Chapter Seven:

Ginny tossed and turned fitfully as the facts and conjectures tumbled through her exhausted mind. She should be sleeping, she knew; rehashing it all would get her nowhere, yet she couldn't help but do just that, as she lay in the silent room that was hers whenever she stayed at Headquarters. Well, hers and Hermione's, but the older girl was off somewhere with Ron and Harry, and therefore would be no help in diverting the redhead's thoughts, even if she had wanted her to be. So they strayed once more to what had happened and been learned. And what hadn't.

Tom Riddle's diary. Marvolo's ring. They had been destroyed before she'd even become aware of the existence of the Horcruxes, bringing the number that needed to be destroyed before Harry could take on Voldemort himself down to four. Since she had begun helping Moody and Dumbledore, the number had been further reduced by two. She had seen the demise of Hufflepuff's cup herself months before, and could remember with sickening clarity learning of the locket's destruction. She hadn't been told, of course, as the only sign as to the fate of Slytherin's necklace was the note that Harry and the disguised Snape had found that fateful night. But she remembered the bitter satisfaction that had been in his pain-filled eyes as the young wizard had lain at her feet, blood running from his nose and mouth.

"You're too late. I destroyed it."

He'd been trembling from the after-effects of the Cruciatus she'd cast, but his pain was not enough, not enough to pay for his words, his traitorous actions. Even the repeated casting of Crucio that followed had not been payment enough. The killing curse that she'd eventually cast on a whimpering Regulus Adalfo Black's huddling, pain-wracked form had still left her simmering with rage.

She. Her. He. Him. The words bounced around inside her skull with enough force and speed to leave her head echoing with pain. It was all well and good to know that the images and emotions that drifted into her conscious thoughts had originally belonged to the Dark Lord and not her. It was one thing for the former Headmaster to tell her that she merely housed the memories and that doing so was no reflection whatsoever on her as a person. It was not the least bit helpful to know intellectually that she had not done or thought any of the things that she remembered, especially in the quiet solitude of her mind.

She ran a pale and barely steady hand over her face before opening glazed brown eyes to stare at the cracked ceiling above her. "I didn't do it."

The words hung hot and desperate in the stuffy air of the room, but the sound of them brought the declaration to life in a way her silent denials could not do. "I didn't hurt him. I didn't kill him."

There was no one to agree with her statement. Not even Crookshanks, the only other occupant of the room, deigned to so much as look over at the obnoxious human who had dared disturb his sleep, though he did thump his tail a few times before rolling over. The lack of response was neither disheartening, nor comforting. Dumbledore had made a point to remind her that she had had nothing to do with the things that she could now remember. She knew the truth, but it was little aid when she could still see the wand being raised in a hand that her memory told her was her own. Truth was a poor defense when she could hear the curses being cast, could still see his body slump at feet that weren't hers. Truth could not make her forget the feel of the rage and the hatred and the foul pleasure that had seemed to fill her in that moment.

The sensations rushed back on her and the youngest Weasley sprung from her bed and began to pace furiously as though enough restless circuits of the room would chase the feelings and recollections back into the recesses from which they had sprung a few weeks before.

She'd been walking to her History of Magic class at the time, but had been lucky enough that most everyone had already left for their next class by the time she had made it out of the classroom. She'd been lucky that no one had been around to notice her stumble as the memory slammed into her, or to see her lean against the wall for support as the dizziness and nausea left her unable to walk for several minutes afterward. She'd even been lucky enough that by the time she had wrenched herself back into the present, she'd been able to make her way undisturbed, to the hospital wing, where the pallor of her complexion and the trembling in her limbs, had made her bid for a day's rest all the more convincing. The fact that the note from Pomfrey had allowed her to withdraw to her rooms, and so slip away to Grimmauld Place unnoticed, had been a further bit of luck.

The recovered memory had left her feeling too ill however, to enjoy that luck, or the fact that she had been able to answer a lingering and vital question, and in turn, whittle the list of remaining Horcruxes down to two. By the time she had felt steady enough to appreciate the progress beyond the methods used to gain it, a sense of enjoyment was far from her reach. In fact, a rather hollow sensation of stagnation had grown to fill her instead.

The recollection of Regulus' betrayal of the Dark Lord and his subsequent murder by her- his hand had been the only memory she had regained in the months since the visions that had led them to the museum. For all the help she had been able to give Moody and Dumbledore through Tom's memories, the youngest Weasley was starting to wonder if her usefulness was reaching its end. The memories left in her mind from the diary were not infinite. There was no telling how much more information she could give to the Order, if there was anything more at all.

