**Author's Note: First, I'd like to wish everyone a belated happy holidays-it's always nice to have a bit of a vacation, yes? And I've been taking advantage of mine, hence the delay in a chapter posting. A few things and then I wish you all happy reading: the first is that if there are things you feel you are missing, spots that need clarifying, my first suggestion is to read carefully. I don't often tend to spell things out. If that doesn't work, throw me an email at hiptoship@yahoo.com. I love discussions with readers. The second-and last-thing before waving you along is that this story is traveling at a particular pace that not even I, as the writer, have any control over. So, my sincerest apologies on that. Now… go! Read!**
CHAPTER FIVE- The Faces of the Helpless
An act of rebellion, you say. It's nothing I've not heard before, nothing I'll not hear again. But if you said that, you'd be wrong. At that point in my life, I had seen what petty revenge, what simple rebellion, could lead to, how it could harm. So-you would be wrong.
Stupid? Perhaps. Impulsive? Certainly. A mistake? No.
More than anything, I wanted to help in any-in every-way I could. The challenge intrigued me; after coming from a family of people-a whole Hogwarts house of people-who had all made indelible marks on the world around them, all I wanted to do was help.
That's what I keep reminding myself.
~~~
The next morning, Ginny felt as she usually did after a row with her parents: embarrassed, ill-at-ease, and more than a little miserable. And, as is the custom with teenaged girls both wizard and Muggle, she came to the table the next morning as though nothing had happened, wondering silently as to what, exactly, had been so urgent, so worth fighting over the night before.
Neither Molly nor Arthur spoke of it at the table the next morning, shooting glances between their two remaining children, their youngest boy and girl, clearly glad of the opportunity to act as though nothing had happened. They ate silently, Ron relishing his food for the first time in a long while. The prospect of work with the twins and added time with Harry had lent to his appetite, and his surety; the tremors were fewer and far between, much to everyone's relief.
"Oh!" Molly exclaimed suddenly, breaking the silence and jumping up from the table. "Ginny, love, I've something for your first day at St. Mungo's." At the innocent proclamation, Arthur blew out an imperceptible breath of relief.
"It's a paper gown with the arse out," Ron stated without hesitation, clearly having picked up a bit of the twins' comedic timing. What he had not yet gained, however, was their lack of shame; when Ginny burst into laughter and Molly and Arthur gaped, his face turned a brilliant shade of red.
"Sorry, Mum," he muttered. "I… ah… best get to the shop." In an uncharacteristic display of affection, he leaned over and planted a quick kiss on the top of his sister's head. "G'luck, today, Gin."
Arthur, Molly, and Ginny all watched Ron fondly as he stepped into the fireplace, Flooing himself to Diagon Alley and the twins' shop. After he had gone and the fire had settled, Molly turned to Ginny and clapped her hands briskly.
"All right then, love," she said, pulling out a clothier's box. "Your father and I ordered these before…" A shadow crossed her face and she shook it away as though it were a physical malady. "Well, no matter. We bought them for you, and we think you could use them now." With a small flourish, she presented the box to her daughter, covertly conjuring a bright bow to top it as Ginny grasped it.
It was a small gesture, trivial, but Ginny knew it for what it was-a bit of an apology, an effort to make things right. And she wanted that, more than she'd known, and the girl who had rarely gotten anything new in her life tore into the box with the fervor of one much younger.
The lime green of the cloth inside brought a small laugh to her lips, and she took out the Mediwitch robes with a smile. "They're wonderful," she said genuinely, standing and holding the thick material up next to her, cloaking herself with this new meaning, this new purpose.
Green for life, for the shoots of new life, green for the numerous potions and remedies brewed daily.
Red for the blood of the innocents taken, red for the shame and the flush of guilt…
But it was easy, this morning, to push those thoughts away. "Thank you, Mother. Dad." And the kisses she bestowed to each of their cheeks were not dutiful, but affectionate, and when she left to go to St. Mungo's, everyone had nearly forgotten about the episode of the day before.
Nearly.
~~~
It was hectic, it was mad, it was restless, and she was fairly certain she loved it. A Weasley thrived on chaos-nearly had to, really-and chaotic was a mild word to describe most of the parts of St. Mungo's. There was an urgency about the place that brought Ginny's novice blood roaring in her body, the facts she was learning swimming right into that rushing flow of adrenaline and pounding themselves extra firmly into her brain. The white band on her arm told everyone she was in training, but more than a few caught the efficiency in her moves, the calming manner of her speech, the cool face presented to even the strangest of maladies.
Ginny Weasley had been born for this sort of work.
