When Worlds Collide

Chapter 8 - A World of Change

Ginny still wasn't talking to her brothers, on account of their determination to leave her out of any rescue plans. Although her own resolve to find a way to help was strong, she still found herself often feeling at a loss - much of her time in the Gryffindor Common Room was spent brooding in an armchair by the fire, and in class it had been noticed that she was generally more absent-minded than usual. Professor Snape had noticed her vacant expression during a lesson, so had given her the added task of writing a 3-foot long essay on the properties of the Revelare Potion. It was this that had brought her to the library later that afternoon. Snape had droned on for what seemed like days about the actions, ingredients and precautions of this potion that revealed marks...or something like that...Ginny couldn't remember. Showed a traitor? Ginny had surmised that it was some sort of magical tracking collar on whoever took the potion.

The sight of such a number of books spread before her, yet little written on the parchment, caused her to groan softly as she despairingly propped her elbows on the tabletop of the cubicle and laid her face in her hands.

"Well, you sound pretty confident about it," came a low tone from on the other side of the cubicle.

"Of course I'm confident," came the equally muted reply, and Ginny recognised the voice as belonging to James Forscythe, the Slytherin Seeker. She strained to hear the conversation that was sounding decidedly suspicious. "I know that You-Know-Who has some plan."

"And your father's confident in this, too?"

"He's still a little sore over You-Know-Who killing my uncle, but I'm sure he believes it too. He wouldn't dare do otherwise."

Ginny concluded that the discussion was between the sons of two Death Eater families, and held her breath in hopes of hearing something that may give a clue as to where Harry was, or what Voldemort was going to do.

"So what's his plan?" James' companion said, still in a quiet whisper. "My father says he's not telling anybody. So how do you know?"

"Well," James whispered back, "I don't know exactly, but-" he stopped as he heard a small sound from across the room, but deciding it to be too far away for someone to be in earshot, he continued, "but You-Know-Who's confident in whatever he's done - he believes it will bring Harry to him."

There was a small gasp, and Ginny hoped that it hadn't inadvertently come from herself. Apparently not, as James' companion sounded suitably stunned as he responded, "But I heard there's a Concealment Charm in place - You-Know-Who shouldn't be able to know where Harry is, so how could he put a spell on him?"

James sounded puzzled as he admitted, "I don't know. Maybe he hasn't. But he has a plan, and whatever it is, he's started it. And judging by his mood in the past day, it's working."

The gasp came again, but this time Ginny was certain it wasn't from her - she was too frozen in shock to make a sound.

"Shh!" James reprimanded his friend in a harsh whisper. "Don't be so loud - we shouldn't be talking about this here anyway! Let's go, and I'll meet you in the Common Room later."

There was shuffling as the students moved away from their seats and headed back across the library. Ginny saw from their retreating backs that it was indeed James who had been one of the speakers, and the other was some Slytherin student she didn't recall seeing before.

She tried to get back into writing her essay for Snape, but after several minutes concluded that she couldn't possibly concentrate on it after she'd just heard that snippet of conversation. Voldemort didn't have Harry! This news brought her joy lasting only as long as it took her to realise that apparently it seemed he had found a way to get him. In panic, she hurriedly packed up her things - she could finish the essay later, she reasoned. After all, Snape had given her until the following Friday to hand it in. She briskly left the library with her immediate destination in mind - the large gargoyle statue to the Headmaster's office.

~<>~

"That was really interesting," Hermione exclaimed. "I'm really glad we were able to see the feeding of the creatures in that big central tank."

Ron shuddered a little. Evidently sharks didn't make him feel any more secure than spiders did. And watching them savagely eat the particles rationed to them hadn't done much to reassure him.

Trina smiled in amusement at Ron before looking up. "Thanks, have a good afternoon," she said to the woman behind the desk as they walked past.

The group of four walked back out of the Aquarium and into the sun. It had sufficiently warmed the air by now, and Ron basked in the shark-free warmth before enquiring, "Where's Tony?"

Trina glanced over the knee-high log fence and down the beach, to see that Tony had indeed gone. "Maybe she went into town," she suggested. She withdrew her cellphone from her green carry bag and soon it was emitting a copious amount of short beeps as she pressed the front of it.

