Chapter Four: Ginny's Awakening.

A/N:

Thanks to LadyJade, GryffindorGirl2002, Julianka,StarEyes, VirtualFaerie, Allie, VioletJersey, Catalina Royce, Supergirl, and all the reviewers! If you recognize it as JKR's, it's hers; if you don't, it's mine or historical fact. The reason this is getting updated so fast is that this is a slightly altered and improved version of what's up on fictionalley. However, after about 6 more chapters I'm going to run out of what I've already got up there, and then it'll slow down some (although I still like to update every couple of weeks.) Ah, you should know that this will, indeed, be every little bit as long as GoF by the time it's done, and I ain't kidding. That's how I write. I've done it before and I'll do it again. BTW. I may do fan art for this story someday, but until that happy time comes (not until Christmas vacation at the earliest, probably) my mental image of Jewel's Draco is pretty close to a very young Edward Norton (American X, Fight Club, Red Dragon, etc.), with very blond hair. ;) I can't link to pics from here, so watch the movies. Contains NotAsCluelessAsHeUsedToBe!Harry and SoScary!Colin. More dark things happen and are remembered.

8:00 p.m.: Hogwarts

Ginny heard a jumble of indistinct murmurs in the darkness beyond her closed eyes. She kept them shut, slowly returning to consciousness, not wanting to be yanked back into the world just yet. She felt weak and dizzy, and her head was pounding. Then, like the Muggle shortwave radio that had so fascinated Arthur Weasley that summer, the voices tuned in. They were very soft. Or at least they should have been. Each syllable seemed to have a buzzing, harsh sound that grated weirdly on her ear.

"Wish Neville would get back." That was Ron's voice. It was followed by a loud swishing noise.

"So do I. I hate not knowing what's happening." And surely that was Hermione. Another swish, loud and irritating. Ginny raised her eyelids a crack. It felt as if five-kilo weights were attached to each one. Her brother and her friend were bent over a wizard's chess board, Hermione's hair brushing the pieces. A white knight spluttered and waved his tiny arms.

"Are you going to play another game, or not?" the black queen asked waspishly.

Hermione shook her head, and several pieces went flying. She picked them up absently.

"Don't wrinkle the material, if you don't mind," said the white king, straightening his minute robes.

"Shut it," muttered Ron.

There was a beat of silence.

Then Ron spoke again, and before he'd even gotten to the end of the sentence Ginny recognized that particular tone in his voice. It was the same one he'd had the summer he was ten. When he'd spent three months doing nothing but plotting morning, noon, and night how to get back at the neighborhood bully, who'd stolen Ginny's new bicycle.

"I'll bet it was Malfoy," he said.

"Ron, you might try being reasonable. That's all you've been saying all afternoon long." That was Hermione, sounding quite aggravated. Footsteps moved around the side of the bed. Now it sounded as if they were both sitting down next to her.

"Why won't you listen to me? You know I'm right," said Ron. His voice was closer to Ginny now, very nearly in her ear.

"I don't know any such thing. You're not thinking logically." Hermione sighed.

"I'm thinking perfectly log--"

"Let's go over this again. One. Madam Pomfrey said that it had to have been given to her at some point during the Yule Ball, last night. Probably more than once. Maybe even later, but she wasn't sure about that."

"That's what I've been trying to say. Why can't you--"

"Two," continued Hermione. "Ginny was with Neville all night long. And I certainly hope you don't start in next with expecting me to believe that Neville did it."

"Of course I won't. But what you said's wrong, and you know it, Hermione," continued Ron, sounding as if he were speaking through clenched teeth. "We don't know where she ran off to after she got so upset."

"As I've told you repeatedly, Ron, you're reasoning from faulty premises," said Hermione in her most irritating tone. Ron growled something incomprehensible in reply. "We may not know where she went or who she was with, but it's just plain ridiculous for you to assume it was Malfoy."

"What!" yelped Ron. "I'm not assuming my sister was with Malfoy, as you put it! If I really thought that, I'd be pounding his rat face into the ground right now."

