o o o
to the heart through the fear slipstreams
o o o
Aunt Alice was not Ginny's aunt; she wasn't even her mother's aunt. According to the relationship thread followed on the Prewett family tree, Alice Carnys, born Nineteen-Oh-Seven was technically a fourth cousin, two generations removed. But Aunt Alice was easier to say, and so that was how Ginny greeted her when she was herded into the woman's room, tucked tightly to her mother's side.
The woman was a diminutive shape, lost in the folds of blankets and pillows around her, only a little more visible by the bleak contrast of her grey skin and white hair against the richly coloured satins, velvets, and furs around her. From the mauve hollows of her skull two strikingly blue eyes watched Ginny as she shuffled closer, sizing her like a hawk does its prey.
Her mother patted Ginny's shoulder, squeezing her. With a very sweet note to her voice, "say 'hello' again, dear. I don't think Aunty Alice heard you."
Ginny opened her mouth, then promptly shut it.
"No." The word was a hard, fighting rasp from the bed. "No, I heard the child."
"Oh, Aunty Alice," her mother said, and it sounded a bit like a recovery, "it's so good to see you after so long."
"We saw each other six months ago. It has not been long." As she talked, Ginny watched the woman's mouth and the way her lips curved back, hugging gums where teeth should have been. She spoke clearly, if very slowly and peppered with deep breaths, and Ginny realised a bit of magic was at work. "That is when I agreed to this ridiculous arrangement. I thought I would have succumbed by now. I was wrong. What trouble to bare witness to this abortion of civility."
"It is good to see you maintain that unique humour!" Laughing like this were some inane oddity, her mother again patted at Ginny's shoulder, perhaps with a touch of nerves. "But this is nice, don't you think? Now you can meet the young lady who will carry on your legacy..."
Aunt Alice didn't hesitate. "My legacy died with my daughters fifteen and thirteen years ago."
Her mother's endurance hit a wall, leaving her stuttering without a reply.
Ginny let her head fall to one side. She squinted her eyes at the woman and waited for some sign of emotion from the statement. When it didn't appear, she said, "you don't seem very sad they're dead."
"Ginny," her mother whispered, aghast. "Say you're sorry."
Aunt Alice laughed, or maybe cawed like a crow might if it ever found anything humorous.
"Child," Aunt Alice said, and her smile was mean under her sunken eyes and strong brow, "if I had the energy to be upset about the past, then I would not be trapped here in this bed."
Her mother released a breath she might have been holding. "Aunty, should we allow you to rest and come back at another time – ?"
"That would be less desirable, Molly."
Ginny had never heard her mother's name said with such cheerlessness. It was a naturally peppy name, bouncy and a little silly, Ginny thought, and Aunt Alice somehow made it hollow and flat.
"So you're a witch. A proper one, we suspect." Aunt Alice was still appraising Ginny with her unwavering stare. "Have you held a wand before? Do we know you are not a Squib? You could always pursue Potions or Herbology if you were. You might become a historian even."
Aunt Alice found these suggestions funny and again crowed.
"I have held a wand, actually," Ginny said, seeing the challenge in the woman's mockery for what it was. "And I know I'm going to Hogwarts this September."
"Weasleys," Aunt Alice spit the name. "You and all your blustering. A daughter and you're just the same bull-headed –"
"Aunty, please. You know how I feel about this – None of that was – "
"How you feel? Oh, please, Molly, let me hear you tell me about your feelings. Again. I would so love that, dearest."
Ginny frowned. The conversation had clearly left her behind and she flicked her gaze between the two women, trying to discern something telling.
But they both seemed to remember Ginny's presence at the same time and the topic was dropped.
Aunt Alice bent her wrist and with a soundless flourish her wand appeared. She said, "you've come here for this."
Ginny lifted her chin and the gesture made the woman sneer.
"Of course," she said. "This wand is suitable for your ilk. It never did favour my careful and thoughtful demeanour."
Her mother made a quiet argument, politely refuting the sour observation.
"Hush, Molly, I believe I would know this wand better than you."
