From Across the Great Divide, Chapter 4
Rated: R
Summary: A post-Hogwarts H/G fic. Strange circumstances draw Harry and Ginny closer together. But are they in danger? Romance, adventure, Monty Python, and tartan boxer shorts abound.
Harry walked into Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes and immediately looked around the shop to see which of the twins was in today. Ever since Fred and George had been recruited into the Department of Mysteries during the last year of Lord Voldemort’s reign of terror, one of them, at most, was ever on the premises at any given time. The other was usually at the Ministry. Upon leaving Hogwarts, Ron had joined the twins as a partner in the joke shop to help them run the place. But he, too, had ended up at the Ministry. Between the three of them, they managed to run the business and fulfil their Ministry duties, whatever those were. The Department of Mysteries guarded its secrets closely. The shop itself was successful enough that its owners were able to hire on enough employees to keep things running from day to day. The only part of the venture that had suffered as a result of its owners’ lack of time was product development. This had slowed considerably once the twins had begun to divide their time between two jobs, but in spite of this, business remained brisk. As for the Ministry, it tolerated their work at the joke shop, because it was considered good cover: outside the Weasley family and the Ministry, the twins’ and Ron’s involvement with the Department of Mysteries was known only to Harry.
Harry spotted George at the back of the shop and walked over. Long association with the Weasley family had taught Harry the subtle differences between the twins: George was slightly taller and stockier than Fred; he wore his hair a bit shorter and dressed in more muted tones. "Hi, George, have you got a minute? Actually, it may take longer than that. I’ve got something I need to discuss with you."
"Sure, Harry. Monday afternoons are always slow. Sounds serious."
"I think it just may be."
George told the witch at the counter he’d be in the back and not to interrupt, then he led Harry into the office and closed the door. "Have a seat, Harry. What’s on your mind?"
"There’s some sort of trouble going on, and it involves your sister."
"What’s she done? Finally told her boss off? Nicked the socks of a high-level Ministry employee? What?"
"No, I think this is really serious." And Harry proceeded to tell George everything that had transpired since he and Ginny had left the wedding Saturday, glossing over certain details he didn’t think were particularly relevant. "I didn’t mention it to Ginny," he concluded, "but I’m sure the wizard outside HMV was not a photographer. I never did get a look at his face, but his build suggested to me he could have been either Crabbe or Goyle."
"Malfoy’s old henchmen?" George let out a low whistle. "You’re right, Harry, something is definitely dodgy about all this."
"I was wondering if you had any information that could be useful. I’m not asking you to reveal any Ministry secrets, but something tells me there is more to this than Ginny sending an owl to the wrong person. There was Dark Magic involved here, and somehow it was arranged so that it didn’t show up on the detectors in Ginny’s office. Either that, or the records were erased."
"And you say she found a record of owls she’d sent to Crabbe?"
"Yes, only a month or so ago. I never did get as far as seeing what the offence was. Ginny’s boss came back to the office earlier than expected."
George considered for a moment. "I can tell you this much, Harry, but it can go no further. There have been reports of an increase in Dark activity elsewhere in Europe recently. No incidents have been reported yet in England, but I think we’ve just seen proof that such things can be covered up. And what you’ve just told me could indicate that the son of a known Death Eater could be involved. I can’t say any more at the moment, but this will definitely have to be reported to my superior."
"Is there any way you could possibly keep this quiet? Ginny didn’t want anyone in the family to know her cottage had been broken into."
George grinned. "Harry, you’re dealing with the Department of Mysteries, here. Keeping things under wraps is our speciality." Then he added in a more serious tone, "As for telling me, you did the right thing. Ginny guards her independence fiercely, but in this case, I think she’s going to need someone looking out for her."
"I really don’t like the idea of her staying by herself in Hogsmeade, as isolated as her house is. Seems like whoever broke in there could come back any time."
"You’ll never get her to leave. That cottage is her pride and joy. You realise, don’t you, that most of her salary goes into the rent on the place? There are loads of places she could lease for less, but she won’t stay anywhere else. And don’t even think of asking her to move back to the Burrow."
