Heyy, this is Helena, and you're new chapter is up!

We are going to update this story on a more regular basis now: new chapters will be published every Sunday, and occasionally on Thursdays (when we happen to have more time or when the chapters are shorter).

Anyways, enjoy!

Disclaimer: We do not own anything, the plot and the characters belong to JK Rowling, and the story is written originally by EMPotter. We just translate (and edit).

Original link: EFP fanficion, ?action=printall&sid=1166371#top

The Dementor

In the chaos of the departure, Mrs. Weasley momentarily forgot her story of the Love Potion. For her husband, it was a real stroke of luck, since it seemed that Mrs. Weasley was ready to go through their entire love story, from how they started dating, to seeing each other even after school, right until, as Fred told them breathlessly between laughter, the story of Bill's conception.

Fortunately, Molly Weasley was busy with other things!

They all climbed into the cars that the Ministry had provided for the Weasleys, and left at full speed towards King's Cross: they were neither late nor so early, and at the behest of Percy they were quickly ushered into the station. The memory of the last time at the station still vividly pierced their minds, as if only minutes have passed since then.

Above all was the memory of how Mrs. Weasley had been shocked when Percy, upon arrival at the station, had gone around screaming "Ten fifty-eight!" "Let's get moving, oh let's move or get going, and to hell with the Ministry and the Law of Restriction of Magic among Muggles!", and it seemed that the imagery still terrified her much, given the silly glances she threw at her son while walking towards platforms nine and ten.

"Right, let's do this in pairs, as there are so many of us," said Mr. Weasley, looking around the station full of Muggles. "I'll go through first with Harry," he added, nodding at the boy to follow him.

The two of them leaned against the railway barrier apparently interested in the InterCity that had just arrived at platform nine, and in a moment they disappeared beyond the wall. Then Mrs. Weasley ordered Percy and Ginny to cross.

"Oh, it's late, I'll be late for Penelope if we don't move fast!" Percy exclaimed anxiously and quickly grabbed his little sister's arm. "Come on, let's just run without getting too much attention from others!"

We certainly wouldn't be noticed, Ginny thought sarcastically.

And so the girl, led by a hurried Percy, ran at breakneck speed towards the barrier while Mrs. Weasley shouted at them to be careful: they emerged on platform nine and three quarters gasping loudly, as if they had both just ran kilometers.

"Ah, there's Penelope!" Percy began frantically stroking his hair, and turned purple as he walked over, chest puffed out to show off his Head Boy badge, to a pretty girl with dark curly hair.

Ginny caught Harry's eyes, and they both turned away to hide their laughter.

After all the Weasleys as well as Hermione have emerged onto the platform, it was the time for farewells. The children climbed into the crowded Hogwarts Express, watching the parent Weasleys from the window as they waved happily from below.

"Behave yourselves this year!" Molly cried, above all to the twins.

"See you at Christmas!" the girl said, waving her hand.

"Be good, everyone! Understood, Fred and George?"

"Of course we'll behave ... We'll swear to it..." the twins said in unison, and once their mother was out of earshot, because she was giving Harry an extra hug, they added, "we solemnly swear that we are up to no good".

Ginny laughed.

Soon everyone was on the train, which began to crawl forward slowly. Families on the platform, especially Molly, continued shouting reminders and wishes for the new year. Ginny, listening and waving, hoped that these were different from the ones of the previous year, when all those wishes dissolved into nothingness while she had been living hell in her first year. In fact, hell would be nothing compared to what she had gone through, and the girl swore to herself that if she ever needed to talk to someone she would rather stand in front of a mirror and only tell her secrets to Ginny in the mirror, as a precaution.

No more diaries in your life!

When the Weasleys shrinked into a red dot in the distance, Fred and George met up with a friend of theirs, Lee Jordan, and disappeared with him to wreak some kind of havok in the train, and Ginny was left alone with Ron, Harry and Hermione, as well as their heavy and annoying trunks.

"I need to talk to you in private," Harry's voice murmured.

Ron looked around.

"Go away, Ginny," he said sullenly to his sister, and she put up a deeply hurt face.

"Oh, that's nice of you," she retorted irritably and quickly walked away, pulling her trunk and not caring if she should crush her brother's feet: she would have sworn that Ron had turned and grimaced in pain.

Ginny walked all over the train, arm aching, cursing her brother Ron and mumbling incomprehensible phrases of which only she could hear or understand: "treating me badly once mum's gone" or, "what a shit hypocrite" or even, "has to be showing off". She kept repeating to herself all the way while finding a compartment, then a familiar voice reached her ears.

