AN: Hello guys! Thanks for your support GirlWhoLovesToReadBooks, krysania, Gemini Peverell, HPfan29, Martel and Karerik. Especially you Martel :D
:::
Ginny's changed a bit since, you know, what happened with Lockhart in the girl's toilet last year, Ron confides to Harry at the opening feast when Harry asks him how his family is. They've missed the sorting because of Harry's allergic reaction to Dementors. He knows he's going to be hearing about his 'fainting fit' from Malfoy in the morning.
"She sounded perfectly fine when she said hello to me at Diagon Alley," Harry said, surprised, half-way through a mince pie.
Harry looks down the length of the dinner table, and there is Ginny, sitting a little away from the others with crossed legs and deeply absorbed in a book. She still looks a little thin, but there is pale-rose in her cheeks and her robes are neat and tidy.
"She looks better than she did when I carried her out of the Chamber."
"Anything would look better than what you carried out. She looked like a ghost," Ron replies, frustrated.
Harry turns to Ron, eyes steady and patient behind his glasses as he waits for Ron to explain. Ron opens his mouth to begin, but all his observations and complaints die on his tongue.
He could go on about a number of things. He could go on about how Ginny falls into black moods at the strangest of times. He could say something about the bedroom she systematically demolished, the shattered bathroom mirrors, and the posters of Harry she tore down in a fit of rage, bright-eyed and manic, and the half an hour later when she dug out every torn piece, taped them together and put them back up again.
Ron could, but he'd rather that all blow over.
"Look at her properly," Ron says instead, because that's safe. "She's reading at the dinner table. Who does that?"
Hermione, who had been delicately sipping at her pumpkin juice until now, joins in. "I do that," she says, rather dangerously.
"Yeah," Ron says, trying to backtrack. "But you know, Ginny's never been the type to do that. She's not like you Hermione, she doesn't go around carrying large textbooks, she likes small animals and playing Quidditch. She used to. Now at school, and at home, all she wants to do is sit around reading old newspapers. It's not natural," he grumbles.
Hermione swats him with her copy of the Daily Prophet, with a look on her face that promises murder. "Where is your sympathy?" she yells.
"Your sister is traumatised. I would guess that she's about half a year behind on all her coursework. On top of that: do you know she doesn't have any friends?"
Ron falls silent. Hermione calms down as he does. "I know how you feel. You feel horrid because this was happening under our noses and nobody noticed. You want the old Ginny back, but you know she's not going to be the same, right?"
"We can do things to help," Hermione concludes. "We'll keep a closer eye out for her this year. We'll talk to her every now and then to make sure she's going on okay."
:::
Although Hermione's lecture is aimed at Ron, Harry also gets hit as collateral. Ron, no one would say it was your fault, he thinks. It's a responsibility everyone shares. No one's ever told Harry it wasn't his fault either. He can feel the sharp points of that shard of guilt somewhere behind his stomach, digging into his kidneys or maybe his core.
He chances another look at Ginny's chair after the professors have left, mentally preparing for the first day back tomorrow. It shouldn't be as much of a surprise as it is after Hermione's speech, but the red-headed girl was still there, and she showed no signs of moving.
Where he was only looking at her superficially before, now he examines and categorises her aberrations. Was she like that before? he wonders. Harry doesn't remember much from what she was like during her first year, but he has a mental picture of wide eyes, flustered cheeks and stammering, and he realises he can't connect the before and after pictures.
There is something about the way Ginny is sitting, with the book between her and the world. Closed-off, it says. The newly-sorted first years are seated near Ginny and they chat with much aplomb and laughter, always talking to each other over her and not at her. In contrast, she appears a black hole in the middle of that cloud of joy and excitement. Aloof. Busy.
He considers going over to say 'dinner's over', or 'hi' or even 'what book are you reading?' but Ron asks if he's heading back to the dorms before he stands up. Harry takes one last look at her, but goes. He doesn't want to bother her.
:::
Harry hurriedly pulls on his robes and checks that he's got the required textbooks for Divination and Care of Magical Creatures in his bag. When he runs out the door, he notices an argument at the foot of the stairs. A crowd has formed around the end of the banister. It's the first thing in the morning too.
"Do something about your sister! If she keeps waking everyone up in the middle of the night, how are we going to pay any attention in our classes?" The complaint comes from a murky blonde, standing amongst a bedraggled group of other young girls in their pyjamas.
Ginny stands off to one side, seemingly completely engrossed by the portraits moving from painting to painting. To the other side is Percy Weasley, trying his best to use his new status as a prefect to calm everyone down.
