"No! NO! HARRY!" Time seemed to come to a stop as Ginny watched him fall, blood gushing out of a wound in his side and a stunned look on his face. Then his head crushed sickeningly against the floor by Ginny's feet, and just a second later she was on her knees by his side. She couldn't believe it. She refused to believe it. Harry, all of their salvation – he who was going to save them, was dying before her eyes, and there was nothing at all she could do about it. During the span of the evening she had seen them all die, one after one, the Order, her family, her friends, until it was only the two of them left.
But she had still thought that Harry would make it. He would defeat Voldemort and the Death Eaters would just give up and everything would be okay. She had hoped and believed and dreamed, even when they were only ten left, even when they were five, and three, and two. But now it was just Ginny. And she didn't hope anymore. That died with a simple cutting hex.
The Death Eaters yelled and laughed around them. Someone shouted, "what do you say, my friends? Shall we give the lovebirds a moment for their good-byes? It'll be the last they ever say!"
Ginny hugged Harry's body to herself, refusing to let go. Then a weak hand wrapped around her's, and he put something in it. He was still alive, but only barely. "Harry?" Ginny whispered brokenly. Behind the disguising curtain of her hair, Ginny carefully opened her hand, and with a soft gasp revealed a Time Turner and folded note.
Ginny wasn't quite sure she had heard it, or if it was just wishful thinking, but she thought she heard him whisper, "I love you," to her, just before his hand fell down on his chest, completely slack.
Taking a shaky breath, Ginny put the long golden chain around her neck, and quickly began to spin the hour glass around and around. Then, when it spun so quickly that it was just a blur, a man somewhere in front of her finally caught in to what she was doing. "SHIT! The crazy bitch has a Time Turner!"
Now they weren't laughing anymore, they were rushing towards her, desperate to stop her before it was too late. But it already was. The first Death Eater to reach her knocked the hour glass to a stop, and Ginny felt like she was being pulled back. The Great Hall disappeared, and was replaced by a colourful blur. A pressure was building up in her head, stronger and stronger, until it felt like she was going to explode. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it ended. She was sitting beneath the magical blue sky, with four long tables around her. Crumbling to the ground, Ginny felt everything she had suppressed these last couple of hours, what she had pushed away in favour of adrenaline and reflexes. She screamed at the top of her lungs, because she thought that maybe the pain and the grief would go away with her vocals, but the only result it had was a sore throat and hoarse sobs.
They had all died, and Ginny had never felt so alone in her life, not even during her first year, after Tom Riddle. She screamed again, not caring that it burned, and she cried and never wanted to stop. She was so wrapped up in herself that she didn't even notice all the people around her or their shouts and muffled voices, not until she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jerked back, away from it, and stumbled to her feet. Her aching muscles protested, but she ignored the pain, focused only on one thing – to get away from all the black-cloaked people around her.
They were backing away slightly, but when Ginny turned around to run away she was met by a wall of others. She was panicking now, and started to hyperventilate. She felt like a caged animal, but she had an advantage that most animals didn't have – she had a wand. She got to her feet shakily, a mess of nerves and leftover adrenaline, and raised her wand to meet the stunned looks on the faces of the cloaked people. Faces she nearly couldn't see through her tears. "Stupify!" She cried out, the only problem was she had lost her voice to such a degree it didn't come out as much more than a hiss of air.
She started to back away from them with a silent sob and was close to tripping over a bench. She made a little jump to her left and continued her stumbling escape. Or rather she would have, had she not backed into a large soft something, and when she turned around she found herself looking up into a pair of small beetle eyes. Hagrid's eyes. Ginny wept with joy. For only a second, when she recognized the half-giant, she was convinced that everything was going to be fine. She hadn't seen the gamekeeper's mangled body being pecked on by hungry crows, Harry wasn't dead and Voldemort wasn't alive. She hoped again. But then, as she turned to fully face Hagrid, with every intention of throwing herself into his arms, the thin chain of the Time-Turner around her neck got her back to the present. The present, which just happened to be the past. Ginny whimpered and fell to the floor once again. She could now see that the cloaked figures around her were not Death-Eaters, but in fact students in their black uniforms. The teachers were in the front line, and they approached her slowly with their wands drawn.
