Where's that espresso machine?" mumbled Ginny, opening and closing cabinet doors at random. She'd bought one at a clearance sale at Madam Lonelyheart's just last month and stuffed it into some cupboard or other at the studio, she was sure of it. So… She glanced at the gleaming copper thing. What was it doing next to the kitchen sink? And why did it look like somebody had just been using it? Did I make espresso in my sleep? Well, anything's possible these days. She tried to remember exactly how it was supposed to work. Cold water poured into the water chamber, boiler cap secured, ground coffee lightly packed into the filter holder… mmm… Ginny's mouth watered. Just a few more minutes… I'll have to have it with honey, though, I forgot to bring any sugar here.

The clock over the sink struck eight, and the cuckoo shot out of a little door, a surly expression on its wooden face.

"Oy! You lazy layabout! It's Monday. Get to work!" it chirped.

Ginny's eyes went wide. Oh, shite! She'd completely forgotten what day it was. That's what I get for spending the night in a cottage with Draco Malfoy, she thought miserably, dropping the espresso cup. I suppose I would've forgotten my own name next. But he can more than afford to act as if he doesn't need a job, and I can't!

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she moaned, racing frantically around the little studio, opening doors to empty closets and slamming them shut again. "Nothing to wear. Not one thing!" She couldn't possibly put on the dirty, crumpled clothes from last night, and there wasn't so much as a paper towel here. Unless… oh, no, I think there is something… It was all coming back to her now, although she had successfully repressed the memory for a long time.

Her heart sank as she opened the bedroom closet. It did have one item of clothing in it, all right. Molly Weasley had sent her a dress a few months before, and Ginny had seriously considered setting it afire with one flick of her wand before it had a opportunity to infect the world with its evil even further than it already had. However, there was always the chance that her mother might insist on seeing her in it someday. A Memory charm could always be cast later, and hopefully the psychological scars wouldn't go too deep. But there just wasn't anything else to wear now, and no time to perform a Clothing charm that would last through the morning. Maybe I could stick together some drawing paper with wet espresso grounds? No, because I didn't even have time to make the espresso, did I? Oh, I'm for it now…

Grimly, Ginny shimmied into the dress. The mirror on the back of the closet door gave a miserable little moan as she looked into it. "Oh, I agree," she said, staring at the lacy, frilly horror in baby pink. Hairbrush! Where's the hairbrush? Not that it could possibly make any difference, considering that nightmare of a dress. I might as well go out looking like an orangutan, I guess. She clawed ineffectually at her hair and grabbed her green purse. At the sight of it next to the dress, five hundred years of color theory whimpered, laid down, and died. Ginny held a quiet, brief funeral in her head for it. Then she ran down the stairs as if pursued by several generations of maddened art teachers, already knowing that she was going to be nearly an hour late for work.

She burst out the front door at top speed, arms outstretched towards the nearest Apparition point, and immediately collided with someone, sending them both hurtling to the ground.

"Oof," said Dean Thomas, hauling her up by one hand. "Glad to finally run into you, Gin. We've been trying to find you for the past hour."

"Uh…" Ginny shook her head, trying to clear it. "Some people would just send an owl, you know. And I'm trying to get to Flourish and Blotts. This had better be good, or-"

"We couldn't find the building," Colin interrupted. "I knew you were around here somewhere; I tried to tell Dean that it had to be shielded, but he didn't want to listen to me, of course. We've been walking back and forth for ages and you've got some mud on your dress, there… but I think it's an improvement, if anything. Did your mirror actually let you go out of the flat like that?"

"Shut it, Creevey! We've got more important things to worry about," said Dean. "Luna's disappeared."

"What do you mean?" asked Ginny. "She was with both of you yesterday; she sent those text messages, and she said you were there."

"She disappeared right afterwards," Dean said grimly.

"We weren't worried at first," said Colin. "I mentioned it yesterday when we were at the Ministry—remember, Gin? But I wasn't exactly worried about it yet."

Yes. She did remember Colin saying something about Luna being gone and nobody having heard from her, thought Ginny, although she hadn't been in any shape to remember much of anything at the time.

