"Yes, Dad. It'll be nice to get out again."
Her mum stood and started bustling plates and cutlery into the sink. "But you're to be on your best behaviour, understand, young lady?" She fought not to roll her eyes. "Yes, Mum." "And no visiting after classes — straight back here, understand?" She grit her teeth. "Yes, Mum."
"Good. You need to get ready then."
Ginny pushed back her chair and retreated up the stairs.
"And no more giving Lady Potter attitude!" This time she did roll her eyes.
She quickly found her books and parchments and stuffed them all into her school shoulder bag. She then reached to the hiding place under her bed, retrieved a tattered copy of one of Bill's old school books that she'd found lying around one day, and snuck in an hour of reading before her mum's voice loudly announced through the door that it was time to go to bed.
Ginny extracted herself from her worn and threadbare summer dress, pulled on her slightly less worn night dress, and slipped into bed.
Soon, the whole house was quiet and the moonlight from outside bathed her room in a peaceful glow.
She reached to her neck and grasped the precious necklace that hung there, hidden and protected well enough to avoid the notice of even the most suspicious and nosy mother in the galaxy.
Ginny relaxed and snuggled as much as she could into her flat, thin pillow, and, mind flitting from scarlet trains, to castles, to a certain lightning bolt scared boy with green eyes and black hair, slowly fell asleep…
…
…And then she opened her eyes. She was standing on a beach. A mild breeze whipped her hair. Seagulls cried overhead. Her nightdress had turned into a black Hogwarts robe just like she'd seen all her brothers try on and buy at the second hand robe shop except these looked new, and felt far smoother. Warm water washed over her naked feet and robes, sinking her feet into the sand, leaving a fine layer of coarse grains on her skin, and a creeping heaviness in her clothes.
"Hello, Ginny."
She whirled around. "Harry!" Harry caught her as she leapt at him and wrapped him in a hug.
She leaned back, grinning impishly. "Well? How did it go?"
Harry grinned. "Pretty well. We got the same 'Harry Potter is to be left alone' speech as last time, the girls held their own on the train, and John made a bit of a fool of himself by screaming that I stole you from him."
Ginny's eyes widened. "He really?"
"Yeah. He also attacked me with fourth year spells."
She snorted. "Wow. That's real smart. 'I'm totally not a time traveller! Oh look while I do all this insane stuff!'" Harry smiled. "To be fair, being a long term time traveller is so far outside the range of possibility that it's extremely unlikely anyone, even Dumbledore, will come to that conclusion."
"So, what are we going to do now?"
"We're first going to get you used to training in dream space. Things can work a little differently here. It's almost the same as training in the waking world, but not quite. It's also similar to training in your mindscape, but with one major difference. Do you know what that is?"
Ginny shook her head.
"Here, you don't make the rules, I do. This is important because in your mind scape, it's very difficult to set up a resistance to yourself, which makes it difficult to train anything. If you want something in your mindscape, it just happens. You can't practise duelling there on your own because the moment you 'want' your imaginary opponent defeated, he will be. It's not impossible to work around that, but you're not at that level yet."
Ginny nodded.
"I'd also like you to fight a few more rounds with Luna while looking for things you need to work on. Self analysis is an important part of training."
"Okay. I can try to sneak out tomorrow night."
Harry nodded. "Tomorrow night sounds good. Right!" He stepped away. "Let's get this started then."
A half dozen wizards, all twice as tall as her, and all wearing death materialised around them.
Ginny's eyes widened in shock.
"Move!"
eater
masks
The cloaked figures raised their wands.
She started to dive to the side.
"Crucio!" shouted from all sides.
A light shock passed through her body. She seized up and ploughed into the sand, unable to lift so much as a finger. She turned her still functioning head, spat out some silty water, and glowered at Harry.
Harry grinned down at her. "Fail!"
Ginny woke up the next morning fully expecting to feel like she'd been run over by the Knight bus, but amazingly, when she patted herself down, she didn't feel a single twinge or soreness. Dream training was amazing.
She kicked off her quilt and made her way downstairs to breakfast, where her mum peppered her with questions, comments, and extracted yet another promise that she would behave herself with Lady Potter.
The next few hours passed in a boring routine of washing dishes, collecting eggs, and helping her mum re-label various jars and bottles, until kitchen clock number two, which actually told the time, announced in a Yorkshire accent that it was almost ten o'clock and that little Ginny needed to be getting to school.
She headed back upstairs, changed into her going out robes, grabbed her book bag, and dashed back down stairs, narrowly avoiding knocking a miniature Egyptian sarcophagus from a shelf that Bill had sent home a few months back.
Molly Weasley brushed an imaginary bit of lint from Ginny's robes, took a pinch of floo powder from the mantle piece, bid her stand in the grate, threw it into the fire, and called out, 'Potter Manor'!
Ginny stepped out into the massive ballroom of the Potter's and quickly made her way to the second floor, only to be met just outside their classroom by Lady Potter, or rather, 'Lady Lily.'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you enjoy reading? Visit my site on Tiendup! There you will find the advanced chapter in PDF format, ready for your convenience.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
https://fictiontopia.tiendup.com/