"She's been through a very tough time, you all know that. If she gets bad dreams, you all could be more supportive," he reasons.
The blonde girl's face crinkles unhappily. "Nobody could sleep last night because of her. Why should she get special allowances?"
"I understand that you're upset right now," Percy placates. "But there are spells Ginny can use, or all of you can use, if there's a problem with sound travelling. Do you want to learn the silencing spell?"
"No, I don't want her back with spells or potions or anything," the blonde insists. "I want her out."
Harry, watching the proceedings from a floor above, stiffens his shoulders and prepares to intervene. It's not his business – Ginny's not his sister, in fact, he doesn't even know her all that well – except for the bit where some bit of him insists she is.
He doesn't get the chance. The red-head snaps back to attention when the blonde's face goes from pleading to hostility. She blinks slowly. Harry notices her hands twitching, like she wants to reach for her wand, but instead, she crosses her arms, leaving her hands hidden underneath her elbows.
"I don't mind moving out at all," Ginny says instead to Percy. "I could stay in your rooms," she suggests, with half-slit eyes and something of a strange smile playing across her face. "I could do that, couldn't I, girls?"
It's not an expression that Harry recognises, but some of the girls laugh. Obviously it means something to Percy because his face goes white and then scarlet. "No!" he yells.
"I'm so sorry to hear that," Ginny replies, inspecting her nails. "Whatever will I do?"
"Don't make jokes like that," Percy blusters with a reddening face. Angry or embarrassed expressions ill suit Weasleys; they always end up looking a bit like lobsters. "As for the rest of you – tough! Professor McGonagall does all the room assignments, if you have a problem with it; you should take it up with her!" And with that last dramatic pronouncement, Percy scampers for the Great Hall at great speed.
"You can come share with me," a brunette offers, after her giggling subsides. "Sandy's mom sent her to Beauxbatons after what happened last year, there's an empty bed. You can't be as bad as what Melissa says."
Ginny flashes her a grin, and then disappears in a flash of motion, presumably to get ready for the first day of classes, and the girls make their way back to their rooms. The blonde grouses bitterly the whole way.
Harry goes down to breakfast, feeling like he's missing something. Girls.
:::
Professor Snape trawls the hallways in a black mood. His temperament has noticeably deteriorated ever since the headmaster's chosen to hire him as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, without any sort of regard for the school's safety or reputation.
He retreats to the Restricted Section of the library to avoid the despicable beast, who has no doubt yet again crawled to his chambers in some sort of pathetic attempt to 'put their school days behind them,' an attempt that will always be doomed to failure for as long as Snape can manage it.
Moste Potente Potions has always soothed his thoughts but curiously, the book is not there.
Snape takes a step back, and realises that Moste Potente Potions isn't the only book that is missing. Someone has been very careful in rearranging the books so that the gaps are not perceptible at first glance, but to a devoted connoisseur as Snape is, the differences are glaringly obvious.
Truthfully, Snape does not need the book. He has his particular version of the Wolfsbane potion memorised. That doesn't mean that isn't ambivalent about its absence.
The first day of term, and already, someone has stolen several volumes relating to the Dark Arts.
This bore investigating.
:::
"Ginny-watch? Is that what Hermione's planning?" Harry says to Ron as they climb in through the portrait.
They sit in front of the fire on a sofa for their first Gin-watch meeting. Harry feels a little bit like a spy in an action movie, but again, anything that'll take his mind off his very first class of Divination is desirable. A terrible enemy is after me. What else is new? Hermione comes in two minutes after the boys.
"I'm not arguing, I think watching out for someone else is a good idea," Harry starts. "Did you have to make a timetable though, isn't that a bit – regimented?"
"And are you sure that you've made this correctly?" Ron continues, squinting at the little piece of paper Hermione's handed him. "It says here that you've got Divination, Arithmancy and Gin-watch at the same time."
"No and yes," Hermione says, as prompt as you please. She shuffles all her other bits of paper together. "I was in her place my first year here, I know I would have felt much better if I had known someone was always looking out for me. One word: trolls!"
Without dropping a beat, she turns to Ron and takes the timetable out of his hand. "You let me worry about that," Hermione says. "Harry, you've got Quidditch training three evenings a week so we'll be taking those shifts, until the Hogsmeade weekends, where you'll be taking ours."
Harry sighs, one hand in his hair. He still wasn't too happy about being the only third year who'd have to stay back in the castle, but at least he'd have something to do. He also knew better than to say 'no' to Hermione when she had that look on her face.
"Ron, I've been thinking about this since dinner, and I'm going to need to ask you some questions. Some of these might feel a bit intrusive, but the more we know, the better."
