Chapter Twelve: A Vision in Webs

International traveling with a one-month old was nothing short of the biggest headache Ginny had ever had experienced. The Weasleys had decided that whoever was after Harry and Ginny would probably be on the lookout for travelers with one tiny baby, and so Ron and Hermione had agreed, over the protests of Harry and Ginny, to send Andrew with them, at least for the duration of the trip.

. “All right, dear? Do you have everything packed?” Molly asked, bouncing baby James in her arms. She and Arthur had insisted that Harry, Ginny and James move back into the Burrow while the final arrangements were made.

Ginny smiled, holding out her arms. “Yes, I think so. With any kind of luck we’ll only be gone a few days, Mum.”

“The boys will get this figured out,” Arthur said solidly, wrapping an arm around Molly’s shoulder and squeezing it imperceptibly. “We’ll get you back home to Britain in no time.”

Harry coughed, then offered his hand to Arthur. “We’ll see you in a few days, Arthur. Thank you for all your help, Molly.”

Molly nodded and blushed, opening her arms to envelope Harry in a bone-crushing hug. “You take care of my grandson while you’re in that godforsaken place.”

“I’ll do my best,” Harry promised faithfully, though his lips twitched.

“Be careful, Ginny,” Arthur said, kissing Ginny on the cheek. “You know how to get a hold of us if something goes wrong, yes?”

“Of course, Dad,” Ginny said, securing James more tightly in her arms. As she leaned over to return her father’s kiss, there was a puff of green light from the fireplace.

“Here we are!” Hermione announced in a sing-song voice, Andrew’s hand firmly in her own. “Step down, Andrew, okay?”

“Yes, Mum,” Andrew murmured.

Ron followed, cursing under his breath as he knocked his head on the mantle. “’Ello Harry, Ginny.”

“Morning, Ron,” Ginny greeted him cheerfully. “How are you doing today, Andrew?”

“I’m okay,” Andrew said, a bit shyly. “Mum made me breakfast.”

As Ginny continued to put the young boy at ease, Harry and Ron had a brief conference, discussing the final details of the plan.

Fred and George had discreetly obtained the hair of a Muggle couple, Edwina and Frank Barrier, and Bill and Charlie had, through their more dubious contacts in Diagon Alley, acquired very good forgeries of the appropriate papers to cross the borders.

“Charlie’s already gone ahead to Japan,” Ron said quickly, “and Bill will be on the British side, just in case something happens. Charlie will take Andrew back with him after he switches up Polyjuice identities. Takashiro is expecting you. He speaks fluent English. You can hide in plain sight in Tokyo.”

“Ron, you’ll send word when you figure out who’s behind this, right?” Harry’s eyes pierced his friend’s.

Ron never wavered. “Of course. We’ll let you know just as soon as we know.”

The two men, more brothers than friends, embraced quickly and stepped apart. “We’ll see you soon,” Harry said.

“Take care of Ginny.”

As Ron reached around to give Ginny a hug, she punched him instead. “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

“You know what I meant,” Ron said crossly, rubbing his shoulder. “You hit hard.”

“She always has,” Harry said smugly. “Good-bye Hermione, we’ll see you in a few days.”

Hermione wiped a tear from her eye. “Take care of yourselves,” she whispered, hugging Harry fiercely.

“We’ll take care of Andrew while he’s with us,” Ginny promised Hermione.

“I never had any doubts,” Hermione said, squeezing Ginny’s shoulders. “We’d better get you two moving or you’ll miss your Apparition time.”

“Here’s your Polyjuice,” Ron said, pushing a vial into Harry’s hand. “You’d better drink that now, before you Apparate out.”

“Right,” Harry said, and quickly took a swig. He could just make out Ginny drinking hers before his vision went blurry and body parts began to rearrange themselves.

Edwina, Frank and their two children made it to the International Apparition Point with no problems at all. The witches and wizards waiting in line with them might have thought Edwina clung to the baby a little tightly or that Frank was a little overly concerned with keeping the young toddler boy close, but that was entirely natural for a young couple traveling internationally the first time.

