Disclaimer: This story includes characters and situations that are part of the Harry Potter universe, which is copyright J.K.Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury, etc. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made in the production of this FANFICTION. Not many outside resources were needed this time, but I (as always) made extensive use of the Harry Potter Lexicon when writing this chapter.
Author's Note: Thank you Chucky1982 for the review! I'm as surprised as anyone else is, but this story will be over (and posted in its entirety) in two weeks. There's just one more surprise, if it can be so-called (and it's one I particularly like).
Expectations of Grandeur: Chapter 35: O.W.L.s
Ginny was having a wonderful dream. Harry had defeated Voldemort, all was well with the world, they were married, and they were seeing their first son – James Sirius Potter – off to his first year at Hogwarts. She smiled and waved as the Hogwarts Express left King's Cross Station. Then, suddenly, there was an earthquake. "Ginny!" Hermione shouted. Ginny didn't have much time to wonder why it was Hermione who had shouted, and not Harry, before she woke up. Hermione was shaking her awake. "Ginny!" Hermione hissed, panicked. "Ginny, are you okay?"
Ginny frowned and furrowed her brow, rubbing her eyes as she pushed herself to a seated position. Hermione was already dressed and a picture of worry, but it couldn't have been much past dawn. "I'm fine," Ginny mumbled disagreeably. "What is it, Hermione?"
Hermione sighed in relief and sat down on the bed next to Ginny. "There was an attack last night. Fawkes was injured. The professors were trying to keep it quiet so we only just found out, but the prefects were alerted about it, and Harry and Ron and I have been up all night. We thought it was Tom and so we worried about you. Maybe he's stolen the parchments back."
Ginny rubbed her eyes again. "I'm keeping up the Occlumency, Hermione, so you didn't have to wake me up for that," she grumbled. She would much rather her dream not be interrupted, and this was a particularly ungodly hour to be awake.
Hermione shook her head condescendingly. "Ginny," she scolded. "This is serious. Unless you were making a fuss about nothing when you told us to have Dumbledore confiscate the parchments, that is," she had a warning look on her face.
Ginny sighed and rubbed her eyes again, settling back into her pillows. "I'm sorry, Hermione," she said in as placating a tone as she could manage. "Thank you for telling me. I will be especially careful about my Occlumency. Now, could you please leave and let me get a few more hours' sleep?"
Hermione looked slightly put out. "Harry and Ron and I," she said by way of scolding, "Are going to go to Dumbledore and figure out if Tom was behind the attack. But if you think your sleep is more important," she snorted, "Feel free to go back to sleep."
Ginny shook her head. They would discover nothing form Dumbledore, she knew that. "Dumbledore isn't going to tell us anything," she said, biting back a yawn. "Unless Tom is a lot less clever than we suspect, he'll have covered his tracks. And Dumbledore is on his side, anyway – wants to give him a second chance. Besides, whether Tom has the parchments or not, the primary thing is for me to be careful about my Occlumency. Which I'm doing, and which is much easier to do if I get enough sleep." She stared Hermione in the face. Hermione was not convinced, and apparently was not going to leave until Ginny buckled. "But if you're so certain, I'll come with."
Hermione nodded curtly, and left the room for Ginny to dress. She pulled on her work robes and, with a stifled yawn, made her way down to the common room. Ron rushed up to her and grabbed her hand, sanctimonious and condescending. "Are you all right, Gin?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes. "I'm fine," she said curtly, with a look towards Hermione.
"Well," the older girl said as if on cue. "Let's go."
The longer they waited outside Dumbledore's office, shouting names of candies at the Gargoyle, the more frustrated Ginny became. This was stupid and ridiculous, and absolutely not how she wanted to spend the hour before classes began. She still had time to have breakfast and a quick nap if she left now, she thought, but a glance at Hermione's stoic face told her it would not be a good idea to suggest they just leave it.
Five more minutes of this absurdity changed her mind. "Let's just leave it," she mumbled.
"What?" Hermione snapped, and Ginny knew that she had heard perfectly well. Harry sighed and leaned against the wall, Ron looked vaguely concerned.