A muted sound of frustration tore itself from her as she turned sharply on her heel for the twenty-eighth time in the last minute and a half. Ginny felt the walls begin to close in on her as the possibilities assailed her, hastening her steps until she had reached the door and not slowing them as she pulled it open and made her way down the empty corridor.

The diary could have conceivably contained memories regarding all the Horcruxes, if indeed the part of him that had resided in it had remained connected to the Dark Lord until its destruction. There was no real way to tell, however, if that was the case. They had seen no indication that Voldemort was aware of his Horcruxes, no sign that he retained enough of a tangible connection to them to feel it when they were destroyed.

There was no proof that the connection between the soul parts had not been frozen when they were broken up. Obviously, the mere fact that parts of his soul still existed was enough to keep him alive, after a fashion; but whether or not there was anything more than their origin between the parts, was simply conjecture. Even if there was nothing more, if the diary had been the last of his Horcruxes to be made, as might be indicated by the casual way it was left in Lucius Malfoy's care, it could still have contained information on all the other portions of the Dark Lord's soul that remained.

Either way, there was a possibility that the diary had at one time housed all the information they needed, but even if that was the case, there was still no way to tell if all of what had been inside its pages had been left inside her. Certainly, it would be logical to assume that in its destruction, parts of it had been lost. But how many parts? And how many of the remaining parts had been left in the recesses of her mind? Ginny wasn't sure, but with each week that passed without her remembering anything more, she became more and more afraid that there was nothing left for her to remember, nothing left for her to give to the wizards that seemed so sure she was the key to finding, taking, and destroying the parts of Voldemort's soul.

The young witch let out a heavy sigh, desperately wanting to return to her bed and sleep without such fears and questions plaguing her. It was a futile hope, however, and she well knew it. She had been able to think of little else for the last month or more, which had been bad enough while she was in school and meeting with Moody and Dumbledore once a week or so to discuss any progress, or lack thereof. It had been bad enough when she only had her free time to spend researching and contemplating. It had been bad enough when the rest of her time was fairly well engaged with classes and homework.

Now, however, as her Christmas holiday stretched before her, empty of distractions, it was even worse. She'd already finished all the schoolwork she'd been assigned in an attempt to occupy her thoughts, and now she was left with nothing else to do other than obsess over why she hadn't remembered anything else useful, and whether or not she ever would.

Ginny ran a hand through her long red hair and swallowed another sigh as she continued to pace through the dark halls of Number Twelve. What was she going to do for the next week and a half? She'd brought all the books she'd been allowed to take out of Hogwarts, but they were no more promising than any of the others that she had read the past few months, both at school, and with the former Headmaster. And it was beginning to try her patience to look through tome after tome without the slightest progress being made. It wasn't even as if she were searching for anything specific, but more that she was simply reading everything she could in an effort to find something that might tell her what to look for.

It was beyond frustrating. She felt as if she were simply running in place, searching and searching, and still finding nothing. No matter how hard she looked, or how much she read, nothing made any sense. She was tired of waiting for things to fall into place, but there wasn't really anything else that she could do, other than hope that something would trigger a memory. The only problem was, she had no idea what memory she was trying to trigger. She had no clue what she needed to remember, because she hadn't known it in the first place.

Still, she tried everything she could think of, tried reading anything that stood out to her, and many things that didn't. She tried thinking really hard about Voldemort, and Horcruxes, and then she tried not thinking about them at all. Nothing seemed to work, and the youngest Weasley had about reached her limit.

"Bloody hell," she muttered, turning on her heel once more as she reached the end of the hall. She cursed again a moment later as the sound of voices suddenly broke the silence, the three individuals she'd hoped to avoid apparently moving towards her.

It wasn't that she didn't want to see her brother and the others, she still considered them her friends, she just felt awkward around them since she had started working on the search for the Horcruxes. She knew they wanted to be working with Moody as she was, knew they all felt left out and ignored. She knew they were growing ever more restless and resentful at being holed up in the school and forced to study and prepare with the professors and Aurors that Moody had arranged to meet them. And she knew that if any of them had the slightest idea of what she was doing, that they would be less than thrilled.

Despite knowing that, however, she wanted to tell them. She wanted to discuss the dreams and memories with her big brother, she wanted to talk through the few clues she'd accumulated with Hermione, she wanted to... Well, to be honest, she wasn't sure what she wanted to do as far as Harry was concerned. She still had feelings for him, she knew; it had only been a little more than six months since he'd broken up with her, and as she'd carried a torch for him for five years before they had gotten together, she was hard pressed to just turn off what she felt. But in those six months she'd found a distance from him, a space from which she could view him more objectively than she ever had before.

