It's easy for children to forget, particularly when those children are young. Before long, Ginny had forgotten the name of the sister she was supposed to find, and soon she thought of her adventure in the labyrinth as little more than a story she had made up. Ron didn't recall it well either, though he would constantly insist that he had seen her vanish before his eyes. After a few days of being teased by Fred and George, he gave up on trying to tell his side of the story and simply watched his little sister bask in the glory of having Bill tell her she was a born storyteller and that he would remember her story to tell to whatever kids he would have in the future. Ginny was always the favorite, it seemed, and sometimes Ron was tempted to wish her away to the goblins again, though he never did. Even if no one else believed him, he knew what had happened that day.
Time passed, and Ron went off to Hogwarts. The next year, Ginny followed him, and she nearly died in a tunnel beneath the school. Ron vaguely remembered her insisting that she would save herself the next time she was in danger, but that thought vanished at once when he heard that she had gone missing and an ominous warning had been painted on the wall. The next year, fortunately, she was in no danger, and by the time she had joined Dumbledore's Army, both of them had completely forgotten about that day six years before.
There were moments that would spark Ginny's memory, though, particularly when she first met Zacharias Smith. His name sounded vaguely familiar, but then, she decided she had probably met a Zachary or a Smith or maybe even a Zachary Smith in Ottery St. Catchpole when she was younger and the name had just stuck with her. In any case, at the end of the year everyone knew that Voldemort had returned, and the next year she was distracted by Harry Potter finally falling in love with her, and she paid the name no mind. Then Dumbledore died, and Bill got married, and Ginny found herself returning to a Hogwarts filled with Death Eaters.
She didn't think about the labyrinth at all, or about a boy named Cassidy, for she was too busy trying to stay alive. In fact, until one winter day, the labyrinth was the last thing on her mind.
Ginny drew in a long, hissing breath, trying to ignore the pain in her side. One rib was broken, maybe two, and she wasn't sure she had the strength to try running back to the Room of Requirement from the first floor. Odovacar Cokes, a Slytherin sixth-year with the most ridiculous name Ginny had ever heard, had caught her off-guard while she was serving as a lookout for Neville. She had managed to draw Cokes away from Neville's work, but on the way had been hit by a jinx and tumbled down a flight of stairs. Her wand had flown out of her hand, and she had scrambled to safety behind a suit of armor. Now Cokes was coming after her, and if he got to her wand first, he would snap it, leaving her helpless. She couldn't just lunge out and grab it, though. She doubted she would be fast enough, and for all she knew, he was willing to use a Killing Curse.
"Where are you, Weasley?" Cokes called as he walked slowly down the hall. Ginny tried to shrink further back and winced at the pain. "Come on out, pretty girl. I won't hurt you."
Of course he wouldn't. The Killing Curse was silent. But then, perhaps he was only trying to draw her out and thought she was stupid enough to fall for that line. She gritted her teeth and stayed put. The only way he could get her to jump out would be if he had a hostage, and she knew very well he didn't. Her vantage point wasn't the best, but she could see very well that he was alone.
"Bitch," Cokes muttered, and Ginny grinned. Maybe she had a chance. Maybe he didn't know where she was hiding and had completely overlooked her wand. If he gave up now, then she would have a chance at making it out of this alive. But he was moving too slowly, and his gaze kept flicking from her wand to the walls, and even worse, to where she crouched. He knew where she was and was just waiting for a chance to make his move.
She would have to make one first.
The worst of it was that she had hoped they could trust him. He wasn't the worst sort – not nearly as bad as Malfoy's lot or other children of Death Eaters – and there were a good many Slytherins who were helping them. Edmund McEwan, another sixth-year, had joined them in the Room of Requirement, and there were even a few double agents, who stayed with the Slytherins but did whatever they could to help from their position of safety, like Estelle Sackville. It would have been so easy to assume that all Slytherins were evil, but Estelle would rather have died than betray them, and Edmund nearly had. They had to judge things based on one person at a time, and it seemed that Cokes had fallen in with the Death Eaters.
He was getting closer to her wand, and Ginny felt nearly out of her mind with anxiety. She couldn't let him snap her wand. There was no way for her to get a new one, not until Ollivander could return – if he ever returned – and without a wand the best she could do was punch Death Eaters, which wasn't nearly as effective as hexing them.
