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Unstoppable

Summary:

Ginny Weasley, youngest of seven and the only girl, was never expected to amount to much. Rebellion was all she had. The staff of Hogwarts Ladies Seminary despair of her ever learning to be a proper lady, and instead make her the next best thing, by sending her off to London to join The Harem, a notorious East End gang led by one Hermione Granger, infamous outcast of polite society. There, she learns how to take fate into her own hands, alongside a group of other young women Society has no time for.

 

Sort-of Regency!AU, following Hermione, Ginny and friends as they, with the help of their favourite professors, attempt to change the Wizarding World into something they can live with following the war. Politics? What politics?

Notes:

Disclaimer: I do not own the works made use of herein, none of the Harry Potter features or characters belong to me. I make no money from this work. (Basically, if you recognise it, it's not mine.)

Hi!
A new story in which I practise writing smut, romance and anything else I fancy popping in there. Feminist themes, but also mildly problematic stuff that tips it more towards a straightforward Girl Power! story. We here subscribe to the old feminist slogan - you know, women can do anything men can do, except we're wearing corsets. Grey!magic, with somewhat muddled morality. The timing is non-specific early Regency, probably littered with errors because it's my first time writing this sort of thing, but hopefully we'll get better as we go on.
Readers of Iacta will doubtless enjoy the same chaotic melding of multiple character viewpoints and romances (here, I consider the SSLB following that fic has generated and wonder what I can do with this one to get the same love...)
We ostensibly follow Ginny and Hermione, but also the viewpoint of the other six girls, because I love my side-characters. This should include Parvati, Padma, Lavender, Daphne Greengrass, Susan Bones and Pansy Parkinson (and a bit of Tonks, I reckon).
Not sure on updates as yet, but we'll get there, I hope.
Thank-you for taking a chance on my tale!
Love always,
Eliza x

Chapter 1: One: London Calling

Chapter Text

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." — Eleanor Roosevelt


 

“London?” Ginny felt faint. She, who never felt even the slightest dizzy, was proud to never have needed smelling salts and could swear like a sailor to boot, was feeling faint .

Headmistress McGonagall’s eyes were faintly kind as she contemplated her across the table. Ginny had been a pain of a student, she knew that, but she’d also thought that the staff had soft spots for her. At the very least, Headmistress McGonagall, whom she had seen so much during her time at Hogwarts that their relationship rivalled the one she had with her own mother. But now she was saying this, this ridiculous thing, in that implacable voice…

“I can’t go to London,” Ginny said, fighting to keep her voice level. “I’m not out, and I’m not ready to be. My mother would have a fit.”

“Your mother has been notified that you will be apprenticing beneath a respectable Potions Master and will have no need for a season, though doubtless she will provide one should you wish.” The Headmistress peered at Ginny through her glasses, solemn as ever. “I was under the impression you did not want a season. Isn’t that what all of this fuss is about?”

She clamped her lips together so that she wouldn’t cry. Of course her teachers would see it like that, of course . She’d been acting up for seven years straight, what else could she expect? It wasn’t like she’d let anybody close enough to learn the real reason she despised this school, the syllabus, the vapid little parasites she’d been rooming with who didn’t understand why they were forced to attend Charms and Defense classes, pared down though the subject matter was for their delicate female minds, when in a few years they’d have husbands to do all of that for them. “I’m abominable at Potions,” she pointed out instead, forcing the words past the tightness in her throat. “Healer Pomfrey says so almost every week.”

The Headmistress fluttered her fingers in dismissal. “As you will not truly be apprenticing there, it is of little consequence. I am sending you to a group of young women who may be able to help you - in fact, may be your saving grace. Should this… placement… work out satisfactorily, you shan’t need to graduate, nor will you need a husband.”

Foreboding stirred in her stomach, hurt knifing through her chest. She chose to focus on the latter, as the former scared her. “You’re expelling me?” she whispered in disbelief.

