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: No Tom in this Chapter, sorry. Well... no physical Tom in this Chapter. Sorry. Thank you to The-Quoi (Unfortunately, Tom can be rather stubborn when he wants to be; he needs a bit of a shock to snap out of it), and Annabel-lurvs-purple (glad you liked it!) for your reviews! See you Thursday, for a chapter that made me grin and guffaw even more than this one!
Expectations of Grandeur: Chapter 36: Confusion
Ginny couldn't sleep the night before her Potions O.W.L. If she was brutally honest with herself, it didn't matter one way or another for her future; no one cared how talented (or wretched) at Potions a professional Quidditch player was. But there was a nagging bit of her (mostly her stalwart determination and thirst for success) that wanted to prove herself against Hermione, against Tom, and against anyone who had ever thought she would need help to get through the day.
This is why, upon waking up only fifteen minutes before the Potions exam, she seriously considered ignoring the Felix Felicis Harry had made for her. Her first instinct was to insist that she could do this on her own; she had no need for artificially produced luck. Her second instinct was to say that she was a fool if she didn't accept Harry's help, and that a little bit of luck was never a replacement for skill.
She didn't have time for a third instinct. She just pulled on her robes and downed the potion in one gulp.
Her mother had told her that Felix Felicis could cause giddiness. Ginny supposed that she could call the feeling that swept through her upon drinking it giddiness, although it was more of a fuzziness, as she felt all her troubles melt away into a sort of vague nonsense. She laughed, supposing that she must have taken a bit too much, and that she would just be luckier for longer than necessary, perhaps. She heard a banging on her door, and stood puzzling at it. Who would be knocking? Why would they be knocking? Everything was just fine, glorious, wonderful. Why would someone be hammering the door down?
"Ginny! We have to hurry or we'll be late for Potions!"
Ginny blinked. Potions. Her O.W.L. was today. That was why she had taken Felix Felicis in the first place. She shook her head. It must have been a side-effect of the giddiness that she had forgotten. Right. So that was solved. She shook her head and grabbed her bag, opening the door and hurrying past her classmates on her way to the dungeons. She had to get there.
Not that she would be late; she was very lucky today.
Although it would be just like Potter to mess up the Felix Felicis and turn it into something much more sinister, she thought.
Then she gasped. Since when did she think of Harry as "Potter"? She wondered if perhaps her Occlumency had come to nothing, and Tom had gotten in. But that was silly; of course her Occlumency was just fine – she had the charm around her wrist and everything.
Or was it her ankle?
That didn't make any sense at all; what did ankles have to do with Occlumency? It must be her neck. But there was nothing around her neck, and she knew for a fact that she wouldn't wear a necklace every day since March. She hated jewelery. She shook her head. She had Potions to think about, and she knew that the best way to keep Tom out of her thoughts was to focus on Potions; her nerves must really be getting to her.
Or perhaps her lack thereof; she wasn't certain.
She found her way to the Potions dungeon and stopped in the doorway for a moment. She had forgotten where to sit. Of course it was a test and they had assigned seats, and of course she realized that they had known their assigned seats for the past week at least (perhaps the past month, she thought with a sense that her memory failing on her was certainly not the effect of Felix Felicis that she would have chosen for a testing situation). She strode to the first open table and found her name on it. Lucky.
Of course she was lucky. She had just taken perhaps too much Felix Felicis. She decided that that much Potion, with that much effect, would probably mean her subconscious was smarter than she at Potions at the moment, and stared down at the test.
The page was blank. She frowned. Surely they didn't have to do a spell to get the test to reveal itself; that would be cruel. And even Snape would have warned them about that. And no other class required them to enchant the tests in order to see the questions, so why would Potions? Perhaps she needed a revealing draught, she thought, and then frowned again because she was fairly certain she had never heard of a revealing draught before and certainly didn't know how to make one. She shook her head. There was a chiming from the front of the room, and the examiner, some old wizard from the ministry with sallow skin and oily hair – was that standard in Potions experts, she wondered, a side-effect of days spent over a cauldron – said in a surly voice "You may open your test booklets; the examination has begun."
Ginny almost laughed with relief (and shock at her own foolishness) as she opened the booklet and gazed at the first question.
She had barely finished reading it before she was certain of the answer. She began scribbling.
Now, this was what she was talking about; Felix Felicis indeed. She practically sped through the exam, except for the few times when she got confused about which questions she was supposed to answer or the form her answer was supposed to take, and had to read the directions several more times to understand. But it was probably just nerves, she decided, and in general the test had certainly gone better than any other Potions test she could remember. So the Felix Felicis must have been working.