Ginny was tired, extremely so. And perhaps that was the reason why she simply followed her earlier intentions and got to her feet and threw herself into Hagrid's warm arms. He was still at first, not sure how to respond to the shaking girl with one of her arms wrapped as far around him as she could reach, but finally decided the best course of action would be to simply hug her back.
In the back of her mind Ginny noticed that she was being lifted off the ground and carried away from the Great Hall, but couldn't really bring herself to care about it. It wasn't until she was laid down on a narrow bed in the Hospital Wing and several professors informed Madame Pomfrey in hushed voices about Ginny that she remembered the note Harry had given her. It was still clutched in her hand around her wand in a desperate grip. Slowly she started to peel it open with her uninjured hand. Her insides felt like they shrunk to half the size they'd had only a second ago.
Tom Riddle b. 1926
Horcruxes:
The diary – Turned into a Horcrux when he was 16. Given to Lucius Malfoy sometime between 1970-1980. Before that the location is unknown.
Marvolo Gaunt's ring – Turned into a Horcrux around 1940. Hidden in the Gaunts' home.
Slytherin's locket – Turned at an unknown time. Hidden in a cave he visited as a child in 1979, but stolen by Regulus Black and hidden in his home by the house elf Kreecher.
Hufflepuff's cup – Turned at an unknown time. Given to Bellatrix Lestrange (Black) and put in her vault at Gringotts sometime between 1970-1980.
Ravenclaw's diadem – Albania. Room of Hidden Things.
Nagini – After resurrection.
Harry Potter – 31October 1981.
Ginny froze and her gut felt like it had dropped and was lying useless on the floor somewhere. All the ones until Hufflepuff's cup were written in Hermione's neat familiar handwriting. The last three however had been scribbled quickly and unevenly in Harry's straggly scrawl. She balled her fist up with the paper tightly. Ginny mentally went back to the Final Battle, to when she had run into Harry, bent over Hermione's dead body and weeping like a little child.
On some level she noticed that Madame Pomfrey was trying to talk to her, to get Ginny to respond while examining her left hand. Ginny hadn't really looked at it after the pain stopped feeling like she would go deaf and blind but she could imagine it wasn't looking good.
When Ginny had gotten down on her knees next to Harry on the burnt rug he looked up at her with blank eyes. "They're not here anymore, Ginny, how can I do anything without them? No, no, no... I can't. Please help me Ginny."Then he told her about the Horcruxes, so quietly and quickly she almost missed it all. "They're bad, bad things... his soul split in seven parts... the diary, Ginny, it all started with the diary."
And then Ginny was screaming, because it felt like her hand bathed in Fiendfyre again like it had in the room of the hidden things with the diadem. She tried to yank her hand away, but Madame Pomfrey held her wrist fast, keeping the hand down in a bowl of muddy liquid. "Be still now, little girl, and it will get better. How you ever managed to get burned by Fiendfyre in the first place is beyond me..." the stern Matron muttered. Ginny could only whimper in response. But she was right, the pain started to dull into a sharp throbbing ache. Pomfrey looked up and noticed the girl watching her with large frightened eyes and her expression softened. "Are you all right now so I can trust you to hold your hand down on your own?" Ginny nodded but at the same time bit her lip to keep from making any more noises.
As the older woman – whom Ginny noticed wasn't as old as she remembered her – started to fly around the room, mixing things and digging through the cupboards, Ginny looked around the room and for the first time started to analyze her situation. Since Madame Pomfrey was here, looking like she was in her mid-forties, Ginny could not have travelled back all that far, forty years at absolute most and at least fifteen, and she quickly calculated that it should be sometime between 1960 and 1985. The thought truly scared her, but at the same time she could think about it with a cool detachment.
"I need to talk to Dumbledore." Her throat was so sore she only managed a rasping sound on her first try, but when she had cleared her throat a few times her message finally went thought. All the occupants of the room looked at her at with the same slightly stunned expression and Ginny couldn't help getting a bit irritated.
A plump little wizard in bright orange robes Fred and George would have wet themselves in delight upon seeing was the first one to react. He cleared his throat and said, "he's not here at the moment, but he's been notified of ehm, this situation, and he should be here within half an hour." He hesitated slightly. "Would you mind telling us what's happened to you, miss...?"
