A/N. I am so sorry for the lonng delay. I swear I will update sooner next chapter.
Also I am baffled with the response this fic got. Thank you all. I am too shy to answer comments, so here is a collective thank you to everyone who took time to write a couple of kind words.
There was silence for several seconds, but then everyone started talking at once:
"How a dragon hoard can help anything?" The burglar exclaimed.
"Are you sure, Elrond?" Gandalf.
"Well, where can I find it?" this was Ginny.
"I will not take a child to Smaug!" Thorin shouted over everyone's' voices, silencing them. "I will not take a child, not matter how able to protect herself, across the whole of Middle Earth to certain death."
"I don't' think you understand," Ginny stepped closer, her voice full of rage. "There are my friends, my brother, that are fighting dark forces! I will do literally anything to get back home! And if it takes going on god damn foot to some distant cave with dragon gold, I will!"
"It is not a cave, but a mountain!" Thorin found himself defending Erebor angrily. "And it is not that simple! There is a dragon upon that gold!"
"So?" Came a stubborn reply, met with gasps, but Weasley didn't seem bothered by it, too busy glaring at Thorin. "It's not like I haven't seen dragons before-"
"You had seen dragons before?" Gandalf asked, and even Thorin had to look at the girl in new light. To have seen a dragon before...
"One of my brothers is dragon tamer," she seemed confused at everyone's shock and then realisation dawned on her. "You mean to say dragons aren't common here?"
"You mean dragons are common were you're from?!" Master Baggins shot back.
"Well, yes. Not too much, because they cause a lot of trouble," Elrond, to Thorin's surprise, let out a pained hiss. "But there are colonies where they live happily and don't torment muggles, I mean people."
"There are ice drakes far to the north in Grey Mountains, and the only living fire dragon that lives in Middle Earth is the one that intruded our homeland and made my people flee it!" Thorin didn't even realise that by the end of his sentence he was bellowing in rage. He felt angry and hurt. People in her world apparently kept catered dragons, while the dragon Thorin met had only cause him ruin and death.
Ginny seemed to be taken aback for a moment, but then she said, calmly.
"Maybe your dragon is bigger and worse than those Charlie works with, but this dragon seems to be my only chance to get back home. Surely you can appreciate the sentiment."
Thorin didn't have what to say to that. Elrond, the confound elf, apparently had.
"So this is your plan, Thorin Oakenshield? To kill Smaug?"
"And return homeland, yes," the hobbit sniffed prissily, making the dwarf King look at him in surprise. He didn't expect the hobbit to defend him, not with the way he was treating him. Meanwhile hobbit carried on. "I very noble quest, I'm sure. And you cannot really deny Thorin that, nor I see why should you oppose us."
"I know a lot about dragons," Ginny quickly inserted, "They are magical beasts, you can't exactly kill one with swords."
"And you, with your unusual magic, can kill it?" Gandalf's voice was laced with suspicion.
"Of course I can't! Even a highly trained wizard can't simply kill a dragon! It takes more than one!"
"Then what use would we have of you, if I do deem you fit enough to travel with us?" Thorin asked. "Where is a guarantee that you, a young human, won't become a liability? That long treks won't exhaust you, that you won't hold us back?"
Ginny's smile was crooked when she answered: "I have six elder brothers. I knew how to keep up with people bigger and stronger since I was a baby."
Two weeks later when the Company sneaked out of elvish city, there were fifteen of them.
True to her words, the human never held them back, despite her obvious youth. Dwarves took to her with wariness, just like they took to Bilbo Baggins at the beginning, but much like with the hobbit, Ginny was soon let into the Company properly. Though Thorin could see that she herself was wary of them, he also could see that she wasn't overly cautious, just enough not to be deemed too suspicious and unfriendly.
Ginny appeared in Middle Earth with nothing but what was on her back, and no matter how Thorin disliked elves, they gave the human all the travelling gear she needed, and now she was clad in leather armour over her own odd clothes, and in a warm grey cloak that elves insisted she took.
And as for weapons, she carried the knife Thorin gave her, and her wand, safely tucked into the leather vambrace on her left arm.
Thorin kept eyes on both her and Master Baggins, for it was his job to look for those he wasn't sure could protect themselves, or could jeopardize the quest. And besides they weren't dwarves. If a dwarf dies on this quest, at least Thorin knew the dwarf put up the fight before his demise, and at least the part of responsibility was lifted from his shoulders.
Thorin knew for sure that Master Baggins didn't even know how to hold his letter-opener, and Ginny... Well, she might have magic, but there was no telling if it would be enough for her. The dratted wizard carried a sword, after all.
So yes, Thorin considered himself responsible for the hobbit and human, and didn't like the fact at all.
Even though the two of them helped to acquire Elrond's blessing on reclaiming Erebor. Not that Thorin needed it. The other item he didn't need, but that was certainly appreciated, was a letter Elrond wrote to Thanduil, telling him that the dwarves, the hobbit and the human were on a missive from him. A blatant lie, but a lie that would be useful, should they be misfortunate enough to cross pass with the accursed elf.
