"What's in the ministry," Molly asked. "Why do we need to go there?"
"There are experts there in the department of mysteries, Unspeakable that specialise in the magic of love and the soul," Dumbledore replied his voice containing a tone of urgency. He knew that if the bond broke now his plans would never be able to come into fruition even half formed as they were. "That book that I showed you in the hospital; that came from the department of mysteries. I know a lot about the magic at work here but the people there are the best."
"But what's wrong?" Arthur asked.
"The increased frequency of the bonds fluctuation means that the bond is destabilising and will eventually break," Dumbledore replied his voice grim. "From the symptoms it might have something to do with the failed curse that hit Harry on Halloween."
"Could the bands be doing this?" Molly asked.
"No this is beyond the influence of the bands; as I said they only contain the magic they don't stop the flow altogether. This is something else."
"So they can fix this?" she asked desperately.
"If anyone can they can," he said firmly.
Both Harry and Ginny were scared. They didn't understand most of the words that Dumbledore had said but they understood enough to know they were in trouble. They knew that if the bond broke both of them would die; neither of them wanted to die, nor did they want to lose their new best friends. They clung to each other as Molly dragged them to the fire and grabbed the floo powder.
"you two and Dumbledore first," she said desperately as they squeezed in and Dumbledore shouted, "Ministry of Magic!" and they disappeared in a blaze of green smoke still holding tight to each other.
Both of them fell clumsily out of the fire place at the ministry with Dumbledore somewhat more gracefully climbing out with them and immediately he started pulling them toward the lifts on the other side of the atrium. Despite the situation Harry couldn't help but be awed by the spectacle of the ministry's main atrium. Hundreds of witches and wizards walked through the space, heading towards fireplaces to leave, an apparation point in a corner or a set of gates and lifts at the far end. Harry reached out to Ginny and together they absorbed the sights of the atrium and the vast plethora of different things to look at and listen to. Dumbledore quickly dealt with the security guard, convincing him to let them pass without the checks as they were kids and travelling with Albus Dumbledore. Harry and Ginny's nerves were frayed and they held each other in fear, hoping that their close contact would keep the bond going and their thoughts were a tangled mass. The lift was relatively empty though it was very brightly lit from the glow of the restrictor bands, their fear and anxiety making their magic want to break loose.
"Keep calm Harry, Ginny," Dumbledore said soothingly. "There will be a solution to this problem, I promise you."
"But what if there isn't," Ginny asked her voice breaking from a small sob that she barely stifled. "I don't want to die. I don't want my Harry to die, we just met and he knows me and he doesn't push me away like my brothers."
"There will be a solution," Dumbledore said. "Your bond is the strongest on record; there must be something big to hurt it and that makes it easy to see. When we see it we can get rid of it and you can go back to how it should be."
"Do you promise?" Harry asked tentatively.
"I promise."
They fidgeted as the lift descended in to the bowels of the ministry, with tinkling music playing through the ceiling and owls perched around the top.
"Why do they have owls," Harry said curiously.
"They carry memos," Dumbledore said. "Though the mess is appalling."
"Why not just send the paper?" Harry asked. "You can make it fly there can't you?"
Dumbledore looked at him in surprise. "You know I've never thought of that," he said with a chuckle. "No one did. I'm sure there is a simple charm that can make the papers send themselves. Quite brilliant Harry."
"Part of the idea came from Ginny," Harry said shyly. "I just put it together."
"Well done both of you." Dumbledore said as the lift stopped and said, "Department of Mysteries."
"Come on you two," and without further prompting the kids hurried down the hall behind the elderly wizard. They turned and opened a door in the hall that looked totally unremarkable and stepped into a circular room with doors all around the sides. When the door they came through closed the walls started spinning around and around making Harry and Ginny very dizzy.
"Department central," Dumbledore said clearly and the spinning stopped and a door right in front of them opened. "Come," Dumbledore said simply, walking through with the children trailing behind him.
In this room there was a sphere made up of at least a dozen other spheres and what looked like tiny people walking around between them. In the centre was what looked like a miniature copy of the room they were in, complete with copies of themselves and Dumbledore. Dumbledore walked towards a set of desks with groups of people clustered around them, everyone looking up to see the people who walked in.