"Why?" Ginny asked, looking over the wand. It wasn't a secret that wands often had their own temperaments, but she wanted to know in particular the history of the one she would be inheriting.
Aunt Alice was pleased she asked.
"This wand is old, little girl. Older than you can appreciate. It's seen its fair number of owners – or those who think themselves so capable. It is a strong minded as the ancient tree that birthed it.."
With her face twisted into a visible frown, Ginny relented she was curious.
"The tree that formed this wand was as old as the land we walk. When the foreign invaders came, blood as empty of magic as their minds of intellect, looking for new soil to conquer, they pulled down the giant that withstood their advances. Wood as old as millennia, nurtured by the fae, and felled by greedy mortals..."
"It's an old story, Ginny," her mother said, not quite as eager to indulge the fantastic history. "We do enjoy tall-tales."
Aunt Alice ignored the interruption.
"Our kind understands the value of wood. Our ancestors sank the tree to the bottom of the deepest, coldest loch... And hardened the magic within for centuries until it was as black and unrelenting as the dark waters in which it resided. When this wand was formed, it was imbued with nothing but the ripe anger and resilience of our blood."
Daintily holding the wand out for Ginny, barely holding it steady just above the bedding, she waved it.
"Want it? Take it, Weasley child."
A silent moment and the pulse in Ginny's veins was very loud. She eyed the length of wood, beautifully carved and black as a new moon, and in an impulsive urge, went to pluck it from the woman's hand.
She meant to snatch it – she tugged at the wand but found instead she was the one ensnared. Her heart slammed hard into her ribs and she gasped.
Aunt Alice had her boney hands wrapped over Ginny's and pinched around her wrist. She was strong despite her age and ailing health, and sharp in her thinness. Bones were hard in their edges without much tissue to soften them. She pulled Ginny close and smiled. "I do not care if this wretched thing accepts you, child, but I never will. I know what is in your heart."
She pushed Ginny from her, right into her mother's worrying arms, and settled into her bedding. The story was over, the whimsy gone from her, and she was once again a motionless stretch of grey stone peaking from a wildly patterned earth.
"Take the child, Molly. Take the wand. Leave me. I am waiting for someone now."
She sounded very much like she were waiting for Death.
Ginny didn't feel at ease again until she and her mother had arrived back at The Burrow that evening. Her brothers ignored her apprehension and insisted she tried the wand for them. They wanted to see what she would be able to accomplish with an inherited wand; if it wouldn't be very much, as in Ron's case, or if it were a good fit, as it had been for both Fred and George.
In her hands, she thought the wood matched her perfectly no matter how she rotated the grip. Heavier than she expected, smooth despite its graining.
She looked at Ron, slumped over himself on one of their sofas between the twins. The family, as was tradition, were sat in the living room and waiting for a show. Last year, Ron had the misfortune of testing his wand and only managing to summon an offensive yellow-green eruption of what had looked like slime, but had only been a distortion of light. Not exactly something one wants to see when brandishing a wand for the first time – the first real time – and Ron had been mercilessly teased for the display.
Ginny hoped she could produce something more impressive – a stream of butterflies, or a fall of flower petals, or a hovering ball of fire that burst into blue and white sparkles. But definitely something cool.
She felt the creaking of floorboards under her bare feet and moved the wand the way the magic in her demanded to move, like water through the earth finding course. Ginny cut the air with her wand – I know what is in your heart – and the magic in her was a storm outside her.
o o o
Chapter Four
Darling, how Daring
o o o
Professor Binns was giving a lecture on the early days of Grindelwald's movement and Ginny might have listened if she didn't have work to do. She and Luna had only so many opportunities to talk and conspire together while trying to finish the map McGonagall had started for them, and History of Magic proved to be a valuable hour.
"Are you ladies doing something very important?" Binns had asked during their first lecture, noticing their blatant huddling in the back of the classroom.
"We're planning a rebellion against the people trying to kill us, Professor," Ginny had said, a day fresh from the Cruciatus Curse. She didn't feel it were too much of a stretch. "You'll teach students a hundred years from now about this. History in the making, innit."
"Oh?" He had yet to mention their delinquency since.
