Dead End

by smartasterisk

When Arthur Weasley bought himself a muggle science textbook to better understand 'eclec-tricity' he did not expect Ginny to take an interest in it.

When Arthur Weasley bought himself a muggle science textbook to better understand 'eclec-tricity' he did not expect Ginny to take an interest in it.

"I'm home!"

Arthur Weasley was pleased with himself. He had an especially grueling day adverting a potential breach of the Statute of Secrecy, it that had to do with radios and their frequencies (whatever those were), but squashed it with little to no difficulty. As a reward for getting through the day (and to quell his curiosity), he picked up a battered science textbook from a charity shop and apparated to the Burrow.

As soon as he closed the door behind himself, three small bodies threw themselves at him.

"You're home!"

"Mum said Fred and I can't fly if – "

"– we haven't finished revising."

With a chuckle, he dropped his briefcase to the floor and picked Fred and George off the ground, an arm around each one. While the two were flailing about, caught between protesting and giggling, Ginny looped her arms around his neck and brought all four of them to the ground when Arthur lost his balance.

Arthur, buried under a heap of giggling children, felt a flush of contentment run through him. His family was a reward in and of themselves.

"Up! Up off the floor! I'm sure your father has had a long day at work!"

His children rolled off him and he brought himself up into a sitting position. His wife, in all her red-haired, knitted glory, wielded a spatula with the air of a disciplinarian. He felt a grin split his face as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"I certainly have."

Molly's posture softened a bit and she lowered her spatula, "well, you've heard your father. Help him up."

Ginny picked up his briefcase, her six-year-old arms slightly drooping under its weight, and directed the twins like a coxswain, "on the count of three: "

Fred and George, clearly understanding an order when they've heard one, scrambled to their feet and grabbed his forearms.

"– one – "

"– two – "

"– three!"

The two leaned back, grunting with the force it took to bring him to his feet, and righted Arthur. Arthur resisted the urge to applaud the three for their admirable teamwork and opted to ruffle the twins' hair. The two squirmed about and he could hear Ginny trying to stifle her giggles. Once Fred and George escaped his reach, he turned around with his arms wide and took a few threatening steps towards her. Molly muttered something about him 'having a rough day, alright' while Ginny squealed and ran off with his briefcase and he gave chase.

Arthur lived a privileged life; his family got fed, his house was filled with love, and his kids were not yet old enough to think that playing with their dad wasn't 'cool' anymore.

They ran through the sitting room to the cheers of the twins where Ron and Percy were engaged in a game of chess. The two looked up to watch Arthur chase Ginny up the creaky stairs before focusing on their game once more.

Ginny swung open her door, Arthur's fingers barely brushing the tips of her hair, and jumped onto her bed in a last-ditch attempt to avoid her father ruffling her hair. Once she hit the bed, chest-first, his briefcase sprung open. Ginny yelped and Arthur took the opportunity to pick her off the bed and ruffle her hair. Her tiny hands batted at his and the two devolved into laughter after a few moments. Breathing hard, from laughing and from chasing Ginny around the Burrow, Arthur let go of his only daughter and watched as Ginny went to pack up his briefcase and stopped at the sight of the battered textbook.

"Dad, what's this?"

Arthur noticed the careful way she fingered the book, "I'm trying to learn more about eclec-tricity. If you want, you can look at it tonight."

Ginny's young face brightened and Arthur felt his heart soar. He loved his children and he loved when they were happy.

"Really?"

Arthur smiled down at her and patted her head, "if you want, Gin."

Ginny grinned up at him and hugged the worn book to her chest, "I'll try to be quick!"

Arthur chuckled at her determined face; the concepts in that textbook were complex, it would be a miracle if he could get through it, "alright, I believe in you."

Ginny's smile split her face and she hopped over to the small desk across from her bed and immediately opened the book. Arthur rubbed the back of his neck and wished her good luck before he picked up his briefcase and shut the door quietly behind himself.

There was no way that Arthur could have anticipated what would happen after that.

It took two weeks for Ginny to get through the entire textbook.

It took two weeks of staying up late, hiding the book from the twins, half-way skiving off her chores, and taking parchment after parchment of notes to get to a point where she could fully understand what she had read.

When her dad offered her the book she couldn't help but jump at the opportunity to read something other than her mum's knitting magazines and cookbooks. Not that there was anything wrong with those, but they were entirely too predictable and she very rarely had the opportunity to read something interesting since her older brothers wouldn't let her read their textbooks. The jerks. So, when her dad got home from work and she handed the completed textbook back to him, she couldn't help but feel proud of herself. Some of the stuff that was in the book was hard to understand, and she had to go through all the references in the back to even start the first chapter. But she had persisted and she wanted more.

"You finished it?"

