Lucius walked back to her room with her, silent the whole way. At the door he stepped away from her, staring over her shoulder out the window to the gardens.

"I think you should go write in your diary for a while. Can you?"

Ginny nodded, afraid to speak in case her voice should betray the fear she felt after seeing Narcissa. It was so obvious that this woman, only a few months ago in the prime of life, had been damaged by something other than routine illness. The woman she had seen had long ago left herself behind.

"Good," Lucius said, touching her cheek. "Go do that, and I will come back when I can."


Very few living people know that you gave me the diary. My parents don't even know; I didn't want to see my father kill you in the streets if he should have found out. But I always knew, Lucius, because although you thought you were being sneaky, I saw you place the journal in my cauldron on a hot, fateful day in Flourish and Blotts.

Even after Tom had gone, I would still think of you and wonder why I had been chosen for your most important task. I would think about it constantly, and then that would bring me back to thinking of the diary, and then I would recede back into myself yet again. Slowly but surely, the people in my life began to give up on me, not outwardly, of course not, but in my heart I knew I was a lost cause to them.

"Oh, poor Ginny," I imagined my family would say someday at Christmas as they watched me from afar. "She was never the same after the Dark Lord's touch." And my nieces and nephews would come to see me as pitiable, an outsider.

I came to the source. You knew him more closely than anyone who lives still, and you too were powerless in his presence. That is why I came. To look in the mirror.

He read it in front of her, then closed the book and laid it on the table, holding his head in his hands. Ginny reached out to touch his knee, and he looked up. They locked eyes, and it felt like nothing ever had.

"Here is your mirror," he said. "Do you like what you see?"

"The reflection is distorted," she said. "There's no way to know."


They went to walk in the gardens, to give themselves something to do while he tried to explain one thing after another.

"She can't exactly remember the incident, and I don't tell her about it. But it is very much my fault, and I came to hate myself for it. She's been deteriorating this way for almost a year, no doubt you've heard the gossip about my newfound reclusive nature. Now you can understand why I choose to leave society behind – how could I face it?" He looked at her, eyes asking for forgiveness. "You'll want to punish me, to leave. You will tell someone the truth."

"I opened the Chamber of Secrets," she said slowly, tightening her grasp on him, "and no one ever punished me."

"Ah, but once again, that was my fault. Everything has been traceable right back to me."

"Everything?"

"I funded the Dark Lord, I poisoned your soul, I…my wife will soon be dead because of things I have done. Not directly to her; I have rarely done anything that directly hurts someone. But I've always been the beginning of the chain reactions."

"A catalyst," Ginny murmured.

"And very little more."

The settled on a bench next to a small pond full of fantastic magical plants. Every so often, gem colored fish would jump from the water to impossible heights and fall back with almost no splash. The sounds they made as they hit the surface were like chimes; Ginny was mesmerized by the performance.

"This pond has been here for centuries, ever since the Manor was built. It sustains its own life and appearance without any help from humans, and although it's small, it's unfathomably deep."

She pulled her eyes away from the shimmering water and looked back to him.

"You're changing the subject," she said coolly.

"Only to tell you about something in which you seem interested."

"Yes, but you know there are other things I'm far more interested in."

"Oh, those." He waved his hand in dismissal, a sad smile on his face.

"What will make it easier?" she asked, desperate for him to stop speaking in vague riddles.

"Nothing."

"Maybe not, but I have an idea." Ginny stood, and offered her hand. He waited a beat, watching a trio of shining fish in their acrobatics, before he took it.


After the war, I was pardoned, as you know, by Harry Potter. Our whole family was, under the conditions that the colors we showed at the end of the war remained true. So, as you may also know, a team of Aurors came here and turned the house upside down looking for Dark objects: potions, books, anything. I showed no resistance, because on the outside, I was simply glad to have made it out with my family intact. Draco and Narcissa, both of whom have better hearts than I do, were truly excited by our chance to try again. They made new friends, Draco got a good job, Narcissa and her sister reconciled; for them, life was new.

I, however, had cleverly hidden one last box full of artifacts. Nothing I truly believed to be dangerous, but things that would have been taken otherwise. They were either family heirlooms, or very valuable, or both, and at the time parting from them seemed like a sin against my true self.

The box was never as well hidden as I thought, and one day about a year ago, Draco and Narcissa were working on getting rid of some old things in the spare rooms. I realized too late that they were working in the room where I had placed the box, disguised as ordinary junk, and by the time I got there to take it away, they were already elbow deep in it. I watched as Narcissa placed her hand on the one thing I had always had qualms about keeping, the one thing that truly should have been taken away. Luckily I managed to grab Draco away from reaching out his hand for it, but it was too late for her. By the time I ordered her to drop it, I already saw the first light going from her eyes.

Ginny read this from the diary alone in her room over dinner; Draco had sent an owl while Lucius was writing informing him that he would be by to visit his mother, and Lucius had immediately jumped up and left in a nervous panic. As she read over the page again and again, spooning soup thoughtlessly into her mouth, Ginny wished that someone would come and place their hand on her shoulder and tell her how to feel.