Disclaimer: Don't own anything related to Harry Potter except my plastic time turner and I paid for that so... Plus I like Ginny/Tom fics so obviously if I owned Harry Potter, Ginny wouldn't have ended up with Harry.

AN: This has been written a little while ago. Can't remember when. I wanted to write the next chapter before posting this but I'm still in stage (3 more weeks left! Gosh I want it finished so bad you have no idea! I've been in stage since January 5! My friends at University, they're in their final exam period. Do you know how much I'd like to have three final exam in a row this week and be done with my semester? When you prefer final exam to your stage there's a problem there and it means that it needs to stop soon) Anyway, I wanted to post something and it's the only thing I have written (sorry for everyone who may be following my other stories) I have no time nor energy to write right now. Still have 3 weeks than 1 week of sleeping and then I'll be good to write again!

In the meantime, enjoy this chapter. It may not be what you expected. It wasn't what I expected but it's what came out of my head and I decided to go with my muse and try this out!

Chapter 4

Ginny awoke to her mother shouting at her kids to get up. Of course her nightmare just had to continue as soon as she had fallen back asleep. Sometimes she wondered if her experience with Tom Riddle would ever stop haunting her. Perhaps once Voldemort was death and truly gone…..but then again, she never did associate Tom with Voldemort. They were both monsters but one was a personal monster, terrifying only in her eyes, while Voldemort was terrifying for any wizard in England.

"Ginny are you up?" Hermione asked

Ginny sat on her bed. "Yeah, yeah Mione. I'm getting up."

"Well don't sound too enthused. Are you okay? You still look very tired and you were whimpering during the night. Did you have a nightmare?"

"When don't I have nightmares?" Ginny whispered to herself, getting up and starting to make her bed.

"What?" asked Hermione. She wanted to check if she had heard correctly.

"Uh? Oh nothing Mione. Yeah, I had a bad dream. No biggy. I'll get my sleep back tonight." Ginny said, faking a smile. Hermione's brows furrowed. That wasn't right. She had heard correctly, but Ginny was denying it. Why?

"Alright" Hermione said, pretending to believe her younger friend. "I'll be waiting for you downstairs."

Hermione left the room and went into the Weasley's living room where Ron and Harry had just started a game of chess. She rolled her eyes. "Really Ron, playing chess with Harry being half-asleep? Don't you like challenges anymore? Harry is already easy enough to beat when he's at full cognitive capacity..."

"Hey!" Harry interjected. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you suck, mate" Ron said laughing.

"Well thanks Hermione" Harry said.

"I just meant Ron shouldn't play with you when you're tired. It's not fair for you."

"Nah. It's okay. You have a point. I'm not much more of a challenge fully awake anyway. Still it's fun. And besides, I got to improve some time."

" Yeah, I can't wait to see that mate"

"Very funny. You won't be laughing once Ginny is up and decides to play against you. From what Fred told me, she kicked your butt last time" Harry replied.

"Pft. Please, she was lucky." Ron said, blushing a little. Being beaten at his favourite game by his little sister was kind of embarrassing.

"Talking about Ginny," Hermione started "Has any of you notice anything different about her lately."

"No" Ron replied absentmindedly, while making his move.

Harry shook his head "Why are you asking Mione?"

"It's just….she was whimpering in her sleep and when I asked her if she had had a nightmare last night, she said something like "when don't I have nightmares". She whispered it, so I wanted to check if I had heard correctly, but then when I asked, she denied she had said anything. But I'm sure that I heard her say she often has nightmares."

"Ginny was never prompt to having nightmares Mione. Besides, you visit us every summer and you always stay with Ginny. If she was having nightmares you would have noticed before" Ron said, reassuringly.

"Yes but…." Hermione started. "The thing is Ron, I never hear anything coming from Ginny's bed."

"Well see!" Ron said smiling.

"No Ron, you don't get it! I hear absolutely nothing! I just, when I woke up last night, I could hear Ginny breathe. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, I could still hear her breathing and then she started whimpering"

"Ok….and?" Harry asked. He didn't get where Hermione was going with this.

"And I just realized, that it was the first time since I've slept in Ginny's room, that I heard her breathing during the night! I literally never hear anything. Not a sound! That's not normal! Unless…"

"Unless she casts a silencio around herself before going to sleep! " Harry exclaimed. "Like I started doing after the visions started, so I wouldn't wake up Ron and the other guys in our dormitory."

"Exactly! And why would someone cast a silence spell around their bed before going to sleep every single night, if they only occasionally have nightmares! I was so stupid. I stay here every summer and it never clicked as being weird that there was no sound from Ginny's bed until one night there suddenly was! She must have forgotten to put a silence spell yesterday"

"But why would Ginny do that? If she were having nightmares, she would tell us!" Ron said.

"Oh you mean like Harry told us about the visions as soon as they happened?"

