Chapter 14

Bill rapped Ron and Ginny on the tops of their heads with the end of his wand and they reappeared. They were standing in the Core, a circular torch- lit room with a dozen doors. Bill had made arrangements with Donerk for all the rooms to be in Fledgling Newbie mode. Instead of having dozens of rooms at varying levels of difficulty, the goblins had created these twelve and adjusted the magic to fit the skills of the wizards present for training. Even Fledgling Newbie mode was far beyond Ron's and Ginny's abilities, of course, but at least Bill knew all three of them would walk out in one piece. The last time he was in here, he had nearly been spiked by poisonous darts shooting from the many eyes of a golden statue.

"Pick a door."

Ginny moved so she was between her brothers. "What's going to happen?"

"Each room has some type of treasure— gold, jewels, ancient artifacts. You have to avoid the traps and penetrate the magical concealment to retrieve the treasure without destroying it. Each room will build on the magic you learned in the previous room, so choose the first one carefully."

"Fun!" Ron said.

Bill smiled at him. It was a hell of a lot of fun, minus the poisonous darts.

Ron looked to Ginny. She shook her head.

"That one," Ron said, pointing to an ornately engraved door to their left.

"Open it."

Ron strode across the chamber and cast an Alohomora. "Ginny, come look!"

Ah, the In Plain Sight room. This room looked like one of the Gringotts vaults with piles of gold galleons, stacks of silver sickles, and heaps of glittering gemstones, none of which were the actual treasure. Ron cottoned on at once.

"This is too easy," he said, frowning. "The treasure must be something else." He lit his wand and shone it around the room. Ginny copied him. "Back there, there's space between all this and the wall." Ron made to climb over the coins, but Ginny pulled him back.

"Wait, Ron, Bill said there would be traps." She turned to Bill, who was watching from the doorway. "How do we find out what the traps are?"

Bill showed them Scarpin's Revelaspell, which revealed any enchantments placed on an object. Nothing happened.

"Did it work?" Ginny said.

Bill tried not to be insulted by her wariness. "Yes, it worked. The coins and jewels have not been charmed. Watch carefully. There's a faint glow that appears around the object when the spell is cast." He did it again.

"Cool," Ron said, climbing over.

"So, if someone had cast that on my diary, we would have known it was cursed?"

Bill stared at her. Merlin, could it really have been that simple? "Yes, I think so."

Ginny got a stubborn look on her face, the same one she wore whenever he or his brothers told her she couldn't join them because she was too young, or because she was a girl. "Show me again."

Bill repeated the movement in slow motion and was teaching her how to pair it with the incantation when Ron called out.

"I've found something!" His red head popped up over a stack of sickles. "It's like an invisible box. I can't see it, but I keep running into it."

Bill left Ginny practicing the wand movement and joined his brother at the back of the vault. "How are we going to remove it?"

Ron's forehead crinkled. "Does the spell you used to make me and Ginny reappear work on objects too?"

"Well done, Ron." Bill reversed the Disillusionment charm.

Ron tried another Alohomora, but the lid remained closed. Bill cast the correct spell, and Ron removed the sculpture. He frowned. "What's so special about this?"

"It's a bust of Nefertiti." Ron gave him a blank stare. "She was the wife of a pharaoh. It's over three thousand years old."

Ron still did not look impressed. "It's not the real one, though, is it?"

"Nah, the Muggles have it. In Germany."

Ron set the bust back in the box. "I don't get it. What was the trap?"

"Greed," Ginny said from behind them. "Remember the Gringotts doors? 'Enter stranger, but take heed, of what awaits the sin of greed. . . .' You had to look past the obvious to find the true wealth."

"Exactly. Ready to try another one?"

Ginny preceded them out of the room and returned to the center of the Core, studying the doors before approaching a plain wooden one and casting a Revelaspell. Blue Arabic shimmered in the air, then disappeared. "What did it say?"

Bill shook his head. "I don't know. I've never seen anyone cast that on one of the doors before, and I wasn't expecting it. Do it again." The blue script reappeared, but Bill didn't read it this time, either; he was too busy staring at his little sister. "That's a N.E.W.T.- level spell, that is."

"It is?" Ginny looked from her wand back to him and shrugged. "It seemed straightforward enough."