"I really think... it's better if I talk to Dumbledore first." She winced in the middle of the sentence when Pomfrey started to wind sheer white cloth about her injured hand. "The old fool has a real knack for these kinds of tricky situations," she said with a laugh. Suddenly she started to feel giddy and if she hadn't known better she would have thought she was drunk. As soon as Madame Pomfrey had secured the end of the cloth and started to move around the room Ginny lifted herself off the bed. She was extremely tired at this point and shivering with cold even in the middle of the warm room, but somehow she was beyond it, it didn't really matter anymore. She had the strangest feeling that an owl had grabbed her hair in it's claws and flew above her, the only thing holding her up. "I'll go and wait for him in his office."
She was met immediately by a chorus of voices and a wall of hands all pushing her down on the bed again. They were soon swatted away by an impatient Madame Pomfrey. "There is no need for you to run off now, little girl, you could have more serious injuries which need immediate medical attention. And you," she shot a pointed and slightly sour look to the rest of the occupants of the room, "there is no need for all of you to be here and just stand in my way."
"Poppy's right, we need to go take care of the students. We have classes to teach." It was a young, pretty witch who spoke, and Ginny nearly fell off the bed in shock when she realized that it was Professor Sprout.
Ginny looked around the room in hunt of an issue of the Prophet, determined to find out the date. She noticed one on a table, just as Professor McGonagall, the last in the line of the teachers, passed it. "Hey, would you mind passing me that paper, Professor McGonagall?" About three seconds later she realized that it might not have been a good idea to address her old professor just as such, as if she was a student. The thought that it was indeed strange seemed to hit the older witch at the same time, and she turned and closed Ginny in with her eyes.
"Of course, miss, here you are," she finally replied stiffly as she picked up the paper and went back into the room and handed it to Ginny. Then she didn't waste a second before heading out of the Hospital wing, leaving Ginny alone with Madame Pomfrey and her increasingly depressed thoughts. The Daily Prophet in her hand had woken that pressure in her chest, as if someone had bound her with magical ropes that just got tighter and tighter until she burst. That didn't happen, instead she threw the paper across the room, as far from her as possible, and screamed angrily. She didn't feel drunk anymore, not giddy or almost happy. Ginny was in the year 1977, and with a rising feel of dread she suspected things would not be all right.
When Madame Pomfrey noticed that Ginny was heading for the door to the Hospital Wing she started to protest, sounding quite annoyed. Ginny had always been scared stiff of the stern and unaffectionate woman, even in her later years at Hogwarts, but right now Ginny just didn't give a fuck.
She simply turned on the spot, facing a slightly stunned Madame Pomfrey, and shoved her wand up her face. "I've had one really bloody horrible day, and right now I'm going up to wait for Dumbledore in his office, you fucking got that?" She backed out of the door and then tore off down the hall in the direction of Dumbledore's office. She didn't give a fuck she had left before she had been healed completely, or that she wasn't supposed to know the way to the gargoyle guarding Dumbledore's office, and she most definitely didn't give a fuck that her mother had taught not to swear.
If she had met someone at that moment she would have hexed them without a thought.
And then, as she turned a corner, just like that, she did meet someone. On second thought, not just someone, she met Harry. It was enough for her to come to a complete halt and exclaim loudly, "what the fuck?!"
Harry looked up, along with the three other people who were loitering with him in the corridor. But then Ginny realised there was something off about the way he stood. It was too carefree and sloppy, Harry had never stood like that before, and the look on his face was all wrong.
"Well hello there, love," the boy next to Harry said. "Aren't you the one who took out everybody's hearing in the Great Hall?"
Harry smirked in response to the boy's question. It was so wrong to see the expression on his face, and just like that Ginny understood. 1977. This was Harry's father.
She made a choked sound before managing to get out, "I think I'm going to be sick."
Then she was running again, back the way she had come, with their yelling voices after her. She ran all the way to the gargoyle, totally out of breath and with aching ribs she suspected were broken. While gasping for breath she started to ramble all the candies she could think of. She had gotten a bit desperate when finally, at 'Cockroach Clusters', she got results. The Gargoyle came to life, much to Ginny's relief, and jumped out of the way. Once she had made it up the stairs she hesitated before the door. Would it be locked? And more importantly, was there some kind of spell to ward off people to get in? Finally she decided that she simply did not care that much and just opened it. Nothing happened. She was able to enter the circular room without problem. She sat down to wait.
