Chapter 6—A Dream of Beltane

She was flying over the orchard very early in the morning when the owl approached her in the air. Her heart simultaneously rose and sank. I shouldn't read the letter, I should send the owl away… oh, who am I kidding. She found herself taking the parchment from the claw and unrolling it.

Malfoy is going to say that we need to stop writing to each other, that's all. And he's right, she thought.

Weasley,

You're most likely right. I won't owl as often, and I'll instruct Invictus to stay away if anyone else is anywhere near.

DM

Malfoy,

Okay.

GW

The broom hovered in the air as Ginny watched the owl disappear. Her thoughts were far from clear. But she did know that soon, she would find the strength to refuse Malfoy's letters. Really. She would.

A couple of nights later, Ginny went to her bedroom early, unable to bear the elaborate overpoliteness her mother showed as they ate dinner. Her father was working late in the Ministry again, and it was only the two of them. As Ginny trudged up the stairs, she thought that could see the dreary shape of the next couple of months. She and her mother would not fight about the issues again, but they would never have any real conversations about them, either.

She studied her Potions text for a few hours, unable to keep her mind on any of it, and finally put down her quill and admitted to herself that all she really wanted to do was to think about Draco Malfoy. Flopping down on the bed, she stared up at the ceiling.

He wasn't going to stop sending his owl to her with those letters. That, at least, was clear. What could it possibly mean? And oh gods, where was it leading?

The same thought came back to her again. She should tell her parents about the owls. But she could just imagine their reaction to learning the news at this point, when so many letters had already been sent, and she'd read them, and replied to them. Her mother's reaction was easy to predict; the screaming and howling really might be enough to make the ghoul move out of the attic once and for all. But her father… he wouldn't have the same intensity of surface explosion, but his sorrow and fear for her would be deeper. No, she couldn't do that to either of them.

And then, too, she knew that she couldn't begin to deal with the frantic questions. Why is Draco Malfoy sending you owls? What on earth is he saying? Is he threatening you? Is he trying to draw you out? Has he asked you to meet him? Oh, Ginny, can't you see what this means? The Death Eaters want to use you to capture Harry. If the Malfoy boy gets you to the Manor, they'll imprison you there. And then you know very well that Harry will come to rescue you, and they'll capture him. Do you want to be the cause of Harry's downfall?

Ginny turned over onto her stomach and played with the lace trim on her bedspread. The worst part was that her mother could easily be right. Draco Malfoy really might be writing to her in an attempt to win her trust, particularly considering the way the last couple of letters had been going. Maybe the next letter would contain a request to meet him, maybe at the edge of the Burrow property, where the wards were thinnest. Then he would kidnap her and whisk her away to Malfoy Manor, where she would be locked in the dungeons. She had to admit, she would be the perfect bait to lure Harry back. That was the reason why she was imprisoned at the Burrow in the first place, after all.

"Ugh. I need to stop thinking about all of this," she said aloud.

The bedroom door opened, and Molly Weasley stuck her head in. "Thinking about what, dear?"

"Oh—nothing. Everything. I don't know." Ginny waved a hand in the air. I might as well be in Azkaban! Mum could teach the Dementors a thing or two about spying on prisoners.

After her mother had left, Ginny turned off the light and went to sleep, realizing that she would accomplish nothing more on her homework tonight.

Bellatrix Black chased her through the slough behind the house, cackling delightedly. "Coming to get you, coming to get you!" she shrieked. Ginny couldn't stop to turn round; she had to stumble through the long grasses and the wet soil, but she knew that the woman's mad, burning eyes were fixed on her. Someone was running to her left; she could hear his harsh breathing and his swift footsteps, and then he put a hand on her arm to stop her. Harry had been at her side all along, so he was the one touching her now, of course, except that it didn't quite feel like him. These hands were larger, the fingers more knobbly, and the touch blazed through her sweater and blouse to mark her skin, as Harry's never had. When she turned to look at her companion, he wasn't Harry, but Draco Malfoy.

At first, she was afraid, sure that he had come there with the Death Eaters and got rid of Harry somehow, and now he would turn on her, and between him and his aunt, they would make an end of her. But he stepped between her and the older woman.

"Leave Ginny Weasley to me," he said flatly.

