Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and am not making a profit from this fanfic.
A/N: BEWARNED: this will have sporadic updates, select Weasley bashing, trio bashing, and LGBTQIA characters (which I should not have to warn, but just telling the homophobes to fuck off.)
Hogwarts Express
Ginny stalked angrily down the length of the train, livid at Ron for unceremoniously kicking her out of their compartment. She hadn't planned to stay there anyway, but it didn't mean that he could just kick her out.
Looking into compartments, she continued her search for Luna, her fury not helped by the whispers that travelled up and down the train and around the compartments as she passed.
She idly wondered what she had done to merit such whispers, before stepping at last into her (only) friend's compartment.
The spacey blonde looked up from the Quibbler edition she was reading (upside down, Ginny noted).
"Oh, hello Ginny. Would you like to help me try to decipher these old vampiric runes? I can't quite figure them out,"
The two friends spent at least a third of the ride intermittently trying to decode the runes and spontaneously bursting into fits of giggles.
A rapping at the compartment door disrupted them and had Ginny looking up, irritated.
An awkward and bumbling blonde boy stumbled in, with a camera around his neck and ears too big for his head. Creevey, wasn't it? Corden something or other? He was in Gryffindor too, Ginny thought…
"Who are you?" she asked bluntly. "What do you want?"
"O-oh, well… errr, umm," She groaned inwardly. Sweet Merlin, this one's thick.
"Yes?"
"W-w-well… I just wanted to ask if the er, um r-rumours are true."
"The rumours?"
"You- you don't know about the rumours? They're s-saying you, uh, petrified the muggleborns last year,"
He turned tail and ran. Coward. Her attention was diverted however, when the compartment door rattled as the train slammed to a halt, and the lights flickered and went out.
A cold wind blew throughout the car and Ginny shivered. She moved across the compartment to Luna for warmth and Luna gripped her hand.
She was back in the chamber now, laying there on the stone of the place that had once been her haven, hearing Tom's apologetic 'I'm sorry, Gin, but I had to. It was the only way… It truly was.'
Hearing Harry realize who Tom was. Hearing Tom mock him.
Hearing Phobetor roar as Fawkes clawed out his eyes.
Hearing Tom shout in rage, rage she felt as well, with the pain, and hear him yell to ignore Fawkes and 'KILL THE BOY'.
Hearing Phobetor fall to the ground, feeling the shudder that ran through the earth at his collapse.
Feeling the hot tears stain her cheeks as her friend and familiar, the one other creature on Merlin's green earth who loved their Tom. Their Tom who betrayed her.
Her eyes cracked open, and she stared into the green eyes of the boy who killed her Tom and her Phobetor.
Hatred, and rage, and anger consumed her, and it took all her strength to contain it.
And then there was the voice.
"Ginny?" it said. "Ginny? Ginny!" But it wasn't Harry or Ron or her parents…
Her lips were forced apart, and something sweet pressed inside. Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked out into a compartment. Watery silver eyes met her chestnut and she almost smiled. Luna. Her wonderful, beautiful Luna.
"Luna? What happened?"
An unrecognizable voice answered her query.
"Dementors stopped the train. Chocolate?"
"Thank you, sir,"
Another piece of chocolate was pushed into her hand and she bit off a chunk. She looked up and studied her saviour. A man stood there, clothed in ratty robes and sporting greying hair, though he couldn't have been older than 35.
"My name is Professor Lupin,"
"Thank you for helping me, professor."
"It was no bother. I must go and check on the other students,"
The man left the compartment. She scanned the car and found a girl, one she didn't recognize, sitting across from her.
She had a petite frame, only accented by her smooth dark hair, striking gold-ringed cerulean eyes, quirked brow, fitted silk robes, and smug grin curled about her lips.
"What do you want?"
"You really should learn to be more respectful, Weasley."
The girl's plump lips curled into a smirk. Ginny gestured to the door, a clear dismissal.