Harry wondered what was going on between Ginny and her mother, but he couldn’t think of any way of asking George without bringing up what had happened on Sunday morning, when Molly had turned up unexpectedly. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to bring up that particular scene. Things were complicated, Ginny had said. Harry had the feeling they were about to get much more complicated. He said nothing about it to George, but he fully intended to be the one who looked out for Ginny’s safety. He hoped he wouldn’t have too much trouble convincing Ginny to see things his way. He thanked George for his help and Disapparated to his flat.
*
Ginny returned to the Improper Use of Magic Office to find Mafalda Hopkirk waiting for her. She was no longer smirking. "That was quite a long lunch hour Ginny. Did you and Mr. Potter have a nice time?"
"I’m sorry I’m late, Ms. Hopkirk," replied Ginny with feigned meekness. "I must have lost track of the time."
"I’m sure you did." The smirk almost returned here. Almost. "But that’s not what concerns me most. It’s what I found lying out on your desk." Ginny’s heart leapt to her throat, but she was able to suppress the gasp that would have made her look guiltier. She had left the files she’d been going through that morning lying out on her desk in plain sight. "You weren’t, by any chance, showing Ministry files to non-Ministry personnel, were you?"
Ginny looked her boss directly in the eye. "No, Ma’am," she lied.
"Then why did you have them out at all? And why these particular files?"
Ginny fought off a feeling of panic. She’d have to think of a convincing story quickly. "It was a slow day. Nothing much was happening. I just thought I’d tidy up the files, while I was waiting to go to lunch."
Mafalda Hopkirk pursed her lips but, fortunately for Ginny, seemed willing to buy this story. "Next time you decide to tidy up, I would appreciate it if you’d actually get around to the tidying up rather than leave the files lying about where anyone could see them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be leaving now. I have a meeting to attend, and then I’ll be off home."
"Yes, Ma’am," Ginny grated out. She glared after Mafalda’s retreating back. "How could I have tidied up before leaving?" she wondered aloud after her boss was out of earshot. "You’re the one who hurried me off. Ignorant cow."
She sat awhile and stewed. She really hated her job. If it wasn’t for the salary that allowed her to live away from home… Suddenly, a thought occurred to her, and she started towards the filing cabinets, but before she could reach them, she heard someone enter the office behind her. She sighed, thinking Mafalda had come up with something else to berate her about while she had been in her meeting, but when she turned around, she saw Percy standing there.
"Percy," she cried, "what are you doing here?" Then she had an evil thought. "If you’ve come to see Ms. Hopkirk, she’s already left for the day."
Percy drew himself up. "No, Ginny, I wanted to talk to you."
"Well, make it quick, I’m busy."
He stared at her, incredulous. "You busy? In the Improper Use of Magic Office? Now we at the Department of International Magic Co-operation get up to some interesting things, but…"
"Like cauldron bottoms?" interrupted Ginny. "Look, I was just about to tidy up the files." If that excuse had worked the first time, it might work again.
"That can wait, can’t it? Although I’ve always said one’s files can never be too tidy…" Ginny rolled her eyes. Why couldn’t he get to the point? "I've come to ask you about Mum. In the interest of family harmony, of course."
"What about her?" Ginny asked suspiciously.
"I was over at the Burrow yesterday afternoon, and she had a bee in her bonnet about something. It seemed to involve you."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing specific."
"So you decided to stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong?" she cried. Her voice continued rising. "Listen, Percy, this is really not a good time. Mum thinks I’m still ten years old and need my hand held. She came over to my house yesterday morning, and I let her know in no uncertain terms that I do not need my hand held. It so happened she didn’t like the terms I used, she got hacked off and left. End of story. Are you satisfied now?" She took a calming breath.
At that point Percy showed the bravery that is the hallmark of a Gryffindor and pursued the subject. "So there’s no hope you’ll go see Mum and smooth things over?"
"Percy, this is really none of your business, but the answer is no, I won’t. If Mum doesn’t trust me enough to realise she misunderstood the situation, I have nothing more to say about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me…"
Percy finally took the hint and left. Ginny took a few more deep breaths to calm herself. Overall, today really was not going well. Skiving off with Harry may have been a high point, but she wasn’t sure it was enough of a high point to make up for all this aggravation. Thinking of Harry brought back mental images of yesterday in her garden… She shook herself. She couldn’t afford to think about that now, pleasant as the thought was. She had to have a look in the filing cabinet. She turned towards it again.
"Erm… Gin?" said a voice.
"WHAT?" She whirled around, and there was George. "What is this, an office, or bloody Kings Cross?"
