Author's Notes: I do not and never will own HP.
Trigger warning for self harm. Slightly AU.
(Much thanks to Luna, who is foxinspace on here, and Blue, who I know from Tumblr, for helping me figure out some kind of ending.)
It starts after the Chamber.
Her mother's in a tither, fussing over her and demanding that she come home before the year's even up, like she has something to hide, like she's damaged, and before Ginny realises she's doing it, her fingernails bite into her palms and she tells her mum to shut up, she's staying at Hogwarts, and that's final.
When Molly gasps like she's been slapped, Ginny thinks that she's gone too far, but her father rests his hand on Molly's elbow and reminds her that Ginny's overwrought and "perhaps she's right, love, she should stay with her friends, it might be best- to heal, you know-"
Ginny knows better than to speak up and say she hasn't got any friends. Not anymore. Harry killed my only friend, actually, Mum and Dad, but you see, it was necessary, because he was killing me...
No, Ginny stays silent.
It's not until later, when she's tucked between crisp, medicinal sheets at the far end of the Hospital Wing, that she notices the damage she's unwittingly inflicted. Purpling bruised crescents mark both palms, and there's blood- just a little, but it's enough to fascinate her. It's pretty, in a weird sort of way, but more than that, it's real. If it's real, then she must be real, and that soothes her somewhere deep down inside, where raw, festering emptiness oozes.
She'll never tell anyone (especially not Harry), but for a moment, when she'd found herself thrust back into her body, when she'd gasped and convulsed a bit and felt like herself, like she'd been shocked repeatedly and suddenly overflowed the banks of her own self- she had wished that he'd been just a moment too late.
Ginny pushes the thought away. It is a traitorous thought. It is a bad thought. It is a related to Tom Riddle thought, and particularly in her own mind, that ensures it is anathema.
After Madam Pomfrey makes her rounds, Ginny sinks her nails into her hands again, relishing the bright, stinging blaze of pain that slowly erupts. She only realises after that she's biting her bottom lip, too, teeth digging into the already-delicate flesh. It makes her smile.
It continues at home.
Staying at Hogwarts didn't help. She admits that, but only to herself. Oh, it helped the rumours. She was right to stay there, right to face up to the entire student body- I did nothing, I was misled- but the school haunts her. All she dreams of at night is a high, cold, cruel laugh, green light painting the surroundings, and the sibilant sounds of Parseltongue, spilling from her slack lips. She remembers chicken feathers, soft and scratchy, spilling from the pockets of her robes, and red paint spilling down her front, so dark it looks like blood.
Home isn't better. Mum stifles her- she's barely allowed to go to the loo on her own and the one time she attempts to do her homework in the privacy of her own room, Molly barges in and nearly snaps her quill in half with panic. Not to mention how many times Arthur has cast and re-cast detection spells at every single sheet of parchment and school book she owns. It was just the diary, she tries to explain, exasperated and nearly at her wit's end, but her parents only give her a look and tell her they just want to be sure.
That night, she takes one of her old quills, sharpens the tip, and scratches red lines into the pale, yielding skin of her upper thigh. At first, it's wobbly defiance- I'll write on something, fucking watch me- but a strange, sudden calmness pools in her stomach, watching bubbles of red well up. When nobody bursts through the door, wand waving and shouting, Ginny smiles. She has no qualms about using a handful of her school robes to mop up the blood. They are laundered clean, but nothing can erase Tom Riddle from them. Nothing.
Arthur brings up a Mind Healer, but Molly refuses, her cheeks mottled red with the force of the words spraying from her mouth. Ginny tucks herself into a corner of the kitchen, unnoticed, balling her fists in her sleeves, as she listens to her mum rant about how no daughter of hers will need a Mind Healer, the very thought is preposterous, look, Arthur, she's fine now, why do you want to bring it all up again, it's not like we can afford it-
Ron looks at her with wide, startled eyes and Ginny just stares back. There is no more talk of a Mind Healer.