Bellatrix skidded to a halt, her dark eyes flicking over the scene, taking in everything, and her full red mouth curved into a smile.

"Why?" she asked in a velvety voice. 'Would you like to amuse yourself with her, nephew? I can see why. She's a pretty girl, for all she's a filthy blood traitor. But I should think you'd have more proper family pride than to take Potter's leavings. He's had her thoroughly, you know, he's used her for his pleasure in every way you could imagine."

Ginny felt a rush of indignant anger. "I've never done almost anything with Harry! We've barely gone past snogging." It made perfect sense that nothing was more important at the moment than setting Bellatrix Black straight about her sexual history, the sort of sense that one can only feel in dreams.

Draco seemed to let out a small breath of relief. When Ginny heard that, she understood that she hadn't cared what Bellatrix thought or didn't think about her lack of experience with Harry. No, she had spoken because she had wanted Draco to know. He shook his head at his aunt. "Never mind that. No matter what she has or hasn't done with Potter, you will not lay a finger on her."

Bellatrix waved a slender hand, the fingers tipped with glossy dark nails. "You can do exactly as you like with the girl, Draco; take her in any way you please. I don't mind in the least… as long as I can watch."

Draco's face twisted, and he stabbed his wand at Bellatrix. "Petrificatus totalus!"

With a look of utter surprise, his aunt stiffened and toppled to the ground.

In one swirling motion, Draco turned towards Ginny and enveloped her in his black cape, pulling her to him. "Thank the gods you're all right," he murmured into her hair. "I was afraid… I didn't know who had got to you yet. But you are all right?" It was completely natural that he should hold her close to his taut lean body and say these things, just as it was natural that she should lay her head on his breast and close her eyes and hear his heart thump beneath his elegant clothes and whisper yes, yes, Draco, yes.

But the sound of rushing feet was coming towards them, a mob, a stampede, and when Ginny looked up from the safety of Draco's arms, there were others behind the fallen Bellatrix. A sea of Death Eaters, moving like massed dark waves, and Ginny did not know how only she and Malfoy could stand against them. Could she even trust him to keep fighting at her side? Doubt pierced through her, and she did not dare look at his face. Behind them, the Burrow burst into sudden flames. Then Amycus Carrow was at the front of the crowd, his eyes eager in his lean face, and he was reaching out his hands towards her, and she screamed and screamed—

And she was screaming still, but there were warm, comforting arms around her, and a woman's broad soft body, and the familiar smell of vanilla and cinnamon, and her mother's voice. Shh, shh, Ginny dear, shh, it's all right. She closed her eyes and found forgetfulness in the things of childhood, and her mother smoothed her hair and held her tight. After a few minutes, she came to herself a bit again, sitting up and rubbing her nose.

"It was only a nightmare, Mum," she whispered. "I'm fine now."

"Shh. You're all right, you're safe, you're at home. We'll keep you safe here, Ginny."

She let herself believe the words, at least for now. This was how they understood each other, at this instinctive level, as if Ginny were still a child, and like a child, she was comforted.

Unfortunately, her mother went on. "You won't leave. You'll stay right here."

"Mum…" Ginny began, feeling some alarm.

"I'll be here when you need me." Molly Weasley got up from the bed. "You're safest with me, with us, at home."

"But surely you can't think that I'll always stay—"

It was too late. Her mother was gone.

It took a long time for Ginny to get back to sleep, and while she tossed and turned, she knew that she was not the child her mother so wanted to believe she could still be, and that the barrier between them remained.

April 25th, 1998. Beltane Week.

Ginny woke up very early and wondered if she had slept at all. I need to be outside for a while, she thought. After throwing on some light summer clothes, she walked to the very edge of the fields behind the house. It was adjacent to one of the soft places, she knew, property on the borderlands between magical and muggle worlds. Spells of earth magic lay on it that no wizard in the present day really understood, ones that kept the Burrow and the land around it from the knowledge of the Muggle village.

