The Shadow of Fear

By: Trep092

I'd like to thank Johnny Depp's Best Lover for looking this over for me.

Disclaimer: Do I own Harry Potter? No. Do I want to? Well that's a different story.

A/N: I had a friend point out to me that Ginny and Bill's relationship in this story kind of sounds romantic. I assure you, it most definitely is not meant to appear that way. They are siblings with a ten year age gap. I always got the impression from the books that Ginny looks up to Bill as her "cool" big brother. She always defends his hair style and accessories to her mother and when Fleur starts going out with him Ginny acts like "you're not good enough to go out with him". Anyways... rant over. Please review.

A/N: I've reposted this story to fix a couple of minor punctuation mistakes that a wonderful reviewer was gracious enough to point out to me. Thanks Stephanie O! :D

She was falling through inky blackness. She tried to struggle, to fight against the darkness, but she couldn't move. She felt nothing aside from the horrible feeling in her stomach that told her that she was falling at a rapid rate.

Suddenly she was in a cage of snakes. They twined about her, preventing any movement. Their thick, smooth skin was as cold as ice against her flesh.

She tried to scream, to fight, but there was no use. The snakes held her tight in their coils.

Suddenly they began to hiss. Their malevolent voices grew louder and louder until she could understand what they were saying.

"We have you, little girl. You will restore us to our full strength. You will die, and we will have the World as our own."

One of the thick serpents began to tighten painfully around her neck. She couldn't move. Her airway was being cut off. Futilely she tried to breathe, and then felt her heart race faster when she realized she couldn't.

Suddenly a black haired youth appeared outside the cage. He was tall and pale with dark eyes. She tried to call out to him, to get him to help. But he simply laughed at her attempts at escape and as he threw his head back in mirth, a long, green snake slithered out of his mouth...

She woke with a jolt. Her eyes frantically searched her surroundings, and only after she recognized the canopy and hangings of her bed at Hogwarts, did she relax.

She tried to sigh in relief, but realized that she couldn't. Panic swept over her again, and she scrabbled at her throat. Finding the sheets of her bed wound tightly there, she frantically twisted and turned until she was free.

Panting and sweating with fear and adrenalin, she sat up and drew back the hangings which surrounded her bed. Cool moonlight streamed through the windows of the dormitory and illuminated the four other beds which held her fellow second year Gryffindor girls. She listened carefully and judged by their even breathing that she hadn't woken any of them in the throes of her nightmare.

She swung her bare feet out from under the warm covers and stood. She tiptoed across the circular room and stopped at the low credenza underneath one of the windows. She gulped water from the pitcher that was placed there. After her thirst was sated, she splashed some of the cold liquid onto her face.

Feeling more in the realm of reality than in that of nightmares, she grabbed her dressing gown from the foot of her bed and padded silently across the room and out through the door. Closing it carefully behind her, she descended the stairs into the common room.

It was deserted due to the late hour; a quick look at her watch revealed it to be four-thirty. She crossed to a chair pulled up to the bed of coals that was previously a roaring fire. Tucking her legs beneath her, she curled up in the chair and stared unseeingly at the dim red glow of the coals.

She'd been having nightmares on and off for the last few months. Ever since she had been possessed by Lord Voldemort and had nearly died. They had become sparser as the summer had gone on, but the dementor on the train had caused all of her fear to come rushing back as though it had never left. Unwillingly, her mind replayed the events of the previous evening.

*** September 1, 1993 (the previous day) ***

With a jolt, the Hogwarts Express halted. They were at least twenty minutes from the school, and everyone in her compartment were understandably confused. And then the lights went out.

Unadulterated fear gripped her. Her heart was racing so quickly that she felt as though it would burst out of her chest. Her breaths came in raspy gasps, and her hands were slick with sweat. She jumped to her feet. She needed to go, to run as far away as possible.

She stumbled towards the compartment door, banging her shins painfully into an empty seat on the way. It took several attempts for her sweat-slicked hands to grip the door handle firmly enough for to pull the door open. Stumbling down the corridor, she didn't realize she was going the wrong direction until she reached the dead-end of the rear of the train. Frantically, she pulled open the compartment door and staggered inside hoping that someone she knew was inside.

She immediately tripped over a person who was attempting to leave the compartment.

"Who's that?" asked a familiar voice.

