So . . . I don't know if any of you have ever had a character that won't leave you alone. You try to work on something else, like something you hope can actually be published someday, or something that's going to be graded, helping to determine your college GPA, and she's just . . . sitting there. Patiently. Whenever you look up.

That was Ginny for me the past two days. See, my friends and I are reading the series aloud, and we just got finished with CoS, and there's a line near the end that is absolute bull. It's something like "On the other hand, Ginny was perfectly happy again," and I don't believe that for an instant. Not after what she went through.

No, I think it's gonna take longer than a few weeks, or a summer, or even a few years. Because as I was reviewing the "Lucky you" scene in OotP, I realized something. Harry apologizes to her. And I don't think anyone had before.

Anyway, that's where this comes from.

DISCLAIMER: Even though Ginny likes to hang out in my dorm room, sitting on my bed staring at me, once I've written what she tells me to write, she leaves, which kinda indicates that she's not mine and never has been.

Healing

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. Paul Boese

There are three people in the entire world who know the whole of what happened to me first year. The first is Albus Dumbledore, who simply knew without having to be told most of it. The second is, of course, Harry Potter.

My family knows the barest details. I don't talk about it, not to anyone. I never have, not really. They know I had a diary, they know it was Voldemort's old diary, they know he used it to possess me, and they know he used me to do his filthy, dirty work. They know Ron and Harry rescued me. But they don't know what happened to me that year or what happened down in that Chamber. They don't know what I went through.

It is the most awful feeling in the world to know that you have committed unimaginable horrors against people you care about. It is the most awful feeling in the world to know that you could have prevented it. I've been told I was only eleven, I've been told that I fought admirably against someone who has used and killed far older and more experienced wizards than I. But no one knows what I know. I could have stopped him. I could have fought harder. No one knows that.

I don't want everyone to know the truth. They wouldn't understand; they could never understand. It's bad enough that my parents know, that Harry knows. I don't want everyone to know the truth.

And yet . . .

I don't want them to know what they think they know, either. I don't want them to see a victim. I don't want them to see a damsel in distress, who waited for her knight in shining white armor, her hero, to come and rescue her.

I am Ginny Weasley. I don't need a damn knight. I fight my own battles.

And I fought him. I did. Once I realized what he was, I fought him with all my eleven-year-old strength, but . . . he got inside my head. He knew how to feed my self-doubt. He knew how to make me fail. And I didn't fight hard enough.

They all tell me it wasn't my fault. They all tell me there was nothing I could have done. But . . . he had to get in in the first place. He had to have an opportunity. And I gave him one. I was a foolish little girl who so desperately wanted a friend that I didn't do what I knew I should have done. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't tell Mum or Dad or a teacher or anyone. Everyone around me had secrets, things they wouldn't tell me. I wanted a secret, too.

I got one.

It's been almost three years since then, and I still have nightmares. I wake up in a cold sweat, weeping, on the verge of screaming out, but I know I can't, and then I curse my own weakness. For letting him get to me then, and for allowing him to keep some hold on me even now.

I didn't faint when the dementors came on the train before second year, but it was a near thing. My boggart turns into a handsome young man of sixteen with a glint of evil in his eyes. Sometimes when I dream, I hear his voice, telling me how worthless I am, how silly, and how I have allowed him to become strong again. And I tell myself that any moment, Harry will come in and rescue me, save me, destroy him.

But in the dreams, Harry never comes. And I can't save myself.

But I'm Ginny Weasley. I don't need a damn knight.

But, oh, how I do.

Mum told the boys not to talk about it, not to bother me. In truth, I couldn't bring myself to look at any of them for two whole weeks that summer. No one came to talk to me, and part of me was glad, but part of me wanted so badly for one of them to come in. I wanted to spill all my fears and worries to someone, but there wasn't anyone I could go to. After what I did to Penny, I couldn't talk to Percy. After what I did to Hermione, I couldn't talk to Ron. After the shock I gave my parents by losing my innocence without either of them noticing, I couldn't talk to Mum or Dad. And Harry was absolutely out of the question.

We went to Egypt that summer, after Dad won the Daily Prophet Galleon Draw. They wanted to get me to think about something other than what had happened. They wanted to get me out of the house and out of my thoughts. Part of me was guilty, because I knew they should have saved the money, but part of me was glad, because Bill was in Egypt.

The third person who knows all of what happened to me in my first year is Bill. I couldn't keep it from him. I couldn't. When he greeted us, he could tell something was up, and he casually arranged it so that he was helping me unpack, alone in my room.

"Hey, Squirt," he said softly, closing the door. I was sitting on the bed in the room. "I hear you had a difficult year." And he was so soft and gentle and not judging that I threw myself into his arms and sobbed. He just held me and waited for me to tell him everything. And I did. And it was . . . such a relief to finally be able to get it all out, to just tell everything to someone. I told Bill how worthless I felt, and how scared I was that maybe I was that awful on my own, and how ashamed I was that I hadn't been able to fight him more. And Bill was gentle and reassuring and so blessedly honest.

Bill really helped it heal, as best as something like that can heal. Bill's the reason I didn't faint when the dementor came near me. Otherwise, I, too, would have blacked out, if only to remove Riddle's voice from my ears. But I had Bill's there too, countering what that monster said. He couldn't counter everything, of course, and he couldn't make it all go away, but he made it bearable, and whenever it became unbearable again, I wrote to him, and he helped fix it.

