Updated: 5-27-04

Author's Note: Ok, SO sorry it's taken me so long to get this next chapter up. Everything is just so crazy right now. Well, this chapter's a tad strange but hope you like it anyway. Love and thanks to those who have reviewed.

chapter 43: REFLECTION - mirror of the self

Ginny kept her eyes closed and pretended to be asleep while the other Gryffindor girls in her year got up, got dressed and, finally left for breakfast. Once they had all gone, and the room had fallen silent, Ginny rolled over onto her back and let her eyes fall open. She stared up at the ceiling, only barely registering the spidery crack that twisted its way over her bed, as she thought back on her dreams.

By now the dreams were so familiar, were so much a part of herself, that she would have felt incomplete if she were to stop having them. The dream she had had that night, however, was different from most of them. It reminded her more of the first ones, the ones she had started to have after the summer of her first year.

She had felt so bereft then, so weak, and out of place. What had happened with Tom Riddle and the Chamber of Secrets...she couldn't get it out of her mind, couldn't get past it. She spent her days in a pantomime of a normal life, while all the time visions of what had happened flickered endlessly through the back of her mind. She couldn't help but feel that she had been the one responsible, that it was her weakness that had allowed what had happened to happen, allowed her to be used.

Her weakness. She despised it. It existed only to be exploited by others. Lying in her bed, Ginny smiled to think that soon, so soon, all traces of that weakness would be gone. The one in the dreams had told her, and she knew that he spoke nothing but the truth.

That summer Ginny had spent much of her time hiding in sleep, trying to forget the things her waking mind couldn't lay aside, trying to forget how much she loathed herself. In the grey world of a perpetual doze, her brain would finally shut down. Numb, she could rest. It was then that the dreams came to her, when he came to her, strong and powerful, and it was a refuge from the emptiness of her life.

He had frightened her at first. There was no denying the darkness that he was, but it was the very fact of her fear that had finally resolved her to facing him. It was then that she saw, too, his strength. His was a will of steel, a will that was bowed by no one, a will that could battle eons without wavering. He never knew self-hate, only righteous anger, and Ginny knew then that she would do anything to match her will to his.

And so had been those first dreams, coaxing, tempting, full of the sweet promises she knew held no lies. They had revelled together in the joy and the triumph that their success would bring, in the beauty of the righteousness which they would restore to the world. And he had begun to show her power. Power such as she had never known existed. Power that would be hers when she forged her will in steel, when she reached out boldly and claimed the birthright that was hers.

He needed her, of course. Why else would he bother to tempt a weakling such as herself, to promise to teach her? Their will would be steel, but it would only be together that they would find triumph. She knew this, savored this power that she held over him. But she knew, too, his patience, knew that down the long slipping eons of time, hers was not the only hand that could stand to grant him his goal, not the only will that could match with him and unleash the power. If she failed, he would not mourn her. He would simply wait. The centuries were nothing next to his indomitable will.

She would not fail. She would not be denied that which another after her would then have a chance to grasp. Lying still in her bed, feeling the cold fire lick along her bones, Ginny savored her successes. The afterimages of her dreams crooned to her of the triumphs that were to come and smoldered along the edges of her heart, weighting it, turning it to stone. Cradled in the old magic of mankind's genesis, she smiled to herself, before slipping back on the mask of her innocence and rising from her bed. Above her head, the crack in the ceiling shifted, sending out another small, hairline tendril.

Draco Malfoy stared blankly at the book open before him. He knew this was a key, but he was having trouble processing all of the implications. The blurry words on the open page seemed to stare back at him and he had the strange impression that if he stared too long at them they would just fade away and leave him with a lingering mystery. 'The blood holds a piece of the soul.' He felt shaky just reading the words, as if he knew what they meant instinctively, but wasn't prepared to acknowledge it with his conscious mind.

Blood magic. That's what this section of the book was devoted to. Blood magic had been used to raise the demon all those many many centuries before, had been used to chain it. One of the ancient magics. A magic hardly anyone ever dared use. Old as it was, it was unrefined and sometimes seemed to have purposes of its own that could never be perfectly understood by the witches and wizards of today.

But Ginny was using it. Of that Draco was becoming more and more certain. But to what end? And there was something else he couldn't quite put his finger on. It wasn't unheard of for some wizards to start dabbling in the old arts. He was fairly certain that Voldemort had drawn some of his power from them. Yet, what Ginny had done with Ron seemed like more than just dabbling. Maybe she had come across an old text that had described a ceremony like the one she had orchestrated, but some instinctive part of Draco doubted it. Who would practice with new magic on themselves? Especially with something as potentially dangerous as blood magic. At the same time, Draco was coming more and more to agree with Ron that she wasn't possessed. He couldn't say why, but he was becoming convinced that taking care of this problem was going to take more than a simple exorcism. And the seeds...The seeds were significant somehow.

Draco was startled out of his musings by the door opening and someone coming into the classroom. He looked up just as Ron made his way over, dropping several round, doughy lumps in front of him.

"What are these?"

"Spinach rolls." Ron flopped down in the chair beside Draco, his legs sprawling out to the sides so that one of them pressed up against Draco's knee. "I decided I'd rather eat breakfast in here with you."

Draco thought about shifting so that they were no longer touching, but then didn't. The warm contact was somehow comforting. It made him feel more grounded, and helped distract him from the dark thoughts he had been having before Ron came in.

Draco picked up one of the rolls and looked at it dubiously. It was a pale, sickly green. "How did you know I'd be in here?"

Ron looked up from picking at his own roll and half shrugged. He seemed sort of distant, as though he were trying to close himself off. "You're here, aren't you?" Draco just looked at him, and Ron's mouth twisted up into a strange smile. "You still have ink on your forehead, you know."

