And we're back to Hogwarts.

GINNY VI

1993

She wasn't sure whether to be happy or scared about the end of the Christmas holidays. Considering recent events, Ginny had spent rather a good time with her brothers for Christmas. They all stayed at Hogwarts while their parents travelled to Egypt in order to visit Bill. Ginny was glad to receive a jumper like her brothers. She felt a little bit like them this way, and not put aside like usual. Her mother also sent her a delicious cake which she liked very much.

Overall, Ginny felt a little better. She didn't experience any black hole in her memory during the holidays, and she hoped it would continue like that. As a result, she felt a little more cheerful when she left the common room and walked to the Great Hall on the first Monday when courses resumed. She had to admit that the fact Harry was absent during the holidays helped. She didn't have to try to avoid him at all costs, and never risked stammering or getting all red in public. Not that there was much public anyway to watch her. As a result, she had spent a very good time. She hoped it would continue like this. Harry was back, and last time they saw each other, Ginny ran away after Draco Malfoy implied out loud that Harry was dating Hermione and Ginny at the same time.

Ginny really hated Malfoy. She hoped that he was the heir of Slytherin, and they would catch him soon. There had been another attack against a Muggle-born student from Hufflepuff, which left him and Nearly Headless Nick both Petrified. Ginny was horrified that even a ghost could be Petrified by the heir of Slytherin. Even more horrifying was that Harry was believed to be the one who did this.

It couldn't be Harry. Ginny didn't care about the things the others said, about him being a Parselmouth. Harry had always been kind with her since the day they met, as he was with everyone else. She wasn't there when the accident happened, but there had to be another explanation to the fact that Harry could talk to snakes than him being the heir of Slytherin. That was ridiculous. Someone had to be attacking people in a way to make believe that Harry was guilty. She had said so to Tom the night after students came back from the Duelling Club, and he agreed with her.

Ginny realized that she hadn't written to Tom since the latest attack. It was strange. She thought that writing to Tom was the only thing that could keep her sane, with all those black holes in her memory. But staying away from Tom and actually trying to enjoy the time spent with her brothers for Christmas made her feel very good. She realized that the diary probably kept her away from her family. It had been a lifetime since she wrote to her parents. She did during the holidays, apologizing for not giving them news during whole weeks. She also played chess with Ron, and spent some time with Hermione as well, who was the only girl of Gryffindor who remained at Hogwarts for Christmas.

If truth be told, Ginny admired Hermione, if only for her ability to speak with Harry without blushing. Also, although she was somewhat jealous of Hermione, it was only because of her latter ability, and not because Ginny believed she and Harry were dating. After spending months with them at Hogwarts, it was obvious that they were only friends. Very close friends, obviously, but nothing more than friends. She wished people stopped propagating those silly rumours about her and Harry. Hermione was in fact very kind with Ginny. She even gave her advice for Harry, suggesting that Ginny starts to look at Harry like a normal boy and behaves just like the way she would behave around any other boy or her brothers. It was easier said than done, but Ginny guessed that she had nothing to lose by trying. She just didn't know how to behave normally around Harry, even less how to look at him like someone normal. It was Harry, after all.

If Ginny thought that the first day of class after the holidays could begin on a good note, she was wrong. She was approaching the Great Hall, alone, when someone hailed her.

"Hey, Ginny."

Ginny didn't recognize the voice of the girl who called her, and when she turned to look at her owner, she saw that it wasn't a girl she knew. She had a round face with brown eyes. Her hair was red, like Ginny's, but their resemblance stopped there. This girl's hair had a brownish tone, and unlike Ginny who kept hers free, falling on both her shoulders and behind her back, this girl bore her own hair in a long plait behind her back, in addition to leaving some strands fall on her forehead. She was also taller than Ginny.

"Your name is Ginny, isn't it? You're Ronald Weasley's sister?" the girl asked.

"Yes."

"My name is Susan. I'm in the same class as your brother in Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"He's never talked about you."

Maybe she spoke too harshly. The girl didn't seem to want her any wrong. She didn't seem to care about Ginny's tone either. "I'm sorry, Ginny, but I just wanted to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"You remember that morning when Justin was found Petrified? Before the holidays? I was just wondering if you saw something that morning, anything unusual?"

Ginny frowned. "Why should I have seen something?"

It was Susan's turn to frown. "I saw you in a nearby corridor that morning, just before I found Justin and Nick. It was you, wasn't it?"

Ginny didn't see what she was talking about. She was nowhere near Justin when he was attacked. She was... She tried to remember that day. It happened so long ago. It had been weeks. It was a Monday, she was sure about that. And it was in the morning.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ginny replied uncertainly. "I was in Transfiguration class that morning."

"Really?" Susan seemed quite surprised, and disappointed. "You're sure it wasn't you?"

"Yes, I am." Ginny put all the certainty she could muster in her answer, but the truth was she didn't have any.

