Chapter Twenty-Two

She wasn't sure she'd ever been this scared before, this horrified. The Acromantulas now somehow felt like child's play. She'd much rather be back in that forest, screaming her head off, than where she was now — racing down the corridor back to Gryffindor Tower and praying that Ginny was there, safe in her dormitory and totally healthy. Because even now, knowing that the pieces of the puzzle were fitting so neatly against each other, she hoped she was wrong. She prayed to Merlin and God and Zeus and whoever else that she was absolutely, positively, without a doubt way off base with this one.

How had she ignored it for so long? The signs after reading that horrible book the first time should have been crystal clear. The niggling in her brain, the screaming alarm bells…all of it was so obvious now. And a part of her could not help but wonder if she'd intentionally refused to acknowledge what was right in front of her just because she was too afraid to see it.

A strong hand pulled her to a complete stop in the middle of the fifth-floor corridor and she struggled against it because she did not have time for this. She needed to find Ginny as fast as possible and then she needed to get McGonagall or Snape or anyone else because Ginny needed help and the Chamber needed to be found and closed before she could end up hurt. The hands that held her did not relent and she whirled around to glare at the person responsible.

It was George.

"Nessa, you have to slow down," he said, his voice frantic. "You can't just say my sister's name and go sprinting off without explaining what's going on."

"We don't have time for this, George," she said, desperately. "Your sister…Ginny…We need to find her. Right now."

"Why?" said Fred from where he and Tori stood behind George.

The two of them were pale and she seriously doubted that they hadn't already put the pieces together themselves. The three of them had easily helped her fill in the blanks of the mystery without even realizing they were doing it. Surely, Myrtle's slip up and their earlier conversation made enough sense to them.

They were hiding the truth from themselves just as much as she had been.

"Nessa, please," said Tori imploringly. She looked as though she were on the verge of tears and Nessa hated that because she'd never once seen Tori cry. "Please just…explain what's happening and I swear we will go find her. She's our sister. Tell us what's wrong with her."

The part of her that wanted so desperately to find Ginny before it was too late to fix anything, wanted to tell her again that they didn't have time. That she would tell them on the way or after everyone was accounted for and healthy. But the other part of her realized how horrible this must look to them. She was a sister, too. She had a brother she'd have died for in a single heartbeat. And that part of her knew that if the roles had been reversed and she had been watching one of them frantically look for Harry without an explanation, she'd have lost her mind with worry.

She looked one last time at the staircase that she wanted to be climbing and sighed heavily. If she had to explain first, she needed to make it quick. No sugar coating.

"Ginny opened the Chamber of Secrets," she said matter-of-factly, leaving no room for argument.

This did not go over well with the others.

"No!" said the twins in unison, backing away from her with a glare.

"She wouldn't do that," said Tori.

She'd not moved and her voice came out in a whisper. Nessa made eye contact with her and knew that she knew. Knew that she was avoiding the truth of it because it hurt to look at. Knew that Tori did not need much convincing, but wanted her to explain it out loud anyway because she couldn't say it to herself.

"You know she did it," Nessa whispered back. "She's been acting odd all year. We've all noticed it — the jumping, the lack of eating or sleeping, the fear. She's been having nightmares. She can't remember large chunks of her day. She woke up on the floor of a bathroom and had no idea how she'd gotten there. She hasn't been herself — not fighting back against her brothers, not making friends. She's a totally different person than she was over the summer."

"That doesn't mean…this!" insisted Fred angrily. "All of those things could just as easily be explained away by stress or fear or —"

"I know that, Fred," said Nessa quickly. "I know all of this. I've spent the entire year telling myself the same thing, but that isn't what's happening. This is so much bigger than her being afraid of the monster of Slytherin. When we were in the library earlier, she told me…she said 'I'm so sorry, Nessa, I didn't mean to.' I thought she was just going to apologize for something stupid. Like not meeting with me anymore or refusing to talk to me when I cornered her, but I don't think she was. She told me she tried to tell Harry and Ron at breakfast, too. I should have known it was something to do with the Chamber, but I didn't want to believe it any more than you do right now."

"This is mental!" said Fred, looking at George as if he needed someone else to talk some sense into her. "It can't be Ginny! It just can't. I mean, why wouldn't she have said something?"

"What's she supposed to say, Fred?" said Nessa, losing patience. "Anything she says is going to sound just as mental as I do right now. And she probably blames herself for the whole thing. If she had enough forethought to try to tell me, Harry, and Ron, then she must know what's happening to her. Imagine how frightening that must be!"