McGonagall shot her an irritable look. “Certainly not. I have not worked so hard these past years to shape you up to give up on you now. We are simply opening different avenues, as we did for these other women. They needed it just as much, and there’s no shame in it.”

“But what is it? Who is it?” Ginny asked, increasingly desperate. It was too good to be true, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to turn up in London and find she had been betrayed, as much as she couldn’t imagine that situation.

“Tell me, Miss Weasley,” McGonagall murmured, pressing her hands together atop the desk, as if she was trying not to fidget. “Have you ever heard of ‘The Harem’?”


 

A ridiculous question to top off a ridiculous night. Had she heard of The Harem? Who hadn’t heard of them?

Two years ago, Wizarding Britain had been in the midst of a nightmare, courtesy of one Lord Voldemort.

It is a well known fact that purebloods are both possessive and covetous of titles, and have been since the first Black was made Duke of Wye Valley by a confunded King Henry VIII (which explained a fair bit, too). They kept their claws dug into them long after the title dropped from relevance, no matter who they have to endow to keep it (see: Lord Seamus Finnegan, Irish third-cousin to the late Earl of Rilltree, from the feminine line, who found himself halfway through his schooling dragged to England and lumbered with a crumbling estate, even though he was both a half-blood with no tangible connection to the aristocracy and had been dragged up on a potato farm). Bearing in mind this obsession with the aristocracy, it came as quite the shock when they all seemed quite enchanted by this interloper, and teamed up behind his blood purity principles. Truly, even in France there had never been a Lord Voldemort, and Merlin knew that before the revolt they’d been willing to title just about anyone.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Lord Voldemort seemed quite reasonable at first, all pleasant politics and pretty speeches, until he’d taken a turn towards the murderous.

He and his moneyed followers, catchily monikered ‘Death Eaters’, arbitrarily determined that ruling half the country was not enough, and, three years back, decided they’d quite like the rest of it, too. They aimed to claim it through killing and torture, and nobody was safe. Ginny knew this personally, having lost a family member to them; Frederick, her delightful, mischievous brother.

Luckily, the Fates had designated a Saviour: Lord Harry James Potter, an orphan boy raised by Muggles. Ginny had known him, which was her claim to fame among the girls at school - he’d chosen her closest brother, Ronald, as his best friend, and so spent plenty of time at their house.

After a few years of horror and fear, two years ago Lord Potter came along and stopped the fighting by destroying Lord Voldemort in spectacular fashion, returning them all to safety.

Or, relative safety, as Lord Voldemort’s unlamented demise left the Wizarding world in upheaval, with nobody knowing quite what to do. Lord Voldemort and his followers had run brothels and drug circles, opium dens and smuggling rings, all of which collapsed in the aftermath, leaving a vacuum of vices. From this emptiness emerged The Harem, to save the morally corrupt from boredom.

They snagged up the brothels and cleaned up the girls, freeing the captured and forcing the Ministry to pay compensation for what they’d suffered. They closed the drug circles down hard , booting the members directly into Azkaban. People began to worry about their smuggling operations, except they were left free, with The Harem taking up the reins and minimising what had previously been a great deal of bloodshed. By now, the Harem ran the East End, both Muggle and Wizarding, with clean brothels, gambling hells and opium dens, all of which now had never-before-seen safety nets, preventing one from losing too much money unless you were quite able to do so, or overdosing on their drugs.

Of course, people slipped through. Now, however, the people who slipped through seemed awful, as opposed to simply poor - serial rapist and notorious werewolf Fenrir Greyback, whom most had thought to be immortal, had been found dead in their premier opium house, ostensibly of an overdose; only one of many horrors that had met their end there. It was a wonder they still attended.

