Note: Book 4 starts to come in a little more at this point, so you might not want to read this unless you've read the end of GoF. I tried to avoid it, but the way this is going, you should know what happened to Harry in that book. But hey, you've probably all read it anyway. :) BTW, it's just going to get scarier from here…

Draco's Desires

Part Sixteen

The Hunt For Evil Ginny

*~~~~~*

Once everyone had decided that it was some evil wizard's fault (most likely Voldemort's), and not Ginny's and Potter's and mine, we spent some time getting every last detail across to each other. I was very nervous in the presence of my little sprite's parents, but they wanted to know every little thing that had happened, everything said, and everything done. Meanwhile, we were waiting for news from the Ministry of Magic as to the whereabouts of Ginny.

Mr. Weasley had gone to the Ministry to help, since it was his child who was likely to be armed and dangerous. It wasn't long though before his head appeared in the cool flames of the fireplace in the little waiting room where we had communed. (Since it was summer, the flames had no heat. It was lit for communication purposes alone.)

"Arthur! Did you find her?" Mrs. Weasley let go of my hand and scampered to the fireplace. We all did, in fact. If the situation had been any less serious, we would have looked quite comical, all of us gathered around a talking head in the flames as if it were the most interesting thing we'd ever seen.

"We haven't actually located her yet, Molly, but she's somewhere in the countryside near London. We do know that she is riding on a broom. She's already been spotted by countless Muggles. We have wizards out performing memory charms left and right. No one has been hurt as of yet, though."

"She must have my Firebolt," said Harry. He was Harry to me now…we'd gone through too much for me to think of him as 'Potter'. Being evil together gives one a feeling of intimacy that last names just can't match.

"That would explain why she's so hard to track. She's moving too fast."

I snorted. This was such a waste of time. What did the ministry know? I would have more chance of finding her myself. We would sit around forever waiting for them to do something. I elbowed Harry. "Hey…gather your troops and meet me in the Quidditch equipment room." Harry looked confused, but nodded. I slipped out of the room and headed out of the castle, breathing deeply of the fresh air. A new day was dawning. Ginny had been on the loose all night, running blind, scared. Or maybe she was enjoying herself, full of evil glee.

I waited around in the locker room, pacing. Where were they? How long did it take three kids to make excuses and get down here? Finally, Harry, Ron, and Hermione drifted in, looking strange and scared in their tee-shirts, shorts, and sneakers. We all looked so different in the summer, I thought. More human, really. Harry had pulled off his green robe, and I was tempted to do the same. We had been wearing clothing under the robes for our Hogwarts siege. The robe certainly was pretty, but it had an evil aura to it. I slipped it off my head and tossed it aside. Maybe another day…

Hermione fidgeted. "Draco…what are we doing here?"

Ron frowned. He wasn't going to trust me for a second. "This is no time for Quidditch. My sister is somewhere out there!"

I smirked at him. "We're hardly here to play. I say we go find Ginny ourselves. You know Ginny, Harry knows Voldemort, and I know Evil. She shouldn't be too hard to find."

Harry suddenly doubled over in pain.

"What's wrong?"

"It's my scar! It's aching terribly all of a sudden!" He grabbed his forehead.

Hermione looked positively green. "That means that Voldemort is on the move. The scar pains Harry whenever Voldemort is nearby."

"He must be after Ginny. Let's move!" I whipped out my wand and blasted the lock on the supply door to smithereens.

Hermione blanched. "I don't even want to think about how much trouble we're going to be in when they find out what all we've done."

"Granger…" I paused. "Take a broom, honey!" I shoved a broom at her and then I realized what it was. "Ugh! It's a Cleansweep!"

Ron looked at the brooms in disdain. "We'll never catch her on these. She's got the Firebolt."

"Well, we have to try!" I yearned for my Nimbus Two Thousand and One sitting at home in my bedroom. I knew Harry was aching for his Firebolt too, the way he gazed at the Cleansweep. We gents were awfully sentimental about our brooms.

