Wow...I'm almost at one hundred reviews...that is probably the best Christmas present I could ask for. Do
you think we could break 100 with this chapter. I swear I will send the hundredth reviewer a whole bag of cookies
in they don't mind giving their address to a complete stranger. Hehehe...that would be fun. Ok, onto my thankyou's:

Darcel Lucia (he gets even more insane in this chapter!), Gryphnwng (hehehe...I love being all powerful in my own little
universe), evillalmanotlamma(frogs (thanks!), Rebuky (wait no longer), Anna Nana (ok!), PATIENCE101 (thanks so much, you
are one of my most loyal reviewers), Fuschia (heee...I am an evil author, thanks and you have a great Christmas as well!),
stefany (sorry about the pony), Linda (thanks), The Golden Goose (hmm...Filch the skunk...I feel a ficlet coming on...), Xia
(I'll get to you later), Lynn-chan (hurray for thesauruses).

The favorite review award goes to Xia, for giving me a phenomenally helpful review. It gave me some pointers and a few
things to work on, which is what I really love in reviews. So thanks oodles to you, Xia. I added a few things in just
because of your review (like the bit with Hermione at the end).

Ok, well...I'm writing this around 11:30 Christmas Eve, so it is still technically Tuesday. Hurray for updating on time!
Whoo! I hope everyone is having/will have a happy holiday, and to help improve yours if you aren't (or even if you are)
I give to you this rather longer than usual chapter as my humble present to you, my wonderful readers. Good night and
God bless us, every one!

Here we go...

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Before that afternoon, Ginny never suspected that so many liters of liquid could exist in such a small
capacity as a young girl's head. But now, with the droplets splashing down her cheeks, dripping off
her nose and turning the dirt at Hagrid's doorway into mud she found that even they weren't enough
to assuage the grief that filled her heart. Great, gulping sobs racked her thin frame, a
humiliating layer of mucus was coating the front of her bright orange shirt and the most unflattering
noises were escaping from her constricted airways as she tried to pour out the whole story.

"Oy, Ginny! What'sa matter? 'S all righ', jest calm down now..."

Hagrid's well meaning attempt at comfort was actually suffocating Ginny more than her hysterical sobs,
and she struggled to free herself from his heavy arms. Fortunately, the fight for life sobered her somewhat
and she was able to gasp out her troubles after a few moments, pain somewhat diminished.

"Oh, Hagrid...I...I...I'm so stupid. I thought...I thought I had a friend Hagrid. And then...oh how could
I have been SO stupid? What would Mum say? And Harry!" At this thought the panic swelled again and Ginny
found the words pouring out of her mouth completely of their own will.

"Oh no, if Harry found out he'd never look at me again and I just couldn't bear that Hagrid! I can stand him
never loving me or talking to me, but if I can't see his eyes any more...I...I think I'd die!" Ginny, suddenly
realizing she wasn't twelve years old anymore, nor a prat, snapped her teeth shut with a click and noticed
that Hagrid looked exceedingly uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, Hagrid. I didn't mean to unload on you like that. It's not your fault that I'm a silly little girl
that could never win the likes of..." she broke off in confusion, wondering why Hagrid was making those shushing
motions.

"What's wrong, Hagrid? Do you not want to talk to me any more either? I...I'm sorry...I shouldn't have..."

Ginny looked at her toes sadly, hoping Hagrid would deny the statement. Instead, she heard a groan that sounded
like a thousand bumblebee's droning and he placed his massive, shaggy head in his hands. The Boy Who Lived sidestepped
around his huge frame and, with a suspiciously red face and an unusually high voice squeaked:

"Hi Ginny! I...uh...I just found out that my...broomstick's...on fire...On fire! Yes! Better go put it out!" And
he was gone, as though he'd put on his Invisibility Cloak.

Ginny did the only thing that she really could do at that moment. She opened her mouth and let out every one of
her troubles in an ear piercing scream. Then, she calmly turned on her heel and walked back towards the castle
fully intending to jump off the nearest parapet.

