Ginny forced her eyes open as she felt warm liquid under her head, which she recognized as blood, and heard someone whisper her name. She was surrounded by darkness and she saw three dark figures on the floor next to her. She tasted iron in her mouth and slowly raised her head to spit out a mouthful of blood.
"Hey, Ginny. Are you feeling okay?" said a male voice as she recognized it as to being Blaise Zabini's.
Not really having the strength to talk, she slowly nodded her head. A dark wooden door opened, and someone else was thrown into the cell where Ginny was. She fought hard to keep her eyes open. She was sick of being tortured day and night. During the final Battle of Hogwarts, Voldemort was defeated by Harry, but some Death Eaters apparated away with some people they now held captive. She knew that she was held captive as bait, to lure Harry into their trap and kill him. But those Death Eaters were daft enough not to let Harry know she was alive, which made it impossible for him to fall into their trap. Ginny was saddened when she thought about Harry, or even anyone in her family, knowing that they most certainly believed her dead.
Every morning and night, some Death Eaters would come in the dungeon where she and the others were held captive, and choose one of them, took them away from the cell they shared, and torture them until they passed out. They would then bring them back and throw them in the cell, where none of them could do anything. They were underfed and weak, unable to stand up against Death Eaters or heal their own wounds.
She turned around to see how the person who was thrown into the cell was. She was hardly able to recognize the person. His clothes were ripped, just like everyone else's in the cell, his pale face was sickly thin and bruised, and his platinum blonde hair was now a darkened red because of all the blood that was on it, caused by the head injury he suffered from. She never would've believed she would ever see Draco Malfoy in such a vulnerable state.
Molly wiped her sweaty forehead as she pulled out several trays of cookies from the oven. She was preparing a feast for her family since today marked the second anniversary of Voldemort's death, and as per usual, the whole family would dine together and remember the good moments they spent in the company of their loved ones that they lost in the war. She had a hard time believing that exactly two years ago, she stood on the battlefield with her family, and lost her daughter. A few tears rolled down her cheeks, and she swiftly wiped them away. Since the Burrow had been destroyed in a Death Eater attack, the Weasleys had moved into a beautiful house that belonged to Molly's parents. She heard a pop into the living room and suddenly heard Harry and Hermione's voices, followed by Ron's. She felt a smile grow on her face as she made her way to go hug all three of them.
"I'm telling you Hermione... I'm sure she's still out there somewhere. She was right next to you when Voldemort died. No one killed her. I'm sure of it. We didn't find her body either. What explanation do you have for that?" said Harry. Hermione shot him an apologetic glance, and then looked at Ron.
"Harry... We looked everywhere for her. We really did. But she's nowhere to be found. I think... I think it's time you start moving on. I don't want you to spend your life looking for a ghost" she told him sadly, as she patted him on the shoulder. "You've been searching for her for the past two years, Harry. After all this time, you haven't found one trace of her. You didn't find any proof that she is still alive. Let her go. You have to stop spending this much energy on her. You just got engaged, focus on that instead" she said. Harry looked at her with tears in his eyes and nodded slowly, wiping his tears away. "We all loved her and it's so sad that she's not here with us anymore, but at least you can trust that she's in a better place, with no suffering, probably with Tonks and Lupin, and all of the other loved ones we lost. They're probably looking over us now, and besides, she's never really gone. She'll always be here" said Hermione as she put her hand over Harry's heart. She then pulled him close to her, bringing her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.
Dinner turned out to be pretty good. Not too many tears were shed, compared to the previous year. They all sat around the table, talked about good memories they shared with the ones they lost. There were many laughs shared and they all appreciated just being reunited there that night and having each other. It was getting rather late, and people started to turn in or to go home. Harry, Hermione, and Ron decided to spend the night there, so they all said their good nights and turned in. Harry fell asleep that night, thinking about Ginny and how much he missed her, hoping she was somewhere out there, and she would find her way to him one day because even if he was engaged, he had lost not only his girlfriend but a friend as well.
