Disclaimer: This story includes characters and situations that are part of the Harry Potter universe, which is copyright J.K.Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury, etc. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made in the production of this FANFICTION. Not many outside resources were needed this time, but I (as always) made extensive use of the Harry Potter Lexicon when writing this chapter.

Author's Note: Well, this was meant to go up on Tuesday, namely at least half an hour ago, but finals week has got the best of me and I completely forgot about this among other things. Hope it's fast enough for you. Thanks go to not as many people this time, Fantome (Sorry, more suspense here I think, but I'm glad you liked the Quidditch at least), Lady Lestrange (I wouldn't describe him as tame, just stubbornly not evil), and Sarcasma (Heh.. the conversation between Kath and Ginny was written before Kath had a character, so I'm very sorry about that).

Expectations of Grandeur: Chapter 19: Sneaking and Secrets

"Ron," Harry Potter said one Wednesday evening in the Gryffindor common room, "what on earth motivated your mother to name her daughter 'Ginevra'?"

"What's wrong with Ginevra?" his best friend queried, looking up briefly from his Divination notes to stare quizzically at Harry.

"Nothing, I guess," Harry replied, "but I just always thought that Ginny was short for Virginia."

Ron blinked. "Well I suppose it could be, but it's not," he answered absolutely.

Hermione laughed softly at her friends. She was, perhaps, thinking how absurd it would be to name Ginny after innocence and purity. Molly Weasley might have some misconceptions about her daughter, but anyone would know that Ginny Weasley was much too clever and much too cunning to be entirely innocent.

Not that she didn't come close.

Harry was talking again. Evidently, he had no desire whatsoever to actually finish his Potions work. "Ron, how are we going to slip Riddle the Veritaserum?"

"I dunno," Ron shrugged. "Maybe we just slip it into his drink at dinner?"

Hermione scoffed at that. "And let the whole of Slytherin know what's going on? Snape would have our heads before we could say 'Blast-Ended Skrewt'. Honestly, what makes you think Riddle won't just go to Snape immediately afterwards and tell him what happened?"

Ron looked rather sick at the thought of Snape finding out, and he passed Harry a disappointed glance, but Harry was curt. "That doesn't matter," he insisted.

"Why not?"

"Snape hates Riddle more than he hates me. Riddle knows it; he'd never go to Snape for anything."

Ron cracked a grin. "I'm not going to ask how you know that, mate," he laughed, "but it's a life saver. So we just need to lure Riddle away from the rest of the Slytherins."

"Get Ginny in on it," Harry said without a pause. "She can do it at one of her study sessions."

Ron looked uncertain about that and Hermione jumped in. "We aren't pulling Ginny into this, Harry. She's gone through enough already – don't make her fight Riddle again."

Ron nodded blankly, but Harry frowned. "She would want to help," he said.

"Not on this one," Ron replied. "Besides which, I don't care if she wants to help or not – she's not helping because it's too dangerous."

Harry squinted at his friend. "Slipping Riddle some Veritaserum at a pre-organised study session? Hardly."

"Incurring Riddle's wrath afterwards?"

Harry sighed. They would have to come up with something else. It wasn't long until Ron and Hermione disappeared on 'Prefect duties' and Harry was left alone.

He wondered why they were so reticent to ask Ginny for help, and he wondered just what it would be that Ginny, in her newer more competent role, would really want. He decided that she would want to know what was going on at the very least, and that probably she would want to help. And then something hit him.

In his friendships with Ron and Hermione, it wasn't the saving-the-world theatrics that made them friends, but the more day to day occurrences. It was the fact that if they ever needed a favour they would come to him and he knew he could rely on them to be supportive in any time of need. The closest thing to befriending Ginny that he had done was allowing her to help him in the Department of Ministries last summer. But a real friend he wouldn't have protested so much about. A real friend he might have even asked for help. He had resolved his mind to ask Ginny to help him when she walked in, with two of her fellow fifth years. They were talking.

"I mean," one of them was saying, "Amelia just won't stop talking about what a shame it is that he's not a Prefect any more. She says that no one stands up to Malfoy any more, that Hermione just isn't effective at it, and so forth. Besides the fact that now it's back to not a single decent Slytherin prefect."

Harry gulped and listened for Ginny's answer. It was measured and politic. "I still can't believe that it's true – Ophicus not a prefect."

The third girl, only slightly larger than Ginny herself, laughed caustically. "Oh yes, and Amelia was just so broken up when she found out about it. I think she's been meeting with him after Prefect meetings." The first one who had spoken giggled slightly. "Which falls just short of your study sessions, Miss Weasley."

Ginny shook her head and laughed, and before Harry could call out to talk to her, she and her friends were gone.

Since she got the enchanted parchment, Ginny's housemates might have noticed her pulling away from them a bit more, but no one really saw anything as noticeably wrong until, upon reaching the dormitory, Ginny immediately pulled a parchment from the top of her desk and pulled the curtains closed around her four-poster, beginning to write. She had written two words; "Tom, Gwen"when Elisa poked her head between the curtains and gasped.

"Ginny? What's going on?" she asked.

"Nothing – I'm just writing," Ginny answered nervously.

"Just writing?" Elisa glanced at the parchment. Fortunately the words weren't disappearing. "Okay," she conceded, "But you know to come to us if anything's wrong, right?"