"Hello!" called Colin Creevey.

He was a little taller now, hair fell a little longer and lighter on his back, while his face was lighted with a beaming smile.

"Hi Colin!" the girl replied, momentarily forgetting her brother.

"Were you talking to yourself?" Colin asked, starting to chuckle.

"Oh ... my brother, you know ... he made me angry, but it's nothing!"

"Perfect, the others are all here, follow me!"

Colin led his friend to the front of the train, where the air gradually grew quieter as they moved away from the tail where the twins and the trio were. He opened a compartment full of second-year Gryffindors: Demelza Robins, Ritchie Coote, Christopher Jones and William Todd all smiled at her from ear to ear and wasted no time in inviting her to sit down with them.

Helped by Colin, Ginny hoisted her trunk on the rails, and sat down in front of Demelza.

"So," Colin urged briskly, "how were your holidays? And where did you go?"

"Have not you read the Daily Prophet?" Ginny boasted, rolling a strand red hair with her finger playfully.

"My parents are muggles, I don't read wizard newspaper," Colin answered, confused. "My parents would seriously run away screaming if they saw that the pictures in your newspapers move like in real life!"

The boys burst out laughing and Ginny looked down at her hands, slightly embarrassed.

How could she be so stupid?

"So, You went to Egypt, tell us how it was!" Christopher said perkily.

"Oh, Egypt ..." Demelza started dreamily. "your picture was in the Daily Prophet: it's simply magnificent!"

"I read the Prophet too!" Ritchie declared, smiling.

"And we certainly don't know that," Christopher replied with an amused grimace.

"Why precisely is it Egypt?" asked William curiously.

"So how do wizards spend their holidays?" Colin asked eagerly. "Come on, tell it!"

And so Ginny told her friends about her beautiful holiday in Egypt with her brother Bill, and everyone was very interested, even if it took quite a bit of time and embarrassment from Ginny to tell how she was afraid to enter the huge pyramids: at this the boys giggled loudly, and Christopher declared that he would never be afraid, for how fun the experience could be.

After Ginny's beautiful narration, Demelza dived into the Standard Book of Spells, Grade Two of Miranda Goshawk, while Christopher and William played wizard chess. Ritchie was cheering along and helping Christopher, and Colin chatted with Ginny even if the girl did not have much desire to listen to him: she was almost sleepy.

"Oh, well ... will someone listen to me?" Colin finally burst out when Ginny's attention was elsewhere.

"THE HELL, CHRIS! HOW MUCH DO YOU CHEAT!" William cried, ignoring his companion.

Colin told himself that this was a lost cause.

When the rain started drumming on the train's windows and the wind howling out loud, Victoria Probisher made her way into their compartment: now more and more pretty, with a curtain of even blonder long hair and a heavy tan, she seemed to emanate a brilliant aura throughout the compartment, which was lit only by small torches in the darkness.

"Oh, where were you?" asked Demelza curiously.

"I was in the compartment of Eloise, Johanna, Julie and Bonnie," Vicky replied as the boys lazily raised their heads.

"Julie, who?" asked Christopher quickly.

"Juliette Collins, from Hufflepuff," the blonde replied. "And guess what? Johanna Roberts is dating a really cute Ravenclaw older than her! I don't remember his name ... something like ... Terry Steeval, I think"

"But... this girl ... she didn't like Harry Potter?" Ginny asked, secretly relieved that Johanna was dating, and she thanked Terry Steeval's beauty for taking her.

"Not anymore, now he's all yours"

Colin turned with surprising speed and looked at the girl with wide open eyes alighted in curiosity: the chess board slided onto the ground and all the chess pieces fell with a loud clatter, before Ritchie accidently set his foot on the pile and broke them into pieces. Demelza seemed to remember that Colin was not aware of the fabulous love story of Ginny, since he was not really around at the great revelation on Valentine's Day, because she turned away and hastened to fix the chessboard for the boys with a practised Reparo.

"Now he's all yours?" Colin repeated, scratching his head, surprised that no one else found this speculative.

"She likes Harry Potter," Christopher answered briskly, annoyed at the fact that they had to start the game from scratch.

"YOU LIKE HARRY POTTER?"

Colin was visibly shocked.

"Did I say something wrong?" asked Vicky, suddenly quieting herself.

"Certainly not!" Ginny exclaimed, slightly annoyed.

