Chapter Nine:
Ginny Weasley swallowed hard past the nerves building within her. They simmered in her gut like a toxic potion, bubbled up into her throat, lodging there, making it hard to breathe evenly as she placed the specially, secretly, spelled Portkey back into the small pocket in her robe. A few days before, when Dumbledore had asked her if she'd like to go to the Ethelward estate to investigate whether or not it housed the fifth Horcrux, she'd readily answered in the affirmative. But now, as she stood in the secluded glade just outside the border of Fittleborough, she felt a twinge of regret at her decision.
Naturally, she had assumed that her excursion to the estate would be like her trip to the Clio, at least in that she would be accompanied by Moody. Yet here she stood, with no Moody, invisible or otherwise, anywhere around to provide support or backup. Despite the spells and tricks that she had learned from the diary, despite all the knowledge that Tom had given her so that she could successfully traipse around the school creating havoc and releasing the basilisk, she was less than confident about her upcoming task.
Even knowing her uncertainty, the former Headmaster had decided that it would be too hard to hide or explain away the absence of both Ginny and Moody either from Grimmauld Place or Hogwarts. As it was, the frequency of the wizard's disappearances during their latest round of research into the Horcrux's identity and location had been in danger of being noticed by the already suspicious and restless Trio. Presently, there was a delicate balance of diversion and distraction keeping the indispensable young wizard and his friends safe and confined until the final confrontation, and Dumbledore did not want to disturb that, and risk anything happening to their only hope of defeating the Dark Lord once and for all. To that end, he had asked Moody to keep Harry and the others occupied while Ginny was sent to Wizarding Wessex.
Objectively, she understood the decision, and knowing the three as well as she did, she was well aware that they had been lucky to be able to keep her brother, Harry, and Hermione out of the fray for as long as they had. Because of that, she knew steps needed to be taken to maintain the Trio's isolation.
They thought that Moody was now the head of the Order, and that if anything were happening, that he would be involved. If he disappeared, even one more time, they may well try to follow him as they had attempted to do the night she had met with him to finalize plans for the trip to the would-be historian's estate. And Harry, Hermione, and Ron finding out what she and Moody had been up to was not something that they needed. If that knowledge spurred the three to venture out on their own search for the remaining Horcruxes, or to discover that Dumbledore was actually still alive, the result could be disastrous.
Certainly the possibility of her brother or his friends being caught or killed, or unwittingly revealing through Harry's scar that Dumbledore hadn't been killed, took precedence over any difficulty she might have in determining if they were right about Ethelward possessing the desk. At least that was what she reminded herself as she pointed her wand at herself.
"Dissimulo. Pedes Silentium."
Even knowing that she was now concealed and that her movement would be inaudible, thanks to the spells Tom had taught her, it took her several seconds and a few deep breaths before the youngest Weasley took her first steps out of the glade and towards the sprawling house she could see a few minutes' jog from her position.
The things she had learned her first year, regardless of how long it had taken her to remember them, added to everything else she had recalled from the foreign memories insider her head, nearly ensured that she could get into and out of the estate without being detected. Still, she had relatively little experience at breaking and entering, and even less at doing it by herself. At least in her first year, Tom had been in control of what she was doing and could have therefore gotten her out of any problem that might have arisen.
Now, she was truly on her own, with only remnants of his knowledge and memories to guide her. That, her vaulted Gryffindor bravery, and of course, her Weasley stubbornness.
Surely with the three behind her she would prove successful, and worthy of the task that the older wizards had entrusted her with. After all, Moody's presence at the museum had proved unnecessary. And her skills and memories, even if they hadn't been hers to start with, had not let her down yet. She was capable of the mission before her. She would complete this assignment, and bring them one step closer to acquiring the fifth Horcrux. She would bring the Order that much closer to destroying the evil bastard that had lured her eleven-year-old self into a fraud of a friendship and proceeded to take over her mind, rob her of the innocent childhood she may have otherwise had, and then left remnants of his soiled mind within her own.