Ginny finished every answer (which was surprising to her, since she had never done that on a Potions test before), and reviewed each answer (finding no particular mistakes, but that might have been assisted by the fact that her nerves were so bad that she couldn't read through a five word answer without losing her place). Another chime rung as she was on the last page and the examiner (who, really, looked like he could have been Snape's grandfather), said in a sneering tone, "Put your quills down, time is up." The sound of frantic scratching stopped. Young men and women in ministry robes walked down the aisles picking up examinations, and the students were allowed thirty minutes for lunch before the practical portion of the examination began. House elves had provided food out in the corridors, and Ginny fell in line behind Colin Creevey and a girl from Hufflepuff to get a sandwich.
"Neville was right," Ginny heard Colin Creevey whispering. "It's so much easier without Snape in the room, breathing down your neck. I reckon I did all right."
The brown-haired Hufflepuff he was talking to tittered. "I don't know, Colin," she said. "The examiner from the ministry isn't much better than Snape. And this test matters so much for our futures; I was just as scared as ever."
Colin shook his head and said something supportive in a muted tone. Ginny grabbed a roast beef sandwich and wandered a bit down the hall. She had the sudden idea of going to the Slytherin common room, which she figured had to be nearby (of course it was in the dungeons), and she looked for a Slytherin in her year before shaking her head; that was absurd. For what reason would she go down to the Slytherin common room? She had never been close enough to Tom, even in the best of times, to casually stop by his common room, and now was certainly not the best of times – it was only a hair's breadth from out and out war.
Not that what he did, throwing a little tantrum, really deserved that, she thought abruptly.
She shook her head again, as though her thoughts were rocks that were bouncing about confusedly in her head altogether too much, and by shaking the inappropriate ones to the bottom she would be more comfortable. Tom had tried to control her again; tried to possess her again. Surely he deserved everything he got.
Except, she realized, he hadn't really tried to control her – all he had actually done was try to stop her from going to Dumbledore before she heard his case. For all she knew, he wasn't being at all unreasonable now. It could have just been a temper tantrum. And she didn't want to be punished for her temper tantrums, she knew. She said things that she didn't mean, she did things that were almost unforgivable, but she was lucky enough to have friends that forgave her for her temper, rather than friends that turned her in to Dumbledore for hexing Draco Malfoy in the hallways.
Ginny sighed. The problem was, even if Tom might still be a good guy (or at least a neutral player), until she knew that for sure she couldn't give him a second chance. With that parchment, with the connection between them, it was just too much to ask to give him another chance. She couldn't stop using Occlumency, she couldn't give him an inch. If he had turned bad, which he very well might have, he could abuse that inch too thoroughly, and take a mile, and she would only have herself to blame for that. So she had to keep her distance. That much was obvious.
But it would be nice to know for sure if it was just a temper tantrum or if it was a change of heart, she decided. And it couldn't hurt to talk to him in person, so long as she was still using Occlumency. He couldn't touch her when she was using Occlumency; or rather, he would have to fight her out and out, and although he was much better at Potions than she, he hadn't yet studied so much of the Dark Arts that she couldn't hold her own against him with Charms and Jinxes.
After all, she was Ginny Weasley, and she was famous around the school for her Charms work. Even Fred and George feared to be on the receiving end of her wrath. She smiled at that.
She wondered briefly how much she could figure out from him if she even talked to him in person; after what happened last time she hardly expected him to say he was up to anything even if he was. And she didn't really think he would fall for her suddenly deciding to join him against Harry and Ron and Hermione and Dumbledore, especially after the last time she had done that. So she thought that maybe she couldn't trust him no matter what he said, and it just wouldn't do any good to talk to him in the first place, but that was a rather defeatist point of view, and she clenched her jaw and determined that she didn't want to be bitter, scared, morose Ginny Weasley, but friendly, bubbly, happy, brave, and proud Ginny Weasley. And the Weasleys gave people second, and third, and fourth chances, even when perhaps they shouldn't. Didn't they?
She thought, suddenly, that maybe they would have her brewing Veritaserum, and she could pocket some to use on Riddle and see what he was really up to – but then she remembered that Veritaserum took a month to brew, and was significantly above O.W.L. level, so that was out of the question. She sighed. It would have been useful, she thought, although making Tom drink it, and making sure he didn't know a counter curse or an illusion to make it seem like he drank it when really he didn't, or hadn't already swallowed some antidote to make it useless, well, ensuring all of those things was well beyond what she was capable of if she wasn't even on speaking terms with him yet. So she gave up on that idea.
Part of her wished she knew Legilimency, so she could read his mind from looking at him, but she decided that it was probably not a very easy task to learn, and whereas Occlumency favoured her strengths of being able to hide her emotions from her brothers, and the ability to lie to her mother taught by Fred and George, well, Legilimency relied on being able to read people; not only obvious people who couldn't hide their emotions if they wanted to like Harry Potter, but anyone and everyone, and Ginny had never been particularly observant or supportive. She didn't think that anyone in her family was, to tell the truth; they were all too noisy and raucous to need to be able to understand quiet and secretive people.
