Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter world (much to my dismay), hence writing on a fanfiction site.

Chapter Ten

I'd had no way of knowing how much time had passed. For all I knew, it could have been ten minutes or it could have been an hour. I stopped thinking about it. I had no more energy to cry. My eyes were sticky with dryness and they prickled with pain. My throat ached and it felt as if the pressure in my head was pressing hard against my skull. Every heartbeat pulsed with agony. My nose was completely stuffed up, and I couldn't even feel my injured hand. I couldn't move it, though I wasn't particularly enthusiastic when I tried. I had no will to stand. Every time I thought that it might be a good idea, my stomach started churning uncomfortably.

Very suddenly, I felt something around me. It was if I were being watched, although I was sitting with my back to the door and there was no one in sight. None of the paintings' occupants had returned either. "Hello?" I called out, not sure if I wanted there to be an answer.

"Now Ginny, haven't you learnt your lesson?" A shock of electricity ran through every inch of me, every hair on my body was standing on ends. I whipped my head from left to right to make absolutely sure there wasn't anyone. "Haven't I always told you that the people you trust will just end up using and betraying you? You mean nothing to these people, Ginny. But I've got great plans for you, little one." Tom had never spoken to me while I'd been awake. Does this mean he's getting stronger? I put my head in between my knees to try and block out the sound of his voice. All I really wanted was to be alone in my head.

"Stop trying to fight me, Ginny. There's no use. You never could and you never will. Were you not listening to what the old man was saying? I am a part of you; I am you. I can see that you're upset by this, so let me tell you something: things are changing now, very quickly. Soon you'll be a part of me, a part of my true and formidable self. When the three of us meet together as one, the world will tremble. We will become a god!" I really did not like the sound of that. Becoming a "god" was something I'd never really aspired to be.

"You're out of your mind," I forced through clenched teeth. His laughter filled the corridor, much like it always did in my dreams. My anger began to rise again. For the first time since I could remember, my fear of Tom started to ebb away. Then again, at the moment, I was a bit beyond reasonable. I couldn't see him, but I could feel him listening closely. "Tom," the air around me seemed to shiver, "get the fuck out of my head."

The corridor was empty. I couldn't feel his presence anywhere. It was as if the air in the hall was suddenly let back in. I made a conscious effort to stand, but my legs weren't quite in the mood yet, so I ended up sliding down the wall back into a sitting position, so I crossed them, and cradled my arm pathetically. Merlin, I felt miserable.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard another voice echo down the hall towards me. "There you are!" I turned to see Remus rushing at me from one end of the corridor. "For the love of magic, I've been looking everywhere for you! I had thought you would have gone back to Gryffindor tower, but I met your brother on prefect duty and he said that you hadn't been back..." he trailed off, and knelt beside me. His deep blue eyes were swimming with concern. "Ginevra?" I didn't respond, I had nothing to say. He put his hand on my cheek, it felt deliciously cool against my hot skin. I leaned my head slightly into it. His eyes travelled down my face and into my lap. He sucked in a quick breath, "what did you do to your hand?"

"Punched a wall," I muttered, shamefully.

"Oh, Ginny," he lightly took hold of the hand in question and examined it. "I don't know if I'm able to fix this, it looks pretty bad. I think you're going to have to go see Madame Pomphrey."

I reached out with my good hand and grabbed his arm. "No, please don't. She'll make me stay the night, and I can't stand sleeping there," I'd had enough bad experiences spending the night there, but then again, how many times do you spend the night in the hospital wing for good things?

Remus neither agreed nor disagreed to my request, but instead offered me his hand. He stood, pulling me to my feet.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, I've got you," my legs buckled and I would have fallen straight to the floor had he not caught me. My vision swam dangerously before my eyes, and an all too familiar laugh filled my mind. The last thing I saw was a pair of distressed blue eyes.

...

When I finally did wake up, it took me a long time to realize that I wasn't where I should be and that something was not right at all. Namely, the feeling of my right hand being dismembered from the inside out. A whimper caught in my throat as I looked over and saw Remus pointing his wand at the hand in question, whispering spells under his breath in deep concentration. When I looked down at my hand and saw bones changing position underneath the skin, I felt sick to my stomach and fell back to a decidedly more peaceful state of unconsciousness.