Still, brute force could be very effective, even if it was only one sixteen-year-old against another. With a snarl, Ginny launched herself out of her hiding place and attacked, beating at Cokes with her fists and kicking. If she had thought she could get away with it, she would have started biting him, but there wasn't time. As soon as he was off-balance and distracted, she dove for her wand, scraping her arms on the rough stone of the floor. Gasping with triumph, she rolled onto her side and pointed her wand at him only to find that he already had his trained on her.
"Got you," he gasped, and wiped some blood from his chin. Ginny felt a savage pleasure at knowing she had managed to hurt him, but it faded quickly at the thought that she would probably die soon. Harry might be heartbroken, and her family would be devastated, and when she thought about it even from the view of a stranger, it was sad. A sixteen-year-old girl would die in the middle of a school, and no one would be able to do anything about it. The best that could be done would be to move on.
She wasn't willing to move on. Even as Cokes grinned and moved his wand from her stomach to her heart, she looked around for anything that might give her a chance to escape. No one was coming to her rescue, but her eyes caught something in the wall that looked almost like a door. It was small, just large enough that she might be able to launch herself through it as long as it wasn't just a trick of the light. She would have to trust to her luck.
There wasn't any time to wait and have second thoughts. Before Cokes could say whatever curse he had been about to direct at her, she dove forward, pointing her wand at the possibly-door and shouting, "Alohomora!"
Cokes shouted something, but his voice was lost in the rush of air that suddenly surrounded Ginny. She couldn't help thinking that perhaps this hadn't been the best choice to make. After all, six years at Hogwarts should have gotten her used to the secret doors enough, and she hadn't recognized this way. It was too late, though, and she had already tumbled through. Beyond the door was nothing but darkness and hard stone floors, but they were different from the stone floors of Hogwarts. There was something familiar about them, though Ginny could barely recognize it. It was like a memory from half a lifetime ago.
Her wand was still safely in her hand, and she smiled to feel it secure there. As her consciousness faded, she thought she heard footsteps and saw a faint gleam of light, but before she could tell whether whoever was coming was friendly, pain flared in her side and then was gone again.
When Ginny woke, she was curled in a bed that was several inches too small for her. Her side hurt worse than ever, but then, everything else on her body hurt too. She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and let everything fade away again and stay faded, but then she realized that there were two things that were very wrong. The first was that she was no longer in Hogwarts.
The second was that her wand was gone.
The second was by far the easier to remedy. As soon as the realization hit her, her eyes snapped open, and the first thing she saw was her wand, lying on a little table. More eager to have it back than she had been for anything else in a long time, she lunged out of bed and grabbed it, heedless of the pain it caused her. As soon as it was in her hand again she felt better, and with a sigh, she sat down on the bed. She was still lost and in pain, but at least she could still do magic. Now that she had that problem fixed, she could move on to figuring out where she was.
She wasn't sure how she knew that she wasn't in Hogwarts anymore. It was just a nagging feeling that pressed against the back of her mind, and she was sure that she could trust it. It was instinct, after all, and she doubted her instinct would lead her wrong, even if she didn't know where it came from.
The first thing to do, she decided once the pain in her head had faded, was to move around and explore a little. There was enough light for her to see her surroundings, and when she rose to inspect the walls, she saw some kind of glowing plant that looked a lot like moss. It didn't look harmful, but she was careful not to touch it in any case. In a strange place, it was best to be cautious, at least until she could figure out how safe anything was.
Her first thought had been that she was lying in a room, but now that she was on her feet, she saw that the bed and table were in a very long hall that curved away to the sides as though she were in a large circle.
Or a labyrinth.
The thought came out of nowhere, and she dismissed it at once. There couldn't be a labyrinth inside Hogwarts. The school was big, but not that big, and someone would have found it by now and started talking about it. Fred and George had gone over the school dozens of times, and they hadn't told her anything about a labyrinth.
But then, she wasn't in the school anymore. She was somewhere completely different.