"Go for it," Ron shrugs.
"What are we looking for? Has she shown any signs of being depressed, or feeling suicidal?"
Ron furrows his eyebrows as he thinks. The other students are making their way to bed, and while there was a constant stream of people going straight from the portrait to the staircase, that stream has been slowed down to a trickle. Ginny's already in bed, they made sure of that before they started talking.
"She stays in her room all the time, and she never wants to play Quidditch anymore. Ginny didn't smile once until Bill showed her how the curses on some of the tombs worked."
There was the loss of interest in things she would've jumped on before; Quidditch, Fred and George's experiments, playing with Scabbers and Pigwidgeon. She withdrew from most social activities. There was the way she looked persistently empty or blank, like there was nothing in the world that could make her smile; the pessimism and the insomnia. On the other hand…
"I don't know if she's sad all the time though. She doesn't look sad, or anxious, just blank. She definitely doesn't act like she's feeling hopeless or worthless, if anything, she's more driven than before."
"More driven than before? What do you mean?"
"She went to the local library one day. Didn't tell any of us that she went. Mum went spare looking for her; we'd thought she'd been kidnapped. Anything could've happened to her. Turns out she'd been there the whole day, filling up her new diary with odd bits from history."
Ron paced back and forth in a furious circle, making quick, frustrated gestures with his hands.
"She didn't even care that we were worried, the way she was going on, you'd think she didn't know she did something wrong! And there's a whole new obsession with mirrors. She'll stop in the middle of something and stare into them for long periods of time."
Hermione frowns. "Narcissism? That doesn't fit in with the rest of the facts."
They begin following her the next day.
:::
The thing is – while Ginny seems different, in a unique and indescribable way, it didn't seem like she needed 'watching over.' It was something in the way that she looked, and in the way she walked.
It took Harry some time to work it out. Confidence. She walked with confidence, and neither the mocking at her back nor her near friendless status seemed to do anything to throw it. A roommate of hers scatters Ginny's belongings across Gryffindor tower; Ginny simply picks them up and moves on.
Ron thinks of confronting the bully. When the golden trio get around to it, the perpetrator bursts into tears and says she's already moved out of the dorm. Ginny's already taken over her old bedspace.
:::
"What on Earth – why – what's she doing, going into the boy's toilet?"
Harry ignores Ron's spluttering, and peers down the corridor. "You're kidding," he says with disbelief. "Are you sure she didn't just walk past?"
"No, I saw her walk in! You've got to go in after her!"
Harry envisions confronting a girl in the boy's toilet, one that he knows, and hesitates. "She'll realise when she sees the urinals, she'll walk back out in a moment, you'll see."
The boys slink to the opposite side of the wall, partially hidden behind a statue in armour, making sure that their vantage point is close enough to see Ginny when she leaves, but distant enough that Ginny will only see black school robes which could belong to anybody. Harry looks up at the ceiling and drums his fingers against the wall; Ron squints anxiously through the gap.
"It's been a moment."
"Wait another moment."
Ron gives Harry a pointed nudge. "It's your watch," he whispers.
"Now hang on a minute," Harry hisses, "I agreed to check up on her, not follow her into bloody toilets! That's just – she's going to think I'm a creep!"
"It will be even worse if I did! Can you imagine the conversations – mum, my brother followed me into a toilet!" Ron hisses right back. "If you do it – well, she won't say anything about you, and it'll be just unlucky coincidence."
Harry crossed his arms, unimpressed.
"What if she's feeling dizzy or ill, and thought to go into the nearest toilet? What if she's vomiting everything up from dinner? She could be, her moods have been changing like lightning, her mental state's all over the place! What if she's trying to hang herself in there!"
Harry's eyes grow worried inadvertently, and Ron goes in for the kill. He grabs onto Harry's shirt and pulls. "What if she's meeting up with a boy in there!"
Priorities, Harry thinks, and pulls Ron's fists off. "Alright! I'll take a look! But I'm not talking to her, and if it's not life-threatening, I'm not interfering in any of her business." Ron brightens, and ushers Harry onwards.
"Thanks mate," he encourages. "You go and do your stuff."
"What are friends for," Harry says, trudging in the direction of the toilet, like a man sent on a very distasteful quest.
He's not expecting much; maybe he's going to see Ginny, maybe he's not. If he does, he's just going to remind her that it's the boy's toilet and they won't meet each other's eyes for a month; if he doesn't, he'll lounge around, pretending to fix his hair into some semblance of tidiness or something until Ginny emerges, and then he'll give her the reminder, and then they won't be able to meet each other's eyes for a month.