Other students found more interest in Ginny and Luna's endeavours than lecture.
"Is that a map of the Dungeons?" One had asked, twisted around in his seat to spy what they were doing.
"No."
"It looks like –"
"It's a drawing of a mouse fighting a frog. See?" Ginny had waved the map, charmed in a disguise, at the boy. The map was not going to be a secret, she had realised. Other students had seen it in the Gryffindor Common Room, and working on it during lecture wasn't exactly a private affair.
"...Your mouse looks like a porcupine..."
"Thank you for your critical input. Would you like a copy?"
"...Sure."
"Are you really making a map of the castle that can predict the movements of the staircases?" A Hufflepuff student had asked the second day of class.
"No, no. Surely such an article would be too powerful? And why would we stop at the staircases if we can predict movements of people instead? That's a much more useful feature... Have you received today's update in our Frog versus Mouse saga?"
Another student: "does the map tell you anyone's location in the entire castle?"
"I've just added a feature to tell us what they're saying, as well."
Their map had no such capability, but if others were going to spread rumours about its existence, then Ginny wanted it to be as conflated in power as possible. Hopefully to the point where it became an impossible artefact, so that when a Carrow or two did hear of it, then they would dismiss the whole thing as nothing more than a fanciful product of gossip.
Ginny arranged to meet in the library, one of the remaining neutral territories in the castle, with Luna and Neville on the first Saturday afternoon of term to complete the map there.
An announcement at lunch that day prematurely ended the plans.
Meals were required attendance, and so Ginny's assigned group members were at the table with her when the brother Carrow made his announcement.
"Students," he started, standing from his seat at the head table. His weak voice was barely registered by the even the closest tables. And then, with a modifying spell, he stated again, "STUDENTS."
The hall quieted instantly and Ginny snapped her head up from where she'd been half asleep over her arms. Across from her, Pansy Parkinson did the same, having folded all of her glorious blonde curls into something of a pillow against Blaise's shoulder in order to rest her eyes. She almost grumbled in agreement as Ginny cussed at the man.
"To maintain appropriate usage of free time," Carrow said, voice booming and invasive, "the faculty requires all students to attend a demonstration this afternoon. You will exit the Great Hall at the conclusion of the meal hour, remain in the castle Entry Hall, and wait for further instructions. That is all."
"This will be fun." Zacharias said the word 'fun' in a way evocative of 'terrible.'
"Bloody demonstration," Ginny moaned. She had wanted to sneak in a nap before going to the library. Trying the thwart the Death Eaters had really eaten into her sleep schedule. "Probably some lecture on the ills of muggles and muggle-born students."
"Is this going to be a weekly event?" Blaise asked. "He made free time sound like a privilege of the past."
Ginny had missed that insinuation and immediately bristled. "Another manipulation tactic. Mandatory meals, head checks at night, suspension of clubs and Quidditch. It's ceaseless..."
"Head checks?" Blaise raised an eyebrow.
"Why does it not surprise me that Slytherins are immune to signing themselves into the dormitories..." Ginny rolled her eyes, and explained. "We have to "check in" to our rooms at night. Stamp our palms onto a parchment to prove we're not out after curfew."
Blaise smirked. "They're trying to be clever."
"Not nearly clever enough," she said.
Pansy had been watching the Carrows from the corner of her eye and didn't seem to have followed the conversation between Blaise and Ginny. She asked suddenly, eyes moving to Ginny, "do you really have that map?"
Ginny didn't allow a visible reaction to show in her expression or posture. Coolly, "map?"
Narrowing her eyes, and looking washed out and impatient, Pansy clarified, "the one that shows you where people are in the castle. Do you have a map like that?"
"I don't," Ginny said, allowing a tiny seed of disappointment in her tone.
It read as sincere because it was the truth – Luna had the map at the moment.
"Of course you wouldn't." Pansy sniffed. She sounded haughty, but there was a strange air of relief about her.
"Ha! Imagine a map like that... and then you see Professor Flitwick and Professor Vector sitting awfully close together in a little closet." Zacharias entertained several other scenarios, then darkened. "Or it's your best mate, right? And the girl you fancy... No...no, that's too much insight to have..."