"Then she didn't call either of us for hours, or show up," said Colin, "and it got a bit worrisome to say the least, but still the problem didn't really begin until…er…"

"I found her self one at three this morning," said Dean ominously. "She'd dropped it at Colin's flat."

"Yes, Dean, and the reason you found it is because you were kind enough to drop by at that perfectly hideous hour. Clever boy. Anyway, Gin, that's why we've been looking for you, aside from the fact that you're her dearest friend and you've simply got to help us. You're the only one we know who could possibly find where it is."

"If you're talking about St. Mungo's psychiatric ward, where both of you clearly belong," said Ginny, "then you certainly don't need me to tell you where it is. I don't understand why you're worried at all. Luna's a big girl, you know. Look, I'm going to be over an hour late as it is, and Mrs. Fustian is going to give me one of those dreadful superior looks of hers from the corner office. Can't you just wait until—"

"We read the texas-message," Dean said portentously.

"It does look rather bad," Colin agreed.

"Argh!" Ginny clutched her head, which was beginning to ache. "All right, this is clearly part of a plot to drive me into St. Mungo's. What in Nimue's name could you possibly be babbling about?"

In answer, Dean thrust a cell phone at her. Luna's cell phone. Self-one. Texas-message… oh. It's all coming together now. Sort of. No, not really. I still think they're mad. Ginny punched impatiently at the text message list until the latest one scrolled up.

Luna—Come to my flat now. Need u desperately. Emergency. Come at once and I'll come later on. Hurry hurry hurry.

"That's the one she got right before she vanished," said Dean. "And Colin says the self one messages can't be traced, so we don't have any idea who it's from."

"It could be anybody," Colin agreed.

"Whoever it is, Luna dropped everything and ran the moment they asked her to. And nobody's seen or heard from her since. We've been round and talked to all of her friends," said Dean.

"All extremely happy about being woken up at five in the morning, too," added Colin.

Ginny stared at the text message. Her friend had disappeared. Nothing else mattered. "All right," she said, everything in the world forgotten besides Luna's gentle face and the awful, gnawing fear that something dreadful had happened to make those blue eyes cloud with pain, or the soft mouth cry out in terror. "So you don't have any idea who this came from? Or where she could be?" she asked.

"Not the slightest," said Colin.

"It doesn't matter. Let's go find her," Ginny said firmly. "Oh—wait—what is it you think I'll be able to do that you couldn't do?"

"I suppose we don't know this, exactly," said Dean, "but you're the only one either of us knows who even has a chance of being able to find her. We were thinking that perhaps you'd learned something from Bill, some sort of Cursebreaker trick."

Ginny gnawed on her lower lip. The last thing she wanted to be reminded of at the moment was any spell of her brother Bill's; a long, long night of in vino veritas was still much too clear in her mind. But she couldn't refuse to try. Not if it would help Luna.

"There might be something," she said. "It's from when Bill would track vampires in the Romanian forests. I need something of hers. That phone would work, I suppose." She passed her wand over the text message, devoutly hoping that this particular spell would work better than any of the others Bill had taught her. " Descoperă.

The phone quivered and then swung round to the left. Ginny raised her eyebrows. "I really need to have a talk with Bill about these spells."

"It looks like it's pointing us somewhere, though," said Dean.

"I think so," admitted Ginny. The phone was straining in her hand. "It's probably the best we're going to get. But the strange thing is that it ought to be giving some information about where we're supposed to be going, or who's sent the message, or something. That's the whole point of the spell. It wouldn't do a lot of good to randomly follow vampires into the middle of the woods, don't you think?"

"I sincerely hope that Luna hasn't been kidnapped by a gang of vampires," said Colin.

"All the more reason to find her as fast as possible," said Dean. "Come on, Ginny."

"How exactly do I keep getting myself into these things?" asked Colin, but the other two had already started down the street at top speed.

Nobody could exactly say that the spell didn't work, thought Ginny. The cell phone seemed to be pulling them to their destination of its own accord; she was fairly sure that they hadn't even used an Apparition point yet, but something still seemed very odd, and she was having some trouble working out where it was.

"Dean, do you know where we are?" she asked as the phone tugged her down a street that really ought to have looked familiar.