"Sorry, Gin, I needed to talk to you."
"Not you, too…"
"Not me too, what?"
"Percy was just in here. If this is about Mum…"
George held up a hand to stop her. "No, this official business. I need to ask you if anything unusual has happened to you, lately."
Ginny’s heart skipped a beat. How did he know? "What sort of unusual occurrence would that be?"
George looked uncomfortable. "You know, anything, erm, unusual…"
Ginny arched a brow. "Is this the Department of Mysteries’ latest interrogation technique? Because if it is, it needs some polishing."
"Come on, Gin, I need to know. This is official."
Ginny fixed him with a glare. "Has Harry been to see you?" George didn’t bother to answer. "He has been to see you! I’ll kill the bastard!"
"Woah, Ginny, calm down."
"I will not calm down." She began to pace back and forth. "I expressly told him not to tell my family, especially not you or Fred…"
"Look, Ginny, he told me the whole story. I had to report it. My superior has sent me for the files you found, as well as the records from Saturday. If you’ll just hand them over then…"
Ginny sighed. Today was definitely not going well. At least she had an excuse now to look at the files again. She went to the filing cabinet and opened it. She noted that everything seemed to be in order. "Here. This is the record from Saturday," she said, handing George a roll of parchment. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him take something small out of his pocket and begin to run it over the parchment. She turned back to the files, pulling out the records of the last six months, and began to page through them.
"Look at this," George interrupted her. "This," he said holding up a small square object, "is called a Spell Checker. You can run it over things like this parchment and see if there’s been any sort of spell cast on it. Watch." He ran the Spell Checker over the record from Saturday and the Spell Checker began to glow green. "This parchment had been tampered with. Some sort of Erasure Charm."
"So someone erased the record of the break-in at my house?"
"Likely. More might have been erased. I can’t tell exactly how much with this. I’ll have to turn this parchment in to have it tested further. Have you got those other files?"
"Just a minute." Ginny paged through the files, and then paged through a second time. "George," she said apprehensively, "they’re not here. They were here this morning, and now they’re gone."
"Could they have been mis-filed?"
Ginny looked through all the filing cabinets as quickly as she could and found everything in order. Then she looked on her desk, on Mafalda’s desk, on the floor… "George, those files have gone missing. They’re not here anywhere."
George grew very serious. He took his sister by the upper arms and looked straight into her eyes. "Look, Ginny, I have a bad feeling about all this. I want you to take this seriously and be very careful. I should tell you to move back home, but I know you won’t do that. I’d feel better about this if you weren’t out there in Hogsmeade all alone. Do you have a friend you could ask to stay with you?"
"Stop it, George, I can take care of myself."
"Maybe Harry…"
"Sod Harry! When I get my hands on him, he’ll regret the day he was born."
"Don’t be so hard on Harry. I’d say he has your best interests at heart." George turned to leave. "Remember what I said, be careful."
"Wait, George. Promise me you won’t tell anyone else about this."
"No problem, Gin. This official Department business now. I couldn’t tell anyone if I wanted to." And then he was gone.
Ginny spent the rest of the evening thinking of ever more imaginative curses she could use on Harry the next time she saw him. When she could think of no more, she sat idly contemplating her wand, turning it over and over in her hands. It was interesting, she mused to herself, how in certain ways she herself was reflected in her wand. It was short at merely seven inches, and she was just barely taller than her mother; its core was dragon heart-string, and she supposed this could represent her fiery temper; she didn’t know what to make of the willow that made up its exterior. She shook herself mentally. The things one thought of when one was bored at work.
Finally, at midnight, Eleanor Branstone came in to relieve her. Ginny was tired and hungry, having had no opportunity to eat anything since the ice cream that afternoon. She was glad her shift was over and even happier that she now had seniority over someone else so that she no longer had to work the overnight shift, as she had had to do when she was first hired. She shivered and realised with a shock that she was still wearing the Muggle summer dress; she had completely forgotten to re-transfigure her robes. "Isn’t that just the icing on the cake," she said to herself. She was sure her eagle-eyed boss would have noticed her change of attire and jumped to all sorts of wild conclusions. Glumly, she made her way down through the darkened corridors to the reception area from where she could Disapparate to Hogsmeade.
