A/N: I’m having some trouble replying to the reviews that have been left for me, but I’d like to answer a question that arose. Hogmanay (an event that was mentioned in the last chapter) is the Scottish term for New Year’s Eve. I hope I didn’t confuse too many of you by using it! Enjoy!
Almost every day for the rest of January was punctuated by a spate of deaths; apparently Voldemort was starting to take his assault on the world seriously. Hardly a single person in the castle went untouched by the escalating death toll. Teachers and students alike were united in their grief and their determination to overcome the impending doom. Suddenly, the Sorting Hat’s idea of all four houses bonding together didn’t seem so far fetched. The less arrogant members of Slytherin house were making a valiant attempt to console their classmates in other houses, and their counterparts were doing their best to welcome them into the main fold of the school. Obviously, there were still some people, like Malfoy and his cronies, who were doing everything they could to bring about inter-house fights in the corridors. Harry had seen Malfoy hexing his friends slyly between classes and then blaming it on other nearby students. However, the crafty Slytherin’s efforts were not nearly enough to dampen the spirit of unity that was rising up amongst the school’s patrons.
Unfortunately, the force of harmony was not enough to overcome deep-rooted trepidation and mind occupying anxiety. Everyone had someone outside of the castle, someone who was in more danger as each day passed. Harry knew this feeling better than any other, the family that he had outside the castle’s walls were in more danger than any of the students around him could possibly have grasped. He was Voldemort’s number one target and he knew that the Dark Lord wouldn’t stop until he had found a way to sufficiently hurt Harry. Anything that might distract Harry’s attention from the task in front of him was a good plan as far as his enemy was concerned. Professor Dumbledore maintained that the frequent deaths were a diversion, a tactic Voldemort was using to keep them away from what he was working on. What that was, no one knew, not even Snape, but they did know that they would likely find out sooner rather than later.
A strange mood settled into the castle, it was tense, apprehensive, prickly and dismayed. Many people began to act peculiarly, the normally shy people were suddenly outspoken and the usually outspoken people were oddly quiet. One of the people who was most affected was Ginny. The latter fortnight of January wrought about some mysterious changes in her character. Harry found her unfathomable. They had gone from perfectly happy and loving to gloomy and distant; they hardly spent any time together these days. Okay, a lot of that was down to the excessive NEWT workload that was being heaped on Harry’s shoulders but there should still have been time for the odd hour together here and there. Apparently not though, because every time Harry tried to sneak Ginny away from whatever she was doing she put the brakes on the idea and stormed off. The thing that worried him more than anything else was the amount of time that she seemed to be spending with Dean Thomas as of late. Every time he saw her moving around the corridors between classes she virtually ignored Harry and instead fawned all over Dean.
It all got too much in the evening of the last day of the month. Harry and Ron were slaving over a Care of Magical Creatures essay for Hagrid while Ginny was on the other side of the room playing a particularly riotous game of exploding snap. When Ginny laid down her last card, the pile on the table exploded in Dean’s face, singeing his eyebrows. She stretched her arms above her head and a loud yawn escaped her. “I think I’ll go to bed now, I’m very tired,” she said as she wangled her head from side to side. “Goodnight, Dean.” Harry nearly jumped out of his chair in fury when she bent down on her way past the other boy, and kissed him gently on the lips. He was even more incensed when Dean flashed her a lustful smile, he even eyed up her bottom as she climbed the stairs to her dormitory.
“What the hell is going on?” Harry bellowed as he rushed towards his roommate.
“What do you want, Potter?” Dean asked exasperatedly.
“I want to know why you’re hanging all over my girlfriend and what you think you’re doing kissing her?” Harry roared.
“What’s wrong? I don’t suppose that you’ve ever considered that the famous Harry Potter just isn’t man enough for her?” Dean said acerbically.
“YOU WHAT?” Harry screamed. He tried to launch himself at the other boy but somebody had a handful of his robes, he turned around to see Ron looking at Dean scathingly.
“Stay away from my sister,” he said dangerously.
“Or you’ll what? Weasel me to death? I somehow don’t think so,” Dean smirked. He rolled his eyes at Harry and Ron before he headed up to bed.
“What have I missed?” Harry asked Ron with bemusement.
“I don’t know. I’ve missed it too.” Ron was looking at the staircase that Dean had just disappeared up.
“What is going on around here? It’s like the twilight zone,” Harry continued to puzzle.
“The what?” Ron snapped out of his daze and looked at Harry oddly.
