Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I write for entertainment only and not for pay.
Author's Note: I'm back with the next chapter for your viewing pleasure. I've been looking forward to getting to this point because of a new person Ginny will be meeting! I personally don't think this character will be such a surprise to most of you, but this character will come as a surprise to Ginny when she learns exactly who it is. Unfortunately for her, it will be much later in our story that the truth comes out. So with no further ado, onto the chapter! If you like it, feel free to leave me some comments, questions, or constructive criticisms in a review! Enjoy!
Prisoner 79934: Ginevra Weasley - Chapter Four
By: Rae
-A Harry Potter Story-
In the days following the visit with her family, Ginny began to fall into as much of a routine as prison life allowed her. Most of her nights were spent awake now that she had somewhat adjusted to the cell. She was plagued with the sounds of screaming and ranting prisoners now that she wasn't exhausted from the trial and subsequent imprisonment, and she spent the first hours of night listening to the calls of other inmates.
She had yet to receive a single owl from anyone back home and was feeling discouraged. Daily she waited for her breakfast rations and tried to engage whatever guard came her way in conversation. They all ignored her except Dirk, who seemed to be curious about her and would stand around for a couple of minutes to ask her questions about her year as the Heir of Slytherin. Ginny still bristled when he called her that, but since he refused to use her actual name, she was slowly getting used to bearing the title, however wrong it was.
Most of her days were spent in boredom, and she found herself listless. The screams of prisoners became the norm as Dementors floated up and down prison blocks, intimidating the inmates they hoped to one day feast on. The thought made Ginny ill when her scheduled day of intimidation appeared each week.
Yes, it was a weekly visit now. She wasn't sure what had happened, but Dirk visited her a week into her sentence to share the bad news.
"New orders today," he said, looking down at a bit of parchment. Ginny eyed him eagerly, but he refused to meet her gaze. "Seems you'll have a weekly visit with the Dementors now. Wizengamot requested it. They say you can't get out of punishment that easily." He looked up now into her horrified eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "They move around Azkaban to the other halls as they like, but I'll send them here every Sunday. That's tomorrow," he informed her when she continued to stare at him.
As Dirk had told her, the Dementors came for her the next day. Two of them had floated down the hall, and she'd felt the cold before they arrived, unable to mentally prepare for the assault on her mind. Ginny wasn't sure how long they stayed, but she slept the rest of the afternoon away after they left.
She'd gone exploring in her cell the following day and made a discovery that pleased her. Under her pallet were a few pieces of charcoal that appeared to blend into the black pallet, made up of who knew what sewed into a black sack. A hole in the seams revealed more bits of charcoal as well, and when she pushed them aside, she realized the charcoal marked the gray floors. Snatching it up, she scratched a line in the floor of her cell and realized she could use the charcoal to write.
Her contraband became a source of pleasure in the days to follow. Always hiding it under the pallet when the guards came with food. During the listless mornings and afternoons when she had nothing else to do, Ginny began to write.
Her first task was to begin chronicling her time in the cell. She decided to track the time by scratching a tick mark under the top of her pallet to mark each visit from the Dementors. Further experiments showed she could somewhat "wash" off the charcoal with a bit of water from her bucket and her uniform. Realizing rather quickly she wouldn't be bathing anytime soon, she decided to only use a small portion of her pant bottoms to wipe off each day's writings.
As she was writing one day, she heard what sounded like a scuffle. The shouts of guards came as some struggle took place. A scream sounded out somewhere behind her cell, and she pressed her ear to the back wall, eager for something to break up the monotony. It sounded like the guards were fighting someone, and she strained to hear.
"Stun 'er! Stun 'er!" A shout came, and Ginny heard the same scream again, high pitched and slightly maniacal.
"Stupefy!" Another voice yelled, and she heard a sickening thud of flesh against the floor. Ginny shivered.
A guard cursed violently, and she listened as they levitated the prisoner into a cell that seemed to be right behind hers. The second thud of flesh meeting the floor came, and the voices calmed down some.
