Ginny Weasley was forbidden to envy the Slytherin girls.
"Shallow, vain, inherited money," her mother wrinkled her nose as she looked up from her knitting, in the otherwise cozy quiet evening of that night; a young 6 year old Ginny looking up from untangling yarn with innocence in those eyes. "Snobbery, mean, think they are better than everyone else for no good reason at all. We couldn't all be born in the right place right time."
The sharp jab in her words were Ginny's first experience of her mother dissections of the Slytherin girls, she had been too young and new to the sharp critiques her mother could produce to yet know how to respond or what to say, so she simply sat, soaking it all in, but when she was 7 and the topic came up again whilst they were baking she couldn't hold her silence.
"They look down on you. Because they think they're better. For no good reason at all. You will find yourself being bullied and made the butt of the joke by them. I don't approve of that behaviour at Hogwarts, but they are well liked by the teachers because of their parents influence, some of the teachers live to hear acknowledgement from them, and my father wasn't powerful enough to say a few choice words about them that could be respected."
"Well they must've done something good to get there," Ginny found herself arguing. Previously in her childhood world her mother had told her about fairness and kindness, to always look from someone else's perspective, and that there's good and bad in every person, you just had to find it. Ginny liked her mother's calmness when she talked about anything but the Slytherin's girls, that sense that there was good and bad in everything and nothing could ever be too miserable before the good thing could some around again - because that was just how the universe worked, but now she was finding herself presented with the idea that something just be absolutely bad, evil, and 7 year old Ginny was trying to bring her mother's story's back to a more friendlier place.
"No nothing. I still remember the names of the 5 bitches in my grade," said her mother with a bit of a wink at Ginny.
"You told me not to say that word!" said Ginny.
"They are the one exception to the rule," her mother said sharply, "Eudora Noirin Disney, Trudy Mac Maghnius, Carlene Eadgyo Reed, Fabiana Leighton James, and Ciara Esmee Leclercq, I remember all of their names like it was burned in the back of my brain."
She then went on long tirades about the 5 girls as the cake baked.
Eudora had always been jealous of Trudy for being pretty when her name was not. Trudy mocked Eudora for having a pretty name but not the face to live up to it when she caught on. Eudora had lashed out in pathological rage at the next available target (myself, Ginny's mother intoned) when she wanted a weakling to pick on but no one in the Slytherin dormitory would put up with her picking on them. The others caught onto Eudora's quick victimisation of Ginny's mother, Carlene and Fabiana unleashed their own brand of nastiness at her mother (and a few other girls that were bullied in the school), quick to move up in some imaginery hierarchy of the Slytherin girls where the meanest and baddest were the most revered.
Ciara whom Ginny's mother held hopes for who might be kind - turned out to be simply quiet in her dislike of everyone else and laughed in her mother's face when she offered to work with her in third year, with her mother thinking this was the opportunity to know Ciara better, but Ciara revealing how she'd always secretly mocked her mother behind her back but did not say it.
The Slytherin 5 were awful. Girls wore their wounds and scars from being picked on by them all throughout the Hogwarts years. They were powerless to do anything about it. Due to a mix of their charm, the way they had the teachers wrapped around their fingers, their parents' influence and own questionable morals. Ginny's mother talked about how they were a blight on her Hogwarts years, whilst also weaving story's of their fabulous wealth, expensive items they owned that were only loaned to their closest friends, clothes that were so exquisite on weekends that one could instantly tell they were tailored right for them, lavish outings with 'the girls' they could afford that others could only dream of.
The Slytherin 5 were hated, but also untouchable, unphathomable to even be them, desirable even, and sought after by most. The girls that were not outcasted by them wanted to be them.
In a way, Ginny's childhood had been filled with tales of their brilliance despite the fact she was forbidden to envy them.
"Disgusting people. Horrible. All going dark and twisted ends in life," her mother said when she was 10 and had come back from dropping of her siblings at King's Cross, "I don't know how anyone could like them besides what they offered. You are forbidden to associate with them. I don't want you associating with such scum," her mother's words were thick and dark.
"Don't be worried. They wouldn't even look twice at me mother," said Ginny.
"They might pretend to be your friend. Offer it. To make fun of you later on because you had the faith to believe it was even real," her mother said without a second's hesitance.
"I don't think they would make that offer to every single girl," Ginny tried to reason, still preferring to live in a world where there was both good and bad, no one could be completely and utterly bad, and even the Slytherin girls had some redeeming feature, still preferring to change her mother's stories to the fairytales of good and bad she liked to listen to, "so it must still mean something if that's the sort of trick they'll try on me."
"It means nothing. I've never wanted anything to do with those girls and still don't. They are worthless and scum to me," her mother said sternly.
"Yes mother," said Ginny.
