleepless vigils? Going through the days as if pixy-mazed, attending classes and taking notes and passing tests with some detached corner of himself, the rest frozen in a sort of suspended animation? Staring out the window of his room and filling page after page of linen parchment with drawings that didn't make much sense, twisted renditions of bird or horse or tree, or disturbing likenesses of the people around him? Towards the end of the past year, he'd been drawing increasingly hideous portraits of the other Slytherins, capturing their malice and cunning and spiritual destitution with a skill that made him deeply uneasy. He'd done only one self-portrait, which he promptly burned.

Or perhaps, Draco thought, he could simply say, I've been waiting, Father, waiting. I've been marking time, drifting through the days. And I think I'd rather die than go through that again, that waiting.

He could have been doing.

But he'd never really believed that a day like this would come.

"Why don't you admit it?" his father was asking in his chiding, disappointed tone."You'd forgotten yourself, and your duties as a Malfoy, as a von Drachen. You'd forgotten your destiny. I'm surprised you didn't simply cast in your lot with Dumbledore, Potter, and the mudbloods."

Draco raised his head. "I'd never do that," he spat.

"Maybe not." Lucius paused. "But you did forget."

Yes, he had forgotten.

Behind him, Draco sensed something very cold, no more than a breath of chill air. He knew it to be the presence of Lord Grindelwald. The Dark Lord wouldn't always apparate to the degree where Draco could see him; it was one of the things he had communicated during the link that afternoon.

But you vill always know ven I am here, the icy voice whispered in his ear, and it was Grindelwald's voice. Ah, my young apprentice, you did forget. There was more sorrow than anger in the words.

"I'm sorry," Draco murmured. "Oh, I'm sorry."

Nothing has been done, that cannot be undone.

"I don't deserve your forgiveness."

No need to humble yourself before me in such a vay. The voice was faintly amused now. I know you are not humble, my apprentice. You do not need to be.

Draco couldn't suppress a smirk at that. But even as one corner of his mouth went up, he saw his mother's eyes on him from across the circle, that great blue gaze that always seemed to hold an inexpressible sorrow. She sighed. He blinked.

"Mother? What is it?"

She shook her head and was silent, but then she was usually silent. Draco was troubled, although he could not have said why. But the dark silk hood of his mother's cloak was drawn over her bent head, and all he could see was the line of her cheek and chin. The moment had been broken somehow, and he no longer felt the link with Grindelwald, at least for now.

There must be close to twenty people down here, Draco thought. Waiting, suitcases in hand. Prepared to go... where? He had not the faintest of ideas, and curiousity was threatening to get the better of even him. But he'd be damned if he'd ask.

Ginny's feet were cold, he suddenly knew. She had no shoes on. Their tender undersides were bruised on the stones of the dungeon floor, and Draco winced when he felt her pain. She had beautiful feet; small for her height, white and rose, the skin like delicate old satin, the toes slender. He pictured himself washing her feet in a silver basin of rose-scented water, running a cloth over the perfect arch of her instep, drying them with a silk towel. Then kissing each one of those graceful toes and running his tongue along their tops, slowly taking them into his mouth, sucking on them, one by one, moving his lips up to the curve of her ankles, and then--

"Draco," said Lucius.

"What?" He recovered himself with an effort.

"You weren't listening."

"I'm listening now," said Draco, not troubling to deny it.

"I should think you'd appreciate an explanation of what's going on," his father said dryly.

He nodded, thinking that it was bloody well about time for one.

"We're Portkeying to the clock tower."

"Seems odd," said Draco noncommitally. "It's close enough to walk."

"Travelling by Portkey first lessens the spatial dislocation. It makes it easier for the human body to adjust to what comes next," said Lucius.

The clock tower... "I think I already know what comes next." Is he really telling me I'm going to have go through that again? Draco remembered the world-consuming pain almost detachedly, but his stomach was clenching into a cold knot. No, that can't be it. Because that would mean he'd have to go through it too, and Father's always been quite a bit more willing to put others through pain than to endure it himself... I should know... no, just stay calm, don't say anything, he wants to tell me, it's practically spilling out of him...