That Headmistress McGonagall was sending Ginny to join this infamous gang was a mystery; the fact that she was, both terrifying and flattering. She wasn’t even certain what this group might want with a girl like her - she had no demonstrable skills except a knack for developing hexes, and she wasn’t what one would call pretty, either. In fact, in a charitable moment, her roommates had described her as ‘fierce’, comparing her to the warrior of old, Esmerelda the Enchantress. Still, no man wished to marry ‘fierce’, as Ginny well knew.

Another thing to thank Lord Potter for.

The older woman had refused to give any further explanation than a recap of the Harem’s deeds and had simply packed her off into a carriage as soon as she found it possible. Even pulled by Thestrals through the clouds, the trip would take at least two days; plenty of time to theorise on her own.

In her wildest fantasies, Ginny thought they might want her as their own personal spellcrafter, making bespoke hexes for the leader of the gang. Or perhaps an assassin. She could do assassin, she thought; sneaking through the shadows, across rooftops to bring justice to criminals.

In her most realistic moments, she brooded on the fact that she was likely about to become a prostitute.

Not that even that seemed plausible; she would be staying at her brother Percy’s house while she was there, and she doubted Percy would miss her sneaking out at all hours to be a fallen woman. He could probably sniff one out a mile away, actually, so any subterfuge wouldn’t last long. And, anyway, didn’t prostitutes live in brothels, rather than fashionable houses just off the park?

None of this made any sense.

It didn’t help that she felt queasy and panicked the further she got from Hogwarts and all that was familiar. Even flying over the county her family lived in didn’t help - she’d not been home since the summer prior, and even then it hadn’t felt overly much like home. Since Fred’s death, a pall had hung over her cheerful childhood home, and being there had been worse than the cool, strictness of Hogwarts. When she’d originally been sent to the Seminary, it had been like a betrayal - all of her brothers had gone to its twin, Hogwarts School of Wizardry in Scotland, which she heard was grand and fun and dangerous and beautiful. Hogwarts Ladies Seminary, by comparison, was set up in a manor house somewhere in Northumberland as a sort of experiment, separating the lesser women from the men who could do ‘real’ magic, and was awful , despite all of Headmistress McGonagall’s attempts to make it somewhere worth being. So, yes, more gaol than school, she'd loathed it until Fred had died and her mother had tried to keep her back: then, she'd craved it, if only for the lack of guilt and misery. She'd spent the last two years cozy there, without much thought to leaving, and now the Headmistress had cut the apron strings in a brutal fashion.

And to add insult to injury, she'd done it while forcing her to live with Percy .

It bore repeating.

They, which is to say, Ginny; her maid, Geria; a footman and the coachman, inventively named Bert, rolled into London early Tuesday evening. Bert took a moment to glamour the Thestrals before they hit the streets, but it didn't matter, for nobody noticed them among a crush of others.

Ginny peered out the window to watch the world pass, finding herself less and less enamoured with London for every minute they dallied there. The roads, which she'd expected to be beautifully paved or at least cobbled, were in some places simply boarded up to cover pots and cracks, preventing poor horses from breaking their necks but doing nothing for the aesthetics. The waning sun gave an ethereal glow to the newer houses they passed, but the old ones glowered and groaned, the light emphasising their imperfections, letting them list as if too tired to go on. This, in the more affluent areas; the poorer hardly bore contemplating.

Percy rented a small townhouse in a muggle area, the exchange rate from galleons to pounds extremely favorable that year (or so he informed her later, to her extreme boredom). He had some fancy job serving just beneath the minister, promoted immediately after the war’s end, and was truly, insufferably proud of himself. Ginny loved her brothers but made no pretense of loving them all equally ; Percy was, perhaps, second lowest on her list.

Still, he was terribly happy to see her.

“Ginevra!” He smiled at her from the doorway, lifting his arms as if to embrace her, then seemed to think better of it and dropped them in favour of chucking her on the cheek like a child. “How was the trip? Not too uncomfortable, I hope. Ah, Roberts, please take the suitcases to the guest room, and acquaint - Geria, is it? - with her quarters. Come in, Ginny, please, it's quite cold outside and I shouldn't like you to catch a chill.”

