Author's notes: well then. After a very long time of writing, rewriting because i needed to change the location of a big part of this story, and endless editing and hoping to find a new beta... here it is. Part 3 of 3, the final part of the Elder Tales. It has been quite the experience to write it, and I hope you will find as much enjoyment in reading it as I have had writing it. I will be publishing this story over the next few months, with a chapter every Saturday and Wednesday.

In order to fully understand this story, I recommend you go back and read part 1 (Driving Miss Weasley) and part 2 (On the Woodway). But if you want to dive straight in to this story, then here is a summary of those two stories:

Auror Harry Potter is assigned to escort Ginny Weasley to her Quidditch match. They run into trouble, their romance rekindles, and Harry has to take possession of the Elder Wand again to save Ginny's life. Scared of the corrupting effect the Wand has on him, he hides it from everybody. Trouble looms for the new couple: mysterious murders take place, and Corban Yaxley, the last remaining fugitive Death Eater, re-emerges. Fear spreads and Kingsley Shacklebolt's Ministry hangs by a thread. It all comes to a head in the Forbidden Forest, where Harry accidentally hits Hermione with a curse. He runs away.

I would like to thank Inareskai first of all, who has been amazing enough to take time out of her busy life to beta this story. My thanks also go to Jenorama, who gave me plenty of wonderful ideas during our brainstorming sessions, and to moon_potato, who has been instrumental throughout the writing of this series. I can't thank these three enough for all the help they have given me over the years.

Anyway, enjoy this story!

Once upon a time there was man named Victor, who lived in the finest house in the forests surrounding Geneva. The mansion was made of plasterwork created by the most gifted Italian architects of the time and its ornamental woodwork was so rich in detail that one became dizzy just from looking at it. Surrounding the manor were luscious planned gardens, blooming cultivated patches with yams, sweet potatoes and dirigible plums, and crystal-clear mountain creeks, finely controlled and redirected into his many fountains and waterfalls. On quiet days, unicorns could be seen drinking from the water. And at the edge of the gardens began those rich forests, so abundant with game that hunts were always successful. Many considered Victor the luckiest man alive, and he was inclined to agree with that. Not because of his land, however, but because of his family.

He had a beautiful wife, Elizabeth, and together they had two daughters whose beauty surpassed any other maiden's. Their skin was white as snow, their cheeks rosy red, and their eyes blue as the sea. The younger was a prodigy in charmwork, but she could never muster up the patience to read books. The older could always be seen with a book in her hands, but she was never proficient with her wand. Neither looked down on the other, and their parents were equally proud of their children.

Victor loved experimenting with spells, so he had his servants convert one of the wings of his manor to a laboratory, where he could research the secrets of magic to his heart's content. There was a workbench for wand building, a small greenhouse for experimenting on plants, a large reinforced room for testing spells, and cages for pigs, chickens, and mice. Victor was in control of his life and land, and he was happy.

This is the setting where our story begins. I have written down the exact happenings to the best of my ability, as it was told to me by an anonymous source. I feel obliged to warn you, for this story is far from the pleasant fairy tales they make these days. I find that it is important to tell as much of this particular story as possible, so that you, the reader, are able to adequately understand the following series of tales. The precise workings of the Elder Wand remain clouded in shadows and mystery, and this book is an attempt firstly at understanding it and secondly at tracing its history to the most recent owners.

The diaries and letters that were given to me suggest that it happened when Victor went for his usual after-dinner walk with his wife. They ambled past the controlled creeks, careful not to disturb the unicorns drinking from the water, when he spotted a shadow moving just past the tree line. Then, slowly, a man appeared from the woods. His clothes were torn, his face was haggard, and his hair grew wildly in all directions.

"Stop!" Victor called, aiming his wand at the man. The unicorns, startled by the sudden exclamation, scattered into the forest. "Who are you, and how did you cross my magical boundaries?"