"Nessa –" said George, his voice placating and clearly on the verge of telling her she was wrong.

"Don't, George." she said warningly. "I don't have time for you to try and convince me I'm being irrational and neither does your sister. Listen to what I'm saying to you." She took a step closer to him, her eyes locked with his and her face deadly serious. She saw him tense. "This is not her fault. But it is her. All of the symptoms line up. She doesn't remember Halloween — she never showed up to the feast or to meet me in the library. And the night she had that nightmare. Do you remember what she told us? That the scariest part of the dream was —"

"Yellow eyes," he said, the words sounding like they were being forced from his mouth, despite the adamant refusal she knew he had to be feeling in his head. His eyes, though. They were deadly serious and she saw a flicker of fear in them before he managed to cover it.

"Exactly," she said. "What if it wasn't a dream at all? What if it was a memory? Or a warning?"

"How though?" he said, clinging onto the only thing he had left. Because there was no chance his sister would have opened the Chamber willingly. But an equally unlikely chance she'd have shared anything with Voldemort. "You said there had to be a connection for this to work. For someone to be…possessed. How would that have happened with her? She'd never have told You-Know-Who anything."

"I told you before. It doesn't have to be willingly shared," said Nessa gently. "What's one thing she would have told her deepest fears, her darkest thoughts, her desires to? Without even a second thought?"

"Her diary," Tori whimpered, her face coloring in shock. "She's been writing in it nonstop. Percy was worried about it causing her upset earlier in the year."

Nessa nodded solemnly.

"Yes, her diary. It's the book Harry had with him in the library back in February. I couldn't tell why it looked so familiar to me. I'd seen it a hundred times. She used it at every meeting. Except when Harry was flipping through it, it was totally empty. Nothing written on the pages at all. I never thought it was hers because there's no way it would have been empty with how much she'd been writing in it, but it must be charmed or something —"

"Dad's had that happen before," said Fred, his anger seeming to leave him in an instant and the horror setting in. "He's confiscated loads of books at the Ministry. One that burned your eyes out. Another that made you speak in limericks. Another you could never stop reading."

"Charming a book would be easy," agreed Nessa. "And whatever he's done to it…I don't know if it allows him to speak with her as he is now or how it works, but the book must be a conduit of some sort. I'm not totally familiar with the complexities of possession or magic this dark, aside from that blasted book, so that's hard to explain. But I don't see what else it could be she'd open herself up to so willingly. She probably didn't even realize what it was until it was too late. Once the tether takes hold, it's hard to break. And the only time I remember her being more…herself was when Harry had the book."

"And then it was stolen from Harry's dorm —"

"Which means it had to be a Gryffindor. No one else can get into the common room. And Ginny went right back to being tense not long after that. It has to be the diary. I don't know how he charmed it or how Ginny could possibly have gotten ahold of it or what purpose Voldemort has in possessing an eleven-year old girl, but the rest of it…the rest of it makes sense to me."

There was a long moment of silence as they stared at her. There was no argument left to be had. She had explained it so thoroughly, backwards and forwards, that any argument they'd have had would only continue to further waste time. Despite the complexity of the situation, she'd managed to make the pieces fit so that only the insignificant pieces hung loose.

George had no idea how she'd done it. Made them fit. She had to have been one of the smartest witches he'd ever met, to have worked something out to this extent. All her time in the library clearly left her with a plethora of knowledge about magic that he'd never have thought to consider.

He wondered idly if even Hermione would have managed to put the pieces together so well. Perhaps if any of them had bothered to spend as much time with Ginny as Nessa had been lately, they would have seen the signs as clearly as she did. But none of them had. They'd pushed the responsibility onto Nessa and made assumptions about Ginny's behavior being simply fear of the Chamber itself. And to think that he and Fred had been covering themselves in boils and jumping out at her to "cheer her up." There was so much they should have done differently…

"What do we do?" said Tori brokenly from beside him.

"We find Ginny," said Nessa firmly. "Right now."

The four of them took off at a sprint again toward Gryffindor Tower. It was likely only minutes, but it felt like hours until they were rounding the corner and could see the Fat Lady at the end. Percy was stepping out and caught sight of them as they were racing toward him.

"What are you doing? You should be with a teacher at all times —"

"Percy, please shut up!" said Nessa, shoving her way past him and into the common room. She heard Percy spluttering behind her indignantly, but she ignored it.

