Ginny rejoiced in the tickly feeling of the fresh dew between her toes as she ran through the fields. It was a late summer’s day at The Burrow. The boys had disappeared soon after breakfast to play Quidditch in the orchard, leaving Ginny to her own devices. She helped her mother with the household chores and was now free to enjoy her day.

The Hogwarts’ owls had arrived earlier in the week, and Ginny had finally recieved her Hogwart’s letter. She had been sure she would get one, but still it had been thrilling when she had opened the parchment to see the perfect handwriting of Professor McGonagall congratulating her on her selection into the school. They would have to get their school supplies next week, which left a few long summer days before they went trundling off to Hogwarts.

Ginny finally reached her destination, a little field on the edges of the property near a small pond. She liked the quietness of the field, away from her rambunctious brothers. She sat down on the sparsely grassed edge of the pond and put her toes into the warm water. Just as she was about to recline and slip into her favorite daydream of Gryffindor Quidditch glory, an interesting package nestled in a nearby shrub caught her eye.

Without thinking, Ginny went over and picked up the package. Unwrapping the parcel, she found a letter, a scroll, and an old worn bowl with strange markings all around the rim. Unfolding the letter, Ginny read:

To whomsoever should find this package,

This bowl so common in its features,
Is actually among the world’s strange creatures.
In that it’s magic you can only summon,
With the words below which seem uncommon.
But when fair Helga, who this bowl molded,
Pranced this Earth, the words would leave her scolded.
Unleashing magic in their wake,
Inside them lies a mystery to take.
A brave-hearted soul to unlock,
These words secrets you must take stock:

Undecum Arcessitus Sapientiae
Ginny read the letter many times, wondering what the strange words could mean. Anxious to figure out the mystery, she collected the scroll, letter, and bowl and put them back into the package then hurried towards The Burrow.

She would need to sneak her new treasures into the house without drawing any attention to herself. She could hardly wait to get to her room and read the letter again. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her! Ginny made her way stealthily through the path by the orchard. She could barely see her brothers still playing Quidditch through the uppermost branches of the trees.

The twins had somehow managed to side against Percy and Ron again, which always led to bloodshed. She decided to hide her package in one of the out buildings and wait for the pandemonium that would explode when her mother saw the boys. Ginny then headed for the house where she then helped her mother set the table for tea and waited.

In what seemed like no time at all, her brothers came streaming into the house, swearing and accusing each other, while her mother fairly hit the roof at the sight of them. Ginny stole out of the front door and was able to take her package up to her room without anybody noticing. She carefully placed her writing desk in front of her bedroom door, as this would at least afford her enough time to hide her items if anyone came up to her room. She then turned to the scroll, hoping to find a fuller explanation of this new mysterious task she had been set. The Scroll said the following:

I will go now, and I will store those two memories in the Pensieve that Rowena has given me. I must needs preserve them, leave them behind, for understanding of such terrible disasters can only come with experience and I do not wish for anyone to go that far before being warned, not again. Perhaps one day I can show them to Salazar, but to convince him I will need to perfect that spell I have been working on first. In making this spell I must have felt, for the first and probably last time, what Rowena feels with that unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I want to understand everything about a spell that can make someone see through another’s eyes and then I will be able to alter it ever so slightly to cast on my Pensieve.

"I will store those two memories in the Pensieve," she repeated.

