Before
Ginny blinked rapidly against the wave of rising tears threatening to spill over. Pacing outside the portrait of the Fat Lady, all she wanted was to be safe inside her dormitory with the only person who ever truly saw her. But to get to him, she had to go through everyone else.
Fabric rustled, and footsteps echoed through the stone corridor. Someone was approaching — she'd run out of time. Steeling herself, she flipped her hair forward to hide her face, shot off the password over the Fat Lady's attempts at platitudes, and rushed into the common room. The boisterous laughter and carefree voices of her housemates, all celebrating the end of another week of school, made her heart twist harder like a towel rung out to dry.
No one noticed her. No one called out her name in greeting, or asked her to sit with them, or even cared. Why would they? She was nothing special. Just another lost little first year who missed her mum.
Swallowing a sob, she clambered up the staircase two steps at a time. The first tear fell, ice cold against her warm cheeks. And with that, her dam of self-control broke. The rest of the tears surged over as she slipped inside her empty dormitory and flung herself onto her four-poster bed.
I wish I never came to this stupid school, she thought as she pulled her diary and quill out from her bedside table.
At least she had Tom. Without him, she didn't know how she'd make it through the year, let alone the next seven. Wiping her eyes to clear her vision, she dipped her quill into the inkwell and scrawled out the first thing that came to mind. The dark words stood in stark contrast to the parchment for a few seconds before fading away as they always did.
No one likes me here. Even my brothers pretend I don't exist. I don't know why I even bother trying.
Within seconds, new words started to form on the page, ink bleeding through out of nowhere. Unlike the others, Tom never made her wait — he always seemed eager to talk, like she was the most important person in the world.
Or, at least, in his world.
His writing filled the page with neat, sophisticated loops and tails. You try because it's Hogwarts. Because nothing in this universe hurts worse than living without magic.
Truth rang through his words. Of course that was why she tried. Over the past few months, Tom had explained things nobody else could, like how the reason people ignored their Squib cousins was because it was kinder than serving as a constant reminder of the life they were missing. No matter how terrible life was for Ginny here, it would be worse to turn her back on everything she knew.
Still, that didn't make her classmates' words sting less. It still hurts pretty bad.
He paused, then added, Tell me what happened.
-x-
Professor Flitwick placed her test paper down on her desk with a proud smile, and Ginny clamped down on the urge to squeal as she read the score written in large numbers at the top of the page. Forty-eight out of fifty — an Outstanding! All of the late-night studying and frantic questions to Tom had paid off. He knew everything like the back of his hand and was able to break it down in simple, easy-to-understand terms, way better than any of her professors could.
Honestly, he should be a professor one day, if he wasn't one already. Between his effortless charm, life advice, and superior teaching, students would look forward to his lessons. Even though Ginny had never seen him, she was sure he was attractive, too, which wouldn't hurt.
She reached for her bag, itching to tell him her score. He was going to be so proud of what they'd accomplished together! Then he could help her write a letter to her mum, who would be over the moon at the news; only her oldest brothers received marks like this, and no one knew she had Tom helping her. For once, it didn't matter that Ginny didn't have any "real" friends to spend her afternoons with. Her fingers closed around the diary, and she tugged it out from between two textbooks.
But then Jane, the Ravenclaw who'd been stuck sitting next to her, leant across to read her score and let out a loud huff, and Ginny froze as she crashed back to reality. Not even Jane's disapproval could burst her bubble of happiness today, but she didn't want anyone to see the diary and realise it was special. Tom had told her they might try to get it confiscated out of jealousy, or even steal it, and then where would that leave her?
She let the diary drop back into place in the bag.
Not now, she thought. I'll duck into the bathroom before DADA and tell him then.
-x-
I wish you were real, Tom, she wrote. I wish you were here.
So do I, he replied.
-x-
Cold air pricked at the bare skin of her arms, and Ginny shivered as she fumbled for her wand. As her spell slowly heated her skin, she glanced around. A faint sliver of a half-moon peeked through the gaps in the emerald leaves, and hundreds of stars glittered through the darkness. The forest was beautifully eerie at this time of night. In the distance, the crenelated castle turrets loomed over the top of the trees.
Most eerie of all, the clearing wasn't her bed. The last thing she remembered was curling up to sleep, unable to wipe away a smile at the fact she'd written an idea in the diary that Tom had called clever. Coming from the smartest person she knew, that had been the highest of compliments.