"Isn't your best mate Susan Bones?"
Zacharias nodded, very glum. "She has too much pull over other girls."
Pansy actually laughed –delighted at Smith's suffering prospects. "And you have no pull."
It was a manufactured change in moods from the other girl, but Ginny was intent on ignoring the people around her. She needed to finish the map. She had to reopen the Room of Requirement. She didn't have time to waste on entertaining Death Eater manoeuvres.
She had resigned herself to mentally working on problems with the map once the entire school had been herded back into the Great Hall for the as-yet-determined demonstration. Inside, the absence of all tables and chairs but for the centre spectacle of a long, raised platform was only a little noteworthy to her. She saw the entire faculty remained, all but the Carrows seated at the back of the hall in a line of theatre rows. McGonagall had placed herself between Snape and the students, who were packed around the stage and barely able to move. The murmurings of confused questions was an anxious, distracting hum in the floor.
Next to her, she heard Neville issue a low, miserable noise of recognition at the setup in the room.
Satisfied they still had allies with them, Ginny concentrated on how to implement the tracking spell on the map, tried to remember the potential incantations that could act as a root for the affect. She almost left the room entirely for a moment...
"As a school for students unlearned in most aspects of our community –" the two Carrows had appeared on the platform and the brother was speaking.
Ginny ignored him harder.
" – it is imperative that we prepare our youth, all of you, for the fiercest rigours of life outside of an incubated little safe zone such as this –"
More torture? She thought with some bitterness, then scolded herself for being brought into the peacock displaying.
"Duelling is an honourable tradition – "
Again, Neville groaned. "I knew it."
"Why would they bother with that?" Her question was mostly to herself and it went unanswered. Most probably because Neville, like herself, assumed it wasn't so much a demonstration of duelling as it was a chance for the two Carrows – and Snape, too, as he was accommodating such a move, of course – to screw with their favourite students.
"Who here is familiar with duelling? Can we have two students to demonstrate what they know of duelling? Oh, you all are so shy so quickly..." Amycus Carrow was oozing with smugness.
Ginny was not going to participate.
"Mister Longbottom, is that your hand raised?"
Neville, arms painfully straight at his sides, went pale.
"And Mister Finnigan? How nice. Come up, boys." Carrow snarled when neither moved, "come up."
What a fool! Choosing two people quite capable of handling themselves. They should have learned as much about Seamus by now. Ginny didn't need to worry. She didn't need to watch, and at first she didn't. She stared at the checkered patterned tiles, a dark purple stone alternating with white marble, under her plain black shoes and considered again the incantations for the map.
A Carrow had attached themselves to each Seamus and Neville.
"How would you proceed, Longbottom, if you had to incapacitate Mister Finnigan?"
Neville must have shrugged.
"He doesn't know! Can you even pretend to think, or is that beyond a son with parents like yours...?"
Ginny winced and she heard Seamus shout, "he would use Expelliarmus. Right, Nev?"
"You are out of turn, Mister Finnigan," Alecto Carrow harped. "Professor Carrow, why don't you make a suggestion for Mister Longbottom, seeing as he is so incompetent."
She didn't see the spell cast and she didn't know what it was that Amycus Carrow had said, but she heard Seamus begin to shuffle and then panic. There was a collective step back from the platform as Seamus yelped, peppering, "get them off!" with a string of curses.
Ginny peaked, squinting half-heartedly at the surge of large, hairy spiders escaping from Seamus's shirt and trousers. She wrinkled her nose, because, sure, uncomfortable, but not immediately lethal...
Seamus had forgotten his wand in the wake of arachnids, and so she admitted it was a fair technique for duelling.
The spiders started to slow in their movements and then fell harmlessly to the floor, and it seemed Luna, stuck in the crowd across from Ginny and closer to Seamus, had remembered hers. She lowered her hand from her mouth and played innocent while Seamus finished shaking out his clothing.
"Who did that?" The sister Carrow pushed Seamus aside and brandished her wand over the heads of the students below where she crouched on the platform. Her arm waved over Luna's head and a few in the crowd around her visibly shifted away. "Miss Lovegood, was it? Then please, take Mister Finnigan's place if you are so eager."
