Harry's bed was plastered with blankets, all patched and knitted, and all smelt of lavender. Despite how comforting it all was, he still found himself struggling to drift off. He'd curled up into a ball, he'd tried sleeping side-on, face-up, face-down - it just wasn't working. He was simply not tired.
The twelve o'clock chimes faintly rung in Harry's ear, and he sighed, kicking the blankets off him. He got to his feet, slowly and carefully treading on the non-squeaky floorboards, and tried to find his way to the door. Glancing over to Ron, he saw that his friend was dead to the world, peacefully snoring and drooling.
Harry then attempted the tricky task of finding his way downstairs. He was surprised to see a light on, and that made things all the more easier.
Slowly but surely he reached the foot of the stairs, and plodded into the kitchen. Expecting to find it empty, he was taken aback a little by the small redhead perched on a chair, sipping on a glass of milk. Her weary eyes shot open at the sight of him, and choked a little on her drink.
"Harry!" she whispered, shocked. "What . . . uh . . . what are you doing . . . up so late?"
Ginny had always been shy around him, which apparently was odd, according to her brothers. He'd hardly heard her speak one word, until last year, in the Chamber of Secrets. She had been full of apologies then.
"Couldn't sleep. You?"
She looled down at her glass, and swirled the liquid around for a bit. She seemed reluctant to answer.
"It's okay, you can tell me" Harry assured her, sitting down in a chair across from her at the table.
Ginny gave him a feeble smile.
"Nightmares" she told him, quietly.
Her hand was shaking slightly, and her breathing was ragged. Harry suddenly realised that the events of last year had a much larger effect on her than people assumed. Than Harry had assumed.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked her, softly. She looked at him, slightly surprised, but nodded all the same.
"Every night it's the same. I'm stood in the halls, my hands covered in blood. I don't know whose, but I'm always drenched in it. There's writing on the wall, mudblood I think. And then Tom is there, giving me this twisted smile. I try to run away, but I can hear him laughing. It's horrible. And then, there are bodies, everywhere. There's mum's, there's dad's, there's Ron's, there's Hermione's, there's yours. And there's just about everyone I know, dead, surrounded in pools of blood. Suddenly I can hear hissing, and there's this great huge snake, just looking at me. I'm shouting at it in this strange language, but nothing is happening. Then Tom appears again, and he's holding out his hand. And I take it."
Ginny sounds so distressed, it upsets Harry.
"You have nothing to worry about Ginny, the basilisk is dead. It won't hurt anyone ever again" Harry promised. But she simply shook her head.
"It's not the snake I'm afraid of. It's that Tom was in my head. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was in my head. He was controlling everything that I did. Because of something he told me do in a stupid diary, I opened the Chamber of Secrets!"
"The diary was destoryed, he can't control you any more."
"How do you know that? What if he still has power over me? He could order me to kill any one of you, and I would have no contol over him. I opened the Chamber of Secrets. What else is he going to get me to do?"
Harry had nothing to say. He had no idea if Voldemort still held Ginny's life in his hands, whether he could still contol her. He couldn't promise her anything, and he couldn't help her. And this hurt him. It hurt him to see his best friend's sister so distraught.
Ginny noticed that Harry had nothing to say, and smiled at him, however sad that smile was.
"It's okay if you don't know what to say, just the fact that you sat and listened to me, some teary twelve year old is help enough."
She said that with such kindness, Harry was instantly filled with warmth. How was is that this teary twelve year old happened to be so wise?