"Please," the man uttered, staggering closer to them. "They're after me, and I had nowhere else to go. You've got to help me!"

"He's raving mad!" Elizabeth whispered to him.

"Don't come any closer!" Victor warned. "Who is after you? Explain yourself!"

The man stumbled to a halt, barely three metres away from them, and Victor could see the panic in his blood-shot eyes.

"Dark… dark creatures," he panted. "Lethifolds. Inferi. Spiders as big as horses."

Elizabeth gasped and squeezed his hand tightly.

"Are they chasing you?" he asked in trepidation. Loath to take his eyes off the strange man, he glanced at the dark forest behind him, yet there was nothing there.

"Me?" the man shouted. "Are they chasing me? I'm nothing but a low-life drunkard. I never asked for any of this. No, it's not me they're after. It's this thing!" He stuck his hand in his robes and pulled out a wand.

"Expelliarmus!" Victor cried, aiming his wand at the man. The spell connected, and the stranger's wand sailed through the air into Victor's hand.

Open-mouthed and wide-eyed, the man stared at his empty hand, then at the wand in Victor's hand. A look of horror crept on his face, morphing his features as he met Victor's eyes.

"You fool!" the man then cried, balling his fists. "You don't know what you've done!"

"Calm down, I'll give it back to you once we've sorted this out," Victor said, putting his newly acquired wand in his pocket. "But it's getting late. Come inside, I'll have my servants pour you a cup of chocolate and prepare a warm bed for you. I insist."

But the man stumbled backward, not once taking his eyes off the pocket where the wand now was. "Oh no. No, I'm not going inside. Trust me, get rid of that thing. Bury it, throw it down the river, anything. Bad things happen to those who use it."

"This wand?" Victor asked, taking it out of his pocket again to examine it, noting the strange knots on its surface. "What do you mean?"

But the man had already turned around, and the couple watched him as he stampeded back into the forest, as if the devil himself was chasing him. He would never be found again.

The wand, it turned out, was made of elder wood, and upon closer examination by Geneva's best wandmaker, Friedrich Krämer, it was found to contain the hair of a Thestral. Krämer could only conclude, wide-eyed and with trembling hands, that this was the Elder Wand, crafted by Death itself.

"Destroy this foul thing," the old man rumbled after that discovery. "This wretched wand will only bring death and misery to your family."

"But those are only stories," Victor replied, who had never believed in fairy tales and myths. He was a man of science, a man of Enlightened rationalism. Myth, he believed, was but a social construct that bogged the mind and made-murky Man's connection with his true rational self. It hailed from more barbaric times, from the dark pagan origins of civilisation and the Medieval ages that were so rife with barbary. Myth had no place in the philosophical utopia that would soon illuminate Europe.

"I can tell that no words will convince you," Krämer said. "So I ask you to leave my store and never return here again, not until you have rid yourself of that foul artefact."

"As you wish," Victor replied, bowing respectfully. "Farewell, Krämer."

I can only conclude from my extensive research that destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed poor Victor's utter and terrible destruction.

First, a moth infestation plagued the hedges of his gardens, and thousands of writhing caterpillars feasted on the box plants until there was nothing left of the neat edges of his flower beds. The second thing he should have seen as an omen was a fly bite he received during one of his many walks past the creeks. He thought nothing of it at first, but after three days the bite mark still hadn't gone away, and after a week the red mark on his left forearm had swollen to worrying proportions. Then came the fever, the headaches, and the seemingly endless fatigue. Elizabeth had brought in the best doctors and healers she could find, and they all concluded that whatever he had contracted must have come from that fly. But not one of them could find a cure. While waiting anxiously for any news from the doctors, he passed time casting spells with the Elder Wand.