Ginny sat there and looked at the people in front of her. She was sitting in front of these people who had once been her enemies and fought on the other side. She realized that not only did she care deeply about them, but she was closer to them more than she ever was with her old friends. They had spent a lot of time together in that dungeon, getting to know each other and grew very fond of one another. She was there with Seamus Finnigan, Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy. She had realized that once you got to know the Slytherins, they weren't all stuck up as she believed them to be. Except for Malfoy. He would still talk to her, but they were still on the last name basis. He was still cold towards her and looked at her like an inferior, something that pissed Ginny off. No matter how many times she would heal his wounds, he still looked down at her. She got used to it, and just ignored his mean comments.
Ginny knew that if they ever go out of there, they would stay friends forever, not talking about Malfoy of course. None of them really knew how long they had been prisoners, but they all knew it was longer than a year for sure. Her fellow Slytherin friends had been captured with her for turning their backs on Voldemort and switching sides. After a little while of being captured, they decided to put their differences aside, and find a way to get out of that hellhole. It was difficult at first, given the insults and pride they all had, but they realized that they needed each other to get out of there. They soon started digging a tunnel, towards what they believed was the outside world. But they were all growing weaker after the torture they all had to endure daily, making the tunnel take a whole lot longer than they expected it to take. The tunnel was on the far right corner of the dungeon they were in. They were surrounded by walls on three sides, and the other side was a very big and thick metal bars that were keeping them in. Five feet across from the metal bars was the wall, with a big wooden door. They dug a hole in the wall, big enough for them to walk up straight. Whenever Death Eaters would come, they would put the first stones back. They used all the dirt they collected from the tunnel as beds. They would put it on the solid rock, making it somewhat more comfortable. The whole cell was covered in dirt, but it was too dark to see, so no one would notice that when they were taken away.
They were all around Draco now, trying to stop the bleeding from his head. Seamus ripped a piece of his shirt and wrapped Draco's head in it. A couple hours later, Blaise got up and went towards the tunnel. They spent a lot of time staring into emptiness and not talking. It happened quite often to spend days without saying one word to each other. He started walking inside the tunnel and continued digging where they had left off. Ginny looked at Pansy and they both slowly got up, ready to join Blaise. Just as they were getting up, Draco started waking up.
"Seamus, stay here with him while we go help Blaise. Make sure he stays awake. We don't know how bad his head injury is" Ginny told him. Seamus nodded. He inspected Draco's head, noticing that the bleeding was slowly starting to stop. Seamus helped Draco up and helped him go on an area with more dirt, to make it somewhat more comfortable for him.
Ginny and Pansy made their way into the tunnel, joining Blaise, and both girls started digging too. They all had a few broken bones and dislocated body parts. Cuts and bruises everywhere, but they all put all that aside and ignored the pain when they were in the tunnel. They knew that no matter how much pain they were in, they had to keep going so that they could get out. Ginny was thinking back to what those damn Death Eaters did to her. How they touched her, beat her, tortured her. All this made her angry, furious, filled her with rage. She took this new energy and started digging faster and harder. Blaise and Pansy, noticing this, exchanged a worried look and then noticed how Ginny was crying. She didn't care what the others might think. She silently let those tears slide down her cheeks. Blaise and Pansy had never seen Ginny cry. None of them had. Not one time since they had gotten captured. She was the strong one, who didn't focus on herself, but would put all her energy into the tunnel or into trying to heal the others. Suddenly, she dropped down to her knees and broke down into uncontrollable sobs. Ever since they were trapped in this dungeon, she never let herself feel any emotion. She never cried. Even during all those days where she wanted to die of pain and when the shame caught up to her. She thought of her family who was mourning her if they hadn't forgotten her already. She thought of Harry, and how much she missed him. She thought of Lupin and Tonks. How they were all murdered by Death Eaters. All she wanted to do was kill them. She wanted them to rot in hell, where they belonged. She thought of how her life was horrible right now, how she would probably rot away in this cell. She just let everything out. All the emotions she had bottled up in the past 2 years. She stood there crying, as Blaise and Pansy gently rubbed her back and hugged her. They stayed there, not saying one word until Ginny stopped crying. She then wiped away the tears and apologized to them, getting back up and continued digging. Blaise looked at her, raised an eyebrow but just kept digging. After a few hours, he felt the dirt get softer. His eyes lit up and he started digging faster. A couple of seconds later, there was a hole in the tunnel. And they could see the stars. They all looked at each other and all ran back towards the cell to tell the two other boys.