Taking a look around, she did not see the distinctive Weasley hair anywhere within the common room. She raced for the girls' dormitory stairs, hitting them two at a time. She heard Tori behind her and they stumbled into the first-year girls' dormitory hastily.

Demelza Robins was sitting on one of the beds and she squeaked when they entered. But there was no sign of Ginny.

"Ginny Weasley…have you seen her?" said Nessa frantically. Demelza shook her head frantically and Nessa swore.

"The map," said Tori, grabbing her arm and pulling her back down the stairs and into the common room.

The twins were nowhere to be found, so they raced up the stairs in the other direction and were nearly plowed over as Fred and George came barreling down at the same time, map in hand.

"She's outside Myrtle's bathroom," they panted, racing back out of the portrait hole. Nessa swore again and ran after them.

There was a stitch in her side and it was getting increasingly harder to breathe and she felt more than mild irritation at the fact that they'd missed her so narrowly. They'd just been in that bathroom, for God's sake. They'd made it halfway there when McGonagall's voice echoed through the corridor, magically magnified.

"All students are to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please."

The four of them froze, panting hard and staring at each other. Nessa's heart was pounding now for a different reason. That couldn't be a good sign, could it? But maybe it had nothing to do with Ginny…

"Go!" she said after a moment of staring at each other. "We can't just stand here!"

When they'd finally rounded the corner to Myrtle's bathroom and came face to face with the wall on the corridor, she'd wished she'd told them the opposite. That they could have stood there in that corridor for as long as they wanted because what they were going to find outside that bathroom was not going to be anything they wished they had seen. But it was too late to go back. To wish they'd done something different. Because all she could see in front of her were the words she was certain would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

She saw Tori's legs give out and heard the sob catch in her throat. Fred and George stood stock still, their faces covered in an identical look of agony. Nessa stumbled and grabbed onto the torch bracket next to her, ignoring how warm it felt beneath her hand.

There, just underneath the original message, was another, dubbed in the same red paint that looked ominously like blood. A message that had not been there just 30 minutes before when they'd gone racing out of the bathroom and up the stairs in search of Ginny Weasley.

Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.

-o0o-

It was astounding how much your life could change in the matter of thirty minutes. Just thirty measly minutes — less time than it took for her to get ready in the morning — and her entire world had toppled unexpectedly.

It was probably the worst day of her entire life. The fact that she'd thought entering the Forbidden Forest to pal around with spiders would be the worst day of her life…maybe that's why this was happening. Maybe karma had seen a nice opportunity to teach her a lesson.

She, Tori, Fred, George, Harry and Ron all sat in a corner of the common room together, unable to say anything to each other. Percy wasn't there. He'd gone to send Mr. and Mrs. Weasley an owl, and then shut himself up in his dormitory.

Nessa wondered, based on the look on his face, how much he had suspected the same thing she'd now come to accept. He'd been watching Ginny all year as closely as she had been and he couldn't make eye contact with any of them. She was aware of how that felt because she couldn't do it either. The thought of looking any of them in the eye now — when Ginny could have been spared had she had the strength to just do anything — was more than she could handle, the judgment in their eyes more than her heart could take. And she couldn't blame them for judging her either, for blaming her. Because she blamed herself too.

No afternoon ever lasted as long as that one, nor had Gryffindor Tower ever been so crowded, yet so quiet. The looks everyone was sending them was nearly as bad as the guilt rolling around in her head. As the hours passed, and none of them spoke, continuing to stare off into the distance with dead eyes, she wished there was something else she could still do. Anything that would help ease the pain she was feeling. That any of them were feeling.

She wanted more than anything to ask Harry if he'd learned anything new, anything that could help find her, bring her back, but she couldn't form the words. Couldn't bear to say aloud again what had happened to Ginny to her brother. How it was Voldemort again, the entire time, how the book was the problem, how it was a snake and he hadn't been losing his mind at all. But what good would it have done at this point? Ginny was still gone and they had no idea how to find her. And the worst of it really was that there was no way she could still be alive…

No, she couldn't say it again. Not today. Maybe eventually when the shock of it all faded, when the pain felt less constricting on her heart and lungs. Maybe then she could tell him without breaking down.

Near sunset, Fred, George, and Tori stood slowly to go up to bed, unable to sit there any longer. God, she wished there was something she could say. Anything.

"Nessa?"

She turned to look behind her at the soft, inquiring voice.

