by Faith Accompli
Disclaimer: All characters from the books belong to Rowling.
Author's Note: Um. My apologies for not putting a chapter up for an entire year. Inspiration fled, but I think I've recaptured it again. I will endeavor to write the next chapter of this before 26/03/05. Those of you who have been waiting and nagging me, and who've actually come back to read this, thank you. I do appreciate it, and hope you won't be too discontent with this chapter - feeble as it is.
"What time do we get to Egypt?" she asked as she followed Bill into their tiny little cabin. Percy and Penelope had seen them off with much hugging and promises to visit and write; she'd seen her mother and father at the back of the crowd, but they hadn't been able to force their way through to the boat before it sailed. "And what do we have to eat?"
Bill rolled his eyes, putting her trunk down and sliding it under the tiny bunk that lay beneath the hammock, while she dumped the armload of last-minute packages over the bunk. "Take my wallet and go aft, there should be a woman selling coffee and food somewhere."
"Aft?" Ginny paused, Bill's wallet already in her hand. "Is that some Egyptian way of telling me to go fuck myself?"
"It means the arse-end of the ship, Ginny."
"Oh." She skipped out of the cabin before she asked any more ignorance-revealing questions, then made her way to to back of the ship, avoiding the couple with the rambunctious and verbose toddler, then the sailor who she dimly recognised from her first year of school, as she rifled through Bill's small change and followed the scent of coffee.
By the time she reached the wooden table set up at the stern, she had fumbled out five sickles and a handful of tiny gold coins and was hungry enough to eat a centaur if one wandered up and held still long enough. "Hi," she greeted the old woman, holding out the coins. "How much can I get for this?"
"Put the gold away, girl," the crone chastised her, and nodded approval once Ginny had shoved it into her pocket. "Two sickles will get you a cup of coffee, a pie and a biscuit. One of each for you?"
"Two. I left my brother in our cabin."
"Ah, well. You should get back to him before he gets himself into trouble. Four sickles."
Ginny handed over the money without pause, taking in return the two paper cups and the napkin holding pies and biscuits, almost dropping the latter before she got her fingers dug in properly. "Thank you."
Provisioning taken care of for the time being, she hurried back to the cabin and found Bill waiting for her just outside the door. "Take it before I drop your dinner on the floor," she demanded, holding out the second cup of coffee and the food, sipping her own drink.
"The deck," Bill corrected, and she poked her tongue out at him as she returned his wallet. "Shut up, Bill?"
"Yes. Shut up, Bill. Now tell me more about the school I'm going to."
It turned out that Bill wasn't terribly knowledgeable about the school, fair enough since he hadn't actually attended it, and what little he did know was mostly because a workmate's daughter was attending at the beginning of the school year-just as Ginny herself was, she supposed. When Bill had exhausted what little reserve of trivia he did have, he moved on to Egypt in general, a description of the culture and peoples much more detailed than the one she had heard from Percy when she'd been twelve.
Bill talked about the religious history, the way the Council was being run ragged keeping those not gifted with magic from finding out about roughly eight thousand years of magical civilisation - the temple-cities that only witches and wizards could see, let alone enter. He told her of days spent roaming and nights spent in the cool of the desert with a warm and willing...nothing that she needed to hear about. Despite her pressing him then, he wouldn't continue, and climbed up into the hammock above her bunk with a stern warning that she wasn't to fall over the side of the ship and drown.
Ginny sighed and curled up on the bunk when it became apparent Bill had no intention of telling her any more. "Stupid brother."
"Stupid sister. Go the hell to sleep."
He dozed off in under a minute, leaving her wide-eyed and awake...alone to worry about the decisions she'd made and bullied her brothers into helping her with. Would Bill start to wish he hadn't said he'd take her? Would the school in Egypt even accept her, as far behind as she was in pretty much every language they used there? She had left her nightmares behind her at the Burrow and they hadn't followed her to Clearwater House; had they sneaked ahead to be waiting for her in Egypt?
Was she making the biggest mistake of her life?
She hadn't told anyone from school where she was going, not Colin and not Em and not Hermione either, who she didn't hate even if Hermione did spend almost all her time tailing Ron and Harry and left little for her. She still had the gold coins from Bill's wallet, and some pencils and paper in her little bag - maybe she should write to them? Cho had fled Hogwarts before she had, and they weren't the girls closest to Harry. Penelope's words had been ticking over in the back of her mind and if anyone was going to get pressed into the cause by Dumbledore, wouldn't it be Hermione?
