Chapter Text
Ginny huffed irritably, blowing a strand of red hair out of her face. Smoldering pieces scattered around the room were all that was left of her opponents. She watched, bored, as the pieces started to tug together, reforming themselves seamlessly back into a ring or practice dummies, courtesy of the Room of Requirements.
She regarded them for a moment before deciding to take a break. Her frustrations successfully vented, she was suddenly very tired. She made her way to an empty corner of the room, smiling as a very comfy looking chair appeared as she approached. She sank into it with a relieved sigh.
That was the magic and the beauty of the Room. And she was especially thankful that she was alone. She had no idea where the other members of the DA were at this time, but she was glad they weren’t here. She needed some alone time. Especially from Fred and George.
She loved her brothers, all of them, very much but they could be so maddening sometimes! And Ron was no help whatsoever.
And they always went on about how they’d explored every inch of the castle. It was a challenge. She’s not even sure when it had started. A challenge for Ginny to find a part of Hogwarts that her brothers had never been. So far she’d had no luck even if she suspected they might have lied a couple of times claiming they already knew about this or that new corner she’d stumbled across. They would too.
But she didn’t want to find a secret broom cupboard or something stupid like that. She wanted to find something big and awesome and secret.
She fumed quietly to herself, staring absently at the blank back wall of the room. Except it wasn’t blank anymore. A door had materialized there.
Ginny blinked a few times, sitting up straight. That was odd.
Okay, maybe not, considering where she was. The Room of Requirements worked to do just that, give you what you required. What did she require?
Ginny got up, gripping her wand cautiously and approached the door.
It was nothing special. An arched doorway with a set of dark wooden doors. They had matching ornate handles shaped into lion heads with rings in their mouths. They looked old, but then, everything in Hogwarts was old. The castle was over 1000 years old. Yeah, she paid attention in History of Magic, as boring as it was.
Her curiosity pique, Ginny approached the doors and ran a hand over the rough wood. Then without much hesitation, she pushed them open. She was a Weasley after all.
They creaked with disuse as she put her weight against them but they gave way little by little. When the opening was just large enough for her to fit, she slipped through and found herself at the bottom of a set of curving stone stairs covered an inch deep in dust.
Well, she did ask for a place her brothers had never been…
With curiosity and determination, she moved forward.
The steps spiraled tightly upwards into shadows broken at a regular interval by narrow pointed windows set high up in the curved wall and Ginny had to break a path through veils of spider webs, her feet sending billows of disturbed dust in her wake.
She climbed and climbed and finally, the curved wall ended abruptly and she was at the top. She lingered on the landing and stared with her mouth just about hanging open.
Ginny found herself at the end of a hallway lined with classrooms. It looked like any of the hallways that she walked through every day to get to class except for one thing.
Everything from the desks and chairs to the books and statues was all but buried in dust and cobwebs. But it didn’t just look disused. She’d found herself in her fair share of disused classrooms while exploring or….other business. They were completely empty, their chairs and desks neatly stacked in one corner.
This place was…..abandoned.
The classroom doors were left hanging open, student’s books and parchments left open and strewn on the desks and across the floor. There were even book bags sagging under dust where students had once sat. It looked as if everyone had just got up and left, never returning for their things.
It made the place surreal. Like it was frozen in time.
Or dead.
She felt like a ghost walking down the hallway, peering into the grimy glass of classroom windows. There were no footprints in the thick layer of dust except the fresh ones she was leaving. No one had been here in years.
As she went further down the hall, she started to notice that the walls looks darker. She reached out and rubbed two fingers against the dirty wall. They came away black with soot. There were other peculiar signs too. Some of the door frames looked singed and damaged.
Fire.
She ran a hand over a large gouge left in the side of a teacher’s desk.
And spells.
Something had happened here. And the darkest, dirtiest and most damaged part of the corridor was at the very end, where the hall ended in two heavy doors with handles that were vaguely lion shaped. The door was charred black, the metal hinges, bracers and handles melted as if by intense heat.
As she got closer, she noticed there were circles and runes engraved deeply into the wood but the doors were so damaged, she couldn’t make out what they were.
Ginny reached a hand to the blob she guessed used to be a lion handle like the ones on the first set of doors, but hesitated. She knew she probably shouldn’t be here, but she also wanted to keep exploring.
She clenched her teeth and took a hold of the handle, pushing again with all her weight.
These doors didn’t budge.
“huh” she huffed. She gave it another go for good measure but the result was the same. Ginny fisted her hands against her hips as she considered the door.
A voice broke the dead silence.
“It won’t open.”
Ginny jumped and spun around so fast her robes whipped around her ankles.
There was a boy. A ghost boy, by the look of his pale face and semi-transparent body.
The boy, who looked no older than a first year, watched her from his perch atop a desk set in the hallway outside of one of the classrooms, his legs swinging absently over the edge. Actually, he floated above the desk, since he couldn’t actually interact with it, but the action was just so, alive somehow.
The boy nodded to the black doors. “They’ve been sealed shut, you won’t be able to open them.” His voice sounded flat in the empty hallway. And sad.
Her heart returning to a normal rhythm, Ginny approached the boy. “What’s over there?”
The boy shrugged. “Dunno. I’ve never been able to go through.” he said sadly.
Well that was interesting. A seal that not even a ghost could cross?
Now that she was closer, she saw that the boy was indeed wearing a school uniform but it was different than the standard uniform all students wore. Only the crest on his left breast was the same as Luna’s, Ravenclaw’s bronze eagle.
