Disclaimer: I don't own/am not making any profit out of the characters in this story. Some of them I do own, but they are few and far between.

On the Other Hand... I Have Different Fingers

Ginny fell out of bed with a large thump.

"Ouch!"

She rolled onto her back and rubbed her eyes. Sunlight filtered the window opposite her, turning her eyelids red. Very slowly she eased herself into a sitting position and surveyed the dormitory.

"Hmmm… where did everybody go?" Her roommates weren't usually up before her, and on the few occasions when they were it was so noisy that she inevitably awoke as well.

Ginny stood briskly, figuring that now she was awake, she may as well do something. She got dressed in a pair of jeans and a loose t-shirt before quickly pulling a hairbrush through her messy red tousles.

She left her room, moving down the staircase. Although everything she was doing felt completely normal - she'd done it thousands of times before – there was something that didn't feel quite right. Something that made her jump at little noises and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up slightly.

The common room was completely deserted, but what confused Ginny was that the chairs were neatly placed at the edges of the room and the fireplace looked freshly cleaned of ashes. It was never clean of ashes! It almost always had a merry fire crackling away.

She hugged her arms to herself nervously, something was dreadfully amiss, where was everyone?

The redhead trailed through the cold and deserted corridors of Hogwarts, feeling out of place, feeling like a lost soul… feeling like the only person left in the world. The castle was different – Ginny was pretty sure that she, herself, hadn't changed, so what had happened? Hogwarts suddenly felt strange and unfamiliar.

She entered the Great Hall with apprehension, wondering what she'd find. But it was empty, just as the rest of Hogwarts was. The four great tables were not present, seeming to make the hall bigger than ever, the ceiling arched high over head, the enchanted sky rolling and scudding with low clouds – tiny patches of blue occasionally visible.

Behind her, Ginny became aware of a slight scuffing noise; shoes shuffling across cold stone. She turned sharply, backing up so her back was to the wall. The noise was coming from the entrance hall, and it seemed to be coming nearer.

Hermione climbed through the portrait hole and into the kitchens first. Careful not to make any noise, she quickly assessed what around. The kitchens appeared to be deserted as well. She turned and beckoned for Ron to follow.

The red head clambered awkwardly through, at the last moment catching his toes on the ledge of the step and falling flat on his face (somewhat dramatically in Hermione's opinion).

"Smooth," she remarked, bending to help him up.

Harry scrambled significantly more successfully through the wall, coming to stand on the other side of Ron.

"Where are they all?" he wondered. Moving quietly through the room, he pulled open a couple of cupboards, the first was empty, but the second held three plates, with three slices of bread and three glasses of milk.

He paused before turning to Hermione for the answer (as what usually happened). "How..?" he started in confusion.

But the witch was pulling a genuine blank. "Magic?" she suggested.

"Well, don't question it! Let's start eating," Ron exclaimed as his tummy gave another burst of rumbling.

Ron and Harry quickly lifted the plates and the glasses down, one for each of them. Hermione took hers absently, before moving across curiously to a very small door on the other side of the room. An elf sized door in fact.

The Gryffindor got down carefully on her knees and had a sudden flashback of Alice in Wonderland trying to get through the small door. A smiled graced her features quickly, before her brows narrowed in concentration.

Hermione prised the tiny door open very carefully and peeped through. What she saw made her gasp.

Spreading away from her in a room that was about as long as the Great Hall was wide were about four hundred tiny beds. Each had a tiny goggle-eyed elf sitting on it. The elves were doing a number of things from reading and knitting, to playing cards and some in the corner even appeared to be watching television. Hermione shook her head in disbelief.

Ron and Harry suddenly alighted behind her, making her jump with a little gasp. Abruptly all the elves froze, and in unison looked in their direction.

Ginny pressed close to the wall as the footsteps neared, she was almost flat against the wall directly adjacent to the doorway. She would have the element of surprise on her side at least.

Suddenly, a figure strode through the archway, a black coat billowing menacingly behind them.

"Expelliarmus!" she shouted as they walked away, hoping against hope that she wasn't about the curse Professor Snape. The person's wand flew into her hand, and they were blown backwards across the hall. "Locomotor Mortis." (Just to be on the safe side.)

The figure writhed on the floor before scrambling rather comically to its feet which caused an onslaught of somewhat hysterical giggles from Ginny. She blamed it on the stress of having no one to talk to, or in fact see, since she'd woken up.

"Find it funny do you?" snarled a familiar voice from the now stolid 'attacker'.

"Dammit Malfoy, you scared me!"

"Hello, I'm the one with my legs locked together here; I think I'll be the one complaining." The Slytherin prince sounded very pissed off.

"Finite Incantatem," Ginny muttered, waving her wand lazily. "Y'know of all the people left, it just had to be you didn't it?"

"Yeah I'm not exactly over the moon either Weasley. I mean, I've dreamt many times that all the Gryffindors would just disappear, but this just sucks. I'll have my wand back too."

The redhead blinked. She'd never heard him say so much at one go before, least of all to her. Maybe the isolation was getting to him too. She threw his wand back to him without thinking.

"Where were you going anyway?" she asked, her voice echoing eerily.

"To the kitchens. I was hungry."

Ah, there we go. The monosyllabia and iciness was back.

"What happens if we're the only one's left in the castle?"

"Then we hope we're not the only ones left in the world," he shot back. "Because there is no way I'm procreating with you!" With that, he turned and strode meaningfully away.

Ginny paused a second, on the one hand she really didn't want to follow him just to be cut down again and again... on the other hand he was the only person she'd met so far and she really didn't fancy continuing to hopelessly wander the corridors of Hogwarts alone like a lost soul when even the Hogwart's ghosts weren't around.

She took off running after his departing figure.

Thank you to Sabine Strohem-Moss my one and only reviewer so far, and - coincidentally - the newest member of the C2 community I manage. It's been updated, if anyone has the time, they should really check it out... (Moi? Scrounging for subscribers? Don't be so rididulous!)

Anyway, I hope people drop a note to say what they think - otherwise how WILL I improve?! So you see really, it's for YOUR benefit. Moving along, I will stop babbling now. Hope you liked it!