Chapter 9: Dreamtime.

"She had been taught in her childhood that such dependence on magical arts was wrong. It was allowed to search for a glimpse of light in the darkness, and this she had done; but magic must not become a child's leading strings for walking."

--Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon.

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers! I will name you by name in the next chapter! JKR owns blah blah blah, I own bleh bleh bleh.You know the dirll.

The amount of research I did for this was not to be believed. Every detail was researched (not that that's a guarantee it's all correct, but the research was done!) If you really want to know more, email me. I've called the land of gods and immortals, which lay rather closer to the mortal world in 1566, the Dreamtime. (If you've read Irina's wonderful Morrigan trilogy, she calls pretty much the same idea, the Otherworld. As much as I try to be original, I'm sure I owe a lot to her! ;) ) The name comes from the Australian indigenous peoples, who believed that before the creation of the world we see, all of reality lay in the Dreamtime. My interpretation of 16th century Scottish magic is based on research (Ogham is the ancient Celtic alphabet and is based on tree magic) and, well, the time-honored tradition of making things up. The Ballad of Tam Lin is Childe Ballad #39 and are absolutely authentic to the exact area of sixteenth century Scotland where I put Hogwarts (south of Edinburgh and Leith. Yes, I know, this may not be exactly where JKR put Hogwarts. Ahem. But in MY little world... mwah ha.) This traditional song has been recorded by a lot of folkie musicians, like Steeleye Span, Anne Briggs, Frankie Armstrong, and the Watersons, so I figured it wouldn't be too farfetched to have the Weird Sisters do it. And yes, it will be a big plot point later on. BTW. Nothing you read is filler; it's all important,or will be. Soon, I will have a character list on another web page you can refer to in case you get confused by all that's thrown at you. (I certainly do sometimes!! And I'm writing it!)

Just to clarify things a bit, Ginny is halfway through her fifth year, and the rest are halfway through their sixth. Ginny is fifteen and will turn sixteen in two months; Draco is sixteen and will turn seventeen a few days after the events of this chapter. In some ways, they are far more mature than Muggle teenagers would be at the same age; and in some ways, too, much less so. And don't worry; Marie-France Tessier is NOT Draco's first cousin (they're third cousins once removed,) and this is NOT their love story; Ginny is his passion and obsession. But she's important. You'll understand when we get to the detailed flashback of Draco's past year, a couple of chapters from now. Now that's a chapter that will earn its R. ;)

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When Ginny had come home after being released from St. Mungo's the summer after her first year, she had been exhausted in body, sick in mind, sick in soul. If she even had a soul any longer, which she doubted. It had rained all that August, and she had spent a great deal of time sitting at the desk in her room and staring out at the gray dreary landscape. At last, she had taken to her bed, mumbling something about being ill. She understood later that she had been very ill indeed.

She'd had a strange Muggle flu that responded to no charm or potion. The mediwitch had told her parents, privately, that Ginny had no resistance left. Their frightened eyes had absorbed the unspoken truth. Their daughter might not survive. It was only after she'd recovered that Ginny understood how terribly afraid everyone had been for her, and it touched her. At least, to the degree that anything could touch her anymore. When Ginny had lain in her bed day after day, however, burning with a fever nothing could quench, everything had seemed blessedly calm. She'd floated on an untroubled sea, letting her very self drift away across the uncharted waters, forgetting both love and grief. She had floated very far.

She could actually feel the faintness of the silver thread that still connected her to land. It had frayed to the point of breaking, and there was a great light on the far shore. In the boat with her was a beautiful dark girl with an Egyptian ankh around her neck and a smile of such surpassingly sweetness that Ginny woke from dreams of it, long after, with tears upon her face.

Lady Death, Lady Death, she had whispered, take me with you, enfold me in your last long embrace, and we will sail to the shore where there is no darkness.

But the girl had only shaken her head.

Ginny had lived, of course, and returned to the greyness of the world, the world that was like dust and ashes in her mouth. She sometimes wondered if she would have come back at all if it hadn't been for Ron, who sat at her bedside all day and all night until her mother would pull him away and put him, protesting, to bed. Her brother's hand had held hers for hours upon hours, anchoring her almost against her will to the dreary earth. But she never forgot the endless peace of drifting, drifting towards the sweetness of death.

