Somewhere Deep in the Jungle....

*Disclaimer - This is not mine, it's J K Rowling's!*

Chapter 1


3 days before Valentines Day…

"I…can not… believe this."

"You said already."  

"Well I'm saying it again." she snapped back.

There was a long pause of silence as each member of the 2-man team considered the other through narrowed eyes.

"You know this is your fault, right?" she said levelly.

"Yes, let's go over this again. I may not have got it the first thousand times how your stupidity IS MY FAULT!" he answered tersely. Sighing to himself, he thought how this conversation just wasn't any more interesting than it had been an hour ago. He continued to march on in the lead, pushing through bushes and over hanging vines, wand in hand.

"Well if you hadn't...Don't you make faces at me!" she cried.

Harry wondered apprehensively how had she known that he was making faces, he turned around to face Ginny, wiping back his hair from his face, revealing his scar, and feigned an innocent smile. 

"Faces? Who was making faces?" he said grinning, which caused her to narrow her eyes at him.

"Come on, I would like to get to this party in time. Hand over the map - I'll lead." She sounded like Mrs. Weasley, Harry mused.

"You will not! It was your reading skills that got us lost in the first place!" he replied curtly. Harry pushed in front of her holding on to the map. She made an indignant noise but followed him.

They continued walking for about an hour, Ginny glaring at the back of his head wishing that he'd trip over a buttress root and fall face first into monkey dung - no, no even better on to a huge sleeping tiger - or a poisonous snake - wait that one wouldn't work, he'd just talk his way out of it - probably send it after her. How about a pit of poisonous scorpions.... Her thoughts continued this way for a quite a while - in fact it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. Her feet were killing her - but she certainly wasn't going to tell Harry that. Hell no; a pit of poisonous snakes wouldn't make her suggest that they stop and camp.

Meanwhile, Harry was trying to figure out where the heck they were exactly.

This all started about a week ago when they'd both received the following by owl;  

You are cordially invited to the following celebration:

'A Major Magical Valentine's Day.'

In the County of Amazonas, Brazil.

Starting February 14th until February 19th.

To dance, eat and celebrate the fall of a dark wizard with the whole magical community.

Please be prepared to arrive one day early and leave one day late,

 Further instructions will be given on RSVP.

Well what self respecting wizard could refuse!? Free drink, food, and music, plenty of young good-looking witches. It would have been a great party. No – It will be a brilliant party, thought Harry as he started to berate himself for thinking that they'd never reach civilization.

The party was due to start in three days somewhere in the Amazon basin. Ginny and he had been asked to set up wards and protection spells ready for when all the guests started to arrive in two days. The party itself had been set up by the European Community of the Magical World, which had been set up after the second (and what Harry hoped was the last) defeat of Voldermort. After a lot of hard work and sacrifice, Voldermort had been overturned. How it had come about was only known to select few, Harry included, but he pushed away unwanted images that tried to make themselves known. The war had been over almost a year now and, needless to say, the world had become a lot brighter since. Harry himself was considering taking up professional Quidditch; he'd been an auror of sorts in the war but now it was over he wasn't really sure what to do with himself.

Ginny, on the other hand, had plenty to do – she had a natural empathy with animals and plants; she'd tamed dragons, ridden unicorns and countless other unimaginable occurrences. She and Herimone had worked tirelessly through out the war designing illusions, creating diversions and working to gather information. The combination of Ginny's power and creativeness and Herimone's intelligence had proved amazing. 

Others had been involved in their team of course: Harry himself, Neville Longbottom, Susan Bones, and Charlie Weasley at one point. Ron was usually leading battles and running troops. He nearly always took their ideas and applied them to the current war effort. Without Ron their ideas would have been nothing, though, and without them, Harry wondered if Ron would have been still alive. The number of times they'd saved his life using their ideas when things hadn't gone to plan was uncountable.

Sirius had once said that the team was like a brick; what good was a brick if you couldn't build? If you didn't have that brick – how would you build sufficient shelter?

The war had certainly changed them all - the Weasleys in particular, when Charlie had been killed. Ron had mellowed, the twins lost some of their appetite for pranks, Percy seemed to spend as much time as possible away from work to be with his family, Bill always looked lonely when the family was together, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley always looked tired.

It hadn't seemed to affect Ginny at all; at his funeral she stood staring at his coffin, but otherwise she smiled, received condolences, and laughed at jokes. Her reaction had stunned people, and driven a wedge between her and Ron. Harry didn't think it was because she was heartless. He thought that maybe she couldn't accept that Charlie was dead, that it hurt too much. She certainly wasn't as happy and carefree as she used to be, but how could anyone remain happy and carefree as people you knew were dying every day?

Harry wondered if he himself had changed. He certainly felt older and wiser. Without Sirius and Remus, Harry knew he never have made it through the war sane. Many a time Sirius and he had had gotten very drunk and ended up fighting as way to relieve anger and frustration. Harry pulled himself out of his reverie when he was struck by a thought.

"Ginny – Why don't you know where we are?" He asked turning to her.

