May 19th, 1653- Weasley Manor, Wales

"Good morning, Genevieve," Septimus greeted her as she followed behind Persephone into the dining room. He was sitting at the head of the table, with a younger male to his right.

"Yes. Good morning."

"You may call me Father," he answered her unsaid plea.

"Yes, father." Whatever it took. She called her own father 'dad', so it wasn't like she was replacing him, or anything. Besides, dad would want her to do whatever it took to fit in and, if she couldn't get home, build whatever kind of a life that she could have here.

"This is Cadmus, my son and heir. Your elder brother. I have informed him of your unique situation and the terms of your arrival, and he has agreed to be patient with you."

Cadmus looked more than patient. In fact, he looked fascinated. Ginny sat down in the seat next to Persephone, who was seated just to Septimus' left, and Cadmus immediately locked his eyes on her. She placed her wand, which had spent the night under the pillow, on the table in front of her plate, where she always put it.

"What's it like, in the future? Sister."

"Different," Ginny answered.

"Ah. Well, if you are not used to the way that people are here, then I shall have to protect my little sister from the advances of men."

"Oh, please don't," Ginny found herself saying. "I have six brothers at home who do that well enough, it's impossible to just live my life. And Harry. Harry's probably here, and he'll most likely take it upon himself to toss himself in between me and danger since Ron's not here to do it. He's got that... saving people thing. He saved me from a Basilisk, you know. And a diary that had been possessed by an evil wizard. He was twelve and I was eleven."

"Your Harry... he is a Potter?"

"Yes."

Cadmus snorted. "That does not surprise me at all. Charles is a good friend of mine, you see. He has a—saving people thing, what an apt description. It's perfect."

"Oh, it didn't come from me," Ginny said, picking up her wand to twirl it absently and send sparks flying everywhere. "Hermione's the one that said that. She's our best friend. Well, really she's Harry and Ron's best friend, I hang out with Luna and Demelza more."

"By Merlin! What is that?"

"A magical foci, from what I can tell," Septimus broke in, eyeing Ginny's wand. "It focuses her magic to a single point and allows her to use a prestructured spell for a specific purpose. Magic has changed very much in her time."

"Wow. Can you show me?"

Ginny opened her mouth to refuse, but then she realized something. "It's not being monitored here, is it? Oh, that's brilliant!" she got an expression on her face that she knew from experience would send even the twins running far away. It meant an incoming bat bogey hex, at the very least.

"Wingardium Leviosa." She swished and flicked in the direction of the salt shaker, sending it high into the air. "That feels amazing. Accio, butter." The butter zoomed across the table to her, and she set it gently down.

Her audience watched with wide eyes as she levitated, summoned, and banished things around the room. She repaired a broken corner on one of the tables.

"Genevieve! Stop that, this instant," Septimus said. Ginny gently placed a vase down with a sheepish expression.

"Sorry. I just haven't ever used magic outside of school before. We aren't allowed. The Ministry monitors our wands. Anyone underage—that's younger than seventeen—is forbidden to use magic without permission, on the pain of warnings, and potential expulsion if we have repeat offences."

"They take your magic away! That's horrible," Cadmus burst out, looking indignant on the behalf of everyone that was forced to comply with The Reasonable Restriction for Underage Sorcery.

"Oh, yes, I know," Ginny agreed, shaking her head. "Last summer, Harry saw Voldemort—that's this really big evil wizard, so evil that everyone is afraid to say his name—return, and the ministry didn't want to accept it, so they started a whole big railroad campaign to make him look like an attention seeking, delusional child. Then they sent dementors after him and tried to get him expelled for using magic to defend himself."

"Dementors. Are those not soul-sucking demons? Why on earth would the ministry of magic have control over them?" Septimus asked.

"They guard the prison. Azkaban. They stay on the island and get to suck all of the happy feelings out of the murderers and rapists and leave us normal, law abiding folk alone. Wait—does this mean that you don't have wands?"

"No, Genevieve," Cadmus explained.

"Would you call me Ginny? I just—that's my name, after all. And if you're my brother, it seems appropriate for you to call me by my nickname."

