Hermione pulled her sweater over her head and began working at her tightly knotted tie. "Oh no!" Ginny looked up, and watched Hermione struggle to untangle her tie from a heavy gold chain that also hung around her neck. Ginny looked back down, figuring Hermione's outburst had to do with her being tangled up. She slowly undid her own tie, as beneath her, the Hogwarts Express rattled forward on its way. They'd both decided that they couldn't bear staying in their robes any longer - it was officially the Christmas holiday, and they intended to be dressed as such. Ginny lifted her shirt over her head without bothering with the buttons and replaced it with a green knitted sweater.
She leaned back against the seat and cuddled into herself. Hermione had just managed to untangle the gold chain and lifted it over her head. "Damn," she muttered, scrunching her eyebrows together as she stared down at the necklace which, Ginny now saw, had some kind of large hourglass charm on it.
Ginny shifted forward slightly to get a better look. The charm seemed familiar, though she couldn't quite tell why. "What is that?" she asked, as Hermione began shoving it into her bag.
Hermione looked up, seeming surprised to find Ginny there. Her cheeks reddened as she glanced at the necklace, now only partially visible, and then back at Ginny. "It's just something... I wasn't meant to bring home with me. I forgot to take it off." Ginny shrugged, and stared out the window at the snowy landscape whipping by while Hermione finished changing.
Hermione sat and Ginny heard her fidget around a while then clear her throat. "Can you keep a secret?" she asked.
Ginny glanced away from the window, but the anxiety on Hermione's face made her shift her attention fully to her friend.
"I've been known to," Ginny said, with a grin. Hermione laughed shortly, tapping a finger against her knee. Ginny leaned forward and caught Hermione's eyes. "Seriously," she amended, "what's going on?"
Hermione took a deep breath, then glanced toward the door, as if to check that they were still alone. Finding the compartment empty - still - she turned and pulled the golden necklace from her bag. She played with the chain between her fingers.
"This," she looked up at Ginny, "is a time turner."
"Whoa," Ginny responded, reaching out for it immediately. She'd heard Professor Binns mention them before - her otherwise disinterested ears had perked up at the mention of time travel - but she never thought she'd see one. They were kept locked up in the ministry and shared rarely.
Hermione, carefully, allowed Ginny to take it from her. She ran her fingers over the rotating rings, finding letters carved into the outermost circle. As she leaned in closer to read it, Hermione recited the inscription from memory.
"I mark the hours, every one, Nor have I yet outrun the Sun. My use and value, unto you, Are gauged by what you have to do."
Ginny ran her middle finger over the final five words. What you have to do.
"I've been using it to get to my classes. The ministry let me borrow one so I could take more. I had to promise to use it for nothing else, of course."
"That's amazing," Ginny whispered, mind already whirring with possibility of what that 'nothing else' might entail. She looked up to see Hermione smiling and - if she wasn't mistaken - relieved.
"It's been so hard to keep it a secret all year," she confessed.
Ginny nodded. "I'm sure Harry and Ron would have some ideas of what to use it for."
Hermione laughed. "That's exactly what I've been worried about. They'd certainly try to talk me into something absurd."
Ginny's smile faded quickly as she continued fiddling with the time turner. Fearing that Hermione might grow suspicious of her fascination, she spoke, pulling her eyes away from the sand slithering through the hourglass. "How does it work?"
"I've got a book!" Hermione said, immediately digging into her bag and pulling out an old, well read volume. Ginny wondered if it had come from the restricted section. Time magic was generally considered dangerous, and Ginny wondered how Hermione battled the temptation to use it all the time - if she did.
Ginny surrendered the time turner itself in exchange for the book. She flipped through, unable to resist stopping on a particular section - the one on traveling through over a year of time. Even though Hermione could never have guessed her purpose, Ginny self consciously pulled the book into her chest as she skimmed quickly over the words. Attempts to travel back further than a few hours... catastrophic harm... such experiments abandoned since 1899... The experiments mentioned all involved travel of several hundred years, which seemed idiotic to Ginny, not to mention pointless. She flipped a couple of pages to find that time travel over several months had been attempted and practiced without any serious damage but was, nevertheless, illegal. Each turn of the inner hourglass took you back one hour but, by pulling out the knob a bit, you could travel back one month at a time. This particular function was locked and prohibited, but unless they wanted to remake each one - which Ginny gathered would be extremely difficult - it would still work.
