Author's Note:

I am a lying liar! Of course that wasn't the end. You know I love me my Weasley reunions, and however satisfied Harry and Ginny were in the last chapter, there is still quite a road ahead of them. Quite a few of you expressed questions, but I'm pleased to say that this prelude answers a question most of you didn't know you had.

I love you guys. Thanks for being the best reviewers.

Thanks to Mel (and also to Andi), without whom this story would never have been finished.

I'm already looking ahead to the multi-chapter fic I will write next. Do we want fun and frothy, like Series of Escalating Dares? Or do we want dark and tragic? Choices, choices...

Carnivals are a place where magic happens — well, that's how the showmen would present it. They travel about, peddling entertainment and exotic creatures, and if people have had just the right level of fun, they are wont to ignore the fact almost all of it is a sham.

Take Little Franz and Gregorio, for example, traveling with (?). Night after night and town after town, they were presented as near feral half-werewolves from Turkey. In fact, they were a (mostly housebroken) set of twins from somewhere in Britain. As it happens, their provenance is far more interesting than any of the other unusual (and highly improbable) tales the carnival showmen make up. If they could but remember it, they would have a tale that would awe even the most cynical carnival-goer.

Alas, the only thing either Little Franz or Gregorio remembered was waking up in a moving caravan, throats dry, heads throbbing like mad, and a few carnies staring at them. They were offered a job — "Just until you get back on your feet"—but it's been several years now, and they never really left. The leaders did not want them to leave — aside from being natural in front of the crowd, they could... do things that defied explanation.

It was a rainy night. "Well, Granz, tonight was—"

"—another great night, indeed it was, Fregorio—"

The wolfboys had pulled off all their extra fur, and were down to their shorts. It had indeed been an excellent night. Little Franz had perfected his knife juggling, and Gregorio had pulled off breathing fire. That he had done this without matches or a lighter was his secret. Only Little Franz knew.

The wolfboys had been accumulating secrets since the carnival had first taken them in. The inexplicable things began to happen in terrifying trickles. Little Franz had ended up in a tree, once, just flew up there without having to climb. Gregorio could light fires with a wave of his hand... it had been terrifying at first.

But then the mysterious letters started to arrive.

At first the letters unnerved them. How was it they were sent by owls? And not even the same owls every time? And this Ginny... at first they wondered if they were being contacted by some nutter... but then Little Franz was juggling one afternoon, and he somehow managed to toss Gregorio up in the air and juggle him too. It made it slightly more easy to read such casual mentions of "spells" and "curses" and "Quidditch".

By the time spring was edging into summer, Little Franz and Gregorio had decided they needed to somehow contact this Ginny person (they suspected she was their sister, as she had spent several pages complaining about being berated in public by "our stupid brothers, and Mum and Dad just sat by"). "I think she thinks we're dead," Gregorio said.

"So why's she talking to dead people, then?" Little Franz asked. "Maybe we're just missing, and presumed dead."

Gregorio just shook his head.

They tried everything. They tried capturing an owl, but they were clever little beasts, and Little Franz's finger took several weeks to heal. They tried making paper airplanes—("I thiiiiink I remember people using paper airplanes to send messages," said Gregorio)—but they only ever flew ten feet, and certainly did not manage to reach the mysterious Ginny.

Come find us, all the messages said. Increasingly, this was all Little Franz and Gregorio could think of. They wanted to leave... but all they knew, all they could remember, was this carnival. What if they set off to find the magical Ginny, and they lost everything? Neither one of them liked to admit they were scared...

"What should we try next?" Their little gypsy caravan was dark. They'd been trying to sleep for hours.

Little Franz rustled his bedclothes. "Maybe we should write it in fireworks..."

Gregorio laughed despite himself. "That sounds like fun... making fireworks say things..." It felt almost like a memory.

"We'll light it up all over Devon," Little Franz added dreamily. "She'll see it..."

"Don't you mean the Orkney Islands? She said she's in the Orkneys, and she's bloody tired of the cold."

"Oh yeah, I meant the Orkneys," Little Franz said.

Gregorio sniggered. "That poor Harry fellow. Poor both of them."

The Turkish wolfboys were quiet again, and soon slipped into dreams — one dreamed of a crooked house with smoke coming out of its chimney, a place that looked like home. The other dreamed of two older people, sitting around a fire, looking sad... both cried in their sleep, but when they awoke, neither remembered finding their home, if only in their dreams.