A/N: This is the first part of the story I am writing for Owain82. The prompt he gave me was: Harry and Ginny, Cho and Michael, Susan and Ernie and Draco and Pansy are trapped in an ancient maze. They have to work together to get out. This is totally different to my usual preferences, so I hope you all enjoy it. It has been strangely fun to write. Thanks for your donation to Stacie, Owain, you're wonderful!

Gryffindor Courage: Ginny

My first thought when I woke up was, 'What the goddam bloody hell is this place?' I know for a fact I went to sleep in my bed in Gryffindor Tower. I was thinking of Harry, of course, and I know that I was warm, snuggled into my blankets and had a relatively soft mattress under me. Well, it was soft compared to what I was lying on now, which, after a bit of fumbling, was revealed to be rock of some sort.

I sat stock upright, gasping in horror. Until that moment I was kind of half thinking this was part of a really weird dream. But the feel of the solid rock, firm and cool beneath my fingers, jolted me into reality. I really was in some rocky place. Beside me, wakened by my sudden movement, Harry stirred and looked up. He looked as confused as I felt when he saw me there.

'Ginny? What? I mean – you shouldn't be here. Not that I don't like seeing you, of course.' He stammered out the last line as he saw my less than ecstatic expression. I temporarily shook off my feeling of 'what the hell is going on?' and concentrated on the knowledge that Harry was there too. If he was with me, then no matter what this was all about, I figured it would at least be fun trying to figure it out.

'Take a look around you, Harry. This is not Gryffindor Tower so I don't think we're going to be in trouble for sneaking into each other's rooms.'

Harry grinned. He was remembering the time we did get caught together, I guess. Not that we were doing anything bad that day, mind, just lying together talking, but we must have fallen asleep and old McGonagall found us when she did her morning rounds. Oh, how the rumours flew around the school over that one. I snorted. It had been kind of fun actually, pretending to live up to the reputation. I figured if we were discovered missing today rumours would be even more … well, I bet they would be salacious to say the least.

'Stop smirking, Harry. I'm serious. And what's more, we have company.'

'Company?'

I took his head and turned it to look to his left, where there were six more shapes scattered around the room. It was a room, of sorts. While it was made of rock, it wasn't solid sheets of rock; on closer inspection, it was made of rough-hewn rock bricks. The room was about twelve feet square and there was one exit from each side. Harry and I were in one corner and the other six people were roughly positioned in the other three. It all seemed awfully – organised, was the best word for it, I guess.

Being a girl of action, I stood up, noticing in passing that I was still in my pyjamas, and moved purposefully off to look over the other people. I saw Harry groping around for his glasses as I moved off. I felt a pang of worry – how were we going to cope if he couldn't even see? – until I saw them by his legs.

'By your leg, Harry,' I called behind me as I reached the first pair. It was Susan Bones and Ernie McMillan. The next two were Cho Chang and Michael Corner, and finally I came to Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson. Merlin! Of all the people we could be shut in here with it had to be them? Carefully, so as to avoid waking them too quickly, I made my way back to Harry. He had finally got mastery of his glasses, and was blinking around at the room.

'It's Susan, Ernie, Michael, Cho, Malfoy and Parkinson,' I whispered to him.

'Malfoy? Oh great. Just who I want to be shut up with.'

'Have you noticed one thing about this, Harry? Whatever made us come here has selected four couples – one couple representing each house. This smells like a bad set up.'

'Yeah, it does, doesn't it? I wonder if this has something to do with Malfoy's mission.'

I rolled my eyes at him. Seriously, he was still far too obsessed with Malfoy but I could play that one to my advantage.

'Could be, Harry, could be. Maybe we should, you know, talk to him, try and figure it out.'

He glared at me. OK, I don't think I did that one very subtly, but talking to the others was still a good idea. While we had been talking the other pairs had woken up, and were doing the double takes we'd already been through.

'Hey, Susan!' I called. I chose her because she was the nicest of the other girls. Plus Cho and Michael were both exes of Harry and mine, and of course Malfoy was, we he wasn't our favourite person, nor were we his if I was being entirely fair. Susan looked up from the intense discussion she seemed to be having with Ernie.

'What's up, Ginny? What's going on here?'

'I don't know, but I think we should go check it out. There's nothing to be gained from sitting here examining our toes, right?'

Beside me Harry was nodding, but the others didn't look too keen.

'That's the way, Gryffin-whores, just go off bull-headed without thinking. Just what I'd expect of a couple of no-brainers like you two.' Malfoy's voice came sneering out of his corner. I bristled at the words, but decided to keep concentrating on Susan rather than give Malfoy the reaction he clearly wanted.

'Until we know what we're dealing with, we're never going to work anything out. Besides, we could just walk out one of those exits and be at Hogwarts. We won't know til we do something.'

Harry was already on his feet and halfway out the nearest exit.

'No luck with that one, Ginny,' he called. 'There's just a long corridor here with more doors leading off it. Someone check the other doors, but I think this is some sort of maze.'

'A Maze?' Cho's voice finally joined in the commotion. 'Why would we be dropped into a maze? That just doesn't make any sense.'

Ernie had leapt up when Harry asked someone to check the other doors, and he finally shouted, 'Yeah, there's a corridor out all of these doors. OK, let's just figure out what we're going to do here. We don't need to fight, we need to work together'

I growled in frustration. Enough with the talking, I wanted some doing. I damn well wanted to be out of this place and back home with some sort of hearty breakfast on a table in front of me. Having a happy little chat about what to do was not going to get us any-bloody-where. Harry seemed to feel the same way.

'No use in talking, I want to get out of here. Let's just pick a door and walk ... we can talk about it on the way out.'

