(A/N) Okay, I know the Harry scene isn't strictly canon. But I really really wanted to put it in.
"Ginny!"
In the instant before she was enfolded in her parents' combined embrace, Ginny saw the ravages of tears on their faces. Caught up in the sheer emotion of seeing them, she wasn't thinking about what was going to happen when Harry explained what she'd done. She could only hug them back and cry. "Mum, oh Mummy I was so scared Mum I really really was--"
"Ginny, don't you ever--"
"We thought we'd lost you forever--"
"I wanted you so much! I'm so sorry, Daddy!"
Her mother turned away, reaching out and hugging Harry and Ron tightly to her for a moment. "You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?"
"I think we'd all like to know that," said a new voice.
Ginny realized that her parents were not the only occupants of the office--Professor McGonagall, white and gasping, was there, and Professor Dumbledore himself stood by the mantelpiece, smiling widely.
Harry stepped away from Ginny's mum and walked to the desk and put everything down that he carried. Battered Sorting Hat, bloody sword and--Ginny forced herself to look at it--ruined diary.
Then he began to speak.
Ginny's eyes grew wider and wider with each word that dropped from his lips. He had actually heard the Basilisk in the pipes, whispering to him all year in Parseltongue--Hermione had figured it out--he and Ron had gone into the Forbidden Forest and infiltrated a nest of gigantic spiders to ask about the Chamber of Secrets. Ron! Ron with his incredible fear of spiders had actually lived through that!
She wanted to look at him, but then Harry broke the news that Tom's victim, so many years ago, had been--of all people--Moaning Myrtle!
I once knew a girl named Myrtle. She was extremely tiresome.
Ginny wanted to be ill. She turned her face into her mother's shoulder, her first movement since the beginning of Harry's recitation, and her mother stroked her hair gently.
"Very well," said Professor McGonagall when he paused, "so you found out where the entrance was--breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add--but how on earth did you all get out of there alive, Potter?"
He had been down in the Chamber of Secrets, face-to-face with Tom, and then Fawkes the phoenix had come to his rescue with the Sorting Hat, which had given him the sword that he'd used to kill the Basilisk. Then Harry's voice faltered and stumbled to a stop, and as if it were a physical touch, Ginny felt his eyes on her. The silent tears that had never stopped redoubled their course down her cheeks. What would he say? What had Tom said? How much did they know?
"What interests me most," said Professor Dumbledore in a queerly gentle voice, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."
Ginny's head shot up.
You-Know-Who?
Impossible--no, it couldn't be--it had been Tom--it had all been Tom--
"W-what's that?" her dad's voice said behind her. "You-Know-Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not . . . Ginny hasn't been . . ." He stopped and Ginny looked up at him. "Has she?"
"It was this diary," Harry answered swiftly, picking it up. It looked very small and very scorched in his hand. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen. . . ."
Dumbledore took it and examined it minutely. "Brilliant. Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen." He looked up and over at Ginny and her parents, and for a moment it seemed as if his light blue eyes bored right down into Ginny, seeing everything. "Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle."
Tom was--Tom was You-Know-Who?
Ginny looked quickly at Harry, who was watching Dumbledore with pure admiration as the headmaster spoke of Tom's transformation into You-Know-Who. Harry hadn't said anything about her, nothing to indicate what she'd done or what Tom had made her do. He was protecting her, which was just like him of course, but--
But--
She couldn't lie anymore, not to herself, not to her brothers, not to Mum and Dad. She just couldn't stand it. She'd told Harry, but that wasn't enough, because she knew that if it didn't come out, he would keep her secret until the very grave. Now that she knew what Tom really was, it was more important than ever for her to tell the truth. If she wanted to be as grown-up as she'd always wanted to be, and tried to be, this whole year she was going to have to--
"But, Ginny," Mum said, and Ginny knew it wasn't an address to her. "What's our Ginny got to do with--with--him?"
No more secrets.
Ginny opened her mouth, meaning to be calm and collected, to confess very maturely to her actions, but what came out was nearer a wail. "His d-diary! I've been writing in it, and he's been w-writing back all year--"
"Ginny!" her dad exclaimed, his face aghast. "Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of Dark magic!"
"I d-didn't knoooooooooooow," Ginny blubbered, tears coursing down her face again. "I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it--"
"Miss Weasley--" at Dumbledore's voice, Ginny fell instantly silent, "--should go up to the hospital wing right away. This has been a terrible ordeal for her."