"Virginia Weasley!" Glennys Gylfoyle, the Healer training Ginny, looked sharply at her clipboard and back at the redheaded scrap of a girl in front of her. She was a Weasley, to be certain, with all the features and fire of a Weasley, her body slight and quick, her eyes flashing with the energy that surrounded them.
She was already on her way to being good, Glennys thought, if she could keep it up. Now it was time to check the girl's objectivity.
A good Mediwitch or a good Healer-just as a good nurse or doctor in the Muggle world, Glennys knew-had to keep calm even in the face of their own mortality, the mortality of the ones they loved. It was time, then, to test a little of Ginny Weasley's objectivity.
"We're going to move around a bit, Ms. Weasley, and go over the organization of patients." Glennys, a large woman with an incredible head of white hair, walked briskly, with sure, long strides that had Ginny nearly running to keep up. "In the case of magical injuries, where harm has been inflicted by wand, we tend to group patients together by the type of wand they were harmed by rather than the type of difficulty they display. This helps us in reversing whatever damage we may see." She gestured around her, talking just as quickly as she walked. "On your left is the Hillis family, all stricken by one wand, which the youngest-it's that small boy there with the incredible amount of grass sprouting out his nostrils-was playing with while the mother wasn't looking." Each of the family seemed to be growing parts and things that didn't belong, and every one of them looked miserable.
Ginny stayed silent, soaking up every word the Healer said.
"And beyond the Hillises we have a bit of an assorted group." Glennys watched Ginny's face carefully as the young woman surveyed the knot of ten to fifteen people. They were all familiar faces, down to the last of them. Tonks was bedded to one side of the group, the entirety of her head swollen, bruised, and purple; Luna Lovegood sat in a chair beside her, rocking and talking aimlessly to herself, her eyes wide and frightened like a jackrabbit. Every few seconds she uttered a piercing scream, then fell perfectly silent once again. There were others, too many others, but Ginny kept her face hard and stoic, feeling her stomach turn over with Glennys's words.
"This is the Malfoy group, so called because they were harmed by a Malfoy wand-which one, we're not quite certain. Similar wands chose similar owners, and since one wand is missing and the other broken, we've no way of determining for certain."
The explanation itself was unnecessary; Ginny knew as well as any other what section of the ward this was, whose wands had done the harming. In point of fact, Ginny was fairly certain she could call up from memory which warriors had been stricken by which wand, but in the flood of pictures and sounds-
Tonks screaming at the top of her lungs, her true face streaked with her own blood, her battle cry representing the rage, the fear, the hope in all of them…
Bill striking down a particularly hesitant Death Eater, his wand expelling a spell that was not fatal, but instead debilitating… do as little harm as possible, he'd said, his eyes both kind and grim before everything had begun…
Ron wading through people, stepping over bodies and worse, parts of bodies as he made his way to the center of the clot of people, to the Dark Prince…
In the flood and pictures of sounds, Ginny was biting her tongue hard enough to make it bleed. When she finally managed to move her mouth and unclench her teeth, her words sounded slightly slurred. "What can we do? What does it take to aid them?"
"Patience," Glennys said, impressed by the girl's candor and spine. "And a bit of knowledge about the wizard who cast them here. The latter comes, as I'm sure you know, awfully dear these days."
"For he doesn't speak," Ginny finished. Was it fortunate, to be among the remaining capable, the able-bodied and strong-minded? Or was it simply another form of hell in which you had to stand by, helpless, as those who deserved better were eaten alive by someone else's greed? "Have you his wand?" The words seemed to come from another place, from another mouth, from another mind.
Perhaps, she thought, the same mind that had sent her speaking against her parents the previous evening, for her thoughts were once again scattered, though she showed the Healer no signs of this weakness.
"We have not," Glennys said curiously, her strange amber eyes flashing as she regarded the youngest Weasley. "Though, broken or not, it'd likely be of some aid to our more creative Healers here."
Ginny nodded silently, and her next words didn't surprise Glennys Gyfloyle at all.
"I believe I'll be taking off a bit early today."
~~~
Knowledge.
We've spoken of it before, yes? It seems we have, though I keep losing my place, coming back to those words, those first words.
"I'm guilty, you know."
It is there I am heading, have no doubt of it. But I beg of you, just as I begged you not to judge, do not rush me, for there are things I'd have right about this story, and things I'd have true.
I set out, once again, for knowledge, fully intending to keep myself safe from the snake who had proved his venom time and time again, the lovely shattered youth, with his lovely, unshattered face, sitting behind cold, unshatterable glass.
Selfish, isn't it? Even in setting out to help those who needed the help, I set out to protect myself.
I think I protected the wrong parts of me, and no one protected any parts of him.
There are many lessons here.
The helpless take many forms.