They made it through customs with minimal fuss. Frank wrapped his arm around Edwin and grasped the younger boy’s hand. With a sharp CRACK, Harry and Ginny Potter left Britain for the first time.

**

Bill, George and Fred approached the Potter house very carefully. The fact of the matter was, the house was warded by probably the most powerful wizard alive in the world. Harry Potter. Obviously, they didn’t mean any harm, but if the house decided it had been abandoned and needed to protect its contents, it might be as dangerous to them as any other invader.

“All right, no matter what happens, we stick together, right?” Bill said in a low voice as they walked up to the door.

“Right. It’s Harry’s house. There can’t be anything that would attack us, right?” Fred gripped his wand tightly.

“Well, the only real danger is in the fact that it’s been empty so long,” Bill reminded them. “Harry might have set the wards to be friendly to Weasleys all the time. I hope that’s what he’s done.”

George raised his eyebrow. “We are talking about Harry Potter, right? Brother-in-law to all of us? Surely he would have our best interests at heart. Why didn’t anyone ask him about this?”

“Because we’re all great big prats, of course,” Fred muttered.

“Harry said that there was a good possibility we weren’t in any danger. But he’s been able to develop semi-animate wards. He’s got full control of them, but only him,” Bill explained patiently. “He can’t predict their behavior one hundred percent when he’s not around.”

“Great. The fact that he’s a powerful wizard is damned inconvenient from time to time,” George said.

Bill reached the door first and whispered the spell that Harry had let them know <said?> would unlock the door.

Stepping inside the front door, they kept their wands in hand, not quite relaxing at their easy entrance. As one, they moved about the kitchen and arranged themselves in a circle.

The incantation was simple enough, Bill thought with a sigh, but interpreting the results of the tracing spell might be a bit difficult, especially the way that they’d modified it. They would have to expose the lines of all the magic done in the room, isolate the dark magic, trap and contain the lines, and transport them to Ron’s office, where he’d set up a scrying bowl where hopefully they’d be able to track the magic. Since none of the other Weasleys had been available, Bill, George and Fred would have to rely on their abilities to get the job done.

“Scribus,” they incanted together, and an intricate wave of luminescent lines weaved itself on the kitchen floor, the traces of all magic cast in the room. Obviously, there were a lot of lines for all the cleaning and cooking charms used. After waiting a few moments to let the lines settle, Bill nodded his head. “Noxus.”

All the lines in the kitchen disappeared, except for a pulsing dark one. Now came the difficult part of the spell. The men all took a step in towards each other and laid the tips of their wands on the writhing string.

Bill took the lead, yanking it up and twisting it around his wand. The whole house seemed to lean inwards, but he did not cease his work. Again and again he wrapped it around his wand. One of the windows cracked. Fred and George braced themselves and stood with their feet shoulder-width apart, casting Bracing Charms wherever they were needed.

After several minutes of this, Bill nodded his head, and the tension in the house seemed to snap back.

“All right,” Bill said tiredly. “That’s one room down. Several more to go.”

In some rooms, they determined it wasn’t necessary to cast the spell to track the Dark Magic, as they couldn’t find any traces of it. The sitting room was like that, as well as the dining room. When they climbed the stairs to the bedroom, though, Bill took a deep breath.

“I have a feeling this is going to be the nasty one,” he said conversationally to George.

“Yeah,” George said, rolling his wand around in his fingers. “I just hope Ron can analyze these and tell us at least where the source of the magic is.”

“Harry seemed to think it would be relatively easily,” Fred reminded his twin. “Anything Harry Potter can do, we can do better.”

Bill snorted. “All right then.”

“Fred, I do believe Bill doubts us!” George exclaimed mockingly.

“We’ll just have to prove him wrong then, brother mine.”

Feeling a bit apprehensive, Bill pushed open the door to Harry and Ginny’s bedroom. The smell of illness had been thoroughly dispelled by the Cleaning Charms Molly had used unsparingly, but the bed was still unmade and James’s cradle was still mussed. Bill shook his head. This made the fact that his baby sister was half-way across the world a bit more… real.