Traveling through the clock tower was just like that.

For a timeless stretch of time, Ginny floated bodiless through space.

Something formless seized at her and pulled the breath out of her lungs. The drifting peace vanished instantly. She struggled against the thing, panicked, flailing blindly in a void. "Let go! Let go!" she sobbed, wordlessly.

And then she hit a dreadfully hard, bumpy surface and skidded across it, coming to rest behind something very large. She lay still, her arms and legs splayed out, struggling for breath. Someone else was breathing loudly as well, gasping for each lungful of air. Ginny scrunched herself behind the thing and peered around it. Her own head seemed to be sloshing around in a sea of dizziness, and her bare feet burned with cold.

The other person was Hermione, lying still as death on the other side of a grass-covered mound. A tumulus, Ginny thought, like the ones in Ireland. It rose too abruptly from the earth to be entirely natural. The moon rode high in the night sky, but it was nearly at the full, spilling its cold white light across her friend's prone body. Hermione's eyes were closed and her eyebrows were shockingly dark against her pale face. Ron knelt next to her, shaking her by the shoulder.

"Come on, Hermione, wake up! You've got to wake up, you can't be-- oh please, you can't be--" His face was white, too, and his eyes were full of fear.

"Mmm," said Hermione.

"Sit up," said Ron, his voice shaky with relief.

"Can't." She fell back into his arms, her body limp. He shook her.

"Talk to me. Say something in that bossy voice of yours so I know you're alive."

"I am not-- bossy--"

"Tell me how we got here."

"Can't-- hurts--"

"Hermione!" Ron's voice grew sharp. "Come on, you know I'm just a stupid prat who doesn't understand this sort of thing. You need to explain it to me. "

"Magic wormhole." Hermione's voice grew stronger. "What Muggles call a time machine. Professor Moody found out about the Jewel of the Harem-- how the times were drawing together, and the great evil was at hand. He agreed to take us. We're--" She sat up slightly and looked about her. "We're here," she breathed. "It worked. Oh Ron, it worked!" But the effort of speaking started her coughing, and she closed her eyes again, leaning against him.

"Hermione, don't go out on me now," Ron said urgently. "Uh-- why isn't there a clock tower? I'm dumb and I don't understand."

"Because there isn't any clock tower until next year. Honestly, Ron! You never did read Hogwarts: A History, did you?"

"All right, if it worked, where are we?"

"Hogwarts... I think... it is the Forbidden Forest, isn't it?" she asked uncertainly.

"Far as I know." Ron shrugged. "This is the clearing, all right."

Ginny looked overhead, holding her head between her two hands in an attempt to control the wrenching vertigo that resulted. The oak trees surrounding her were all old beyond measuring, gnarled and twisted dark shapes. Surely such trees would have been marked out as a source of earth magic, and all the students would have seen the grove, or visited it with a Herbology class, or at least heard about it. The air was utterly fresh and cold and clean; she could hear the caw of ravens overhead, and the great trees around the clearing stood still and watchful. Something was different. Very different. Suddenly, she was sure that no place like this existed at the Hogwarts she knew. The knowledge made her feel as if something was creeping just beneath her skin, ready to strike. She squeezed her eyes closed briefly.

"We really did it," said Hermione. "And it's Yule, or nearly, it must be. I can feel the strength of the magic right now." She still leaned up against Ron, but Ginny had a rather strong feeling that it was from choice, not necessity. Her friend's eyes looked searchingly into those of her brother. "You were really that worried?"

"Well, yes," Ron said casually. Only Ginny, who knew him so well, saw the faint trembling of his hands. "Moody couldn't find a sixth for the team. We really can't afford to lose anyone else."

"I don't understand why it happened at all." Hermione's voice was very irritated, and Ginny thought she heard a faint thread of disappointment. Oh, Hermione, if you'd grown up with him you'd know what that tone of voice really means! "It felt as if something reached out towards us and sucked every bit of energy out of me, and it shouldn't have...It would be different if we hadn't been going into the past."