"You're welcome to see yourself out. See the door's just there, and then you have to pull it open and-"
"You know, I don't think I will just yet,"
Ginny groaned. This girl just didn't know when to leave well alone.
"My name's Asteria Greengrass,"
Ginny gave up. Asteria cocked a brow but let it rest and turned to Luna.
"Is she constantly like this?"
Ginny however, didn't hear Luna's response, as fatigue overtook her as a result of not getting much sleep on the lumpy mattress with only a thin sheet to keep her warm the night before. Her mum had booted her out of her bed in favor of Granger sleeping with three thick blankets on her bed.
Her mum also felt it necessary for her to call Granger 'Hermione', because she sounded like 'those horrid Slytherin heathens', and because Granger was her friend (she wasn't), and cared about her (did she? was that why she didn't notice Ginny was being possessed for a year?).
But any coherent thought remaining dissipated as her eyelids shuttered and she gave into the soothing embrace of Morpheus.
Hogwarts Express
"Weasley? Wake up, we're almost there,"
Ginny rolled over at the nudge in her ribs, and as words began to take meaning, she sat up and stretched languidly.
"Fine then," Ginny yawned. "You go change in the loo and I'll change in here,"
Greengrass suppressed a chuckle and rolled her eyes but made no protest as she left the compartment, door sliding shut in her wake.
Ginny reached her hand into her trunk, reaching for her robes. She shed her torn muggle jeans and Weird Sisters shirt and pulled her worn uniform on over her head.
Greengrass returned soon, Luna in tow, and sneered at the heap of Ginny's clothes showing out of her trunk. She surveyed Ginny's ratty robes critically and sneered.
"Don't your parents have the money to buy you clothes that fit? Ones for girls, at least?" Ginny growled. Greengrass mockingly raised her arms up in surrender.
"I give, I give, Weasley. But if I'm going to keep associating with you, I'll have to buy you new robes. It's not good for my image, you know, to consort with you while you wear… those,"
"And who says you're going to keep associating with me?"
"Well I do, of course,"
Ginny sighed. She seemed to be doing that quite a lot lately.
When Luna and Ginny got out at Hogsmeade Station, Asteria came with them.
When they climbed into the thestral-drawn carriage, Asteria followed them.
When they walked into the Great Hall, Asteria stuck by them.
And when they separated and Asteria went to Slytherin, Luna to Ravenclaw and Ginny to Gryffindor, Ronald exploded. Literally.
"Wha' the hell d'ya think you're doing wi' tha' slimy snake, Ginny? They're all junior Death Eaters, Jus' waitin' to join You-Know-Who, bad blood, tha's what it is,"
And Ginny snapped.
"Oh for the Lady's sake, Ronald. Our grandmother was in Slytherin. You don't always have to be such a close minded bloody git," she seethed. (''Language," Granger reprimanded) "And if your good friend Harry had properly defeated him, they wouldn't join him,"
The other two thirds of the esteemed 'Golden Trio' seemed taken aback at her fierce and impassioned defence of the 'evil, Death Eater' House.
"You know, Ginny, he's just trying to protect you," Oh yay, the know-it-all has spoken.
"Yeah Ginny, you know what Malfoy's like, he's an evil git," Potter, the prat, jerked his head in the direction of the Slytherin Table, where Malfoy was, indeed, reenacting his fainting on the train.
Ginny saw Asteria sitting nearby, conversing with a pair of dirty blonde haired twins. She glanced back at Malfoy's group and frowned when a girl with aristocratic features and dark, smoky eyes caught her attention.
She raised a brow. Ginny grimaced and motioned to the trio. The other girl nodded. Ginny wasn't sure what exactly the Slytherin got from the conversation but Ginny was left somewhere in between satisfied and confused and perhaps a hint of something else.
When she climbed into bed that night, she was still thinking about the silent conversation with the Slytherin girl who's name seemed to remain stubbornly just out of her mind's reach.