The Red Skies Above

Chapter X

The Ginny of the age of twenty-four looked at me with a gleam in her eye. Ginny was the Princess.

Voldemort still knelt on the ground, but upon his face was a gape that he couldn't rid himself of. Clearly the fact that the Princess, the one he, the Snake had looked up to was a Weasley wasn't pleasing him.

Malfoy, who knew what Ginny looked like in her sixth year quite well, was apparently torn between admiration of the fact that she had risen to this much power and the hatred of all of the Weasleys. In a few moments he had made up his mind and getting to his feet, he grabbed his wand that was still suspended in mid air and turned to Ginny. He jabbed his wand in her direction, and a purple spell shot at her, aimed for her heart.

Even though the spell caught her off guard, Ginny raised her left hand in front of her, palm facing Malfoy. The purple spell hit, but didn't penetrate a sort of invisible shield that had just appeared around her. As she turned to face Malfoy, she raised her other arm, pointing her index finger at Malfoy. Suddenly, he flew back about twenty feet and into a tree.

Voldemort continued to gape as Ginny started towards Malfoy. Without thinking, I raised my wand and yelled, "Stupefy!" Even though she had been caught off guard once more, Ginny raised the invisible shield, making my spell bounce off. "As long as you're the Princess, Ginny, I'll never fight beside you!"

"That's a shame," Ginny replied. "Because you'll have to." She raised her hand, and my wand flew from my grasp to land point down in the ground about thirty feet from me. "Wands are of no use to those who don't need them, Leader. Let it be a battle of other magics."

With that, she raised her hands again, and I felt myself lift off the ground. I flailed my arms, trying to get down, when a small rock struck me hard on the side of the head. Ginny was levitating objects and sending them at me. A stick managed to rap me brutally around the middle as I tried to think up a solution. What I needed was a shield like Ginny's to repel her attacks. I needed something to protect me. As I thought this, a black bubble appeared around me quite like Ginny's, and the objects began to bounce off of it.

Ginny looked slightly taken aback as I filled my mind with as many thoughts of reaching the ground as I could. Eventually, I felt my feet set upon the ground, and I turned to face Ginny just in time to see her tear a tree from the soil and send it hurtling at me.

The tree made contact and broke the bubble around me. Although the shield took most of the damage, the force of the blow sent me sprawling to the ground. As soon as I was down, Ginny had sprung upon me. Lifting my left arm in front of me, I made a gesture as though I was picking something up, and thought hard of levitation. As Ginny struck, I floated above her head and looked around for a weapon. From that height, it was impossible to find my wand. I'd have to use something else.

Ginny clamped her hands to her sides, and joined me in the air. Her hands glowed with red flame, and as she mimicked punching me, I felt a searing pain come across me as I was thrown from the air.

I slowly got up, lifting an invisible something in the air. To my surprise, a rock lifted from the ground about the size of a boulder and hovered about three feet in the air. Using both hands, I pantomimed pushing, and the boulder hurtled itself at Ginny. She put her hands in front of her, and the flame still issuing from them cut through the rock.

Immediately, she threw flame at me, and I quickly raised my bubble again. Still inside, I tried to fire a rock at her again, but it wouldn't go through the shield. I quickly lowered it and fired. Ginny raised both of her hands above her head and a bubble of flame enveloped her, which my rock couldn't penetrate.

I hastily thought of flame erupting from my hands and looked down to see nothing. Ginny had lowered her shield now, and was hurtling fire at me. I retreated to the air, hoping that she couldn't reach me there from her current position. I was quite wrong and had to keep dodging her attacks. Finally, she hit her target, and I fell to the ground, an unbelievable pain spreading through me. I hit the ground and bounced, landing a few feet away from Ginny.

"Leader, will you not join us? You will have to in the end. Why make this hard?" Ginny asked, standing above me, her flaming hands on her hips. They seemed to not hurt her.

I gave her my worst look and said, "Never." Quickly and painfully, I got to my feet and lifted both of my hands this time. Immediately, I raised higher and higher, rocks larger than my head following in my wake. The rocks began to spin around me, some of them going horizontally, some going vertically. They spun faster and faster until they began to glow black, seeming to be just one blur.

A light surrounded me so that I could only slightly see Ginny and the rest of the graveyard. She looked slightly awed as I began to hurtle rocks at her. Once they attempted to hit her, they returned to the swirling mass. She dodged them easily until they began heading at her three at a time.

After she narrowly avoided one again, the rocks all floated to around my head in a huge circle. The ball of black light around me exploded, sending beams of light everywhere. Everything went white and I feared for a moment I was going to go blind. The light slowly faded, and I sank to the ground, where I stumbled and fell.

The trees in the cemetery had all been snapped in half, and Voldemort and Ginny were thrown against the wall surrounding the graveyard. Voldemort's armor was pierced, and Ginny's garments were slightly burned. The gravestones were scattered all around, and it occurred to me that they had been like tally marks as to how many people had been killed by Voldemort. The ground around me had scorch marks in the shape of a huge circle, and some of the grass was still burning feebly. Suddenly, I was over whelmed with tiredness, and fell asleep on the spot.

*~*~*~*

I opened my eyes, only to have a rain droplet fall into them. Blinking to clear my vision, I gazed around me. Ginny and Voldemort were still unconscious, slumped against the wall. My body throbbed horribly whenever I breathed, and I had a horrible headache.

Getting to my feet, I swayed and fell. I got up again and proceeded to stay up and headed toward Ginny. There was a stream of blood on her face, running across her right eyelid, her lip was cut, and her hand was pretty badly slashed. Feeling immensely guilty, I brushed a stray piece of her hair behind her ear, and adjusted her lopsided tiara.