He was going to expel her. She knew it. He was, and she didn't blame him because what headmaster in his right mind would want a girl in his school that had been possessed by You-Know-Who?
"There will be no punishment."
She lifted her head, feeling tears drip off her chin. She wanted him to repeat it--those beautiful words--There will be no punishment. But--oh, but why?
"Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort." He went to the door and opened it wide. "Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up," he added, giving her a warm, forgiving look.
At that moment, it was as if she'd swallowed up the chocolate already, for the warmth that filled her insides made every horrible doubt, every tear shed, every minute of grief fade. It was not that his kindness had canceled it out--it was still there. But his look said, I know what this has been for you, my dear, and you have been punished enough. That was why there would be no expulsion, no suspension, not even a detention. He knew what her punishment had been already.
"You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out the Mandrake juice--I daresay the Basilisk's victims will be waking up any moment."
"So Hermione's okay!" Ron exclaimed.
"There has been no lasting harm done, Ginny," Dumbledore reassured her again.
Her mum's arm slipped around her waist, and she led Ginny out of the office. They stopped just outside, and her mother held her away for a moment, examining her minutely for missing limbs. Then she hugged her again. "Ginny, Ginny--"
Ginny buried her face in her mother's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Mummy," she mumbled.
She felt her dad's arms wrap around both of them. "But Ginny," he said. "Why didn't you write us about this? Why didn't you tell one of your brothers?"
"I didn't know," she said again. "I didn't understand what was happening, and then when I did--" She looked up at them. "I thought nobody would care. I didn't think anyone cared about me."
Her mother's arms tightened convulsively. "Those boys--" she started to say furiously.
"Molly," her dad said. "Ginny, did he tell you that?"
"Not exactly, but he helped."
Her father extricated her from her mother's arms, and knelt so he was on her level. "Virginia," he said. "Nobody in this family is ever unwanted, or uncared for." His eyes, red and swollen, bored into hers. "Nobody. Understand?"
A smile wobbled over her face. "Yes, Daddy."
He gave her shoulders a little shake. "Good." Then he pulled her into his arms again.
"Mum!"
They all looked up. Percy was hurrying down the corridor towards them, and for a moment he didn't see her. "Mum--Dad--" he croaked, and then he saw her. "Ginny!" he cried out, and grabbed her up in a hug.
She could have sworn she felt ribs crack before he let her go, peering into her face. "How--what--?" His own face was blotchy red and white, almost as if he'd been crying.
Their mother hugged them both at once. "Harry and Ron went after her, Percy! They actually got her out of the Chamber of Secrets!"
"I don't understand," Percy said blankly. He still had her by the upper arms, as if reassuring himself that she was real.
"It's a long story," her dad told him, looping his arm comfortingly over Ginny's shoulder, "and she's very tired, Percy. We're taking her to the infirmary."
He looked up. "Of course, Dad."
She snuffled away tears. It was tempting to just go along with them, but she had to tell Percy--so he'd know--
"Percy," she said, in a thin thread of a voice. "Percy, I need to--"
"It can wait," he told her, "let's get you to the infirmary--"
She wrenched away from him. "No!" Her voice rose, shrill, and Percy stopped.
"All right, Ginny, all right," he said placatingly. "Maybe just to the dormitory--"
"I'll go to the infirmary, but, Percy, I need to tell you--"
"Ginny, can't it wait?"
"No, Mum!" She clenched her fists in her robe and spoke as quickly as she could. "It was me--I was doing all those things. I released the monster in the Chamber of Secrets."
He stared at her as blankly as he had when he'd realized she was alive. "I--don't understand."
She looked at her feet. "I did something really stupid, and the--the Heir of Slytherin sort of took me over." Her brain froze up, trying to imagine Tom--even treacherous Tom--as--as--You-Know-Who. "I honestly didn't mean to, but that doesn't matter, because I did and--I'm so sorry, Percy! I'm so sorry, especially about Penny, you don't even know--"
"Penny?" her dad said.
Percy didn't even look up at him. "Y-you? You, Ginny?"
She nodded mutely.
"This is why you've been so strange all year?" He looked as if he were thinking of the Mudblood incident.
She nodded again, feeling more slow tears trickle down her face.