"That's not the same thing. It concerned You-know-Who and Harry wasn't telling us much of anything. No offence mate"

"None taken, Ron. I know how I was. I still am like that. I've been having nightmares of Sirius' death since it happened and I didn't tell anyone about them. They're personal. Maybe Ginny's nightmares are personal too"

"But nothing happened to Ginny, like it happened to you Harry." Ron said.

"True" Harry said.

"Well something must have happened. Why else would she be so reluctant to talk about them?" Silence fell on the trio. No one knew the answer to Hermione's question.

"Hey guys. Why so solemn?" Ginny asked, smiling. "Did Ronnie-Wonnie lose at chess again?"

The three looked at her. "What?" she said.

"Hermione said you had a nightmare last night" Harry started. "We were just wondering if you wanted to talk about it."

"Oh you mean, like you talk about your nightmares" Ginny replied defensively. No way. They were not going to ask about her nightmares and expect her to answer. Since when did they care anyway? Hermione, she could understand. That girl worried about everyone. She was a real mother hen sometimes. Not that she could blame the other girl, with all the trouble Harry and Ron constantly brought upon themselves. But Ronald and Harry? Please. Those two had the observation skills of a rock. It wasn't so much as they didn't care as they didn't notice there was anything to care about. Beside, if there was someone who would not understand what happened with Tom, it would be Ron. She could not let him know her secret. Not that one anyway. And talking about Tom would just be opening herself to people looking at things too closely and discover the entire truth. And Ginny knew she couldn't deal with anyone else knowing; hell, she couldn't deal with herself knowing!

"Hey. Don't talk to Harry like that. He's just trying to help." Ron told his sister.

"Well he's not okay. Just leave it be! There's nothing you can do about them, so why bother?"

"So you have been nightmares frequently then" Hermione said.

Ginny's eyes widened. Darn it. "No. Just forget it okay."

"But Ginny if you have nightmares, talking about them can help make them go away eventually. It helped when I talked about my visions and if I remember correctly, you thought it had been stupid of me not to talk about them before."

"Yeah. And remember my nightmares about spiders forcing me to dance? It helped when I talked about them."

Ginny looked at her brother and his two friends. She felt like she was suffocating. She so didn't need this after last night's nightmares. She really didn't. They kept pushing her and telling her how talking about their previous nightmares had helped them. Their voices got mixed up in her head and finally, she just snapped.

"Yeah, but none of those things ever really happened to you Ron! Harry yes. His nightmares…but he never talked about Cedric or Sirius so don't tell me you know it'll help, because you have no idea!" She screamed at them. Then she ran up the stairs to her bedroom and shut the door. She really didn't need this, she thought as she fell back on the bed. Then the little voices in her head woke up.

'They were just trying to help Ginny,' chided the first voice. 'Oh please, like they care. They've never cared about you before, and they won't start now. They'll just use the information you'll give them to hurt you,' the second voice sneered. That voice had been omnipresent right after Tom had died, making Ginny believe only the worst of people. It had taken time for her positive side to reappear but no matter how hard she tried, that little negative, condescending, and untrusting voice never really left her. It still raised many doubts in Ginny's mind. Much less than before, true, but it was still there and Ginny felt that as long as it was, she would never be what she used to and Tom would have really won.

'Ginny, they're your friends.' Said the good voice. 'They wouldn't hurt you. They want to help. Let them in.' 'Right. Let them in just like you let Tom in. That ended up so well after all' the second voice said sarcastically. "Shut up, just shut up!" Ginny told herself.

"Gin, are you okay?" Hermione said, entering the bedroom.

Ginny looked at her friend, with tears in her eyes. She was so sick of this. That negative little voice had made her life hell. Unable to trust in people, always staying all alone in fear of others….She was tired of this. Maybe…. maybe it was time to talk about it. She could still hear that second voice telling her this would only hurt her but she fought against it and made it shut up. What had listening to that voice ever brought her? Nothing. Things hadn't gotten better in a long while. How could she expect different results while doing the same thing over and over again? Maybe it was time to change things.

"Ginny, we're worried about you. I know you don't want to talk, but can you tell me what the nightmares are about? I don't need any details. I just…can you please tell me what they're about?"

Ginny looked at her friend, sadly. She took a deep breath and gathered her courage. "Tom" she said softly. "They're all about Tom." There she had said it. After years of being haunted by her memories of Tom Riddle, she had finally admitted to someone else that she still suffered from what happened to her in her first year.

"Thank you" Mione told her.

Ginny nodded. "Can I be alone now?" she asked.

"Of course. I'll tell your mom you're not feeling well and you'll eat later"

"Thanks" Ginny said, rolling over in her bed, away from her friend, as tears fell from her eyes and her heart was torn into pieces.

/

AN: Hope someone out there will like it! Please review to give me comments! Like I said, this wasn't what I originally thought of doing with this fic but now it is so I'd like to know what you guys think!