Bill shook his head again, harder this time. "Do it again, and see if you can hold the spell so the writing stays visible." As he expected, she had more trouble with this. Since he could see the effort was tiring her, Bill cast the spell himself and translated the writing. "The door is sealed, and there are concealment charms and transfigured objects inside."

Ginny went still and rigid. "This one has dark magic."

Bill nodded.

She reached for Ron's hand.

"You don't have to do this," Ron said quietly. "I can open the door and see what's inside first."

She considered the offer, then shook her head. "Bill, there's not anything— anything living in there, is there?"

He knew there wasn't, not at the Fledgling Newbie level, but as this was supposed to be a teaching exercise. . . . "That's a different spell, actually. Vita revelio. Nothing."

Was it just the torchlight, or had she really gone that pale?

She backed up and cast the spell from the center of the Core. The lock clicked, and the door swung open. It was pitch black inside. Ginny lit her wand, and its light bounced erratically. Slowly, she advanced to the doorway, pulling Ron with her.

"Will you conjure some lamps, please?"

Her voice was shaking almost as much as her hand. If he wasn't certain this would help her, Bill would have felt guilty for putting her through this. He conjured several hanging lamps like the ones at the Burrow. This room was plain and apparently empty.

"Do that disillusionment thing."

"No, I want to try. What's the incantation again?" Ron said.

Bill told him and Ron repeated it. Nothing happened.

"Stupid, useless thing." Ron looked like he wanted to break his wand in half for good. "I can't wait until we go to Diagon Alley. Dad said I can get a new one."

"Here, try mine."

"No!" Ginny's voice was high and shrill, and Bill and Ron turned to look at her. "Bill is the only one who knows what he's doing. He should keep his wand."

"Well then, let me borrow yours."

Ginny just gave Ron a look.

Bill placed her behind him and Ron and relinquished his wand. This time, when Ron repeated the incantation, the air and floor ahead of them wavered and shimmered before reforming.

"Did you see that?"

"I did." Bill smiled at his brother's excitement and set his hand over Ron's. "One more time." With the added force of Bill's magic, the floor in front of them opened into a deep pit.

Ginny gasped. "You mean if we hadn't done that, we would have just fallen in?"

"Yes. That's why the first thing you do in approaching a site is revealing charms, but I've never seen anyone do it from the Core. That was brilliant, Ginny."

She shifted her wand to shine at him, judging the sincerity of the compliment. "Thank you." She turned back to the room. "What's back there?"

Ron and Bill repeated the Disillusionment charms until the entire room was exposed. This one was set up like a shop, with a worktop at the back and shelves along the walls holding various types of clothing and household objects. Ginny shone her wand light down into the pit again.

"Didn't you say there was transfiguration magic in here?"

"Mm-hmm." Bill was shining his own wand over the shelves, trying to remember what the treasure was in this room.

"What if that pit isn't really a pit?"

That was interesting. "Give it a go."

"Finite Incantatem."

Something flew up at her. Ginny screamed, and the room filled with flying bat bogeys. She had always been good at that spell, but the improvement when performed with her own wand was dramatic. Bill knocked a particularly gooey one off the back of Ron's neck and ended the charm. Ginny was shaking, taking those little heaving breaths girls did when they were trying not to cry. Ron put his arms around her, and she buried her face in his chest.

"You said there wasn't anything living in here," Ron accused.

"There isn't!" Bill reached for Ginny, but Ron actually turned her away from him. The brothers glared at each other.

"There isn't anything living in here, Ginny. That wasn't dark magic, either." Bill moved under Ron's watchful gaze to pick up something from the floor. "This bounced at you when it changed back into its original state."

Ginny didn't move from Ron's embrace, just turned her face to rest against his shoulder, raised her wand arm behind his back, and cast a Revelaspell at the ball in Bill's hand. When nothing happened except the faint glow, she stepped away from Ron.

"If I had done that first, would I have known that was what it was?"

"You would have known it was transfigured. That's the spell I thought you were going to do."

She took a deep breath. "Okay, there are too many things in here to check them one by one. Now what do we do?"

"When did you know there was something wrong with that diary?"

She went still and rigid for so long that Ron answered for her.

"In January, shortly after term started. She tried to throw it away in Moaning Myrtle's toilet."

"Is that true?"

Ginny shrugged. Again.

"When, Gin- Gin?"

