Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Anything you recognize is not mine.

Nine-year-old Ginny Weasley usually loved her noisy family, but today she felt as if one more lecture from Percy, explosion from the twins' room, or absent-minded hug from her mother would make her scream. Her oldest five brothers had just come home from school for the summer, and she missed the quiet of the past year when she had lived alone with her parents and Ron. Much as she loved her brothers, she would not be sorry when fall came and Ron left for Hogwarts as well.

Ginny glared at a strand of purple and orange hair, courtesy of Fred and George, and pulled her hair into a ponytail so that she didn't have to look at it. Enough was enough. She ran down the stairs and out the door, shouting over her shoulder, "Going outside, I'll be back to help with dinner."

The invasion of boys had spilled over into the yard. Up the hill, Charlie and Bill had taken over the Quidditch pitch with their friends. Ginny sighed and started walking away from the Burrow, kicking at random clumps of grass and rocks. She could pretend she was setting out to seek her fortune. She was the youngest daughter in a poor but good-hearted and honorable family, which was almost as good as being the youngest son. Daughters never seemed to have adventures, but she was probably fated to meet a handsome prince or hero.

Ginny smiled dreamily as she walked further from the Burrow. Her prince would take her away from the overcrowded, rickety Burrow to an ancient manor and buy her new robes without patches or stains, and shirts and slacks and skirts made out of silk or velvet or something grand, rather than embarrassing cotton floral prints that had once been bags. Her prince would buy her a horse of her very own, maybe even a pegasus, and a menagerie just full of exotic magical beasts. There would be house-elves to do all the cooking and cleaning and gardening and she would do, well, whatever it was that grand ladies did. She tried to imagine how a grand lady like Narcissa Malfoy spent her days and tripped in a ditch.

She almost fell onto the Muggle road. Catching herself, she backed away to what seemed like a safe distance in case any of the strange Muggle cars came by. How had she come this far? She felt suddenly uneasy, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. She should go back home. She really should not be here, alone, by the side of a Muggle road. But there was a dull roar, getting loader, and something bright in the distance. She had never seen a car. Surely it couldn't hurt to stay and watch one pass. Just one, she promised herself, and then I'll go.

The car slowed and came to a stop beside her. She stared in horrified awe at the rumbling, foul-smoke-belching vehicle. It had just been going faster than the fastest broom she had ever seen. It was huge and hideous and smelly and very, very Muggle. Before she could decide whether she should run, a Muggle, a real honest-to-Merlin Muggle, was leaning out the window to speak with her and she just couldn't go.

"Don't be afraid, little girl. I won't hurt you. Are you lost?"

"No sir," she said. "I'm fine. I live near here." Surely there were Muggle homes nearby too.

The Muggle smiled. "Ah, then we're neighbors! I just moved into the area a few weeks ago. My name is Ken Jones."

"Ginny Weasley."

"Would you like a lemon drop, Ginny?" The Muggle held out a paper bag.

Ginny grinned. Muggle candy! She hadn't dared to eat anything her mother hadn't made since the twins came home. Muggle candy would be safe, though, with no chance to give her wings or turn her skin as red as her hair. And it was Muggle and therefore strange and exotic! She stepped to the car and, reaching into the bag, took a hard yellow candy. "Thanks!" She popped the candy into her mouth and licked the white powder it had been coated in off her fingers.

"So, Ginny, tell me about yourself. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

Ginny made a face. "Six older brothers. They're all home from school for the summer, and most of them have friends visiting too."

"Ah, no wonder you decided to go for a walk." The Muggle chucked. "I had one younger sister, and can hardly imagine six siblings."

"I ought to be going back now," she said. She felt oddly tired. Maybe she should take a nap before dinner. Anyway, annoying brothers or not, she was not supposed to be anywhere near the road, and certainly not talking to Muggles.

He looked at her with concern. "A little girl like you shouldn't wander around alone. Hop in and I'll drive you home."

She looked longingly at the car. If only she could say yes. But she thought of the Quidditch game in progress and shuddered at the trouble she would be in if she brought a Muggle through the repelling charms and wards just because she wanted to ride in a car. "Thank you for the offer, but it's not far."

"As long as you're certain you'll be all right. Do your parents know where you are?"

Ginny was starting to feel strange. "They know I went for a walk. I said I'd be back by dinner."

