A/N: Well, here is chapter twelve! Yay! Sorry the update is a bit late, you guys know I try to get it to you over the weekend and it's Monday night already, but hopefully it will do. And I'm already working on the next chapter, so there you go!

I just want to say to all my readers that although I don't respond to reviews personally, or if I do only on rare occasions, I still read and love each and every review that I get, so please keep reviewing, flame or praise, even if it's just two words or so. Every review a writer gets on his/her story is a huge motivational boost to keep writing. And thank you to all my readers who loyally read my story and respond to it. I really appreciate it!

Now, on to the chapter. Have fun. ;)

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"Mister Malfoy! Mister Malfoy sir!" yelled a loud voice as two men came tumbling into Lucius's study, interrupting him as he stared sullenly out the window, musing to himself. He looked up with a quirked eyebrow and an annoyed expression on his chiseled face at two of his men, lower Death Eaters, scum really, as they fought for his attention, both speaking at once. Lucius closed his eyes, trying not to get a headache, and raised a manicured hand, effectively silencing them.

"What, may I ask, is so dire that you must interrupt me with it?" They both opened their mouths to speak, but were quickly silenced by a glare. "One at a time!"

"Sir, we overheard a very interesting conversation while tapping into the floo network."

The other man nodded enthusiastically. "Your son, sir, speaking with Blaise Zabini about your recently runaway slave."

Lucius felt his blood boil at the mention. To think that a mindless, pathetic mudblood slave girl could not only better him, but manage to escape right out from under his nose! But he was not surprised, irate, but not surprised, to find his son and his friend involved in the escape. He clenched his hands around his wand, nearly breaking it in anger.

"But that is not all, sir! We heard something that might really interest you. Blaise Zabini was discussing with your son a wizard he had met up with, one who had studied Weasley just before escaping from the Dark Lord's clutches. And, he said he may have a lead on how to get her to speak again. Possibly, even, what her secret is!"

Lucius's interest peak and he shot up quickly and began to pace. "Do you know how? Do you know where this man is?"

"They did not go into details in their discussion, however, they did let slip a valuable piece of information-where they were headed next. They were going to take a portkey to Wales and hide out there in a safe haven for refugees escaping our Lord Voldemort's regime. With some calculation and maps we've got a rough area where we think this hideout may be."

Lucius nodded, taking in this information. This could be their big break, this could get him in the Dark Lord's favor once more. Not only that, he could finally get Ginny Weasley off his mind and out of his life, of course after finally fulfilling his darkest desires with the young, pretty girl. He smiled wickedly and looked at his men. "Go there, intercept them. Bring me two prisoners alive, the rest I want killed, though I don't care what you do with them before you slaughter them. Bring me this wizard and bring me my slave. I want to see she is properly punished. Make sure neither escapes! There will be a great reward for both of their heads, alive, and great punishment if one or both dies or gets away. Go, now!"

The men nodded and left. Lucius sat back in his chair, staring out the window at the gardens where his son and Ginny Weasley were walking along the grounds like lovebirds. His blood boiled, but he resisted the temptation to kill them both on the spot. No, he wanted them to be shocked and distraught over this new revelation. Let them think for now they were safe. Soon they would both be suffering.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Lucius stared at the pathetic, pitiful man before him as he groveled on the cold stone floor of his cell in the Malfoy dungeons. He kicked the wizard, smirking at the way the man trembled, and stooped over, grabbing him by the chin and making their eyes meet. "So this is the wizard who believes he knows how to fix my problem with the last remaining Weasley. Tell me, wizard, what you know, before I kill you."

The groveling man looked up at him with fearful eyes. Lucius loved that, the fear he saw. Fear was what gave him power, control. Fear was what would save him, was what would make him the Dark Lord's right hand man, and possibly his successor. Fear. He lived for fear. "S-sir, I know this g-girl of which you speak. I-I researched her, you see, for the the the Dark Lord. Studied her. All sorts of tests, and nothing! I was befuddled. But then, you see, I stumbled across something, something very interesting." He grinned like a maniac up at Lucius.

"Well, spit it out then, scum!" Lucius glared at him angrily. He was really beginning to get pissed off now.

"F-for a p-price, s-sir. I will tell you what you w-want to know, b-but you must first p-promise not to kill me for betraying the D-Dark Lord. I was acting out of f-foolish fear." The man smiled at him with mischievous, tricky eyes. So he wanted to make a deal did he? Lucius would make him a deal alright.

"How about you spit it out and I consider it?!" He grabbed the man by the collar of his torn, dirty shirt, lifting him up. He was frail and weak from weeks of running and starving. He nodded quickly and Lucius dropped him to the ground.

"No, Grindle, don't tell him!" screamed a feminine voice from the cell adjacent. Lucius whipped around to find his slave there glaring at him, her face pressed against the metal bars, her hands clutching them tightly in anger.

Lucius smirked and flicked the Cruciatus Curse at her nonchalantly, watching how she screamed in pain, despite how hard she tried not to. He lifted it slowly, after many long, torturous seconds. "I suggest you keep your mouth shut, little birdie. I will get to you soon enough." Malfoy turned back to the wizard Grindle expectantly. "You were saying, before I cut out your tongue?"