Ginny still wasn't sure what she would tell Dumbledore when he got there. Could she tell him the truth, the entire awful truth? If she did then the pressing responsibility she felt would no longer be hers. She was still a young girl, if she confined in Dumbledore the much smarter and innovative man would overtake that. But she was not sure that was the right thing to do. She wanted to change, to do everything right, but to tell someone of their future was another thing. Dangerous things could happen, and she was not sure what to do, or how Dumbledore would respond. She was sure that he would not do anything stupid or rash, but this would affect his decision making in the future, and perhaps do something differently than was intended, and maybe make things ten times worse.
But on the other hand she was doing that exact thing by simply sitting in this room. She was changing the course of history every second she stayed here, and it was far from certain that those changes were for the better. Yet when she thought about it again she remembered that she did not have much of a choice here. She was stuck, irrevocably and permanently, because a Time-Turner only went back in time, not forward.
Absentmindedly she fiddled around with the little hourglass which up until then had been hidden by her robe. With a start Ginny realized it probably would not be a good idea if anyone saw it, she would have to hide it. She moved to get up from the chair, but accidentally hit her knee right on the edge of Dumbledore's great mahogany desk, making her curse silently and glare at the hard edge. But then she noticed something. A chip of wood had loosened in the intricate carvings leaving a coin-sized hole. The carvings were hollow, and upon closer inspection it was just large enough for her to squeeze the Time Turner inside and hide from view.
Ginny sighed and looked around the room. The peculiar things seemed to be the same, although Ginny could not be sure. She had not been in here enough times to memorize anything. That is if you do not count Fawkes. He sat proud and beautiful on the back of the chair behind the great desk, head tilted to the side and eyes peering at her. She guessed he had been reborn not that long ago. Then Ginny's eyes were drawn to a pile of rugged fabric on a shelf. The Sorting Hat. She contemplated trying it on, just to see what it would say. Harry told her he had done the same in his second year. He refused to tell her what it said, that it was too personal, and Ginny hadn't pressed the issue. There was no point, she knew he had his secrets and she respected them.
But Ginny only had time to just start to stand up when the door flew up and Dumbledore entered. "Well well well, Miss, you seem to have shaken up the routine around here quite a bit, would you not agree?"
Ginny could not bring herself to do anything but nod.
Neither of them said anything for a long time after Dumbledore took his place behind the desk. Ginny wasn't sure what to say yet, in fact she wasn't so sure why she had even insisted so on talking to him right now. There were so many things she needed to figure out. Dumbledore kept quiet out of respect and simply waited her out.
As she sat there and gazed at the amiable old man she almost burst into tears again. Who was she kidding, what was she going to do on her own here? She needed help to accomplish anything, and just like that her mind was made up.
"You always help those in need, don't you?" she thought it best to start out carefully.
"If I have the possibility to do so I will, and if I do not then I will still try."
"What I'm about to tell you, it's quite big..." Ginny stopped short. Dumbledore would not let finish her story if he found out she was from the future, she would have to tread carefully now.
"Yes?"
"If I knew how to to stop Voldemort, what do you think I should do with that information?"
He surveyed her, dragging out the answer as if he was judging how serious she was. "I think you should do whatever you need to in order to use it to its absolute maximum."
"And what if," Ginny paused slightly, "what if... I got this information by very unorthodox means? Do I still have the right to change the events which will transpire from my decision?" Ginny never talked with such big words when she wasn't in Dumbledore's presence. It was just something about him that brought that out in her.
The bright eyes behind half-moon glasses were sharp and it felt like he could slice through her soul. Suddenly Ginny realised what he was doing and quickly averted her eyes. There was no way she was going to let him sift through her memories.
Dumbledore chuckled. "You sure are something else. Falling out of the sky in the Great Hall and trying to hex the students as if they would attack you. Like you did not know where you were, yet only minutes later you requested specifically to see me. That might not be so strange, they write about me frequently in the Daily Prophet, and being the Head Master of the only wizarding school in of Great Britain it is not farfetched that you heard about me somewhere else. The peculiar thing is that you called professor McGonagall by name and knew the way to my office. You were also able to figure out the password up here, and if I'm not mistaken that is a Hogwarts uniform you are wearing. In fact, if I did not know better, I would say you were a student here."