Ginny had never heard of anything that you could store memories in. She wondered what could be so horrible that you would have to alter your own feelings of your experiences in order to share them with others.

~~~

Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. the door read. Ginny stood with her hand on the knob, staring at the lettering. She could hardly believe her good fortune. Ron had sat silently at breakfast that morning when their mother had announced that Ginny was getting her own wand. He’d had to make due with hand-me-downs his whole life, while Ginny, being the only female Weasley child, tended to get new things. Ginny had felt a qualm about this, but then she decided it was only fair. The boys often had a way of excluding her from anything fun solely because she was a girl.

Ginny and her mother stood before Mr. Ollivander as he regarded her intently. He finally went behind a large wall with huge shelves filled with wands and came back holding two. Both wands were made from a similar wood stained dark. One was slightly longer than the other.

“Hazel, I think at least to start. A fine young girl like you has to be a summer’s babe,” he said, giving Ginny a kindly wink and handing her the shorter wand.

Ginny accepted the wand with a shy smile and carefully gave it a flick; mimicking the movements she had seen countless times. The wand sputtered and made a strange, high-pitched noise. Both adults grabbed quickly at the wand, finding the noise upsetting. Her mother put the offending instrument down on the counter and Mr. Ollivander gave Ginny the longer wand. Again she swished the wand, and this time she felt it, a small tingle in her fingers as the wand reacted to the powers coursing within her. The wand sputtered a lilac smoke as together they made the back wall rumble and one of the shelves started to fall. Ginny stared at the shelf intently, holding her wand steady and whoosh, the shelf and its contents floated back to their proper place.

“Perfect!” Mr. Ollivander exclaimed. “Ten and a half inches is a bit longer than I’d have thought, but I knew the hazel wouldn’t go amiss, and the Dragon Heartstring core from a very fine Ukrainian Ironbelly, perfect for all forms of magic, but especially fine for spell work.”

Ginny hated to put the wand into its box, it felt so thrilling to have finally performed proper magic, but she knew she had one more stop to go. Her mother had been even more watchful since the nastiness in the bookshop with those odious Malfoys. Ginny’s parents had had to buy worn copies of schoolbooks in order to afford her new wand, and her cauldron hadn’t been the highest quality.

Normally, she wouldn’t have cared, but the way Mr. Malfoy had looked at her, and the mean things he had said about her family, right in front of Harry Potter, no less . . . Ginny shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, putting her mind firmly back into her mystery. She had to go to the apothecary shop alone. She had saved a little of her birthday money in order to buy the things she couldn’t get from her mother’s special garden.

~~~

The weeks flew by in a blur as Ginny tried to get used to her new surroundings. Hogwarts was as wonderful as she’d hoped it would be. She was thrilled to have been sorted into Gryffindor, and had found her roommates to be quite nice. She made a huge show of “ruining” her cauldron during her first week of potions, and Professor Snape had grudgingly allowed her the use of an old one for his classes until a new one had arrived. The loss of House Points had been painful, but there was nothing to be done. She knew her parents would be peeved, but she had owled them about the mishap and the new cauldron had arrived and no one was the wiser. She was glad of the exacting nature of her potion’s class, since in order for the strange spell to work she must first brew a special potion, which was more difficult than anything she’d ever helped her mother make.

The information Ginny had gathered so far seemed to be enough to go ahead with the brewing, so she had. The potion was finished and all she needed to do was wait for the next full moon, then place it in the bowl and read the incantation that is written around the rim it.


When the next full-mooned evening arrived, Ginny carefully poured the potion into the strange bowl. She took her wand and carefully swirled the contents, first clockwise for ten slow swirls, then counter-clockwise for twenty more. The brew began to glow, filling her small dormitory with bright light. She had been instructed to start the incantation at dusk, which meant her roommates were still at dinner, giving her ample time to complete her task. She swirled the brew clockwise again, this time eleven short turns, and the color became cloudy again, the room returning to semi-darkness.

Lumos, Ginny whispered, lighting the tip of her wand so that she could see the incantation written around the bowl (although she had read it so many times she knew it by heart.)

“Four into one requires understanding. Understanding begins with knowing another. Undecum Arcessitus Sapientiae.”

Suddenly a swirl appeared in the potion. It was a faintly glowing mist, which swept through the air and Ginny sucked it in. Her head felt woozy for a moment and she rocked back on her heals while her head was filled with memories that were not her own. She had decided to try the spell on a very simple memory, but one that nagged at her: the day she fought with her father, to whom she was so close she never thought disagreeing with him was possible. It had been a silly argument, but she had never before or since argued with him. He wouldn’t let her go into town with the boys. She couldn’t have been more than eight, but she had wanted to go and felt the sting of his anger when she wouldn’t let the matter drop.

