Disclaimer: All characters belong to JK Rowling, not I. I hope I won't embarrass her too much by what I do with them. : )

The Promise Ring - by The White Lily

Chapter 10: The Spy

The scene was the same dark forest as had been the meeting place earlier in the summer. Wormtail was standing in his place, wringing his hands and obviously terrified, although he was desperately attempting not to show it. The other Death Eaters were also showing some signs of apprehension: the occasional twitch of the head, the slight shifting between feet, or the nervous clenching and unclenching of a hand. Harry noticed, however, that no Death Eater indulged in any nervous motion that would bring his hand anywhere near to his wand.

Voldemort was pacing purposefully around the circle, directing glares at the masked faces. "Fools," he hissed, his ceaseless movement continuing to disconcert the circle. "Fools!" he shrieked suddenly in his high-pitched voice, spittle flying from his thin lips, and causing several of the black robed figures to flinch involuntarily.

"I will have that Weasley girl!" Voldemort screamed at the uncaring sky. "Why have you not found her by now?" He spun, pointing directly at one figure in the circle. "Malfoy!" His voice had dropped to a whisper, but it lost none of its sheer rage. "Tell me."

Malfoy dropped to his knees immediately, lowering his face and not daring to look in into the Dark Lord's furious face. "We cannot find her, My Lord."

"Why not?" came the enraged whisper once again.

"No Locating Charms work on her. We tried everything, Light or Dark. She must have been warned My Lord; we must have a spy in our midst. There is only one protection spell which could produce these results."

The Dark Lord made no response, merely waiting for his cringing underling to continue. He glared at the Death Eater, his slitted red eyes whirling with dark orange flecks.

"It must be the Fidelius Charm, My Lord," Malfoy at last spoke up.

"And have you performed the spell to identify the Secret-Keeper?"

"Yes, My Lord, but there are no results. I don't understand it, My Lord. She seems to have disappeared without a trace."

Lord Voldemort's voice remained at that deadly calm whisper as he continued. "Then try it again. Snape!" A tall figure stepped forward, bowing low. "I want you to help Malfoy. Use your knowledge to amend Malfoy's potion. I will see results. We need to apprehend the right person first time; it takes a great deal of time to break an honourable person," he sneered, "and we need to get the girl before she goes back to Hogwarts. Don't fail me." The slitted red eyes whirled faster, narrowing with cruelty, as he turned back to Malfoy, and then he struck with the speed of a snake. "Crucio."

***

Harry sat up in bed clutching his scar from the pain that had woken him, but far from feeling frightened, or worried, he considered dancing for joy. They couldn't find Ginny! She was safe. She was safe. She was propped up on her elbow beside him in bed, looking at him with an expression that spoke of concern. Harry took a deep breath. "You're safe. They can't find you. They think you're under the Fidelius Charm and are trying to search for your Secret-Keeper."

Harry paused for a minute watching Ginny's face melt into a slightly insecure smile. As he tried to run over his dream again to reassure her, he found the details fading. "I need to write it down," he said desperately. "I'm losing the details. Why does this always happen?"

Ginny grabbed her Potions homework and turned it over, giving him the quill and ink she had been using before bed. He hurriedly scribbled down what he could remember, which wasn't really much.

Can't find Ginny

Think she's under Fidelius

Can't find Secret-Keeper by magic

Going to keep trying

Malfoy got Cruciatus

Harry tossed the summary to Ginny and she looked it over carefully. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? It might help jog your memory."

Harry waved a hand to encourage her to go ahead. "Who said that I was under Fidelius?"

"It was –" Harry wracked his brain, but couldn't remember a thing. "No, I can't remember."

"Was there anything in particular they were going to do to keep trying?"

"Yes, they were –" Harry groaned in frustration. "I know they were, I just can't remember what! Oh this is hopeless. Think of all the things I'm missing." Ginny added the fact that they were trying something different to find the "Secret-Keeper" under the current summary.

"Do you think they'll try to find my Secret-Keeper by torturing my parents or something?"

"No. I don't remember why, but I remember that they won't." Ginny added the information to the list.

"Then won't they go after someone else and forget about me? I mean, Ron or Hermione or my parents would probably make just as good hostages as far as you're concerned."

Harry laughed. "When I'm spying on Voldemort, I sort of sense how he's feeling and get a feeling of the way his mind works; that much I can remember. He's incredibly obsessive. It drives him insane when his minions can't get what he wants and he focuses on that thing until he gets it, forgetting any ways around the problem. He went to a great deal of trouble to make sure that it was my blood that was used to resurrect him even though any witch or wizard who hated him would have done.

"Voldemort's so obsessive that now that they've found the ultimate hostage for me, he can't really understand that Ron, Hermione, your parents, or even Colin Creevey would probably do exactly the same thing." Harry paused, a certain revelation coming to him. "Maybe it's because to a certain extent he can understand what we have between us. I'm sure that he can't understand my friendship with Ron and Hermione; he probably thinks I would just cast them aside if they became inconvenient. Even though he doesn't understand the friendship between us, he knows that you and I can't just ignore each other if the other is in trouble because of the bond formed when I saved your life."

Ginny smiled at him weakly at the reminder of her life-debt to Harry, before scribbling down his thoughts on Voldemort's possible plans. She sucked thoughtfully on the end of her quill for a moment. "One last question. Why did you wake up?"

Harry puzzled over that for a moment and replied, "Well, I don't think I can sleep through one of the Unforgivables. Any time someone casts one of those, my scar hurts so much that I wake up. This time, it was the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy. Do you think that could be useful somehow?" Ginny shrugged doubtfully, so Harry went on. "Now it's my turn. Did you know I was dreaming?"

"I could see that you were having a nightmare, but something told me not to wake you up. It was weird, you weren't moving around like normal. You were just as stiff as a board and both of your hands were up on your scar. Through your hands I could see that your scar was bright red and I could feel the heat radiating off from it when I sat beside you. I thought it might be an important dream, so I just watched you. Then you convulsed and scr—" her mouth twitched slightly, "yelled and sat up. The moment you woke up, your scar went back to normal." Ginny paused a moment. "You know what we need to do now, don't you?"

"What?"

"Send an owl to Dumbledore!"

Harry knew that she was right. But somehow it seemed a little pointless, as though Dumbledore knew from a better source already. Maybe it was something else he didn't remember from his dream.

Hedwig was still delivering the switched letter to Hermione, but by the time he had finished writing his letter to Professor Dumbledore her snowy form had soared in through the window. She wasn't carrying a letter, so Harry had to suppress his curiosity about whether he and Ginny's plan to give Ron and Hermione a push in the right direction had worked. The obviously exhausted owl headed straight for her cage to gulp some water, then put her head under her wing.

In the end they decided to wait until morning to send the letter to Professor Dumbledore, giving Hedwig the chance to recuperate overnight. Harry added a postscript to his letter, asking if there was some faster way to get mail to him if he had another dream. Finally the duo went back to their separate beds to catch some more sleep. The separate beds lasted until Harry's next nightmare, when he sneaked in beside Ginny. They slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

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A/N: If you haven't already, now is an appropriate time to read the outtake I have written - Mixed Letters. You know you want to find out what happened when Ron and Hermione got their letters!