After the Fog

Had it not been for the incessant drip, drip, dripping on her arm, Ginny probably would have slept for days. Between the time when her mind cleared enough for her to realise she had been irritated awake and her actually opening her eyes and accepting that fact, a series of things occurred to her. She was obviously not in her soft, warm bed at The Burrow. Cold seeped all the way down to her bones and uneven stone dug into her back, causing her to fight down the urge to cry out. Silence surrounded her, eerie silence that was almost tangible, only broken by the pounding of her heart in her ears.

Too afraid of what she might find, Ginny kept her eyes squeezed shut and tried to convince herself she was dreaming. Knowing it wasn't true, accepting that the clarity of her mind and sharp pain pulsing all over her body proved that she was indeed awake, she bit her lip and tried to remember. Nothing came except for a scary black fog that forced her to reach down deeper into the depths of her memory, frantically searching for something, anything, that would ease her fear enough so that she could open her eyes.

Nothing. Not the usual kind of nothing, where you know it's there but just can't call it forth at that particular moment. Not the type of forgetfulness that comes during the OWL exams, when your mind is racing too fast to recall who wrote the Werewolf Employment Clause of 1872. It's still there, somewhere buried under the steps for making a perfect Invigoration Draught and the wand movements for levitation.

This was different. It was horrible. When Ginny went further into herself, she found only the thick black fog; as if someone had taken her memories and spilled ink all over them. Suddenly, as she was trying to clear the fog away, concentrating so hard that her lip was bleeding from the overzealous attention it was receiving from her teeth, one word erupted in her mind.

"Obliviate!" Ginny's eyes flew open as she jerked up from her prone position. Her fear had momentarily been replaced by a burning anger. She hated memory charms, even if she understood the necessity of them in some cases, and finding out that the fog in her brain had been purposely put there didn't warm her to them. She wondered briefly why the hex stood out while nothing else did, but pushed it aside. As she stewed in her own anger, she finally allowed her eyes to focus.

She was surrounded by stone. Ugly, marred stone that seemed to pulse with life. Rivulets of water were dripping silently from the ceiling and disappearing into the stones at her feet. She had only a second to dwell on the fact that the stone beneath her appeared to be hungrily absorbing the water before something caught her eye. Ornate carvings of serpents slithered up the corner of the wall to meet with the transformed werewolves, vampires, Thestrals, and other dark creatures that dwelled along the perimeter of the ceiling and seemed to come alive when Ginny looked at them.

With a shudder, she turned her eyes away and almost moaned in relief. She was not completely surrounded. The wall behind her was non-existent. Even though she was not locked in this stone cell, she was not stupid enough to think she was free. Whoever had obliterated her memory had done it for a reason and wherever she was, she wasn't going to get out just by standing up and walking away.

She knew better than to jump up and run off, probably right into whomever had put her here. Curling her legs under her ripped robes and pulling her hair out of her face, she thought back. Her eyes went out of focus as she tried to recall the last time she had been awake.

It had been just over two months since the school year had ended and everyone was waiting for Harry to arrive. Molly had ordered the garden degnomed, every closet and dark crook was to be checked for lurking boggarts, and Fred and George's empty room was being cleared of boxes and any ‘funny looking gadgets or sweets.'

"That poor boy," Molly had sniffed while handing Ginny a shuddering jar that looked as if it were about to explode. "He doesn't need to leave that...that place just to come here and pick up the wrong end of a, oh, drat. What are they called Ron, dear? The ones that shoot off bubbles that smell like your brother's old Quidditch trainers when they pop? Anyway, not that a little laughter wouldn't do him some good. Nothing but loss in his young life. You know, it's just so unfair that you all only got to know Albus Dumbledore for such a short time. Such a great wizard. I remember this one time in fourth year Transfiguration when..."

Ginny had tuned her mother out. Not that she didn't miss Dumbledore or mourn his death; it just felt wrong to be speaking of him as if he were gone forever. The logical portion of her brain knew he was, but it was just too soon and too painful to acknowledge it. Having finished her portion of the room, Ginny gestured to Ron that she was leaving and raced down the uneven steps to the kitchen. Grabbing a handful of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and slipping on her sandals, she walked outside and sought a place to think. It was still light enough outside to go into the forest behind the house, so after a quick glance behind her to make sure no one saw where she was headed, she dropped the beans into her pocket and dashed into the cover of the trees.

Harry was coming. He would be Apparating into the front garden that night at precisely 6 o'clock. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't believe it. It really hadn't been that long since she had seen him, but it felt like forever. She hated him a little bit and hated herself even more for thinking that way. Why couldn't he be a normal seventeen-year-old boy with stupid and selfish reasons for leaving her? At least then she could throw things and spend long nights hexing his picture without feeling like a prat.

