Entry 3

After an estimated four days—eight meals, twice a day—marked by sleeping, singing to herself, daydreaming, thinking about the future, and basically every other way she could think of to occupy herself in a room that was constant darkness punctuated by periods of brief magical light, the routine came to an end.

When a creaking sound came from somewhere near her head that morning, followed by invasive light, Ginny kept her eyes shut and remained laying on the bed, expecting Malfoy to come in, drop her breakfast somewhere in her vicinity, and then step out again. Since the shock of seeing him the first time, they hadn't said a word to each other, until the boredom and loneliness of being stuck in a solitary room had finally overcome her and she had asked him when she was going to see Voldemort. His response was a flinch at the name and then a harsh comment on her gall for saying the Dark Lord's name out of her filthy mudblood loving lips. Of course there had been some insults exchanged, and she had almost punched him before she realized her perilous position as a captive of the Death Eaters, but finally he told her in a very cold and rude manner that he had no clue when she would meet him. And in the end, Ginny had somehow wound up telling him that she was sick of the room and he had—to her surprise—agreed to get her out of it.

Though she didn't hold much faith in the word of a Malfoy at all, even just the slightest glimmer of hope was enough to keep her content until she met with Voldemort. She allowed herself no more than a glimmer; hope followed by disappointment and despair would do her no good in her current situation. Thus, when Malfoy entered the room, Ginny laid on the bed silent and unmoving, refusing to open her eyes and acknowledge his presence at all. She feared that seeing his face or meeting his knowing smirk would dash her small glimmer of hope permanently.

"Get up girl," said a raspy voice, grating her ears like sandpaper on skin.

Ginny's eyes snapped open and she rolled onto her stomach, pushing herself up on her elbows to stare the new arrival in the eye.

"Stop looking at me like a newborn lamb," the woman snapped, implying that looking like a newborn lamb was in some way disgusting and entirely undesirable. "Now get up. You're gonna work."

It took a few more seconds for the woman's words to fully register in Ginny's mind. Work? Did the woman mean as a Death Eater? So she was approved even without Voldemort deciding what to do with her? Completely puzzled and surprised, her small speck of hope broadening against her better judgment, Ginny pushed herself off of the bed and stood up, feeling cramps already forming in her legs from lying on a bed motionless for the many hours that she had.

At the sight of the expression on the woman's face, she didn't dare try and stretch to relieve her aches. Instead, she followed closely behind the woman, tailing her steps eagerly to the point of almost stepping on her heels. As the two went down the stairs, she fell back in her pace and took the opportunity to observe the house as it unfolded before her. She hadn't gotten much of a chance before, seeing as her face had been pressed into someone's bulging stomach, but now she realized that the house was much larger than it had appeared outside the night that she had been brought there. It wasn't surprising, seeing as many wizards compressed the appearances of their houses, cars and such to make it seem far less roomy than it actually was. Or rather they did the opposite, and expanded the inside of their belongings to make it far roomier than it should have been. She assumed that it was a benefit since the man had implied that they were living in an area filled with muggles.

The stairs let out to a large entrance hall to the house, filled with bright and warm lights from the chandeliers on the broad ceiling high above the hall. However, the entrance hall was about the only bright and cheery place in the entire house. Everywhere else—the stairs directly opposite to the ones that she was climbing down, the long dark hallways of rooms that the staircase led to, and another part of the house that the entrance hall led to, a long and gloomy looking hallway, filled with numerous closed doors and hidden secrets behind each. She wondered if any Death Eaters were behind those doors, hidden in the murky shadows of the rooms, plotting their next move.

Excluding the false comfort of the entrance hall, the house reminded Ginny of the chilling sensation that she had first had upon walking into the Phoenix headquarters the first time. Admittedly, it was rather empty of the normal decorations and items that most houses of Dark Wizards held, and that Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place had first held. The teen wondered if it was because all of the really bone-chilling items were hidden in the rooms in the hallway before her, or somewhere in the Death Eaters' rooms above her head. Or was there no dark décor because the house wasn't originally a Dark Wizard's house at all? It had obviously been originally a muggle residence, adapted to fit the Death Eaters' needs, and they hadn't completely finished with the remodeling either, she guessed. A reason why the main entrance was still bright and cheerful.

