She wakes up in the pitch black, thirsty and sore. Dizzily, she rubs at her sides, rolls her shoulders slowly to get the blood flowing.
When her feet touch the floor, she thinks she's hearing voices, low and buzzing throughout the apartment. Gossiping, tattling, talking about her.
Exactly as they had done when her parents came to take her home from Hogwarts, as Mum helped her pack her sparse belongings while Dad had sat in the Common Room, Ron and Fred and George and Percy next to him, all pale and stiff.
Exactly as they had done at home, when Mum and Dad had whispered things - things she couldn't quite discern until very late at night, when his ghost would always stop by. He'd tell her what they'd said, he'd tell her all that Mum and Dad had said about her; how she's not well, not entirely herself, not entirely normal. Not entirely normal, are you, he'd laugh at her as she'd press the pillow hard over her head.
And exactly as they had done when she arrived alone at Ilvermorny, as she was escorted to the Headmaster through sets of foreign hallways she didn't want to know while so many pairs of eyes had followed her. All of them had talked about her when they thought she was asleep. New girl, odd, too quiet, an outsider.
Maybe the nattering voices had started long before she came back to life in the Chamber, she can't quite remember. There's so much she can't remember.
Not entirely normal.
Her padding feet stop in front of his desk, paper and manilla files strewn haphazardly on top of it. Her gaze drops to the set of pictures clumsily brushed under one of the files, her fingers quietly spreading them across the desk.
Portraits of young women with their eyes emptied of life, beautiful and eerie in their stillness. She looks closer and gasps, one palm spread open at her heart, the other at her open mouth.
It's her, she's there, she's in the picture. She's staring directly at herself.
"Ginny?"
"Needed some water," she answers, hushed, shaking hands shoving the pictures back exactly as they were. She takes two steps towards the bed, trembling, before an invisible string tugs her back and - she can't help herself, she's looking at the pictures once again.
Strangely, she isn't there anymore. None of the three dead women is her.
Steadying her breath, Ginny slips back between the sheets, Harry's hand wrapping around her, resting on her naked chest. Her heart picks up speed under his touch.
The voices suddenly die down, silence now flooding her ears and Ginny braces herself - they never really leave her, do they?
His palm brushes her breast and she can feel him harden behind her. She curls her hand around him and then starts to pump, welcoming the blissful oblivion that's about to follow, washing out the insides of her mind.