Ron was quite used to a Cleansweep, so the broom actually behaved for him. As for Harry and me, our brooms acted as if they wanted to buck us right off. Hermione almost took a tumble a couple of times. She may have been excellent at book smarts, but she was no flyer. I grabbed her by her hair at one point to keep her from diving into the air, and she screamed.

"Sorry, sorry! I didn't think you would feel it anyway, with the mat you've got up there!"

"Shut it, Malfoy!"

We were all getting along splendidly.

*~~~~~*

Once we all got used to our brooms, we were rocketing along quite well. We had managed to get caught in a lovely wind, so we were moving almost as fast as the Firebolt, although perhaps not as gracefully. Harry just got worse and worse, so we figured we were getting closer. Eventually, he was in too much pain to fly anymore, so we abandoned his broom and I took him on the back of mine. He gripped me around the waist and moaned. "Hang on there, old boy. She can't be far now."

"Dad said something about looking for You-Know-Who in a little village near here. They think it's where he is hiding out. Something about the Riddle House," said Ron.

Harry squinted down at the countryside. "This is familiar. I've been here before."

"The Riddle House?" I wondered if Voldemort was hanging out at his old house, where his father lived when he was Tom Riddle. "But wouldn't the Ministry have checked there already?"

"They have. They haven't found anything. But You-Know-Who is tricky, isn't he? Maybe he could get around the Ministry." Ron was pale.

Harry spoke through his pain. "Or maybe he wants to be found…"

My heart gave a leap. "I'll bet he does. I'll bet he wants us to find him. He has something up his sleeve." We soared down into a large field to rest.

Hermione looked around. "So what do we do? Just wait for them to come to us?"

"You have a better idea?" I smirked. We were quiet for some time, before coming to an agreement. "Why don't we go to the Riddle House and fish them on out?"

Harry was lying on his back in the grass, breathing hard. His head was aching. "Fish out Voldemort?"

"I am not scared of Voldemort!"

"Have you ever actually met Voldemort?" Harry glared at me. "It's not fun, you know."

I flushed. "Not exactly…but I'm not afraid of anything! I'm a Malfoy! He wouldn't dare hurt me!"

Ron rolled his eyes and pulled Harry up off the ground. "If you're so sure, Draco, you can go in first!"

I gave him a smirk and we headed off in the direction of the little town. Once we arrived we managed to pry some information out of the villagers, such as the name of the little town, which happened to be Little Hangleton, and the location of the Riddle House, a great manor on a hill, in much disrepair.

"I wouldn't go up there though, if I were you, Son," an old man told me. "The place is the scene of a murder from long ago, and there's all sorts of strange sounds and lights up there. A man was killed up there only last year. You don't want nothing to do with that house, understand?" He patted my head and swaggered into the local pub.

I looked at the others. "Well, that just about means that something's going on there, now doesn't it?" Ron and Hermione nodded, but Harry was peering at an old cemetery down the road a bit. "What is it, Harry?"

"I've been here. This is the place where I last encountered Voldemort." He wandered down the road and through the cemetery gates, his mouth open, gawking.

We followed along cautiously. "What exactly happened to him that makes him look so frightened? He's practically trembling."

"Long story," said Ron.

Harry came to stand in front of a large sinister looking tombstone. The inscription read 'Tom Riddle'. "Voldemort's father is buried here. I was tied to this tombstone, right here." He was shaking.

I whispered to Hermione. "He's not mad, is he?"

"If you'd been through what he's been through, you'd be shaking too."

I silently agreed with this, and I had a sick feeling that I would be shaking too by the time this evening was over. I grasped Harry's arm. "Come on, then. Let's go to the Riddle House and see if Ginny's there." As I dragged Harry away from the tombstone, a high pitched laugh broke through the silence of the dead. I spun around and immediately felt the other three grip onto me. I clung back. Something was materializing on top of the stone.

A pale figure dressed all in green shimmered into focus. It had flaming red hair and dark, dead looking green eyes, but they were now slanted like a snake's. Its lips were bright red, as if they were made out of pure blood. A green snake was draped around its bare shoulders, where its robe had slipped off them. It smiled at us evilly, and I could see two small fangs. It was Ginny…or at least it had been at one time. Now it was exactly that…IT.

*~~~~~*