"W-well, yes, you see, some months ago I stumbled on the answer completely by accident. I was at an Order hideout and they had some of the few remaining, surviving memories of Albus Dumbledore from just before he was killed. The Aurors kept the secrets locked up tight, but one night I slipped in and opened the chest and looked into the pensieve. Amazing, it was, truly incredible, that man is a genius! However, one memory in particular stood out to me because it involved Ginny Weasley, of whom I was most curious then and still am. It was the memory of a ceremony, a very secret, private ceremony, between just Albus Dumbledore and Ginny Weasley."

Lucius cocked an eyebrow with a perplexed expression. He had never known Dumbledore to be as interested and active with the younger ladies as he was. And he had never expected Ginny Weasley to be into men over a hundred years old. Grindle looked at him with perplexity before catching onto his thoughts. "Oh, no! Nothing like that, you pervert! It was a private ceremony because of how dire Ms. Weasley's secret was. Not even her family knew it. Dumbledore took it to his grave, or so he thought. You see, in the ceremony Miss Weasley and Dumbledore were chanting and as they did, a firey red aura seemed to surround and leave her, entering him. The language was unknown to me, older than Latin, I can assure you, a lost language most definitely. Dumbledore cut-off the ceremony just before it could be ended and told Ginny Weasley that if she was ever to be captured by the dark side, all she need do it utter the last word of the chant and her voice would leave her so that her secret would never be revealed. It was a safety precaution more than anything. Dumbledore, being the only other person to know her secret, would be the safe-keeper of her voice. Once the war ended and she escaped, given she was ever caught, she need only return to him and he would give her her voice back."

Grindle grinned at Lucius from the floor, his stutter leaving as his voice grew in volume, becoming more dramatic. By the end he looked like a mad wizard embarking on a new discovery. Perhaps he was.

"Then what about the fact that she couldn't write the answers to our questions? How come a truth serum wouldn't work? Or the Imperius Curse? Why would nothing work?!"

"Ahh, Dumbledore was a tricky, smart old man. He knew everything you would come up with before you even thought it. He needed defenses at every turn, and this ritual, this ancient magic, answered that need. Ancient magic is very finicky and fickle about its performance, but the spell seemed to work, incredibly, in fact, for Ginny Weasley still can not speak, even after Dumbledore's death!"

Lucius began to pace. This was good. He knew the origin of the spell, was confirmed in his belief that it was old magic. But how to undo it with Dumbledore dead and Ginny Weasley unable to speak? And what, exactly, was the secret she kept hidden under lock and key so dearly? He voiced his questions to Grindle.

"Ahh, well…that's where things became a bit more confusing and vague. You see, the only information I gathered as to why Ginny Weasley needed to hide such a dire secret was a name. Tom Riddle. I could make nothing of it, but perhaps you could?"

Lucius's head snapped up as he stared into the wizard's eyes, trying to find any hint of a lie, but there was none. Tom Riddle? Of course he knew the name. That was the name of his Lord Voldemort as a teenager. That was the name used by the Horcrux Lucius had given to Ginny Weasley in her First year. Did this mean that the Horcrux was somehow still out there, somehow still held the fragment of the soul of Lord Voldemort?

But how was that possible? He had held the dead, empty book in his hands with a hole in it and dripping Basilisk venom. He had felt no stirring of life. Harry Potter had surely destroyed the Horcrux, or so he believed, but did Ginny Weasley perhaps believe it still housed Voldemort's soul? Did she know its whereabouts? He had thrown it in the trash after he thought it destroyed, but had he been wrong?

This was all very interesting indeed. Now he understood Voldemort's interest in Ginny Weasley. Perhaps Voldemort could feel some stirring of this fragmented soul somewhere in the world. Perhaps he speculated, but was not sure, needed proof. Perhaps Ginny Weasley had the answers to all of Lucius's, and Voldemort's, questions.

"How?!" Lucius grabbed the man by the collar once more and shook him. "How do I undo the spell?!"

"First of all, you can't undo it, only Ginny Weasley can. Second of all, it isn't a spell, it is old magic, which is much more complex than any spell. And third of all, I do not know exactly, I have only a guess based on my observations, a guess that may be very wrong. If I am wrong, it could claim the life of Ginny Weasley, and her secret would be lost forever. If I am right, it could return her voice to her."

"Just tell me, damnit!" Lucius threw him against the wall, ignoring the girl's outburst from the next cell over.

"Well sir," said Grindle, looking smug, "essentially you have to kill her."

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"Ginny! Draco! Where are you?!" Draco looked up from where he had been sitting beside a sleeping Ginny, stroking her hair and admiring her beauty. He had taken to watching her sleep often, unbeknownst to the naïve girl.

She had no clue how he watched her. She had no clue how her eyelids fluttered in her sleep, brushing her eyelashes against her soft, creamy, pale skin. She had no clue how she murmured to herself or how she sighed or how her hands twitched around his fingers or how her hair fell in her face so enticingly. She had no clue how much he loved her.