It was volatile. Occasionally it burst with potency, causing his spells to have far too much power. More than one quill had been buried into the ceiling of the experimentation wing. Yet other times he had trouble even casting the simplest Levitation Charm. Gradually he found that Occlumency was the key to solve its highly changeable nature. Normally the practice served to protect the mind from intrusion, but Victor wrote on All Saint's Day, 1755, that forcing his mind to do the opposite – not to wall it in but to leave it bare for all outside influence to enter it – was the key to getting the wand to work.

During his bed-ridden periods, he stared at it as it lay next to him on the bedside table while he felt the burning sickness seep from the oozing, throbbing fly bite into every fibre of his body.

Then came one restless night, where Victor could no longer sleep peacefully. He was drenched in sweat as he tossed and turned until the first grey of the new morning was visible. The following month was a haze of nightmares, dizziness, near-constant muscle spasms, and strange, haunting hallucinations. He lost all track of time and place as he swam in white-hot agony.

During this time, Elizabeth rarely left his side. She had set up a chair next to his sick bed as she tried everything to heal him again. Their daughters had already married and moved in with their husbands and were far away in Zürich and Paris, and so there was not much else for her to do than sit by his side and pray that he would heal.

Both healers and Muggle doctors came and went. Victor had been given potion after potion, he'd been fed experimental medicine by a colonial British doctor, and in Elizabeth's desperation, she had even summoned the notorious practitioner of the black arts, Françoise Pelletier. The woman, accused of witchcraft but acquitted for lack of evidence, had dragged Victor's fever-racked and quickly emaciated body outside and performed strange rituals at one of the nearby water springs. But even that hadn't helped.

Victor's condition rapidly worsened, but one evening, when all hope seemed lost, a strange mist descended upon the garden. The door to the bedroom opened, tongues of fog rolled into the room, and out of the mist entered a man dressed in splendid red and white robes.

"Who are you?" Elizabeth whispered, standing to her feet at once and placing herself between the strange man and Victor.

"Worry not, I come in peace," the man replied. "Call me Mephistopheles. I have come to save your husband."

"The Devil has come to save his soul? You will forgive me if I'm somewhat vexed."

"I understand your sarcasm, my dear lady. You've sat by his side for so long, you've done so much, yet all in vain," Mephisto said, his brown eyes shining with empathy. "But I am not the Devil. Merely a... helper of sorts. I advise you to believe me, my lady, because I am the only hope you've got. His life is slipping away with every breath he takes. I can heal him, but time is not on our side."

"But why would the Devil want to save him?"

Mephisto took a long time to consider this. "My apologies, but there is not much that I'm allowed to say." He paused again, and grabbed the Elder Wand from the bedside table. "When Victor acquired this wand, his life became a more important matter to certain figures. He cannot die now. It is not allowed." He twirled the wand in his hand, and Elizabeth was sure that a smell of burning was spreading in the room. Faint tufts of smoke rose up from the wand spinning in Mephistopheles' hand. Then he carefully laid it back down, drawing back his hand as if he'd burnt it.

Elizabeth stared at the man dressed as schoolmaster for a long time as she weighed her options. Finally, she spoke. "What is your proposal? I know the way you do your business. Tit for tat. So speak."

"You are well read, my lady. You're right, my help won't be free. By preventing one death, another has to take his place. And the only suitable payment is the soul of the one he loves most dearly, of the person who his heart belongs to. What I require, lady Elizabeth is your soul."

"And what if I refuse?" she asked quickly.

"You don't want to refuse," he said with an easy smile. "I presume you want to keep the suffering to a minimum?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then you need but say the word, and I will heal him at once."

Elizabeth took a moment to look at Victor. His usually handsome features were marred by his grey, clammy skin and the visible bones underneath. He was dying. Every breath, every heartbeat, was one closer to his last. And at that point she knew that her decision was already made.

"How long do I have left?"

"Until I've completed the ritual. After it is done, I will take you with me and we will depart from this world."

"Then we have no time to waste."