To her luck and slight disappointment at not satisfying her morbid curiosity, the woman didn't lead her to any of the shadow filled areas in the house. Instead, Ginny followed her into a room almost underneath the stairs that she had just come down. It wasn't dark and terrifying; it was a kitchen. But it was a far cry away from the warmth and security of her mother's kitchen or even the kitchens at Hogwarts. It was small and dingy looking, with rust strains over the countertop, peeling paint on the walls, and a fresh spiderweb in the corner of the room. The cabinets were faded and the knobs on them looked worn; one cabinet slightly ajar to reveal a meager selection of jam, canned food, and malicious looking potions ingredients that Ginny was sure she had never used in class. She wondered if some of the ingredients had come from Knockturn Alley on the night that she had been captured.

Besides the stove, the refrigerator, the countertop, and the cabinets, the room only contained one other piece of furniture, a small table with crooked chairs. It was on one of these chairs that her companion sat and looked at her pointedly, the woman's prematurely graying hair giving her an undeserved appearance of old wisdom as she told Ginny what to do.

"Look in that sink," the Death Eater instructed her, waiting until she had complied to continue. "You're gonna wash those dishes."

Ginny paused, looking at the dirty dishes in the sink and waiting for more instructions. Hearing nothing further, she turned around and glared at the woman who was now reclining back in her chair, her legs on the table in front of her. Somewhere, she had gotten a book and was currently reading it with a sour look on her face.

"How am I supposed to clean the dishes without a wand?" the girl finally asked, irritated and tired of waiting for her overseer to glance up.

The older woman snorted derisively but didn't look up as she replied to her. "I'm not giving you a wand. Do it by hand, like muggles do."

Ginny looked back at the dirty dishes, piled high in the sink and caked to the brim with food. Didn't the dark wizards ever finish everything on their plates? She stared at the dishes further, thinking of how to wash them with no magic. It required a rag—something that she spotted out of the corner of her eye—soap—another thing that was on the side of the mountain of dishes—and water. She frowned. There was no water present, and without a wand, she wasn't exactly sure how to make water suddenly appear.

She turned around again and crossed her arms in annoyance, staring at the woman, who was now tapping her fingers on the table absentmindedly as she glared at her book.

"There's no water," she informed her. Her companion continued tapping her fingers and frowning at the book, ignoring Ginny entirely as if to say, "Not my problem."

Ginny glared at her, taking advantage of the fact that the woman wasn't looking, and turned around again, determined to find a way to wash the dishes herself without relying on the woman's non-existent help. First there was the matter of water. She looked around her, knowing that muggles had some way of getting water without a wand. Unfortunately, she wasn't as familiar with muggle contraptions or their ways of coping with magic as her father was, and had only seen her mother clean dishes with magic.

She glanced at the sink that the dishes were contained in and saw nothing. Peering carefully behind the stack of dishes, while trying to avoid them toppling over, she finally spotted a faucet. Of course, she thought, privately chiding herself on once again not realizing something before. And in the presence of another Death Eater as well. She hoped that she wouldn't constantly continue in this pattern. It would put her odds of becoming one of them very low, if she couldn't even prove that she was intelligent enough to be one.

The witch flicked on the faucet and watched the water come out, shooting from the head of the faucet into the drain below. Now how to keep it entirely in the sink? She looked around again and saw something to her left that might work. It was large enough to cover the drain and looked like it would fit snugly enough to avoid being pushed upwards and wind up floating on top of the water. She placed it over the drain and ran the water again—it worked.

After a long and tedious washing of the dirty dishes by hand, her arms soaked to her elbow and her nose covered with soap suds from a palm went astray, Ginny dried the last plate with a towel and set it with the others in an orderly pile arranged by item. Then she emptied the sink of its water, letting it slowly spiral down the drain as she removed the block that she had placed there.

"I'm done," she called over her shoulder. When she turned around, her eyes met a basket full of laundry that was level with her head. The basket was lowered, allowing her to see the Death Eater's face above it.

"Good," the woman told her. "Now go hang these up to dry."