Harry's definitely not expecting to turn the door handle, and see Ginny staring lifelessly at the mirror and washing blood off her hands.
"Merlin!" Harry yells, running over to the sink. He grabs one of Ginny's skinny little wet arms, oblivious to the way she startles, and pulls it away from her body. He knows who exactly to blame for this. "Fucking Tom Riddle!" Harry growls, looking at the devastation that one bad memory had wrought.
Ginny stands stock-still, eyes dilating in shock. "What," she says, as the blood runs down her forearm.
"I can't even begin to dream of what you might be feeling like right now, but don't do it. It's not worth it."
Ginny starts trying to pull away from him, but she's a malnourished second year recovering from dark magic, and he's a third year, and a boy. "Wait – let me explain things," she says, eying her wand on the counter. Harry notices and tugs her further away.
Her whole demeanour flips, and Harry's struggling to keep her contained, trying to stop her from hurting herself even more. "You have no idea, you would not be able to comprehend the enormity, the horror of being trapped in that book," she snarls. "You could not understand; the prospect of enduring for another year, fifty years, for all infinity was anathema!"
Harry doesn't even understand half the words coming out of her mouth right now, but he does understand that people say all sorts of strange things when they're distressed.
"I know, I know," he hushes. "I'm so sorry that I wasn't there for you last year, but that doesn't mean that you should let anyone else get to you. Don't give in."
She stops struggling. He sighs, relieved. Progress.
"… You're saying that you support me. That's a sudden change in heart."
Her words bring back memories of their conversation in Diagon Alley, where they had agreed to be friends. And what had he done? He had skulked around and watched her walk from class to class, without even saying a word to her. If only he had said something, he thinks, maybe she wouldn't be doing this now.
It wasn't too late.
"Of course I do." Harry says earnestly, infusing as much sincerity into his voice and eyes as he can.
"Magic makes you want to do some crazy things sometimes, doesn't it? We could go and do something crazy together. It makes more sense than cutting up your arms in the dirty boy's bathroom."
Ginny looks at him, and looks at him, and after a minute where they both stare into each other's eyes, Ginny abruptly breaks off her gaze. She bends over, hiding her face, and Harry's heart does acrobatics when he realises that she's using her other hand to muffle the little hitching noises coming out of her mouth.
"Are you okay?" he says, with maybe a twinge of desperation.
The dam breaks, and Ginny bursts into laughter. It sounds – manic, hard-hitting, high-pitched. Harry's never heard anyone laugh like that before and it disconcerts him for a moment.
"Ginny."
She laughs harder. The thing with laughter is that – it's catching, and Harry begins to laugh with her after a moment, sick with relief.
"Thank you," she says to him after the laughter dies down. It's a good look on her face – her eyes are gleaming, her smile is wide. "I feel better already."
"You know you can come to us for help with anything, don't you?" Harry continues, pleased that there won't be another dead body in a Hogwarts bathroom, at least, for today.
"Thank you," Ginny repeats. "I wasn't committing suicide, however."
Harry's completely unconvinced. "Where did all this blood come from then?" He snarks, swiping his fingers across the blood trailing down the side of her elbow.
Ginny's smile turns sly. "From my vagina."
It's Harry's turn to stand, dumbfounded.
"Before you ask, I wasn't raped. No, no, don't ask at all actually, I'm not about to explain this to you. If you have any female friends, you should ask them." She thinks on it for a moment, and then makes another decision. "Actually, perhaps we should ask together. If I must suffer through this, it's only fair that you do too."
Harry feels that he should get a prize for dealing with this. Ron owed him. Ron owed him a whole box of sugar quills from Hogsmeade.
"I would feel better about it," Ginny says sweetly, as she finishes cleaning up.
"But it's normal," Harry manages to get out in the end, rushing to the sink to get the blood off.
"Normal, and extremely tedious. I've never dealt with it before. I'll need to learn."
"Is that why you headed to the bloke's room?" Harry says, running his fingers underneath the spray of water. Ginny watches in amusement, and Harry wonders how a girl a year his junior can make him feel self-conscious.
"It's the only one on this floor. You know the girl's bathroom isn't working."
"I know Moaning Myrtle's bathroom isn't working, but generally, don't all the girls just go up a stair? It's not much of a walk." Harry says, disgruntled. "Have you been going to this bathroom all the time? You know you can't walk into the boy's bathroom."
"Do they? Oh." Ginny's quiet for a moment. Then like a kettle that's just reached boiling point, she exclaims: "The sacrifices I make!"