"Such a good girl." The Muggle's voice sounded very far away. Distantly, she felt hands guiding her into the car. "I'll take care of you, Ginny Weasley."

The car roared far, far in the distance as Ginny fell into darkness.

When she began to feel her body again she knew that something was wrong. She was lying on a hard surface in a brightly lit room. Her ankles and wrists were tightly fastened to whatever she was laying on and she could barely move a centimeter. This can't be real, she thought. It's just a dream, a nightmare.

The Muggle she had met on the road stepped up to the table, and she looked up at the bottom of his chin in horror. He wasn't wearing a white robe like she had heard Muggle doctors did in hospitals, but she had fainted, after all, and maybe he had misplaced his robe. "Are you a doctor?" She asked. "If you are you should let me go because I'm not sick."

The Muggle stared at her contemplatively, as if he was thinking what to do with her.

She shivered. "Didn't you hear me? Let me go!"

The Muggle did not reply.

"My family will be looking for me," Ginny said, trying to hide the unsteadiness in her voice. "I have six older brothers, and two parents, and some of their friends are Aurors and you really don't want to mess with them. Just let me go and I won't tell them you tied me up."

The Muggle leaned down to whisper in her ear, "No one will come for you." His breath tickled and she shuddered.

"Yes they will!" She glared at him. He had to be wrong. She was just a little girl. These things weren't supposed to happen to her. Surely someone would come to rescue her--her father, her brothers, her prince, the Aurors, or even the Muggle police. But they weren't here yet, and the Muggle was and everything was horribly wrong. She took a deep breath and screamed as loud as she could. "Help! Someone help!"

The Muggle walked around her, gazing at her calmly. He bent forward to whisper in her other ear, "No one can hear you."

"You're lying," she said, although she was suddenly horribly sure that he was telling the truth.

"Then scream, little Ginny," he whispered. "Scream all you like. No one will hear you but me." He pulled a knife from somewhere and started rubbing his fingers along its side, eyeing her strangely.

He was really starting to scare her. "What's wrong with you? You sound like a Death Eater!" How long had she been gone? Would anyone have noticed yet? She needed to get away from this madman before he did something with that knife.

"Shush, little Ginny," he whispered, and she felt the cold metal brush against her cheek. "No more talking. This must be perfect."

She squeezed her eyes shut, afraid with the knife so near them. "Let me go! You're crazy! There's nothing perfect about scaring a little girl!"

"Shhhh," the Muggle whispered. She felt the knife against her throat and held her breath. It slipped. She felt something warm trickle down her neck and knew that it was blood.

"Help!" She shouted. "Oh Merlin, someone please help!"

The Muggle was whispering again, but she was too frightened to make sense of his words. She felt the knife move to cut into her feet, her ankles, her calves. She screamed. The Muggle was going to kill her. He was hurting her, and he was going to keep hurting her and then kill her, and she'd never see any of her brothers or her parents or her friends again. She'd be dead. She'd never go to Hogwarts, never meet her prince, never do anything ever again. She didn't want to die. Not yet.

The too-bright light shone in her eyes as the Muggle cut and she screamed, begging him to stop, begging someone to come rescue her. She hated the Muggle and his drugged candies and his knife. With all her heart she wanted him dead, where he could never reach her again. She imagined what he would look like, how he would collapse and lay on the floor like a doll, harmless.

He was whispering something to her, but his words might as well have been in Chinese for all she understood. The knife was moving, following some pattern only he understood. Then it was at her throat again, pressing but not yet cutting, and she held her breath again.

He was going to kill her right now. She had to do something, anything to save herself because no one else was here and oh Merlin she didn't want to die yet.

She lost the last of her hold on her terror and felt the magic flow out of her, wild and desperate.

A flash of green light lit the room for an instant.

Then there was silence, broken only by Ginny's ragged breaths. The knife was no longer at her throat. Her hands were free.

She sat up slowly. The Muggle lay on the floor below her, the bloody knife still grasped in one hand. He was not breathing.

Her feet were still bleeding, she realized. She needed to stop that before she could think about the dead Muggle. Her robe was bloody but at least it was something. She felt dazed, but managed to tear several strips off the bottom and wrap her feet in them. She wrapped more strips around her forearms, where the Muggle had cut some sort of pattern, because the dripping blood was annoying her. The other cuts could wait. Then she looked at the Muggle again. He was dead, without a mark on him. She blinked. Green light. Unmarked corpse. Killing curse?

