The force of her forward momentum working against the repelling force of the barrier caused her body to scream in protest as the two powers fought against each other. Pushing the pain aside, she forced her legs to move, slowly, stepping one in front of the other. With each step that she took, she could feel the outward levels of the barrier lessening, weakening to allow her to move even closer to the center.
As soon as the pressure from the barrier lessened enough, she concentrated on the forces mingling around her - the magic of the barrier, the power of the unicorns - and the distinctly dark force that was slowly seeping outwards, contaminating everything around it. She closed her eyes, feeling the power in the circle, adjusting her senses to it until she finally could sense the magical makeup of the force. She smiled as she realized that, and with a slight exertion of her power, she could feel the barrier begin to pull back, reshaping itself to allow her to pass through without being pushed backwards.
After the intense pressure has eased away, she opened her eyes and glanced around her - and was struck with the horror of what she was seeing. She was standing in a snow-covered field, eternally dark, the only light was emanating from the cluster of frightened creatures that were cowering together to the far end of the area. The sanctuary - the green, luscious field that represented everything alive and healthy in the world - was gone, replaced by a barren wasteland of snow. The trees were all black and froze, and it was so incredibly cold in there. She watched in numbed horror as her breath created mists of steam in the air.
Her eyes centered on the man standing in the center of the frozen field, the immobile body of a unicorn sprawled in the snow beside where he was standing. She felt his eyes on her; she could feel the cold hatred piercing through her from his gaze. Inside, she was trembling, but she forced her chin up, and walked forward to face him, wearing all the Gryffindor courage she could muster.
"Ginny Weasley, the courageous little Gryffindor, proud member of the Weasley clan, the best and youngest diplomat the Ministry of Magic has ever had. All of it seems so perfect - but then no one knows the truth behind it all. That you let me die."
"But you aren't dead, after all, are you? It was all just one big lie!" she said, her anger that she'd been torturing herself for so long over a complete and utter lie renewing itself as he tried to use it against her. It wasn't going to work.
"You want to talk to me about lies, little Ginny Weasley? What about this power of yours? You know very well, being the champion of banning all Dark Magic, that the Ministry of Magic has outlawed that type of conjuring, and has declared it a Dark power. And yet, here you are, Ministry official, freely using something that could land you Azkaban!" he fired back.
"I've learned quite a bit in Bulgaria, Neville - maybe even more than you learned from Lucius Malfoy in Guatemala. And you're the one living the damn lie, Neville! You were our friend - you saw everything that they tried to do to our world! To Harry, Ron and Hermione! To your own parents! And here you are, one of them!" she cried, her voice infused with disgust.
"You MADE ME this way! All of you! You let me die, and then all of you just left me there!" Neville screamed. "None of you ever saw me as anything but the almost-Squib, the forgettable clumsy Neville who tried to tag along with the rest of the heroes! None of you ever saw me for what I was!"
"Because you didn't want us to!" Ginny said. As realization struck her and she finally understood, she continued. "Because...you were afraid that if we really saw you, we wouldn't like you, or we wouldn't accept you. So you hid in the background, hoping that if you were with people who were good, then maybe you would be as well. You let them take all the risks, watching from the sidelines, hoping to get a share of the credit when it all ended well!"
"Shut up!" Neville yelled, shaking his head as Ginny spoke.
"And you hated them for it! Harry and Ron, and Hermione! People who thought of you as friends, who looked out for you because they considered you a friend - and you HATED them for it the whole time. Waiting for a time that would never come because you were too much of a bloody coward to do anything on your own!"
"SHUT UP!" he shrieked. Ginny gasped, as the air seemed to grow red, and then much warmer. She could no longer see the frost of her breath in the air.
"The only thing you ever did on your own, the only risk you ever took was when you saved my life. But you messed that up, didn't you Neville? Because you got hit when it happened. No one could see how brave you were, because you'd been cursed instead."
And the ungrateful bitch that you are, you didn't tell anyone about it! I saved you bloody life and you left me there to save your own neck, and then you kept it a secret all these years! They all thought that poor clumsy Neville had just tripped and fallen into a curse! You stole that from me!" Neville yelled.
"But you've been wrong all these years, Neville. You think that everyone saw you as just clumsy Neville Longbottom - but we never did. You were just Neville to us - that's all that mattered. It's all that we wanted you to be!" Ginny said, anxiety filling her as the air grew to a more unbearable temperature. The snow that had covered the ground was rising in pockets of steam as it melted away and evaporated. Ginny felt a trickle of sweat drip down her forehead, as the red light seemed to grow even stronger, and the heat intensified. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the wide, shining eyes of the unicorns catching in the red glow, and deep inside, she could feel their terror, their sorrow at those that had already been lost. She had to keep him distracted, so that they stayed safe.
