"I took your whispered.
magic
inside
me?"
she
"This is a dream, Ginny."
"Ah." "Close your eyes again. This time extending the finger distance."
I'm
Ginny nodded and once again closed her eyes.
Ginny sat in class while Lady Lily passed out the different maths and English worksheets for the different age groups.
In her hand, she held her self inking quill. A self inking quill, which was magical. When she was sure no one was looking, she closed her eyes, built up the magic on the tips of her fingers for a shield charm, but didn't let it escape. She withdrew the magic and as the magic retreated back into her, tried to desperately suck in anything else she could from the quill she held.
She opened her eyes and scowled. Nothing. Ginny crept through the tunnels of the Aztec pyramid, eyes flitting from side to side, trying to spy out anything that looked suspicious in the row upon row of strange bluebell flame illuminated pictures carved into the rock. The bluebell torches cast soft light across the passageway, giving the feeling of being underwater. None of the sounds from outside filtered this far into the monument to Mesoamerican magic. Everything was quiet.
She closed her eyes, imagined magic flowing and streaming around her, sent out a tiny pulse of magic through her fingertips across the wall, and instantly drew back everything she could in its wake.
There. Something tingled down her fingers. The tinniest sense of a presence. Of something, almost beyond her ability to detect it… but not quite.
Ginny grinned, reached into her pack, drew out a wand, pointed it at the wall and shouted, "Paint ball!" A splotch of paint splatted onto the wall.
A faint pop sounded next to her.
"Harry! I did it! I found one!"
Harry grinned back. "Yes, yes, well done. You've activated trap number fourteen." Ginny stilled. "Trap?" A huge rumbling approached.
"Have fun." He popped away.
"HARRY!" Ginny looked around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her. She stood up, made her way up to Lady Lily's desk, and picked up the dark magic detector that Harry's mother had left there since the first lesson when they'd started on magic-muggle relations almost a month ago. She closed her eyes, pushed her magic into the device, and waved it over her head.
The device did nothing, which was good. She'd hate to think what would happen if anyone ever found out about her necklace. Knowing this thing didn't react to it was good.
She slipped into her occlumency and reached out with her magic like Harry had taught her, trying to feel her own magic reflected back to her through the device.
It trickled back into her. She felt it…
She. Felt. It.
Ginny's eyes snapped open. She stared at the dark magic detector, eyes dancing in triumph. She'd done it! She'd felt the magic! Hah!
She did it a few more times, revealing in her mastery over something that only the most powerful wizards were supposed to be able to do.
She then spun around and walked back to her seat, unable to keep the huge smile off her face, not even caring that a certain black-haired witch was watching from the other side of the classroom, violet eyes narrowed in obvious suspicion.
Ginny slipped out of bed,
wrapped in darkness, already fully clothed, and padded across the room.
She opened her bedroom door, closed her eyes, and opened her senses to magic.
Heart beating faster than normal, she crouched down and started to run her hands up the door way.
There. A line of magic reaching from one side of the door to the other.
There. Another one, half way up the door. And there. Yet another one, this time at the top of the door.
She felt around the doorway for other clues. Nothing. She stepped back.
It wasn't even a perimeter ward. It was like a magical tripwire.
Harry had said it would take another few months until she was up for trying to actually crack even the most basic of magics, rather than just feel them. Dare she try to sneak through now? She frowned. Damn straight, she dared.
Ginny tied her hair in a ponytail and shoved it down the back of her shirt. She wasn't robed, so that wouldn't be a problem.
She took a step forward and reached through the space between the trip lines, ducking her head through them, and carefully bringing first one foot through, then the other.
She made her way downstairs, arms thrust out in front of her, carefully feeling for any other trip lines or wards. A drop of sweat ran down her face. Her heart beat wildly against her chest. With every step, she half expected her parent's door to bang open, and for her mother's voice to thunder down, promising domestic serfdom and no dessert until she was eighty.
The backdoor had a similar set up to her bedroom door. After she slipped through the trip lines, she carefully closed the back door behind her, and stood in the backwall's darkness, body coiled, knees bent, waiting for any sign that she'd been caught again.
None came.
After a few minutes, Ginny stood up and let out a sigh. She grinned. She'd done it. A month's hard work had payed off. All those moments caught in between chores — all that time spent before, after, and during class, probably looking like she was napping or slacking off — Harry said learning the basics of feeling magic with her level of occlumency took around two hundred hours, and she was sure she'd put that in, at least.
And now! Her face firmed. Luna was going down!
Consciousness faded back and Ginny looked up into the smiling face of Luna, who extended a small hand to where she lay on the damp ground around the Lovegood plum bushes.
"Try again, Ginny?"
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