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Green grass stretches far, kissing bright blue sky at the edge of the horizon and promising land further still. Facing the horizon is the hodgepodge Castle, reminding Ginny of another home in the way the rooms stack on top of each other nonsensically, larger on the inside than the rock walls make it seem. Oddly, the rooms have settled in the general opposite order they had at Hogwarts. The common rooms make the foundation of the Castle, with Gryffindor at the stark center, surrounded by Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. All the other dusty classrooms and courtyards had grown on top of it as more and more students entered the Room, each being comforted by something new. The Great Hall sits proudly on the second floor, next to the Slytherin Common Room.
Everyone is welcome in the Room.
Ginny had staked a claim on the Quidditch field as soon as it had popped into place, moving into the supplies shed next to the court. She transfigured a few of the old, school issued brooms into a bed and a pillow; this was before it had become too unstable to use magic in the Room. The Gryffindor common room was practically overrun at that point, and Ginny could sleep on a few stray pieces of straw at night while the other Muggleborn children rested by the fire. It was the least she could do. Neville had done the same, choosing to live next to the rows of lettuce and strawberries he had been planting in the rich, fertile dirt the Room had provided for them.
It had been about a year into the war, Ginny thinks, when they’d made that conscious decision. To live in the Room. By that point, it was hard to ignore the signs from the castle; the original Hogwarts castle, not the makeshift one in the Room. Magic only stretches so far, and cannot create something out of nothing; when more and more students sought refuge in the Room, afraid of the Carrows roaming the halls of Hogwarts and even more afraid of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named outside of Hogwarts, the Room called upon Hogwarts itself to serve the Requirements of its students and the Requirements of the Room.
Hogwarts loves its students. Hogwarts is weak. Hogwarts agreed.
And the castle ate itself, transporting its halls into the Room’s pocket dimension and recreating the Castle inside the room as the real Hogwarts crumbled. Who were the DA to ignore this sign, and who were the scared little children to turn away from the one safe haven they had? Neville and Ginny and Luna had created the Room as a place to hide out and plan and fight back, but then Luna had been taken, and a Chasing team needs three people, not two.
As much as they try, they can’t keep track of time. Clocks don’t work, and the Room’s unnatural weather, with the painted stars and fixed sun and moon, make it hard to decipher. But she knows she’s grown older, as have Neville and Hannah and Terry. There’s no use in pretending, when the little first years aren’t so little anymore and Neville’s gardens have turned from precious little seedlings into towering creations with their own harvest seasons. Oddly enough, the kitchens haven’t shown up in the Room yet. Hannah says it’s because of the house elves, who wouldn’t come into the Room and wouldn’t abandon their kitchen. Ginny knows it’s because the Room hasn’t been filled yet and doesn’t have the need for kitchens, because there’s still people outside. Still someone.
Most of them think she’s insane for still believing, she knows. But Neville knows the truth, and so does she. They wouldn’t have abandoned them, and the resistance against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is stronger than most give it credit for.
And she often sees Neville, walking behind the Castle. Towards the only classroom not a part of the Castle, because it had never officially been a part of Hogwarts in the first place. And sometimes she even joins him, walking past the training bean bags and the dummies, past the walls lined with bookshelves and the empty hammocks hanging from the alcoves. Always, they stand there. But they don’t dare open the door.