If we weren't-- what? Ginny sat bold upright and was rewarded by a spinning right in the center of the stomach that slumped her back to the ground.

"Yes, I know. 'The future splits into an infinite diverging series,'" Ron quoted in a sing-song voice. "'The human body, at its cellular level, attempts to split as well, to follow each of the possible futures. To travel any stretch beyond a few hours into the future is to court almost certain death. Backwards time travel, however, is a very different matter. According to Steven Hawking's theory of--'"

"All right, I believe you read the book." Hermione cuffed Ron lightly on the arm.

"You must feel better, you're hitting me. You abusive wench, you," said Ron, and then he leaned down and kissed her, slowly, lingeringly. Ginny looked away discreetly.

"Wench. Humph," sniffed Hermione.

"We're in the sixteenth century now. Didn't they use words like that?"

"We're supposed to talk to the people of 1566 as little as possible, remember?" Hermione sighed and leaned back against Ron. "I suppose I'm all right, really. I might have known I'd have the most problems with the trip. At least we all used the Portkey first. That helped, so the dislocation of space wasn't so bad."

1566. 1566. Ginny knew she needed to come out from behind the bramble bush, to tell them she was here, but everything she had heard seemed to be rooting her feet into the ground.

1566.

Over four hundred years in the past. It wasn't possible.

The parchment. The timelines. The weird drawings of inverted cones and hex-signs and mathematical equations.

But it couldn't be, it just couldn't. Ginny knew about time-turners; Hermione had explained them to her, but this was magic more forbidden than all the dark arts put together.

--but--

She understood, now, what they had all been keeping from her. Understood the whispered conferences in dark corners of the halls, the low murmuring in Hermione's room late at night when Ginny crept down the corridor and pressed her ear against the door, trying to hear; understood the blank faces they were forever turning to her, the conversations that stopped the instant she entered the room, the sheer weight of secrecy. And Professor Moody-- The very thought that a teacher had organized this thing made her blood run cold. How? When? Why?

And what was this mysterious thing they had mentioned, the Jewel of the Harem?

She focussed her ears. They were continuing to speak.

"Has anyone ever actually tried to go into the future?" Ron asked curiously.

"A few times. There was a horrible experiment some dark wizard or other did at the end of last summer. They sent house elves one day ahead." Hermione shuddered. "About half of them died."

"Who was it?" asked Ron.

"Let's just say that the Ministry of Magic brought Lucius Malfoy in for some friendly questioning."

Ron's eyebrows shot up almost to the roots of his dark red hair. "Really? Do you suppose--"

"They were never able to prove anything. I doubt they tried very hard."

They were silent for a moment, and Ginny was gathering her strength for another attempt at getting up when Hermione spoke again.

"Oh God," she said.

"What? Are you feeling worse?" asked Ron with a sudden catch in his voice.

"No. I know why it happened!"

Hermione leaped to her feet and stood unsteadily. "Harry! Neville! Professor!" she called in a voice filled with urgency.

Ginny heard the sound of footfalls on the frozen turf and, looking up, saw Neville running from the opposite direction, Professor Moody following them more slowly, stumping along on his pegleg. Harry followed him, moving very unsteadily and holding his head.

"We got through," Neville was saying excitedly. "All of us, we managed it! I don't mind telling you that I was a bit worried, I was pretty sure I'd never make it--"

Harry covered his face with his hands. "For the love of God, Neville, don't talk. My brains are coming out my ears as it is."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Neville wilted. "You know, whenever anyone tells me to shut up, I always shut up. Gran always said that I was very good at shutting up; she'd say, 'Neville, my dear boy, your capacities may be limited, but you certainly do know when to shut up,' and--"

"Everyone all right?" growled Professor Moody, leaning on a staff. He looked none too steady himself, and the bottom edge of his dark cloak swayed. They were all wearing the same kind of shapeless black cloak, Ginny realized, and they each carried a bulky cloth pack. Hermione was clutching onto hers, shaking her head repeatedly as if to clear it and trying to speak again.