The young witch's expression hardened with her resolve, her stride growing wider and smoother as she approached her target. About a hundred yards from the walls, she halted with a silent nod as she felt the humming of the estate's exterior wards a mere foot in front of her. They weren't basic wards, such as the ones that surrounded the Burrow's boundaries. No, these were rather considerably more complex defensive shields meant to not only keep the property from being noticed by any passing Muggles, but to keep any of those passersby - Muggle or otherwise - out of the property.
The complexity, however, looked to in fact prove more help than hindrance to the estate's current uninvited guest. The layering of spells and wards was complicated to the point of being overdone... dangerously overdone. At least it would be dangerous to the integrity of the defensives if she had anything to say about it. Brown eyes narrowed as she waved her wand over the invisible wall in a careful pattern that left faint symbols drifting temporarily in the air before her. Ginny repeated her motions several times as she made her way along the warding line, examining each set of symbols closely before retreating several feet along her path and coming to a stop with a small smile.
Each layer of spells and wards was worked into the next, layered and entwined so that the combination was stronger than the original pieces. It was a daunting obstacle, yet not impossible to overcome, especially when one was able to find a place where all the layers were not combined as seamlessly as they should have been. The section of wards she was facing at that moment was not terribly unlike the surrounding sections, but if the proper spells were applied, the incongruity of the merging wards was apparent. And being thus exposed, it left the youngest Weasley the opening she needed.
Taking a deep breath, Ginny got to work. Keeping the small kink in sight, she cautiously worked her way between the magical fibers, enlarging the gap a little bit more with each pass of her wand until the hole in the mesh could be cut open enough for her to slip through without setting off the alarms.
"Patefacio," the redhead stated with a growing smile. The sight of the opening widening for her passage sent a thrill of accomplishment, and a rush of confidence through the witch and she quickly stepped onto the warded property and with an absent "restituo," she left her first triumph behind her and headed silently towards the manor itself.
The jog to the main building was long enough to leave the sixth-year slightly out of breath by the time she reached the shadow of the large stone walls, but not so long that she had forgotten her previous victory with the wards and grown nervous. Still, she forced herself to stop an arm's length from the wall and examine it in the same way as she had the wards.
What she found took a moment's longer translation than it had on the grounds. The second set of wards were not more exterior wards, nor were they truly interior ones. Instead, the magical barrier was worked into the building itself, designed to detect any aberration in the walls such as a person trying to walk over the threshold, or attempting to breach the walls. No spell or charm she knew of would bypass the shield, as it was codependent on the integrity of the walls themselves. There was one spell, however, that might blind the ward's detectors to her presence, or at least fool them into thinking that she was supposed to be there.
Casting her gaze over the surrounding area, the witch searched for a fragment of the spell's anchor- the stone of the walls. There were several chips of stone that had flaked off and fallen to the ground, but most were close enough to it that her picking them up might trip the wards. One piece, though, was about a foot away from the building, and soon found itself in the redhead's possession. Once she had obtained part of what the spells would detect as belonging to the wall, Ginny slowly began pulling out the pale vestige of the estate's own magical signature and casting several replications of it until she had a patch of iridescent energy that she could stretch to cover herself.
Effectively draped in the walls' own magic, the honorary Order member tentatively touched the rough stone. A moment's breathless pause proved her spellwork solid and she quickly set about scaling the walls with a quiet, "escendo."
Approximately ten yards up, she quietly unlocked a wide bay window with a wave of her wand and slipped inside. The redhead winced as she landed a little harder than she'd planned, reminding herself that her silencing charm was still in place. Trusting that it, along with her concealment spell, still held fast, the petite sixteen-year-old softly closed the window behind her and made her way to the door on the other side of the large room. Before leaving what appeared to be an unused bedroom, however, she took the opportunity to cast a tracing spell that would help lead her to the strongest source of passive magic in the area.
Inanimate objects, especially those previously spelled or warded, gave off traces of those spells, as well as any magic they absorbed from their owners or surroundings. Given that the desk she sought had been owned and used for years by one of the strongest witches in history, and had then been imbued with a portion of Riddle's powerful, if evil, soul, she was certain that it would be the first thing her spell would detect.
Ginny's assumption seemed likely as her wand pointed her towards the interior of the manor, where the rooms would have no windows to let in sunlight that might damage the books or wood or other surfaces of priceless antiques. The minutes it took her to reach her destination, while short, were tense and nerve-racking for the redhead as she strained to hear any sound that might indicate the approach of another individual or the activation of some unseen alarm.
