AN: Despite the labelling, this story is actually a crossover with A Countess Below Stairs/The Secret Countess; not Magic Flutes. It is also more of an AU than a crossover as no characters from ACOS appear. Characters belong to JKR; Plot belongs to Eva Ibbotson; I just mashed the two together.

Also, a warning: those of you familiar with ACOS will know that certain characters are awful and thus the Harry Potter characters I have put in their place are similarly awful. Please know that I love and defend many characters that, in this fic, will be portrayed badly, so if you have a huge fondness for Pansy and Draco (among others), this is not the fic for you. If, however, you love fluff and Hinny (with side-orders of Romione and Neville), read on and enjoy!


Prologue

Between the two wizarding wars, the magical world was an incredible place. The first had been a long war, the start of which marked the magical world's inevitable withdrawal from muggle society to keep non-magical friends and family safe from the grasp of the Dark Lord. Despite the distance between the two groups which now governed society, the end of the war ushered in a new age of prosperity and advancing technology as bright minds turned their eyes to the future, tinkering with muggle contraptions — the motorcar, for example, and the telephone and the radio, which held innumerable possibilities — engineering new spells, mixing unheard-of potions, working hard to forget the tragedies of the war. It took just a few years for society to recover from the blows dealt by the Dark Lord and his armies (such as they had been). There had been losses, greater than anyone could have expected: the Potter line, which, after the war, was all but exterminated; the Longbottoms who for years had been beacons of hope for all who knew them; hundreds of teenagers, freshly graduated from Hogwarts and Beauxbatons and Durmstrang who instead of taking their places in the world had become wand fodder…

But now the war was over, and those who survived — the Malfoys, finally freed from an incantation which had caused them to act as the Dark Lord's puppets; the Weasleys who had survived the war intact and could now return to their primary preoccupation of birthing sons and wishing for a daughter; the Blacks, reduced now to three members, excluding the house elf — were eager to grieve the losses quietly and quickly before breathing in the fresh air of freedom.

And into this freedom, two girls were born.

Charlotte and Greg Booth had long wanted a child and, with the war safely behind them, took their oppurtunity. Virginia Emily Booth was born in January, one year after the war ended. For a few years, the small family was happy, while Virginia enjoyed mishaps of accidental magic and befriended both gnomes at the bottom of the garden and muggle children who lived on her street. When Virginia was four, disaster struck in the form of Dragon Pox. Her parents died within a few weeks of contracting the disease. Virginia herself survived for a long time in St Mungo's although all the healers knew that if she lived, she would not have anyone to return home to. But still they hoped that she would pull through because she was sweet and fragile and deserved, they thought, a much longer life than she seemed likely to get.

The Weasley family was known as one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight; twenty-eight families whose magical blood was purer than pure, untainted by muggle ancestry. They lived in a rambling pile of a mansion known as the Burrow which came with the title of Viscount, a title that Arthur Weasley loathed but could never quite shake. Viscount Weasley and his wife, Molly, already had six children. But they wanted just one more, for all they had were boys — all any Weasley had had for several generations now were boys — and they wanted a girl. Shortly after the war ended, the gods who had kept the entire Weasley family intact at the height of the war blessed them with a baby girl. The Weasleys were delighted as were plenty of other pureblood families, many of whom had sons who would, when they came of age, require a pureblood girl to marry. Ginevra Molly Cedrella Weasley adored quidditch and butterbeer and cats. She was the darling of the family, doted upon by her brothers, indulged by her parents and much-loved by all. This abundance of love, however, could not protect Ginevra when she, like Virginia, was infected by Dragon Pox at the age of four.

The two girls were placed on the same ward, and were not allowed visitors due to the contagious quality of their illness. Every day, though, Molly Weasley would sit in the hallway, looking in through the small smudgy window at her daughter fighting for her life, willing Ginevra to get well. Each weekend the entire family would camp out in the hallway: Arthur bringing paperwork that he needed to to complete, and which he would always forget about in favour of watching over Ginevra; William, the eldest, who used to resent babysitting his younger siblings; Charles, who secretly believed that his obsession with dragons had caused his sister to become ill; anxious Percival, periodically fetching snacks for the others; the twins Frederick and George who had always felt that Ginevra was more theirs than anyone else's; and tiny Ronald, not yet able to fully comprehend his mother's grief but sharing in it nonetheless. No one ever came to see Virginia.