"I suppose so," Cadmus agreed. "Magic is all about intent. Can I see that foci of yours? Would you tell me a spell?"

"Careful," Ginny warned. "I'm kind of helpless without it." She slid the wand across the table to Cadmus. "It may not work as well for you as for me—we're given wands with different cores and different kinds of wood in order to match up best with our magical cores. Thirteen and a half inches, ebony and unicorn hair, willingly given, of course. Ollivander said that I was difficult, I must have tried hundreds of wands before I finally got a reaction out of this one."

Cadmus had picked up her wand and was staring at it in fascination. "Try giving it a wave," Ginny offered, wanting to see what happened. Cadmus waved it and created sparks, but not the explosion that it produced from Ginny's hand.

"Okay, looks satisfactory. Now, pick something light. We usually use a feather at first, but I don't see one around, so we'll have to improvise. Set it on the table, and move your plate out of the way." Cadmus produced a banana, and placed it in front of himself on the white tablecloth. "The movement is all in the wrist—swish and flick. Here," she added, taking pity on him waving the wand around. "I'll show you." She took it back, and did the wand movement exaggeratedly, so that he could see. Then she returned the wand and picked up a fork, continuing with the motion.

"The incantation is wingaaardium leviosa. Make the 'gar' nice and long, and emphasize the o sound in leviosa. There you go," she added, as he made the sounds. "Now put it together, while concentrating on the banana."

Nothing happened. Honestly, Ginny hadn't expected it to—he wasn't used to the wand, and he didn't know how to focus magic through it. Cadmus looked discouraged, but Ginny told him this, and he brightened. "When we get in contact with Harry, I can give you proper lessons—we can borrow his wand. But how do you do magic?"

"Intent is magic, Ginny." She grinned at Cadmus' use of her real name—a piece of home.

"Will you show me?"

"It looks like we'll have all the time in the world."

Septimus cleared his throat. "Genevieve, Cadmus, it is wonderful that you are getting along; however, other things must be take care of."

"Oh, yes," Ginny managed weakly. "Manners."

"Yes, my dear. Starting with—sit up straight."

Ginny's mother had always lamented her posture. She didn't think that there was anything so bad about it—this corset prevented any hardcore slouching. But apparently, even the slight drooping forward of her shoulders was enough to warrant notice in this new world of etiquette and poise for young ladies.

She sat up straight, resigning herself to a new way of life.

Hours later, she was ready to stab herself with a butter knife. There was a ridiculous amount of rules, just to eating a meal. Which hand to use, which course to eat first, which knife to cut which type of meat. It was endless. She had perfected her posture early on—practically glued to the back of the chair, staring straight ahead of her with the cutlery in her hands—with the necessity, since Persephone had threatened to tie her shoulders to the back of the chair, which was apparently how children were taught to perfect their posture.

Finally, she had gotten through a meal without any major mishaps, and Persephone pronounced her taught, if not perfected—they had three months for polishing. Yay, how she was looking forward to it. Persephone hadn't understood her, so she had had to explain sarcasm, only to be told that ladies did not use sarcasm.

Now, they were onto walking. Apparently, though they didn't wear the slinky little stilettos that were all the rage with both wizarding and muggle females back home, women still wore heels here. And Ginny had never been allowed to wear heels—combined with the skirt that tangled around her ankles, she was stumbling every few steps. She had always been athletic, both with Quidditch and with sports on the ground, and never really been clumsy.

"Again," Persephone instructed tirelessly. Ginny suppressed a growl and straightened her posture, lifted her skirts in front of her—but not above the ankle, no, never above the ankle—to walk the length of the ballroom again.

This was ridiculous. But necessary—always necessary. There was nothing to do now but admit defeat. The time turner hadn't even been invented until the late nineteenth century, and this was the seventeenth. There was nothing that she could research, no magic that she could look into. It wasn't a spell that had sent her back in time, after all. Just several broken time turners—broken time turners that had been the experimentation pets of the Department of Mysteries. Who even knew what those things were capable of? Nothing normal, if you could call a time turner normal, that was for sure. She had seen what they had done to Dolohov, trapping just his head in the endless cycle of birth to death, like some kind of sick, fast acting Phoenix.