It was George. To her surprise, he was waiting for her, his hand out expectantly, his face still a mask of confusion and grief. Tori and Fred had paused at the boys' dormitory stairs to look back at her.

"Are you coming?" he said, sounding for all the world like the thought of her staying behind would make the pain he was already feeling much worse.

It was the tone in his voice that made her nod without hesitation. She stood and leaned over to give her brother a kiss on the forehead, squeezing her eyes closed and lingering longer than she might normally have to convince herself that he was real and safe. It was odd how a situation like this one made her realize how so ephemeral they all were. Harry squeezed her wrists hard as she pulled away and smiled at her sadly.

She grasped George's hand in hers and let him pull her up the staircase without a word. Through the window of their dormitory, she could see the sun sinking, blood-red, below the skyline. The silence permeated even once they were alone and it weighed heavily on her chest. Tori climbed into bed with Fred, and neither of them said anything for a long moment, as George led Nessa over to his own. She might have protested under any other circumstances, because Lord knew how awkward she'd felt the last time they'd fallen asleep together in the common room, but she didn't have the heart to do it now. If this was the only way she could provide him any form of comfort, she'd do it without a word of protest. She had no idea how to help otherwise, other than just be there.

"Do you think there's any chance that she's still — you know —" said Fred, his voice hoarse from grief and not having spoken for hours.

Nessa felt George tense against her side and knew it was a question he'd been asking himself but was too afraid to give voice to. She caught Tori's eyes from across the room and neither of them said anything because neither of them truly believed that she could still be alive. Not given the culprit. The two of them understood plain as day the kind of pain Voldemort could inflict on another in only a moment.

Tori looked away first, pushing herself away from the headboard and climbing under the blankets to lay down. Nessa sighed heavily when Fred did the same and tried not to panic when George seemed to take that as his own cue to lay down now that there was nothing else to be said. Given the circumstances, it was really entirely inappropriate for her to be feeling any sort of way about George at the moment.

As the room darkened more and more with the setting sun, the silence was broken by a soft sniffling and Nessa tried to pretend she couldn't hear it because she didn't think Tori would really appreciate it being pointed out. She'd never taken very well to anything emotional. She could hear the gentle rumble of Fred murmuring back to her, but she couldn't quite make out what he was saying.

Nessa and George said nothing, though they were facing each other, eyes locked onto each other in the same way they'd been when he'd been calming her in the forest. Nessa, who had always been uncomfortable with eye contact, found it strange that the typical panic she normally felt at the action was not present with him. After what felt like an eternity, he spoke softly to her, drowning out the grief from the other side of the room.

"It's not your fault," he murmured, his eyes never wavering.

Nessa swallowed hard, her eyes prickling and her throat starting to burn. How did he do that?

"You wouldn't look at any of us," he said by way of explanation when her face morphed to confusion. "I took a guess."

"I should have said something," she said brokenly. "I told you I would if —"

"If you knew it was getting bad," he reasoned quietly. "You didn't know what was wrong with her. How could you have?"

She felt like pointing out that she clearly could have known because she'd figured it out eventually. It had just been too late by then. And maybe that was what rankled so much. Thirty minutes sooner — if she'd woken up thirty minutes earlier this morning or if she'd skipped going to the kitchens or let Fred convince her to chase after her when she'd run out of the library and forced her to talk.

"I should have done something," she repeated again. "I should have known it wasn't stress. I just wanted it to be that so badly that I —"

She stopped talking suddenly because her voice was cracking and it was making it harder for her to hold herself together. Besides, what was she even doing being so upset in front of him? It was his sister. She should be the one comforting him. Not the other way around.

"You did more for her than any of us did," he said, clearing his throat roughly. "If we'd just listened to you — if we hadn't made you stop and explain, then maybe we —"

"Don't," she whispered roughly, resting one of her hands on the side of his face. It was wet. God, she hated this. "Don't do that. I would have done the same thing if it had been Harry."

They lapsed into another silence and her hand shifted so that it was running through his hair. Her stomach clenched when he closed his eyes and moved closer to her touch. It was such an intimate thing, to be touching him in this way. She'd never comforted anyone in the same way except for her own brother and that didn't give her butterflies.

She shook her head sharply because now was really not the time for this kind of lunacy. He did not need her losing her head when he was so clearly in pain.

"You don't think she's — alive, do you?" he whispered suddenly. She closed her eyes. "Be honest. I need someone to be honest with me right now."

She hesitated. She did not want to say it out loud. The thought alone was hard enough.