"You're mistaken there." Lucius shook his head. "You went one way. We will go another. The opposite direction, in fact. The path you travelled was quite a bit more difficult, I must admit."

"Difficult," said Draco with a sneer, "is not the word I'd use."

"It's truly regrettable, but it had to be done. You needed to be untraceable during the journey to Malfoy Manor. You can be hidden by Concealing spells once you're here, but even Portkey leaves a signature. There simply was no other way. Dumbledore himself couldn't have found you between one and ten. And for all we know, he tried."

"So how did I get here?" Draco asked flatly, suddenly tired of all the idiotic games.

Lucius smiled. "It's not a question of how," he said, "but when."

Not how, but when... oh damn him, can't he ever just come out with anything clearly and plainly...

The clock tower.

When...

We will go another, the opposite direction, in fact...

When...

It is now the year which is in Western reckoning, 1566...

When...

He looked down at the torn half of the parchment in the book in his hands. The diagrams, the cryptic words, past, present, future... the timelines... the timelines...

And the puzzle fell into place.

"It's a contained wormhole," said Draco. "A time warp." He drew a shuddering breath, and a great excitement bloomed through him like a dark and poisonous flower. "I went forward a bit, didn't I? That's how I got here. But now we're going back in time. To Istanbul. Potter and the mudblood and that lot are trying to do the same thing, aren't they? And they think they're going to get the Jewel of the Harem. But they're not. We are."

And Lucius Malfoy smiled. It was one of his rare, fleeting smiles that lit up his entire face and gave him a beauty that would have made the fallen angel Lucifer, his namesake, sick with jealousy. "Well done, my son," he said. "Well done."

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

Finding them was so much easier than Ginny had thought it would be that she was faintly surprised.

"Ow!" she heard Neville yell almost right away.

"Honestly, Neville, do watch your feet," said Hemione.

"I've never liked coming down here," Neville said faintly.

"Shhh." That was Harry; she'd recognize his voice anywhere, and she easily picked out the fourth set of footsteps as Ron's. They were all here! Had they perhaps thought that she'd taken the train on her own? No. They knew that she was being sent to St. Mungo's. Ginny knew that with a sudden, chilling sureness. They must have thought that actual aides were coming to get her; she couldn't believe that they would have known what was really going to happen, of course not. But the question still remained, why were they here?

Now they were moving more quickly, turning right, then left, then right again down the twisting corridors of the deepest dungeons. Ginny struggled to keep up. The darkness actually seemed to intensify until she could barely even see her feet by the ruby light, and her bare soles ached from scrambling along the rough stones of the floor. If she lost them now, she might not be found until the holidays were over. God, to be stuck down here for weeks on end, the darkness closing in on her, the rats creeping closer and sniffling about her, and maybe worse things than rats...

Ginny broke into an almost-run. She actually saw the retreating back of Ron's robes by the candle Hermione held in front of him. Then he vanished through a wall. The hall was empty. As Ginny stood, fighting not to break into wild tears, the footsteps following her came closer. She slipped into a broom closet and crouched on the floor, head between her knees, taking deep breaths.

Through the crack of the open door, she saw the dim outlines of two figures, each also holding a candle.

"I've lost her. These stupid dungeons," said the voice of Ivy Parkinson.

"Try a Finding spell," Colin said.

Ivy pulled out her wand and murmured some words. "Nothing. I might have known. It's too close to midnight; the tower's going to knock out any other sort of magic."

"Where d'you suppose the others are?"

"They've probably left. It's so late."

Colin reached up a hand and rubbed his face. "Damn, my nose is bleeding again."

"If you don't remember how to cast a Disanguination charm properly, that's hardly my fault."

"You don't have to be snippy about it."

"I'll be snippy if I please. The only thing we can do," said Ivy, "is to find the door ourselves. She's going to have to move then, and we'll hear her."

"Well, since we're stuck down here, no point in wasting a nice dark dungeon, is there?" Colin turned towards Ivy Parkinson and the candle in her hand. Ginny could see his smirking, lustful face clearly, a sight she could have lived and died happily without.