She appeared with a pop in the road in front of her cottage. The moon was bright, but its position behind her house cast the front garden into shadow. Ginny took one step towards her door and froze. There was someone lurking in the dark near her doorstep, she was sure of it. Quickly she drew out her want and muttered, "lumos."
"You!" she cried. It was Harry. She saw him leaning against the wall next to the front door with what looked like a bulky bag on the ground at his feet. Then she noticed Hedwig in her cage behind the bag. "Harry, what are you doing here?" she asked in an icy tone.
"I was waiting for you to get home from work," came his answer.
She advanced on him so that they stood face to face. "Harry, I’m in no mood for this. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I know you went to see George and told him everything."
"I didn’t tell him absolutely everything."
"You told him enough." Her voice was shaking now. "He came into the office this evening and wanted the files I’d found. And I asked you not to say anything. You should be very afraid right now. I spent the rest of the evening deciding the best curse to use on you."
Harry seemed to suppress a smile, Ginny noticed, and this did not improve her temper. "And which curse did you decide on? The Transmogrifian Torture?"
"That’s not funny. And you still haven’t told me the reason you’re here."
"I’m moving in here with you until we know what all this is about."
"You sure as bloody hell are not!"
"You can’t stay here by yourself. It’s too dangerous. I didn’t say anything this afternoon, but I’m fairly sure the wizard who was following us could have been Crabbe or Goyle, from his build, anyway. I discussed it with George, and he agreed with me that you shouldn’t be here alone."
Ginny narrowed her eyes. "Oh, thank you so very much for discussing me with my brother behind my back. And you’ve got quite a nerve assuming you can just move in here with me…"
She was interrupted at that moment by a flutter of wings, as an eagle owl swooped down at her. She stumbled forward with a cry, as she tried to avoid the owl’s talons which passed dangerously close to her face. Harry caught her and steadied her before she could fall, then he reached down to pick up a black envelope that the owl had let fall at their feet. They stared at the address on the envelope, which read "Ginny Weasley, Hogsmeade" in sickly white lettering. Harry, however, was reluctant to hand it over, and finally Ginny said, "Go on, open it." Harry hesitated and then tore the letter open. A greenish mist rose from it and formed itself into the shape of the Dark Mark.
Next chapter
Summary: A post-Hogwarts H/G fic. Strange circumstances draw Harry and Ginny closer together. But are they in danger? Romance, adventure, Monty Python, and tartan boxer shorts abound.
Harry walked into Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes and immediately looked around the shop to see which of the twins was in today. Ever since Fred and George had been recruited into the Department of Mysteries during the last year of Lord Voldemort’s reign of terror, one of them, at most, was ever on the premises at any given time. The other was usually at the Ministry. Upon leaving Hogwarts, Ron had joined the twins as a partner in the joke shop to help them run the place. But he, too, had ended up at the Ministry. Between the three of them, they managed to run the business and fulfil their Ministry duties, whatever those were. The Department of Mysteries guarded its secrets closely. The shop itself was successful enough that its owners were able to hire on enough employees to keep things running from day to day. The only part of the venture that had suffered as a result of its owners’ lack of time was product development. This had slowed considerably once the twins had begun to divide their time between two jobs, but in spite of this, business remained brisk. As for the Ministry, it tolerated their work at the joke shop, because it was considered good cover: outside the Weasley family and the Ministry, the twins’ and Ron’s involvement with the Department of Mysteries was known only to Harry.
Harry spotted George at the back of the shop and walked over. Long association with the Weasley family had taught Harry the subtle differences between the twins: George was slightly taller and stockier than Fred; he wore his hair a bit shorter and dressed in more muted tones. "Hi, George, have you got a minute? Actually, it may take longer than that. I’ve got something I need to discuss with you."
"Sure, Harry. Monday afternoons are always slow. Sounds serious."
"I think it just may be."
George told the witch at the counter he’d be in the back and not to interrupt, then he led Harry into the office and closed the door. "Have a seat, Harry. What’s on your mind?"
"There’s some sort of trouble going on, and it involves your sister."
"What’s she done? Finally told her boss off? Nicked the socks of a high-level Ministry employee? What?"
"No, I think this is really serious." And Harry proceeded to tell George everything that had transpired since he and Ginny had left the wedding Saturday, glossing over certain details he didn’t think were particularly relevant. "I didn’t mention it to Ginny," he concluded, "but I’m sure the wizard outside HMV was not a photographer. I never did get a look at his face, but his build suggested to me he could have been either Crabbe or Goyle."
