Disclaimer: I own nothing. Surprise. I'm also not making money off any of this. Stunning, I know.
Before We Begin: This story is AU. I spent a lot of time thinking of the consequences involved with the characters and how things would change. That doesn't make me right– I'm open to your opinions.
Please keep in mind characterizations will be a little different due to behind the scenes events and, in later chapters, on stage events.
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
- From To a Mouse by Robert Burns
Dirty, trembling fingers slid into the inner pocket of Ginny's school robes, fumbling the potion vial against her ribs as blood slicked the glass. Tiny silhouettes cast from the large window around the corner reflected sharply on the places not obscured by smears, wands flashing. Green spell light glinted off the container and lent the murky red liquid inside a brown hue.
Strings cut, one of the shadows fell. Ginny squinted her eyes and looked down the dim hallway on her right to avoid seeing the body hit the floor. She didn't dare close her eyes. It was impossible to hear the flesh hit the stone floor over the chaos of battle, but Ginny thought she heard a thud anyway. Her fingernails scrabbled harder against the cork, little pieces flaking away from the mouth of the vial.
After a few more precious seconds she pointed her wand at it. If all the curses sailing past Ginny hadn't hurt it before now popping the cork out wouldn't either, no matter how delicate Hermione said this sort of potion was. What was the worst that could happen? She went back in time a century instead of a quarter of one? It didn't matter anymore.
Ginny didn't even know who was dead now and who wasn't. Harry... was. She'd never be able to think about him again without seeing his pale, broken corpse being hefted up above the Death Eaters to dance like a marionette. Their laughing jeers echoed in her memory.
With a sharp inhale she tossed the cork aside and watched it bounce off Malfoy's stunned body crumpled at her feet. Ginny swayed back against the wall. She was more numb than in actual pain, wounds and all. She wasn't sure if that was bad or good.
Didn't matter. They were going to fix everything, and everything would be okay. Everything would be fine. Harry, Fred and George, Bill, her father, and everyone else would be alive and well. If she repeated it enough times she could convince herself.
Ginny eyed the sluggish liquid in the blood smeared vial critically. She should probably be a little more concerned about the blood all over it. There wasn't any way to be sure it didn't mix with the potion. It'd just turn it into a poison. No big deal. Better than here.
This time Ginny closed her eyes, and gripped the vial tighter in her grimy fingers as she sloshed the potion into her mouth and swallowed. She was almost fast enough not to taste copper and burnt mud. It had blood in it to begin with. It didn't have to be the blood on her hands.
The aftertaste was more like burnt hair and soap. There was something earthy about it, though. Not quite soil. More like rotting leaves. Yellow, orange, and red.
Colors don't have tastes.The thought lingered as a chill spread through her chest, tingled against her fingertips and toes. Someone dashed down the hall past her, too fast for her to react. Boots slamming on stone under the shouts and screams, the shattering of rock and marble around them. Everything felt quiet. Calm.
Feeling came rushing back as the castle shook, and her gasp of breath cut off her scream. No, she was definitely not fine. It was like her entire body had fallen asleep instead of just a foot and everything was on fire. Her back leaning against the wall was a personal hell, and the vibrations through the stone only made it worse.
She pushed off reflexively and toppled over Malfoy and onto the floor, screaming into the chaos around her. Before she lost consciousness the one clear thought she had at the back of her mind was that someone must have found her. She hadn't been paying attention. Someone must have found her and used the Cruciatus Curse.
Then everything was black, and nothing, and fine.
When Ginny woke up she wasn't sure if she was still alive. She was lightheaded enough to feel like her body was floating between the bed she laid in and the lacy canopy above, held down by the heavy velvet and silk blankets covering her. A dry swallow rasped her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and Ginny closed her eyes against the dull light in the room. At least the needle sharp pain jabbing into every millimeter of her skin was gone.
Where was she? The comforter she was clenching in her fists felt soft as down. Everything was disturbingly quiet. No battle. Not captured, not dead...
Ginny snapped upright and staggered back down into the entourage of frilly pillows, sweat cooling on her open palms as she groped around for her wand. A teddy bear gussied up in lace and ribbons flew off the edge of the bed, rippling the curtains draped from the canopy. A soft thump came up from the floor below a half second later.
Ginny propped herself up on shaking arms, facing the mattress. Strands of long, dark red hair had escaped her french plait to obscure her vision. Her hands looked pale and tiny in the predawn light. They seemed fitting to her somehow, almost comforting.
She couldn't grasp why.
Drawing a deep breath she turned slowly and propped her back against the pillows. The room around her was lit in shades of gray and lavender from the three windows. Plush toys were neatly stacked in rows on decorative wooden shelves and atop the large dresser against the left wall.