“Sorry, it’s a Muggle expression, there used to be a t.v program called The Twilight Zone and from what I’ve heard, a lot of really strange things used to happen,” Harry explained.
“Oh, right. Maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and this will all just be a dream,” Ron said consolingly.
Ron’s prediction proved to be incorrect, when they woke up the next morning nothing had changed. In fact things got worse, in the middle of his breakfast at the Gryffindor table; Harry was tapped on the shoulder sharply. He looked up to see Ginny standing behind him; she was glancing up at the doors of the Great Hall distractedly and when she stared back down at him there was something missing from her eyes; love. “You’re dumped, Harry,” she announced loudly. Everyone in the hall stopped their chomping so that they could hear every word that was about to pass between Hogwarts’s most famous couple.
“What? Why?” Harry was acutely aware of the high-pitched quality of his voice. He didn’t really want to discuss this here of all places but he wanted to know why he was getting dumped.
“Because I don’t like you anymore,” she looked at him with a mixture of laughter and disbelief at his stupidity.
“But what did I do?”
“It’s more what you didn’t do,” she snorted.
“Ginny, you can’t just chuck me like this!” Harry complained.
“Too late, I jut did,” she said austerely. She turned on her heel sharply and made to turn away from him but she changed her mind at the last second. “Oh, and by the way, I’m going out with Dean now.” With that she walked away from Harry, leaving him standing in the middle of the Great Hall completely gob smacked and everyone else feeling extremely humiliated for him.
“What just happened? What’s going on? Why is she doing this?” Harry spluttered as Ron pulled him out of the Great Hall and away from the hundreds of eyes that were staring at him pitifully.
“I haven’t got a clue,” Ron huffed as he struggled to pull Harry’s rigid form through the corridors.
“Where are we going?” Harry asked him when he finally returned his focus to the direction that Ron was dragging him in. “Flitwick’s classroom isn’t up here.”
“We’re not going to Charms yet,” Ron answered as he hoisted Harry’s book bag further up his already overloaded shoulder.
“So what are we doing then?”
“We’re going to the library.”
“You think we’re going to find the answer to Ginny’s mad behaviour in the library? Trust me, if there’s a book in there that explains the weird things that girls do, then there’s going to be a waiting list as long as the train line from Hogsmeade to King’s Cross for it. Every boy in school’s going to want to read it. I don’t even think you could fit an explanation of a girl’s brain into a book, it’d be about a million pages long and even then it probably wouldn’t make much sense because a girl would have had to write it and we don’t understand anything they say. There would be all this reading in between the lines stuff that we’d never pick up on….”
“Harry, would you stop babbling you’re giving me a headache!” Ron snapped. “We’re not looking for a bloody book! We’re looking for Hermione!”
“Is that really a good idea? I mean all you two ever do is fight and argue, all you’ll do is get yourself a detention off Madam Pince.” Harry knew he was rambling; he couldn’t help it, he felt like he was drunk. Only this wasn’t the kind of tickly, funny feeling, it was more of a desperate and depressing kind of drunk.
“Shut up, Harry, and wait here.” Ron pushed him roughly against a wall outside the library. He disappeared inside and returned five minutes later with Hermione hurrying along behind him. He grabbed Harry by the shoulder once again and pushed him into an empty classroom further down the corridor.
“What’s the matter?” Hermione asked suspiciously as she slammed her book bag on a desk grumpily.
“Ginny just broke up with Harry,” Ron filled her in.
“And while I’m very sorry to hear that, I don’t see what it’s got to do with me,” she told him acidly.
“She’s acting really weird,” Harry elucidated.
“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a very nasty war right now and everyone is a little bit worried about everything that’s happening, but perhaps the wonder duo is too oblivious to notice that. I’m sure there has probably been some important Quidditch crisis that has dominated your short attention spans. Or maybe you were just too busy scheming up ways to get people to talk to you!” Hermione said contemptuously.
“That’s uncalled for Hermione! We wouldn’t be bothering you if we didn’t think something was seriously wrong! Something isn’t right with her and you’re the only person smart enough to work it out!” Ron yelled. Hermione breathed deeply for a few minutes before she continued.
“I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might be busy with other things?” she asked coolly.
“Things that are more important than saving our best friend’s relationship?” Ron said softly. Hermione remained silent but Harry was gaping at his red haired friend. “What?”
“You wait until now to get it?” Harry asked disbelievingly. Ron’s ears flashed red.
“Yeah, well things are slightly different when you’re on the other side of the fence,” Ron confessed.
“I’ve only been trying to explain that to you for months now!” Harry exclaimed.