A shiver ran down Ginny's spine, and she turned in a slow circle, looking around for any sign of where she could be. There was nothing apparent, so she set off down the hall, holding her wand at the ready. Her side still felt like something was stabbing it, and her body ached all over, but she was determined to figure out what was going on. She supposed she ought to feel like a child, but she didn't. Her jaw was set, and if anything, she felt more like an adult now than she ever had before. She could do anything she needed to, and that certainly included getting home.
Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any obvious way for her to get home. The hall – or tunnel, she supposed, since it was made of the same material everywhere and might well be underground – went on without change for what felt like ages. The only landmarks had been the bed and table, and by the time her legs grew tired, those were long behind her. She hadn't come across them again, and as she paused to stretch her calves, she wondered just how large this place was. If it weren't for the visible curve on the wall, she would have thought it might take her days to find her way around, but it still might, and she didn't have any source of food or water. She certainly wasn't about to start eating the moss.
She set her wand on the palm of her hand. "Point me." She didn't know that finding north would help her much, but it was better than nothing, which was what she had now. Her wand spun rapidly in her hand, but when it continued to spin after a full minute, she decided that it wasn't going to be any use and closed her hand around it, stopping the motion.
There had to be something very strong here to keep her wand from finding north. Whatever it was, she had to find it. She also had to get back to Hogwarts, but her curiosity had been piqued, and she pushed on, moving at a faster walk.
This place felt familiar. She couldn't deny that, but she couldn't think of how she knew what it felt like. It felt like it came from half a lifetime ago, just as the stones had felt before she passed out.
A memory hovered at the edge of her thoughts, but it was gone before she could understand where it had come from. The best she could do was to push on and hope she could solve this mystery before she was gone for too long. The DA needed her, and she didn't want her family to think she had died. Things were tense enough without everyone assuming the youngest Weasley had been killed, and for all she knew, Harry would decide to do something stupid and noble to avenge her. She loved him, but he could be something of an idiot from time to time.
The path continued as it had been before, but Ginny soon found a door set into the wall. It was well-hidden enough that she nearly passed it by, but as soon as she recognized that the hollow in the wall would lead somewhere, she doubled back to investigate. The door led to some stairs, and she took them two at a time.
There was more of the glowing moss along the walls, so she didn't have to test whether a wand-lighting charm would work or would fail as badly as the four-point spell had. Before too long, though, she didn't even need the moss to see where she was going. Natural sunlight reached the stairs, filtered by dust, and when Ginny looked up, she saw windows set high against the walls. She knew that sunlight from somewhere, but it only stirred distant memories of determination.
The stairs brought her to a long hall, and after looking to either side and finding it empty, she decided arbitrarily to go right. The stone here seemed different from the stone in the tunnel below, and the floor had hay scattered across it. Somehow she knew she was in a castle, and it was a very different castle from Hogwarts. This place, wherever it was, had none of the joy of her home. It felt like an old place, one that should have been abandoned long ago but was kept alive by creatures that should have long since faded into dust. It was the sort of castle that belonged to old stories and should have existed only in memories.
And she knew this place.
Ginny couldn't shake that sensation, and she set off down the hall at a run, ignoring the pain in her side. Madame Pomfrey would be able to set it right when she got back to Hogwarts. There were always chances to sneak to the Hospital Wing, and even if there weren't, Neville would know something to help. Hannah Abbot might be able to do something too; she was turning out to be an excellent battlefield nurse.
Even thoughts of Hogwarts couldn't get rid of the thought that she was somewhere terribly familiar. She had come this way before, though it had seemed much larger and more frightening then. Years ago, perhaps, in a dream she had found herself here, and now she was sleeping again. Or perhaps now she was awake and could recall what she should have always known.
The hall led her to a large room, and inside she saw several small creatures, each no larger than a child. Somehow she knew they were goblins, though they were nothing like the goblins she had seen in Gringotts. But her gaze traveled past them to a throne at the far end of the room, where a long-legged man sat, turning three crystal spheres in a circle in his hand. He smiled when he saw her and got to his feet, and Ginny somehow knew that they had met before, and perhaps they would meet again, and each time they would find themselves in opposition.
"Ginny Weasley," he said, setting the spheres on his throne. "It's been a long time, dear girl, but I always knew you would come back. You may have tricked me once, but you have always belonged in the labyrinth."