Ginny was amazed by the effects of the potion. The results were...unexpected. A simple memory suddenly took on new proportions as she found herself watching the same scene from the point of view of her father in the argument. She saw him looking at her as she was, a small girl of eight, but seeing herself in his eyes. Ginny had been right, of course, he’d let the boys go to town at a younger age than this. But, when he looked at her, he didn’t see the growing girl, but all of the ones she had been before. In a fleeting moment, she saw through his eyes as he held her for the first time, counting her toes, and then she was grabbing at his finger, then slowly, tremblingly walking. She looked at herself as he saw her, the overwhelming mixture of love and fear he felt for her, his only daughter and shining light of his heart.

Ginny was amazed how well the potion worked. She went back to the resource book she had found and wrote down what had happened. The book swooshed to another page telling her about another trick that her hidden treasures could do. The book astounded her with its knowledge and Ginny decided to take its advice and try this new spell on a historical event, which was newly of interest to her. She frantically wrote back to the book asking it how to make the spell work for such long leaps in time and without having a specific memory to use. Again the pages swooshed, and again she found the answer. Of course, Ginny thought. How Simple!

She heard the tinkling of the alarm charm she had used to warn her of her roommates return and quickly hid her treasures. She took a small amount of the potion and put it into a vial she had tied to a string and placed it around her neck. Evanesco, Ginny whispered, vanishing the remnants of the potion and carefully placed the bowl under her bed as well. She would have a new potion ready for the next full moon, one that could withstand the jump back into history.

Ginny carefully placed the ingredients into her cauldron, allowing the powdered opal to mix with the quartz she had found just on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. This needed to seep for a fortnight in a lightly mixed brew containing the herbs from her mother’s own garden. She had been able to acquire the opal without trouble at the apothecaries during her trip to Diagon Alley as well as a few extra herbs, which were to be added once the other ingredients had formed the proper infusion. The addition of the quartz would allow the magical properties of the opal to be enhanced to make up for the time leap required.

Ginny checked daily on her cauldron, careful she wasn’t being followed. The book had told her of the special spot, which would stop the Whomping Willow, allowing her a safe place to brew her potion. She had discovered an extraordinary fact in the book that caused an inner struggle within her: if you were to go back and change one tiny thing it seems that this could change so much for the better. It didn’t take a brain the size of Hermione’s to figure out that messing with the past was dangerous, especially when it came to this portion of the past. Nonetheless Ginny was convinced she needed to do this.

When the next full-mooned day had arrived, Ginny awoke before dawn and carefully whisked her cauldron back to her room. She hid it in her trunk, charming the lining to withstand the low level flame the potion needed and went about her day.


When dusk finally came, Ginny added the remaining ingredients. The dried Pennyroyal she had managed to secrete from her mother’s garden had not been enough, since the drying process used a lot of the herb and Ginny could only take a small quantity of such a useful potion ingredient without her mother noticing. Ginny had again carefully scrounged about the edges of the Forbidden Forest on her way to and from her classes and had thankfully found a large quantity in the woods directly behind Hagrid’s cottage. She didn’t think he’d miss it and had begun taking a bit each day, thankful that this ingredient wasn’t dependent on any moon cycle to be effective. She carefully added the ground herbs, but this time after the final eleventh wand turn the potion turned a violent shade of purple, and the swirls that rose and filled Ginny took her immediately to her destination.

Ginny found herself surrounded by people dressed in the most splendid costumes. She didn’t have time to gawk, but still stared in amazement. Finally, she got her bearings and set out to find the room the book had mapped out for her. She was amazed at how few changes nine hundred years had made to Hogwarts. The Headmaster’s Office was still located behind the Gargoyle on the seventh floor. Ginny carefully repeated the words the book had instructed her to use to hide herself further. Being only an essence meant that only the most powerful of wizards could detect her presence, but the Head of Hogwarts would certainly have felt her being. She simply melted through the door and floated to the office above. Ginny was thankful the room was unoccupied and looked quickly for the glass orb that she needed. This, the book had explained, was a powerful magical object which, if no longer available to the Head of Hogwarts, would make everything better.

Confringo Ginny called, pointing her wand at the orb, causing it to smash into dust particles.