Victor's body floated ahead of Mephisto and Elizabeth as they walked past the edge of the forest. They walked for what seemed like ages, deeper and deeper into the woods of the Jura, but Elizabeth could only think about the fact that this was the last thing she would ever do. She would never see her husband open his clear blue eyes again, nor would she have a chance to say goodbye to her daughters. But she drew strength from the fact that this would save her Victor. It was a purpose worth dying for ten times over.

They finally arrived at a field. In the middle stood an oak, immense in circumference, and its mighty branches spread out far from the trunk. She felt the power of this site, a soft humming in her ears that got louder as they approached the tree.

Mephisto lowered Victor onto a bed of moss and he turned to her.

"You'll forgive me for waiting so long before coming to your aid," he said. "We needed to collect a few more… artefacts first, for this ritual to work." And from his scholastic robes he drew two things: a silky cloak and a rough black stone. Elisabeth leant forward to look at the intriguing things more closely, but then he hid them again in his robes. "This doesn't concern you," he said, giving her a reassuring smile. "Be glad that they don't."

He looked away again. "First, we build a fire." He waved his arms, and fallen branches and twigs from all over the clearing flew towards them, landing in a neat pyramid-shaped heap next to Victor. With a snap of his fingers, the woodpile lit up, bathing the clearing in a dancing red light.

Next, he transfigured a small stick into a rope. He slung it over a thick branch close to the trunk, and climbed to the dense canopy. He pulled himself up on the branch, and then climbed further into the heart of the tree, until she could no longer see him. When he came down again, he was covered in leaves, sticks and dust.

He held out his hand to her, and in his outstretched hand she saw a simple acorn. "This is the reason why we are here," he said softly. "The heart of the oak. Hold it for now, my lady, but do not lose it." She took the acorn from him, hesitantly, and then slipped it into the pocket of her nightgown.

The helper of the Devil then transformed the rope into a large axe as he turned back to the tree. "Renewal of the wood, renewal of life," he murmured in a gravelly tone that did not belong to his normally smooth voice. He walked up to the tree, and began hacking away at it with powerful swings, repeating that mantra over and over again in a low, inhuman tone.

Elizabeth watched on as he cut through the bark, then the outer layers, and then the core. The red-hot light of the fire dancing around the clearing and Mephistopheles' repeated chanting lulled her into a trance as she witnessed the ritual.

With every swing of the axe he dug deeper into the trunk, and the humming in her ears got louder and louder, as did the groaning of the oak wood. Every swing of the axe reverberated around the field and shook her stomach. The humming became unbearable when he came close to felling the tree, and Elizabeth covered her ears, but it didn't stop the unearthly noise. Her very being vibrated along with it. The tree swayed back and forth, and it seemed as if the earth itself shook to its core. Then it gave way, and it was as if time slowed down as the giant finally fell. Wood snapped and broke violently, earth, leaves and rocks were thrown up in a cloud of dust as roots once anchoring the giant to the earth were pulled up to the surface, and Elizabeth sank to her knees, her eyes closed and ears covered. Birds, mice and other animals quickly scattered, running or flying away from the ungodly noise as the ancient oak collapsed to the ground with a thundering impact that made the earth shudder.

When the violence had passed, she hesitantly opened her eyes again. Mephisto waved his arms, and the many branches that were snapped off the tree levitated off the leafy ground. With a subtle wrist movement, they were gathered around the immense tree trunk.

"Renewal of wood, renewal of life," he called again in that unnaturally raspy tone. He aimed one hand at the fire near Elizabeth and Victor, and a tendril came loose, rising up above the other flames. Then, like an arrow, it shot at the twigs and branches leaning against the enormous trunk, and the pile of wood immediately caught fire. The flames reached around themselves and multiplied, grew and gradually spread to the entire gigantic tree.

The blaze continued all night, growing to monstrous proportions. The flames went so high that they seemed to reach the heavens above. The immense heat coming off the inferno singed Elizabeth's face, even though she and Victor were fairly far away from it. Mephisto never stepped away from the fire as he kindled it, spread it over the entire trunk, and made it grow even larger than it already was.