She was led into a hallway decorated with such oppressive masculinity that Ginny was hard-pressed to imagine her brother living here, never mind herself. The walls were dark wood and even darker papering, with a mist-glass chandelier dappling the room in cloudy candlelight. Portraits of previous Ministers took the traditional place of family members; presumably because the tone of their red hair would unaccountably damage the colour scheme. Roberts, the butler, seemed solemn and unbending, eyeing her with concealed distaste. Ginny couldn't imagine what the servant had been told about his master’s rebellious, too-boyish sister, but the unfavourable impression he'd been left with seemed compounded by her state of dress - a dark blue dress her mother had altered from one of her own, showing signs of wear, with a bonnet she'd discovered crumpled and flat beneath her bed at Hogwarts the day they'd left.

“We'll have to take you shopping,” Percy said critically, apparently realising the same thing. She grimaced at the very thought. “You look like a widow rather than a girl.”

“I don't mind,” she demurred politely. “It sounds as though I'll be spending most of my time in a lab, new dresses would be a waste.”

Percy tutted as he waved her through into a parlour and dropped her reticule on a chair. “I simply cannot have my little sister running about London in hand-me-downs. No, don't argue - we shall go and see Madam Malkin at first opportunity. Once you are appropriately attired, we can discuss your misguided belief about your Apprenticeship - to wit, that you shall be spending all of your time there. I understand that you are not yet ‘out’, and so cannot enjoy many of the occupations of a young lady your age, but as my sister you will be faced with a host of social obligations. Don't worry,” he reassured her, mistaking the horror on her face for anxiety, “we'll ensure you're properly prepared so as not to embarrass yourself, or I.”

“Thank you?” Ginny said, remembering all of a sudden how she, Fred and George used to snicker and refer to him as ‘Pompous Percy’. How little some things changed.

“Now,” Percy slapped both of his palms down on his thighs, a gesture that might have looked in place on a larger, older man - like, perhaps, Minister Shacklebolt - yet on Percy only drew attention to his stick-thin legs. “Master Snape has kindly arranged for a chaperone to escort you to and from your sessions with him, with the promise that a second chaperone will be present indoors. Ginny, I really must insist that you be kind to these chaperones, especially the first. I hear you'll be sharing her with Lady Pansy, and you know how connected she is. If any misdeeds of yours reach her ears…”

Percy gave a significant look that had her choking down a snort of disbelief. Not only was he making Ginny sound like a holy horror, which she was not , but he made Lady Pansy Parkinson sound like a Saint, which she most certainly was not! Ginny would know - Pansy had been two years above her at school, and she still remembered how Pansy’s laugh bounced off the wall as she found joy in other students’ misfortune. She was part of a graduating class that Headmistress McGonagall not so secretly feared was a write-off: seven girls, each and every one of them rebels, genuine rebels in a way Ginny with her paltry pranks and small diversions from the norm could only wish to be.

Still, Percy was taking her in when it would have been much easier to throw her to the wolves, so she prevented herself from saying any of this. Let him have his fantasies; it wasn't as though Lady Pansy’s peculiarities would ever be relevant to his life.

“The lady will be here to pick you up at dawn to escort you to Master Snape. With that and your journey in mind, perhaps you would like to retire early, this evening?”

“Ye-es…” Ginny nodded, grateful for the excuse. “I think I shall. Thank you, Percy.” She pushed all of her gratitude into those words, giving them much deeper meaning than the superficial.

Her brother flushed slightly, his ears tinging red in the Weasley manner. “Well, of course. You are my sister, Ginevra. I will always be here for you, should you need me.”


