The first week of classes included more lectures on preparing for O.W.L.s than anyone wanted to hear. Even Tom, who seemed far too excited about the brutal exams, began to mock the professors and their ponderous nonsense about how the stduents' whole lives hung on these tests and they needed to take them seriously and study as hard as they could. Harder. This was not the year for lollygagging or skiving off to go watch Quidditch practices.

Ginny had begun to tune them out when Severus Snape ended the first Defense Against the Dark Arts class by asking her to please stay a few minutes if she wouldn't mind. She minded a great deal but she forced a smile to her face and said of course not, it was no problem at all. Once all the other students had filed out Snape closed the door with a click that seemed very loud and her general sense of unease turned to a far more defined nervousness. "Is something wrong with my work, professor?" she asked.

Your work is my work and therefore it is perfect, Tom muttered but he knew as well as she did this wasn't about how well she cast a protego or whether she'd done any reading over the summer. Nice stall, though.

"Your work has always been excellent," Snape said. He might have been confessing a sin the admission appeared to pain him so much. "Far beyond the scope of what I would expect in a school girl, to be quite frank, Miss Weasley."

"Are you complaining I am doing too well?" she asked. She could almost feel the Mark squirming on his arm, and she knew Tom could. Whatever magic linked him to those burnt curses on his followers hadn't been broken by his time in the diary.

"No," Snape said. "Quite the opposite. I was going to suggest you might benefit from additional tutoring in more advanced topics."

She had to keep herself from taking a step back. He wants to figure us out, Tom hissed. Say no.

How the bloody hell am I supposed to do that? she demanded.

"Are you all right?" Snape asked. "Your eyes went a bit blank for a moment, Miss Weasley. Are you suffering from petit seizures?" His tone was too malicious or her to believe for even a moment he was worried she had some seizure disorder. "You should see Madam Pomfrey if you believe that to be the case."

"I'm fine," she said, "I was just thinking about my schedule. This is my O.W.L. year, and I'm not sure -."

"I can easily assist you in that," Snape said. His smile grew almost predatory. "Though I am very sure you will not need it. I have never seen a student quite so apt – I've only even heard of one - and it would be a pity to let your skills be held back by your imbecile classmates."

"I'm really nothing special," Ginny said. "I don't want to be any sort of -."

"Bother?" Snape's fingers twitched at the cuff of his sleeve and she tried not to notice. She wasn't supposed to know about that Mark. "I can assure you, Miss Weasley, you will be no such thing."

There was no escaping this. "Then, thank you," she said.

She turned to leave and had one hand on the door when he added, his voice as smooth as glass, "A friend of mine happens to be in Britain right now. I think you might have met him at one of Narcissa Malfoy's interminable parties. Regulus Black. He's always been clever and I wanted him to look over some of your work. That won't be a problem, will it?"

"No," she said. She was sure her voice was so faint she might have been a ghost. "I look forward to it."

Snape pointed toward the door and she slipped out, managed to walk a few paces through the hall, then collapsed, shaking, against the wall. A portrait eyed her curiously and she mustered a typical look of the adolescent sullens. "Stupid teacher," she muttered so the portrait could hear and run off to Dumbledore to report. "Like I want to spend more time with him when I could be flying."

Tom was silent, never a good sign, and she decided that flying was exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to go fast and feel the wind sting her eyes and be airborne and free, even if that was an illusion. A quick trip back to the Slytherin dormitory and she had her gear on and her broom in hand. Draco, looking wan, smiled at her from whatever old book he was bent over. "Need a break already?" he asked. "It's only September. It'll get worse."

That was what she was afraid of but she gave him a quick, two-fingered salute and then sauntered off toward the pitch as if she didn't have a care in the world.

We don't need to worry about Regulus, Tom said at last. I could tell at Narcissa Malfoy's party that he -.

We do, Ginny said. She waved to a pair of Hufflepuffs going by and they waved back. Outside the bitter personal rivalries she seemed to always be stuck in, most people at Hogwarts didn't cling to their Houses with near fanatical loyalty. She should think about grooming more people from other groups for when they took over. He'll know you're there, she added. Snape knows.

He doesn't know what it is.

He's Dumbledore's man.

Maybe.

She snorted. You wait, she said. He'll turn out to hate you.

To hate him, Tom corrected her. We want them all to hate him.

Arguing with him that he and Voldemort were pretty much the same person seemed pointless, and not exactly accurate anyway, so she just pointed her broom at the sky and hurled her body upward. It was cold, too cold for September surely, but she flew higher and higher. Her eyes watered and the wind tried to force her off the broom but she was Ginny Weasley and she couldn't be forced to do anything. She'd picked her House at Hogwarts, defied her family, ingratiated herself with the wealthiest purebloods in Britain. And she was going to bring down a monster, and if Severus Snape, Death Eater and Dumbledore's lackey, thought he could stop her, well, he had another thing coming. Let him bring Regulus Black in.

Let him just try to stop her.

She hadn't carried around the darkest wizard in all history in his head for several years without learning a few things.