This chapter is dedicated to the first four reviewers of my first-ever story! *Hugs*! To Miah Tolensky "anally retentive" is a British expression for someone who adores rules and can't abide rule-breaking. Crystal and Fire Fairy - muchas gracias for the support. VenusDeOmnipotent - you sound just like me from your reaction to the story!

The third Ginny and Neville discuss Ferret

The two Ginnys had stopped fighting and spitting at her and had sunk below the surface for a moment. The real-world Ginny Weasley felt relaxed for once. Actually relaxed, she thought, staring into the fire, one shoe off, homework sliding off her lap and onto the floor. She had finished the Charms homework - she was better at that than at anything else. Not bad, Weasel, she thought, allowing herself a rare, tiny pat on the back. Ginny- at-the-helm had not done too badly for once, helped along immensely by a completely unexpected conversation with Neville Longbottom.

She had gone back through the portrait hole, the vague familiar anxiety coiling around her heart. It had an almost physical presence. It seemed to wake and sleep in the left side of her chest, where she imagined her heart to be. Now it lay asleep, but when it woke it stretched like a cat - or a snake. The common room had been unusually empty, except for Neville Longbottom looking through Ron's forgotten Chudley Cannons magazine. Ginny had forgiven him for treading on her feet at the Yule Ball, Neville seemed as mentally dishevelled as she felt and she often spoke to him about her worries - no specific details but generalised complaints that mirrored her inner storms. How had that conversation started?

"Have you heard, Neville? There were horrible Muggle killings in London this week, right in the middle of Hyde Park." Neville frowned - his knowledge of the Muggle world was limited. "How many?"

"Four. People - bodies found scattered around the Park. One with her bike beside her, two with rollerblades still on. And a Park-keeper." She paused. "I'm very upset about it." Saying it helped her somehow.

"Was it You-Know-Who?"

"Who knows? The Muggle police say it was the work of an Albanian gang, all in the space of a week. Ordinary folk, poorer than average...I think about You-Know-Who a lot of the time, you know?" Neville's mouth opened and Ginny realised that she'd said the wrong thing. "About the whole situation. What'll happen next, whether he'll pounce, whether he'll wait and play with our minds, whether he'll target my father, whether I'll be dead in the next year." Suddenly aware that her speculations were growing steadily more tragic, she sighed. To her surprise, Neville did not seem fazed. "Uncertainty is the hardest thing." he said, looking at his shoes. Ginny glanced down and smiled a small smile, his shoelaces were no better than hers. At least she had a partner in something.

It must be pointed out here that Ginny and Neville often had philosophical conversations. Ginny asked Neville questions that no-one else did. So he gave her answers that he wouldn't dream of giving anyone else. "I've been thinking of getting the 'Meditations' of Marcus Aurelius," he said. "It says that the first thing you must do on waking up every morning is to remind yourself that someone is going to treat you like shit during the day. Some worthless idiot is going to come up and treat you like you're dirt. And you've got to get used to it. That's just the way life is. And then you die. "

Ginny Weasley never realised this, but she loved debating with people on issues that caught her interest. She was so caught up that she did not notice the two bickering Ginnys at all. They had disappeared, not completely, but for a while. "That's just sappy, Neville. I simply can't believe something so pessimistic! OK, I know that nowhere in the history of the world, muggle or magical, has there ever been complete peace at any time. Someone's always fighting someone else." It was a real sign of her interest that she didn't even think of herself at this point. "But there's got to be some philosophy somewhere that can lead to an end to this horror. War after war after war. What's the point?"

"Some people are purely evil, Ginny," said Neville. "There's nothing you can say or do to them that will make them stop craving power over people or stop them abusing that power. They're made that way and that's how they'll stay. Think of the dementors." He shuddered. Ginny considered. Everything that Neville was saying was alien to what she believed. The third Ginny, let it be known, had the hotheadedness and passion that only the idealistic young are capable of. Fortunately it came to the fore when the two bickering Ginnys were stilled, and sometimes she caught a glimpse of how she could be a much happier Ginny. "The dementors maybe. But what about the giants, the centaurs, the goblins? They went over to the Dark side because this side had nothing to offer them. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. Expect someone to be evil and they will be. Trap them into being one thing and they won't have a way out. Wasn't it as much our fault as theirs?"