"I — I don't know. I think it would be a miracle," she felt him flinch, but he waited for her to continue, his eyes still tightly closed. "But I hope that she is. She's a fighter."

A flicker of a smile crossed his face at those words.

"She used to chase us around the yard when we were kids if we made her mad. I took her doll once — it was this hideous looking thing Mum had given her, some kind of family heirloom or something. It was terrifying though — it's eyes were all lopsided and it had this horrible smile on its face. She didn't like it much either, and hid it in her closet. But every time we pissed her off, she'd get it out and hide it around our room to scare us. Anyway, I stole it out of her closet — because we'd put a Dungbomb under her pillow so that it would go off when she laid down, and I knew she'd use that bloody doll again when she found out." He leaned further into her so that she had to shift slightly to look up at him as he continued, "Yeah, well, she knew we'd taken it and she was righteous pissed about the Dungbomb because she smelled like shite no matter how many times she tried to wash the smell off. Anybody else, y'know, they would have gone and thrown a fit to Mum. Percy and Ron used to do that all the time."

"Not Ginny, though," she said matter-of-factly, a small smile lifting the corner of her mouth.

"No, not Ginny," he said with a soft laugh, the sound tinged with a sadness that made her heart hurt. "She came barreling into our room, screaming nonsense. Chased us both outside the house and demanded we give it back. Well, I didn't want to give it back. I mean, I'm telling you it was bloody terrifying, Nessa. I don't know what Mum was thinking, giving that thing to a child." Nessa snorted despite herself, even though the story was bitter-sweet given their current circumstances. "So when she cornered us in the tree house, I held it over her head because she couldn't reach it. I was so smug, y'know, because she kept jumping up and down but couldn't reach."

"Yeah, I can imagine just how amusing you'd think that was," she said with an eye roll. He smiled again at the memory.

"Yeah, but that just made her more mad," he said, as though this weren't totally self-explanatory. "So she punched me square in the stomach."

"You're joking," she said, eyes wide.

"I'm not. Took me by surprise too. I just bent over double and she snatched the doll and ran off cackling."

"You deserved nothing less," said Nessa, pointedly, even though she was smiling gently.

His eyes opened then and she stilled when he looked at her again. There was a hope in them that hadn't been there before.

"She's a fighter," he said, but the words were firm, unyielding.

"Yes," she agreed. "She absolutely is."

-o0o-

She wasn't sure when they'd fallen asleep. The events of the night had seemed to build up so hastily and left her so anxious and depressed, she was surprised any of them had been able to fall asleep at all. But she must have been because suddenly she was being awoken by a frantic Professor McGonagall.

"Miss Potter! Mr. Weasley! Up, up!"

Nessa lunged forward with a gasp as the events of the night came racing back to her. What was happening? George sat up next to her, dazed and rubbing sleep out of his own eyes, as Professor McGonagall moved over to wake Tori and Fred.

"I will refrain from asking what the two of you are doing in the boys' dormitory, given the circumstances," McGonagall said, looking at her and Tori sternly over her spectacles. Nessa met Tori's eyes briefly before they shot back to McGonagall. "The four of you, come with me, please."

They scrambled after her and waited as she woke an equally confused Percy Weasley, who was clad in his pajamas and shoving his own glasses onto his face. She walked swiftly down the staircase and through the castle until they came to a stop outside of the Hospital Wing.

Nessa felt her entire body stiffen as the door opened slowly. Please, God, no. Don't let her be dead. Don't let this day get any worse, please. She felt Tori grab onto her hand, her grip bruisingly tight, as they stepped into the room.

"Ginny!" said Percy, racing forward to hug a perfectly alive and breathing Ginny Weasley.

Nessa felt her heart stutter in her chest as the shock of seeing her friend in front of her. She saw the twins and Tori race forward to crowd around her as well, all of them looking the most happily relieved she'd ever seen, but Nessa was still staring at her as if expecting her to disappear.

She was there. Just standing there. She was pale, clearly shaken up, and covered in grime and something black all in her hair, but she was breathing.

Ginny's eyes met hers suddenly, brown clashing with green, and suddenly Nessa's heart was beating again, frantically against her ribs and she lunged forward so quickly she nearly knocked the poor girl over. The familiar flowery scent of her shampoo filled her nostrils as she hugged her so tightly she wondered if the younger girl could even breathe. If she couldn't she didn't say anything, but Nessa couldn't really tell if that was because she could breathe or because she was sobbing so intensely into her shoulder.

