"What the hell are you talking about?" Ginny asked, raising her wand. She didn't know whether it would work, but then, neither did the man, whether he was a king or not. Before she could wonder how she knew that he was a king, he took another step forward, and she pointed her wand straight at his chest. "Don't come any closer."
The Goblin King smiled and stopped, though he didn't seem at all bothered by the fact that she was threatening him. Instead, he seemed almost amused, and that made Ginny want to hex him even more. Only the knowledge that she might lose her bluff kept her from doing so. "You've grown a great deal, haven't you, little Ginny?" he asked. "Not so little anymore, I suppose. Tell me, how long has it been for you? Seven years? You're fifteen years old, aren't you?"
"Sixteen," she snapped. "And what do you care? I've never been here before. You don't know anything about me."
"On the contrary. I know that you're a very determined girl – though I suppose you're a young woman now – and that you're very strong-minded. I also know that you had help escaping me all that time ago." He turned and walked back to his throne, and Ginny let him, though she tightened her grip on her wand. Surely there had to be some spell that would work, just in case.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ginny said. Her side hurt and she was tired and hungry, but that only made her angrier. Whoever this Goblin King was, he was likely the reason she couldn't head to the Room of Requirement and get a nice hot meal and a long nap, and she would get past him if she had to break his nose. She would break anything she had to if it meant escaping this place, though possibly also because she wanted to get rid of that infuriating smile on his face. She didn't like him one bit, she decided, and she would continue to dislike him until she was well away.
"Is that so?" The Goblin King raised one of his eyebrows and made a quick gesture toward the goblins on the floor, some of whom scurried away. "I suppose it has been a long time for you, possibly longer than it has been for me. But then, time in your world has always flowed strangely."
"Says the man with a thirteen-hour clock," Ginny snapped, and as she spoke, her gaze darted up to the clock above his throne. It did indeed have thirteen hours, but she had known that even before she saw that there was a clock there, and the fact that she didn't understand where the knowledge had come from frightened her. She refused to show it, though, so she kept her wand pointed directly at his heart.
"So you do remember some things. Excellent." The Goblin King smiled, and a moment later, the goblins returned, holding someone tightly in their grasp. He was a boy, yet not quite a boy; a goblin yet not quite a goblin. He seemed to exist somewhere between, and if she'd had to guess, Ginny would have put his age at about eight or nine. He couldn't possibly be any older than ten, and yet she imagined he had been alive for longer than ten years. He looked terrified, and when he spotted her, his eyes grew wide with shock.
"Ginny!" he cried eagerly, and tried to wriggle away from the goblins who held him. "You came back for me! Did you find Hepzibah? Did you avenge me?"
Hepzibah had to be one of the oddest names Ginny had ever heard, and though she was sure she ought to remember where she had heard it before, she couldn't quite place it. Instead, her gaze returned to the Goblin King. "What's going on? Who is this boy?"
The Goblin King smirked. "You really don't remember, do you? Such a pity. Young Cassidy was so looking forward to seeing you again. It was all he could talk about after we caught him. 'Ginny's going to save me. You won't last long after Ginny comes back here.' It was pathetic, really, but he kept reminding me of you. The one girl to come into my clutches by the words of someone else and yet escape of her own free will. I grew curious." The Goblin King rose, and Ginny's hand tightened even more around her wand, so much that her palm and fingers hurt. "I couldn't get you out of my mind. The little red-haired girl who bested me. The child who managed to escape. So I began setting doors in your path, waiting for you to return, for I knew you would return."
He took a step forward, and Ginny couldn't hold back her shout. "Stupefy!" she cried, and a jet of red light burst from her wand. Instead of reaching the Goblin King, however, it exploded like one of her brothers' fireworks barely a foot from her face, and in the time it took her to blink away the glare from the blinding light, the Goblin King had crossed the room and grabbed both her wrists, angling her wand to the floor.
"Such a determined girl," he said in a low, dangerous voice. "You've only grown more so through the years. You've grown beautiful, too. I can see why Cassidy was so fond of you. If you can capture the heart of a boy as a child, imagine what you could do to a man. Even a king would fall to his knees before your beauty."