Ivy sighed. "Creevey, don't you ever think about anything else?"

His lips paused in their journey towards her neck. "No. Well, photography. I do try to combine the two. It helps to have a darkroom of one's own for that sort of thing."

"What, so you can capture the timeless artistic images of yourself wanking off?"

"Ivy! What about this morning?"

"Quite the most exciting two minutes of my life, I'm sure. Anyhow, I saw you with Weasley! You'd take anyone."

"I do fancy redheads," said Colin. "I'm just following Malfoy's lead in that, you know."

"Likely," said Ivy with a trace of bitterness in her voice. "He never has anything to do with them."

"You don't know that story about him and his French cousin in St. Tropez last Christmas hols, do you?" Colin's voice was very superior. "She was one, I've heard... he loves them, and hates them. Honestly, Ivy, you're better off with me--"

The sound of fumbling hands. Then a slap. "Stop it," whispered Ivy. "We've got work to do. It should be right about here."

Ivy pulled a large glass bottle from beneath her robes. She unstoppered it and shook out something across the wall; Ginny couldn't be sure in the near-total darkness, but she thought it was a glittery substance. It hung suspended in the air much longer than it should have. Then it scattered itself across the wall in a deliberate pattern. It was a door.

"I knew it," said Ivy with some satisfaction. "A good Revealing potion works every time."

"Calls for a celebration, don't you think?" Colin pushed Ivy up against the wall. "Come on, Ivy, a knee-trembler, anything, after all I've done for the cause--"

Ivy was trying to push him off her; Colin was pressing her back to the stone, and neither of them was paying much attention to anything else. Ginny wrenched herself out of the closet and ran through the shimmering door. Their yells of surprise followed her into the dungeon.

Ginny's hands were glowing slightly green from the potion that had rubbed off onto them, and she able to see everything in the room. It was small and cramped, the walls dripped with cold, mossy damp, and there was nothing at all in it except for an old bicycle tyre lying in the middle of the floor. But there was a sharp ozone smell in the air, which was still crackling faintly. Without hesitation, Ginny grabbed the tyre, praying that she'd gotten to it in time. The sudden yank behind her navel told her that she had. But just as the Portkey began to pull her away from the dungeon, she saw Colin and Ivy bursting through the wall and stretching out their hands towards it as well.

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

"Ten of twelve," said McNair. "There's nae mair time tae waste, Malfoy."

"We need those operatives back, McNair," said Lucius.

There was a shuffling of feet and a sound of indistinct murmurs as a nervous restlessness spread through the room. The plan had met a hitch.

"We'll leave without them if we must," said Lestrange in his high, nasal voice. "This is cutting it too close for my comfort as it is."

"If we leave without the Weasley girl..." muttered Lucius, breaking off in mid-sentence. He seemed to be considering something.

In the pause, the air crackled. Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson Apparated with a pop. Pansy looked furious, Goyle was red with rage, and Crabbe bore his usual resemblance to a block of uncarved wood. No-one else was with them.

"Where is Ginny Weasley?" demanded Lucius.

"We lost her," said Pansy.

"I do not take kindly to failure," Lucius said, but Draco had the odd feeling that he wasn't nearly as angry as he pretended to be. "But there's no time to talk about it now. Come and come quickly." He moved forward, towards a long white silk sheet draped over the obsidian altar. In the still-pulsing light of the rubies, it resembled a winding sheet, a shroud for the dead. The circle closed around it.

They don't have Ginny Weasley, thought Draco with a sort of incredulous fury. I should've known. Trust that lot to botch it up! Bloody hell! Why didn't they send me? I'd have had her back here, all right! He was filled with the baffled frustration he'd felt when he was ten years old and was told he couldn't go to the grand Christmas gathering of his Malfoy and Tessier cousins in the south of France because he'd had that ignominious Muggle disease, chicken pox. Draco had pouted and whined for weeks, hexing every house elf who came into his room or even walked past his door. How dare fate keep something from him that he wanted so much?