Draco pressed his lips together and made an ineffectual swipe at his forehead. "Yeah, thanks for reminding me."

Ron took out his wand and pointed it straight at Draco's forehead. "Pugare Erroris," he said before Draco had a chance to protest. "There, I remembered it from when I was looking up the other glamour."

Draco raised his eyebrows uncertainly. "Is it gone?"

Ron tucked his wand back in his robes and just smirked at Draco. "Technically? No. It's a glamour to make you look clean."

Draco snorted incredulously. "Imagine that," he sneered, "the Weasley can remember a spell to hide the mess, but not to actually clean it up."

Ron just crossed his arms and sneered right back, "Imagine that, a Malfoy gets dirty and has to wait for someone else to do something about it." He sighed then, and turned back to his spinach rolls and Draco was reminded just how strange Ron's behavior was at that moment.

"What's wrong with you? Why aren't you at breakfast devouring a full plate of eggs?" Draco laughed self-deprecatingly. "I know my company is utterly enthralling, but not even Potter can stand between you and food. It always scares me when I glance over at the Gryffindor table."

Ron sighed again and drew his legs together, tucking them under his chair. Draco felt a moment of regret for the withdrawal of that spot of warmth.

Staying hunched over his rolls and not looking up, Ron finally said. "She got Zabini."

Draco went still at the words. "What do you mean?"

Ron bit his lip and finally looked up at Draco. His eyes were haunted and he looked lost. "Harry said Hermione found him outside the Gryffindor common room cut up and bleeding and almost dead. Harry...He thinks you did it." Ron looked guilty as he said this.

"I didn't." Draco knew the statement was unnecessary, but he had to say it anyway.

"I know that." Ron reached out suddenly and grabbed a hold of Draco's hand, looking intently into his eyes. Draco flinched at the unexpected contact, but still managed to hold Ron's gaze, resisting the urge to snatch his hand away. "But now Harry's thinking of you as a threat."

"And?"

Ron dropped Draco's hand and looked down. "And, I don't know. All the years he's been at Hogwarts, one of Harry's primary goals was survival. When he discovered a threat, he found a way to neutralize it. We have to be careful of him. I don't know what he might take it into his head to do."

This was too much. Draco shook his head and forcibly put the matter from his mind. They needed to deal with one problem at a time. "Your sister's using blood magic." When Ron didn't say anything, he continued. "I know we basically already knew that, but I've been thinking about it, and I think it might be worse than we first realized. What she did with you and what she did to Zabini may be just a taste of what she's planning to do. And she's got guidance. I think you're right, I don't think she's possessed, but she's gotten knowledge from somewhere. That ceremony she preformed with you, it was too precise to be the result of muddled experimentation."

Ron wrapped his arms around himself and continued to stare down at his knees. "So what do we do?"

Draco sighed and propped his head on his hand on the desk. "I'm not sure. We need to find out more about what kind of magic she's using; I think this book here is a good start. We also need to find out what, ultimately, she wants, and find a way to prevent her from getting it."

Ron leaned forward, resting his forehead on the desk and covering the back of his head with his hands. "I can't believe we're talking about my little sister here. I can't believe she would do this. She's always been the normal one."

Draco could hear footsteps filtering in from out in the hallway. Class would be starting soon. Before he could say anything to Ron, one of the Gryffindors came in, looking curiously over at the two boys. Ron lifted his head to see who it was and gave a weak wave of his hand, before unconsciously shifting closer to Draco. Draco understood, right now it was them against the rest.

Harry stood outside the Potions classroom, waiting for Hermione to show up so he could talk to her. He almost missed her when she came down with a group of the other Gryffindor girls, but managed to snag her arm at the last minute. "Hey, what did McGonagal say?"

Hermione looked annoyed at being detained, but answered him anyway. "All she said was that we shouldn't talk about it to anyone until the teachers figure out what's going on, and that I don't have detention anymore." Hermione's face was blank and Harry figured she was still trying to deal with what had happened that morning. "Did Dumbledore say anything? Did you talk to Ron?"

Harry grimaced. "No, Dumbledore just said I shouldn't talk to anyone and told me to go to breakfast. Ron, though..." Harry sighed in frustration, resisting the urge to grind his teeth. "He insists Malfoy didn't do it. Won't say why he thinks so, just refuses to see reason. And he had all these half-healed scars all over his arm and chest. I don't know why he defends that bastard. Can't he see that Malfoy's dangerous?!" Agitated, Harry ran a hand through his hair, knowing in the back of his mind that it was going to make it stick up at impossible angles.

"I know, Harry." Hermione frowned and shifted her book bag up higher on her shoulder. "He sounded really sympathetic towards Malfoy when I talked to him, too. At the time it seemed to sort of make sense, but now... It had to have been a monster that did that to Zabini, and it's a monster that's got control of Malfoy. I can't think of any other explanation."

"We've got to do something, Hermione. Ron won't listen to us."

"Yes..." Hermione stared off into space, biting at her lip. "Yes, I'm thinking about it. First I need to try to find out more about this demon. Maybe there's something in the restricted section." She trailed off, and Harry realized that that was about as far as they were going to get with the conversation. Unhappily, they turned and entered the Potions classroom.

Harry frowned when he saw that Ron and Malfoy were already in there. They didn't seem to be talking to each other, but they were sitting close together and both were staring off into the space at the head of the classroom. Uneasiness settled in the pit of Harry's stomach. Something needed to be done, but what? He thought about trying to get Ron's attention, but then decided that after the argument in the showers, Ron probably wasn't speaking to him at the moment. Resigned, Harry sighed and took his seat. First to get through another day of Potions.