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Draco tossed fitfully on his warm couch. Unsettling dreams were plaguing his subconscious that night, but not the same
dreams that had haunted him for so many months. In the first of these new nightmares, he found himself standing in front of
a clouded mirror, his own face staring back at him. A sense of foreboding surrounded him and he glanced over his left
shoulder...there was nothing there but a dusty grey room. However, when he turned back to the mirror he found his father's
countenance in place of his own, a glint of insanity in the eyes betraying his identity. Startled, Draco bent forward until
he was nose to nose with the reflection. Suddenly, in a flash of well remembered green light, Voldemort's face leered at
him from the mirror and powerful arms shot out and snaked around his torso, pulling him inevitably into the glass. This was
so disturbing that Draco's mind rebelled and propelled his subconscious into another figment of his imagination. This time,
Draco faced what appeared to be an ancient puppet show. He stared at the limp, lifeless marionette that hung despondently from
his many strings and gasped in surprise. It was himself, in perfect miniature! He craned his neck upwards, but only shadowy
silhouettes smote the light, indistinct in the high contrast.

Draco woke in a sweat, having rolled off the couch and uncomfortably near the roaring flames of the Slytherin fire. He put
a trembling hand to a groggy head, smoothing unruly hair from his sweat slicked brow. Licking dry lips, he struggled to his
knees and stopped halfway to his feet. There, in the smooth surface of the silver mantle, his reflection stared back at him.
In this light and with his hair hanging loosely around his face, the uncanny resemblance to Lucius was barely detectable.

"Who am I?" The thought rose out of the shadowed corners of his still sleeping mind and passed through his lips, fogging
the silver and obscuring his reflection.

'Who am I?' The thought echoed uneasily through his head.

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Lucius panted raggedly, his usually neat hair mussed into an unholy halo around his painfully thin face. He had become rapidly
emaciated when he began using the Testamente curse on his only son and heir, but that was hardly an issue when you were capable
of controlling another person's every whim and action. Unfortunately, even more of Lucius's strength had been sapped when Draco
forcibly broke the bond the curse had formed between them. According to the ancient book in which he had found the curse, that
wasn't supposed to be possible, not in the least, but Draco was a Malfoy and Malfoy's were well known for their abilities in the
Dark Arts. This train of thought leant an eerie smile to the older man's face, a smile that reeked of madness and an insatiable
lust for mayhem. It came and went completely unremarked as the smile was suddenly replaced by a look of intense concentration as
Lucius read aloud the words on the page.

"Addo...ti degradare dominae!"

A sourceless wind picked up in the office, whipping papers into a tornado that encompassed the entire room. A bright flash of a sickly
yellow light flooded Lucius' vision for one brief moment, leaving red/purple after images burned onto the back of his eyelids. The
light had consolidated into a fine beam by the time he could force his eyes to open again and was weaving in a serpentine fashion before
his chest. Then, with the coiled power of a springing viper, the light struck his chest with a force that knocked him out of his chair and sent
him skidding across the polished wooden floors and up against the back wall. Suspended in the air, he writhed in an ecstatic agony at
the power that coursed through his veins...and still more came. More and more until he thought he would explode from the pain and the joy,
until he was too full of the light, until he WAS the light and only a shred of Lucius Malfoy clung to this strange man floating in the
room. With an abruptness that was shocking, the light winked out, the wind died off and Lucius' body came crashing to the floor.

He lay motionless for an indeterminate amount of time. Days, weeks, minutes...he couldn't tell. But when he raised his disheveled head
and rose up to his knees, none of it mattered. He could feel...something. A presence. A disembodied life force that was completely under
his bidding. He caught his reflection in the window glass across the room, simultaneously surprised and disregarding the apparent
madness that exuded from his frame. The image blurred and suddenly Lucius found himself staring at his traitorous son, hair a mess and
looking more like his mother than any real man had a right too. With a snarl, Lucius clenched his fist and the window exploded into the
night, glass raining down on the white covered lawn. As snow blew in the opening and swirled around Lucius's head, a delighted giggle
bubbled up from his stomach that chilled the room even more than the frigid wind.