Driven by some instinct she did not understand, Ginny stopped and peered into the misty space just outside the field. She saw little dark people walking about. They were the earth-elves, cousins of the gnomes, and they seemed to be preparing for some sort of event. Some were laying heaps of dry wood for bonfires, some were laying out a circle of stones, and some were cutting flowers, baskets at their sides. A larger group worked together to raise a pole and set it into the earth. The top was covered with bright, broad ribbons that drooped down only a few feet from the ground. A Maypole, thought Ginny. Beltane is almost here. Although it never has a specific date, does it? I suppose time runs a bit differently in that place too…

As she watched, Invictus fluttered down to her side. None of the elves seemed to notice; she wasn't even sure they saw her outside of the magical boundary, so she took the letter and began reading it.

Weasley,

I wrote you this letter hours before sunrise, but I did not send it until now. I am not sure why I am telling you this unnecessary detail. Are you sleeping well? I am not. Night after night, I lie awake, staring into the darkness; day after day, I walk in sunshine that rarely touches me. Yet the sun is so very bright today, and the scent of a million flowers fills the air.

She almost smiled at his stilted, old-fashioned language, wondering if all uppercrust purebloods wrote as if they'd been given lessons by their tutors in the Victorian era. Malfoy certainly did seem to slip into that mood sometimes. Yet she could see him lying awake in the small hours of the night too, and the thought was oddly painful. Ginny shook her head and went back to reading.

If you were here with me, then I could feel your cool hands on my head, and the pain would go away.

She closed her eyes, pressing the letter to her chest, imagining, against her will, the scene he described. His cold, sterile rooms at Malfoy Manor, all priceless white gold furniture and hand-woven Aubusson rugs, exquisite Ming dynasty porcelains, immaculate white walls hung with eighteenth-century portraits of stiff and sniffy Malfoys. His enormous four poster bed carved in dark wood with ornate flourishes, shrouded by red velvet hangings. And there he was, alone and pale and staring at the underside of the mahogany bedstead, his head aching. She would steal across the carpet, the sound of her footsteps so muffled that nobody but Draco Malfoy might have heard them. "Who's there?" he would call, instantly alert, his voice only faintly trembling. And without a word, she would slip into the bed beside him. He would turn to her, his great grey eyes searching hers for something he did not know how to find. "Shh," she would say, and she would raise her cool hands to his head, and the heat would flow between them—

Ginny snatched the letter away and held as far from her as possible, disturbed by the power of her own fantasies. It was as if she'd seen his rooms and his bed, when of course she never had done. I didn't even know I could imagine that twit in that poncey setting in so much detail! Must be from a Masterpiece Theater episode I saw on Dad's TV once…

Smoothing the paper, she struggled to calm herself. She ought to either write nothing in reply—that same old vow that was always broken—or her words should be cool, pleasant but distant. That having been decided, she picked up the pen and began to write a reply that was very far from what she knew it should be.

Malfoy,

Actually, I'm not sleeping well either. I just had a nightmare about the day the Death Eaters burned down the Burrow, and Bellatrix Black was chasing me in exactly the same way she really did. I dreamed you were there, too.

She thought about adding that he had been helping her, saving her, but was able to stop herself from writing the words. Her self-control only went so far, however.

If I were with you, I would rub your temples again until your pain was gone.

GW

Ginny watched the graceful owl soar into the sky for several minutes, until it had disappeared entirely. Then she moaned and sank her head in her hands. Please, please tell me that I didn't really write those words and send that letter. Her brain refused to reassure her of any such thing.

As soon as Ginny walked into the house, she saw her mother standing in the front hall, hands on her hips. It was not a good sign.

"Where were you?" Molly demanded in the exact tones that had always made Ginny want to scream.

"Just walking behind the house, along the edge of the fields." Ginny tried to move past her mother to the dining room. Molly stepped into her path.

"Does that mean that you saw those elves?" There was definitely an edge to her voice.

"Well—yes. They're getting ready for tonight. Can I eat breakfast now?"

Her mother crossed her arms, apparently ready to keep standing in the entrance hall as long as necessary. "Ginny, I want you to stay in the house for the rest of the day and night."

"What?" exclaimed Ginny. "Why?"

"Never mind why."

Ginny gritted her teeth. "Mum…"

"Do you want me to spell it out? Very well; I will. I don't want you to have anything to do with… with what's going to happen tonight, on that land.

"You don't seriously think I'm going to go to an elf festival!"

"I want you to remain inside until tomorrow," was her mother's only reply.