"In November, after Colin was Petrified. I knew the diary was magical, but at first I thought it was charmed to repeat whatever you wrote in it. I wrote my name, Tom told me his. I said I was eleven, he said he was sixteen. But when I started writing more complicated things, his responses still made sense."

"November? But why—"

"Quiet, Ron. How did you know, Ginny?"

She swallowed. "Well, Dad always says you should never trust anything that thinks for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain—"

"You remembered that? Then why—"

"Ron!" Bill sharpened his voice. "You are not helping."

Ron slouched against the worktop, arms crossed.

"There was just something off about it, and after— after Colin, it was almost like Tom was glad, like my fear pleased him. I had never heard of a book writing back, and I had these gaps in my memory, but every time, the last thing I remembered was writing in the diary. And after a few weeks, I had to write in it. It was like it sucked me in, like those magnets Dad has in his shed. I stopped carrying it in my pocket and starting revising in the library instead of the common room, but I couldn't avoid it. It just— it just called to me." She shuddered.

"There is always 'something off' about dark objects. Sometimes it's the way they look, or the way they make you feel, or where you find them; they just don't belong. Magic can give you information, but it can't think for you. You still have to know when to use which spell and how to interpret the results. This room is like a scavenger hunt, with lots of dark objects amongst the clutter. Study the room, choose carefully, and cast the Revelaspell again."

()()()()

Bill stood in a corner and watched his two youngest siblings work the room. Neither one of them was half- bad, certainly no worse than some of the trainees he had seen, and the two of them together were just as good. They weren't going to find the treasure (in no small part because he couldn't remember what or where it was to guide them in the right direction), but after all, the whole point of this exercise was to boost Ginny's confidence around dark magic, and it seemed to be working.

She had identified a dark object with her first spell, a pearl- encrusted hair comb with a nasty variation of a Confundus Charm. The two of them had not asked for Bill's help since, simply piling all the dark objects on the worktop and working their way around the room.

Ginny moved behind the worktop. "What is this doing here?"

Bill waited for Ron to levitate a nasty- looking set of knives out of harm's way, then joined Ginny at the back of the shop. It was a pushchair complete with a baby blanket wadded in the seat, as if the mother had just picked up her child.

Ginny frowned. "There's not any baby stuff in here. I haven't even seen baby clothes. Or bottles, or nappies, or anything. Ron, have you seen any baby supplies?"

"Nope. Unless you count that ball that bounced out of the pit, I haven't seen any toys, neither."

"So what do you think?" Bill asked her.

"I think it doesn't belong. And the way that blanket is just begs for you to pick it up and refold it, or see what's underneath." She chewed her lip for a moment, then used a Levitation Charm to lift the blanket. Nothing. Her frown deepened. She cast the Revelaspell, and once again Arabic writing appeared.

"End the charm."

Ginny looked at him, obviously reluctant after her last encounter with Finite.

Ron had abandoned the shop shelves and came over for a look. "I'll do it."

"No, I can do it." She took a couple steps back and extended her wand. "Finite Incantatem."

The pushchair spun itself in circles a few times and then shuddered to a halt.

"What was it?" Ginny said.

"The handle was spelled with a Sticking Charm and the pushchair itself with Locomotor. If you had grabbed the handle, it would have pulled you around instead of you pushing it where you wanted. Are you about done in here? I want to make sure we have time for one more room."

Ginny nodded, but Ron looked disappointed. "But we haven't found any treasure yet."

"You could stay in here all day and not find any treasure. The goblins call this the Room of Perpetual Exploration for a reason. Come on."

Both of them were comfortable in the Core now, looking at the remaining doors with interest rather than fear. Ron headed for the one opposite them but Bill stopped him.

"Actually, it's my turn." He waited for Ron to return to the center beside him and Ginny, then spoke to the Core at large. "Show me The Dark One."

The air crackled, and white flames floated in front of a door behind them. Bill crossed the chamber and Vanished the flames with a wave of his wand. He turned round. Ginny and Ron had not moved.

Bill cast both Revelio spells, showing rather than telling them that the room was free of both dark magic and dark creatures. This room was about darkness itself.

"Open the door, Ginny." He wanted her to do this herself, to make the decision to confront her fear. All the practice and exposure in the world wouldn't help her if she didn't take the initiative. She wasn't holding Ron's hand, but she was standing unnaturally close to him. When she finally spoke, Bill could tell it cost her to ask the question out loud.

"You're not going to prank me?"

