Uninvited

Chapter 6: Remembering

"What we learned here is love tastes bitter when it's gone

past yourself, forget the light, things look dirty when it's on

funny how it comes to pass that all the good slips away

and there's no one around you can remember being good to you"-Shame, Matchbox 20

Excerpt from "The Journals of Salazar Slytherin"

Sita beckons to me. She has become a full-time assistant and confidante. She shares my newly found hatred of Rowena, and seems to have a general love for and adoration of me, which differentiates her from all those around me. Godric, of course, has decided that she is a thing of evil and must be destroyed. Of late I have been growing weary of him more often than usual. Although I do agree with him that Sita's appearance is strange and not entirely human, she is far too humane in her emotions to be what he says.

Sita is sitting by the fire now, watching it, entertained by the flames as if she were a child. Her skin is tinted blue, as it often is after sundown, and she stretches her wings as she yawns. Her hair seems to also change colors after the moon shines, but this change is far more subtle. Usually silver, it seems a reddish-gold now. I suppose my obsession with her appearance is not in character for me, but she is so strange and astoundingly beautiful, and her love for me would humble kings. My experiments that drove Rowena to leave me seem to adhere to her curiosity. Although, it does seem that all of her differences tend only to remind me of Rowena herself...

[Present Day]

Hermione pushed aside scrap pieces of paper and set down the large book she had carried from the library back to her room. It was six in the morning, but she vaguely noticed that Ginny was not in her bed.

She opened it hurriedly and marked the spots she wanted to read later on before shoving the book under her pillow and running out of the room again.

***

"So Ginny," Ron said conversationally, "looking forward to our trip home?"

"Sod off. Don't bother me."

"I'll take that as a 'no' then. Don't you want to see Mum and Dad?"

Ginny returned only silence.

"Gin, you have to talk to me at some point. Seamus has been trying to ask you out lately, you know, and he says you won't respond. In fact, he says you just sort of look at him hopelessly. I'm getting worried Ginny. Mum's going to be even more worried if we come home and you won't even look at me-"

"I'm not coming with you, Ron."

"What?"

"I said I'm not coming with you. I have a lot of work to do and I don't think I could get it all done at home, so I'm staying here. Now fucking shut up, will you?"

"But...there are only about three other students staying here... what do you propose I tell Mum?"

"That I'm studying."

"But-but-but..." Ginny stood up and walked out of the common room.

***

Hermione was in the library once more when Professor McGonagall reached her to inform her of the discovery of a second body. Most students had been scared off by the first one, assuming that it was indeed the work of a dark witches and/or wizards unknown, and had left early for winter vacation. Those who were left, mostly Slytherins and Gryffindors, would surely be going home to their families soon.

Hermione went with McGonagall to the infirmary, where the body was being kept. This one was not in quite as horrific a state as the other one had been in, although the head seemed to have been pulled off hurriedly and without any help of tools, as if the predator, or whatever it was, had seen something coming towards it and had found it necessary to cut its practice short.

***

Dean had just about finished packing for home. He stuffed the last few pairs of trousers into his trunk before sitting on it to make sure it would close properly. Standing up again, he noticed a picture of Hermione sitting on Ron's desk. He walked over to it to pick it up. He had always thought she was beautiful. Even when he had had his short fling with Parvati Patil, considered by some to be one of the prettiest girls in the school, he had wanted Hermione. He had, in the end, been the one to convince her to break up with Victor Krum. The teasing from Ron had made her consider it, but he had pushed her over the edge. When her parents had gotten divorced in fifth year, Dean had consoled her. Harry and Ron had been too preoccupied with themselves to even notice she had been upset. Dean of course, watching almost her every moment, had noticed immediately. He had comforted her; even let her cry in his presence although he hated watching people cry.

He looked at her in the picture, pure happiness and content, and wished silently that she was still that way. Of late she had been distracted and stressed, taking on work that wasn't hers, but she wouldn't tell him why. It hurt him that she couldn't trust him with whatever it was, but he decided he would just give her some time and she would tell him. He knew she would be there all winter because she didn't live with her parents anymore. Couldn't stand to hear them speak, she'd say. Every word either one of them would say was directed toward the other one. Hermione said it had gotten bad over the summer; so bad she had told them she wanted to spend the rest of the summer at the Weasleys and that she would return to their homes only when they had proven to her that they could restrain their constant insulting of one another. Dean admired her for it; no one else he knew would stand up to their parents that way. Of course, her parents still paid for her school and her books, which he didn't understand. If he'd done something like that, he'd probably be on the streets.

But that was only one of the differences between them.