No one deserved to end up with Potter.
Crawling out of her bunk and grabbing her bag on the way, Ginny made it out on deck and sighed, glancing up at the purple-black sky. This was the best thing she could be doing. Even if the school in Egypt wouldn't take her, Bill would find somewhere that would. She was going to stay safely away from England, away from Voldemort and Potter and her mother and the Gryffindor girls in her year. She'd be somewhere that she could just be her and not be defined by other people.
Waylaying one of the sailor girls decked out in a stripy shirt, cut-off trousers and a red cap, who looked her up and down before raising an eyebrow in question, she asked if there were any owls aboard.
"Owls? On the Night Boat? You'd be bloody lucky," the girl said with a laugh. "We don't have 'em onboard. But if you climb up to the crow's nest," she added, pointing up to the mast, "you might find an albatross or something willing to carry your letter."
"Thanks," Ginny said with a little grin, not sure if the girl was serious or just having her on, before walking away to the base of the mast. "I'll do that, then."
Scaling the mast wasn't as difficult as it looked when she found the invisible toeholds, aided in large part by her not wearing shoes or stockings, and she only slipped once or twice before making it up to the platform, what had to be the highest point one could get to on the ship without a broomstick or a misplaced levitation charm. Settling herself firmly on the boards and opening up her bag to retrieve paper and pencil, she frowned. What was she supposed to say? 'Dear friends, I have grown tired of Scotland and decided that fucking off is a really good idea. Thanks. Bye.'
While not without its own charm, maybe she'd word her farewell letters with a little more substance to them...or at least make them a little less to-whom-it-might-concern. The easiest one first, she decided, scribbling down 'Hermione, you probably won't believe a word of this, but,' and pausing. But what? 'But Cho's fled the coop, so have I, and if you have family anywhere out of the country who's willing to take you, pack your bags now'? That sounded good enough to her. Hermione had mentioned some Muggle cousins in America, and America was far away from Voldemort...
She scribbled down a little more of her new suspicions, not mentioning Penelope's name so if the letter was intercepted she wouldn't get her brother's girl in trouble, then folded the letter and glued it shut with a shrug. This was more than she was required to do, and if Hermione didn't listen to her...well, that wasn't her fault.
Colin was next, just a short note explaining that Voldemort was back and she was so gone, thanking him for letting her sit with him in class and not being a prat about her getting him petrified, and warning him to steer clear of Potter because people ended up dead that way. After a moment's thought she added a postscript for him to tell the rest of the Muggleborns the same, then glued that letter and put it under her bag with the one addressed to Hermione.
She was chewing on the end of her pencil and debating what to say in the last letter when a mostly-white albatross swooped in just like the sailor girl had mentioned, watching her with one beady eye and circling the mast without flapping its long wings once.
It landed on the edge of the platform and folded its wings neatly, cocking its head and peering at her curiously. "You do mail-runs?" she asked hopefully, and the bird's beak dipped once. "Excellent. Can you wait five minutes or so? I've just got one more to write."
The bird stepped closer to her, settling in beside her bag so as to not fall off the edge, and closed its eyes. She took that as a yes, and started writing the last letter-the hardest one of all. How did you tell your best friend that you were ditching her in favour of saving your own skin, based on hallucinatory nightmares that might have no actual bearing on reality but fucked with your head enough to make you run for cover at the first chance? Did you even bother going into details, given that she was a Slytherin, her parents were Slytherins, and while they probably hadn't supported Lord Voldemort last time they still agreed with some of his politics?
In the end Ginny didn't know what she said, if she had admitted to anything beyond a deep-rooted fear of Voldemort, if she'd said her thank-yous properly or mentioned how much their friendship had meant to her, but she signed it and glued it closed without looking back over it. If she looked, she'd change her mind and burn it, disappear without a single word. Em wouldn't learn she was gone until September, and she shouldn't - wouldn't treat a real friend that way.
She gave the albatross the letters after addressing them properly, holding out two of the gold coins she'd nicked from Bill as payment. The bird simply looked at her. "Um. You can buy fish with them?" she suggested.
The albatross looked unimpressed, as though she'd missed something blindingly obvious, but picked the coins out of her hand with its free foot, nudged her once in the side and launched off into the night. "Thanks!" she called out after the bird, and was answered with a flap of its wings as it gained height.