 

Dawn crept in so quickly that Ginny felt she'd barely slept before she was groggily standing before her mirror, watching Geria lace up her stays. It was still a novelty, having a maid; back home they simply had a single house-elf and their mother, with the chores evened out over the family. Geria was a donation from the Headmistress, who'd refused to send Ginny to London without one. She was a quiet girl but trustworthy, hired from a local village more for her discretion than her skills with a toilette.

“Nervous, mum?” Geria asked now as her fingers busily plucked at a knot she'd managed to make in the strings.

“No,” Ginny lied. She'd slept well enough, but woken with a horde of butterflies in her stomach that wouldn't quit.

“I'd be nervous,” Geria told her with a sympathetic pat that said she'd seen right through her. “ The Harem. I mean, even we've heard of them, and it's only the rich ‘uns that ever go to London from there. They say nobody has ever seen the leader, you know, only his wives, and he has so many of them that nobody knows what the number is. They swish about in cloaks the colour of jewels, covered from head to toe like those heathens in the east.”

Geria’s voice was wistful, almost worshipful. A muggle raised to serve the magical world, one would think she'd have enough mystery in her life as it was, but it seemed even she couldn't resist the lure of the criminal underworld.

“Promise you'll tell me about him, mum? When you meet him? There's some who say he's as handsome as he is wicked, and others who suppose he's an ugly bas- err. Not good looking, so he has to wear a mask. I think he must be right pretty, though, to have so many wives. Ways I see it, an ugly man can only have one or two.”

Ginny rolled her eyes to herself. Such logic. “I promise,” she said anyway. If he was as terrifying as he was reputed to be, no doubt she’d need to speak with someone about him, and the ‘girls’ McGonagall was sending her to were hardly likely to provide a sympathetic ear. Geria grinned brightly, satisfied with this, and helped her struggle into her best dress, quite possibly the only white thing she owned that wasn’t covered in grass stains or blighted by torn hems.

Downstairs, Ginny stuffed a pair of scones in her mouth at high speed as Percy flit from window to window, watching for the carriage that would signal her chaperone’s arrival. Why this chaperone was so important to him, she couldn’t possibly tell, but he was wringing his hands like a nutter as they waited. They made sparing small talk, Percy too distracted to say much and Ginny too nauseous to do more than pray that the stodgy-ness of the scones soaked up the roiling before she vomited all over someone’s shoes.

Finally, a half-hour after dawn, someone clanked the knocker loudly against the door and Percy shot out of his seat. Ginny stood slower, listening to the sounds of Roberts opening the door a room away, murmuring to whomever was on the doorstep, and then the pair of them plodding towards their room.

“Miss Nymphadora Tonks, to collect Miss Ginevra, sir,” Roberts said stiffly, his face so severely tight that Ginny was concerned he was about to have apoplexy. The reason for his manner became quickly apparent when Miss Tonks swept into the room.

“Wotcha, Perce,” trilled a young woman, perhaps six or seven years older than Ginny herself. At first, Ginny thought she was wearing an odd, elongated bonnet of bold puce; some minutes later, however, it became apparent that the violent colour was, in fact, the woman’s own hair. Ginny gaped at it, barely noticing the elfin-featured woman beneath as she shook - shook - Percy’s hand energetically. “Been a long time, I reckon. What, five years? Look at you, barely changed at all! How’s Charlie?”

Percy appeared to have lost all ability to speak, staring at the newcomer with a face emptied of colour. “Miss- Miss Tonks, yes, hello…” he crumpled his brow in consternation. “I didn’t - that is to say… we don’t have time for visits this morning, I’m afraid. My sister is going to be picked up any moment for her new apprenticeship…”

“Yep, I know,” Miss Tonks grinned, turning to Ginny. “That’d be me, it would. Here to take you to your…. Apprenticeship ,” she embroidered that word with an unsubtle wink. “Lady Pansy offered me up to you - nicest thing she’s done all year, honest. One’s got to wonder what’s in it for her.” Another wink, even more significantly emphasised, this time. Suddenly, with a shattering sense of her own idiocy, Ginny recognised her - Nymphadora Tonks, disgraced grandchild of Druella and Cygnus Black, whose middle daughter had run off with a muggle-born shopkeep. Nymphadora, to add insult to injury, had been born a metamorphmagus - a condition which would have been highly prized in a pureblood, but in a half-blood? Shameful.

