CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:  SUMMER OF DEMENTIA

22 July 1995

This has been one of the worst weeks of my life!  Mum’s been working us raw.  I mean, I understand her preoccupation with getting this house in shape, but the way she’s going at it, you’d think she had a personal vendetta against the house in general; and the dirt it’s accumulated in particular.

It’s taken us most of this last week to get two of the third floor bedrooms in order.  Sirius and Lupin are sharing one, Fred and George are going to share the other.  The stuff that was packed into the one Sirius and Lupin are sharing!  Sirius says that it was Regulus’s bedroom (Regulus was Sirius’s brother, the one who became a Death Eater).

There was a dragon vase in the corner that emitted a sickening mist whenever anyone touched it, causing anyone in a ten foot radius to throw up all over themselves.

In the closet Lupin found a sack full of poisoned brownie arrows, the kind that make you pass out if you get hit with more than a couple at a time (no one knows what happened to those.  Last Lupin saw of those he had put the sack on the kitchen table.  I have my suspicions though, especially when Fred and George keep talking about their newest ‘fainting fancies’).

The thing I found most interesting was the way that the drapes in Regulus’s bedroom caused anyone who came too near them to sink into a sort of daydream.  The daydreams were different for each person.  Almost everyone found them frightening, or at the very least, disturbing.  I couldn’t share their fear though.  For me the curtains had me performing that ‘Stairway to Paradise’ bit with Harry in my room at the Burrow.  I must admit that I felt a real twinge of regret when Mum burned them in the kitchen fireplace.

The rug was pretty nasty too.  It kept sending up tentacles, if you can believe it; tentacles of carpet that would snag people’s ankles and pull them to the floor.  They didn’t have the strength to choke, but just made it next to impossible to move.

We figured out what had gone wrong there when Ron uncovered a shriveled plant in the back of the closet.  It was (or had been) a cutting of Devil’s Snare.  The tentacles had shriveled up and fallen off onto the floor where (it is assumed) they integrated themselves into the very fabric of the carpet.  Moody says that the plant lost a lot of it’s potency by integrating itself into the rug, but stayed alive (from the looks of the small skeletons we found stashed under the carpet) by eating bugs and small animals like mice and rats.

But the bed . . .the bed was the worst!  It had been stripped bare, right down to the mattress and springs, and there was a horrid stain . . .a person-shaped stain in the middle that looked for all the world like blood . . . and no matter what sort of charm Mum used, it wouldn’t come clean.  Well, actually, it would be clean for a few moments, and then the stain would reappear, rapidly filling itself in until it was just the same size and shape as it had been before.  Finally Dad enlisted Bill’s help and destroyed the thing altogether.

I’ve been doing my best to act normally, but Mum’s been so annoyed with me!  For some reason I just can’t seem to shake Harry’s presence.  Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t a time when I don’tknow where he is or what he’s doing, but usually, if I keep busy enough, I can sort of push him to the back of my mind and get on with whatever it is that I’m doing. Not this summer though.  This summer it’s been a nightmare, living continually with Harry in the forefront.

I keep seeing things that aren’t there.  I move to avoid them and trip over things that are there, right in front of me, but that I didn’t see because I had Harry’s awareness superimposed over my own.

 I can’t shake him, even at night.  Especiallyat night.  At night he dreams of Cedric, and the graveyard, and I wake up in a cold sweat, screaming my fool head off at memories that aren’t even mine!  

It was bad enough at the Burrow, but ever since we’ve been here at Grimmauld Place . . .I don’t know, this house seems to sort of amplify every bad thought and feeling.  It’s disturbing!  My own dreams have come back in full force since I’ve been here.  You know, the ones where Tom Riddle comes out of the diary and forces me to play host to his soul . . .those are the worst.

It was getting pretty bad there for a while, the circles under everyone’s eyes . . .! I was forcibly reminded of that summer after my first year where I woke up scraming night after night.   After one whole week of waking the entire house up every night, I finally crept up to the attic (taking care not to touch anything) and evoked the elements.  They (the elements) can’t stop the dreams, but are doing a good job of keeping a silencing charm in effect around my bed every night so that I don’t keep everyone else up.

Of course after I wake it takes me forever to get back to sleep again.  Sometimes I’ll sit there for hours just staring at the wall.  Sometimes I creep down to the kitchen to read or to make myself a cup of tea.

