Ginny felt as if she was being dragged into a tomb. She could not even kick and scream because she knew that they had no choice but to go into hiding: all of them. Ron had been captured by the Death Eaters and, although he had managed to escape, his presence at Harry’s side had put the entire Weasley family on Tom Riddle’s most wanted list. Ginny said nothing as she was shunted from safe-house to not-so-safe-house because she knew they were all suffering.
The twins, of course, could never be locked up. They continued to find ways to help others and get a laugh, becoming regular members of Lee’s radio show Potterwatch. Percy, who had already disinherited his family, was probably still bouncing along happily in the ministry as if everything was alright. Ginny turned to Bill in her first few days, but her favorite brother, the brother she had always looked up to the most, did not seem to understand her anymore. He would listen to her and make sympathetic noises or comments every now and then, but he did not really get it anymore. He still wore the ring in his ear and did dangerous and exciting things for the Order, but now he seemed to see it simply as part of his duty and all the longing and the excitement for adventure that they used to share was gone. It was as if his marriage had transported him into a completely different world, as if his personality had been altered all of a sudden just because he had a new family to consider and protect. It was Charlie who took it the hardest.
He had to be forcibly dragged from the reserve in Romania and only really gave in when he was attacked by a band of Death Eaters, barely escaping with his life. The scars on his arms began to heal and his face seemed to become more handsome all of a sudden. He did not say anything or complain, but Ginny could see the sadness in his eyes. Mum could exclaim all she wanted that he was looking much more like her old, dear Charlie again, and that he should get married soon, but Ginny saw the pain in his eyes. To her the wounds of being locked, of being away from his dragons, of being almost useless, were much more visible and ugly than his old burns and scars had been.
Despite all of this Ginny did not seek out Charlie’s confidence like she had with her other brothers. She watched from a distance as he practiced hexes and jinxes in the backyard and in his room. She watched him read the same book about dragons over and over. She noticed that his mood would lighten every time Hagrid was mentioned or came over for an Order meeting. At one point, Ginny began to wonder if he was trying to get a smuggled dragon egg out of Hagrid. He’d do it. She would do it. They needed something fiery and bright to fight back against the now constant darkness.
It was Charlie who sought her out after two weeks of being locked up. “Come here, broom-thief,” he said one evening, “I’m going to take charge of your education so you don’t fall behind.”
Ginny grinned as Charlie shouted down Mum and then she followed him out to the protected backyard. “You’re not really going to teach me History of Magic and all the useless stuff I’d be learning at Hogwarts.”
Charlie laughed. “If I remembered any of my History of Magic I might consider trying, little broom thief. Show me what you can do!”
He whipped his wand out so quickly and suddenly that Ginny barely had time to duck. She went rolling out of the way and sheltered behind a tree as she pulled her wand out. Taking a deep breath, Ginny jumped back out from behind the tree and struck Charlie with the strongest jinx she knew. She followed it up with a bat-bogey that missed its mark and then was forced to duck a nasty-looking non-verbal spell that Charlie shot at her.
They spent nearly two hours dueling furiously, their spells lighting up the pitch black sky. For the first and only time since going into hiding Ginny felt truly alive.
…
Blaise and Theo were summoned into Snape’s office together. He was not there when they arrived, although the Gargoyle had wordlessly let them in, but Blaise felt that they were being watched. He tried to communicate this to Theo, but his friend seemed to be in a different world, examining Snape’s things with a careless inquisitiveness. Finally, one of the portraits spoke up.
“Watch what you’re doing, sonny, that’s a very rare-”
“I know,” Theo replied, a boyish gleam in his eye. “It’s a cursed secrecy sensor that can detect and identify very dilute poisons. Did he invent it?”
“As a matter of fact, I did, Mr. Nott.” Snape’s sallow voice interrupted him. “Now, if you will please take a seat and stop playing with my possessions…”
Theo put the secrecy sensor gently back on the table and took a seat opposite Blaise. Snape, as always, made a show of striding slowly and menacingly across the room before sitting down at his desk. He surveyed them both through penetrating eyes. “The Dark Lord has a mission for you.”
Blaise let out a pained breath.
“Make no mistake, this is a test. I do not think I need to impress upon you the magnitude of the consequences should you fail. The Dark Lord has rather higher expectations of you than he did of Draco and, as such, his anger will be much greater if you should fail.”
Blaise closed his eyes against the image of Draco’s insane, blood-smeared face. Ever since that night, the night that a permanent darkness fell over the world and Draco was punished, he had become completely unhinged.
“The hiding place of the Weasley family has been located. It is heavily protected, which means we must have a very good plan when we attack. The Dark Lord is giving you one last chance to prove yourselves useful – to prove yourselves more than sniveling little boys who will collapse at the sight of blood and punishment the way you have been doing recently. The two of you will be responsible for laying the plan to attack the Weasley safe-house. Everyone else is expendable, but the girl, Ginny Weasley, must be brought to the Dark Lord alive.”