But this, of course, was worse; he was nearly seventeen, not ten, and he wanted Ginny in a way that was anything but childlike. The frustrated hunger in his body seemed to follow him all the way through the Portkey. Unbidden, it mingled with his hurtful memories of the scent of salt roses one year before in St. Tropez, and of the dark golden eyes of his cousin, Marie-France Tessier.

Desire.

J'ai envie de toi... she had whispered to him, her copper curls falling over her bare shoulders as he knelt before her and she fell back against her bed as if in a swoon.

Deception.

J'ai besoin de toi...

Betrayal.

Plus profond, plus forte, vite, vite, mon cherie, mon Draco!

And, with a great rush in his head like the roar of the sea outside her villa in the south of France, he tumbled into the Malfoy clock tower.

When Draco opened his eyes again, he was at the bottom of a twisting staircase, the air smelling of dust and old, dried wood. The dark cloaked figures ahead of him were moving steadily up the stairs.

"I was never comfortable with the idea of using her," his father muttered to Lestrange, climbing the steps directly ahead of him." Never. I certainly do realize why she was... mumble, but too many things might go wrong."

"Oh, I understand. Believe me, I do. I know what you fear." The other man's voice lowered even further and took on an unpleasantly insinuating tone, but then, Lestrange always sounded that way. "Mumble mumble... can be so... foolish, shall we say, at that age..."

"I quite agree," said Peter Pettigrew's whining voice.

"Exactly," said Lucius Malfoy. "Exactly. How good it is to find... understanding."

Draco wondered exactly what they were talking about. But then he felt long, icy fingers at his temples, and closed his eyes as a surge of energy drained out of him. I wonder what sort of effect this is having on me... well, no time to think about it now... Lord Grindelwald flickered into shape behind him. An uneasy murmur went up and down the stairs. None of them could see the Dark Lord apart from Draco, but there was no mistaking his presence in the tower.

Grindelwald asked in a silky voice. "You vould replace Ginny Veasley vith some other girl?"

"It would be simpler," said Lucius. "Ginny Weasley is an unknown quantity in so many ways; there are too many secrets surrounding her, too many mysteries that all my efforts have not been able to crack."

"You believe that Pansy Parkinson vould be better, perhaps?"

"Yes, yes!" said Lucius, sounding relieved. "She is a known quantity. We need fear nothing... unpredictable with her. With the Weasley girl, on the other hand, anything at all might happen. You know of what I speak."

Grindelwald shook his head in mock disappointment. "You do not trust me, my friend. How very disappointing that is."

"I don't mean that at all, only that-- ahhh--" Lucius suddenly stopped on the stairs, clutching at his left arm, his face grimacing as if in near-unbearable pain.

"You have already one mark from your old master," Grindelwald said softly, continuing to drift up the staircase. "You vill soon have mine-- if I believe you vorthy of it."

"I am, my lord, I am!" said Lucius. Draco thought with a faint trace of amusement that his father was starting to sound the way he always had when he used to grovel before Voldemort in the old days. "I mean, I will be, I don't doubt you, never think that--"

"Enough." Lord Grindelwald raised his hand in a sideways motion, and Lucius Malfoy staggered forward, breath hissing through his teeth. "See that you do not, my friend."

Draco caught his father's eye and smiled smugly. "The Dark Lord didn't look pleased, Father," he said in an undertone as the group crowded into the clock room at the top of the stairs. "I thought I'd keep you informed, since, of course, nobody would know apart from myself."

"Remember what I have told you, my son," Lucius replied. "The unfledged dragon should not try his wings too soon." In the near-total darkness of the clock tower, his face was impassive. Can you challenge me yet? it seemed to ask.

No... Draco thought reluctantly. Not yet. But the day will come, Father. The day will come.

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

Ginny was in a small square room with a dirt floor, and a steep spiral staircase went up into darkness before her. She could hear many footsteps clattering up the wooden stairs far ahead of her. Behind her, Colin appeared with a pop and grabbed the back of her robes. Ginny ran up the stairs as fast as she could, ignoring Ivy's hissing as she appeared as well. She stumbled up the stairs, sobbing; once her foot caught painfully on a nail and Colin came within a hairs' breadth of seizing her, but she jerked her ankle loose and his hands closed on empty air. Her thigh muscles burned and the stitch in her side was a burning brand, but she had to keep going, keep climbing. What am I going to do once I get there? she wondered.