"What are you doing?" Ron asked.

"I was going to call her," Trina explained, "but it's Saturday so it would be more expensive. I'm Text Messaging her instead."

This made no sense to Ron, but he didn't pursue the topic. He only looked with a confused expression to Harry, who was smiling a little at his naivety.

The phone made a melodious bleep as the text message was sent, and Trina looked up in thought. "I don't know how long it will take for her to get back to us," she said, "so what shall we do in the meantime?"

"Can we just sit?" Ron moaned.

"Not a bad idea, really," Trina concurred. "We'll just sit on the beach until Tony - and presumably Draco is with her - gets back. Let's go."

With that said, the youths walked down amongst the stone and driftwood until they found a comfortable looking spot to sit, about halfway down the beach.

"Beaches are better when they have sand," Ron piped up with his opinion. "You can't make sandcast- I mean, cool stuff, out of stones and shingle."

"We have a sand beach too - 'Ocean Beach'," Trina justified, and Harry grinned at the name. "Yeah, I know - real imaginative," Trina said sarcastically. "Surfers go there, because sometimes there are big waves there that don't come to this coastline." In the following silence, she picked up a smooth round stone and tossed it gently up in the air a couple of times before throwing it away.

The silence stretched on indefinitely. Whether it was because no one could think of something to say, or whether they were preoccupied thinking about things was anyone's guess. Maybe it was both.

Trina was the first to voice a thought. "Are you and Draco going to be in a constant spat for as long as we stick together?" she asked. The Gryffindor three all looked at her, and then at each other, unsure of how to respond. "Coz that will really make things difficult," Trina added.

"He's Malfoy!" Ron answered indignantly, as if this explained everything.

"Ok, and now that you've made sure I know his name, will you answer the question?"

Ron adopted an incredulous expression and opened his mouth to speak again but Harry interrupted him. "He starts it. I know that sounds childish," he admitted quickly to Trina when he saw her giving him the same look she'd given Ron, "but for as long as he provokes the arguments, they won't go away."

"I'm not asking them to go away," Trina said. "I used to be in school too - I know a nemesis doesn't become a friend simply on request." She watched a seagull alight close to her and ponder her for a moment. As if realising she didn't have any food scraps to toss to it, it flew away, and Trina resumed, "School is where you learn so much more than just what comes from a book - it's where you learn how to appreciate those who like you, and how to manage those who don't. In an effort to survive this social development, students will form packs, whether they intend to or not, and those in the pack will show loyalty to its other members, regardless of whether or not they're in the wrong."

Hermione said determinedly, "All friends should be loyal."

"Yes," Trina agreed, "they should. But that loyalty should be given only when it's deserved - it's not an obligation or a right."

"What does this have to do with Malfoy?" Harry asked.

Trina mused quietly while pondering how to phrase her answer. "I'm saying that what you and Draco have - this back-and-forth trading game of insults and sour expressions - may in actual fact have little to do with personal prejudice at all, but rather just a constant 'payback' for what the other person did previously." She looked pointedly at Harry. "Harry, tell me something - why do you, and I mean you specifically, hate Draco?"

Harry's brow drew together into a frown as he thought of all Draco's negative actions towards them. "He insults my friends for no reason."

A bemused smile tugged at the corner of Trina's mouth, and she looked out over the sea as she spoke again. "Does he, now?" she said, but it didn't sound like a question. "How do you know whether or not he has reasons? Have you discovered a way of getting into someone's head?"

"Of course not!" Harry responded. "But we don't deserve what he gives us! He just assumes we're rubbish and inferior to him - people should be known for who they are before they're cut down!"

Trina so abruptly turned her head to face them again at these words that Harry ran his words through his mind to see if he'd said something unusual. He couldn't see what, so he settled for looking puzzled.

"Exactly," Trina said. "And that's what it all comes down to." The confused faces only looked more lost, so Trina drew the conversation to the very beginning of their Hogwarts life. "Tell me, who was the first person to start this conflict between you all? And, what was it?"

"Malfoy," Harry said. "He was arrogant and when I first met him he said that Muggle-borns weren't good enough, and he mercilessly insulted Ron and the Weasley family on the train on our first day."