Somewhere in the ritual she must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes, it was already late in the morning. She blearily looked around to get her bearings. Victor was still next to her, but he still looked as ill as he had before. The mossy ground under them was wet with dew, and the smell of burnt wood filled her nose.

They could now see the sky clearly, the morning illuminating the scene in a washed grey light. In the middle of the new clearing lay the burning husk of the ancient oak tree. There were still small fires here and there along its trunk, but a lot of the wood had already turned into a mountain of ash. The trees surrounding the clearing had apparently also caught fire; the only thing left of them were short, grey stumps.

Mephisto levitated the ash and spread it around on the forest floor, covering the entire area in the grey dust. She coughed when some of the clouds reached her and snuck into her throat. Mephisto then approached her, his hair, face and robes entirely covered in soot.

"Now it's time to plant the acorn," he said. His voice was raw from the ceaseless chanting.

Elizabeth stood up and gave it to him, coughing as more ash filled her throat. She then followed him to the centre of the clearing, soot being kicked up with every step they took. Mephisto carefully placed the acorn in the hole he had dug there.

"The old will give way to the new," he murmured. "It is done. From this acorn and the offering of the old oak, a new one will grow. The cycle of nature shall continue."

"What now?" Elizabeth asked after he'd covered the acorn in ash and dirt.

"Now we bring Victor back home."

Not a word was said on the way back, and she felt a strange distance between herself and the rest of the world. The song of the birds, the wind rushing through the trees, Victor – her Victor – levitating grotesquely in front of them. Soon, she would no longer be a part of all this, but she felt as if she was already halfway there, only loosely tethered to the world around her.

She followed Mephisto through the garden and into their house. When he lowered Victor onto their bed, Elizabeth carefully tucked him in. She lovingly brushed a stray lock of hair from his face, which looked considerably healthier than it did before.

"I love you," she whispered in his ear. She kissed his warm, unresponsive lips, and then turned to Mephisto.

"I'm ready," she said in a voice that did not seem to belong to her. "Will he know what happened when he wakes up?"

"He knows what happened," he said softly. "He is lucid, floating between life and death. As soon as the new oak bursts to life, he will wake up in his own body again."

"Will he be all right?" she asked. Now that there was nothing more to do, the bravery she'd felt until now vanished like snow in the spring. The very same mist that preceded Mephisto now rolled back in to the garden and the bedroom.

"It is not up to us any longer," Mephisto said, his gaze warm and kind as he held out his hand, reassuring the frightened woman. He was kind and flattering until her very end. "Come, now. You don't have to be afraid."

They exited the room and disappeared into the mist.

As Mephistopheles promised, the sapling oak sprung up from its seed, nursed and fed by the ashes of its ancient predecessor, and Victor opened his eyes once again. Tears streamed down his face as he watched the tranquil fog slowly retreat back into the woods again, with it taking his wife away from him, forever.

Victor was never the same person again. His sickness had quickly disappeared, but the hole Elizabeth had left in his heart could never be healed. He remained alone in his mansion. The stucco slowly faded and crumbled from the walls, wood started to rot here and there, and his gardens slowly started to wither. The flower beds, patches, and gentle fields once again became part of the forests they were once claimed from, and his once carefully managed creeks rerouted and found quicker ways downstream, or silted shut.

Victor was rarely seen in public anymore. Even his dwindling group of servants often wouldn't see him for days at a time. He had nothing left to do but focus fully on the one thing that still gave him satisfaction: his experiments.

It had taken him a few months to get used to the Elder Wand, but once he did, he achieved results he previously wouldn't even dare dream of. With every other part of Victor's life cut off with surgical precision, there was now nothing left in the way of its path to greatness. The helper of the devil had made sure of that, with his charming gaze and helping hand, reaching out from the realm of immortality to this Earth just when Elizabeth had given up hope. Just when she was ripe for the plucking.