"What do you know? You're just little Ginny Weasley, the tag-along little sister who almost gets killed all the time! Where's your big brother and his best friends to save your neck this time, Ginny? Aren't you important enough? Don't they see that you need them, that you've always needed them and they were never there?" Neville said, stepping closer to her, looming over her. His eyes were mirroring the same red glow that was cast over the field.
"You've haunted me enough, Neville. I won't let you anymore," she said. The great range of emotions that had flooded her since the very beginning of this long, long day began to amass in the center of her body, building into a giant ball of energy. The energy was spooling around her magic, drawing out the lines of emotions - fear, confusion, the few stolen minutes of peace and happiness she'd been able to share with Draco, the hurt, the pain and the utter sadness at how one life had been so distorted, pulling the emotions in, drawing on their energy. The pressure was building, becoming so tight that her hands were shaking with the effort to control the flood of power that was filling her.
"And what do you think you can do to stop me? I'm Slytherin's apprentice, his chosen one to carry out the most important task that has ever befallen a wizard - to make the potion to bring him back to power. What is little, invisible Ginny Weasley - the girl too afraid to use her powers to save her own life - going to do to stop me?" he sneered, thrusting his wand in her face.
"Just wait and see," she said, as she closed her eyes, and felt her control shatter - and all the magic she had inside her sprang free.
* * * *
"Stop your bloody fidgeting, will you? I'll have nothing to do with you if you go back near that damn barrier and get your hands fried by it - again, Malfoy," Hermione scolded, as she tapped his red and blistering palms with her wand. Draco ignored her, and stared past her, straight into the heart of the forest. The red glow coming from the center of the woods was casting an eerie ambiance over the area where they were all sitting - waiting. He shuttered inwardly as another spasm of pain wracked through his body, but was comforted by the fact that it seemed to have leveled, it was no longer increasing in intensity, which he hoped meant that Neville had stopped injuring his unicorns.
If he shut out Hermione's annoying nattering and the worried mumbling of Ginny's older brother, he could almost feel her behind the barrier. The forest, his forest, had reacted immediately when she had stepped inside. Some of the poison caused by Longbottom was drawn away, and the life of the forest had grown slightly stronger once again.
There was cold, and he could see flashes of the sanctuary covered in snow and frozen in the grip of a powerful cold that threatened to kill all the abundance of life that the sanctuary normally held. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the beating of his heart, counting the number of beats in a minute, trying to focus on something other than the throb of pain in his body, and the feeling of dread.
A few minutes passed in silence, and he could suddenly feel a great burst of heat. The red glow was growing ever stronger, and the flashes of snow that he'd been seeing had melted away. In a strange moment of detached thought, Draco was reminded of his first impressions of Ginny - the Ice Queen whose molten temper was kept carefully buried under thick layers of ice. He'd so often wondered what would happen if she were to ever fully unleash that fire on the world, and even with all her displays of temper and power that he'd seen, he was still certain that he hadn't seen the full force of it. She still held something back, trapped by that icy exterior, even as much as it had melted in recent days. As the emanating heat from the beyond the barrier grew even stronger, Draco stood up, and walked forward, brushing off Hermione's questions.
There was a pounding in his ears, and it grew stronger the closer her got to the barrier. He turned back to look at the group huddled together, watching helplessly. He met Weasley's eyes; and he wondered if his were as grave and worried.
"Look at that!" Potter called out, pointing. The dark sky was ripped apart by a bolt of red light shooting through the trees. The brilliant flash of light was almost blinding in its strength, but their eyes eventually adjusted to it, and they were staring at it in wonder.
"Do you think that's the all clear signal from Ginny?" Hermione asked, hopefully. She was walking cautiously towards the edge of the barrier, her fingers reaching out tentatively. Her own hands were still raw and red from her previous attempts to breach the magical barrier, and she was unwilling to try to touch it again. There was something not quite right about it.
A sudden flash of intense heat was his only warning.
"Ginny, no!" he screamed, too late. A giant rumble could be heard in the distance, and the shaft of light erupted into a giant wave of power that burst through the forest, sweeping outwards from its point of origin. Time froze for an instant, when the world seemed perfectly still, before the light surged forward in a red tide of power, and exploded all around them.