"You'd be doing well to find him," said Hermione. "Nobody knows where he is."

"I know. I wonder what that means. D'you suppose Moody knows? Hey-- wait a sec-- you're trying to distract me. It isn't going to work."

"I wasn't trying to distract you, Ron. I was trying to do some actual thinking, which seems to be in short supply in this room at the moment."

""I may be harboring plans for hideous revenge, but I am thinking," said Ron in his most hurt tones.

"I suppose it's possible," Hermione said dryly." But you've left one rather important thing out, Ron."

"What?"

"Motive. Why on earth would Malfoy do such a thing?"

Ron snorted. "Oh, you really think he'd be too noble for that?"

"Of course I don't. But it's a serious offense and he would have got into a lot of trouble if he was caught. Why should he take the risk? What's in it for him?"

"How do I know! Because he's an evil git."

"That's not a good enough reason, Ron. People have been sent to Azkaban for it."

"All right, how's this. Because he thought she knew something about what we're doing. And would tell him."

"I can't believe that," Hermione said flatly. "This doesn't work like a Veritaserum. The victim doesn't simply pour out every secret she knows. She has to want to tell--" She stopped, cutting off her own words.

There was a tentative knock at the door, and a creak as it was pushed open. "Sorry," said a muffled voice that Ginny couldn't quite place. "I'm sorry-- I see she's not up yet--"

"Oh! No, I'm so sorry," Hermione was saying. "So terribly sorry. Are you going to be all right?"

"Yes," said the muffled voice. "Madam Pomfrey fixed my nose already."

"Look, I'm sure that Ginny will be sorry as well," Hermione continued. "Once she's-- er-- herself again."

"It's all right," said the muffled voice. "Please don't think I hold anything against her. I understand." There was something familiar about that voice. Horribly familiar. Ginny opened one eye just the tiniest crack.

Colin Creevey was standing in the doorway, holding his heavily bandaged nose. "I heard about what--" He stopped. "She'll need all your love and support," he said in his most oily, unctuous voice, spoiled somewhat by the fact that he sounded as if he had a dreadful head cold. Ginny had a sudden impulse to leap out of bed and punch him again. "She'll be vulnerable... hurt... angry..." Well, he was right about that last one.

"She is going to be all right, isn't she?" Colin asked. Ginny squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that she thought, for a panicked instant, that someone would surely notice.

"Yes, Madam Pomfrey says she will," said Ron's voice from very close to Ginny's ear. She felt his weight shift and guessed he must be sitting on her bed. Madam Pomfrey. So she was in the hospital wing.

Colin's footsteps came closer. "Do they have any idea who did it?"

"Not really," said Harry. Ginny nearly jumped at that; it was the first time he'd spoken, and she hadn't realized he was even in the room.

"Listen," said Colin, "I-- I came because I felt bad about something."

"You don't need to feel bad about anything," Hermione said in warm, sympathetic tones.

"Oh, but I do. It's-- it's something I saw."

Ron stood up very quickly; Ginny could feel the sudden loss of his weight on the bed next to her.

"On the night of the Yule Ball. And I didn't tell anybody. And now I'm thinking that I should've," said Colin.

"If you have something to say, please say it, Colin," said Harry in a strangely distant voice.

"Well, I saw Ginny run off and I went after her. I thought maybe I could help to calm her down a bit-- she seemed so emotional that night, didn't she? She went all the way up to the north tower and I followed her, but she was so upset; I didn't know if I should let her know I was there just yet."

Ginny felt drops of ice water begin to cascade down her spine.

"I'm awfully ashamed I didn't say anything then," said Colin in a whine. "But he's broken three of my cameras already and this Hasselblad is brand new, and--"

"Who?" asked Ron in a very level voice.

"Malfoy."

Quick, heavy footsteps crossed the room. "Tell me absolutely everything you saw right this instant," growled her brother.

