It was the last yawn of a long, hot summer, and despite the troubles of the previous school year, the Weasleys had enjoyed it immensely. Mr Weasley had gathered the family together on the first weekend and insisted that until September, there would not be so much as a hint of a black mood or scowling face within the Burrow. Fred and George had been conspicuously absent all summer; too busy with the mounting preparations for their new joke shop business in Hogsmeade to afford any time with their family. This was their excuse, anyway- Ron and Ginny both suspected the real reason for their absence was avoidance of their mother, who was not particularly pleased about their spectacular exit from Hogwarts earlier that year.

A relaxing summer, then, but a curiously slow one, stuffed with languid stretches where nothing at all seemed to happen, and permeated with a silence that did not become the usually bustling Burrow. With Ron and Ginny now the only Weasley children haunting the ramshackle house, family meals and outings took on a oddly muted tone, punctuated with try-too-hard attempts at polite conversation from their parents, typically answered with cursory grunts from the now-teenaged children.

But there was another reason for the quiet, contemplative nature the summer had taken on in the Weasley household. Ever since one odd night in August, Ginny Weasley had been feeling rather unlike her usual self.

It had started with a dream. Not the usual kind, but a frustrating, jutting, bitty mess of a dream, composed of sharp, disjointed images and short blasts of white sound. A girl. Blonde, petite, but strong somehow- her defiant stance and fierce little face triumphant, almost heroic. Another- this time a brunette, wielding what appeared to be a sharpened length of wood as she head butted some sort of monster and scissor-kicked another with a flair that betrayed experience. Another girl, oriental, her delicate face twisted grotesquely into a silent, rasping scream as one of the monster's sunk its teeth voraciously into her neck. They stood like this at length, curiously intertwined, as failing candelight flashed around them like a nightmarish strobe light, or a siren. It was then that Ginny heard the noise- a bellowing, ominous, un-human groan, like a starved stomach battering against its own walls, weeping in agony. It was, she knew instinctively, the sound of the Earth itself splitting ever so slowly in two. And then she saw them- from the gaping hole that was so woozily snapping the planet into pieces- thousands of jaggedly vicious creatures spilling from the cracks, like an army of bizarre, misshapen ants. They scuttled across the belly of the Earth, charging hungrily towards unseen targets, spitting and snarling, teeth bared. Even in her sleep, they filled Ginny with the sort of terror even Voldemort himself could not inspire; a deep, primordial dread that had been with humanity longer than fear itself. Yet, even with this fear, Ginny felt oddly adrenalised, as if the only thing she would like to do more than run from these very visions of Hell was kick them in the face. She was drawn to them as one dying of thirst is drawn to water- she found herself wishing, illogically, insanely, that she would wake, so that she could charge screeching from her home and throw herself at these creatures until there was nothing left of them but dust.

She woke, her eyelids darting apart from each other like repulsed magnets. She was drenched in a cold sweat and for no reason in particular wanted to scream- with fear, with confusion, with elation. The dream, instead of slipping immediately from her mind like water cupped in inept hands as most did, stayed maddeningly in focus, the images burned into the back of her head as when one looked directly at the Sun. She became aware, very suddenly, that she felt extremely uncomfortable in her own body, as if she had been lodged into the shell of another person. Her arms suddenly felt immensely heavy, her legs hard and lean and strong in a way they had never felt before. She tried, ever so carefully, to sit up, and found herself weighed down by the sudden might of her own torso. After much effort, she managed to force her right arm upwards, and almost recoiled at the sight before her. She watched the once pale, frail veins that traced down her slender arm bulge and tighten wildly, like snakes in the thrall of a charmer. Her forearms were grimacingly tightening themselves into muscular knots, and she had an irresistible urge to punch forwards. She did so, and felt her arm lance through the air like a knife through butter, swift and smooth. She raised the other arm with less effort this time, and punched forward again, with such vigour as to make thin air even thinner. Invigorated, she moved from her bed, and felt her bare feet hit the cold floor as if scolding it. She stood and felt this new strength lurch through her body like a drunken guest unaccustomed to its surroundings, pervading every bone and cell, equally frightening and electrifying. Slowly, she turned towards her wall, and punched it as lightly as she could. Nothing happened, but where as previously even this lightness would have hurt her delicate fists, this time she felt nothing other than an urge to punch again. She did so, harder this time, and again felt no pain. Almost chuckling and now confident in her own strength, she pulled back her arm like a tightened spring, then smacked her fist into the wall as hard as she could- then watched in horror as it went straight through, crumbling admittedly already decrepit bricks and causing a loud groaning sound to emit from the Weasley house.