Maybe it was some immature and spiteful part of her that resented being tossed away when things got tough, a sliver of annoyance at his overly noble and somewhat selfish attitude. Ginny shook her head. For all that she might have some justification in feeling that way, she just didn't, not really. Well, maybe a smidgen, but only when she was feeling especially frustrated or mope-y about something else, and even then it wasn't really enough to explain her attitude towards her ex-boyfriend. Perhaps it was simply a matter of getting what she'd always thought she'd wanted and realizing it wasn't really what she'd thought it would be. Perhaps it was just that she'd grown up a little more over the last few months, and that working with Moody and Dumbledore, working against the Dark Lord, had given her a new perspective on things.

She hadn't considered her feelings for Harry to be hero-worship, even when they had been, but she had to admit that a small part of her had been more attracted to the boy she'd seen and heard about from Ron than the boy she'd actually known. After all, even when she'd tried to move on and had been able to act like a real person around him, even when she'd hung out with him and Hermione and Ron, she hadn't truly been part of the group. No one else could truly be part of that group, the three of them were simply too good of friends for a fourth to rival them, and she didn't begrudge them that. She just knew that that made it nearly impossible for her to ever really fit in. If she hadn't been Ron's little sister, and Harry hadn't gone so long seeing her as a semi-sister of his own, it would have been easier. But then again, maybe not.

All she knew was that she didn’t feel comfortable around him any more, at least not as comfortable as one should feel around a potential boyfriend. Or even an ex-boyfriend. And it wasn't just because she felt guilty for keeping things from him and Ron and Hermione, though she did. It was more that whenever she was around him she expected certain things from herself, certain reactions and feelings that had begun to desert her. It was hard to face what she sometimes saw as a failure, and even harder to admit that she didn't always regret being unable to live up to what she, and most everyone else, expected of her when it came to Harry Potter.

The fact that she was keeping her second-hand memories secret from the older boy and his friends only made it worse. And that was without even factoring in what she was not telling them about her work with Moody. Not to mention their former Headmaster. Dumbledore. Now that was certainly something that made her more than a little uncomfortable and more than a lot guilty whenever she was faced with the Trio. She'd grieved with them all when the aged wizard had first 'died' and had watched them continue to grieve after she had learned that there was no true reason to do so.

She'd nearly slipped when they had been escorted back to the Burrow for the wedding, nearly told them that the bearded man was still alive. The redhead had barely stopped herself in time, and had from then on endeavored to keep her distance as Moody's warning had rung in her ears.

"As much as those kids have proved themselves to our side, we can't forget that they could betray us, even without meaning to. Remember, girl, not a one of them can keep a secret from another of them, and Harry never finished his Occlumency lessons. Voldemort still has access to his head if he really wants it."

It was logical, of course, that none of them know the truth. It prevented the Dark Lord from finding it out through them, and at the same time, reinforced the useful lie should Voldemort actually use his link to Harry to 'check in' on the opposing side. Yet it still felt like she herself was betraying her friends and family without meaning to, simply by keeping quiet and letting them hurt and fear when they didn't need to.

That feeling of betrayal left her more than slightly relieved when the voices died away, indicating that they had perhaps turned down another hall and were currently moving away from her. The relief was so great, in fact, that she didn't notice that only two of the voices had reached her ears, and that the third had in fact, been missing entirely. If she had, she would certainly have thought better of turning into the library a minute later, as that was exactly the place that she was most likely to find Hermione Granger. Which is exactly what she did.

The bushy-haired witch was seated at the small antique desk on the far side of the room when the youngest Weasley entered it, and even before the image fully registered, the redhead's nerves began to fray. Those nerves, however, were spared further torment, at least on that score, as all thoughts of her brother's best friend fled her mind an instant later.

All it took was an instant for the sensations to crash against her inner barriers as the memory burst forth. It was pure luck and raw will that kept Hermione from realizing she had been there at all as Ginny silently fled the room. She cast a quick succession of spells to keep her undetected as she raced to the rooms that held the current and former heads of the Order of the Phoenix, though the waves of nausea and pulses of skull-numbing pain prevented her from being consciously aware of doing so.

All Ginny Weasley was aware of as she slipped into the small sitting room and slumped onto Alastor Moody's couch in front of a worried Albus Dumbledore, was the image she had seen superimposed on the sight of Hermione hunched over the old desk. All she could think of was what she had remembered: the identity of the fifth Horcrux.

End Chapter Seven
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