"Freaky bird," she muttered to herself as she clambered down the mast, her bag thrown over her shoulder once more. "It'd bloody better deliver those..."
"I didn't mean you were actually supposed to do that," the sailor girl said from behind her when she set foot on the deck once more. "And as for an albatross just stopping by to pick up your mail - it was a joke. They don't do that. They carry messages once in a blue moon, but only if it's important. Deaths, shipwrecks, acts of God."
"So I'd have been better off shoving the letters into a bottle and throwing them off to smash on the shores of Portugal?" she asked slowly, contemplating the wisdom of throwing the other girl overboard to smash on the shores of Portugal.
"If the bird took them, they'll get there," the girl admitted. "It's just...they're not supposed to. They don't stop to fetch and carry for just anyone."
"I'm special," Ginny said with a smug smile, then turned on her heel and marched off to the cabin. Dropping back onto her bunk, she fell asleep in the time it took for her bag to hit the floor.
She woke up an undeterminable amount of time later when Bill dropped a wet towel on her head, and struggled free with muttered profanity to see through the open door that the sun had barely risen.
"Come on, Ginny," Bill told her when she was sitting up and looking unmistakably cranky. "We'l be in port in ten minutes, and we have to go through Customs and get you registered."
"What, like I'm someone's pet crup?" she bitched, rolling out of bed and fumbling clean pants and a skirt out of her bag. After changing quickly underneath her robes, she poked Bill in the side. "Well? Do I get dog tags? Huh?"
"Maybe another time. Right now you get this ever-so-attractive headscarf, because this is Egypt." Bill ignored her sulky look and made a half-hearted attempt at tying the silk scarf on to her, eventually giving up and just wrapping it around her head three times. Knotting the ends together and patting her on the shoulder, Bill stepped back and yelped when she viciously kicked him in the ankle.
"Nkkkhseerbrth," she protested, struggling with the knot and eventually tearing the scarf off.
"What's that?" he asked, nursing his injury outside the cabin where she couldnt kick him again, and peering around the door.
"I can't see, and I can't breathe," Ginny repeated, plaiting her hair quickly and arranging the scarf so that no errant strands of copper could escape it. Later on she'd learn how to do it better, but for the time being, so long she made a token bow to the strange Muslim concepts of modesty... "This'll do, right? I don't need to wander around with a bag on my head or anything?"
"I think a bag over your head would suit you - kidding, just kidding. It should be fine," Bill nodded. "You won't be walking alone, and you're a white girl. There's only so much they can expect of you."
"Oh, fabulous," she grumbled, picking up Bill's bag since he was the only one of them allowed to use his wand, at least until she got to school, and he was responsible for carrying her much heavier trunk and all the rest of their things. "Be nice to me, I'm stupid-I mean, English."
"Pretty much." Levitating Ginny's trunk and the bags and packages atop it, Bill led the way and she followed. "Dig out the papers in the front pocket of the bag, would you?"
"Do this, Ginny, do that, Ginny...yeah, got 'em." Pulling a handful of documents out of the bag just as the ship made its last jump and arrived practically in port, coasting in to gently touch the dock, Ginny shuffled through them until she found Bill's passport and one in her name-one that she certainly hadn't filled out any paperwork for, or had her picture taken for. Photograph-Ginny stuck her thumbs in her ears and poked her tongue out at the real Ginny, then turned around, and pretended neither of them existed. "What a revolting picture," Ginny grumbled and nudged Bill in the ribs, running her fingertips over the dark green dragonhide. This wasn't the passport she'd had last time she went to Egypt... "Where'd you get it, and how come you got this in the first place?"
"Photo's one from Percy's collection, and we forgot to get your passport from Mum before we left. Rather than go back and ask for it, I just got you a new one." Bill shrugged. "Easier this way, and this one's got me listed as your next-of-kin instead of Mum and Dad."
"'kay," she acknowledged. She wouldn't have gone to collect it either, if only because her mum and Ron would probably clap her in irons and throw her in the cellar with the root vegetables.
Disembarking the ship (Ginny with a little wave for the sailor girl who'd tried to send her up), they made for the shorter customs line and Bill took the papers from her to fish out the relevant ones: her passport, the paperwork saying that she was with him now instead of her mum and dad, his passport bound in a shimmery gold-brown leather quite unlike the relatively bland green dragon of hers, and the certificate that stated she had been withdrawn from Hogwarts.
