Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.

AN: This is probably the longest chapter of B&C so far. I haven't time to thank individual reviewers today, but I love you all!

Anyway, here it is: the confrontation.

Gretchen Discovered.

Harry knocked at Melanie Hargreaves' door later that morning, apprehension twisting in him. He didn't know what to expect to see - Malfoy, with that unfamiliar look on his face? Ginny, guarded and wary? Riddle, with a smile on his lips and blood on his hands?

He started nervously when the door opened abruptly, Malfoy looking around it with deep suspicion. Quickly, Harry dropped the hood of his Invisibility Cloak, and was immeasurably gratified to see a momentary look of terror on Malfoy's face.

"Potter!" he snarled, utterly pissed off, "I thought you were - "

Any amusement Harry might have felt disappeared utterly, and as Malfoy caught himself, - a little too late - he threw the hood of the Cloak back up. His momentary fit of nerves had passed, and Harry found himself slowly sinking back into his black, black anger. God help Malfoy if he tried to keep him out.

"What are you doing here?" Malfoy's tone was vicious, his hands were clenched into fists, and Harry got the chilling feeling that Malfoy wouldn't be able to see him right now even if he were visible.

"Let me in," he said, keeping his voice low and precise.

"What?"

"I know about Riddle. Let me in."

Malfoy went dead white and stared straight at Harry. From within the room the faint zinging sound of a hairbrush stopped abruptly.

Very low, very softly, Harry leant in and said, "Let me in, Malfoy, or I'll kill you."

A look of pure fury was all Malfoy had time to formulate before the door was quietly pulled all the way open.

"You sound like him today, Harry," Ginny said in a resigned tone. She was as pale as Malfoy, and for a moment there, framed slightly behind him in the doorway, she looked utterly defeated. Harry tried to remember the fierce fourth year girl he'd taught to cast a perfect Patronus, but he couldn't remember her face.

Malfoy shot her a look, but she just turned away, walking over to the window with her arms wrapped around her waist.

An uncomfortable silence followed, during which Harry came inside and took off the Cloak, and Malfoy shut the door and settled himself in the chair closest to Ginny. The tension in the air was palpable, with the feeling of each party simultaneously wondering what the hell they were going to say now.

"I forgot about your dad's Cloak," Ginny said quietly. "Were you there in the corridor?"

"Yes." Harry replied, ashamed. Malfoy was looking at him furiously.

"You filthy sneak - "

"Malfoy."

He probably shouldn't have been surprised to see Malfoy subside, but he was.

"I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have done it, but. I mean, I thought – that you might be in trouble."

"Yeah." she said, her voice getting softer. "Well. At least that means you already know everything."

"I don't know why," he said bleakly, regretting the plaintive note in his voice as soon as he heard it. "I don't know why he's back and I don't know why he . . . why he chose you."

There. That sounded more controlled.

She smiled, unbelievably, looking out of the window with a little flick of a glance. "Maybe he loves me."

Harry's hands clenched on the arms of the chair reflexively.

"If that's a joke, it's in really bad taste." Malfoy interjected harshly.

"The whole thing's a joke, Draco," she replied. She sounded almost bitter, and Harry fought the urge to shiver suddenly. Cold in here.

"It's in the worst taste possible."

"Yes."

She turned to face them both, leaning back against the window as if she didn't care that it could break. She looked straight at him, steadily, for the first time since Friday morning, and it seemed suddenly to Harry that this, just her dark eyes in her white face, could be stared at until he died. The tension in the air thickened perceptibly.

Ginny took a slow, measured breath, moving her eyes to Malfoy. She regarded him with the same inscrutable gaze.

Finally Harry said, "You know something. Don't you?"

"Yes." she said, with a sigh like a suicide note. "There are some things you have to know, Harry. And Malfoy . . . I don't know how much you already know about what happened then. You know. In the Chamber, that last time."

"What everyone knows. Riddle worked through you, setting a Basilisk on Mud – on Muggle-borns. He took you to the Chamber of Secrets; Potter rode in and saved the day. Basilisk killed, diary destroyed, Riddle dead."

Malfoy said it calmly enough, but Harry could see the way his mouth twitched when he said Riddle.

"Yeah." she said. "And I screamed and cried and became very boring."

Malfoy looked at him, and Harry nodded. "That's what he said to me."

"I used to wish so hard that that had been true."

"What?" Harry couldn't tell who had said it first, Malfoy or himself, but they were both staring intently at her now. "What do you mean?" he added.

She looked at the floor, preparing herself. "It wasn't like that at all. It wasn't meant, any of it – you know, it wasn't meant to be like that." She drew a breath, and Harry knew that whatever she was about to say would be painful. "Just listen, alright? Just listen, and don't say anything until I'm done."

They nodded.

"He was the first best friend I'd ever had. You can't know; you think of him as . . . what he was. But I didn't see any of that, remember, all I saw was him, and how kind he was to me, and how funny and . . .  gentle he was. Anyway. You could have guessed that part; how much I. How much I adored him."

She paused, as if looking for the right words, but they could both see what it cost her to keep her voice, her manner so detached.

"Well. I was frightened when the attacks began, but he always made me feel safe. I know; I know how ironic that is. I didn't remember a thing, but of course I eventually guessed it was me, and that it was his doing, and that he was doing something terrible. He told me not to be afraid; he told me – he told me he would take me with him." The look she gave them was like a hand warding off a blow – "Don't say anything. He wanted to take me with him; he never wanted me to die. That wasn't part of the plan."

Ginny looked at the floor again, twisting a corner of her robes in her hands. Her next words were soft, spoken half to herself.

"He was so angry when I tried to disobey him. When I tried not to black out, or when I tried not to tell him what he wanted to know . . . he said to me once, when he was angry, that I wasn't trying very hard. That he'd seen grown men die under Cruciatus without saying a word, and here I was; a silly little girl, telling him whatever he wanted as soon as he started to break my wrist."

Harry wanted to kill something. Her heavy black robes covered her wrists, but he knew very well how thin and white they were. How very easy they would have been to crack and break. How very easy she would have been to crack and break.

"I threw the diary away. I couldn't stand it anymore, and I threw it away, and I cried and cried. For a long time." She sighed. "And then you found it, Harry, and then I stole it back. I couldn't help but want it back; I needed him. And my God, he was angry - he was furious. He was going to have his chance to kill you, Harry, but he didn't want to do it there, he just - he knew that you were on to him and that he didn't have much time. You forced his hand . . . or I did. He was furious. There was nothing he had time to do but kill me and hope that he could kill you as well, and he hated that. He was so angry with me; apart from to command me, he only spoke to me twice after that. In the Chamber."

There was a long pause. Her eyes were dry, her voice having regained its detachment and her hands having since stopped their pained twisting.

"He said, See what you've done. And he let me remember everything."

"God, Ginny." Malfoy said, involuntarily.

Harry didn't know what to think first. All he could hear was a cool, dark voice saying, She screamed and cried and became very boring.

God, Ginny. Everything? A small, red-haired girl with blank brown eyes, that's what she had been. The memory of all of the Basilisk attacks hitting her at once? Yes, it would have been very easy to finish her after that. He could still hear her little voice echo in the stone Chamber: It was me.

It hurt to think of training her now, of her stubborn refusal to show pain. The way she laughed when he knew it hurt and the look in her eyes when she'd mastered a particularly vicious hex.

The horror of it was the five years he had spent not knowing.

Or maybe the horror of it was Malfoy, already risen to meet her, holding her lightly in his arms as she struggled with terrible success not to show anything at all.