No, Ginny was stuck here in the seventeenth century, hopefully with Harry, but only time would tell. She could very well be completely alone. And here, either you fit into upper society, or you starved to death.

Persephone finally pronounced her walk as passable, or at least well enough for a governess to work on, they moved on to speaking.

"Ladies do not use sarcasm. They do not talk about delicate things. They do not interrupt. When they are in the presence of a man, they speak only when spoken to. You do not make eye contact unless you are involved in a conversation. You must remain demure at all times. Your tone soft instead of strident. It must be your goal to make a man think of music, bells, when he hears your voice. A lady never shouts, screams, or shows her loss of temper. You must mask your emotions. You may feel anger, frustration or boredom. Some of the balls will be long and tedious, and you will make useless conversation about useless things. But even if everyone else feels exactly the same way that you do, you must hide it. Your demeanour must remain pleasant and demure."

"That just seems... so fake."

Persephone laughed. "It is fake. Our entire world is fake, Genevieve." The use of her ultimately fake name seemed to drive this home. "I will teach you how to eat, walk, dance and speak, but listen very carefully, for nothing that I will say to you will be nearly as important as this is: our world has two uses for women, Genevieve. As pretty, young things and baby makers. If you are no longer one, but have not qualified as the other then you have lost your purpose entirely, and you are doomed to spend the rest of your life in seclusion. If it were not for your unique circumstances, Septimus would have already been searching for a betrothal for you. If you are still with us, he will start requesting offers by next season, perhaps even halfway through this season. It will depend on how well you adapt."

Ginny stared at her in horror. "Get married? But I'm only fourteen. Sure, I'll be fifteen in a few months, but still!"

"And most young women are introduced into society the season that they turn fourteen, so what would have been last season for you. They get one social season to remain as social butterflies—to meet and greet, and, perhaps, to do anything that they can to lure a desirable man to them, and then their fathers begin to take offers."

"Is it the same in the muggle world?" Ginny enquired.

"What is the muggle world?"

"The non-magical people? Muggles? Their government and shops and everything? You know."

"Genevieve, we live alongside the non-magicals," Persephone answered, staring at her strangely. "There are the occasional things that we need, and the non-magicals are not... aware of us, per say. Well, they know that we exist, but nothing about who we are or how to identify us. When we shop, we shop in—what did you call them? Muggle? That really is quite the rude name."

"Of course," Ginny breathed. "It's 1653. The International Statute of Secrecy won't go into effect for another two centuries."

"What's this?"

"A law," Ginny answered. "A huge elaborate law—in fact, the law is pretty much what our entire government is founded on. I've never been big on history—my teacher's a ghost, he's very boring—but from what Hermione has said, when the wizarding world decided to split off and segregate from the muggle world, they decided to have no contact at all. They formed the Ministry of Magic and signed the Statute of Secrecy. We must never tell a muggle who isn't the immediate family of a muggle-born or the spouse of a witch or wizard anything about magic or its existence. We're so separated that it doesn't even really matter to anyone but the muggle-borns anymore."

"Muggle-born?"

"That means someone that is born to non-magical parents," Ginny explained. "Hermione is a muggle-born. A pureblood is someone that has no muggle in their ancestry for—I think that the old families define it as having four magical grandparents. Except the really fanatical ones, like the Blacks go back another generation to having eight magical greats. Halfblood is anything in between."

"That's barbaric!"

"Oh, I know," Ginny answered, shaking her head. "My family is pureblood, but only by chance—we don't run around marrying our own cousins to prevent diluting the bloodline. The old families call us blood traitors, for being 'a disgrace to the name of wizard', Lucius Malfoy said once. We're fighting a war over it—this man named Tom Riddle turned up about thirty years ago now, and started gaining power with the purebloods, advocating the stamping out of the ones that were unworthy to learn magic—muggle-borns, those with impure blood, and the purebloods that don't agree with their philosophy, namely blood traitors, like us and the Potters, the Longbottoms, the Prewitts, the McKinnons."

"You're at war over this?"