“Can we get back to the point please?” Hermione cut across their repartee. The two boys explained Ginny’s strange behaviour over the past two weeks, only pausing when their female companion made an odd um, or ah.
“So what do you think?” Ron asked her once they had completed their summary. She was clearly still thinking very hard.
“It definitely doesn’t sound like Ginny. I’m surprised that she dumped you at all but with the way that she did it, she would never do that, no matter how much she hated you.” Hermione gave Ron a very pointed look.
“So what should we do?” Harry asked. He wasn’t happy about sitting here while his relationship with Ginny disappeared down one of Moaning Mrytle’s toilets, and zoomed to the bottom of the lake, where it would probably lie forever as just another toy for the Giant Squid to play with.
“Maybe we should just corner her and harass it out of her,” Ron suggested indifferently.
“Don’t be so stupid, Ron.” Harry shook his head.
“Actually, that’s quite a good idea,” Hermione confirmed as she surveyed Ron with an interesting look.
“Are you kidding? Corner Ginny? She’ll go ballistic!” Harry squeaked.
“No, the old Ginny would react badly, but who knows what this new Ginny will do?”
“Right then, we’ll get her after dinner,” Ron said with renewed enthusiasm.
“See, you didn’t need me after all,” Hermione said despondently.
“Don’t be daft, Hermione. Ron comes up with his best stupid ideas when you’re around.” Harry draped an arm over her shoulders and squeezed her tightly.
“Oi! I’ll remember that the next time you come up with one of your gung-ho plans to get us all killed!” Ron whined and punched Harry on the arm.
“Ow!” Harry started gingerly rubbing the now throbbing flesh of his upper arm. Hermione smiled at the pair of them; somehow it felt like things were getting back to normal.
After dinner, the first meal in the Great Hall that Hermione had attended since Halloween, the three of them returned to the common room and settled themselves in to a table in the corner, inconspicuously. to wait for Ginny. They hadn’t seen her at dinner and hoped that by hiding themselves in a corner she would walk right past them and they would be able to follow her to wherever she was going. They didn’t have to wait all that long before she climbed through the portrait hole with Dean, she was tucked under his arm and gazing at him adoringly. Harry and Ron nearly burst with fury when they spotted her hand moving around in the pocket of his robes. The seventh year’s plan had worked excellently; neither Dean nor Ginny noticed them as they ambled their way across the room and up the boy’s staircase.
“I kill him and her for that matter!” Ron seethed. Harry’s anger was wordless; it wasn’t just that, he was hurt, deeply wounded in fact. The way Ginny was looking at Dean and touching him, she had never done any of that with him, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Let’s go now!” Ron hurled himself from his seat and at the stairs with Harry and Hermione in hot pursuit.
“Ron, you’re Head Boy, don’t do anything foolish!” Hermione screeched from behind them. If Ron hit another student he was sure to be stripped of his badge. Up in the seventh year boy’s dormitory, Dean and Ginny were stretched out over Dean’s bed. They watched horror struck as his hands went places that Harry had never dared to touch and Ginny’s did no better.
“GET OFF MY SISTER NOW, THOMAS!” Ron roared and ripped Dean away from Ginny. A lot of scuffling ensued as Dean tried to reach around and hit his captor; Ginny jumped off the bed and began pulling, scratching and even biting Ron’s arms. Harry dodged around behind her and grabbed her around the waist with one arm; he hoisted her off the floor and clamped his other arm around her thrashing limbs.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? LET HIM GO!” she screamed.
“Can everyone please calm down?” Hermione called politely over the din.
“GET OFF ME YOU FILTHY BLOOD TRAITOR!” Dean bellowed. This statement caught them by surprise, so much so that Ron released his hold on the tall black boy.
“What did you call me?” Ron asked in confusion. This feeling was echoed by Harry and Hermione. Dean was a Muggle born wizard, one who would have placed no store in blood status; his outburst didn’t make any sense.
“I think a better question would be, who are you?” Hermione posed this question, proving that her mind was as sharp as ever and she was still unchallenged as the cleverest witch of her age. She didn’t have to wait long for her answer.
Before Harry’s astounded green eyes Dean’s dark hair and skin lightened to become the deathly pale complexion and silvery blond hair of Draco Malfoy. That wasn’t the only surprise, however, when Harry turned his shell shocked face to Ginny, the red was fading from her hair and she was becoming taller, Ginny wasn’t really Ginny.
A/N2: Dun-dun-dun! Another totally evil cliffhanger for you. The next chapter is called…Ginny In Danger. Until then, keep yourselves safe.