"Oh, Ginny," he sighed, and put his arms around her again.
Then the waterworks really started, because he was being so kind instead of scolding her. She sobbed into her brother's shoulder while he awkwardly patted her hair and told her she was sorry and that was what counted and even though she really should have known better she was very brave to have owned up to it in the end, and Penny was being revived and she would be all right, and he wasn't mad, honestly he wasn't . . .
As soon as she'd run out of tears, he patted her shoulder one last time. Their mum was crying a little too, but she smiled waterily at them.
"Up on my back, Ginny?" he asked.
She blinked up at him through swollen eyes. He hadn't given her a piggyback ride in years, ever since his third year at Hogwarts, when he'd inexplicably decided he was really much too old and dignified to be giving piggyback rides. He made a face at her--another thing he hadn't done in ages. "Come on, now, I'm waiting--"
She clambered up and he set off down the hall, grunting a little, because she wasn't eight years old anymore. But he didn't put her down. She laid her head against his back and sighed, then drowsed.
When they reached the infirmary, she woke up enough to drink her hot chocolate, then slipped in between cool, soft sheets. Her mother sat with her, stroking her hair. "I shan't scold you, Ginny," she said in a low voice. "I'm sure you know how wrong it was."
"Mhm," Ginny murmured.
"Now don't you think we don't love you ever again, you hear me, Virginia Myrtle Weasley?"
Even her horrible middle name made her smile into her pillow. Her ribs still ached from Percy's hug.
Ginny slept.
"Shhhh, she's still asleep, see--"
"It's gone ten in the morning, she should be awake--oy, Ginny!"
"Sh-shhhhhh!"
Ginny blinked her eyes open to see three faces hovering over her. "I'm awake, I'm awake," she said, struggling to sit up.
"Look at that, you woke her up!" Carmen reproached Jeremy.
"Did not, she was awake already--weren't you?"
Ginny giggled. "Yes." Then she focused on the third face. "Colin! You're all right!"
He grinned. "Woke up last night." His face fell. "My camera got melted--I lost all the pictures from the Quidditch match. My parents sent another, though, while I was Petrified." He held it up. "Isn't it great? It's got--"
"Never mind that," Carmen said. "Ginny, you're all right, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm--I'll be fine."
"But why was it you that got taken? Nobody will tell us anything. You're pureblood--there was no reason--"
"Your brother said yesterday that it was because you knew something," Jeremy said. "Is that it? What did you know? Whyn't you tell us?"
For just a moment, she thought of making something up. But she'd been living a lie for the entire year, and even if it lost her their friendship, she couldn't do it any longer. "I--" She swallowed. "I did know something. I knew practically everything. I was the one doing it."
For once in his life, Jeremy had nothing to say. All three of them stared at her, their mouths hanging open.
"You remember that diary? The one I wrote in all the time? It was enchanted, and it enchanted me. It made me do all those things. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't tell anyone. I couldn't."
Jeremy found his voice. "I thought you lost it."
"I did. I . . . found it again."
"Oh."
Carmen said, "This was what was bothering you then."
Ginny nodded mutely.
"That explains a lot."
Silence fell again. None of the three seemed to know what to say.
"Colin--" Ginny said, and stopped in confusion. What could she say? She'd just told him to his face that she was the one who'd robbed him of practically his entire first year. "Don't hate me," she finally said in a small, foolish voice.
"Hate you?" Colin said. "What d'you mean, hate you?"
"I did this to you."
"'S not your fault," Colin said staunchly. "I'll hate the git who enchanted you, but not you."
"What kind of fairweather friends d'you think we are?" Jeremy burst out.
It was balm to her wounds, but one person had yet to react out loud. "Carmen?" she said in her smallest voice yet.
"I'm with Jeremy," Carmen said quietly. "What kind of fairweather friends do you think we are?" She took Ginny's hands. "I wish you'd told us, but Colin's right. We'll hate the one who did this to you, but not you."
"I didn't want to lose you," Ginny said. "I was so scared of losing you."
"Never," Carmen said, and her hands tightened around Ginny's.
The two girls had to cry a little together, while the two boys coughed and looked embarrassed and pretended to have colds so they could blow their noses. Finally, Carmen wiped her eyes and her nose and sat up straight. "Now," she said, not letting go of Ginny's hands. "Tell us everything."