Victor produced shield charms as large and strong as elephants, even his most intricate transfigurations lasted for nearly an eternity, and he was able to create the strangest and most audacious spells. The days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years. He hardly even thought of his old friends and family anymore. Every part of his brain was taken over by the Elder Wand.

But his old friends never stopped thinking about him, and one day his good friend Clerval had had enough. He walked the considerable distance from the city to Victor's mansion, knocked on the door, and was let inside by a weary-looking servant, whose eyes looked strangely void of emotion.

When Clerval found Victor in his experimentation wing, he took a step back in shock. This was not the tall, handsome and vivid man he had once known; this was a gaunt, pale, wasted figure. His hair had grown out of control, his clothes were smelly and smeared, and his arms had turned to thin, skeletal sticks. He sat hunched over the central table, breathing raspy breaths.

"Victor," Clerval said carefully, holding his hand near the wand holster on his hip. "It's me, Clerval."

Victor turned around, and Clerval took another step back as he met his sunken, uncannily glowing eyes, his veined and corrugated forehead, and his thin, blackened lips.

"Clerval, my old friend," he wheezed, standing up and with it showing how bad his hunchback had become. "Come, join me, I have much to tell you."

"What happened to you?" he asked, taking cautious steps toward the man, but reeling at the smell of pure death emanating from his friend's rotting mouth. "It's been ages since we've last seen you. We thought you'd died."

"Died? Hah! Parts of me died, my friend, but others have blossomed. Come, come look. Stay for a while, and I'll show you." He brushed loose scrolls, quills and other things Clerval hardly recognised off the table. Then he walked across to the far end of the room, opened one of the animal cages there and grabbed a chicken from within.

Clerval wrung his hands as Victor put the indignantly clucking animal on the central table and aimed his wand at it. He didn't recognise this wand. Victor's was smooth and light brown; this one was made of dark wood and had strange nubs along its length.

"Watch the chicken," Victor rasped. "Imperio."

The chicken, previously glancing around the room curiously, now stood perfectly still. Then Victor pointed that strange wand at the edge of the table, and it obediently made its way towards that point. He repeated the same for the other edges of the table, then made it jump through a conjured hoop and, as a finishing touch, ordered it back into its cage.

"See that?" Victor said, closing the cage door with a flick of his wand.

"You were controlling it?" Clerval asked.

"Precisely! This is what I've been working on all this time. I call it the Imperius Spell. I cast the spell, and the recipient enters a strange, lucid fog, where they are barely aware of their surroundings. The only thing they hear in their minds is what I tell them to do."

"I see," Clerval said, intrigued despite his worries about his old friend. "How did you ever find this out?"

Victor turned his head towards him, which visibly strained his malformed neck, and he grinned, baring his black and brown teeth. "Between you and me, my friend, all my success is down to this wand. It tells me what to do when I'm stuck, it guides me when I'm close, but not quite there yet, and it gives me so much power. I have done unbelievable things here, things I could never have done without it…"

"… Like creating your mind-controlling spell."

"Precisely!" Victor cried, accentuating it by pressing his finger down on the table. "I've penetrated deeper into the secrets of magic and nature than anyone has ever done before! Here, here, look at this." He veered up and made his way to one of the terraria standing in the dusty, withering windowsill. He brushed the cover aside with his wand, and scooped a stick-like creature out of the smudged glass case.

"A Bowtruckle," Victor calmly explained. The stick, previously motionless, unfolded itself and looked around curiously, reaching out with its thin, frail arms to hold onto the man's wrist. "Normally quite vicious when you try to separate them from the wand-tree they protect. But as you can see, this little creature here is completely docile." To prove it, he gently stroked its back with his index finger. "Because I have full control over its mind." He put it back in the case, and moved on to another terrarium, showing Clerval a black widow as it cartwheeled around its small habitat.