"Actually, Hermione said that Voldemort is really more of a terrorist," Ginny said pensively. "It's not a real war as much as a guerrilla war. But one that they were possibly winning. One night, he went after Harry and his family, but for some reason the curse backfired and Voldemort destroyed himself, leaving Harry with nothing but a scar. He used an obscure necromantic ritual to come back last year, after thirteen years of peace. We were having... difficulty convincing the ministry that he was back. They're scared, see. But Cornelius Fudge is a spineless, bribable coward who employs evil sadists."

Persephone stared at her in confusion, so Ginny simply waved a hand in the air. "Never mind. It doesn't matter anymore, really—you don't have to live in my world, I have to live in yours."

"Alright, then, dear," Persephone agreed. "We exist in the non-magical world. Our magic is simply under the surface of that society."

"So it's like a... don't ask, don't tell policy?"

"Yes, that sounds about right. We know the names of the other magical families."

"What about the muggle-borns?"

"The first generation magicals are not identified until the Book of Magical Births sends them a letter in their early twenties. Then we send someone to explain that it isn't simply a distasteful joke, and they decide if they want to learn to master ambient magic or not. They aren't really at any disadvantage—we do not teach children to master magic. Only what they need to control their outbursts. We don't have those foci—wands, you call them?" At Ginny's nod, Persephone continued. "We don't have wands, or structured spells. There is magic all around us, and as a magical being, with the right intent you can master it."

"Wandless magic," Ginny commented. "It's supposed to be really difficult. Only the most powerful wizards can use it, and even then they can only do a little."

"It isn't difficult at all," Persephone said, enthused. "In fact, perhaps that is why you spend seven years in school, and we only take two or three. In constructing your structured spells, you've lost the ability to harness the ambient magic in the air. Can you feel it?"

Ginny gave her a blank look. "Feel what?"

"The magic, of course. Oh, you can't?" She sounded like a wistful child. "Your senses have been dulled. You've lost the ability to simply make your thoughts reality."

"We can do that?"

"Of course we can, you silly girl," Persephone said fondly, ruffling her hair. "Genevieve—Ginny, since you are my step-daughter, after all—I am going to teach you to harness the ambient magic. We don't have time to wait for Hogwarts. If you go to Hogwarts like this, they'll think that you're a blank."

"A blank?"

"A child born to a magical family with no ability to sense the magic. They are rare, but they do occur on occasion."

"Oh, like a Squib. I wonder why we have so many different names for things?"

"It does seem strange, doesn't it? Now, sit down here—practice your posture, this is no excuse for you to let your lessons slide—and close your eyes. Concentrate on nothing but the sound of your breathing and what you feel. Go on," she said encouragingly.

Ginny looked dubiously at her before taking the seat and letting her eyelids slide closed, and the sound of her breathing lull her into a peaceful state.

May 19th, 1653- Potter Manor, England

These people were strange. He had no idea what was happening, and no idea where he was. Just that they had interpreted 'Harry' to be short for 'Hadrian', and assumed that he was their long lost younger son, who had disappeared as a child and never been found. He was apparently the right age for it. Privately, Harry thought that maybe the toddler had wandered off into the night and gotten eaten by something unfriendly, but he didn't mention this. There seemed to be no doubt as to his heritage—they had decided early on that he was definitely a Potter. Something about the wards? Harry didn't know anything about wards.

But the real question was what had happened to Ginny? They had gotten separated, and, if Harry was to believe these people, she was now wandering all alone in the year 1653. Merlin, they were in trouble.

There's chapter two—etiquette lessons for Ginny, and a snippet of what Harry's been up to.

An anonymous reviewer (so I can't answer them privately) expressed a concern about religion. I hope that this explains why they appear to be Christian—because at this time in England, everyone was very religious. I won't go into any detail with the religion, but there are going to be mentions of it. And they're going to go to church on Sundays, even if I don't describe it. For those of you who get defensive when religion is raised, since I know that it can be a sensitive topic, don't worry about it being overpowering or anything. I'm just trying to add authenticity to the time period. You don't have to worry about Harry and Ginny becoming bible-thumping church enthusiasts, or anything like that.

Please tell me what you think.

~ITooktheOneLessTravelled