"I said, let's just leave it. We're not going to get in there, anyway. If Professor Dumbledore wants to talk to us, he'll send a message with McGonagall or someone. And if not, then he's not going to tell us anything anyway. Besides, he was the one who wanted to give Tom a second or third or whatever number this is chance, so it's not as if he's likely to blame Tom." They didn't look persuaded, so she sighed and continued. "And, as if that wasn't enough, if Tom is half as clever as I think he is, he'll have covered his tracks and put in a fake parchment so it won't look like anything happened except Fawkes getting injured. That could have been anyone that did that – and there's another person attacking the school and Dumbledore anyway, so wouldn't it make a lot more sense for Dumbledore to suspect the person who wrote all those notes, rather than Tom?"
"But Tom wrote the notes," Ron mumbled.
"No he didn't, he was minding his own business until..." Ginny trailed off. She knew for a fact that he had flown off the handle when she laughed at him, but she didn't want to tell Harry and Ron and Hermione that she had snogged Tom Riddle and he wasn't particularly good at it. "Until the middle of March," she finished. "You gave him Veritaserum, Harry, Ron. You know he wasn't up to anything at Christmas." She rubbed her eyes, barely containing her frustration. It was ridiculous. They all knew that she had to keep a cool affect, and yet Hermione had the gall to wake her up at this ridiculous hour and force her to stand and make a fool of herself for no benefit outside of Dumbledore's office. The more she thought about it the angrier she got. She tried to focus on something calming, she forced herself to remain externally calm at least, but suddenly she realized that even if Tom saw these thoughts he would think they were false, so she gave up, and just shouted. "Maybe if you lot all just trusted him and treated him like a human being, he wouldn't have flown off the handle at all, and we wouldn't need to be on our guards against two Dark Lords!" The words burst out of her mouth, taking with them some of the exhaustion and the suppressed anxiety of the past days. It felt good to let loose, to yell and scream and lose focus.
Harry looked at her in shock. Ron's mouth was hanging open. Hermione alone was put together and rolled her eyes. "That hardly matters, does it, Ginny, because now we do have to be on our guards against two Dark Lords, and yelling at each other isn't going to do any good. Besides which, you shouldn't be yelling at anyone – it conflicts with your Occlumency."
Ginny took a deep breath and smiled sweetly. "Standing here waiting for Dumbledore isn't going to go any good either," she said. "I'm going to breakfast; we have class in thirty minutes. And in case you're horribly worried about me, Hermione, I don't think he would change the thoughts I just expressed; it wouldn't be in his interest." Hermione sighed in frustration, and as if to punctuate her point, Dumbledore came walking down the hallway.
He smiled wearily at them. "You're here to pay your respects to Fawkes?" he said, fairly clearly certain that their intentions were somewhat different.
"No," Hermione said bluntly. "We think it was Ophicus Marvolo, Professor. You have to arrest him." Her voice was cold, rigid, and brooked no protest from Ginny.
"I fear you are most likely incorrect, Miss Granger," Dumbledore replied. "The only things of interest to him were the parchments," he said with a glance toward Ginny. "They were not stolen. In fact, nothing was. It would seem that whoever broke into the office either did not find what he wanted or wanted only to harm Fawkes. The faculty and I are currently looking into suspects." He smiled warmly and looked toward Ginny. "It has crossed my mind that the parchments I have are fakes, planted by Mr. Riddle. However, they interact in much the same way as the originals, and the only way to truly test their identities would be for Miss Weasley to let up her Occlumency for a moment and see if anything appears."
Ginny scowled. "Never," she said simply. "I'm not opening myself up to anyone until I know they've been destroyed."
Dumbledore sighed. "You do realize that for us to help you, you have to allow yourself to be helped," he said patronizingly. Ginny just glared at him frostily. "You would be surrounded by friends; perfectly safe," he added, and Ginny turned away, not believing him. "In that case," he said, turning to look at Hermione again, "I really have no reason to suspect Mr. Riddle. You four should catch some breakfast before classes."
Ginny led the way to breakfast, not speaking to anyone. She schooled her emotions to reveal nothing, but she was having a hard time of it. She told herself that it didn't matter, that she shouldn't care that Hermione had ruined her night's sleep, especially since she had been awoken for her own good, and out of concern, not spite. But it was difficult, and when Hermione handed her another bag of herbal tea, Ginny snapped "I don't need to be mothered, Hermione!"