Ginny slid to the floor next to the Muggle's corpse, put her head in her hands, and sobbed. She didn't know what she felt, but it was awful. He had hurt her and she had killed him. Worse, she had somehow cast the killing curse with accidental magic. Would they send her to Azkaban? What was wrong with her that she was worried about prison when she had just cast an unforgivable and killed a Muggle?

But he had given her candies with potions in them to put her to sleep and kidnapped her and hurt her. He had acted as if he planned to hurt her much, much worse. He would probably have killed her. He had probably hurt other children. If she had not killed him, he would probably have hurt more.

But did that really make it all right to want someone dead so much that they died?

She was still crying when the Aurors arrived. She heard them walk in; one set of regular footsteps and one irregular, a footstep alternating with the louder sound of a wooden leg. Then they stepped through the doorway and she saw them: a young woman with dark hair and pink cheeks and an old, scarred man with a wooden leg and magic eye. The man looked vaguely familiar.

The younger Auror gasped. "Moody, there's a kid here!"

The other Auror, Moody, snorted and hobbled over to her. His wooden leg knocked on the floor. "You're Molly and Arthur's youngest, aren't you." It wasn't a question. He looked at his assistant, who was waving around some sort of device and writing on a scroll. "Jones, meet Ginevra Weasley."

The younger Auror looked from her to the device and muttered, "but the Weasleys are a Light family." She blushed as the old man glared at her and carefully walked over to Ginny, holding out her hand. "Hestia Jones, Auror trainee. I'm pleased to meet you."

Moody turned his glare to Ginny until she shakily reached up to shake the younger Auror's hand. "G-Ginny Weasley, and I'm p-pleased to meet you too." Somehow, the little social ritual made her feel better, as absurd as it was when she was all over blood and in this room with two Aurors and a corpse.

Auror Jones pulled a handkerchief from her robes and used her wand to dampen it. "Here, you might feel better if you washed your hands and face."

"Thanks." The cold water felt good. She focused on that and tried to ignore Auror Moody, who was examining the corpse.

Jones took the handkerchief, now sticky and bloody, back from her and deposited it somewhere in her robes. She glanced at the device, which had stopped beeping, and seemed to relax. "Brave girl. What do you say we head back to the office so you can see a healer? Your parents can meet you there."

Ginny eyed her warily. She wanted to ask her to promise not to let them lock her away in Azkaban with the dementors, but could she believe her if she did? The Muggle had promised not to hurt her. She and her brothers had lied often enough, but it was frightening to know that adults could lie about important things, like not meaning to kill you.

Jones reached out to grab her arm.

Without thinking, she rolled and struggled to her knees again several feet further from the Auror. "I d-don't t-trust you," Ginny said. The calm she had felt for a few minutes was shattering. "I want my p-parents to c-come here."

The device started beeping again and Jones tensed.

Moody looked up from the corpse. "Never thought to say it but you, girl, are too vigilant." He glanced at the trainee Auror. "Breathe, Jones. You too, Weasley."

"But sir, the detector's going wild again!" Why did Jones sound frightened? She was an Auror! I'm the one with reason to be afraid.

"I can hear that," Moody said. "Now breathe and try to calm down, both of you." He turned back to the corpse, but Ginny could see his magical eye watching as she took deep breaths. "Weasley, would you take a calming draught?"

Ginny eyed him warily. Was he insane? "N-no, sir. I d-don't really k-know you and I've already been d-d-drugged once t-today."

"Smart kid," Moody grunted, "but right now you're too dangerous awake." Before she could react, he had his wand out and pointed at her. "Consopio."

She slept.

The voices woke her. She kept her eyes closed and tried to breathe evenly. It was better to learn as much as she could before the adults realized she was awake. They never told her anything important. Where was she and how long had she been asleep? When Auror Moody hexed her she had been bloody and hurting, with strips torn off her robe for bandages. Now she was no longer in pain, and she felt clean. She was lying in a bed with slightly scratchy sheets, wearing a fresh robe that wasn't hers. There were bandages around both feet and her left arm, but the shallower cuts seemed to be healed already. The bed was in a room that smelled like nothing at all. Was she in the hospital? St. Mungos had that smell, probably because of too many disinfecting and cleaning charms.