When her wand finally indicated that she was within several yards of the source of magic that she was looking for, she halted and stared unerringly at the large double doors in front of her. Lowering her arm, but keeping her wand gripped tightly at her side, she bit her lip. This was as far as her spell would take her, and there was no telling what lay in the room beyond. Would she know the desk when she saw it? If she saw it? The glimpse of insight that had informed her that it was indeed a desk they were looking for had not granted her an actual visual of the object in question and her well of memories had been dry as of late. Did she even possess any other recollections, or had she uncovered all the remnants of the diary that existed within her?
There was really only one way to find out.
With a deep breath, Ginny reached out and carefully pushed the solid oak doors open and stepped into the largest library she had ever seen outside of Hogwarts. The comparisons to Madame Pince's domain went beyond the size of the room, however, but included the number of seating options and writing surfaces that it offered. From her position she could see at least half a dozen tables and desks. The confidence and hope that had been rising in her chest began to sink heavily into her stomach. There was no telling which of the desks was the one they needed. Blinking away the tears that stung the back of her throat, she took a less than self-assured step further into the room and turned on her heel to get a better look around the room.
She hadn't turned halfway around when she suddenly froze. Every muscle in her body seemed to clench in painful unison as the sight overtook her. It was not the sight before her that she saw, however, but one she had never actually seen, one that Tom Riddle had seen over a decade before when he had stood back to admire the wooden relic that he had just filled with a irreplaceable piece of himself.
Ginny Weasley took a gasping breath as the vision faded and the tension drained from her, leaving her staring at a simple yet intricately carved writing desk tucked reverently between two shelves of books on the history of Hogwarts and its founders.
She barely kept herself from racing across the room in her haste. This was what she'd been sent to find, this was what they needed, the next step to destroying the safeguard that Voldemort had placed to keep himself alive, and though the former Headmaster had not actually asked her to steal the desk, but only to determine if it was there, she couldn't simply leave. It was there, feet from her, and she simply couldn't bring herself to leave without it. She had to get to it, but first she had to find a way around the ward that encased it. Biting back a sigh, she examined the spells and allowed herself to relax. Apparently the latest Ethelward felt that the wards on his property and home were sufficient and had not used much more than rudimentary protective spells on the desk itself.
"Abrogo."
She watched with relieved satisfaction as the spells fell away and allowed her to run a fairly steady hand along the smooth wood before she shrunk the last remaining possession of Rowena Ravenclaw and placed it carefully in the special moke-skin bag she had used to transport Hufflepuff's cup. Neither wizard had known that she'd tucked the bag into her robes before she left, and she almost hadn't risked doing it, but she was glad she had, as it was possibly the only way she could have transported such a large object, even shrunk, especially considering the magic inherent in the object which could very well counteract some portion of her own spell. Inside the pouch, however, she had a much greater chance of getting it to her destination. She didn't let herself further consider the small possibility of something going wrong in transport, however. She had it, that was what mattered at the moment. That, and getting out of the estate with it.
Having the desk was not the same thing, after all, as handing it over to Moody and Dumbledore to be properly dealt with, so the redhead quickly retraced her steps. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears, and there were a few moments when she thought she heard something that could have been the approach of the estate's owner, but after several tense minutes the redhead reached the room she had entered through and made her way to the bay window and carefully swung herself over the sill and floated to the ground below. Taking a moment to remove the covering of magical signature that had gotten her through the walls' wards, she dashed breathlessly across the lawns and stopped once more at the exterior wards.
It took her longer than she would have liked to reopen the hole in the mesh of spells that protected the estate, but eventually she was through and running almost invisibly to the glade where she had first arrived. Reaching the cool shade of the trees, Ginny couldn't keep the grin from spreading across her face as she Disapparated.