Trina looked thoughtful. "I'm not going to pretend to know everything that happened," she said, "but so far it seems that the books detailing your adventures have been reasonably accurate. So I just may be right..."

"What's right?" Hermione asked her to clarify.

Trina shifted herself in the stones to get more comfortable as she prepared to explain. "Harry, you first talked to him in the Robe Shop, right?"

"Right," said Harry, still a little unnerved that a stranger knew the finer points of his life due to a novel release.

"Who started the conversation between you two - you or him?"

Harry could tell from Trina's face that she knew the answers to the questions she was asking, but she must have wanted him to come to a conclusion himself, rather that her just tell him her theory. Harry felt slightly uneasy under this questioning. He wasn't sure he wanted to know how it was going to end. He felt a little like he was in a courtroom.

"He did," he said, tonelessly.

"And he started a conversation with you before he knew if you were Muggle-born or not?"

Harry frowned. "But in the conversation he made it clear that he was spoiled rotten and he said that Muggle-borns shouldn't be allowed at Hogwarts."

"Spoiled rotten, huh? Well of course - considering the family's wealth, it's not like he has a choice." She adopted an expression from which Harry could tell she was about to ask another question she already knew the answer to. "What's the one thing Draco always says, to back up threats or to use as a reason for something to be true?"

Harry's brow furrowed in thought, but the answer eluded him.

"It's always something along the lines of, 'Father says...' isn't it?" Trina stated rhetorically. "He's given the best of everything because it's what his father thinks he should have, he believes the things his father taught him as truth, and he says and does things that his father tells him is in his place to do. He's little more than an extension of his father, because of the limits imposed on him by his father and by his status."

Trina's voice had grown a little louder while saying this, as if this would help prove a point. Her voice lowered again and she said, "What can you tell me about Draco that's not a report of his efforts to uphold an image? What does he like to do at Hogsmeade? What does he hope to get each Christmas? What's his favourite childhood memory?"

A resounding silence was all Trina was returned. She turned back to stare over the rippling water and watched the thin tendrils of the tide grope the shore as they climbed the beach. "So all this time," she summarised quietly as if talking to herself, "you've been hating a stranger."

This goaded Hermione into speech. "He may have been told many wrong things by Lucius Malfoy," she reasoned, "but he still knows what behaviour is just plain nasty. If he was really a good guy, he wouldn't say half the things he does."

"Oh, I'm not saying he's a good guy," Trina assured her. "I agree that a lot of what he said was totally unnecessary. But when was he offered the opportunity of something different? Did any of you offer friendship?" She remembered something about this so before she could get an answer she continued in a voice so quiet the Gryffindors almost had to strain to hear, "No...you didn't did you...but not just that, you refused it when he tried..." She turned to face them again and said, louder this time, "If you refuse to throw someone a lifeline when they ask for one, you can't be surprised when their ghost haunts you for letting them drown."

The part of Harry's brain that wasn't trying to process all this - the part that was still adamantly against Draco Malfoy - prompted him to say, "Well if he wanted to be friends with us, he didn't go very well about it. And why was he sorted into Slytherin then?"

"Why weren't you?" Trina said, and Harry almost visibly flinched. "You asked the Sorting Hat not to put you there. Dumbledore told you about the importance of choices. Draco undoubtedly would have wanted to be put in the house that his father wanted him in. He may not have actively chosen it himself." She picked up a piece of driftwood and started aimlessly shifting stones around with it. "You also said you hated him for insulting Ron when he came to see you on the train - the second time he'd tried to befriend you, I might add. What made him do that? Insult Ron, I mean."

It seemed the conversation had long since been just between Trina and Harry, so Hermione and Ron had been sitting quietly listening. Hermione had been engrossed in thought at what they were saying, although Ron's silence was mostly due to incredulous fuming.

"His father telling him Ron wasn't important?" Harry guessed.

Trina turned her attention from the driftwood and back at Harry. "He laughed." Her gaze travelled to Ron, and she now directed her speech at him. "Didn't you, Ron? You laughed at his last attempt to befriend someone outside of his father's circle of importance and influence."