Ginny felt uneasy at the all too accurate analysis of her. It was easy to forget that behind his façade of mirth and twinkling eyes, this man was sharp as a whip. She needed to avert him before he figured out anything else about her.
"Horcruxes," she blurted out.
"I beg you pardon?"
"You said I should use it to max, right? Well, do you know what a Horcrux is, professor?"
"Do you mean to tell me, miss, that he has split his soul in two?" Dumbledore appeared very serious now, this was not something to joke about.
Ginny continued. "I would imagine you know how tabu talking about Horcruxes is, sir? Well, I've only heard of them one time in my life. I don't know the details, but I understand that to do something like this you have to be pretty sick and twisted. Tom split his into seven."
Dumbledore's eyebrows rose so high it looked comical. Then he leaned back in his chair. "Not many know of Lord Voldemort's given name, even less use it."
"That's the part you picked up from what I said?"
He chuckled. "Oh, I heard it all, I simply prefer to address it separately."
Ginny shrugged before explaining herself. "I learned it by equally unorthodox means, and was it not you who said that fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself? Lord Voldemort is not his name, Tom is, so we should use it."
The elderly professor leaned forward again and placed his elbows on the smooth surface of his desk, his fingertips coming together to form a tent. His eyes were sharp as he regarded her, but Ginny was careful to never really meet his gaze, instead looking intently on the tip of his long and crooked nose. "What is your name?" The voice was low and precise.
"Ginny."
And your surname?"
Ginny smiled sadly. "I really don't think it would be a good idea for me to tell you."
Yet he would not give up. "Where do you come from?" he asked instead.
"So far from here it would blow your mind if you knew."
"How did you get into the Great Hall?"
This was getting ridiculous. She sighed in frustration, before wincing as the motion disturbed her ribs. Dumbledore's eyes flicked down to the hand clasped at her side.
"Perhaps you should-"
"No! Wait, I want to finish this first... So now you know about the Horcruxes, great. But it doesn't really tell you that much, does it? They exist, but where? It could literally be anything, a dirty sock in the gutters of London, a tree in the coldest part of Siberia. It would take years, and excessive amounts of research for you to track all of them down. Then there is the question of how to destroy them, of course. What could have any effect on so dark magic? There is so little information on Horcruxes as a whole, no wonder that there is next to nothing on how to get rid of them. So once you found the Horcruxes there is another step for you to take. You will have to experiment with how to destroy them. That does seem like an awful lot of work, does it not?"
Dumbledore did not answer her at first, merely watched her. When he did it was in a low voice. "Yet I have a feeling you know what will speed up this tedious process you so vividly has described."
Ginny flashed him a grin. "Naturally, professor. I know of two ways to destroy the piece of soul in the thing he put it in. The venom of a Basilisk and Fiendfyre." At the mention of the deadly fire the old man's eyes quickly flicked to the hand Ginny had wrapped in gauze. She pretended not to notice his stare. To acknowledge it would only invite him to ask more questions she would not answer. "As for what they are..." She reached over the desk to hand over the piece of paper Harry had given her in his last moments of consciousness. Dumbledore was just about to pluck it out of her fingers when she hastily withdrew her hand again. She had almost given Harry's name to him, and no good would come of that. Carefully Ginny tore the last two rows of the parchment, with Harry's name and the snake. For now they were irrelevant. Without meeting his eyes she once again reached out to give the note.
For a long time Dumbledore just looked at the writing in a surprisingly stunned silence. Then he slowly lifted his gaze to meet hers. When he attempted to enter her mind this time Ginny did not look away. She simply pushed up the memory of the only time she had ever seen Tom Riddle in the flesh. Those few seconds in the Chamber of Secrets as she could feel the warmth and life slip out of her and the handsome boy leaned over her. Not more than a shadow, and yet the sneer on his face was so clear Ginny could still see it bright as day.
Dumbledore flinched visibly and looked away.
When Ginny spoke again it was in a slow drawl that emphasized every syllable. "The only thing you have not tried to ask me today is why I am doing this, what I am doing here. Incidentally, that is also the only thing I will answer. I am here to save your life. Yours and everybody else's."
"Ginny! Ginny, help me! They got Fred, the bastards got Fred! And Percy! Oh god, mum, and dad... Bill... please don't go Ginny! Don't just stand there, you've gotta do something, Gin. You were always the strong one... We made fun of you, but we all knew you were the greatest. Please Ginny, I can't take it anymore... HELP ME!"