It was easy to listen to her mother about the Slytherin girls. Ginny grew up mostly with brothers, homeschooled and away from other wizarding children except her siblings, and because of the fact the Weasleys were well-known for preferring big families and love over filthy wealth, and one of the older wizarding families, Ginny knew that others would have some idea of who she was when they saw her, and those that didn't like her would self-select away from her. She knew the Slytherin girls in her grade would most likely leave her alone if she didn't do anything to them, and had never felt like it was a very difficult thing at all to keep well away from them. She had done so well so far, and it would be easy for her Hogwarts years she had always thought.
Although a part of her was curious about them. They were the only people who had a sliver of wealth, fashionable clothes, delicious foods from what her mother told her about envious parcels they got in the mail, enchanting events, and it seemed the secrets of how to ascend in society, that Ginny knew of, or were palatable to her eyes and years and could be understood by an 11-year old girl. A part of her was curious to do everything they had done, take a seat at their tea party and play the enchanting role they got to play in the only society and world she had ever known.
Ginny had also never really had girl friends. She had one witch friend a year older than her whom she briefly hung out with for three glorious months when she was 8 who moved away when her family moved, and so she only had her brothers and her mother for company for the most part. They were decent, but even Ginny had to admit she didn't particularly have many girl friends due to the make-up of her world, and a part of her envied the girls for it. That rite of passage, the hidden door to a wonderland of girl friends and all that they would get up to themselves.
The Slytherin Girls were also her foray into having girl friends, as they seemed like the most visible group of girls in campus, and so Ginny found herself repeating her mother's stern lessons in her head about not being associated with them, the relieving thoughts that she most likely wouldn't have anything to do with them, but yet also imaginations, interspersed, about what a life in their world may have been like...perhaps in another universe or parallel reality, a world within a world...
That world came true when the diary she'd found in her cauldron from Flourish and Blotts - a sale accidentally dropped in her cauldron by the shopkeeper and unnoticed she thought - wrote back after she'd spent an hour ranting about how much she wanted to be with the Slytherins if she were to go to Hogwarts and somehow be sorted into Slytherin House, even though she knew it stood for everything she was against, and that her life would never be the same afterwards if that alternate path had happened.
Would it? The diary wrote back.
Sorting hasn't happened yet. Slytherin self-selects for ambition, including the rare ambition to be sorted into the house. Anything could happen. What if not being sorted into Slytherin is the alternate path?
That can't be. You're talking nonsense. I've weighed up my traits and thought about this for years! I'm a Gryffindor through and through. Wrote Ginny, eager to have someone to talk to about this. Her brothers were busy with their own things most of the time, her mother also didn't have all that much free time to spare, and Ginny was on her own a decent amount, desiring a friend her age but never having one. It was an easy conversation to be had.
You are. In everything except the urge to be sorted into Slytherin. Tell me which Gryffindor has that? The diary wrote back.
It doesn't mean anything. It's just because my mum talks about it a lot and I always notice what the wealthy families from Slytherin wear and how they talk, act and dress when I go to Diagon Alley with my brothers everytime they've gone. If you have to listen to story's about them that much or see their flashy clothes and self-following trolleys you'll think twice about them too, I think.
They are an obnoxiously flashy part of wizarding society. But that doesn't stop you from thinking you could do it better if only you were born in the right starting place for the game now does it?
Ginny frowned. The rest of the witches and wizards had mostly seemed like peasants to her, the Slytherins the only kings and queens, nobilities, whom were perhaps meaner, but also had more power, more choice, only because they were born with a move to make. She'd often thought opportunities seemed only born to those from select families, other influential people only looked to them to give them opportunities and allow them to move forwards in life. She wasn't from such a family. But she did have the thought that if she was born in one of the Pureblood Sacred 28 families, sorted into Slytherin...with that world available at her feet, she always thought she'd do better than some of the Slytherin girls her mother talked about.
She couldn't be so nasty and mean. She couldn't waste time on trivial things like picking on people for fun. Instead she'd use everything she had to soar to places she wouldn't and come back a rich woman - top of wizarding society, in power, rich, influential, adored and loved by everyone for the right reasons. She'd have made the best out of what the life she had been given would allow her to do, in all of the world and brief bit of history that she would experience in her lifetime - and she'd have done it better than a born and bred Slytherin girl.
How did you know? She wrote.
Common thought among anyone who has ever considered Slytherin. You'll need more than that though, to truly succeed down that path. You will face greater challenges than you ever thought of, when you meet the people there and see the world you have stepped in. I can be a guide. I know a bit about Slytherin.
The diary wrote.
What else do you know? Asked Ginny.
A bit about everything. The diary said.
Alright. Said Ginny. What you've said makes sense. I trust you. I've never had a diary that wrote back before. Although I often wished my diary could do that. I guess I got lucky this time when I went to Flourish and Blotts right? Oh, my mum's calling me! I got to go. See you later.