Again, they arranged themselves in a circle and cast the first spell. Instantly, the room crackled with energy, making Fred and George’s hair stand on end. Bill winced as his wand arm heated up.

“We aren’t going to be able to wait long on this one,” he shouted through gritted teeth at his brothers.

They nodded their heads, either unwilling or unable to respond. Without much further discussion, they cast the second spell and couldn’t hold back their gasps of surprise.

In the kitchen, they had found just one curse line. In here, there was a veritable web of them, pulsing purples and blacks and deep, nauseating greens, woven in and around and through each other. The mass was lighter around the floor but culminated in a heap that writhed on top of the bed, particularly on the side where Bill assumed Ginny slept. He fought his urge to become physically ill.

“Blimey,” Fred breathed. “How are we going to store that?”

Bill rolled up his sleeves and looked over at Fred and George. He hadn’t seen anything so bizarre in all of his years of Curse-Breaking. The challenge of it was uniquely stimulating.

“I think we’re going to have to unravel it into chunks,” Bill suggested. “If we can separate the strands where they’re gathered together up there, we’d have a better chance, don’t you suppose?”

“Yes,” Fred said emphatically.

“We’re going to have to do this fast. We can’t unravel these strands and brace the house at the same time,” George pointed out, though his expression was an excited one. “We’re going to have to break it apart before the house caves in.”

“Great! A challenge,” Bill muttered, and grinned at his brothers when they nodded and smiled back at him.

**

Ron was ready for his brothers when they burst into his office, aglow with the excitement of their success. He had the scrying bowl set up on his desk and rose to his feet to greet them.

“Did it work?” he asked anxiously.

“Of course it bloody worked,” George replied enthusiastically.

“It’s a bloody Harry Potter spell,” Fred agreed. “It worked bloody brilliantly.”

“We nearly brought the house down,” Bill said dryly. “It’s still standing. But Harry’s going to have some home-improvement projects waiting when they get back from Japan.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ron muttered. “Who cares about the bloody house at a time like this?”

“Ginny,” Fred and George said at the same time.

“All right. Good point. I’m glad you’re here,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “Firenze has agreed to come out and help us interpret the dreams. I was able to contact him this morning.”

“Brilliant,” Fred said simply and collapsed in one of the chairs across from the desk. “When is he supposed to get here?”

“Anytime now. He feels like he owes Harry a favor.”

There was a discreet knock on the door. Firenze stuck his head in. “Mr. Weasley? You were requesting my presence?”

Ron broke out his trademark grin and gestured to the bowl in front of him. “You’re very, very welcome.”

**

Remus tapped his quill on the parchment in front of him a bit distractedly. Feeling a bit better than normal, he sat at his desk with a book of records from the Second Voldemort War in front of him, a cup of tea to his side. He was looking for any clues hidden in the rows and rows of names in the books, which listed not only deaths, but injuries. The maniac after Harry and Ginny hadn’t made any mistakes as of yet, but psychopaths always showed their hand. It was just a matter of following all the clues.

There was a discreet knock on the door. “Remus?” Dora stuck her head in and smiled. “Making any progress?”

“Not much,” he admitted and sighed. “This guy hasn’t made any mistakes that I can see.”

“Really?” Tonks arranged herself in his lap and looked over his work. “You’ve been making some notes, I see.”

“Yes. Well, the type of magic they’re using is so specific, you see…. I was looking for connections to someone who would have that type of skill.” Remus sighed. “It just seems so fruitless. I hope that the Weasleys are making progress on that tracking spell because it seems to me that there has to be some sort of personal reason for this. It’s too personalized for it to be otherwise.”

Dora nodded her head and was about to open her mouth to speak again when Ron’s voice came from the fireplace.

“Remus? Are you around the records from the war at all?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Remus said, turning his chair to face in that direction. “Is there something I can look up for you?”

“Yeah. Look up when Colin Creevey died.”