"Malfoy’s old henchmen?" George let out a low whistle. "You’re right, Harry, something is definitely dodgy about all this."
"I was wondering if you had any information that could be useful. I’m not asking you to reveal any Ministry secrets, but something tells me there is more to this than Ginny sending an owl to the wrong person. There was Dark Magic involved here, and somehow it was arranged so that it didn’t show up on the detectors in Ginny’s office. Either that, or the records were erased."
"And you say she found a record of owls she’d sent to Crabbe?"
"Yes, only a month or so ago. I never did get as far as seeing what the offence was. Ginny’s boss came back to the office earlier than expected."
George considered for a moment. "I can tell you this much, Harry, but it can go no further. There have been reports of an increase in Dark activity elsewhere in Europe recently. No incidents have been reported yet in England, but I think we’ve just seen proof that such things can be covered up. And what you’ve just told me could indicate that the son of a known Death Eater could be involved. I can’t say any more at the moment, but this will definitely have to be reported to my superior."
"Is there any way you could possibly keep this quiet? Ginny didn’t want anyone in the family to know her cottage had been broken into."
George grinned. "Harry, you’re dealing with the Department of Mysteries, here. Keeping things under wraps is our speciality." Then he added in a more serious tone, "As for telling me, you did the right thing. Ginny guards her independence fiercely, but in this case, I think she’s going to need someone looking out for her."
"I really don’t like the idea of her staying by herself in Hogsmeade, as isolated as her house is. Seems like whoever broke in there could come back any time."
"You’ll never get her to leave. That cottage is her pride and joy. You realise, don’t you, that most of her salary goes into the rent on the place? There are loads of places she could lease for less, but she won’t stay anywhere else. And don’t even think of asking her to move back to the Burrow."
Harry wondered what was going on between Ginny and her mother, but he couldn’t think of any way of asking George without bringing up what had happened on Sunday morning, when Molly had turned up unexpectedly. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to bring up that particular scene. Things were complicated, Ginny had said. Harry had the feeling they were about to get much more complicated. He said nothing about it to George, but he fully intended to be the one who looked out for Ginny’s safety. He hoped he wouldn’t have too much trouble convincing Ginny to see things his way. He thanked George for his help and Disapparated to his flat.
*
Ginny returned to the Improper Use of Magic Office to find Mafalda Hopkirk waiting for her. She was no longer smirking. "That was quite a long lunch hour Ginny. Did you and Mr. Potter have a nice time?"
"I’m sorry I’m late, Ms. Hopkirk," replied Ginny with feigned meekness. "I must have lost track of the time."
"I’m sure you did." The smirk almost returned here. Almost. "But that’s not what concerns me most. It’s what I found lying out on your desk." Ginny’s heart leapt to her throat, but she was able to suppress the gasp that would have made her look guiltier. She had left the files she’d been going through that morning lying out on her desk in plain sight. "You weren’t, by any chance, showing Ministry files to non-Ministry personnel, were you?"
Ginny looked her boss directly in the eye. "No, Ma’am," she lied.
"Then why did you have them out at all? And why these particular files?"
Ginny fought off a feeling of panic. She’d have to think of a convincing story quickly. "It was a slow day. Nothing much was happening. I just thought I’d tidy up the files, while I was waiting to go to lunch."
Mafalda Hopkirk pursed her lips but, fortunately for Ginny, seemed willing to buy this story. "Next time you decide to tidy up, I would appreciate it if you’d actually get around to the tidying up rather than leave the files lying about where anyone could see them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be leaving now. I have a meeting to attend, and then I’ll be off home."
"Yes, Ma’am," Ginny grated out. She glared after Mafalda’s retreating back. "How could I have tidied up before leaving?" she wondered aloud after her boss was out of earshot. "You’re the one who hurried me off. Ignorant cow."
She sat awhile and stewed. She really hated her job. If it wasn’t for the salary that allowed her to live away from home… Suddenly, a thought occurred to her, and she started towards the filing cabinets, but before she could reach them, she heard someone enter the office behind her. She sighed, thinking Mafalda had come up with something else to berate her about while she had been in her meeting, but when she turned around, she saw Percy standing there.