"Strange. I was sure that..." Susan had started to look at the floor, as if lost in her thoughts, but then she straightened up and looked at Ginny. "I must have confused you with someone else. It was dark, and I only saw that person's back. I'm sorry to have bothered you, Ginny. Have a good day."

Susan left. From the badge on her robes and the way they were colored, Ginny could tell that she was from Hufflepuff. No wonder Ron never talked about her. But as the girl walked away and was followed by another Hufflepuff girl with blond hair arranged in pigtails, Ginny thought about that morning. She indeed had Transfiguration with McGonagall that morning. But when she tried to remember what they were taught that day, she couldn't remember. It wasn't helped by the fact that McGonagall had given her additional work and even a detention for missing two classes during the first half of the year. One such class happened just before the holidays. Was it the day this boy from Hufflepuff was found with Nick? Ginny couldn't tell. As the months had gone by, the number of black holes in her memory had not stopped to increase along with the attacks. She dared not to talk about this to anybody but Tom, and despite his reassurances and soothing words, Ginny couldn't stop wondering why this kept happening. And now this girl just told her she was close to Nearly Headless Nick and that other student when they were Petrified.

Ginny's heart was racing. She looked at the Great Hall, and decided not to go in. The next thing she remembered, she was standing in front of the wall on the second floor, where Mrs Norris had been found months ago.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED.

ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

Did she black out again? That meant that she could walk during these periods she didn't remember. The first time it happened had been the night Mrs Norris was attacked. She couldn't remember what she did the evening and night of Halloween. Then the black holes, the moments she couldn't remember, multiplied. She couldn't remember where she was when Colin Creevey was Petrified as well. She remembered being at the practice of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, watching Harry just like Colin did, only she wasn't taking photos like he did. But she couldn't remember leaving the pitch. And now she couldn't remember exactly where she was when Nick and Justin Finch-Fletchley were Petrified. This girl, Susan, she seemed sure to have seen Ginny nearby when it happened.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED.

ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

What was going on with her? Ginny slowly cowered into a corner, right under the red writing. She was shaking uncontrollably. She looked into her bag and took out the only thing that could make her feel better. Tom's diary just looked as old and lifeless as ever, but it was the only thing that helped her to feel better. She opened it to today's page, took her feather and dipped the quill into a bottle of ink. She had all the difficulties in the world to do it as her hands were shaking like they never did. When she tried to write, she couldn't hold her hand still, and only produced an incomprehensible scribble. Ginny brought her feather to her mouth, squealing. Tears were running down her cheeks, and she couldn't hold them back. She was whimpering. On the page, her ink disappeared to leave place to a different writing.

Ginny? Are you alright?

Ginny wanted to answer, but what could this diary do? Tell her to not worry, that it was only stress, the weather, her brother scaring her, the new environment in which she lived. He would tell her that she wasn't going mad. But the diary was lying to her. She was going mad. Everyone around her said that she looked peaky, ill, depressed. She had no friends, she barely spoke to her brothers or anyone else for that matter, and she was no closer to speaking with Harry, despite Tom's encouragements. Despite Tom's assurances that things would get better with time, they didn't. And the more she felt close to Tom, the more she felt like she was moving away from her family and everyone she cared about. During the holidays, when she stopped writing, she felt better, and she could almost have normal conversations with everyone again.

Everything had started to go bad the moment she opened that diary. The little book was reassuring, but he didn't help her to get better. First, it felt like a friend she was carrying in her pocket. Now it felt heavy like a cannonball or a Bludger, and Ginny was afraid that it was carrying her all over the place like the one who attacked Harry during the first Quidditch game of the year.

Ginny looked at the diary that had slipped on the floor. She hated it. She hated it with all her heart. She closed the pages and took a decision. There were toilets nearby. They were out of order. She ran into them, rushed to the first toilet she could find, dropped the diary into it, and flushed it. Then she ran back, in order to be sure to not try to take the diary back. She was crying, feeling like she lost a large part of herself, but at the same time she felt relieved to not carry this weight around.

Ginny arrived at her first class of Transfiguration on an empty stomach, and late, which made the Professor McGonagall very upset, of course. She removed ten points from Gryffindor and gave a detention to Ginny. She should have felt horrible, angry, sad, but strangely enough, she felt nothing of these things. She worked tirelessly during the course, and although she didn't manage to completely change her small piece of cotton in linen, Ginny felt better after the class was over. She nonetheless had to stay after the others were gone, as instructed by the professor to receive her detention.

To Ginny's complete surprise, McGonagall didn't just give her a detention. "Miss Weasley, is there something you would like to tell me?"

Ginny was taken aback by the question. "I don't understand, Professor."

"Miss Weasley, professors speak among themselves. And everything my colleagues are telling me about you is worrying me. You arrive late in class, sometimes you miss whole courses, and whenever you're there, you look as if you were about to throw up or to get asleep. So tell me what is going on. I'm trying to help you."

The Professor McGonagall was looking at her with an unusual concerned and caring look. It was disturbing, considering the usually severe attitude of the professor. But Ginny couldn't tell her anything.