Oh, she had acted the understanding girlfriend. She had actually been the understanding girlfriend, up until the point where he was actually gone and her brain got to work. Damn him. Damn him for being Harry Bloody Potter. The Boy Who Lived. The Boy Who Would Always Put Others Over Himself Because He Was So Bloody Noble. She threw a green bean as hard as she could up against a tree, distantly hoping it wasn't one of the highly rare--and normally flavoured--pear ones.

"Pity. I always did fancy the broccoli flavoured beans." She whipped around and that's when the fog appeared. Except for the one shouted curse that seemed to flare up out of the blackness, she could remember nothing else. Scowling, Ginny wished she had a whole bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans to throw. Not to mention someone to throw them at.

Exhaling with a dramatic sigh, she pushed herself into a standing position and immediately had to brace the wall for support. With a string of swears that would make her mother turn purple, she gingerly prodded her temple and felt an impressive bump. After taking a moment to let the dizziness clear, she purposely put one foot in front of the other and walked toward the open wall.

A second before she was almost into the corridor, she stopped suddenly and peered at the space. Why would someone put forth the effort to throw her into a room that was freezing cold and smelled of rotten pudding if not to tickle her claustrophobia along with her senses? If she were meant to go wandering about, why the ghastly accommodations? Scrunching up her features in thought, she considered her options. She could be dealing with an idiotic kidnapper who simply forgot to lock her in, but she doubted it. She didn't want to walk right through an invisible splinching ward and find half of herself in and the other half out. If only there were a way to test it.

Ginny squinted her eyes and tried to focus on the clear space running perpendicular to the walls and forcefully blew out a breath. She didn't notice if anything happened because at that moment, she realised exactly what was on the other side of the possibly invisible barrier.

Directly across from her, beyond the broad corridor, was another cell, identical to her own. She had noticed it before, but only now that she was standing as close as she dared to the end of her own cell did she see the huddled figure. "Hello?" The huddle didn't move an inch. "HELLO? Can you hear me?" Still no response. Worrying her lower lip between her teeth, she wondered if this person was even still alive.

Ginny looked down at her hands. Her mother had always told her they were artist's hands--long fingers with short, even nails. "Ginevra, my dear, the things you will be able to do with a wand!" She considered her options. It was not in her nature to not help someone who could possibly be in pain. She couldn't leave the huddled figure there without at least trying to make sure they were okay. On the other hand, what good would she be if she walked through and suffered some horrific injury? Her hands were her only option, so far as she could tell.

Kissing the palm of her left hand as if wishing it good luck--after all, no sane witch or wizard would put their wand hand in harm--she tentatively stretched out her arm. Unable to force her fingers through the space with her eyes open, she squeezed them shut and reached blindly forward.

Pain like nothing she'd ever felt enveloped her. She tried to scream but all that came out was an ugly, high-pitched moan. Jerking her eyes open, she stared in disbelief at the fingers lying twitching on the other side of the invisible barrier. There was no blood, but it couldn't be denied that she had stupidly plunged right into a splinching ward. She stared quietly at her fingers, which she had grown quite attached to in the last 16 years, before letting out a huge sob and crumpling to the floor.

Although the searing pain had subsided somewhat, huge tears rolled down her cheeks and fell onto the stone floor. An enormous feeling of loss overcame her, so heavy that it was almost ridiculous. "Get a g-g-grip on yourself, Ginny," she wailed. No matter how much she happened to like her fingers, they were, after all, only fingers. She felt out of control, like she was slipping into the great bottomless pit featured in the previous year's Wurster's Wizard World Records.

"Stop it!" Ginny's head jerked up at the hissed words. She concentrated all of her thought on the voice, but tears had started pooling on the floor, as if there was too much even for the parched stone. Ginny gawked at the puddles and touched her face with her uninjured hand. Tears were pouring out of her eyes at an alarming rate and she could barely push her fingers through to the skin underneath.

"I c-c-can't! I've been sp-splinched! And now I'm going to drown in my own s-sodding tears!" The thought that she sounded ridiculous niggled at the back of her mind, but the overwhelming emotional pain pushed it back until it had disappeared.

"You haven't been splinched. Well," the voice gave a harsh little laugh, "I suppose you have. But there's a spirit-breaking ward integrated into the splinch ward. You need to try and stop crying or else your spirit will drown."

"I can't stop! It just won't stop. Tell me h-how!" Ginny cried harder as the voice faded in and out. She could no longer see clearly and her body was giving bone-rattling shudders. She felt as if something was trying to rip its way out of her chest.