"Percy," she cried, "what are you doing here?" Then she had an evil thought. "If you’ve come to see Ms. Hopkirk, she’s already left for the day."
Percy drew himself up. "No, Ginny, I wanted to talk to you."
"Well, make it quick, I’m busy."
He stared at her, incredulous. "You busy? In the Improper Use of Magic Office? Now we at the Department of International Magic Co-operation get up to some interesting things, but…"
"Like cauldron bottoms?" interrupted Ginny. "Look, I was just about to tidy up the files." If that excuse had worked the first time, it might work again.
"That can wait, can’t it? Although I’ve always said one’s files can never be too tidy…" Ginny rolled her eyes. Why couldn’t he get to the point? "I've come to ask you about Mum. In the interest of family harmony, of course."
"What about her?" Ginny asked suspiciously.
"I was over at the Burrow yesterday afternoon, and she had a bee in her bonnet about something. It seemed to involve you."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing specific."
"So you decided to stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong?" she cried. Her voice continued rising. "Listen, Percy, this is really not a good time. Mum thinks I’m still ten years old and need my hand held. She came over to my house yesterday morning, and I let her know in no uncertain terms that I do not need my hand held. It so happened she didn’t like the terms I used, she got hacked off and left. End of story. Are you satisfied now?" She took a calming breath.
At that point Percy showed the bravery that is the hallmark of a Gryffindor and pursued the subject. "So there’s no hope you’ll go see Mum and smooth things over?"
"Percy, this is really none of your business, but the answer is no, I won’t. If Mum doesn’t trust me enough to realise she misunderstood the situation, I have nothing more to say about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me…"
Percy finally took the hint and left. Ginny took a few more deep breaths to calm herself. Overall, today really was not going well. Skiving off with Harry may have been a high point, but she wasn’t sure it was enough of a high point to make up for all this aggravation. Thinking of Harry brought back mental images of yesterday in her garden… She shook herself. She couldn’t afford to think about that now, pleasant as the thought was. She had to have a look in the filing cabinet. She turned towards it again.
"Erm… Gin?" said a voice.
"WHAT?" She whirled around, and there was George. "What is this, an office, or bloody Kings Cross?"
"Sorry, Gin, I needed to talk to you."
"Not you, too…"
"Not me too, what?"
"Percy was just in here. If this is about Mum…"
George held up a hand to stop her. "No, this official business. I need to ask you if anything unusual has happened to you, lately."
Ginny’s heart skipped a beat. How did he know? "What sort of unusual occurrence would that be?"
George looked uncomfortable. "You know, anything, erm, unusual…"
Ginny arched a brow. "Is this the Department of Mysteries’ latest interrogation technique? Because if it is, it needs some polishing."
"Come on, Gin, I need to know. This is official."
Ginny fixed him with a glare. "Has Harry been to see you?" George didn’t bother to answer. "He has been to see you! I’ll kill the bastard!"
"Woah, Ginny, calm down."
"I will not calm down." She began to pace back and forth. "I expressly told him not to tell my family, especially not you or Fred…"
"Look, Ginny, he told me the whole story. I had to report it. My superior has sent me for the files you found, as well as the records from Saturday. If you’ll just hand them over then…"
Ginny sighed. Today was definitely not going well. At least she had an excuse now to look at the files again. She went to the filing cabinet and opened it. She noted that everything seemed to be in order. "Here. This is the record from Saturday," she said, handing George a roll of parchment. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him take something small out of his pocket and begin to run it over the parchment. She turned back to the files, pulling out the records of the last six months, and began to page through them.
"Look at this," George interrupted her. "This," he said holding up a small square object, "is called a Spell Checker. You can run it over things like this parchment and see if there’s been any sort of spell cast on it. Watch." He ran the Spell Checker over the record from Saturday and the Spell Checker began to glow green. "This parchment had been tampered with. Some sort of Erasure Charm."
"So someone erased the record of the break-in at my house?"
"Likely. More might have been erased. I can’t tell exactly how much with this. I’ll have to turn this parchment in to have it tested further. Have you got those other files?"
"Just a minute." Ginny paged through the files, and then paged through a second time. "George," she said apprehensively, "they’re not here. They were here this morning, and now they’re gone."
"Could they have been mis-filed?"
