They day was bright and chilly, and as Ginny slowly made her way down to Care of Magical Creatures she could only think of the night before when Harry had finally kissed her. She had waited so long for that moment and when it had come she couldn't hold back her tears of happiness. For more than an hour they had sat next to each other by the fire in the common room. Everyone else had gone to bed but neither of them moved. The fire was slowly dieing out and the early morning light was creeping closer when Harry finally turned towards her and pulled her to him. He leaned down and every so gently pushed his lips against hers. When she responded to his touch he kissed her again. Ginny didn't know what to do, didn't know where to put her hands, didn't know how to position her face. This was her first kiss. But Harry didn't notice her innocent awkwardness or he pretended not to. He pulled back and looked her in the eyes. She smiled, and as though a sign that everything was going to be find now, he smiled back. He took her in his arms and held her softly till morning.
Ginny violently awoke. The sheets seemed to be strangling her, they were so tight. She could feel tiny beads of sweet across her forehead and felt as though she was going to suffocate. Slowly her heart beat slowed and her breathing became regular and she remembered the sweet dream she had just had. Then she remembered the living nightmare she is in now. Slowly, she climbed out of the bed and found her clothes tossed across the room. She dressed carefully, not wanting to agitate her new bruises and scratches. Her body moaned in protest as she started to walk around the room, looking for the exit that Malfoy must have taken to leave. But she could find nothing. There were no hidden doors behind the beautiful tapestries, no magically concealed exits in the rough stone. Neither were there any trap doors leading downwards nor any staircases of any kind leading up. She slowly lowered her self onto a stool and could feel a wave of complete hopelessness wash over her. It was overwhelming and devastating, taking her down into the abyss of darkness, named despair.
"No," she said quietly. "I will not be held captive by him; I will not let myself be made into a helpless victim." Ginny paced the room, looking at the walls. Not studying them for exits, just looking. It's when your not searching the answer comes. Her glance passed along a huge picture of a brooding, cloaked man when she stopped. She crept up to the picture and ran her small, elegant but bruised fingers around the edges. She winced as a torn fingernail caught on the wooden frame, but she soon found what she was looking for and she forgot the pain.
There was a small latch on the edge of the painting. Ginny unhooked it and the picture frame swung silently forward. She peered inside to be greeted by intense darkness and a caustic smell that filled her nostrils and her throat. She suppressed a gag and slowly climbed into the dark hole in the wall. It didn't seem like the way Draco had taken her to get here, but she had been struggling and confused by fear. And it was her only option at this point. She didn't want to be anywhere near that bed when he got back. She started down the passage way but could not continue. The darkness was too deep and too utterly black. Never before had she been so consumed in darkness. She slowly retraced her steps back to the room and looked for anything that could serve as a light in that hell hole. The only thing she found was a small bag of glowing stones. She didn't know their real purpose, but they would suit hers. She made her way back to the passage and climbed inside, her body aching with every movement. She reached back, once inside, and pulled the picture back towards her, closing herself in. She pulled one of the glowing stones out of the bag and it illuminated the corridor in an eerie shade of green. As far as she could tell she had one option and that was to go straight. There were no turns as far as she could see.
"At least I can find my way back if it leads to a dead end," she whispered to herself, stumbling over a crack in the floor. I have no place to hide if Malfoy comes, was what she was really thinking about as she took a few more steps. But the rewards of maybe getting out of Malfoy's twisted world outweighed the consequences of him catching her. She made her way slowly, looking out for ruts and cracks and rocks. The smell that had nauseated her earlier was dissipating and she hardly noticed it anymore. For more than an hour she walked, the stone that she held never dimmed, it actually seemed to grow brighter the farther she distanced herself from that room that had stolen everything from her.
Ginny continued her trek until at last she came to an end. The wall in front of her was smooth and warm. It almost seemed to be alive under her hand. She looked around and to her astonishment found a beautiful crystal doorknob shinning in the light of the stone. The crystal refracted the glow from the rock and it bounced off the knob in many directions. Ginny slowly turned the handle. It wasn't locked.