Author's Notes:
For anyone that is interested, the latin translations of the new spells are as follows:
Dissimulo- to conceal, disguise, keep secret, to ignore, leave unnoticed
Patefacio- disclose, expose, make open
Escendo- ascend, go up, climb
Abrogo- to repel, annul, remove
End Chapter Nine
Ginny Weasley swallowed hard past the nerves building within her. They simmered in her gut like a toxic potion, bubbled up into her throat, lodging there, making it hard to breathe evenly as she placed the specially, secretly, spelled Portkey back into the small pocket in her robe. A few days before, when Dumbledore had asked her if she'd like to go to the Ethelward estate to investigate whether or not it housed the fifth Horcrux, she'd readily answered in the affirmative. But now, as she stood in the secluded glade just outside the border of Fittleborough, she felt a twinge of regret at her decision.
Naturally, she had assumed that her excursion to the estate would be like her trip to the Clio, at least in that she would be accompanied by Moody. Yet here she stood, with no Moody, invisible or otherwise, anywhere around to provide support or backup. Despite the spells and tricks that she had learned from the diary, despite all the knowledge that Tom had given her so that she could successfully traipse around the school creating havoc and releasing the basilisk, she was less than confident about her upcoming task.
Even knowing her uncertainty, the former Headmaster had decided that it would be too hard to hide or explain away the absence of both Ginny and Moody either from Grimmauld Place or Hogwarts. As it was, the frequency of the wizard's disappearances during their latest round of research into the Horcrux's identity and location had been in danger of being noticed by the already suspicious and restless Trio. Presently, there was a delicate balance of diversion and distraction keeping the indispensable young wizard and his friends safe and confined until the final confrontation, and Dumbledore did not want to disturb that, and risk anything happening to their only hope of defeating the Dark Lord once and for all. To that end, he had asked Moody to keep Harry and the others occupied while Ginny was sent to Wizarding Wessex.
Objectively, she understood the decision, and knowing the three as well as she did, she was well aware that they had been lucky to be able to keep her brother, Harry, and Hermione out of the fray for as long as they had. Because of that, she knew steps needed to be taken to maintain the Trio's isolation.
They thought that Moody was now the head of the Order, and that if anything were happening, that he would be involved. If he disappeared, even one more time, they may well try to follow him as they had attempted to do the night she had met with him to finalize plans for the trip to the would-be historian's estate. And Harry, Hermione, and Ron finding out what she and Moody had been up to was not something that they needed. If that knowledge spurred the three to venture out on their own search for the remaining Horcruxes, or to discover that Dumbledore was actually still alive, the result could be disastrous.
Certainly the possibility of her brother or his friends being caught or killed, or unwittingly revealing through Harry's scar that Dumbledore hadn't been killed, took precedence over any difficulty she might have in determining if they were right about Ethelward possessing the desk. At least that was what she reminded herself as she pointed her wand at herself.
"Dissimulo. Pedes Silentium."
Even knowing that she was now concealed and that her movement would be inaudible, thanks to the spells Tom had taught her, it took her several seconds and a few deep breaths before the youngest Weasley took her first steps out of the glade and towards the sprawling house she could see a few minutes' jog from her position.
The things she had learned her first year, regardless of how long it had taken her to remember them, added to everything else she had recalled from the foreign memories insider her head, nearly ensured that she could get into and out of the estate without being detected. Still, she had relatively little experience at breaking and entering, and even less at doing it by herself. At least in her first year, Tom had been in control of what she was doing and could have therefore gotten her out of any problem that might have arisen.
Now, she was truly on her own, with only remnants of his knowledge and memories to guide her. That, her vaulted Gryffindor bravery, and of course, her Weasley stubbornness.
Surely with the three behind her she would prove successful, and worthy of the task that the older wizards had entrusted her with. After all, Moody's presence at the museum had proved unnecessary. And her skills and memories, even if they hadn't been hers to start with, had not let her down yet. She was capable of the mission before her. She would complete this assignment, and bring them one step closer to acquiring the fifth Horcrux. She would bring the Order that much closer to destroying the evil bastard that had lured her eleven-year-old self into a fraud of a friendship and proceeded to take over her mind, rob her of the innocent childhood she may have otherwise had, and then left remnants of his soiled mind within her own.
