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: Wow… so this chapter is crazy short, but it describes a plot-arc and it's important and I couldn't really add it to another chapter without making that chapter obscenely long, so here it is… We'll see how you like it. Thanks go out to Amazing, Lady Lestrange (although I suppose, after the e-mail I sent you, you won't want anything to do with me. Sorry if I was too harsh), Pixie (glad to have you back, darling!), Ray1 (I will just grin in response to that review), and Sarcasma (I have been struck by your powerful update hex and will therefore update quickly).

Expectations of Grandeur: Chapter 21: Flip-flops and Persuasion

Sitting in the library, between two shelves, Ginny stared at the parchment in shock. Surely Tom couldn't have known how upset she was; she hadn't told him a thing, hadn't written anything on the parchment. Perhaps he saw her storming from the Gryffindor Tower to the library? She decided that must be the case and prepared herself for that answer, but what she got was something quite different.

"The parchment was going crazy, swirling dark scribbles in black and red. I couldn't say anything except that it looked, well, angry. So I supposed that you were angry." For a moment she couldn't move. This wasn't what the parchment was supposed to do; this wasn't what she wanted the parchment to do.

"You mean the parchment broadcast my thoughts?" Ginny asked, barely able to write, her hand shook so.

"You mean you weren't writing?"

"No," she wrote, and her hand dropped to her side, she was paralysed in fear.

"Then yes, it did, I suppose."

There was a long pause in which no one wrote anything, and then, regaining her composure to a degree, Ginny set quill to parchment. "It's never done that before," she scrawled, mind still reeling. She had too much to deal with. She didn't need the parchment to start acting up. That would be too much like first year. Much too much like first year.

"I know."

Altogether, that was an unsatisfactory response. Ginny wrote as much.

"We can research it, figure out what's going on, over Christmas holidays. Why don't you stay so we can look through the library?" The words seeped on to the page and Ginny's stomach sunk at the thought.

"Fine," Ginny answered, knowing that staying at Hogwarts this Christmas would cause her endless grief in her family, but not caring. Somehow, it didn't matter anymore that Molly was worried sick about her daughter and Ginny had six overprotective brothers to deal with. Or perhaps it did matter, and Ginny was actively rebelling against it. "But how do I contrive to keep the parchment until then? No one trusts me, Tom. They all think I'm out to repeat what happened first year."

"No, that's me," he responded, and Ginny could almost hear his voice take on a sarcastic lilt. She was calming down already.

"Oh, yes, I forgot." She said.

"Lucky you." And at that, Ginny Weasley had to laugh, she was so relieved.

It was long after curfew when Ginny snuck back into the Gryffindor Tower, but Ron was waiting for her nonetheless. "We need to talk, Ginny," he said, before she could tiptoe past and reach the safety of her own dormitory.

"I'm sorry I was out past curfew, Ron," she said, pretending to misunderstand his meaning. "It won't happen again."

"No, that's fine, Ginny," Ron said, before realising his mistake and abruptly taking it back. "I mean, no, that was very wrong of you, Ginny, but that's not what I want to talk about. I mean, Ginny, what's all this nonsense about writing to Riddle?" he stumbled.

"It's not nonsense. I'm writing to him through a parchment," Ginny responded, maintaining her composure admirably so far. "He's helping me with my Potions work, and you all were so opposed to us meeting in person, after all." She tried to smile sweetly at her brother but it wouldn't work.

"Ginny, you have to stop."

"Why?" she snapped. "Why is it any of your business?"

"Because you're my sister and he's… You-Know-Who." Ron yelled.

"No he isn't, Ron," Ginny shouted back. "Why can't you take Dumbledore's word?"

"Because I love you too much," he answered immediately. "I'm not going to lose my sister to the Dark Lord because she needed a Potions tutor. You matter so much to all of us, Ginny, and as long as there's any chance Riddle is You-Know-Who I'm not going to risk you." Seeing how shocked she was, he continued. "As long as you're here with us, there's something to fight for – there's innocence and beauty and idealism. But if you're killed, or even worse corrupted, what's the point? The very people we're fighting for are being turned against us then."

