The Horcrux Children
1.
Ginerva Weasley first meets Harry Potter at platform nine and three quarters. She doesn't know he is then and in her excitement trips over him. Or at least that's what her mother thought. Molly Weasley didn't see the way he casually changed his path to move in front of her, or the way Ginny pretends not to notice as she deliberately catches her foot on his. He lifts her to her feet like a real prince, says a few carefully selected words, and becomes her first crush as a small smirk plays on his face at their game of subtlety. That night she dreams of dark green eyes.
2.
Harry deliberately finds an empty compartment on the train. He knows he's famous but not how much, so it's a game of sorts. He wants to test the character of the people who seek him out. He wants to know who's ambitious, who's curious, and who's just plain attention seeking. He finds them in Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley.
3.
Ginny can remember the fight her father got in when she was five. It had been one of her first times out in Diagon Alley and a sharp faced blond man had made a remark about her. There was spell light and physical blows. She cowered under a table and wished for it to end. And, when it finally did, and her father and the blond man were taken away for disrupting the peace, whilst she was lead away by a female auror to wait for her mother to get her, she leant down and picked up the diary she found in the middle of the dusty road.
4.
When Harry Potter arrives at Hogwarts he is not what people were expecting. He is elegant, refined, and charming and not Gryffindor in the least. The small smirk on his face when the hat calls out 'Slytherin' is enough to prove that he belongs there.
5.
Ginny knows that Tom Riddle was not her friend. She knows if she had been older, had she been stronger than he would have drained her strength, her soul and used it as his own whilst she lay dead as a hollow shell. But she wasn't older and Tom knew that the diary would be noticed eventually. So as she told him her secrets he slowly integrated his soul fragment into her own. Until one day at dinner she realises she hates her father for his love of muggles.
6.
Harry sits through the welcoming feast exchanging polite conversation with his new housemates. His word's stroke Draco's ego, allay to rest Daphne's well hidden fears, and silently enters an agreement of later exchange of knowledge with Theodore. And all the while Harry wonders what to do about Voldemort possessing his DADA teacher.
7.
Ginny reads about Harry in her brother's letters. She reads how he moves through the houses like he belongs to each one of them. She reads how he diffuses situations between the warring Slytherins and Gryffindors with easy grace, pleasing both sides and gaining as well. She reads how he already has a large group in the year that listen to what he has to say. Then she reads between the lines and sees he has no real friends.
8.
It's late at night when Harry absently recalls the first time he realised his soul was not fully his own. He'd had his suspicions a while but it was when the guest speaker in his filthy primary school brought in a snake and he understood what it was saying that he recalled moments of another life for the first time whilst still awake. And as he sat watching the creature, he smirked like he had a lifetime before.
9.
Ginny grows to hate her family. She hates the way the belittle her as the only girl. She hates the way they don't see her brilliance. But most of all she hates the way part of her tainted soul rebels and loves them anyway.
10.
Harry hates the way Dumbledore watches him. A small part of him remembers how much he hated it years before. He's more careful this time though. He plays the game better than he did before. He befriends Hermione Granger and thinks what a useful tool she is. A shield from suspicious eyes. A mudblood and a Gryffindor. It's easy to hide his distain for her, especially when she isn't searching for it. He's kind, she's desperate, and they're intellectual peers. How easy people are to fool.
11.
Ginny likes to wear masks. It's a game to her. People are easy to fool. She fools her father into believing her brothers have hurt her and watches maliciously as he punishes them. She fools her brothers into believing it was a misunderstanding and laughs to herself as they run themselves ragged trying to please her as she cries. She fools her mother into spending more money on her than her siblings and smirks as she runs her hands through the fine material of her new dress. But then she goes to play with the Lovegood girl and fumes in anger as she sees past her masks like they're not even there.
12.
Harry learns of the philosophers' stone in the first few months of school. He knows it's guarded but seeks little to obtain it. Dumbledore still watches and whilst immortality and wealth is much to desire, anonymity is much more important at this stage. Besides he's still working on it in a way.
13.