It took her a moment to realise that they were the only white witch and wizard in the line.
"Uh, Bill? This isnt the line for foreigners. That one is. Shouldn't we be there?"
"I've got residence, stupid. I work here," Bill stated, flipping open his passport to display the little gold-embossed Gringotts stamp on the first page.
"Shouldn't I be in the other line, then? Cause I don't."
"No, you're with me. Now shut up or I'll sell you to the white slave trade."
Resolving to kick him in the bollocks as soon as they got home, wherever home was, Ginny pasted a sweet smile on her face and did as she was told.
A Customs witch with a name-badge that read 'Lujayn' took her passport, raised both eyebrows at the picture, and asked her if she was being abducted against her will to be married off. She burst out laughing at that, denying that Bill had brought her over for that purpose, and then paused. "You mean that really happens?"
"More often than many young witches would prefer," Lujayn said, nodding toward Bill. "You do look a lot alike, but that's all the more reason why we have to ask. It's most commonly done amongst families, whether it's because they consider it right for the child in question or because of a messy custody battle."
"I think Bill would tell me if he was going to marry me off to someone. And he'd get such a kicking in return..." she trailed off, her thoughts still on what the woman had said. While she hadn't thought for a moment that Bill would have sold her, the fact that it still happened - she'd thought it had died out around 1800, at least in wizarding society - was disturbing. Actually, that was an understatement. It was completely fucking disturbing, and she didn't like it one bit. "Anyway, I'm here to go to school. It's safer here than in England, Bill says."
"Have fun." Lujayn stamped her passport with a big purple stamp and gave it back to her. "I'd recommend the House of Hathor, but I'm biased. Maybe with your hair you'd be better off in the House of Set."
Later, she would ask Bill just what all that meant. For now, though, she thanked the woman and followed Bill further into the plastered and painted building that looked as if it could have come right out of one of her ancient history books.
"You want me to dive into that fountain." It was a statement, not a question, for Bill had looked completely serious when he gave her the instruction. "You want me to crack my head open and bleed to death, don't you?"
"Yes, that's exactly it," Bill snorted, offering her a hand. He'd already shrunk their belongings and put them in his pocket when they'd reached the fountain room, and now he expected her to jump into a shallow pool of water. "Look, just hold my hand and jump in when I do. Since you don't know where it is we're going and there's anti-Apparition wards around the houses..."
"Fine," she grumbled, linking arms with him and scowling. "If I die, the first person I'm coming back to haunt will be you."
"Promises, promises," Bill patted her on the head and jumped headfirst into the fountain, dragging her with him.
She almost drowned on the way, which was probably her own stupid fault for opening her mouth to try and yell at her brother, but before she had a chance to inhale too much water they arrived.
Ginny landed on her feet, knee-deep in the paddling area of a generously-sized swimming pool and feeling that throwing up would be an excellent way of expressing how much she liked this new method of travel. Only the thought that she might like to swim in the pool later kept her from actually being sick, and her nausea faded quickly as she got out of the water.
"You'll get used to it," she was assured as they made their way through the glass doors and into a painted lobby.
Bill's apartment was on the fourth floor, seeming outwardly tiny but decent enough when they went through the door. She realised after a moment that she'd been evaluating it as though it was meant for six or more people, rather than just Bill and - during the holidays - her.
The living room was nice enough, with furniture that didn't look as old and broken as that at the Burrow, the kitchen was tiny but according to Bill he didn't cook much anyway, and although her room was small with a bed taking up at least half the floor-space, there was a cupboard that Bill said she could fit pretty much everything into. She had asked if she might end up in Narnia, walking through, but he said he doubted it and she'd probably just end up lost in there. It was magical, but not that magical.
Returning to the living room after she'd unpacked in the style that seemed most appropriate, throwing everything into the magic cupboard and slamming the door, she sat down on the sofa and relaxed. She had made it this far, she was away from England and Death Eaters and Voldemort and a certain person who probably meant well but tended to get those around him killed anyway. Freedom! As much as a fourteen year old girl could get while living with her older brother, anyway.
The next few days passed in a blur of new experiences for Ginny: decorating her new room which devolved into a paint-fight with Bill, meeting his partner from work and his partner's two wives, shopping for suitable clothes at the markets and getting her very first lessons in Egyptian and Arabic. She had no more nightmares of Voldemort coming after her, although she did have a bad dream about showing up to her new school stark naked, and rather than wake up screaming she simply fell out of bed.
