Characters are property of J.K. Rowling.
There is a line in "Stronger Than Hope" by Alaunatar about Ginny being left to patch up her mind as best she can after the Chamber of Secrets, by herself. And then, suddenly, I desperately wanted to read a story where someone helps Ginny patch up her mind. After all, in "Stronger Than Hope," Harry needs and receives a lot of guidance. It seems odd that no one would offer the same to an eleven-year-old who had just been through what Ginny had.
I looked for a Ginny/Severus that wasn't about getting them in bed with each other, and didn't come up with much. There are shadows of the theme that I was looking for in the Ginny/Snape interactions in "Dumbledore's Men" by Jocelyn, and the closest match is "Learning to Cope" by Bluebird88, but their actual interaction is very short, so I decided to write another (where their actual interaction is also very short).
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Afternoon sunlight suffused the upstairs classrooms of Hogwarts with a warm, golden glow. Severus knew this from experience, and resented the clammy gloom of the potions dungeon. He wondered, as he had many times before, why put the potions classes where there were no windows to fling open should a noxious accident arise? Why rely on the teacher's wand and wit to Vanish a mess? It wasn't as though he couldn't merely shrink the appropriate ingredients from his storeroom and bring them up to one of the more welcoming classrooms.
Of course, he couldn't mention it to anyone. Voldemort's reappearance hinted at dark times ahead the way a tornado spout hinted at breezy weather. Severus needed his reputation to match his dungeons: cold, dark, and stony.
Severus curled his lip, surveying his neat rows of raven chicks and lion cubs, heads bent diligently – and quietly – over nearly identical scarred chopping blocks. Albus had not bothered to interfere with Severus' suggestions for his second-years' schedules, nor for that matter with the schedules in any year which did not include Albus' precious Boy-Who-Lived. The combination of Slytherin and Gryffindor classes was, in Albus' mind, undoubtedly made to hone Harry Potter's mettle, but it was simultaneously serving to hone Severus' nerves to a fine edge.
A small Ravenclaw boy raised his hand. Severus gave him a nod in acknowledgment.
"Sir, is a grindylow-toe-width fine enough?"
"Make it one half, Mr. Pike, and the rest of you."
Albus was an idiot. Compared to third-year "Harry Potter" potions, these classes were a breeze to teach. There was no point in snapping at young Mr. Pike that the instructions were on the board, nor that he had already demonstrated the proper dimensions of all of the ingredients at the beginning of class. Severus understood – this was elementary potions, there were many finicky ingredients, and those children who might be competent potioneers in the future had not yet developed a feel for their work.
How different from the third year class, where he would be obliged to tear Miss Granger to shreds for the same sort of question, knowing the eyes of his snakelets were upon him. How much more pleasant it would be for everyone involved if the questioner could be Miss Bones, perhaps, from Hufflepuff. The Slytherins wouldn't bother reporting to their parents that he had answered one of Miss Bones' questions with a decided lack of malice.
With a sudden excess of fondness, Severus rose to his feet. The action sparked a few nervous glances, but not the outright panic it would have among his third year Gryffindors. He began to make a round of the dungeon, regret and resentment mingling and curdling somewhere in his elbows. The elbows, he had learned, was a safe enough place to hide one's emotions, especially when wearing robes. Damn Albus for having him waste a whole class of Gryffindors, and Slytherins, for any real potion-making instruction. Look how well these Gryffindors were doing. He sought out each Gryffindor with his eyes, each paired more or less randomly with a Ravenclaw, as he had insisted on the first day of their first year of class. There had been no protest.
His glance landed on one pair, as sharply and thoughtfully as a raven on a stile. This was certainly disturbing. Miss Lovegood – "space cadet" would be a word for her from his Muggle youth, he thought as he watched her gyroscope earrings spin – had finished julienning her common seaweed, but instead of moving on to the roots, her knife lay forgotten on the board. Instead, she was giving Miss Weasley small pats on the back, occasionally running a dazzlingly-painted hand – each fingernail and finger sporting a different color – through Miss Weasley's red hair.
Severus stifled a sigh, as always. Miss Weasley had Lily's exact hair; Harry Potter had Lily's exact eyes. Would his trials never cease? He had watched Miss Weasley, though, and had determined early on that she was no Lily. Lily had preferred potions and charms and football to Quidditch. And Lily, having grown up with Petunia, was not a prankster; although, to be fair, Miss Weasley currently didn't look like one, either.