The summer passes. Slowly, her parents let her finish her homework in her room. Her brothers keep dropping in on her, and she keeps up the pretense as best as she can. See, I am still your daughter, I am still your sister, I am Ginevra Molly Weasley and I am not a shell, I did not leave myself behind in the Chamber of Secrets, pressed between two pages of an old diary like a wilted flower-
The nights ground her. She pushes her window open and stares at the stars, absently pinching the scarred, rough skin of her thighs, pressing bruises around her kneecaps. Sometimes it doesn't even hurt. Sometimes she doesn't care.
Coming back to Hogwarts is no better. Her trunk is full of Muggle razors she stole from a Muggle shop two weeks before school started. Her brothers covered for her- they thought she was buying something else. Fred and George searched her for Dark magic, but there is nothing Dark about sharpened bits of mundane metal, and she hoards their secret close to herself, like something precious. She didn't know what she was searching for until she found it- something handier than a quill, less significant than a wand.
Something Muggle is perfect, Ginny thinks, and can't help but laugh, just a bit.
When the dementors enter the train, Harry isn't the only one who faints. For Ginny, nobody notices but Loony Luna Lovegood, who just manages to catch her before she falls off the seat. When she comes to, Luna has her half in her lap, half on the floor, and is looking down at her with a very dreamy smile and tears staining her cheeks.
"Here," Luna tells her, and hands her a bar of chocolate from their new DADA professor. At first, she wants to refuse it, but Luna looks very implacable all of a sudden, and Ginny finds herself breaking off bits of chocolate and putting them in her mouth anyway. It's the first food in months that doesn't taste like ashes.
Luna says that dementors are horrible creatures, in a slightly wobbly voice, wrapping herself up in her robes and playing with her sleeves. Ginny agrees wholeheartedly.
It's like the castle is enshrouded, Ginny thinks with weary hopelessness that night, dragging herself up to her dormitory. She wishes Luna was in Gryffindor. The dotty Ravenclaw never seemed like a brilliant choice for friend before, but they bonded over their shared dislike of dementors on the train. But now- now she is alone, and facing her dorm mates seems like more than she can take. They were cordial before the summer- a bit cautious, but extending at least a tentative hand of friendship. They still are, but Ginny finds herself hiding in the loo anyway, a Muggle razor glinting in her fingers and her breathing coming in ragged, whooping gasps.
She hopes the house elves can be discreet when it comes to blood stains.
They can- or perhaps, Ginny thinks with burning cheeks, they assume the blood is from somewhere else, as she's suddenly found her bedside cabinet full of magical sanitary napkins, a labeled potion for menstrual cramps, and a heating pad. She started the past summer, sometime toward the end of July, and it's not that time, but she pretends it is anyway. It's easier that way.
Besides, the heating pad is oddly soothing, perched on her stomach as she tries to sleep.
Life falls into a routine. She goes to meals, picks at her food until she's managed to swallow enough to convince her brothers (and Luna, from the Ravenclaw table) that she's nourished, goes to classes, writes essays with a hand that only slightly shakes...
She spends the rest of the time with Luna because being alone is intolerable. She knows she could spend time with Fred or George or Ron, but- the twins have enough to worry about besides their baby sister, and Ron doesn't like being seen with her, not when she's a second year and he's friends with Harry Potter- She doesn't think badly of him for it. He's been overshadowed by everyone else, and Harry doesn't seem to mind, not when Ron can still be a decent friend.
Her own fledgling crush seems to have evaporated with the basilisk's last breath. She doesn't think that she cares. She thinks of her own behaviour toward the Boy Who Lived last year, and her face floods with shame. She might as well have joined the fan club (she carefully doesn't think about the membership pamphlet hidden at the very bottom of her trunk) and flung herself at his feet. No more.
Ginny starts visiting the second floor girls' bathroom again. Moaning Myrtle doesn't bother her. In fact, Moaning Myrtle takes one look at her, goes even more transparent than usual, and vanishes down the nearest toilet. For a moment, Ginny feels bad about that, but shrugs it off. She doesn't try to enter the Chamber (she doubts that she can mimic the proper hissing), but she sits underneath the sink, knees up and arms folded tight around them. She doesn't think about anything at all until Luna tiptoes in and finds her, guiding her back to the rest of the castle with an airy warning about Wrackspurts.