Tearing off a strip of my robes, I bandaged Ginny's hand as best as I could. She needed help from a real Healer.

I looked up to search for my wand, to see it being held at my eye level. "Thanks, Mal-" I began, only to see who it was. The sixteen-year-old Ginny was standing before me, a little worse for the wear, but not badly hurt.

"I believe this is yours."

Standing up, I wrapped her in an embrace. She patted me on the back. "How'd you know to come here?" I asked.

"Malfoy ran up to me and started saying something about a Princess, and then he said you were in trouble, and told me where you were. I Apparated here," Ginny replied. "What hap-"

I cut her off. "Ginny, don't ask me what happened here. I want you to live how you should. You need to be strong."

Ginny pushed me back so that I was arms length from here, her hands on my shoulders, inspecting me closely. "You're not my Ron, are you?"

"Ginny, you wouldn't believe me if I told you." A smile crept across my face. "Ask me in eight years."

She nodded and helped me pick up the Princess. I quickly put up her hood so that Ginny couldn't see her face. "Who's this?" Ginny asked.

"Again, you wouldn't believe me even if I told you. Now, I need your help to apparate you, her, and me." She tossed me my wand, and with our combined strength, we apparated to Saint Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

A Healer immediately rushed towards us, eyes on the white clad figure in between Ginny and me. "What happened here?" The Healer asked.

"Don't ask. Just listen. This is a very important person. It's mandatory that she be healed. Once she's restored to full health, allow her to go where she wants. No truth spells or potions. Oh, and give her back these clothes. They're very special to her." With that, I grabbed Ginny's hand, and we Apparated outside of Hogwarts' grounds.

As Ginny and sprinted through the gates, I shouted at her, "Where's Harry, Hermione, and Luna?" A horrible stitch started in my chest, but I paid it no mind and ran on.

"They took care of the Dementors and they said they'd meet you at the Astronomy Tower. They're fine, or at least they're better than you are," Ginny shouted back.

We had reached the Entrance hall, but there was no door to go through. Ginny and I ran through the corridors, and up to the Astronomy Tower. We ran up the whole tower and burst through the door leading to the outside.

There were Harry, Hermione, and Luna, all a bit more injured than when I had seen them last, but in good shape. As I burst through the door, Hermione looked up and scream. "What?" I asked, a bit defensively.

She moved over to me wordlessly and grabbed my left arm, which had blood dripping from it. My entire forearm was decorated with crisscrossing cuts, starting at my middle finger and ending at my elbow. I tore another strip from my robes and wrapped it around my arm; they were nearly destroyed anyway. The left sleeve, and half of my right was gone, and the bottom of my cloak was so torn up it was much higher than it had been before.

Luna, who had looked up from tending Harry's cut when Hermione had screamed, saw the state I was in and ran over to me, throwing her arms around me in a huge hug. "You look horrible, and those will scar!"

"Gee, thanks," I said sarcastically. "Er, Hermione, can I talk to you?"

Oh, sure, Ron," said Hermione, following me through the door and down half of the stairs to a door that looked extremely old and dusty, except for one handprint near the handle.

"Knock, knock, Ron and Hermione. You've got to face the world again."

The door opened a crack, and then all the way. The younger Hermione saw me and mouthed like a goldfish. Ron stared at me and managed to say, "What'd you do?"

I laughed. "Long story, mate. The most important thing, though, is that you need to assume our appearances." I took off my shirt and handed it to Ron. "Oh, and by the way, we'll need to give you these scars, seeing as the others have already seen them. Don't worry, it won't hurt as much as it did to get them."

*~*~*~*

A half an hour later, I was back in the odd black velvet robes I had worn to Diagon Alley, and in my twenty-five-year-old body again. Hermione was in her green satin robes, and older as well, and our younger versions had assumed our appearances.

"Now, Ron, do me a favor and keep those scars there, okay?" I asked him after explaining briefly what had happened. I had "forgotten" to mention the Princess thing.

"No problem, er, Ron," he said awkwardly.

Hermione walked over to me, the rucksack on her back. "Are you ready to go back, Ron?"

I took one last look around, taking in the school that I had missed for so long. "Yes, I think we'd better."

Hermione grabbed the golden chain around her neck and extracted the Time Turner. She took off the chain and said to me, "I want you to keep it. You did most of the work."

I smiled at her. "Thanks." Lifting the chain, I placed it around both of our heads, turning it eight times, and flipping the lever. The world went into hyper speed, and I saw Ron waving at me, as the walls in Hogwarts aged, and various children walked through them.

*~*~*~*

I sat up in my bed, and turned to look out the window. The sun was about halfway above the ground, and my watch told me it was nine-o'-six. There was a knock on my door and I yelled, "Just a minute," stumbling out of bed and pulling on some jeans. I opened the door.

Standing before me, dressed in an aqua and maroon plaid sundress was Luna Lovegood. She stood on tiptoe and gave me a kiss. "Why, hello there, Ron. It's around nine, and I thought you'd want to get up. I've been downstairs helping your mum with breakfast. Hurry down. We're having haggis!" With that she went down the stairs.

Laughing a bit to myself, I reached absent-mindedly into my pocket with my scarred hand and felt a piece of parchment. Slowly taking it from the folds of my jeans, I unfolded it, fearing what I'd see.

It was blank.

Heaving a deep sigh of relief, I grabbed a shirt from my drawer and put it on, and headed out of my room. I was about to go down the stairs when the sight of red hair coming up caught my attention.

Up came Ginny, dressed in a white mini skirt and a blue poncho. When she saw me, she froze, watching me carefully. I paid her little mind and walked down the stairs to the kitchen, but I swore I heard her say something as I passed.

"The Princess has been defeated, Leader."