"Professor--" she said shakily. "Listen to me, please, I just realized something--" Ron reached up to put a hand on her arm and she shook it off.

"She's in some sort of shock," he said with a hurt look.

"I am most certainly not in shock!" snapped Hermione.

"When you bring along a witch as brilliant as Miss Granger, you'd best listen to her," said Moody. "What is it?"

"The Malfoys and the Death Eaters are right behind us," she blurted. Neville jumped at least two feet in the air and Harry gripped his wand tightly. "No, I don't mean like that!" she added impatiently. "I don't mean they're here this minute. But they're coming after us. They have to be. I felt this-- awful loss of energy when I was going through, did any of you feel it too?"

The others looked at her, their anxious faces alternately concealed and revealed by the clouds scudding past the moon.

"Yes, I suppose I did," Harry finally said, "but that might have meant anything."

"I know what it means, what it has to mean." Hermione took a deep breath. "They're tracking us."

Moody nodded. "They're traveling on our time signature. Malfoy Manor has one of the four clock towers on the circuit; they can all be used, but it's only the Hogwarts tower a wizard could be tracked from. And that's what they did. We knew this might happen; our sources of information may not know all we could wish, but Lucius Malfoy's been trying to do the same thing we've been doing for over a year now. And you might just as well put those away," he added, glancing at the four wands drawn from their holsters. Their owners all stared at the grizzled professor as if he'd gone mad.

"They don't work here," Moody added, in slightly gentler tones.

"They don't-- what?" squeaked Neville.

"Go on. Try."

Neville looked as if he was rather beyond the ability to recall his own name, much less any spells, but at last he said "Lumos" in a quavering voice. Nothing happened.

"Out of the way," said Ron impatiently, pointing at a patch of dry leaves on the ground. "Incendio." They did not burst into flame. His face blanched. "Harry? I reckon there's something wrong with my wand. Try yours."

"All right," said Harry. "Something easy.. ah... Accio Hermione's backpack." The bag stayed on the ground.

"What's wrong?" asked Hermione. "Did time travel have some sort of effect on our wands? Or-- oh!" She put her hand to her mouth.

Moody shook his head. "Magic works in the context of a specific time and place. Don't know if you've all learned this yet, but Granger knows, I'd say. The matrix for these wands is over four hundred years in the future. A different world, really, and you'll learn that all too well-- a little book studying could never tell you how different it really is here. For one, wizards and witches in 16th century Scotland rarely use wands, and in the Ottoman Empire they don't know what they are. So yours don't work, and they won't work."

"Well then, what's the bloody point of doing anything?" Ron demanded angrily. "We can't stand against the Malfoys and the Death Eaters without wands!" He leaped to his feet none too steadily and placed himself in front of Hermione, as if to protect her from dangers lurking unseen behind every bush and tree. Moody held up a hand.

"If they're tracking us then they couldn't leave until after we'd started to go through the wormhole. So they started out behind us and they'll stay that way. Perhaps no more than an hour, but if we leave now we'll be all right. There's a carriage waiting for us just outside the grounds; I arranged for it when I was last here."

"In Hogsmeade?" asked Harry.

"Yes-- the only other way out is through the Forbidden Forest. And the Forest you know is an amusement park compared to the one that you see now, in 1566."

The night pressed in around them, and the trees seemed to leaning closer, listening. Moody looked at them all with keen eyes. "It isn't safe to stay even here too long. There's too much magic, and it isn't magic we know or understand; too close to the feast of Yule, too many eyes might be watching us, and not human eyes, either... We've got to leave. The Ban-Righ sails in three days at low tide from Leith, and we'd bloody well better be there." He turned around and began stumping off in the other direction almost before he'd finished speaking; Neville helped Harry, Ron, and Hermione up, one by one, and they followed along a winding path that led away from the clearing. Now was the moment to reveal herself. Ginny quailed at the thought of the shocked faces and furious questions. But there was nothing else for it. She stood.

The world tilted away from her feet so swiftly that she barely felt her head hit the ground, or the brambles scratching along her arm, as she fell into darkness.

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