"I'm so sorry, Nessa, I'm so sorry," she sobbed, clinging onto her friend just as tightly. "It was me — I opened the Chamber of Secrets, but I didn't mean to, I swear. I wanted to tell you, but I was so scared you'd be mad at me and —"

Nessa pulled away from her suddenly and stared down at her in shock.

"Mad at you?" she said in confusion. "Why would I be mad at you? It was Voldemort who did this to you, wasn't it?"

Ginny flinched at the name and looked up at her in surprise.

"How — How did you —"

"We figured it out just before we heard you'd been — that you —" said Fred, clearly unable to say what had happened aloud again, now that he could see her there in front of him.

"Well, Nessa figured it out," amended George. "We were looking for you when we saw the last message on the wall."

"How did you even get out?" said Tori, clearly not in the mood to have this conversation again.

Ron spoke up then and it was in that moment that Nessa realized that he was also covered in dust and grime.

"Harry and I figured out that the entrance was in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom," he said, eyeing Nessa wearily when she stared at him in shock. Of course it was. She'd assumed it was just a good place for a snake to use the pipes and go in many different directions within the school. "Because Aragog told us that the last victim died in a bathroom and we figured —"

"It was Myrtle," said Tori with a slack jaw. "Myrtle was the last victim. How could we have missed that?"

Well, to be fair, Nessa had not given that much thought. When Aragog had been speaking to Harry, she'd only really heard parts of the conversation, given how frantically she'd been trying to think of how to get them out of there and maintain control over her phobia.

"Right," said Ron with a nod. "Well, we went down there —"

"Went down there?" Nessa shrieked suddenly, her heart plummeting as she took a step back from Ginny, looking frantically around the room for her brother. Oh God, where was he? "Where is my brother, Ron?"

Ron took a hasty step backward with his hands raised.

"I'm really sorry, Nessa, we —"

Nessa stumbled backward again at these words, reaching blindly for something to hold onto as her legs gave out. He sounded so guilty, his voice cracking with it and she did not want to know. Suddenly, she did not want to know.

She made an agonized noise and Tori was there in front of her in a heartbeat, grabbing onto her waist and holding her steady.

"No, no, he's alive — bloody hell, I'm sorry, Nessa, I didn't mean — He's with Dumbledore." Ron rushed out, suddenly realizing how bad the words must have sounded coupled with the fact that Harry wasn't with him.

"Merlin's beard, Ron," said Fred with a glare.

"Why'd you have to say it like that?" snapped George, who's face had gone pale again.

Tori whirled around to look at him with her hands on her hips.

"You should never be allowed to talk to people, you know," she said, vehemently.

Nessa ignored all of them as the feeling came back into her body again slowly. She looked at Ron, her face still very pale.

"He's alive," she whispered, afraid to hope.

Ron nodded hastily, grimacing at her in apology.

"Yes, yes, he's fine, I swear it. I only meant that I was sorry we hadn't told you before we'd gone down there. There just wasn't a lot of time, you know?" He continued when Nessa nodded, her eyes still wide. "Well, we went down there and then Lockhart stole my wand and tried to cast a memory charm on us but it backfired and it…well the tunnel caved in so we got separated, but Harry said that Riddle was there —"

"There?" said Tori frantically, looking at Nessa in a panic. "How could he have been there? I thought he was in Albania?"

Ron huffed. "Do you want me to tell the bloody story or not?"

To her credit, Tori only glared at him but let him continue. Nessa highly suspected that Ron would come to regret his moment of snark in the coming days, if the look she shared with the twins was any indication.

Ron told them every part he could remember from what Harry had told him in McGonagall's office. About how he was merely a memory within the diary, about how he had been trying to get to Harry ever since he had learned about him from Ginny and Harry had found the diary. About how he'd been planning to use Ginny as a means to gain his full power back. About Harry battling the Basilisk and Fawkes coming to his aid when he'd been bitten by it and then destroying the diary with one of the fangs so that Ginny could wake up again.

By the end of the tale, the room was deathly silent, Ginny had begun crying silently again, sitting on her bed with her legs curled up into her chest, and Nessa felt like her legs were no longer strong enough to hold her up.

"I need to sit down," she whispered hoarsely, searching blindly for a chair in her daze. Tori led her over to the one that was next to Ginny's bed and stayed standing behind her as she tried to anchor herself again.

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, who had been speaking seriously with Madam Pomfrey up until now came bustling over to fret over Ginny again.

