Hello all! Yes, I am dead. Yes, I have been surfing on vacation all year/summer. Yes, I have been kidnapped by a sadistic terrorist organization for ransom.

Now that that's all done, a word: This summer is really the end of Harry Potter, isn't it? Forget the last two movies. The books are where it's at. We know what'll happen in the movies, though we cannot predict who will be assigned random ridiculous caterpillar mustaches or bald cantaloupe heads. But no matter; as a sort of send-off to the series, I'm going to try posting the last few chapters of my current monstrosity before tomorrow midnight. (I wrote this stuff like a year ago. Shame, shame.)

My last comment: I feel, like a lot of you feel, I am sure, that I am the only person on Earth who has truly read Harry Potter. I cannot imagine it any other way. Sort of like I can't imagine the world going on if I am not present or conscious. And so these books, read by billions of people worldwide, are my very own in my little odd Brain World and as close to my heart as my life is; it's not an offensive or insulting thing. It is simply the way my mind functions. I'm sure I'm not alone on this one.

Please enjoy :

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Psychopathic-Murderer-Bloke

The night before the fifth-years were to take their O.W.L exams, Ginny Weasley had a huge problem.

Her regular nightly routine of wandering around till about four in the morning and then making her way back to bed for a few hours of sleep was disrupted by the presence of Filch, pacing determinedly in front of the entrance to the common room. Ginny watched him on the map, his little dot never wavering from its course, forward, back, forward, back.

She should have known this would happen; the third time she was caught, he'd threatened, "You're no good, no good at all, little miss! You think I dunno what you're up to, but I warrant you I'll find out." She'd laughed it off then, but now she was tired and sleepy and had nowhere she could go, unless she let Filch catch her. And this was not an option: she was sure he'd write to Mum then, and there'd be hell to pay.

She suddenly remembered the room she'd found on the seventh floor, the one that seemed to change a lot into whatever she needed most. It was hard to reach and most people, she was sure, couldn't know about it. A good place to spend the night as any.

Ginny climbed her way quietly up each flight of stairs. Then she heard a noise, somewhere around the sixth floor, where the Hufflepuff common room was. She hid quickly in the shadows, but saw that it was only a girl a year or two older than her. She looked a little lost and worried, so Ginny decided to help her out.

"Hey!" she called softly. The girl whipped her long black plait of hair around and looked for the source of the noise. Ginny stepped out of her corner and reassured, "It's just me—don't worry."

The girl's expression became relieved. "Thought you might've been Filch, or Peeves," she said.

Ginny grinned. "Neither, sorry to disappoint. What are you doing out here?"

"The suit of armor over there, he's the one we give our password to, but he feel asleep after I got back from the loo. I don't wanna try to wake him…he might make a racket and wake everyone up. So I've got nowhere to go." The girl, Ginny saw, must be a Hufflepuff. She looked slightly familiar.

Wanting to know her name, Ginny held out her hand. "I'm Ginny," she offered. "I'm shut out of my dorm, too."

The girl shook it. "Susan. Do you know anywhere we could go?"

Ginny nodded, glad to be useful. "There's a room I know on the seventh floor—it's a pretty good place to hide out, I think. C'mon."

She led the girl to the strange, changing room. "Last time, I was looking for a room that'd excite me, and after I walked a bit, it was there—it was full of funny little instruments and knickknacks to play with…" Ginny trailed off, walking across the stretch of hallway several times, asking it for a place to sleep.

The door appeared after the third time. "Amazing!" Susan cried out, then immediately covered her mouth. "Sorry," she said in a quieter voice. Ginny waved it off and opened the door.

The first thing she noticed was the shards of porcelain lying at her feet, as if someone had thrown china at the door. The room had indeed become a bedroom, and the two girls quickly stepped inside to avoid getting caught.

There was a neat little bedside table, and a warm rug, the bed itself being very plush and looking comfortable. But it wasn't empty. Ginny caught her breath when she saw the handsome face of the boy who was slumbering in it. Even as she watched, his eyes opened and he got out of the bed.

He was wearing day clothes, what looked like a rumpled Hogwarts uniform, his tie loosed and hanging down on either side of his pale neck. "Hello," he said simply.

"Er…" Ginny wasn't sure what to say. "Sorry for intruding," she said warily.

He waved a hand aside. It was a very long-fingered, graceful looking hand, she noticed. Susan and she exchanged a riddled glance. What could they say?

And then the boy saved them from having to think anything up by pointing his wand at Susan and smoothly saying, "Stupefy."

The black-haired girl fell to the floor, stunned. Ginny moved to the door, but knew she couldn't leave Susan here at the mercy of this stranger. "What d'you think you're doing?" she snapped at him. "Who the hell are you?"

