Lessons
Knowing the dark parts of yourself at twelve was an uncomfortable experience. Ginny knew that twelve year olds were supposed to be naïve and pure with glittering souls. Not twisted and alone and tarnished. But she was all of those things and more because of Tom Riddle.
It would be so much easier if she could just forget about him like her parents advised. But she knew that was impossible, he'd written himself into her story, into her life with his charming poisoned words. She wondered why the adults who were supposed to be much cleverer than her couldn't see how impossible simply forgetting him was. He'd ruined her, made her hurt people, made her love him while he stole her soul. None of those experiences were at all forgettable. But it would have all been bearable if she didn't miss him. She could have dealt with the nightmares, accepted the lectures on common sense, even ignored the gaps in her memory. She would have been fine if only she hadn't longed to pick up her quill and write to him again. She could have pretended everything was okay if she had some anger to hold on to, if she didn't feel like her own soul had died with the diary. Tom was evil and manipulative and he'd nearly killed her but she loved him anyway, loved him painfully. At only twelve years old Ginevra Weasely discovered how loving the devil blackened your soul. She became sickeningly familiar with the way guilt and horror sat in a person's stomach. She got used to the hole that missing him left in her chest.
Two summers later she learned that she still knew the texture of Tom's soul intimately, it was woven into her skin, twirled through her magic. In the great clean-up of Number 12 Grimmauld Place she found a locket that made her magic sing and her skin thrum, and she pocketed it. That night when she slept with it resting between her breasts Tom Riddle flowed back into the craters he'd left in Ginny's soul and she felt whole again.