Ron's brewing anger now exploded. "He asked for it! He thinks he's all that! He gets the best of everything and we can't afford it, and he just loves to taunt me mercilessly about it! You can't blame me for making him feel bad! If that's what I did, I'm glad I did it!"

"Perhaps," Trina started, "and I'm not saying this is the case, but just perhaps...there's a reason he keeps mentioning his wealth. He flaunts what he has, and yet he is still bound by the etiquette set by his father. He sees that you can't have the things his money can buy, but you still have the things he wants - a friendship beyond a Sons-of-Death-Eaters-United club, and you're a lot happier than he is. His money is dictating who he can be, to a degree - and it's all he has."

"Ha!" Ron said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "Are you saying that Draco "Look-at-me-I'm-God" Malfoy could be jealous of a Weasley for being poor?"

Trina looked at him seriously. "Golden gem-studded chains are still chains."

In the following silence that seemed even heavier than Ron's yelling, Hermione finally said, "You'd thought lots about this, hadn't you?"

"Actually, no," Trina corrected her. "It was a theory that Tony came up with over time. When I heard it, I thought it was stupid too, but when it's fully explained I think it's quite plausible." She looked at Ron as she added, "...unless you're already convinced of your opinions and refuse to accept alternatives."

Trina sighed as she looked out over the sea again. "It was just a thought. Wow," she said. "I really went off onto a tangent, didn't I? I really didn't intend to get into all of that now. As I was saying at the beginning, I know it's relatively normal for you and Draco to be at each others' throats at Hogwarts - but when you're on the other side of the world and your very life could be at someone else's mercy, do you really want to be devoting you energies to avenging someone for an impression they fixed in your minds when they were an 11-year-old boy?"

"I'll stop it if he does," Harry said, bitterly.

Trina lay back against the smooth stones and closed her eyes. "That's good enough for me."

~<>~

The Great Hall was full of the usual clamour at dinnertime. Students busily talked to one another while managing to fill their mouths at the same time and Dumbledore looked serenely down at them all, although tonight his eyes were a little less jovial.

The arrival of three public owls surprised many of the students into stopping to watch. The mail usually arrived in the morning at breakfast. This must have been something important.

The owls circled the room slowly before gravitating toward the Gryffindor table, where each of them dropped the envelope they had been carrying in front of the intended recipients - Fred, George, and Ginny.

The twins were looking at each other in confusion as they held their letters, and Ginny cowered under the intensely curious gaze of the other students. For a moment she thought she'd just pocket it, and open it later in the privacy of her dorm where there weren't so many curious faces directed at her, but upon seeing her brothers unsealing theirs, and hearing the urging from her nearby housemates, she opened the envelope and withdrew the parchment from inside. From what she saw of her brothers' letters, they all looked to be the same, only with different names at the top. Ginny held the parchment close to her and hunched her shoulders slightly as she looked down at her copy, in an effort to hide what it said from prying eyes:

Ginny dear,

I have just heard the most alarming news about Ron, Harry and Hermione. I am absolutely appalled that Dumbledore was not able to stop them being taken - and from Hogwarts too! I certainly don't want any more of my children there since your safety obviously cannot be assured.

I am most distressed at this, but your father convinced me not to send a howler as it may cause unnecessary attention if there are any who don't know about what has happened, although I'm sure it's known by everyone over there.

Ginny asserted that the real reason was to save her and her brothers from additional embarrassment, and she mentally thanked her father.

I have sent an owl to Dumbledore requesting your immediate removal from the school until this is solved and Ron, Harry and Hermione returned. I shall organise a tutor to supervise you in your studies.

You'll be escorted to a Portkey from Hogwarts tomorrow morning. I do hope nothing terrible happens before then.

Love always,

Mum.

Ginny was incredulous. Leave Hogwarts? She looked to her brothers who had obviously finished reading their letters too and were now looking at her with equal shock. Expectant and curious students were straining to see over their shoulders, and Ginny quickly folded up her letter and pocketed it, refusing to tell her housemates what it said, much to their disappointment. Her brothers were doing the same.

Dinner was rather tasteless from then on, so after a short while Ginny mumbled a goodnight and left the table early.