Ginny's heart pounded in her chest, but she wasn't willing to back down now, even if her wand and her fists were useless. "Let me go!" she yelled, and drove her forehead up, trying to hit his nose. She missed and clipped his chin, and though the blow hurt her likely more than it hurt him, she still lashed out with her feet, kicking at his shins and trying to drive her knee between his legs. Charlie had taught her that when she was younger, along with how to wrestle a young dragon to the ground without hurting it. She hadn't thought she would ever need to know either, but as the Goblin King recoiled from her attack, she decided she was glad her brother had taught her Muggle fighting.
It still wasn't enough for her to have a chance to escape. "Grab her!" the Goblin King called, and before long her legs had been bound by some of the goblins. They pulled her to the floor and bound her wrists as well, and when she tried to bite their hands, they stuffed rags into her mouth hard enough that she nearly gagged. None of them could pry her wand from her fingers, but that was only a small comfort, since she doubted it would be any use to her at all.
The Goblin King set a foot on her shoulder and rolled her onto her back almost gently. Ginny glared up at him and tried to shout curses at him past the rags, but he only smiled and shook his head.
"Dear child," he said. "You really have no idea what you're facing, do you? I am a king, with armies at my command. You're only a lost girl. That's all you ever were." He knelt beside her and gripped her chin in his fingers. "But you needn't be that. I can see a fire burning in your heart. With the right fuel, you could be the most powerful woman in the world. Join me as my queen, and I will teach you how to rule."
Ginny wrenched her chin from his hand and shook her head. The Goblin King's face twisted in fury, but soon the expression became a smile again, and he stroked her cheek so slowly that shivers ran up Ginny's spine.
"Very well," he said. "I will give you two gifts, then. You will have a chance to escape my labyrinth once more, but this time no one will help you on the pain of death. If you can escape on your own, then you will be free forever. I will not try to trap you again." He made a sharp gesture, and the goblins lifted her from the floor. "The second is my name. I know yours, and if we are to be the equals I wish us to be, then you ought to know mine. I am called Jareth."
Then the goblins carried Ginny away. There were too many of them for her to fight, and after a few minutes of fruitless struggling, she gave up and went limp. Even that didn't get them to release her, and after a long walk through halls and down stairs, they threw her into a cell. Her body hit the floor hard enough to hurt her side again, and she cried out in pain as she rolled onto her face. The stone had scraped her skin, and for an anxious moment she thought that her wand had snapped under her. Even if it was useless here, there was still a chance that she would make it back to Hogwarts, and she would need all the magic she could get there if she was going to help.
But she didn't even know if she would make it back.
A sob got caught in her throat, and Ginny only barely managed to keep herself from crying. Even if she was alone, she wasn't going to cry. She wasn't a damsel in distress. Something in her reminded her that she had decided to save herself the next time she was in trouble. Well, she had been saving herself all year; this was just another chance for her to be the knight in shining armor.
That thought felt familiar as well, though she couldn't place from where. It was as though there had been someone else in the back of her mind, someone waiting to be remembered just at that moment. She knew this place, and she had known the Goblin King. She had even known Cassidy, and she knew the name Hepzibah. If they really did come from half a lifetime ago, then that meant she knew them from her childhood, from before she had even come to Hogwarts. She didn't remember much of that time, though she did know that she and Ron fought more often, and that Bill had liked to tell stories of a Goblin King and children who were stolen away to his labyrinth and had to be rescued by their older siblings.
It was impossible, and yet as she lay with errant tears dripping off her nose and onto the stone, she thought she could remember a fight with Ron, and him shouting a few words without considering what might come after.
"I wish the goblins would come and take you away!"
Ginny sniffled and squirmed, trying to sit up. After a few moments of effort, she managed to get up off the floor and press her back against the wall. She couldn't exactly deny that her scenario was possible; she was in it now, and that proved its possibility. What she had to worry about now was making it out, and doing it without any help. If she could trust Jareth – and somehow she knew that he wouldn't lie – Cassidy had helped her the time before, and that had only gotten him into trouble. She couldn't let anyone risk themselves for her this time. She was a Gryffindor, and more than that, she was a Weasley. She could defend herself perfectly well.
