"Disillusionment," Harry said. "Disillusionment?" Ginny asked, dancing in her eyes. "Disillusionment," Harry repeated.
mischief The shrill voice of Molly Weasley sounded through the Burrow. "Ginny! Ginny where are you? We need to get to the Alley before everything closes! They don't open on Sundays and we won't have time before the portkey for Romania leaves on Monday!"
An almost invisible Ginny quietly sniggered and crept back up to her bedroom from where she'd been secretly training in the backyard. She dropped her disillusionment and poked her head out the door. "I'm here, Mum!"
"Oh!" her mum said, looking more than a little flustered. "Good, then."
"HOW?!" Ginny beat her still almost invisible fists on the ground in rage and frustration.
Luna smiled dreamily, brought her hands to her ears, and flicked them back and forth. "Right," Ginny muttered into the frosty late December ground, "guess it's going to be silencing charms next."
The next night, Ginny lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking. She wished she could go to the Winter Festival at Greengrass Manor, but her parents were taking her to Romania to visit Charlie. It wasn't that she wasn't looking forward to seeing her second eldest brother again, she was. But, well, she had seen her mum packing four separate Ginny Weasley sized coats into her old expandable trunk. Cumbria wasn't that cold.
There was also the fact that she still hadn't completely forgiven either Bill or Charlie for ignoring her last summer and pushing Harry so far that he actually suffered a panic attack strong enough to briefly knock out the Burrow's wards.
That Charlie had supported their parent's decision to confiscate the broom Harry had gifted her rankled even more, especially given Charlie's own history with Quidditch. She'd like nothing more than to blow off some steam in the nighttime skies around the Burrow.
Ginny stared at the ceiling some more. She frowned and sat up in bed and stared at an empty patch of bedroom wall. But… now…if she could… Her eyes narrowed. Yes.
She quietly slipped out of bed, opened her door, slipped through the magic trip wires with barely a second thought, moved as silently as she could without magic to the trapdoor to the attic, carefully opened the door, stunned the ghoul, turned and regarded the ward around the trunk that she'd found before.
She closed her eyes, opened herself to magic, and let the intent caress her skin her like a Luna-hurled stunner to be instantly swatted away. It felt like… a key-in perimeter ward? A key-in perimeter ward… and something else… a motion detection area ward… a motion detection ward that worked by…. Ginny tilted and rolled her head as though trying to hear something a long way off. …It worked by 'seeing movement.' The trunk itself… had no magic.
Ginny bit her lip, turned, thought about the distance between here and her bedroom, and the chance that she could make it back without bumping into her parents if something went wrong. She turned back to the ward. Her jaw firmed. She looked around, picked up a hat from a nearby hatstand, disillusioned it, and, standing right next to her escape route and holding her breath, frisbeed the almost invisible hat past the perimeter ward and into the motion detector ward.
Nothing happened.
She let out her held breath. Stage one was successful.
Ginny walked towards the ward line and allowed herself to also fade into the background.
She focused on the hat… and switched, bringing herself forward a whole few metres closer to the trunk and depositing the hat back where she'd been standing. Again, nothing happened.
Right. Next step.
Ginny walked forward as carefully and as slowly as she could manage. She wasn't completely invisible after all. She reached the trunk and suddenly realised there was a problem. She couldn't just open the trunk lid without triggering the motion detection ward.
Ginny chewed her tongue.
But, she couldn't just disillusion the trunk either. That would surely also trigger the ward. But…—She stopped chewing her tongue and started on her cheek—…But maybe she could slowly disillusion the trunk, just a tiny bit at a time.
She reached out, placed her hands on the trunk and slowly, ever so slowly, applied one disillusionment charm after another, each one just a bit stronger than the last, each time waiting a good amount of time before casting again.
Eventually, the trunk was noting but a mirror of the background, an outline in the air.
Ginny fingered for the lid and opened it just a crack. The disillusionment held, shielding the trunk's contents from the ward without actually carrying over. She opened it a bit more, peeked in and had to stifle the instinct to breathe in sharply and shout in triumph.
She snatched her tiny, limited-edition Nimbus 1700 from the bottom of the trunk, closed the lid, slowly dispelled the charms, worked herself back through the area ward, switched herself to the other side of the key-in perimeter ward, used a disillusioned umbrella to retrieve the hat, tiptoed back down the stairs, into the kitchen, out the back door—slipping through the other set of trip lines as she went—down to the orchard, gave her broom the magical once over, un-shrunk it, mounted up, and shot into the air, grinning like a madman, and letting happiness surge through her body.
Her parents would never know. Oh, they'd find the broomstick gone when they next checked, but they'd have no way of suspecting it was her who had done it. She'd deposit the broom in Harry's fidelius charmed secret passage way when she was done. She sure wasn't stupid enough to hang on to it — she'd learned that lesson well enough. But it was back in her possession again, and that was what mattered.
Ginny did a loop in the air, still under disillusionment, and soared upwards towards the moon.
She'd get cold soon, but right now, she felt she could weather an Arctic snow storm, she was that happy. The last four months had been almost nothing but hard, hard work and soon she'd be back at it, but for these few, precious moments, she was going to enjoy herself, just like Harry surely was at the Winter Festival.
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