She laughed at herself. Here she was worrying about not being a Legilimens, when she could just reach into the back of her mind and see if Tom was up to anything – much easier than any Legilimency.
She almost did, too, before she realized how stupid that would be and stopped herself. Any door opened opens both ways; if she wanted to check on him she would be allowing him to check on her – and that was just what she didn't want to have happen. Besides, she knew that she could control the connection by Occlumency, but that meant that he could as well. She didn't trust Tom to be any less adept at Occlumency than she was, so she would likely see only what he wanted her to see.
She shook her head. This Potions test was distracting her far too much; she had almost made a fatal mistake. She wondered for a terrifying moment if perhaps the Felix Felicis hadn't really been Felix Felicis; what if it was some poison or some draught to make her confused and more likely to slip up like that?
But that was ridiculous. Why would Harry give her something that would make her slip up and give Tom an opening? And the potion had certainly come from Harry; who else could get it into the Gryffindor Common room or convince one of the girls to put it by her bed? Besides, the note had been in Harry's rather distinctive scrawl.
But he was such a dolt at Potions; almost as bad as she – what if he had messed up somehow? What if he had made some mistake and it had caused the potion to backfire? She didn't know how Felix Felicis worked, and certainly not well enough to be able to tell whether or not any mistake Harry was likely to make would have caused her to be confused and foolhardy all day rather than simply lucky, but she couldn't dismiss that thought from her mind.
It was, of course, exactly the wrong thought to be haunted with as the examiner called them back in to the room for the practical portion of the test. She had barely touched her sandwich, but it wouldn't do to keep everyone waiting, so she filed back in with the rest of them, and nervously sat behind her cauldron. The standard set of ingredients was neatly arrayed in front of her on the table. A young man checked the hallway for stragglers and then closed the door behind the last student, a bored expression on his face.
The examiner cleared his throat, and the room again went silent. He pointed his wand to the chalkboard and a thick white piece of chalk hastily scribbled "Draught of Peace" in absolutely perfect printing. "You will be making the Draught of Peace," he intoned. "You have four hours. You may begin." There was a chime and Ginny stared at her ingredients.
There was a moment when she wasn't sure how to start, but then she erupted into a frenzy of action; setting her cauldron to boil and taking a whole moonstone out of the ingredients kit to grind with her mortar and pestle.
Everything was wonderfully automatic; she dumped the moonstone into the cauldron just as the water began to boil almost without thinking of it, and then began quickly chopping the other ingredients. In went the hellebore, the crocodile heart, the burnt and shredded porcupine quills, and so on and so forth. It was almost as if her subconscious was working faster than her conscious mind; whenever Ginny thought of something that might have gone wrong, it was already accounted for.
She wondered if taking some and drinking it, when it was done, would soothe her nerves and reduce the negative effects that the Felix Felicis appeared to be having. Perhaps it would make her mind more orderly; so she could keep up with herself. But she balked at that possibility; first, it was entirely possible (and likely) that she had botched the potion somehow. Second, it was equally likely that the potion wouldn't do a thing to counteract Felix Felicis. And third, she didn't know, or want to know, what trouble she could get into by stealing something from the Ministry of Education – the O.W.L. reviewers weren't wizards to be taken lightly. Perhaps she could be accused of cheating and have all of her tests thrown out simply for that; and without any O.W.L.s, she wasn't going to get a job anywhere. No one would trust her with even the simplest task.
So she had best just leave the potion in the cauldron, let them evaluate it, and hope the jitteriness and the confusion and the nerves left her at the end of the Potions exam. She thought, briefly, that it was just like Harry to botch something like this; try to help her out on her Potions exam and end up just making her nervous and disoriented all day. He was well-intentioned, perhaps, but horribly inept.
And sometimes she wondered even if his intentions were all that good. No, she couldn't deny that he meant the best, and she was glad to be in his confidence more now than she had been in the past, but he was a mediocre friend to her and even given his attempts to be friendly and supportive especially since her falling out with Tom, well, he wasn't doing particularly well. In fact, usually he only succeeded in annoying her. And what sort of friend was that to sacrifice other things for?
Ginny sighed angrily. She had to let the Potion sit for another twenty-two minutes and five seconds, and she eyed the small alarm clock warily. At thirteen minutes to go she had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Something had gone wrong. She first thought it had to be with her Potion, and frantically went over every step she had taken – none of them were mistakes. She smelled the potion and examined it; it appeared to be correct. So she didn't think it could have been that.
