Chapter 2: Ginevra

Nearly two weeks later, Harry was up late again, pacing the house to avoid dreaming. The Erica Gorelli books had helped the nightmares a lot, giving him something else to think about – they were probably the only reason he wasn't a total wreck from sleep deprivation – but he couldn't read all the time.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were avoiding him almost completely this summer, and Dudley was doing his best not to see Harry at all, a difficult task for people living in the same house. Harry was helping them as much as he could, staying in his room for most of the day, coming down only for meals, such as they were.

There wasn't really much of anywhere else to go. One of the first letters he'd gotten from the Weasleys had contained a warning from Mr. Weasley not to leave the house. Apparently, whatever protection Privet Drive offered was only good within the actual walls of the house.

Harry had crumpled that letter and thrown it across the room when he realized this meant at least two or three weeks indoors, at the one place he hated most to be indoors. If it had been Hogwarts, or the Burrow, or even number 12, Grimmauld Place...

But perhaps number 12 wouldn't be such a good idea right now, Harry thought, pacing around the living room. It had been Sirius' home, the Black family home for generations, and the treacherous house-elf Kreacher lived there. It had been Kreacher who had told the Death Eaters, in the form of Sirius' cousin Narcissa, how to bring Harry out of his safety at Hogwarts, leading directly to Sirius' death...

He stubbed a toe on an armchair and bit back a swearword. Narcissa, besides being Sirius' cousin, was the mother of Harry's greatest enemy at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, had been one of the Death Eaters captured in the attack at the Ministry of Magic, where Sirius had died...

Harry pulled his thoughts away from that and back to his last sight of Draco Malfoy. The boy had made the mistake of attacking Harry in front of a group of DA members. D.A. officially stood for Defense Association, but among themselves, they were known as Dumbledore's Army. Malfoy and his thugs Crabbe and Goyle hadn't stood a chance. By the time the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were through with them, they had looked like human-sized slugs, stuck onto the top luggage rack of the Hogwarts Express.

Harry grinned at the memory. "Malfoy was such a fool," he said softly.

A sound from outside the window made him spin towards it –

– just as a cat sprang through it and into the living room.

Harry jumped back, then felt foolish. He didn't really know any cats, except Hermione's orange tabby, Crookshanks. For all he knew, they leapt through strangers' living room windows every day.

He turned on a lamp to get a better look at it. Like Crookshanks, this cat was an orange tabby, but this cat was sleek and slender, with warm brown eyes... wait a second. "Cats don't have brown eyes, do they?" he asked himself, trying to remember. Crookshanks' were yellow, he knew that much...

The cat shook its head.

Harry stared at it. "Do you understand me?" he whispered.

The cat nodded hard, as if desperate to get the point across.

"Are you an Animagus?" Witches and wizards who could turn into animals were rare. Sirius had been one – his animal form had been a huge black dog. Harry's own father had been one as well, and his Transfiguration teacher, Professor McGonagall, could take the form of a cat, but Harry thought he remembered her being gray...

The cat meowed quietly, but with definitely speech-like inflections.

Harry blinked. "Did you just say "Maybe?"

Another nod. This might be a dream, but if so, it was the most bizarre Harry had had all summer.

"All right. Do I know you?"

The cat nodded again. Suddenly its head whipped toward the window, and it yowled – a long, low, frightened sound.

"What's wrong?" Then Harry heard it too – voices, getting closer. He turned the lamp off and pulled out his wand.

The people who appeared around the corner weren't out of the ordinary so much in themselves. They looked a lot like office workers or bureaucrats, probably because they were precisely that. Still, their robes would have gotten a lot of odd looks on straight-laced Privet Drive. So, probably, would their conversation.

"Where can the blasted thing have gotten to?" snapped the brunette woman.

The red-haired man in glasses stiffened. "Don't talk that way about my sister."

"Well, Weasley, if your sister hadn't been where she wasn't supposed to be, I would never have done what I did!" the woman snapped back.

Percy Weasley made an inarticulate but angry-sounding noise, and the group of three moved into the cone of light shed by a streetlamp.

Harry watched them muttering together. The cat was pressed against his side, purring, but he remembered Hermione telling him that cats would sometimes purr when they were frightened. With his free left hand, he reached down to stroke the creature's head. "It's all right now," he murmured. "It's all right... you'll be just fine..."

"What was that?" the woman demanded, spinning to face the house. "I heard something... Lumos!"

Harry ducked quickly as a beam of wand-light shone across the room. It would have struck full on his face, reflecting off his glasses, if he had not gotten out of the way in time. Hearing footsteps approaching the house, he secreted himself directly below the window, so that no one could see him without sticking their whole head through it, and if they did that, he could not be blamed for attacking first and asking questions later. He wished he'd thought to bring his Invisibility Cloak along, but he had not known, when he got up around midnight, that anything like this was going to happen...

"Wait!" Percy Weasley's voice rang out loudly in the night air, and his two companions shushed him hurriedly. He dropped his voice only a bit, though, and Harry could hear every word clearly. "Don't you know who lives here?"

"Muggles, I'd assume," said the woman's voice. "Does it matter?"

"Yes, it matters!" Percy was obviously upset. "This is the house where Harry Potter lives!"

Harry frowned. Why did Percy know his Muggle family's address?

"It is?" asked the other man, silent until this point, and Harry recognized the usually unctuous tones of Cornelius Fudge, current (but not for much longer, said his letters from Ron) Minister of Magic. He sounded oddly worried. "Do you think... he'd hold a grudge, Weasley? I mean, after all, I was rather rude to him last year..."

"I doubt it, Minister," said Percy impatiently, "and besides, he is still underage, and I can't say for sure, but I doubt he'd do anything out-and-out illegal. Against the rules, yes, of course, but I think he has a touch of respect left for the law at this point..."