"Now, Madam Pomfrey says that you should be okay to go to the feast, if you're feeling up to it, dear," said Mrs. Weasley, gently to her daughter. "But maybe, you should just take some time to yourself for now. Bed rest, I think, is best. We can have some food brought up if you'd like."

"I can stay with you," said Nessa immediately with a gentle smile. She wasn't feeling up to being around the entire school at the moment anyway and Ginny still looked so horribly upset.

"You – you will?" said Ginny in surprise. Nessa felt her brows furrow in confusion. "You're really not mad at me?"

"No, of course not," she said firmly. "Why would I be mad at you? This isn't your fault, Ginny. Tell me you know that." Ginny looked down at the bedspread and ran her hand over it, back and forth, even though it wasn't wrinkled. "Ginny."

"I opened it, though, Nessa," she said, refusing to meet her eyes. "Me. If I hadn't kept writing in my diary, then I —"

"Ginny, you couldn't have possibly known better," she said adamantly. "I mean, Harry obviously didn't. He wrote in it, too. And I don't think I'd have thought twice about it either. I mean, the pictures move here, for chrissakes. A book that wrote back to me would really just be another day in my life."

"Neither of you grew up in this world, though," Ginny implored, as if she wanted to convince her to be mad at her. Nessa shook her head in denial. "I have. None of my brothers would have written back," Her brothers grimaced and shifted uncomfortably and Nessa glared at them until they stopped. "And Dad says I should have known better."

Nessa's eyes flicked toward Mr. Weasley, who looked guilty now, and opened his mouth to console his daughter, but Nessa spoke first.

"I don't think he meant that to say that it was your fault, Ginny," she said, gently.

"No, of course not," he agreed, gripping her hand in one of his. "I just want you to be aware. To be cautious."

"But he's right," she insisted, tears falling over her cheeks again. "I should have known. And someone could have died, Nessa. You deserve to be mad at me."

"No, I do not. You did not do this because you wanted to hurt someone. Intention matters. And besides, Ginny, no one died."

"But if they had —"

"If they had, it still would not be your fault," she said, firmly, moving from her seat so that she could sit cross-legged on Ginny's bed. Ginny was still refusing to look at her. "Ginny, look at me." Her eyes lifted hesitantly. "This is not your fault. I promise you it isn't. The only person to blame for this is Lord Voldemort."

They all flinched, even Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, but she ignored them completely and kept her eyes locked on Ginny. She looked guilty still, her eyes not wavering anymore, but her lip trembling and her hands still smoothing over the sheet below her, over and over again.

"I wish I had been braver, y'know?" she whispered quietly. "But I wasn't. The more he…took over me…the more afraid I got. And then when I let the diary go because I suspected it was doing something…I saw Harry with it. I got so scared that Tom would tell him that it was me. I panicked. I took it back. And, even though I suspected the diary…I still wrote in it after I got it back. Still told him how scared I was."

"Why?" said Nessa, gently, careful to keep any judgment out of her tone so that Ginny wouldn't think she was going to blame her. She wasn't judging either — because she suspected that she knew the answer and she understood it very well.

"I thought…I thought he was my friend," she said brokenly. Mrs. Weasley choked up and hugged her daughter against her briefly. "He listened to me. He actually listened to me, y'know? He didn't tell me I was annoying or that he had to polish his Prefect badge or make some joke about it." All of her brothers shifted guiltily from behind her and she could tell that they'd never really put much thought into how these actions would have affected her. Men were so…stoic, in an almost annoying kind of way. "It was just nice, y'know? To feel heard."

"Yeah, I do know," she said quietly.

"But he wasn't really listening to me at all, was he?" Nessa felt her heart break at how broken she looked when she said it. "He was just using me."

"He was," she agreed softly and grabbed one of her hands, lacing their fingers together. The action seemed to shock Ginny a little, but she squeezed and took comfort from her anyway. "And I'm so sorry, Ginny. I wish I had noticed sooner what was bothering you. I wish I could have spared you this. I can only imagine how scared you must have been, how lonely it must have felt."

"You said…in the library, you said in your first year, you felt lonely even though you were surrounded by so many people. Do you remember that?" Ginny asked her, wiping her face on the back of her free hand. Nessa nodded. "That's how it felt. Like that. Except I knew I had you and Harry and Tori and my brothers. So I don't really understand how that could be the case. I wasn't alone."