The fourth time I crept down to the kitchen I was startled nearly out of my wits to find Sirius already there, sitting at the table, a bottle of fire whiskey on the table in front of him beside an old photo album that was open to a picture of Lily and James Potter at their wedding.  He was staring off into the fire and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw me.

“Damn, Ginny!  What on earth are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Another dream?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t hear anything . . .”

“Nah, there’s a silencing charm around my bed now.”

Sirius nodded, staring once more at the fire. 

“Too bad they don’t have silencing spells that will work on the dreams,” he said bitterly. 

“You have dreams too?” I asked him and he shrugged in response.  “About Azkaban?”

At the mention of the wizarding prison Sirius shuddered uncontrollably, knocking over the bottle of fire whiskey that emptied itself onto the scrubbed boards of the trestle table and began dripping over the edge; puddling on the flagstone floor.

(Turns out it was his last bottle of fire whiskey.  I’ll have to make it up to him someday).

We talked for four hours that night, until dawn arrived, and my Mum with it, ready to start breakfast and not a little startled to find her daughter sitting in the deserted kitchen with the notorious Sirius Black and an even dozen bottles of butterbeer (all of them empty) on the table in front of us.

Mum never asked me what happened in the kitchen, not that I’d tell her if she asked.  Sirius started talking after his third butterbeer (I don’t know how many glasses of fire whiskey he’d drunk before I arrived) but he talked more than I’d heard him talk in the two weeks we’d been here; all about Lily and James and how he’ll never forgive himself and the coldness of Azkaban (a coldness he described as ‘able to freeze your very soul’). 

He acted perfectly normal the next couple days, but I think he was ashamed about spilling his guts though, I know because I went down to the kitchens two nights ago and he was there again, and he apologized for  what he called ‘going off on a rant’ the last time.  I told him it was okay, that I didn’t mind, that I understood exactly how he felt and he said “I bet you do,” and then asked me what it had been like to play host to Voldemort’s soul.

No one has ever asked me that before.  Everyone; Mum, Dad, Dumbledore even, seem hesitant to broach the subject; more comfortable not talking about it.  I’ve never wanted to talk about it before, but I found myself telling him everything; all about how dark it was, about how, even after he was gone, how I felt urges, caught glimpses of things that I knew couldn’t possibly belong to anyone except the Dark Lord. 

I stopped just short of telling him how some of what I’d seen seemed to touch some part of me — call to me if you will, on a deep level of which I’m barely aware, but he seemed to grasp the implications.

“It has a sort of Dark Glamour,” he whispered finally, staring into the fire again.

“Come again?”

“The Dark Arts, the power that he wields, it calls to me sometimes, Ginny, surely you feel it too?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.  The thing is, I could do Dark Magic if I tried, I know how!  It’s all there, the methods, the knowledge, just inside my head.  I could do it if I wanted to and sometimes . . .

“But I won’t,” I whispered and it was his turn to nod, as if he knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Growing up in this place,” he began, than swallowed, cleared his throat and tried again.  “Growing up in this place, it would have been so easy to fall into the Dark Arts.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I — I don’t know.”

“Why did the Sorting Hat put you in Gryffindor?”

“I — I asked it to,” Sirius whispered, his voice barely audible over the crackling of the flames.  “I didn’t want-” he paused again, wetting his lips with his tongue.   “I didn’t want to end up like them.”

“Them who?”

“My parents.”

“Were they so very bad?”

“Well, they hated Muggles and Mudbloods and those they deemed Blood Traitors, you’ve met my Mum.”

“Yeah, but if you were raised by them . . .”

“I should have turned out like them?”

I had to shrug.  It seemed logical.  If he’d been brought up by Dark wizards, you would have thought he’d take to it readily enough.

“It just wasn’t right!” Sirius croaked harshly. 

“Of course it’s not, but . . .”

“I can’t explain it,” Sirius went on, cutting across me.  “I just couldn’t bring myself to believe what they believed, hold onto those old hatreds . . .”

“But your brother . . .”

Sirius gave a bark like laugh that echoed around the kitchen and took a deep drink from his cup (we had tall mugs of cocoa that time instead of butterbeer).

“Right little clone he was,” said Sirius bitterly.  “Drank it all up, like a sponge.  Parroted back to Mum and Dad exactly what they wanted to hear; got sorted into Slytherin like a proper Black, sucked up to the Potions teacher, then joined the Death Eaters.”  Sirius shrugged, then added, “not that it did him any good.”

“How — how did he die?” I managed, uncertain if Regulus’s death was a safe subject where Sirius was concerned.