"Calm down Ginny, nothing special, pretty much the whole school knows about it, and now Colin does too, right? We're all friends and these things go around pretty quickly, and honestly it's fine," said Christopher, trying to make her think. Ginny clenched her fists.

Ritchie and William did not seem like they wanted to join the party - they were more occupied with their chess pieces.

They remained silent for a few seconds, throwing glimpses at eachother, then the train shuddered and began to sharply lose speed: the lights went out and a complete darkness fell. There was a tremendous jolt, and Vicky squeezed over Ritchie as the chessboard fell again from the seat. William cursed under his voice as Christopher waved weakly.

"Why did we stop?" Colin asked, looking around the darkness.

"Maybe we've arrived..." Ginny said, even though the trip had seemed extraordinarily short.

"We can't be there yet!" decreed Demelza.

"Maybe there's an engine failure," Ritchie suggested.

"We won't have to miss much, anyway... we should be close to Hogwarts now," William murmured, spying out the window into complete darkness.

Then something moved again: dark shadows sliding outside.

"I'm going to ask the driver," Vicky announced bravely and Colin followed her towards the front of the train.

"Me too ... I'm going to check ..." Ginny said, determined to find the trio's compartment.

She walked all the way back, through the quickest way she could find, through the students that came out of the compartments to see what was going on. Some had their noses squeezed in the windows to see something besides that strange whirling mist: Ginny hoped with all the heart that the train did not jump into the air or anything, because she was really about to do it.

The trio always knew everything and that time would not have been different, so she opened the last compartment with hopes of being able to understand more of this situation, even though how her brother last treated her still annoyed Ginny: a dark shadow stood in front of her and Ginny shrieked.

"Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"Ginny?"

Oh, how could she be so stupid? The shadow looked like a girl, and those bushy hair were particularly recognizable, even in the dark:

"Hermione?"

"What are you doing?"

What am I doing? Ginny wondered desperately.

"I was looking for Ron" she threw off.

"Come in and sit down"

"Not here, I'm here!" said Harry's voice quickly, and Ginny bounced off embarrassedly with purple cheeks that would glow even in the dark - Harry must have been on the seat she was about to sit down in.

Next to Harry, she found Ron's hand and sat down in the seat next to him, but on something hard ... like a leg ...

"Ouch!" groaned the unfamiliar voice of the trio's friend, Neville Longbottom.

"Quiet!"

A hoarse voice from a man different from Neville's resounded in the compartment.

Someone was moving in a corner, right in front of Ginny and the girl identified a man: he was holding a handful of flames for lighting, which brightened his watchful eyes and gray, tired face.

"Stay where you are," he said in the same husky voice, and got up to open the compartment door.

But the door of the compartment was never opened by him, indeed, it seemed that no one had touched it: as the door slid open an incredible frost spread through the compartment, freezing the blood in her veins, and Ginny almost felt sick because there was a threshold figure, very different from the shadow of Hermione which Ginny was found in front of, a figure much more menacing, wrapped in a black cloak.

Suddenly, the memories of what happened in the Chamber of Secrets crossed Ginny's mind like in a fast-forwarded movie, and she could not help but tremble like a leaf in the storm, even if she wanted to scream at that thing, whatever it was, to stop it ...

Tom Riddle's voice echoed in her head, along with screams… her screams of fright ...

What the hell was happening?

The figure held out a hand, slimy and wrinkled as if dead, and drew a long, slow breath as if trying to breathe in more than just the air. It rushed onto Harry, who stiffened instantly.

"None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks ... Go!" the man shouted, making everyone jump, but the thing did not move. "Expecto Patronum!" the man added.

That time, the big creature disappeared. The instant when something silver came to meet it, it was made to move back and go away. Meanwhile, Harry had fallen from the seat and began to twitch strangely, as if he was living the worst nightmare of his life.

The train jerked slightly, the lights came back on and Hogwarts Express began to move again.

Sirius Black? What did Sirius Black have to do with it?

Maybe ... that creature ... was a guard of Azkaban, the wizard's prison?

Ginny lowered her head, thinking of all that, as well as how she had seen her nightmares … and it seems, so had Harry...

"Harry!"

"Harry, Harry, are you feeling well?"

"W-What?"

Ron and Hermione helped the boy get back onto his seat.

"Are you okay?" Ron asked him.

"Yeah, what happened, where is that ... that thing, who was screaming?"

"Nobody screamed," said Ron, very pale.

"What was that thing?" the boy insisted.