When Balin had explained why dwarves didn't like elves, and Thranduil most of them, Ginny nodded in understanding, and said: "He certainly sounds like one of those uptight purebloods."
Which, of course, prompted the explanation of wizardry hierarchy, something half the dwarves couldn't grasp, but their hobbit quickly got the hang of.
"Not too different from what we hobbits have, if I must say." the burglar proclaimed. "Like Brandybucks with their boats and Tooks with our adventuring are forever odd and not at all respectable," then he frowned. "Though none would try to chase them all. Except for Lobelia, perhaps."
"Chase off," Ginny laughed. "Try kill. You-Know-Who's mission is to kill all the muggleborns, muggles, and blood traitors. This is actually why I need to get back - there is a battle."
Dwalin shifted next to Thorin and spoke: "And why exactly children are fighting?"
The girl shifted, her face becoming hard.
"Because no one else would listen to Harry," she declared. "Harry can see into You-Know-Who's head, and he saw that he stole Harry's godfather! But there was no one who would listen to him, so it were only us to save Sirius."
"And did you?" the bald dwarf raised his split eyebrow. The girl licked her lips and looked down, before giving a distraught answer.
"No. Apparently, that was a trap. We came to the Ministry, and there were Death Eaters."
As it soon became apparent to Thorin, although Ginny was friendly to everybody, and as loud as Bofur, she almost never spoke about herself, except for those couple of times. And, well, wasn't that just like their hobbit? The hobbit was all polite smiles, but the only thing Thorin knew about him was that he was partly Took. And no, Thorin wasn't stalking the creature, he just was very observant. Observant when it came to living and breathing, it wasn't his fault that the roads were particularly keen on running away from him, Mahal curse them.
During one of his night shifts, on the second watch, Thorin caught the movement from where the girl slept. He saw how she quietly got up and-
"Where are you going?" He asked, his voice carrying over the sleeping dwarves.
"Where do you think?" Ginny snapped, but her tense shoulders gave away that she wasn't just going for a nightly mission into closest bushes.
"Do not take me for a fool," Thorin said calmly, watching the girl visibly struggling with herself. After a tense silence, she finally turned to him.
"I was going to practice spells. I haven't mastered some defensive ones, and with Umbridge in school we didn't really have chance to practice outside classrooms."
"So this are not spells approved by your school?"
"Merlin, no. Ministry thinks that we don't need to know even basic of defenses. Defense Against Dark Arts became a joke," she snorted derisively. Thorin regarded her silently. She was incredibly young even by human standards, and yet she was fierce and willful. She would be at home among dwarves, if it came to that. For her own sake, Thorin wished it didn't. Everyone deserved a home.
"No need to hide in woods," he said. "Come here and practice here. I, for one, would like to see magic at it raw form."
"I won't able to practice some violent ones with all them is close proximity," she answered, reasonably.
"Then come and practice non-violent ones. Surely they don't teach how to murder from the start."
"They don't teach us to murder period!" She retorted, and started walking to Thorin, carefully stepping over sleeping lumps.
"Then do show me what they teach you," by this point Thorin was really curious what Ginny would do. The only spell so far he saw for sure was when she tied that orc. Though, come to think of it, while others, and Thorin as well, seemed to suffer from mosquitos and other bugs, the infernal insects kept their distance from the young girl. Or what about that time when it rained, and everyone was wet and miserable, but she, although sopping wet as well, didn't look too bothered? The dwarf had a startling realization that Ginny's been using magic all this time, all of a month being with them, and no one noticed. Well. Now he will just have to watch her even more carefully.
Weasley set down next to him, leaning on the fallen tree trunk behind them. "This is a very complicated incantation, and I don't really see its use in here, but I really need to master it," she started speaking quietly. "When I get back, there might be dementors for all I know. And I don't want to meet a dementor unprepared again."
There was residual fear in her voice, that made Thorin wonder what exactly those creatures were, but he didn't have time to voice the question, as she already spoke some unfamiliar words. The dwarf watched with interest as the cloud of white shiny mist appeared from the tip of her wand. It was less than what Thorin expected, but, come to think of it, Thorin didn't know what he expected. He just wanted to see some magic, and if it sounded like a dwarfling's whining even in his own head, no one had to know. Still.
"A cloud?" He whispered, as though not to startle Ginny, but in reality he didn't want to wake anyone.
"A mighty cloud," she countered just as quietly. "It makes some very dark creatures go away. But actually it is supposed to take a solid form, a doe, or, I don't know, a dog. I still have much to train."
And so they spent quiet some time sitting together, with Ginny conjuring and offing her cloud from time to time. But by the end of his shift, Thorin shooed Ginny off to sleep. They had to cross the most dangerous part of the pass tomorrow, and it looked like a storm was brewing. They all had to get as much sleep as possible.