Besides, the magic of this place wouldn't allow her to leave if she had any help. She didn't know how she knew that, but it felt like the truth. Well, if she had to get out on her own, she could do that just fine. After all, she had managed to survive being possessed by Voldemort when she was only eleven. Getting out of a labyrinth could hardly be worse than that.
Though she wouldn't have minded having Hermione around to help her. Hermione, or a Ravenclaw, or anyone who had gone through mazes before. Even Harry might be helpful, since he had gone through that maze during the Triwizard Tournament in her third year.
On a second thought, she decided she didn't want to have Harry around. He might only get himself into trouble trying to save her. Much as she loved him, she knew he tended not to think ahead when he had to be a hero. If she was going to get out, it would be on her own, and then she could tell the story to her family later on. Bill would love it, and she had no doubt the twins would as well.
The ropes around her wrists were too tight for her to wriggle out of them, and she couldn't angle her wand so it would poke through them and untie the knot. She could get it to tap against the knot, but it wouldn't slip through the ropes, and she bit back several curses while trying. The rope scraped against her wrist, and she knew that her skin would be rubbed raw and red from struggling. The only good that might come of continuing to try would be if she could get her arms slick enough with blood to slide the ropes over her hands, but she doubted her hands were small enough to allow that, and she didn't have any way to treat her wounds. The only option she could think of was likely impossible, but she didn't have any other choice.
With a sigh, Ginny tapped her wand against the knot and said through her gag, "Alohomora." She didn't think there was any chance it would work – she tried more because she had no other idea what to do – and was amazed when the ropes fell apart around her. With a grin, she pulled the rags out of her mouth and cast the same spell on the ropes around her ankles. They didn't fall off so much as they disintegrated, but that was good enough for her, and she sprang to her feet.
It was time to get the hell out of the labyrinth.
The door to the cell was locked when she tried it, and she hadn't really expected it to be otherwise. Still smiling, she pressed her wand against the lock and said, "Alohomora." The door didn't open, but there wasn't enough time for her to be disappointed. It flew off its hinges and crashed into the far wall with a satisfying bang, and before the dust had settled, she sprang out of the cell and raced down the hall, looking for any way out that she could find. If possible, she decided, she would avoid using magic, but only because she didn't know what to expect from her spells. If there came a need for her to cast a spell, she would, without hesitation.
The halls she ran through were empty, which was something of a relief, since Ginny didn't want to try to fight off a bunch of goblins. They looked nearly harmless, but in enough numbers she was sure they could overpower her, and she didn't want them to take away her wand. Without that, she was helpless.
As she ran, she realized just how melancholy the castle felt. There was something wrong about it, but it wasn't anything she could put into words. It only troubled her mind, leaving nagging doubts in the back of her thoughts. She had to get out as soon as she could, but at the same time, she wanted to linger and see whether there was anything she could do to get rid of the wrongness. The castle wasn't meant to be wrong, and perhaps it only needed her hand to set it right.
She dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred to her. She couldn't stay, and anything that tried to convince her otherwise was only a trick that Jareth would try to use to keep her there. She couldn't trust him, and she couldn't trust anything about this place except her own desire to get out. That was the one thing she knew to be true.
The hall led her to a larger hall, and that one to another still larger, and she soon found herself in a courtyard surrounded by a wall. Ginny continued to run, and she swung her wand at the iron gate set into the wall. "Alohomora!" she cried, and the gate flew open, both sides twisting and cracking so they were nearly unrecognizable and certainly unusable. With a wild laugh, she entered the labyrinth.
From there on, she knew, she was on her own. No one could be allowed to help her, and even if they offered, she wasn't sure if she could trust them. Cassidy was trustworthy, almost certainly, but that trust might only get him into trouble, and she couldn't let him do that, not even for her. He was a only a boy, after all, no matter how long he had been trapped here.
She remembered him. That, more than anything else, surprised her, and she slowed to a quick walk as she passed through the stone twists and turns. She remembered Cassidy, and she remembered this place. As clearly as if it had been yesterday, she remembered being eight years old and finding herself in Jareth's castle.
Now she knew for certain she had done it once, and this time she was eight years older and eight years cleverer, and she had magic on her side. Nothing would keep her from getting out of this labyrinth.
And if anything tried, it would face the rage of a girl who had been raised by Molly Weasley, and it would know fear.