The alarms sounded in her dorm room and Ginny willed herself back to the present. She quickly hid the bowl under her bed and picked up a book, lay on her bed and pretended to read.

“Feeling well, Ginny?” the girl asked as she opened her trunk and put away her bracelet. Ginny stared at the girl in amazement. This wasn’t one of Ginny’s roommates. In fact, this girl should have been a Hufflepuff that Ginny knew by sight alone.

“I’m beginning to feel much better,” Ginny faltered, not even sure of the girl’s name. “In fact, I think I’ll go see what’s going on in the commons.”

Ginny hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time, fearing who would be sitting in the common room and who would be missing. She looked quickly around the room and spotted Ron, sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs by the fire. He was sitting alone playing with his Wizard Chess set, idly causing random pieces to die horrendous deaths.

“Um. . . how’s it going, Ron?” she asked, nonchalantly as she scanned the room for missing people.

Ron shrugged his shoulders as a Knight unceremoniously ran through a Bishop. Ginny’s worse fear had been proven true. Hermione and Harry were not there. She looked up at the clock. She had almost a full hour until curfew. She raced out of the room, hoping she would find them in the Great Hall.

Hermione was sitting alone at the Ravenclaw table, scribbling furiously on a parchment while eating a bowl of soup. Ginny hurried over to her, wondering if she would know who she was.

“Hello,” Ginny said gingerly.

Hermione looked quizzically at her, but did not respond. Ginny desperately wanted to help her friends, who were very much in need, but she realised that she must first find a way to fill the gap of communication and understanding that had obviously grown between them. This new spell she had discovered would be the perfect tool. Ginny knew what she had to do. She went out into the hallway, removed the vial around her neck and violently shook it, silently reciting the words of the first spell. The bit of the potion inside began to glow and she opened it inhaling the swirl while she thought of Hermione’s sorting.

She sat on the stool holding the sides, terrified. Ginny could feel her silent longing to be sorted into Gryffindor, since after having read all of Hogwarts: A History, as well as various other reference guides, Hermione had concluded it was by far the best.

“Ravenclaw!” the Sorting Hat proclaimed as a relieved, if disappointed, Hermione jumped off of the chair.

Ginny couldn’t believe it. Her book had made her destroy the orb because it allowed for the opportunity to join the House you truly wanted, not the one for which you were most suited. She raced back up to her room, somewhat relieved that the other three girls were the ones she knew as her roommates. She chatted with them, as one by one they drifted off to sleep. She picked up the bowl and silently went into the hall. She took her wand and carefully added a bit more ground Pennyroyal, and again after the final eleventh wand turn the potion turned a violent shade of purple once more, and the smoke that rose and filled Ginny took her immediately back in time.

She raced up to the seventh floor and again floated through the door, but this time she had forgotten to use the charm to hide herself. She took her wand and performed a quick reversal spell she had seen the twins practising, and the dust of the orb instantly rejoined. Ginny floated the orb back to its rightful place on the Headmaster’s desk, and was about to will herself back to her own time when she heard a feminine voice clear her throat.

“I was wondering what had happened to the orb,” the Headmistress intoned, not unkindly. “I guess we need a bit more protection of our hat.” With that, the Headmistress took the Sorting Hat off of the shelf, and waved her wand wordlessly over it. The Sorting Hat shivered for a moment while it absorbed the magic into itself, and then the Headmistress destroyed the orb.

“We should have realised how dangerous this was, but we had no idea anyone knew about the properties of the orb. Looks like a simple paperweight to me,” she said smiling at Ginny.

Ginny, who found the whole series of events unnerving, returned the woman’s smile and willed herself back to her own time.

Evanesco Ginny called, vanishing the bowl and the remnants of the potion. She also destroyed the letter and the scroll, and was about to do the same with the book when again the pages turned furiously.

I’m not so simple to get rid of, little Weasley, it said. Our little warm up exercise may not have gone so well, but I have other tasks for you.

Ginny stared at the page and mindlessly closed the book, carefully hiding it under her mattress. She could hardly wait for the next mystery.