Severus didn't like at all the limpness in Miss Weasley's hands, nor the downturn of the mouth which last year, in those first weeks before the Chamber of Secrets, had either been laughing like a pixie's or pouting like a vexed sprite's. He had never been as stern as he could have been about that impish look, because it could make his little sheep-like first year class rally in the late afternoon. (Not because it somewhat resembled Lily's - not at all.) First year was mostly about technique, and he had revised the curriculum of those last few months – possibly permanently – to include as many simple calming draughts as possible.
Today, Miss Weasley had skin as pale and damp as a dead flobberworm's. Her freckles stood out like spattergroit spots. Miss Lovegood reached up quickly and snatched at Miss Weasley's left hand before the trembling silver knife could cut it by accident.
"Miss Lovegood. Miss Weasley."
Two young faces – one with protuberant pale eyes, the other with unnervingly dead ones - swung towards his.
"Miss Lovegood. Why have you not moved on to the next step?"
Little Luna bit her lip, looking worried. "I was looking for Wrackspurts in her hair, sir," she murmured earnestly. A few of her classmates cast anxious looks in their professor's direction, wondering how he would take this apparent jibe.
They need not have worried. Severus found Miss Lovegood both amusing and sincere. He had decided after several lessons to take everything Miss Lovegood said as though it made complete sense. The students could interpret this as kindness or mocking on his part as they wished. "And you have reason to believe there are...wrack-spurts...in her hair because...?"
She gave another clandestine nibble at her lip. "Ginny's not been feeling well lately, sir. Wrackspurts are known to cause distraction."
What a strange child. "Then Miss Weasley should see Madam Pomfrey on her own time instead of distracting you in class with her problems." He glanced at her seatmate to see how Miss Weasley had taken this statement. The girl's pale hands were resting tensely on the wooden board like frightened gooby-birds poised for flight, but she was hiding her face behind a glossy curtain of fine red hair.
Miss Weasley was no more a hider than her blasted twin brothers. Had no one thought to help her after what she had been through last year?
"Detention, Miss Lovegood, Miss Weasley, for being distracted in class," Severus said smoothly, ignoring the pained intakes of breath from their classmates. Miss Lovegood nodded sadly. Miss Weasley did not respond, which Severus decided to take as assent. He turned a calm face on the others. "Personal problems should be dealt with on personal time. Madam Pomfrey will be happy to excuse any of you from class for an appropriate –" and he stressed the word doubly, "reason. This is much safer than brewing a potion while distracted or incapacitated." He paused for a moment to let the words sink in to their impressionable minds. "Back to work."
Severus tipped his chin at the two girls. "Friday afternoon, Transfiguration 1."
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Ginny waved off Ron's enraged howl of protest. "We weren't working fast enough," she said disinterestedly, as though she were talking about the steamed broccoli she was picking at.
"The lousy, greasy, git."
Ginny felt herself frown as though she were seeing herself from far away. "It's not like he's evil, you know." Not like Tom.
Ron's voice exploded painfully in her ears, echoed by Harry's intense agreement.
Ginny stared at Harry without listening to either of them. She'd thought his eyes were so perfect, but maybe they weren't. They were too – round. Too green. Not dark enough. They were a boy's eyes, not an almost-man's eyes. Not like Tom's.
Ginny felt as though her broccoli had turned to green pus, and she pushed her plate away. She had been so dumb.
"I've got to go. Don't want to be late."
Ron hardly paused in his tirade. Harry gave her a sad wave. Hermione shot Ginny a sympathetic look, and went back to muttering, "Professor Snape," to her friends.
Luna caught up with Ginny and they walked silently to the Transfiguration 1 classroom.
"Isn't it interesting," Luna commented dreamily as they approached the open door, "that the Professor should have his detentions upstairs. He must be like a ridge-backed saurophant. They prefer to spend their mornings in the dark."
"And their afternoons in the light?" Talking with Luna could be wonderfully relaxing, because it was never about anything stressful, or real.
"Yes, exactly."
Professor Snape always had at least a few students for detention, and preferred to hold them all together. He tumbled a handful of marble-sized cauldrons onto the floor and conjured two large washtubs of soapy water beside them.
Ginny pursed her lips. That was a little unfair. Snape's punishments usually fit their crimes, and neither she nor Luna had done anything messy.
A wave of his wand grew the cauldrons to standard size – along with their crusty-looking stains, and he threw two scrubbing sponges towards the back of the room. "Begin."
Two sixth year boys walked up to the tubs and began scrubbing.
