specific warnings and other notes will always be listed at the end of a chapter, so remember to scroll down if you want to read them first
this is mostly book canon! With small scale changes and scraps of movie canon when I feel like it. relative to the movies there's more violence, Neville is still short and fat, Luna and Harry are completely different people, and some characters like Dean and Ginny actually have personalities. however there will be gay activity later
/
01. In the Echo
Ginny knew the world best from above.
In the too many rooms of the spatially illegal Burrow, Ginny knew her family. Outside, she'd hardly set foot beyond her mother's garden. She knew the curving branches of every path through the marshes, and the places animals would run in and out of the tall grasses, but only as seen from a broomstick. Half as well as a bird, then.
In the early morning hours she crept downstairs, shoes in hand, and pulled them on in time to race across the muddy yard. From the shed, she'd take her prize and tell it what to do. With a kick Ginny could take them both to the clouds. The safest way out was if she flew past the kitchen and her own windows; sometimes right past her mother, bent down over the tomatoes. Ginny thought about what would happen if she just kept going, where the sky went.
But then it would be time to go home and lock up the broom shed. Past the orchard trees she could throw a quaffle for herself and catch it, dive faster than gravity for it when she missed. Let the clouds soak her on hot summer mornings. Do trick moves she saw in magazines to keep her blood rushing in the cold. At ten, she hid extra eggs behind the chicken coop, and the next day she moved on to catching those.
The year Ron left for Hogwarts, at least the wind remained to play with her. It wasn't until next year that she made a friend.
/
some years later
"Alright, Miss Weasley. Do I want to know why you're stealing from my ancient family's library of twisted evil?"
Ginny turned to Sirius Black with eyes oblivious as a doe. She was but a hapless child.
"Fess up," he said, claiming the old dining chair across from her and settling in. "Dung saw you today and now he wants to know if it's open season on my inheritance."
She was surprised Sirius didn't want to play dumb, more than anything. He delighted in every piece of his inheritance that could go straight to the trash.
Ginny suppressed a glare and gave up on staring into the night, resting her arms on the table. "The title talked about mental combat or something? I forget. The first chapters talk about some defensive magic called-"
"Ah, Occlumency," Sirius finished for her. "Dastardly business. My least favourite cousin practises it. I think Regulus might have used that one for light reading, too." Sirius could never resist commentating on his least favourite family. "Lot of the Death Eaters practise it for cover, or even interrogation. Snape can't have tea with his buddies wi-"
"Snape knows Occlumency?" Ginny demanded, straightening up.
Sirius looked at her with pity, the candles on the table showing his grimace. In telling him more about his absent godson, she'd disclosed the events of her first year at Hogwarts. Then Sirius, with his loneliness and hollowed face, had supportively railed against every way she'd been wronged and listened to every offered detail without flinching. He'd returned the honesty by sharing little pieces of Azkaban; the monotony of a wretched cell where all passersby ignored you, of having the dementors soak your world with their essence until what made you yourself was nearly gone.
He knew better than most what appeal Occlumency held for her. He shouldn't have been hassling her. "First things first. Give me that book back."
Ginny made no acknowledgement of this. He pleaded, "I just don't want you reading that book, specifically. The, uh, material is more offensive than anything, and it gets a bit graphic."
"Saw the pictures, yeah," she rolled her eyes, leaning away. "Think the author was using his imagination?"
"Hers, and no." His grimace deepened. "And I don't expect you'd enjoy having Snape teach you-"
"I don't but I already do-"
Sirius laughed mirthlessly. "For Potions, where he isn't licensed to point a wand at you."
Ginny didn't care. Tom Riddle was returning to power. "So you're going to stop me from learning how to protect myself? Better to risk the odds against threats I don't know than Snape or some book?"
"Give me the book and I will make it up to you, I swear," he swore, with eyes still full of the kindness he'd spent over ten years unable to share. Before the house soured him. "I don't know if anyone who knows Legilimency has time to help you, but I will mention it to Dumbledore. When your family isn't around!" He added hastily. "And you can try asking me too. I know a little bit, about defence only. I'll read with you, even, just. . .don't tell your parents. I'm still on thin ice with Molly for going after Peter without talking to the Order."
/
For her birthday, Sirius Black gave Ginny the first and only present she got from him in life. A small, old book entitled The Arte of Mind and Memory.
The arte of mental resistance receives no benefit from wands and artefacts. The fundamentals of its practice are the same as any other form of wandless magic; emotion. . .
. . .To master one's mind is inextricably linked to mastering the body. Emotions are reactions to stimulae. Will over emotion comes from will over what surrounds them.