"Shut up and listen to me. You have about ten minutes before you become a shell. A body with nothing inside." At this, Ginny seemed to let the second dam burst. Her robes were soaked and she pulled in more and more water with each breath she took. "A disgustingly dry body, at that. I want you to take your unaffected hand and feel for your fingers on your left hand."

"But I don't have any fin--"

"Just do it! Feel where your fingers should be," the voice snapped. Ginny felt for her left hand, which was laying as if dead next to her body. She tentatively touched the end of the stubs on her hand before tracing where her fingers used to be. "Good, now picture your fingers there. Recall what they looked like. Listen to me; this is all technically in your head. Remember that."

Ginny did as she was told, but picturing her fingers filled her with such anguish that she almost bit through her lip. Concentrating with all of her will power, she tried again to squash the grief that was threatening to explode right out of her head. She remembered her fourth finger, where she had, at the age of eleven, magically drawn a gold engagement ring with an emerald the color of Harry's eyes in the center. The middle finger that she so loved to flaunt, much to the dismay of her mother, came in to view next, followed by the pointer finger that often twirled her flaming red curls while she studied.

The pain receded just a fraction and Ginny gasped in pleasure, accidentally sucking in a mouthful of tears and sputtering. She imagined her hand as it held Arnold the Pygmy Puff or absently picked at the fringe on one of her mum's awful homemade pillows. With each new vision, the tears slowed until they had retreated to a somewhat manageable flow and Ginny was left hiccoughing weakly.

She attempted wiping her face with the sleeve of her robe, but it was useless: she was soaked through. When the tears stopped completely, she forced herself to look down at her hand. As if the past torturous minutes had never happened, her fingers were back in place and fully functioning. "Oh, thank Merlin." She was shocked to hear her voice come out in a croak. She looked around and cringed at the site of the flooded floor. She was by no means an expert, but she was pretty sure that she should have shriveled up into a prune or something of the sort after letting go of that much water.

Before she had the chance to voice this concern aloud, she felt a tingling where her legs touched the ground and inhaled sharply as she watched the water begin to flow back in to her body. "Blimey," she breathed. She took a moment to gather herself before looking up. After she did, she wished she had taken a bit more time.

"Malfoy?"

*****

Harry hated Apparition. It felt worse than the forceful tugging of Portkey travel and the dangers were ridiculous. One's mind must be free of everything but the destination, and if there was one thing Harry was completely useless at, it was clearing his mind. He briefly entertained the idea of a Pensieve, before his thoughts turned to Dumbledore and he quickly shut them off.

"What do you think you're doing, boy?" Vernon Dursley was out the door in a minute, eyeing Harry's wand with displeasure. "Put that thing away," he whispered almost hysterically. "What are you playing at?"

Harry hid a smile and raised his want toward his uncle's chest. The man goggled for a minute before snorting. "You can't use that thing. I know better."

"As I've told you almost every day since I came back, I am not going back to school, so it doesn't matter. I'd think you'd have marked today off on your calendar as it's the last time you'll have to ever see me."

"Bollocks. Where are your things?" Vernon continued to eye the wand that was poking him in the chest warily.

"Sent them ahead." Harry paused for a minute, hating the fact that he couldn't be ungrateful, even though he hated number four Privet Drive and everyone dwelling there even more. "Er, thank you for letting me come back here once a year. I'm not sure I'll see any of you again, so I just wanted to...yeah, thanks." With that, he dropped his wand and went back to his perusal of the previous day's Dailey Prophet. He distantly heard his Uncle stomping away, but his attention was already back on the newspaper.

Harry knew his uncle didn't believe for a second that they were rid of him. "Too good to be true," he had heard Vernon mumbling on occasion since he'd been back. Harry almost felt the same way. Had it been up to him, he would have left the Dursleys long ago.

Harry turned the page, finding himself uninterested in the article about a mass thievery of Muggle dishwashing soap, and his mouth dropped at what he saw.

MALFOY HEIR STILL MISSING

After a month of searching, Draco Malfoy--son of proven Death Eater Lucius Malfoy, heir of the considerable Malfoy fortune, and seventh year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry--is still missing. No leads have proven fruitful in the attempt to locate the lost child and Narcissa Malfoy is crying foul play.

"The current Minister is not putting forth much of an effort in locating my son," she says to reporter Daniel Warbuck Jr. "I can only surmise that the past dealings of my husband are inhibiting the search."