"Miss Lovegood. Miss Weasley," Snape said without turning around. "Take a seat. Lines, to help you concentrate. The first line is marked for you."
Snape handed them each four pieces of parchment and an inkwell with a quill, then sat down at the large desk at the front of the room.
Ginny stared at her parchment as words began to appear.
Miss Weasley: Are you still troubled by the events of last year? Write 'yes' or 'no.'
Ginny stifled a gasp. She looked up to find her professor's eyes looking straight back at hers. Professor Snape was no fool. She picked up her quill and wrote, in a shaky hand, 'yes.'
Letters formed rapidly on the parchment's pitted surface.
The Dark Lord, or Tom Riddle, as he was to you, has bent many strong witches and wizards to his service. Based on what we saw in the last war, strength is a challenge to him. Had you not been intriguingly powerful, he would likely not have bothered with you. He would likely have compelled you to hand the diary off to someone else.
Line: "I am strong." 50 times.
Ginny looked up, but Professor Snape was marking papers in trademark vermilion.
Well. She was in detention, wasn't she? She began to write.
As soon as Ginny finished the 50th line, which didn't take long, since it was so short, more words started racing across the page.
Another covert look at the front of the room showed her that Professor Snape was either not paying attention or pretending not to; but in any case, the rapid check-and-X directions of his quill showed that he was not writing what was appearing. She wondered if he had charmed the parchments ahead of time.
The Dark Lord, so I am told by the Headmaster, would converse with you through the diary. However, any act that he forced you to do was done without your recollection. To do otherwise might have damaged your mind and your faculties, as it did those of the late Professor Quirrell.
A shudder ran through Ginny's body without any hope of suppression, at the thought of having Voldemort's head growing out of the back of her skull.
The words marched on, relentless.
Even the Dark Lord chose not to derange your mind.
Line: "I have a beautiful mind." 50 times.
Ginny wrote. She brushed a teardrop off the paper as though she were shooing a fly – she certainly wasn't crying- and lifted the quill from the last line.
Further to that point, the Dark Lord did not try to make you consciously do anything you might have opposed. It is likely that he understood how deep your rebellion would be.
Line: "I have integrity." 50 times.
Goose-pimples were rising on Ginny's skin. Tom was evil – but could her Tom, however evil he might have been, have recognized all these things in her?
She printed the words as neatly as she could.
When you were a child, you were party to horror.
Ginny noted the first "were" with interest.
You must put some of this behind you now. There will be more challenges for you ahead. Four lines:
I am strong.
Ginny copied dutifully.
I have a beautiful mind.
I have integrity.
I am Ginevra Weasley.
Ginny substituted 'Ginny Weasley' instead, and the parchment seemed to accept that.
Will you remember these things? Say 'I will remember.'
"I will remember," Ginny said loudly, and the parchment burst into a cold flame that consumed it entirely and then died out.
The two boys in the front of the room started, Luna stared at her, and Snape looked up. "What was that, Miss Weasley?" he drawled. He swept his gaze over her desk. "No lines?"
Ginny narrowed her eyes. Surelythe parchment had been spelled to disappear on that command, and he knew it. Was that twitch in his lip a tic, or a smile?
Ginny smiled back broadly, coming to a decision. No one who hated her would have had her write one hundred fifty-four lines about how great she was. "Accident, sir. But I have been writing my lines."
Professor Snape rolled his eyes. "Borrow a sheet from Miss Lovegood."
Ginny borrowed a piece of parchment, and "I will not look for wrack-spurts during class" wavered slightly and turned into "I will not bring wrack-spurts in my hair to class."
Ginny wrote each line in a different handwriting, dotted the i's of the last line with little stars, and turned in the sheet at the end of the period.
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Ginny Weasley was not fooled when the dark descended on Hogwarts.
When Harry's terrible story and its aftermath swept through Gryffindor tower, Ginny marveled at the way her other professors had been manipulated. She did not mourn the loss of the headmaster who had dismissed her from Tom Riddle's questionable embrace with a figurative lemon drop and no guidance whatsoever. Instead, she mourned and feared for the professor who had been exiled from the castle, and she channeled all of the fear, and the strength that he had known she possessed, into defensive and offensive spells. She stayed away from anything too dark, though; after all, she had integrity, and a beautiful mind, and if Tom Riddle hadn't spoiled either of them, then neither would she.
In her sixth year, Ginny looked around the castle and saw her favorite professors still in positions of relative power, watching over their houses. She thought she understood, now, about that disappearing parchment and the desire to keep those sentiments a secret. She did not forget that the new headmaster could be kind, although the adults around her did.