He smiled. "Aren't you the firebrand?" he murmured. "You're the Weasley girl…Harry Potter's…"

She stared, goggle-eyed. "That Slytherin prat that's always bugging me?" she asked in disbelief. She hadn't seen him in months…right? "What, are you a friend of his? Think you're a funny bloke, do you?" Please think you're a funny bloke, she prayed inwardly, and not a psychopathic-murderer-bloke.

But the dark-haired boy simply arose from the bed and approached her. She whipped her wand out and held it in front of her as a warning. "Don't even try it," she said through gritted teeth.

The boy's handsome face lifted in a smile. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'd just like to talk to you, Ginny."

She snorted, glancing at Susan's still form. "Oh, yeah, tell me another," she said mirthlessly. The stranger had followed her gaze and shrugged.

"She was unnecessary in our meeting. This was a lucky chance, to meet the girl my Harry has such a liking for—even if he doesn't realize it yet. It's simply unfortunate this other one came along."

Ginny was growing confused. "What are you talking about? Me and Potter aren't friends."

The boy didn't answer. He watched her intensely, so that she was almost hypnotized. And when he reached out a hand to run through her fiery hair, she was too captivated to move.

"I could use another ally," he said, leaning close and letting his breath tickle her earlobe. "You're a skilled witch, aren't you? You like to sneak and slither all over the school, after dark…I see it in your mind, Ginny. You could learn to embrace the Dark Arts. Won't you join me?"

Ginny shuddered, closing her eyes. How he knew so much about her, how he was reading her mind, she didn't know. The Fred and George in her appreciated the humor of the situation: Ginny Weasley finds a great-looking bloke in bed and he turns out to be a Dark Arts fanatic.

She laughed a little and opened her eyes, her trance broken. "Look, I'm not going to be your 'ally' or anything, and if you really must know, I don't think coming on all evil is going to make you many friends."

He looked angry for a moment, but gathered his self-control before saying coolly, "Very well, little cat. Sorry you feel that way. Stupefy!"

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Tom watched the redheaded girl fall to the ground. It really was a shame she didn't want to be friends, he thought as he picked up her wand and turned to her friend, who was already stirring slightly.

"Avada kedavra," he said lightly, watching the green jet of light issue from Ginny Weasley's wand. The black-haired girl stopped moving immediately, and Tom picked the two of them up and deposited them near the Hufflepuff common room. He twined Ginny's fingers around her wand again and stroked her hair back from her face.

The books Harry had gotten for him had been a marvelous read. Tom had learned everything he wanted to know about the events taking place around the time of Harry's birth: the death of the baby Neville Longbottom, the downfall of Lord Voldemort, the destruction of five different Horcruxes, and the search for the sixth that had never surfaced.

"Curiosity killed the cat," he murmured, smiling one last time at Ginny's vulnerable form before making his way back to the Room of Requirement. Tom Riddle had places to be.

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The next morning, a Hufflepuff third-year found Ron Weasley's little sister kneeling, sobbing, next to the dead body of his best friend. A quick Priori Incantatem spell proved that Ginny Weasley's wand was, indeed, the wand that had fired the killing curse of the victim. Professor McGonagall, the sister's head of house, escorted her to her office, where the Weasley girl told her through broken sobs about a pale, dark-haired boy in a shape-shifting room on the seventh floor.

The floor was searched thoroughly by the staff, but no such room was found, nor the boy that the Weasley girl had been gibbering about. Professor McGonagall had no choice but to alert the Ministry to take the girl to some sort of holding area where she could wait to be tried by the Ministry for the murder of Susan Bones.

And so Ginny sat now, bound to a chair in the Entrance Hall, staring out the window at the noon-time sun while the fifth-years prepared for the exams that would start after lunch. She could hear Professor McGonagall asking her dorm-mates about the affair in the staircase leading to the hall.

"This doesn't come as a shock to any of you, that a girl like Ginny Weasley would do such a thing?" McGonagall's sharp voice was muffled by the twists of the stairs.

"Oh, Professor," came a tearful girl's voice. "She's so strange, all secretive-like, always sneaking around at night and coming in to bed at five in the morning. We knew she had to be up to something…"

Bollocks, Ginny thought with tears brimming in her eyes. You thought I was meeting some illicit boyfriend, Melinda Davies, you stupid lying bint. Oh, she wished she had never succumbed to the charms of the map, never tried to live up to her twin brothers' marauding standards, never stopped suppressing that itch of curiosity.

"…always had a weird relationship with her brother…yelling at him last Hogsmeade…small wonder she targeted his best friend…" Melinda's voice continued disjointedly.

Oh, God, Ginny thought. What was Ron going to think? She gave a great shuddering breath, and then heard McGonagall again, this time saying, "Very well, Melinda. I've got to…brothers should know…"

Ginny heard the lot of them walking away, and grimly stared at the ropes that bound her hands and ankles. Would this constitute ending the year with a bang enough for Fred and George? she wondered mirthlessly.

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Whew. How was that, now? Really, I can't remember anything...