On a very cold night in the middle of October, she sneaks out of her dormitory, tiptoeing out the portrait hole and down the hall. It's not the wisest of decisions, Ginny knows, but can't bring herself to give a single fuck. Just thinking the word makes her shoulders hunch up defensively, as if Molly Weasley's dish towel or wand can flick her ear even here. Nobody sees her or stops her as she makes her way out onto the grounds, heading for the Quidditch Pitch.
The school brooms are- not the best, but she doesn't care, plucking the best of a motley lot out of the pile and arrowing into the dreary sky. The wind whistles past her ears and she's bitterly cold in a minute (she's wearing a sweater, but it's not nearly enough), but it doesn't matter. Nothing matters but the feeling of weightlessness, the drizzle needling down her collar, and the brief, glorious feeling that she's left all of her problems down on the pitch. She loops and rolls, pulling stunts that would turn Molly's hair white, content-
When she looks down, someone else is tucked into the bleachers, watching her.
The shock makes her broom wobble, but Ginny knows how to control it, and she soon levels out, flying down in slow spirals to see precisely how much trouble she's in. She feels queasy all of a sudden, and fiercely wishes that she had one of her razors.
It's not a professor-
But it is Luna.
Just a feeling, Luna explains quietly, once Ginny has landed and guiltily tossed the misappropriated broom with its fellows. Luna looks cold- her cheeks are red, and her hands are buried in her shirt. Ginny goes very pale when she looks down and realises Luna's only in her socks.
"My shoes have gone missing again," Luna offers with a shrug, like it doesn't matter, but Ginny knows it does.
She scolds Luna, telling her she's going to catch a cold, but Luna just looks rather pointedly at her still-dripping hair and the bedraggled wool of her sweater. She walks back quickly, bursting with barely stifled energy, dragging Luna with her. The entry is as still as when she left.
"Come on," Ginny whispers impulsively, tugging Luna up the stairs. She knows one place they won't be disturbed.
Moaning Myrtle is nowhere to be seen when they step into the second floor girls' room, though Ginny can hear very distorted sobbing coming from somewhere in the pipes.
Why here, Luna asks with wide, curious eyes, and Ginny shrugs. How can she explain? It feels- safe- in here, though it shouldn't.
Perhaps it's that safety that has Ginny yanking up the sleeves of her sweater and unpeeling her tights, showing ragged, raw lines. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't know how.
"Oh, Ginny," Luna says softly. She steps closer, gently uncurling Ginny's fingers so that her sleeves can flop free, looking away so that Ginny can pull her tights back up. Ginny looks at the wall, cheeks burning, eyes suspiciously blurry.
"Have you gone to Madam Pomfrey?" Luna asks. "Some of those look infected maybe-"
"No," Ginny blurts out. She's shivering, but she doesn't know why. The bathroom is warm enough compared to the pitch. "She doesn't know, no one knows but- but you now, and i-it has to stay that way-"
"Why?" Luna asks. There's no judgment in her voice, but Ginny flinches a little anyway. Cool fingers brush some of her fringe back, and Luna is right there, and her eyes are the steadiest Ginny has ever seen them.
"Mum said I don't need a Mind Healer," Ginny replies, a bit proud of how even her tone has become. "I'm better and they can't afford it."
"But you aren't better," Luna points out. "And if money is an issue, I'd be glad to help- although I doubt Madam Pomfrey would charge you anyway."
"Yes, but," Ginny says helplessly. "You- I couldn't ask you to do that, I'll be fine, I prom-"
"We're friends," Luna interrupts. "That's what friends do. That's what Mum always said anyway." Luna stops, swallowing hard, and Ginny reaches out before she can stop herself, holding Luna's hand.
"I want to help you," Luna continues. "But I can't help you with this by myself. It doesn't have to be now or anything. It doesn't have to be Madam Pomfrey. But I really do think that you should see someone. If nothing else because like I said, those cuts look infected."
"Will you come with me?" Ginny asks in a small voice. Luna smiles at her.
"Of course I will," she says, and Ginny hugs her as tightly as she can.
"Thank you," she stammers in Luna's ear. "I- thank you."
Luna's return hug is answer enough.