The first step is knowing. The texture of a tunic, the shape of an underfoot stone, the live connection between the head and every toe. The senses must be utilised to their fullest to ground them. A sense unknown will create reactions unpredictable. The blank slate, the unreadable mind, can only be built with feeling dispersed. Disseminated. Only the most forceful reader may dig up what is buried.
Children, being excessively sensitive to normal stimulae, possess wild will. The adult mind is known not for producing nor for withstanding the extremes of distress that small children can forget in a single night. . .
Children were nothing if not sensitive.
The worst part of the summer after was wondering if anyone else would ever live up to the kind of friend Tom had been while it lasted. Someone who went everywhere with her, listened to every detail of her life no matter how mundane or embarrassing and knew her so well he knew exactly what to say. Someone who could open himself to her as a book and let her watch his own life by his side.
Tom the Orphan, Tom the watchful Head Boy, Tom the Genius Prankster. He'd been so easy to open up to. The possession had required a close connection and he'd reeled her in completely. The book showed her how to heal fear but at this point Ginny felt like it would follow her the rest of her life, the way her mother talked around discussions of her family.
Not her children, but the noble Prewitts, instrumental to the first Order of the Phoenix and all dead and gone save the women who'd married out of the name. Ginny had never heard of them at all until her father explained. Their deceased uncles, Gideon and Fabian, had been the vanguard of the vanguard for the first Order. The Weasleys, while not officially in the Order, had nonetheless offered a safehouse. Bill was the only one old enough to remember this; even Charlie seemed to be under the impression that his family just had a lot of get-togethers. Knowing now, it felt right and a relief that their family had always been the sort to take action.
The girls in Ginny's year were funny and affectionate, but Ginny realised her mistake too late. In her desperation to act cool and well-adjusted, they had never discussed anything to do with Tom Riddle. Or, as they knew him, You Know Who. None of them were anti-ministry material. In fact none of them had anything better than condescendig to say about Harry, or Dumbledore, or Ginny's father. And no matter what the most popular girl in Gryffindor did say, they held it against her if Ginny shouted or cussed about it.
Very abruptly, Loony Lovegood and Ginny became Herbology partners.
/
From their first year, Luna was darling with a permanent expression of wonder and ribbons and radishes strung in her scraggly hair. The first time she explained the nargle infection afflicting the most popular girl in Gryffindor(or maybe just the loudest, since she wasn't popular with Ginny) she left Ginny speechless. Over time confusion became curiosity; she was sweet, but didn't seem to require company, let alone request it. She was Loony because Loony didn't give a shit what anyone thought of her, and no one else could put on a show like she could. She'd make a fine Gryffindor. By fourth year Ginny was bursting with admiration. Much as she vied for the attention of any girl within five feet of her, Ginny sometimes wished she could be so untouchable, unembarrassable, and kind without exception or expectation.
Also, as a staunch rule breaker, Loony was about to be useful. They almost made it out to the forest beyond Hogsmeade when they found themselves being followed.
"Where are you two going?"
Ginny instantly got hit with a flight response. Parvati Patil was looking at her.
"The Shrieking Shack is the opposite way up the road," she continued with an intense stare that Ginny avoided.
Ginny had only ever spoken to Parvati in the months before the Yule Ball, when she and Lavender had burst into delighted giggles at the sight of Ginny for a solid month. They eventually dual-confronted her to confirm the full lyrics of "his eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad."
Parvati was neither smiling nor giggling now. "We're not going anywhere!" Luna claimed, Ginny slipping behind her slowly. "We just happen to be here right now."
To be fair, when Ginny wasn't dying of embarrassment at the memory, she had to admit it was a little funny. Lavender had seemed genuinely confused when Ginny started fleeing from the girls in terror. She got the feeling they didn't think of themselves as bullies.
"You're not headed into that forest, which I might report you for doing?"
Patil and Ginny made eye contact and she realised with a jolt this must be Padma. The Ravenclaw prefect. Once Ginny was paying attention the differences seemed obvious; her nose was shorter, and the jaw might have been a different shape. The twins weren't even identical.
"Did you follow us after we all left the Hog's Head?" Ginny asked suspiciously.
"I saw you heading for the forest. Prefects have responsibilities."
"Do they include crawling up Luna's ass?" Ginny couldn't help asking.
Padma's brow barely moved. "Are you going in the forest?" she asked shortly.
Ginny sighed. She'd hoped Padma would take points off Gryffindor and be satisfied enough to leave. "Look, Luna lost her purse, we think some of the girls charmed it to go flying in there. We won't go far, we just wanted a look." Ginny gave Padma her most pitiful can't-be-helped frown and hoped Luna would pull her end of the wagon. She didn't give up the lie, at least.