The young witch's expression hardened with her resolve, her stride growing wider and smoother as she approached her target. About a hundred yards from the walls, she halted with a silent nod as she felt the humming of the estate's exterior wards a mere foot in front of her. They weren't basic wards, such as the ones that surrounded the Burrow's boundaries. No, these were rather considerably more complex defensive shields meant to not only keep the property from being noticed by any passing Muggles, but to keep any of those passersby - Muggle or otherwise - out of the property.
The complexity, however, looked to in fact prove more help than hindrance to the estate's current uninvited guest. The layering of spells and wards was complicated to the point of being overdone... dangerously overdone. At least it would be dangerous to the integrity of the defensives if she had anything to say about it. Brown eyes narrowed as she waved her wand over the invisible wall in a careful pattern that left faint symbols drifting temporarily in the air before her. Ginny repeated her motions several times as she made her way along the warding line, examining each set of symbols closely before retreating several feet along her path and coming to a stop with a small smile.
Each layer of spells and wards was worked into the next, layered and entwined so that the combination was stronger than the original pieces. It was a daunting obstacle, yet not impossible to overcome, especially when one was able to find a place where all the layers were not combined as seamlessly as they should have been. The section of wards she was facing at that moment was not terribly unlike the surrounding sections, but if the proper spells were applied, the incongruity of the merging wards was apparent. And being thus exposed, it left the youngest Weasley the opening she needed.
Taking a deep breath, Ginny got to work. Keeping the small kink in sight, she cautiously worked her way between the magical fibers, enlarging the gap a little bit more with each pass of her wand until the hole in the mesh could be cut open enough for her to slip through without setting off the alarms.
"Patefacio," the redhead stated with a growing smile. The sight of the opening widening for her passage sent a thrill of accomplishment, and a rush of confidence through the witch and she quickly stepped onto the warded property and with an absent "restituo," she left her first triumph behind her and headed silently towards the manor itself.
The jog to the main building was long enough to leave the sixth-year slightly out of breath by the time she reached the shadow of the large stone walls, but not so long that she had forgotten her previous victory with the wards and grown nervous. Still, she forced herself to stop an arm's length from the wall and examine it in the same way as she had the wards.
What she found took a moment's longer translation than it had on the grounds. The second set of wards were not more exterior wards, nor were they truly interior ones. Instead, the magical barrier was worked into the building itself, designed to detect any aberration in the walls such as a person trying to walk over the threshold, or attempting to breach the walls. No spell or charm she knew of would bypass the shield, as it was codependent on the integrity of the walls themselves. There was one spell, however, that might blind the ward's detectors to her presence, or at least fool them into thinking that she was supposed to be there.
Casting her gaze over the surrounding area, the witch searched for a fragment of the spell's anchor- the stone of the walls. There were several chips of stone that had flaked off and fallen to the ground, but most were close enough to it that her picking them up might trip the wards. One piece, though, was about a foot away from the building, and soon found itself in the redhead's possession. Once she had obtained part of what the spells would detect as belonging to the wall, Ginny slowly began pulling out the pale vestige of the estate's own magical signature and casting several replications of it until she had a patch of iridescent energy that she could stretch to cover herself.
Effectively draped in the walls' own magic, the honorary Order member tentatively touched the rough stone. A moment's breathless pause proved her spellwork solid and she quickly set about scaling the walls with a quiet, "escendo."
Approximately ten yards up, she quietly unlocked a wide bay window with a wave of her wand and slipped inside. The redhead winced as she landed a little harder than she'd planned, reminding herself that her silencing charm was still in place. Trusting that it, along with her concealment spell, still held fast, the petite sixteen-year-old softly closed the window behind her and made her way to the door on the other side of the large room. Before leaving what appeared to be an unused bedroom, however, she took the opportunity to cast a tracing spell that would help lead her to the strongest source of passive magic in the area.
Inanimate objects, especially those previously spelled or warded, gave off traces of those spells, as well as any magic they absorbed from their owners or surroundings. Given that the desk she sought had been owned and used for years by one of the strongest witches in history, and had then been imbued with a portion of Riddle's powerful, if evil, soul, she was certain that it would be the first thing her spell would detect.
Ginny's assumption seemed likely as her wand pointed her towards the interior of the manor, where the rooms would have no windows to let in sunlight that might damage the books or wood or other surfaces of priceless antiques. The minutes it took her to reach her destination, while short, were tense and nerve-racking for the redhead as she strained to hear any sound that might indicate the approach of another individual or the activation of some unseen alarm.