"Why me?" Ginny asked suddenly, glancing up and closing the book, but keeping her finger in the bottom to hold the page.
"What?"
"I mean, why tell me?"
Hermione tilted her head to the side and leaned back into her seat. "Because I trust you. And I needed to tell somebody."
Ginny frowned, feeling guilty for what she was about to do. But not so guilty that she reconsidered. She reached over to her bundled up robes, where her wand was still in an inside pocket. Carefully, appearing as casual as she could, Ginny wrapped her fingers around her wand and, without removing it from her pocket, mumbled a sleeping spell.
Hermione collapsed sideways immediately, and Ginny breathed a sigh of relief. One girl in her year had terrible insomnia, and had asked Ginny to use a spell on her that her mom had done at home. After practicing on Scabbers a few times, Ginny tried. At first the sleep was too light, and then too deep, but after nights of practice, she'd perfected it.
She leaned forward, checking that Hermione's slow, deep breaths were normal, then wasted no more time. She pulled the Time-Turner from Hermione's limp fingers and threw it around her neck. She tried pulling out the knob on the side and found that it was, in fact, locked. She hoped that lock was literal.
"Alohomora," she whispered, tapping her wand against the golden rings. A tiny clicking noise came from the Time-Turner, and Ginny tried the knob once more. When it clicked into place between her fingers, her heart began to race - but not from fear. This was her chance, likely her only chance, to change everything. Everything that had happened to her. No Tom Riddle. No Basilisk, no blood on the walls, no feeling the life siphoned out of her while she waited, pitifully, for rescue.
She began turning the hourglass.
"But where's Ron?" Ginny asked, trying to turn around as she was forced down the aisle of the Hogwarts Express for the first time.
"Got lost, probably," George joked, dropping a hand onto his younger sister's shoulder and gently steering her forward. Ginny stumbled forward, feeling as if she was drowning just in the sheer number of people around her. Why was everyone so tall? And where had Ron gone? And Harry? She felt herself blush and glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, but no one seemed to see her at all. She felt tiny here and as she reached up to her shoulder, suddenly realized that George's hand has disappeared.
Whirling around, Ginny saw that the twins had gotten distracted talking to some girls she didn't recognize. In the mean time, she'd been shuffling forward, and now several rather disgruntled looking people separated her from her brothers. Ginny fought frantically to turn around, trying to squeeze by the people who clearly just wanted to sit down before the train began to move.
Fred, who was standing halfway in a compartment now, looked up when he noticed the traffic jam in the aisle and grinned and shook his head when he saw Ginny at the front of it. "Go on," he shouted, waving to her, "we'll be right there!"
Ginny would have much rather stayed with her brothers, even if it meant standing in silence while they talked to their friends, but she had no choice but to keep going. With one hand sliding across the wall as she walked, Ginny whipped her head back and forth, searching for someone that she recognized. Not that she knew anyone here outside of her family, but still, there should have been enough Weasleys on this train.
A flick of fire red hair caught her eye, and without thinking, Ginny stepped through the open compartment door. The door slammed shut before she even saw who she'd walked in on, but she knew immediately that it wasn't one of her brothers. The girl drawing a curtain over the compartment's window had flowing red hair that reached halfway down her back and wore knee high black boots.
"Um," Ginny managed to squeak out before the girl turned around and shocked her into speechlessness. Absurdly, her first thought was that her accidental traveling companion was carrying a mirror, except that the determined and hardened expression in front of her was one she'd never seen on her own face.
"Don't ask questions, just listen," Ginny's look alike commanded. She grasped Ginny's shoulders and pushed her down onto the seat, then sat across from her. While Ginny stared, the other, strange Ginny spoke quickly and confidently.
"Yes, I'm you. From the future. I used something called a Time-Turner to come back and talk to you. We only have a few minutes before Percy shows up. He's looking for you now." The girl glanced anxiously at the compartment door, giving Ginny's whirling mind a moment to catch up.
"Am I dreaming?" she asked.
The girl, her future self, laughed without changing her expression. The result frightened Ginny, and she wondered how this girl could possibly be her. Or, how she could ever become this girl.