"No," he said, frowning. "And I keep thinking that I should." He glanced around in a confused way. "I'm almost sure I saw a street sign a moment ago, but then it disappeared…"

"This really does almost look familiar," said Colin. "No—maybe not—or perhaps it's just that I can't quite remember when I've been here. Does it really matter, though? The phone's still leading us to wherever Luna is, right?"

"I don't know…" Ginny shook her head, trying to clear it. "I just keep thinking that I should know where I am perfectly well, because I've been here before. This building, for instance." They began climbing up the back stairs.

"I think I know what this reminds me of," said Dean thoughtfully. "It's really rather like the psych ward at St. Mungo's. It's Shielded so that it's impossible to find unless you have visiting privileges or you're an employee, and even if you do, you don't quite know where it is. You only know how to get there."

Ginny closed her eyes briefly. She remembered that all too well from the summer after her twelfth year. "How do you know that, Dean?" she asked tightly.

"I'm one of the medipsych interns there," he said quietly. "I don't tell a great many people about that, of course."

"Oh. Oh." Ginny felt a wave of shame. "Dean, if I'd known, I'd never have said what I did earlier. I shouldn't have done, anyway. It wasn't a very funny joke, was it?"

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. You're not gasping in horror and making the sign against the evil eye now that you know what I'm doing, anyway. I knew you wouldn't—that's why I told you. But the point is that this does make me think of that. The question is why. Is it really just something to do with the spell itself—the one you learned from Bill—or is it because wherever we're going really is Shielded?"

"And if it is, then why?" murmured Ginny.

"What are you two mumbling about back there?" asked Colin. "I absolutely know I've been here before, although why it should make me think of goats, I really can't guess."

"And I don't particularly care to," said Ginny lightly, grateful to Colin for providing a moment's comic relief. Things had been getting altogether too heavy with Dean.

She craned her head round the hall corner. "That's it, number sixty-six," she hissed.

"How do you know?" asked Dean.

"You know, I was going to say number sixty-six as well," said Colin. "This is looking so awfully familiar. I just don't know why."

The cell phone pulsed eagerly in Ginny's hand. A tremor of unease fluttered through her stomach. I don't think this is going to be good. "Luna's in there," she said.

"Right. Let's go," said Dean.

"Wait, wait," said Colin. "How are we supposed to get in there? Anybody thought of that?"

"Because I cast the Descoperă spell, I have to go in first. That's the way it works. I suppose that I could just knock on the door," said Ginny.

Dean set his jaw in a way that reminded Ginny distinctly of all her older brothers put together. "You are not going to do any such thing."

"Oh, both of you could rescue me before it got too far, if the flat belongs to some sort of leftover Death Eater-serial killer sort of character," said Ginny. "Or maybe it's a Death Eater sex talk call center looking for new girls—" Why on earth am I babbling like a lunatic? she wondered. Something's very wrong here, I just know it. Oh, fuck, I'm not looking forward to finding out what's behind that door… and who…

"That's it," said Dean. "You're staying out in the hall."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "I was only joking."

"Well, it's not funny," muttered Dean.

"I thought it was Luna's virtue we were worried about."

"How the hell do we know who's in there? I'll have to protect the both of you as well as beating whoever it is to a bloody pulp, and then—"

"When the two of you have quite done flirting," said Colin, "you might get round to answering my question. Finding the flat isn't going to do much good if we can't get into it."

Oh no, Ginny thought uncomfortably. I do hope Colin's not having a perceptive moment. He's rather prone to those lately. There certainly wasn't any flirting on her end where Dean Thomas was concerned, but from his point of view… well, they'd once dated at Hogwarts, after all, and she'd always been uncomfortably aware that he'd liked her very much, and she'd treated him very badly. She'd rather callously dumped him for Harry Potter, knowing that Dean still wanted her, and still cared about her. What if he wants to pick things up again now? What if he's getting ready to rescue Luna and murder whoever it is to impress me? What if I'll have to bail him out of Azkaban? Conjugal visits will be right out, that's for sure… oh, fuck, how do I get myself into these things?

"Uh… how about good old-fashioned Alohamora?" asked Ginny.

Dean snorted. "On the door of a Shielded flat? Not bloody likely. I wouldn't be surprised if there are about a dozen Dark spells guarding it." He seemed to think for a moment. "Ginny, what about some good Entering spells, something that goes beyond Alohamora? Did Bill ever teach you any of those?"