The overseer shoved the basket in her still-damp arms and told her to go out the front door and walk around to the back of the house, where she would see a clothesline. She also informed her that there were clothespins under the top shirt that she could use to hang them up. Then she pushed Ginny out of the kitchen, turning around and disappearing into the black hallway behind the girl.

Before anyone could spot her and tell her to do something that didn't involve going outside, Ginny sped out the front double doors.

Light met her eyes, natural this time instead of the magical and artificial light that she had been exposed to thus far. And suddenly, all of her senses were assaulted at once. The smell of fresh air and the hint of moisture that always came after a recent rainshower, the feel of the breeze and the heat from the sun on her bare skin, the sound of birds' chirps and bees' hums ringing through her ears as they went about their daily work, and the visual stimuli that met her eyes—green grass, tall trees, the blue sky—far different from the ancient wooden boards that she saw whenever her room happened to be lit. To a person that had been contained in a small prison for days, it was like paradise. She wanted to jump up and down, running and skipping, as happy as one might be if a long-lost friend had finally returned from a long trip away from home.

However, Ginny did none of this. On the contrary, she quickly calmed herself and tried to get her thoughts back in order, bringing her to a more rational state. She was outside, which meant that she could run away and try to escape. The man's words came back to her, the warning that he had given her on the day that she had been brought there. He could have been bluffing, she reckoned, but then the words that she had said to him came back as well.

Don't worry. I wasn't planning to escape.

When she had said them, she had really meant them, and she suddenly realized that she still meant them. Though running away might be the most satisfying option, even if she somehow managed to avoid being captured by the Death Eaters and made it back to her family, she knew that she would forever regret not going through with her plan and seeing if she could ever really become a successful and powerful Death Eater. Going back to comments about how she was too young to do something, or conversations about the wonderful deeds that everyone around her had done, and of course, the all-encompassing accomplishments of her ex-boyfriend, Harry Potter. The involuntary thoughts were as strangling as the reality had been back in the Burrow and Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. Though the Death Eaters were evil, within them she could carve her own place, without expectations or overshadowment, and where she could prove herself as successful a witch as Harry Potter was a wizard, if she so chose.

Convinced again that it was the right choice to stay there and shoving the painful thoughts of her break up with Harry—was it because he thought her unable to take care of herself?—out of her mind, Ginny readjusted the clothes basket in her arms and stalked off to the back of the house to hang the laundry up on the line to dry. Interestingly, once she got there she found that there were all types of things in the basket. Shirts and pants similar to the ones that muggles wore to work, jeans, t-shirts, the all black formidable looking Death Eater robes, a pair of mismatched striped socks, an odd looking fisherman's hat, a damp teddy bear—she wasn't sure what to do with that one, so it went on the grass beside her as she worked—and even a hideous looking fur coat, probably ruined from washing it the wrong way. She was hanging up a large and heavy bed sheet when a familiar and most un-welcome voice met her ears.

"You're in my way."

The girl put the last clothespin on the sheet and spun around, her hands on her hips in a very Mrs. Weasley-ish appearance.

"I happen to be hanging laundry to dry," she informed Malfoy bitterly.

"Yes, but you're doing it wrong," he pointed out coldly. "There are too many spaces in between the clothes. Where am I supposed to put mine?" A basket similar to the one that was at her feet was in his hands.

She turned around, putting her back to him. "You have magic. Make the line longer."

"No," he blatantly refused. "And this is a muggle area. We can't just go around doing magic in the middle of the day."

Ginny opened her mouth, wanting to point out that the adults did magic all the time, daylight or not, but instead she told him, "I'm already three-quarters finished."

"So?" came the response from behind her.

"So?" She spun around again. "It would take me forever to reorganize the clothes. Especially just for your benefit!"

"True." His eyes narrowed and his wand raised, and then she heard a sharp noise behind her. Ginny spun around again, to find that he had smashed all of her laundry together at the left corner of the clothesline. The wet bedspread that she had been putting up earlier came free of its pins to cover her head, and a quick laugh from somewhere behind her let her know that Malfoy was the cause.