The warmth of the memory quickly fizzled out, leaving her body comfortable but heart icy. This wasn't the first time she'd woken up in the middle of nowhere with no idea how she got there. A fortnight ago, after coming to her senses with blood on her hands, she'd asked Tom about it, only for him to be uncharacteristically skittish about answering. She knew he knew why this was happening, and for him to not tell her…
It's the diary. The realisation settled in her gut like an anchor, weighing her down and making her stomach drop several thousand feet. Somehow, Tom's doing this to me.
She must have somehow let him in — slept too close to the diary at night, maybe, or echoed back some dark possession curse when he taught her hexes. It would have been easy for Tom to slip something sinister in without her noticing.
But why? What did he gain from taking her into the forest and leaving her there?
A forest teeming with centaurs and other creatures. From what Ron said, He Who Must Not Be Named had even used it as a hideout last year. A shiver scurried down her back, and Ginny resisted the urge to break out in a sprint. Quiet was key. Slowly, she trudged towards the distant turrets, clutching her wand tightly and running through everything she'd learnt in DADA or through the diary. She had never duelled before, but if she was quick enough and her aim was sure, she might be able to incapacitate a predator long enough to buy herself some time.
It was unlikely, but she had to believe it was possible. She had to believe she could get back safely.
And when Ginny did, she would — she would…
She didn't know what she'd do. Tom had always held a hint of danger, luring her with help and secrets that would scandalise her parents. The matches were there, flickering in the dark, and she'd known it all along. Only, she never expected to be the one he burned.
This couldn't continue. If — when — she got back, she couldn't keep relying on him so much.
But at the same time, he was all she had here at Hogwarts. Her brothers didn't want anything to do with her, embarrassed to be seen with their little sister tagging along. Her classmates never wanted to hang out, only talking to her when they had to for lessons.
Tears pricked her eyes. She wanted to rip the pages out of the diary, to destroy it just as thoroughly as he'd destroyed her. But she also, more than anything, wanted to take her quill and vent all her frustrations into that parchment so he could make it better the way he always did.
-x-
Blood pounded in Ginny's head as she grabbed the diary and stuffed it into her backpack. Her thoughts blurred together like rain, like the tears welling behind her eyes, like the water pooling on the floor of that corridor —
No. She shoved that image out of her mind, then winced as she realised he'd been the one to teach her how.
Trying to pull herself together, she took the steps down from the girls' dormitory two at a time then strode through the common room without meeting anyone's gaze. If anyone spoke to her, she'd implode, and she couldn't afford to do that. Not yet.
After everything — after all of Tom's help, after that stupid night in that stupid forest — she should have known better than to believe him. She'd tucked the diary into the bottom of her trunk, promising herself to only pull it out when she really needed it, but even that hadn't been enough. Of course it hadn't, not when dealing with someone who knew all manner of dark secrets that even her professors didn't. But he'd talked away all her suspicions, and like a fool, she'd trusted him, and she'd trusted herself to keep everything under control. People handled dangerous magical artefacts all the time, she'd figured, so why couldn't she?
Now she knew why. She'd lost time again, and she hadn't even written in the diary in over a week. Apparently now the connection was established, Tom didn't need her to actively write in it to possess her.
She'd ducked away from the Halloween feast to find a loo, only to wake to copper-red blood staining her hands and her robes. Heart in her throat, she'd frantically washed off as much as she could, hoping it was just a repeat of that time with the chickens. Only, when she tried to make her way back to Gryffindor Tower, she stumbled across a bustling crowd of students gathered around a limp, hanging Mrs Norris. On the wall behind her, a chilling threat was scrawled out in dripping blood and eerily familiar handwriting.
Hers.
Tom had done it. She'd done it, too, with her inaction.
Not anymore. No amount of magical destruction had affected the diary; cutting spells glanced off it, conjured fire only singed her bedspread, and spilled water never affected its pages for long. But even if she couldn't destroy it physically, she could get rid of it. She'd flush the diary down the toilet and let it rot forever, water-logged and forgotten, in some distant sewer. Then it wouldn't be able to harm anyone anymore.
-x-
After
Ginny huddled cross-legged on her bed, staring out her window at the overgrown field lit up by the midday sun. Ever since school ended, the Burrow had been uncharacteristically quiet. It was as if Fred and George had laid eggshells out as one of their pranks, and everyone was tiptoeing around, trying not to cut themselves. Except instead of a prank, it was the biggest mistake of her life, and instead of avoiding injuries, they were worried about her feelings.
Careful or not, though, their confusion and pity and judgement still bled through in small ways, in their stilted posture and awkward words and hushed tone. They were trying to give her space to heal, or give themselves space from what she did, but all it made her feel was lonely. Everybody cared but nobody understood.
Tom would have. He always did.