Ginny nodded her head and sighed in relief when Elisa left. But looking down at the parchment she suddenly realised that Tom probably had no interest whatsoever in Gryffindor gossip and she wished she could take it away. "Never mind," she wrote.

Slowly her words disappeared from the parchment. "What?" came the response.

"Never mind, Tom, it's just silly Gryffindor gossip."

There was silence, or emptiness, for a while, and Ginny sighed and continued to write. "Gwen says you're not a prefect any more. Is that true?"

Ginny almost hoped that it wouldn't be, for some strange reason – probably because she had decided that no matter how bad Tom actually was, Draco Malfoy was probably worse. But the word "Yes" curled onto the page and Ginny sighed. "Dumbledore felt he had to punish me when the threat was written on the wall."

"That was you?" Ginny asked, suddenly terrified.

"Of course not," appeared rapidly. "I'm no more at fault than you are. Who knows who it was, but it wasn't me."

Ginny sighed and continued to write.

Meanwhile, in the Gryffindor common room, Elisa had found Harry. "Harry!" she almost shouted. "I need to find Ron, and fast!"

Harry blinked. "I don't know where he is," he responded lethargically and turned back to his Potions work.

"It's about Ginny – she has a new diary," was all that Elisa could say before Harry had jumped up and was looking as though Voldemort was about to pop out from behind a mirror or painting. Elisa's fears were confirmed.

"Get it away from her," Harry ordered Elisa harshly. "I don't care how you do it, but you have to get that thing away from her as soon as you can. Get everyone else in your year to help you – but take the diary away from her."

Elisa gulped, uncomfortable with this suddenly aggressive Harry. She nodded mutely and ran back up to her dormitory, where she found Ginny smiling and doing her DADA work, no parchment in sight. "Ginny?" she asked. "Where's the parchment?"

"What parchment?"

"The one you've been writing on – the one you call Tom."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Elisa."

"You were writing in it a few minutes ago!" Elisa insisted.

"No, I was doing DADA work. You're imagining things."

Elisa blinked and frowned but she could do nothing to affront Ginny's calm. "I'm not imagining things, you're lying."

Ginny sighed. "Why would I start writing to something I called Tom? That would only remind me of how horrible my first year was."

Elisa had to admit that Ginny wanting a reminder of her first year was a bit illogical. But neither could she deny the fact that she had seen Ginny writing to someone named Tom. "Can I look at your notes some time?" she asked shakily, as a direct address wouldn't work. "My potions notes are horrible."

Ginny smiled benignly. "Any time. They're usually on my desk."

Elisa smiled. She would wait until Ginny left to search through her things for the parchment in question.

Harry, on the other hand, wanted to do anything but wait. Ron and Hermione were still at their Prefect meeting and he was sitting restlessly in the common room, aching to burst into their meeting and shout that Riddle was up to something. He was talking to Ginny. He was writing messages. He was going to take over the school, while Dumbledore sat complacently in tacit approval of everything he did.

Harry was, of course, beside himself. He would have marched up to Ginny's dormitory immediately and torn the offending article out of her hands had the stairway not been enchanted against his entrance. He would have shouted bloody murder and wrung Riddle's neck right then and there, had he known how to get into the Slytherin dungeons. He should have, perhaps, gone to Dumbledore and alerted the professor to this new turn of events, but at the moment Harry was not thinking about what he should be doing, except solving the problem himself and in the most dramatic way possible. He had a thousand deaths prepared for Riddle already; he was aching to test them out.

He hadn't made any progress on his Potions work when Hermione and Ron entered, returning from the Prefect meeting with two seventh years and one fifth year trailing a few steps behind. Hermione, looking over his shoulder, was kind enough to point out that at this rate he would never get his homework done, but all Harry could do was growl out to Ron, "She has a diary."

Ron looked at Harry blankly. "What?" he asked.

"Ginny – one of the girls in her year says she's been journalising again, talking to someone named Tom."

Ron stood amazed but Hermione laughed a little. "So that's the parchment he's been working on," she mused. "I was wondering what he would use it for."

Ron suddenly turned on Hermione. "You knew about this? You knew what was going on, that he was planning on using Ginny just like last time, and you didn't say anything? Whose side are you on, Voldemort's?"

Hermione stared coldly at Ron. "I knew he was enchanting two parchments to say the same thing. That's all I knew, Ronald Weasley, and if you think that I would become a Death Eater that's absolutely absurd! Me, a Muggle-born and a Death Eater? They'd never accept me into their ranks even if they didn't overtly seek my destruction."

"Voldemort's a half-blood," Harry insisted.

"Not if he's not Tom Riddle. It's entirely possible that he's not anything – just an idea, a spirit of malcontent embodied in that diary," Hermione replied.

"You listen to Dumbledore too much."

"You don't listen to him enough, Harry!"

Ron was absolutely amazed that Hermione was yelling at someone and it wasn't him. But as soon as he came to his senses, he returned to Harry's aid. "I think," he said, "that the most important thing is to find out what's really going on – and to do that I think we have to go to Riddle. We've got to find a way to use the Veritaserum, and fast."

Hermione looked at him, shocked. "Ron," she said, sighing, "That might just be the one time you've been reasonable in your entire life." She smiled at Ron and he flushed bright red. But at least they weren't yelling any more. Things were, almost, back to normal.