'Who died and made you King, Potter?' Pansy Parkinson said in her slimiest Slytherin way. 'No-one elected you leader of this bunch, no matter how beloved you are at school. We rational people want to think it through before heading off into who-knows-what.'

I threw my hands up and marched towards the door Harry was still hovering in.

'No-one asked your opinion, Parkinson. You all can sit here debating the finer points of maze lore all you like, but we are going to get out of this dump.'

Without caring who came too, I grabbed Harry's arm and went out the door into the darkness of the corridor.

'Guys! Wait!' Cho's voice was anxious, but I didn't care. 'Wait up, Harry. Ginny. We're coming too.'

'We are not. There was no discussion,' blustered Ernie.

'But, in a way they're right,' said Cho. We really do have no idea what's out there; we need to find our bearings. We can be careful.'

By this time Harry and I had stopped and waited for them. I was conscious of his hand, warm in mine. I squeezed it, and smiled up at him. The others were going to do the sensible thing after all. We could get the hell out of here. All that crap about being careful was all very well, but at least we'd be moving, doing something. Harry smiled back, and by that time the others had got to us.

'Can't you two keep the googly eyes to yourselves? It makes me ill seeing you all over each other like that.'

'Like you're any better, Parkinson. Couldn't find a real man, so you had to take the slimeball over there, huh?'

'For Merlin's sake!' Susan shouted. 'Stop with this stupid fighting all the time. You all make me want to crash your heads together. We need to work as a group to get out of this place.'

I blushed. It was incredibly fun to fight with the Slytherins, in fact it was almost compulsory if you were a Gryffindor, especially in my family. But it wasn't really fair to other people. Cho, Michael, Susan and Ernie deserved better than dealing with our constant bickering all the time. I mumbled an apology to Parkinson, and she muttered one back. We'd called a truce, for want of a better word, just for the duration of course. She was still Slytherin slime, and I'd never be best pals with her, but I vowed to hold my tongue, at least for now.

Impatient to get moving again, Harry pulled on my hand and we started off down the corridor. He determinedly took the first door we came to and we ended up in another room. This one was about half the size of the first one and had 2 doors leading off directly from the wall opposite us. We walked straight towards one of them and found a whole raft of doors all leading off one side. We took the first one and came abruptly up short. This one had led us into a tiny room with no other exits at all.

I was beginning to get a prickly feeling that something wasn't right and the feeling only intensified when the others piled in behind us. When we were all in there, there was no space for anyone to move and several people stood on each other's feet. There was a general muttering and cursing and an 'ouch, get off me' chaos around me.

'OK, stop!' Michael's voice was firm and authoritative. 'Whoever is nearest the door, back out please.'

Malfoy began grumbling, but did as he was asked, pulling Parkinson with him.

'Good. Now the rest of us should be able to get out too. This is obviously not the right way.'

As we got ourselves righted and were getting out the door, Ernie bent down quickly. He picked up a small flat rock which had an inscription on it. He read it aloud: 'Courage is needed in face of the foe, but courage alone will lead to woe.'

What the hell did that mean? Since when was courage a bad thing? I could see my confusion mirrored on Harry's face, but the others were nodding. Nodding! As if it was true. I huffed in exasperation.

'You guys think there's something in that comment? I think it's just some stupid cryptic message left by someone. It might not even be for us.'

'Weasley, if you believe that, you'll believe anything.' Malfoy. I curled my lip at him.

Harry leapt in; he never could resist when Malfoy made one of his cracks. 'Like you have all the answers, Malfoy. If you're so damn clever, you can get us out of this place.'

Cho stepped in. 'We were put in this place for some sort of reason. Why else would it be so … so pat? This clue thing is here, where whoever put us here knew you Gryffindors would lead us.' Cho was being reasonable, damn her. 'It's clearly a commentary on not being able to battle through this with just sheer guts.'

I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off, saying, 'I mean, it says courage is a good thing, and that we need it to solve this problem, but that it isn't the only thing we need to use to get out. I don't know, I just feel we should take heed and do something else, rather than wander aimlessly around barging into whatever door we get to without thinking through the possible consequences.'

She broke off, looking nervous. 'I mean, I want to get out as much as the rest of you. But this, what we've been doing, hasn't gotten us anywhere except a dead end. And this thing,' she waved the stone for emphasis, 'shows that it isn't the 'right' thing to be doing.'

'Chang's right,' said Parkinson, with a smirk in my direction. I glared through slitted eyes at her. The evil cow was trying to wind me up and make me break the truce, but I wasn't going to let her win like that. I held my tongue. 'We need to try something different. Now Draco and I,' she simpered at him in the most nauseating way, making me glad I'd had no breakfast to bring up, 'have been using our heads while the rest of you have been blindly following Potter.'

Susan and Ernie both began fidgeting. 'Get on with it please, Pansy,' insisted Ernie. 'We don't want to be stuck here all day.'

'Well, those of us who use our eyes have noticed that every single passage way and room in here is made of exactly the same stuff.' She was right, damn her. The whole place was completely featureless.

'Yeah, what of it?' Harry was getting impatient; I could feel his hand shaking in mine. He wanted to be moving again, and so did I. But we'd agreed to let the Slytherins take over – for now. I just wished they would hurry up. Malfoy must have sensed that Parkinson was losing the group's good will because he butted in right then.

'Same old Potter, no brains to speak of.' I wanted to slap the foul little git, but he hurried on, 'If there are no features in the open, there are probably hidden features. It makes sense. The doorways and rooms are all the same. So the only way to differentiate them is by finding what each one hides.'

'But, that's stupid!' Susan burst out. 'What could they be hiding? Secret tunnels?'

'Bingo, Bones. Not as stupid as your average Hufflesquib, are you? Yes, secret passages, and we have an idea where to find one.'