"E'ry time we put her somewhere we got a riot on our hands," said one. "Should jus' let them Kiss her and be done wi' it. Dunno what the Wizengamot's thinking leavin' her alive like this. This is what? Fifth time we moved her?"
"Shuddup, Moser," came another voice. "This should stop her plottin' for a while. Closest inmate's four or five cells down, eh? Her man's clear on the other side."
"We'll send 'em in for a few hours e'ry day for a week this time," said another guard. "Mebbe that'll teach 'er to stir things up."
"This one?" Laughed the first voice. "Not bloody likely. She's pure crazy."
The three guards laughed together, and Ginny listened as they moved away. The cell grew silent, and she wondered who was adjoining her. For the rest of the day, she listened, but the cell occupant remained quiet, and she found herself back to her usual listlessness that night.
That next week was a hard one for Ginny...and for the person lodging behind her. The Dementors' couldn't truly push their powers through the thick walls of the cells, but Ginny was forced to listen to the woman's screams as they tormented her for hours at a time. She tried to distract herself with writing, but it was hard to focus.
When the week of torture ended and Ginny had endured her own torment that following Sunday, she tried to get back to her normal routine, such as it was. But her routine was interrupted shortly after Dirk delivered her breakfast.
"So you're the Heir of Slytherin," a raspy voice said, coming from the back wall and sounding close enough to touch. Ginny jerked in surprise and looked around, trying to figure out why the voice was so clear.
"There's a crack," the voice continued, and Ginny focused, looking around as she did and realized the woman was right. She crawled over to the right-hand side of the wall, examining the almost invisible crack and then stretched out, lying down on her stomach with her hands under her chin.
"Who are you?" She asked softly, wondering if the woman could hear her.
"Who are you, Heir of Slytherin?" The woman replied in a lower voice, laughing softly. The sound of it sent a chill up Ginny's spine.
"I'm not the Heir of Slytherin," she responded vehemently, shaking her head despite the wall between them. "My name is Ginny."
"Ah, Ginny," came the woman's voice. "What a lovely name." Her voice dripped sarcasm, and Ginny's eyes narrowed as she wondered not for the first time what this woman had done to deserve Azkaban. "I've heard about you. But I didn't expect you to be so young."
"How do you know I'm young?" Ginny spat back, firing up a bit.
That same low laugh filled the cell, and she felt the hairs on her arms raise in response. "Ah, love," the woman said, "you can't listen to someone in here and not learn about them. You're missing Hogwarts, aren't you?" Her voice was cold and calculating as she continued, "You're no more silent than the rest of us when the Dementors come calling. You just don't scream." Her voice changed to something Ginny couldn't quite figure out. "You yell. You cry. You call out for your mother." That last was said with something between disgust and pity that made Ginny bristle.
"What do you want?" She asked angrily, unable to think of anything else to say.
"I want to know how Slytherin's Heir turned out to be a whiny little girl who cries for her mother," the woman replied derisively. "The great house of Slytherin represented by a little girl with no backbone?" She laughed, and the sound was cruel and cutting.
"I'm not a Slytherin, and I'm not Slytherin's Heir," Ginny said, defeated. These same arguments had cut through the Wizengamot in the weeks of her trial, and she was exhausted by them. Nothing she said made any difference.
"Not a Slytherin, hmm?" The other woman's voice grew curious now. "Then what House are you in?"
Ginny swallowed hard, seeing the irony in the reply but then drew in a deep breath and stated firmly, "Gryffindor."
The laugh that followed was high, cold, and mirthful. "To think Slytherin's Heir could be a little lion!" She laughed long, and Ginny was reminded of the twins talking about hags and how their laughs sounded. She shuddered and pushed up off the ground, sitting up and staring down at the crack in the wall.
Pushing away from it, she went and lay on her pallet, still listening to the woman behind the wall as she laughed. Ginny curled into a ball and put her hands over her ears the way she had the first few nights in Azkaban. Holding her hands tightly over her ears muffled the sound as the woman tried to speak to her again. She stayed still and waited, hoping the other inmate would soon tire of the attempts when she got no response.
It was a long day. That night, she softly cried herself to sleep after hours of listening to strangers screaming in the dark.