Ginny woke up the next day with puffy eyes, and if it weren't for Lily forcing her out of bed because they both had the same class first thing in the morning Ginny would have still be buried under her covers.
"You came in late last night," Lily said.
Although it was posed as a statement, the look of intensity Lily gave her made it obvious that it was a question.
"I was with Sirius," Ginny replied.
"Of course, you were," Alice giggled.
"It's irresponsible," Lily lectured.
But Ginny was no longer listening as she trailed behind her two friends as they headed to The Great Hall for breakfast.
It was the truth; Ginny had been up all night with Sirius. But not in the way her friends had automatically assumed, although Ginny was not going to correct them. It was better that they thought she was up all night snogging Sirius – it was better than them knowing what she was actually doing.
Which was staying up all night crying while Sirius held her, while he tried to calm her down, in order for her to tell him anything about what had gotten her so upset. But Ginny didn't say a word, she cried until the tears had stopped and she fell asleep in his arms. When she woke up, they were both asleep on the couch. She detangled herself from his embrace and she crept silently to her dormitory, only to slip under the covers and spend the remaining few hours tossing and turning until Lily shook her awake.
Ginny had never cried so much before – and she had done a lot of crying when she first arrived. But this was different, she was no longer crying over the life she had, the family she missed, or even her love for Sirius.
There were no more tears of frustration; her frustration over the task she had gotten herself into, or the difficult game of chess she had sat down to play with Tom Riddle and the Slytherins she brushed shoulders with.
This time she cried for herself, because even though she wasn't sure how she was going to stop Tom Riddle, now because of what Severus had discovered it was obvious that when she was finally able to kill Tom, she was going to die to.
Which meant that in order for her to stop Tom, she needed to make sure that Severus forgot what he found, because if Regulus knew that in order for them to succeed, it meant Ginny would die he would do everything in his power to make sure that Ginny wouldn't succeed.