"Yeah," Jeremy said, looking relieved to have all the sniffling done with. "Don't leave out a single detail."
In a voice that grew steadily stronger, she told them everything, watching the way their eyes widened or their mouths fell open or the little exclamations they let out at key points in the story. Finally, she'd brought them up to the point where she'd left Dumbledore's office.
"Wow," Jeremy said. "He's really not going to punish you at all?"
She shook her head. "I don't really know why, except maybe he knows what it was like."
"Punishment enough," Carmen added.
"Something like that."
"Well," Colin said. "Harry didn't get punished either. He got a whole load of points and trophies and things."
"What about Ron?" Ginny asked anxiously.
"Oh, him too, I guess."
Carmen's eyes opened wide. "Ginny! Ginny! Harry rescued you! Just like a knight in shining armor!"
Ginny's mouth fell open. "I never thought of that--he really did, didn't he?" She frowned. "I don't remember knights in shining armor getting so dirty, though."
Carmen sighed and flopped across the bed. "How romantic!"
They looked at each other and started giggling madly. Jeremy groaned.
Colin said, "Are they always like this?"
"Only about him. I'm glad you got un-Petrified, though. S'my only chance to get some sense into this group."
Colin took his picture.
At Madam Pomfrey's huffy behest, they left an hour and a half later, still arguing over the camera
"Come on, Colin, lay off for two seconds, right?"
"Oh, let him, it saved his life. But not in the face, Colin, no flashbulbs in the face."
"Aww--"
"Okay, maybe if you warn me."
Ginny had some time to hug herself and revel in the glory of having friends who knew all about her and still liked her. The warm glow of that had hardly faded away before she heard a familiar voice. "Right, okay, but if she's awake--"
"She needs her rest!"
"But chess isn't hard! She falls asleep during chess!"
The last time she'd fallen asleep during a chess game with Ron, she'd been nine, and it had been three in the morning, and they'd been having a best-of-three that had turned into best-of-fifteen. In the morning, Ron had claimed that the decisive bout was his, because she'd knocked over her king when she'd fallen asleep. She'd retorted that it was a perfectly permissible request for a break, and she'd been winning all night anyhow. It was an ongoing argument.
She was looking forward to continuing it.
Ron came around the corner, looking mulish. "One game," he was muttering. "Peh."
"I do not fall asleep during chess," she said.
"Not so loud, you want Madam Pomfrey over here saying I have to leave?"
Oops. "No."
"Right then."
He started setting up the chess pieces, and she realized something. "Ron! What happened to your hands?"
They were bound up in shining white bandages, both of them, and she didn't see how her brother could even move his fingers. He looked down at them blankly, then seemed to remember. "Oh--! It's from the rocks."
"The--?"
"You remember that great pile of rocks you climbed over--"
"Yeah--"
"Well, I was trying to move them so I could maybe get in and help you and Harry in the Chamber of Secrets." He gave a forlorn little shrug. "Sorry I didn't--it sounded really scary."
"Oh, Ron," Ginny said sadly.
"They'll be all right," he reassured her quickly. "Madam Pomfrey put some stuff on them and said they'd be all right in a day or two, just not to use them really until then." He grinned at her. "Good job exams are canceled, eh?"
She smiled a little.
"I mean, it could've been worse--I could've lost you and had to sit exams--"
She had to laugh then, because the statement was so--well--Ron.
He laughed too, then his face sobered and became rather fierce. "You know, you really do have people who care about you--you know that, right? So you didn't have to go to some rubbishy old diary, you hear?"
"I know that now," Ginny said.
"Right. Just so's you're clear on that." He adjusted the chess set on her tray. "Come on, let's play."
He let her win the first time. Then she made him play honestly, and laughed delightedly when she really did beat him.
All through the long, golden afternoon, they played, arguing amiably, crowing in victory and scowling in defeat. Sitting with her chin in her hand, narrowly watching her brother's hand as it hovered over the board, Ginny felt as if the whole year of ignoring and bitterness on both sides was starting to fade.
He made his move, and looked up at her with a grin. "Ha! How d'you like that, eh?"
She got a good look at the board. "Hey! You just--ooohh!"
He roared with laughter.
After three more games, all of which he won, he left for dinner. Ginny was watching the pattern of the leaves on the window and seriously contemplating a nap when Madam Pomfrey's voice intruded.