Students parted for Seamus as he rejoined them on the floor and found a place next to Ginny, who didn't immediately notice him. She had forgotten the map and any hopes of ignoring the duels. She had her hand on her wand and her eyes on Alecto as Luna very calmly took the steps up the platform.
Luna reached her mark on the stage and no sooner had she stopped, Amycus lifted Neville's arm, which jerked reluctantly at the prying, and sent another of the spider-summoning spells at her.
Some students could only gasp in reaction at the foul move, but Luna eased her weight from one foot to another and angled her shoulders so that the spell hit the loose sleeve of her robe. As the spiders reappeared, she shrugged the robe off and dropped it by her feet, where they continued to fountain up and outward, but she enchanted them to sleep as well.
Amycus dropped the show of making Neville duel, pushing past him, and sent another hex at Luna. From the end of his wand shot out an iron chain.
Its intention was to bind her, Ginny guessed, but Luna pointed to a spot a few paces in front of her and with a quick word, the chain snapped from its arc through the air to the floor of the platform. The sound was loud and rattled with the collision of links.
Luna had reacted smoothly, and still looked a bit bored in her typical, dreamy fashion, but Ginny saw a tense line in her straightened shoulders.
Amycus opened and closed his mouth, clearly out of a play after his spell had failed. He turned from Luna to snap at Neville, "well! Retaliate, Longbottom! Don't just stand there with that stupid expression."
Feeling more confident with Luna sharing the platform, Neville's demeanour changed. They had been partners at the D.A. by the end of last term, having developed a good sort of chemistry in fake duels. Between the two of them, a silent conversation seemed to happen, unbeknownst to either Carrow.
At the reiterated provocation from Amycus, Neville sent a slow-moving spell at Luna, one that Ginny recognised would have set her into a fit of giggles, and Luna cheerfully pivoted to let the magic sail by her and right into Alecto Carrow.
It could not have been practiced to have gone any better.
Ginny's face cracked into a grin as other students laughed at the Carrows' expense, one chortling herself to tears and the other stumbling over performing a counter-spell. Amycus sent a frantic look over his shoulder to the other professors, picture of pathetic as his movements subconsciously seemed to implore someone more capable to help him.
"That's – that's enough! Silence! Silence, all of you! You two, off the platform!" He bellowed, his face going red with the effort. He finally calmed his sister and dramatically returned to his end of the stage. Snapping with spittle, he chose another pair of students to duel, but his anger didn't deter the giddiness that had seized the students.
No matter the ages or the houses of the students he picked, there seemed to be a goal amongst the students to create the most harmless of duels. The horrors inflicted included changing school robes to brilliant colours, charming one another to sing or dance, hiccupping or burping jinxes, swarms of bubbles, showers of glitter, transfiguring shoes to fuzzy slippers.
Eventually, Professors started shouting suggestions from their spot as an audience to what was surely meant to have been a dire show of Death Eater might.
Flitwick requested ballads and McGonagall critiqued transfigurations.
"I've taught you how to make more impressive slippers than that, Miss Forsyth!"
When the Carrows picked on Michael Corner, Ginny perked up and decided, she would participate. Michael would do well to share his melodic singing voice with others.
She hopped onto the stage without an invitation, and raising her eyebrows at Alecto Carrow, she waited for the woman to challenge her, but the refusal never came. And while she had enjoyed Neville's Giggling Charm take the toad down a bit, Ginny decided she was going to let the heat of her duel rest on the man who had used the Cruciatus Curse on her.
Tossing her robe to Neville, she shook her shoulders loose. Ginny teased, allowing her voice to carry, "I would like a proper duel, Mister Corner."
Maybe she would send a Bat-Bogey Hex a little wide, accidentally in the direction of the Carrow hovering to Michael's left. And maybe accidentally follow that up with a jelly-leg hex so that he couldn't escape the assaulting bogeys.
The image made her smile.
Around her, the happy chatter of students quieted and Ginny's expression dropped as Snape walked onto the platform.