"Who's that?" she replied desperately.

"Ginny?" the voice she now recognized as Hermione asked.

"Hermione?"

"What are you doing?" Hermione demanded.

"I was looking for Ron—"

"Come in and sit down—"

Gratefully she groped her way into the compartment. After accidentally sitting on Harry and then Neville, she found a empty seat near the window. She could feel the cold of the glass next to her face. She shivered.

At first right after she had nearly died, she couldn't be in the dark at all. It reminded her too much of the blackness that filled her mind when she was possessed by Voldemort. So she always made sure there was a light on wherever she was. Even when she was sleeping, or more accurately trying as hard as possible not to sleep due to terrifying nightmares that plagued her during the night.

She had grown thin and pale. She knew that her parents and brothers worried about her. They each tried to cheer her up. The twins had pulled practical jokes, Ron had lent her his comic books, Percy had stopped staring at his picture of his girlfriend and his shiny new Head Boy badge long enough to give her a pompous lecture that nearly made her pass out from boredom. Her parents had tried talking to her, and even Charlie had come home to visit for a few days when he had found out. She loved how her family was helping her, but she also felt overcrowded and longed to be alone. But when she was alone, she felt terrified.

The first weeks of the summer holidays had dragged on, and she was becoming more despondent. The lack of proper sleep she was experiencing was taking a toll on her health and attitude. One evening she had overheard her parents discussing whether or not to take her to St. Mungos for treatment. Luckily, before they could reach a decision, they received the news that they had won the Daily Prophet's Grand Prize Galleon Draw. She had asked if they could go see Bill in Egypt, as her parents had always wanted to, and she hadn't seen him in a very long time. Perhaps because they truly wanted to go, or because of the excitement she had shown when asking, her parents agreed and they made plans to leave the following week.

She loved all of her brothers very much, but Bill was her favourite. It was perhaps because of the ten-year age gap that separated them. Bill had never teased her or played pranks on her, he had in fact doted on her. When he was home from Hogwarts he didn't mind playing with her, he had in fact let her ride his broom—something her other brothers continually denied her. When he had left school and gone off to Egypt, he wrote her letters and sent her fascinating artefacts that he found throughout the course of his job.

When he had found out about the events of her last year, he had tried to get off work to come home and visit as Charlie had, but he was unable to. He had sent her a letter though, and a beautiful stone he had found that changed colours in different lights.

They had arrived by portkey, and had immediately been struck by the overwhelming heat. Bill had been there to meet them and had swung her around in a circle as he used to do when she was little.

They had gone to his small house, which was overcrowded with the nine of them. At first this didn't bother her, the novelty of having her whole family together outweighed her newly developed sense of claustrophobia.

It was after dinner that first night that she began to feel panicky. There was too much noise and too many people. She quietly slipped out into the gathering dark, and sat on the little porch with her knees pulled up to her chest. She was careful to position herself in the pool of light emanating from the kitchen window. This pool of warm light made her feel safe.

She wasn't sure how long she had sat there, staring up at the brilliant stars, when a warm body sat down next to her.

It was Bill. They sat in silence for several long minutes, both appreciating the hundreds of glowing stars in the velvet sky.

Eventually Bill began to talk. He didn't ask her to tell him anything about her experiences last year for which she was grateful. He simply talked about his life; about his job and his plans for the future. He told stories about his discoveries and about the goblins he knew. She felt herself relaxing as she listened to his soft voice. She didn't even notice when the light from the window vanished. For the first time that summer she felt her mind clearing, and didn't feel as though a nasty presence was inside her body.

Eventually, Bill ran out of stories and they sat together in comfortable silence for a while. sooner or later she found herself talking. In an odd sort of detached way, she found herself telling Bill everything she could remember of the previous year. Of her fears that she had been attacking students, of the absolute terror she felt when she found herself waking up in strange places covered in blood and feathers with no memory of having got there. Of how she had woken up in a dark, dank cavern with blood everywhere and the body of a huge serpent on the floor. Of how she had been petrified at the thought she might be expelled, and of the horrible nightmares that made her fight to stay awake rather than experience them.

Bill just listened calmly. He'd always been good at that. She'd always been able to come to him with her problems, most of which were the Twins or Ron picking on her.