"I need to speak with experts in soul and love magic immediately," Dumbledore said to the group at large and several people stepped forward and pointed their wands at the sphere where several of the inner spheres lit up and doors appeared in the walls nearby.
"What do you need professor?" the one in the front asked in a neutral tone of voice with just the slightest hints of curiosity. Her voice was clearly feminine but definitely not girly, more of a high melodic voice that sounded like she was constantly singing. She towed them towards one of the doors and gestured to the people who had come through them to follow, Harry and Ginny tagging along wordlessly. They were understandably intimidated by the strange things that they had seen the workers at the desks dealing with when they passed close enough that they could see anything.
"We have a problem with a newly formed soul bond; the bond is destabilising quickly," he responded gravely.
"How is that possible?" one of the others asked. "How old is the bond? What stage are they at?"
"The bond is exactly..." he checked his pocket watch. "Twenty three hours and forty three minutes, give or take a few seconds. They are still at the first stage."
"Where are they?" another asked and Dumbledore gestured to the kids. "Them? But they're only children! They couldn't possibly form a soul bond at that age!" he cried.
"I have checked the book of bonds, they're in there," Dumbledore said.
"Carmick," the first to speak and for this she was presumed to be the leader, said while the others consulted in whispers. "Bring the book of bonds." The said man hurried towards a door and disappeared through it, returning less than a minute later with the same book that Dumbledore had brought the previous day.
"They're in here," Carmick said. "'Harry James Potter and Ginnevra Molly Weasley, soul bond', they are bonded."
"When I was called this morning by Molly and Arthur Harry was complaining of pain in his scar and when questioned they revealed the fluctuation frequency had increased from twenty minutes the previous night to less than five minutes as of ten minutes ago," Dumbledore put in.
"What grade were the fluctuations to?" another asked.
"Late fifth level," he replied and every worker gasped. "They also exhibited enhanced abilities in previous levels such as aura vision and total memory sharing. Possibly the ability to rejoin if needed but that phenomenon could be put down to accidental magic. Harry was able to take control of Ginny's body while Ginny was under a dreamless sleeping potion and Harry under a full body bind."
All the workers looked shocked before one spoke up, "have they slept yet?"
"Yes why?"
"Because when unconscious together the couples usually form a mindscape where they converse and otherwise exist until they awake," he said. "This sometimes shows an indication of their bond in some way; be it a symbol, a scene, colours whatever."
Everyone looked at Harry and Ginny. After a brief moment of consulting Ginny spoke. "There was golden light everywhere and there were two balls of light. They were green and brown. There was a ribbon of colour around them but it wasn't complete."
"Could you draw it for us?" Dumbledore asked handing her a quill and parchment.
"Yes," and with that she drew the balls and the ribbon of light. What startled the Unspeakable was the frayed and ripped end that Ginny drew curling up above the two balls and back down again.
"It looks like the Eternity Rune," Carmick spoke up. "But it's incomplete."
"Yes," another agreed. "But only soul magic can interfere with a soul bond. We'll need to take an animus quaero test."
A third Unspeakable walked toward a set of shelves on the walls of the room and took what looked like a sheet of plastic out. He/she they couldn't tell, brought it over and positioned it in mid air behind the couple.
"Stand very still," Carmick said and he and two others pointed their wands at them and spoke a series of incantations in Latin and some older, eldritch language. The pair glowed and shone shafts of light out behind them, passing through the sheet. After a minute they stopped, leaving everything seemingly as it was before. He pulled a small bottle from his robes and poured a single drop onto the sheet and murmured a phrase. The sheet glowed just like the kids had done and patterns formed on the surface before the entire sheet dissolved. In its place was a small depiction in 3d of what Ginny had drawn, though in colour and with several pieces that she had missed in place.
Now clearly visible was a black tar-like substance at the break that scattered the substance of the ribbon encircling the spheres.
"What is that black stuff?" a voice behind Ginny and Harry asked. They both jumped and turned around to see Molly and Arthur standing behind them.