He might have descended there to the platform like a black drip from a dreary cave's ceiling. He was swathed in a rich fold of black and green fabric, slick from head to toe with a disquieting sense of ease. And tangible anticipation.
He joined Michael and Amycus Carrow with a quiet stalking, turned to the boy and hissed, "shoo."
Michael booked it and Ginny panned her ex-boyfriend with a thumbs down and raspberry as he sheepishly disappeared into the crowd.
It was her own display of bravado, she realised, because she didn't particularly like that she was now facing two men who had each tried, and one having done so successfully, to torture her.
She was slow to give Snape any attention when he said her name, and acted a little bothered by his presence.
"Yes, Professor," Ginny said, maintaining the carefree attitude she had brought with her to the stage. She was cool. Very cool. Unfettered. So much of the battle was image. And also - he was not going to spoil the fleeting moment of fun she had tried to enjoy.
"You said you wanted a proper duel." Snape smiled, perhaps forever spoiling for Ginny the expression, and waited for her to nod.
She accepted the proposal.
"Professor Snape!" McGonagall was down from the stands as well, halfway up the steps to join them.
"Do not interrupt, Professor McGonagall, when another professor is teaching his students," Snape said, words sharp and cutting in the crowded and silent room.
Snape didn't look back at McGonagall, but his words made her stop mid-step. She glanced at Ginny, then to Snape, and then lowered her foot from the platform and retreated, unhurried, down the steps. She was calm and gave Ginny a curt nod, but didn't offer anything else of support or subtle guidance in her body language.
Ginny would have liked for her to point at Snape and then mime an enthusiastic thumbs-down, but alas her professor resisted the indulgence.
Raising his wand to his face, squaring his body off, Snape told Ginny to do the same. "This is a duel, Miss Weasley, try and imagine some semblance of decorum and face your opponent with dignity."
"I must imagine my opponent is deserving of dignity. Gotcha, Professor."
At the line that formed in his brow and the tightening at the corners of his mouth, she smirked.
She remembered on their first night back to the castle, after she had complained about her family not warning her about Snape being the headmaster, she had turned to Neville and asked him, "and what's that guy got against me? I mean, me, Nev. He doesn't like me."
And Neville had lifted a shoulder. "Gin, I'm pretty sure the guy hates everybody."
Neville had suffered more humiliation than was ever appropriate for a student under the care of a teacher.
She had agreed with him, "he's made your life hell for six years now, huh."
Neville was used to the fact and his flippant nodding had disturbed her.
Ginny had sat and chewed on her gripes with Snape more, and shared after a long moment, "but he said this shite about me like I'm some sort of trollop or something. It was personal, swear it."
"He probably resents you because you're with Harry."
"Most of the school is with Harry –" she had said, and then catching on, "what? As in, he resents me for being Harry Potter's girlfriend?"
Neville's answer had been another eloquent shrug. "It took me a few years, but I finally caught on to the fact the guy is jealous of Harry. Something like that. He really likes to lay in about Harry being spoiled and all that."
"Uh-huh."
"Although I never heard about him giving Cho Chang any trouble."
"Aye, but who would? Have you seen her? She's lovely."
"He's jealous because you've got more game than him?" Had been Neville's next suggestion, and Ginny had taken that to be a very probable reason.
"I get all the boys he wants," she had said. "He's just an old man."
"Old and undesirable."
"Time to put him out to pasture."
On the duelling stage, willing her legs not to betray her nervousness, Ginny repeated the phrase to herself, "put him out to pasture."
Severus Snape was a lonely man whose only power came from picking on children in his classroom. He was nothing to fear.
He had killed Dumbledore with that wand, though, hadn't he? The wand he now raised to her – again.
Her veins were dry of any liquid luck, and when the duel started, her reactions were born from adrenaline. She was a Chaser – and from all her time flying, she knew how to throw her body around, how to roll from harsh landings, how to dodge and recover. She was small and she was quick – and if the platform were too narrow for a move, then she was fine with dropping to the floor and giving herself more room. She could commit to avoiding the reach of any spell Snape tossed at her.