"You are the expert, Weasley," said the woman with just a trace of boredom in her voice, "but tell us, why does it matter that a wizarding boy, however famous or important he may be, happens to live here? At this time of night, he's not likely to be awake, is he? Why shouldn't we simply Disillusion ourselves, enter the house, find the girl, and leave with her – if she is in fact here?"

"It matters, Madam Secretary, because since my sister was eleven years old, she has practically worshiped Harry Potter. And he has shown a strong tendency in the past to protect others, even from their own follies and troubles. If she has entered this house – if he is here – she will probably, by now, have let him know who she is, and solicited his protection. In that case, he would indeed be awake, and probably convinced that we're a danger to her, perhaps even that we're... not what we look like," Percy finished lamely, but everyone listening knew what he meant.

Death Eaters. The phrase trembled in the air without ever being said.

"Very well, Weasley," said Fudge finally. "We should probably be getting back to the Ministry anyway, we've wasted enough time with this..."

"And besides, Minister, if Harry Potter does have her, he can inform my parents of her whereabouts and spare me the trouble." Percy's voice faded as he walked away from the window, and a moment later, the quiet of Privet Drive was shaken somewhat by one small pop and two loud bangs.

Harry sat up and peered out the window, already knowing what he would see – an utterly peaceful street, except for the first of the sleepy neighbors opening their windows to look for the backfiring truck or the unlawful teenager setting off fireworks in the middle of the night.

"Come on," he whispered to the shivering cat, carefully gathering her to his chest. "We have to get upstairs before they wake up."

Stepping carefully onto the second stair, Harry climbed as noiselessly as he could manage, the cat curled in the crook of his left arm, claws hooked into his shirt – he could just feel them through the fabric – and with his wand still out and ready. He wasn't really expecting any Death Eaters, or even Percy Weasley, to pop into existence in front of him, but his life had had enough unpleasant surprises in it, to this point, that he wasn't willing to risk anything.

He made it to the top of the stairs, and finally into his room, without any response from the Dursleys other than his uncle's and Dudley's usual snores. It seemed they had managed to sleep through the whole thing. Harry was grateful for that piece of luck.

Hedwig hooted softly in welcome as Harry collapsed onto his bed, releasing the orange cat, who flowed to the foot of the bed and sat down, looking at him with very human – and very familiar – brown eyes.

"Ginny?" he said tentatively.

The cat nodded firmly.

Harry thought for a moment. This almost feels like a set-up of some kind. No one who wants to harm me is supposed to be able to get in here... but I suppose a little "Constant Vigilance" wouldn't hurt...

"If you're really Ginny, then you won't mind showing me what you sent me for my birthday."

The cat gave him a somewhat offended look, then jumped off the bed, walked deliberately over to the bookshelf, reared onto her hind legs, and pulled out the Erica Gorelli series with her front paw, one at a time. She came back to the bed, leapt up, and sat down, staring at Harry challengingly.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed. "Your mother is going to have a fit," he said finally, and the cat – Ginny – began to purr again, with an odd added quality that sounded, or felt, a lot like laughter.

"I guess I'd better let her know where you are... and what you are... and 'spare Percy the trouble'," he added, imitating the Weasley brother's voice as best he could, and Ginny's purr redoubled.

Harry went to his desk, sat down, found ink, parchment, and quill, and discovered a warm furry weight on his lap. "What are you doing?"

Ginny looked up at him with inscrutable cat eyes and merely settled herself more firmly into her curled-up position.

"Fine, sit there if you want. Just don't get in the way or knock the ink over or anything."

Ginny hissed mildly, in a tone of mocking reproof, as if to say, What in the world gives you the idea that I would do that?

Harry dipped his pen and began to write.

Mrs. Weasley and Everyone,

Ginny is all right. She's here with me at number 4. She's a cat, but it's definitely her, and I overheard some wizards in the street looking for her.

No need to tell them who the wizards were, or that one of them had been Ginny's own brother, and apparently only mildly concerned for her whereabouts or the fact that his superior had changed her form...

I can have her here for a few days, but my aunt and uncle will notice eventually, and my aunt hates animals in the house. Please write back soon.

Harry

He blew on the letter to dry the ink, then looked down at Ginny. "Where is everybody? The Burrow?"

Ginny shook her head.

"Headquarters, then?" Harry didn't want to say the address aloud, but Ginny would understand.

She nodded, then squirmed a bit and, in the sudden way of cats, was on the desk without seeming to go through any intermediate steps like actually jumping up. She nudged the ink bottle with her nose, tilting it without knocking it over. Then she sprang one front claw and moved it over the edge of the parchment.

Harry frowned. Ginny had to repeat her motions before he caught on. "You think you can write with your claw? Using it like a quill?"

She nodded again.

"All right." Harry poured a little ink onto a scrap of parchment, hoping it wouldn't get through and stain the desk, and Ginny delicately dipped her claw into it and began. It was slow work, but eventually she got a message scratched at the bottom of the parchment. It was just one word, and one Harry had never seen before: Ginevra.

"What's that?"

Ginny tapped her paw on her own chest.

"You? Is that your name, your real name?"

She nodded, and Harry realized he had never thought about her full name before. Obviously no parents would name a child just plain Ginny, especially not their only daughter. "That's pretty."

Ginny purred.

"So your mum and dad will know it's really you, and I'm not just having delusions." Harry folded the letter and addressed it, then stood up and went to Hedwig's cage. She was awake and had been watching the whole scene with what appeared to be fascination. He held out the letter, and she nibbled his fingers before she took it.

"You'd better hurry, Hedwig. They must be frantic by now."

Hedwig ruffled her feathers, then launched herself out of the cage, out the window, and was gone into the night.