***

"Hey Crooked," Ginny said as Crookshanks jumped on her, waking her up. "What's that you've got? Another dead animal?"

He had gotten in the habit of bringing dead rats and other small animals to her. Once she got past the startling, and disgusting, morbidity of it, she actually liked it. It was like he was bringing her presents.

It was not. To her surprise, he held in his mouth what looked like a necklace. It was a long, black ribbon with a Wiccan pentagram on it.

"Why thank you, Crookshanks. It's quite pretty." In response, he jumped off the bed and disappeared again. "Bye then," she said sullenly, on the verge of anger at being left alone again. She didn't know where Hermione and she didn't want to see anybody else, although she certainly didn't want to be alone with her thoughts. Yet there she was, remembering. Remembering Lux, how she looked, felt, tasted. She wasn't sure how, but she knew Lux was not coming back, that it, whatever it had been, was over. And with it over, she couldn't justify its original existence to herself anymore. She couldn't say it was a rebellion or a fling or even love. In truth, she just didn't want to live with the memory of it.

But there it was. There was an image of Lux in her mind, perfect and beautiful and flirtatious in a seductive manner. Her hair, fine and silvery, was flowing down her back, slightly past her waist. She looked a little like Fleur Delacour from Ginny's third year, only she was prettier, so much prettier. Her eyes were light, clear blue, dotted with silver, lined by amazingly long, silver-white lashes. Everything about her seemed to have silver, even her skin. Her skin...milky white, silver-reflective properties...so pale Ginny was sure it would make snow look dark. It shined like the snow too.

As Ginny watched her in her mind, eyes closed, her mouth curved into a smile. Her lips were a pale pink color, covered in silver lip-gloss, the only makeup Lux ever wore. As she smiled, she raised a single eyebrow, questioning Ginny's existence with a single expression, as always. She waved her hand in front of her, as if trying to take Ginny out of a trance, but sparks followed its path. Lux then spun around, and the image in Ginny's mind became sharper and clearer. She could see Lux's whole body now, and her surroundings. She was in a graveyard. She was not alone.

Voldemort was with her, controlling her.

Ginny opened her eyes. Somehow, she had seen something not in her memory, but occurring at that moment.

***

It was on the train home that Ron accepted Ginny was not coming with him. He was in a compartment with Dean and Seamus, who were both sleeping. They had been sitting next to each other when they fell asleep, and had ended up on top of each other. Ron entertained himself briefly with the gossip that would circulate if he told Parvati...he pulled the camera he had confiscated from Colin Creevey, who had taken up secretly following Ginny around since Harry's absence, out of his trunk and took about seven pictures, posing the sleeping boys in different scandalous positions each time.

"What are you doing, Ron?" Harry asked from the doorway.

"Oh, I didn't see you there," Ron motioned for the other boy to sit. "I was just getting my Christmas present for Parvati ready. Like it?"

"I'm not into that kind of stuff, Ron. But if you are, you should know that I'm perfectly fine with it-"

"Oh shut up, Harry!"

"Hmm, getting frisky, Ron?"

"Harry!"

"Do I make you horny, baby?"

"What are you doing that voice for?"

"Nothing, nothing. It's a Muggle thing."

"Right," Ron said, putting that camera back. "So, any updates on...You-know-who recently?"

"Nope. Hermione's working on something, but she said it's going to take a while to have anything definitive."

"Still no idea what killed those two girls?"

"Well we do, actually. It's this thing called the Juggernaut. It's from Hindu mythology. The word Juggernaut means a destructive force. Wherever it moves, utter chaos and havoc ensues. But like I said, it's a myth. No truth, as far as we can see, behind it. Hermione just said it seemed to fit. Although, we do know that so far, the murders have fit into a specific pattern."

"And that is?"

"The head are gone. Nowhere to be found. This is why Hermione pointed out the Juggernaut. It keeps the head of its victims."

"But there have only been two murders. That's not much of a pattern."

"I know. This is one of those rare occasions when you actually want to find more dead bodies."

"Maybe we should talk about something else."

"Right...um...how's Ginny doing?"

"Something other than that."

"Um...got a girlfriend?"

"No...you are just determined to pick on sore spots aren't you?"

***

Ginny had been in the library for about two hours, when she heard someone else enter. She didn't care enough to get up and see; she was stationed behind a shelf, blocking her view of the door.

She flipped a page in the book. It wasn't terribly interesting, a biography of Merlin that had managed to make his life into an amazingly boring textbook.

"Hi Ginny." She looked up and saw the one person she thought she might be able to stand at that moment.

"Hi Draco."

***