Chapter One – Dreaming Of The Past
'It's so dark in this round room. Why do the candles have to cast a scary blue glow? Is it to present itself with a darker atmosphere? To tell you the truth it doesn't need it.' I unconsciously moved closer to the person standing next to me and almost wrapped my hand in theirs until I told myself that now wasn't the time to show fear.
"How do we know which room it is Harry?"
"I will know it when I open the door, but in my dreams it's always been one door right across from where I enter."
"So what should we do?" asked Neville who stood near the back of the group.
"The only thing we can do is open each door until we find the correct one." Harry walked across the room toward the first door and opened it to a bright light. I blinked my eyes rapidly as the light filled the once pitch-black room, causing my brown-eyed pupils to dilate to their smallest size. I waited patiently for my eyes to adjust to the brightness before taking in what had been hidden behind door number one. Luna, who stood on my right, muttered something about the government hiding creatures in the Ministry of Magic, but I didn't believe that the Ministry would do something so scandalous as confine a species to a single room. I glanced at a large tank and saw something shimmer, then the surface began to ripple, as if something below was stirring.
I watched as Hermione entered the room and was shocked when she yelled out, "There are brains in here!" Not believing her I made my way with Ron, Luna, Neville, and Harry to the tank were, in fact, around fifty brains of various sizes swam in a clear substance. Ron let out a 'humph' when Hermione slapped his hand away from the tank and I silently thanked her for stopping Ron from letting his curiosity get them better of him. I stayed back from the brains and felt a chill run up my spine.
'Why does the Ministry of Magic have brains in a room?'
My head swiveled to face my brother Ron when asked, "Hey Ginny, are you okay?" I just shook my head yes and kept my distance from the glass box, deciding to observe from a far distance. Finally Hermione said we should continue searching for Sirius, Harry's godfather, who had, according to Harry's vision, been taken here and tortured. Hoping the vision wasn't true, I shuffled out with the rest of the group to the center of the first room we had arrived in.
"Flagrate!" yelled Hermione. Immediately a red X appeared on the door we had just left. As Harry closed the door I watched the walls and doors begin to spin rapidly around me, making myself a little sick to the stomach. Tightly shutting my eyes I desperately attempted to block out the food that threatened to come back up. Thankful when it was over, I dizzily watched as Harry once again opened the next door.
Neville whispered into my ear, "You as afraid as I am Gin?" Not wanting to show my weakness, I replied, "Most likely, but we need to pull ourselves together."
Harry and Hermione disappeared into the newest room, shortly followed by Ron and Luna, yet I continued to comfort and encourage Neville, which in part helped me too. After finding mysterious brains swimming in questionable liquids, I decided that I wasn't curious enough to look inside all the doors. 'What else might I find?' Even though I wished for the answer, I knew I wouldn't know until I looked.
"Now remember what we learned in the DA? Neville, promise me you will protect yourself and use the spells we learned and I will do the same. Sirius could be dying and he needs us to be strong."
Neville wrapped his arms around me and let some of his pent up fear out by silently sobbing on my shoulder. I ran my long fingers down his back in a comforting pattern, hoping to sooth him. Before anyone noticed his temporary breakdown, he stood back up to his full height and wiped away the tears. I followed him to the entrance of the second room and with apprehension took a look.
My breath hitched in my throat at the sight of the large stone room with its large, steep steps that lead to the center. There I saw Harry and Hermione arguing at a dial that stood right in the middle of the giant room and felt entranced by its beauty. I couldn't explain the sensation…the want…the need to touch the veil that hung and seemed to sway without any obvious winds to push its tattered and ragged cloth.
Neville said something along the lines of "its magnificent", but I wasn't paying attention.
I was captivated.
So, I watched the dial but found it hard to concentrate with Hermione and Harry constantly walking back and forth. Hermione stopped her pacing directly in front of my line of attention and grabbed at Harry's outstretched arm that itched to feel the fabric in its grasp. She told Harry something that snapped him out of the same daze I was in, causing him to sharply look away. He began to march up the steps towards me and I knew that we had to continue our search, but I didn't want to leave. I think Hermione noticed this since she grabbed my hand and pulled me along after her. As she moved me along, I keep my face towards the door and sadly watched as Ron closed it behind him.
Again Hermione pointed her wand at the door and cast Flagrate. The room spun once more and left us disorientated and curious as to which door should be tried next. Harry seemed to be becoming impatient and randomly picked the door next to us. He pushed hard against it but it wouldn't budge. He pulled out a knife that Hermione told me was from Sirius and supposedly could open any locked door, no matter what spells it was under, and slid it through the cracks on the side. Nothing happened.
