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: A short epilogue, conclusion, and who knows what else. Sorry if it's too fluffy, or too inconclusive, or too... I don't know what. But it did seem the most appropriate. Thank you to SaintRidley and The-Quoi for your reviews, and thank you to everyone who has read this far. I'm honestly amazed that I actually got to the point of posting this, and that's all due to the people who have reviewed along the way and my good friends at the S.S. Gin'n'Tonic.

Expectations of Grandeur: Epilogue: Honor

When she got out of the hospital wing four days later, Ginny Weasley made her way straight to the Great Hall. She strode into the room, robes swirling behind her, and quite a few people looked up and stared at the strange figure she cut – small, undeniably powerful, mostly calm but very, very angry. She could see a bit of fear in the eyes of some of the Hufflepuff first years, and a begrudging respect from even the most stuck up and stubborn of Slytherin seventh years. Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked up expectantly – where else could she be expected to go than to sit with them? But she strode directly to the Slytherin table and decisively sat down across from Tom.

He raised both his eyebrows. The fact that he had fought against, and almost been killed by, Lord Voldemort, had put him on the outs with most of his Slytherin compatriots (although it would almost certainly be different had the boy defeated the Dark Lord), and he was sitting in relative isolation on the Slytherin table. "You're making a scene," he said simply.

"So what if I am?" She hissed angrily.

"What are you angry about now?" he asked, and he seemed to be confused and frustrated more than anything. "Surely no one is treating you like a powerless child anymore?"

Ginny laughed. "I had a lot of time to think while I was waiting in the Hospital Wing," she said. He was silent. "And I did a lot of thinking about what happened... during my Potions O.W.L." He still said nothing, but he looked back down to pick at the food on his plate, so Ginny could tell that she was on to something. "You didn't just help me on my O.W.L., Tom, did you?"

He glared up at her, confident. "No," he admitted. "I didn't."

"You tried to make me hate Harry," she said.

"If that was true, it was obviously a failure," he replied simply.

"You tried to make me dislike Harry," she insisted.

Tom shrugged. "So? I can try to convince you that he's a useless fool as much as I want – it's up to you whether to listen to me or not."

Ginny glared daggers at him. "Don't trifle with me, Tom," she bit. "You used a confusing concoction and the parchments to try to brainwash me into hating Harry."

Tom was still meeting her eyes, and the truth flickered behind them before he set down his fork. "So what if I did? Obviously, you don't hate Harry. And the confusing concoction didn't have repercussions on your potions marks. So what are you upset about?"

"You needled your way into my mind! You made me want to hex Harry! I would never think any of those things without you putting those thoughts in my head!" She fumed.

Tom snorted. "I pointed out that Potter is more harm than he's worth, but your reaction to that information was entirely your own. I didn't put any plans for revenge into your head; neither hexing Potter nor your more... creative ideas."

Ginny flushed. She didn't know if he was telling the truth or not. But he didn't look like he was lying, and he had never been very good at acting. It wasn't worth arguing over. "Destroy the parchments," she said simply.

"No," he said in response. He looked back down at his plate, picked up his fork, and took a bite.

"Tom," Ginny whispered. "Do not mess with me. In case you had forgotten, I saved you from being blown to bits by You-Know-Who a few days ago." He paused in his chewing, and gulped down his food. "And I saw how useless you were in a battle – a true Slytherin; ambitious, cunning, clever, and absolutely incapable of conquering their fears." Ginny laughed. "Harry did better than you, Tom." She laughed again. "In fact, Harry at age twelve did better than you did just last year, if memory serves correctly."

"Harry had help."

"Harry wasn't a coward."

Tom glared at her. "Don't test me, Ginevra," he said.

She laughed. "You should take your own advice," she answered. He looked back at his food, and didn't say anything. "Destroy the parchments," she repeated.

"How do you know I have both of them?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not that foolish – you only need yours to do anything, of course, but you needed to steal the pair so you could replace it with a pair; otherwise Dumbledore could write on one and notice it didn't bleed through to the other."

Tom frowned. "How did you figure that out?"

"I've been hanging around you too much, it would seem," she said quickly. "Destroy the parchments, Tom," she repeated after a pause.

"You're not going to give this up, are you?" he asked sullenly.

"No," she replied, her voice flat.

He looked up at her as though he wanted to argue the point, but was interrupted by the sneering voice of Draco Malfoy. "You're turning into a real Gryffindor, Marvolo," he sneered. "Maybe you should go sit with Potter and his cronies."

Ginny spun in her seat and fixed Malfoy with a glare that could kill. The boy edged away, fumbling with his wand. Ginny stood up calmly and looked at Malfoy with what she hoped was mature kindness. "I'm sorry that your father is going to go to Azkaban, Malfoy. It must be really hard to live with his mistakes."

Malfoy just stared, and Ginny ignored him and looked toward Tom. "You heard me. Do it, Tom," she said quietly, and then walked over to sit by herself at the Gryffindor table.

No matter how much she told herself she should, she simply couldn't bring herself to sit by Harry and Ron and Hermione. Because she knew that this episode wouldn't change their relationship in the slightest – Harry would go back to being the hero, they would go back to being his best friends, and she would go back to being the spunky and determined younger sister who was a good witch but a peripheral character in the grand story of Harry Potter's battle against Voldemort. It wasn't worth putting herself through it.

And throughout the year, she had so grown apart from her roommates that it was almost like they had all disappeared on her. She didn't expect they would welcome her back with open arms; they would think she had snubbed them, and maybe she had. They would think she should just be friends with Harry and her brother and the other heroes.

Ginny shrugged and loaded up her plate with food. Meals in the hospital wing were good, but carefully balanced and portioned for people on the mend: not nearly enough food for someone accustomed to Molly Weasley's cooking. She supposed she would have to get used to being plain old Ginny Weasley, and if Harry Potter or Hermione Granger or her brother Ron cared to notice that she was worth befriending, well, that would be good enough for Ginny.

After all, she could stop - had stopped - the Dark Lord right in his tracks, and not many people could say that.

The castle was silent. The other students had all gone home on the Hogwarts Express, for summer holidays and fun with friends. Tom stared into the fire in the Slytherin common room; even though it was warm and sunny outside it was cool and dank in the common room and needed a fire lit to keep it at all hospitable. He sighed. Perhaps this was what Harry Potter felt like every summer; tired from another year of fighting against Lord Voldemort, facing another three months of bleak loneliness and being stuck in his own thoughts.

But no, Tom thought; Harry Potter had the Weasleys to break his solitude and his thoughts. And Tom just had the cool, dank, empty Slytherin common room. Tom snorted and pulled two parchments from his robe pocket. He held them out before him. Ginny was having a wonderful time on the Hogwarts Express, playing exploding snap with her brother and Hermione and, predictably, Harry. Hermione and Ron were going to leave soon for Prefect duties, which would leave Ginny alone with Harry, and she was surprisingly calm and unemotional about that prospect.

And then, suddenly, the parchment went blank and one sentence appeared: "Destroy the parchments, Tom."

Tom sighed, and tossed the parchments into the fire, watching the admonishment fade into ash.

He had been shown up, in the worst possible way, by a girl – a girl a year younger than him, and a girl in Gryffindor.

It was, honestly, humiliating.

But Dumbledore had ignored all of that, and had invited Tom to stay over the summer to repair the wards that had been broken by Voldemort in his attack. He was to be on a level with the Hogwarts Professors. Tom still was, and Dumbledore would proudly admit this, one of the best students Hogwarts had ever seen. And Tom supposed that he would have to be content with that, and the rest of it would come with time.