"Three bottles," Ginny panted to Madam Pomfrey. Cruciatus curse-lifting extract and blood-replenishing potion were in high demand. Ginny frowned at the cabinet as the healer lifted the bottles down. "You still have some left, after yesterday?" she wondered. "Do you brew all of them yourself?" Does Snape brew them?
Madam Pomfrey seemed to have heard the unasked question. "The Headmaster used to brew them," she said, in pinched tones, "but lately Miss Lovegood has taken up the task."
There was no way of that. Luna spent most of her time with the D.A.
Ginny delivered the bottles to the Room of Requirement, checked her charmed galleon, and ran off to find Luna.
Luna was sitting in a window-seat at the top of one of the staircases, casting Shield charms on the students that she could see through the windows.
Ginny cast a Muffliato that she had learned from Harry, so that they wouldn't be overheard. "Luna – Madam Pomfrey says you're brewing all the Cruciatus cures-"
Luna smiled. She flicked her wand at her bookbag, which opened. A stack of books covered in shiny multi-colored paper shimmered and transformed into a wicker hamper filled with small bottles. "There was a note with the first one," she said idly, turning back to the window and resuming her earlier activities. "They appear in my trunk, and I take them all down on Sundays." The hamper shimmered again and became books.
Ginny looked at her friend sharply. "And you just take them? Any one of them could be filled with poison!" But she knew now that they weren't, and they couldn't be, and they would never be, because she had no doubt as to whom they were from.
Luna shrugged again. "They're not," she said. "Anything that feels that much like daisies can't be."
Ginny raised her eyebrow.
"And I looked up some poison-detecting charms in the library."
One forgot that Luna was in Ravenclaw.
There had only been one grave moment of doubt, when Luna and Neville and Ginny had been caught trying to steal the sword of Gryffindor. Ginny had stared at the professor, whose eyes glinted like obsidian, threatening to cut them all to pieces. I remember, she thought. I am not betraying you. But we must help Harry. How can that possibly be wrong?
The professor sent them to the Forbidden Forest instead of to the Carrows, and Ginny would never doubt him again.
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Severus tasted the metallic tang of blood-replenishing potion in the back of his throat.
"Hello, Professor." Luna's voice floated around the edges of his consciousness. "I think your antivenom – was it antivenom? – must have worked, or else you would be dead. I gave you several bottles of blood-replenishing potion."
Through slitted eyes, Severus could see moonlight glinting off of several bottles lined up neatly by his head.
"Shall I take you back to the Great Hall?"
Severus clutched at his robes and found the old serpent ring – his mother's – still pinned with a muggle safety-pin securely inside them.
"I suppose that blue glow means no," Luna said sadly. "We will miss you, wherever you go." She pushed a bag of something into his hands, and Severus caught a glimpse of a sleeve made dark and stiff with blood. "Ginny wanted you to have these. They're some of her brother's toffees and such. I think they might be very useful. She would be here, you know, except that Mrs. Weasley is quite concerned about her. Oh, and there are some galleons, of course. They're all we have."
Shockingly, Luna pressed a light kiss on his forehead, and then she let go of his hands and the portkey activated.
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Ginny put up a resistance, and pretended it was at the second half of Albus Severus' name, rather than at the first. "Albie. Short for Albert, let's pretend. Do you like that?" Albus Severus gummed grumpily at her sweater. Ginny lifted it. She'd have to look up other wizards named Albus when she could.
The small ball of feathers that was Pigwidgeon rocketed past the porch, made a hairpin turn, and came back sheepishly to drop a letter onto Ginny's lap. She propped Albus Severus up with her knee and opened it.
Dear Harry and Ginny, Hermione had written in her loopy cursive.
The conference is going fine. My Arithmancy talk was well-received, and now I can enjoy the rest of the presentations. Our social events are often double-booked with the potions conference in the other wing. It's a marvelous hotel, and Ron and the children are thrilled that the Quidditch pitch is so close. The local minor league team even holds open practices!
I've sat in at some of the potions lectures, and I know you'd never believe me, but truly some of them are as boring as writing lines in detention.
I'm off – two more days of thinking, and then we're Apparating to the Cote d'Azur for the weekend. Luna promised to meet us, as she's been backpacking across the Continent.
All my love,
Hermione
Ginny had never told Harry about the detention, but she had eventually told both Luna and Hermione. She knew what those lines meant, and she allowed her heart to soar.
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