Harry draws in his eyebrows. He's about to go for another pep talk where he tries to encourage her to see the positive side in things, but before he can get a word out edgewise, Ginny's pushed him off to one side, yelled 'this, all of this is your fault!' and stormed out.
Now that was unfair. How was her going to the boy's toilet his fault?
:::
:::
:::
He can still remember the phantom pain of basilisk poison burning through his skin, twisting through all the crevices and spaces that held his form together. He knows what it's like to lose half his mind to blind panic, and the other half to sheer agony.
He remembers waking up. There was a brief, very brief moment where he marvelled at the sensation of soft sheets against his cheeks, and then reality hit.
How close he had been to dominion, how sure he had been of his victory; the wand had been in his hand! Fuck Ravenclaw's bloody, raw, defiled cunt, and fuck everyone in her asinine, brain-dead excuse of a house, how the fuck had that fucking son of a whore beaten him, Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort, how in Salazar's blood-stained name had he done it three times?
He remembers looking down at his white-knuckled, pretty, girly-looking fingers. They were clutching the blanket and physically aching from the tension.
How.
How did I lose.
:::
It was all he thought about all summer – how had that moment turned into the ultimate defeat?
Tom turns the memory over as he washes the dishes. Seven children used fewer plates than an orphanage of more than forty; also, dishes were easier to wash with magic than ice-cold, recycled water. Menial, but necessary.
There was nothing in his mind that was certain about that night, save for one thing; Harry Potter had won that fight. The basilisk was defeated, the plot he had been waiting five decades to launch had been staunched, and the Chamber he went to several lengths to find was discovered, desecrated and barred. Even the boy that he had framed for the opening was allowed to walk free.
What happened, he asks his half-seen reflection in the window.
Basilisk poison burned through paper so quickly. The process was incomplete; it would've been folly to stay in the incorporate body of ink and paper, the one that he had so painstakingly fashioned for himself. As a drowning man instinctively brings his head up for air, Tom managed to yank onto the soul bond, and shift something else instead.
What happened before? The eyes staring back at him are hazel and provide no answer. They blink and remind him that he should be dead.
His stomach revolts and he recoils, physically nauseated.
He could not make sense of the series of events. He could not fathom a scenario in which he did not succeed, and yet it had happened.
:::
There must be something, he reasons. It was impossible for a mere boy of twelve to best him. To best him twice… one might laugh that away as coincidence, but to best him three times? Three times is a pattern of ill intent, and a mystery; one that I intend to solve.
Was it, as Harry Potter had said, a mother's love?
Impossible, Tom decides as he retraces Lord Voldemort's path through old history books. To believe as such would be to spit in the faces of all the mothers that Lord Voldemort had killed – their children dead because obviously, mommy didn't love them enough. What of the list of dead lovers? Is eros, romantic love, not equivalent to storge, familial love? What was the difference?
However, to repudiate the theory of 'a mother's love' was to obligate himself into searching for another, so Tom sets his brain into working overtime while his hands went to permanently de-gnome the garden. There must be one common aspect within all three encounters, he thinks. When I contrast my failures and my successes, what differences are present?
Tom reaches a conclusion as he reaches the gnome's liver. There was one common factor, the most obvious one: Harry Potter. There was a theory: he wasn't a just a mere boy of twelve. Hadn't he noticed their similarities within the Chamber?
'You're a wreck. You're barely alive. That's where all your power got you. You're in hiding. You're ugly, you're foul—'
If so, what made Harry Potter special? What knowledge was written into the depths of his brain, what arcane magic was tattooed on his skin, what divine quality was intertwined with his very root?
:::
He didn't know anything, and there was much to learn.
Tom left the vicinity of the boy's bathroom with a thousand thoughts racing through his mind, weaving in and out between each other, forming and collapsing all at once.
There was nothing to differentiate Harry Potter's circumstances from any other normal boy within his memories. Being a half-blood orphan was not special. Being raised by muggles was not special. Being targeted by Voldemort was also not special. There was nothing to explain his survival.
But.
He hadn't felt it, as a memory, but with a physical body – there was just the slightest sensation of a pull towards the other. It had manifested at Diagon Alley and it had manifested at close quarters within the bathroom. If he closed his eyes, Tom imagined he could remember the sensation of walking through the other's mind, comfortable and familiar.
Of course, he thinks. He came to three conclusions:
One: Lord Voldemort would not have been defeated by someone ordinary. Now it was just a matter of confirming what weapon the boy had, and then rising to combat it.
Two: Fortune had bequeathed him a second chance. He was not going to fail.
And three: Death was not good enough for Harry Potter. Oh no. Death, death was far from good enough for Harry Potter. He was going to RIP HIM APART.
:::