As I came back to, at first I didn't remember much, and thought I was in my four poster bed, but when I stretched my legs out as far as they'd go, they didn't touch the baseboard like they usually did. I sprawled my arms out on either side of my, but neither of them hung off the edge as they would have in my school bed. Then I noticed that my sweater was still on and my hair was still up. I never wore my hair up when I slept because the hair elastic was too uncomfortable. I also had a tendency to overheat in my sleep, which is why I could never wear a sweater. Everything started to flood back. I couldn't help but blush slightly as I surmised that I was in Remus' room. In his bed.

Finally, I sat up and looked around the room. It was fairly small, with the bed taking up most of the space. The duvet was a midnight blue, and the sheets underneath were a dark brown. While looking at his covers, I found that he'd wrapped my hand in a sort of tensor bandage, having healed it to the best of his abilities. I could never thank him enough, his kindness to me seemed to be never ending.

I slid out from underneath the blankets and got up. I couldn't believe how all those emotions drained my body to exhaustion. I was still feeling weak and lethargic. I took another look around the room, and spotted something I didn't see before. There was a bottle on the bedside table with a note stuck to it. Seeing my name on the note, I grabbed it and the bottle and sat back down on the bed.

Ginny,

I do hope that you're feeling better. If you've woken up before I'm back, then I'd like you to do me a favour: drink this potion, it's for a Dreamless Sleep. I know that your nightmares aren't exactly normal dreams, but I believe this will at least help. Feel free to stay where you are, I know you've had a trying night and I want to make sure you get some sleep. If you'd like, we can talk in the morning, but right now, get some rest.

Remus.

I felt like such a fool for acting the way I did. It was the least rational thing I'd done in a long time, except for once when I accidentally chucked my hairbrush out my window in a fit of rage… my closed window. He must think I'm completely unstable. I guess maybe I am a little bit. But it's hard to keep balance when the world around you is nothing but manipulation, lies and withholding of vital information that may or may not have changed the entire face of your miserable, lonely, misunderstood past.

I took a few moments to calm down before I got myself so worked up again and did something even more stupid than breaking my hand. Like breaking my other hand for instance.

Even if he did think I was deranged, I still wanted to thank him and to tell him I was feeling fine enough to head back to my own room and that I wouldn't be any more of a burden, which is all that I was feeling to him lately. But when I opened the door that lead into his office, there room was empty, with only a few candles lit.

Then I was hit with a moment of terrible indecision. Nearly every part of me wanted to hightail it out of there and spend the few remaining hours of the night in my own bed, but I was held in place. It was the coward's way out and also I would hate to imagine unappreciative it would look if he came back and I'd left. Especially after reading the note and potion he'd left for me. In the end it came down to this: had he not asked me as a favour, I would most likely have put my shoes on and snuck back up to my dorm. But who was I ask so much from him and not respond in kind?

I made my way back into his room and sat on the edge of the bed. I took my hair out of the restricting elastic and finally downed the entire bottle. I had only a few moments of thought before its affects took over. First I wondered where in the rule book they covered sleeping in professors' beds, but then as I became more sleepy, my thought turned his bed being nearly five times more comfortable than mine and how unfair it was. I burrowed under the blankets after removing my sweater and rearranging my tank top underneath. I fell asleep, breathing in the subtle smell of him, wondering where he was.

...

I was startled awake by someone in the room. I peaked over and saw the back of Remus looking through his wardrobe for some clothes. He was only wearing a pair of faded black sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt. I wasn't used to seeing him without his robes. He picked something out of the wardrobe and then closed it softly. I only had a second to snap my eyes shut when he turned around to look to see if I was still asleep. When I squinted to see if he was still looking, I opened them up again when he was turned around.

Without warning, he pulled his shirt up over his head and threw it on a nearby chair. I'm sure my face must have gone bright red, but I couldn't help myself from staring. At first I was surprised at how toned his back was. With his robes on, he looked deceptively more slender and lean. The second surprise came when I noticed the tracing of scars across his body. Some were nearly a half an inch thick and ran from one shoulder blade to the opposite hip while others were smaller, almost healed into the same colour as his skin. I wanted to cover my mouth in alarm and absolute compassion for the pain he must have been through but I didn't want to move because I didn't want him to know I was awake. He put on a white wife beater and then buttoned a plaid shirt over top. He looked very natural in muggle clothes.

When he went to untie the drawstring on his pants, I squeezed my eyes closed, tight as they would go. I heard him zipping up the fly of a pair of jeans he'd pulled out of his dresser, and then I heard the door open and close. The room was empty once again. My whole body was overheating and it definitely wasn't from the blankets. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad and bad.