“Killed.  Probably by Death Eaters.”

“But why?”

“Well, from what I gathered, he got cold feet when he found out some of the things that Voldemort wanted him to do, decided that enough was enough.”

“Bad move,” I said, shivering slightly. 

“Very bad move.  He ran for it, came home to get some of his things, but they caught up with him, killed him in his own bed.”

“You mean he died — here?”

“In this house, yeah.”

“So, that’s why the bed . . .”

“Yeah.”

A horrid thought actually, that the stain on the mattress had been from Sirius’s brother’s blood.

We both lapsed into silence then.  When the clock struck six I started getting out the breakfast things, Sirius helping me without so much as a word.  When Mum came down we had the kettle boiling for tea and a pile of toast already on the table and the eggs.  She looked at the pair of us rather funny, but didn’t say anything.  She’s been acting weird the last two days, I wonder if she thinks . . .no, she couldn’t possibly . . . could she?

25 July 1995

Trust my mother to think the worst!  She actually had Dad sit down with Sirius and me this morning after breakfast.  She was very blunt about it.  Sirius assured her that there was nothing going on between us — he seemed rather shocked that she would think such a thing — but Mum made it perfectly clear that she didn’t think it was proper for us to be alone together before the rest of the house was up and about.

If she hadn’t been so worked up about the whole issue it would have been hilarious.  As it was, when Mum said the bit about it not being proper for us to be alone, I looked at Sirius and he looked at me and we both burst into laughter. 

“This is no laughing matter, Ginevra!” Mum said sharply. 

“But Mum, surely you don’t think that Sirius and I — that we-” but the thought was so absurd that it set me off again.

“Well, what am I supposed to think?” demanded Mum in a waspish voice.  “That’s twice now that I’ve come downstairs at the break of dawn to find the two of you-”

She broke off, looking from Sirius to myself and back again and finally appealed to Dad who, characteristically, hadn’t said a word so far.

“Arthur, back me up!  You can’t tell me that you think it is appropriate behavior for Ginny to be alone with a man who is old enough to be her father during the dead of night.”

“I thought you said it was the crack of dawn?” said Dad dryly ( I was relieved to see his lips twitching madly as if he dearly desired to laugh himself).

“That’s hardly the point!” Mum cried, her voice rising to a dangerous level.  “It isn’t right I tell you, I won’t have it.”

“Come now, Molly, you don’t think that I’d ravish your fourteen year old daughter on the kitchen table now, do you?”

“There’s no telling what you’d do!” snarled Mum, her lip curling in an uncharacteristic sneer.

“Look here . . .!” began Sirius, but Dad interrupted smoothly, grasping Mum by the shoulders and steering her to a chair.

“Now Molly, perhaps we should let Ginny explain why she’s been down in the kitchen so early in Sirius’s company so very early.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said immediately by way of explanation.  “Once I have one of those dreams . . .” I shivered, unwilling to divulge the contents to Mum, she’d freak out even more than she already was.  “Well, I can’t get back to sleep, and I don’t want to keep Hermione awake by tossing and turning for hours at a time . . .” I shrugged, and Mum sniffed.

“A likely story.  I haven’t heard anything!  I would have heard you if you’d woken up.”

“Not with the silencing charm on her bed,” said George unexpectedly. 

Mum, Dad, Sirius and myself all jumped about a mile as George walked in, stuffing something that looked like a very long shoelace into his pocket.  I recognized it at once as an extendable ear. 

“Silencing charm?” said Mum, her eyes narrowed with suspicion as George strolled over to the table and plucked a current bun from the plate on the table.

“Yeah, she was tired of waking everyone up every night so she asked me to put a silencing charm around her bed.”

Mum’s head swiveled around to look at me.  I tried to look as if this wasn’t news to me (I think Sirius caught a glimpse of my original shocked expression).

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t get too worked up about her and Sirius,” said George, shrugging.  “I apparated down the other morning round about three for a glass of water, they were playing chess, innocent as you please.”

“Well, I-” Mum looked from George to Sirius (who was suppressing a grin) to me and finally said, “well, all right then, but if you’re going to wander around the house in the middle of the night Ginny, at least wear a robe.”

She got up from the table then and walked out of the kitchen, her head held high.  We waited until her footsteps could be heard in the hall above us before all four of us burst into peals of laughter again.

