I do not own neither "Harry Potter" books, nor the characters.

This fanfiction events happen in the course of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" book.

Hope you enjoy my story, I hope you can understand everything even with typos or gramatical errors, but English isn't my native language (I try the best I can =3)

Feel free to send me a PM if I'm being lazy and not updating!

Chapter I

That was by far the worst summer in Ginny Weasley's life. Not because her brothers left her alone all the time, not because her new sister-in-law Fleur was a bitch, but because her brother, her best friend and her quasi-boyfriend decided to disappear from the face of the earth during a Death Eater attack, and they never received any news after that.

That's good, at least that was what her mother thought. If they were found and killed, You-Know-Who would be screaming everywhere that The Boy Who Lived was dead. But Ginny dreamed about it every day. Harry's pale face in the front page of the newspaper, and Voldemort's laughter echoing in her dreams. She always woke up soaked in sweat and tears.

By late summer, an owl with a letter from Hogwarts came by. The new headmaster, Severus Snape, wrote to every parent, ensuring the safety of their children during the school year. Of course Mrs. Weasley didn't want Ginny to return to school with fear of retaliation against her because of her brother running away to help Harry Potter, but Mr. Weasley and the other Order members convinced her to let her go. After all, even controlled by dark forces, Hogwarts was the safest place in the world. And they would never kill a pure blood student if they could avoid it.

Then she returned to Hogwarts. Hoping she could pretend all was well, that it would be a year just like before. But it wasn't, and arriving at Kings Cross was enough to realize it. The platform was almost empty, most were Slytherins. No wonder about it. After all, they were connected with the Dark Lord.

After a long walk through the Hogwarts Express, she finally found the compartment were Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbotton, her best friends, were. "Hi everyone," she greeted as she got into the compartment with her heavy suitcase.

"I'm glad you could join us," said Neville, getting up and grabbing the bag to put it on the support over the seats. He had grown a lot during the summer, looking thinner than Ginny had ever seen him before.

Luna stood up and hugged Ginny, in tears. It wasn't normal to see Luna like this, and it scared Ginny. "What's wrong?" she asked, breaking the hug and grabbing her friend's shoulders.

"Almost no one came. Because of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, all the Muggle-borns had to flee."

"I heard about it," Ginny said, sitting next to Luna in front of Neville. "But who do we know that was affected by it?"

"Dean," answered Neville, arms crossed and serious face.

"But Dean is half-blooded," noticed Ginny, looking away from Luna to face Neville.

"His father's dead, so he couldn't prove anything. He was ruled Muggle-born and had to run away."

"It's true," said Luna, sobbing next to Ginny.

"Oh Merlin, I can't believe my parents didn't tell me. They must have known. And Charlie and George-" They probably didn't want me to worry, Ginny thought. She dated Dean from the end of her fourth year through a large part of fifth year. Although she wasn't in love with him anymore, she never wanted something bad to happen to him.

"And now I heard from some of the parents at the Platform that those Carrow siblings will be teaching at Hogwarts," whispered Neville, leaning towards the girls so no one could hear them outside the compartment.

"Are those Death Eaters?" asked Luna, whispering as well.

"Yes, they managed to avoid going to Azkaban when Who-Know-Who disappeared, but when he came back they went back to their old ways," he explained, and Ginny asked herself how did he know so much about this stuff.

The Express was almost arriving to Hogwarts when Ginny excused herself so she could go dress her uniform. When she was leaving the bathroom, she got face to face with none other than the platinum-haired Malfoy heir, Draco.

"I thought they weren't letting blood traitors come back to Hogwarts," he hissed towards her, disgust printed on his face.

"And I thought you were going to spend the year licking your Dark Lord's boots," she answered, chin up, trying to look corageous although she wasn't really feeling like that, given that Malfoy was probably a Death Eater by know.

"Oh, you will regret saying that, little Miss Weasley" he said, putting the tip of his wand under her chin.

"And you will regret it if I throw a Bat-Bogey Hex on you again, Malfoy," she hissed back, hoping the reminder of the confrontation at Umbridge's office would help her somehow. He leaned forward so their eyes would meet and almost thouched her small freckled nose with his white pointy one. She could feel the smell of roses nd perfume on him.

After a long stare, he walked a step back, not taking his eyes from her. "You may go now. But you better watch out your smart tongue, or someday I will have to cut it out from you."

Ginny walked past him, bumping purposely on his shoulder, her face warm from the confrontation. Oh, how deeply did she hate him.

In a flick of time they were in Hogwarts again, entering the Great Hall so they would have the Sorting of the First Year kids. In every hallway was at least one Death Eater, Ginny could tell from their marked forearms. She knew she mustn't confront them, because they wouldn't have a problem cursing her, and she was certain Snape wouldn't object anyways.

She sat at the Gryffindor table near Neville, Parvati Patil and Lavander Brown. Their table wasn't the most empty, but a lot of pleople from various years were missing. Especially the rounded glasses she was internally hoping to see.

The Hufflepuff table was the most empty of the four tables. Probably was the one with most Muggle-born students. And obviously the Slythering table was cramming, since every student there got to prove they had at least one wizard parent.

The small number of eleven year-olds came in, they were probably 30 by Ginny's math. Most went to Slytherin, then a few went to Ravenclaw, five went to Hufflepuff and four to Gryffindor. Two boys and two girls, trying to look confident as they walked towards the rather small number of house mates waiting for them.

They were received with as much joy as everyone in the table could give them at the time. But the happy talk was soon interrupted by Snape, who wanted to give his first speech as headmaster.

"Welcome new and old students to Hogwars," he started in his low and characteristic paused and nasal voice. "This year will prove to be rather different than any other year before. As you know, the Dark Lord has rised from the darkness and his mission to purify our world has began. Every and each one of you constitute the promise of the great objective we are pretending to acheive. However, we won't tolerate any kind of deviating behaviour, and we have new responsible people to educate each student who atempts to disturb the peace in Hogwarts, our Deputy Headmasters, Alecto and and Amycus Carrow.

"Because of the small number of students coming back this year, we decided the smaller years will start having classes together. The first year will be alone because they will be starting a new exciting journey, but the second and third year will attend classes together, as well as sixth and seventh year.

"The teachers will try to keep the work in a rythm that allows lower year students to keep up with the older years, while the older years will have the chance to keep mastering the classes. Muggle Studies were decided to be mandatory to every student, and Defense Against the Dark Arts is now.

"I hope this year will prove that each one of you is the wizard this new world needs, and that the school year can go on without disturbances of greater kind. You may resume your feast now."

He sat between two people Ginny supposed to be the Carrow siblings, and the food appeared in front of them like every year before. When she glanced up from the lamb, she saw Draco Malfoy's icy eyes looking straight at her from the other side of he Great Hall.