One day Ginny's mum takes her with her when she does to visit a distant squib cousin. They leave her alone at the park with muggle children her own age as they talk together on a bench over coffee. Ten minutes later they have to go home after an incident where a snake bit one of the other children. 'It's a shame,' her mother comments. Ginny thinks not.
14.
Harry sits in the corner of the Slytherin common room and observes. He does it slyly, reading an obscure book of runes he found in the library. And in a dark brown journal makes notes, theorises, and improves on what he reads. Whilst he does that he watches, catalogues, and learns the best way to manipulate each of his housemates. A smile for that witch, a challenge for the boy at the fireplace, and lonely mask seeking company for the abused second year.
15.
Ginny goes to Romania for Christmas. She sees Charlie again for the first time in a year. He teaches her about all the dragon types. He tells her their strengths and weaknesses. Ginny already knows them though. She wonders what Charlie would say if he knew that part of her tainted soul once spent long hours in a library factoring in how dragons could work in its favour.
16.
Harry looks the invisibility cloak over and marvels at its quality. It's probably the finest piece of workmanship he's ever seen. He'd go as far to say infallible. He can't help the small laugh to himself as he realises what Dumbledore has handed him.
17.
Ginny dreams of her coming days at Hogwarts. And each time she does she dreams of verdant eyes. She worries it's obsession, the way she scours for information about the boy in her brother's scarce letters. And she finds herself impressed when she learns from Charlie about the way he helped Hagrid the groundskeeper with a dragon problem. And yet she couldn't care less that he's helping people. She's impressed by the way he's gained allies in them.
18.
Harry marvels at how well he's integrated himself into all four houses. Most don't even seem to care he's not one of their own, whilst some of the older Slytherins wonder at how The-Boy-Who-Lived is more one of them than they themselves are. Snape just regards the boy with solemn contempt and thinks how he's very little like either of his parents.
19.
Ginny is going through her old things when she stumbles across the empty husk of a diary she once treasured. It's useless and empty. The soul it contained is now hers. But still, she gently brushes the dust off it, and places it in the old battered trunk her mother brought down from the attic ready for school.
20.
Harry watches himself or rather part of what he once was. He knows that Voldemort is beneath the turban. He is the man's most loyal ally. How could he not be when part of his soul belongs to him. However he knows not to approach. It's too soon and Dumbledore is too close. So watches and he plans and he fumes when he sees himself flee at the end of the year without the stone. He is so weak now and Dumbledore has foiled him again.
21.
It's late at night when Ginny feels the anger vibrate down her soul. Part of her is relieved to know that the part of herself that is Voldemort is still out there and several plans form in her mind on how to rejoin him. However part of her wonders at the anger and how it comes from the same yet different source.
22.
The end of the school year comes quickly. Harry has the best marks in the year and Hermione seeks to learn where she went wrong from him. He listens and puts up with the girl in close quarters for all of the train ride home. However, when they come to part, he wonders why he regrets the joy in her eyes when he introduces him to her muggle parents as her 'best friend'.
23.
Ginny meets Harry again briefly in Flourish and Blotts about a month before the school year. She watches as he skilfully avoids the pathetic attentions of an even more pathetic author. And makes small talk with him over the usefulness of a borderline dark book he was perusing. And as their talk progresses they each pull more of their masks into play, watching knowingly as the other does the same. They each try to out act the other in wits and masks. Finally Ginny issues the challenge of fooling the author. It's a simple task, the real challenge is catching it in her delicate words in the first place. The smirk is enough to know he heard loud and clear.
24.
Harry smirks as he watches Ginerva leave the bookstore. In her cauldron she has not only Lockheart's complete collection but all of the schoolbooks on her list and then some completely free of charge and courtesy of the author. She turns to him, her smirk mirroring his. Her brown eyes sparkle. 'You won this time,' they say. And somehow he relishes the promise of more games of wit.
25.
Ginny smiles to herself as she lays the last neatly folded dress down. It rests on top of all her school things. Everything was ready for Hogwarts. She was finally going home.