Bill held out his free hand, fifth finger extended. "I'm not going to prank you."

Ginny hooked her own tiny pinkie around his, and the promise was sealed. "Alohomora."

The door opened to reveal a cave, completely empty and illuminated only by a shaft of light through the center of the ceiling. Ron and Ginny stepped inside.

"When I close the door, that shaft will close and the room will be completely black. The purpose of this room is to overcome fear— fear of the dark, fear of closed spaces, fear of being alone— all the things that can happen if you get trapped in a tomb. The magic of the room presents you with what you fear most, but no matter what it is, it can't hurt you in here." Bill looked at Ginny. "We won't stay long, but I want to give you a chance to overcome some of the immediate panic. Okay?"

Ron and Ginny were both whey- faced, but they nodded. They were holding hands now. Bill took a deep breath himself and let go of the door. It closed with a resounding clang, and immediately he felt the sense of infinite space, the impression that he could walk towards the back wall forever and yet never reach it. His heart rate kicked up.

"Lumos." Ginny's voice, even higher than usual.

Nothing happened. This room couldn't be penetrated by magical light.

"Lumos." Now Ron was trying. Bill didn't blame him. The urge to do so was almost overwhelming, even though Bill knew it wouldn't work. "Lumos maxima! Bill?"

"I'm right here, Ron." Bill took two steps towards his brother's voice, and Ron's groping hand hit him in the stomach. Bill could hear scuttling noises now, and a faint crunch as he shifted his weight. Spiders.

"Gin- Gin?"

"Fire," she gasped. "Light a fire, Bill, please!"

That wouldn't work either, but to refuse would be cruel. "Incendio! Flagrate!" The scuttling was quieter now, replaced by an ominous slithering sound. Damn, he had forgotten the monster was a basilisk. Surely these were just regular- size snakes, though. Right?

"Okay. Remember what I said, that nothing in here can hurt you. It's just an illusion. Damn convincing—" Bill drew another deep breath (it felt like the walls were receding and drawing him deeper into the room at the same time)— "but an illusion nonetheless." The three siblings had positioned themselves back- to- back, subconsciously protecting their weakest sides.

"What do we have to do to get out of here?" Ginny had found his arm, and her grip was bruising.

"Walk forward."

"What?"

"Walk forward. Walk towards the fear, confront it head- on, and the sounds and sensation will go away. Once all three of us have done that, the shaft will open up, and it will be light again." Bill felt his left arm pull away from his body as Ginny immediately obeyed his instructions. A surge of pride momentarily suppressed his nausea. Never let it be said his baby sister hadn't earned her place in Gryffindor.

"You have to do it alone, sprite." Her grip tightened painfully, and he could hear her breathing. "Come on, Ginny, let go."

Bill wouldn't have thought it possible, but her grip tightened further still. His hand was numb.

"I'll do it with you." Ron's voice wasn't much more than a whisper, but Bill could feel Ron's determination as he shifted his stance. "Come on, Ginny, let's tell that sorry Slytherin where to stick it."

The snakes hissed as if they took the insult personally. Bloody hell, was that a rattle? There were no rattlesnakes in Egypt!

"I am not a crybaby, and I am not a silly little girl. And I wasn't sorted into Gryffindor just because that's where all my brothers went. I can be brave too." She dropped Bill's arm and stepped away from him in one sudden motion. "Ron?"

"I did it too, Ginny. Now you, Bill."

Bill gritted his teeth. Putting his back to Ron and Ginny had meant he was facing the door, but now he had to turn and move towards that infinite wall. He spun round and stepped forward, and the three of them were bathed in light. Bill rested his hands on his knees and swore, first in English, then Arabic. "Merlin, I hate this room! Let's get out of here."

Ron and Ginny were grinning broadly when they returned to the Core, and Bill couldn't help but grin back. "You two were fantastic. I'm so proud of both of you." He bent to hug Ginny, picking her up to buss her cheek, then gripped Ron's hand, pulling him into a one- armed hug and ruffling his hair. Both of them were pink with pleasure. "Now remember, the note said we went flying, so be sure to tell Mum how great the Quidditch was."

a/n: For those of you who have asked, this story will end next week with an epilogue. If you've read this far, please, please take a moment to review and let me know what you think!

Ginny's quote from the Gringotts doors is from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Chapter 5 "Diagon Alley," p. 56 (Bloomsbury children's hardback).