But the nagging sensation that something was horribly, terribly, and irrevocably wrong didn't go away. She began to get frantic. What had she done wrong? What had she forgotten? What trap had she fallen into?
That was it; that was the nagging feeling. Someone had tricked her, sabotaged her, fooled her into a false sense of security and then pounced when she least expected it. She slipped into a panic. What had been in that potion she drank this morning? What had she done; drinking it without making sure it was what it claimed to be? What fool mistake had Harry made that caused her to be unfocused and confused for her Potions exam?
Unfocused.
She felt all the blood rush from her face. Unfocused. If she couldn't focus her thoughts, she couldn't control the parchment. Occlumency, after all, was all about control and focus. And Harry, that blamed fool, had made her lose her focus for the better part of a day with his faulty potions-work. Tom would have had essentially free access to do whatever he wanted to her thoughts, all day, and it was entirely Harry's fault!
She was lucky Tom hadn't tried anything. Which either meant he didn't know about his chance – something she found incredibly unlikely, since they shared a telepathic connection – or he didn't have the parchments, making him powerless to do anything about it – which contradicted her strong belief that he had broken into Dumbledore's office and stolen the parchments back – or he had chosen to do nothing, when he had an absolutely golden opportunity to take action – which screamed against every single thing she knew about You-Know-Who, and everything she knew about Tom Riddle. Tom was evil and manipulative, opportunistic to a fault; surely the Diary had never let a chance for possession go by unused. So this last option seemed the least likely by far. Most likely, he didn't have the parchments, which meant he hadn't been behind the attack on Dumbledore's office, which meant that someone else was.
But who could that other person be? And if someone else had broken into Dumbledore's office, just like someone else had written those letters and slammed the doors shut at Christmas, well, perhaps her question shouldn't be who that other person could be, but how on earth Dumbledore and Harry and everyone was going to deal with not one but two incarnations of the Dark Lord in the school at one time. Ginny agreed very much in principle with Mr. Lovegood: she thought the school could make a stand against a single You-Know-Who and succeed, but if there were two of him she was doubtful that even Harry Potter would come out alive. Especially if the boy who lived couldn't even make a proper batch of Felix Felicis.
Then again, Ginny thought, there were perhaps two other possible interpretations. The first was that Tom wasn't the one to ransack the headmaster's office not just because the older Lord Voldemort had gotten to it before him, but also (or mostly) because he had realized the error of his ways and decided to leave Ginny alone. Or rather, he had calmed down enough to give up his plans for out and out war, and had decided that instead he would be much better off just keeping to himself and to Slytherins, Gryffindors (and especially Harry and Ginny) be damned. That was at least as likely as him being beaten to the idea by his senior and thwarted by increased security measures.
The second (or was it third? Ginny still found her thoughts confused and slightly lost at sea) possibility was that he had the parchments and had done something, and she hadn't noticed because of Harry's blunder in making the Potion. But that was absurd. Of course she would have noticed, even in the jittery and unfocused state, if Tom bloody Riddle had implanted thoughts into her head.
The timer rang, and she jumped to a seated position, waving her wand at it in a desultory fashion to quiet it. She cooled the potion and saw it gelling slightly – perfect. She dipped in a nickel ladle, which was almost as resistant to reaction as the fancy platinum ones she saw in apothecaries (but much cheaper), and filled five vials with her potion. Then she began to clean up. It was miraculous, she thought, that even with a malfunctioning Felix Felicis making her unfocused and confused, she had made a picture perfect Draught of Peace. Almost like someone else had seen through the haze of her thoughts and directed her hands for her.
She stopped cleaning with a jolt and almost spilled her potion all over the floor. That was absurd, unspeakable, so far from likely that it didn't bear any thought whatsoever.
But it did, she supposed, explain a lot. Tom broke into Dumbledore's office and stole the parchments back. But probably his aim with them was no more evil than it had ever been – he just wanted to communicate with her. Of course, he had told Malfoy and the other Slytherins differently, in order to avoid their scorn and get their help in the plot to break into the office in the first place, which explained the rather smug sneers Malfoy had been sending in her direction lately. And then Tom had noticed when Harry's botched potion made Ginny's mind accessible, of course, and had used the parchments not to brainwash her, but to ensure that she passed her Potions O.W.L.
She had misjudged him. Oh, how she had misjudged him. Here she had been calling him evil to Harry's good, when in reality it wasn't about good and evil at all – it was about incompetent and brilliant, talentless and gifted, weak and powerful. And who could consent to condescension from a weak, blundering fool when they could be treated as an equal by someone of the finest caliber Hogwarts had ever seen?
She needed to talk to him, to apologize to him for her behaviour. She handed her potions to the proctors with a frenzied look on her face, and then marched towards the Slytherin common room, not puzzling for a moment that she had never known where it was before.