Author's Note: It's been a while since I've written anything, and here's an old, pre-HBP story I found on my hard drive. Another addition to the "Ginny Weasley character exploration series" that began with By Name, and that I never got around to making into an actual series.

So here it is: we begin right before the Dream Team's sixth year. It's an AU, to preserve my pre-HBP ideas. Ginny introspection, Ginny/Hermione pairing comes up later, as well as Death Eater-action.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

The world is a plain, smooth-grassed, hummocky, extending from the hills as far as the eye can see. Under a hot sun, it glares back at the eyes in shades of white, of gold, of barely-green. There are no hills of course, save to those who climb them. There are few hummocks. Under the white sun, a dizzying, light-on-flesh melee of humans from here to the horizon teems, moves, touches, parts.

A woman-child, melancholy in her too-old eyes, imagines she is the only one who sees.

Too many battles. Or not enough, when one considered that the closest thing to a battle yet had been a short encounter at the Ministry, and Severus had not even taken part. But too many months, too many meetings. Too many potions brewed after hours for the Headmaster, potions whose purpose Severus did not question but could guess from their nature. Too much evidence that he would not survive this war.

And for all he had given, and would yet give – for he knew, certainly, without any reliance on tea leaves or crystal balls, that he would be asked to give much more before anything like an end would come to this – he would still owe a debt to the man called Albus Dumbledore. Likewise to the woman called Minerva McGonagall. Nothing would erase either debt to his benefactors. Especially not to Minerva.

He was tied to Minerva for eternity by the strings of a duty he could not repay.

Severus paused in mid-stride – a terrible habit he'd picked up in the last year, as bad as nail biting. He'd been pacing the entrance hall to 12 Grimmauld Place for the past fifteen minutes without being conscious of much of his surroundings. Dark-colored stone, not cheered much even by the silver-gray rug Molly had recently laid over it. Hat tree. Staircase (creaky). Covered portrait (dangerous). Closed doors all around. Yes, he'd been reviewing again his great debt, the price he had to pay for being stupid as a teenager.

Just when I think I've gained some self-respect, Severus thought, I lapse right back into self-pity. Into the tragic debt I owe to a woman I've never even hurt.

It was only partially true – he'd seen the disappointment in her eyes when she learned of his early affair with the Death Eaters. But nothing but his own thinking made that in any way a debt he owed.

The connection that his tragic fiction afforded was probably what made it so attractive to his mind. That being so, the fiction was at least a little acceptable. And Minerva was here right now, he remembered as if only just realizing it. That accounted for his current whereabouts, even after his business in the Order meeting had been long finished.

A door opened. It was the door to the kitchen, and despite himself Severus felt a shot of adrenaline enter his system – a minor dose, as any potions master could tell. Minerva stepped into the entrance hall, closing the door on a cheerier yellow lighting that Severus felt no particular kinship with. She saw him and paused, as if not quite sure how to react to meeting him here.

"Good evening, Severus," she said after a bit, adjusting her emerald cloak. Whether she was making too much of the action or doing it absentmindedly, Severus could not tell.

"And to you, Minerva." He realized he had paused in his walking, but it might have seemed rude to continue. "Heading back to the castle?"

"I am," she replied, and Severus found he had an ache of anxiety in his stomach – the awkwardness was nearly too much to bear.

He nodded abruptly. "I bid you safe journey then."

Must I be such a coward?

He Disapparated just as abruptly, leaving a blinking Professor McGonagall behind. From the second-floor landing, the toughest witch within a several-kilometers' radius could almost have looked disappointed.

Ginny didn't stir until McGonagall, too, had Disapparated, and then she only adjusted her position on the second-story floor. It was of the same cold dimension stone as the entrance hall, without benefit of a rug, and more than mildly uncomfortable. Door-watching, she called her newest hobby, for every few minutes of the day at least one of the doors in the hall would open and admit another member of the Order. Sometimes she witnessed interesting meetings like the one she'd just seen. Most of the time the action was more boring. She would wedge herself between an old cabinet and the railing, well out of the light, and sit, and watch. Watch until every detail of the entrance hall was burned into her memory, like the background of a photograph. Too stark and tangible, from here, to be a real place where real people passed through.

That doesn't make any sense, Ginny thought. Quite often. But those were the only words for it. There was an atmosphere to the entrance hall, one that made it hard to believe in once one had seen the place enough.

The entrance hall was a place of dreams; surely it could not be real. It was a place of thought and atmosphere. No one else really knew it like Ginny.

I spend too much time here. Ginny thought that quite often as well. And yet, were she at home, this time would have been spent roaming the fields, or maybe walking the road into town and back every day. Anything to be alone – but not here.

She didn't exactly hate the entrance hall. That would have been pointless. A melancholy that said she would have been elsewhere – if if if. This was the place at 12 Grimmauld Place she most liked, the one she conquered as her own. It was nothing to worry about that she kept to her onesome.

A pause in thought while loud footsteps – they could have been thunder – sounded from down the hall. Hermione Granger thundered past in a dream of bushy brown hair, white jumper, and blue denim skirt. Boom-clapping down the stairs, Hermione's passing began Ginny's thought process anew. She'd never thought of Hermione as the "thundering" type. The girl seemed too proper by far. But maybe that's the problem, Ginny mused, maybe I've automatically assumed she is too proper to thunder. A made-to-order mental block. I see her coming and think dignity.

Hermione was now running from the bottom stair, across the entrance hall and to the kitchen door. Dignified, no. Not now that Ginny considered her. Too pushy, too mouthy, too disheveled for that.

Dignity seemed to arise out of the older girl's disorder, though. Ginny gave a mental shrug – it didn't matter. These were thoughts of an afternoon in the entrance hall, nothing more.

Nothing less.

Hermione Granger paused before tapping on the kitchen door, turning partially to one side. Her half-visible profile caught whatever meager light there was in the entrance hall. The wan light curving softly down one of her cheeks, and then only her bushy head of hair visible as she faced the door head-on – Ginny swallowed, a sudden warmth in her gut dissipating as Hermione was admitted, and the sliver of yellow cheerfulness disappeared once again (there must have been no important business going on).

Thus it had been nearly all summer. But again, no matter. Whether she encouraged the whole business or not, no matter.

Somewhere in the bowels of 12 Grimmauld Place, a clock struck five in the evening. Ginny stirred again and settled back against the paneled wall. Her discomfort was of her own making. Entirely. And actually, she rather liked that idea.