"A Dementor," the man replied, introducing himself to everyone as Professor Lupin and started distributing chocolate to everyone in the compartment. "One of the guards in Azkaban, it was patrolling the train for Sirius Black, I need to speak to the driver, excuse me ..."

Professor Lupin passed the boys and walked out of the compartment as unrestrained questions crowded into the girl's mind: so that suspicion is confirmed, but why had she seen those bad things again?

Ginny and Neville decided to leave the compartment and go back to theirs to warn their friends, and they walked through the whole train without exchanging a word, because they were both so terrified of what had just happened.

Then Neville broke the silence, still shaken.

"I had heard that Azkaban guards were horrible, but never like that," he admitted.

"Me too ... I would never have believed ..." Ginny murmured. "Now I believe how everyone goes crazy in Azkaban: I saw the horrible things of last year and I don't even know why ..."

Neville looked at her and there was something more in his eyes, as if he could understand the little girl: could the stuttery, shy Neville Longbottom really understand her? And why did Ginny admit to him what the Dementor had done to her? Maybe because that chubby guy inspired some sort of confidence... maybe because he knew even if she never opened her mouth to anyone ...

"Well, well, well ... look who's here!" a shuffling voice began, cutting off Ginny's train of thoughts.

Neville turned, frightened.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

"Longbottom and Weasley, it's a pity that Weasley likes Saint Potter ... too late, Longbottom!" Draco Malfoy scoffed at them with a malicious grin and laughed like an idiot with his two bodyguards, Crabbe and Goyle.

"Shut up!" Ginny growled angrily.

"Oh, look at you, all pale and sweaty ... bleah" the boy continued mocking, grimacing. "Those bad dementors have scared you so much, haven't they, but you were with Potter, I mean, he sure would have saved your life!"

"You shut it, Malfoy!" Neville retorted with a menacing look. "Nobody saved our lives, we were in danger and anyone could have fallen from the seat like Harry did!"

"Did Potter fall from his nappy?"

Malfoy seemed like he had just found out that his birthday arrived ahead of time, and Neville cupped his mouth, but too late: Malfoy ran toward the end of the train, followed by the other two giggling idiots, and disappeared. Surely Neville did not mean to do it on purpose, but for the entire rest of the walk he was completely mortified, and did not mutter a word.

It was almost a relief to reach her friends' compartment and throw herself onto the seat.

"What happened?" Demelza asked, audibly scared.

"I've been looking for you for at least ten minutes!" Vicky was outraged.

"There were Dementors here ... in the train ..." little Weasley murmured and everyone held their breath, except for Colin and Christopher who seemed profoundly confused. "I saw it, a dementor..."

"Sorry but, what are they?" Christopher asked politely as Colin scratched his head.

"Dementors," replied Demelza promptly. "The horrendous guards of Azkaban, they can drive you crazy"

"Really?" asked Colin.

"I'M TELLING YOU, I'M" shrieked Vicky furiously.

"And what were these ... these guards doing here?" Christopher asked.

"They are the guards of Azkaban," Demelza repeated.

"And do they believe they can find Sirius Black in this train?" William said, bewildered.

"That's not very logical, is it? The driver would have seen Sirius Black entering the train!" Ritchie burst out.

"But still ... guards are guards... they had to check!"

"And did you see them?"

"Only one ..."

"That's why you're like that ..." Colin began, but Ginny interrupted him.

"What am I like?"

"Well, you've got this face ... I mean, you're really pale"

"What are you talking about? Look at her, she's more than pale!" exclaimed Vicky, studying her face. "You look scary, good heavens!"

The children opened a smile, but they came back to being serious when they noticed Ginny's particularly hurt expression: so, a girl who just had a close encounter with a disgusting creature, was it scary?

"All right, let's go back to it ..." Colin cut short. "So, what did the Dementor do?"

"It went all cold and the Dementor it ... threw itself on Harry and he ..."

"Wait, you didn't tell us you were in Harry Potter's compartment!" Vicky exclaimed wickedly.

"Oh, so you really like Harry Potter!" said Colin with a smile.

That last little bit of the trip passed in general giggles about how Ginny had gone to Harry's compartment to see how her lover was... and things like that ... it certainly was not the best trip the girl has had on the Hogwarts Express.

That's it, hope you liked it- the story is moving quite quick, we're on the fifth chapter in POA already. Ermory is translating the next chapter already and it will be up on Sunday as promised!

~Helena Heansilton (editor)

translator (and owner of this account): Ermory

Next: Ginny's Second Year