It was not until a hand gently shook her awake that Ginny realized the voice screaming along with George's pleas was not in her head, but in fact her own voice. Her vocal cords still felt slightly raw and when she tried to swallow down the bile gathering in her mouth the acid burned her throat. Hot tears leaked down her cheeks, soon cooling to leave trails of ice in their wake. She sobbed into the soft cotton of a nightgown, two warm arms were wrapped around her shaking body.
"Please make him stop, please. I can't help you George, there was nothing I could do!" The person comforting her had started singing softly in a sweet voice. It was obviously a girl. Ginny did not recognize the song, but she suspected it was muggle. Slowly her tears stopped falling, and her body only sporadically shook with dry sobs. Instead she listened to the song the girl was singing. It was comforting, most probably a lullaby because Ginny could already feel her eyes drooping and her limbs become heavy. She was exhausted, both from crying and the fact that she probably had not slept for more than a few hours since Dumbledore brought her back to a fuming madame Pomfrey who healed all the ribs with perhaps a bit more force than was necessarily needed. Ginny had fallen asleep before the matron had time to examine her further.
Even through the fogs of sleep could Ginny feel the moment the other girl started to pull away, presumably to return to her own bed. Ginny almost started crying again from the loss of the other comforting body. "Please, don't leave me all alone, I can't stand being alone." It sounded pitiful even to Ginny herself.
The girl hesitated for a second, then she quickly slid down next to Ginny in the bed. It was a bit crowded, but Ginny did not mind. It only took a moment for her to fall asleep again.
When she woke up she was alone.
This did not come as a surprise to Ginny, partially because she could tell it was very late in the afternoon and partially because she was not completely sure the other girl had actually been there. It may very possibly have been a dream.
Slowly she started to sit up in the boiling hot bed. Everything hurt. There were bruises and scrapes covering her arms and, from the feel of it, the rest of her body as well. The burnt hand was no longer confined in gauze, but it felt strange and very numb. Like it had been dipped in ice water for too long. Her head soon started to pound and when she brought her right hand up to her face the cheeks felt like they were on fire.
Ginny nearly fell down on the pillows again.
A door creaked open to her left, and when Ginny turned her head she spotted madame Pomfrey. The older woman was busy stirring a cauldron, but when she heard Ginny move she immediately abandoned her potion and came over to Ginny's bed, lips pursed and jaw locked in a stubborn set. Ginny tried to say something, but without a word Madame Pomfrey poured a tasteless potion into Ginny's open mouth.
She coughed slightly but obediently swallowed it all down. A layer of the potion stayed in her mouth, making her tongue and teeth feel thick and oily.
"What time is it?" she managed to rasp out.
"Three in the afternoon, but this is the third day since you came here."
Coughing Ginny attempted to rise from the pillows again. The pounding headache was going away with the unpleasant potion and her cheeks already felt cooler. "Three whole days?"
"Yes. You needed the sleep to recover from the stress your body had been under. The fever drew out the infection. For how long had you been awake before you came here?"
Ginny didn't really want to think back to the battle but forced herself to. Blurry memories of a sunset and a sunrise and another sunset rose. "I'm not really sure... thirty-six hours, but it could be more... definitely more. But I was out for at least four hours after someone Stupified me, though I wouldn't really call that sleep." It had been fitful and full of nightmares, and when Tonks woke her up it felt like she had taken a fist to the face.
Madame Pomfrey made a very distasteful face and continued to ask questions about what had happened, what hexes and curses she had been hit with, what colours the ones Ginny didn't recognise had been and at what distance the people had been. Ginny tried to be as precise as she could without giving anything important away. It was hard because she didn't really feel like dealing with it now and some of the things she remembered got mixed together and contorted when she described it.
Finally Madame Pomfrey left her alone to go to the teacher's lounge, presumably to tell everyone she had woken up at last. She left Ginny with a small jar of salve for her torn skin, trusting Ginny enough to let her put it on herself.