Miss Tonks had visited the Burrow once or twice when Ginny had been a small child, always hanging about her second-oldest brother, Charlie; throwing gnomes, playing Quidditch and generally eschewing all convention.  

“Miss Tonks,” she said, offering a hand for her to shake, since she seemed so fond of the action. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t recognise you.”

“Tonks, please,” she replied, still smiling madly. “I wouldn’t have recognised you, either, what with you having grown up and all. Last time I saw you you were nibbling at my ankles!”

Ignoring Ginny’s snort and Percy’s gasp of shock at her behaviour, Tonks grabbed onto Ginny’s arm and began steering her out of the room. “Can’t chat, sorry! We’re late, and Master Snape is a right old git. He’ll have my head if I’m not there,” she wrinkled her nose with a quick glance at the mantelpiece clock, “well, right now, actually. See you soon, Perce!”

They were in the carriage in no time, Tonks kicking the ceiling (a convoluted system that required her to lie on her back and flail her legs outrageously in the air) to get the carriage moving at a fast clip. “You ready for this?” she asked Ginny once the sound of hooves striking the ground drowned out outside noise.

Ginny nodded, unsure if she’d be able to lie effectively should she open her mouth.

“Good, good. They’re not as bad as they sound, honest. I mean, I like ‘em all well enough, but I like everyone. I don’t reckon they’ll kill you, though - bad for business.” Tonks burst out laughing when Ginny blanched. “Kidding, kidding! Gods, just look at them like that and you’ll do great, fit right in.”

She wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a compliment or not.


 

They were driven into the depths of London, middle-class housing dropping away to teetering slums, chandleries and the pervasive stench of sewage. Tonks didn’t seem bothered at all, still laid on her back, reading some book about - Ginny tilted her head - Investigative Practices of The Intrepid Auror. Ginny, on the other hand, was used to riding on horseback, or walking, and so found herself fighting off continual bouts of travel sickness. That she did not, at any point, actually vomit felt like an accomplishment by the time they slid into an alleyway, Tonks pulling her out one side of the still-moving carriage and directly into another, gloomier one as it pulled alongside. Ginny was still gaping at the swift change when the new carriage, this one cheaper and smelling somewhat of pipe smoke, rattled back onto the street from whence they’d come.

“What?” she finally asked Tonks, who’d snuggled back into the opposite seat, completely unbothered. She wouldn’t be, would she? Ginny reminded herself sardonically. She’s the one who bloody did it!

“Can’t exactly have aristo carriages tottering up to the house all day, can we?” Tonks said, flipping a page. “Don’t worry - he’ll pick up someone of about your size and shape in the next street, give them a quick ride down to Master Snape’s apothecary. No doubt he’ll love having someone new and innocent to lambast.”

“You could have warned me!” Ginny spluttered, fire shooting through her veins as she remembered the gap between the carriages where she could easily have fallen and broken her neck, or the fact that if they’d been one second later she’d have found herself beneath the horses, instead.

“And give you time to panic? No, thank-you. Learned my lesson with Lady Pansy, I did.” Tonks shuddered dramatically. “That girl can scream .” Again, not bothering to notice Ginny’s growing ire, nor how the other girl was suddenly doubting her role as ‘chaperone’ (because she was quite sure chaperones did not pull off moves straight out of adventure novels without even a yelp), she peered out of the window and gave a satisfied smile. “Here we are, then. Leave the- whatever that is,” she gestured at Ginny’s reticule, which contained the letters of recommendation McGonagall and her staff had written her, “here. You won’t need it.”