It was on one such peaceful night as Draco sat beside her watching her sleep, exhausted but unable to pull himself away to go lay on his couch which, although soft and luxurious, gave him a neck cramp every morning, that Blaise came rushing into his room half dressed looking as if the hounds of hell were biting at his feet, waking Ginny and rousing Draco out of his trance. They both looked up in surprise, and a bit sleepily on Ginny's part, at Draco's friend whose face clearly revealed that something had gone terribly wrong.

"It's Alex, Draco." Draco shot a glance at Ginny. They had told Ginny that Alex had escaped, but nothing more, for fear of what she might say under torture. However, now it seemed, as Blaise began to pull clothes out of Draco's drawer (making him blush when his silky black boxers landed on the bed next to Ginny) that keeping everything kept under lock and key was no longer and issue. "She's been captured, by your father and his Death Eaters. I don't know where she is-if she's here, in Azkaban, or…dead. I just don't know. But I do know that your father is coming for Ginny."

"Wait, wait, what?! You don't know what's happened to her? And what do you mean my father's coming for Ginny?!" Draco jumped up, grabbing his friend by the shoulders and looking him in the eyes. "What's going on, Blaise?!"

"Draco, the man that was caught with Alex is a wizard by the name of Grindle. He studied Ginny's…condition, and he knows something about it, perhaps how to reverse it, I'm not sure. All I know is it's a matter of time before your father tortures him into speaking and then once he knows enough, he'll come here for Ginny."

Draco looked at Ginny, who was sitting on the bed staring at her shaking hands, tears forming in her eyes. She looked distraught over this news. Possibly in shock. Draco gazed back at Blaise. "Wait, how do you know all of this?"

Blaise suddenly looked incredibly guilty as he went about throwing more clothes onto the pile. "Because…I was there. There was nothing I could do, Draco! My father took me along and I couldn't stop it, couldn't stop them! I didn't even see Alex until they were taking her away in chains, that wizard beside her. They-we-killed everyone else. Clearly your father went there looking specifically for Alex and that wizard! Somehow they found out, as careful as we were!"

"The floo. They intercepted us speaking through floo. Damnit! I knew we should have been more careful!" Draco picked Ginny up from where she lay in the bed and stood her up. Her long, white, silky nightgown went down to her ankles in loose, flowy folds of satin, though the top hugged her curvy chest and tiny waist beautifully. Draco had to pull his eyes away from the way her blood red hair contrasted to the nightgown to grab his blue traveling cloak, his warmest one, and throw it over her shoulders, clasping it. It was too long on her, trailing on the ground behind her, but it would have to do.

He looked her in the eyes, trying to ignore the fear and trepidation growing there by the second. "Ginny, we have to leave now, we don't have time to even worry about clothes. We have to pack our necessary things and leave. Is there anything you absolutely need?" She shook her head no. He nodded and threw his clothes and what little there were of hers into a traveling bag and shrunk it down, sticking it in his pocket. "I need my broom and my cloak."

"I'll get your broom, you find your new invisibility cloak." Draco nodded and he and Blaise split up to gather his remaining items as Ginny swayed beside his bed, looking sick. They were still searching for his broom when the door opened and Draco looked up to see his father walk in, his expression cold and hateful.

"Going somewhere, Draco?"

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"Kill her?!" Lucius yelled, shoving the man against the wall. "How in the bloody hell would that help anything, you dimwit?! I ought to-"

"Please, please listen!" whimpered the wizard Grindle with a cry. "I know it may seem to defeat the purpose, to kill her-"

"You don't say?!"

"But you must realize that it is the only way to get her voice back! You see, Albus Dumbledore has her voice now. He performed the ritual so that he would take it with him everywhere for safekeeping! Even if that meant to the grave! You must kill Ginny Weasley, temporarily, let her seek out Dumbledore and get her voice back, and then revive her quickly before she can truly die! Obviously you can't use the Killing Curse, for it kills instantly and no one can be revived from it. No, you'll have to use some old-fashioned method of stopping her heard momentarily and then starting it back again!"

"I say we start with you!" Lucius yelled, sticking his wand into Grindle's throat. The man shook his head quickly and nervously.

"No, no! Only Ginny Weasley can get her voice back! That is the way the spell is! She must approach Albus Dumbledore herself and request it back and he will give it back if he sees fit! This is all theory, it is true, but the only way for her to have her voice returned is to meet him once more, and the only way she can do that is in death!"

"And if this crazy theory does work?" Lucius asked with a low growl, narrowing his eyes.

"Then the rest is up to you! Figure out Ginny Weasley's secret and do what you must!" The fidgety little wizard shifted nervously, wringing his hands.

Lucius smirked and pressed the wand further into the man's neck. "Then I guess that means I have no more need for you. Avada Kedavra!" There was a scream before the body went slack, the eyes lifeless. Lucius dropped the useless corpse to the ground with a thud and walked to the other cell, unlocking it. His runaway slave crouched against the wall like a wild animal, glaring at him. "You, up. I may need you for…motivational purposes."