As always, he let her talk herself out. She could tell by his stiff posture that he was disturbed by what she had told him, but he placed a gentle arm around her shoulders and said, "you know he's gone right? The part of You-Know-Who's soul in that book is gone. He can't do anything anymore."

She had nodded mutely, but this wasn't good enough for him. Gently, he turned her face so she was looking at him in the dim starlight. "It's gone Ginny, it is no longer inside you."

For the first time since she had been interrogated by Dumbledore in Professor McGonagall's office, tears poured down her face. She tried to hold them in like she usually did, but they just flowed faster.

"Hey," Bill said softly, tipping her head up with a finger under her chin. "It's okay. It's gone. It wasn't you who attacked those people. It wasn't your fault. Everyone knows that. No one is going to hate you for it."

These words had been said to her many times by many different people over the last few weeks, but somehow, she believed Bill where she didn't anybody else. Perhaps it was the fact that he didn't tell her that everything was going to be all right. She didn't think she would ever get over having being possessed by You-Know-Who and didn't appreciate those who told her that her feelings were going to vanish overnight.

They sat on the porch of the little house for quite a while after they stopped talking, each taking comfort from the other's presence and warmth. Sometime later though, Bill shifted and broke the silence, "I'm getting too old to sit like this."

She gave a small giggle that turned into a full laugh as he made exaggerated groaning noises as he stumbled to his feet. "I think we should get to bed," he said as he stretched, his back popping and cracking as he lifted his arms over his head. "This old man needs his beauty sleep."

She slowly got to her feet. She was a bit stiff as well from sitting in the same position for hours on end. "You're not old," she laughed tugging on his ponytail. He whirled around and poked her in the stomach making her release his long hair.

"Leave the hair alone," he mock growled and tickled her.

For the first time in many months, she let out a full belly laugh. The sound was so foreign to her ears that she stood in shock as Bill fled into the house without pursuit.

As she climbed into the bedding on the couch that was to be her bed, she yawned exhaustedly. It was past four in the morning and everyone else was fast asleep—their differing snores well audible in the small house.

That night her rest was peaceful. There were no dreams of blood, dead students or Dumbledore expelling her. Instead, she dreamed of Harry Potter. Of him soaring high in the sky on his broom in search of the golden snitch, of him smiling as he handed over the Lockhart books in Flourish and Blott's, of him kneeling over her in concern in the Chamber... She woke the next morning feeling slightly better despite her short sleep.

Over the next weeks, she still had nightmares, and there were still times that she needed to be on her own, but with the new surroundings, and the amazing things Bill was showing them, she began to have patches where the shadow of fear that was usually looming over her vanished. Though as the number of nightmares waned, the number of dreams of Harry increased

By the end of the trip she was confident enough to enter the dark tombs and felt only mild panic. Her mother was still shielding her though and wouldn't let her go into many.

The day they had to leave came all too soon for her liking. She had had a wonderful time with her family, and she had wished it would never end. She bid a tearful goodbye to Bill—embarrassed that she was crying which she never did. Bill told her that she could write to him anytime, and then the portkey had whipped her and the rest of her family away. Charlie had left to go back to Romania earlier that day.

The first night back at the Burrow was a bad one. She awoke shaking violently from a dream in which she had stood covered in blood over a pile of bodies and had laughed maniacally in a cold high-pitched voice that most certainly didn't belong to her.

She began to spend a lot of time outdoors. When her brothers were otherwise preoccupied she would break into the broom shed and fly on their brooms. The swooping, soaring feeling she would get every time she soared around the apple orchard would cause her to forget anything else. She also couldn't help but think of Harry as she soared and dived. She wondered what he would think of her flying. Would he be impressed?

The summer came to an end far quicker than she had thought was possible. On the last day of the holidays, they all had went to Diagon Alley to get their new books and supplies. Ron was meeting up with Hermione Granger and Harry. Her stomach squirmed at the thought. She had adored Harry ever since she had seen him at King's Cross two years prior. Now that he had saved her life down in the Chamber, she didn't think she could face him without dying of embarrassment.

But she had faced him, and while being highly embarrassed, she hadn't made a complete prat of herself. She wondered what Harry would think if he knew that he was the idol that she relied upon to banish her nightmares.

And now she was here on the Hogwarts Express in total darkness. Her old fears were crowding her mind blocking out all else.