Shit.

She heard confused talk from her parent's room above her and the sound of sleepy feet hitting the ground. She darted about her room, looking desperately for her wand. The sound of a door opening. The wand, it seemed was in none of her drawers. Shit, shit, shit! The footsteps were now crashing down the stairs. She threw open the doors of her wardrobe and tossed about everything; clothes, books, shoes, wand, toiletries…wait, wand! Triumphantly, she sprung up and pointed the wand like a barbed insult towards the gaping hole, which suddenly, sickeningly, reminded her of the monster-spitting gape in her dream. Desperately trying to clear her mind, she tried to think of the appropriate words.

"…Fixo?"

Nothing. The footsteps were coming closer and closer, until they suddenly stopped with a crash. Clearly, one of her parents had fallen over in their haste. This, at least, bought her some time.

"Um, ummm…."

It was no good, her mind was completely blank. If only she'd concentrated in lessons last year instead of staring longingly at random boys!

"Un…hole…o…?"

The hole looked at her sardonically, as if to say, 'Yeah, that'll work.' She flitted through fond memories of the times David Jones had complimented her spell work and tried to think of the only person she knew who would be perfectly competent in this situation.

"What would Hermione do?" she whispered rhetorically. A memory…Harry's glasses had broken somehow…that was it!

"Reparo!" she shouted giddily, "That's it, reparo!"

Sulkily, as if her competence had spoiled its fun, the hole shrank until it was no more. Clutching her wand to her breast, Ginny dived into bed and pulled the covers over her just as a breathless Mr Weasley threw open her door, his wand outstretched.

"Ginny! Ginny are you alright? What was that? Death Eater?"

Ginny affected the grogginess of sleep and pulled off her covers, sitting up and making a show of rubbing her eyes.

"I…what, father? I'm confused?"

She instantly felt guilty for her brutishness- whilst the cobwebs of sleep were still dangled over Mr Weasley, he was desperately alert and worse- terrified. His mention of the Death Eaters had been the first mention of last year's events to occur all summer. Of course, all of the family had been thinking about Voldemort's return to full strength and what that entailed, but it wasn't until now that any of them had voiced such apprehension.

"A noise, Ginny, I heard a noise!"

"I didn't hear anything, dad, really," groaned Ginny, trying to sound weary. "It was probably just-"

At this point, Ginny was interrupted by a muffled thump at her window.

"There! You see!" Her father raced to the window and flung open her curtains, eyes flitting about maniacally in their sockets as he searched the muddy grey skies of early morning for any sign of an intruder. Suddenly, the thump again, and as he raised his wand, he saw that the object battering against the wall was in fact…

"An owl!" He squinted into the vague darkness as the owl now sat perched on the windowsill, a letter tied to its leg. Ginny, curious, got out of bed, forgetting all previous attempts of affected tiredness.

"It's a Hogwart's owl!" she exclaimed, immediately opening the window and allowing the regal bird to sniffingly stroll inside. Frantically, Ginny untied the letter and ripped it open, wondering what might be so important that Hogwarts would need to send a letter to her when school didn't start for weeks.

"Oh," she said bathetically, scanning through the pages for any dire warnings or urgent matters. "It's just one of those beginning of term letters they send out just before every year, telling you what books you need and stuff. But why would they send them out so early this year?"

Her father, who was stretching off the last remnants of sleep from his person, laughed incredulously at his young daughter and ruffled her strikingly orange hair affectionately.

"Early? Ginny, darling, the new year at Hogwarts starts in two days!"