"Evil," Dumbledore said grimly. "And I think I know what it is. I suspected something like this but hoped I was wrong."
"But what..." the leader of the team trailed off and his expression changed from confused to appalled. "Surely not even he would go that far?" he asked looking at Dumbledore pleadingly as though asking him to disabuse him of the notion that he had thought up.
"I believe he went further than either of us could imagine," Dumbledore said with a note of disgust in his voice. He then pointed his wand at Harry and performed a complicated series of gestures. Harry turned pure gold with only his scar glowing with pure black which everyone present didn't believe was possible.
"Horcrux," Dumbledore said grimly. "It's interfering with the bond."
"Yes, "Said one of the people who hadn't spoken yet and most of them were looking green; one had even thrown up and hat to quickly clean the floor and his robes. "Evil like that would not be able to stand love like that and vice versa. Each is battling the other and neither can win alone."
"I'm sorry but what is a horcrux?" Molly asked. "And what does it have to do with their bond?"
"A horcrux is a name for a container which holds a piece of a person's soul," Dumbledore said sadly. "It is the most despicable magic imaginable and not just because of what you have to do to create one. To create one you must commit cold-blooded murder of an innocent and enjoy doing so. That creates a tear in the soul which a person can use to rip a piece away and store it in a container. Such ripping is indirect violation of nature and changes the person permanently. The objective of such a thing is to make the creator immortal, or close to it. A person who makes a horcrux is bound to this world and will survive even a direct hit from a killing curse. Our problem is that the only way to destroy a horcrux is to destroy the container beyond magical repair."
"YOU DON'T MEAN ..." Molly screamed.
"Harry yes," Carmick said. "That's the problem we face: if we leave it in the bond will break and the kids will die. If we take it out, the kids will die."
Harry and Ginny were clutching each other tightly and shivering with fear at the pronouncing that they were going to die.
"Y-You said that there would be a way," Ginny sobbed looking at Dumbledore. "You promised!"
"Is there any way to get the horcrux out without killing Harry?" Arthur asked. "Is there any way at all, there must be a solution."
There was silence apart from the two kids sobbing, both of whom were being comforted unsuccessfully by Molly as everyone thought through the problem to try and find some way out of the hole they found themselves in. Eventually one spoke.
"When a horcrux is created both person and vessel must be prepared for several days before the killing and binding right?" he asked.
"Yes," Dumbledore replied trying to see where this was going.
"So Harry must not have been prepared correctly for the implanting, otherwise he would have succumbed to possession years ago. If the bond wasn't formed correctly..." he trailed off.
"Then we may be able to sever the bonds between the host and fragment without killing the host," another Unspeakable finished.
"Would that work?" the leader asked.
"It's our only shot," he replied. Everyone looked at the Weasleys and Harry.
"What's going on?" Molly asked.
"We think that because the process for creating a horcrux was not complete, we may be able to get it out without killing Harry," Dumbledore said.
"What are the risks?" Arthur asked.
"If it goes wrong it could be fatal," Dumbledore admitted. "Though there really is no other choice; doing nothing would have the same effect as failure. Worse in fact as it would be drawn out and painful."
Molly and Arthur looked at each other stricken. Their youngest child and only daughter was facing death and it was a choice of certain death via long and painful methods or probable quick and possibly painless. They were completely out of their depth but they knew what they had to do. They had to give their daughter her best chance of survival and that meant going ahead and trying to remove the soul fragment. Unable to speak, they both nodded with tears in their eyes.
"Harry? Ginny?" Dumbledore asked gently.
"Will it help Ginny?" Harry asked.
"It's the only chance you have," he replied sadly.
"We'll do it," Ginny said.
"We should go to the room of death," Carmick put in. "We can send the soul fragment through the Veil once it's out."
"Good idea, to the death room," the leader said and everyone trooped out another door. All three Weasleys and Harry had tear marks on their cheeks while the Unspeakable were a mixture of sad and impassive faces.