Ginny nodded and rocked back and forth on her heels, "yeah! Do you think you can get another one?"

Her dad looked gob smacked and her mum peered at the book she handed to her father.

"Is that a muggle book?"

Ginny nodded and turned to her mother, "yeah, it's full of theories about how the universe works, but it looks like magic contradicts some of those theories and I want to see if something called quantum mechanics makes sense with magic or not."

Now, both of her parents were looking at her like she had grown a second head and she suddenly felt the irrepressible urge to hide in her room, "what?"

Her dad flipped through the book and furrowed his brow, "hey Bill, could you come in here?"

While they waited, her dad and mum looked through some of the pages of the book and her mum asked, "you understand all of this?"

Ginny nodded and fidgeted, "yeah, it took a while because I had to learn some athrimancy stuff."

Her mum nodded absentmindedly and Bill strode into the kitchen. Bill was her eldest brother, and he was smart – she heard her parents whispering about he might turn out to be the smartest out of all of them, and she had to agree. He knew everything about everything!

"Bill, would you say this has some complex athrimancy in it?"

Her dad handed Bill the textbook and he flipped through the pages, he snorted and handed back the textbook, "oh yeah, Professor Vector told us we shouldn't bother learning this stuff unless we wanted to go into the field."

Her dad nodded and looked back down at Ginny, "and you really understand all of this."

Ginny threaded her finger around the hem of her shirt and twisted, "well, I could show you my revisions if you want."

"Wait, Gin has been learning this?"

"Yes, can we see?"

Ginny nodded, skipped up the Burrow's old wooden steps, and dodged Fred and George to get to her room. She got to her knees and felt around under her bed for the box she kept her notes in. She didn't know why her parents were asking about her notes, or why they looked so shocked. Her dad wouldn't have given her the book if she couldn't understand it. When she hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen, Charlie and Percy were sitting at the table along with her parents and Bill. She set the box down and gingerly set her notes on the table. The table was clean, well-scrubbed, but Ginny was obsessive about her notes.

"Okay, here are the notes about the concepts and here are the solutions to the questions."

Bill took the parchment with her solutions, with too much force in her opinion, and her dad looked at the concepts she summarized and the sections where she theorized about science's application to magic. It was silent for a few moments while her revisions were passed around the table.

Bill was the first to speak up, "dad, I think that you ought to enter her early or maybe get her an apprenticeship somewhere. This – this is talent." Percy's face looked a bit pinched but Charlie nodded in agreement, "this is something that she could go into."

Ginny twisted the hem of her shirt and looked up at her dad, "Is this stuff supposed to be really hard?"

Percy let his head hit the table with a thump and Charlie started laughing, "yeah, Gin, this is supposed to be really difficult."

She fidgeted and watched as her dad and mum were muttered to each other in hushed voices, "– I think he might owe me a favor…"

"I could call Mrs. Abi – "

"– would Hogwarts even take a six-year-old?"

The relative silence in the kitchen was squashed when Fred and George dragged in Ron by the collar of his shirt, "is there a family meeting we're missing?"

Her dad was occupied with her notes on electromagnetism so her mum answered the two, "a meeting of sorts, we're looking over you sister's notes."

Ron got to his feet, despite Fred and George's grip on his shirt, "what notes?"

"Athrimancy."

Ron glared at his older brothers, "you said Gin and I couldn't use your textbooks!"

"She used dad's textbook."

"Oh."

Silence reigned once more before her dad finally spoke up, "I'm going to run to the office, would you all mind putting the notes in the box, I'd like to take them with me."

The notes were gently put into the box which he tucked under one arm, "this shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

He walked from the table, through the back door, and apparated away.

"Do you think dad'll get another book for me?"

Charlie burst into laughter and Bill shoved at her shoulder, "I think he might get you something better."

Fred and George look at the textbook at the center of the table and flipped through its pages. Immediately their faces scrunched up, "ew, that looks hard."

Ron peered over their shoulders and his expression was telling, he held the twins' opinion. Ginny felt very put upon; all she wanted was another book and now her family was acting as if she had done a backflip off the roof of the Burrow. After a few more awkward moments, her mum ushered her brothers to bed. Ginny was left in the kitchen alone, and she had the peculiar feeling that she had somehow left them behind. Her hands found the hem of her shirt again and she twisted it.

"Gin, would you like me to warm some milk for you while we wait for your father?"

Ginny nodded took a seat at the table. She felt exhausted. Her mum fiddled around the kitchen, heating up some things and cooling down others, "mum, I read the book so I could help dad with the Christmas lights."

Her mum paused for a moment and then moved to get her a mug, "maybe they'll light up this year."

Her mum put down the mug of warmed milk in front of her and she wrapped her hands around it, "the reason it didn't work before is that he didn't connect it to a stable source of electricity. Muggle electronics don't usually blend with magic, they weren't made to."