Padma relented, expression softening. Ginny could've jumped for joy-
"At least let me come with you."
That was not on Ginny's agenda.
"Really?" Luna asked in delight. "I didn't know you broke rules, Padma!"
"There have been reports of strange noises in the forest," Padma said, coming forward. "The teachers almost cancelled this trip."
"Oh, is that why you came here?" Luna asked as Padma walked by them.
"No," declared Padma, leading onward. Luna scrambled into the woods behind her. Ginny needed a real plan.
/
The woods were just woods. Luna became absorbed in the little noises of the forest as they examined it, and caught on to zero of Ginny's attempts to ditch Padma. It didn't seem like they would get anywhere useful before they'd have to turn back and make a rush for the carriages. Ginny mulled on how easy it had been to ditch Michael and his friends. No matter how many jokes she made or interesting conversations she tried to start, she got the sense Michael's friends just didn't want her around. Which was not something she felt anything about at all, she decided after carefully grounding herself and picturing how small and insignificant Michael's sidekicks were out of everyone at school.
Loony blazed her own path. Apparently, someone wrote to the Quibbler about an undiscovered variety of furry tree-dwelling beetles. The "beetles" flitted away laughing.
"I told you they were just doxies," Padma lectured as Luna clutched at her poison-swollen fingers. . .not poison, venom. Hermione would be proud of her for remembering the difference.
Luna spun around and walked away, spurning Padma. Ginny followed quickly and glared back at Padma, but Luna pulled her wand out and Padma just started up again. "Luna, don't, any magic we do out here will be underage magic. We'd be caught for sure."
Ginny cursed herself for forgetting this very important hang up. "Seriously? We should just leave. No point being out here if we can't do magic." Luna came to a stop.
THWUD. A deep thud like that of flesh sounded about them, though smaller as if far away. Still Ginny hated the sound. It was too much like the landing of a beast. Something large, large enough to eat what it pleased.
"Did we just wake up an animal?" Padma said, turning about sharply.
"If we can't do magic that's double reason to head back-"
Luna became so agitated she shrank in on herself, shoulders hunching. "I don't see what the big deal is about underage magic! I used to heal myself whenever I stepped on a Dugbog and I never got arrested for it."
Ginny snorted in disbelief. "Not with a wand, right?" You could just make out the edge of Hogsmeade through the trees. Maybe someone big just had a bad fall.
"Yes!"
Luna only showed them her back. Padma cut in, expression turned down. "When you say Dugbog. . .?"
"They live out in the marshes," Ginny explained quickly, knowing why Padma would be sceptical. "They glide around looking like grass and mud and attack people's feet. It's why my mum never let us out past the orchards."
"Oh," Luna asked suddenly. "Is that why she got mad and said you couldn't play with me anymore?"
Ginny was hit by a memory of being furious about this, as Luna was the only little girl in their area and they only hung out once or twice. All that rage only got her punished harder. "You don't remember?" she asked, shoulders loosening in the lasting stillness. "She blew off at your parents for letting us wander out as far as we wanted. Then you came over the Burrow and got hit by a Quaffle and we never hung out again."
Luna turned to face her, distracted by this thought. ". . .I might remember that."
"Well, Parvati blew up a pot fighting with our mom after second year and she got a warning for that," Padma broke in, dragging them back on topic.
CRKK bwoosh. This time the crack was loud enough to hit every hair on Ginny's arm, followed by the unmistakable noise of the wrong end of a tree hurtling over the ground. You didn't hear that shit in the Forbidden Forest. This place had something that beat everything at Hogwarts. Ice swam up Ginny's nerves. The Forbidden Forest gave her the creeps already, but at least if Hagrid were still there-
"What are you kids doin' out here?" someone called.
"HAGRID!" Ginny spun about and shouted.
At first she ran for him, overjoyed; he'd been missing for months. Then she was terrified; his face was half yellow and purple from some ageing bruise, getting obvious as he approached. His mouth hung slightly open, misshapen, and he moved toward them at a limp.
"It's nice to see ya, Ginny. But it'd be better if it were somewhere ya were supposed to be," he growled with an ironic look. He eyed her companions behind her. Padma stepped ahead of Ginny.
"I was just escorting these students back to the carriages. They wandered off, and I retrieved them," she explained, breath ragged in the cold. "I am a prefect. Did the school send you out here to investigate what's in the forest?"
Hagrid stiffened, and straightened himself very tall to regard her. "Yes. Yeah. That is why I'm here." He paused and gulped. "A prefect, huh. I suppose you'll be. . .reportin' this, then."