It seemed inevitable that at least one of the girls would not survive, and the healers, though too professional to voice these opinions aloud, probably thought that it would be Virginia to succumb. She was much smaller than Ginevra, and only a halfblood, after all. In comparison, Ginevra was fierce, her cheeks flushed with the effort of survival, her fiery hair thrown across the pillow as she muttered and tossed in her sleep while pale, washed-out Virginia lay still and silent in the next bed. Finally, a heroic six months later than anyone might have predicted, one of the girls did die.

If only the healers at St Mungo's had been a little more careful with the paperwork; if only the girls had not had beds next to one another on the same ward; if only they had not both gone by the nickname of "Ginny", then perhaps it would have said Virginia Emily Booth on the death certificate. The healers who had hoped for the sweet girl would have mourned, briefly, but she would have been with her parents in whatever world comes after this one.

Instead, the Weasleys received correspondence from St Mungo's to the effect that their daughter Ginevra had passed away as a result of her illness and that, due to the contagiousness of the disease, her body would not be released for burial. The family was welcome to collect her ashes — which they did, burying the first Weasley girl in over a century under an ash tree on the Burrow estate. And the girl now known as Virginia "Ginny" Booth, miraculously recovered from her own illness, was sent to live with a foster parent named Minerva McGonagall.

Whatever memories she'd had of her former life, already damaged by the disease that had wracked her small body, faded into nothing more than dreams as Minerva brought Ginny up alongside another foster-child, Dean. Minerva believed in bravery and in doing the right thing and protecting those too weak to protect themselves, so it was no wonder that her foster-children, weaned on such virtues, were sorted into Gryffindor when they arrived at Hogwarts. Foster-children with unknown origins have many battles to fight, and Dean and Ginny, closer than a pair of twins, vowed to fight together... to live together... to die together.

But this was not the end of Ginny's tumultuous childhood. During Ginny's first year at school, something dark wormed its way into her head and made her do things she would have nightmares about for the rest of her life. As a result, Ginny knew that the Dark Lord would return well before the whispers began scarcely fifteen years after the war had ended. The Dark Lord was sighted in a far-off land, gathering his followers… a well-known advocate for muggleborn rights was killed in a suspicious accident in Albania… Pettigrew, the traitor, escaped his prison cell… a dark mass of Dementors abandoned their posts at the wave-flung site of Azkaban prison to attend some dark, unknowable gathering…

It was happening again. The children of the last war were growing up as their parents had done: prepared to lay down their lives at eighteen, nineteen, twenty… and some of them did just that, even before the second war began. There were hopes, expressed directly by the Minister of magic, that perhaps He Who Must Not Be Named was not truly back; perhaps the wizarding world could escape unscathed this time. But eventually, as the bodies began piling up (victims of 'suicides' and assassinations and plain old torture courtesy of Bella Lestrange) even the ministry — loathe as they were to acknowledge the existence of darkness in such a glitteringly hopeful time — addressed the likelihood of another war. And just like that, twenty years after the first time, the world ended again.

Within a few short weeks, tentative alliances which had slowly grown over years were shattered; the Malfoys declared their allegiance to the Dark Lord as did the Crabbes and the Carrows and a dozen more of the Sacred Twenty-Eight; six Weasley sons took up arms against their former friends; Ginny Booth and her foster-brother Dean joined the resistance and Minerva, the closest thing either of them had to a mother, was proud but terrified for them.

The second war was shorter. It was not the slow-burning fire of the first war which had consumed fuel until it burned itself out, but a devastating bolt of lightning, scorching the ground, scarring everything it touched until one day, when many had lost hope, it ended without warning. Many death-eaters were convicted though the Malfoys were untraceable. Five Weasley sons came home to the Burrow. Ginny returned to Minerva's house in the Scottish Highlands without Dean, who had been lost somewhere between battles.

For the second time, the wizarding world tried to heal.