"How about Malfoy?" said Neville. He smiled, it didn't reach his eyes. "That thing is evil." There was a rare vehemence in his tone and he had tensed. "He believes that Mudbloods should be killed, Ginny. Imagine what he would do to squibs if he ever had one in his power. Oh, and speaking of power, have you seen anyone he doesn't use and abuse? Any opportunity he doesn't take to push his money and his inbred family into everyone's faces? Imagine Malfoy older, with more money and more power, Ginny. What would you say to him? Hi Malfoy, I don't expect you to be evil. Now calm down and let out your nice inner child. We all know it's in there somewhere! Do you think he would say, oh yes, Ginny, gosh, I didn't know I could be good until you told me. I'm going out to give all my money away to charity and make my castle a Muggle shelter right now??"

Neville was breathing harder than usual but Ginny could detect something in his tone that reassured her - it wasn't personal. And she had to smile at his sarcasm. She appreciated smart talking. Malfoy. She stopped a moment, imagining herself being anything other than reluctantly tolerant towards Malfoy, and only if he were standing between her and a hungry Hungarian Horntail. She grinned. "You've got a point there. But look. Malfoy is the result of his upbringing. You don't know that he's intrinsically evil. He doesn't *know* anything about Muggles. Fine, he doesn't care. But let's say Hermione saved his life. I don't think he'd be able to ignore that."

It sounded unconvincing, even to her own ears. For a moment she stopped, overcome by a memory of Lucius Malfoy at the bookshop. The sneer, the cruelty making a wall so impenetrable that it was hard to believe he was human. She remembered the diary, and then a harsh memory surfaced. Harry had saved her life, Dumbledore had made the right speeches and handed round 'Special Services to the School' awards. Her father had lectured, her mother had wept, Ron had frowned. Ginny had just realised how close to death she had been. The evil that everyone had prattled on about was not the thing uppermost in her mind. It was the way that those who knew had looked at her. Harry had given her an unwanted look of pity. Her father had treated her as totally devoid of intelligence. Her mother had her face screwed up in disbelief. Ron had given her a 'so you're the cause of all this trouble' look. Hermione had smiled uneasily, trying hard to look ignorant of the event in Ginny's presence.

At that end of that year Ginny Weasley knew, as if the knowledge were a knife thrust into her side, that she was no longer a child. She had split and the two Ginnys had emerged over the summer. The hysterical Ginny was the one that no one trusted and everyone regarded as the weakest link in the chain. The anally retentive Ginny was the one who tried to compensate for these sins, beating herself up to regain the control she had so completely lost that year. Nuclear fallout in her head all day every day, the buzzing never stopping. Except at moments when the original Ginny (now relegated to third place) emerged, interested as openly as a child in some idea.

There was one other thing that Ginny never told anyone. It came to her again and again in her dreams. It wasn't You-Know-Who. The cold and utterly evil force that pursued her again and again in her nightmares was that of Lucius Malfoy. His son, by extension, was part of that evil which in her dreams had no eyes, no nose, no mouth, no ears. Just a cold, swift presence that planned to maim and kill. The rapid memories came and went and Ginny stopped trying to imagine the Malfoys as human beings subject to weaknesses and acting out of ignorance. Neville was looking sceptical and shaking his head at her. "Maybe he'd just kill her to keep it quiet." he said. "Poor Hermione, I hope she's never around when Malfoy needs his life saving." Ginny nodded. "Well, you still haven't convinced me with the born-evil theory. Except for the dementors and Malfoy!" she laughed, and Neville placed Trevor on his shoulder, saying goodnight.

Funny what a few words from someone you could genuinely relax with could do, thought Ginny. The third Ginny, the original Ginny, Ginny-at-the-helm.

And on that note ("a few words from someone.." hint hint to my lovely readers) I exit through the side door. I love my reviewers. If you don't like it, tell me why! If you do, tell me, it makes my day and gives me energy and I head off to write more chapters straight away!