Two days later Ginny found herself sitting on the Hogwarts stool beneath the Sorting Hat.
She hadn't meant to take the diary's words seriously, it just felt like a friend lifting up her spirits when she had something in particular to chatter on and on about. The diary had nodded along with her and agreed with her about Slytherin, and perhaps Ginny could appreciate why people wanted to be in Slytherin even more now - to get a slice of the glory that came from the Pureblood Sacred 28 families and perhaps walk that path better than they did, but she didn't truly want to be in Slytherin. Didn't truly want to go down that path.
It was just a stray thought. A passing thought. She did at several moments in her life think she could do it better than those nasty people if she was sorted into that house and given some opportunities, but she didn't mean it. She knew the Sorting Hat would say Gryffindor. It had to. She had spent her whole life pining to get into Gryffindor...
I see such old regret in yet such a young mind... the hat said. You have very shrewd reasons for avoiding Slytherin, the one house that possibly interested you enough to give Gryffindor a run for its money that many young kids your age who haplessly idolise Slytherin do not. It is a house of nastiness and meanness. No house is a saint and you're very aware of the downsides to Slytherin. But yet...I see in you, deeper than your urge to be in Gryffindor, your regret for having never given Slytherin a try...
Regret over the path not walked. Never attempted...
Ginny felt her eyes widen in surprise, shock. But not altogether an unpleasant feeling. It felt as if some deep side of her that had been yearning to get out, crying and screaming all this while, was finally acknowledged, and it felt so good - even if by an old talking hat on her head.
"SUITABLY, SLYTHERIN!" the hat cried.
The Great Hall gasped.
Ginny felt in a daze as she slipped of the stool and headed to her house table. But a little good all at the same time. She had gotten a reaction by it. And Ginny often thought anyone could be ambitious or cunning if they wanted to, it didn't matter if they were born in one of the Sacred 28 families or not, and she resented the idea that people seemed to have such an image of her it should be so shocking to think she didn't have the same thoughts sometimes...
In a way she felt good people were recognising she couldn't not be in Slytherin simply because of the family she had come from.
"I'm Celinda Etiennette Huxley, I love your hair," smiled a tall girl with a heart-shaped face, mousy blonde hair in large curls and large green eyes with long eyelashes.
All of the girls at the table had the air of well-dressed, pampered, wealthy families, even if they weren't actually anyone Ginny recognised from the Sacred 28. She supposed it was too much to ask that there would be a member from one of those families in every single year of Hogwarts.
"I'm Drousilla Kendra Keys, I think you're the only girl we don't already know," said another tall girl with straight brunette hair and blue eyes, confirming Ginny's suspicions that even though they were not the Sacred 28, they still knew each other before coming to Hogwarts.
"Corinthia Bette Blackman, I thought you were brave when you walked here. Some people are upset by the ridiculous reactions Hogwarts has towards being sorted in Slytherin," said a short girl with fizzy black hair and grey eyes.
"Maybelline Allyson Lowe," said an average height girl with wavy blonde-brown hair and brown eyes, "welcome to the club. You'll fit right in in no time."
Ginny smiled. Then she turned her attention back to the Sorting, the girls had previously whispered it, and once the Sorting finished they dissolved into such wild erratic conversation that Ginny forgot she had been nervous that day about the Sorting at all. Conversation was pleasant, she learnt a bit about everyone and found they did have some things in common such as Quidditch, and pets and interests in duelling, and it wasn't until she was leaving the Great Hall with some people still throwing glances at her (she had not been able to see her brothers' reactions yet), that she felt the finality of it sink in.
7 years at Hogwarts.
She was going to have to go, sit at, leave, the Slytherin table.
Represent the house in front of prying eyes, as if waiting for her downfall (today's affair bought everyone some suspension of disbelief, as if they did acknowledge she could've legitimately been suited for Slytherin afterall, but were still waiting with baited breath somehow to see if it was true or not...), and still live to tell the tale. Live with her dignity intact. To not fall despite everyone wishing she could, as if to prove that just because she was born in the wrong family, she could not have been in Slytherin. There was no way someone not from the right family could have those traits.
She was going to see the Slytherin common room, hear things from their side, their perspective, see the world through emerald-coloured eyes and yet...
She felt like a curious little kid unturning a stone and realising that it could not ever be unturned...
Even if she ended up hating Slytherin house, even if she thought the whole thing was a scam (she was not the first kid to question the Sorting Hat's abilities and sometimes think the school just instructed it to sort people into houses and everyone found reasons why they fit the house they went into instead of it being the opposite way around...), even if she was the most anti-Slytherin after she'd left...she'd still know what it was like to be a Slytherin, and to reject being a Slytherin, from the perspective of a Slytherin and not a Gryffindor...
And that's when she started feeling Slytherin.