Then suddenly Colin's hand seized her. She kept struggling forward, dragging him; Ivy was pulling at her hair and both of them were pushing her on at the same time. They had all reached the top of the stairs. There was a great clockface filling the whole of the far wall, and the clockworks attached to it were making a whirring sound before striking. Ginny elbowed Colin in the neck and he fell back.

The clock began to strike. Harry, at the head of the group, leaped directly into the clock. Ginny stifled a scream. He had vanished. On the next tolls of the great bell, Ron, Neville, and Hermione followed him.

Now Ivy was holding Ginny's robes in both her hands, and although she was small and delicate, her nails were very sharp. Ginny thrashed back and forth and managed to break free. Ahead of her, the last person was moving towards the clockface, walking with a limp, and she saw the nimbus of grizzled hair about his head. It was Professor Moody. Then he, too, was gone, on the tenth stroke of the clock.

Colin's hands were on her again as Ginny desperately tried to go forward. He was holding her back by pulling on all the loose material in her robes. She could hear the beginning of the eleventh toll of the clock.

"No! No!" she shrieked. "Let go of me, let--" There was an enormous ripping noise from behind her, and suddenly she was free. Ginny ran forward as fast as she could. The clockface shimmered. The sound of the eleventh toll was beginning to die away. There was no time to think. She launched herself into the air. Behind her, in a last, frantic backwards glance, she saw Colin Creevey, holding her robes in his hands and staring at her with a crestfallen look on his face.

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

The tower clock at Malfoy Manor had begun to toll. With each of its basso profundo strokes, another group of cloaked Death Eaters went through the clockface. Some, like McNair, Lestrange, and Notte, wore their uneasy, swaggering bravado like a not-too-convincing disguise, their faces tense with the fear they really felt at walking into the unknown. Some, like Pettigrew, Crabbe, and Goyle, were quivering visibly. Some, like Narcissa Malfoy, seemed to show no emotion at all. Pansy followed the blonde woman, biting her lip and casting glances back at Draco. And some were cloaked so heavily that he couldn't yet tell who they were.

"Have they gone through at Hogwarts yet?" Lucius asked his son in an urgent voice as the clock struck seven.

"I don't know. I can't tell what Potter and the rest are doing. Only her," Draco replied.

Then Lucius rushed forward and he was gone too. But Draco still stood, the presence of Lord Grindelwald behind him, somehow knowing that he couldn't leave until Ginny did. The clock struck ten. What in hell was keeping her? He could still feel the bond between him and her like a thin silver thread. Stretching. Stretching. And then, with a lurch, she was through, and he no longer felt her.

In the space of a heartbeat, Draco knew that he couldn't have been sure he actually would go through with this, not with the memory of the inhuman pain he had felt the last time so fresh in his mind. But Ginny had gone, and where she went, he would go; where she fled, he would pursue. The clock struck twelve. The sound began to die away. And in that moment, he moved forward and followed her through the worlds.

A/N: Pansy's English words are basically a translation of the Turkish ones. Why does Pansy know a Turkish spell, you ask? Ahhhh..... all will be made clear...

When Ginny is tapped on the second floor and she asks who it is, the Bloody Baron replies "I am Lukas von Drachen." He then asks her if the fate of man will repeat itself , again and yet again, and tells her, as he told Draco, to go to the doom appointed for her. Nothing like German for expressing the angst-ridden. ;)

So the journey's begun, thank God! Glad that's done; this was a hard chapter to write and it got revised about 8,000,000 times. Now things will just get more and more interesting... ;) Next stop: 16th century Scotland. And don't worry, we'll be getting Draco and Ginny back together in the next chapter! But maybe not the way you think. Draco remembers his cousin Marie-France saying to him, I want you, I need you, deeper, harder, faster. Gee, what could she be talking about? Snerk. But why does she look like Ginny? Mwah ha ha. I am so evil sometimes...