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Her mother has always done the washing on Saturdays; Ginevra never entirely understood that, but as she surveys her wardrobe and realizes that nearly everything in it is dirty, she has to admit that her mother may have been right about just this one thing.
She clears out some socks—ugh, so vile, you'd think she was a boy, leaving all these filthy things in here—and some underthings. They're all plain, black or white, cotton. She's seen some of Hermione's on the drying rack that she unfolds in the sitting room after doing her own washing—Ginevra has learned that certain types of clothing are not meant to go in the Muggle drying device—and Hermione's are not all plain cotton. Ginevra would never in a million years have imagined that Hermione Granger would own black lace knickers—and, more shockingly, red and purple ones too—but she imagines that shagging Dean Winchester on a regular basis might expand one's outlook in that regard.
Ginevra picks up a pair of her own—more white cotton, boring boring boring—and throws them into the pile to be washed. Oh, bother, it's not as if it matters what color they are. No one's seeing them except herself. She's sure that Sam wouldn't object, but she can't make herself do it, not yet. Some Gryffindor she is, Ginevra thinks. Scared of something that happened months ago. Scared of somebody who's dead.
As if pulled on a chain, Ginevra's head tilts so that she's looking at the top shelf of the wardrobe. Almost empty, it stands out from the others, which have clothes folded (or stuffed) on them; shoes dropped there for lack of anywhere better; the rucksack she brought with her this summer.
The item on the top shelf isn't large, though its wrapping—multiple layers of plastic grocery sacks—gives it more mass than it would have on its own. It's just a lumpy, amorphous shape, harmless, not taking up much room except for the fact that she's allotted it its own shelf in her wardrobe.
She's Scourgified it more times than she can count, starting before she even came to America, when this was hidden underneath her bed at the Burrow, and repeated since she's been here. But it doesn't seem to matter. The cloak retains its miasma, its taint—or maybe, Ginevra thinks, she's the one who's tainted, and the cloak merely reflects that, now that it's in her possession.
She picks up her wand and whispers, "Accio." The parcel flies down from the shelf, and she unwraps it carefully, awkwardly, using her left hand to push away the plastic and poking at the cloak with the wand in her right. She doesn't want to touch it.
The fabric is the same as always: silvery and deceptively beautiful. She always thought Harry's Invisibility Cloak was lovely, shimmering and mysterious, but this one looks like a falsehood embodied, all that beauty used for something so ugly. Of course it's not the cloak's fault who purchased it—or, likely, who stole it—but the taint is still there. Like in herself, Ginevra thinks. It will never be clean, and neither will she.
She exposes enough of the fabric to be able to point her wand at it and say, yet again, "Scourgify." Nothing happens. It's not that the spell hasn't worked; she knows she can perform it effectively. It's that there's nothing to clean, at least not on the surface.
Sod that. "Mobili—" she begins, then breaks off. Bugger. Sam and Hermione would know the Latinate ending, but Ginevra has no idea. She remembers Hermione's spell for moving their luggage when they first arrived here: "Mobilimpedimentia!" But the parcel remains still, as it's not a suitcase or a rucksack. Ginevra re-covers it with the plastic bags, then points her wand again and says, "Wingardium leviosa!" Obediently, the concealed cloak rises into the air, and she pushes it out of the room, into the corridor, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, where the small clothes-washing and clothes-drying devices are located in the corner, stacked on top of each other.
She puts down her wand and, still taking pains not to touch the cloak itself, upends the bags so that it falls into the clothes-washing device. She dumps in an entire cupful of the washing powder that Hermione buys; it's too much, she knows that, but she wants the thing clean. Clean and smelling of what some Muggle seems to think is the scent of spring rain, though the powder just smells like chemicals to Ginevra. Her mother does the wash with a variety of the soap she makes, and everybody's clothes and sheets always smell faintly of peppermint from their garden.
She turns the dial to set the water as hot as it will go. She doesn't know what this will do to the cloak—she's fairly sure they're not meant to be put through Muggle clothes-washing devices—but it occurs to her that she doesn't care if it's destroyed. It would be a relief, really, though of course a waste of something valuable.
She shuts the door to the clothes-washer more forcefully than she intends, and the metal falls into place with a loud clang. She turns to go back upstairs but finds that she can't. Rather, she stands there for several minutes and stares at the clothes-washer, listening to the water run. She backs up from it, keeping her eyes on the thing, which does nothing more than continue to fill itself.
Nevertheless. She grips her wand tightly and sits down across the room, leaning against the cupboards. She remembers sitting in here with Sam, the day everything came out—alone at first, a clench of anger and misery gathered in on herself, and then with him, her head on his shoulder, his fingers gentle in her hair.
She doesn't look away from the clothes-washer—as though, if she does, its lid will pop open and the cloak will fly out and...what? Attack her? She imagines the headline in the Daily Prophet: WAR HERO KILLED BY INVISIBILITY CLOAK. Ginevra Weasley, 17, daughter of Molly and Arthur Weasley, best known for her role in You Know Who Voldemort's defeat in the Second Wizarding War, was found dead in a Muggle home in New York City, the victim of an apparent attack by a rogue Invisibility Cloak.
Oh, ridiculous. She sighs, but doesn't put down her wand. She could ring Sam—and say what? "Do please drop whatever you happen to be doing and come over. I'm experiencing the entirely rational fear that an inanimate object will rise out of a clothes-washer and assault me." She could phone Hermione—except that Hermione doesn't know about the cloak. Nikkya, too, knows what Draco did—Ginevra was a young woman in a war; that she'd have been raped isn't much of a stretch of the imagination—and Nikkya certainly wouldn't judge her, especially given what happened to Angelina. But Nikkya doesn't know the full story, and she certainly doesn't know that Ginevra has Draco's Invisibility Cloak. The same for Faith.
A credit to Gryffindor, Ginevra thinks disgustedly. Dumbledore and McGonagall would be so proud. No, Godric himself would give me a prize for my courageous behavior, sitting here in a kitchen with a wand in my hand as though one of the serviettes or hand towels might look at me threateningly.
She doesn't feel brave, or bold, or chivalrous, or any of the other things her parents and her school and her friends and in fact her entire world told her that she would be. She feels small and scared and very much as though she'd like to have a bath, despite the fact that she had one this morning. She settles her head on her knees and waits for the washing machine to finish its cycle.