Ginny's footsteps echoed in the deserted corridors of what had once been the Ministry of Magic and was now nothing more than a relic of the past.
She turned to Hermione. The older girl was observing her surroundings with a grim expression that mirrored Ginny's own feelings.
"It's so uncomfortable." Hermione whispered. "I miss fighting, at least then we'd known what to expect. This is just …" She gestured vaguely as if trying to explain what the room was.
Ginny hummed in response. She knew what Hermione was trying to say. At least when you were facing down Death Eaters, you knew it was going to be adrenaline and curses and not having a minute to think because if you stopped for just half a second too long you were dead. This odd, post-apocalyptic hell that they'd been dipped into these past few months was too quiet.
It still felt so surreal.
When Harry had leaped out of Hagrid's arms at the battle of Hogwarts, somehow miraculously alive, the Light had been lulled into a false sense of security. After all, Harry had come back from the dead. Harry had been prophesied to rise up and kill the Dark Lord. And he did- Tom Riddle died at Harry Potter's wand, as he was supposed to.
What no one expected, however, was for Harry Potter to be hit by a stray killing curse.
Ginny wished it had ended then. That everyone had given up and gone home, holed up with their defeats gnawing at their hearts. Instead, the war dragged on and on and on, until it seemed that there had never been anything before or after the battle, that this simply was how it had always been. Both sides took heavy losses. How could they still call it a war when it was barely alive anymore, wasn't the loud shriek of avada as you charged at your enemy, but rather the quiet whisper of crucio.
Ginny Weasley, born last of seven, now the youngest of three.
And that was why she was here. Because she could not, would not lose another one.
Theodore Nott, Death Eater deserter and convert to the Light, spy extraordinaire, had been missing for two weeks.
"Unfortunately, Mr. Nott is in possession of information that we absolutely cannot allow to fall into the wrong hands." Shacklebolt had told Ginny and Hermione gravely. Ginny had wanted to snap that the fact that her friend might be dead was also quite unfortunate, but she'd held her tongue and let the man finish. "Therefore, I must ask you to go on a mission to retrieve Theodore Nott safely, and if that should fail…"
The implication hung thickly between the three of them.
Now Hermione and Ginny were back in the Department of Mysteries, thankfully deserted if not worse for the wear. They were in a room that might once have been beautiful. Elaborate gold trimmings transfigured and danced on the pale blue walls, lazily morphing into different runes. It would have felt welcoming and cheerful were it not for the massive sections of the wall that had been blown out. The missing spaces between the walls were occupied by a vast nothingness, a void that seemed to stretch on for infinity. Whispers licked at the debris, a thousands' voices murmur that melted into an unintelligible buzz that set Ginny's hair on end.
"He's not here. He would have left a trail for us." Hermione announced, ever the pragmatic. She wanted to get out of this awful building.
Ginny ignored her. She wasn't leaving until she found some part of Theo, even if that meant his mangled corpse. If Kingsley said Theo had been sent here, that meant he was here- or had been here at some point. The boy wasn't stupid, he left metaphorical bread crumbs everywhere he went. There'd been enough disappearances lately.
"Ginny?" Hermione asked in a forceful tone that suggested she'd already tried to grab the redhead's attention several times.
"Hm?"
"We should try another floor." Her tone was soft, hesitant. As if Ginny might break. "If they caught… if he's not here, we might find, um, traces of him somewhere else."
Ginny nodded, lump in her throat. "Go ahead, I'll be right behind you. I just want to look around one more time."
It was perhaps a testament to just how much the last year had hardened them that Hermione didn't argue, simply nodded and walked away. Ginny tried to focus on the buzzing, the murmurs rising and falling around her.
They seemed to be coming from the void.
Of course. It just had to be spectacularly creepy.
Experimentally, she moved closer to the blown out wall. The whispers became louder.
Acting on instinct, she took a deep breath and steadied herself against the bricks, clutching tightly at the wall. With her free hand, she tentatively reached out into the dark. It felt cold, and somehow a bit wet, like the inside of a cave. She thought she heard her name, lost somewhere in the increasingly loud cacophony of voices. She thought she heard Theo.
Spurred on, she thrust the rest of her arm into the darkness, swallowing her fear as she watched everything past her elbow disappear into nothingness. Her hand came in contact with something solid. Fear and bile rose in her stomach, but she clutched the mass and pulled it forward.
Ginny blinked. In her hand, seemingly at the edge of the void, was an object that looked very familiar. A sense of dread filled her as she recognized object. It was a diary.
She turned it over, heart beating rapidly.
It was the diary. Not as she'd last seen it, in Dumbledore's office, tattered and defiled by basilisk venom. No, this was the diary as it'd been hers, freshly pressed and pulsating with something else-
Whatever fear had been gathering inside of her lurched violently as the wall she'd been leaning on crumbled.
It was all she could do to clutch the diary to her heart as she fell forwards into terrifying emptiness.
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Important A/N: This is a rewrite! I was working on this forever ago and I hated what it morphed into. Apologies to all of those who followed this before. Also, this is AU, so you'll prob notice a lot of changes with cannon past, especially regarding ww2 and Riddle's timeline.