As sweet as his sentiments were, Ginny couldn't help but smirk. "You think I'm innocent and idealist?" she sighed. "You have me confused with Hermione, Ron. But you don't realise it. You think I'm a symbol of your cause, a child to be protected and never allowed to falter. But I'm my own person, believe it or not, not just the last of the Weasleys."

With that, she turned and headed to her dormitory, let Ron say what he might. But what he did say was a low blow.

"I'll be glad when you go home for the Christmas Holidays, at least then Riddle won't be able to get to you!" he shouted after her.

She rushed up to her dormitory and her bed and pulled the curtains closed, trembling, and did the only thing she could have done – she cried hysterically.

On the other side of the castle, in the Slytherin Dungeon, Tom couldn't help himself. He was staring at the whirling, scrawling lines of the parchment as Ginny fought with her brother, watching enraptured as they calmed to a mist of light blue and then solidified to a dark, solemn blot. His attention was absorbed as the ink disappeared and then, mere seconds later, something else appeared on the parchment.

Were they tears?

He pulled a quill out from his desk. "Ginny?" he asked. "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

But no response came for a long time, just more tears. They resolved themselves into a criss-crossing network of water stains, intricate and ever changing, but unintelligible. Tom thought he could make out words, names, places, facts, but they were shifting and blurred, and although with each new teardrop they became stronger, they also leafed out into new, more illegible forms. He began to worry – what had they done that would cause that solemn blot in her emotions, these tears? She had cried before, certainly, but it was always his fault – he was comfortable with that. It was what he was trying to deal with. Ginny crying because of a Gryffindor's actions was something novel and strange to him. But certainly that was what had happened.

The hand that responded was trembling and the writing was tentative and shaky. "Ron is being a prat, is all. He's decided that I need protection."

"Don't you?" Tom responded, wondering why she would be upset that she had people to look out for her – surely, after what happened her first year, she wouldn't consider it a bad thing. She couldn't consider it a bad thing.

"No." She responded immediately, her writing more confident and quick now that her emotions were under control. He looked at the swirling watermarks on the paper, for they had yet to go away. Primary in the words, now easily recognisable, were things like 'china dolls' and 'damsel in distress'. He thought he understood.

"You want to stand up for yourself."

"Of course," she responded.

The words had faded back into the background. He thought he could make out his own name in the watermark, but he didn't want to press his luck. "Understandable," he wrote.

"How do you know me so well, Tom?" she asked, and he supposed she didn't realise how infantile she sounded just then. Certainly, she needed all the protection she could get, certainly she was still a child. But the watermark shifted with the ever-changing state of her mind, he supposed, and he was fairly confident at that moment of what it revealed. He considered keeping his discovery to himself, but decided against it.

"Your tears – they've seeped into my parchment. It's a movable watermark. I think it tells your thoughts."

Ginny was silent for a time. Tom didn't expect her to write anything, and instead waited patiently, watching the swirling and changing watermark beneath the parchment. Something significant was happening therein, but it was faint and he couldn't quite make it out.

"I have to stop writing." Ginny wrote, finally. "This is too much like my first year."

"I promise you this parchment is not a dark object," Tom wrote, frantic that his pet project could not so soon be thwarted.

"How do you know?"

"I enchanted it!"

"But you didn't expect this to happen. I have to stop writing."

He could make out words now; things like betrayal and Basilisk. He frowned in frustration and would have shouted, but his housemates were sleeping and he didn't want to wake them. "No, we'll figure out why it's doing this. Just stay over Christmas Holidays."

"I can't," she responded, slowly. "My family expects me to leave."

Tom scoffed at that idea. To say she was an adult now would be laughable, so afraid she was of her family being disappointed in her. But were she a child she would also be easily swayed. "Say you have more important commitments," he wrote.

"They wouldn't believe it."

He sighed in frustration but still would not let go of his project. In any case, he would discover what was going on with the parchment, because he was sure his spell could not have been wrong. This was just a new element – something to look at with curiosity and puzzlement, something to figure out. "Well, do something then, but I'm going to figure out what's going on, with you or without you."

"No. Let me help." Always a child, he laughed to himself, but he knew he had won.

"Then stay."

"Fine."