Ginny looked through all the filing cabinets as quickly as she could and found everything in order. Then she looked on her desk, on Mafalda’s desk, on the floor… "George, those files have gone missing. They’re not here anywhere."
George grew very serious. He took his sister by the upper arms and looked straight into her eyes. "Look, Ginny, I have a bad feeling about all this. I want you to take this seriously and be very careful. I should tell you to move back home, but I know you won’t do that. I’d feel better about this if you weren’t out there in Hogsmeade all alone. Do you have a friend you could ask to stay with you?"
"Stop it, George, I can take care of myself."
"Maybe Harry…"
"Sod Harry! When I get my hands on him, he’ll regret the day he was born."
"Don’t be so hard on Harry. I’d say he has your best interests at heart." George turned to leave. "Remember what I said, be careful."
"Wait, George. Promise me you won’t tell anyone else about this."
"No problem, Gin. This official Department business now. I couldn’t tell anyone if I wanted to." And then he was gone.
Ginny spent the rest of the evening thinking of ever more imaginative curses she could use on Harry the next time she saw him. When she could think of no more, she sat idly contemplating her wand, turning it over and over in her hands. It was interesting, she mused to herself, how in certain ways she herself was reflected in her wand. It was short at merely seven inches, and she was just barely taller than her mother; its core was dragon heart-string, and she supposed this could represent her fiery temper; she didn’t know what to make of the willow that made up its exterior. She shook herself mentally. The things one thought of when one was bored at work.
Finally, at midnight, Eleanor Branstone came in to relieve her. Ginny was tired and hungry, having had no opportunity to eat anything since the ice cream that afternoon. She was glad her shift was over and even happier that she now had seniority over someone else so that she no longer had to work the overnight shift, as she had had to do when she was first hired. She shivered and realised with a shock that she was still wearing the Muggle summer dress; she had completely forgotten to re-transfigure her robes. "Isn’t that just the icing on the cake," she said to herself. She was sure her eagle-eyed boss would have noticed her change of attire and jumped to all sorts of wild conclusions. Glumly, she made her way down through the darkened corridors to the reception area from where she could Disapparate to Hogsmeade.
She appeared with a pop in the road in front of her cottage. The moon was bright, but its position behind her house cast the front garden into shadow. Ginny took one step towards her door and froze. There was someone lurking in the dark near her doorstep, she was sure of it. Quickly she drew out her want and muttered, "lumos."
"You!" she cried. It was Harry. She saw him leaning against the wall next to the front door with what looked like a bulky bag on the ground at his feet. Then she noticed Hedwig in her cage behind the bag. "Harry, what are you doing here?" she asked in an icy tone.
"I was waiting for you to get home from work," came his answer.
She advanced on him so that they stood face to face. "Harry, I’m in no mood for this. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I know you went to see George and told him everything."
"I didn’t tell him absolutely everything."
"You told him enough." Her voice was shaking now. "He came into the office this evening and wanted the files I’d found. And I asked you not to say anything. You should be very afraid right now. I spent the rest of the evening deciding the best curse to use on you."
Harry seemed to suppress a smile, Ginny noticed, and this did not improve her temper. "And which curse did you decide on? The Transmogrifian Torture?"
"That’s not funny. And you still haven’t told me the reason you’re here."
"I’m moving in here with you until we know what all this is about."
"You sure as bloody hell are not!"
"You can’t stay here by yourself. It’s too dangerous. I didn’t say anything this afternoon, but I’m fairly sure the wizard who was following us could have been Crabbe or Goyle, from his build, anyway. I discussed it with George, and he agreed with me that you shouldn’t be here alone."
Ginny narrowed her eyes. "Oh, thank you so very much for discussing me with my brother behind my back. And you’ve got quite a nerve assuming you can just move in here with me…"
She was interrupted at that moment by a flutter of wings, as an eagle owl swooped down at her. She stumbled forward with a cry, as she tried to avoid the owl’s talons which passed dangerously close to her face. Harry caught her and steadied her before she could fall, then he reached down to pick up a black envelope that the owl had let fall at their feet. They stared at the address on the envelope, which read "Ginny Weasley, Hogsmeade" in sickly white lettering. Harry, however, was reluctant to hand it over, and finally Ginny said, "Go on, open it." Harry hesitated and then tore the letter open. A greenish mist rose from it and formed itself into the shape of the Dark Mark.
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