There was a pause, just a millisecond longer than it should have been. Then Colin spoke again. "I really didn't see anything. Ginny was standing next to the balcony and looking out over the grounds. Draco Malfoy came up next to her and said something, I don't know what it was. They both stood there for a moment, and then he left." Ginny dared to open an eyelid slightly. She saw that Colin was looking at Harry, Ron, and Hermione hopefully, like a dog who has successfully performed a trick and now expects a biscuit. A dog with a servile grin on its face and rabies frothing behind its razor-sharp teeth.

"There's got to be more. Think!" Ron barked so sharply that Ginny's hands clutched at a fold of her robes, involuntarily.

"There was one other thing!" said Colin in a stricken sort of voice.

Ron drew his breath in with a hiss. "I knew it. I knew it. What else?"

"I don't really think I should--"

"Tell me."

"But you don't want to know," said Colin.

"The hell I don't!" There were two or three heavy strides across the floor and then the unmistakable sound of someone being grabbed by the collar and shaken ferociously; Hermione was screaming and beating at Ron with her fists.

"Stop it! You can't do this, Ron, you know you can't; he's only trying to help!"

"He'd better tell me what he knows then," said Ron, but he let Hermione drag him off Colin.

"He was--" said Colin, panting for breath, "Malfoy, he-- he grabbed your sister. Ginny tried to fight him off, but he was too strong for her."

"What. Happened. Then," asked Ron, each word as flat as if it had been stamped out by machine.

"I started running up the stairs as fast as I could once I saw that. But before I got there, well, he had her backed up against the balcony and he was, er, lifting her robes up--" Colin moved out of Ron's reach slightly, but the other boy was simply staring at him, face utterly expressionless. "He leaned forward too far and she kneed him in the groin. Malfoy sort of collapsed on the floor. Then he staggered up and ran down the stairs. Look, I'm not proud of how I behaved, not at all, but--"

"Don't worry about it," Ron said distantly. "Sorry about a minute ago."

"But there's something else. There was a glass of punch sitting on the balustrade, and she picked it up and drank from it."

"How did it get there?" Ron asked, as if enquiring after the point spread on the Chudley Cannons for next Sunday's Quidditch game.

"Malfoy, uh, set it down before he started to..."

"I see," said Ron. "I see."

"Right. I'll, er, just be going then, I suppose." Colin paused another moment; Ron, Harry, and Hermione stared back at him with expressionless faces. "I'm awfully sorry I was the one to tell you," he said, and at last he left. Just before the door closed, he turned back towards Ginny. One of this eyelids closed in a wink. The sound of the door falling shut died away.

"Wonder how I'll kill him," said Ron in the same toneless voice.

"There's a Muggle saying, you know," said Hermione. "'Don't shoot the messenger.'"

"You know perfectly well I'm not talking about Colin," Ron said in a calm, thoughtful way.

Hermione looked at him narrowly, but obviously came to the decision that he sounded far too unemotional to present any danger. Ginny almost sat up to tell her friend that alternating between passionate snogging sessions and furious fighting didn't give her the sort of understanding of Ron that she needed just then. Ginny knew her brother had a fiery, hair-trigger temper; all the Weasleys did. But nearly sixteen years as his sister had taught her something else, too. Ron wasn't really dangerous when he ranted and raved and kicked at walls, but rather when his voice took on that utterly flat sound, and his eyes became blank and his face smooth. These thing meant that he was completely consumed by homicidal rage.

"I don't think a wand is going to give me what I need," continued Ron, as if pondering a choice between chocolate and vanilla pudding at dinner. "I really think I'll have to see his blood all over the floor. That pure blood the Malfoys are so proud of."

"Ron, you're scaring me," said Hermione in a very small voice. "Please stop. There's law. There's justice in the courts."

"With Lucius Malfoy having the Ministry of Magic in his pocket?" asked Ron. "I don't think so." Ginny opened one eye almost all the way and saw Ron pick up his backpack from the floor. "Right then, when's the last train?"

"To where?" asked Hermione in the cautious tones normally reserved for speaking to criminally deranged lunatics.

"Kent," Ron said.

"To do what?"