But there's a part of it that nothing fixes. There's a part of it that won't go away, and won't be made better. And so, I can't banish a dementor. I can't repel a boggart. And there are nights where I wake up wanting to scream.

It's been two and a half years since that day in the Chamber, and the day before Christmas break was to start, I was awakened by Professor McGonagall telling me that my father had been attacked. And later I heard that he had been attacked by a giant snake. And that Harry had been the one to rescue him.

By the time this War is over, how many Weasley's will owe their life to Harry Potter? The count now stands at three.

That night, at Grimmauld Place . . . all I could think of was my first year and people being attacked by snakes, and now it had happened again. To my father. Someone close to me had been attacked by a snake, and I knew it wasn't my fault, but . . .

Everyone else in my family was in such shock that mine just kind of blended in, and no one noticed anything odd. Except Bill. I didn't get a chance to talk to him, but he squeezed my shoulder as he passed my chair and he looked at me and I knew he knew.

But then we overheard Moody tell my mother that he thought Voldemort might be possessing Harry, and that drove thoughts of my father's attack almost out of my mind.

Harry hasn't take the news well. Of course, it's no wonder, but still. No one knows better than I that being possessed by Voldemort is no picnic. I understand not wanting to talk to anyone, but I know what he's going through and I can help. But he's spent most of the last night and today avoiding us, and I'm getting tired of it. Maybe thoughts of my first year haven't been flooding through his head since all this started, but if the prat took two seconds together to think about all this, he'd realize that he has what amounts to a bonafide Voldemort possession expert sharing a house with him, to whom he could go for help. But no. He's too busy feeling sorry for himself. Which needs to end.

I've talked about it with Ron, and Hermione just got here about fifteen minutes ago, and we've talked to her, too, and we're going to do something about Harry. Now.

I'm so irritated with him right now, and maybe it's irrational to be, but I am. Most of the time, I don't mind being indebted to the boy I had a crush on for so long. But at times like these, I want so badly to knock him over the head with something hard and solid.

I'm Ginny Weasley, and I don't need a damn knight, and if I'm going to be stuck owing my life to someone the way I do right now, then that person is, by Merlin's Beard, not going to be someone who spends his days wallowing in self-pity! I won't stand for it.

Hermione went to get Harry out of Buckbeak's room where he's hiding. Ron and I are in their room right now, just waiting.

I can hear Hermione saying something about riding the Knight Bus away from Hogwarts and how furious Umbridge is as she leads Harry into the room. He looks surprised to see Ron and me there. Honestly. Did he really expect that we wouldn't be?

"How are you feeling?" Hermione asks him, and he lies through his teeth and tells us he's fine, which is absolute bull.

Hermione calls him on it, which is good, because I would have if she hadn't. And when she informs him that Ron and I have already told her that he's been avoiding us all, he has the audacity to glare at me! "They do, do they?" he snaps, and I am so tired of this!

"Well, you have!" I snap back, as Ron looks at his feet. Well, I don't bloody care if he's going to let Harry walk all over us in a bout of self-pity. I'm bringing him out of it if it's the last thing I do!

Hermione tells him what I desperately want to. "Oh, stop feeling all misunderstood," she says in that voice that's going to come in handy when she replaces McGonagall someday. "Look, the others have told me what you overheard last night on the Extendable Ears –"

"Yeah? All been talking about me, have you? Well, I'm getting used to it," he growls, and I can't stand it anymore, I really can't.

"We wanted to talk to you, Harry," I tell him straight out, "but as you've been hiding ever since we got back –"

"I didn't want anyone to talk to me," he says, and that's it. The last straw. Everything I've been feeling and reliving and experiencing since I heard Dad was attacked comes boiling to the surface, to say nothing of the struggle that's gone on inside my head for nearly three years.

"Well, that was a bit stupid of you," I yell at him, simply unable to keep it in any longer. "Seeing as you don't know anyone but me who's been possessed by You-Know-Who, and I can tell you how it feels!"

The silence in the room rings after I say that. I don't talk about what happened that year. I don't. I stand, perfectly still, even though I can feel Ron staring and Hermione waiting. Then Harry whirls around to face me.

"I forgot," he says, and I look him straight in the eye.

"Lucky you."

And there's so much more I want to say. How I can't forget. How I wish every day that I could. How I would give anything to be able to forget. But as I look at him, I find I don't really need to say any of it. He knows.

"I'm sorry," he tells me.

And I believe he means it, and for more than just forgetting.

And you know, it's the first time anyone's ever thought to tell me that. They've told me that it wasn't my fault, and they've told me I have nothing to be ashamed of, and they've told me that, in time, life would be all right again, that I would heal and be okay. But no one has ever apologized for what I went through. No one has ever told me that they were sorry I had to experience what I did.

It shouldn't mean more than the other things I've been told since that year. And it shouldn't do more toward making things better than any other conversation or letter. And hearing it shouldn't make me feel as though I'll be better able to face the dementors, the boggarts, and the nightmares than I have since it happened. That one phrase alone shouldn't be able to do more healing than three years of trying to cope has.

But . . . it does. Somehow, it does.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think!

Realmer