I opened my eyes once more and looked around. His shirt and pants were still on the chair, but on top of the dresser beside them was another pile of folded clothes. It took me a moment to recognize that they were my school uniform and a whole new change of clothes, underthings and all. I didn't really feel too embarrassed because I knew that he had to have gotten a house-elf to get my things. I smiled to myself at his consideration. Now that it was morning time though, I did feel considerably self conscious about the fact that I'd stayed the night in Remus' room.

I got changed and found on the bedside table that my school bag had also been brought. I shoved my clothes into it. I found out that it was just after five in the morning from a clock on his dresser. I didn't feel that I should be spending any more time in there than necessary, but I waited a couple more minutes before I left, trying to psyche myself up.

I hesitantly opened the door, not sure what I was going to say to him. He would probably have questions to ask about my reaction to Dumbledore, but I didn't think I'd ever be able to reasonably put it into words how badly I'd been hurt by his revelation no matter how much he deserved a decent explanation. But when I fully opened it to reveal his office, no one was there. My mind and body relaxed.

I thought about staying and waiting for Remus to return, but then I threw the idea out. If I didn't have anything to say to him, what would I accomplish by staying? As I reached the door to leave, I stopped myself and turned back to his desk. I'd at least leave him a note explaining where I'd gone and tell him thanks. I felt that I owed him much more than a note, but I wasn't going to stay; I had to leave.

I walked quite quickly away from his office, hoping desperately that I wouldn't run into him. I'd be especially awkward if he caught me trying to run away, but for once I was lucky, and didn't bump into him. Seeing as how I had two hours until most of the school woke for breakfast, I decided that I might as well take a luxuriously bath in the prefect's bathroom. I had yet to use it, and felt that this was a spectacular time to try it out.

An hour and a bathtub full of bubbles and perfumes later, I made it back to the Gryffindor common room. I climbed through the portrait hole and tried to quietly make it up the stairs, but a voice behind me scared me half to death.

"Where have you been?" I whipped around and saw someone I really hadn't been expecting: Hermione. I at least thought it would be my brother or Harry.

"I got up early and had a bath in the prefects washroom, what are you doing up so early?" I tried to act completely innocent, although I really wasn't sure why I felt so guilty. I mean, it's not like I'd done anything wrong. I think.

"Ginny, I know you didn't come back last night," she was completely pissed off. Well that's rich, how many times have I seen her and those two climb under that cloak and disappear off into the night? Did I ever say anything? No. It was none of my business. I wanted to snap at her and tell her how unfair she was being, but I saw the concern behind her anger. I realized that she'd just been worried about where I'd been.

I sighed in frustration, I didn't know what to tell her. I settled on the truth, "I went to go talk with Dumbledore last night."

"What for?" Her expression had completely changed, now she was undeniably curious.

"Well, after Harry told me about, well, what he'd dreamt, I felt that I needed to talk to someone," this was true.

"So why weren't you back last night?" She demanded, but then her gaze dropped and caught sight of my bandage. Oh, hell. "Ginny, what happened to your arm?"

I gave a big tired sigh for effect and then recited a reasonable story that I'd just made up on the spot, quite proudly I must admit. "Well by the time we'd finished talking it was so late, and I was exhausted and distracted that I took the wrong path back to the common room. So pretty much instead of going left up some stairs, I went right down some stairs, literally. Landed on my wrist and it was obviously a serious injury so I had to see Madame Pomfrey who as you can imagine wouldn't let me leave until the sun just began coming up. So after that I decided to try out the prefect baths and relax from my awful evening." Okay, so it wasn't the truth, but it was an improvement if Hermione believes it. For an awful moment she still looked doubtful, but I was pretty sure she'd let it drop.

"Can I ask you another question?" Oh Merlin, what else did she want to know? "Would you come to Hogsmede with me this weekend so you can help me pick out a costume?"

"Oh! Um, alright," I replied, taken off guard.

"Great!" She beamed and then headed back up to her dorm room in a completely different mood. I stood on the stairs mildly flabbergast, but shook my head in amusement as I headed into my own room.

TBC

Author's note: Here's another one! Hope you enjoyed it. So I've noticed other author's respond to questions in review by just replying at the end of each chapter, now I've never done this, but I feel like it's a good idea. Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you'll leave a review!

TemperedRose: I actually don't think I'm going to be using Rowling's horcrux idea, I'm sort of disregarding the last books entirely so that I have free reign to do whatever I want ! :) And Dumbledore only had suspicions. Ginny showed no signs of being possessed or anything and she hadn't told him about her nightmares, so he started to think that Tom hadn't used her as a host. Hope that clears it up!