As she pulled the nightgown over her head and dipped her fingers into the jar she started thinking. Three days. She still remembered the date on the paper she had read the first day, so today must be the 30th of September 1977. It still felt so unreal. And she wondered what Dumbledore would have her do now, if he would even take what she said seriously. She thought back to their conversation and nearly blushed. She had been so rude, maybe he would just kick her out to get rid of the problem, maybe he would-
She was suddenly interrupted by a low clearing of the throat. She nearly turned around to see who it was before she suddenly remembered she was just wearing her knickers. She had never though someone would come in. With an embarrassed little yelp she scrambled after the borrowed nightgown to restore her decency. With cheeks redder than her hair she finally turned to see the intruder. She was met by the sight of a very handsome boy with black curly hair and a very pompous grin on his face. Ginny instantly became angry and went into attack-mode. "Let's see if you're still smiling with a face full of boils!" It wasn't very well thought-out, but it did the trick. The smirk faded slightly.
Not for long though. It was back soon again. Ginny just sighed and slumped on the edge of the bed. When he spoke she closed her eyes, trying to force it out of her head. "Where have you hidden the ice woman?"
He could only mean Madame Pomfrey. "She went to tell everybody I'm awake. I would imagine she'll be back in a few with half the teachers." She looked up at the boy just in time to see him nod in understanding. There was something about him that just made her feel very uncomfortable.
He took a step closer to her and bent a little to see her face clearer.
"So you look better than the last time I saw you..."
He had been in the Great Hall. Of course, no wonder, the entire school had probably been there. She smiled faintly. "I feel like I took a punch in the gut."
The smile he answered with was charming and flirty. "Yeah, that's the usual response I get from girls when they see me... although they usually describe it more pleasantly – like butterflies, if you don't mind the cliché."
Ginny nearly laughed at that. She would have if she didn't feel like she could ever laugh again, or feel happy. She settled for hostility. "I can punch you in the gut, see how you like it."
He just laughed, and Ginny got the feeling she had heard it before. So whose father is this? The thought left a strange taste in her mouth and she could almost feel bile rising her throat. "You're delightful, though you could work on your threats. They could use some creativity and a little better presentation." He grinned down at her and extended his hand. "I'm Sirius Black, but you can call me love."
Ginny's mouth watered rapidly and then she was on the floor, retching. She could feel his hands holding her hair back and she wanted to throw him off of her but her stomach was cramping and her entire body heaving with such force she could do nothing but let him. Then there were voices all around her. They were closing in on her like they had in the Great Hall, and still she could do nothing but stay on the floor, scrambling to get away from everything. She was crying again, and breathing much too fast. Little spots were dancing before her eyes in a million colours and her vision started to blur.
Then there was a face in front of her, a pair of hands clasping her own and a low voice telling her to calm down, to just concentrate on breathing slow and even. From far away she could hear a voice saying, "thank you, Mr. Black, I'm sure your presence is required elsewhere."
Ginny tried to force it out of her head, only concentrating on the soft voice of the witch on her knees in front of Ginny. Her breathing slowed and her vision cleared. On unsteady legs she let the witch help her up onto the bed. She noticed the room, which had felt so crowded just seconds ago, only inhabited three people beside herself. Professor Dumbledore, Madame Pomfrey and Professor Sprout. Sirius must have left... oh god, Sirius...
Pomfrey cleaned up the vomit on the floor with a swish of her wand, and then an uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Ginny was just concentrating on her hands, trembling she tried to open and close them slowly. Her hurt hand still felt a bit thick, but she was amazed there was no scaring at all. "Would you maybe like some water, miss?" Sprout asked and Ginny simply nodded in response. She did not think her voice would hold yet if she tried to speak. Dumbledore's wrinkly hand offered her a tall glass and Ginny instantly gulped down half of it. The water calmed her down somewhat and removed the stinging at the back of her throat.
Madame Pomfrey had withdrawn to her office after Dumbledore had given her a pointed look, and Sprout, after making sure Ginny had calmed down, also left the room with a sad little smile in Ginny's direction.
"So, Ms Weasley, would I be correct to assume Mr Black's presence disturbed you?"
Ginny nodded. "Yeah." She really did not want to go into it in greater detail, instead she changed the subject. "Have you thought more about the Horcruxes, about wanting my help locating them?"
After placing the glass on her bedside table Ginny turned to the elderly man and looked at his expectantly.
"I have. In fact it has preoccupied my thoughts quite a lot." He paused and Ginny watched him carefully, waiting for his decision. The old man looked almost torn where he stood, before he raised his gaze to hers and said with absolute certainty, "where is the Room of Hidden Things?"