“I’ve never seen you around the school before” she said, mentally going over all the ghosts she’d seen roaming the halls of Hogwarts.
The boy smiled sadly. “I don’t leave this hall.”
“Why not?”
The boy didn’t answer right away, instead focusing on the empty classroom to his right. He frowned a little. “No one ever comes to see me,” he said, sounding a little bitter, “-why should I go see them?”
Ginny didn’t understand the logic in that. It sounded like a bit of self-pity to her, which she’d never had much patience for. But if he never left this place, she could see how he might be more than a little lonely.
“I’m here.” she pointed out.
The boy regarded her quizzically. “Why are you here, anyway.” he asked.
“I wanted to explore someplace no one had been to before, and when the opportunity presented itself, I took it.” she put it simply.
The boy made a face. “Well I wouldn’t say no one has been here before. There used to be lots of students here, a long time ago. But it is true that no one has been here for a while.”
“How long?” asked Ginny.
The boy frowned in thought, scrunching his eyebrows together. “What year is it?”
“1995” Ginny watched as the boy rolled his eyes up, doing the math in his head.
“Three hundred and eighty three years.” he said after a moment, before adding “I think” to himself.
“Wow! That’s a long time! And you haven’t seen anyone come in here since –“ she did the math herself. “-since 1611??”
The boy shook his head.
Take that Fred and George! Ginny internally savoured her victory. But then a though occurred to her.
“Wait, you mean I’m the first person you’ve seen and talked to since 1611?”
The boy gave her a sad smile.
“Is that when-“ she hesitated, knowing this might be a sensitive subject for a ghost. “-is that when you died?”
The boy shrugged. “Must be” He floated up and through a classroom wall, Ginny walking around to the door to follow him.
The ghost boy stood behind a student desk and passed a hand over a workbook that had been left open on the desk. He looked sad that he couldn’t touch it.
Ginny walked over and he pointed at the parchment. She picked it up and blew the dust off the page, holding it so that it caught the fading evening light.
The date at the top read 3rd October, 1611
The paper itself was a student’s half written notes on
“Alchemy?”
She looked up and noticed the boy watching her.
“They’re all like that-“ he floated up the aisle of desks. The classroom looked like it had been deserted. There were personal items left behind which indicated that everyone had just up and left in a hurry. Even the chalkboard had a lesson half written on it. Like the professor had dropped his chalk halfway through his sentence and walked away.
Ginny picked up a textbook. Intermediate Rune Arithmancy. Sounded like a cross between Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, which she was certain Hermione would love.
“Huh, Alchemy…. I didn’t even know they used to teach that here.” She looked up around the class room, trying to imagine students filling those seats in 1611. Something bad had happened here. There was a reason no one had been here in almost four hundred years.
And it had something to do with what was behind those burnt doors at the end of the hall.
“What happened here?” she asked, her voice echoing in the vaulting classroom.
The boy stopped in front of the professor’s desk. “I can’t remember.” There was no sadness in his statement this time, just fact. Like he’d given up trying to remember a long time ago.
“When I came back to this place, everyone was just….gone” he said, his round eyes fixed on a diagram of a large circle at the front of the classroom.
“I think….I was looking for someone, but I can’t remember who, or why. I guess it must not have been important.” he said.
Important enough for you to come back as a ghost, she thought looking at his back.
Now that she knew he was a Ravenclaw, she could see how the slightly paler rim of his cloak hood could have been blue. His hair was pale, indicating that he might have been blond or a very light brown hair but it was hard to tell because everything about him was washed out.
This boy had died here.
She wanted to know what happened to him, to this place.
A booming bell tolled suddenly, making her jump again. She dropped the book with a heavy thud on the desk, sending more dust into the air. She recognized it as the warning bell to send lingering students back to their dormitories before curfew.
Just like in any other part of the castle, the bells sounded like they were ringing from the very walls. She hadn’t realized it was so late. And Gryffindor tower was still a long walk away, she’d be lucky if she got there in time.
“I’ve got to go.” she said with genuine regret. She wanted to stay and chat with the ghost boy some more, but she didn’t want to risk being caught by Umbridge after hours.
“Some things never change” he said, indicating the sound of the bells with a twirling finger in the air. He offered her a small smile. “It was nice of you to visit. Come back, if you want. I’ll be here.”
“I will.” she promised. She made her way to the classroom door and paused before leaving.
“Oh, my name’s Ginny, by the way.” She raised her eyebrows at him in a way of asking for his name in return.
“Al” he said and waved her good-bye.
“Bye Al”
Ginny hurried down the spiraling stairs and through the lion doors. Instead of emerging into the room of requirements like she expected, she found herself directly in the hallway where the entrance to room could be found.
She spared it only a quick glance before making her way through the maze of hallways and stairs back to the Gryffindor common room.
She made it five minutes before curfew.
It was only after Ron gave her a curious once over that she realized her robes were more grey than black and she had cobwebs clinging to her red hair.
“None of your business.” she told him in mock haughtiness before making her way to her room for a much needed bath. She knew Ron and Harry exchanged a quizzical look behind her back but she didn’t care.
She’d originally wanted to shove her discovery in Fred and George’s faces but seeing the cozy common room and her friends sitting around low tables working on their homework, she suddenly decided that she wanted to keep the abandoned hall and the ghost boy to herself, at least for now.
She kept thinking about it long after saying her goodnights and getting into bed. A whole wing of the castle that no one had been in for nearly four hundred years. Yet so many questions! So many things that had been lost to time.
A Lost Wing, she liked the sound of that. It was her last coherent thought before she fell asleep.
Thanks for reading.
- Misuto -