Ginny Weasley ran down the narrow streets of Diagon Alley. The shopping center which had once flourished with color and bubbled with laughter was now dark and silent. The Cold Age had begun. The age when wizards would once again be hunted as they once had been many centuries before. Ginny quickly turned into an abandoned shop, nearly slipping on a patch of ice, and threw herself under an old splintered desk which lay rotting in a corner. Ginny pulled her knees up to her chest and hid her head between them. Then she waited. For a while nothing came. But then she heard it; the soft thudding of paws on the snowy streets. Ginny ducked lower beneath the desk to be sure that she was well hidden. She couldn’t afford to be captured—not now.
Ginny caught her breath when the thudding stopped right outside of the shop that she was now hiding in. She heard whispers as her pursuers contemplated what to do. Ginny noticed a small worm-hole in the desk and very quietly bent herself lower to peek through it. Ginny had to stifle a gasp. The creatures that had been following her were not creatures at all—they were humans. They looked like ordinary people except that they wore red X’s on the pocket of their black jackets. Muggles, Ginny thought. The sight of them terrified her. They began to talk louder and Ginny strained to hear wisps of their now audible conversation.
“…We need to leave this place…no one is here….must go now!” A tall male with dark brown hair was telling the others. The group of them consisted of three men and two women. None of them looked at all menacing, but their presence in such a guarded place was daunting. Finally, after what seemed hours, the group left.
Ginny sighed in relief when she could no longer hear their footsteps. She slowly got up and realized that the contents of her pack had spilled onto the floor. Ginny bent down and gathered the slightly molding loaves of bread and small bottles of old pumpkin juice and put them back into her pack. She made sure that she had everything. Her family wouldn’t starve—at least not tonight.
When Ginny placed the pack on her back again she stood up tall and walked back out into the deserted street. She took one last look around her, knowing that she couldn’t come back. The Muggles would be able to sense her very presence now. Ginny fought back tears and apparated home.
* * *
Draco Malfoy knocked on the door to his father’s office in the Malfoy Manor. He was holding the latest issue of the Daily Prophet tightly in his fist. The news had been coming very slowly lately, reason being that most of the journalists had resigned or had been murdered.
“Come in,” said Lucius Malfoy’s tired voice at last.
Draco hastily opened the door, swiftly walked up to his father’s desk, and slammed the newspaper down. His father stared at it dully.
“What on earth is the matter Draco?” He asked stubbornly. “Can’t you see that I’m busy?”
Draco was already becoming annoyed. “Can’t you read this? ‘Ministry Fears Are True: The Muggles Are Attacking’. What is going on? I demand to know!”
Lucius sighed and took off his reading glasses. He began to massage the bridge of his nose in a way that somehow infuriated Draco.
“It means,” Lucius began. “That the Muggles have finally lost it. They know all about our world and they plan to destroy it. It’s as simple as that.”
Draco’s jaw dropped. “Simple? That’s simple? We’re being attacked by Muggles! The article says here,” Draco pointed to the third paragraph on the right. “It says, and I quote, ‘Our magic is useless against them. Something, in the crosses that they wear, blocks our magic.’ Doesn’t that frighten you at all?”
Draco stared at his aging father in utter disbelief. The past two years had gone by slowly and dreadfully. The Cold Age had taken a toll on everyone. Many people lost their jobs, and families were starving. It had all started right after Draco graduated from Hogwarts. He remembered the events leading up to it quite well.
*
Draco stood on the tall stage that had been built in the Great Hall. Professor McGonagall was rambling on about ‘friendship’ and ‘love’. Draco could have cared less. He just wanted to get out of there. The ceremony was to be nearly three hours long and he had no idea how much time had gone by. It could have only been minutes, for all he knew. Finally, after what seemed like ages, Draco heard McGonagall say ‘Congratulations to the class of—‘ and then all hell broke loose.
Death Eaters came swarming in from the doors and the windows, chanting something incomprehensible. People were screaming and running for the exits, which were now being blocked by howling werewolves. Draco stood motionless, not sure how to react. He had left the Death Eaters before school had started, and was at Hogwarts under the protection of the Ministry of Magic.