Ginny struggled to control her temper. "You want me to stay at the Burrow for the rest of term. Fine, I'm doing it. But now you're not even going to let me go out of the house because you think I'm going to go to some elf and gnome party. That's mad. What's next—are you and dad going to lock me in my room? Except that Dad's never around, so I guess it would just be you!"

"Don't talk back to me, young lady!" her mother snapped.

Looking at the grim determination on her mother's face, Ginny was driven by something she did not understand, exactly as she had been when she'd watched the elves.

"Maybe I will go!" she said recklessly.

Her mother began waving her hands around and spluttering. "I won't have you even saying that! That dirty, filthy Beltane ritual—it's absolutely disgusting."

She vowed then and there to find out exactly what the ritual entailed. A bit of fuzzy memory was coming back to her now. "What do you think I'm going to do with an elf, Mum?"

"It's not about elves and gnomes!" burst out her mother. "It's all happening in one of the soft places, Ginny. You know that. Anyone could get through and steal you away—we'd never see you again—"

"Molly," said her father's quiet voice. He appeared behind her in the hall.

Her mother nodded, her eyes suspiciously bright. After a few whispered words, she headed upstairs. Arthur beckoned to Ginny, and the two of them went outside.

They walked around the pond, and Ginny wished that she'd brought a hat. The bright sunlight was beating down too hard, and she felt hot and itchy and unwilling to take any more time in getting to the point.

"You and Mum were talking about this before I came in," she said. "Weren't you?"

"Yes," her father responded.

"So which one of you decided I should be locked up in the house all day?"

"Ginny…" Her father took off his glasses briefly and rubbed his nose. He looked very tired, she saw. "Your mother's right, you know. And I'd like to explain why."

That's more than I would have got from Mum, anyway. Ginny nodded, even though the idea of running for the borderlands while screeching at the top of her lungs had its appeal.

"Ginny, you haven't been at home on Beltane for several years, and the last time you were here this time of year, you were a child."

Ginny nodded, hoping that her father wasn't about to say anything she desperately did not want to hear. She'd cudgeled her brains to remember anything she knew about Beltane, but she had only vague memories that she'd heard it had something to do with sex.

"The Burrow sits on the Borderlands, as you know. We normally have nothing to do with that area on the edge of the property."

Ginny nodded again. She and her brothers had always avoided it; Fred and George had dared each other to go there once or twice over the summer during their early teenaged years, but no more. It was as if they had all known instinctively that it was a place where people were simply not supposed to be.

"But on the festival of Beltane, the soft spaces are softer than ever," he went on. "The boundaries are muted and easily broken. That means that if anyone were watching this house and waiting for a chance to kidnap you, then tonight is when they would do it."

She suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

He stopped and put a hand on her arm. "Please, Ginny. Don't go outside until tomorrow morning."

She gave a stiff nod, knowing he was probably right, remembering Draco's letters, hoping the memory did not show through on her face.

"So that's mostly what we discussed," he said, "your mother and I."

Ginny looked up sharply. "So you mean there was something more? What else did you talk about?"

Her father's eyes shuttered. He seldom did this, and he wasn't very good at it. "Nothing that was important."

Whatever it is, he's not going to tell me, she thought resentfully. And Mum certainly won't. She resolved to start listening at doors and sneaking around the house to spy on conversations. Maybe Slytherin methods would work best here!

Ginny stomped up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom, trying to make her footsteps as loud and annoying as possible. She slammed the door and paced back and forth, thinking seriously about pounding her head on the wall. But wait, no- there was something she wanted to do, and she'd need her brain for it. She would find out about the Beltane ritual.

But how?

She paused in the middle of the floor, tapping her finger on her chin.

Hermione had told her about the interspiderweb—or at least she thought that was what it was called—and if she only had access to a computing machine, then she could use it to learn information. Too bad Dad never brought home one of those! As it was, she was going to have to make do with books. A trace of memory was coming back to her. One night during fourth year, she'd caught the Gryffindor boys snickering as they clustered around a large photo book with a dark green cover, staring avidly at pictures. She'd only seen one, which showed a devil chasing scantily clad girls around a bonfire. It had not held her interest at the time, but now, she wanted to know more. It was sort of medium sized, with a dark green cover and gold lettering. A Book of Pagan Days, I think it was called… and I don't think that was the last time I saw it. She could swear she'd seen that very same book in Bill's room, always hastily put away whenever their mother was about.