Blaise opened his eyes and they met Theo’s. Snape dismissed them, but Blaise forced himself to ask the one, all-important question.
“How long do we have to plan?”
“The Dark Lord is giving you one week. Tomorrow morning at eleven you will meet someone in Diagon Alley who will show you the place and explain the finer details of your mission.”
…
“I said no, and it’s final!” Molly Weasley said decisively. “Ginny will not be left here alone. Your father and I will be at the Order meeting, Charlie is out on a mission, so you two will stay right here with your sister.”
“Yeah,” George said venomously, “because she’s really going to need us while she sits here under a million protective spells.”
“Don’t you remember, George,” Fred continued with equal sarcasm, “Ginny’s afraid of the dark. She was possessed by bloody You-Know-Who in her second year, she fought off a whole bunch of Death Eaters in her fourth year, but she’s afraid of the dark now.”
“I’m not going to keep repeating myself,” Mum said. “There’s going to be at least one person in this house with Ginny at all times.”
Ginny turned away from her mother’s red face and her brothers’ angry, resentful ones. She pulled out her wand and used five of the Jinxes Charlie had taught her in quick succession, reducing the entire left wall of the kitchen to smithereens.
“Go to your room, young lady!”
“Because being locked up in here with a prison guard isn't good enough for you, now I have to be locked up in my room!”
“Now!” Mum said with finality.
“I’ll go,” Ginny said, “but I promise you that once I turn seventeen you’re not going to ever see my face again!”
“Ginny!” Mum continued to reprimand her for her rudeness all the way out of the kitchen, but it was Dad’s face that looked shocked and hurt. Molly Weasley might think that Ginny was simply being rude, but Dad knew that she might well act on such a threat.
…
The candle’s flame seemed to grow bigger and bigger the more she stared into its depths. It seemed to fill her whole world. She wished that was true, but the chills running up and down her spine told a different story.
“Celeste!”
Celeste jumped and knocked the candle over so that its magically enlarged flame caught at the papers on Miss Kate’s desk. She reached for the jug of water on the side table and it came zooming of its own accord and landed sloppily on the desk, spilling half its contents on the desk with the force of its landing.
“Sorry!” Celeste apologized, looking around for a way to fix the sodden mess she had created. “I didn’t realize I was making it bigger… I just…”
“Sometimes,” Miss Kate said, wiping at the wet puddle with a small rag, “when I see you do magic it makes me feel safer, like we have someone to protect us from… from all of it. Then I look outside the window and all my fears come back. Maybe I should have insisted you go to that school.”
“At least then I’d be able to control it better,” Celeste whispered, looking out at the perpetual darkness. “But I don’t think it would have helped much, really, or they would have figured out how to get rid of that mist by now. Even powerful Wizards have fallen before these Death Eaters, what would I be able to do even with a witch’s education?”
“I’ve canceled the trip to the library tomorrow,” Miss Kate said suddenly. “I know it’s only a couple of blocks away, but…”
Celeste nodded. Anyone in their right minds would have cancelled it. She wondered if the Library employees would even leave their houses to go open it in this darkness. If you had others to worry about, family or friends, especially little ones, this was a time of hiding, not trips to the library.
There was a long silence in which both women stared out the window and listened to the quiet of the Orphanage at night.
“We can read books aloud to each other tomorrow. Jimmy reads beautifully, we can ask him to start to encourage the others.”
Miss Kate nodded. “Have you put up those protective spells Remus taught you?”
“I did,” Celeste said, standing. “An hour ago, but I’ll go check…make sure they’re on all the entrances…”
“Celeste!” Celeste stopped at the door and turned back. The older woman smiled at her, the closest thing to a mother’s smile that Celeste had ever known.
“You are very powerful in your own way and without you – magic or not – the kids wouldn't be so healthy and happy now. If we let it get to us, make us depressed or afraid, the children will feel it and it’ll frighten them much more than anything else.”
…
Theo locked the doors and windows and then walked around the room in a circle reciting all the protective enchantments and concealment spells he knew. Blaise was sitting in a hard-backed chair that he usually avoided looking down at his own hands. He may not have noticed Snape’s curious looks, but Theo had. Snape had felt something in Blaise’s normally collected face. The Headmaster had glimpsed something behind the mask today.
Theo stood staring at his friend for a while. If they had a plan, if they knew what they needed to do, Blaise would be able to mend the holes in his mask and keep up the act. What mattered now was getting through this “test” that the Dark Lord has set them.
“I need you with me, Blaise, because you’re the one with a flair for spell-invention and I can’t plan this without you.”
Blaise lifted his head and the tortured look in his eyes stung. It was as if he had forgotten that he was not alone, that he had one friend.
“This is it, Blaise. Tonight we have to decide how the war changes us. We either let it destroy us or we come up with a way to find ourselves, fulfill our dreams, through it.”
Blaise laughed. “Dreams?! I don’t even remember having any bloody dreams!”
“Well then, I’ll remind you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe we can rule out killer and kidnapper from the list of potential occupations.”