"Don't know." She answered. Studying her face, he realized that she was uncomfortable with this thought. "I can't get a sense – when we Apparated here I felt restricted, like someone was blocking me. But I think it may be just because the forest doesn't know me, the trees are different." She bit her lip, and rubbed her temple.

"Maybe we should stay on guard. It's possible we didn't Apparate wrong. Maybe we were brought here on purpose."

"The war was over a year ago. Why would any one bother to attack you now?" said Ginny.

"That's the most stupid comment I ever heard. I can think of plenty of reasons. What makes you think they're after just me anyway?" he answered, a little more sharply than intended. Brown eyes looked at him questioningly,

"Sorry, my brain's a little overloaded and tired at the moment," she answered, "Apparently I'm not the only tired and cranky one though." She brought her hand up to wipe away stray hair from her face, rubbing her temples again.

'Are you all right?' he asked, concerned

'It might be the humidity but I have a headache. If we can find some feverfew or rosemary, I'll be fine.' She smiled at him tiredly. Now Harry was concerned, so he suggested that they stop and camp. He set up the only tent they had, as Herimone had taken Ginny's with her, and sat down to eat some dry bread and pumpkin juice next to a warm fire. After searching for 30 minutes for something for Ginny's headache they resigned themselves to the fact that it was getting too dark.

The night drew in quickly; in fact Harry was quite surprised at how fast darkness fell. He went into the tent to change while it was relatively light, took 5 minutes at the most to change, and reappeared to find complete darkness. He hadn't thought the loss of light would have made much difference as the canopy of leaves blocked out most sunlight anyway, but he had been wrong.

It was amazing how dark it was. What had Ginny said? It's as black as night...and all that bloody noise. For once he'd have to agree with her. It was never quiet in the forest - the leaves rustled, monkeys hollered, birds screeched.  Harry noted that the fire was going out again. It was still quite humid and the damp air and ground made it near impossible to keep a fire going.


Harry gazed into the darkness wondering what was taking Ginny so long - what was she doing in there?

Harry kicked at the ground and wondered for the hundredth time how exactly they'd ended up getting lost.

He briefly wondered if Ron had swapped the Apparition details because he'd insisted that Harry and Ginny Apparate together, leaving him to Apparate with Herimone. At the time Harry had thought it was just that Ron had wanted to be with Herimone, which had made him curious as Ron would only have had a minute (if that), alone with Herimone. It just hadn't seemed right at the time to go to all the trouble of getting them to Apparate together.

But if he had swapped them, it didn't seem like a very funny prank. It also didn't seem like something Ron would do. Ok, maybe he'd have them de-Apparate over a river or into a tree or something, but not some random spot in the middle of nowhere. Not with everything that had happened with the war.

Harry lifted his wand and shot a phoenix in to the sky. He was worried about this. It didn't seem right – his Auror senses screamed that something wasn't right. But he also had to consider that maybe they just Apparated wrong. They'd both been bickering at each other at the time.

He heard Ginny emerge, and turned to see her looking at her watch.

"You sent a phoenix?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "How are you feeling?"

"Better now that I've eaten and have something cooler on." She said indicating her strap top, shorts, and loose robe open over the top, then continuing, "This heat is killing me. I was expecting to Apparate into a nice magically temperature-controlled area in the middle of he forest.'

"You and me both," he replied.

"Harry, what are you doing?" she inquired

Harry appeared to be squishing bugs continuously and at the moment was making strange flapping motions in the air.

"Well, I'm not sure, but apparently I'm every bug's dinner within a mile of here," he replied.

"Well, aren't you using bug repellent? It was on the instructions." she asked, concerned.

"Of course." Harry pulled out a flask from his bag and showed it to Ginny.

"Uhhh - Why's it blue?" she said cautiously.

"Isn't it supposed to be?"

"No - It's supposed to be green."

He looked at her like she'd gone mad.  "But Ron..."

"Ron," she said laughing. Ginny pulled out her bug repellent from her bag and handed it to him, "Here, use mine."

"That idiot! This means I have a prank to pull when I see him next," he said cheerfully.

"How about a spell that means he has to stay two foot away from Herimone or something?" she questioned

"That's mean…" he said grinning. "I like it."

"On the other hand though – both Ron and Herimone are likely to beat us to a bloody pulp."

"Ahh. Not good," he said a little deflated. "Then again, it means they'd admit that they were going out."

"Let's let them have some fun while they can – they deserve some," she said seriously.

"It's more fun watching them sneak around and making life awkward anyway. I can't wait till they slip up."

"Harry!" Ginny said, shocked.

"What?" he said smiling innocently. She smiled back and Harry felt his heart jump. She chuckled lightly and shook her head.

"You haven't given them a minutes peace have you?" she said.

"I've given them a whole five minutes peace before now, I'll have you know," he said pretending to be insulted. She laughed and Harry realized how rare a sound that actually was.

"Come on, let's get some rest," she said, standing up.

They made their way into the tent and both feel into a deep sleep, unaware of the noisy forest amongst protection and soundless spells.