Ginny untangled herself from the bedsheet and tore it off of her face. She spotted Malfoy at the right side of the clothing line, hanging up his own batch of clothes to dry. Instead of wasting time to glare at him, she growled. That was it; she was sick and tired of him. In a quick flash of motion, the only girl in a family of six brothers tackled the blonde-haired mass of arrogance to the ground. Then she raised her fist to punch him.

"Doyoureallywanttodothat?" he said quickly and rushed, half a smirk still on his face.

She glanced at her raised fist and then she slowly lowered it, wishing that she could choke him at that very moment. But she didn't, furious that attacking a git like him would put her in a precarious situation with the other Death Eaters. She got off the boy and stood up, still glaring angry daggers at the cause of her current frustration.

"Mark my words, Draco Malfoy," she threatened, pointed at him as he stood up and brushed himself off, taking care to fix his hair. "Once I'm a Death Eater, you will pay."

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her, still straightening his robes. "All this over a little charm on the laundry?" He smirked. "So I guess that the entire Weasley tribe is all temper and no brains, not just your brother huh?"

Her hands clenched together again, but she didn't reply to his insult on her family like she knew that he wanted her to. Instead she said, "You've been a pain ever since I first came to Hogwarts, Malfoy. No, in fact even before that," she corrected herself. "In that bookstore right before my first year, when your father so generously gave me Riddle's book and caused me to have my worst year at Hogwarts ever."

Malfoy smirked in amusement and remembrance. "I had forgotten about that. You were killing chickens right?" He laughed, as it the reopening of the Chamber of Secrets in her first year had actually been a humorous event.

She growled at him again, her anger building even more. "Get away from me," the girl ordered quietly, but with a dangerous cadence to her voice.

Her companion stepped away from her, smirking at the fact that he had been able to make her angry, and obviously feeling safe that she couldn't act on it. She watched him flick his wand almost absent-mindedly over his shoulder, and the rest of the clothes that were left in his basket hung themselves on the line, clothespins and all. Then he turned on his heel, strolling back to the house and stowing his wand in his pocket as he went.

Ginny turned away from him and stomped to the corner of the clothesline, glaring at the crunched up clothes fiercely with misplaced anger. She let out an angry yell and punched the nearest item hanging on the line, a still very wet shirt. She tried to calm herself down, telling herself that Malfoy wasn't worth ruining her day over, even if he was an infuriating prat.

"Jerk," she muttered to herself and placed her hands on her laundry, preparing to straighten out the clothes and arrange them properly on the line. Then a thought struck her.

The witch whirled around to find Malfoy about to enter the house through its back door. "Malfoy!" she called sharply.

Her quarry paused and turned around to face her. "More threats?" he asked in a bored drawl.

"Why did you do it?"

He blinked in confusion. "Because it was fun?"

Ginny frowned. His answer made no sense. Then she realized that he thought that she was referring to the sheet thrown over her head earlier. She shook her head at him. "No, I meant, why did you help me? You're the reason why I'm out of that room, right?"

The smug look that came over his face at her last question made her almost want to take it back. Or send a very heavy bat bogey hex at him. Whichever opportunity came first.

"I thought that you were lying when you agreed to help me yesterday," she added in slight puzzlement.

His eyes narrowed. "Malfoy's do have a code of honour, Weasley. We don't lie about trivial things."

Ginny crossed her arms and stared at him. "That doesn't answer my question."

He smirked. "Simple. You needed out of that room and I didn't want to do all of this rubbish by myself."

She frowned, slightly disappointed by his answer. She had been expecting a more…chivalrous one, maybe something to uncover some secret soft side of him that she hadn't believed existed before. Now she knew for sure that it didn't exist. Malfoy was a being that only did things for his personal benefit, just like all Malfoys. A selfish jerk; probably the main reason why he was in Slytherin. That and his meanness.

The older boy suddenly smirked at her again and made an upward motion with his head, urging her to look at something behind her. Ginny glanced over her shoulder—and the same bedspread from earlier fell upon her head again, encasing her in a mound of whiteness.

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Author's Note: Thanks so much for the reviews! I'm glad that you like it. This chapter is the longest so far. Unfortunately, the next chapter will probably be the shortest, so beware.

--Paze