Chapter #4
The Prologue to No Escape

“Enlightenment involves waking up into a state of super awareness.”

She dreamed of a place which reminded her of older times, much older times, a place where the buildings were tall and stone, where the building tasted of unrefined pathar and dust and rusty greatness. The streets ran, paved but not roads, the kind of antique modern that reminded her of women in robes of coarse, perhaps woollen materials, and men with moustaches who bore sheathed swords at their sides.

Then she was awake and clinging to Malfoy’s side - as she had been, on the train - and Ginny realized it had not been a dream but reality, a thick, concentrated sort of it.

“Where are we?” she asked, and her voice shook. In front of her ran a path, and on both sides of it were buildings spaced well apart, buildings the likes of which she had never seen before, save in pictures. She stood up, grabbed the front of his robes, and began to shake him hard. “What have you done? Malfoy, what have you done, where have you brought me, is this another of your evil –”

“WEASLEY, GET A GRIP!”

He shoved her off and, stumbling backwards, Ginny suddenly realized how strong he was. He bent down, picked something off the floor, and she noticed that it was the chain that had come off his neck when she had grabbed him, in the train. Only now the oval pendant was open, and its empty, round walls stared out at her.

“My God,” he said quietly.

“What have you done?” She asked again. She was shaking now, shaking with rage and terror, both. The space around them was empty, except for a stray donkey, but the foreignness of it unnerved her, and she felt as if her senses had been magnified in power by the seeming seriousness of her situation. It was not like Ginny to be scared, but it almost felt like she was somewhere else, somewhere out of the world, somewhere –

He ignored her, bent down again, clearly searching for something. Then his wandering eyes suddenly came to a halt, and he picked something off the floor. It was round, a rough thing of stone, and its edges were marked, a tiny, stone knob sticking out of its front – a knob that was twisted at an odd angle, clearly broken.

“Weasley –” For the first time, he sounded tensed, and it suddenly scared Ginny, scared her because she knew Malfoy as an enemy, knew he never let on how he felt. If he sounded tensed, something had to be wrong.

“Where are we?” She was still shaking, but she kept her distance from him. The last thing she wanted to do, right now, was to be pushed away again - fear made her more fierce, and Ginny knew if he so much as touched her another time, she would punch him and give him a black eye – and this time, she was pretty sure she would not miss.

Terror, after all, often determines precision.

“God, you’ve killed us, Weasley.”

“TELL ME WHERE WE ARE, MALFOY!”

His eyes narrowed. “You land us in the middle of nowhere, Weasley, and you ask me where we are?” He glared down at her, clearly taking full advantage of the fact that he was a good six inches taller, and his lips curved into an angry, contorted look that ruined the handsomeness of his face. “Why did you have to touch my time-turner, you filthy blood-traitor?”

The world seemed to come crashing down on Ginny’s head, but only for half a moment. “Time-turner,” she repeated, but the fear in her tones had suddenly vanished, only to be replaced by fury. “What are you, Malfoy, some kind of useless joke? Keeping a time-turned is illegal, unless approved by the Ministry” – this she knew courtesy Hermione – “and I’m pretty sure that thing in your hand doesn’t have a Ministry chit attached to its end.”

“Shut up,” he snapped, and the fact that he snapped, not drawled, made it clear that he was nervous. “This is a family heirloom, Weasley, it’s been in my family for seven decades.”

“THEN JUST USE IT AND GET US BACK!”

Malfoy grinned, a nasty, chilling grin. “I think I will, Weasley,” he said, pleasure in his tones. “I think I will get back – but I don’t think I’m taking you along.” He turned, as if to reach towards the time-turner and, everything else forgotten, Ginny launched herself at him, grabbing his robes and shaking him again. “Don’t you even think about it –” she began.

“Get off me, Weasley.”

“If you even touch that time-turner, I’m going to –”

“Sit here and beg to be taken back?”

Ginny’s hands were shaking so much with fury, she had to let go of him. “If you say another word, Malfoy, if you say another word I’m going to give you a black eye for now, and a punching telescope for Christmas.”

“Nice imagery,” he said, grinning maliciously as he took a step back – in contempt, clearly – and pretended to brush invisible dust off his robes. “Blood-traitor-touch – wonder how long that takes to wipe off.”

“MALFOY, STOP IT!”

If she had said something ugly, it would have taken him milliseconds to come up with an amazing retort. But she had not and, Malfoy not having expected such a turn of events, merely blinked. “Well, well, well,” he said finally. “Abuse really works with women. Shuts them right up.”

He did not agree with that, of course but it was still good, waiting for her to throw herself headfirst into a temper because of what he said.

But she was no longer paying his words any attention. Ginny took a few deep breaths, as if to steady herself, and then planted herself squarely in front of him. “Look at me,” she said, pointing at her ripped jeans and t-shirt. “It was summer where we were, it’s clearly autumn where we are now, and I’m COLD. I demand that you take my back, this instant, you big-headed git.”

“I don’t think I will, you equally big-headed –” he began and then, catching the murderous look on her face, broke into a malevolent grin. “Look, Weasley, I really don’t think any of us is going to be doing any time-travel, right now.”

“Malfoy –” she began warningly, but he cut through her words at once.

“No, I don’t want to snog you Weasley, so don’t get your hopes up. I’d love to go back to Hogwarts and get rid of you – there’s just the teensy weensy problem of my time-turner BEING BROKEN BECAUSE OF YOU.”

He held the stone thing up, its broken knob catching the light, and the world came crashing down on Ginny Weasley’s head.