Poor Mum!  She’s so old fashioned.  I know that she has my best interest at heart, but really!  Sirius?  I mean, not only is he old enough to be my father, but he’s not my type, not by a long shots!  I’m certain he was quite good looking when he was young, and he’s still not a bad looking man, but I find him about as sexually appealing as Lupin, or Dad for that matter. 

26 July 1995

I thanked George for coming to my rescue (he’d been listening with the extendables and thought he’d better step in before Mum got any more worked up).  He’s going to get in trouble though. I think Mum suspects that he and George are listening in to conversations somehow.  I saw the look on her face at supper tonight when Fred asked about something that was brought up in the meeting the Order had this morning.  I wouldn’t put it past her to search their room (although she’d be taking a great risk to do so, Ron went in after something the other day and ended up strung up from the ceiling by his ankle, some sort of booby trap they implemented.  He was up there for a full half an hour before anyone heard him yelling, we were all down in the kitchen eating lunch).

Mum was furious, she said that Fred and George’s trick stuff was getting out of hand and that they were going to end up hurting someone blah blah blah.  Fred and George of course (being Fred and George) said that they had every right to charm stuff, and that it wasn’t their fault that Ron couldn’t keep his nose out of their business etc.  It went on and on.  Nice diversion.   This everlasting cleaning crap is really getting on my nerves. 

I snuck up to the attic tonight and called the elements.  I had to call them silently, but Mira came ( I knew she would!) and didn’t seem at all surprised by the change in surroundings.    She’s taught me so much, Mira has.  We had a long talk about Mum’s old fashioned attitude and her protectiveness.  Drives me nuts. 

Anyway, we ended with Mira showing me a way to use my elements for a sort of all-day buffer between myself and mum.  It isn’t a direct intervention, like when I use them to control my temper.  She said if I call them in a specific way before anyone else is up, that they’ll provide a sort of all-day buffer.  It’s not that Mum won’t notice me, but her attention won’t stay fixed on me, so I’ll have a better chance of being treated like everyone else.  I’m going to try it in the morning and see if it helps.

29 July 1995

I was down in the kitchen before Sirius this time.  Took down the book on Animagi that I picked up from the used book shop in Diagon Alley last time we were there.  It’s quite fascinating.  I’d love to be able to transform.  You want to know the weirdest thing, something deep inside me already knows how.  Is that Tom again do you think?  Surely he was an Animagi.  How could he not be?  I bet I know what he transformed into . . .what do you bet it’s a snake?  He has one hanging around him all the time, doesn’t he?  Harry saw it in his dream last summer.

I was halfway through the chapter on personality compatibility when the door swung open and Sirius walked in.  He looked rather ruffled, as if he been standing about in a high wind and seemed quite interested to find me reading up on the subject.  He asked me if it was homework, but I said ‘no’ then threw caution to the winds and told him about my fascination with Animagi and how I so much want to learn how to transform.

He listened the whole time, looking thoughtful, then finally asked me if I planned on trying the transformation for myself.  I told him yes, that I’d been reading up on the technique for a whole year and thought I had a good grasp of the concepts involved.  He sat staring into the fire for several minutes before making me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Sirius is going to teach me how to transform.  He says it can go badly wrong, and that if I’m going to try it anyway, it would be better if I did it where he can keep an eye on me.   I’m going to learn how to be an Animagi.  Sirius said to meet him down here at Midnight tomorrow and he’ll oversee my first attempt to transform.  I’m so excited I’m shaking!

30 July 1995

I’m a cat!  Well, when I do the Animagi transformation I become a cat; a sleek black cat with Amber eyes.  In fact, oddly enough I look like a skinny Mr. Chubbs!  I mentioned it to Sirius after I turned back into myself and he said that seeing as that Mr. Chubbs played a significant part in my early childhood, that it very well may have affected the type of animal I become.

I got it right on the first try too, the transformation.  It seemed to amaze Sirius that I took to it so readily.  I didn’t try to explain about already understanding the concept of centering, I mean, I center myself every time that I call the elements.  I center myself every time that I meditate.  

What a feeling though!  I felt so strong, so sleek and powerful and attuned with the night!  I could hear everything; every squeak of floorboards, every scuttling mouse, and the desire to run wild under the stars was so overpowering that I actually found myself pawing at the front door before Sirius collected me and instructed me to change back into myself.

It was then that I did a very stupid thing.  I mean, it’s written in nearly every text I’ve read on human to animal transformation; I forgot to concentrate on the clothes I was wearing when I turned back into myself.  I found myself standing completely starkers in the middle of the kitchen.