"...best option for everyone," her father was saying. He sounded as if he had not slept in a week.

"Oh, Arthur, she's just a baby!" Her mother's voice broke.

"For Merlin's sake, stop your weeping." Auror Moody said. "A Muggle is dead with your daughter's magical signature on him and no visible cause of death. Your daughter was giving off so much Dark Magic when she felt anxious that I had to put her to sleep to get her out of the building. She's not a baby, she's a bloodless murder waiting to happen."

But I'm just a little girl, Ginny thought, furious and hurt all at once. How could an adult, an Auror, say that about her? Worse, how could he mean it?

"You know full well that accidental magic protects children when they are in danger, Alastor Moody!" That was her mother's voice, and she sounded as angry as Ginny was at the Auror's words.

"Not generally with killing curses," An older woman noted mildly.

Ginny fought her instinct to wince at the reminder of what she had done. Somehow, 'I didn't mean to' didn't hold much weight when speaking of a curse that was well known to require you to mean it. And she had meant it. She could remember how desperately she had wished for the Muggle to die. If only I'd wished for something less than his death. Why didn't I think of something else? I guess it might have something to do with being tied up by a madman and cut into like a roast turkey, but still, why was killing the first thing I thought of? What's wrong with me?

The woman continued, "Even accidental magic expresses the general character of the individual's magic. Duplicating an Unforgiveable indicates-

"We know," her father said wearily. "She takes after my mother. I'm sorry, dear."

Ginny's mother sniffed. "Nonsense. Ginny is simply a powerful witch whose magic protected her, just as it should. Alastor's meter must have been malfunctioning. No child of mine could possibly give off the amount of Dark Magic you claim Ginevra released."

Ginny shuddered and hoped no one noticed. What were they saying? How could she possibly have been giving off Dark Magic? Her family was Light, for Merlin's sake! There was the killing curse, but Light witches cast that sometimes, she remembered hearing that even the Aurors had used all three Unforgivables in the war before she was born.

"The girl's Dark, Molly," Moody said. "Do you really think we put adult-strength inhibitor bracelets on her for no reason? Either you get her help or you will lose your daughter."

"How dare you-"

Ginny had heard enough. If she listened any longer she would start crying. She opened her eyes and blinked at the brightly lit, all-white room. She shivered, remembering for a moment the bright light in the room the Muggle had taken her to. "Mum? Dad?"

Her parents, Auror Moody and the trainee Jones, and an elderly woman in a healer's robe were standing to the side of her bed. They turned to stare at her.

"Ginny!" Her mother rushed to her bed and embraced her. "I'm so sorry honey, whatever happened with that Muggle must have been dreadful and we're so glad to have you back."

Ginny struggled to breathe, and was glad when her mother released her. "Oh mum!"

"It's over now, honey," her father said gently. "Could you tell us what happened?"

Ginny bit her lip and looked at the adults surrounding her. She did not want to answer their questions, but somehow she didn't think they would give up until they had answers. "I really don't want to talk about it. Can I just give you my memory of what happened?"

Moody turned to his assistant. "Jones, we need a pensieve."

"Yes, sir." The Auror trainee half-ran out of the room.

The healer pulled a vial from her robes and held her wand to Ginny's head.

Ginny squirmed. She didn't like having that wand so close.

"Have you done this before?"

"No."

The woman smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Just think of the memory you want to give me. We need to see everything from when you met the Muggle until the Aurors arrived at the scene." She paused. "Unless you had met him before?"

Ginny shook her head.

"Good. Now think of the memory and I will draw it out."

She thought, and part of her mind was free to watch, fascinated and disgusted, as the woman drew something slick and silvery from her head into the vial. It looked like the slime a snail left behind it. When the slime was all in the vial she asked, "Do all memories look gross, or is it just the bad ones?"

The woman looked at her an raised an eyebrow. "The content of a memory does affect its physical form, yes."

"All right." Ginny fidgeted with her hands and indicated thick, metal bands around both wrists. She might as well get this part out of the way. "Am I a prisoner?"

"No, honey," her father said. "The ministry does not prosecute children under eleven for injuries or deaths due to accidental magic."

"And these things around my wrists?"

"For your own protection, and that of those around you." Jones said as she arrived, slightly out of breath but proudly holding the penseive. "They prevent you from working any magic, and are used for children with unpredictable or potentially dangerous accidental magic."