Before Draco could decide what to do he heard a blood-curling scream and whipped himself around in time to see a small, red haired girl being dragged across the hall by a Death Eater. It was Ginny Weasley. Without thought, Draco jumped off of the stage and ran to help her. He pointed his wand at the Death Eater dragging her and cried out ‘Expelliarmus’. Ginny was immediately released. Draco bent down and cradled her in his arms. He somehow managed to escape the Great Hall and run through the halls.
“Why did you do that?” Ginny asked tearfully.
“I don’t know.” Draco answered honestly. He picked up the pace when he thought he heard someone following him. Finally, he saw it; The Room of Requirement. He put Ginny on her feet and opened the door. Then he felt a hand on his back and he turned around with his wand out to find a tall man with red long red hair and a scared freckled face standing before him.
“That’s my brother!” Ginny yelled. “It’s Bill! That’s my brother.”
Draco stepped aside and let Bill walk into the room where he embraced his little sister.
Draco quickly turned to them. “You need to stay in here.” He ordered. “You will be safe. Don’t come out until someone comes for you—don’t worry. They'll only find you if they're looking for you, and in all of this confusion I don’t think the Death Eaters will know you’re gone.”
Draco began to walk away, but Ginny was suddenly in front of him. She looked up at him with her light brown eyes and said, “Thank you.”
*
“Are you listening to me Draco?” Lucius Malfoy asked acidly.
“Sorry.” Draco looked up at his father.
“I’ve had enough with your day dreaming. Please leave me with my work.”
Draco turned to leave and then stopped in the doorway. “Those Muggles couldn’t have gotten magic by themselves,” he said. “That’s what’s in those crosses they wear. It’s some kind of shielding magic. They had to get help from somewhere. And I’m going to find out where.”
* * *
Ginny appeared in the kitchen of the Burrow with a sudden ‘pop’ and, almost immediately, there were ten pairs of eyes on her. Ginny smiled sadly and pulled her back off of her back and placed into the table.
“Oh! Ginevra!” Molly Weasley yelled, while jumping out of her chair, and nearly knocking it over. “I was so worried! You’ve been gone for hours!”
Ginny smiled as her mother nearly smothered her in a hug.
“Mum!” Ginny yelled. “I’m fine! You shouldn’t have worried. I always come home.”
Ginny then ushered her mother back to her chair next to Arthur Weasley and walked back to her pack.
I haven’t much,” She admitted as she opened the pack. “I was almost caught by some of the Hunters. I was lucky to get this much…”
Ginny could see the disappointment on everyone’s faces as she pulled out the moldy bread and the old pumpkin juice. She had tried to get good food, she really had. But most of it had already been picked through. Ginny sighed and began to pass small pieces of the non-molded bread parts to her family. Everyone had to move back to the Burrow. They had lost all of their money when the Hunters took Gringott’s over. There was nothing left at all. The richest wizards and witches were now among he poorest.
“I’m not hungry,” Fred said when Ginny got to him. “You can give my share to Hermione.”
Ginny smiled at her brother. He and Hermione had gotten married about a month before the Cold Age begun. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, Hermione had said. But they ended up falling madly in love with each other, and Hermione was now carrying Fred’s child.
Hermione kissed Fred on the cheek and took the bread. Ginny walked past them to where her mother and father sat, nearly wasting away. They had tried to save most of the food for their children throughout the Cold Age and they were now beginning to succumb to starvation.
Ginny nearly jumped when she heard a loud cry from the end of the table. Fleur, Bill’s wife, sat with her face in her hands and with her shoulders shaking. Bill put his arm around her and whispered something in her ear which seemed to calm her down. Fleur’s entire family had been murdered by the Hunters during the first year of the Cold Age and she hadn’t been the same since.
Ginny sighed. Even though times were tough Hermione and Fred, Bill and Fleur, and her mother and father seemed to be able to stay in love. Ginny probably would have been married by this point if Harry hadn’t of vanished off of the face of the earth. No one had seen him since that dreadful night two years ago; the night that began the Cold Age. That night had been horrifying and amazing at the same time. She had been saved by none other than Draco Malfoy himself. The meanest, foulest, and most horrible boy in the world had saved her. Perhaps he wasn’t so horrible after all.