"Not necessarily." Padma seemed like she was trying to start a staring contest with Hagrid. "There's been no harm done here. Just some. . .curiosity. We don't need to punish that kind of attitude."
Hagrid fixed on Padma completely.
". . .'Course," he agreed, loud but deep enough it still sounded like mumbling. "Students should hold on ta that. . .spirit." With this, he forced a grin. "I'll see ya soon, Ginny. Just got to handle this, business. Then I'll be back at the school." He smiled, waved her off awkwardly, and marched on his way.
Ginny decided not to tell Hermione.
/
"So you just wander around the Forbidden Forest whenever?"
"Oh yes! The thestrals live at this end of the forest, so I'm never really alone."
Ginny only rolled her eyes internally. "How about I go with you? And what's a thestral?"
Luna glowed, and after class the two were out in the afternoon sun in no time. Luna told her about the phantom horses of the forest-which apparently did exactly what normal horses did, except they were skeletal and had WINGS. Wings. Ginny thought she spotted Padma Patil watching them, cautiously, from the lake, but the next second she clearly wasn't, listening to several other girls.
"Does Padma talk to you a lot?" Ginny asked Luna.
"Oh, Padma and I don't talk, exactly. She doesn't talk much at all. One time I was looking for wrackspurts and I found her reading under a table in the third floor corridor."
"Weird."
Luna regarded Ginny inscrutably. "You know, in Ravenclaw, the prefects are always singing."
Ginny definitely did not know. "Seriously?" she scoffed. Ginny tried to imagine Michael's first sidekick singing. Luna grinned and burst into a skip ahead.
"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure," she sang as Ginny sped to follow, "research is better when we do it together. . ."
The path Luna followed wasn't strictly a path. Ginny stumbled over roots and random dips in the ground, unseen under the brush. After falling behind and trying to walk some ways a few metres from Luna's side, Ginny's path became blocked off by dead branches she had to step on just so, to keep them from slipping around and whacking her. As they went deeper Ginny found herself tracing Luna's exact steps, and every so often, she got the sense that Luna was watching things far off into the trees more than the tricky ground.
In time, they passed a large rock embedded on a hill in only partial shadow, the kind little kids would've fought to sit on like a king had it been available to them. It beat the ground, where bugs would be harder to see.
"Is here good?" Luna supplied at just this right spot.
"Yeah, good pick."
"So, what sort of magic is this?"
"You don't have to try it, but you wouldn't tell anyone-" Ginny sought to confirm, but Luna perked up at this.
"Of course not!"
Ginny kicked herself up to the top tier sitting spot. Luna, set on being helpful, began asking questions. "Oh, do we both sit, or am I watching you in case something goes wrong? Or do I have to hold a ritual component?"
Ginny patted the spot next to her, beckoning. "Uh, no, you can sit. It's called Legilimency. Or Occlumency, or both I guess," Ginny began as Luna sidled up, crossing her legs off the back. Ginny had just curled her own up to balance on the more level part of the rock. "Um. . .Legilimency is when one person tries to open someone else's mind and see what's there. Occlumency is the art of defending against, that, and all kinds of intrusions. Legilimency is just the easiest attack, I think. But all you have to do is point at me and say 'Legilimens.' There's no special casting that I saw, it's supposed to be something people do wandlessly, so they can be sneaky."
Luna nodded as she spoke. Ginny's explanation wasn't really classroom material, but Luna didn't interrupt when she paused. "And my 'role,' I guess, is just to kick you out. There's no ritual, sorry."
Luna watched her intently. Ginny cleared her throat and shivered. "Oookay, we can start, if you want," she finished, suppressing an old stutter that didn't want to die just because she'd finally unhinged her jaw in front of other girls. If she failed, their relationship was about to get weird. Not gonna fail, I can do this, Ginny reminded herself.
"On three?" Luna suggested.
"Oh, sure."
"Three," Luna counted. Ginny straightened up and grabbed the stone for support. Still like stone. "Two." Blank slate, grey. Luna pulled her wand from her jacket. "One." She pointed and Ginny held her breath for a moment, feeling the way it steadied her middle. Luna parted her mouth, staring wide-eyed and eager, and said-
Ginny's vision swam. Colours blurred and changed at breakneck speed. Browns and whites flashed but that was a partial flow in a torrent. Hermione dipped her head down across a study table, like in the library, and even as she flickered away Ginny realised the deluge must be composed of separate images. She could barely tell. She couldn't even tell if they were slowing down or she was adjusting to the flood.