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Needless to say, Ginny did not jump off of anything, much less a parapet. She really wasn't an over dramatic prat and she knew that this
wasn't the end of the world, it simply felt like it. Still, she found herself wanting to do nothing more than lie on her bed, alone and
miserable, and feel sorry for herself for the rest of this terrible Saturday. She was well on her way to achieving this goal, as it was
already two in the afternoon and she hadn't heard the whisper of a single person since she returned to the Gryffindor tower. She was just
beginning to feel that her emotions were at the stage in which a large block of Honeyduke's chocolate should
cure all of her ills when a hesitant knock came at the door. Preparing to do some full scale yelling if the person
wasn't bearing something sugary, Ginny got up and practically threw the door open. Hermione squeaked and abruptly dropped the huge chunk of
chocolate she held in her hands. Ginny watched in dismay as it shattered on impact, feeling that this was indeed the 'insult that enraged
the hippogriff' as the saying goes. Hermione, who had a hand to her rapidly beating heart, smile kindly at her and pulled out her wand.

"Sorry, Ginny. You just startled me is all. Here, I'll fix it. Choculis Repairo!" And the scattered pieces all shot back together. "There.
Might be a little worse for the wear, but it's still chocolate!" She smiled encouragingly at Ginny, profferring a rather large hunk. "Do
you think that I could come in for a minute?"

Ginny accepted the piece with unfeigned enthusiasm and, with a gesture, ushered Hermione over to her bed. Ginny sprawled on the coverlet,
to depressed and humiliated to care if Hermione was actually looking directly at her. It didn't really matter any more. She had let HIM
look at her, let him steal her identity all because of those compelling grey eyes and he had gone and thrown it in her face. She was
featureless now, just another blade of grass in a never ending field. She didn't care any more. Which was, to say the least, slightly
disconcerting for poor Hermione who was trying, in her own, awkward way, to sympathize with the younger girl. The only problem was that
Hermione was not at all used to opening up and letting her feelings out (which was part of the reason she seemed to be the only person that
didn't know she was madly in love with Ron) so all she could really do was sit in uncomfortable silence on the end of the bed while Ginny
munched the chocolate dejectedly.

Hermione opened her mouth to say something, anything to end this terrible silence when Ginny spoke up.

"Thanks for the chocolate. How'd you know?"

Hermione smiled hesitantly, secretly thrilled that she'd done something right. "Well, I suppose that Muggle born and Wizarding family girls
aren't all that different on the inside. I know that I always want chocolate when I'm feeling especially bad about things. You should have seen
me in third year, when I had all those extra classes," she added with a laugh. "I must have gone through a pound a day."

Ginny did her best to laugh, but all she could manage was a sickly smile. "Actually, I meant how'd you know what happened?"

"Oh..." At this Hermione's face flushed to a bright red and she quickly found the scarlet blanket she was sitting on fascinating. "Well...Harry
sort of told Ron that you had gone a little nuts this morning." She glanced up to see if Ginny was offended by the semi-derogatory word. Falesly
reassured by the sudden blankness of the redhead's face, she continued on. "He asked Ron to talk to you, but uh...he was pretty mad. You know how
Ron is, so I thought that I should come up and uh...try to sort things out." With that she forced herself to look at the girl across from her.

Ginny had wondered if the day could get any worse, and it had just proven that it could. Hermione was talking to her because Harry ASKED her to?
He wanted her to intervene so that Ron's 'creepy little sister' would stop obsessing over him? Oh, this was not the calming situation that she
so desperately needed right now. It wasn't even close. Ginny felt a white hot rage that would outshine Ron at his worst build up inside of her
and barely managed to say, through gritted teeth:

"Get out."

"What?" Hermione stammered, suddenly realizing that the younger girl was seethingly angry. "Oh Ginny, that came out all wrong..."

"Wrong? How could it come out wrong?! Harry and Ron probably bribed you with...with...with BOOKS to come up here and pretend to be my friend so
that I'd leave them alone? Take on for the team, eh Hermione? Well, great job! I promise I'll leave you all alone now! GET OUT!" Ginny roared
the last two words so loudly that Hermione had fled in terror before their echoes died away.

Ginny sat down hard on the floor, too exhausted and alone to even think about the parapet.

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Whew! That was hard. Writing Ginny in a bit of a temper is a challenge for me, I hope I did all right. Review and let me know and I'll review you!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!