"This must be it." Ron piped up from the back.
Being reasonable, Hermione said to Ron, "It cannot be the correct one because Harry said he could easily get though it in his dream. Let's try another one." No one except me seemed to notice the sad look in Harry's eyes as he gently placed the ruined knife inside his cloak before his face was once again filled with determination.
Now the room had three large red X's. I found myself wondering which room had the veil in it and shook my head in the darkness, telling myself to get over the thing. I panicked when Harry screamed as he opened the fourth door, but then I learned it was a happy shout…we had found the right room!
Dashing in behind the others I felt a happy, gleeful laugh begin to rise up my throat and beg to be let free as I took in the glittery jars full of unusual items. One jar caught my eye in particular but Harry pulled me along as he told us what isle we were trying to find. At the thought of finding Sirius I sobered and began to thinking about healing spells and charms that would help us get him home safely. Having been one of the slowest curse learners I had decided that my job on this mission would be to tend to the injured and of course, throw spells I had mastered at deatheaters.
When we arrived at row 97 I followed closely behind Harry and in front of the others as we slowly crept down towards the end of the row where we hoped to find the hurt Sirius Black. My heart sank when the row ended with no Sirius in sight and no trace that he had even been there. I could almost imagine what Harry was thinking as his breath caught in his chest and his heart sank down to his feet. Before I could do anything he was sprinting down all the columns, looking desperately for what I knew he wouldn't find.
I could barely hear Hermione repeatedly saying to herself, "No, no, no, no, no, no!", and Neville who let a curse word slip past his lips. If the circumstances had been different I would have scolded Neville for his foul language, but in the present situation I could only stand there.
Ron had walked back down the isle, perhaps to find any sign that the ex-prisoner had set foot in the building, and had stopped to look at something. As Harry ran past he called out his name and I curiously wondered to Ron's side to see what he found. I never had expected what sat on the dust shelf. It was a tiny snitch-sized globe covered in dirt with Harry's name on it. Against people's wishes, Harry seized the globe and looked closely at it.
A pop. I was the first one to hear it. When I turned around to investigate it was too late to warn the others. Deatheaters.
Lucius Malfoy scared the bijous out of everyone as his low voice rung inside the empty room, making his presence known. Instinct had us grabbing for our wands and all six of us directed the wooden sticks towards the deatheaters. I suddenly knew that it had all been a trap. There never was a hurt Sirius down here. Clenching my teeth in anger I listened as Malfoy tried to get the dusty ball of liquid from Harry who bravely fought back. I thought we were all safe until that horrid woman, Bellatrix, said the words that froze my terrified body.
"How about we torturer the little girl until Harry decides to give us what we want." The deatheaters began to circle around me since I hadn't been as close as I should have been to the rest of the Gryffindors. Thank the Lord that Harry stood in front of me to buy us time. Hermione and Ron also enclosed me in a protective circle, not allowing our enemies the chance to grab one of us. I was startled when Hermione told me to use a spell called Reducto at Harry's queue, and silently passed it on to Ron, who said it to Luna, who told Neville.
"Now!" shouted Harry. Raising my wand, I cast Reducto to my left and watched as the prophecies, as Lucius had called them, fell to the ground and begin to talk loudly. As the ghosts and all of their voices filled the room, Ron grabbed my left hand and began to run after Harry, Neville and Hermione as I tugged Luna along.
Ron, who was leading the three of us, didn't see the rug that wasn't completely flat and toppled over, taking Luna and I down in a painful crash. Screaming in pain I felt my ankle snap in two. I looked down to see that it was twisted in an odd position and only hoped I would be able to run on it long enough to escape from the room. I felt myself be picked up by someone and began to struggle, throwing my hands in every direction. I smacked the person on their cheek and was dropped back to the cold ground. Trying to stay awake, I looked for Ron and Luna but couldn't focus my eyes because of the pain that coursed through my body. I could barely make out the pair of feet that stood to my right and the other pair directly behind me.
I looked up to see their wands directed at my chest and let a scared squeak escape my lips. My eyes closed as the two men said two different spells at the same time. I fell over onto my side, reacting to what I thought I was supposed to be feeling. But I felt no pain. Pretending to have fainted, I prayed the deatheaters would leave so I could search for Ron. Soon enough I was able to sit up and with all my might ignore the waves of pain that crashed down on my hazy brain.