"I'm fine, Professor," she said.

"Are you sure?" the Transfiguration teacher asked.

"Yes, Professor. There isn't anything, Professor."

She hoped that McGonagall would believe her. Whatever the woman's feelings about Ginny's lie, she returned to her stern self almost immediately. "Well, whatever is causing you to not respect rules, Miss Weasley, I hope you'll solve it quickly. In the meantime, you will help Mr Filch clean the Entrance Hall this evening. You get there after your last class."

Ginny wished her punishment had been different. She was already afraid of Mr Filch in normal circumstances, but now it was worse since she was afraid he might suspect her about Mrs Norris. Not to mention she was the sister of Fred and George, probably the two students who the caretaker despised the most.

Ginny ate like a glutton at lunch, to compensate the fact she took no breakfast this morning.

"Be careful," Ron told her as she was swallowing her fourth sandwich. "Or else you'll end up like Ernie Macmillan, or worse, Crabbe and Goyle."

Ginny wanted to retort that he was the one to speak, being the person who always asked for a second plate at home, and who emptied dishes at every feast he could attend. She was prevented from saying her thoughts aloud by the bacon, salad and bread in her mouth, and by a group of students who just stopped behind Ron the moment he spoke.

"What did you say, Weasley?" the stout boy at their head said.

Ron turned to face the intruder. "Oh. Hi, Ernie. Don't take it too personally." Her brother was definitely in a foul mood.

The boy Ron called Ernie, who was probably the same he had referenced as being fat a moment before, turned pink at his words. "I want an apology."

"You can dream, if you want."

Ron turned his back on him and returned to his own plate of sandwiches. But another boy seized her brother by the shoulder and made him turn back towards Ernie. "You're going to apologize to my friend!"

"Wayne! Come on. Let's go. It's not worth it," a girl with pigtails told him. Ginny realized this was the girl Susan went to after she talked with Ginny. From the look of their robes, all students in this group were from Hufflepuff. Susan was not among them.

"Yes, it's worth it," Ernie said angrily. "I want an apology."

"You have a problem with our little brother?" Fred and George just stood up from their side of the table and were advancing on the Hufflepuffs. Ginny's brothers were older than them by two years, and some seemed afraid all of a sudden, but Ernie and his friend who they called Wayne stood their ground.

"Yes. He just insulted me. He says I'm fat."

"You are fat," Fred and George said together. Ernie turned from pink to red.

"Hey, don't take it too hard on yourself. Our mother is fat, and she's not making a big deal out of it," Fred said. "But, if you want that much to be slimer, we have a very good solution for you."

Fred and George looked at each, nodded, then positioned their hands before their mouths like megaphones. "SERIOUSLY EVIL WIZARD COMING THIS WAY! MAKE WAY FOR THE HEIR OF SLYTHERIN!"

As they couldn't be better timed, Harry and Hermione had just walked into the Great Hall. Harry looked obviously displeased by Fred and George's show, and Hermione too. The Hufflepuffs, though, had gone from red out of hatred to blank out of fear.

"Come on, Ernie. Let's go," the girl with pigtails said. No one dared to oppose her decision this time. Ron was free of the Hufflepuffs.

"You really need to say that?" Hermione told the twins on an exasperated tone.

"What? We just saved Ron from receiving the lesson of his life by a bunch of Hufflepuffs," George said.

"You could have found another way."

"Perhaps, but it wouldn't have been that funny."

"For once, I'm glad people think you're the heir of Slytherin," Ron told Harry as he sat down next to him.

"If only there were more advantages." Harry didn't look happy at all when saying that. It was the first time Ginny saw him since he returned from the holidays. He looked at her. "Are you alright, Ginny?"

She felt herself blush, like always when he looked at her or talked to her. "Yes," she said in a very low voice. Luckily or not, she never knew if it was a good thing or not, Harry went to talk with Ron and Hermione for the rest of lunch.

Ginny's afternoon went pretty smoothly when compared to this morning. The class of Potions proved to be less unbearable than usual. Ginny followed the instructions Professor Snape gave them and produced a potion that wasn't that far from what he asked from them, even though he told Ginny hers was barely fair. In Ginny's eyes, though, it was a compliment coming from such a man.

She had to go quickly to the Entrance Hall in order to clean it after the Potions class. Filch was as horrible with her as he was with all other students. Still, she was almost happy when she walked into Gryffindor's common room. She climbed the stairs to the girls' dormitory, like always, and moved to grab Tom's diary, but she refrained when she remembered that she got rid of it. He had to be totally ruined by water now, surely. Ginny went back into the common, and had the pleasant surprise to look at Fred and George start some Dr Filibuster's Fabulous Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks. The common room exploded in applauses when they were done, and Ginny joined them. Here was something she would have missed had she kept the diary. Life may not be as unpleasant as she was without the friend in her pocket.

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Next chapter: Hermione