Ginny thought hard, but could remember nothing. "I really don't think so."

"Ginny, can't you think of anything that might at least test it out? Get some sort of idea of what might be guarding that door?"

"Well… there's one spell I did learn from Bill that's along those lines a bit, but only a bit," said Ginny. "It'll reveal who's gone in or out of the flat recently. But it's not very precise—"

"It would prove that Luna's in there, though," said Colin.

"No, I don't think it would, which was what I was trying to say. It only works for people who come from families that have used a lot of Dark magic for a long time, and unless Luna's got a secret life she hasn't been telling me about, that won't apply to her," said Ginny. "The other thing is that it's drawn more to the Dark magic than to the individual person, so if they're directly connected to a family who's in it deeper than their own, that's the one the spell will identify."

"And that's all you have?" Colin asked dubiously. "It doesn't seem very helpful to me."

"I didn't say it was," said Ginny irritably. "Do you want me to try it, or do you want to spend the rest of your life in this hallway? Or would you like to wait until whoever it is who has Luna skips out for the afternoon paper and drags you in there as his personal slave boy?"

"Well, now that you mention it—"

"Shut it, Creevey," said Dean. ""Of course I want you to try it, Ginny. We can't be too picky just now, and we don't know what might be helpful."

Ginny drew her wand. I don't see how this is going to work, she thought. But we've got to try something. Maybe I can at least find out who else is there; it seems likely that whoever it is would be connected with Dark magic in some way. ..

"What are you waiting for?" hissed Colin.

She stared down at her own hand, feeling a tiny twinge of apprehension rippled through her. Why? she wondered. Bill's spells don't have a very good track record so far. The last one led us here, at least, but we don't have any idea what we're going to find. Is that it? I don't have a good feeling about this, I really don't. But there's nothing else to do.

"Probatur," she finally said, tapping the doorknob.

Ginny wasn't sure what she'd expected, although it was probably something along the lines of a loud voice announcing the identities of every sinister character who had walked through the door that morning. When she heard nothing, she was sure for a few moments that the spell either simply hadn't worked, or that nobody dodgy was in the flat at all. How could she be so sure that Luna was even here? Maybe the entire thing had been a wild goose chase; look at how Bill's other spells had worked. I'm going to be in so much trouble at work, she thought guiltily. But maybe not if I leave right now. I really ought to turn around this second and just-

A small, shadowy image shaped itself in her head. Or perhaps it wasn't so much an actual image as an impression, or even an overall sensation, but whoever it was, Ginny couldn't even tell if the person was male or female. This really isn't very useful, she thought.

"Did it work? It doesn't look like it worked. I'm not seeing anything. I'm not hearing anything," said Colin. "I don't think the spell worked. I just hate it when spells don't work. I mean, if they're not going to work, then you have to think of something else, and then if that doesn't work, you're really in trouble, and—"

"Shut up, Colin!" hissed Ginny. Another impression was coming. This one was very vague and wispy. She tried as hard as she could to gather it together into some sort of coherent form, but it was never quite possible. For a second, though, she had a single flash of Smollet. Smollet… now, where had she heard that before? A dim memory of a late-night conversation came back to her. Luna had said that her cousin had married a Smollet, a member of a pureblood family that been very much involved with Voldemort. That had to be it, then. The connection was by marriage, and it wasn't really close enough for her to get a true picture, but it had to mean that they'd been right.

"Luna's here," she said.

"Who else?" Dean asked tensely.

"I don't know. I'm not getting anyone. Either there isn't anyone else, or there's nobody who has any Dark connections."

It was a tiring spell to keep up, and Ginny gave a long sigh. She began to lower her wand. Suddenly, something hit her with all the force of a tremendous wave. She fell back against the wall, flattened by the force of the impression, the sensation, the overwhelming presence. It felt palpable, real, as if she could reach out and touch it, but even more so; it felt as if it… he… were inside her, breathing in and out with her lungs, seeing with her eyes, touching the smooth cool brass of the doorknob and the irregular grain of the wooden door with her fingertips.

Malfoy.

The spell was telling her that a Malfoy had walked through the door of this flat. She was sure of it.