"If I wear Muggle clothing, I think I could get into Malfoy Manor all right... pose as a servant or something... Fred's got some blue jeans I could borrow," said Ron. "Then I'm going to find Draco Malfoy and beat the shit out of him and leave him lying on the floor in a bloody pulp."

"Er, Ron," said Harry, turning from the window.

"Wish you could come with me, Harry. I'll bet they've got detection spells covering a ten-metre radius of the place against you, though. But I'm a lowly Weasley, dirt under their feet, not even worth hating; who would suspect me?"

Harry came forward. His green eyes were very brilliant, and his face was very grave. "Ron. I really think you should stop it."

"Oh, so you're singing that song, too?" Ron whirled on his friend, and for the first time Ginny saw the hurt and misery beneath his deadly calm facade. "You don't know what this is like! You've never had a sister, never will have one."

"That's true," Harry agreed. "I'll never know what it's like, what you're feeling now, but--"

"So you'll never know why I have to do this."

"Do what?" Harry stepped deliberately closer to his best friend. "Throw it all away in a stupid gesture so that you're not there for Ginny when she needs you?"

Hermione was standing in the corner, twisting her hands. "Oh, please don't," she whimpered, but there was no way to tell who she was speaking to.

"Ginny needs you now," said Harry. "She's going to need you more than ever, after what happened to her." He was only speaking about her, not to her; still, Ginny drank in the sound of Harry's words. He never, never spoke this way when she was around, with such adult seriousness in his voice. No, he always treated her with-- well, to be honest, with a sort of kindly condescension. Ginny's mind shied away from that thought. But she knew that something complex and adult was there, or potentially there, always lurking beneath the surface of Harry Potter. In the two years since the horrible events of the Triwizard Tournament, he'd lost a lot of his awkward adolescent cluelessness. That had been cute crush fodder. What he was now-- As always when she thought about what he was now, Ginny shivered with hapless desire and hopeless love.

Ron sank back onto the bed. "D'you know what my first real memory is, Harry?"

The other boy shook his head.

"I was about five years old, I suppose. Ginny and I were playing in that little park near our house." Ron's voice took on a dreamy, vague quality. "There was a slide, and a swingset... but the neighborhood bully didn't like to let the other children use them. Ginny was just four. She tried to get on the little merry-go-round they had, she liked the way it went round and round, and she'd get dizzy... And I was showing off for some of the Muggle kids, hanging by my knees upside down on the monkey bars. I heard her scream. The bully had pushed her down. Blood was pouring out of her nose, and her little face... I never forgot the way it looked, so full of pain and fear, and something more, like the world had turned and slapped her and she'd never trust it again... Mum was sitting on a park bench with her knitting, and she rushed over and gathered Ginny up. I've never forgotten the look on her face when she turned to me. Like nothing else in the world could ever disappoint her that much. 'I told you to take care of your sister,' was all she said. I never forgot it. And I always have, you know, Harry. I've always, always taken care of Ginny." Ron's eyes were wet with tears, and Harry looked away for a moment, letting his friend collect himself. Ginny had closed her eyes again, and felt tears prickle behind them, too.

"Ron," Harry said so quietly that Ginny could barely hear his words, "you can't go hunting down Draco Malfoy."

"And why not?" Ron tried to hide his sniffs behind his cupped hand.

"It's suicidally stupid, for one thing. They're Death Eaters; think of the sort of protection they must have around their lands. But it's more than that."

"Yeah? What?"

"I don't know," said Harry. "I wish I did. But there's something about what Colin said that's-- well, just not right. That doesn't fit together."

Ron looked at Harry with a little more interest. "You think so?"

"I do." Harry said firmly.

The door creaked open. Neville stepped in, his face red and flustered. This was, of course, his usual state, but there seemed to be a greater-than-usual undercurrent of desperation to it today. Harry and Ron both turned towards him.

"What is it?" Harry asked quickly.

"The book's gone," Neville burst out.

"Gone?"

"Disappeared! Vanished! He can't find it, and we figured out that there was a Breaking spell used on the lock of the office door!"