Sirius had the courtesy to turn his back immediately, giving me a degree of privacy as I turned back into the cat and tried it again, this time concentrating on the nightgown that I’d been wearing when I transformed the first time.  I probably should have been devastated, you know, blushing to the roots of my hair and all of that, but to be perfectly honest I was so psyched about the transformation, that I found I didn’t really care much at all.

As soon as I was dressed, Sirius took the opportunity to tell me (sniggering the entire time) about how he had done the same exact thing and how James had never let him forget it. 

I tried the transformation three more times.  The third time, before I could transform back into myself, Mum showed up in the kitchen, seems she’d heard noises (probably our muffled laughter) and had decided to investigate.  She was shocked to find a cat on the kitchen table, and instructed Sirius to put it out immediately. 

“Lupin’s allergic, Sirius, you should know better.  By the way, have you seen Ginny?  I checked in on her and Hermione on my way down, but she wasn’t in bed.”

“She was here a while ago,” said Sirius evasively, glancing sideways at me with a furtive grin. 

“I wish she wouldn’t wander about so!” said Mrs. Weasley fretfully.  “There’s still so much we haven’t cleaned up.  She could run into something really nasty.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Ginny, Molly, she’s a sharp kid, I’m sure she can manage.”

I flexed my claws, leaving twin tracks in the tabletop.

“Bad kitty!” Mum scolded, picking me up by the scruff of my neck and tossing me to Sirius who caught me deftly and tucked me under his arm.

“Now don’t go upsetting the cat!” said Sirius reprovingly.  “She doesn’t know any better.”

I turned and hissed at him, showing all my teeth.

We had a good laugh over it once Sirius had taken upstairs and I’d changed back into myself.  Mum came up at once, demanding to know where I’d been, I told her I’d been in the third floor loo, since Hermione had been using the one on our floor.  This answer seemed to satisfy her, but Sirius keeps going on about how he’s going to put a litter box in my room, just in case.  Git.

31 July 1995

Happy Birthday Harry!  He still gets quite a rush from knowing he’s a year older.  I think it’s because each year he is subconsciously counting down to the day when he no longer has to live under his Aunt and Uncle’s roof.  He’s been in a rather tetchy mood lately though, and today was no exception.  He was so annoyed with Ron and Hermione’s letters (he’s convinced that they’re having all sorts of fun without him) that he tossed both bars of chocolate into the trash.  Pity really, Honeydukes chocolate is some of the best there is!

But it’s not just his birthday.  He’s been getting increasingly moody and prone to angry spurts all summer.  Stupid git.  He thinks he’s purposefully being kept out of the loop.  Well, come to think of it, he might be at that, but not because he’s Harry.  Look at how Mum’s treating us!  Even Fred and George, keeping us away from the meetings and brushing off any questions by letting it be known in no uncertain terms that we’re too young to be worrying about “things like that.”  Typical mum. 

Speaking of Mum, she went ballistic when she found out about the extendable ears.  Yes, she found out about them.  Fred, being the brainless gorm that he is, left one in his pants pocket when it went down to the laundry.  Mum of course deducted what it was immediately and binned the lot, well, all that she could find, anyway.  She practically stripped Fred and George’s room looking for them.  She even checked Ron’s room and confiscated the two she found in his bedside table drawer.

What she didn’t know is that George had stashed a dozen with me just in case.  Can you believe that he charmed them to look like hair ribbons?  Stupid prat, he was making fun of me! I could have hexed him for his choice of disguises, but it worked!  Mum didn’t even blink at my drawer full of hair ribbons.

Hermione nearly gave the whole thing away by saying, “Hair ribbons Ginny?  Since when have you worn hair ribbons?” But Mum didn’t cotton on.  In fact, she pulled out a silky green one and told me she thought it would look really nice with my green sweater.  Honestly!  What does she think I am, five years old?  Probably.

2 August 1995

I’ve transformed five more times already.  I almost ate a mouse!  I actually caught it and was getting ready to break its neck when it dawned on me what I was doing.  That’s the key you see.  You can’t let yourself become the animal completely.  Oh, you become an animal, you look like an animal, but you have to maintain a clear picture of yourself as a human still and not transform all the way.  According to what I’ve read, nasty things can happen to witches and wizards who let themselves go all the way.  There’s all sorts of complex magic involved with turning them back into themselves.

