Chapter One – Decisions
She was glaring daggers at the pile of dishes when the battered owl flew in. Ginny ran over to the tiny creature, waving her wand to close the window against the rain and the cold, and picked up the small bundle of feathers. She took it to the couch, closer to the fire, and untied the letter gently. The edge of the string had come undone sometime during the flight and tangled with feather and claw. It was a miracle the poor thing had managed to reach her.
She did not have time to look for an Owl treat so she summoned some spiders from the corner she was supposed to have cleaned this morning and turned away to read the letter. The parchment was wet, torn and…completely blank.
But she could see a faint outline of something, barely discernible. She walked over to the window to hold it up to the sunlight, but there wasn’t any…of course. She let her arm drop to her side and tried desperately to remember that revealing spell she’d read about earlier. She would not call any of her brothers. Asking mum for help was one thing, she was supposed to have a solution for everything after all, but asking the twins or whoever else had “guard duty” as she liked to call it, was a different matter altogether.
“Morning, thief!” she grinned; so it was Charlie today, Charlie who trusted her most of all and who did not think she needed to be pampered and guarded day in and day out, “Anything good for breakfast?”
“A blank letter,” she replied. As she turned to face him a strange movement caught her eye. She turned back and stared at the spot, just behind the shed, but it was all just rain and mud and utter depression. It must have been her mind playing tricks on her, her hopeful imagination seeing excitement and battle where there was none…and never would be.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie slipped a brawny arm around her shoulders and looked out.
“I thought I saw something,” she shook her head and turned away from the window, “It was just my imagination. Must be going mad locked up in here all day.”
Charlie took the letter from her wordlessly and examined it for a while. “Ah,” he muttered, “You can almost see it; whoever cast it must have been in a hurry.”
She watched as he pulled out his wand and tapped the paper twice then ran the tip of his wand down over it. There was a clap of thunder, but she could have sworn she heard something else too – banging. Ginny willed herself not to be a frightful mess, since when had she been afraid of thunder, or any other stupid noise? She walked over to read the letter from behind Charlie’s shoulder and snuck a look outside, but everything was as it should be.
Suddenly, the words caught her attention and she let out a small gasp. “Ginny, I need you to stay here and be very careful,” Charlie’s voice did not betray a hint of worry, but Ginny was suddenly hearing the world crashing in around her, “Keep your wand out, wake the twins if anything happens, alright?”
“Yeh,” it came out as a gasp as Charlie shoved the parchment back into her hands and Apparated away to the aid of the order…and her parents. She sunk to the floor, the rain increasing her feeling of being drowned, suffocated.
Suddenly, the twins’ footsteps alerted her to their arrival, blending in eerily with the thunder. She turned her head just a little way to watch them come down the stairs and wondered what they would do. Ginny would be considered a hindrance, they wouldn’t want to leave the poor little girl alone and they would want to go, they would be needed. She barely heard their greeting and stood up when they started joking about her taking mum’s instructions too seriously and shining the floors.
“I’m not shining the blasted floors,” she said hurling the letter at them, “Look at this!”
They each read it over twice, just like Charlie. It was very vague and her Dad’s hand must have been shaking as he scribbled it down, because his writing had gone from something resembling Charlie’s quick hand to something more Ron-like. One word was clear, however. Help.
“They must still be at Headquarters, Fred, something like this was bound to happen after…”
“No need to wake Charlie, he’s supposed to be taking care of Ginny anyway.”
“You don’t need all three of us to take care of you, after all Charlie is a Dragontamer.” Ginny looked up at the hopeful note in George’s voice. The pounding at the back of her head was getting worse, louder. She knew then, as the silence stretched between them, how much it hurt her brothers, especially the twins, to have to watch her when they could be out there. She wasn’t the only one locked up because of her mother’s ridiculous rules. But none of them knew her as much as Molly Prewett who had eloped with a poor Weasley in the first war. Ginny’s mother was not guarding her from outside demons; she was guarding her from herself.
She nodded.
“Right, Fred, cast a good Protean Charm will you, brother?”
They pulled out their wands simultaneously and turned in a circle, back to back, casting a quick protective charm. Ginny could now see a black shadow creeping closer across the backyard. It had not been her imagination. There were too many of them to fight. “Hurry up!” she said, her resolve strengthening, “Help them!”
The twins Apparated without another word; leaving her to wait, but she was not waiting for them to return. She set her jaw. Ginny would not be there when they returned and they would not have any reason to look for her or her return either. She took a deep breath and opened the window for the tiny owl to make his escape. His flight was erratic and he would not be able to fly too far without stopping for a break, but she hoped he would make it far enough.
She shut the window and turned her back to the darkness and the cold. An eerie howl signaled the beginning of the end and she was both burning and freezing at the same time. She ran up the stairs all the way to the top, her wand hand shaking. “I will kill you, Fenrir Greyback,” she promised running her left hand over the walls and tracing her farewell with pale fingers, “I will kill you.”
She forced the image of her beloved oldest brother to the forefront of her mind, her beautiful brother whose face had been mangled. She reviewed every spell that could possibly come to use here. She would kill him; she would use the killing curse if she had to.
They broke in as she entered the attic and she heard someone laughing and a low growl. Even the Ghoul’s wailing could not drown out the crashing and banging below, or the pounding in her head.
“Determination, Destination…what?” she mumbled to herself. She had to remember this. This was one of the things Bill had insisted he teach her for emergencies. One of the very few “safety precautions” that she actually agreed with. She tried to remember it for a few more minutes and then gave up with a series of curse-words. She didn’t need it anyway, all she needed to do was visualize the right spot and she’d be fine.
They were coming up the stairs. She could hear one of them trying to coax her out of her hiding place. They would have to go all the way up to find her. She craned her neck just a little to see outside, but it didn’t look like they’d left any sort of guard out there.
Greyback’s next howl sent shivers up her spine. They were very close. She counted to ten, slowly, just to be doing something that would distract her from the fear that was now undeniable.
The door flew open. Ginny screamed. A long shrill scream that roused the Ghoul into another round of wails. The youngest Weasley closed her eyes and imagined her destination, behind that big tree just a little way beyond the shed. The place was vivid in her memory from the many times she had hidden there to watch and make sure no one was coming so she could steal Charlie’s broom.
The feeling of Apparition was horrible. Almost like being strangled. She tried to take deep breaths, but that seemed to be distracting her from her image so she gave up and held onto the picture in her mind. Before she got there, she saw, fleetingly, the window of the attic with a Death Eater hanging out, screaming curses and shooting hexes. She suddenly realized that there was a large ring of Death Eaters waiting in the shadows around the house. She was staring right at the back of one of the huge black-clad figures. A hand snaked around her mouth from behind and another one around her waist, but the swirling, squeezing feeling of Apparition wouldn’t stop and she felt as if she was going to faint.
The only thing keeping her from giving in to the overpowering darkness was a strong familiar scent that reminded her of strength.
Finally, Ginny fell to her knees and found herself staring at a large silly-looking snowman that was wearing one of Percy’s school hats.