That was the real kicker. All she wanted to do was talk to him and have him make everything alright, but how could he when he was the one who messed it all up in the first place? He was the problem, and he'd planned to kill her to bring himself back to life, and now he was dead because of it. The diary that had given her such comfort was now a blackened, shrivelled husk, and that was right and good and utterly devastating.
How could she grieve the person who almost killed her? How could she hate the person who spent several months as her lifeline?
Smothering the urge to scream, she strode over to her desk and settled down in the cushioned chair. Schoolbooks, scraps of parchment and sentimental knickknacks were scattered across the wood in the sort of organised chaos that always drove her mum mad. Dipping a quill in her inkwell, she grabbed the nearest parchment and slowly wrote:
I just want this to be over. I want everything to go back to how it was before.
The black ink glistened on the cream scroll, and for a second she expected it to bleed into the parchment and be replaced by a far neater, more sophisticated script. But her messy cursive didn't fade, and no reply came. It was all as it should be.
Hot tears burned at the corners of her eyes and blurred her vision. Why couldn't life be as simple as her fairy tales? The villain had lost. The hero had prevailed. So why couldn't she move on?
Two quick knocks rapped against the door. 'Ginny?' came Percy's voice gently, as if she were some wild beast needing to be soothed. 'Do you want some sweets?'
Her stomach grumbled at the offer, but eating meant letting him in, and that meant conversations she would never be ready for. She wiped her face to dry herself off and, with as steady a voice as she could muster, replied, 'No, thank you. I'm still full from lunch.'
He hesitated before sighing. 'Alright. I'll set some aside in case you change your mind.'
-x-
If Ginny thought first year was bad, the first few weeks of second year were torture. All her classmates knew the bare bones of what happened: she'd been kidnapped and would have died if Harry and Ron hadn't gone in after her. Thankfully, nobody knew about the diary or her connection to the basilisk's attacks — but while that spared her from the school's judgement, it made them even more eager for details.
She could divide her classmates into three camps. The first, largest group avoided the topic altogether, treating her like a porcelain doll that would shatter into tears if they so much as looked at her the wrong way. The second group tried to pick her brain about what happened — some outright asking, others so very politely hinting that they were curious, as if that would make her comfortable telling virtual strangers about the worst night of her life.
The third, thankfully smallest, group were the blood purists who thought she'd got what she deserved. They were the easiest to deal with. She couldn't tell them her hexes were the reason rashes prevented them from sitting still in lessons or bogeys chased them back to their dormitory at night. Her secret revenge made her feel better, though.
All three approaches were offensive in their own way. From one school year to the next, she'd gone from a nobody to the topic on everyone's tongue. And it was all so fake. None of them were really interested in her, just what she had to offer them.
Then again, wasn't that the case with Tom as well?
The one light in the darkness was Charms. Professor Flitwick kept pairing her up with a girl named Luna, who was the only person in her whole cohort who seemed more concerned about the Dementors than about Ginny. Sitting together in that high-windowed classroom, puzzling through new spells together, it felt for the first time like she truly had a friend at Hogwarts. They began gravitating towards one another in all of their shared subjects, and Luna's wild theories and straightforward kindness helped shield Ginny's ears from the whispers and judgments of their classmates.
In return, every time Ginny heard someone make snide remarks about Luna's eccentricities, she made them regret it. Unlike the blood purists, however, she made no attempt to hide the fact she was responsible.
Every single point she lost was worth it. When the other Gryffindors stopped bullying Luna, maybe Ginny would start feeling guilty.
-x-
It shocked her how much Tom had affected her thinking. Ginny couldn't count how many times a professor mentioned some fact or idea — the cause of a goblin rebellion, or the dangers behind brewing a particular potion, or the uses of household spells — and her first instinct was to argue that they were wrong. That the potion was completely safe as long as the brewer wasn't a complete buffoon. That the scouring spell had far more uses than just cleaning a pan.
After the first incident, when she told Professor Snape that unicorn blood actually had a wide variety of Ministry-approved uses and received a blank stare from him and a chorus of affronted gasps from her classmates, she learnt to hold her tongue. In the subsequent detention, he drawled out that although her other professors might be more accommodating given recent events, he would not have her corrupting students in his classroom.
The words stabbed at her heart because, for the first time, someone had verbalised what she'd feared and known and suspected for months.
Her friendship with Tom had changed her — corrupted her right down to her core. Try as she might, ignore it as she might, there was no undoing that.
From then on, she hesitated before replying in lessons. She had no doubt there was truth in some of what Tom's words. The goblin rebellions weren't driven by greed and gluttony, but instead a desire for freedom and respect. Not all dark spells were evil, just as not all light spells were good. Life wasn't black and white; it was brilliant, treacherous, radiant colour.