Ginny tiptoed down the hall to the spare storage room at the very end. Carefully closing the door, she pawed through several boxes before finding the book. Then she stole back to her own bedroom, heart pounding like mad the entire time. She breathed a sigh of relief once she was safely behind the closed door.

"Lammas, Saturnalia, Samhain," she muttered, leafing through the pages. "Imbolc, Eostre, oh where is it…"

The book fell open to its centre, and Ginny saw the picture she remembered from her fourth year. Her eyes widened. She hadn't remembered the devil being so… well-endowed. Hastily, she began to read the text.

Now we turn to the feast of Beltane, the most ancient and sacred of all pagan high holy days. On this night of revelry, the rites of the Great Goddess are enacted amongst the groves for the renewal of the land.

The next picture showed a ring of women dancing around a crackling fire, and because it was a wizarding book, they moved and bounced and kicked up their legs. One younger girl shook out her long red hair and laughed. Ginny turned the page.

And each woman shall choose a man, and with him she shall go away from the fires, into the darkness of the night.

Now the redheaded girl was holding out her hand to a tall, slender young man, his head glinting fair in the firelight.

So to all women I say, choose your lover well…

And Ginny saw a scene, complete and all at once, as if she had fallen through the page into a moving story.

She was lying on her bed exactly as she actually did now, except that she wasn't reading a book, but a parchment.

Weasley,

Meet me at the edge of the fields, in the soft spaces, where the elves prepare their Beltane fires on the borderlands.

DM

She put down the letter, slipped on her shoes, and stole quietly out of the house.

The winds sighed softly around her in the slough, where the long grasses had grown after the house burned the year before. Between the waving stalks, she saw Malfoy on the other side. He reached out his hand to her. Whether she took it or not was entirely her choice. She could turn away and see no more of him. But she did not; she took his hand, warm and firm, and he pulled her across the boundary into the borderlands.

The elves and gnomes were dancing round the fires, but he led her past the circles of orange light and through a dense thicket of roses, into a dark clearing. Only the white circlet of the full moon shone down upon them.

"What would you have of me, Draco Malfoy?" she asked him.

"You know what I would have," he replied, and he pulled her down to a soft bed of long grass. His hands reached for her.

Ginny could feel the bedroom around her, too, lying close over the deeper reality of this vision. In that dimension, she vaguely knew that her own fingers were straying between her legs, creating a shadow sensation of the pleasure he drew from her body.

"Why this night?" she asked him once.

"Because it is the last night of the world," he replied.

They lay together, and he was hard and demanding, but in her own way, so was she. Ginny wanted nothing more than to share his need and give to him what they both desired, and that she did. When he brought her to climax, her own hands mimicking his motion, she muffled her cries in a pillow. When he knelt between her legs and took her virginity at last, these were sensations that her flesh and blood body did not feel, and she moaned at the loss.

"You must leave me now," he said, when their breathing had slowed.

"How can I, when you have made me yours?" she asked.

He looked gravely into her eyes. "You know I have not. This is only a shadow show, only dreaming."

She wanted to weep, but he lifted her face to his with a touch on her chin. "We will meet again," he said, "and one day, I will make you mine in flesh, Ginny Weasley."

She kissed him one last time, the scent of early roses rising round them, and the sweetness carried her back to her own time.

Ginny blinked at the ceiling. Her head was pounding, and her fingers were still between her thighs, she realized with some embarrassment. She turned over onto her stomach with a long sigh. What on earth had just happened? Had she simply fallen asleep and dreamed the entire thing? She tried to convince herself that this was the only possibility that made sense, but being a witch in the world of magic, she couldn't quite convince herself that it was the explanation.

Well, whatever it was, there's nothing I can do about it now. Might as well go to sleep. She reached out and switched off the light, and this time, she drifted easily into sleep. Only one thought followed her.

When she'd read about Beltane, she had wanted to be there. If she had been, she would have gone aside from the fires with a faceless man, and laid with him in the fields and woods, and let him have what he wanted of her. Except that the man would have a face, could have only one face, and it belonged to Draco Malfoy.