Harry tore his eyes from the article and concentrated on the black, white, and sneering image of Draco. Harry couldn't believe what he was reading. Draco Malfoy wasn't missing. He was hiding. Voldemort was probably taking extremely good care of the person who made the death of Albus Dumbledore possible. Harry laughed bitterly. Yes, wherever Draco Malfoy was, Harry didn't think Narcissa need worry over his well-being.

Harry squelched the urge to throw the paper down. All he needed was for a Muggle to unknowingly pick it up and have a heart attack over the moving pictures. He did content himself with ripping it up and savagely stuffing it into the pocket of his overly large jeans, though. Checking his watch, he prepared himself for the most unpleasant act of Apparating and closed his eyes.

*****

"Mum, don't worry. I'm sure she just lost track of time." Charlie Weasley patted his mother soothingly on the back and cursed his sister. She knew better than to take off without letting anyone know where she was, especially with the recent reports of missing underage witches and wizards, mass Muggle murders, and the bombing of Hogsmeade. The clock on the wall had recently acquired the annoying habit of placing all nine Weasleys under ‘Mortal Peril,' regardless of what they were doing, and this didn't ease Molly's mind.

"Do not placate me, Charles. I haven't seen her for four hours, as you well know. Ron saw no trace of her in the woods and she knows better than to go into town without permission, so I doubt Fred and George will come up with anything." Molly continued pacing around the kitchen, absently stirring soup and flying plates onto the large, misshapen table. "Someone took her, Charlie, I just know it. Where is your blasted father? I owled him over an hour ago!"

Before Charlie could open his mouth to reply, a flurry of noise erupted by the front door. He followed his mother out of the kitchen and would have laughed at the scene had it been any other night.

"Oi, Harry, geroff!" Ron's face was red from trying to wiggle out from underneath a stunned Harry. "Are you mad? You were supposed to Apparate to the front garden!"

With a worried look on her face, Mrs. Weasley ran over to help Harry up, tutting the whole time. "Oh, Harry, good thing Ron was there! Had the door been closed, you would have surely splinched yourself! You must be more careful."

"Yeah, good thing I was there," Ron muttered grumpily from the floor. After a minute, he seemed to realise that no one was going to help him, so he pulled his long frame up off the floor and glared at Harry. "Bloody hell, Harry! What were you doing? You almost broke my--"

In the middle of his sentence, Ron seemed to disappear as the twins rushed through the door and began fighting for a turn to talk.

"Asked old Phillibus if he'd seen her walk through town," George rushed out.

"Man's denser than a broomstick, but always has one eye out the window," Fred finished.

"Didn't see her pass through, but--"

"--that pretty Muggle woman has been hanging about all day, so who really knows."

"Showed her picture to that, what're they called?"

"Pollus Men. We asked the Pollus man, but he said he hasn't seen her."

The twins continued recounting the events of their excursion into town for the next few minutes, but Charlie knew before they finished that they had come up with nothing. He watched as the hopeful light in his mother's eyes got dimmer and resisted the urge to punch the wall.

Only then did he truly notice Harry. The boy had turned white and his eyes had become impossibly wide. He closed his mouth with an audible click and cleared his throat when he noticed Charlie staring at him.

"It's Ginny, isn't it?" Harry stared pleadingly at Charlie, as if begging him to say that it wasn't true. Charlie gave a small nod and looked away. Harry continued to gape as the people around him seemed to realise that he was there.

Ron got up off the floor, where he had been trampled by Fred and George, and awkwardly patted Harry's shoulder. "Walked out a few hours ago, mate. We were fixing up your room and she just left. Can't find her anywhere."

Mrs. Weasley let out a small sob and covered her face with her hands. Harry continued to pale, but there was something fierce behind his eyes as his hands fisted at his sides. "Voldemort's got her. I know it." Another cry escaped from behind Molly's hands and Harry seemed to realise he'd spoken aloud. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Weasley. It may not be true. We'll keep looking for her, I promise."

Harry set his jaw and magically floated his trunk up the stairs to the twins' old bedroom. With an imperceptible jerk of his head, he walked out the door, closely followed by Ron.

After consoling his mother and promising to stop by the Ministry to make sure Arthur was on his way home, Charlie followed, praying to anyone that would listen that Harry was wrong.

*****

A/N: The title of this chapter comes from the lyrics for Waiting for the Night by Depeche Mode.

Original books/spells/creatures:
Wurster's Wizard World Records:
Author(s): Warren William Wurster III
Genre: Non-fiction, compilation
Summary: Warren William Wurster III is world renowned for his book of records. Wurster travels the world in search of strange and exciting phenomena and compiles them yearly. He will be celebrating his 110th birthday in Peru, at the site of the largest pewter cauldron ever built, this November