Hermione glanced towards Ron and Harry, who had their noses pointed to their plates as if to avoid the conflict altogether, and seeing that they would be no help to either side thrust the tea bag at Ginny again. "Ginevra Molly Weasley," she said in a voice that was probably as close to Mrs. Weasley's as any non-Weasley could manage (although Ginny could certainly do better). "You are going to drink this tea, you are going to control yourself, and you are not going to throw a temper tantrum that could be used against all of us, especially now that Ophicus has the parchments. Do you understand where this puts us? Do you understand that whatever safety we have had for the past weeks has been entirely abrogated? And all because you can't find it in your heart to trust Dumbledore!" Hermione snorted. "So, because you're being a stubborn little baby, we're doing this the hard way, and if we're doing this the hard way, then you're at least going to sign on and not forfeit the entire thing just because you're a stubborn cow!"
Harry and Ron's heads snapped up. Ginny was fuming. "That's a bit much, Hermione," Ron mumbled, and Harry looked like he agreed but was too afraid of his classmate to say anything. Ginny just continued to glare, and set her jaw in a firm line.
"Hermione," she said with a shakily calm voice. She took the tea bag and dropped it in a cup of hot water, without looking away from Hermione. "Don't treat me like an idiot. Until you've had Tom bloody Riddle in your head, you can't hope to understand." She didn't bother looking at Harry, who was perhaps the one other person in the room who could understand what was going on in her head, because she hardly hoped for him to back her up. But, miraculously, he did.
"She's right, Hermione," he said quietly. "You're out of line – if she doesn't want to open herself up, then she doesn't have to. I'd do anything to keep You-know-who out of my head. And Dumbledore distanced himself from me all last year just because of the danger. It would have been stupid to give Tom the chance, Dumbledore there or not."
Hermione crossed her arms and made a "humph"-ing noise before turning to her breakfast. They passed the rest of the time in silence.
Ginny didn't speak to Hermione, or Ron, or Harry, except to get herbal teas in the mornings, for at least two weeks. The Quidditch Final came up, and Harry said that after the fiasco at the last game, they were going to let their reserve player play instead of fielding Ginny. He said it with such a look of pity that Ginny almost forgave him, but only nodded coldly and left the pitch. She didn't stay to watch, and she stayed away from the raucous celebration downstairs when Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup.
She heard Hermione telling Harry and Ron that Ginny was probably just tired from Occlumency, and not angry with them; Ginny laughed. Anymore, Occlumency was easy. It was schooling her appearance to be exactly what she wanted it to be. There had been a time when she wasn't very good at that, but growing up with Fred and George had made her an expert. In fact, this was far easier than directed Occlumency: shutting everyone out required much less effort than expressing emotions and repressing them at the same time. And she had to admit, the herbal teas helped a lot. She wanted to tell Hermione, no, I'm not tired, unless you count tired of being treated like a small child. But she decided that she had perhaps best not do that until she could find another source of herbal tea.
Just to be safe.
And then, altogether too soon, O.W.L.s were upon her and she found herself staying up late at night studying. She was tired, she was stressed, and she could tell that her shell was going to break soon. Late one night, she figured it didn't much matter if Tom knew she was thinking of Transfiguration, and she stopped fooling everyone. The shell fell off with a sigh, and she felt something – the tiniest twinge – in the back of her mind, just the same as when Tom had put a drop of blood on the parchment.
He was watching.
Let him watch.
She filled her mind with Transfiguration notes, and although at the beginning she had a bit of trouble biting down false remorse about staving him off for so long (she admitted to herself – and him – it was a nice try on his part), soon she was more focused than before. There was something she didn't have to worry about, finally. And as long as she was focused on studying, she could forget about everything else.
Tom simply could not believe his luck. He had expected to have to use a confusing concoction to crack Ginny's shell. But the very morning after he stole back the parchments from Dumbledore, not twelve hours after he broke into the Headmaster's office, he was startled by the eruption of her anger at breakfast. He almost pulled out the parchment but then held back; it would be far too obvious to do anything deleterious at this point, he had to give everyone a few weeks to begin to believe that all that had happened in Dumbledore's office was a bird getting injured. Instead, he just watched and listened.
She was standing up to Granger, he saw (which was obvious from a glance towards the Gryffindor tables). But he could also see that the argument was about him, and that Ginny was fairly certain (as were, surely, the others) that he was responsible for the attack on Dumbledore's office, and that he therefore had the parchments. But what puzzled him was that she wasn't going to do anything about it other than continue to cold-shoulder him. He tried to throw a few wrenches into her thoughts to keep her angry (and thus incapable of effective Occlumency), but it was for nought and her thoughts disappeared from the parchment once more.