It took almost half an hour for the Unspeakables to set up a ritual of expulsion and do the necessary arithmancy to get the correct incantations. Ginny and Harry sat together with their parents while they waited, both of them trying to sooth the two kids fears even though inside they were breaking down themselves.
I'm sorry Ginny, Harry thought to her. I should have stayed away from you; you wouldn't be here if it wasn't because of me.
It's not your fault Harry, I chose to go out to you and I chose to go with mum to the hospital. You're my best friend and nothing will change that.
Finally it was time and Ginny and Harry hugged Molly and Arthur.
"We love you mummy and daddy," Ginny whispered. "Never forget that."
"We love both of you too," Molly replied in tears again, knowing that she was saying goodbye in case they didn't survive. "Come back to us, and no bringing You-Know-Who back to play, you can't keep him." She made a poor attempt at a joke.
"We won't mummy," Harry said, noticing how strange the word was on his tongue and together the two kids walked towards the Veil.
"Stand in front of the Veil, but not too close," the leader instructed who had introduced herself as Sally Rosedine. "We don't want you falling through."
"What's through the veil?" Harry asked. "I can hear people behind it."
"It's the Veil of Death," she said gently. "On the other side are those that have died; once you go through you don't come back."
Both nodded and prepared for whatever lay ahead. Molly and Arthur stood to the side in case the kids needed an anchor during the ritual.
"Ready?" Sally asked. Everyone nodded. "Go."
All the adults began to chant in an ancient language, some simply repeating the same phrase over and over, others simply chanting nonsense to add tenor to the overall chant. Others spoke strings of ancient words which the children couldn't understand. The two stood where they were, silent and simply looking into each other's eyes, their arms around each other. As the chant progressed Harry began feeling a tugging at his scar and it began to burn, like someone had shoved a white hot branding iron into his skull and was trying to pull it out again.
Stay with me Harry, Ginny thought to him.
I will, he thought back through the pain.
The pain in his scar grew and grew until Harry couldn't contain it anymore and both children began to scream and clutch each other's heads. Harry's vision flickered and he convulsed, both kids sinking to their knees and blood running down Harry's face as the scar re-opened. Using what he could see of his own face through Ginny's eyes he kept their gazes locked. He felt something wet on his/her face and forcing his eyes to work again he saw that a cut had opened on Ginny's head as well in the same shape.
If we don't make it I want it to end how it began; looking in your eyes, he thought to her though wether she understood or not was not known to him. Both their minds were twisting in agony and thoughts were barely coherent.
Molly and Arthur watched on as the kids sank to their knees, crying out at the pain of the ritual. After a minute of screams which tore through the parents like knives, a green and black mist seeped from the scar on Harry's forehead. The mist formed a face, snakelike with red slits for eyes. With a final shout all the adults raised their wands and swiped their wands from the mist figure of Voldemort to the veil and with a scream of rage the shade soared through and did not come back out.
The two parents jumped forward just as the two kids went limp and keeled over onto their sides and lay still.
Harry and Ginny just managed to keep themselves awake to see the soul fragment that caused all this trouble fly through the Veil. As their vision faded they heard the voices behind the Veil.
"You're so brave..."
"Don't be scared young ones...
"It's over now, rest."
"We're so proud of you..."
"Look out for Dumbledore; he's not what you..."
"She's perfect..."
"What is it with you Potters and fiery redheads?"
"Rest now dear..."
Then everything went black.
When they woke they were in their golden place in their minds again. They looked around and saw that the surroundings were forming into a recognisable scene; Ginny's bedroom at the Burrow. There was her bed, half formed and intangible but still there and yet there were other things there that did not belong in her bedroom.
On the ceiling there was the symbol that they had seen before, but it had changed. Now where it had curled up in a mess before returning to the other sphere there was another ball it curled around this one also brown. The final shape curled over the brown ball on the right and dropped toward the bottom of the green one, curling around and up to the right of the top brown before looping around and down to the bottom of the right brown ball.
"That's the symbol that was there?" Harry said confused. "It's changed, there's an extra ball."
"One that should have been there and the horcrux blocked it," Ginny said. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know."