Ginny grimaced, not liking the idea that she was helpless to defend herself. "But I've been doing accidental magic since I was a baby! It was never dangerous before."

"That was before." Moody growled. "Would you bet your brothers' lives that nothing has changed?"

Ginny imagined what might happen if she panicked the next time the twins sneaked up to prank her. Her magic had killed a man. What if she accidentally hurt or, Merlin forbid, killed one of her brothers? She felt the blood leave her face. In a voice that suddenly seemed far too unsteady, she said, quite sincerely, "I'd rather you locked me in Azkaban."

"Admirable sentiment," Moody said. "Arthur, Molly, stay with your daughter while the rest of us watch this memory."

They nodded, and Ginny was surprised that her mother at least did not protest. Maybe they did not want to know exactly what had happened. She wished she could forget.

"What will happen to me now?" Ginny asked, once the Aurors and healer had lowered their heads into the penseive. She did not want to say this, but how else could she find out? "Can they send me to Azkaban for casting the killing curse with accidental magic?"

Her mother drew in a ragged breath. "Oh, Ginny! What has happened to my little girl?"

"They cannot," her father said, his voice unusually calm. "Are you sure that is what happened?"

"I wanted him dead, " Ginny whispered. "Then there was a green light and he was dead."

Her parents' faces paled when she mentioned the green light. "No one else was there?" Her father asked.

Ginny shook her head.

Her mother started sobbing, and her father turned to hold her. Neither of them looked at Ginny.

Ginny stared, horrified. Her parents were afraid of her. Her mother was crying because she was so afraid. Ginny wanted to ask why, what she had done, what was wrong with her, and whether this meant she was an evil person. This morning she would have asked, would have cried. She blinked back her tears. "So the bracelets really are to keep me from accidentally killing anyone else." What a horrible thought.

Her father nodded.

"Do I have to wear them forever? Can't I ever learn magic now?" If she couldn't go to Hogwarts, couldn't learn magic, what could she do? Ginny did not ever want to see another Muggle.

"We hope that you will be able to learn to restrain the Dark aspect of your magic," her father said, running his hand through his balding red hair. "Dark families have ways of training their children so that they do not face this problem. We…don't usually speak of it, but my mother was born a Black and she's willing to try to help you."

"You're sending me to Grandmother?" Ginny asked, feeling the beginnings of hope. Her parents were afraid of her. Even Aurors had been afraid. There was something horribly wrong with her magic, so that it had turned Dark. But she had been expecting to face Azkaban or, at best, St. Mungos. Even if her grandmother was a Black and had been born a Dark witch - and why had they never told her this? - she was determined and brilliant. Ginny felt as if she just might be all right if her grandmother was in charge.

"As soon as the Aurors release you from custody," her father said. He seemed relieved at her lack of protest.

Ginny could think of nothing to say to that, and so they waited in silence for the Aurors and healer to leave the penseive.

Moody was, predictably, the first out. He took one look at Ginny, sitting alone on the bed, and her parents, holding each other and not looking at their daughter. "It was Dark Magic," he said, almost gently. "But it was also self defense by a child's accidental magic."

"You might consider taking Ginevra to a mind healer," the healer said. "I've dealt with her physical injuries, and they should heal within the next few days. The arm and feet may scar, but the rest should heal cleanly."

Ginny's father nodded grimly. "Is there anything else?"

Moody stared at Ginny's parents. "Do not remove the bracelets until you are certain that your daughter can control her magic. If there are additional incidents of this sort, we will be forced to take further action."

"There will not be," Ginny's father said.

Moody nodded grimly. "Then you are free to leave."

Ginny stood, a little unsteady on her bandaged feet. Her father looked down, murmured a charm that left her nearly weightless, and pulled her up onto one hip. He took her mother's hand and led them out of the Ministry.

"I'll pack her things," Ginny's mother said once they had reached the alley. She did not look at Ginny, who watched, stunned, as her mother disapparated with a pop.

"I'm not going home at all?"

"No," her father said. "It's safer to take you directly to mother."

He didn't say who it was safer for. Ginny didn't ask, but as they apparated, she swore that she would gain control quickly so that she would never again have to hear her father speak as if she was a danger to the rest of the family, even wearing inhibitor bracelets like a criminal. But you are, a voice whispered in the back of her mind.