"Miss Weasley? Are you up to more visitors?"
Ginny was about to say no when another voice said, "Of course she is, she's a Weasley, i'n't she?"
"Constitution like a rock."
"Metabolism like a hyperactive ferret."
"Could wrestle a troll in the morning and swim the lake in the afternoon."
"We're sturdy like that. Bounce like india-rubber balls."
"It's your brothers Fred and George," Madam Pomfrey said, unnecessarily. "They've just brought you some of your--homework."
Ginny mouthed, Homework? in utter disbelief, but sat up and said, "All right."
Her brothers swarmed into her little cubicle, Fred swishing the curtains closed behind him while George slung the bag he held onto her bed.
"Homework?"
"We just said that to get it through Madam Pomfrey," George said in a low voice, opening up the top of the bag. "We thought we'd bring you a little something, since you missed the feast--"
"Ruddy bad luck, that, it was a great feast--" Fred removed four apples, a pudding, half a sponge cake, and a leg of lamb from the bag.
"And anyway, you've got to keep your strength up." George reached into the bag and pulled out five bananas, three rolls, half a chicken, an army-sized tin of biscuits, the other half of the chicken, and a flask of pumpkin juice she could have swum laps in.
Ginny goggled at the bounty. "How much strength am I keeping up, exactly?"
Fred snorted with laughter and pushed the sponge cake into her hand.
Throughout the meal, her brothers were in high good spirits--cracking the most outrageously awful puns they could think up, doing hysterically accurate imitations of professors, and arm-wrestling each other for the second drumstick (they'd let Ginny eat the first one). It wasn't until they were working their way through the tin of biscuits that George gave Fred a poke in the ribs.
Fred looked back at him, and George nodded. Fred took a deep breath. "Listen, Gin--"
She sensed seriousness, coming on like an avalanche, and set down her biscuit. "Yes?"
"Percy told us."
"Everything."
"About you and that--"
"Don't be mad at him."
"We wouldn't let up."
"Well, we were concerned, weren't we."
"'S a good job he's gone, is all I have to say."
"Not Percy."
"Him." Fred pronounced the syllable as if it were a particularly nasty hex.
"We would have beat him up for you."
"I can't believe you didn't say anything."
"Well, you were enchanted and all that."
"Understandable, I guess."
They squinted at her. "Say something, Wee One," George said in a desperate voice.
"You're saying it all," she said.
"Oh. Right."
Silence fell.
George poked Fred again. Fred cleared his throat. "And . . . about before."
"Before what?" Although she thought she knew.
Fred and George looked at each other, looked at her, and looked away. They were positively squirming.
"We--we didn't know anything was wrong."
"We thought you were just being--you know--moody."
"All our teasing and that--we were just--"
"Sort of--"
"Trying to--"
"Toughen you up," George said.
"Yeah," Fred said. "Toughen you up." He started to aim a light punch at her arm, then apparently thought better of it.
"We're sorry, if that helps," George added.
"Honestly we are. We felt like slime, all day yesterday."
"Snakebellies."
"Beetle feet."
"Little bits of chewing gum on the bottom of beetle feet."
Ginny nibbled her biscuit into a fingernail moon and wondered whether to put her brothers out of their misery. They looked positively downcast, sitting on either side of the foot of her bed. George wasn't even eating his banana. "You meant well," she said finally. "It's all right."
They brightened. "You mean that?"
"Really?"
"Of course." Ginny daintily bit her fingernail-moon biscuit in half.
Fred grinned widely. "And some of it was fun, anyway."
"Remember that one mask--the purple one--"
"With the green spots--"
"That one was horrifying," Ginny said sternly. "It put me off my dinner."
Their shoulders sagged. "Oh."
"For three days straight, mind you."
"Pond scum," Fred said gloomily. "All day."
"And well you should. That was an absolutely horrid mask." Ginny swallowed the last of her biscuit and reached for another one. "Can I borrow it?"
The twins laughed so hard they fell off her bed.
Full and delightfully happy, Ginny was just snuggling down into bed when one last voice echoed through the infirmary. "Madam Pomfrey? Um--is Ginny Weasley awake?"
Ginny sat straight up, all thoughts of sleep fleeing.
"She might be, but I'd really rather you not disturb her, Potter. She's had a steady stream of visitors all day, and her brothers just brought up a great deal more food than was good for her."