Harry sitting quietly with others, the Weasley family brooms stacked in a shed, trains speeding away, her roommates pulling off their nightclothes, Hogsmeade clothes laid out-
How long was this going to go on? The pages of her books flashed before her, passages indistinct even if she remembered the takeaways. The books had never said how Legilimens ended. She'd assumed it would be like a one time charm that did its thing or faded. What if it kept going like a curse? No, stop, stop-but the images drifted over Tom Riddle laughingly hexing a girl who Ginny had looked up and discovered to be a muggleborn, a shower curtain opening over a small girl's uniform drenched by the water?
Empty space at a bird's neck, not just headless but Nothing oozing out on a tree stump in a confusion of colour and a short wooden handle in Ginny's hand, then the wooden handle sprouted roots and the bird put down roots from its neck.
Her skin crawled. I want to be me, Ginny remembered as a jade beetle flicked its wings and jumped up someone's hand. Blood on the wall and muggleborn Colin Creevey lifted frozen from the ground, what crept up her spine. This is why. Ginny pushed down and contained herself away from the strange and beyond.
Her vision sucked itself back behind her eyes. Suddenly aware of her body, Ginny almost felt weightless until her leg twitched and her knee scratched rock. Luna was still beside her. The treetops seemed to blend together at the coming hour, whatever that was.
"It's a connection," Luna marvelled.
"What?" Ginny asked. Her mind had cleared but her thoughts were still spinning.
"I saw my mother-the summer before she died-Legili is in legible, legislate. It can mean reading or writing. You can see or you can show. The spell goes two ways no matter who cast it." Luna appeared so dazed Ginny wondered if she'd done something very wrong and hurt her. But everything Luna said was pretty coherent, more so than anything bouncing around inside Ginny's head and heart and lungs.
If Luna had stuff in that brain salad too, then-
"Did you see those roosters?" Ginny asked in desperation. "Was that your memory?"
Luna studied her for long seconds. "The no head bird looked a bit like a chicken, but I've never butchered fowl, no."
Ginny grabbed and held her forehead, slowed her breath and willed herself not to have a reaction. A breeze in the air, sunlight deepened to orange but still scattered above the forest. She pulled her hands through her hair. "Well, I don't remember seeing that," Ginny stated, but it was more of a question directed at her own mind.
"Maybe you forgot."
Forgotten, but remembered? Ginny remembered some of what her books had said about the subconscious, but they had only talked about feelings. "So. . .what, I remember it but I can't think about it normally?"
"Maybe not perfectly. Maybe what happened didn't look like that and your fear or hope is just filling in."
"How do you mean?" Ginny said sceptically.
"My mother turned herself inside out testing out spells when she died," Luna said thoughtfully, like she really was discussing a pop quiz. Ginny's face jerked in horror and Luna apologised. "Oh, it was ages ago. I was nine. I saw it happen, but I don't remember things I know would have happened. I know there was blood, but I've never been able to remember any. All I see when I try is the plants from the garden behind her."
Ginny had no idea how to take this anecdote. "Lucky you don't remember that, Luna," she offered with her politest cheer, "I wouldn't want to think about it."
"You don't want to think about what you saw when you killed animals, either," Luna pointed out. "That doesn't mean the memory is gone. It might be incomplete, though. When you try to look at it, your thoughts stretch to fill in the blanks and what you see is damaged."
Luna did nothing if not provide change in perspective. Ginny knew some magic could alter or hide a memory. Maybe she had memories from the possession like that. Which meant everything from that time was still lurking somewhere in her mind, like a disgustingly large slug you might find after overturning a rock.
Luna's eyes were wider than usual. "If you want to try again, I'm always here. You can try Legilimency on me as well, if you've the interest."
"We don't-you don't have to do that," Ginny insisted.
"I don't mind," Luna said clearly. Her face betrayed no disturbance with any of their conversation.
Later that evening, Ginny almost considered asking Luna what she did remember about her mother's death, then realised Luna had specifically mentioned blood, and nothing else, as something she forgot. Ginny hastily decided against it.
She avoided going to the forest with Luna again. Ginny wasn't searching for the sorts of things Ravenclaws did.
/
CHAPTER THREE WILL BE POSTED JUNE 17TH, beginning regular updates, with the revised chapter one being posted on June 10th. Everybody say thank you to Your-High-Lady and Just-an-Entity for agreeing to beta. I won't turn down fourth or tenth opinions of any kind, so if you, as a reader, follow this work and think you'd be interested in helping beta for exactly as long as you want, PM me for the Googledoc.
warnings for past character and animal death, for this chapter. if it wasn't obvious, implied/referenced torture, manipulation, coarse language, different varieties of bullying and death will be a given at any time