By the time they resurfaced, he had not only decided that a confusing concoction was necessary, but had brewed it. It sat on his bureau in a clear vial, perhaps five millilitres of light yellow fluid, waiting for the proper method of delivery. He could slip it into her tea in the mornings, but other people would be around and would probably notice. Best to have her take it just as she woke up, when she would still be groggy and when Hermione would not be there to insist that someone test it before drinking. So he figured he could convince a house elf to deliver it to her in the middle of the night, and he just needed some cover story to convince her to drink it.
He didn't hope for a moment that he wouldn't have to use it at all. But then, a week before her O.W.L.s began, her thoughts began to appear on the parchment.
Of course, they were all about Transfiguration. It wouldn't be very useful for him to disrupt her knowledge of Transfiguration, he decided. He tried to make her think about other things, but she had gotten better at controlling her own thoughts, as well as the Occlumency. She was keeping most things from him, just letting him see her studies.
But it did afford him a place to practice. So he subtly affected just her thoughts on academics; correcting one here or there, planting a false notion in her head only very occasionally. He got to be so good at it that she didn't notice, or at least didn't alter her behavior. He abandoned her completely during the Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L., but to his dismay he didn't think she noticed that either.
It crossed his mind with not a little bitterness that she had Harry Potter to help her with that one.
And then, it was Thursday evening, and the only test that remained was Potions. Ginny was studying frantically. Tom figured, this was his only chance. He scrawled a note, saying the draught was Felix Felicis, and since Ginny was so nervous about the Potions O.W.L. she should take some for luck, enchanted it to take on the handwriting of whoever Ginny expected it to, attached it to the bottle and went down to the kitchens to plead with a House Elf.
Then he waited until morning. Her test was at nine in the morning, and he woke up at five.
By seven, he was studying the parchment carefully – it showed nothing, as it tended to do every night (Ginny would not be so careful as to let Tom see her dreams, after all). But she had to be awake – she had her Potions O.W.L. in two hours.
Eight, and still nothing. Tom cursed under his breath. Maybe she had caught on and this would all be for naught. Eight-thirty. Then, at eight forty-five, the parchment erupted into a sea of thoughts, slipping from here to there in a blur of confusion. Tom almost cackled with delight.
Still, it wouldn't do to let her be late to Potions. He slipped in directions, reminders, making sure she never got lost. He inserted thoughts putting her confusion off to nervousness. He inserted misconceptions about Occlumency, hoping to make her completely incapable of that. Finally, he tried to go so far as to make her hate Harry – but that thought soon disappeared into the storm of her mind never to resurface.
The Potions test began. Tom had to bring her attention back to the written portion almost every five minutes, and advise her constantly, but it wouldn't do to let her fail the Potions O.W.L. By the end of the written portion, she was feeling inexplicably confident and successful, but still had the attention span of a cocker-spaniel. Tom rubbed his eyes. This was almost as grueling as taking the test had been last year. But it had to be done; if she failed the Potions test she would lose her trust in him completely, and he would be back to square one. The practical portion of the test consisted in brewing a Draught of Peace, and Tom walked her through every step to make a successful potion, and then carefully removed some thoughts that perhaps tasting some would calm her nerves and help her regain her normal self-possession. In her current state, she might just drink her O.W.L. potion, and while it would have had exactly the effect she thought, well, it would have been unseemly.
And it would have had exactly the effect she thought.
Then, finally, it was over. Tom could almost hear the bells ringing as students filed out of the classroom. Ginny was suitably thrilled about being done with her O.W.L.s, and the confusing concoction was just beginning to wear off. It was his last chance.
He only had to implant three thoughts: first, the strong assurance that he had never, and would never, done anything to hurt her. Second, the reminder that Harry Potter was an arse, always had been, and had only made Ginny feel like more of a second-class citizen. Third, he added the suggestion that she abandon Potter and his friends and cast in her lot with Tom.
He couldn't quite tell if it had worked. He waited for a moment, and her thoughts became clearer as the last of the confusing concoction wore off. But she didn't close herself off from him. He added a small suggestion that she come to the Slytherin common room, wrote in directions, and waited.