Bill didn't nag her like her mother did, to eat her vegetables and put clean underwear on (she didn't hate vegetables in the first place and had already grasped the fun concept of personal hygiene), nor did he bring up Harry once. They had breakfast cereal she liked, rather than a ton of grease-drenched hot food, and he didn't mind answering all of her stupid questions about Egypt. They went touring the pyramids, this time without her mum there to forbid her entering them, and she spent Bill's money on tacky souvenirs without him giving one word of condemnation.
"Bill?" she started hesitantly as she put her moving sculpture of the Sphinx on her bedside table and her death mask on the wall above her bed, "Do you regret having me come here? I'm going to drive you broke at this rate-"
"Oh, get over it and stop worrying," Bill chided her, sitting down next to her on her bed and pulling her in for a hug. "I make quite enough to buy you food and whatever junk your avaricious little heart desires - and soon you're going to piss off to school and I won't see you again for at least four months. I can make more money then."
"Well, so long as you've thought about it, rationally and so-forth, okay. I solemnly swear to get over myself at the soonest possible opportunity."
Bill quirked an eyebrow at her, looked as though he was going to say something crude, changed his mind, and changed his mind again. "Have you been reading the porn mags Charlie and I left at the Burrow?"
"Time-Turners And The Witches That Use Them? Urgh, yuck. I'd need to jemmy it open with a crowbar, the way those pages are all stuck together." Ginny pushed Bill off her bed. "Sod off now, I'm going to sleep."
"I'm going. Don't forget you have to be up early, though, we're going to the school to get you enrolled tomorrow morning."
Tomorrow morning? Surely she would have remembered. "What? You never told me!"
"I'm telling you now. Sweet dreams," Bill teased, and closed the door on her.
She had showered, scrubbed only half her skin off with nervousness, plaited her hair neatly, and was sitting on the balcony fretting into her cup of tea when Bill found her.
He sat down on the other chair, looking out over the city, and left her in relative peace for a few moments before he found his voice. "Ready?"
"No," she admitted, forcing herself to put her cup down on the table before it shattered in her hands. "But we're going anyway. I can't not."
"It won't be that bad," Bill said, reaching over to pat her hand. "What's the worst that could happen?"
"They won't let me in because I'm stupid. Then they won't let me go to Beauxbatons because I'm stupid and English and the headmistress there is friends with Dumbledore, and they might let me go to Durmstrang but someone would kill me because I'm feeble, so I couldn't go there, and I couldn't go to China 'cos it's far away and they wouldn't let me in there, and I couldn't go to school in America because it would be really expensive, and I couldn';t go to school in Brazil because that old penpal of yours would break my kneecaps then turn me into a frog because you couldn't visit, and I'll end up in Antarctica going to penguin school."
"Gin. Calm down." Bill took her cup away from her and threw it over the balcony. "And no more hallucinogens for you. There's no penguin school, you're thinking of Australia-"
"Ha, that's what you say," she said glumly. She was overreacting, but she'd spent half the night awake thinking about it, about what if this new school wouldn't take her - she couldn't go back to England - or what if they did take her, but everyone there hated her - because she wasn't like them - or what if a thousand things went wrong? What if she was sent to Australia and had to stand on her head?
Bill got up, pulling her to her feet without another comment on penguins or southern continents. "Come on, let's go. We're expected soon anyway, and once we're there you'll see that everything's fine."
"I'm not ready!" she protested as he hauled her over his shoulder and carried her inside. "C'mon Bill, just give me another minute, I need to get my bag and, um, go to the toilet-"
"You just went," Bill told her, slinging her bag with her papers in it over his other shoulder and opening the front door.
"Bill, let me down or I swear I'll pee all over you." She was abruptly dropped on the floor, luckily feet-first instead of head-first, and scampered back to the bathroom. She didn't actually need to go but she closed the door firmly, glad of the soundproofing in the apartments, and screamed as loudly as she could.
Two minutes later, when she had run out of breath completely, she emerged and took her bag from Bill, walked past him out the door, and started down the stairs before him.
By the time they reached the pool in the courtyard, she had regained her ability to speak. "So. Now we go."
"Now we go." Bill took her hand, and jumped with her into the water.