Delicately standing, I hobbled in the direction I thought would lead to the first room we had entered and stumbled, causing a stool to crash, making a thud sound that could have easily have woken up the entire Gryffindor house. Hearing footsteps I crouched to the ground and let out a sigh of relief that it was Ron and Luna who had come to investigate. Being back together again we traveled to a room that reminded me of a planetarium, something Hermione had told me all about. When Luna was trying to come up with a plan, Ron screamed and tried to dodge a spell sent our way by Bellatrix. His tired body absorbed the purple light and I watched as he began to giggle in fits.
'What, Ron, hit you?' I began to worry about him as he rolled over and tried to take breaths as he continued to laugh for no apparent reason. Bellatrix left when something was shouted outside our door. "Come on Ron," I tugged on his arm and he followed Luna and I as we struggled to find Neville, Hermione, and Harry.
Not looking back the three of us came to a familiar door and literally tumbled inside the room beyond. Tears began to wash down my unusually pale face as my ankle once again twisted into a position it shouldn't have been able to make. A male voice alerted me to Harry's presence and I knew that for know I was safe. I let myself detach from my body, a trick I had learned during my first year after waking up with bloody hands. Without my knowledge, I quivered at the thought of him.
Someone mentioned my name and I started to reenter the conversation that was going on. Ron's laughter kept ringing through the room and I wanted to slap my hand over his mouth to stop the sound that would eventually alert deatheaters to our location.
As if they had been reading my mind, the door began to burst open and masked faces rushed through towards our hiding spot. My arm was flung over someone's shoulder and I was hauled into the circular room where we randomly entered the brain chamber. I was non-to gently placed on the floor and with blurry vision, watched as four people ran around the room sealing doors. Each time a door was hit by a deatheater on the opposite side the door loosened and I felt fear cool my blood.
Only one door wasn't locked yet and it was that one that the deatheaters rushed in through. I screamed a warning to Hermione and Luna whose backs were turned towards the enemy, and didn't see the yellow light that rushed over towards my head. I felt my world go black from the edges in and thought, 'So this is what fainting feels like', before my world turned black.
"Ginny, get up you sleepy head."
My body flung itself into a sitting position, effectively hitting one of my roommates, Anita, on the forehead. Letting out a groan, I rubbed my hand across the front of my head were I predicted a bump would begin to grow. I took in the picture of a blonde girl with pale green eyes furiously trying to find her wand to stop the sure-to-be bump from forming.
'That's what she gets for waking me up. The girl is smart in class but is really as bright as a burnt-out bulb.'
Applying the fake voice I was accustomed to using around everyone, I said, "Oh Anita, I am so sorry." I picked up her wand from the ground and handed it to her were she immediately cast a healing spell. "It's my fault Ginny," she smiled. "I should know better then to wake you up, but I didn't want you to be late for charms."
'And yet you still do it.'
Grumbling that I was indeed going to be late, I let her leave to save herself from the Professor's wrath and walked to my dresser. Pulling out a pair of jeans and I plain white shirt I looked at my reflection. What I saw didn't surprise me…a girl with no specific beauty. My red hair was the most noted feature I had and loved, since it was a deep red that stood out even in my house. My brown eyes were slightly puffy from crying in my dream.
My dream…
I could still feel everything from the terror to the pain that I had experienced almost one year ago in the Ministry of Magic. Now with my fifth year half way over, I could say that a lot had changed. No, not my looks, well they had too, but it was something else that no one noticed except me. It was the darkness that resided inside of my body twenty-four/seven/three-sixty-five. Something happened that night one year ago, something I was either trying to forget or simply couldn't remember.
Pushing the thoughts to the back of my mind, I threw on my outfit and left the dorms at a leisurely pace. 'I am already late,' I thought, 'So why run to get there?' When I reached the room the squeaky voice of my professor reached my ears and I took my seat, avoiding his gaze.
"Your late Mrs. Weasley."
'I know you twit.' I thought bitterly, 'Why don't you just rub it in.'
Hello to everyone who is reading this. I hope you have enjoyed the first chapter to my newest story. It is a long one, but most of my other chapters will be shorter.
To make sure no one is confused, this story is from Ginny's point of view and will be held in the setting of her fifth year (which is the trios sixth year at Hogwarts). I have taken the events from J.K. Rowling's books and am trying to keep her characters in their usual context but don't plan to slave over her books to make sure every detail is correct.
Please review with comments and tell me if any spelling mistakes have occurred or if something doesn't make since so I can fix it. Thank you for taking time to read my story.
HannaH