They continued looking around, there was a wall that seemed to both divide and open the room to another room, similar to the one that they were in but with some key differences. There was nothing magic in this room, everything was muggle. There was a hair dryer on the dresser and a quilt with ponies on it on the bed.
The biggest difference was that there was someone else in that room.
She was slightly taller than them, with bushy brown hair and brown eyes. She was looking around seeming scared and calling for her mum.
"Hello?" Ginny called back to her.
"W-Who are you?" she stuttered. "What are you doing here? What happened to me?"
"I don't know what happened to you," Harry said. "I'm Harry Potter and this is Ginny Weasley, my best friend."
"I'm Hermione Granger," she said. "I was with my mum making lunch when I started getting a head ache. My mum took me upstairs when it got really bad, I was screaming and my head started bleeding. Something was being pulled out and I was scared and then it stopped. Everything faded and went black. Am," she faltered and looked even more scared. "Am I dead? Are you angels."
(A/N and we said "nay we are but men."
Sorry couldn't resist adding that)
"I don't know," Ginny said. "We were trying to get a spirit out of Harry, an evil man left a bit of him in Harry when he attacked Harry as a baby and we got it out."
"Our heads were bleeding like yours was," Harry took over. "And the same thing happened to us."
"Are you a witch?" Ginny asked curious.
Hermione burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.
"What's wrong are you alright?" Harry asked.
"W-why do you say t-that," she sobbed. "E-everyone s-says things to me. Teasing me, h-hiding my books. Why do people h-hate me? They always say that w-when something weird happens around me."
"We don't hate you," Ginny said looking surprised. "When you say weird things happen, what things?"
"Like when Jessica stole my book it flew back to me and when Lauren pushed me and I pushed her back she flew back ten metres."
"You can do magic too!" Harry cried happily. "Things like that happened to me as well."
"T-they did?" Hermione asked looking up.
"Yes, once when I was being chased by my cousins gang I was suddenly on the roof and I have no idea how I got there," Harry said.
"Until you met me and mum and we told you," Ginny said.
"Then why did you call me a witch?" she asked.
"Because you are one," Ginny said. "And so am I."
"Really?"
"Yes, a witch is a girl who has magic, I'm a witch and Harry's a wizard."
"Oh," she said. "Now what happens?"
"Usually we wait in here till we wake up," Harry put in.
"Aren't we awake," Hermione asked confused.
"No we're in our minds, its part of our bond," Ginny said. "Hey do you think that Hermione will be in our bond as well? That would be great! I'd love to have a girl as a friend like you are," she said to Harry.
"What bond?" Hermione asked.
Ginny then explained the soul bond to Hermione, how it works and how long it was for.
"So you two are bound together forever?" she asked. "And you can hear each other's thoughts and memories and see through each other's eyes?"
"Yes, it's nice to have a friend who really knows you," Ginny said. "He knows all my secrets and will never share them. He will always be there and will never hurt me."
"That would be nice," Hermione said and a tear started to form again.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked again.
"I-" she faltered. "I don't have any friends."
"We'll be your friends," Harry said. "I didn't have any before I met Ginny either, my cousin saw to that." He finished the last piece as a mumble.
"Why would your cousin do that wasn't he nice," Hermione asked.
"Nice? Him and his aunt and uncle tried to kill him," Ginny said fiercely.
"They didn't..." Hermione gasped looking horrified.
"They did and would have done if mum and I hadn't been there, we took him to hospital and he almost died," she sobbed at the last words. "We bonded there, that was only yesterday."
"What happened to his relatives," she asked.
"They were arrested," Harry put in quietly. "The trial should be fairly soon."
"I'm so sorry," Hermione said. "What about your parents."
"They were murdered when I was one," he said. "All I remember is a green flash from when he tried to kill me too."
"Oh my god," Hermione whispered. "I- I just don't know what to say, it's so horrible."
"It is but I've got Ginny and the Weasleys now," he said.
They spent some more time talking about Hermione's parents who were dentists and the rest of Ginny's family. Eventually however the golden glow of their surrounding began to fade into white. On the cold stone floor Harry and Ginny opened their eyes.