"Ginny?" She faintly heard Dean's voice. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. What else could she say? "That spell, uh… it takes a lot out of you. That's all."

"I knew Luna was there," said Dean under his breath. "Fuck, and we still can't get in—"

Ginny barely heard him. Her hand went out to the doorknob, and she turned it.

"Huh. It was open all the time," said Colin. "I thought that sort of thing only happened in bad Muggle sitcoms."

Draco couldn't be on the other side of the door, waiting for her. It was mad. And suddenly, she desperately didn't want him to be; something very small and newly born in her knew that he couldn't be, or the madness would all begin again. Something else in her wanted to fall into his arms just as desperately, craved him beyond all reason, and burned for him to finish what they'd begun the night before. She could feel the dark hot thick excitement pounding through her veins and humming through her entire body, driven by this part of her that he'd so expertly awakened. And yet—

The flat still looked hazy and strange, as if she could almost, almost remember it. She'd been there once before, and she knew it, but she couldn't quite place anything. The Shielding spell still lay over everything, although it would wear off very soon.

Someone was sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table that she knew she would remember in a minute or so. His back was to her, and she couldn't see him at all. She wasn't even sure why she knew a man was sitting there. But she did know. It was Draco, it had to be, and when he turned round and saw her, she would stalk up to him and slap his face. No, she would straddle his lap and kiss him full on the mouth and pull his clothes off, and then pull him down to her and they would make love on that horrid table… ouch. Ginny winced at the thought. He'd be pressing her right into the carving of the goat (why do I know there's a carving of a goat? Didn't Colin say something about a goat?) Well, maybe they could move to the purple sheepskin rug. No! She would tell him that he'd made his bed and now he had to lie in it, and after all, Astoria was already there, and she was clearly what he wanted, because he'd married her. No… she'd… well, she'd…

"My little lollipop's back," said a deep, sexy voice. "I've missed her. I don't like to go so long without a good licking session. Let's not do it again. Can't we use a delivery service next time? What say we start putting all that coffee ice cream to some good use? We don't need to bother with spoons, do we…"

Little lollipop? Ginny thought blankly. Something's not right here…

"Luna, love, why don't we start from the toes and work our way up this time? There's a little tickly bit on your inner right thigh I don't think I've lavished quite enough attention on yet…" The chair began to swivel round. Oh, no, thought Ginny.

Blaise Zabini faced her, wearing a black satin robe with a tiger embroidered all the way down its back. It was undoubtedly meant to look sinister and sexy, but Ginny thought that it gave much more of an effect of needing a good dose of worming medication. His hooded eyes sprang open. "Ginny?" he asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I- what are you doing here, Zabini?" she demanded.

"It's my flat! I rather think that gives me the right to be here, you know."

"But—but—" she stammered. "It was Shielded, and—and Luna should be here, and—"

"She went out for coffee ice cream and more chocolate syrup, not that it's precisely any of your business. I've given up threesomes as of this morning," said Blaise. "Ginny, love, what are you doing here?"

"Where's Draco?" she blurted.

Blaise looked away from her shiftily. "Er…"

"Where is he?"

"Oh, Ginny my sweet, why do you ask me questions like this?"

"Blaise Zabini, if you don't tell me where he is right this minute I'm going to hex your balls together into a Gordian knot!"

Blaise winced. "I'm not half done using those today! All right, Ginnygin, but please remember that you forced me to this. He's uh…" His gaze fell to the floor. "On his honeymoon with Astoria. On Vendetta Island, just off Corsica."

"Oh," said Ginny faintly. Her wand hand fell. Her head seemed to be filled with an enormous buzzing.

"Ginny, you must have known what sort of answer you'd get to that question," Blaise said softly. "Whyever did you ask?"

"Uh…"

"Surely you didn't break into my Shielded flat on Monday morning at the ungodsly hour of nine a.m. just to ask me one of the more awkward questions in the world?"

"No…" Ginny looked down at her feet.

"Then why?"

Ginny really had no idea what to say. However, the door burst open at that precise moment, and at the sight of Dean's furious face only a millisecond before he stabbed his wand into the center of Blaise's chest, backing him up against the full-sized black velvet painting of the tiger on the living room wall, she realized that there was really no need for her to explain anything at all.