Next to the bed on the left was a round cherry nightstand with a flower pattern cut out of its surface. Ginny could see light reflected in the glass petals from the window above it. Past the nightstand sat a narrow bookcase filled with thin children's books and a few thicker ones, small toys filling in for book ends. At the bottom where the stuffed bear lay staring up with blank black eyes Ginny could just make out one of the titles as The Standard Book of Spells, Grade I.
Looking to the foot of the bed revealed an open closet door with shelves of stacked clothes. A closed door was recessed into the same wall on the left, and to the right was an open archway with a marbled white sink behind it.
The last two windows lit the room from the wall on her right along with a tapestry containing a snoring unicorn, and between the last window and the identical nightstand on the right side of her bed lay a vanity in the corner of the room. A small girl with mussy red hair and brilliant green eyes looked back out at her from the mirror, face drawn and bloodless.
Those were Harry's eyes... on Lily? No, reflected in the mirror from her. Evans. The potion. A jolt froze her stomach and she clutched the sheets beneath her. They were a Muggle family. Her eyes flicked back to the unicorn, its sides heaving with each great snore. Maybe they'd picked it up in Diagon Alley while they were getting spell books.
If they'd already gotten spell books, where was her wand? Maybe they'd kept it up somewhere out of reach? Ginny swallowed bile rising up as she carefully slid toward the edge of the bed, closing her eyes tight against the sudden wave of dizziness. She paused there, hand gripping the nightstand with white knuckles before looking back up into the mirror.
"Hmmm," it drawled in a pompously high soprano. "Perhaps you should just stay in bed today, dear. No one would want to be caught in public looking like that."
The Evans wouldn't have replaced their furniture in Diagon Alley. Maybe it was just a mirror that struck their fancy. Maybe they were trying to get their daughter – daughters – used to the magical world? Yes. An insulting mirror for a little girl. That made plenty of sense.
Ginny swallowed and closed her eyes again. If she opened her mouth to tell it off she might sick up. This wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to be with the Evans, she was supposed to be with-
The bedroom door flung open causing Ginny to nearly jump out of her skin as she spun toward it and landed in a heap on the floor as her knees buckled.
An ashen blonde haired girl looked down at her from near the closet, dark eyes wide. Ginny regarded her blankly. She was a haughty sort of pretty with defined cheekbones, a pale blue nightgown draped around her thin frame. Her neck was a bit long, and that along with what little she'd been told of Harry's family led her to guess.
"Petunia?" Ginny asked, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth and hating the uncertainty that had seeped into her voice. The blonde turned and darted back down the hall out of sight. Ginny could hear the thumping footfalls retreating.
"Violet?"
Ginny turned toward the quiet voice and found a girl identical to her leaning out of the archway that she'd seen the sink behind earlier. From her new vantage point on the floor clutching the edge of the bed she could see an open door behind it that led into a bathroom. Another open door beyond that looked into a similar bedroom judging by the frilly canopy she could see beyond. It was light pink instead of pastel green. "What's wrong?"
Ginny's eyes flicked back to the girl, and watched Lily's red eyebrows crease in concern. There was no mistaking Lily. "What's wrong?" Lily asked again, her voice taking on a quicker edge. Fear. Before Ginny could shake her head and try to calm her Lily called, "Kippit!"
A green bat-eared house-elf popped into the room, wide pale eyes seeming to glow in the dim light, and Ginny promptly threw up. Past the sounds of her gagging she heard footsteps running up the hall. "Little Mistress?"
The sick up vanished, and a silky dark emerald slip pooled around Ginny as a woman crouched down over her. "Merlin," the woman breathed, "I told him the Anti-Apparation Wards were a bad idea."
Ginny looked up into the face of what was unmistakably a Malfoy, the cold grey eyes wearing a soft concern Ginny never would have attributed to them. The woman looked down at her with a soft smile, rubbing Ginny's back. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," Ginny lied, and the woman's lips thinned in a way that reminded Ginny painfully of her mother.
"Petunia?" The Malfoy woman asked, glancing to the girl who looked the most like her, "Would you fetch one of my velvet robes? I need Kippit to go find your father," she added with a nod to the house-elf who disappeared with a pop instantly. Petunia paused in wringing her hands before hurrying from the room. The woman watched where she had been for a couple of minutes, then turned to Lily and looked back down at Ginny.
"I know it's the seventh and you're both eager to go buy your wands. We're just going to make a quick little stop first, all right?" She smiled again, stroking Ginny's back, apparently decided that she'd solved what was worrying Ginny.