"The-- oh God, the book, Moody's book! The kitty-- no, what's it called, I can never remember the name," said Ron.

"The Kitap- an Düs," said Harry. "When?"

"When what?" asked Neville, who looked as if he was having considerable trouble remembering his own name.

"When was the breaking spell used?"

"I don't know, maybe ten minutes ago. It just happened. I've got to get back, I just had to come and tell you; we're getting things ready--" Neville looked at the bed, his eyes lingering on Ginny. She closed her eyes until there was just the faintest image of Neville's wistful face, fringed by her lashes. "I won't be able to say goodbye to her," he said. "I wanted to say good-bye." He walked slowly to the bed, leaned down, and glanced back pleadingly at Ron, who nodded. Ginny shut her lashes all the way and felt a quick, fleeting kiss on her cheek. Peeping again, she saw Neville turn back to Ron and Harry. "Moody wants you to come down as quick as you can," he said. They both nodded. Hermione was looking out the window and only the back of her head was visible, but she nodded too.

The door closed. "Do you see what I mean?" Harry asked Ron in a low voice.

"The thief could have been Malfoy, too," Ron said stubbornly. "Maybe he's been hiding out in the kitchens or something all this time. Maybe he's there right now."

In answer, Harry reached for something in his satchel and pulled it out, unfolding it with a snap. It was revealed as a large piece of blank parchment. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he said. Ginny was hard put to it not to give a cry of surprise as the castle and grounds of Hogwarts blossomed on the yellowing page.

"Look," said Harry, his finger on the map. "Here we are in the hospital wing. There's Pansy Parkinson getting on the carriage to the late train--"

"I see you've modified it. Shows more of the grounds now," said Ron, peering at the map.

"Yes, well, I'll tell you all about it later if you really want to know-- Funny, Pansy just disappeared." Harry gave a slight frown. "That's odd-- anyway, there's Madam Pomfrey moving down the hallway, she'll be in the room any minute, Filch in a first floor corridor, the Bloody Baron drifting about in the dungeons, Colin going upstairs, Ivy Parkinson on the third floor, almost everyone else is gone, and no Draco Malfoy anywhere. Mischief managed." With another tap, Harry folded the map up.

"Damn," said Ron glumly. "All right, all right. That wasn't him. But what about what Colin saw?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know. But we don't know almost anything about what's really going on. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. So you can't go mental on me now, Ron."

"I suppose you're right really," said Ron. "I reckon I went half crazy for a few minutes. It's just-- the thought of that slimy bastard putting his hands on Ginny-- and don't joke about going mental, Harry, not with--"

"I know, Ron, I know."

"I reckon it's the best thing..."

Her brother seemed unable to finish his sentences. Ginny felt something apprehensive begin to stir in the pit of her stomach.

"I just don't know if I can stand it," Ron whispered. "I won't know anything about what's happening to her. She'll be in good hands, I know, but--"

"There's something else to consider as well." Harry looked at his friend. "We've all sworn-- what we've sworn. And we have to follow through."

Ron nodded reluctantly. Then he glanced up at Hermione, who was still standing against the wall. "You too," he said, walking over to take her hand. It looked unusually stiff in his, and there was a frozen expression on her face. Ginny realized that Hermione had been standing there all during the conversation, shunted out of it. The boys formed a tight circle of two. It simply wasn't large enough for anyone else.

In the silence that followed, Ginny's mind was full to bursting with everything she had just heard. She tried and tried to force the scraps of conversations into some sort of sense. They eluded her like the last fading pieces of a dream in daylight. But one thought pounded through her head above all the rest. Colin had not told the whole truth to her brother. In fact, he'd lied. He had painted a picture of events on the north tower that put Ginny in a rosy light, the innocent victim of Draco Malfoy's advances. But he had photographs to prove otherwise. Moving ones, no less. Why? Why?

In the middle of the confused turmoil, Ginny felt her eyes snap open. She sighed inwardly. Ready or not, she had to rejoin the outside world.

A/N: Review! Review! Review! :)