A dazzling light broke into her consciousness. A man was standing in front of her carrying a handful of bright flickering flames. By its light she could see the other occupants of the compartment. She saw her brother Ron, Hermione, Neville and more importantly Harry. He was sitting by the door, and she fixed her eyes on him. The knot of nerves in her stomach eased. He was here, everything would be all right.

Than the man with the fire began to head towards the door. He was leaving! He would take away the light and she would be lost in the darkness again. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him not to leave, but before she could the compartment door slid open.

A towering figure stood in the doorway. It was cloaked and hooded hiding all of its features except for a slimy, decayed hand that protruded from its robes. It drew in a long, rattling breath, and her insides turned to ice...

...She was standing in her dormitory. She couldn't remember how she got there, the last thing she remembered was heading down to dinner. Walking over to her bed she felt something sticky drenching the front of her robes. Looking down she gasped as she saw a huge splash of blood covering the front of her robes. Nausea gripped her as the smell of the blood reached her nose. She began to claw at her clothes, trying to rip them from her body, but she couldn't. She screamed in terror...

...Leaning over the toilet in the bathroom she retched violently. She had just found out that Nearly Headless Nick and Justin Finch-fletchley had been attacked. She couldn't remember where she had been that day. She was beginning to suspect that somehow, she was the one attacking students and that the diary in her possession had something to do with it...

...She was standing outside the Charms classroom, face burning in embarrassment as the Dwarf sung the Valentine's Day poem she'd written for Harry. Then, she spotted the black Diary on the floor amongst Harry's spilled possessions. The diary she had thrown away down a toilet a month before. Fear gripped her. Harry had the diary. He was in danger...

...She was lying in a dim cavern. The stone floor beneath her was freezing. She looked up and saw a huge, ugly statue towering over her with its mouth an enormous, gaping hole. She looked to the side and saw blood. Pools of thick red liquid surrounding the carcass of an massive snake. Harry was there, absolutely covered in blood and gore. But he was alive. He was alive! ...

Someone was shaking her. The train was moving again and the lanterns were once again illuminating the compartment with warm light. She realized that she was still shaking, and when she put her hand up to her face she realized that she was crying.

Hermione was sitting beside her and had her arm around her shoulders. She was murmuring quiet words of comfort in her ear. Slowly, she felt herself relax. She could see Harry, and he was all right though he seemed to have had as bad of a reaction to the dementor as she had.

The man who had lit the compartment with a handful of flames was now distributing hunks of chocolate to everyone in the compartment. She held onto hers, and like the others, she didn't eat it.

Conversation swirled about her that as far as she could gather was centred on Harry and his reaction to the dementor. She was concerned for him, but she felt as though she was separated from them all by a barrier of wooziness and illness. She couldn't join in on the conversation, all she could do was sit and shake.

Eventually the man returned. She hadn't even noticed he'd left. He said something with a kind smile, and everyone began to eat the chocolate he'd given them. Idly following suit, she raised the melting lump of chocolate in her hand to her lips and took a tentative bite. Her eyes widened. A warmth was spreading through her body chasing away the ice that seemed to have filled her veins. Smiling, she crammed the rest into her mouth.

*** September 2, 1993 (present) ***

She woke with a jerk. Morning's grey light was filling the common room-she had evidently fallen back to sleep during her reminiscences. A figure was standing over her. It was Harry.

"You all right, Ginny?" he asked with a smile.

"Y-yes," she squeaked nervously.

"You were shaking. I er—just wanted to know if you were okay."

"I'm fine, thanks Harry," she said a bit more eloquently, though still in a higher pitched voice than usual.

She could feel her face burning in embarrassment as she uncurled herself from the chair and rose to her feet.

"Er—I'll see you around," she said and fled up the stairs to the girls' dormitories.

As she stood in front of the mirror in her dormitory after getting dressed, she smiled to herself. Harry was worried about her. If that happy thought couldn't keep her nightmares and the shadow of fear that loomed over her consciousness at bay for a while, she didn't know what could.

Her heart feeling lighter than it had in quite a while, she picked up her bag and skipped off down the stairs to a fresh new year.

*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*HP*

Please review. And for those waiting for the next chapter of Moony, it will definitely be up by March 10 (Lupin's birthday you know :D)