"Poisonous spiders under your complete control?" Clerval asked. "Have you registered the spell at the courts already?"

"Oh yes, I have. They're still debating whether to file it as a spell or as a curse, but it should be done any day now."

"What if someone with ill intentions learns the spell?"

That was the wrong thing to say, and Victor snapped his ugly head towards him, his mouth turned upside down into a sneer, his eyes glowing like those of Satan himself.

"Do you think I care about that? Do you think I am a damn coward? Do you think I would have ever come this far if I restrained myself by such spurious questions? How primitive would we still be if every inventor was called to a halt by their sense of morals? We'd still writhe around in caves and forests, wearing nothing but the hides of the animals we hunt! Or worse yet: we'd still be the maggoty slaves of our lords and kings! Ethics are for the weak, Clerval, they are for the slaves, the primitives, the heathens. But ambition? Ambition separates us visionaries from the common folk, from the dull, repetitive and oh so damned meaningless life that they live."

A deeply shaken Clerval was then let out by the same docile servant that had let him in. When he reached the edge of Victor's land and arrived at the dirt road leading to the city, he broke out into a panicked run and didn't stop until he had reached the safety of his home.

Victor's condition rapidly worsened, and as he relied more and more on his wand to stay sane, the opposite happened. His magical abilities declined steeply. Casting his Imperius Spell became harder and harder, as did other mundane tasks like eating and washing regularly.

He was of no use to the wand any further, and thus his life was at an end.

Tired and hungry, because he forgot more and more often to eat and drink, he stopped locking the cage doors. More and more animals escaped, the black widow included. A sharp bite in his neck was the end of Victor, and he slumped down in his chair, paralysed by the spider's venom; he was still alive, but unable to move.

The spider created a comfortable nest in a secluded corner of the wing, the chickens flew outside through one of the broken windows, and the Bowtruckles found their way back to the trees they once protected. But pigs are remarkably smart, and, more importantly, no picky eaters. Thus, they turned on the paralysed body of he who had once been their captor, who had once subjected them to the most degrading experiments. They feasted on his still-breathing form until nothing was left of him, and then broke free of the rotting experimentation wing.

The servants eventually managed to free themselves from Victor's spell, but by that time there was nothing left of their old master. Victor perished, just like every other mortal man. But the Elder Wand remained.

Ginny Weasley finished the last sentence and closed the book. She let out a tired breath as she absently stroked the worn leather binding of the collection of tales, called Tracing the Elder Wand. It had been written by the mysterious author Claudius Cuculiformus, just after the war had ended. Just after Harry declared the truth of the Elder Wand in front of everyone in the Great Hall, she thought. That had probably been the author's inspiration for this book.

She wasn't sure whether it was meant to be taken seriously or not, but it was the first of its kind that she had come across.

When Harry disappeared, she immediately started her search for clues, answers, anything that could help. And that search had brought her here: the dusty attic of Grimmauld Place. Sitting cross-legged in the centre of the room, old books strewn around her on the floor, she wondered why no one had ever thought to clear out this part of the building. It was filled to the brim with old books, children's toys, and strange-looking heirlooms she didn't dare to touch. It seemed the perfect place to look for answers. She had started this morning, pulling random books that looked promising from their dusty shelves, burying herself in the tomes, absorbing their ancient knowledge. But although the books she found looked exceedingly old, like Labyrinten by Jens Baggesen, or An Account of Some of the Statues, Bas-Reliefs, Drawings, and Pictures in Italy by Jonathan Richardson, they were of no use to her, and she quickly cast them aside. And then this book had emerged from the pile.

She had last seen Harry barely a week ago, but so much had happened in the meantime that it felt like ages.

For a few days it seemed certain that Hermione would have a miscarriage. The Cutting Curse that Harry had cast on her had sliced deep into her belly, cutting through the wall of her womb. Ron didn't once leave her side in those agonizing days at St Mungo's, and Ginny had also been at her bedside more often than not. Ron needed his sister, she needed Ron, and Hermione needed them both.

