Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, it is the property of the brilliant J.K Rowling. This story is the product of her marvellous characters and world and my imagination.

Any reviews are loved very much. Enjoy this chapter.

Lessons with Dumbledore and trying to forget

It was 2 o clock the next afternoon and at 12 Grimmauld Place a large host of interested people were waiting eagerly outside the kitchen for one Ginny Weasley to finish her first lesson with Albus Dumbledore. Twenty minutes later Dumbledore emerged levitating a slim red haired girl whose eyes were closed. The group began to panic immediately, fussing and worrying until Dumbledore calmed them with a wave of his hand, "Miss Weasley is in perfect health. She is merely sleeping, constant occlumency practice and casting spells like the patronus takes an awful lot out of a witch or wizard, especially one of only sixteen. After all this work her mind will be more open tonight so I've placed some mind shields in her head and left a dreamless sleep draught for her to take before she goes to bed tonight." He bid them all goodbye and headed back to Hogwarts.

Ginny woke up two hours later with only a small headache and a large appetite. The work with Professor Dumbledore had been very draining, especially having to relieve all her memories, good and bad. The worst were the memories of Tom, but Dumbledore tried to focus more on memories of her younger years, before she had gone off to Hogwarts. She was grateful to him for that.

She padded down the stairs to find the kitchen fairly empty, with only Harry, Ron, Hermione, Remus, Sirius and her mother present, a small number compared to the usual dozen or two often present. They all asked her enthusiastic questions about her lesson while they all tucked into soup, but were always careful to not ask too deeply about the memories she had been forced to relieve. Her mother fussed over her, which was comforting and normal, but still rather annoying. She wasn't a china doll about to break, nor was she on the brink of a mental breakdown.

No said her brain, you're just obsessively hunted by the most evil wizard of the twentieth century, and that's just so much better she thought sarcastically to herself. Rolling her eyes discretely she returned to her soup and ate silently.

Being cooped up in the house was not what Ginny enjoyed, she wanted to roam about Diagon Alley with her friends and just feel the sun on her face. She couldn't even get Ron, Hermione or Harry to get something for her very often because of the new rules Dumbledore had imposed upon the Order. Any of the children had to be accompanied by at least three order members when they went out, four if you were Harry. Even the adults had to travel in pairs or more, unless given permission by Dumbledore to do otherwise. But at least they all had a chance to go out, she did not.

But she was sensible enough not to try and sneak out, they all remembered what had happened to Sirius all too well, even though he had returned from the veil in the end. But that didn't stop her from feeling like a caged animal. She was constantly looking for things to do to keep her mind from wandering to Tom, as it inevitably did when she found herself with nothing to occupy her time with.

She, along with Harry, Ron and Hermione, had been given the school books they would have had if they were going back to Hogwarts, in hope that they would keep up with their studies. It was a week later and in typical fashion Hermione had every one memorised, Harry had vaguely skimmed over a few and Ron hadn't opened a single one, resolutely declaring that it was still the summer holidays and he would do no work. Ginny had surprised herself when she had finished all her school books only shortly after Hermione. Her parents pretended they were glad she was taking her studies seriously in the dangerous times, but everyone knew she read to keep her mind off the darker things in her life.

Sirius and Remus subtly helped her by offering books from the Black family library or Remus' personal collection that they thought she would enjoy. Even Dumbledore chipped in occasionally, giving her a book or two to read on subjects like patronuses, shields and occlumency after many of their lessons. She was very grateful to them all and tried to show it by helping with chores and cleaning some of the worse areas of Grimmauld Place whenever she wasn't studying. Her mother was delighted to teach her to cook and then the house was filled with the constant aroma of food, much to Ron's joy, as Ginny found she dearly loved to cook and appeared to have inherited her mother's talent for it.

She would often think about the fact that it was the whole Tom mess that had enabled her to improve so much in her studies, become a great cook and help people. While she was happy to be learning so many things, she couldn't help but feel that she'd trade it all for a world where Tom Riddle wasn't hunting her.

Her lessons with Dumbledore were progressing well. She was much more proficient with her patronus now and her hexes were coming on nicely. She was itching to unleash her even more powerful bat-bogey hex on someone, but as there were no death eaters around the opportunity had yet to present itself.

The most useful thing she had learnt was a shield charm, but not just a normal one, an incredibly powerful version. You cast it with your wand but controlled it with your mind and it enveloped you in a shield that protected the caster from any and every spell with the exception of Avada Kedavra. Luckily, since Voldemort obviously wanted Ginny alive, they wouldn't use the killing curse on her. The only problem was that it required intense concentration to keep up and exhausted her afterwards. But she could hold it for 10 minutes now and, if what Dumbledore said was correct and it usually was, this was an incredible feat and she would still improve. Ginny knew that the shield could be what protected her from Voldemort's grasp and she therefore spent many hours trying to master it.

Next chapter shouldn't take too long.