But for every kernel wisdom he'd given her, he'd told ten falsehoods.
The battle was over for Harry, Ron and Hermione. Most of her professors had moved onto new concerns — Sirius Black, the Dementors, and the twins' newest pranks and jokes.
But for her, the true war was just beginning.
-x-
Ginny wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck as she peered up at the flashes of yellow and red uniforms overhead. The chilly wind pricked at her cheeks and ears as thunder cracked in the distance, temporarily drowning out the cheers and boos of the crowd. Fortunately, Percy's Deflection Charm kept her from getting drenched from the storm, sending the rain splattering to the ground at her feet.
Unfortunately, she couldn't say the same about the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff Quidditch teams. They were subjected to the full force of the autumn storm.
Two months into the school year, she'd finally found some normalcy. Cavernous chambers and hulking basilisks regularly haunted her nightmares, and hearing the name Tom shook her to her core… but for the most part, she'd put it behind her. Not far enough that she couldn't still see it whenever she looked over her shoulder, but enough that it wasn't her future.
Tom wasn't anyone's future anymore.
The Quaffle tucked under her arm, Katie darted around the Hufflepuff Chasers and flitted to the left. Fleet mirrored her, covering the hoops. Katie was brilliant, definitely, but she was sometimes too delicate and had a habit of telegraphing her moves. She needed to get out of her head and just go for it.
At the last minute, Katie banked right and pelted the ball straight towards the far hoop. Gasping, Ginny surged to her feet, her fellow Gryffindors standing with her. Fleet jolted his broom to the left, leaning low over the handle for speed. His hand reached out to block the Quaffle —
And missed by inches. The ball flew straight through the hoop, not even brushing the metal sides.
The crowd erupted. Ginny whistled loudly and regretted every time she'd ever criticised the Gryffindor Chaser, even in her head. That was one of the best things she'd ever seen. Imagine flying up there with them. Imagine scoring a goal for Gryffindor, or catching a blinder of a pass from Angelina, or setting up a goal assist for Alicia —
There was no way she'd get in, not while the current Chasers were at Hogwarts. They were fantastic individually and worked together like a dream. But maybe one day, after Angelina left or if one of them took a break to focus on their NEWTs…
The chill worsened as the rain picked up. For the team's sake, she hoped Harry caught the Snitch soon. Then they could all go inside and celebrate over hot chocolate and lunch. She bent her head so her scarf rode up over her chin, warming her face.
Her classmates could celebrate, and she could go up to her room, all alone, where she belonged. Because after all, this was all just a show, wasn't it? She was still the same lonely, desperate girl who'd taken whatever morsels of friendship she could find and almost killed people for it.
She didn't deserve to be out here having fun, not when her stupidity almost killed three of her classmates. Maybe she should have died in the Chamber after all.
Dark spots dotted her vision, flying about with the players. She shivered.
Why is it so damn cold? It wasn't just the storm — this was different. After all that time with Tom, she knew what dark magic felt like.
The pieces fell into place at the same time one of the Gryffindor players slid off his broom.
The bitter cold, the dark spots, the empty misery; it wasn't the storm, it was the Dementors. They'd left their posts at the school's entrance and crashed the Quidditch match.
And Harry was falling.
-x-
The common room was unusually quiet for the rest of the weekend as everyone processed what happened. As Harry tumbled towards the ground, Diggory had caught the Snitch and won Hufflepuff the match, marking the first time they'd lost to Hufflepuff in years. Thanks to some quick spell work by the professors, Harry had survived with moderate bruising, but he was still in the Hospital Wing, and no one knew when to expect him back.
The only good news was that the Headmaster had publicly banned the Dementors from entering the school grounds again. Ginny never again wanted to feel the guilt and self-hatred and overwhelming hopelessness she did when they swarmed Harry.
That girl wasn't her anymore.
For the first time since meeting Tom, that wasn't just some mantra or self-deception designed to get her through the pain. She genuinely believed she had moved on.
After all, moments of heightened emotions had always been the thing that sent her running straight back to her dormitory and Tom's diary. Yet as worried as she was for Harry, and as confronting as her addled thoughts and feelings had been, she hadn't once felt that old urge to reach for a quill and write to him.
If this is what freedom felt like, she liked it. Never again would she let herself become so dependent on one person for her happiness.
So Ginny visited Harry in the Hospital Wing to drop off a singing get-well-soon card that Tom would have called tacky, then she spent the rest of the weekend doing homework with Luna and talking to the other Gryffindors in her year. Conversation was stilted and awkward at first, but by Sunday evening, the first shoots of friendship were blooming.
Wild and unpredictable and beautiful and free.