"Lily, do you know where I keep the floo powder?" There was a hint of distaste in her voice that Ginny picked up on instantly, and a twist of dislike turned her stomach. She swallowed hard again, her mouth sour instead of dry. Lily must have nodded, because the woman continued. "Would you -"
Pop.
"Merlin, Dahlia, what?" A tall man had materialized in front of the closet, Kippit clutching his wrist tightly in her little green fists. His dark red hair and brilliant, fiery green eyes left little doubt to who he was. "Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to say, 'Excuse me, my wife sent the house-elf after me. I should go before things get interesting'?"
"That wouldn't be a problem if you hadn't set up those wards," Mrs. Evans hissed through her teeth, her face still a cheerfully comforting smile that no longer reached her cold eyes. "I've been telling you sooner or later something would happen and instead of making us safer it'd be an immense trap.
"Lily, why don't you go grab it for me?" Mrs. Evans managed to make the skin around her icy eyes crinkle in a sort of happy way as she looked over. Lily started off just as Petunia returned dwarfed with a heap of crinkled dark plumb fabric. Lily paused at the door. "- and, Petunia, why don't you go with her? I might've put it up on a higher shelf. I can't quite recall now."
"Put what on a high shelf?" Mr. Evans asked, turning an arched eyebrow on his wife just as Kippit pipped,
"Mistress, Kippit would be happy to retrieve -"
"Dahlia, why don't you just summon -"
"I am trying to keep them distracted!" Mrs. Evans snapped, the continued rubbing on Ginny's back getting to be a little too much pressure for comfort. In fact, Ginny was being pressed into the side of the bed by a very firm if slim hand. "Look at Violet! Look how pale she is – she looks horrible."
Mr. Evans and Ginny exchanged regards and frowns, Ginny's now green eyes a little wide. "She's just a bit pale, Dahlia. She's fine. Well. Other than being crushed into the bed.
"Violet, how are you feeling?" He asked Ginny quickly, apparently sensing danger from the way his wife's pretty face twisted.
"Little sick," Ginny decided shortly after a glance at Mrs. Evan's furiously thinned lips. This won a smile from the pale woman and gentle hug. She smelled like mint and the air just before it snowed. Ginny expected her to begin cooing at any moment.
"Everyone gets a little sick sometimes," Mr. Evans smiled not unkindly. He took Dahlia's long robes from Petunia and shook them out a little. "You've got magic. You'll be fine."
The room stilled. Ginny noticed that everyone seemed to be trying not to look at Petunia. Even Mr. Evans seemed pained as though he was biting his own tongue. He turned to look down at his eldest daughter wearing a fixed sort of expression. "And even if you didn't, you'd be fine. Wouldn't she, Tuney?"
"Yes," Petunia replied simply, staring at the teddy bear on the floor. Watching her and the way her lips thinned Ginny felt it was the expected response instead of the one she wanted to give. There was a pause. "She didn't look a little sick when I saw her, though. She'd fallen over."
"I'm okay now," Ginny reassured her, ignoring Lily's dubious look. "I was just a little disorientated. You scared me when you opened the door, is all."
"You puked on the floor!" Lily accused, pointing a little finger at Ginny for emphasis. Mrs. Evans had her lips pursed, her arms around Ginny a little tighter as Ginny looked to Mr. Evans for help.
"I'm okay now," Ginny repeated, trying to sound a little stronger.
"Hmm." Mr. Evans glanced to Mrs. Evans, and shrugged slightly as he held out her robes. "If you get the girls ready I'll take Violet to St. Mungo's as a truce. Fair?"
"Fair enough for now," Mrs. Evans decided, hugging Ginny a little tighter before slowly relinquishing her and taking the velvet robe from her husband.
"But-"
"We'll go get your wand after that. I promise." Mr. Evans looked down at Lily and smiled cheerfully. "We'll even meet you at Ollivander's, Lily." Mr. Evans held out his hand to Ginny, but not closely enough that she'd be able to grab it without walking to him. He wanted to see if she was alright for himself, Ginny realized.
She stood, cursing Merlin silently at the little wobble to her balance and walked over to grasp his hand. Hers was so ridiculously tiny in comparison. She expected some callouses like her own father's hands, and only realized she was expecting them when there weren't any.
Mr. Evans winked at his family, and flourished his free hand to his house-elf. With a pop, they were gone.
AN: Special thanks to my sparkly unicorn beta, Tabii. All hail the unicorn beta.
In context, deep calls to deep. I prefer hell calls to hell for this. If you have no idea what I'm saying, we're both fine. ;) Please review! Constructive criticism or even if you just like it is fine. Anon reviews are on.