When her wand finally indicated that she was within several yards of the source of magic that she was looking for, she halted and stared unerringly at the large double doors in front of her. Lowering her arm, but keeping her wand gripped tightly at her side, she bit her lip. This was as far as her spell would take her, and there was no telling what lay in the room beyond. Would she know the desk when she saw it? If she saw it? The glimpse of insight that had informed her that it was indeed a desk they were looking for had not granted her an actual visual of the object in question and her well of memories had been dry as of late. Did she even possess any other recollections, or had she uncovered all the remnants of the diary that existed within her?
There was really only one way to find out.
With a deep breath, Ginny reached out and carefully pushed the solid oak doors open and stepped into the largest library she had ever seen outside of Hogwarts. The comparisons to Madame Pince's domain went beyond the size of the room, however, but included the number of seating options and writing surfaces that it offered. From her position she could see at least half a dozen tables and desks. The confidence and hope that had been rising in her chest began to sink heavily into her stomach. There was no telling which of the desks was the one they needed. Blinking away the tears that stung the back of her throat, she took a less than self-assured step further into the room and turned on her heel to get a better look around the room.
She hadn't turned halfway around when she suddenly froze. Every muscle in her body seemed to clench in painful unison as the sight overtook her. It was not the sight before her that she saw, however, but one she had never actually seen, one that Tom Riddle had seen over a decade before when he had stood back to admire the wooden relic that he had just filled with a irreplaceable piece of himself.
Ginny Weasley took a gasping breath as the vision faded and the tension drained from her, leaving her staring at a simple yet intricately carved writing desk tucked reverently between two shelves of books on the history of Hogwarts and its founders.
She barely kept herself from racing across the room in her haste. This was what she'd been sent to find, this was what they needed, the next step to destroying the safeguard that Voldemort had placed to keep himself alive, and though the former Headmaster had not actually asked her to steal the desk, but only to determine if it was there, she couldn't simply leave. It was there, feet from her, and she simply couldn't bring herself to leave without it. She had to get to it, but first she had to find a way around the ward that encased it. Biting back a sigh, she examined the spells and allowed herself to relax. Apparently the latest Ethelward felt that the wards on his property and home were sufficient and had not used much more than rudimentary protective spells on the desk itself.
"Abrogo."
She watched with relieved satisfaction as the spells fell away and allowed her to run a fairly steady hand along the smooth wood before she shrunk the last remaining possession of Rowena Ravenclaw and placed it carefully in the special moke-skin bag she had used to transport Hufflepuff's cup. Neither wizard had known that she'd tucked the bag into her robes before she left, and she almost hadn't risked doing it, but she was glad she had, as it was possibly the only way she could have transported such a large object, even shrunk, especially considering the magic inherent in the object which could very well counteract some portion of her own spell. Inside the pouch, however, she had a much greater chance of getting it to her destination. She didn't let herself further consider the small possibility of something going wrong in transport, however. She had it, that was what mattered at the moment. That, and getting out of the estate with it.
Having the desk was not the same thing, after all, as handing it over to Moody and Dumbledore to be properly dealt with, so the redhead quickly retraced her steps. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears, and there were a few moments when she thought she heard something that could have been the approach of the estate's owner, but after several tense minutes the redhead reached the room she had entered through and made her way to the bay window and carefully swung herself over the sill and floated to the ground below. Taking a moment to remove the covering of magical signature that had gotten her through the walls' wards, she dashed breathlessly across the lawns and stopped once more at the exterior wards.
It took her longer than she would have liked to reopen the hole in the mesh of spells that protected the estate, but eventually she was through and running almost invisibly to the glade where she had first arrived. Reaching the cool shade of the trees, Ginny couldn't keep the grin from spreading across her face as she Disapparated.
Author's Notes:
For anyone that is interested, the latin translations of the new spells are as follows:
Dissimulo- to conceal, disguise, keep secret, to ignore, leave unnoticed
Patefacio- disclose, expose, make open
Escendo- ascend, go up, climb
Abrogo- to repel, annul, remove
End Chapter Nine
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