"Seamus! Malfoy! We did it! We can get out of this place! We just need to make the hole bigger, but we can finally get out of here! Can you believe this? The sky! We can see the sky!" said Ginny getting excited. Seamus got up and hugged Ginny. They were all excited. They all got up and started walking towards the tunnel.
"Wait guys," said Blaise "someone needs to stay here in case we don't finish until they come back. They can't know of this tunnel. We need to make sure we leave without them knowing and it's been a couple hours since Draco is back. They'll come back before we make the escape hole bigger. Someone needs to stay here to alert us when someone is coming" he said.
Everyone looked at each other and nodded in agreement. Pansy offered to stay behind while the others went back to dig. They had time to dig for about thirty more minutes until Pansy called out to them, letting them know that footsteps were approaching. They all ran back and Blaise, with the help of Draco and Seamus replaced the rocks at the entrance of the tunnel, covering it so that it wouldn't be visible by Death Eaters. The door swung open, and they opened the cell, grabbed Ginny by the hair and dragged her out of the cell. She was dragged into the room next to the one where their cell was. She knew that room very well. They all did. As soon as the door closed behind them, the others went back to digging, listening to Ginny's cries for help and screams from the room next door, feeling sad, knowing they were unable to help her.
Ginny's torture lasted for a couple hours, and then she was brought back to the cell, bleeding and bruised. As soon as the door closed behind her, Seamus kneeled next to her trying to tend to her injuries as best as he could. When she was able to stand, they all made their way to the back of the tunnel, where the others had managed to make a hole big enough for them to pass one by one. They started getting out, Seamus first, then followed by Ginny, Blaise, Draco, and when Pansy was about to go through, the door of the cell swung open, and Death Eaters came in. They saw the tunnel and started running towards it. When they realized that the prisoners were trying to escape, one of them grabbed Pansy by the hair and pulled her back. They had a knife to her throat, as the others froze, scared to move and risk their friend's life.
"Come back into the cell or I will kill her!" yelled the furious Death Eater. Draco looked at Blaise, unsure of what to do. He walked back to the hole, ready to get back in, not wanting to get Pansy killed.
"Draco, get out of here! You finally have a chance to escape! Take it and go!" yelled Pansy trying to get out of the Death Eater's grip. She whimpered when she felt the knife press harder on her throat. She then started fighting against the Death Eater's grip harder. This one, annoyed by it, in one swift movement, pulled her head back and slashed the knife across her throat. Warm blood started flowing from the wound and her body fell limp to the floor. Ginny felt her world stop. She felt tears roll down her cheeks and quickly came back to reality. She grabbed Draco's shirt, pulling him back from the hole. They all took off running towards the woods. They were running and dodging spells that flew towards them. They were almost safe behind the big trees that offered protection when Seamus fell to the ground. Blaise stopped running and went to help him up when he saw that he had been hit with a curse that knocked him out but didn't kill him. He picked him up, throwing him over his shoulder, and ran as fast as he could towards the woods, where Ginny made him put Seamus down. She grabbed his face, and slapped him a couple times until he regained consciousness. Seamus immediately got up, filled with adrenaline, and they all kept running until their legs and lungs couldn't take it anymore. At that moment, they didn't think about their injuries or the death of their friend. All they thought about was that they had to get away and survive. They ran for a long time until they were sure that Death Eaters wouldn't find them. They stopped near a big tree, and all fell to their knees, breathing heavily.
"We made it," said Draco. "We're out of that place! We're finally out!" he said getting up. "We need to get the hell out of here. We can't stay here they'll find us sooner or later" he said looking down at his tired friends. "We need to climb in this tree. They won't find us during the night and we'll be able to get a bit of sleep" he said.
Blaise and Ginny looked at each other, wondering if he was joking or not about climbing in a tree. When they saw him start climbing, they rolled their eyes at him and started climbing as well. They got to the higher branches, where they were hidden by leaves, and made themselves comfortable on wider branches, making sure they wouldn't fall.
"I'll be damned if we survived almost two years of torture, and one of us falls from this tree and breaks his neck," said Ginny with a light chuckle. She saw Draco and Blaise smirk at her, followed by Seamus who chuckled. She soon drifted off into the best sleep she had in over two years.
A/ N: Heyyy guys! Yes I know, this was an eventful chapter, but the next ones won't be as morbid, I promise! Have a nice day!