"You're not dreaming. Listen to me." She leaned forward and took both of Ginny's hands in hers, staring forcibly into her eyes. Ginny couldn't help but stare, never having seen her own eyes so close before, or so intense. "Horrible things will happen to you this year."
She sucked in a deep breath, waiting for her future self to continue. Instead, the girl across from her kept staring, and Ginny dropped her eyes to avoid the scathing eye contact.
"Ginny? Has anyone seen –" Both girls jumped at Percy's voice, and finally the girl dropped Ginny's hands. Breathing hard and fast, she switched to the other side of the compartment. She grasped Ginny's shoulder and began whispering in her ear. Outside, Ginny heard Percy's voice getting louder, asking if anyone had seen a first year with red hair.
"You're going to change the future. Riddle's diary, get rid of it." She didn't give Ginny time to protest and dug her nails further into her shoulder as she continued. "Get. Rid. Of. It. Slip it into someone's bag when they aren't looking. Anyone. Make sure they don't see you. Got it?"
Ginny turned, and finally saw something of herself in the girl next to her. The anger and intensity had been replaced by desperation. She was pleading.
"I'll do it," Ginny said, deciding in that moment to trust this girl – to trust herself.
Future Ginny nodded, and then pulled her necklace from her shirt. Ginny watched in fascination as the girl fiddled with the hourglass she wore. Slowly and methodically she turned the dial.
"One more thing," she said suddenly, looking up from the necklace. Outside, Ginny heard a knock on the compartment door.
"Listen to the sorting hat."
"What?" Ginny asked, perplexed by the change in subject. Behind her, she heard the compartment door begin to slide open.
Eyes flashing, the girl leaned in close. "Gryffindor is for heroes and people heroes think are worth saving. You're not a hero, and you'll get sick of being saved. Trust the sorting hat." And then, just as the compartment door slammed open, the girl twisted the glass between her fingers and disappeared.
"Who were you talking to?" Percy asked, sliding in across from Ginny.
"Uh." Ginny closed her eyes. "No one. Myself." Her brother looked at her strangely, but didn't press the matter. She guessed that he really didn't care.
"Ah, another Weasley." Ginny's breath caught in her throat as the voice whispered in her ear. She knew that the sorting hat sometimes spoke to you, but that hadn't prepared her for the voice that seemed more inside her mind than out of it. The hat drooped almost down over her eyes, and she swore she could feel it moving, humming around her ears. She bit her lip and waited for it to say more.
"I suppose I should put you in Gryffindor..." Ginny let out the breath she'd been holding since the tall, elegant witch - Professor McGonagall - had called her name. "But you're different from the others," the hat continued, "intelligent, driven, and so much anger." Ginny's fingers, knotted tightly together in her lap, began to shake. She'd squeezed her eyes shut the moment the hat was dropped upon her head so she couldn't see all the people staring, and maybe that was why the words whispered in her ears didn't quite feel real.
"I think I should put you in Slytherin." Ginny's heart raced as she began to imagine her family's reactions to her being sorted into Slytherin. Not being in Gryffindor was bad enough, but Slytherin?
"I know," the voice said, "it's difficult to be different. But they'll figure it out one way or another."
Ginny nodded, forgetting that the hat could already see into her mind. Do it. she thought. I'm not scared.
"You are. But Slytherin will help you with that." Ginny opened her eyes and listened to the hat shout its decision into the room. It seemed that the whole world paused and even though her eyes were boring into the back of the room, she could feel her brothers watching. Then suddenly, applause erupted from the table on the far right.
Ginny rose, letting her eyes fall on the table that housed her new family. She smiled at the cheers, and sat in the first of the many seats offered to her. Blushing and laughing, she shook hands with a few people around her as they tried to introduce themselves over the din.
McGonagall called the next name and the table quieted, but Ginny could still feel their eyes on her. Families didn't always get sorted into the same houses, of course, but the Weasleys were practically a Gryffindor legacy. Most of the glances from the Slytherin table glowed with curiosity, but she could feel the disapproving stares coming from the Gryffindor table, as if she'd betrayed them. At that moment, she decided not to care. She was heeding a warning from her future self - no one else could be expected to understand.
She had to look out for herself.