Sirius is impressed, he says that I have a natural instinct (no pun intended) but won’t lay off the litter box jokes.  In fact, he gave me a present the yesterday, it was a flea collar.  I told him to get stuffed.  His birthday’s coming up here next week, I’m going to give him a chew toy, or a muzzle.  I can’t decide which would be more appropriate.  (Of course I’ll get reprimanded by Mum either way, but the elemental invocation seems to be working quite nicely, I doubt I’ll get more than a cursory reprimand).

Ginny put her quill down and grinned at the page in front of her.  What an incredible feeling, changing into a cat!  Too bad Harry couldn’t do it, it would give him something else to think about.

It would keep him warm.

The icy coldness was creeping across her skin . . .Harry’s skin . . .blackness, absolute blackness and a silence so heavy she could hear his heart beating descended like a blanket over Harry.

My god, what’s happening?

Dunno, Harry shot back promptly. 

Ginny was icy cold, she could feel herself sitting stark upright in her chair, could feel her body shivering uncontrollably in spite of the warmth of her bedroom.  Through Harry’s awareness she could sense Dudley, that big lout of a cousin was blundering around, yelling that he’d gone blind.

Did I do magic?  Harry thought wildly, swinging his head from side to side, trying to catch even the slightest of movements, the briefest glimpse of light.

Don’t be stupid, Ginny retorted without thinking.  You don’t have the power to turn off the stars.

Is it Dementors, do you think? Harry wondered.

Feels like it.

Sounds like it.

And there it was, the deep, harsh, rattling breath that Ginny knew to be the sure sign that Dementors were in the vicinity.

“Dudley, whatever you do, keep your mouth closed!” bellowed Harry.  He was reeling now from the blow to the head that Dudley had landed him, his fingers scrabbling frantically over the ground for his wand . . .

“Lumos!” Harry said the spell automatically, and Ginny was as surprised as Harry himself when his wand lit just inches from his right hand.

Stunned beyond belief at Harry’s just having done wandless magic, Ginny watched in astonishment as he attempted to produce a Patronus.

There was no happiness in him.

Come on you great git!  Don’t you ever want to see Ron or Hermione again?

With a great surge of energy, the stag Patronus erupted from the end of Harry’s wand, driving back the Dementors before fading into the night.

It was an astonishing bit of magic, but Ginny knew, even as she watched Harry encounter Mrs. Figg and attempt to heave a nearly catatonic Dudley back home that something was desperately wrong.

What the bloody hell had Dementors been doing in Little Winging?  What was going to happen to Harry now that he’d done a piece of highly advanced magic not only while still underage, but in front of a Muggle as well?

Ginny erupted from her seat, her breath coming in short gasps.  Dumbledore.  She had to tell Dumbledore.  He needed to know . . .now . . .he was downstairs, talking to Dad, she’d seen him must half an hour ago.

Please let him still be there!

Speeding down the steps, she arrived in the front hall just as the doorbell rang.  Sirius brushed past her, cursing loudly as Mrs. Black’s portrait began a fresh chorus of screaming, to admit a badly shaken looking Mundungus. 

“Dementors!” he gasped, looking over Ginny’s head and addressing someone behind her.  Ginny spun on the spot, Dumbledore’s silvery hair and beard glinted silver in the dim  gas light.  “Dementors, in little Winging!” he managed, slumping against a wall. 

“Did you dispose of them?” asked Dumbledore sharply.

“Well, I-”

“You’d gone off, you great coward!” Ginny said hotly, turning to Dung with her hands on her hips.  “You went off to buy dodgy cauldrons and left him by himself!”

“Is this true?” said Dumbledore, not bothering to ask how Ginny could possibly know what had transpired, but rounding on Mundungus with a dangerous glint in his eye.

“Well, yeah, I suppose it is, in a way . . .”

“IN A WAY!” roared Dumbledore.  He looked livid.  “See that he,” he pointed his wand at Dung who cowered as if he were going to be hit, “stays here, I’ll be wanting a few words with him.  Is Harry all right?” asked Dumbledore, addressing Ginny as if this were the most natural thing to do.

Ginny let her eyes unfocus for a moment.

“Yeah, his Uncle’s yelling at him, but he’s in the house, everything seems to be oaky.”

“I’m off then.  Tell Arthur I’ve gone to the Ministry to sort this out,” said Dumbledore, addressing Sirius.

Sirius gave a curt nod and opened the door for Dumbledore, who swept out with in a swirl of robes.