"You can feel alone even if you aren't truly alone. Loneliness doesn't work that way. You were going through something the rest of us didn't and couldn't understand. That's lonely no matter how you spin it." she said and then leaned forward so that their eyes met again before she said, firmly, "And I think you were very brave, Ginny. Even if you don't."

Ginny shook her head, frowning.

"I wasn't though," she said sadly. "I didn't fight him at all. I didn't tell any of you even though I should have. I told him everything about me."

"You fought him every step of the way though, didn't you? You were going to tell me and Harry. Even though you were afraid we'd be upset. You threw out the book when you realized what was happening, even if you did take it back later. You fought against him in every way you knew how. He was just stronger than you were."

"Because I opened myself up to him. He told me that's how he was able to keep such a tight hold on me, even after I threw the book out. If I'd been braver, I would have been able to handle it all myself. To push him away."

"It takes a lot of bravery to open yourself up so completely to another person, Ginny. Even if you never see their face." she said.

"I shouldn't have though. How can I be brave for trusting someone I shouldn't have?"

"Sometimes we open ourselves up to people who don't deserve it. That's the risk you take. It isn't your fault if they choose to betray the trust you gave them. Not ever. He knew perfectly well what he was doing to you. He knew perfectly well how scared you were and he kept doing it. That is weak. That is cowardly and disgusting. You have a good heart, Ginny Weasley, and he took advantage of that. The only person at fault for any of this is him. Don't give him the power to convince you otherwise, do you hear me? There are wizards much older and wiser than you, who have fallen prey to Lord Voldemort. This is not your fault."

Ginny sniffled and smiled at her. Vanessa smiled back, thankful to see something so familiar on her friend's face again. She would have been willing to sit here the entire night if it would convince her to forgive herself for this.

"That's what Dumbledore said," said Ginny softly.

Nessa leaned back a little and grinned at her, glad for something to change the subject to something lighter.

"Yes, well, I don't think they'd let him run an entire school if he was completely barmy, do you?" she said.

"Ah, thank you, Miss Potter," said a calm voice from behind her that made her freeze completely. "That is not a sentiment I hear very often these days, I'm afraid. It is much appreciated."

Nessa stared at Ginny in horror, who was clearly trying not to laugh as her eyes shifted to a space behind her.

"Of course, he's right behind me," she muttered to her. "Why wouldn't he be?"

It was these words that broke the tension and sent Ginny into a fit of giggles. Her parents, brothers, and Tori followed her until the entire room was laughing heartily and the darkness that had been shrouding them dissipated.

Nessa turned to face the headmaster after she'd stopped laughing and the embarrassment lingered as her eyes landed on him. He looked as he always had — his blue eyes twinkling behind his spectacles as he eyed her over them, his beard white as snow and hanging down to his stomach, his fingers steepled together in front of him — but he was not with Harry. She jumped up from the bed immediately and raced over to him.

"Harry — where's —"

"He is safe and perfectly healthy, Miss Potter," he said, kindly. "He is taking care of a small matter with Mr. Malfoy and Dobby, but I daresay he shall be here in just a moment."

"I — Dobby?" she stuttered, looking at Ron curiously. He shrugged at her, clearly as confused as she was.

"I will let him explain, I think," he said, his eyes drifting over and landing on Ginny. "I am simply here to check on Miss Weasley. You are feeling better, I hope?"

Ginny nodded, seeming flustered by all the attention. Dumbledore clapped happily.

"Well then, I expect we should all be getting to the feast. We have much to celebrate." He clapped his hands again and there was a tray of hot chocolate for Ginny and her parents. "I think you deserve this. Hot chocolate always makes me feel better. I shall see the rest of you very soon."

He made it to the door of the Hospital Wing and had nearly let them come to a close before he returned, peaking through the doors and smiling at Vanessa happily.

"And Miss Potter," he said, causing Nessa to turn to face him again. "Fifty points to Gryffindor. For being the light amidst someone else's darkness."

Nessa gaped at him as he left, the hospital wing doors closing behind him with a snap.

-o0o-

Did I get overly emotional writing this chapter? Yes, absolutely. I am a huge baby sometimes. But I really do feel so horrible for Ginny and the Weasleys sometimes. They seriously go through so much in the span of the series.

I was going to write her reaction to Harry being safe as well, but this is already very long, and I think diving a little into Ginny's post-possession feelings is important, given how much emphasis I've tried to put on her throughout this story. She deserves the attention, I think. The next chapter is officially the last one for CoS! Perhaps, I'll post it tomorrow instead of waiting another week. I haven't yet decided. See you soon, lovely readers!