With that, Tonks flung open the door of the ( still-moving!) carriage and hopped down, gesturing impatiently for Ginny to follow, which she did, managing not to twist an ankle only through years of illicit Quidditch training. The carriage tumbled off into the distance, leaving them stood before a row of tumble-down houses. The streets outside were suspiciously clear for being in such a poor area so early in the morning, and the houses themselves looked deserted. This didn’t stop Tonks from marching up to a ratty wooden door and pounding on it three times.

Ginny had only just caught up when the door was flung open by a pudgy bloke in a badly tailored set of robes, who scowled out into the street before catching Tonks’ eye, at which point he melted. Melted. This big tough, his face softening into an expression Ginny could only describe as worshipful upon seeing her tiny figure. “Miss Tonks,” he rumbled.

“All right, Flint? Is the big man in? Got ‘em a present.”

“Aye, Miss. In the library.” At this, both rolled their eyes.

“Should have guessed. Thanks.” Tonks waved Ginny through - an effort, given they had to squeeze past Flint’s massive form, which Ginny could have sworn he placed purposefully in the centre of the frame so that he could feel Tonks shove past him. Tonks didn’t appear to notice, striding purposefully into a -

A corridor with beautifully gilded walls, with marble flooring and expensive-looking figurines and statues stashed in crevices along the walls. It spanned the length of the house, archways leading off into sumptuous looking waiting rooms, with a pair of exquisitely carved double doors at one end. “Audience chamber,” Tonks explained, waving at them briefly as they mounted a polished staircase. “For the general public.”

Portraits of women and men in fancy clothes from eras past lined the walls, muttering amongst themselves as they passed, up one floor and then the next. As they went, Tonks nattered on. “This is the main house,” she said, gesturing about them. “Here they do their counting and plotting, and receive visitors, and some of the upper-level members live upstairs, too. A few doors down some of the houses have been knocked together to make the main brothel - you should see the street on a Wednesday, about two, when the men have left Almack’s. Barely room to breathe. On the other side you’ve got the private stuff - labs, treasure houses. The Opium happens elsewhere, and they’ve got a few warehouses on the docks, too.” Tonks paused in the hall on the top floor, turning to Ginny with a solemn look in her eye. “It’s a big operation. Important. I’m proud of what we do here, and so should you be. It’s an honour to be involved.”

An honour? Really? Ginny didn’t huff her disbelief aloud, but Tonks must have seen it in her face, for she got a gleam in her eye that could mean nothing good. “You don’t know nothing about anything yet, Miss Weasley,” Tonks reminded her with a steely hint to her voice.

“You’re right,” Ginny allowed. She had severe misgivings, though. What was she getting herself into? This place looked like Croesus’s house, and that sort of wealth never came from anything good. Never .

Tonks made a little harrumphing noise but continued on until they came to a plain door made of fine wood. “Now you be respectful,” she warned, as if Ginny could possibly be anything else, not when her life could feasibly depend on this moment. She turned the knob and pushed the door open, pulling Ginny through with an arm through hers. “Miss Ginevra Weasley, might I present, Master Gold, the leader of the Harem.”

At first, all she saw was a slight figure, their face hidden behind a book. Then, as they lowered the tome, a few disparate details filtered through: mad, bushy hair left loose and springy like a lion’s mane. Elegant, delicate cheekbones. Thick, dark eyelashes surrounding brown eyes, which watched her with an uneasy, nervous expression.

The dress, denoting her gender.

“Ginny,” Master Gold said, getting to her feet with a shy smile. “It’s been a while.”

Through a dizzy haze, Ginny clutched at Tonk’s arm so tight it was bound to bruise. “Merlin’s beard,” she gasped, choking the words out.  “That’s Hermione Granger.”

And then, embarrassingly, Ginny felt herself succumb to a fit of the vapours, toppling to the ground with Hermione’s familiar stricken face the last thing she saw.