Ginny took a small sip and noticed that her mum watched her with a bemused expression, "mum, what the muggles have done – it's amazing. Magic usually interferes with the mechanisms inside of some of what they created. But with proper shielding or changing some small parts of them, there is no end to what we could accomplish."

She took another sip and sighed as its warmth hit her stomach, "they've created something called 'nuclear weapons', which take the smallest bits of the universe and explodes them, they can blow up things larger than a town!"

Her mother began to look distinctly uncomfortable but she pushed on, impassioned by sharing what she learned, "and then they figured out how to harness that explosion and use it to power their homes, this stuff – why haven't we tried it their way before?"

Her mum was a pureblood witch who tried her hardest not to be discriminatory. But, for all her goodwill towards the muggles, Ginny nursed the suspicion that her mum feared the them.

"We don't need stuff like that to keep our houses warm."

"But these concepts, if we apply them to some other spells, even household ones, we could create – "

"Ginevra, this is not stuff that you can play around with – "

Her mum was interrupted by the arrival of her dad and a stout man in a deep purple cloak.

Her mum immediately stood and Ginny rushed to do the same.

"I'd like you to meet Saul Croaker, an Unspeakable from the Department of Mysteries. Gin, he'd like to speak to you for a moment."

Ginny stumbled when she tried to move her chair and bumped the table, spilling her mug of milk. Her mum went for her want to clean it up, but Mr. Croaker beat her to it. He didn't even say a spell to clean it up! Ginny looked up at the man with something like awe.

The man, stout and fierce looking, smiled down at her, "hello Ginny, I've looked over some of your notes about muggle theories and their application to magic. Is it true you wrote this?"

Ginny felt a thrum of annoyance run through her, who was he to not believe her dad! Her dad was one of the most trustworthy people she'd even known, "yes, I wrote them."

Mr. Croaker, she noted, had a gimlet eye, which sparkled down at her, "I was especially interested in your theory about how we comprehend time and how earth rotates."

From the corner of her eye, she could see her mum stiffen, but she was too excited by the prospect of discussion to consider it, "well, it would only make sense that if the way we comprehend time and space changes then we change. The textbook mentions something about a Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and how languages change our brain and – "

Mr. Croaker chuckled and look at her father, "oh yes, I would be interested in having her apprentice under me."

Her mum paled and her father laughed incredulously, "is that all it takes?"

Ginny's head spun and she felt a bit sick, an apprenticeship? Would she still get to go to Hogwarts? She just met the man!

"Oh yes, we'll teach her rudimentary concepts and she should be more than prepared for Hogwarts when she turns eleven. However, we'll need her to swear the same oaths the Unspeakables do."

Her mum clutched at the table and whimpered, "oaths?"

"Yes. She'll be considered an Unspeakable and an adult by the law."

Then, the world exploded in sound.

"Arthur! I will not stand – "

"This is for her future! I – "

While her parents were arguing, Ginny felt herself mentally search for a lifeline. Oaths? Becoming an adult?! She felt herself wobble a bit and felt a solid hand on her shoulder. Despite the noise in the room, when she looked up at Mr. Croaker, she felt strangely calm.

"Mr. Croaker, will I learn new things as an unspeakable?"

Mr. Croaker chuckled and lifted his hand from her shoulder, "yes."

The strange calm she felt left, and in her panic, Ginny said rather loudly, "I want to join."

Her parents paused, the house stilled, and the ringing in her ears died down.

"Gin, you don't know – "

Mr. Croaker put his hand on her shoulder and she felt a wave of calm wash over her, "if the girl wants to join, then she will join."

Her mum looked about ready to explode, "you are not her mother!"

"With all due respect, ma'am, her decision will be treated as an adult's is."

It was a battle of will and ferociousness, between the quiet confidence Mr. Croaker exuded and the fiery passion of her mother.

"I think that this would be best for Gin."

Her mum looked at her dad, she looked betrayed. Her dad twisted the hems of his sleeves and shrugged, "this would secure her a career, and they would teach her things that we couldn't."

"Arthur, she's six."

"Six and a half, actually."

All the adults looked at her and she had a strange desire to giggle, "I'm six and a half and I want to apprentice under Mr. Croaker."

Her mum teared up and Mr. Croaker let go of her shoulder, but that calmness didn't leave her this time.

She made her decision.

"Gin, you don't know what – "

"Mum, I want to do this."

As stubborn as her mum was, Ginny thought that she was more stubborn. She wouldn't lose this fight.

"If that is Ginny's decision, I'll need her to come with me and give the oaths tonight."

Her mum croaked out, "tonight?"

Mr. Croaker stepped out from behind her, his posture was powerful looking, "yes, I intend to teach her as soon as possible."