Guilt. Guilt had bounced around them like a Quaffle among Chasers. Ron blamed himself for not noticing something was wrong with Harry. Teddy blamed himself for running away in the Forbidden Forest. And Ginny blamed herself as well; she'd known Harry was hiding something from her. In the beginning, she hadn't wanted to bring it up, afraid as she was to bring an end to the blissful summer they spent together. But as the summer drew to a close, their 'honeymoon period', as her fellow Chaser Olivia called it, drew to a close. The murders, Harry's nightmares, and his secrecy surrounding all of it had quickly blown that dreamlike feeling away. She supposed that the murder of Xenophilius Lovegood had been the point of no return. It was easy, far too easy, to pinpoint in retrospect the exact things that helped them on their way downward into the deep dark hole that they were in now, and then to chastise herself for not doing more.

What if she had simply called Harry out earlier? Demanded answers? What if she simply forced him to open up to her right after he had saved her from the Black Lake? Would it have come to this if she had?

She would never forget those hectic days. Ron had Apparated Hermione into the emergency room of St. Mungo's immediately, and in an unprecedented feat of magical healing, she had been placed in a suspended animation, slowing all her bodily functions down enough for the healers to stop the bleeding and mend the terrible damage Harry had wrought. Thankfully, both Hermione and the baby had stabilized and while they were still under observation, signs were looking good.

She shuddered to think what would have happened if Hermione had miscarried at the hands of Harry's curse. What would have come of the three friends, who had been through so much together? And what would have become of Harry himself? She thanked whoever was looking out for her that that scenario would merely remain a nightmare.

With the immediate crisis over, Ginny had decided it was time to start searching for Harry. But through the heartache of sleeping in an empty bed, waking up and facing every day alone, there was a vicious part of her that was trying to break out of her repressed unconsciousness, a part that really wanted to simply leave him to rot out there. At times when she was all alone, she was convinced that his running away was unforgivable, and she knew that Ron and Hermione shared that thought. Ron had repeatedly said so in his moments of frustration while he sat at Hermione's bedside. But other than those in-between moments, they didn't talk about it, and Ginny was glad that she had the chance to consider all this on her own.

The Elder Wand, Ginny thought. How much had running away been Harry's decision, and how much had it been that wretched artefact telling him what to do? She didn't know yet which was the grimmest option, especially after reading the first bit of Tracing the Elder Wand.

In the end it was her brother who put an end to her fretting. It was at the end of a long visit to a sleeping Hermione and a bleary-eyed Ron. Just when she was about to stand up and leave, his voice stopped her.

"You're going to look for him, aren't you?"

He had known it before she did.

"What do you know? Maybe I never want to see the coward ever again," she said, perhaps more harshly than she intended. Ron didn't deserve it after the week he'd been through.

"I just wanted you to know that… you're not alone. We'll help you. Hermione and I. He needs us."

She stared at him as she tried to rein in the warbled mix of emotions rising up inside her. Relief, fear for Harry's condition, and the love she felt for her brother at that moment.

"I get to give him the first punch," she said. Her lip trembled, and they shared a shaky, watery smile before she turned around and practically ran out of the hospital.

And now it was the first of October, ten days after Harry disappeared. Autumn was quickly coming, turning the leaves brown, elongating the shadows over the small park just outside Grimmauld Place, and casting a chilling wind across the country. And Harry was out there, all alone, with the fugitive Death Eater Corban Yaxley probably right on his tail.

But the last thing she would do was sit on the side lines. The time of waiting was over. They had all been lulled into a false sense of security after the end of the war; with Kingsley as minister, and their side victorious, she and many others were sure that things would turn out well from here on out. But now, with Harry gone and Kingsley's ministry on the chopping block, times were changing once again. It was time to stand up.

She turned the page of Tracing the Elder Wand and delved deeper into its mysteries.