But she didn't know what to send back. Or how - maybe.
Harry would have known how to answer Snape's spells. It was why he was a better leader of the D.A. than Ginny had any right to dream she might be.
She didn't even understand most of the spells Snape used, but she was pretty certain they were more refined and damaging than a childhood hex she had set upon the twins to get them to stop bothering her. They were at least damaging enough to warrant McGonagall deflecting them from the mass of spectating students.
He sent out a whiplike thread of fire and Ginny didn't think to dodge. She countered it with a gust of wind – spiralling the flames upward and snuffing them out in the vortex.
She watched the fire disperse and barely had time to react to Snape's follow up attack.
Hot water? No, a spray of hot oil that sizzled and hissed when it hit the shield she summoned with protego.
McGonagall called for the end of the duel, but neither Ginny nor Snape dropped their stances. Ginny sent out a hex that would sprout a nasty line of sores across any part of the body it hit. Snape deflected the spell and returned one that was purple and left a nasty scent trailing in the air after it. Like bad eggs.
She responded with an invisible spell that burst into a flare next to the target's head.
For a moment, she had a window to a win. She had the disarming spell on her tongue when Snape knocked the breath from Ginny's chest with an instantaneous spell. It was like a hook yanking up her lungs threw her throat. She choked and barely kept her knees from folding under her. Her hand shook with the tight grip she had on her wand, but she couldn't form any words for a spell.
Not all spells needed words.
Her earlier hesitance died. Ginny wanted the man to scream and so she snapped her arm down.
A burst of light, putrid, vibrant red struck out from her wand and hit Snape's face. An ugly snapping sound followed and his jaw went slack.
There was a second of silence and then Snape's gargled moaning filled the room.
Fighting for her breath still, Ginny took a moment to understand that his jaw wasn't merely slack, but completely disconnected and held to his face by the stretch of his skin.
When she was more or less able to inhale normally, she managed a short, victorious laugh.
He shut her up with a curse that split open her face.
It wasn't the full strength of the spell but it hit her directly and sent her backwards to the ground. Her eyes burned with the gush of blood and her skin was raw fire, sliced open in a diagonal line from one side of her forehead to her jawline opposite. She was gasping again and voiceless, writhing on the ground and blindly trying to find her wand but her wet fingers were slippery on the platform floor.
It felt like ages before someone was next to her, soothing her and tending to her face.
Ginny eventually became aware of her own croaking voice, demanding both her wand and for Snape to come at her.
"Where is he? Where is that cunt-smiling bastard?" She heard herself almost shouting.
Flitwick was tending to her and he told her Snape wasn't there and not to worry. He tried to wrap bandages over her face, tried to block her eyes, she thought, but Ginny spotted Snape in her stained and blurry vision.
McGonagall had transfigured a metal device to keep his jaw in place temporarily, and the man had the gall to stare Ginny down with pompous arrogance. She saw it in the curve of his eyes as he looked at her.
Her hands left Flitwick to scratch around for her wand once more. When her fingers found the cool promise of its handle, she raised it as high above her as she could manage. She didn't intend to attack Snape, but there were more people around her and they must have assumed as much. They became a solid wall, trying to subdue her.
She squirmed and dry-heaved and she prevailed eventually. Her arm snuck around someone's shoulder, the wand free, and she sent into the air above their heads the image of gleaming green skull, its mouth wide and its eye socket filled with the coiling scales of a snake.
The hall was dark and lit only by the glow of her spell. An eerie dullness settled upon the room, quelling for a moment those trying to hold her down.
Someone screamed at the mimicked presentation of the Morsmorde calling card and the quiet vanished. Fighting against the hands trying to tear the wand from her, Ginny snapped that she wasn't "bloody finished," and sent up a complementary explosion of red sparks.
She lit the Morsmorde on fire.
Red and bloodied as her face, she thought, sneering at the blazing image before someone forcefully knocked her out.
o o o
Author's Note: Check out the new story art, eh! By my amazingly talented friend, DoodleHolic!
So I'm still enjoying putting everyone through a little bit of pain. And, uh, that trend will continue! Oops.
Please review!