"Oh." He sounded a little downcast, and Ginny nearly bit the end of her finger off in mingled despair and delight. "Could you--I mean--just for a little--"
"I honestly think she should get some sleep."
Somewhere, Ginny got up the courage to call out, "I had loads of sleep last night, Madam Pomfrey. I can see Harry for a little bit."
Madam Pomfrey looked as if she wanted to argue this, but she looked from Ginny's face to Harry's, then said, "Ten minutes. Not a second more." She swept away, leaving Harry standing at the foot of her bed.
He looked at his feet, then at her, then at his hand, resting on the iron bedstead. She noticed that he had a scrape along his hairline and his glasses were sitting crookedly on his nose.
"All right then?" he asked finally.
"Mm-hmm," she said. "You?" For once the words were coming out normally--maybe she'd be all right as long as she kept to monosyllables.
"All right," he said.
She said, "Thank you," feeling she ought to. "Um. Sit down?"
"Sure."
She passed him the biscuit tin, which was about half-full still. He took three and passed it back.
She took one for herself, even though she wasn't hungry, and they sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment, eating so they wouldn't have to look at each other.
After he'd worked his careful way through his second biscuit, Harry burst out, "It was Malfoy's dad, you know."
She stared at him. "What?"
"The one who gave you the diary," he said. "It was him."
"But--how--" Then Ginny thought of the fight in the bookstore, and Mr. Malfoy shoving the Transfiguration book into her hands. It's the best your father can do for you . . . And then she'd found the diary in there later that afternoon. "B-but--why?"
"He was trying to make it look like you did--all of those things--all on your own, just so's he could get at your dad."
Ginny's fists clenched in the bed clothes. "Why that--!"
"Exactly. And they can't prove anything either."
"Nothing?"
"No." Then Harry brightened. "But I got back at him. I tricked him into freeing his house-elf."
"You didn't!"
"Yeah--it was great. He was furious, but Dobby--that's the house-elf--"
"Yeah--"
"Well, he sort of chucked him down the stairs and told him not to hurt me and Malfoy's dad couldn't do anything but skulk away!"
Ginny clapped. "Brilliant!"
Harry shrugged and blushed a little. "Least I could do. Dobby was--sort of--helping me along all year."
Another silence fell, this one a little more comfortable. Ginny wiggled her toes and watched the blanket bounce. Then something horrible occurred to her.
"H-Harry--"
"Yeah?" He was eating his third biscuit.
Ginny took a deep breath. "What did Tom say? About me?"
Harry looked up, his eyes sharp behind his glasses. "What d'you mean?"
"Did he--" Ginny could feel her ears burning at the memory of some of the soppy things she'd told Tom. "Did he say anything about what I wrote? To him? In the diary?"
Harry chewed slowly and swallowed before he said, "Not much, honestly--a little something about how your brothers teased you--"
She watched him anxiously. "That was it?"
He tucked the rest of his biscuit into his mouth and said indistinctly, "Myeh."
Madam Pomfrey swept over. "All right, now, time's up--"
"Just one more minute?" Ginny pleaded.
"Please, another minute, Madam Pomfrey," Harry exclaimed at the same time.
"Potter, I really must insist-- After all, Miss Weasley needs her rest, with all the visitors and the revelry she's had today--"
Harry left, waving good-bye over his shoulder. Ginny waved back until he went through the infirmary door.
She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them, absently eating another biscuit.
What a strange twenty-four hours it had been. She'd awoken in the Chamber of Secrets, convinced that when everyone knew, they would hate her and reject her. Instead, she'd met with nothing but forgiveness. Every time she thought of it, the boisterous affection of her brothers and her friends wrapped around her like the blankets on her bed.
And Harry . . . even Harry who'd had to go all the way down into the Chamber of Secrets to save her . . . even he didn't hate her.
Which only went to prove, she thought, how very wrong Tom had been about everything.
Madam Pomfrey bustled back. "Miss Weasley, put those away. It's time for you to rest. You've been through a great deal--" She swished the curtains closed, muttering to herself. "It's like this every time one of you lot's in here, every other infernal redhead in the place has to visit you with chess games and legs of lamb and I don't know what all--"
Ginny stuffed the last biscuit in her mouth and snuggled down under her covers. When she drifted off to sleep, there was a euphoric smile on her face.